As was usual on the sites, the girls soon sorted their crews into who was best suited for which particular job. Jane and Kathy were both extremely good on the winch, having a ‘feel’ for the great creature tethered only by a slender steel cable, quiet and seemingly compliant one moment and making desperate attempts to escape or to come crashing down on the nearest buildings the next. But at such times, when the wind was high and conditions hellish, both crews were turned out, and then either Jane or Kathy would go to the winch whilst the other acted as No. 1.
It was a great comfort to them both to be together. They shared a small room at the head of the stairs, where they could be easily fetched by the guard when Balloon Centre rang to tell them there was an alert. To Kathy’s pleasure, Jane seemed to have abandoned her free and easy ways and to have settled down with Jimmy as the only man in her life once more. Despite the convenient closeness of ‘Cupid’s Cavalry’, as the searchlight boys were called, Jane steadfastly refused all invitations to go to the flicks, out dancing or to some other form of entertainment. Kathy also refused such advances. She had told Jane she had a boyfriend to whom she wrote regularly but had never revealed that it was Jimmy’s greatest friend. She felt superstitiously certain that if she did so something awful would happen. The plane would crash and she and Jane would lose their lovers in one blow, or Alec and Jimmy would fall out and have a fearful row, which would make life aboard their Wimpey both difficult and dangerous. At best, one or other of them might be posted, and she would feel it was her fault for having let Jane – and the fates – know of the strange coincidence. For it was a strange coincidence that two best friends, in the same aeroplane, were going out with two Bops, also best friends, working on the same balloon site.
It was tempting, of course, to tell Jane about Alec, to share the fact that they meant to marry when the war was over, if not before, but for the first three weeks on site, at any rate, she had managed not to do so. She and Jane were getting on so wonderfully well, slipping back into their old intimacy, that she hesitated to do anything which might spoil it. And it was impossible not to remember that Jane had once liked Alec very much indeed, had even seemed to think him better looking than her beloved Jimmy.
The icy cold weather continued and the girls were delighted to have proper quarters instead of a draughty Nissen hut and the horrors of air force ablutions which, on a balloon site, usually meant a small basin of cold water beside one’s bed and a lengthy route march to the municipal baths once a week. Instead, the girl who had been detailed to do the cooking and cleaning of the house, Norah Brown, got up early and boiled a huge preserving pan full of water in the kitchen. The girls trooped in and took turns to have a really good wash over the sink, finding it a good deal more satisfactory than trying to cart a basin of hot water back to their own rooms. Any shyness about stripping naked in front of their friends had been dissipated years before in chilly Nissen huts all over the country, so removing their garments in the warmth of the kitchen was nothing to them.
But though the weather continued cold and flying the balloon was made, if possible, more difficult by gusty March winds, the crew on Balloon Site 7 were settling in and were not displeased to be told, by telephone, that their officer would be visiting them that very same day and would expect a complete turn out. This meant that anyone hoping to sneak off home for half an hour or so, or to have an extra sleep to make up for the fact that they had been working in the early hours, would be disappointed. However, it gave them time to get everything ready. The balloon was on close haul; the balloon bed itself had recently been painted during a lull in activities and looked first rate, the blimp had been ‘topped up’ with hydrogen the day before so that she looked as fat and sleek as a pig about to give birth, and the girls themselves laid out their kit in readiness on their beds, and then helped Norah to black lead the cooking stove, polish the kitchen floor and whiten every step in the place. The officer was supposed to arrive at eleven o’clock, but it was noon before she put in an appearance. Jane saw her first and raced back to warn the others. ‘They said she’d be on a bicycle, and so she is, but it’s an awful smart one,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Norra bit like the old boneshakers officers mostly use. She’s ever so tall and haughty looking. She’s one of them what pushes her cap forward so she has to raise her chin to see daylight even. She saw me and beckoned me over, then shoved the bike at me and telled me to get the crews lined up around the balloon bed. We’d better gerra move on. I reckon she’s one of them what enjoys finding fault.’
‘She won’t find much fault with us today,’ Kathy said with satisfaction. ‘Everyone’s present, there’s no kit missing, and for once the blimp is behaving herself. What’s more, we’re all old hands so we know the balloon drill backwards. Let’s get out there!’
The girls drilled without even the smallest mistake and then Kathy, as the senior NCO present, went over to the officer to accompany her on her tour of inspection. ‘All present and correct . . . ma’am,’ Kathy said, lifting her gaze as she did so, to look squarely into the officer’s eyes, though these were deeply shadowed by the peak of her cap. ‘Would you like to do the kit inspection first or the kitchens?’
Such was Kathy’s preoccupation that, for a moment, she stared at the officer without really seeing her. Then, as the woman said coldly: ‘Kit inspection first, corporal,’ she had to strangle a gasp. The officer was Marcia Montgomery!
Two hours later, sitting in the kitchen at the long wooden table and eating the hot meal that Norah and her helpers had prepared, Kathy told Jane who their officer actually was. Jane’s eyes rounded and she gave vent to an incredulous whistle. ‘Oh, Kathy, there’s your sergeant’s stripes gone for a burton,’ she said. ‘’Cos if you reckernised her, she’ll have known you, ’course she would. Didn’t she give no sign? I thought she were extra specially nasty in the bedrooms, pullin’ the girls’ kit about and sayin’ she’d seen brighter brasswork on a new recruit, but I thought it were just her way, like.’
‘If I’d thought she had recognised me, I’d be a gibbering wreck,’ Kathy admitted. ‘But I’m bloody sure she didn’t. She’s the type who never really looks at anyone she considers her social inferior, and after I’d realised who she was I pulled my cap down myself and never said a word more than I had to.’
‘Ye-es, I did notice that, ’cos it ain’t like you to keep shtum,’ Jane teased, grinning. ‘Now you’ve told me, I remember the name an’ all. Ain’t she the one you punched on the nose in Paddy’s market?’
Kathy gave a groan and buried her face in her hands. ‘Yes, you’re right. I’d forgotten that. I wonder if I ought to put in for a posting? But why the blazes should I? I really like this site; it’s grand having a house of our own instead of Nissen huts and we’ve got a first-rate crew without a single troublemaker aboard. What’s more, I can visit Mam and Billy easily from here, now that they’re back in Daisy Street.’ She squared her shoulders, smiling at her friend. ‘No, that settles it. Marcia bloody Montgomery isn’t going to scare me away; I mean you never know where I might get sent. It could be miles away and I’d hate that.’
‘You’re right there,’ Jane said. ‘I suppose your best bet is to do everything so bleedin’ perfectly that she can’t complain and go on keeping your head down. Good thing she ain’t like some officers, prowlin’ round the sites two or three times a week. The sarge said once a month was more her style and he’s been right so far. C’mon, let’s get down to the kitchen and give Norah a hand with the dinner.’
It was inevitable, of course, that Marcia should recognise Kathy, but when she did so her only response was to be haughtier than ever. She completely ignored Kathy and talked to Jane instead, and if Jane was not present, she talked to a point about three inches above Kathy’s cap, seldom giving the younger girl a chance to speak at all. Accordingly, the weeks passed pleasantly enough. Kathy and Jane were both swotting in the hope of passing their sergeant’s examinations by the end of the summer, since this would mean more pay and they felt their present responsibilities could scarcely be more onerous; after all, they were in charge of the site and managing it as well as anyone could, or so they thought. Certainly, the flight sergeant, who was in charge of a good many balloon sites, told them on his weekly visit that they were streets ahead of the other sites, getting the balloon up quicker, when necessary, and running the site without fuss or arguments, so that a happy atmosphere prevailed. It was clear that their Section Officer, despite her dislike of Kathy, had never complained about them at Balloon Centre and had sent in reports which, while they may have damned with faint praise, certainly brought no adverse reaction from their masters.
It was almost June before Marcia came to the site one morning to tell them, in her coldest and most offhand manner, that No. 7 Balloon Site had been chosen for an inspection by the Top Brass. ‘You have two full weeks to make sure that your balloon drill is perfect and the site itself the same,’ she said. ‘The Air Commodore will go everywhere, examine everything, including the entire house, so I, or Flight Sergeant Griffiths, will be visiting the site daily from now on. I know you must feel that because you have your own bedrooms you have the right to some privacy . . .’ here she glared straight at Kathy, ‘. . . but this is not the case. All traces of your personal possessions must be out of sight, is that understood?’
Jane and Kathy agreed that it was, and immediately began on the enormous task of making a practical working site look like a model in which every length of rope was meticulously coiled and every tool neatly hung in its place. The balloon bed itself was whitewashed, with the bricks picked out in red ochre, and the blimp was topped up with hydrogen and checked down to every tiny patch to make sure that nothing untoward would catch the official eye.
The girls played up magnificently, even Norah allowing her kitchen to be cleaned and polished until it was impossible to imagine that a meal had ever been cooked there, let alone eaten. On the morning of the inspection itself, Kathy and Jane did a hasty last minute tour of the bedrooms and were actually in their own room when Jane, looking out of the window, gave a squeak and turned so quickly that she banged her knee on the bedstead. ‘They’re here!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, Kathy, we’d best get down before that hateful Marcia starts complaining about us.’
She flew out of the room as she spoke and Kathy was about to follow her when something on the floor caught her eye. It was a letter, written in familiar handwriting. Kathy swooped on it with an inward curse and crammed it into the pocket of her boiler suit. As commanded, she had put all her personal possessions, including Alec’s letters, neatly away into the small locker one was allowed for such things but, clearly, she had been a bit careless, since this page had escaped. But this was no time to worry about a moment’s inattention; Kathy flew for the stairs and tumbled down them, and by the time Marcia and the Top Brass arrived the crews were ready to start balloon drill.
‘Well, that went off a treat!’ Jane remarked, sitting down on her bed with a sigh of relief. Kathy and Jane were in their room, getting ready for an evening’s relaxation after the strain of the inspection. They meant to leave their two senior Bops in charge whilst they paid a hasty visit to Daisy Street and since they were still wearing their crisply starched boiler suits – one always wore boiler suits for a balloon drill inspection – they would have to change into their No. 1s.
‘Yes, we did bloody Marcia proud,’ Kathy said, beginning to struggle out of her boiler suit. ‘Can you come round to mine after about an hour, Jane? Only I told Mam we’d be coming home after the inspection and she said she’d bring enough meat and potato pie back from the tearooms to make a decent tea for four.’
Because the girls both now had bicycles, it only took about ten minutes to reach Daisy Street from the balloon site, so it was a regular thing for either Kathy or Jane to bicycle home and arrange their next visit. Sometimes, of course, they combined a visit home with a trip to the cinema or a session at the nearest dance hall, but on this occasion, at least, they wanted to tell their families how the inspection had gone.
‘Course I can,’ Jane said briefly. She had stripped off her own boiler suit and was already fastening her skirt. ‘Your mam’s meat and potato pie is one of me all time favourites.’
‘Me too,’ Kathy was beginning to reply, when a rustling from the pocket of her boiler suit made her remember the letter. Swinging round with her back to Jane, she plunged a hand into the pocket and pulled it out. She was about to put it in her locker when something about it caught her attention. It was Alec’s writing all right, but he had not started the letter in his usual way. Of late, his letters began
My darling Kathy
, but this one . . . Kathy sat down heavily on her bed. This one started
Dear Jane
!
For a moment Kathy was quite literally devoid of speech; she could not so much as open her mouth but simply sat, staring at the page spread out before her. Jane, blissfully unconscious that anything untoward had happened, continued to prattle about the inspection whilst Kathy tried to gather her wits. It was not one of her letters, it was one of Jane’s . . . but the writing was still Alec’s, which meant . . . which meant . . . just what did it mean, exactly?
‘Kathy? Wharron earth are you starin’ at? Oh, I guess it’s a letter from your feller. Well this is no time to be readin’ old letters or we’ll be late for your mam’s meat and potato pie and we don’t want—’
‘Shut up a moment,’ Kathy said. Her tone was peremptory but not, as yet, particularly unfriendly. ‘I’ve got to read this, it won’t take me a minute.’