Spitfire Girls (37 page)

‘Couldn't he expose you as a prostitute if you become famous?' asked Lili, at once fascinated and horrified.

‘By the time I'm famous I'll be in England and I'll be doing Shakespeare. Who the hell is he, anyway? He's just nobody, baby.'

Later that evening, after the largest meal Lili had eaten since the grand summer ball at Villiers Industries, the two girls went to their room to recover from the feast.

‘Let me see your bruises, then,' Lili said quietly.

There was no response from Kay.

‘Are you asleep?'

‘If I am asleep, why ask?' croaked Kay, turning on to her stomach.

Lili moved to her bed and gently pulled down the loose-fitting blouse to reveal a muscular back with shoulders powerful as a man's. Gently probing Kay's tense neck muscles with her inexperienced fingers, Lili felt as if a new and unknown power had overtaken her as if, with the excess of wine, the spirit of a a prowling jungle beast had invaded her soul.

Kneading Kay's muscles, Lili felt an overwhelming excitement beginning to churn within herself, and she shut her eyes, fighting back an impulse to settle on to Kay's magnificent flesh and envelop her whole. She knew Kay was not asleep, but she could feel relaxation in the worn muscles, and it was only when a hand began to stroke her thigh, so slowly, that Lili knew her explosion could no longer be contained.

Her mouth met the back of Kay's neck and with an
ungodly strength Lili held her and tore away the blouse, covering Kay's back with wild movements of a tongue that wanted to sweep across her fragrant beauty without end. Still Lili held Kay down, but opening her eyes realized there would be no resistance to her relentless passion, and soon they were as one, flesh to flesh, their complicated, fruity wetness joining in a fiery throbbing that held them both at the brink of a precipice …

Sobbing, moaning, crying out and begging for more of this ecstasy, Kay could not recall ever having known such terrible urgency with any man, each touch of Lili's skin and fingertips and adoring mouth bringing her to almost unbearable rapture. Having come completely after what had seemed hours of electrifying awakenings down her hardened nipples into the depths of her womanhood, Kay took Lili in her arms and held her in silence. Slowly, her fingertips outlined Lili's form, falling gently along the soft skin of her young thighs and moving into the shy, untouched garden that Kay now probed with tenderness, its virginal treasure wanting and pleading …

Every night thereafter the two girls slept as one and though Lili's moaning voice declared true love, Kay would only revel in the newfound form of sublime orgasm and over nine sleepless nights of insatiable, devouring, never-once-mentioned love.

No sooner had Hana Bukova and Josef Ratusz arrived in Britain than their lives were being commandeered by an assortment of Polish agents and military eccentrics who appeared more menacing than the Nazis they had just left behind. Hana had landed with crisp precision at Prestwick, spending the first night on friendly soil at the Orangefields Hotel, where the wizened, bow-legged proprietor had been convinced his new guests were German spies.

Little sleep was had by either flying ace, and by six o'clock the next morning a hearse had arrived to whisk the pair away, its darkened windows leaving the hotelier bemused. When they had gone his bobbing bald head pleaded with his assortment of long-term resident ferry pilots to do something about this calamity, but these residents were Americans and on this morning they were setting out on their busiest day yet. The Battle of Britain was raging, their President could do nothing, but they had survived U-Boat alley to be where they most wanted their talents to be used.

Departing in a cold dawn mist, the car carrying Hana and Josef had an odd identity plate, the letters of which were recorded by the vigilant proprietor. By the time he had lumbered back to the breakfast room, where smells of black pudding and toast entranced the last of the pilots remaining at the table, his wife was bustling at the washing-up and mumbling about the absence of eggs. He wanted to tell someone about the car and the spies and their bizarre
uniforms, but she could only wail while the American pilot scraping his plate laughed and took his leave.

Arriving in the centre of London at what seemed an eternity later, Hana and Josef laboured to extract their stiff bodies from the automobile, hunger and thirst pushing them to the brink of collapse. Being allowed no respite, their sullen driver, and in turn his tall, colourless companion, ordered the pair in Polish to mount a fiendish pyramid of steps. At the top Hana felt she would faint but Josef seized her by the arm and when she had recovered her breath they could see these were the headquarters of Poles in exile. Not one word had been exchanged during the seemingly interminable car journey, but now Josef wanted a response.

‘How did you know we were arriving?' he demanded, grasping his driver's richly-woven coat lapels.

No reply was forthcoming, and Hana grinned.

They walked.

‘They knew we were on our way – amazing!' Hana whispered, hopping on to her toes to make Josef hear.

‘This is an impressive edifice,' he said, choosing to ignore her as if at any moment a gunman might jump out from behind a pillar and cut him down for speaking out of turn. He peered up at the ornate ceiling as they marched along a wide, echoing corridor.

‘It has been occupied since 1908 by some English oddity called the Automobile Association,' the accomplice explained. ‘They have kindly given us the seventh floor, which has a clock on each corner. My office is underneath the clock of Leicester Square.'

‘Kind? – I would go insane!' Hana exclaimed, her step
overtaking the others. ‘Are you sure this gesture was not some sort of joke?'

The two British agents for the Polish government in exile walked on in silence. When they reached the end of the corridor, their guests were escorted through a heavy, window-less door, into a debriefing area. This also served as a storage cellar for the AA but the Poles had been allowed to set up an assortment of makeshift, windowless offices that had a sinister ambience out of context with the Englishness of the dank, mediaeval odour emitted by its walls.

Josef and Hana sat down and were relieved that food and drink had been laid before them and that the two men, now facing them across a wooden table, were smiling. Hana grabbed at the food, gulping down a sausage roll and a cup of lukewarm tea.

‘Can you give me my mother's address, please?' she asked, her speech interrupted by a hiccup.

Her escorts exchanged glances, and Josef, deeply involved with a sandwich, seemed uninterested in the proceedings.

There was another long silence, and Hana hiccupped again. ‘My mother brought the Kranz family to England and she was to stay a while before going back to my father.'

One of the men, clad in wool, came to life:

‘Our concern is for your comfort and safety. As you know, the Air Transport Auxiliary is keenly in need of expert pilots, and we have been instructed to engage your services for them immediately.'

Josef choked on his food. ‘God Almighty! I am not a ferry pilot – I am a fighter. Surely they could use me. I would not have risked my life, or Hana's, to come here and ferry Queen Bees.'

‘Indeed,' said the giant of the two, ‘Queen Bees are your first assignment. A pair will be needed for delivery to St Athan as soon as possible. Can you start now?'

‘No!' screamed Hana, rising from her chair. She was dirty and she hated the way she smelled, wanting to be clean to greet her meticulous mother.

‘There is nothing more to say,' said the small man, his expression pained. ‘We were expecting you, and the British government needs your expert services for special missions ferrying across perilous routes.'

Josef had now risen to his feet. ‘Hana and I must bathe and rest. Then we must see her mother, who is the great ace Vera Bukova.'

One of the men produced a sheaf of papers. ‘Please sign these and we will find Madame Bukova for you.'

Josef and Hana were feeling strangely lethargic and as they sat once more and perused the documents they realized they might never again see daylight if they did not agree to the absurdly simple terms on offer. Josef felt an urge to assault these characters for using Hana's mother as a bargaining tool. Their dungeon had an unspeakable stillness about it and the damp smell had begun to permeate their clothes. Reading the print, which covered several sheets of impressively headed paper, the two pilots learned that they were each to take a short test, and that Hana would be restricted to single- and twin-engined aircraft, should she pass. Josef would be inducted as a senior ATA man, on a handsome salary with room and food provided. It was attractive, and they were sick with tiredness.

They signed.

*

That evening Hana waited in a hotel room overlooking Maida Vale, her expectations rising with each passing hour as the prospect of news intensified. She had been promised a personal visit by the Polish Consul at nine o'clock precisely, and from the lively tone of his voice she assumed her mother would be found within the plush confines of his limousine, fueled for all contingencies even while Royalty volunteered for rationing. At this moment Hana did not care about the British, or the smouldering, bombed-out ruins of Northwick Terrace she had seen in a dream as she slept in her chauffeured car; the disgorged skeletons of Northwick Mews, the flattened entrance to which until that day had been a church. She was not moved by the fact that in Lisson Grove an orphanage was now in a state of carnage. She did not care that the electrical generating station on Aberdeen Place had been the target the Luftwaffe had missed, nor did she care now whether the light in her room violated the blackout. This was the longest gap she had ever known away from her parents and the prospect of ferrying Spitfires made no impact as she awaited the arrival of familiarity in a sun-baked but worried country full of brave strangers.

Her wristwatch, a gift from her great-grandfather, ticked loudly and she smiled at the thought that she had been the first female to wear it in the history of the Bukova family. Now its delicate hands showed nine and she moved from the small bed, her leg tingling as the circulation returned after having been tensely tucked under the other in a corner of the bedding. Walking to the door, she turned the icy-cold brass handle gingerly and moved across the corridor, listening for the slightest sound from Josef's
lodging. Her hand moved to tap at his door and then stopped, Hana realizing two minutes had passed and that the hotel was silent …

At midnight Hana, her hands frozen and her mind nearing distraction, went again to Josef's door, there to hesitate once more before returning to her room and curling up on the cold mattress. No-one had come, not the Consul nor her mother, and she watched from the window as a light show in the eastern sky seemed a laughing reminder of the war she thought she had escaped. Hana resolved that in the morning she would go to the Consulate in person and demand to see the highest in command. Her mother was Poland's greatest female ace, she would shout, and surely they would let the two women meet at last. Secretly Hana had always wanted her parents to split their union, and now there was a chance to enrol her mother in ATA, where the two could serve as a team.

She had it all mapped out, and with that Hana slept.

‘While we are here we can write a history of the Blood Libel.' André Grunberg had not envisaged spending his war within the confines of a British internment camp on the lovely Isle of Man. He could have blamed his plight on Friedrich Kranz, but the two needed each other in these unspeakable circumstances and the past would have to be filed away in a mental cavern.

‘I imagine there is no scholarly account available in this country,' Grunberg continued, pushing a wedge of white bread into a pool of gravy that swilled on a green plate. ‘We would be doing the Ur work by delving into mediaeval manuscripts. It would raise a few eyebrows up in East Anglia, don't you think?'

‘How would we do research, Grunberg? Here in this ridiculous camp? You're mad.' To adjust to this sudden detour in his life, Friedrich Kranz had had to set aside debilitating worries. His family, whom Vera Bukova had been paid to evacuate, and the Englishwoman he craved, seemed to have evaporated into this island's foggy air. For months he had heard nothing, nor had the occasional newspaper allowed into the camp revealed the latest achievements of Valerie Cobb; she had disappeared from the headlines as the grim war news brought 1940 to its cold conclusion.

‘There is a library nearby, and these officials here are quite civilized. They'll let us go there, under escort.' Grunberg leaned forward in his bunk and placed the plate on the concrete floor.

‘Believe me,' Kranz said, ‘at this point the Blood Libel is not the focus of my life.'

‘What
is
the focus of your life, may I ask?'

‘My children! My wife, for God's sake, you idiot,' Kranz shouted, leaping off his bunk and towering over the ballet master. He paused. ‘My mistress.'

André Grunberg looked up at his brilliant compatriot, amused at the afterthought. ‘Your fantasy?'

‘She's not a fantasy,' snapped Kranz, moving back to his bed and sitting down again. ‘This woman is very real – she writes poetry and lives in a caravan with another female – a young girl who idolizes her.'

Leaning back against the barracks wall, André Grunberg wondered how he, distinguished choreographer and senior ballet master, had arrived in such a state so late in life. In Vienna, he reflected, he would have been removed by the Gestapo, probably in the middle of a class, and sent to a death camp. At least the British, with greatly apologetic gestures, had sent him to what he had come to call a ‘Life Camp'. Still, it was a form of imprisonment and he had been flabbergasted when the authorities had arrived at his studio – having been tipped off by his landlady of twenty years standing – to whisk him away from his young dancers and the plinking piano. Here he had met Friedrich Kranz, who had rescued his sanity with a breathtaking knowledge of music and of history, and whose family, like Grunberg's, was spread across the ghettoes of Eastern Europe as well as being assimilated within the enlightened walls of Vienna.