Spitfire Girls (41 page)

‘Is this a suggestion that I change professions?' she asked, smiling and puffing into his florid face.

‘We expect you will, if anything, retreat from the limelight for the duration of the war and not venture anywhere near an airfield.'

‘Thank you.' She was standing in the middle of the room and had been allowed to wear the striking blue uniform. Her removal from ATA had involved a swift series of events, principally her being whisked away at the crack of dawn like a spy and being kept in polite custody at a Ministry establishment until her connections with the thieving Jew could be clarified. Her father had refused to speak to her and by now she surmised he had disinherited her, possibly in public. She had lost track of the days. In the spartan accommodation she had been given by the confused military – was an ATA woman a soldier, and could she be kept under house arrest? – she could not escape thoughts of Edith Allam in Beaverbrook's ridiculous villa in the middle of the City. Here there was no elaborate bathtub, nor were there plush sofas and opulent fabrics. Someone had decided Valerie Cobb should be kept away from humanity because she had cohabited with a Jew and had become involved in his deeds. If only they would tell her where he was!

‘Are you aware that aliens are being interned in this country?'

She was being questioned again, and calculated this must be the eighth hour of the eighth day. ‘I am aware political prisoners in Germany are known to be victims of cruel human experimentation.'

‘That is not relevant to this enquiry, madam.'

‘It's “madam” now, is it?'

‘Kranz stole a new aircraft with your consent and active assistance, he presented himself at a military establishment
under false credentials and he later robbed Lord Truman and created a disturbance at the Truman residence.'

‘You have told me this a dozen times,' she snapped.

‘We will not repeat the information again if you will agree that you assisted Kranz, sign these documents, and consent to the passing over of your ATA office to other personnel.'

‘Just think of what Max Beaverbrook will do with this, if he hasn't already!' She stubbed out her cigarette. An assortment of eyes allowed looks of longing to escape and then to retreat as she stared back mockingly.

‘Beaverbrook is in many people's eyes as repugnant as characters like Kranz.' This time it was the knight speaking.

‘Nonsense,' said Valerie. ‘He's as popular as Myra Hess. Twin institutions. His newspapers, and her concerts at the National Gallery. I expect you'd think her fur coats vulgar.'

There was a silence as the men looked at each other in bewilderment.

‘Will you sign?'

‘No. I 'd sooner stay here for the duration of the war.'

Preparing for her ninth day in disgrace, Valerie watched as Sir Francis Shelmerdine, Gerard d'Erlanger, and Tim Haydon MP filed out of the room like soiled old men from a peep show. She was excused, and could go home.

That evening she had a visitor.

Listening to the tap at the door she agonized over who it might be, and after what seemed an eternity she decided the person waiting patiently outside might be Shirley.

‘This is a disgrace,' Sir Henry announced, standing at
the entrance to the living room and not moving forward to his daughter's perch.

‘Do you mean the room, or the lack of a whisky decanter?'

‘Valerie, with some considerable difficulty I've managed to keep this affair from the press. Even Beaverbrook thinks you have disappeared on some heroic mission. Privately, I consider everything you have done this year, where that man is concerned, to be utterly despicable.'

She rose from the small, flowered sofa and stood, not daring to approach his enraged presence. ‘The Committee, minus Lady L, seemed more worried about the horror photographs than about my involvement with Friedrich.'

‘You never told me about the snapshots,' barked her father. ‘That girl should have turned the film over to you immediately. This whole affair shows even more disorganization within your Pool than I had feared.' He surveyed the room. ‘I do wish you would not refer to that man Kranz by his
Christian
name,' he stressed.

‘Would you rather I had become a missing person – me instead of Annabel?'

‘Valerie, please. I need to get through this present matter as quickly as possible.'

‘What present matter?' She looked up, her bloodshot eyes unfocused.

Sir Henry was still standing, and his shoulders drooped, giving him the look of a tired junk merchant.

‘Beaverbrook has offered to give you only a good press––'

‘He knows I'm under enforced seclusion!' she interrupted.

‘––to tell the story of the Jew as it stands but to make you look the victim.'

‘That is absurd, Henry!'

‘He has the pictures, and now he wants everything else.'

‘Pictures of experiments on Jewish-looking inmates, plus the tale of Kranz – that will be marvellous!' Valerie grinned broadly at her father.

‘Are you being facetious?'

‘It's the best news I've heard all day,' she said, rising and stretching. ‘What do you have to do next – telephone Max? My phone has been disconnected, you know. The spooks have done that, as if I were a German paratrooper squatting in a country cottage.'

‘That is a preposterous notion!'

‘Is it?' She moved towards Sir Henry and he backed off as if she might strike him down. ‘Haven't you been the prime mover behind my ordeal of the past few days?'

‘That is monstrous, Valerie.'

‘Of course it is, and it is also true, so do come in and be seated like a normal person, not like a beast who turns his daughter in because the constituents would want it that way.'

He remained stationary, fingering his hat and letting his uneven breathing accelerate until it could be heard in every corner of the room.

‘A father who has lost one daughter would not turn in another.'

‘I've heard of worse, in Euripides and … other places,' she said, curling up into the sofa. ‘Tell me more.'

He looked at her for the first time and his breathing had come under control. ‘The men on the Committee want you
to sign a small statement, Valerie, and I too ask you to do this.'

‘What would Mother have said?' she asked brightly, staring back at him with a vision that seemed to bore through him despite her bleary, red-rimmed pupils. ‘Do I get burned alive afterwards? Do you suppose that's what's happened to Annabel?'

‘Heaven forbid,' he muttered, moving into the room.

‘It's likely – fascists make you sign, and then you burn.'

‘You won't miss ATA, Valerie.'

‘Good God, Father – take my blood!'

‘It isn't the end of the world – someone else can run the organization.' She had used his favourite word and he felt uncomfortably close to tears.

Valerie rose from the sofa:

‘Just at this bloody moment, there aren't half enough girls to go around to replace the men being siphoned off for active service. D'Erlanger sat there today vexing me but he knows I have access to hundreds of pilots who are holding back from applying to ATA because they don't want to see me wronged. There is a war, and yes: there is an enemy, but right now we are behaving in this country like imbeciles, imprisoning brilliant Jews who have escaped to this ruddy so-called island haven with Hitler at their heels, and removing me from a vital operation just when the Battle for Britain has been unfolding. Please listen to me, Father – all of this is happening because of one stupid man wanting to save the remainder of his family, having paid Vera Bukova's lot a fortune to rescue his closest loved ones, and because this man pinched a precious Fulmar, stole somebody's wallet and loved me.'

‘People associate you with enemy aliens – that camera film implies you have had dealings with Nazis.' Sir Henry's face was expressionless as he spoke. ‘Enough is enough, Valerie.'

‘Gerard is in love with me and wants to see me home-bound – I believe they call it bondage.'

Sir Henry was silent. He looked around the room from his spot in the shadows and smiled.

‘Would you be interested in some gossip?'

‘I love gossip. Do sit down.'

He did not move.

‘Angelique Florian has done the unthinkable,' he murmured, fingering the rim of his hat yet again.

‘She crashed?'

‘She's pregnant.'

‘Is that all?' Valerie slumped into the corner of her sofa with an irritable twitch.

‘To me it is quite something.' He smiled. ‘Had you information she was planning to do something worse?'

‘Not at all.' She smirked as the thought of Angelique's proposed mission made pregnancy pale in comparison. ‘Is it your child, Henry?'

He stopped smiling.

‘There has been speculation about Balfour.'

‘Oh – good! A member of the Committee disgraced! Let Beaverbrook get that one!'

‘I must be going,' said Sir Henry. ‘Please remember that if you sign those papers, the repercussions may subside, and you may be reinstated. A year from now, Kranz will be shipped back to one of those places we saw in the photographs, and you will be back as Head of ATA. Mark my words.'

‘They are indelibly stamped on my forehead!'

‘A father's oath has been made to a daughter.'

‘Many a fatality, in classic literature, has followed upon such oaths.'

‘We need to get Kranz out of the way and then things will be fine,' said her father with a pleading look.

Valerie stood up. ‘Where is he?'

‘I cannot tell you.'

‘Please.'

‘He is being packed up ready for shipment.'

She was standing next to the father and his hat. ‘What if I'm carrying his child?'

‘Valerie – for God's sake!'

‘What if I am?'

‘It's not possible!'

‘Am I so plain as not to be able to make dough rise, asked the maiden?'

‘You can't be having that man's child, Valerie.' His breathing was doubling in rapidity. ‘When you have these notions you remind me of your mother. Anyway, there is nothing growing inside you, Valerie – when there is a seed growing, a man can tell, especially when the vessel is a daughter.'

With that Sir Henry moved to the front door and Valerie looked at her watch:

‘Good heavens! The spooks will be bored stiff waiting for my gentleman caller to leave the premises,' she said.

‘What are you talking about?'

‘They are keeping a twenty-four-hour watch – as you well know, Henry.' She snatched his hat from his cold, loose hand and placed it atop his balding head. ‘You arranged it.'

‘I did no such thing. I have merely advised you of the Ministry's demands about your comings and goings.' His eyes seemed to dart from place to place. ‘It was never my intention to have you watched.'

‘On the contrary – perhaps you should run over and say hello. Or would you like to bring them a cold sausage? I've one just here.'

‘Valerie, please think about me, and about your sister, and about Mother.'

‘I spend most of my time thinking about Lysanders and Spitfires.'

He left her, and as he moved down her path in the pitch dark she chuckled.

‘Don't forget my greetings to your spooks!' she hissed.

He did not turn back, and in a few moments he had disappeared into the night.

Closing the door firmly Valerie thought of Friedrich and of his heated urgency and of his exploding entry that had made her erupt inside and continue to smoulder every moment ever since their last insane coming together. She leaned against the door and ran her hand along her abdomen, begging some supernatural being to reveal his whereabouts and to relieve her of the unbearable urge that was beginning to obliterate even her worries about the pilots' pools. She was throbbing and felt ashamed, pressing herself to the door as if the cold wood might absorb the rhythm of her frustration. Her torso rigid against the flat, there was a sudden pounding and she jumped back.

Could it be him?

Might Friedrich have been released?

Would she hold him tonight, on the soft carpet in this
room, letting him take her then and there because she could not endure the eternity of labouring up the stairs and entering the good manners of a bedroom?

Valerie turned, aware of the perspiration on her back that had pasted her dress to the door, and she reached behind her to pull the fabric away. There was that terrible pounding again. She turned the handle and opened the door, very slowly – and out of the dark came the face of Amy Johnson.

All during the night the country's youngest female ATA pilot had been thinking about flying Lancasters and wondering how one might commandeer a bomber. Eventually Hamble's best heaved a giant sigh. There simply was no way, for there surely would be a flight engineer on the Lancaster who knew girls were still prohibited from bombers; and God help anyone if that flight engineer was Slater.

End of story.

Was it possible that ferrying Spitfires had become routine for the men, after all the expectation and build-up? What the women would not have given to fly operational craft … Angelique Florian thrust her head into the musty pillow and tried to sleep.

As sleep eluded her, she rehashed the polite tea with Balfour. He had been alone at a smart London address, and his awkwardness suggested he had borrowed the location for the sake of this meeting. Angelique had left Nora Flint scowling on a day when Hurricanes were leaving the huge Hawkers factory at Langley faster than male pilots were available to transport each of the £100,000 machines. ATA women were needed for taxi jobs and no-one could be spared. Her uniform had looked exceptionally smart that day, although she could sense Nora's disquiet about her destination, and about her bulging waistline in these times of deprivation.