Spitfire Girls (44 page)

The legend walked on into the night, elated that for once
she was alone, and free, and not being photographed, and not being harassed. The small hours, with their teasing mist and smiling clouds of passing foggy shadows, were kind to her, and she smiled back at them.

Jo Howes and her father had lived in a caravan since they arrived in Britain, but with the onset of a bitterly cold 1940–41 winter Bill had accepted the offer of accommodation near White Waltham, while his daughter entered the world of Mrs Bennell at the Stone House, Hatfield.

All concerned had been amazed by Jo's rapid maturity, and her progress up the ranks of ATA had rankled a few of the older women, now in their twenties, who had been flying at the expense of their daddies for ten years or more. Now Jo was to go to Upavon for the Central Flying School conversion course, and she would be at the forefront of war activities if her time there was a success. In recent weeks when he had arrived back at the caravan exhausted and white as a sheet, Bill had fallen asleep before his soup had cooled, and she had daydreamed about the autumn sunshine across America, where the Battle of Britain would have seemed remote. Congregations in Iowa and Utah might even pray for the Spitfire pilots who went up with a flash and came back in ashes, but for those churchgoers evening still meant long walks and cocoa, not blackouts and telegrams read and re-read a hundred times.

One evening in October, Bill had come back agitated, his weariness trying to take second place to a need to disseminate gossip.

As soon as his white-haired head had passed through the small, rusty door Jo could sense his restlessness and
she placed the bowl of chicken broth on a side table as he sank into their one and only easy chair.

‘That damned fool Sean Vine hasn't got enough to do so he's gotten everyone he can think of all riled up,' he said, his breath coming in spurts.

‘So what else is new, Dad? He and Noel are always making trouble.'

‘They call it “stirring it up” in this country, you know,' he said, doing the same to his soup. ‘First he said Alec's gal Marion stole some valuable pictures that Valerie Cobb had gotten from some Nazis she shouldn't have been talking to in the first place, and then he upset Angelique something awful.'

‘Finish your soup, Pa.'

Bill placed the spoon down on the tiny wooden table alongside, and folded his hands in his lap.

‘Angelique has been talking a lot of nonsense herself lately,' Jo said. ‘She's gone in for wee-gee boards and crazy black magic stuff. Thinks that way she might track down her two lost brothers. If you ask me they were nuts to go to Spain. Who the heck goes to Spain?'

‘That's what I want to tell you.' Bill sipped the soup and looked at her gravely, his colour a strange grey, with a yellowing around his temples that seemed to glow.

Jo sat. ‘Oh, God, don't tell me she's crashed––'

‘Listen to me, girl!' he shouted.

Jo fell silent. It was the first time he had raised his voice in anger since they had arrived in this strange, overcast island kingdom. ‘Something's happened?' she murmured, unable to move.

‘Goddamned Sean Vine found out about Angelique's
brothers and he blabbed to every goddam person about it except to the poor gal herself. She and Delia had just done three ferry trips over three days and nights in a row, all through lousy weather, and she comes back to Hatfield to find the whole place buzzing about Zack and Paul.'

‘Where are they, Pa?'

‘It seems that Vine took the now-famous roll of camera film to Tim Haydon, who then had Sean as his guest at some kind of Committee meeting – I bet you Vine's in for a big post – and he heard about the Florian boys then and there.' Bill bent over as if to tie one of his ATA issue boots, but his hand merely traced the shape of his foot and went back to his lap.

‘Are they dead?'

‘I can't tell you, honey – it's not nice.'

‘If you aren't going to tell me, one of the girls will.'

‘How come you didn't hear about it?'

‘I had a few hours off. Mrs B asked me to go with her to find a Wee-gee Board. Anyway, these girls don't tell me inside stuff. Now that we've been working weekends and all, they hardly talk to me about anything. Fancy that – everybody knowing about Ange's brothers, except her and me.'

‘You're both foreign, baby, and don't ever forget that.'

‘Angelique is deposed royalty.'

‘She's foreign.'

‘They think Barbara Newman's an alien, come to think of it.'

‘Sure thing – she may be a Lord's daughter but she's Jewish and that's why, child. Foreign.'

‘What's happened to those two Florian guys?'

‘Don't worry yourself about other folk.'

‘Angelique is a friend, and she's having a baby, too.'

Bill stooped his face to his soup, slurping hungrily. Then he said:

‘You ought to be thinking about taking less time off – some of those other gals are being promoted.'

‘I'm just a teenager.'

‘Angelique isn't much more than that.'

‘She isn't a novice pilot.'

‘If you want to be with that boy all the time, then you might as well forget about flying, girl.' He looked up and smiled.

‘What boy?'

Bill did not speak as he scraped the spoon around the bottom of the stoneware and placed the empty bowl on the table.

Jo watched him quizzically and could feel herself reddening.

‘You know who,' he said.

‘I'm expecting him here any moment.'

‘That's that, then.'

Later that evening, when thoughts of Angelique's brothers and of Spits falling from the sky had drifted away, a man and two children talked about life and ate delicious Selfridges' salami in darkness. Cal March had dreaded this visit, but as soon as he had entered the eccentric American's caravan he felt elated, the same sensation he experienced on his first solo flight in a rickety Puss Moth. Bemused by the curious closeness of the man and girl, Cal found himself rapidly enthralled by the pair's rapport.

Three qualified pilots had spent that twilight gossiping and the two who were children had learned that Amy was no longer Mrs Jim, and that a new ATA boy called Anthony Seifert had arrived from the Isle of Man overflowing with stories about the interned Germans and shocking everyone by claiming to be Delia's long-lost brother. Bill Howes had gossiped relentlessly that evening, entertaining the child pilots with tales of Alec Harborne's latest quirks, which had included doing circuits around Prestwick with a pet goat inside a Master because there had been no-one left at the airfield to look after the creature …

‘Alec says Noel Slater is a male witch,' Cal had chirped, making his favourite girl laugh.

‘Some of the pilots say he's cast an evil spell over that meat-market man,' Jo added.

‘Meat-market Man is turning into a damned good pilot himself,' Bill grunted. ‘What you two kids don't understand is what brings two people together. Sam Hardwick and Slater get along because Noel is the smart son he never had. Noel's told me all about his folks. They're worth forgetting.'

‘What's wrong with them?' piped Jo.

‘They're long gone, but when they were alive he was trash.'

‘Why's that, then?' asked Cal, sitting upright and staring grimly at the burly American.

‘He had a bad time, and accomplished nothing – got thrown out of schools and was no good at sports because he was a little bit crippled like Roosevelt – then when his folks dropped dead, one right after the other, he just took off.'

‘I can't imagine Noel Slater having a mum,' Cal said quietly.

‘That's because he's never missed her,' Jo asserted.

‘How do you know?' asked Bill.

‘It shows.'

Cal rose and walked to the narrow, partially obscured window that seemed forever overgrown with moss. Jo had often enjoyed scraping the green substance from the corners of the panes, and marvelled at the rapidity with which it grew back.

‘Could I take Jo for a little walk?' asked Cal.

‘Don't go anywhere near Slater,' Bill said, flustered. He rose from the chair, struggling to lift his heavy frame out of its worn, sagging interior.

‘Noel's in Scotland anyhow,' Jo said, helping her father. His arm felt like a thick tree branch emanating rippling warmth. ‘We're all sitting waiting for the Ministry to let us get near operational planes, and creeps like Noel are fighting Hitler with chits for every kind of aeroplane. He even gets to sit alongside Sam on almost every trip: imagine how Alec would love being next to Marion all the time!'

‘He's a crack flight engineer,' said Bill, eyeing Cal carefully.

‘He causes accidents, sir!' Cal exclaimed.

‘There's never been any proof,' Bill countered.

‘What about the Toland brothers?' Jo interjected.

‘Slater is destined for something big,' Bill said, stretching his ample frame and letting his arms fall on to Jo. ‘He's shrewd, passing all the qualifying for twins, and soon he'll be running his own aircraft factory. Mark my words.'

‘Sam Hardwick took me up as an assistant in a Hudson,' Cal offered, smiling weakly.

‘That's no big deal, Cal!' Jo exploded. ‘Every goddam Air Training Corps cadet has to go up with a pilot in a Hudson – let's see if I can remember my notes:

‘“If both traditional methods of lowering the undercarriage fail, the poor old ATC cadet's last job before oblivion is to help his pilot apply negative G by pushing the nose downwards and employing the hand pump. Most of the time you've got no intercom, so – when the flight engineer's duties take him to regions out of sight of the pilot and the pilot wishes the flight engineer to report back to him for instructions – he will convey this by momentarily increasing pitch of all engines to maximum permissible revs and then back to cruising revs. On hearing this the flight engineer will immediately report back to the pilot.”'

‘Now I'm going to bed,' announced Bill.

Cal stole a look at Jo. Her father's stamina had been sapped by the tasks of recent weeks, when Britain had fought to keep Germany at bay and his countrymen had continued sipping coffee at Chock Full-o-Nuts. He wandered off to the corner in which he slept, leaving the young pilots to examine the mist that hung in the night air.

‘You'd never know half of the world was bracing for war, would you?' Cal asked, leading Jo by the arm with awkward assertiveness.

‘I feel it all the time,' she said, pulling away from him as they confronted the cold air outside the caravan.

‘It mustn't end before my chance comes,' he said.

‘What – to be swallowed up for ever?' Jo demanded.

‘My chance – Mosquitos,' the boy murmured.

Jo stopped and studied the boy. They were in pitch darkness and the only sound was of distant thumping. Sounds of death. She smiled.

‘In a few months, you will be full RAF and then you will go out in your beloved Mosquito,' Jo said, facing him. ‘There won't be any more Noel Slaters to torment you, or bunches of us ATA girls and old men lining up to get their chits. Some don't come back. Some ATA people never come back at all – they get eaten by balloon cables, or by weather, or by faulty crap that hasn't been tested.' Jo bowed her head and walked on.

Cal shivered in the damp, still cold and had a momentary, subliminal flash of a squadron of Mosquito pilots flying in formation and all dropping out of the sky.

‘I'm frightened, Jo!' he whispered, seeing her figure retreating.

‘Come here,' she said, turning and fixing him with a steely expression.

He moved towards her and they were in the middle of a paddock, surrounded by silence. She did not touch him.

‘That film Marion gave to Sean Vine', Jo said, ‘is going to be printed in newspapers all over the world. It shows what remains of handsome men and pretty women who became the victims of Nazi experiments.'

‘Are they still alive now?'

‘Right at this moment?' Jo's breath steamed into the night, passing across Cal's face. ‘Who knows? I've been told a secret – and don't you blab – that some Nazi doctor does a hundred experiments a day on the prettiest women – and then kills them.'

‘So they're dead.'

‘There are always more – endless supplies of gorgeous dames for him to use. I've got photographs from just one half-hour's session. The Nazis do experiments on children too.'

Cal was feeling miserable now. ‘I'd love some sweets.'

‘Stick around me, Cal, and we'll lick this sugar ration. Shirley Bryce says it's bad for your flying brain to have no sugar, so ATA may be letting us have a bar of chocolate.'

‘I love you. Little American bird.'

‘Don't be stupid.' She thrust her hands into the deep pockets of her flying jacket.

He moved closer and wanted to press her down on to the damp, leafy ground and be buried alive with her for a long, long time.

‘Why are you hating me so much tonight?'

‘There are little voices inside my head, Cal. They're telling me your future. That's made me hate you.'

‘What do your voices say?' He was holding her arms but she sensed not the slightest excitement in his firm grip.

‘You'll be sent a long way from home, that's all.'

‘ATA doesn't send people far away, ninny!'

‘It will – soon.' Her mind was drifting to her father, whose lone slumber she wanted to guard inside the lonely, battered caravan, reversing roles as girl protected man in a strange land.

That night, when Cal had kissed her lightly on her mouth and walked away feeling ashamed before she could shout to summon him back, she had realized how much she would hate her birthdays when her father had died, always wondering exactly when and in what conditions she had
been conceived in clinging ecstasy by two people who no longer felt. Cal had gone away and she had gone back to her tiny corner in the caravan, wanting so much to recreate that clinging ecstasy …