Spitfire Girls (48 page)

‘You're so patriotic, Val.' Angelique felt a foreigner in these surroundings.

‘After what's happened to me, I 'd advise everyone to be very careful,' said Valerie. ‘The safest people in this world are Church of Scotland crofters.'

‘Amy misses you, Val.'

Valerie did not want to reveal that Amy had visited her – she could trust Angelique with the information but her ordeal had made her reticent and frightened.

‘How is Martin?' Valerie cast a furtive look at the window of her father's office.

‘He's fine – starting on those Beauforts and things. He and Oscar operate as an ATA team, a bit like Sam and Noel. Are you anxious to get back inside, Val?'

‘Walk with me.'

The two women went into the imposing building and stopped in the foyer.

‘Valerie, I can't believe it's you!' Angelique enthused, throwing affectionate arms about her once more. ‘Some of us thought you were dead.'

‘In an odd way I have died, you know.'

Angelique had never before seen Valerie Cobb cry, but now she could detect a catch in the other woman's throat, and a reddening about her eyes.

‘What about the girls?' Valerie asked. ‘Is everyone all right?'

‘Marion and Alec are very happy, but she always looks as if someone has taken all her blood for the war effort. Sam and Noel are getting terribly chummy, and Shirley Bryce misses you terribly.'

‘Does she make a career of it?'

‘Valerie – she cares deeply for you. It isn't her fault you abandoned your friendship with her because Friedrich fell out of the sky.'

‘The last thing I want is Shirley making a spectacle of herself. What was that you said about Noel and Sam? Chummy?'

‘Perhaps I should rephrase that,' Angelique said, studying this remarkable woman's fiercely intense eyes and understanding why Shirley might miss her so much. ‘Sam and Noel have become … inseparable – people do talk, you know. His wife is distraught. Alec Harborne went to visit her and she's taken to all sorts of weird habits, like piling up newspapers in her drawing room.'

Valerie listened quietly, bowing her head.

Angelique continued:

‘I think you miss Shirley, deep down inside.' The words had popped out, and she regretted them at once.

‘I miss
all
my pilots!' stormed Valerie.

‘Please don't be cross with me, Val,' Angelique said meekly, wanting to hug her once more. ‘Seeing you is like a dream.'

‘It is wonderful to see you too.' Valerie had calmed down and spoke in hushed tones, gulping at the lump in her aching, sad throat.

‘Is there anyone to whom you want me to say hello?'

‘You were not meant to have seen me, my dear,' she
said, smiling. ‘I ask just one thing: if you should learn of a definite address for Friedrich, please, please let me know––'

‘Valerie!' A brusque voice interrupted them.

‘I'm coming, Dad.'

Sir Henry Cobb bowed briefly to Angelique and before she could say goodbye to Valerie, Hatfield's Commanding Officer and the founder of women's Air Transport Auxiliary had vanished down a corridor with her father. Momentarily Angelique wanted to run after her, but then emotion overwhelmed her and sobs surged into her mouth. She tried to muffle her gasps, but her weeping reverberated through the sombre chambers. She stumbled back out into the fiendish winter and a taxi took her away from Harold and the House and the expensive doctor who had said it was too late to kill the foetus. She would head towards White Waltham, where she would find a way of getting airborne and forgetting Martin Toland's child until it had been born in Spain. Her taxi pulled away from Whitehall as, from a window above, Valerie Cobb saw a blur that was Angelique but whose form was too obscured by a flood of the Commanding Officer's own uncontrollable tears.

They had waited what seemed an eternity for Barbara Newman to arrive for tea. In this part of Norfolk guests were expected to behave impeccably, even in time of war – and especially if the guest in question was a top officer of the Air Transport Auxiliary. Indeed, Barbara would be interrupting a punishing schedule of Hurricane deliveries to journey all the way to Weston Longville. Lord and Lady Truman had no staff for this grim winter of 1940, and their financial state had crumbled further when their only useful land was taken over by the RAF. The local base was being expanded and now the Trumans lived alone amid the noise of a war they had hoped to escape in this remote wedge of East Anglia.

‘Do you suppose she's been distracted by those men?'

Truman looked at his wife and frowned. ‘What men?'

‘This girl is a pilot, and she would have been intrigued by what's going on in our grounds.'

‘If you've seen one installation, you've seen them all,' he grunted, scraping at the bowl of his pipe.

‘I do hope nothing terrible has befallen her,' Lady Truman fretted, her slim figure making a perfect L shape as she sat upright in what her husband called her ‘anxious before lunch' position.

‘Do you remember that chap I told you about – the one who stopped here for a bath?' he asked, resting his pipe on a knee clad in thick wool trousers.

‘Oh, good lord! That awful dark man from Vienna?'

‘Didn't know you knew him.' Truman dug in his jacket pocket for a tobacco pouch.

‘He came to see Tim at the House,' she said curtly.

‘Well, that Jewish scum has wrecked poor Valerie Cobb's life.'

‘I can't see what it has to do with us, darling.'

‘It has
everything
to do with us,' he barked. ‘I feel responsible for her plight. Tibbs and the gardener made such a song and dance about the man – you'd have thought he was the devil himself come to enslave Christian England. In the end I had to give in and tell all to the police. As it turns out, the miserable wretch was part of the same gang who stole my wallet. Fagin lives.'

‘Why are you telling me all this now?' Her face was pinched, but the beauty of a debutante still peeped weakly through her tired features.

He had tamped the tobacco into the splendidly carved wood and was holding a light over the fragrant concoction. ‘Virginia leaves – imported. Same as those poor airmen.'

‘What on earth are you talking about?'

‘Americans – the ones who they say just died.'

‘Who?' His wife's face was immobile.

‘They were sent to deliver some new aeroplanes. There was a great hoo-hah because the aircraft had made it through U-Boat Alley on a freighter from Virginia. It seems the blasted flying machines were faulty. Two chaps went down one after the other. Terrible mess.'

‘How did you hear?'

‘Charlie Buxton – Commandant at our new base here – told me the whole story. They crashed a few minutes after leaving the factory. If you ask me, those ATA people
shouldn't be allowed to muck about in new aircraft. Think of what those two things cost. My God – it doesn't bear thinking about.'

‘Perhaps that's why Barbara is late.'

Truman puffed away furiously, a grin on his face.

His wife gazed at the smoke curling up into the still air of the quiet sitting room and let her eyes wander to the view beyond their front window. ‘Just imagine how the families in America will suffer.'

‘What families?' he asked, squinting.

‘Those two men – the vicars – surely they have families.'

‘Lord knows. Anyway, I'm getting fed up with this waiting.'

‘Have you any idea what she wanted to talk about?'

‘She said she had what is known as a multi-pronged plan of some sort.' He paused. ‘Her plan relates to our Sarah.'

‘These young women are remarkable!' But mention of her daughter had little effect these days; she was ashamed to admit that feelings of detachment had begun to creep in when people talked of her lost child.

Now Truman was scowling. His pipe had gone out. ‘Valerie is the most remarkable of them all,' he said, fumbling with a match. ‘I want to do something to get her name cleared, and in return I shall ask for a place on one of these ATA committees.'

Lady Truman observed her faltering husband drop match after match to the floor, and she could not dispel the feeling of disgust that had crept into her in recent months. His increasing infirmity, which left him almost completely
immobile, had made him flabby and irritable. Staring out of the window she could not help admitting to herself that she was finding her London job a stimulus to the fiercely sensuous female that still dwelled somewhere within her polite exterior.

‘I can't imagine what Newman's girl would know about our daughter that I haven't already gleaned from the Ministry, but it's worth a try,' Truman said, managing to light one matchstick and thrust it into the pipe clenched tightly in his jaw.

Smoke curled once more.

‘She is forty-five minutes late. I've mince pies to prepare.'

‘Bloody mince pies.'

‘You've always liked them.' She hated the smoke, and his unpredictable complaints. ‘It was my turn this year for the Church and with all those airmen moving in, we'll need dozens more than usual.'

‘If you make it too obvious that we've stockpiles of sugar and flour, my love,' he growled, ‘those uncouth fliers will be raiding us in no time.'

‘You will be pleased to know I've advertised the fact that these will be made with substitute ingredients due to rationing.'

‘Ho-ho! They'll taste too bloody good. No-one will believe you.' He grinned at her and puffed furiously. ‘God help us if the Yanks come in on this fracas and start bringing their peasants over here.'

‘Why ever should they do that?'

‘What – join the war?'

‘Bring peasants.'

‘Well, to be truthful, my dear, neither is too likely. Old President Rosenfeld is too busy trying to please his Congress, and even if they did join our cause their peasants wouldn't pass military exams. These mixed races are a disaster – full of physical shortcomings.'

Lady Truman glared at her imperfect husband. ‘I shouldn't harp too much on that, if I were you,' she murmured.

‘And what is that supposed to mean?' Truman's eyes blazed.

‘Nothing.' She looked at the floor and noticed the smoke had stopped. ‘Is it true Liverpool has had eighty-odd consecutive days of bombing?'

He was silent, pipe in hand. Then, ‘You don't like me much, do you?' he asked.

Lady Truman rose, avoiding his gaze. Moving to the frostbitten windowpane she craned her neck for any sighting of an ATA lady pilot on a bicycle.

‘
Liking
each other has never entered into our world, darling,' she replied, fingering the curtain. ‘Perhaps it is more important to those peasants you were talking about just now.'

Truman sat back, his unhealthy colour making his wife shudder.

‘I don't suppose she's coming,' he said, closing his eyes.

‘Something awful has happened, I just know it,' she fretted, staring out at the leafless branches of their large grounds, the neatly landscaped look now gone for ever with the departure of the gardener. Focusing on one branch close to the icy window, she wondered if leaves would ever sprout again – if enough bombs fell, and enough fires were started, life on the planet might disappear.

Did people on remote exotic islands know there was a war on? she pondered. And what about those poor Britons stuck out in places like Singapore?

It was now one hour since Barbara Newman had been due to visit, and Lady Truman's throat was constricted with a raging, painful dryness as she thought of another mother missing a daughter. In Tim Haydon's briefings she had begun transcribing reports from Germany about medical research carried out in death camps. One experiment had involved a mother and daughter, both naked, strapped into seats facing each other. According to these sketchy details, disseminated by some valiant means to make their way into the Houses of Parliament, mother and daughter were ordered to press buttons to inflict electric shocks upon each other, the voltage increasing with every new push of the button. The Germans thought it interesting to determine the death threshold of young versus old and used the method ten to fifteen times daily.

Lady Truman had become ill and Haydon had sent her home early that day, but now, as she thought obsessively of Barbara Newman's mother, she realized that even in England a new way of making war had dictated that girls would no longer be girls and that shock thresholds would never be the same again.

Amy had been infuriated to learn that two of the newest girls had made it through the appalling weather. Though conditions had worsened, she was determined to carry out the demands of her assortment of chits earmarked for this weekend. She had hated having had to spend Christmas stranded at Prestwick but had been able to make her way to Hatfield where she had been astonished to encounter Valerie Cobb. Without so much as an explanation, Valerie had appeared in her midst, handed Amy her orders and spoken a few clipped words about dinner and twenty new ATA ladies.

Had she been reinstated as Commanding Officer and as Head of ATA?

Because the two women had not had time for a chat Amy knew she would have to wait until after the New Year to hear the lowdown on her friend's odd, sudden reappearance. Amy had known for some time of Barbara Newman's absurd plan to threaten some highly-placed associates of her father's with a scandal in order to secure Valerie's release, but this had come too suddenly for that. Amy had not seen Barbara since delivering her to Upavon and, in fact, she had not seen anyone in ATA for weeks.

She had been in the air, it seemed, for ever.

Exhaustion was now her conqueror and for once she wondered if her tenacity had metamorphosed into folly. Her brain was not enjoying this exercise and the cold of uncaring clouds pierced through to aching wrists and throbbing knuckles.