Spitfire Girls (60 page)

‘Or a pilot for a father?' Edith asked, grinning.

‘Marion Harborne is doing very well as a full-time pilot and mother,' Delia remarked, her eyes puffy and bloodshot from weeks of marathon ferrying. She looked toward the unkempt gardens of the Truman estate and her mind moved agonizingly back to the day Marion and Alec's baby had arrived, the tiny girl born six weeks before her time and delivered by a member of the ATA Medical Staff – a nurse whose husband had died in the Wellington crash. Marion and the nurse had campaigned for Air Traffic Control to be set up within ATA and shortly afterwards the first Controller was appointed at White Waltham. Marion's baby, named Alexandra, had become Delia's adored obsession.

‘Who the devil cares about all this paternity business anyway?' scoffed Barbara, jolting Delia from her thoughts. ‘I was the one who got excited about Anthony's rights, but does it matter?'

All eyes were now on Barbara.

‘If Hitler wins this war, half the occupants of this room will be exterminated – you, Anthony, for having been born
in a Jewish household, Edith and myself for being daughters of Abraham, and you, Lady Truman, for having associated with a Negro.'

‘Does an alcoholic father count with the Nazis?' Delia asked meekly.

Anthony bowed his head and sighed. ‘I only wanted to make your acquaintance,' he said calmly, rising from his chair and taking her ladyship's hand.

‘You are mine, somehow.'

Lady Truman had spoken. She held Anthony's young fingers, pressing them to her face. ‘Stay with me,' she said.

‘I have my own mother,' he whispered.

His hand was set free. ‘Go to her, then,' snapped Lady Truman.

‘You come too,' suggested Delia, suddenly alert.

Lady Truman's expression turned thoughtful. Secretly, she longed to be flown to the village in which her husband's mistress lived. She longed to be transported by one of these remarkable young pilots but she also longed to be transported by the sounds of Errol Carnaby's voice. Talk of Anthony's parentage, and flashes within her mind of that night of carnal fusion between Truman and Delia's mother a generation ago, had made her strangely restless. If only Errol were here! She knew that upon their next meeting she would have to submit to the terrible wanting that had pushed her along a relentless course to the planning and execution of the killing, to be known by posterity as Carnaby's accident.

‘Will anyone be seeing Errol today?' asked Edith.

‘I may be doing so, in the village,' her Ladyship replied.

‘May I leave this for him, madam?' Edith asked, producing a small book of sonnets.

Barbara caught sight of the book's spine and glared at Edith. ‘Why trouble her ladyship?' she demanded. ‘Can't you give it to him at the base?'

‘I hate that base,' Edith replied. ‘Burt Malone's brother Frank is in charge of policing, and he gives me the creeps.'

Lady Truman had opened the small volume of love poems and her face was expressionless. ‘Why are you asking me to give this to Errol?' she asked slowly, her eyes boring into the soul of a child.

‘I wanted him to have them, and I thought he might like to read them aloud to you,' Edith said solemnly, rising from the sofa. ‘This war is getting worse, and I've decided to jettison certain encumbrances. Sonnets are a prime example – like love, they seem absurd juxtaposed with human experiments in death camps.'

Lady Truman studied the American closely. Her guests had moved to the doorway, as if avoiding a confrontation between two rabid dogs. Edith had expected this to be her only meeting with Lady Truman, but as the silent group walked to the front entrance, she was disturbed by a strong feeling that the two of them would meet again, perhaps over a book of sonnets.

Nothing had been resolved, but Edith knew Anthony Seifert had generated a firestorm of conflicting emotions within Lady Truman's breast, and she left her colleagues to drink in the RAF club before embarking on the next step of her day's journey. By now Edith had grown accustomed to the ATA routine: regulations provided that each pilot worked thirteen consecutive days followed by two days off, with a fortnight's leave in summertime. White Waltham had doubled in size, and here in Norfolk Edith and her fellow pilots observed the total colonization of the countryside by the military establishment. Everywhere one turned a base was shooting up, and as Edith made her way to the tiny motorcar, she remembered a comment made by Eddie Cuomo about England becoming an American military outpost. The war had lasted for four years now, and for Edith's British associates the end of the conflict had stopped being a point of conversation; war had become a way of life, and some even dreaded its conclusion.

Inside the car, Molly sat ready to chauffeur the flight captain to her next mission. The two friends buzzed along the peaceful minor roads, the newly arrived WAC corporal reticent in the company of one so superior in rank. Despite ATA's non-combatant status, all participating forces regarded the organization's officers as the elite of the nation's civilian flying corps. Edith reminded Molly about petrol rationing and then gave up any attempt at further conversation, Molly smiling in silence and gazing sideways
at the imposing ATA uniform crowned by its majestic wings.

Soon the large country house, also known as the last of the internment encampments, came into view. Edith motioned to Molly to stop the car well away from the imposing edifice and marched along the immense gravel walkway until she had reached the front door. Here, she was to meet a contingent who would endeavour to see the last of the three inmates released.

‘Is this an RAF headquarters?' Molly asked timidly as they entered the glorious main hallway.

‘You're kidding!' hooted Edith. ‘This is where they kept all the foreign Jews and Wops before they realized they were good for Britain.'

‘Like concentration camps?' Molly asked, wide-eyed.

‘Not really,' Edith replied, scanning the room for her entourage. ‘It's not in the character of Britishers to spoil their routine for some crazy kind of extermination business.'

‘What routine is that, Edie?'

‘They have their season and their fox hunt and their shooting parties, and the Glorious Twelfth and Henley. It's all kind of stopped for the war, but not altogether.'

‘Somehow I picture Hitler and Mussolini loving foxhunting,' Molly observed.

‘Next time you meet them, don't encourage it,' Edith countered. ‘Remember, they're just across that little channel of water, sweetheart.'

‘Isn't it a shame Kelvin Bray had to leave us so soon after the trial?' Molly asked.

‘He was never cut out for the service – the guy's a softie,' Edith replied.

‘Do you think he's a coward, Edie?'

‘Goddammit, Molly – what a dumb question!'

‘Mario, my husband, thinks he's a sucker.'

‘Mario, your husband, is a tough dago,' rasped Edith. ‘Kelvin Bray could never be called a coward – he defended a Negro.' As Edith spoke, Hana Bukova and Josef Ratusz came through the door with the American press contingent.

‘Where is Hartmut?' Edith asked, looking around anxiously.

‘He got called back to special ferrying duty,' Hana said glumly. ‘You know how good Valerie thinks he is on those Hudsons.'

Edith knew Hartmut had been taken on by ATA as an aerial reconnaissance pilot, his unique skills invaluable to the small team of photographers employed by the organization. Hudsons were used for the flights and Hartmut had shown exceptional skill, working in shifts with his teammate Ludo, who had shown similar talent on the surveillance assignments. All the pilots had felt great amusement in the light of Ludo's total infatuation with Hana, a passion that had so far gone unrequited. Hana had never even been willing to speak to him, and as his English was appalling none of the ATA men took much notice of his pleading, garbled requests to tell Miss Bukova about her mother and the Kranzes at Sobibor …

‘We have a new arrival here,' said a guard, shaking Edith's hand. ‘We have reason to believe he may be the genuine article – he speaks the King's English. Unfortunately the man knoweth not from whence he cometh nor will he divulge a name. He had a phoney passport – the sort that
were used by those refugees escaping through Romania some years ago.'

‘Did you say Romania?' Hana piped excitedly.

‘This chap is definitely not Romanian, miss,' continued the guard. ‘We think he may be a Nazi operative. He gets on beautifully with our Germans: Raine and Zuki.'

‘Could I meet him?' asked Hana, forgetting her reason for being on the premises.

‘We have a publicity stunt to perform, my dear,' said Edith, smiling at Hana.

‘This man might know something of Hana's mother,' speculated Josef.

‘What's happened to your mom, then, honey?' asked Molly.

‘She was supposed to be here – almost two years ago!' Hana said animatedly. ‘Her job was ferrying refugees from Poland and the German-speaking countries, through Romania and then on to England. She had my favourite young man in her cargo.'

‘There would be no harm in Hana's meeting this new inmate,' Edith said. ‘I'd just appreciate it if you press guys would stay outside,' she added sharply.

Burt Malone and Stan Bialik exchanged amused looks.

Leading Hana, Edith, Molly and Josef inside, the guard walked briskly down a ghostly corridor and soon they arrived at the end of a hallway, where a neatly dressed grey-haired man seated in a rocking chair looked up at those assembled.

Edith could feel Hana's heartbeat somersaulting at the sight of the gentleman who was not her father or Benno Kranz, but whose unearthly expression held her spellbound.

‘This lady thinks you might know something about her mother,' said the guard brusquely.

Valerie Cobb had wanted to get away from her spacious new office at White Waltham to attend the publicity exercise in Norfolk. At the back of her mind she wondered if the mystery man newly interned in East Anglia might, for some reason that bordered on the psychic, have information about her sister Annabel. Having left Barbara Newman and Edith Allam to defuse the Truman affair in order that Anthony's claim to a title might attract as little publicity as possible, Valerie had been able to concentrate on the staggering demands of the accelerating Allied war machine. She reflected on the tragedy of Lord Truman: the man had emerged from the Carnaby trial as a generous philanthropist, and the fact that now those within ATA who knew about Anthony lamented the fact that the old man had never met his rightful heir.

Lady Truman had seemed so tragic at the Old Bailey spectacle.

What of her daughter Sarah?

What of Annabel Cobb?

Intelligence services were searching, but there was little hope.

Valerie had come to love her headquarters at White Waltham, where women now worked on a par with men and the male and female ranks of ATA had grown to six hundred pilots and over one hundred flight engineers. Stella Teague had been made a Commanding Officer at one of the smaller ferry pools, and it was no longer
necessary for Valerie to fight the Ministry for jobs suited to her girls. Today, she had sent three of her best girls – Kay Pelham, Lili Villiers, and Sally Remington – on Halifaxes along the now standard Marwell–Radlett–St Athan–Holmsley South route, which the pilots said they could handle blindfolded. Another of her best had taken a Percival Proctor: Marion Harborne had become a part of the Seifert family and her baby was cherished by the Brigadier and his errant wife. Marion had worked tirelessly for Alec's legacy, the Air Ambulance Service, and was on her way to becoming a Commanding Officer for Number Five Ferry Pool. On Hudsons, ATA had requested Hartmut Weiss and the man known as Ludo, to pilot the ATA photographers, and secretly Valerie hoped Raine Fischtal too would be taken on by ATA, since her work was so incomparable.

On this day, Valerie had been delayed because Hamilton Slade, with Noel Slater as his flight engineer, had been given the honour of flying Churchill's Skymaster to be photographed from the Hudsons. Various complicated arrangements had to be made, with the Churchill aeroplane being flown out of Northolt. Everyone in ATA knew Slade had only a few weeks to live and though one-armed Sam Hardwick had shown disappointment in not having been selected for the Skymaster flight, the men understood the magical moment Hamilton had been granted.

Kay Pelham was finished for the day, and she smiled broadly as the two women met in the middle of the newly widened White Waltham landing strip.

‘What a day!' Kay exclaimed, her skin as radiant at the end of the ten-hour day as in the early morning mist.

‘Duncan Worsley is joining our crowd,' Valerie said. ‘We should have quite a turnout for this little show.'

Kay had been organizing a poetry reading for some days, the unbelievable pressures of Bomber Command sometimes making her project seem an impossibility. She had wanted Errol Carnaby to share in the reading of Blake and Milton, and had been overjoyed when it appeared likely her ATA group might be able to converge on Norfolk for the special occasion, an event she liked to call warstopping.

‘I think you and Duncan are a number,' joked Kay, walking with Valerie to the large Operations Room. ‘Is it his racing-car past that excites you, old lady?'

‘He is a charming man, but his interest in my work is purely professional,' Valerie replied testily. ‘Those two Germans in the Norfolk country house, the so-called internment camp, could be ideally suited to an intelligence operation he's undertaking for the Navy.'

As they spoke, Worsley emerged from the canteen, his trimly tailored naval officer's uniform accentuating the tall, square-jawed figure whose knowing, masculine expression sent a tingling sensation down Kay's legs.

‘We've one hell of a contingent,' boomed Worsley. ‘Perhaps we should take out extra insurance on this flight – it will be carrying the best and the brightest of ATA.'