The Forget-Me-Not Summer (41 page)

The lorry driver chuckled. ‘Got you,' he said cheerfully. ‘Just follow me, only not too close, and I'll take you through the suburbs and out on the right road. When I pip my horn and veer off to the right you go straight on.' Miranda thanked him from the bottom of her heart, but expected a rocket from the officer when at last they drew to a halt outside his headquarters. Sometimes the men she drove scarcely bothered to acknowledge her presence at all, but this one, it seemed, was different.

‘You've done very well, aircraftwoman. Despite the conditions you drove so smoothly that I was able to snatch quite an hour of sleep.'

‘Thank you, sir,' Miranda said, gratified. ‘But I'm sorry I got lost.'

The man chuckled. ‘You weren't the only one,' he admitted ruefully. ‘I'm a Londoner, but with the snow down and no lights showing you could've driven me into Buckingham Palace and I still wouldn't have known where we were. What's your name? I shall ask for you next time I'm needed for a meeting.'

Doris's voice brought Miranda back to the present with a jolt. ‘Do you want me to move my bed or don't you?' she demanded. ‘Honest to God, Miranda, you're such a dreamer.'

Miranda apologised hastily and admitted that it would be grand to have Avril beside her. ‘Otherwise we'll keep trotting up and down the hut exchanging bits of gossip and news and disturbing everybody . . .' she was beginning when the hut door was abruptly opened by their flight sergeant and the officer was ushered into the room. Miranda jumped hastily to her feet and went and stood at the head of her bed, saluting stiffly until they were told to stand at ease, and the kit inspection began.

When it was over and no one had been called to account for missing equipment or clothing, she walked across to the cookhouse with the others, glancing at the large watch on her wrist. It was essential for drivers to know the time since their work was planned by the clock, and now she saw that she would have to get a move on or she would be late for her next job.

The girls straggled into the cookhouse, taking a plate each from the big pile at the end of the counter nearest the door. Miranda held hers out to the fat little cook who plopped a generous helping of mashed potato on to it, whilst another girl slapped on a ladle of the much despised corned beef stew. There was tea in a bucket and Miranda dipped out a mugful, then went and sat down at a table where girls she knew were already tucking into their food. ‘Room for a little one, Hazel?' she asked politely, not waiting for a reply before she took her place at the table and began to eat. All around her there was clatter and chatter, and when Hazel suddenly addressed her Miranda, whose thoughts had been far away, jumped. Hazel laughed. ‘I was just asking you about this pal of yours who's coming up to use her training as a driver after two years on barrage balloons,' she said. ‘All the
girls are leaving the balloon sites, aren't they?' She snorted. ‘Now that the air force have maimed the flower of British womanhood with the beastly things, they simply change their minds and make the girls re-muster. It's too bad, so it is.'

Miranda laughed, but shook her head. ‘No, you've got it wrong. Apparently, if your job simply disappears, you can choose which branch of the WAAF you transfer into. Avril – that's my pal – trained as a C and B, but went over to balloons after her first year because they were recruiting strong girls and she hated working in the cookhouse. They gave them men's rations, because they were doing men's work, and men's clothing too: trousers, special gloves, balaclavas – all sorts, in fact.' She laughed. ‘The fellers will like Avril; she's one of those Nordic types; blonde hair, blue eyes . . .'

‘. . . and white eyelashes,' Hazel said, giggling. ‘What time's she arriving? Will she come by rail?'

‘I dunno,' Miranda said, shrugging, ‘but I shall be hanging round the airfield until she arrives. I'm driving the liberty truck into Norwich this evening, so I just hope she gets here before then.'

Avril sat in the train, peering out through the dirt-smeared window and reflecting that although re-mustering was probably always a bit of a strain, re-mustering from balloons was weird. Balloon operatives were the only people who were allowed two kit bags because of the great mass of equipment they had to carry around with them, so travelling without the extra weight made her feel strange, almost naked. She knew that the air force was constantly posting Waafs from one
station to another, seeming indifferent to the fact that this was the part of service life which the Waafs found hardest to take. To be removed from friends and from the familiarity of work and workplace seemed to them totally unnecessary; certainly the powers that be would not dream of splitting up the crew of a bomber, though she supposed the fighter pilots might find themselves flying from a variety of different airfields in the course of their work.

‘Hey, Avril! Want a sandwich? I'd do a swap, because mine are all dry and curling up at the edges. I couldn't believe it when Cookie told me that all we got for the whole journey – apart from the rail pass – were two lousy Spam sandwiches, a bottle of cold tea and a bit of cake so stale you could resole your shoes with it. It's not as if we could hop off the train and buy something from the refreshment room because if we miss our connection they'll probably court martial us.'

Avril gave a snort of laughter, but turned away from the window to answer. She and the other aircraftwoman had met whilst waiting for the connection and Avril had speedily discovered that they were both heading for Norfolk airfields. Now she shook her head at the suggestion of a court martial, though it was perfectly true that arriving after your leave had expired was a punishable offence. It had to be, otherwise members of the forces would use the unreliability of the trains and the various vicissitudes which beset all travellers in war time as an excuse for prolonging their leave by a day or two.

‘You're daft, you are!' she said. ‘Next time the train stops we'll look out and see if there's a grub trolley on the platform. I can manage without food but I'm desperate
for a drink, and if I have a drink I shall have to visit the bog, unless you think I ought to use my tin hat?'

The other girl laughed. ‘Tell you what, when the train stops next we'll both hop out, I'll hold the door open – the engine can't move until every door is closed – and you can nip along to the bog, and if you see someone selling drinks . . .'

‘Right you are,' Avril said. ‘God, this train is barely moving at walking pace. At this rate it'll be midnight before we get in. Good thing the weather's lovely, because I've not got enough money for a taxi . . . but surely they'll send a vehicle of some sort to meet us? I saw other Waafs and aircraftmen on the train when we got on, so I'm hoping there'll be a gharry or even a bus waiting for us. I know the days are long at this time of year, but they'll want to see us into our huts and get bedding and so on sorted out whilst it's still light, don't you think?'

It was her companion's turn to shrug. ‘Dunno. This is my first posting, apart from when I first joined of course, and that took place with twenty or thirty of us all heading in the same direction.' She looked curiously at her companion. ‘You said you were on balloons. Did you like it? I reckon I'm too short – maybe even too fat – but I wouldn't mind having a go. They say you get special rations and have a much freer life on a balloon site, with only the odd officer prowling round a couple of times a month, than you do when you're on a real RAF station. So why did you decide to re-muster?'

‘I didn't,' Avril said patiently. She felt she had already explained at least fifty times why she was heading for pastures new. ‘The air force looked into the number of balloon ops who were in hospital with hernias or broken
wrists or . . . oh, all sorts, and when they realised how many of us got injured one way or another they closed down most of the balloon sites, conscripted men to run the ones which were left and advised us to re-muster. I don't deny that it was hard and dangerous work – it truly was – but I think we all loved it. It wasn't too good on the city sites because it was the devil of a job to get the blimp up when it was surrounded by tall buildings, flats, churches and the like. Getting it down was even worse; that's when most people got injured. I copped a broken wrist and two smashed toes on my right foot, but apparently I'm a quick healer and was only off duty for six or eight weeks. But I loved it – as I said, I think most of us did. I'd never have re-mustered of my own accord, but of course we had no choice.' She smiled at the incredulity on the other girl's face. ‘It would be hard for other people to understand, but the comradeship, the closeness, the feeling that we were all in it together, and the sheer beauty of the countryside surrounding some of the sites . . . it made up for the hard work and the danger.'

‘But all the airfields are surrounded by countryside,' her companion pointed out. ‘And though they're pretty dangerous places there are plenty of dugouts and shelters and such, whereas on the balloon sites you had to be outside working with the balloon all through the raid until well after the all clear had sounded. I don't fancy that, I'm telling you.'

Avril sighed, knowing that it was impossible to explain how she felt. She remembered a wild night when the cable which tethered the balloon to the ground had snapped and she, the sergeant in charge of the winch,
and the entire crew of Site 36 had chased across the London suburbs in the windy darkness, finding the balloon eventually and staring helplessly up to where it roosted, like an enormous broody hen, over the roof of a fire station. Poor Belinda Boop – the girls always named the balloons – had been rescued eventually but the damage was too extensive for mending and she had been taken away on a tender. The new balloon arrived the very next day and the girls, worn out from their exertions in pursuit of the errant Belinda, had to begin the task of readying the new balloon in case a raid occurred the following night.

Avril told the story of the escaping balloon amusingly and well, and pushed to the back of her mind the sad memories which she could not bear to recall. There was Erica, who had tripped over a guy rope and failed to see the concrete block which secured it. She had bashed her head open, and because the night was wild and the concrete block in shadow had not been discovered until she had bled to death. The girls had been shocked and horrified and had not appreciated the dressing down they had received for not noticing Erica earlier. Later, their sergeant had told them that their fellow operative could never have recovered, was probably dead within seconds of her head's meeting the block, but Avril knew for a fact that two of the girls – the ones who had first found Erica – had asked for transfers to other, less hazardous work as a result.

But the train was slowing and the ghastly image conjured up by memory faded as their carriage drew to a juddering halt. Avril stood up and let the window down, then turned to her companion. ‘Are you sure you'll
be all right, Daisy? I'm sure if you explain to the porter that this isn't a corridor train he'll let us nip out to the bog. If we take it in turns then whoever remains here can buy a cuppa or whatever. How much money have you got? I've got two half crowns, which won't buy much, but . . .'

‘I've got the same,' Daisy said, ferreting around in her gas mask case and producing a small red leather purse. She jumped down on to the platform and gave Avril, who was already down, a shove. ‘Go
on
,' she urged. ‘There's folk getting off but no one in uniform, so this ain't Norwich Thorpe. But there's been no announcement about changing trains, so we'd best hang on where we are.'

Avril set off at trot for the Ladies, passing a lad of fourteen or fifteen pushing a scantily laden trolley. She waited until she had swapped places with Daisy, then beckoned to the boy. ‘What have you got for half a crown? A mug of tea – no, two mugs of tea – would be very welcome.' She eyed the rolls and sandwiches suspiciously, then pointed to two which looked as though they contained lettuce and tomato as well as some sort of cheese. ‘I'll have two teas, please, and two cheese salad rolls, if that's what they are.' She fished around in the breast pocket of her tunic. ‘What's the damage?'

Miranda spent most of the afternoon in jumpy distraction. She was on ambulance driving, but managed to swap with another girl, hoping that when she drove into the city she would find Avril waiting on Castle Meadow, where all the gharries from all the airfields congregated so that the troops might know precisely where to find them for the return trip.

She had been edgy all afternoon, but as soon as she stopped the gharry on Castle Meadow and went round to remind her passengers that she would be leaving at ten o'clock, she began to feel apprehensive as well. Suppose Avril had missed her train? It was not unlikely, since most trains would be full of troops, heading for whatever part of the coast had been selected as the jump-off point for the planned invasion. On the other hand, Avril would have been told to arrive at RAF Scratby by midnight, so in the event of something's preventing her from getting here before Miranda, and the gharry, left, she would still have two hours before she was liable to get hauled over the coals for tardiness.

Miranda was just deciding that, if the worst came to the worst, she would disable the engine in some way and claim that that was what had held her friend up, when a familiar head appeared in the window of the gharry, flaxen hair flopping over a broad forehead, light blue eyes sparkling with excitement.

Both girls squeaked each other's names and Miranda threw open the gharry door, nearly sending her friend flying, but Avril righted herself and the girls hugged exuberantly, Avril laughing whilst tears ran unchecked down Miranda's cheeks.

Miranda was the first to recover. She rubbed the tears away, then produced a handkerchief and blew her nose before shoving the hanky back in her battledress pocket. ‘Oh, Avril, it's just so wonderful to see you,' she gasped. ‘I couldn't believe my eyes when your letter came saying you'd re-mustered as a driver and were being posted to RAF Scratby.'