Between Friends (67 page)

Older men were found, those not carried away by the excitement of going to war and within weeks the motor car factory was as busy as it had been under the guidance of Martin Hunter. Meg was elated but her elation was tempered by the realisation that it was not Meg Fraser who had brought it about but the demanding need of the Army for transport for its troops.

Young girls were employed to do many of the jobs which, before the war had been exclusively for men, for they were emancipated now, this generation of women, running garages, driving ambulances and omnibuses, becoming mechanically-minded in all manner of work which had been considered fit only for a man.

‘Hunter Aviation’ was thriving. It was almost a year since the war had started and the Royal Flying Corps was beginning to take on an important role in the hostilities, beyond that of reconnaissance patrols above the enemy lines. The first British bombing raid in direct tactical support of a ground operation had occurred in March, comprising attacks on railways which were bringing up German reinforcements in the Menin and Courtrai areas. Single-seat fighters using machine guns were claiming victories, French certainly, but in June the Royal Flying Corps were similarly armed. Aircraft were being shot out of the skies and the demand for new ones was growing with each month.

Martin Hunter’s ‘Wren’ was only one amongst many and Meg was increasingly aware that, just as she had driven his motor car, now she was ready to fly his aeroplane!

Fred Knowsley looked disapprovingly over the top of his spectacles.

‘You know what fitting means,’ he said in answer to her laughing question, ‘and for a lady to take up an aircraft is not fitting. Oh, I know you are going to tell me that ladies have already done so and they have gained a licence to fly but really, I don’t know what the authorities are thinking about, giving pilot’s certificates to women.’

‘Come on, Fred, you know I can do it.’

‘Oh, I’ve no doubt,
and
kill yourself into the bargain.’

‘No, I won’t do that. Not if I’m taught by a competent flyer. Angus is good. He must be or Martin would not have trusted him to test the “Wren”.’

‘Meg …’ He had by now been persuaded to call her by her Christian name. ‘Don’t do it, lass. You have … responsibilities. You cannot chance your life on a whim.’

‘It’s not a whim, Fred. I
can
do it, and I want … to know what it was that Martin knew. I want to share an experience with him.’ She looked into his wise eyes, knowing he knew exactly what she meant.

She wore coveralls, a leather jacket, knee-length leather boots, flying helmet and goggles and around her neck an emerald green silk flying scarf, embroidered with her initial, given to her by Fred Knowsley. He said, if she was determined on it she might as well do it right and wear the scarf all flyers wore to protect their neck against the high altitude cold, and for luck, he said, and she would certainly need her fair share of that!

‘We’ll do a test flight first, Mrs Fraser.’ Angus Munro was a Scot and his manner of speaking was laconic but his keen eyes missed nothing from the polish on her boots to the blaze of excitement in his pupil’s eyes.

It was a clear day, cool and windless. The sky was a pale silver grey with a tracery across the arch of it like a child’s scribble in charcoal. She could see the wind-sock hanging like an empty stocking from its pole, and from the window of his office Fred Knowsley’s anxious face as he watched her walk across the field with Angus. She waved to him and he lifted his hand in a gesture which said quite clearly he never expected to see her again and on an impulse she blew him a kiss. She saw his face split into an unwilling smile and he shook his head as though at a wayward child.

She sat in front of Angus as he began the run down the empty strip towards the hedge which surrounded the field, and for an aching moment she was transported back in time – to a sun-filled day when two young men and a girl had stood amongst thousands of others and watched, their breath fast in their throats, their hands to their mouths, their eyes huge and round with wonder as an aircraft such as this had lifted daintily into the air. The silence had been absolute then, but for the noise of the aircraft’s engine, until it had soared, with no more substance than a gull, over their heads, then the crowd had roared and the girl had held the hands of her companions and they had smiled at one another brilliantly and jumped up and down for the sheer joy of it and the day had been perfect!

Oh Martin … she had time to cry silently then she felt the ground fall away beneath her and the air lifted her up and up and in that moment she felt the warmth of him near her and his hand was again in her’s, and she heard his voice speak of his pride and his love for her and for the first time since she had read his letter which even now, as it always did, rested against her heart, she felt a quiet peace settle about her.

She had five glorious minutes in which to look about her, stars of delight in her eyes behind her goggles, to see the undulating carpet of hills and valleys, the squares of the fields in which miniature cows and horses grazed, tiny houses and tinier people and toy motor cars and waggons travelling on thin ribbons of road, then they were over the moor. The low hills looked blue in the hazed mist in which they floated and for a moment she felt
alarm
for surely they would be lost then the mist lifted and clear over the wings of the aircraft she could see bare trees and stone walls etched against the horizon, a stretch of green turf and heather, still in bloom in places and so close she felt she could reach out and pick some to take back for Annie. There were grey rocks like gravestones and escarpments of rough sandstone, rough worn paths and a tiny stone hut. Though she had walked on this moor a dozen times she knew she had never before seen it, as a bird sees it, the whole stretched out before her in beauty and peace. She was mesmerised to a kind of trance-like state, still as a bird on a branch as the hawk flies overhead, hardly aware that this was a machine she was in, for she was a bird … when, without warning there was a stutter from the engine, another, then absolute silence and the aircraft slipped sideways and downwards, turning slightly to jink a little and Meg knew they were in that dreadful condition which pilots most fear. A stall! The engine had stalled and if Angus could not right it the craft would simply fall from the sky. She considered in that moment the irony of it for it seemed both she and Martin were to meet their death in the machine he had designed and though she was not afraid she was saddened for surely there must be some fault in …

‘Don’t worry, Mrs Fraser,’ a calm voice said in her ear. ‘We shall be out of this in a moment. The thing to do is keep your head and remember what has been taught you.’

‘Indeed Angus, but supposing it is one’s first flight as this is mine.’

‘The next time this happens you will be qualified to deal with it, as I am so do not worry.’

‘I’m not worried, Angus. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.’

‘No thank you. I think I can manage.’

‘This is what is known as a stall, is it not, Angus,’ she shouted. The craft slipped further sideways and the wind sang in the struts and Meg resisted the temptation to cling to the sides.

‘Aye lassie, but you’ve nothing to worry about,’ and in a moment the engine took up its beat again and soared heavenwards and Megan Fraser had, unknowingly passed her first test!

They flew high and wide that day for an hour and a half and when they landed she could not speak at first but clung to Fred Knowsley’s hand and her eyes blazed into his. He wondered if
there
had ever been another woman like her for he had never known one with the sheer spunk she had.

Going up each day for half an hour at a time she was taught the functions of the simple controls. The rudder bar, the joy stick, the rudder, tail plane and elevator. The ailerons, aileron balance wire and control wire and how each worked and flew the craft. She was allowed to take the controls from Angus and felt the machine respond to her hands and feet for the first time and for ten glorious minutes forgot that Angus Munro was behind her as she flew with Martin Hunter.

She was given demonstrations of straight and level flying, the turn, the misuse of controls in a turn, the action of the controls with the motor cut off, slow flying and glide turns, and finally take-off and landings. Each flight was preceded by half an hour of theory.

She was not a born pilot, as she was a driver of her fast little motor car, but her determination, her pride, tenacity, thoroughness and the stubborness with which she had once tackled Mrs Whitley’s kitchen floor at Great George Square, and every challenge since, made her an excellent pupil, Angus told her.

She loved it. The lightest pull on the joy-stick and she was climbing up into the hazy light of the pale winter sky, another and the machine, like a frenzied, fragile butterfly was diving towards the earth, another and the butterfly turned to bank and glide, obeying her, loving her, it seemed as she loved it.

‘Simple, isn’t it?’ Angus said at the end of the second week.

‘Indeed,’ she answered.

‘Take her up then!’

‘
Solo
!’

‘Indeed!’

And so she did and three weeks after she had begun Meg Fraser was granted her pilot’s licence.

IN THE SPRING
of 1915 in the battles of Ypres and Neuve-Chappelle, the Germans counter-attacked the British Army with great strength and for a while it was thought they might succeed, through the novel use of poison gas, in getting through to the English Channel.

The gas, launched on a favourable wind at dawn was chlorine! The bulk of it fell on an Algerian division which panicked and took a French division with it but the strange green vapour was no respecter of nationality and a company of the ‘King’s Liverpool Regiment,’ the third Liverpool ‘Pals’ which was attached to a Lancashire Battalion for trench training got a whiff of it, no more, and one of those who suffered was Corporal Tom Fraser.

At first he felt he was drowning but how could that be for he was on dry land, he agonised, and still the flooding of his lungs continued. His head exploded in pain and his mouth was filled with a raging thirst and instinctively he reached for his water bottle for more than anything in the world he needed to quench it.

A sargeant was running along the trench, knocking men backwards, tearing their water bottles from their hands and his voice could be heard quite distinctly above the barrage of the guns.

‘Don’t drink, lads … for God’s sake, don’t drink or you’ll die … don’t drink … don’t drink … it will pass … get your heads down but don’t drink …’ but some did not hear him and some did not care for the knife edge of pain in their lungs and throat could only be soothed, surely, by a cool drink of water. Those who drank began to cough and a froth of greenish fluid erupted from their stomachs and lungs and they began to fall, insensible, to the ground. The colour of their skins turned slowly, from white, to greenish-black and then to yellow, their tongues protruded from their mouths and their eyes assumed a glassy stare and in this fiendish way they died.

The shells burst round him and Corporal Fraser forced himself
to
spit and his eyes filled with matter and he could not see, falling down amongst his dead ‘Pals’ as though he himself was to die and he lay in that trench all day, coughing and gasping with the wounded and the dead, and when they found him they evacuated him by motor field ambulance – on which the name ‘Hunter’ was written but he did not see it as he was carried to the hospital. He was ‘fortunate’ to recover, he was told and was returned later, fit for duty, they said, to his regiment as
Sargeant
Fraser for one of those who was not fortunate was the sargeant who had warned the others! It was Tom Fraser’s first, but far, far from last brush with violent death.

She was in the new hangar at the field when he came in. She still wore her flying outfit for she had just been up and his eyes passed over her without recognition. She heard him ask if Mrs Fraser was about. He had been told, he said, she was at the airfield and he had thought …

She saw Fred Knowsley’s dour north countryman’s face clamp in an expression of guarded watchfulness for this chap was a stranger. Fred was manager now of ‘Hunter Aviation’ and this huge hangar, only recently erected to accommodate the growth in the manufacture of Meg Fraser’s aircraft, sorely needed in France, was in his charge. How had he got in, his expression asked, for what they did here was part of the war effort and highly secret and not for any Tom, Dick or Harry to cast curious eyes on!

Meg turned jerkily from her machine which the mechanics had just pushed into the hangar and keeping it between herself and the man who had asked for her stumbled on shaking legs towards the small office and changing room in which her clothes hung. Her hand reached out for the door handle and she clung to it as she felt the mist of fading consciousness drift into her head and she thought frantically that for only the second time in her life she was about to faint.

‘Meggie.’

He spoke her name softly, and in that particular way she remembered, loving and infinitely patient. She turned, unable to understand her own frightened panic and looked for the first time in fourteen months into the face of Tom Fraser.

‘… I don’t know how he got in, Meg. There’s no-one supposed to come in without a pass …’ Fred Knowsley bristled up to Tom,
ready
, should it be necessary to manhandle him from the hangar, the field even, though the poor lad looked as though a puff of wind would blow him away. Besides, Fred was not awfully sure he could bring himself to lay an aggressive hand on a soldier. One heard such tales, though how true they were, of what they suffered in the trenches but looking at this one it could readily be believed.