Firebirds Soaring (58 page)

“Can you spare an instructor?” Theo ventured.

Leland North gave her a withering look of pure disgust. “The Spitfires are single pilot,” he said. “Surely you know.”

She could have kicked herself for saying something so unutterably stupid.

There was instruction, after all, a great deal of it; the planes were too precious to be trifled with. Theo took it all in carefully, but she did feel like a lamb to slaughter as the fitters trussed her into the cockpit for the first time, and showed her how the oxygen mask worked. The gun sight made her stomach turn over.
This is real.

It was a pig to taxi. Theo hardly dared use her brakes for fear she would tip herself over; the long, slender nose was so high off the ground you could not see a thing ahead of you, and you had to weave all over the place to get an idea of where you were going. There was the trick to remember about switching hands on the throttle once you were in the air, so you could raise the wheels. But taking off was, as ever, so easy, easy as falling over, easy as jumping off a cliff, only in the opposite direction. The sheer strength of the fighter took Theo by surprise. It was staggering that a single human being could master so much power at once. She had, previously, thrilled to be in the air; now she thrilled to be in control of this tremendous Merlin engine.

The little airplane was beautiful. It was so neat and clean and shapely, with its slender fuselage and smoothly curving wings; Theo had never imagined such a marriage of force and grace could be possible. She hauled up the landing gear and felt the drag cut away. The Spitfire seemed as eager to be in the air as she did.

She flew a neat circuit, once she got the engine to behave obediently, carefully curving her flightpath on the approach as they had advised her, so she could see the runway past that great pointed nose. She landed sweetly, with scarcely a bump on touchdown.

Two of the ground crew came racing out to her, both clearly in seven fits of fury.

“Do you know how close you came to clipping the dispersal hut?” one of them shouted. “Do you know how close? By God, I thought you were going to take the roof off. You bloody well ought to be grounded!”

“Sorry—sorry—” Theo cringed, chagrined and deflated.

“Half-trained cocksure young blood fresh out of flying school!”

Nobody grounded her. They sent her straight back up. They meant to send her into battle next week.

Theo walked into the mess hall that night in a turmoil of exhaustion and frustration. She took a deep breath and introduced herself to her new fellow pilots. They were more welcoming than anyone else had been that day, until she came face-to-face with a pale, fair-haired young man with a wispy mustache and big ears. He went gray as skimmed milk when he saw her, and almost instinctively drew back his offered hand for a moment.

“Who are you?” he whispered. In her memory, Theo peeled away the mustache, and saw behind it the face of Graham Honeywell, one of Kim’s three best friends from the Canterbury Grammar. Graham had been a year ahead of Kim.

“Kim Lyons,” Theo said in a low voice.

“But—” Graham said weakly, and of course he knew who she was. He gave Theo a long, searching once-over, taking in her wings, her smooth face, her challenging gaze. He had been shooting down German bombers earlier that day, and Theo suddenly felt like such a charlatan, such a time-wasting fake, that she wanted to turn and run.

Graham rubbed his eyes, then held out his hand again. Theo took it. Graham’s palm was damp, but his handshake was firm and determined. He shook his head. “Could have sworn you were knocked down by a van last spring,” Graham laughed.

He had always been a wisecracker, behind the milque-toast, which was why Kim had liked him.

“I haven’t been knocked down by anything yet,” said Theo. “Though I expect you could do it very quickly, if you wanted to.”

“Damned if I’d try.” He grinned at Theo conspiratorially. “That’s the Hun’s job.” He clapped his arm over her shoulder. He was shorter than her. “Have they let you go flying yet?”

“I’ve been up all afternoon.”

“Unbelievable, isn’t it?”

“Unbelievable,” Theo agreed with fervor. She did not know if he meant the war, or flying a Spitfire, or the fact that she had turned up as his messmate, or that she had only a week to train in, but it was all, unquestionably, unbelievable.

For a moment she wished Graham
would
give her secret away, make it easy for her, take the responsibility out of her hands.

I could leave, Theo thought, as she lay in bed in a twin bunkroom whose other occupant had been killed two days earlier. I could just tell them who I am and they’d kick me out. I could join the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, like I said I was going to. They might take me, now that I can decipher Morse code in my sleep. Maybe I could be a fitter. Some of the fitters here are girls.

Don’t be an idiot, Theo, she told herself. If you tell them who you are, you’ll be so blackballed no one will ever let you near another airplane.

Well then,
Kim
could leave. Kim could walk away from here and disappear, and I could turn up at home as Theo, and go back to doing whatever Theo was going to do with her other life, her real life.

Theo threw off the covers and sat up, pounding the mattress with her fist, enraged with herself. Oh, good plan, Lyons, fine plan. That would really be the perfect ending to all your efforts to honor your dead brother’s memory. T. Kimball Lyons, who walked away and disappeared in the darkest hour his nation has ever known, and went down in the annals of the Royal Air Force as a deadbeat and a quitter! Not just a slacker, this time, not
just
a slacker, but also a
coward
! A
deserter
! That’s how you’re going to immortalize your brother?

You get sucked into things. You go with your idea, or someone else’s, or the movement of the crowd, until you find there is no turning back. The pull of events, of your companions, of duty or excitement, sweeps you over hurdles that your heart and brain would never venture. Guilt and shame are stronger than fear.

Theo would sooner have cut her own throat than failed to follow her squadron leader into the air and up to twenty thousand feet, high over the white cliffs and blue waves and into a swarm of Messerschmitt 109s, escorting a band of bombers, dense as a cloud of midges.

They were twelve against a hundred. That was a guess; there were too many to count. The only shots Theo had ever fired from her loaded wings had been at stationary targets on the ground. Clay pigeons, she thought, clay pigeons. Stay high, keep the sun at your back, blind your enemy. They’re just a mess of clay pigeons—nothing to it.

She fixed one of them in her sight and pressed the gun button. Clay pigeons did not go spiralling out of the sky in flame. Nor did they shoot back—Theo did not have a second to focus on either elation or regret, and for the next ten minutes did not fire a single shot, only because it was all she could do to keep her own plane from being hit.

Gosh, throwing yourself around like this burns an astonishing lot of fuel, she thought.

The Spitfires were joined by a squadron of Hurricanes. They harried their enemies back from the cliffs through sheer persistence, it seemed, or more likely the German planes were running low on fuel as well. The Messerschmitts started retreating first, and the bombers had to go with their escort or be blasted out of the sky. The entire battle lasted twenty minutes.

A parting shot from one of the German fighters landed dead on the nose of a Spitfire a thousand feet below Theo, and the aircraft bucked and dipped, trailing black smoke. She watched in horror, anticipating the inevitable dive toward the bright sea.

The voice of Theo’s squadron leader burst over the radio in a blue shower of obscenities. It was impossible to tell if it was he who had been hit or if he was cursing on behalf of the stricken aircraft.

All of a sudden the sky was practically empty. Half the squadron, Theo’s flight, had headed back. As far as Theo could tell she was alone above the crippled plane, which still glided gently toward the cliffs. Come on—get out, get out, get out, Theo willed the pilot, watching for a parachute. Get out! she urged him in her mind, and then woke to sensibility and screamed into the radio, “Get out! Open the hood! Roll!”

Oh, what’s the matter with you, she thought with a sudden surge of irritation. I’ll
show
you what to do.

She plunged after the limping Spitfire at such a speed that for a moment it made her head tingle and her vision go gray. She was unprepared for the cloud of debris the hapless plane was trailing, scraps of wire and metal and whatnot that had been invisible from a distance; something struck her windscreen with a bang and blanketed the front of it with oil, so that she was suddenly flying blind. She glanced out the side of the canopy, and through the clear Perspex there recognized the markings of the other aircraft. It was Graham’s plane. Theo flew in formation alongside him, and saw him raise his head.

God help him, he’s been out cold all this time, she thought. Another few minutes descending on this course and he’ll fly into the cliffs, if that thing doesn’t fall to bits first.

“Open your hood!”

Theo pointed aloft. She did not know if Graham could hear her, so she mimed the motions of opening the canopy and the access door, making broad, exaggerated gestures. She wrenched back her own canopy. The wind off the sea was cool and salty sweet, blowing away the stench of burning oil and cordite.

“Out of your harness—”

She kept her own harness fastened, but he was with her now, and went through the drill obediently. They were still a good couple of thousand feet above the cliffs and out to sea.

“Now follow me through a roll, and you’ll be out—over you go—”

Theo had done all she could. She climbed away from the cliffs.

She could not for some reason manage to get the canopy shut again. It was so filthy anyway, and the wind so welcome, that she did not try very hard. Theo was drenched with sweat. She tore open her jacket and collar. She circled back over the cliffs and saw an open parachute floating gently toward the rock pools below.

“The lucky sod!” Theo exclaimed triumphantly. With all the English Channel to dive into, Graham had managed to come down twenty yards offshore.

Theo circled overhead, watching as the parachute folded into the water. She passed within two hundred feet of the bobbing silk and saw a figure stagger out of the sea and lie down on the flint pebbles of the beach at the foot of the cliffs. There was no sign of his plane but for a patch of oil spreading over the swells. Theo roared back toward Maidsend.

Well done, Kim, Theo told herself.
Bloody well done.

Flying at cruise speed with the hood wide open was like battling a tempest. The goggles protected her eyes, but she still found herself flying with her head turned aside and her chin tucked into her shoulder. Her unbuttoned jacket, though held down by the life vest and harness, yanked and whipped around her neck. She could not do anything about it while she flew and the wind howled. She landed, without taking the roof off the dispersal hut, and taxied away from the runway.

After she had opened the radiator grills and switched off the electrical system Theo had spent herself entirely and sat waiting for someone to help her out of the plane.

“Bloody hell, Lyons, are you hurt?”

Two fitters and her squadron leader scrambled up on the wings and laid half a dozen concerned hands on her.

“No, no, just all out.”

“What’s all this bandaging, then?”

Her shirt had torn open in the wind. The men had their hands around Theo’s waist, on her chest.

“Get lost!”
Theo snapped, and hit their hands away.

They stared at her.

“Bloody hell.”
John Manston, the squadron leader, swore again. “You’re not—”

“I’m not
hurt
,” Theo muttered. “I need a cigarette.”

There was a long silence.

“Here.”

Manston held an unlit cigarette clenched between trembling lips; he could not light it so near the bullet-ridden fuel tanks of his own plane and the refilling cans. He passed it to Theo anyway. Then he and the fitters lifted her out of the plane and handed her down the wing into the arms of half a dozen other men waiting anxiously on the ground.

“Get your hands off me. I can walk.” Theo pulled her uniform shut; her hands were trembling too much to fasten it.

“Lyons—” Manston began.

“Did everyone else make it back?” asked Theo. “Except Honeywell. He bailed out in St. Catherine’s Bay.”

They all nodded, gaping at her.

“Yes, that was nice work, Lyons, showing him what to do. A bit original, but you pulled it off. You got a 109, too, didn’t you? ”

“Two.”

“You must be joking! On your first time out?”

“Well, there were a lot of them to choose from.”

One of the other experienced pilots nodded and drawled slowly, “I saw them go down. I can’t count much higher than two, but I’ll confirm those.”

“Feel like going back up in fifteen minutes?” Manston asked her.

Theo accidentally pinched the cigarette in half. Her lower jaw jutted out. “Sure.”

“Or shall I find someone to take over for you?”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Theo, thinking she might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.

John Manston looked from one to the other of his stunned companions. “If any one of you thinks there’s some reason Lyons shouldn’t be flying in this squadron, let’s have it now or never.”

They were silent.

“Now or
never
,” Manston cautioned.

The two fitters turned away and set about industriously reloading the ammunition in Theo’s wings.

John Manston gave her a thumbs-up. “Let’s go have a cup of tea, then, while they patch up and refuel.”