Spitfire Girl (12 page)

‘Well?’I prompted.

‘I think,’ he said suddenly but as though continuing a conversation, ‘we all want to know how we would react to danger. It must be a satisfying thing to know one isn’t a coward.’

‘Is that all?’ I prompted.

‘Pretty well,’ he replied.

‘Isn’t that rather selfish?’

‘You want me to say things about Democracy and Truth and King and Country...’

‘Well?’

‘Sorry. No go. That gives me a pain. All I remember of democracy is derelict coal-mines in South Wales, the Dole and a hunger march to Hyde Park.’

‘Are you a Socialist or a Communist or something?’

‘That’s right, dammit,’ he answered angrily, ‘pigeon-hole me.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I’ve been a nonentity all my life,’ he continued. ‘Ten Weights for fourpence. Fifty-shilling suits.’ He looked wryly down at his officer’s uniform and his wings. ‘Now I’m an official gentleman and an incipient hero.
I’m
not fighting for the good old days. I want to fight because I shall enjoy returning to the airfield with the guns empty and mechanics patting me on the back saying ‘‘Good show, sir.’’ I want to sew medals on my tunic and see people look at me and nudge each other when I walk into a restaurant.’

Bloodshot and sheepish, he saw me off early the following morning. I promised to answer his letters.

His letters, alternating between hilarious idiocy and gloomy despair, reflected faithfully the progress towards his ambition of being a fighter pilot. Frequently they lay in the post-box next to the air-letters from India, posing a neat little problem in loyalty. I had carefully told each of the other, though there was not much to tell Reg about John. Two short visits to Hamble, a dozen letters and sporadic telephone calls. There was more to tell John about Reg.

A few weeks later I collected the ferry-chits from the operations officer and scanned the day’s programme as pilots banged open their lockers and greeted each other with a cheerfulness born of the clear blue sky and the promise of a perfect day. The first chit ordered me to collect a Miles Master from John’s aerodrome and ferry it to the Midlands. I grabbed my parachute and helmet and climbed into the taxi aircraft already ticking over on the tarmac. It was a short flight and I was dropped off within twenty minutes of taking off.

The aircraft was waiting for me. I signed the chits before looking for John. He was not in the Control Tower or the mess. Anxiously I phoned his Flight Commander. ‘He’s flying,’ he answered.

I took off and headed for the practice firing range a few miles to the south. The speck on the horizon grew larger until I could recognize it as a Master with a target drogue trailing behind. Keeping well clear I watched his monotonous progress back and forth as another aircraft positioned itself for a practice attack. After three or four attacks the attacking aircraft broke off and headed back to base. Gleefully I positioned myself in what I hoped was the correct position and made an attack on unsuspecting John. Instead of breaking off the attack with a violent downward dive I carried on, pulled up close to him and waved. He gave me a startled look and violently waved me off. I shook my head and pulled off my helmet.

‘It’s me,’ I mimed. He peered at me as I tucked in closer until a few feet separated us. Suddenly his face broke into a delighted grin and he blew me a kiss. We flew parallel with each other. He pointed down. I shook my head and pointed to the north. He held up ten fingers, pointed to himself and then down again. I shook my head. He pleaded with his hands held in the attitude of prayer. ‘I can’t,’ I shouted idiotically, ‘I must go.’

To my astonishment I blew him a kiss before waggling my wings in farewell and peeling off sharply to the north. As I looked back he resumed his monotonous beat as another aircraft positioned itself for an attack.

A week later a telegram arrived at Creek Cottage:

Posted. Fighters. Weeks leave. Can I see you. John
.

Since the kiss I had been stricken with remorse. In itself it was nothing. In its impulse it had revealed, like the brief flash of a lighthouse, the reefs and rocks that stood between Reg and me. I had determined not to see John again but this laconic cable, hinting an appointment with death, entreated partiality. Not the cold neutrality of a prude. I wavered but the decision was taken firmly out of my hands for returning the same evening from the aerodrome I found John, flanked by the Greenhills, calmly sitting in the lounge.

‘Hello,’ he greeted casually, ‘I was just passing by.’

I tried to be angry at his audacity but his bland refusal to take up the cudgels soon reduced me to impotence. He studied carefully a new portrait that had recently arrived from India. ‘Reg?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I answered.

‘Hum. Brown job,’ he commented idly, replacing the portrait on the writing desk. The Greenhills laughed.

‘And what’s the matter with a brown job?’ I asked irascibly.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh, nothing,’ he hurriedly assured me.

‘Thank you very much!’

‘Well, what shall we do?’ he asked, imperturbably.

‘Do? When?’

‘Tonight. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. I have to report to the O.T.U. on Thursday.’

‘Spitfires?’

‘Yes,’ he answered jubilantly. He looked much younger. The top button of his uniform was already undone.

‘I cannot get leave. There’s a priority flap on at the moment,’ I said.

‘That’s all right. I’ll fly with you. It is allowed?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I answered uncertainly.

He flew with me on the second day and sat quietly in the back seat as we took off in a Miles Master. Conscious of his scrutiny (pilots are almost pathologically intolerant of other pilots’ abilities) I flew with excessive care.

‘Nice take-off,’ he commented. Hands busy I nodded acknowledgement before throttling back to cruising power.

Gradually as we flew steadily across a sky mellow with soft clouds and shafts of sunlight I felt a mood of exalted surrender. Linked by the engine’s incidental music – John, the sky, the green chequered fields – the knowledge of life’s inconstancy in war built up a confederacy of such profound intimacy in the cramped cockpit I felt myself beyond body; as though I had stepped into a poet’s unwritten soul. Into a world of metaphor and image whose ecstasy defies man’s alphabet.

Distantly I heard his voice.

‘Don’t you do any aerobatics?’ he shouted.

‘Not allowed to,’ I shouted back.

‘Who’s to know? May I?’

I held up both hands to signal that he was in control and tightened my straps. He started with a barrel roll to the left then, to emphasize his versatility, a slow roll to the right.

‘You try,’ he shouted.

I took over and tried a roll to the right. It was appalling.

‘Not bad,’ he shouted. ‘Use more top rudder going in and coming out. Try it again.’

I nodded and tried again. It was a good one.

‘Very nice. I’ve got her,’ he shouted, and flicked the Master over on its back and held it inverted whilst the dust and dirt showered into my eyes from the bottom of the cockpit. ‘Enough,’ I begged, hanging uncomfortably upside down from my straps. He rolled the aircraft back to level flight and handed the controls back to me.

We returned to Hamble in the taxi aircraft as the sun lingered on the horizon and painted peaceful hues in the evening sky; a moment of armistice before darkness and death prowled again.

There was an unwritten agreement between John and me not to discuss what we were doing. Where we were going. What would happen at the end of the four days. It was a life within a life. A short story developing with classical precision. He did not kiss me, nor touch my hand. His eyes only were his advocate.

He called for me on the last evening, driving a disreputable car that he had borrowed from someone in the mess at Hamble. We were going to a dance in Southampton and he had insisted that I wear a dress. I looked at myself in the mirror. The trim uniform had vanished leaving a distressingly plain reflection. I was perversely content. The
denouement
would gather the loose ends of the story and end it as neatly as a Bach fugue.

He looked up from the evening paper as I entered the lounge. Coolly his eyes dropped to my ankles and then slowly rose as I hesitated in the doorway. It was a long time before his eyes finally reached mine.

‘What’s the matter, Jackie?’ he asked carefully. ‘Did you think it was the uniform?’ I nodded. ‘It wasn’t,’ he said simply.

The car made it a perfect evening. ‘Do you want to drive?’ he asked as we drove back from the dance, the masked headlights almost extinguished by the oppressive blackout.

‘I don’t drive,’ I admitted.

‘That’s a funny thing. You fly and you can’t drive.’

We watched the dotted white line slipping beneath us and the play of searchlights on the horizon. The dimly lit instrument panel surrounded us with a conspiratorial glow.

‘I must teach you one day,’ he said suddenly.

‘What?’

‘Driving.’

‘Um.’

‘You will marry me?’ he continued.

‘Yes,’ I answered.

He covered my hand with his and carried on through the blackout to Creek Cottage. Somehow it seemed superfluous to do anything else.

During the weeks that followed I seemed to develop three different personalities. There was one that was reckless and indomitable when I was with John. A second that read Reg’s frantic cables from India with remorse and equivocation and a third, neutral, that looked at the other two with scornful disdain. I did not like myself very much. I lied to John, to Reg and to myself. I was too cowardly to hurt any of the trio and too unsophisticated to enjoy the role of
femme fatale
.

The little buff envelope arrived whilst the Greenhills and I were listening to the news on the radio.

‘It’s for you, Jackie,’ said Mrs Greenhill, handing me the telegram.

‘You open it,’ I said in the sudden cold silence, broken only by the unemotional voice of the news announcer. Please God, I begged silently as she fumbled with the seal, don’t let it be Reg.

‘It’s John,’ she said, passing me the telegram. ‘Missing in action.’

I phoned his squadron. They were polite but could add little to the telegram. His formation had been jumped by an overwhelming force of German fighters. In the ensuing scramble he had vanished. No one had seen him go down. They would let me know if they heard anything further.

I carried on flying in a sky suddenly unfriendly. Each flight evoked John. Each cloud was like a gravestone; silent and reproachful. Each time the landing wheels touched, skimmed over the surface and finally settled on the runway I remembered that John had not landed. At night, in bed, I convinced myself that there had been an empty space in the telegram until my decision had irrevocably written the name of John. That I had wished him dead that Reg might live. Guilt played havoc with commonsense and for weeks I reported to the aerodrome and ferried aircraft with the slinking furtiveness of a criminal.

Six weeks elapsed before I was reprieved. Weeks of reasoned argument from Mrs Greenhill who knew all. Of phone calls to his squadron who already were beginning to forget him. I refused to answer Reg’s bewildered unhappy letters. It was in this mood that I returned to Hamble after ferrying a sluggish heavy Walrus amphibious aircraft. Dispirited and tired I slouched into the mess for a cup of coffee. Dropping my parachute and helmet on the floor I got the coffee and slumped into one of the deep leather armchairs that were dotted around the mess.

‘Hi,’ greeted the figure sitting in the chair next to mine.

‘Hi,’ I answered mechanically, intent on balancing my coffee. He got up and, grinning like a Cheshire cat, stood in front of me.

‘John. John!’

He had lost weight and looked drawn and haggard. That evening in Creek Cottage he told me his story, reluctantly.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

He shrugged disinterestedly, got up and sat next to me on the settee. ‘What happened?’ I insisted.

He smiled wryly. ‘I caught it too soon. We were at 20,000 when they jumped us. We broke up. I got on the tail of a 109 and pumped everything I had into him. Funny thing,’ he mused, ‘I was enjoying it; enjoying trying to kill him.’ He lapsed into silence for a moment and then continued: ‘But he wouldn’t go down. Then someone blew
me
out of the sky. Own fault. I didn’t see him. I caught fire and got out quick. You did a jump once didn’t you?’ he asked parenthetically.

‘Yes.’

‘You must be crazy. Anyway I got down all right and walked home.’

‘From Germany?’

‘Yes. I was captured but jumped off the train on the way to prison camp. Got to Holland. The underground did the rest.’

I looked at the top button of his tunic. It was done up. He caught my eye and grinned, bringing a lustre to his tired eyes. ‘I don’t want to be a hero any more,’ he said.

I lied to him for two months, until he was fit and well and wore the blue and white ribbon of the Distinguished Flying Cross before I told him.

During the early spring of 1944 the A.T.A. was almost
overwhelmed by a flood of aircraft pouring from the factories. Every available pilot was called to cope with the heavy programme of priority and super-priority delivery flights. Rumours of a big show were rife as, from dawn to dusk, we criss-crossed the skies with an armada of fighters, bombers and troop-transports freshly painted with dramatic black and white markings.

As we flew over the southern ports we could see something was going on. Rivers and creeks were stuffed with landing craft. New balloon barrages sprouted like cabbages over harbours crammed with shipping and supplies. Puzzling structures, subsequently renowned as ‘Pluto’ and ‘Mulberry’ added to the crop of rumours.

On June 1st all leave was cancelled, long stretches of coastline were declared prohibited areas and all aircrew subjected to a belated security check. By then even the most unsophisticated agreed that it must be the invasion.

A sudden lull proclaimed the end of preparations, the moment of decision. Most of us guessed that the lull was the eve of history. Lost by the sudden inactivity and the strange quiet that settled on the aerodrome the pilots moped around the operations room trying to cadge flights, or played tennis desultorily in the shadow of the hangar.