Till We Meet Again (90 page)

“Oh, you’re loving this, aren’t you, you bastard? Torturing me is the most fun you’ve had in years. Why did I ever tell you anything, you smug, cocky, rotten, sneaky
fucker?
Why did I ever give you the smallest advantage over me?”

“Hey, you opened your eyes! I have a theory that it’s impossible to stay angry with your eyes closed. You can’t glare. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Save the theories for the ground. You made a promise,” Freddy insisted.

“I said ‘when you look around, when you look down’—so far, all you’ve looked at is the cockpit. You could be in a car.”

Setting her teeth, Freddy warily moved her eyes around from one side to another, without relaxing the stiff set of her head on her neck. Then, without turning her body, she slowly leaned her entire torso sideways a few inches toward the window and glanced down. She immediately righted herself and fixed her gaze on the windshield.

“See anything interesting?”

“Very funny.”

“Well? What’d you see?” he insisted.

“You bloody shit, I saw the same stuff I always see around here, what’d you expect, elephants?”

“You never know. It’s pretty wild country, right on the edge of a desert—you could get lost before you knew it.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“Familiar with the local landscape, are you?” Jock asked.

“You knew perfectly well I learned to fly in this area, that I soloed at a little airport right near here.”

“I did not. Why would I know? Do you think I’m familiar with every little last detail of your past?”

“Obviously not.” Freddy felt ridiculous. Of course he wouldn’t know. Experienced pilots didn’t talk about when and where they’d soloed unless they were sitting around reminiscing.

“I’ll bet you don’t know where I soloed, do you?” Jock asked.

“No, and I don’t give a hoot in hell. I just want to go back down,” Freddy demanded wrathfully.

“All right. O.K. In a minute. Just let me tell you about it. It was my sixteenth birthday, and my instructor knew, naturally, that I was dying to solo. I had nine hours, and I thought I was really hot stuff. This was at a little airport down near San Juan Capistrano, and it was after school and getting late and I thought it was then or never. Well, my instructor let me fly the pattern and do touch-and-goes for the whole hour’s lesson without saying a word, not even a meaningful look. Then, when the hour was over, completely over, and it was
practically dark out, this guy, God, I’ll never forget him, says, ‘
Jock
, taxi her over to the parking space,’ and when we got there, he climbed down first as usual and he said, ‘Well, kid, I’m going in for some coffee, you’re too young to drink coffee, so you take her up and fly the pattern a few more times—see you later,’ and he just walked away. Never looked back. Well, first I thought, does he want me to go up
alone
or what? And then I caught on and I gave this terrific yell and I just took her up and … well, you know how it feels, Freddy, you can’t describe it. If you haven’t done it, you haven’t done it. If you have, you have. That’s the thing of it. I didn’t want to ever come down. I would have flown around all night, till I ran out of gas, if I hadn’t seen the evening star, kind of blinking at me. Reminding me. Suddenly I realized that it was really getting dark, so I came in fast, not bumpy, just with all due speed … and it was over. Yeah—January 1936. Only it’s never really over, thank God. Some days you think it’s over, you think the thrill is gone, you think you’re used to the wonder of it, but then it comes back. It always comes back. Like today, watching Annie put her little hands on the wheel—I thought of you, I was wishing you’d been there to see her face. Well—anyway. Story of my life. Pretty unusual, huh? Never happened to anyone else, I guess. A unique experience, unheard of in the annals of aviation.” Jock yawned. “Wow, I’m sleepy, so sleepy … too many thrills for one day … think I’m getting old, Freddy, huh? You take her.”

He stretched hugely, his long arms over his head, his hands flat against the top of the cockpit. Freddy automatically took the wheel, automatically her feet reached for the rudders, automatically she checked the instrument panel, automatically she flew the plane. Good, Jock, very good, you suckered me into it,
bored
me into it, smart, oh, very smart, and I didn’t even see it coming.

She looked over at him. Jock was giving a very good imitation of a sleeping man. His eyes were definitely closed, no question of it, and his breathing was regular and seemed to be getting deeper. The sunlight in the cockpit gilded the blond hair of his bare, muscular forearms. His long, lean body slumped in the seat. Next thing you know, he’ll begin to pretend to snore, she thought, and dismissed him from her mind.

Freddy was busy getting the feel of the Piper Cub, after a
year away from flying. She did a few cautious turns, with a very gentle bank. The plane was light but it had plenty of horsepower. She’d flown it before, and knew its capacities. It handled so easily that a child could fly it. A child
had
flown it, she reminded herself.

She turned more steeply, sweeping immediately from one deeply angled turn directly into another in the graceful seraphic linkage that beginning students find so amazing, the heady, intoxicating dance anyone with any sense of balance at all can do with a plane, even if they don’t know what keeps it flying or where it’s going. Freddy looked around in every direction. There was no one in view. She took the Cub higher, until she’d reached four thousand feet. This was more like it. Oh, this felt—fine. This felt—
wonderful!
Tears came into her eyes as she understood that she felt not the slightest trace of fear. She deliberately thought about the details of her flights to Paris and back. She faced them, she tried to relive them, but all she could do was remember them. She knew in her gut that she’d never feel that way again. She had lost her nerve. Yes, indeed. Now she had it back. Yes, indeed. It could happen to anyone.

Freddy looked for a cloud to play with, but it was a cloudless day. The sun was getting low on the horizon, and Annie was waiting, patiently she hoped, back at the airport. Jock was not quite snoring, and not quite not snoring. She took the Piper Cub up another five hundred feet, looked around carefully once more in every direction and, without warning Jock, deliberately plunged the plane into a steep dive. The Piper, unbridled, roared toward the tapestry of the ground willingly, as if it had been waiting for her to do something interesting. Freddy watched the galloping needle on the instrument panel, transfixed with patient passion, until she’d picked up enough speed to begin her loop. Now she began to ease the throttle gently forward, coming out of the dive and beginning the upward climb, starting the circle that would take her over the top of the horizon, over the top of the world. As she climbed, she flicked an eye at Jock. He was still pretending to sleep, breathing easily, relaxed, almost—yes—almost smiling. Bastard!

She mounted relentlessly, higher and higher, her whole body eager for the magical thrill—higher, and higher—and
over]
Over the top, upside down, laughing, zooming, free to fly. Free, divinely free, master of the sky, queen of the
horizon, keeper of the clouds, sister of the wind, cut loose from the humble, drudging reality of gravity in the only elemet that blesses mankind with such choice.

Freddy recovered from the loop and took her hands off the controls.

“Take her back, Jock,” she said, “if you’re awake.”

Jock landed at Santa Paula and taxied slowly to the side of the landing strip. Neither of them started to leave the plane.

“Thanks, Jock,” Freddy said, “you’re a friend.”

“It was nothing.”

“It was everything.”

“It was … what it was.” He grinned at her, enchanted and tongue-tied. She was so hopelessly beautiful, with no makeup and her nutsy hair all over the place and a feisty look in her eyes that he hadn’t seen in much too long.

“I’ve got to admit it, you cured me.” Freddy shook her head in candid admiration. “Maybe—maybe you could do something about another problem that’s been bothering me,” she added thoughtfully. “It’s the same kind of thing—strictly in my head.”

“I’ll try,” he said eagerly.

“I’m suffering from some sort of amnesia. The doctors tell me it’s common after an accident. They say I may never get that memory back—a whole important period of time out of my life! It’s driving me bananas. The last thing I remember was singing old songs up on the bandstand at the hotel. I distinctly remember the last song, ‘I’m Always Chasing Rainbows’—and the next thing I know, I was waking up in a hospital—
weeks
later, as it turned out. Obviously I’d gone up and crashed into a mountain, that much I know because they told me, but I don’t remember anything after the bandstand.”

“Nothing? Absolutely nothing?”

“Nope. I don’t know what I did after I stopped singing. At least I assume I
must
have stopped singing or I couldn’t have been flying a plane. Just look at the kind of connections I’m reduced to making! It’s pathetic. I feel as if I’m only half here.”

“Would the words ‘Till We Meet Again’ bring anything back?” He risked the question, a mesh of his blond hair flopping over his forehead, his eyes squinting apprehensively.

“Come on, Jock, that’s the song my mother always told us was lucky, although she’s never said exactly why. I sang that
song for all of you at the Blue Swan because I felt a certain … magic … in it—I hoped it might bring you all back safely the next day. I didn’t say I’d forgotten my
entire
life, just a part of it.”

“So you don’t remember anything from after ‘Rainbows’—you don’t even remember how you got home that night, you don’t remember … anything … else?”

“How many times do I have to tell you that it’s one big empty blank?”

“Hmm. Well, that
is a
problem.”

“That’s very helpful. At least you’re convinced it’s a problem. We’re making progress. Very slowly, to be sure, but I suppose you could call it progress.”

“I have an idea, if you’d stop laughing at me.”

“I’m listening.” Her frolicking smile was that of someone listening to the sound of bravos echoing in her ears, well-earned bravos.

“We should—re-create—the events of that night. I don’t think it’s necessary to hold another Eagle Squadron reunion, because you remember that, but there are other steps that could be taken. For instance, you could wear the same dress, that wild and disorderly red dress, if you still have it, and those jazzy red shoes, and your ATA wings, and we could go somewhere with a dance floor and music and we could have dinner the way we did, and dance the way we did, and I could tip the bandleader to play some of the old songs and … well, sort of take it from there. Something would be bound to happen that would trigger your memory.”

“That sounds like an ingenious idea—as long as I don’t have to sing. When can we do it?”

“Whenever you like. I’m available. I’m not going anywhere.”

“How about tonight? Would tonight be too soon?” Freddy asked.

“Tonight would be—great. I don’t have anything better to do. Do you?”

“No, Jock, nothing better.”

Hastily, Freddy gave Jock a peck on the cheek and made ready to get out of the plane. If her memory was triggered any more powerfully than it had been as she sat so near him, she’d fall into Jock’s arms and make an unseemly, unladylike, immodest spectacle of herself, right here inside the Piper Cub. He was going to have to work very hard to bring back her memory.
Oh, yes!
Amnesia took a powerful lot of loving
to cure, a powerful lot of kisses, a blizzard of hugs, an encyclopedia of words; all the loving Jock had, all the loving that had been waiting, stored up all these years for her. She wanted to hear him say it all over again. And again.

“Freddy—” Jock leaned toward her impulsively, such emotion blazing from his eyes that she almost tumbled out of the plane. What if he could read her mind?
Not so fast!
Amnesia, she had amnesia. Freddy clung to the thought as she forced herself to look blank. She blinked.

“Yes?” she asked innocently.

“I love you. Freddy, damn it, I’m so much in love with you I can’t take it anymore!”

“Wait! Say that again!” Freddy commanded. She drew herself up, vulnerable no longer, needy no longer, ready to listen to her heart.

“Why, so you can gloat over me as usual?” He grinned again, suddenly sure of himself. She’d heard him the first time.

“No—it’s what you just said—I think—I think maybe a little bit of my memory’s coming back—something about … could it be a … a school prom? Something about going flyin’ together? Hmm … doesn’t it seem to you that we’ve already been flyin’?”

“Knock off that teasing. Tease me every day for the rest of your life, but now, let me give you a kiss.”

“You don’t want much, do you, Squadron Leader?”

“Oh, darling, I want it all.
All
. Starting with a kiss. Please, Freddy.”

“I remember someone saying … yes … I remember it clearly … ‘Only a jerk asks a girl’s permission,’ ” Freddy said in an astonished voice as she reached out to Jock, lifting and opening her arms in a gesture that was half a surrender and wholly a promise.

For the hundreds of women pilots, from more than a dozen countries, who flew in the British Air Transport Auxiliary from September 1939 through November 1945. These splendid women joined in the essential job of ferrying aircraft of the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force throughout the British Isles, proving that women could fly anything with wings, from fighter planes to four-engined bombers with skill, valor and an outstanding safety record
.

For Steve, once again, with all my love, yesterday, today and tomorrow
.

Acknowledgments

I owe a great debt of gratitude to the people who helped me unearth the facts that are the necessary foundation of this fiction.

Lettice Curtis
, British pilot and former First Officer in the British Air Transport Auxiliary. She was among the first women who joined the ATA and one of the last to leave, after six unstinting years of wartime service. Her later work as an aviation historian produced her book
The Forgotten Pilots
, which was an invaluable source of factual material on the ATA.