Bluebirds (24 page)

The instructor was lukewarm. ‘Not bad. But you were slow. Much too slow. You're all going to have to be a lot quicker than that. Next one.'

They had already learned from the table map that RAF Fighter Command was divided into Groups and the Groups into Sectors. Now they discovered more about
how an Operations Room worked. Fighter Command Headquarters, the instructor told them, was like the nerve centre of a spider's web that reached across the country, and information was passed up and down the strands. Messages and orders were sent to the Ops Rooms of fighter stations where the Controller-in-Charge directed his squadrons. He sat high up on a balcony or dais so that he could have an uninterrupted view of the plotting table.

‘He can see the whole situation spread out in front of him, at a glance. And your job is to give him the latest information fast and accurately.'

Ops A sat next to the Controller and took down messages as they filtered through and Ops B sat on his other side, assisting. An Army officer was also present to keep the anti-aircraft batteries informed.

‘And this,' the instructor continued, indicating a large blackboard on the wall, ‘is known as the tote board. As you can see it's marked up to show the state of the squadrons – Airborne, Standing By, At Readiness or Available. The Controller has to be able to see all that as well as everything else.'

They were told about the men of the Observer Corps who kept watch for enemy aircraft and sent in their information over field telephones, and they learned something of the chain of mysterious stations strung along the coastline which could somehow track aircraft by radio waves.

And all the time the importance of secrecy was impressed upon them. Their instructor was blunt.

‘If I had my way you girls wouldn't be doing this job. I never yet knew a woman who could keep a secret, so I hope you're all going to prove me wrong. Just remember that what goes on in our Ops Rooms is something the enemy would give a great deal to know about. One silly, talkative girl could give it away. And people will want to know about it – your friends, your family . . . they'll be curious about what you do. They may get angry and upset when you won't tell them, or they may try to guess,
draw you out, tease you about it . . . Whatever they do or say
you
must say absolutely nothing.'

Virginia absorbed every word. During her first few days in the WAAF she had wondered how she was going to survive. She had not bargained for the bewildering strangeness of it all. She had been unprepared for the brusque ordering about, the rudeness and unfriendliness of some of the other recruits, the cold and discomfort and the total, embarrassing lack of privacy, and she had found it hard to remember all the peculiar rules and regulations. At night she had wept silently into her bolster pillow, believing that she had made a terrible mistake. She had wept at her own unhappiness and at the thought of her mother sitting alone in the flat, and she had wept again in the day when reprimanded for her clumsy attempts at drill and PT. They had been issued with a sort of uniform – gaberdine raincoats, ugly black berets, men's shirts with stiff detachable collars and sad black ties. None of it seemed to fit her properly and it all made her feel even more ungainly. If it had not been for one thing that eventually happened, her misery would have been complete.

From the moment she had placed that red arrow on the plotting table over Tunbridge Wells, and the wooden block alongside it, Virginia had felt quite differently. She had known then that she had done right. She had been right to leave home and Mother, and none of the other awful things mattered. She had been given an important job to do. Something worthwhile. And she knew that she could do it well.

At the end of their training course they were asked to give a preference for the area where they would like to be sent. Thinking of her mother, Virginia specified the south-east. Later she was told that she was being posted to RAF Colston on the south coast of England.

THE JOURNEY GOING
home on leave to Suffolk was dreadful. Winnie sat squashed uncomfortably in the third class compartment with seven RAF airmen who teased her all the way to London. Because of a fresh fall of snow, the train was more than an hour late arriving at Victoria Station and then, as before, she got lost in the Underground and had to ask her way at least half a dozen times. Liverpool Street Station, when she finally reached it, was crowded with travellers and she was swept hither and thither like a piece of flotsam on swirling flood waters. The loudspeakers blared out announcements that she could neither make sense of nor hear properly above the hissing and belching of the steam engines. The train she had been supposed to catch had long since departed and the next one to Ipswich did not leave for more than two hours. She sat in the Ladies' Waiting Room where it seemed to be even colder than it was outside. When she boarded the train at last, there were no empty seats left and she had to stand in the corridor with her suitcase wedged between her feet.

As the train steamed slowly out of London, she watched the drab buildings slide by the window and read the big advertisement hoardings . . . 
Guinness Is Good For You . . . Virol, The Food For Health . . . There'll Always be Mazawattee Tea
 . . . In a row of back gardens below, she saw lines of sooty washing and the raw humps of air raid shelters poking through the snow like new graves. Presently, the train gathered speed and the terraced houses gave way to semi-detached ones and wider streets and deeper snow. A cemetery flashed past, then a park with
allotments and, as darkness was falling, the flat openness of Essex. There were stops and starts and long waits at stations and signals and, as she was drooping with weariness, Essex became Suffolk and the train drew into Ipswich. She queued patiently for the bus which ground its way through treacherous lanes and deposited her outside the Pig and Whistle in Elmbury. Then she walked the remaining two miles home through deep snow and drifts and stumbled up to the farmhouse door.

Her family were sitting round the kitchen table having tea and the oil lamp lit their surprised faces as they all turned towards her. Her mother stopped in the act of cutting into the cake, the knife in mid-air.

‘Winnie! What're you doin' here? We weren't expectin' you.'

She set down her suitcase. Her hands and feet were so cold she could scarcely feel them.

‘I wrote I was comin', Mum. Didn't you get my letter? They gave me leave.'

‘Well, we never know what's happenin' these days, what with the war and the weather. We didn't think you'd get through, it's been so bad . . . What's that you've got on your head?'

‘My beret. It's uniform.'

‘Funny lookin' thing. Well, you'd better make haste and sit down then while the tea's still hot.'

Winnie took off her raincoat and beret and hung them up by the back door beside Gran's old pattens. Her shoes and stockings were soaking wet but she was too tired to care. She sat down at her usual place at the table. Gran, guzzling from a plate held up to her chin, grunted something and Ruth and Laura stared at her round-eyed as though she were a stranger. Her father passed his plate down for a slice of cake and addressed her indirectly.

‘Lost two ewes last week. Six foot drifts. Ground's like iron. Pond's frozen solid. Can't dig anythin' up. Makes no end of work.'

Nothing much had changed since she'd been away. Dad
was grumbling just the same and everything looked just as it had always done. She looked round the room, at the big dresser with its rows of plates along the shelves and cups hanging on hooks, the oak settle along the wall, the ebony clock on the shelf up above the range and the pink lustreware plates each side of it:
Thou God Seest Me
and
Prepare To Meet Thy God.
The kettle was simmering over the fire and there was Gran's chair with its patchwork cushion, and the picture of Ely Cathedral on the wall . . . It was all just the same.

Her mother poured her tea. ‘You're lookin' pale, Winnie. Peaky. Don't they feed you properly in that place?'

‘I'm all right, Mum. Just a bit cold, that's all. It was a long journey.'

‘Well, you don't look it.' Her mother wiped the jam from Ruth's face. ‘You never looked like that when you were here. What's that shirt and tie you're wearin'?'

‘It's our uniform, Mum.'

‘Don't seem proper to me – wearin' men's clothes like that.'

‘They're not really. And I wear dungarees here, Mum.'

‘That's different. You don't look right at all in those things . . . and all pale like you are. I never did want you to go to that place.'

Gran had finished her plateful and she smacked her lips together. The bib of her long black dress was liberally spotted with food stains.

‘Leave the mawther alone, Rhoda. Stop yar fussin'. Yew've no sense at all. She's tired, comin' all that way. Needs her tay. Leave her be.'

Winnie drank the hot tea and ate hungrily. Now that Gran had spoken, she was left in peace. There were floury scones with thick yellow butter, plum jam and seed cake . . . she had forgotten how good home-made food tasted.

Afterwards she did the washing-up out in the scullery. The pipe that brought the water from the pond to the
pump beside the sink was frozen solid and so she had to use water from a pail, mixing it with hot water from the kettle off the fire in the enamel bowl. She worked quickly, the old routine resumed as though there had been no break at all and as soon as she had finished she went to change into her dungarees, jumper and woollen socks. She took her old coat off the peg by the back door, pulled on her boots and went out to the stackyard to give her father a hand. He behaved as though she had never been away, leaving all those chores to her which had always been hers, without a word said between them. She drew water up from the deep well, carried the straw and the hay and the feed, and swept clean with the besom. The animals had not forgotten her. Tulip and Buttercup, Cherry and Daisy in the cow byre looked round at her with their soft eyes. Susie grunted in her sty and edged close to have her back scratched with a stick. The ewes in the shed bleated, and butted her with their heads, Prince and Smiler stamped their great hooves in their stalls and swished their tails, and Rusty leaped and barked excitedly at the end of his chain. Even the hens, roosting for the night up in the granary loft, gave soft cluckings and flutterings at the sound of her voice.

Her father, stumping to and fro in his nail boots, grumbled some more. Old Jack was getting worse than useless these days, what with his rheumatism and his slowness, and he couldn't be trusted with the milking any more. As for Barham's lad, the one he'd taken on when Winnie'd gone off and left them in the lurch, he was just a drawlatch, always looking all ways for Sundays.

‘Fordson won't budge, neither. Not spark. Been tryin' to get her goin' all week. Blessed if I know what in tarnation's the matter.'

‘I'll try her tomorrow, Dad. See if I can.'

‘You won't. Dead as a doornail. Just as well we've got the hosses. New fangled machinery . . . don't know why I ever bothered with that dratted thing. Near two hundred pounds she cost me an' all . . .'

By the time she got to bed she ached with tiredness, and yet for a long time she could not sleep. She lay watching the moonlight shining across the foot of her bed – so bright she could see the quilt pattern clearly. Gran was driving her pigs to market in her room below, noisy as anything. They were all asleep. Except for Ruth and Laura who'd taken a while to get used to her again, they'd all behaved just as though she'd never been away. Nothing
had
changed . . . except for herself. That was what was different. She didn't feel like the same person she'd been before. She was glad to be back – to be home again with the family, and to be working on the farm again, and with the animals – but she felt different somehow. As though she no longer properly belonged here any more. Like she was only visiting.

She turned her face towards the attic window. She could see the moon through the gap in the curtains – a full moon, round and soapy white as a cheese, up there in the sky. An owl screeched close by the house and Rusty barked once or twice in the stackyard below – sharp, warning woofs. A fox, most probably, prowling round outside the granary, after the hens. Tomorrow she'd have a good look to make sure it was all secure.

She tried not to think about what had happened with Taffy but it kept coming into her mind. What a fool she'd been, going off with him like that. Such an innocent, just like he'd called her. ASO Newman had been very kind about it, not angry at all, but she'd talked about being careful not to lead the airmen on, about keeping your distance with them, about the fact that she was engaged . . . and that had made her feel a whole lot worse. Made her feel like Dot Bedwell at the Pig and Whistle, or something.

She'd heard that Taffy had got into a lot of trouble and she'd felt bad about that, too, because it had really been her own silly fault – the way she'd gone on about the 'planes, telling him things, acting so eager . . . She ought to have known better. Had more sense. Everyone
had got to hear about them getting caught together, about her running out of that stores hut with her shirt torn where Taffy had grabbed hold of her to try and stop her. In the Orderly Room they'd put on false Welsh accents and made jokes about leeks. People had sniggered behind her back and whispered all sorts of untrue things about her and Taffy until, in the end, they'd got tired of it, or forgotten about it. But she couldn't forget, no matter how hard she tried. The very worst thing of all was that she'd let Ken down. That's how she saw it.

She wished she never had to see Taffy again, that his squadron would be posted away. He still kept coming to the Orderly Room, trying to talk to her, but she kept her back turned, pretending he wasn't there. Then, he had cornered her by the entrance to the NAAFI.