Bluebirds (84 page)

A GUST OF
wind snatched at Madge's cap and whisked it from her head. It bowled away up the grassy incline towards the cliff top with Madge lumbering in pursuit and making frantic grabs at it with her hands. She caught up with it only a few yards from the edge, pinning it down at last with one foot. Virginia, watching from below, saw her look out over the Channel and then turn and shout something, but the wind carried her words away. She began to make frantic beckoning signals to Virginia, pointing and then jumping up and down.

They often walked along the cliffs above Walmer in the light evenings; it helped the sore eyes and aching heads from the hours spent in the darkened room and there was a wonderful view of the sea. It was more than the view, though, that was making Madge so excited. Virginia ran up the rest of the slope to join her, hanging on to her own cap.

The sea below heaved cold and grey and flecked with white, the horizon lost in murky mist and cloud. There was nothing remarkable about rough weather in the Channel, even in summer, but Madge was not pointing at the big waves, or the white horses, but at the huge fleet of small ships that were gathered there. She had a huge grin on her face and was shouting against the wind.

‘They're going to invade! They're going to land in France! It's happening at last!' She jumped about again, waving her cap in the air. ‘Hip-hip
hooray
!”

But Virginia didn't cheer too, or jump about with excitement like Madge. Instead she stood and stared at the great armada. It stretched away into the sea mist
as far as she could see, probably all the way down the coast for miles. Thousands of men in small ships would have to cross that treacherous expanse of water and fight their way ashore on mined and fiercely defended beaches. Thousands of them would probably die. Neil had done what they were trying to do and it had failed tragically.

Please God, she prayed, let them succeed this time.

They've gone and posted me back to Colston
, Anne wrote to Kit, though heaven only knew when he'd get the letter.
I'm going back where I started. Except that last time I was Aircraftwoman Cunningham, the lowest form of life, and this time I'll be Flight Officer Cunningham (I bet that's a surprise). I'll be inspecting instead of being inspected, dishing out jankers instead of doing it. You'll probably be quite right and I'll hate it, but you know what they say about poachers making the best gamekeepers.
She finished the letter:
Take care of yourself.
That was a laugh! What hope was there of him doing any such thing in France? At D-Day plus fifteen the allies were still struggling to get a solid foothold there. Nobody had ever said it would be easy, but nobody seemed to have thought that it would be quite so difficult either. Nobody had expected the Germans to have had so much fight left in them.

And nobody had expected the Germans to start attacking London with a new and horrible weapon. There had been rumours, but there were rumours about all sorts of things, and most of them were untrue. Now, out of the blue, the Jerries had begun launching flying bombs that came over all on their own, without any pilot. Unsporting people called it, as though war were a game of cricket. The buzz bombs came at all hours, by day or by night, and when their engines stopped they simply crashed to the ground and blew up. It was hard to shoot them down, or deflect them – though fighters tried with their wingtips and sometimes succeeded – and as nobody could stay in a shelter all the time, survival in London had become a
game of chance. People carried on with their daily lives hoping that if a flying bomb appeared overhead it would keep on going and fall on somebody else.

She was on her way to Victoria Station by taxi, crossing London to catch the train to Colston, when the air raid siren sounded. As she got out of the taxi at the railway station to pay the driver she saw a flying bomb approaching. It looked like a toy 'plane buzzing along about three hundred feet in the air, spurting a little tail of flame and making a spluttering growl. Everyone around had frozen like statues where they stood. Nobody moved. Everybody watched and listened. And when the spluttering stopped suddenly they all flung themselves to the ground with their arms over their heads, or crouched in doorways. The taxi driver leaped from his cab and pulled Anne down with him underneath it. ‘Better safe than sorry, miss.' A moment later there was a violent explosion that shook the ground and dust and debris and shattered glass fell like rain. She crawled out from under the taxi, brushing herself down, and retrieved her scattered coins. The dust still in the air had made the day as dark as dusk. Only a few streets away ambulance sirens were wailing. Around her, people were picking themselves up off the ground and emerging from their doorways and then carrying on almost as though nothing had happened.

The taxi driver grinned at her. ‘We've got used to 'em, miss. 'itler can stuff 'is doodlebugs.'

It was very strange to be back at RAF Colston. It was a bigger and busier place than she remembered – swarming with RAF and WAAF. Very young-looking airwomen saluted her smartly in immaculate uniforms. How different it had all been in the beginning. She thought of Gloria teetering along in her high-heeled sandals, of Pearl with the flask of whisky in her handbag, Sandra carrying her travelling rug, Enid weeping constantly, Winnie curtseying to an apoplectic CO, the airmen
whistling and laughing from barrack room windows . . . The new Station Commander, a young Group Captain, leaned over backwards to accommodate WAAF needs, and there was a brand new Waafery with well-equipped recreation rooms and a large, sunny Mess that had curtains at the windows and flowers on the tables.

The WAAF sergeant who entered her office looked as efficient as all the rest. Anne looked, and looked again – closer.

‘
Pearl!
I'd no idea you were back here. How wonderful! When were you posted here?'

‘Six months ago, ma'am.'

She was ma'am now, not love or ducks or duckie any more. There was a gulf between them. An uncrossable chasm in RAF Regulations and it was sad.

‘How are you, Pearl?'

‘Very well, thank you, ma'am.'

She was still plump but instead of the riot of red curls tumbling over her forehead, there was one dark and restrained wave.

‘Whatever happened to Autumn Glory, Pearl?'

‘It's Rich Mahogany now, ma'am.'

‘And that engagement ring on your finger? Is that Mr Right at last?'

There was a faint smile – a glimmer from the past. ‘Mr He'll Do, like I always said. He's a RAF sergeant.'

‘Congratulations.'

‘Thank you, ma'am.'

Anne leaned her arms across the desk. ‘Remember the old days, Pearl? I was just thinking about them now . . . Corporal Fowler in the kitchens, Sergeant Baker trying to teach us drill, how hopeless we were at everything? Remember that Sergeants' Mess dance when Enid got drunk and we carried her back? And that time you and I tried on all the fur coats at that Officers' Mess do? And the teacups, Pearl . . . remember how you read them for us and most of it came true?'

‘Oh, yes, ma'am. I remember it all.'

‘So do I,' Anne said. ‘So do I.'

They smiled a conspiratorial smile at each other. There was a small silence and then Anne straightened up in her chair.

‘Well, sergeant,' she said briskly. ‘What did you want to see me about?'

Further along the South Coast, another WAAF flight officer, seated behind another desk, was looking at the sergeant on the other side sympathetically.

‘I'm sorry, my dear, to have had to give you such bad news. So very sorry.'

She was a much older woman: one of those who had been in the Women's Royal Air Force in the First World War and rejoined for the Second. She did her best to act as surrogate mother to the young WAAFS away from home, seeing it as her special role by reason of her age. This made the job of telling one of them that her real mother was dead all the more unpleasant. It was by no means the first time she had had to do so. She had known a number of airwomen who had lost their mothers in the Blitz, but that had been near the beginning of the war. This was supposed to be near the end. Paris had been liberated. The Allies were pressing eastwards. And yet here she was telling this girl that her mother had just been killed by a flying bomb that had fallen directly on her home.

‘If it's any comfort to you, she wouldn't have known anything about it. It was a direct hit. It would all have been over in a second.'

She watched Sergeant Stratton carefully as she spoke. She seemed totally stunned. Devastated. She had not yet said a word but sat staring down at her lap, her shoulders and head bowed. It was a great pity all ways round. The girl had been doing so well. When she had first come across her she had been a shy and very diffident sort of person – rather clumsy in her manner, though never in her job. But lately she had blossomed and acquired so much
more confidence. She had made a sound corporal and was proving an excellent sergeant – responsible, efficient and unusually dedicated. She could easily become a good officer, given time, and make a real career in the WAAF. It would be a great shame if this tragedy were to set her back – knock the prop from under her, as it were.

The flight officer went on. ‘Of course, we'll arrange compassionate leave for you at once. You should be able to catch the early afternoon train to London . . .' She looked down at the file on her desk. ‘Your mother was a widow, I see.'

Virginia nodded. The face-saving lie had been perpetuated even in WAAF records.

‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?'

She shook her head.

‘Any aunts or uncles? Cousins?'

‘I have a great-aunt who lives in Bexhill, that's all. I'm not sure if she's still alive, though.'

The flight officer said kindly: ‘Would you like me to find out for you? You could go and stay with her for a few days, perhaps –'

Virginia thought of the gloomy, mothball-smelling house. ‘No, thank you.'

‘Are there any friends of your mother? Older people who might rally round?'

‘My mother had no friends.'

‘Oh. I see.' The flight officer didn't really see at all. A warm, outgoing person herself, she could not easily imagine someone having no friends. The one thing she did see clearly, though, was that Sergeant Stratton was now apparently completely alone in the world – so far as a family was concerned. It was very fortunate, she thought, that the girl had the WAAF. In her considerable experience, the service could sometimes fill that gap quite well.

She said gently: ‘We'll do everything we can to help you, my dear.'

The house in Alfred Road had been almost flattened by the flying bomb. Only a small part of one wall remained standing; the rest was an uneven, towering mound of rubble. She saw that the houses on each side had been badly damaged, too, and all along the street windows had been shattered and tiles broken. The force of the explosion must have been enormous. Two small boys were picking through the ruins, clambering over piles of bricks. When they saw Virginia standing at what had once been the gateway, they ran away with their hands full of prized pieces of twisted metal.

She walked up the path and through the gap where the front door had been. The brown linoleum was still there on the hallway floor, covered in a thick layer of dust, and she could see the bottom part of the hat-stand sticking out from under debris. Horribly, one of her mother's hats was lying close to it, covered in dust, too, but undamaged. She edged her way round the splintered wreckage of the staircase, trying to see into the rest of the flat. Part of the gas stove was visible where the kitchen had been and one of the blue and white checked curtains had draped itself over a fallen rafter. The sitting-room had been completely buried beneath its ceiling and the upstairs floor. The armchair with the tattered floral cover and the enamel-topped table with two legs missing must have come from Mrs Hickey's flat above. One of the neighbours had stopped her and told her that Mrs Hickey had escaped because she had been out when the buzz bomb had fallen. Until that moment she hadn't even thought about her. All she had been able to think about was that she had never really made up the quarrel with her mother, and now she would never be able to.
My mother has no friends.
Until now she had never considered what that meant. Now she saw that it must have meant many long hours of loneliness. She, Virginia, had been the only friend her mother had had and she had first deserted her and then rejected her. And she had died all alone.

The undertaker was grave-faced and kind. He took all the arrangements out of her hands; she had only to choose the coffin – what kind and what price. He turned the pages of a folder apologetically, murmuring about types of wood and different handles, and she sat staring blankly at the different pictures. Later he found her a cheap bed-and-breakfast place not far away.

The cemetery was vast. The graves stood in unending rows of sad grey stone and sombre black marble, decked discordantly with gaudy flowers. She had thought that she was the only mourner in the small chapel where the priest said prayers over her mother's coffin, but when she turned to follow it out to the graveside, she saw a man and woman standing in the back pew – a middle-aged couple who were complete strangers to her. Relatives she had not known about? Friends, after all? The man stepped forward as she reached the pew.

‘Virginia?'

She paused. He had grey hair and a pepper and salt moustache, and he was dressed in a dark suit and wearing a black tie.

‘I'm your father . . .' he gestured helplessly with one hand. ‘Forgive me for coming here like this. I wanted to pay my respects. To give you some support. To see if you were all right . . .' He turned to the woman beside him. ‘This is Dorothy.'

She must be That Woman. She couldn't be his wife because Mother had never agreed to a divorce.
So long as I live I'll make sure he can never marry that woman
. She was nothing like the siren she had always imagined. She was rather overweight and her hair was grey, too. There was nothing glamorous about her at all.