Spitfire Girl (2 page)

When we are very young,
The grown-ups talk as though we cannot hear,
‘Poor Jackie’ mother says aloud,
With poor me standing near.

1938

Six months before I was born my widowed mother and
I moved to my grandmother’s home. Six months after I was born my mother re-married. My grandmother, old-fashioned and strong-willed, was determined that I should not leave her orthodox Catholic home and influence. It is not difficult to imagine the arguments and promises that centred over my sublimely indifferent head like a tropical storm thundering high in the heavens over a placid lake, but when my mother moved to her new home in Durban I stayed at Pretoria with my grandmother.

The results were inevitable. I adapted myself, and was adapted, to an elderly woman. My behaviour, habits and interests were those calculated to make her happy. I was quiet, reserved and serious except when surrounded by octogenarians.

My grandmother’s firm belief in the Roman Catholic version of faith was a deep-water harbour in which I moored without once slipping the anchor and venturing outside the harbour gates. To her it was a living philosophy to which she referred even on the most trivial matters. In her generation it was simpler to have only black and white. She, and I, were untrammelled by the greys of modem psychology, where, the point of sin and misdemeanour is counter-pointed by environment and hereditary influence. For her, and me, this was right, that, unquestionably, was wrong. Admirable in a grandmother. Insufferable in a grand-daughter.

Thus when I was fourteen and my grandmother died I was a prig and a prude and ill-fitted to return to my mother’s home and the extravagant high spirits of my two step-brothers.

Reviewing my life it seemed inevitable that I would fly, though, looking back, I cannot choose the precise moment and say
that
was when I was committed to the sky. Perhaps this was it:

‘Sissy.’

‘Baaaby.’

‘Cry Baby.’

‘You wait!’ I cried, ‘I’ll show you.’

‘Showing’ my step-brothers was an empty gesture. I had been showing them for months but they refused to be impressed. Still fuming I left their calumny, jumped on my bike and rode out of Pretoria.

Calmer, I stopped on the dusty road that bordered Swartkop military aerodrome, leaned my bike against the fence and gazed pensively. Aircraft, the sun ricocheting sharply from their windscreens, rose gracefully and effortlessly into the sky. No longer pensive I cycled nearer to the hangars, parked my bike against a ‘Trespassers will be Prosecuted’ sign and looked closely at the pilots and pilots-to-be. I watched them until the last aircraft landed, the hangar doors closed and quiet returned to the aerodrome.

Riding home I wondered about the pilots. They seemed perfectly normal. Their hands into which they placed their lives were as mine. They had laughed and gestured ordinarily; oblivious of the courage, nobility and many other virtues that my admiration lavished upon them.

After I had been told off for being late for tea I announced that I was going to be a pilot.

‘Yah! You couldn’t fly for toffee.’

It went on like this until, over my fifteenth birthday breakfast, my mother, entirely hoodwinked by my unwary and apocryphal affection for flying, announced that for my birthday present we were all to drive out to Rand airport for my first flight. She called it a joy-ride. The sudden departure of my appetite and an attack of biliousness were charitably attributed to excitement. I have never been so frightened in all my life.

The drive to the airport was purgatory. I prayed for an earthquake, a flat tyre, anything to deter further progress as I wrestled with the problem of Scylla and Charybdis; the fear of flying or the humiliation of admitting the lies of the last few months. I chose, if such a word describes an almost involuntary action, the whirlpool of flying with its remote possibility of survival to the certainty of rock-like ignominy that would follow confession.

The wretched airport looked peaceful with an air of gentle laziness and shimmering quiet broken only by the departure or arrival of aircraft that, paradoxically, seemed to intrude. Irresistibly we drove through the gates to the excited and envious comments of my step-brothers. My mother had the smug expression of those who give. I tried very hard to wrench my ankle as I stepped out of the car but succeeded only in giving myself ineffectual pain.

I remember nothing of that first flight except the studied disgust of the pilot as he delicately avoided my breakfast and the feeling of unutterable relief when my feet touched soil again.

I contrived to avoid further combat but towards the latter part of the following year as I neared my sixteenth birthday, it was evident that my position as a ‘pilot’ needed strengthening. I requested a repeat performance. This time, on my birthday, we drove to Barragwanath airport, the headquarters of Johannesburg Flying Club, and I remember every minute of it.

The aircraft, de Havilland Moths, stood wing-tip to wing-tip in a neat line in front of the administration buildings. I was introduced to the veteran who was to transport me to another element. He was casually unconcerned as he showed me around the aircraft prior to our flight. Had he, I wondered, forgotten his first few flights. Rapidly he strapped me into the front cockpit immediately behind the engine and then climbed into the cockpit behind me. I sat, frightened, and gazed at the welter of instruments, wires and crash pad. Everything seemed oddly still. A mechanic appeared and, with the order ‘Contact,’ spun the propeller. The engine coughed into action and transformed the plane into vibrating animation. The tiny pointers on the instruments rose, registering goodness knows what. A laconic ‘O.K.?’ through the speaking tube attached to my helmet calmed my fear as we taxied out over the grass. The rattle of the tail skid on the uneven surface sent a series of judders through the frail structure; the wings curved and swayed with an action of their own. With a sharp turn we stopped at the far end of the field.

Another laconic grunt implied something, but before I could answer my back was pushed sharply against the back rest and we careered along the field. Fascinated, I saw the nose lower until I could see along the top of the engine. The wind thrust at my head and buffeted me like a punching bag. The airport buildings lurched and ran towards us. Closer they came until I could see our car parked nearby. They’ll catch us, I thought childishly, thinking of a game of tag, when suddenly they gave up the chase and slid smoothly beneath us. Timidly I looked ahead and saw the horizon. The large horizon of pilots, with the earth sinking into insignificance beneath. We banked steeply and as I looked down the left wing and saw the ground I was conscious of the void beneath me. I wondered what I sat on, looked down between my feet and was horrified to see canvas and flimsy bits of wood. Panic-stricken I tried to hold on to the struts that supported the top wing; the wind tore my hands away and only another grunt from the rear prevented sheer hysteria.

Suddenly the unnerving roar of the engine subsided to the gentle caressing swish of wind against the wings. I relaxed and was sick. The saucer of the earth gradually flattened as we glided towards the field. Gently the plane transferred its weight from the air to the ground and the swish gave way to a rumble of wheels and tail skid as they creaked protestingly over the field. We stopped, and everything was still.

In the last few moments of that flight, after fear and panic departed, leaving a brilliance of perception that follows all malaise, I realized that now I
wanted
to fly. Wanted the exhilaration of fear and difference. A world beyond my step-brothers.

We had lunch at the airport and I spent the afternoon enquiring about the economics of learning to fly. To my dismay I learned that I could not qualify for a licence until I was seventeen. I could however commence flying lessons immediately. I was introduced to the Chief Flying Instructor who, as I watched in awe, spoke of pounds, shillings and pence. Fortunately my mother was with me and absorbed these essential matters.

That night and every night for weeks my mother and I discussed and argued interminably. The entire family and all my relations were united in their opposition against my wish to fly. The four pounds a week, they suggested, could be more usefully spent on a finishing school, preparation for university or marriage, or scores of other estimable projects.

I had my first flying lesson two months later. It was a
trial lesson with the Chief Flying Instructor prior to committing myself to the full course necessary for obtaining an ‘A’ licence. This first lesson was in a Hornet Moth, with side-by-side seating arrangements and an enclosed cockpit. Looking back I realize that most of my early difficulties were due to the lop-sided effect of sitting on one side. As the instructor levelled off high above Johannesburg he gestured to me to take over control. At that time I was about five feet tall and could barely reach the control column and rudder bars. I stretched, coupled my fingers around the joystick and clung on, hard. The following series of evolutions, a faithful exposition of all I had read in a book entitled ‘Learn to Fly by Correspondence Course,’ defy description.

‘Try some straight and level flight,’ said the instructor wearily.

‘But I am,’ I answered.

‘Oh.’

We landed, I was sick again and we had a fatherly chat in his office.

Despite his advice I arranged to take the full course and had five rather unproductive lessons on the Hornet Moth before transferring to the illustrious Tiger Moth. This machine, vehicle of pioneering record-breaking flights, with its tandem seating and open cockpit seemed more of a friend than an enemy to be conquered. Each Sunday, weather permitting, and in South Africa it usually did, I had one lesson lasting an hour and a lecture or two on ground subjects.

Getting to the airport, 45 miles from home, had become a problem so I bought a motor-bike or, rather, my mother bought one for me. This of course played havoc with her estimated budget of flying costs.

I failed to fulfil gloomy prognostications of an early death and became inordinately attached to this machine. It reacted to my moods. A bilious approach would provoke mule-like obstinacy and though I would kick the starter for hours it would remain inanimate. Happiness, induced by Sunday sunshine and freedom would bring a response of eagerness and burbling vivacity and we would roll along, friends, reluctant to turn back, anxious to explore together the next hill, the next horizon.

Flying, and my motor-bike, injected me with confidence. My inferiority complex almost vanished and boys became objects of scorn rather than envy. I held court with scores of them, patronizing one against the other, letting them bathe in my reflected glory as an ‘ace’ with queenly condescension. Only one little beast resisted and refused to become my liege. I cycled interminably past his home with passion and hatred in my heart. Unfanned, the flame soon expired and the courted became the despised courtier.

My life became a happy whirl of study and flying... and a waiting for Sunday. I learned the alchemy of Meteorology that produces the allies and enemies of the sky. Of the levels of pressure sporting in the desolate Arctic wastes that, later and thousands of miles away, would transform the sky from blue placidity to dark satanic fury. Of the counter-pressures, friends of pilots, that would restore serenity. I learned of the things that go up and down inside engines, though to this day I do not believe they do these remarkable things. The mysteries of Morse code were unravelled from dots and dashes. The stars became signposts to distant destinations and the quaint rotations of the sun and moon became a logical sequence upon which all life depended as I progressed from medium turns to steep turns and from gigantic bounces to tolerable arrivals. The mere sight of an aircraft sufficed to fill me with pride and not a little humility.

About this time, after sojourns in schools of varying quality though, in South Africa, identical curriculum, I managed to matriculate. So ended my formal education. I fully intended later to go to Oxford. My schooldays over, I devoted myself to flying.

After seventeen hours of dual flying, my instructor considered that I could probably get an aircraft into the air and down again without too catastrophic a result. My first solo! I was turned over to the Chief Flying Instructor for the flying test that precedes all first solo flights. He clambered into the Tiger Moth, plugged in the speaking tubes and sat motionless. After an exaggerated pre-flight inspection of the aircraft I climbed into the seat behind him. I examined carefully the back of his neck; it was inscrutable and he needed a hair-cut. I too sat motionless, considering this encouraging fallibility until a gentle ‘Well?’ erupted down the speaking tube.

We began badly. The engine would not start. With eyebrows eloquent the mechanic pushed and pulled at the propeller until both he and I were bathed in perspiration. The neck was still motionless and inscrutable. When I least expected it the engine sprang into unnecessarily hearty life, nearly decapitating the mechanic. Ghost-like my throttle closed as the Chief Instructor closed his (all controls are duplicated and interconnected on training aircraft). The mechanic, by now a confirmed misogynist, obeyed my signal and thankfully removed the chocks from in front of the wheels. Gingerly I opened the throttle and taxied to the down-wind boundary of the field.

‘I want you to do three complete circuits and landings, please. And relax,’ instructed the metallic voice.

‘Yes sir,’ I screamed down the tube. The neck winced involuntarily.

‘Don’t shout!’

‘Yes sir,’ I whispered.

‘What?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘I’m not knighted... yet,’ he answered.

Brooding over his heavy irony I stopped at right-angles to the take-off path and carefully went through the cockpit drill that precedes all flights. Petrol on and sufficient for the flight. Throttle friction nut adjusted to prevent the throttle from slipping back during the take-off. Trim-tabs set. Both magneto switches on. Mixture control fully rich. With a last look round the sky I turned into wind and opened the throttle firmly, at the same time easing the control column forward to lift the tail. At 60 m.p.h. the aircraft climbed gently. Tense and unsure I watched the airspeed indicator and tried to keep its elusive needle pointed steadily at 70 m.p.h. as we climbed straight ahead to 1,000 feet before I throttled back to cruising power and levelled off. Carefully I started the 180-degree turn that would bring us back parallel to the aerodrome. I turned too steeply and found myself too close to the field. I edged out hoping he would not notice, but an exaggerated look at the field by the head in front dispelled that hope. As the aerodrome passed under the port wing-tip I turned again through 90 degrees and prepared for landing. Throttling right back and trimming the aircraft for the gliding attitude I turned in at 70 m.p.h. and gradually flattened the angle of glide until we sailed over the leeward boundary at 20 feet or so flying level with the ground. As the speed dropped I eased the nose higher until we were in the three-point attitude and then, as the book says, the aircraft will sink gently to the ground. It didn’t, and I waited in what I thought was the three-point attitude for anxious moments. A sinking sensation was followed by a distressingly hollow thud. I stopped without further incident, taxied back to the take-off point and awaited comments.