Spitfire Girl (3 page)

‘Not bad. Try and make your circuit a little cleaner and don’t level off so high on landing,’ came the voice from in front.

I could have kissed him. With this shrewd praise my nerves vanished and I completed the next two circuits and landings with moderate success. After my third landing the Chief Instructor took over and, whilst taxi-ing back to the take-off point, issued instructions in a matter-of-fact voice.

‘You can go solo. Do one circuit and landing and pick me up after you’ve landed. I’ll wait here.’ We stopped and he climbed out. I waved and swung into wind. I was astonished at the visibility. For twelve flying hours I had had to peer over and around the instructor’s head a few inches in front of me. Now there was nothing but pregnant vacancy. Only then did I realize I was alone.

In the most complete solitude I have ever experienced I joined the sky. Looking down at the earth receding into a blur of green and brown I sang and handled the aircraft carelessly. At last there was no instructor in front to comment acidly on the skidded turn or wayward airspeed. ‘Look,’ I cried. ‘Everyone look up. It’s me; Jackie Sorour. I’m flying, flying, flying.’

I waggled the wings and waltzed around the circuit in lyrical bliss. Even the aircraft seemed to respond to this magical moment.

‘I’m flying, I’m flying.’ I repeated the phrase, ecstatically aware, as one is rarely aware, of the moment at the moment. I knew that I could not deserve many more like it.

I landed smoothly and taxied back to pick up the Chief Instructor. He looked at my radiant face, smiled and held out his hand. ‘Good show, nice landing. Take it up again for twenty minutes but don’t lose sight of the airfield. I’ll walk back.’

I shook hands, took off and drank more elixir.

After landing and receiving the congratulations of my fellow students I straddled my motor-bike and drove home furiously. To my intense disappointment the house was deserted. I sat fuming and fidgeting until my family returned, waited my moment and then calmly announced: ‘I went solo today.’

Whilst passing the first milestone, that of going solo,
and preparing for the second, my ‘A’ licence, a further project was passing through my mind. I dismissed it as firmly as I could whenever the thought overcame my natural reluctance. But the more I tried to banish it the more strongly it returned. My normal instincts of self-preservation were as ineffectual as Canute’s demand of the sea. I wanted to try a parachute jump. That isn’t true, I didn’t want to. Nobody wants to do that. This was another obstacle of fear that by its very enormity of terror fascinated me as a doomed rabbit is fascinated by a snake.

During the following months as I prepared for my flying licence examinations I frequently glanced over the side of the Tiger Moth aircraft and looked at and through the emptiness beneath me. There flashed through my mind the image of my body falling through space, tumbling, tumbling to oblivion. I watched my body until it became a speck amongst the myriad of specks that made up the landscape. This recurring image brought violent attacks of vertigo and made me shrink, unnerved, into the cockpit, hating myself and the devil within that drove me to such idiocy.

Evidently I should explain why I had to jump. Ingenuously I have thought it simply the action of a coward. I had to prove to myself that I was not a coward; therefore I must jump. Later a more facile analysis by a flying comrade suggested that it was my innate sense of publicity. That so strong was my conceit and wish to be a celebrity, even at that tender age, I was prepared to go to the lengths of risking my life for public adulation. Another pseudo-psychiatric suggestion was that I wanted to be a boy and, therefore, this was simply another manifestation of frustrated masculinity. Now, in comparative maturity, I must confess the second theory rings true. (Though not for constant and international fame would I jump again.)

I waited patiently for my seventeenth birthday and practised interminably the various tortuous manœuvres on which I would be tested for my licence. ‘Figures of 8’ around two pylons, and dead-stick landings to within inches of a chalked circle in the middle of the airfield. The ‘8’ was a test of flying accuracy. Two pylons had to be encircled at a constant height and airspeed with the evolution of the ‘8’ to be as near perfect as possible. The flight path resembled a pair of spectacles, with the pylons in the centre of the lens. The cross-eyed effect of my earlier efforts caused a certain amount of unkind amusement but as the day neared I managed to give the impression of normal eyesight.

The flying test was arranged soon after I was seventeen. It was a sunny day, with people going their ways quite normally. I felt mild resentment that on such a day they could be so unconcerned.

The sealed barograph, an infernal contraption that traced on a chart any variations of height during my solo test manœuvres, was placed in the rear of the aeroplane. With this omniscient and incorruptible passenger and under the watchful eyes of the Chief Flying Instructor and fellow students I perspired my way through the test. I landed and accompanied the Chief Instructor, and the barograph, to his office. With ballot box tensity the seals were broken.

‘Hum, what happened there?’ asked the instructor, pointing to a sharp dip in the pen’s spindly trace.

‘A thermal current,’ I lied hopefully.

‘Some current!’ he said as he continued examining the tell-tale trace. I examined him examining it and observed the analogy of the lines around his eyes and mouth. As they deepened, so my spirits sank sympathetically.

‘I think it will do,’ he observed finally. ‘We’ll send it to the Ministry. Now for the ‘‘Oral.’’’

Half an hour later, having survived the barrage of questions, I left his office. A week later my licence arrived.

The celebrations over, my thoughts returned to the parachute jump. Three months later I was still trying to obtain permission from the Ministry. Their replies were a masterpiece of prevarication not, under the circumstances, entirely blameworthy. Not to be outdone I decided to see the minister. I do not know who was the more astonished as I sat in his office in a vast leather chair, my legs dangling a few inches from the carpet: he at my audacity, I at my success in sitting in this exalted office. I peered over the desk and, strengthened by the knowledge that he had done the first parachute jump in South Africa, launched into what must have been a brilliantly persuasive soliloquy for within a few days I received official permission to jump.

My mother and I sat at home one serene Saturday evening. Idly she brushed aside her sewing and turned on the radio for the nine o’clock news.

‘...particular crisis had passed. Hitler had declared himself satisfied... At six o’clock tomorrow morning Miss Jackie Sorour, a young South African girl aged seventeen, will attempt a parachute jump from 5,000 feet over Swartkop aerodrome... Here are the sports results...’

I was dumbfounded and watched horrified as disbelief and incredulity passed across my mother’s features.

‘What on earth... Jackie, are you mad! How dare you! I forbid it.’ She got up, a tiny tower of rage.

‘I must do it now,’ I appealed, alarmed at her anger. ‘Everything’s arranged.’

‘The funeral as well?’ she answered.

For the first time in my life my mother and I quarrelled bitterly. I felt ashamed at my deceit in not taking her into my confidence. However, the unfortunate announcement over the radio, made without my knowledge or consent, forced her compliance. She appreciated that I could not draw back now.

The next morning my mother drove me to the aerodrome. Under a thin cheerless drizzle the pavements glistened drably in the half-light of approaching dawn. The windscreen wiper clicked thumpily in unison with my heart.

As daybreak lifted the pallor of the low unseasonable clouds it revealed the airport road unusually heavy with traffic. The car-parks were full and cars had spilled on to the perimeter of the aerodrome; their owners sitting on the roofs placidly munching sandwiches. How I envied them. The faint lingering hope that I might escape the inevitable vanished with a thud into the pit of my stomach.

My mother stopped before the airport buildings and, rather importantly, opened the car doors for me. I stepped out into a blaze of flashes as press photographers jostled their way on to the front page.

The pilot, solemnly benevolent, strapped me in before we took off in a haze of waving handkerchiefs. As we climbed, climbed, climbed, the sun shone through the broken clouds giving dimension to the height.

‘O.K.,’ he shouted as we levelled off at five thousand feet. ‘When you’re ready.’

I undid the straps and cowered in the seat. ‘What did you say?’ shouted the pilot. I shook my head; I could hardly admit that I had sobbed: ‘Oh Mum.’

Insane with fear I stood up on the seat and clambered out on to the lower wing. The slipstream screamed at my insolence and only the firm grasp of the pilot leaning out of his seat prevented me from being blown off unceremoniously. It suddenly occurred to me that sitting on the wing of an aircraft at 5,000 feet is a most extraordinary thing to do. I sat for long seconds gazing down at the mile of space beneath and the unfamiliar silhouette of the tail, usually unseen, perched inconsequentially on the end of the fuselage. Defying the fury of the wind I waved at the pilot. He waved back. I did it again; it seemed so funny with my legs dangling absurdly over the chasm beneath. The wind still struggled. ‘Stop pushing,’ I protested, ‘I’ll jump when I’m ready.’

The wind and the noise suddenly ceased and I knew I had jumped. Uselessly I splayed my arms to stop the sickening somersaults before plunging through a broken fragment of cloud. At the back of my mind was the thought that I had forgotten something. A thousand feet passed before I remembered and pulled the rip-cord. A brief flash of eternity passed before the sharp rupturing crack of silk proclaimed survival and the violence of the last few moments gave way to a calm swinging gentleness.

Recovering I looked up into the huge umbrella of silk that flapped hollowly like sails in a moderate breeze, and began to enjoy the curious quality of floating through space, of altitude without noise. A bird passed; it circled and passed again. I am sure its features registered astonishment. Distantly I heard the drone of aircraft encircling my descent. One, I knew, had a newspaper camera man aboard. I waved and tried to appear composed.

The ground reached up with suddenness. I had missed the aerodrome. Angled hangars, loomed hugely; a telegraph wire pinged against my foot before a welcoming field slipped beneath my feet. I hit it, hard. A spasm of pain brought momentary unconsciousness. Then dimly, through the folds of collapsed silk I saw polo players approaching on horseback like an army of Pegasus. They helped me to one foot. The other was useless, the ankle broken.

The ankle grounded me for the next six months. During
that time I gathered a large circle of friends, including some of the South African Air Force. I envied the latter their dedication to flying and felt, by comparison, a dilettante. They and I were oblivious of the dedication to follow. That this peace-time practice of an art would flourish into a science of horror that would spray indiscriminate death; that would turn night into a holocaust of impersonal bestiality and enable crews to return, smiling insensibly, to their bacon and eggs.

But, I was carefree. My home became a free-house. My mother blossomed in the casual uniformed atmosphere and kept the refrigerator bursting with swiftly prepared delicacies. I went to my first ball with an air force cadet and hobbled awkwardly, though successfully, on one foot.

During the interim of plaster-casts and crutches I had secretly written to an aeronautical college in England for details of a residential flying course that would enable me to qualify for a professional ‘B’ licence. It would take a year and cost a thousand pounds, including fares. Poor Mother! That was a sizeable chunk from the debris of her marriages.

‘But Mother, if I get a ‘B’ licence I can fly professionally. It’s as good as a degree.’ I had started my campaign to go to England.

‘But your instructor told me you couldn’t get a job as a pilot. They don’t like women piloting passengers. I don’t either!’ This was the core of the argument that stretched interminably as my mother fought a determined rearguard action. A stream of eligible bachelors were inveigled to her support. The air-force cadets were given a cool reception at variance with their previous welcome. Our home became a maelstrom of sulks, counter-sulks and wilful obstinacy.

I
boarded the ship in June 1938. It was an Italian ship, the
Giulio Cesare
. My send-off from Pretoria was reminiscent of the kind loved by Hollywood directors when their small-town girl goes off to New York to make good. A cadet played an accordion as I danced around the station platform with all my friends. They cheered as I boarded the train and waved continuously as I disappeared in a flurry of steam and coal specks. My mother sat quietly and sadly in the corner of the compartment and sent a twinge of remorse through my heart at my thoughtless gaiety. We cuddled and cried as familiar landmarks clicked past the window.

I said good-bye to her at Johannesburg.

‘Thank you Mother... for everything.’

‘Now don’t forget your promise. If there’s a war, you return immediately.’

She disappeared, her face wracked as she fought back the tears. I waved to her on the platform until her tiny figure was lost. I continued, alone, to Cape Town.

The
Giulio Cesare
was an overture of sparkling white and expectancy. Faces registered extremes of emotion in the revealing sun. I edged my way up the gang-plank, threw a streamer amidst hundreds of others and watched it sadly as it fluttered into the oil-slicked ditch that sucked noisily between the ship and the quay. Pointlessly I waved to the upturned faces and nodded violently to nobody.

The purser, in impressive white and gold, steered me firmly through the gesticulating voyagers to the two nuns, an oasis of starched calm, who stood on the tourist-class boat deck. My chaperones. They were returning to the Emerald Isle and were to accompany me to London.