Spitfire Girls (42 page)

‘Better she should think me guzzling chocolate from
the black market than in a condition she would abhor,' she remembered thinking to herself as the Commanding Officer had granted permission for four hours' leave from her duties. That leave would have to be made up for some other day, and Angelique knew that day would have to be soon. Nora had distanced herself from Gordon Selfridge, and like so many women in positions of power, had eliminated what she considered unnecessary elements in her life. If Gordon had to go, Nora would lock him out of her life with as little concern as she had cancelled deliveries of biscuits to the base. The girls were astonished when Gordon disappeared from their midst, while some were even more incensed about the biscuits …

Now her baby was shifting again, and Angelique sat up on the sagging mattress. It was black outside and she hoped the Germans would attack other places tonight.

Where were Zack and Paul? Sarah Truman and Annabel Cobb? Where was Valerie? Imagine being Sir Henry!

She jumped from her cot and walked to the window of her tiny room, stepping lightly so as not to awaken the other girls whose tomorrow would likely include several confrontations with the Birmingham barrage balloons. Skirting death was becoming a constant, reflex-sharpening practice for every man and woman in ATA, but the terrors only heightened their desire for tougher assignments, some pilots now doing three complete round-trips a day; all perilous and often in once-only-tested machines. Tomorrow the Toland brothers would be ferrying a pair of Beauforts from a new shipment. Both men were fully recovered, and she smiled to herself at the thought of the two vicars in
sheepskin boots, goggles and bomber jackets. One of them had shed his boots and his vestments and when he had taken her in this very room she had been terrified Mrs Bennell might burst in as he slowly peeled the cream blouse from her young shoulders.

‘What do you want with
him
, when you've got
Balfour
?' Marion Harborne had shouted as they flew over Slough in an Anson on the way to Hawkers, with Amy in the rear. They had giggled at the fact that she always kept her parachute at the ready when another ATA pilot was in the cockpit. Angelique's complicated personal life had become the focus of their chatter, while Amy had drifted into a sad daydream from which neither girl could hope to rouse her until they had reached the entrance to the Hurricane factory. The two Americans had fascinated the women pilots, not so much for their moonlighting as ministers but because their colleague had become, literally, a guardian angel to both men after their near-fatal ordeal. She had stood by when an enquiry had been held, and had comforted them in their typically backwoods bewilderment when Noel Slater's behaviour had been excused by a distinctly anti-American Adjudicator.

Oscar Toland would be a friend for life but she knew Martin, with his tall, lanky figure and thick, curly brown hair would be her lover. He had taken her for coffee after the enquiry, and the smell of soap, which seemed to emanate from all the Yank men, excited her in a way she did not understand. She also knew Balfour had been beside himself with infatuation for her ever since their brief encounter in the ladies' changing room during a VIP tour, and she hoped to play upon his fascination when word got about ATA that she was readily entertaining Toland the Ordinary.

‘Don't be frightened,' Martin had said, his gentle personality suddenly coming to life as he drew her to him and kissed the one breast he gently took into his left hand. His right hand somehow relieved her of the bottom half of her uniform and she half wanted him to stop, but now his warm, inviting mouth left not one inch of her flesh dry and still he stood, holding her like a giant ice lolly that melted but never shrank. He had placed her on the bed and as she watched his ridiculously long fingers release his strong body from the ATA uniform, she felt an urge to run down the dark, wooden stairs and go to work, naked, in Mrs Bennell's scullery.

Now Angelique could sense the approach of the same phenomenon. As scenes of her childhood in opulent surroundings amongst obscure European royalty paraded, crammed within a six-second space of thought, Martin was now lying beside her, strangely quiet and controlled. Her royalty faded, and her childhood link with the approach of death disintegrated. She reached out for the ordained minister from Virginia, who at this moment was erect as the fires of Hell, and kissed his forehead. There was no possibility of retreating to the scullery, the expert hands making her want to give everything up and perhaps do this for the rest of her life, his first entry into her churning newness like a killing during which she would weep and ask to be slain again …

It had left her with a baby.

Angelique found the entire situation amusing. Martin had come to her many times after that first encounter, which had lasted three hours until the sounds of pilots and beer and tea had begun to waft up to her room. As usual,
it was Amy who had helped her smuggle Martin out of the girls' wing of the boarding house while Mrs Bennell had been distracted by Jim's drunken ravings. Now, standing at the window, Angelique worried about Amy.

Amy could only be happy when in the air, and Shirley's new status as a ferry pilot had helped her fight off suicidal urges, brought on by the reality of Valerie's enslavement to orgasm with someone of the opposite sex. It all seemed so idiotic, Angelique thought, returning to the bed. In the few minutes in which she had left its warmth, the mattress had become unwelcoming and she snuggled back under the covers as if to comfort the bed. She always thought of a bed as a he, not a she. Angelique had Catholic Jesus to comfort her, and Martin had Protestant Jesus to comfort him, but what could
they
offer, in this time of global hate, to comfort
him?

Angelique could not sleep.

Tomorrow, and the days leading into 1941, would be so important for everyone: she would see Balfour again, Martin would ferry his new Beaufort with Oscar alongside in its imported twin, and Jo would travel with her to lobby London about poor Hana's mother. Since arriving, Hana had thrown herself into ATA work, transporting up to three different aeroplanes a day. Ratusz had been just as tireless, his total lack of humour excused by all when he turned in chit after chit in every kind of weather, and in every kind of peril, be it anti-aircraft fire, balloons or simply a terrain completely alien to his experience.

And soon the Americans and Australians who wanted to help ATA would be arriving in force.

Beaverbrook had come under terrible criticism in the
aviation press, but Angelique looked forward to meeting Edith Allam again. Imagine having a coloured boyfriend! It was something for which any English girl would be disowned by her family, her peers and the architects of her livelihood – in this case ATA.

Look at Valerie!

She had encouraged the overtures of a Jew, and her destiny had been fractured … What, she pondered, would Hitler do with Armenians? Had any of her relatives been taken to those camps?

It was 3 a.m., and Angelique thought she could hear a distant thumping. She rose again, holding her abdomen as if to support her child in its own slumber, and as she approached the window again she could see flashes of light. Germany again, she pouted. They would be daft enough, and cruel enough, to bomb Britain in the small hours. It might, of course, be the Northern Lights, and some thunder to accompany the colourful show. Even with the daily rush from sunrise until last shadows, to collect and disperse aircraft for a desperate RAF, she did not have a burning sense of war.

Where were these hordes of Nazis? What did they look like? Did their men behave any differently when in the throes of basic passions, like her Martin, out of his uniform and driven by his eager, wanting member?

Fear seemed to be the common emotion pervading as the girls spent day after long day waiting over chess and bridge for their next ferry assignment. Angelique stood at the window, watching the occasional burst, and reflected that, like fighter pilots, they too could never know the
outcome of a journey: whenever an ATA pilot was lost, the name was wiped from the large blackboard and those underneath moved up – the gap must never be allowed to remain or morale would crash like the victim it mourned. So far only men had perished but she sensed the women would soon start losing their lives.

Moving to her small chest of drawers, Angelique drew out the Ouija board Mrs Bennell had coaxed from the Polish girl. Hana had stopped visibly fretting about her mother, though all Pool personnel knew how distraught she was inside. She must not have used the Ouija board, Angelique reflected, unfolding it upon her bare thighs. She ran her fingertips along its bewildering array of symbols and wished it would reach out and speak to her. Someone had said the boards were of no use in the hands of one person – there had to be two or more present to initiate a seance.

What about those poor souls in Marion Harborne's pictures?

That roll of camera film had created a sensation – the first photograph of Nazi doctors experimenting on Jews. Had any of those Jews sought guidance from the occult? Certainly their regular God had got lost somewhere else. She stared at the board on her knees and let the flashes of light play upon its shiny surface. Every new illumination meant another death. By talking to the board, she mused excitedly, could she stop the war, right at this moment? Hana had told her that on her first night in England she had sat at a window and watched a light show and had vowed never to take shelter in an air raid. Indeed, Delia had threatened to go up on the roof of Hamble and watch the next bombing of Southampton Docks.

Angelique had the life of a child to cherish, and the thought of putting oneself at peril for something as silly as a bombing raid now seemed perverse. Delia Seifert, like Shirley, hated life. Perhaps, Angelique muttered to herself, most women felt that way, deep down inside, even in the best houses, even in the best clothes, even at Ascot in the best hat …

Looking down at the Ouija board she realized the light show had ceased. Angelique wanted information about Zack and Paul and would consult the supernatural anyway, even without a companion, save her unborn infant. Closing her eyes she kept her hands spread across the board and concentrated on images of Spanish countryside and of Franco, whose visage had lately been featured in so many magazines. Some of the women pilots had joked that
Time
magazine might make him Man of the Year, with Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain reserved for other covers. She concentrated, and soon the birds, not weakened by rationing, were beginning their energetic dawn chorus.

It was cold in her room but she had to force herself to be oblivious to the elements: Zack and Paul, Sarah and Annabel, all of whom she knew must be in Spain, would emerge in her mind's eye very soon, and lead the way to her navigational enterprise. Tomorrow Balfour would have to agree to her mission, otherwise she would defy every rule and do something the RAF and ATA would consider unforgivable and insane.

Natural light was beginning to creep in and Angelique felt energetic despite having allowed an entire night to pass without slumber. Her mother would have said this could be fatal for her baby, but, barely into her twenties, her
strong constitution kept her mind alert and her thoughts reverberating with the prospect of a prohibited mission. Closing her eyes she mumbled to herself again and begged the images to appear …

Zack and Paul were evading her plan: Annabel and Sarah seemed to float in and out of the darkness behind her eyelids as shades in white sheets. Her heart began to pound as minutes passed and she could not bring her brothers into the picture that was set against the blackened screen. She threw her head back and begged the spirits to enlighten her about the boys' whereabouts. Letting her head fall forward, she kept her eyes shut and gradually an image emerged in tandem with the two girlish shades: was it Amy?

She carried a suitcase and had Hamilton Slade in tow. They were about to enter a bright new Oxford with confidence and waving at the shades, whose hair had turned grey.

Angelique concentrated, wincing as she kept the eyelids tightly sealed, for fear that the images would be cursed and slain should she open up and see light too soon. Her head was still bowed and her hands still spread across the smooth, hard board.

Amy approached, smiling and looking relaxed, a state of being she had never displayed since joining ATA. She held an envelope marked TOP SECRET and Hamilton, his smile seemingly pasted to his square jaw, waved again. The grey-haired shades stood in front of the Oxford and scowled like small children not wanting their parents to leave them with a nanny.

As Amy and Hamilton approached the aeroplane someone's voice shouted to them to stay away, and soon Angelique was crying out. She wanted them stopped, and as she shouted the shades disintegrated like worn candlewick, their remains now a small powdery pile next to the aircraft, the Oxford's shiny silver now turned instantly to black.

Is it camouflage?
she shouted.
Is it camouflage?

Amy and Hamilton stared back at her, their expressions glazed. Now she screamed as the black machine began to ooze a white goo that wiggled like caterpillars through cracks in the fuselage and fell upon water that sizzled as each blob hit. She cried because Amy and Hamilton were gone and the Oxford was heaving, its body contorted and swelling, swelling, about to burst. Angelique could not move, and thought she would be crushed; indeed she had begun to suffocate, her voice gone. She gasped as the Oxford grew big enough to explode and out of the bulging cockpit window she saw Amy clawing to be set free.

Angelique's mouth had dried and she wanted to help but her body was being pushed against a steely wall and her baby being obliterated––

‘You crazy mongrel slut!'

Sally Remington was dressed all in white and Angelique jumped from the chair, her stiffened neck sending a sharp pain down her side and through her shoulder.