Spitfire Girls (58 page)

Tim Haydon's prose was dutifully evaluated for the American wartime market and Errol began keeping company with Lady Truman whenever his Lordship was up to town. She worked in London three days a week and this coincided nicely with her husband's sojourns to Norwich on the other two days of the working week. Always in the back of her mind was the fear of an unexpected visit from a villager, producing the inevitable accusations of eccentricity, or even worse, immorality. ‘Keeping company with a coloured man!' they would shriek, and she had lurid fantasies of being dragged through the town to be vilified as a witch and an outcast.

It was impossible not to like this young man from Philadelphia, a city he described as a bigger version of Cambridge. After a month she had forgotten his colour and admired the immaculate uniform of the United States Armed Forces and the books of poetry he selected for each Tuesday and Thursday. Lady Truman, thin and proper, and bound by centuries of moral dogma, thought of Errol as a tribal phenomenon sent down by the Lord to test her Christian generosity. Jesus, she reminded herself, accepted all races, and now she had been summoned to rise above
the fears and hates of generations of East Anglians in order to cultivate a new member of the community.

Unfortunately Errol fell in love with the much older lady, her rosy cheeks and soapy smell mesmerizing him whenever they chatted about Enitharmon and Orc. ‘What a crazy man he was!' she would exclaim as they laughed over Blake's verbal inventions, and Errol wanted so much to love this woman, but was fearful. She would tell him about her husband's ill-health, and about the missing daughter whose absence diminished his spirit, but Errol could only watch her lips moving animatedly, wanting to unpeel the delicate silk blouse that barely hid a still alluring womanhood. He would sit quietly, his other, invisible self jumping out to kiss the fleshy ripeness divided by a welcoming cleavage that seemed to deepen and deepen for his probing urgency.

Each night he would think about her ladyship and when he slept he would dream of Edith's young, pulling wetness and after many weeks he thought he would go mad, throwing himself even more deeply into his poetry readings. Charlie Buxton no longer administered the small American force, and Errol's detachment was now under the command of the Unites States Air Force Attlebridge, with men like Frank Malone keeping an eye on the niggers.

Errol Carnaby had never set eyes upon Lord Truman in his life before he killed him. Sadly, his American comrades did not believe him, and even the coloured soldiers – brought over like him to perform the most menial tasks for white warriors – rejected his plea. When the shotgun exploded in his hands and the man in boots and tweeds lay fallen at his feet, Errol cried out in terror. Blood spurted
across the small courtyard in which the handsome Negro had been cleaning the white men's rifles, and more blood seemed to pour endlessly from the writhing figure of an English country gentleman. His pipe leaned grotesquely against his engorged mouth, and his ears oozed over his stiffly starched collar.

Errol had never looked upon death, and all he could do was stare.

War took second place to the biggest local story ever to inflate the pages of the
Anglian Press
. A black GI who was helping out at the local air base and had an accident with a rifle was not the stuff of front-page headlines. Rather, here was a Negro who was keeping company with the wife of the Lord Lieutenant and who slaughtered her husband in cold blood. Much was made of Errol's relationship with Lady Truman; she had denied intimacy but had to confess to their close friendship when asked to take the stand. He had been tried under British justice, and marvelled at the eloquence and detachment of the barristers trading syllogisms under the gaze of a scandal-hungry press.

When Errol had been taken into custody he was quickly beaten to a pulp by Frank Malone in the Philadelphia cop's unofficial capacity as base thug. Errol praised his Maker when handed over to the British civilian authorities and when Edith Allam appeared on the base, having been summoned by Charlie Buxton. The RAF Wing Commander, worried that Errol would be victimized by the white soldiers, thought a visit by the famous American aviatrix could defuse the situation. For all the bewildering weeks afterwards, Edith had kept Errol company in between exhausting ferrying jobs. Air Vice Marshal Sir Arthur Harris had been
making enormous demands and every type of operational aircraft was now being transported by the men and women of ATA.

Valerie's Spitfire Girls had become Mustang, Typhoon and Dakota girls as well, their numbers increasing as quickly as she could find competent fliers. Soon there were one hundred and eighty, including Jacqui Cochrane's American squadron.

Despite the bruises inflicted by Frank, Errol had laughed heartily when Edith described her pathetic return from Philadelphia to England via Australia with only Lili, Kay and Hartmut in tow. Beaverbrook had not wanted to greet Edith, and he called the human cargo of pilots her ‘motley crew', but the Townsville girls were to prove valiant in the service of ATA. Edith made Errol smile again when she recounted the story of Kay, who when stranded in Barton in a Battle meant for Silloth, was moved to cable her ferry pool about her predicament. Her message, ‘Nobody wants my beautiful Battle, so wedded are we until Barton us do part,' was picked up on 41 Group RAF signals and relayed to the Air Commodore – who was not amused.

Errol had rocked with amusement when Edith declared Kay a true menace to women's aviation, having set the cause back twenty years as far as the Air Commodore was concerned and despite Gerard d'Erlanger's effusive assertions that such talent should be put to use confounding the German signal scramblers …

Passion came to the surface when, on the fifth day of Errol's trial for murder, Lady Truman pleaded for mercy and stressed the black man's intellectual brilliance. She likened him to Paul Robeson – a scholar and an athlete,
an artist and a philosopher all rolled into one – which only inflamed the courtroom atmosphere further. Complications arose when Fleet Street joined the uproar and reopened the festering wound inflicted upon the Trumans when the Anthony Seifert story broke. Ever since the revelations leaked to the newspapers, the Trumans had drifted apart, his lordship spending countless hours brooding about his lost daughter, and her ladyship devoting more and more time to Tim Haydon's office and to her black American companion.

Lord Truman did not want to meet his son and heir and repudiated the boy's claims through his own, very powerful Fleet Street connections. Nevertheless, the Anthony saga left Truman prone to terrifying fits of temper; when Errol Carnaby walked into her Ladyship's life, her day-to-day existence was already a series of frightening confrontations. Secretly, she wanted desperately to meet Anthony Seifert, and though her moral upbringing dictated she should regard the boy's mother as a profligate, she could not suppress a fascination with the liaison, which by now seemed of another century.

Anthony's sister Delia had been making banner headlines with her achievements; Lady Truman read with alacrity the story of the girl's first four-engined bomber flight in a Wellington from Castle Bromwich: ATA had given her up for dead when two of the monsters collided in mid air shortly after take-off from Castle B. Delia's mother, the woman to whom her Ladyship's husband had gone for satisfaction thirty years before, became hysterical with joy at the sight of her daughter alive and well. Delia would go on to ferry scores of four-engined bomber aircraft, armed
with gunners onboard. Lady Truman nursed a secret desire to meet this girl, though after much soul-searching she still could not pinpoint her reasons why, nor could she fathom why she no longer missed her own Sarah, her own flesh and blood.

‘Accidental! It was an accident!' screamed a reporter who tore down the steps of the Old Bailey to a large awaiting crowd. Errol Carnaby's story had attracted national attention by now, as had the constant companionship of his ATA heroine Edith Allam. Local people in Norfolk had come to sympathize with the black GI, who, like the American girl, had come over to Britain to help the war effort ahead of time. Though the popular newspapers chose to cheapen the nature of the pair's rapport, Lady Truman's dogged loyalty to her Negro made a deep impression upon the community of Weston Longville. Its villagers developed a degree of compassion for the soldier whose country, founded on the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, forced him to serve in the niggers-only detachment of a segregated army.

‘Accidental,' was the verdict on the killing of Lord Truman, and a small congregation of ATA girls clung to Edith as the courtroom spilled out on to the sunbaked London pavement. She had been grateful for the company on the judgment day, and was touched by the sudden humanity of Nora Flint in allowing four of her best pilots one full day's leave to attend the last day of the trial. Tears came quickly to Edith and the women celebrated in a fashionable restaurant, their flying pay now on a par with the men of ATA.

Errol had been taken back to his base, waving from the
army vehicle at the bevy of attractive uniformed ladies gathered along the pavement. Watching him depart, Edith felt a mixture of relief and sadness, her true depth of feeling for Errol only having risen to the surface during this ugly trial.

Was this a form of jealousy aroused by the passion of Lady Truman?

Had Edith loved and forgotten Errol at a time when she had needed to dominate, hence the attraction of sweet, dumb, passive Hartmut?

‘… the progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic system …' was the joint message relayed by the British and American Bomber Commands, and now it was time for Edith to return her mind to the work at hand. This was the year of the Halifax, and the volume of ferrying tasks was staggering. Edith wanted Errol to be seconded from the United States Army to ATA but she doubted even Charlie Buxton could persuade the Americans to release their useful tribe of workhorses. Her only wish now was for her Negro lover to be happy; she knew that he adored her, and she would beg Wing Commander Buxton to protect Errol from the danger his exoneration might engender.

Mutual Broadcasting had sent its star radio man from New York to London when Errol Carnaby was freed. Eddie Cuomo was thrilled to be in a war-torn country and had spent hours staring at the bombed-out ruins of irreplaceable English architecture that had survived for three hundred years until the arrival of the German Luftwaffe.

Eddie's first assignment entailed a visit to Norfolk and Suffolk where American Bomber Command was descending on villages and establishing major bases of colossal size and population. Watching the country settings being transformed into military strongholds, he wondered if the county might become a new American state at war's end. His tour had ended at Weston Longville, where he was instructed by a gruff military policeman to wait in the outer enclosure for the British Wing Commander.

‘I'm not actually in charge here,' Charlie Buxton said, his cheerful, roundness greeting the equally effusive Italian American. ‘Our American Commanding Officer is meeting the Ambassador today.'

‘That doesn't matter,' said Eddie. ‘I want to see Errol – this story is hot, you know.'

‘We'd all like to see it evaporate,' Charlie said, leading Cuomo to a dirt pathway. Shirtless black soldiers were building rounded bomb shelters amongst the thickly overgrown fields of the Truman estate.

‘This place seems kind of wild,' Eddie commented, looking out across the uneven foliage.

‘Ever since the scandal', Buxton explained, ‘Lady Truman has let things fall into neglect. She's an odd old bird. We've offered to help with the landscaping but she wants no men anywhere near the house.'

They walked along the path to the coloureds' barracks and a lone soldier stood to attention.

‘We are looking for Carnaby,' Buxton announced.

‘Corporal Carnaby is visiting with some local children, sir, or so I believe,' said the GI.

‘Now I've heard everything!' Eddie exclaimed, grinning.

The soldier remained impassive.

‘Was this sanctioned?' asked Buxton.

‘I don't know, sir – we were told he was to go to the village hall to read some poetry to a group of kids.'

‘Thank you,' murmured Buxton, taking Cuomo by the arm as the black man saluted. ‘This seems odd – I 'd been told most of our coloured men were detailed for building work today.'

‘Is that what they do with their time?' asked Eddie.

‘Is this a journalistic exposé or are you asking me man-to-man?' demanded Buxton, stopping at the entrance to the compound.

‘If you ask me, it looks like a Southern plantation here,' Eddie replied. ‘My question is man-to-man.'

‘Your American military', Buxton said, resuming walking, ‘chooses to separate white from coloured, and it is clear the Negroes are given the most awful jobs to perform. One could say somebody has to do these tasks but it is a pity these men will never see combat. We have women flying four-engined bombers in this war, but strapping men like these are kept in the background.'

‘Do you know if Carnaby's lawyer is still around?' asked Cuomo.

‘Kelvin Bray has gone back to Pennsylvania,' Buxton replied. ‘He was a brilliant chap, but the whole thing left him exhausted and now he is on extended leave.'

‘That doesn't leave me with a whole lot to do,' complained Cuomo.

After ploughing through underbrush the two men emerged once more at the RAF base. Three uniformed women were hovering by the main door.

‘Eddie Cuomo!' shouted Edith Allam. ‘The voice of the Hindenburg disaster!'

‘Do I know you, honey?' asked Eddie.

‘Seven years ago at Lakehurst, New Jersey? I was there with Raine Fischtal,' Edith replied. ‘What brings you here, Mr Cuomo?'