When the Lights Go on Again (13 page)

Lou couldn’t sleep, which was ridiculous, given how tired she was. She looked at her watch. Four o’clock. Surely the raid must be over now and the men would be on their way back home. Lou closed her eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like turning for home, the heavy Lancasters lighter now without their deadly loads, the night sky filled with the steady thrum of plane engines, as they crossed the darkened land below them. Each mile closer to home would ease some of the pressure, but the rear gunners would be poised and on the lookout for German planes and anti-aircraft batteries, as would the pilots, whilst the navigators kept an eye on their course. If their target had been Hamburg then they wouldn’t have much land to cover, before they reached the North Sea and then the safety of English shores.

She should be trying to get some sleep, not worrying about the safety of men who had nothing to do with her, but it was impossible to do that when she was here at their base, just as it was impossible not to be infected with the mood of anxiety that gripped the other girls in the hut. It took her back to the days when she had first joined up to be back in a WAAF hut again. The other girls might be strangers to her, but she still found their presence comforting.

It was five o’clock when Lou finally heard the
sound for which her ears had been straining: a low barely there rumble she had to track for several seconds before she was sure it was the returning planes, and by that time the barely there rumble had intensified to a muted thrum, the sound quickly increasing.

‘They’re back,’ came a voice from one of the other beds, and all around her Lou could hear the sound of movement of heads on pillows, lifting in the darkness and turning towards the sound of the returning planes, just as she had lifted her own.

No one was counting out aloud but Lou knew that they were all checking the numbers inside their heads as the planes came in.

One, then two, three, four, each touching-down plane easing a little more of the tension, until they had reached twelve. No one counted thirteen, just in case. Fifteen planes had gone out but for them all to return safely they would have to count to sixteen. Only they couldn’t.

Number fourteen landed and then there was silence, and waiting, hoping…A plane could get off course, or be hit and slowed down; it might even have to be abandoned, its crew parachuting to safety if it was badly shot up. Fourteen. They needed two more to have a complete tally. Fourteen.

‘Corp’s chap is a navigator on one of the planes that went out tonight,’ the girl in the bed next to Lou whispered to her as the door opened to the small private room occupied by the corporal, and in the dim light from that room the fully dressed figure of the corporal could be seen, smoke curling through the air as she drew heavily on her cigarette.

The minutes ticked by and became an hour.

The corporal, who had stood in silence in the doorway, stubbed out her fifth cigarette and went back into her room.

‘They won’t be coming back now,’ the girl next to Lou told her soberly.

Two planes lost, two crews potentially lost – men with wives, and children, sweethearts and families. Men who were gone for ever. Men like Kieran Mallory. Lou’s heart turned over. It was just because she knew him, that was all, she told herself sturdily. Nothing else, and certainly nothing
more
!

There was no sleep now for any of them.

‘I’m still hoping that Leonard will get leave over Christmas. What about you, Katie, have you made any plans yet?’ Gina asked as she and Katie walked into the office together and headed for the cloakroom.

‘My parents’ friends have invited me to join them for the day.’

‘They live in Hampstead, don’t they?’ Gina asked as she unwound the knitted scarf from around her neck. Gina was wearing her lovely warm-looking camel coat and her brown beret. Her friend always looked so smart. Katie’s own coat was dark grey and she had bought it just before the war.

‘Yes, that’s right.’

Katie wasn’t really looking forward to Christmas, she admitted as she removed her own bright red scarf and hat and hung them on one of the pegs, the red making a brave blaze of colour against the dark brown painted walls.

‘We’ll all be going to the Manor House and Eddie’s parents for Christmas dinner. Apparently it’s a family tradition, with Eddie’s father being the head
of the family. Privately, between you and me, I’d much rather Leonard and I could spend Christmas on our own.’ Gina pulled a small face. ‘I know that’s dreadfully selfish of me.’

‘No it isn’t,’ Katie defended her. ‘It’s perfectly natural. Perhaps you could suggest to Leonard that the two of you spend a couple of days in London and the rest of his leave with his family?’

‘I’d love to,’ Gina admitted, ‘but it wouldn’t be fair to the children.’

They removed their coats and hung them up.

‘Come on,’ Gina said firmly. ‘Let’s get to our desks, otherwise we’ll be late.’

An air of despair and despondency at the suspected loss of two planes and their crews quite naturally permeated the thoughts of everyone at the base, including Lou, who emerged from the admin block into a morning of crisp clear air and the knowledge that she had clearance to resume her journey.

It wasn’t just the thought of the two Lancasters and their crews that was weighing so heavily on Lou’s heart. There was also the loss of a fellow ATA pilot, even if she hadn’t actually known that pilot personally.

It had been all over the canteen when she had queued up for her breakfast that one of the Lancasters had been the one piloted by Kieran Mallory. Just thinking his name in her thoughts made Lou’s heart give a fierce kick of tangled emotions, and a desire to reject the fact that Kieran and his crew were now officially posted as ‘missing’,
which meant that it was more than likely that they were dead.

Kieran had taken her from youthful adolescence into the pain and misery of her first – and last – crush; her first taste of the bittersweetness of being ‘in love’. It had been from him that she had learned about duplicity and all that went with it. It had been because of Kieran that she and Sasha had quarrelled.

His death should have freed her from all those unwanted emotions she couldn’t quite escape but instead of feeling free what she actually felt was disbelief and pain, mingled with anger at this reaction.

She had no reason to mourn a man who had treated her and Sasha so badly. A man who only yesterday had infuriated her with his arrogance. And who had made her ache inside with a need she didn’t want to acknowledge just by lighting her cigarette for her.

She desperately craved the comfort of a cigarette right now, Lou acknowledged, but the Spitfire had been refuelled and was waiting for her.

Her eyes stinging with unwanted tears, Lou walked to the runway, carrying her parachute with her. The morning breeze had a sharp edge to it, making her shiver slightly. A small group of mechanics were standing close to the Spitfire and outside the hangar, but instead of smoking and talking they were all standing completely still, their backs to Lou as they stared at the horizon.

Something – a frisson of sensation, an awareness of a different movement in the air – had Lou
stiffening where she stood, her own focus on the empty sky, a knowing that lifted the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck filling her, even though she could neither see nor hear anything. Something was happening. The sound was so faint that she had to stretch her ears to hear it: the stuttering of a damaged engine, the growl of an injured lion, breathing his last, that had her breath catching in the back of her throat and her heart filling with hope – and fear.

Now at last they could see it, the dull grey shape no more than a smudge on the horizon, weaving its way towards them.

It didn’t take one of the mechanic’s grim, ‘Looks like the undercarriage is gone. He’ll never be able to bring her down in one piece,’ to tell Lou what was happening, and how badly damaged the incoming Lancaster was.

‘Mallory won’t try to land her. It’s a miracle he’s managed to get her this far, if you ask me, but then he’s a ruddy good pilot. He’ll bring her down as low as he can and then give the order to the men to jump – them what can jump.’

Mallory. It was Kieran’s plane that was limping home, a wounded wreck, kept in the sky only by the skill and the determination of its pilot. Her relief didn’t last very long, though. Inside her head Lou could see the plane that had come down when she had been in the WAAF – with only her to witness the pilot’s danger. She had acted instinctively then, running towards the crashed plane to help the pilot, her actions earning her the honour of a George Medal, which she still did not believe
she had really deserved. She had after all only done what anyone else would have done.

From one of the hangars the fire and ‘blood’ trucks came racing out onto the runway, sirens screaming as the Lancaster, tilting steeply to one side, one of its wings badly damaged, its doors open, lurched unsteadily earthwards. Lou could only imagine the cool nerve it would take to keep on flying a plane that was in that state. She could see smoke curling warningly from the plane as Kieran brought it in, skimming the trees in the field beyond the runway, and then dipping lower, almost at hedge height, so low that Lou felt sure that he was going to belly-flop and crash-land. From the open doors of the Lancaster men jumped, three, four, five of them.

‘Christ, what’s he doing? Why doesn’t he get out whilst he can?’ one of the mechanics swore, as suddenly the plane swerved fiercely to the left.

‘He’s trying to turn the plane so that it doesn’t plough into the runway.’

‘He’ll never get out of it alive now,’ the first mechanic stated grimly. ‘Ruddy fool. He’s one of the best pilots we’ve got. This war needs men like him. He’s worth more than a ruddy runway.’

The mechanic’s angrily spoken words were, Lou felt sure, shared by the rest of the small crowd, not watching and waiting, but praying, as she found she was doing herself, for Kieran’s survival.

The plane hit the ground with a thump that Lou could actually feel inside her own body, gouging up the field before exploding with a dull whump of sound.

The mechanics were running towards the field, and somehow Lou was running with them, her parachute abandoned, her heart pounding. The fire truck was already on the scene, battling with the flames, whilst the ambulance crew were helping the men who had jumped out of the plane.

Kieran. She had loved him with a young girl’s foolish love and then she had hated him with an equal passion, but she had never wished him dead. Emotion clogged Lou’s throat. She turned away from the burning Lancaster, unable to bear looking at it, unable to endure imagining…

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a dark-haired figure who, despite the fact that he was limping, still managed that familiar male swagger that irritated her so much as he made his way towards where Lou was standing, by the gate in the hedge, a streak of blood on his forehead.

‘You’re alive,’ was all she could find to say as they stood separated by the gate.

‘Don’t sound so disappointed.’ Kieran rubbed his arm across his forehead, adding a streak of dirt to the blood.

‘What…what happened?’

‘Bomb bay door got stuck and that delayed us, so we were behind the others coming back. Jerry got us just before we crossed the Channel. Killed the rear gunner, and shot away our undercarriage. Thought I’d have to ditch in the drink, but luckily I managed to keep her going.’

Beneath the dirt and the blood, Lou could see the bleak look in his eyes belying the almost casual description he had given her of what had happened.

A couple of first-aiders were running towards them, carrying a stretcher.

‘I’m glad that…that you’re safe.’

What on earth had made her say that? He would think she was still the same silly idiot who had made such a fool of herself over him. The ambulance crew had reached them, obliging Lou to step back from the gate.

She wasn’t needed or wanted here. She was an outsider to the base who would want to mourn their dead in private. Lou made her way back to where the Spitfire was still waiting patiently for her. Kieran was safe and alive, and she wasn’t even going to think about asking herself why that mattered.

‘You’ve got a visitor, Katie. Good-looking, and wearing a Senior Service uniform. Name of Eddie, apparently. Strictly speaking men are not allowed in female billets, but Gerry was so taken with him we had to let him in.’

Eddie. A rueful smile curled Katie’s mouth as she thanked Peggy for her information.

‘He’s in the drawing room,’ Peggy continued, ‘with Gerry, and I should warn you that you’ll find it difficult to evict her. She’s even made him a cup of tea, or at least it was supposed to be a cup of tea. First time I’ve ever seen her so much as fill a kettle,’ Peggy grumbled tartly and truthfully.

Gerry might have promised to mend her ways, but whilst it was true that she was no longer worrying them all to death by staying out late and
then returning to the billet worse for wear, she still seemed to be dating an awful lot of different young men.

Katie felt extremely sorry for her. The death of her brothers had obviously hit her hard and Katie felt she deserved their sympathy and a bit of leeway, even if Peggy Groves took a sturdier attitude and said that it was high time she pulled herself together.

Still smiling, Katie went upstairs, opening the door to the formal drawing room, which looked out into the square. Eddie was standing in front of the unlit fire, looking very handsome in his naval uniform, his mouth curling into a smile when he saw her.

‘Oh, Katie. There you are. I suppose you want me to leave,’ Gerry teased her with a smile.

‘Oh, I don’t mind kissing Katie in front of you,’ Eddie assured her, with a wicked grin that made Katie shake her head reprovingly, and Gerry laugh.

‘I’ve come to persuade you to take pity on me and have dinner with me,’ Eddie told Katie as soon as Gerry had gone. ‘Here I am, a chap on leave from serving his country, up in London with a table booked at the Savoy and—’

‘Eddie, I’m sure your little black book is absolutely full of the names of girls who would be delighted to have dinner with you,’ Katie told him.

‘Yes,’ he agreed simply and without embarrassment, ‘but your name comes first.’

Katie didn’t know quite what to say. Eddie was a charmer, she knew that, a flirt and a tease and
good company. His comment about her coming first was just a ploy, of course. She knew that too. But on the other hand there was really no reason why she should not have dinner with him, especially dinner at the Savoy, Katie admitted to herself. She certainly wasn’t in danger of allowing herself to fall in love with him. It crossed her mind that Gerry and Eddie would be far better suited to one another than she and Eddie ever could be.

‘Very well,’ Katie gave in, ‘but I must warn you, Eddie, I know how much of a flirt you are, and it won’t wash with me.’

‘A flirt? Me?’ Eddie gave her a hurt look. ‘How can you say that after I resisted the lures of your resident man-eater?’

Katie laughed. ‘That isn’t a very kind thing to say about Gerry. In actual fact she’s very nice, and if you want the truth I was just thinking how much better the two of you would be suited to one another than you and I ever could be,’ she told him honestly.

‘Ah, but it’s a well-known fact that flirts don’t pair up with one another,’ Eddie countered her comment, adding softly, ‘You underestimate yourself, Katie. You are truly the darlingest girl, you know.’

Feeling that the conversation was getting out of hand, and well aware of the amorous look Eddie was giving her, Katie deliberately changed the subject to something less dangerous and rather more mundane.

‘What time is the table booked for, only I shall need to get changed?’

‘Eight o’clock, plenty of time, especially if I come and help you.’

He really was irrepressible.

‘You will do no such thing,’ Katie told him sternly. ‘You shouldn’t even be in here, never mind anywhere else. This is an all-female billet, and the rules are no men allowed.

‘It’s a pity Gina’s taken a couple of days off to go down and see her family – she could have come with us.’

‘Oh, yes, a dreadful shame that she can’t. Now I shall have to put up with having you all to myself,’ Eddie teased, before glancing at his watch and warning her, ‘You’ve got just over half an hour. Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you and help?’

‘Perfectly sure,’ Katie told him, whisking herself through the door before he could offer her any more arguments – or inducements.

Dinner at the Savoy would be a real treat. Eddie and Leonard had taken her and Gina to the Savoy for dinner the first time the four of them had gone out together, and Katie smiled as she remembered how that had been the beginning of Gina and Leonard falling in love with one another.

Now that they were into October there was a definite chill in the air and for that reason Katie decided to wear an old dress in black taffeta her mother had passed on to her, which Katie had had remodelled.

Black wasn’t really one of Katie’s favourite colours, but there was no doubt that the dressmaker
had done an excellent job of restyling the original dress to give it a neat waist and a prettily panelled full skirt, using the spare fabric to add a new shawl collar, which showed off Katie’s shoulders.

Slipping on her court shoes and grabbing her stole and her black taffeta evening bag, with its bugle bead embroidery in the shape of a flower – another loan from her mother’s pre-war wardrobe, just like the long gloves she was wearing – Katie gave her appearance a final quick check in the mirror before heading for the stairs.