She turned to me staring.
‘To the airfield? In the Tilly?’
I laughed. ‘No, in a Bristol Blenheim,’ I said. ‘Out over the North Sea during the Christmas truce.’
Very softly and slowly, she played the opening bars of ‘Joy to the World’.
Then she stopped. She glanced at me, biting her lower lip, and croaked, ‘Yes, please.’
She was so eager it made her look like she was about ten years old. I laughed again.
‘You’ll get a ride in the Tilly as well, come to think of it, if Ellen brings you over tomorrow morning,’ I said. ‘Wear extra socks. Wool. Three pairs at least. It gets colder the higher you get.’
Louisa:
The sun on Christmas morning rose shining through clouds, bright red as a cherry-flavoured boiled sweet, a poinsettia in full bloom, a glowing punch bowl of holiday sorrel. I leaned into the window and pulled back the blackout curtains and thought, I will be up there with it today!
Jane was excited because I was excited. She came downstairs to see me off, wearing a beautiful short silver fox-fur cape. Mrs Campbell was slamming things around behind the bar. She couldn’t keep public hours until the twenty-seventh of December, and fretted about not being able to work.
Phyllis scolded, ‘Think of those young men in the air on Christmas Day! They’re not complaining.’
‘Why are you in and out the kitchen if you’re not working?’ Ellen provoked Nan.
‘I’ve to fix Christmas dinner for you girls, haven’t I?’ Mrs Campbell grumbled. ‘You’ll be hungry when you’re back from your flight. Morag’s mother, Mrs Torrie, has sent a bit of venison.’
Most of Mrs Campbell’s meals involved tinned beef, cabbage and turnips, so a morsel of fresh meat would be a proper treat.
Jane took off her cape, bundled it into a fluffy roll, and piled it on top of the counter.
‘Happy Christmas, Nancy,’ she said. ‘I thought you might like to have a fur, as I’ve little reason now to wear them all.’
Nan Campbell went as pink as when 648 Squadron were chanting her name the day they got there.
‘Why—’ She spent so much of her life grizzling that she struggled when she was pleased. ‘Why, Aunt Jane. That is— That is—’ She looked at the lovely soft thing as if she expected it to come back to life as a dozen foxes and bite her to death. ‘I couldn’t!’ She put out a hand as if she were going to push it away, and instead she patted it.
Then there was no going back.
‘Well, if you’re not wearing it, as you say,’ she conceded. ‘Thank you, Aunt Jane.’
Jane had given me one of her fur coats, too. I was stunned. I’d saved enough of my small salary to buy her a record album, as I hardly ever spent money on anything except the gas meter. I’d bought it in Stonehaven when I went by myself to return the library books: William Walton’s Viola Concerto. I thought Jane might like some new English classical music. I was very glad I had something nice to give her.
Ellen gave me and Phyllis each a silver sixpence, because we were going flying with 648 Squadron.
With a dramatic flourish she pushed a silver coin of her own into the beam above the bar.
‘Go on. You do yours now, Louisa.’
My heart seemed to turn somersaults. The ceiling was low enough I could touch the beam with my fingertips, but I wasn’t tall enough to force the sixpence into a crack.
I couldn’t climb on the counter with Nan watching.
I dragged a chair to the edge of the bar to stand on. I could see Jamie’s sixpence, waiting for my penny to turn up beside it the next time another decoded instruction was ready for him. I didn’t want to draw Nan’s eyes over there.
I pushed my sixpence into a crack in the old wood right at the other end of the beam. I’d easily remember where it was – exactly opposite Jamie’s.
My fluttering heart soared, plummeted in terror, and leaped into my throat.
Rules are made to be broken, Lula, Mummy’s cheerful voice reminded me in my head.
If I died that afternoon it would be worth it to ride in an RAF Bristol Blenheim bomber.
I touched my sixpence with the tip of my finger. Keep me safe.
Jamie:
I found myself whistling ‘The Wassail Song’. It was not regulation for Pimms Section to take three girls along on our Christmas mission, and Phyllis was so nervous it was hard not to tease her.
‘No worries, this isn’t a bombing run, we’re just on patrol,’ I told her cheerfully. Oh, it was like being in school, if school had included aeroplanes! It gave me the same feeling of truant joy, the heady satisfaction of undermining authority just for fun.
The ground crew helped the girls into flight suits, pleased as punch to be pulling a fast one on Wing Commander Cromwell.
‘Helmets, good – don’t worry about masks, they won’t need mikes and we’ll stay low enough they won’t need oxygen,’ I told the fitter who was equipping us. ‘Can you get three more Mae Wests? Extra gauntlets and as many Ever-Hot bags as you can find! Don’t tell ops.’
‘As if I would! Whose head is on the block when someone twigs, anyway?’
‘Mine, mine, always mine,’ I assured him. ‘Nobody’s fighting today. There won’t be a bit of trouble. It will all be wizard.’
In flight suits and life vests, the lasses walked to the waiting planes without attracting attention. Madeira Section had already taken off, and Old Flash had promised to make sure Cromwell didn’t go near the hangars or the radio room. Phyllis and Ellen and Louisa stayed close together, a complicated collection of nerves.
Phyllis wasn’t afraid of flying – she was just terrible at breaking rules, and she dithered with anxiety. ‘Oh dear – oh dear, I shouldn’t be doing this. It’s so important I set a good example—’
I knew Ellen was scared. I’d taken her up before, and she hadn’t liked it. But she wouldn’t admit it. She steeled herself by looking angry and bored, and kept close to Louisa, the baby of the gang.
‘Who do you want to fly with?’ I heard Ellen whisper to her. ‘Phyllis is going with the Aussies. You can choose.’
Louisa was the only one of the three who was visibly sparkling with excitement.
‘You go with Jamie. He’s your friend,’ she said decisively. ‘I’ll go with Ignacy and Derfel.’
‘All right, Ignacy and Derfel are safe as houses, but look out for that Yorkie,’ Ellen told her. ‘He’s pinched my bum five times since they got back from Deeside, once a day, regular. If he does it again I might have to thump him in the teeth.’
Bloody Bill Yorke.
Nothing I could do about it now; he wouldn’t be able to bother Louisa from the rear cabin.
But I made a note to keep a close eye on him back on the ground.
I wasn’t going to let him ruin my day, nor anyone else’s.
Louisa:
The only plane I’d been close to was Felix Baer’s Messerschmitt 109. Now I was going to climb inside a Bristol Blenheim bomber. With an engine mounted in each wing and the glass turret riding on its back for the gunner, it seemed gigantic. Its tail rested on a tiny wheel against the ground and its nose pointed at the sky as if the silly tail wheel embarrassed it and it couldn’t wait to take off.
Jamie hustled me on to the wing of Ignacy’s plane, giving me a river of instructions.
‘Walk up the wing along this rough bit; you won’t slip. Sit on your parachute just in front of Taff’s feet – you’re only wee, you’ll fit. Once we’re in the air you can hop on to the observer’s seat in front of him and you’ll have a super view out the nose. Don’t worry about Yorkie, I know what Ellen’s been telling you, but he’s stuck in the rear cabin minding the radio and the rear gun. Mazur and Taff are a sound pair – they’ll take care of you. You won’t be able to hear much, or talk to anyone, so thumbs up for everything bang on, and thumbs down if you need to be sick! Here you are – pop your foot into my hands and I’ll boost you up. Climb in through the hatch—’
S
quatting on the broad wing next to me, he locked gloved fingers together.
‘Warm enough? All buttoned up? Mae West tight? Righto, we’re off to the North Sea – just wait till you see the Scottish Highlands from the air!’
The front cabin of the Blenheim didn’t feel gigantic, though. With three of us squeezed in together, it was like being a bit of saltfish in a tin. Ignacy and Derfel chattered to each other in Polish and Welsh as they checked the flight instruments. I wondered if they were doing it on purpose to wind up their new gunner. Or me – they must be used to Bill Yorke by now.
I thought of Phyllis squeezed in with tall Harry Morrow, the Aussie flying the third Pimms plane with his knees around his ears, and Gavin Hamilton, who still looked like he wasn’t old enough to shave. I thought of Ellen squeezed in with easy-going, handsome David Silvermont and Flight Lieutenant Jamie Beaufort-Stuart. For a moment I felt a stab of envy.
But if I’d gone with Jamie and Silver, I’d have to go with Chip Wingate, the American from Texas.
My pilot, Ignacy, waved to get my attention.
‘All right, little one?’
I gave him a thumbs up. He grinned. ‘Engine start!’ he yelled to the ground crew.
One propeller began to turn, then the other. Within seconds they were both alive and it became wildly, deafeningly loud in the cockpit.
Through the clear panes in the canopy overhead, I saw clouds rushing by as we gained speed for the take-off. Then the tail of the plane lifted and I could see trees and moorland ahead of us. Finally, the way a ripe mango suddenly comes unstuck from its stem, we just lifted away from the ground. I could feel we were aloft.
I was in the sky.
Ignacy pushed levers and turned knobs, holding the control yoke lightly with one hand. He waved at me again, gesturing Up, up! He pointed into the Blenheim’s nose. Get up and look!
I crawled forward to a swivelling stool in the nose of the plane. There were wide, clear Perspex panels in the front. I crouched on the metal seat in a cocoon of glass and I could see everything as we took off to the west, into the wind.
Jamie was right about the super view. The Highlands were magical ahead of us. We were still lower than their snow-covered heights, white and pink and gold in the elusive winter sun like a glittering Christmas card. We flew over the moors where the main road passed on its way to Aberdeen. Beneath my feet was a herd of red deer, dozens of them, leaping away as we skimmed overhead.
I hadn’t realised how beautiful it would be. I forgot it was dangerous.
Derfel tapped me on the shoulder and beckoned. When I crawled back to him, he offered me his own leather helmet so I could hear the radio.
‘Hallo, Louisa!’ came Ellen’s voice in my head, crackling over the static. ‘Happy Christmas!’
Only Ignacy had a microphone that connected to Jamie’s plane, so I couldn’t answer her. All I could do was beam. It was smashing.
Ignacy’s voice spoke clearly in my ear.
‘You want to fly?’
He lifted his hand from the controls, and to my surprise the plane flew steadily on.
‘The Blenheim flies herself,’ he told me. ‘Here, try, you will do it—’
He let me crouch next to him and hold the controls. He coaxed me to tilt the wings, following Jamie ahead of us.
Ellen:
Jamie had one extra leather helmet with a headset in it, and I was the lucky lass who got to wear it.
‘All right?’ he asked.
‘Braw!’ I said. I’d been up with him once before and never showed him how it frighted me the first time, and I wasn’t going to now, either.
‘Stand up and take a look out the back!’
‘Stand up? Are you daft?’
‘Maybe, but look at Ignacy waving to us!’
I was too tall to stand all the way straight, but I put my head up in the clear canopy for about three seconds, holding hard to Jamie’s seat back and Silver’s shoulder. I could see Ignacy’s Blenheim flying behind us away off to our left, with the Aussies lined up on our right. The wings of Ignacy’s plane were rocking gently up and down.
After a moment Jamie dipped our own wings to wave back, and I tumbled over into Silver’s lap.
‘Jamie Stuart, you raging gumpus!’
Then Silver and I laughed so hard untangling ourselves that I feared it would make Jamie crash the plane.
But of course he did no such thing, and with the rest of Pimms Section close behind us, we all veered round together to head out over the North Sea.
Louisa:
Ignacy waved me away from the controls so he could turn, and Derfel plucked his helmet off my head and put it back on his own. I saw him talking. But over the roar of the Blenheim’s twin engines I couldn’t hear a thing he and Ignacy said.
They seemed tense and focused now.
I crawled back to the observer’s seat to stay out of their way. Then through the panel in the clear nose of the plane, I saw why they were paying attention. We’d reached the navy ships we were looking for. From the air they seemed tiny, fragile things, black water bugs in an absolutely endless world of grey.
For a moment I thought, It could be Daddy!
Then I remembered it couldn’t.
Not on a navy ship.
Nor on a merchant navy ship any more, either.
Oh, Daddy. How did I get here? I wondered again. How did I get here?
My pilot and navigator now seemed to forget I was there at all. That frightened me a little. I wondered if this was how they felt all the time they were flying: a little bit scared.
We followed Jamie’s plane into the grey sky of fitful sun, and the other Pimms Section plane followed us. Somewhere ahead of us, I knew, Madeira Section was also on patrol. Safety in numbers.
We were faster than the ships below us, so we swooped around and back, sweeping the skies for enemy planes, who might have guns even if they’d agreed not to use them today.
Who made that agreement? How did they let each other know? A radio message? In code? In German? In English?
It was impossible not to feel uneasy.
Ellen:
‘Aw, fer cryin’ out loud,’ said Chip in the back. ‘The Luftwaffe is out here on Christmas Day after all. I can hear ’em jabbering away in Kraut. Tune in and listen, cap’n, they’re not on the same frequency as us—’
Jamie twirled the dials, and then I heard it too, crackling in and out: men’s voices barking orders in a tongue I could not understand.
I had a queer sense of the sky full of invisible young lads ready for a fight.
Jamie and Silver felt it too. They were pulling worried faces at each other. It made my mouth go dry.
I swallowed and licked my lips. ‘What’s up, Jamie Stuart?’ I challenged him.
‘Ah, well, lassie,’ Jamie said in a low voice, ‘I might not have brought you along if I’d known there was going to be a surprise party. I suppose that’s the nature of a surprise party, actually.’
Louisa:
Ignacy and Derfel burst out laughing.
Derfel handed me his flight helmet. We’d picked up the Luftwaffe radio signal too. They were probably patrolling their own shipping, like us. I couldn’t hear much – mostly crackling static.
But now and then came a man’s voice, singing in German.
It was a Christmas carol. I listened and listened.
Jamie:
‘Bloody Jerries,’ said Silver.
They were singing ‘O Tannenbaum’.
‘You hear that, Pimms Leader?’ called Ignacy.
‘It’s the Christmas truce of 1940!’ I exclaimed. ‘But wasn’t it “Silent Night” the Jerries sang with our lads in the trenches in the last lot?’
I gave the Germans a taste of their own medicine. ‘Stille nacht, heilige nacht—’
There was deafening stillness.
Then, in a burst of defiance, the German voice shouted: ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt!’
All of B
-Flight heard it.
‘That’s no Christmas truce, that’s the Nazi national anthem!’ yelled Harry Morrow. ‘Can we go get ’em?’
Bloody hell, I thought, not with the girls on board, you young tosser.
‘We don’t know where they are,’ I said. ‘Let ’em sing.’
Louisa:
We didn’t see any German planes.
But we heard the singing, off and on, the whole time we flew over the battleships. Derfel kept passing me his headset so I could listen.
We circled the ships for two hours, until Jamie said we’d passed the English border with Scotland. After that, another RAF squadron from further south came flying up to meet us. Everybody waved their wings at each other in a friendly way and shouted Happy Christmas over the radio. Then that lot took over our job and we could go home.
We’d passed the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Tay and were heading up the Angus Coast towards Stonehaven when we met the Luftwaffe bomber.
It was a Junkers 88, a Ju-88 – I recognised it as German the moment I saw it. To me it looked like the perfect match for the Blenheims we were flying, twin engines just like ours and about the same size, except the wingtips were sharply squared instead of rounded like ours. It was flying low along the sea cliffs, scouting, an ominous black shadow below us against the winter sea.
Ellen:
I haven’t Louisa’s eye for German planes. But I worked it out quick enough, because when Silver pointed, bloody Jamie stood the Blenheim practically on its wingtip in a turn that made my stomach tumble the wildcat. I held on to my porridge, and I got an eyeful of the Jerry bomber out the side of the canopy, with one of our own Blenheims diving after him.
Flight Lieutenant Beaufort-Stuart suddenly pushed the nose of his Blenheim forward, too, and we swooped in a swan dive towards the planes below us.
Jamie:
The Enigma Game Page 18