Spitfire Girl

by Jackie Moggridge

  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.

  4

  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.

  Slowly the ship wrenched me from South Africa. My roots dangled in suspended animation until, eight years later, they were transplanted in the mellow soil of Somerset.

  I escaped my inseparable companions as the ship docked for a brief interlude at Dakar. Enchanted, I wandered alone through the monumental filth of the back streets. Filth meant difference, not poverty, misery and disease. I was oblivious of the tragic, conscious only of the foreign.

  ‘It’s about time we returned to the ship, miss.’ I turned, astonished. A young steward, immaculate in sailor’s civilian whites, grinned at me. ‘Sorry,’ he continued, ‘Captain’s orders. I mustn’t let you out of my sight.’ Both flattered and insulted by this attention I returned with him to the ship.

  We docked at Marseilles and entrained for Paris, where we spent three days in an estimable, though dull, tour of the churches. Indefatigably the nuns and I explored dank crypts, penetrated stygian gloom in their devotion to God. He will forgive my frustrated preference for the frivolous. I noticed the northern twilight that stretches day into the domains of night and offers a siesta of darkening tranquility between work and play. The day, too, was different with gradations of colour unknown in sun-blinded South Africa.

  The boat-train from Folkestone to London introduced me to the anarchy of the English countryside, its green luxuriant beauty a host of individual enterprise. Hedges and fences crawled bewilderingly. Oblongs jostled with squares, trees with wheat, dairy farms with slender tall chimneys. A perfection of chaos. A landscape of Lilliputian enchantment, with narrow roads curling inconsequentially through cool glens and dozing villages.

  I was shocked at the straggling mass of chimney pots that heralded London. Short, slim, long, fat, they shot their filth into the polluted haze; even on this sunny temperate day. I was glad when these identical burrows were purged from my sight and replaced by the comparative dignity of warehouses and factories as we neared Victoria.

  I said good-bye to the nuns and looked for ‘Uncle’ Jimmie, a friend of the family, who was to meet me. I sat on a bench on the platform innocent of the need to clear Customs where, of course, Uncle was waiting. The Customs shed emptied and no me. The platform emptied and no Uncle. We both waited independently, thinking unjust thoughts of each other. I sat for three hours. Pretoria was a long way away.

  ‘Whasamattermiss?’ I looked up and dashed a tear. The porter eyed me kindly.

  ‘I was supposed to meet my uncle here. He hasn’t turned up,’ I answered woefully.

  ‘Yore Awstryliyan aintcher?’

  ‘No, South African.’

  ‘Same fing.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ I queried, startled.

  ‘Oh, you know.’ I did not, of course. This was my first experience of that peculiar English idiosyncracy that considers fluency a vice and inarticulation a virtue. ‘Where yer going?’ he continued.

  ‘Witney Aeronautical College, near Oxford,’ I replied.

  ‘Coo! Kumon,’ he summoned, picking up my small case and tartan travelling rug. ‘We’ll go to Enquiries.’ We walked to the enquiry office.

  ‘Lidy wantsago ter Oxford. Rite it down. Shees foren,’ he explained. Later he put me in a taxi for Paddington Station with explicit orders to the driver to put me on the correct train. He refused my proffered tip, ‘No fanksmiss. Spleasure,’ and blushed at his kindness. I had learned of another English idiosyncracy: kindness to stray animals.

  After a bewildering jour
ney I found myself at Oxford. I felt crushed and insignificant in this illustrious city. Diffidently, and as instructed, I ’phoned the airport:

  ‘Is that the aerodrome?’

  ‘Yes,’ exquisitely.

  ‘I’m Miss Sorour from South Africa. Will you come and pick me up?’

  ‘I’d love to, miss, but I’m on duty. May I pick you up some other time?’

  ‘Is that Witney aerodrome?’

  ‘I regret that it isn’t. This is Royal Air Force, Brize Norton.’

  Regretfully I replaced the receiver. The second call was more successful. A young gallant arrived, driving the college station-wagon and took me into protective custody. Thankfully I placed myself in his care and, sleepily and mono-syllabically, was carried along antiquity with ancient spires landmarking toy villages and graveyards nestling peacefully in the lengthening shadows.

  Turning into a cobbled lane we stopped before a farmhouse. With mews of sympathy I was welcomed and spoiled and tucked between welcoming sheets. I cried a little. Then, with a gentle reminder to God that I was here and not in Pretoria, I slept to the unfamiliar lullaby of crickets.

  5

  The next morning I awakened late and refreshed. A distant carpenter emphasized the quiet so strange to my urban-bred ears. Birds sang their solo to the accompaniment of nature’s hum. The low baritone of a cow prompted the shrill answer of a cock. I washed and went downstairs.

  ‘Good morning. Did you sleep well?’ asked Mrs Hirons, my hostess. There being no accommodation for females at the school, it had been arranged that I would stay with Mrs Hirons and her family. It was a farmhouse without a farm. Oddly enough another South African girl was staying there, studying engineering. We did not become good friends. I had robbed her of her distinction of being the only girl at the school.

  ‘Like a log,’ I answered, looking for breakfast.

  ‘Over here,’ she pointed, anticipating my pangs.

  Tall, elegantly slim and with the aquiline features of an aristocrat, she joined me at the table. I felt a little awed. It was weeks before I could emulate the example of the other students and call her ‘Mum’. Her son John, equally imposing and of my age, was in the garden. ‘Dad’ too.

  ‘Your uncle phoned last night...’ she said.

  ‘What happened to him?’ I interpolated sharply.

  ‘He waited for over three hours in the Customs shed at Victoria. Your luggage is still there.’

  ‘Customs! What Customs?’

  ‘Didn’t you go through Customs?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How did you get out of the station?’

  ‘Just walked out,’ I answered. She laughed. ‘That explains everything. He saw your luggage in Customs and naturally assumed you were bound to come there. Poor man, he was terribly worried when he phoned last night. He asked me not to wake you.’

  ‘What shall I do about my luggage?’

  ‘Write to the Customs people at Victoria. They will clear it and send it on here.’

  They did but in their diligent search for contraband pulled the rip-cord of my parachute. They enclosed a brief note of apology with the gigantic bundle of crushed silk.

  I spent the following day, Sunday, exploring the countryside alone. In constant delight my eyes were filled with the quaint and the picturesque. I touched the hedges and crossed the stiles; discovered idling brooks wafting softly and coolly through magical pathways. Village vied with village in somnolent charm. As the sun lingered hugely on the horizon I walked home slowly, reluctant to end this enchantment.

  Early the following morning the station-wagon arrived to take me to the college. I had dressed inconspicuously and wore a studious air.

  I was disappointed at the school’s insignificance. I had envisaged stone quadrangles, Norman towers and the rich cool green of carefully tended lawns. Instead I saw a cluster of nondescript buildings nestling on the boundary of a grass aerodrome. A hangar denoted aviation. Overhead a ubiquitous Tiger Moth droned and circled lazily. I turned resentfully to the driver. ‘Is this it?’ I asked.

  ‘Is this what, miss?’

  ‘The college.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All of it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ruefully I recalled the glowing terms of the prospectus.

  I was introduced to the Chief Flying Instructor. He was absurdly young. He was killed a year later whilst testing an experimental flying-wing aircraft. He introduced me to the other instructors and lecturers. The majority of the students were studying aeronautical engineering; only a dozen or so were taking the pilots’ course. This was another disappointment. I had imagined a vast impersonal machine that spat out squads of trained pilots regularly and efficiently.

  That evening at a cocktail party held in my honour in the club-house I met the other students. They were cosmopolitan in nationality and ambition. Shamefully I recall my patronage and condescension towards the coloured students from Africa and India. South African prejudice is too insidious and comprehensive to be banished in a day, or by the example of others. It has taken nearly a decade to purge the last lingering symptoms of this disease from my mind.

  After a brief period of refresher flying with my instructor I was sent up solo to practise a few spins and stalls and to familiarize myself with the local landmarks. Uneasily I completed the spinning. Few pilots enjoy the unnatural contortions of spinning with the aircraft pointing vertically at the gyrating landscape and groaning and heaving its resentment as the wind slaps sharply from unfamiliar angles. The stalls were a mild manœuvre in comparison. I then began my tour of the landmarks. Happily I sported with the clouds. Wisps of placid stratus carpeted respectfully the towering majesty of pompous cumulo-nimbus. Like a mosquito I buzzed insolently against their confined rage and darted off as they slapped at me with their turbulence when my audacity overcame prudence and I got too close.

  I glanced at my watch: time to return. With a last defiant tilt at the clouds I turned back to the aerodrome. A twinge of anxiety tingled my spine when it failed to appear. I flew on, my head swivelling from side to side like a tennis spectator’s.

  Slowly and inexorably as the useless miles were spanned I became utterly lost. With growing anxiety I oscillated futilely over the bewildering similarity of the English countryside. Absurdly it occurred to me that some rascal had moved the aerodrome. Tacking errantly I followed likely paths until they disappeared into a vista of unfamiliarity. With maddening monotony the smug ground remained unmoved and refused to proffer the aerodrome. Almost babbling with fright and shame I jerked across the sky in aimless panic. Where is it? Where is it? Oh God, where is it? The cumulo-nimbus clouds had shaped into gigantic profiles that leered maliciously. The petrol gauge fed my fear. I had been up for three hours. I imagined the few remaining gallons of petrol swilling emptily in the tank. My calf muscles ached with tension; my hands slipped in sweat; my face was stiff. Only my eyes, searching the horizon like a coon, moved facilely. Fervently I offered penances to God if only He would show me the aerodrome, any aerodrome. The engine, oblivious of impending disaster, purred glibly and greedily sucked its own life’s blood.

  When I had been reduced to simpering vilification against fate, God optioned my penances and miraculously produced an aerodrome. A large hangar beckoning from the horizon, cut a swathe through the sky-line of calamity and offered sanctuary. Waggling my wings in an ecstacy of deliverance I dived crazily to refuge. The engine faltered as I finished my landing run and stopped altogether as I turned off the runway and taxied towards the Control Tower. The petrol tank was empty. With this last melodramatic gesture the aircraft rolled silently to a halt. Fortune smiled and moved on.

  As I sat ruminating a car drove out:

  ‘Where am I?’ I asked.

  ‘Royal Air Force, Brize Norton,’ they answered.

  They entertained me to tea. I telephoned Witney where two aircraft were searching for me and waited in the officers’ mess for an instructor to fly me back.


  6

  The months at Witney passed by pleasantly and fruitfully.

  My first ‘love’ was with an old man of twenty-four. A fellow student, he made it quite clear that I was distinguished only by his company. Meekly I accepted this analysis. There were only two girls at the college. He had, of course, already discarded the other one.

  There was little to do to weld this quaint relationship other than pastoral rambles and an occasional visit to Oxford. After sundown we would walk together along the winding lanes to the village and sit in a cool oak-shadowed arbour outside the village pub. I would not go inside. He drank ‘the usual’, whatever that was, and I sipped gigantic fizzy lemonades that provoked hiccups all the way home. He would talk ever-increasing nonsense. Every night he got angry because I would not kiss him.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘But why don’t you want to?’

  I wished I had the temerity to tell him that the smell of hops combined with my fortuitous hiccups was too much even for that God-like profile. We would walk home in silence with the owls hooting mockery and derision at his frustration. Or so I liked to think. Sulkily he would try again before saying good-night. Thwarted, he would amble off, muttering ‘frigid iceberg’ or similar unkind observations.

  Finally he gave up.

  The next affair was passed inarticulately. It was, of course, with John. We had blushes for breakfast and ers and ars for supper. The week-ends were passed in a comparatively brilliant series of monosyllables. His mother condoned our halting courting, knowing its artlessness. Still smarting from the dismal failure of my first love I resorted to high heels and a dash of lipstick in order to nurse this tender hot-house plant. The former provoked an uncontrolled guffaw; the latter, mild disapproval. I could talk only of flying; he of motor-bikes. We kissed once. My first kiss. We both slobbered a little and did not quite hit the mark. To my intense chagrin he did not try again. Our undying love died.