Spitfire Girl

by Jackie Moggridge

  A few second later I found myself soaring through the air in a machine that made poetry of flight. Carefully I familiarized myself with the controls as the ground fell away at fantastic speed and felt exhilarated by the eager, sensitive response. Singing with joy and relief I dived and climbed and spiralled around the broken clouds, before turning on to course.

  I landed uneventfully at Tern Hill, a fighter squadron base, and climbed out with spurious nonchalance as fighter pilots, sunning on the grass and awaiting the call to battle, waved and wolf-whistled in welcome. With an easy camaraderie I waved back, for after all I was, almost, one of them.

  As the summer closed, a new women’s ferry pool was established at Hamble aerodrome near the south coast. A few of us from Hatfield, relative veterans, were transferred to form the nucleus of the new pool to which new women pilots, fresh from A.T.A. training schools, were added.

  There was an immediate scramble for billets on our arrival at the new pool. We collected our billeting slips and rode off on bicycles like locusts about to descend on unsuspecting pastures. After numerous enquiries and false trails I cycled along a glade, thick with fallen leaves from the overhanging trees, that followed the winding unassuming River Hamble. My billeting slip showed only the name of the house. Picturesque bungalows, their backs to the river, peeped cosily through the rust-tinted trees. One in particular caught my eye with its neat tiny drive and mellow air. Wish that was it, I sighed wistfully as I looked at the name plate. With a second look I slammed on the only brake that worked, the front one, skidded, parted company with my bicycle and sat on the wet leaves gazing at the name plate just above my head: Creek Cottage. Hastily I got up and tried to make myself presentable, but it was too late.

  ‘You wouldn’t be coming to stay with us, would you?’ enquired the elderly gentleman eyeing me from the drive with a mixture of amusement and concern.

  ‘Yes,’ I admitted.

  ‘Come in. We have been expecting you,’ he invited kindly, ‘though not quite like that,’ he added with a grin, taking my bicycle and wheeling it along the drive.

  Surreptitiously I examined the bungalow. It was a gem of story-book charm that so often rewards those who explore unpromising bye-ways in England. A garden, carelessly elegant, spread to the water’s edge where, in a small boat-house a motor-boat and a dinghy, promising idyllic summer evenings, were moored in the still waters of the lock. My hosts welcomed me warmly and quickly dispelled my qualms that they might resent their imposed guest. The Greenhills, though retired, took me to their home as naturally as though I were their own daughter. Now that peace has returned to that quiet glade on Hamble River may they have back the happiness they gave to me.

  I spent a day exploring the tiny river and the garden and adding my own personality to the bedroom overlooking the river banks, before reporting for duty. By then some semblance of order had emerged from the packing cases and chaos at the aerodrome and we plunged into a heavy backlog of work. It was five days, every night spent in different though similarly dreary hotels, before I returned, dirty and exhausted, to Hamble and climbed out of the taxi aircraft.

  ‘Hi, Jackie,’ greeted the operations officer. ‘We had a phone call from a Mr Greenhill. He wanted to know if you were all right...’

  21

  Meanwhile Reg courted me with a clinical tenacity that boded ill for my independence. Every day I received a letter until his agonizingly cramped writing became as familiar as my own characterless scrawl. I was paddling on the banks of a river that threatened to suck me reluctantly into midstream and on into the estuary of marriage. After meeting his parents in Taunton I left exhausted, following a week of nervous politeness and appraisal with the feeling that I was walking up a descending escalator. There seemed to be something peculiarly unexciting about Reg and me. As though we were following a path across a plain instead of exploring the foothills of a majestic mountain.

  With the fulfilment of my job and the easy comradeship of war I was no longer blindly flattered by his attentions and met him in Taunton and Hamble with an equanimity impossible six months before. But he remained a yard-stick against which others were compared and found wanting.

  Often, during the winter of 1941–42 when the night sky over the southern ports became a battlefield, I sat in the cosy oasis of Creek Cottage discussing with my proxy-mother, Mrs Greenhill, the prospect of marriage.

  ‘But I don’t want to get married.’

  ‘You will have to, some day.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why!... You want children, a home...’

  ‘I want flying... I cannot have both.’

  Interminably and inconclusively we discussed and probed. Reg, with a delicacy of perception that belied his more stolid qualities, waited patiently. It was a long wait.

  In the spring of 1942 Reg telephoned me at Hamble soon after completing an O.C.T.U. course at Aldershot. ‘It’s India,’ he confirmed casually. ‘Two weeks’ embarkation leave starting tomorrow. Can you get leave?’

  ‘I think so,’ I answered.

  ‘Right. Come down to Taunton as soon as you can get away.’

  ‘Did you get your commission?’

  ‘Yes, darling. It’s Lieutenant Moggridge now.’

  I packed a toothbrush, ferried a Fleet Air Arm Albacore to Bristol and hitch-hiked on to Taunton. On the army lorry that carried me the last few miles to Taunton I itemized the reasons why we should not get married. I knew what I was in for. It seemed silly to answer simply: I don’t want to get married. A man departing for two years in the grim Far-Eastern theatre deserved more rational reasons for going un-wedded.

  Nature partisaned his cause. The weather was idyllic, the days balmy, the nights mellow and making nonsense of my obstinacy. Reg was cunning. During the day when we played tennis or lounged in sweet-smelling fields listening to the put-put of distant tractors, he wore a martyred air. At tea each cup was punctuated with a sigh. It was during the evening calm that his campaign took a more tactical turn. In the garden under the insidious influence of the stars and with his arms around me as we sat in the swinging hammock I became equivocal. Perhaps, maybe. My resistance was at a perilous ebb by the tenth day. If I could last out one more day it would be too late to arrange the ceremony.

  On the twelfth day he admitted defeat. ‘You have no objections to an engagement?’ he asked ironically during lunch.

  ‘None whatever,’ I replied. We kissed formally and then not so formally.

  We bought the ring in the High Street. In the jewellery shop I wondered that assistants carried on business as usual, working from nine to five, with Thursday afternoons and Sundays off. It seemed grossly unfair that history should pass them by and leave them trailing in a wash of ration books and petty monotony. I felt guilty as the assistant glanced enviously at our uniforms and mechanically quoted prices as we pondered over the rings. I chose an inexpensive zircon that sat unobtrusively on my finger. It had to be small. I always wore gauntlets when flying.

  We had tea in a quaint shoppe. I fidgeted with my left hand like an inexperienced actress. ‘Take your glove off,’ grinned Reg. I obeyed and stared at my hand as though it were a stranger’s.

  Reg’s departure for India left me curiously un-distraught. There was a gap in my life but it was the gap of an extracted tooth. An emptiness without feeling or pain, noticed only when in idleness one feels for it.

  22

  Trying to evoke memories of war is like writing the epitaph of a dead friend. As with the friend one remembers only the virtues. The epitaph becomes a eulogy and another generation is weaned on the glories of war.

  There was John. I met him a year after Reg had left for India. Cadaverously good looking and frustrated he had, to him, the ignominious task of towing targets at an aerial gunnery school; a menial and unexciting job allotted usually to pilots who had misbehaved. He wanted to fly Spitfires in a fighter squadron and met me with sour malice when I landed at his aerodrome with a coveted Spitfire to refuel. He was duty pi
lot on that day, responsible for arriving and departing aircraft. The weather was bad and, after an introduction spiced with irony about my sex and phallic-symbolled Spitfires, he invited me to a dance to be held that evening in the officers’ mess. I accepted and telephoned Hamble that I was staying overnight.

  He drank too much at the dance with a feverish boyish defiance. He later confided that he did not like whisky and beer made him sick. He became cheeky and I did not mind. He made the most outrageous suggestions and I did not mind that either. Then he became maudlin. His technique was admirable. I guided him to the porch like a tug nudging a transatlantic liner into harbour.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

  ‘To get you some coffee,’ I replied firmly.

  ‘Dowant coffee. Wanna fly Spits. Sit down.’

  ‘You’ll fly them. I’m sure you will.’

  ‘Huh. Whatdo-you-knowaboutit. Bloody...’

  ‘Stop swearing.’

  ‘Jesus... Spitfires and piety. Cocktails for two.’

  I could not be angry with him. ‘Somebody has to train the pilots,’ I suggested soothingly.

  ‘Oh. Reasonable. I hate reasonable people.’

  ‘Why don’t you say something?’ he added, after a moment’s silence.

  ‘Because you want me to be unreasonable,’ I promptly replied.

  ‘Beautiful Spits,’ he observed irrelevantly. He was sitting down, head on knees, when I brought the coffee. He grimaced and drank it quickly.

  ‘Well?’I prompted.

  ‘I think,’ he said suddenly but as though continuing a conversation, ‘we all want to know how we would react to danger. It must be a satisfying thing to know one isn’t a coward.’

  ‘Is that all?’ I prompted.

  ‘Pretty well,’ he replied.

  ‘Isn’t that rather selfish?’

  ‘You want me to say things about Democracy and Truth and King and Country...’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Sorry. No go. That gives me a pain. All I remember of democracy is derelict coal-mines in South Wales, the Dole and a hunger march to Hyde Park.’

  ‘Are you a Socialist or a Communist or something?’

  ‘That’s right, dammit,’ he answered angrily, ‘pigeon-hole me.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I’ve been a nonentity all my life,’ he continued. ‘Ten Weights for fourpence. Fifty-shilling suits.’ He looked wryly down at his officer’s uniform and his wings. ‘Now I’m an official gentleman and an incipient hero. I’m not fighting for the good old days. I want to fight because I shall enjoy returning to the airfield with the guns empty and mechanics patting me on the back saying ‘‘Good show, sir.’’ I want to sew medals on my tunic and see people look at me and nudge each other when I walk into a restaurant.’

  Bloodshot and sheepish, he saw me off early the following morning. I promised to answer his letters.

  His letters, alternating between hilarious idiocy and gloomy despair, reflected faithfully the progress towards his ambition of being a fighter pilot. Frequently they lay in the post-box next to the air-letters from India, posing a neat little problem in loyalty. I had carefully told each of the other, though there was not much to tell Reg about John. Two short visits to Hamble, a dozen letters and sporadic telephone calls. There was more to tell John about Reg.

  A few weeks later I collected the ferry-chits from the operations officer and scanned the day’s programme as pilots banged open their lockers and greeted each other with a cheerfulness born of the clear blue sky and the promise of a perfect day. The first chit ordered me to collect a Miles Master from John’s aerodrome and ferry it to the Midlands. I grabbed my parachute and helmet and climbed into the taxi aircraft already ticking over on the tarmac. It was a short flight and I was dropped off within twenty minutes of taking off.

  The aircraft was waiting for me. I signed the chits before looking for John. He was not in the Control Tower or the mess. Anxiously I phoned his Flight Commander. ‘He’s flying,’ he answered.

  I took off and headed for the practice firing range a few miles to the south. The speck on the horizon grew larger until I could recognize it as a Master with a target drogue trailing behind. Keeping well clear I watched his monotonous progress back and forth as another aircraft positioned itself for a practice attack. After three or four attacks the attacking aircraft broke off and headed back to base. Gleefully I positioned myself in what I hoped was the correct position and made an attack on unsuspecting John. Instead of breaking off the attack with a violent downward dive I carried on, pulled up close to him and waved. He gave me a startled look and violently waved me off. I shook my head and pulled off my helmet.

  ‘It’s me,’ I mimed. He peered at me as I tucked in closer until a few feet separated us. Suddenly his face broke into a delighted grin and he blew me a kiss. We flew parallel with each other. He pointed down. I shook my head and pointed to the north. He held up ten fingers, pointed to himself and then down again. I shook my head. He pleaded with his hands held in the attitude of prayer. ‘I can’t,’ I shouted idiotically, ‘I must go.’

  To my astonishment I blew him a kiss before waggling my wings in farewell and peeling off sharply to the north. As I looked back he resumed his monotonous beat as another aircraft positioned itself for an attack.

  A week later a telegram arrived at Creek Cottage:

  Posted. Fighters. Weeks leave. Can I see you. John.

  Since the kiss I had been stricken with remorse. In itself it was nothing. In its impulse it had revealed, like the brief flash of a lighthouse, the reefs and rocks that stood between Reg and me. I had determined not to see John again but this laconic cable, hinting an appointment with death, entreated partiality. Not the cold neutrality of a prude. I wavered but the decision was taken firmly out of my hands for returning the same evening from the aerodrome I found John, flanked by the Greenhills, calmly sitting in the lounge.

  ‘Hello,’ he greeted casually, ‘I was just passing by.’

  I tried to be angry at his audacity but his bland refusal to take up the cudgels soon reduced me to impotence. He studied carefully a new portrait that had recently arrived from India. ‘Reg?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I answered.

  ‘Hum. Brown job,’ he commented idly, replacing the portrait on the writing desk. The Greenhills laughed.

  ‘And what’s the matter with a brown job?’ I asked irascibly.

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh, nothing,’ he hurriedly assured me.

  ‘Thank you very much!’

  ‘Well, what shall we do?’ he asked, imperturbably.

  ‘Do? When?’

  ‘Tonight. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. I have to report to the O.T.U. on Thursday.’

  ‘Spitfires?’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered jubilantly. He looked much younger. The top button of his uniform was already undone.

  ‘I cannot get leave. There’s a priority flap on at the moment,’ I said.

  ‘That’s all right. I’ll fly with you. It is allowed?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I answered uncertainly.

  He flew with me on the second day and sat quietly in the back seat as we took off in a Miles Master. Conscious of his scrutiny (pilots are almost pathologically intolerant of other pilots’ abilities) I flew with excessive care.

  ‘Nice take-off,’ he commented. Hands busy I nodded acknowledgement before throttling back to cruising power.

  Gradually as we flew steadily across a sky mellow with soft clouds and shafts of sunlight I felt a mood of exalted surrender. Linked by the engine’s incidental music – John, the sky, the green chequered fields – the knowledge of life’s inconstancy in war built up a confederacy of such profound intimacy in the cramped cockpit I felt myself beyond body; as though I had stepped into a poet’s unwritten soul. Into a world of metaphor and image whose ecstasy defies man’s alphabet.

  Distantly I heard his voice.

  ‘Don’t you do any aerobatics?’ he shouted. />
  ‘Not allowed to,’ I shouted back.

  ‘Who’s to know? May I?’

  I held up both hands to signal that he was in control and tightened my straps. He started with a barrel roll to the left then, to emphasize his versatility, a slow roll to the right.

  ‘You try,’ he shouted.

  I took over and tried a roll to the right. It was appalling.

  ‘Not bad,’ he shouted. ‘Use more top rudder going in and coming out. Try it again.’

  I nodded and tried again. It was a good one.

  ‘Very nice. I’ve got her,’ he shouted, and flicked the Master over on its back and held it inverted whilst the dust and dirt showered into my eyes from the bottom of the cockpit. ‘Enough,’ I begged, hanging uncomfortably upside down from my straps. He rolled the aircraft back to level flight and handed the controls back to me.

  We returned to Hamble in the taxi aircraft as the sun lingered on the horizon and painted peaceful hues in the evening sky; a moment of armistice before darkness and death prowled again.

  There was an unwritten agreement between John and me not to discuss what we were doing. Where we were going. What would happen at the end of the four days. It was a life within a life. A short story developing with classical precision. He did not kiss me, nor touch my hand. His eyes only were his advocate.

  He called for me on the last evening, driving a disreputable car that he had borrowed from someone in the mess at Hamble. We were going to a dance in Southampton and he had insisted that I wear a dress. I looked at myself in the mirror. The trim uniform had vanished leaving a distressingly plain reflection. I was perversely content. The denouement would gather the loose ends of the story and end it as neatly as a Bach fugue.

  He looked up from the evening paper as I entered the lounge. Coolly his eyes dropped to my ankles and then slowly rose as I hesitated in the doorway. It was a long time before his eyes finally reached mine.

  ‘What’s the matter, Jackie?’ he asked carefully. ‘Did you think it was the uniform?’ I nodded. ‘It wasn’t,’ he said simply.