The car made it a perfect evening. ‘Do you want to drive?’ he asked as we drove back from the dance, the masked headlights almost extinguished by the oppressive blackout.
‘I don’t drive,’ I admitted.
‘That’s a funny thing. You fly and you can’t drive.’
We watched the dotted white line slipping beneath us and the play of searchlights on the horizon. The dimly lit instrument panel surrounded us with a conspiratorial glow.
‘I must teach you one day,’ he said suddenly.
‘What?’
‘Driving.’
‘Um.’
‘You will marry me?’ he continued.
‘Yes,’ I answered.
He covered my hand with his and carried on through the blackout to Creek Cottage. Somehow it seemed superfluous to do anything else.
During the weeks that followed I seemed to develop three different personalities. There was one that was reckless and indomitable when I was with John. A second that read Reg’s frantic cables from India with remorse and equivocation and a third, neutral, that looked at the other two with scornful disdain. I did not like myself very much. I lied to John, to Reg and to myself. I was too cowardly to hurt any of the trio and too unsophisticated to enjoy the role of femme fatale.
The little buff envelope arrived whilst the Greenhills and I were listening to the news on the radio.
‘It’s for you, Jackie,’ said Mrs Greenhill, handing me the telegram.
‘You open it,’ I said in the sudden cold silence, broken only by the unemotional voice of the news announcer. Please God, I begged silently as she fumbled with the seal, don’t let it be Reg.
‘It’s John,’ she said, passing me the telegram. ‘Missing in action.’
I phoned his squadron. They were polite but could add little to the telegram. His formation had been jumped by an overwhelming force of German fighters. In the ensuing scramble he had vanished. No one had seen him go down. They would let me know if they heard anything further.
I carried on flying in a sky suddenly unfriendly. Each flight evoked John. Each cloud was like a gravestone; silent and reproachful. Each time the landing wheels touched, skimmed over the surface and finally settled on the runway I remembered that John had not landed. At night, in bed, I convinced myself that there had been an empty space in the telegram until my decision had irrevocably written the name of John. That I had wished him dead that Reg might live. Guilt played havoc with commonsense and for weeks I reported to the aerodrome and ferried aircraft with the slinking furtiveness of a criminal.
Six weeks elapsed before I was reprieved. Weeks of reasoned argument from Mrs Greenhill who knew all. Of phone calls to his squadron who already were beginning to forget him. I refused to answer Reg’s bewildered unhappy letters. It was in this mood that I returned to Hamble after ferrying a sluggish heavy Walrus amphibious aircraft. Dispirited and tired I slouched into the mess for a cup of coffee. Dropping my parachute and helmet on the floor I got the coffee and slumped into one of the deep leather armchairs that were dotted around the mess.
‘Hi,’ greeted the figure sitting in the chair next to mine.
‘Hi,’ I answered mechanically, intent on balancing my coffee. He got up and, grinning like a Cheshire cat, stood in front of me.
‘John. John!’
He had lost weight and looked drawn and haggard. That evening in Creek Cottage he told me his story, reluctantly.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
He shrugged disinterestedly, got up and sat next to me on the settee. ‘What happened?’ I insisted.
He smiled wryly. ‘I caught it too soon. We were at 20,000 when they jumped us. We broke up. I got on the tail of a 109 and pumped everything I had into him. Funny thing,’ he mused, ‘I was enjoying it; enjoying trying to kill him.’ He lapsed into silence for a moment and then continued: ‘But he wouldn’t go down. Then someone blew me out of the sky. Own fault. I didn’t see him. I caught fire and got out quick. You did a jump once didn’t you?’ he asked parenthetically.
‘Yes.’
‘You must be crazy. Anyway I got down all right and walked home.’
‘From Germany?’
‘Yes. I was captured but jumped off the train on the way to prison camp. Got to Holland. The underground did the rest.’
I looked at the top button of his tunic. It was done up. He caught my eye and grinned, bringing a lustre to his tired eyes. ‘I don’t want to be a hero any more,’ he said.
I lied to him for two months, until he was fit and well and wore the blue and white ribbon of the Distinguished Flying Cross before I told him.
23
During the early spring of 1944 the A.T.A. was almost overwhelmed by a flood of aircraft pouring from the factories. Every available pilot was called to cope with the heavy programme of priority and super-priority delivery flights. Rumours of a big show were rife as, from dawn to dusk, we criss-crossed the skies with an armada of fighters, bombers and troop-transports freshly painted with dramatic black and white markings.
As we flew over the southern ports we could see something was going on. Rivers and creeks were stuffed with landing craft. New balloon barrages sprouted like cabbages over harbours crammed with shipping and supplies. Puzzling structures, subsequently renowned as ‘Pluto’ and ‘Mulberry’ added to the crop of rumours.
On June 1st all leave was cancelled, long stretches of coastline were declared prohibited areas and all aircrew subjected to a belated security check. By then even the most unsophisticated agreed that it must be the invasion.
A sudden lull proclaimed the end of preparations, the moment of decision. Most of us guessed that the lull was the eve of history. Lost by the sudden inactivity and the strange quiet that settled on the aerodrome the pilots moped around the operations room trying to cadge flights, or played tennis desultorily in the shadow of the hangar.
‘Jackie!’
‘Yes?’
‘Ops want you right away.’
I dropped the racquet and ran.
‘Tempest to New Church,’ greeted the operations officer. ‘Priority, they are waiting for it. Pick it up at Aston Down. I’ll arrange for the taxi aircraft to pick you up later at New Church.’
‘Roger. I’ll go and change.’
‘Where?’
‘Creek Cottage.’
‘No time for that. Off you go.’
‘I can’t go like this,’ I protested, indicating my white tennis shorts, plimsolls and sweatshirt.
‘GO!’
I found another pilot, jumped into the stand-by Auster aircraft and took off hurriedly for Aston Down where the Tempest fighter, its deceptively simple lines cloaking with an air of innocence the most formidable fighter in the skies, stood parked near the Control Tower.
By the time I had completed the handing-over formalities a large crowd had gathered. A hundred hands helped me on with my parachute and there was a delighted roar of ‘Ride her cowboy’ as I thankfully hid my legs in the slim cockpit.
The roar subsided to a speculative hum as I got out the Tempest pilot’s notes and refreshed my memory before starting up. Heads shook disapprovingly at this cavalier treatment of the mighty Tempest. Enjoying the effect, I propped the book up against the windscreen and pretended to read whilst starting up and taxi-ing with important blips of the throttle to the take-off position. They were still standing in front of the hangar as I shot into the air like a startled faun and set course for New Church.
A few minutes later I glanced idly to the east where the English Channel glistened in the warm sunshine like a limpid lake and beyond, faintly visible in the heat haze, the French coast waited and challenged. To the north, balloon barrages swayed like drunken elephants at a carnival. Content with speed, power and solitude, it was some seconds before I appreciated the possible menace of the speck that detached itself from the enemy coast and headed towards me. I sat up and watched it warily. Must be one of ours, I reassured myself hopefully, waggling my wings in a timi
d gesture of friendship as it loomed closer. No answering waggle untied the tight knot in my stomach. It was too late to run for it. With a show of bravado I turned towards it but it ignored me and continued steadily on its course. I was mildly insulted before it shot past in front of me showing fully its hideous black silhouette. It was a Buzz-bomb. Impulsively I opened the throttle, turned steeply and, bobbing violently in its wake as it sped through the air with the soulless determination of a torpedo, chased after it. There was nothing I could do except perhaps topple it with a wing-tip. The Tempest’s guns were empty. Urging on the Tempest I stared fascinated and repelled as the macabre gaunt parody of an aircraft headed insolently for the distant haze that pin-pointed London. It was uncanny; my legs were clammy with goose-pimples.
Suddenly, shooting puffs of black smoke from the stovepipe exhaust, it slowed down, dropped a wing and began its menacing gliding turn to oblivion. It circled lazily like a scavenger picking its prey before plunging with inhuman robot hate into a tiny picturesque hamlet. Sickened I circled the stricken cottages, cut through the bitter pall of dust rising slowly in the peaceful afternoon sun and turned back on to course.
Unnerved by this sombre glimpse of the future I made a shaky landing at New Church. It was a relief to hear the warm wolf calls of welcome and see the startled scurry of naked airmen disturbed from their afternoon sun-bath as I pulled off my helmet and emerged from the cockpit.
Shortly afterwards a squadron of Typhoon fighter-bombers returning from an offensive sweep over the French Channel ports taxied in and switched off, their wings stained by cannon smoke. In a moment I was surrounded by nervously chattering pilots, clad in saffron-coloured Mae-Wests, describing the results of the sweep. One of their aircraft had failed to return. Shot down by ground fire. There was shock and fear and drunken excitement in their eyes. May God forgive me but I was almost glad that one of them had died. There was still some humanity in war when one risked life to kill. When the limitations of flesh and fear mar the scientists’ robot perfection.
24
The invasion, the steady creep of Allied forces towards Berlin, Reg’s impending return from India and frequent flashes of irritation from my fellow pilots in the A.T.A.: ‘Oh grow up, Jackie,’ were a nagging reminder that the roundabout of flying, ingenuousness and naiveté on which I had ridden as contentedly and aimlessly as a butterfly since the early days of the war would soon grind to a halt.
My reaction was typically perverse. To genuine innocence and ignorance I defiantly added a breathtaking pious pseudo-saintliness that would have made a nun of Assisi a harlot by comparison. I met all casual references to sex and sensibility with a blank stare and determined misunderstanding, saw smut where there was none and ruined many a good joke by ostentatiously not seeing the point. Thus I determined to counter maturity and evil, which I misguidedly assumed to be the same thing, by being totally immature.
It was unfortunate that casual acquaintances found me quaint and refreshing thus encouraging the growth of this exotic off-shoot in my character (though, when flying, I always left St. Dolores Teresa in the crew-room with a secret, though unadmitted, sigh of relief).
Looking back it is difficult to understand how I survived the fury of my colleagues during this period of immaculate virtue. Even the priest, incognito on the other side of the confessional grille, implied that I was being very tiresome when my only admitted sin was the wish that the war would never end. To please him I confessed imaginary sins and smugly enjoyed fulfilling undeserved penances.
It was in this mood that Reg found me on his return from the Far East during the closing months of summer. It had been a full day with a touch of tension that lifted it out of routine. In the morning I ferried a replacement bomber uneventfully from Dunsfold to Kirkbride in Scotland. Over lunch in the mess I met the engineer who was to accompany me on the return ferry-flight in a dilapidated aircraft, a Mitchell, destined for the graveyard. The ferry-chit was endorsed in red ink with the curt statement: ONE LANDING ONLY, the laconic warning used in the A.T.A. when a machine was on its last legs.
We approached the Mitchell dubiously. It looked very sad and tired in the driving rain. Rows of bombs neatly painted on the nose under an exotic though faded Varga girl testified to its honourable career.
We climbed aboard, cleared the debris from the cockpit, started up and, with the rain alternately dripping and pouring in thin streams as the aircraft lurched heavily on each wheel, taxied to the take-off point.
‘Going to the dance tonight?’ shouted the engineer, referring to an invitation received at Hamble from the officers of a nearby American army camp. I nodded absently as a forbidding black squall threatened from the north turning, like a cloud of locusts, day into twilight. At that moment a red flare shot high into the sky from the Control Tower and hovered brightly in the darkening gloom. ‘The dance,’ urged the engineer as I hesitated whether to obey the order, implicit in the flare and the approaching squall, to cancel the flight and return to the hangars. A vision of couples dancing and the thought of spending another night away from the comforts of Creek Cottage guided my hands to the throttles.
Carefully looking away from the Control Tower we accelerated down the rain-thrashed runway and disappeared over the hills as another flare mottled the sky with an angry red glow. Grinning like truant schoolchildren we levelled out just beneath the clouds and headed out towards the sea where no hills lurked.
As we neared Dunsfold the starboard engine as though suddenly struck by the absurdity of contributing to its own demise coughed and began to vibrate alarmingly.
‘Feather it,’ I shouted, opening up the port engine to maximum power and adjusting the trim. The engineer reached up, pressed the large red feathering button and watched the starboard propeller slowly jerk to’ a halt, its blades knifing the slipstream. ‘O.K. She’s feathered.’ I checked the maps. We had ten minutes to go.
‘Is she holding?’ shouted the engineer, anxiously scanning the instruments. I nodded. The altimeter held steadily at 800, the air-speed indicator at 140.
‘What about alternating?’ shouted the engineer, wriggling and fidgeting in his seat.
‘No. Dunsfold is the nearest. We’ll be there in five minutes. Watch out for it.’
‘There it is,’ he shouted, pointing straight ahead at the runway shining like black glass in the rain. I nodded and circled warily. One engine meant that, once the undercarriage and flaps were down on the final approach, there was no room for error.
The engineer, his hand suspended over the undercarriage lever waited tensely as I lined up the Mitchell and began the final approach to the runway beckoning encouragingly through the misty curtain of rain. ‘Have you done a single-engined landing before?’ he shouted anxiously.
‘No...’ I replied. Without comment he tightened his safety straps.
‘Now?’ he anticipated, his hand fidgeting with the lever.
‘No! We’ll undershoot. Hold it,’ I shouted, kicking the rudders as the Mitchell drifted and crabbed sluggishly in the gusty cross-wind.
‘O.K.,’ I shouted about a mile from the end of the runway, ‘undercarriage down.’
With a gesture of relief he threw the lever forward. The nose dropped immediately as the undercarriage unfolded like the legs of a bird. I compensated for the increased drag with a touch of throttle and trim as the runway appeared to sway in the wind like the landing deck of an aircraft carrier. The engineer’s hand now hovered over the flap lever.
‘Half flap,’ I ordered.
‘Half flap down,’ he acknowledged, selecting the lever half-way.
‘Full flap.’
‘Full flaps down,’ he replied.
As the flaps came fully down we sank like a lift and waited, committed. We were a little high but the wheels touched, bounced and settled safely. The engineer grinned hugely and clenched his hands happily above his head as we rolled to the end of the runway. I switched off the gallant port engine, as the crash wagon clanged out to meet us, and
looked at the maps clutched in my hand. They were shaking like an aspen tree.
‘You all right?’ shouted the crash crew as the engineer slid back the side panel and poked his head through.
‘Sure,’ he shouted, with a grin. ‘The pilot was a lady.’
I felt a childish glow of pleasure at the surprised and impressed glances. A single-engine landing occurred a dozen times a day in the air force. But it was my first and I had pulled it off in an unfamiliar aircraft.
The dance inevitably turned out to be an anti-climax and as our foursome returned to Creek Cottage for good-night coffee my thoughts still lingered on the Mitchell rather than the jitterbugging marathon of the last four hours. I was surprised to see a faint crack of light edging the blackout curtains. The Greenhills usually retired early. We got out of the car and crept quietly into the lounge. As I blinked the blackout from my eyes Reg, bronzed and thinner, rose from the easy-chair and the clutter of pipe cleaners and magazines that tokened a long wait. I remember little of what happened in the shy haze of welcome except that the others were curtly dismissed and I was firmly kissed.
25
The next few weeks as the leaves turned auburn and the sun moved imperceptibly south were weeks of supreme illogicality. A sort of mad-hatter’s tea party during which I was transformed from an eminently Victorian product, prudish and priggish, into an impatient fiancée eager to be dominated by man and marriage. I have tried to avoid saying what must be and is the answer, for it is such a simpering banality. I fell in love. It is not a banality to do so but to write so.
There was little left from our past relationship. The past two impressionable years had changed us both. At first we searched for the things that had committed us to each other two years before. But we had discarded those unconscious mannerisms; forgotten also the conscious ones used to attract.
As his tan faded and his pipe became as familiar as my own hands, the shy curiosity of getting to know another who had the privilege of intimate friendship but who was as a stranger, was slowly transformed into feelings that gave an almost gross significance to perceptions and experience. Flying north was flying away from him. Like a horse returning to the stable I was discontent until the compass once again swung south. A flower, an ode, a falling leaf, everything had a link, however tenuous, with him.
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