by Pip Granger
I can smell that clubhouse even now. It reeked of booze, cigar and cigarette smoke, leather, polish, Parma violets, oil and men. At one end was a bar with a shelf of bottles behind, a couple of beer pumps on the scratched and ringed surface and a few barstools to complete the picture. There was also a blackboard to one side of the shelf. This had names, numbers and weather conditions scrawled on it. The information on the blackboard varied, depending who was in, what they owed for drinks and the current state of the weather.
Sylvia, the source of the scent of violets, ran the bar and made sandwiches when the weather kept everyone grounded for long enough for bellies to rumble and complain about the lack of sustenance. She also baby-sat me when Father was in the air, but all I can remember about her was lots of dark, wavy hair, very red lips, a throaty laugh, a curvaceous figure, a voice like a Billingsgate porter – with language to match – and, of course, the heady smell of Parma violets. Sylvia was engaged to George, the owner of the flying club. He was ex-RAF, and had the rich, fruity accent of the very posh delivered from under a luxuriant moustache that made Jimmy Edwards’s look puny in comparison. Birds could have nested in it. George was very proud of that ’tache, to judge by the way he stroked and caressed it. If it had been a cat, it would have purred.
The couple had been on the verge of matrimony for many years, but the rumour was that his folks disapproved of Sylvia so violently that they threatened to disinherit him. So they bided their time and lived contentedly in a small bungalow opposite the entrance to the aerodrome. Every now and then, George would make a sortie to the family seat to smooth parental feathers and dodge the débutantes his mother had lined up for him to consider for a stroll down ‘the jolly old aisle’. He’d leave Sylvia at home in the bungalow when he made his visits, but he never stayed away for long.
‘I miss the old girl,’ he’d explain to one and all, and slap her behind and make her squeal as he said it. Apart from that, both their lives revolved around the club and each other.
There were tables and chairs dotted about the clubhouse and on the walls, large maps covered in heavy, scratched and yellowed sheets of plastic that added to the smell of the place. There were also propellers fixed to the walls, memorials to planes that had gone to the great hangar in the sky, lost but not forgotten. Each had a story attached: one belonged to an Auster, flown by ‘that silly bugger Reggie “Pongo” Bagshot, who pranged it when he ploughed into that field on the Isle of Wight. His poor old crate would have been tickety-boo if he hadn’t hit that bloody bull. Farmer was livid, the bull was none too happy, either – and the cows were desolate.’
The contrary British weather was responsible for many an hour spent in the club room listening to yarns, lies and grumbles about ‘the sodding weather’. The winds were too strong, or coming from the wrong direction; or there was fog, low cloud, a storm brewing – the list of hazards seemed endless, but somehow these worries never put the pilots, licensed or budding, off their stroke.
As soon as George’s plummy voice boomed over the Tannoy, there was a general scraping of chairs as the men – and one or two women – rose as one and headed for the runways and hangars. Soon there’d be a cacophony of coughs and splutters as one engine after another turned over and caught. The air would be redolent with the smell of aviation fuel and hot engine oil, there’d be men with earphones and what looked like ping-pong bats waving their arms about and a hoarse cry of ‘Chocks away!’ And a Tiger Moth, Gypsy Moth or an Auster would rattle along a runway and soar into the air, carrying my father and his instructor with it.
Later, when Father had enough flying hours and had passed his navigational tests, he would leave his instructor on the ground and I would be in the passenger seat, soaring up towards the beautiful blue skies and scudding, cotton-wool clouds. Once up there, I’d look down and marvel at the tiny houses and the mosaic of green, yellow and brown fields and pity the titchy people, scurrying around like so many ants, because they were stuck on the ground while I was way up in the sky, looping the loop with my daddy.
4
The Knee-High Smuggler
I rustled and crackled like a crumpled old Smith’s crisp packet as I walked across the tarmac with my teddy in one hand and my father’s solid, square hand holding the other. I was hot and grumpy, because I’d been made to wear my liberty bodice even though it was summer-time, and thick liberty bodices were meant for the cold days of winter. Everyone knew that; except, apparently, my father. But I quickly discovered that there was a method to his madness. He’d stuffed large, white, five-pound notes between me and my bodice when my little pink plastic shoulder bag could take no more. That’s why I crackled when I moved.
Later on in my life of crime, I was provided with a specially doctored teddy that could take even more of the precious, and rather beautiful, banknotes. I remember those notes well. They were the size of a doll’s tablecloth and had lovely flowing handwriting telling the bearer how much the Bank of England said they were worth. I think that the paper they were made of had at least some linen in it, because they felt so crisp, and the sound they made when handled was most satisfying. However, they were significantly less pleasing when stuffed down a person’s liberty bodice, as they tickled and scratched something awful and made the wearer hotter and crankier than ever.
I had the sense not to make a fuss, though. I had learned to my cost that annoying my father was never a good idea: no match was needed to ignite his temper, a spark would do, as he had no fuse, not even a short one. What’s more, I sensed that what we were doing was our secret, and I wasn’t to let anyone know about it, especially if they were wearing any kind of uniform. It’s funny how the children of the bent take that lesson in with their mother’s milk. It’s like a sixth sense.
Post-war England was stony broke, and travellers were forbidden to carry more than about twenty pounds out of the country. A measly twenty-odd quid was nowhere near enough lolly for Father’s new enterprise, which was why I had become a walking bankroll. Nobody would think to search a curly-haired, blue-eyed moppet of three or four for currency when she was out for a jaunt with her daddy. And so it was that we made the first of our many trips to Le Touquet in France.
Poor Peter was green with envy. Like all boys at the time, he was besotted with aircraft, flying and all things aeronautical. The war and the heroics of the Royal Air Force had seen to that. As soon as we were out of the Rest Centre and into a council house in Essex, Peter would spend many happy hours in his bedroom, fiddling with bits of balsa wood, glue, white tissue paper, varnish, elastic bands and little tins of smelly, shiny paint, creating Spitfires and Messerschmitts to dogfight once again. He’d rumple up his counterpane to be the White Cliffs of Dover, and his bedside rug would become the English Channel as he re-enacted skirmishes between the RAF and the German Luftwaffe. He became a master of sound effects: he could do spluttering engines, exploding bombs and rattling machine guns as the action demanded.
If there was no other boy available to be the German half of things, then I was dragooned into action, which thrilled me to bits, because I so rarely got to play with other children that even playing with my older brother was a huge treat. It was so much of an honour for me to be allowed to play with Peter that I didn’t seem to mind being shot down in flames over and over again. We both understood that it wasn’t on for the Royal Air Force to land in the drink: that was the Germans’ job. I, being the younger and ‘only’ a girl, was always cast as the enemy.
Naturally, as soon as a lad with murky knees that lurked just beneath the hem of his grey flannel shorts showed up, I was tossed aside and ordered to go and play with my dolls, or something equally boring. Which is why I harboured a secret satisfaction at being the family’s chief mini-aviator and currency smuggler. For once, I was top dog and mistress of the skies, while poor Peter was chained to his desk at school, struggling with handwriting practice and his three times table.
*
It was market day in Le Touquet, and Mother h
ad joined Father and me on one of our ‘business trips’ to France. Sometimes all four of us made the journey across the Channel, but Peter wasn’t with us on this occasion. Which may have been just as well, because, although he was dead keen, Peter was not a good traveller and there was always the risk that he’d ruin the precious stock by vomiting on it. Even men in grubby raincoats, hungry for second-hand sex, drew the line at paying hard cash for a stained, crusty and smelly copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
For once, it was a happy day; both parents were more or less sober, and inclined to view the world and each other with a benign eye. We strolled in the sunshine between stalls piled high with wonderful food. Stall after stall displayed colourful fresh fruit and vegetables, deliciously smelly French cheeses, long sticks of bread and fabulous fish and shellfish nestled in crushed ice. As we walked past, our eyes on stalks and our mouths watering, I was filled with wonder. For the whole of my life, England had had food rationing, and so I’d never even seen a lot of the produce before, let alone eaten it. My parents were in transports of delight, and deep in food nostalgia. They kept asking each other if they remembered when ‘you could get a succulent steak, followed by apple pie and cream, for one and threepence?’ or extolling the virtues of the knickerbocker glory that Betty had told me so much about, and I listened, fascinated. We were having a lovely time.
We wanted to take it all home with us, but one big problem was weight. We simply couldn’t buy everything in sight, because the three of us, plus the precious books, cigarettes and brandy we were taking back with us, were about as much as our flimsy little plane could carry. The second problem was lack of lolly: we’d spent almost all of the money we’d smuggled out of England on our contraband, so funds were tight. We just had to be content with gawping at the produce and sampling tiny little bits of what we could afford, eating it on the hoof.
Mother and Father were just discussing the last time they’d seen ‘a bit of cheese that size’ when Mother stopped dead in her tracks and gaped at some peculiar yellow, bent things on a fruit stall.
‘Bananas!’ she breathed, as if she had just seen God. ‘Look, bananas!’ I looked, but couldn’t see what the fuss was about, because I thought that the almost mythical fruit came in a sundae glass, as Betty had told me, and I was so disappointed to gaze at the yellow mound and note the absence of ‘dollops of vanilla ice cream’, not to mention the sprinkle of hundreds and thousands. ‘We’ve got to get some,’ Mother told Father. ‘The kids have never had a banana, and I can’t wait to see their faces when they taste one.’
Mother, the only French-speaker in our party, began negotiations with the stall holder as Father counted up the money we had left, and in the end they managed to buy what they called ‘a hand’ of ten bananas. This confused me slightly, because although the bananas did look a bit like big, yellow fingers, all the world knew that a hand held only five digits. But then there was no telling about the way grown-ups saw things, and anyway, everyone was in such a good mood, and I knew better than to argue the toss.
We found a bench and sat down, with me firmly sandwiched between them, and Mother solemnly handed me a banana which I politely stuck in my mouth, although I was still hankering for the ice-cream and hundreds and thousands. If they said it was edible, then I had to believe them, but I have to say, it tasted a bit strange to me, sort of waxy and hard and pithy. My parents thought this was hilarious, and rocked with laughter until tears ran down their cheeks. I’d taken a reluctant bite and was trying to chew it before they collected themselves enough for Mother to notice what I’d done. Still chortling, she showed me how to peel the thing. It was like opening a birthday present, and my first bite, sans skin, was like being transported to heaven. It was wonderful, truly wonderful. I was all for gromphing another one, being something of a little porker, but Mother was firm: we were taking them home to share with Peter, and that was final.
Once at the aerodrome, with all of our illicit loot safely stashed under my seat, we were soon trundling along the runway ready to take off for the trip home. There was never any looping the loop, hedge-hopping, victory rolls or fancy stuff on return trips, in case our cargo was dislodged and damaged, so the flight was uneventful.
Once we landed safely in England, a cheery Customs officer stuck his head into the cockpit and asked, ‘Anything to declare?’
And, for once, Mother was able to say, with complete honesty, ‘Yes! We’ve bought a hand of bananas.’ And she reached back to where I was sitting, grabbed the paper bag with the fruit in it and waved it triumphantly at the official. The officer duly peered inside the bag. There was a moment’s confused silence, then he began to laugh, and his eyes twinkled merrily as he drew out the contents and dangled them in front of Mother’s startled face.
‘As far as I’m aware, there’s no duty or restrictions on these, madam,’ he informed her. During the journey I’d quietly scoffed the lot, and all we were left with was a hand of empty skins.
For the most part, I preferred going to France with Father on my own. First off, if Peter was aboard we couldn’t do any fancy stunts on account of his weak stomach and his tendency to make for the door to get out, even when we were high above the clouds. Also, the combined honk of vomit and aviation fuel is not a happy one. Then there was the problem, if Mother came too, of keeping our parents out of the bars.
Drinking was one of the things they liked to do together, but sadly, when they guzzled booze it led to domestic strife very quickly. Sometimes it was just a bit of a squabble, but the trouble was, you could never be sure when the bitching would boil over into actual violence, and then it was a toss-up who clouted who first.
Once, when all four of us had flown over by way of a celebratory trip, the fight was so severe that gendarmes were called, and we all spent most of the night in custody while we waited for my parents to sober up and calm down. We were in a café that was also a bar, and while Peter and I enjoyed our cheese omelettes and chips, our parents were downing a substantial liquid lunch to celebrate finally being allocated a council house, on a brand new estate in Essex. Father wasn’t that thrilled to be moved out so far from town, but Mother had already found a new job, fairly near to our new house, so she was ecstatic. At last, a home of our own! However, the celebration became increasingly fractious with each gulp of wine. That was the trouble with having boozy parents: celebrations, parties and even holidays would soon turn into battles royal when alcohol was introduced into the proceedings. And of course, it always was. The irritable wrangles that day suddenly escalated into open warfare when one of the waitresses approached us with a wide smile, her arms outstretched, and exclaimed, ‘Douglas!’ in a surprised and delighted tone.
‘Angélique,’ Father replied, a tad more cautiously.
Angélique spoke rapidly in French, but as only Mother understood her, she had to act as interpreter and her face grew more and more thunderous as the conversation progressed.
‘She says she is delighted to see you again.’ Mother listened some more. ‘She says she has never forgotten that day when you dropped out of the sky and made an emergency landing in her father’s cow pasture.’
‘I told you about the emergency landing …’ Father began, but Mother wasn’t listening to him, but to another burst of rapid French from Angélique. This was followed by what was obviously a series of questions from my mother; we could tell by the way her voice rose at the end of sentences, in that note of enquiry that questions in any language seem to have. Angélique answered them happily, smiling all the while, obviously unaware of the dangerous changes taking place in Mother’s expression. However, Father, Peter and I noted the signs and I, for one, almost went off my lunch as my fear grew. Even though the delicious omelette and chips had turned to ashes in my mouth, I ploughed steadily on with them, knowing that it was always a bit of a toss-up when we would get to eat again. Mealtimes could be very fluid in our household, or missed altogether, depending on Mother’s condition and the state of our rocky finances. Ther
efore, it paid to gromph when the opportunity arose, and to not be a fuss-bucket about it, either, the way that children so often are. If we complained, our nosh would wind up in the bin and we simply went without, which cured Peter and me of being faddy very quickly.
‘What’s she saying?’ Father asked anxiously.
‘Wait!’ Even Angélique’s smile wavered as that single word exploded like a pistol shot and she finally noticed the tension that was building at our table, and the worrying glitter in Mother’s eyes.
With a murmured, ‘A bientôt,’ Angélique beat a hasty retreat back to the kitchen. Mother took several deep breaths before telling us what mademoiselle had said.
‘It seems that my excellent French has led her to believe that I am the cousin who has been translating her letters to you, and who has been replying on your behalf. She thanked me profusely.’ Mother smiled tightly and her eyes glittered with pent-up rage. ‘She says that I write a beautiful and very romantic letter, and that her parents are looking forward to you coming to stay again soon.’
‘I can explain …’ Father began, but Mother interrupted before he could get any further.
‘I bet you can, you, you …’ – Mother paused as she searched for inspiration – ‘You incestuous bastard!’ she hissed venomously. ‘Have you explained to Angélique that you have two children by your “cousin” and that, being married already, you are in no position to be courting her?’ Mother took another hefty swig from her glass before she continued. ‘So that’s where you disappeared to when you took off for the weekend! And there was me, silly cow, thinking you were trying to find some work. When will I ever learn never to believe a single word you say?’