by Carol Gould
54
‘I’ve never understood why the daughter of a millionaire aviation manufacturer should have to be tested for ATA,’ complained Kay, stretching her bronzed figure across a towel on the bright, sandy beach. Only a short distance away was Magnetic Island and Kay luxuriated in the special beauty of her native Barrier Reef.
‘Father has always bent over backwards to make me work for what I get in life,’ Lili countered, sitting upright and looking through binoculars toward the island.
‘Well, if Edith Allam ever does bother to make her way here, I am not being tested,’ Kay asserted, looking around at the neighbouring sunbathers, most of whom were women whose husbands and lovers had begun to drift away to the war.
‘Edith never even sent an apology,’ Kay continued, unfolding a large London newspaper that was ten days old. ‘Now I’m reading here that more ATA girls are being seen at a place called Upavon, and the press boys are taking pictures of them. There’s a tart from Warsaw over there as well – I gather the Polish boys have been flying with the RAF. We’re missing it all because of that stupid Yank bird.’
Lili frowned and laid the binoculars on the towel.
‘Actually, I had a dream last night,’ she said, fingering a heart shape into the sand. ‘We were on a big airship dropping bombs, and all around us were aeroplanes of every description, all manufactured by my Dad, with beautiful women pilots inside every cockpit. Suddenly we were landing in the middle of a gorgeous field next to a glorious mansion with those landscaped gardens you only see in England. Amy Johnson greeted us – just you and me – and then she went up in our balloon. That was when my dream ended because I had banged my head on the bedside table.’
‘What boring dreams you have, mate,’ Kay muttered.
Lili played with the sand and then looked out to the sea. ‘God, I miss having you in my bed,’ she said, playfully dropping a grainy handful on Kay’s ankle.
‘Wait until we can get away from home again,’ Kay said, lying back and closing her eyes. She was feverish with the urge to tear away from home, and resented the adventures being had by the European girl pilots.
‘Don’t you miss men any more?’ Lili asked, her tone hushed.
‘I’m homebound, so I try not to think about anything, Lil.’
‘They’re talking about stopping air joyriding, Kay – that means we can’t even fly for fun anymore. All the civil aircraft are being earmarked for the war effort.’
Kay feigned sleep to stop Lili’s chatter, thinking about their overwhelming physical minglings that had left Kay tingling and helpless for weeks after they had left Brisbane for home …
Edith had never come to Australia to administer the ATA tests, and the girls had had to return to their anxious parents, but Lili had been unable to settle into family life. Her father had had to take long walks after midnight to find his wandering daughter, her gaze fixed upon the Reef under brilliant moonlight and her mind distracted by something he knew was not conventional.
Her mother had asked if she had found a young man, but Lili was jumpy when such questions were asked, always running from the spacious mansion and not stopping until she had reached the threshold of Kay’s front door.
The Pelhams were always polite and plied her with beer until she was dizzy, but Kay had looked bored. At night Lili could not sleep, her hot, searching hand running down the length of her own body and hungering for Kay’s strong, controlled lovemaking. Now, alone with her polite parents and the gentle servants, Lili wondered if Kay’s nights were scorched with this same desperation, cured only when Lili could run into the darkness and let the seas drench the conflagration that danced around her nipples and erupted along her ripe contours …
Lili’s dream had been more specific than the version she recounted to Kay: though she had never met the American, Edith Allam was clear as a day of Townsville sunshine, her smile friendly but not beautiful and her entourage just one single man, a hulking blond. Lili had been disturbed by the dream because Amy had risen above the crowd in the giant balloon, which all the girls assumed could not be retrieved.
When she awakened Lili felt depressed to be languishing in Australia. If dreams could be harbingers, however, Lili hoped the imagery might come true and she could fly away to England with her most beautiful possession and make love in a tiny room at the top of a country hotel.
She too had read about the daring ATA girls being tested at Upavon in a county called Wiltshire, and had followed all the scandals that seemed to dominate the pages of the newspapers, war or no war. Lili and Kay had willed Valerie Cobb to overcome the hypocrisy of the characters who had sent her into exile, and had laughed together at the insinuations about Miss Cobb and Miss Bryce …
War was, after all, incidental: Lili had come to terms with the fact that she could never stop thinking about Kay, and as a sixth sense told her the balloon dream might soon unfold before their eyes Lili let the sea envelop her burning flesh before desire might drive her to insanity.
55
Upavon village, on the banks of the Wiltshire Avon, was home to Central Flying School. Jo, Sally and Barbara had been flown there by Amy Johnson, and the trio moved into rooms set aside for them in a house by the Avon River. Amy had flown on to Prestwick, where, she explained, three men including Alec required transport back to White Waltham. Jo, Sally and Barbara had winked at one another, knowing Amy was destined for another encounter with Hamilton Slade. She was not a good liar, Valerie always said, and now the girls knew what their absent CO had meant. Amy was so nice, and her melancholy dedication to ATA duties, desperately dull compared with her previous life of glory, made her a disarming companion for all the women in the organization.
No pilot, male or female, could endure the nerve-wracking CFS course without a few fleeting moments of wanting to abandon ferrying to return to their wartime gardens. After her successful completion of the course, Delia Seifert had returned to Hatfield spluttering to the others about having to come in to land at a speed to which they had, until then, been accustomed for cruising.
Confidence was tested by throwing a pilot into an aerobatics routine and then demanding endless solo take-offs and landings. Knowledge of constant-speed propellers, retractable undercarriages and cooling gills had to be gained with rapidity, and, most exciting of all, the girls had to learn to cope with two engines. Only a year before, Valerie Cobb had had to fight every step of the way to convince the Committee that a tiny band of females should be allowed to transport trainer aircraft short distances. Now the gap was narrowing, and in a matter of twelve momentous months Valerie’s dream had crystallized; in fact, the ATA women were progressing up the ranks faster than anyone had envisaged. The country simply could not do without the services of these immensely capable aviatrices: Germany’s folly had made a dream a reality for the women lucky enough to wage war in uniform up in an airy space.
Several men had arrived at Upavon for the course, including Josef Ratusz and Anthony Seifert. Sally had talked to Anthony all afternoon, intrigued by his stories, which included a claim that his mother had sent him away to be fostered and would be shocked to see that he had amounted to something. During his infancy his father had been a menacing force sodden with alcohol, and the boy, who had always doubted his true paternity, was sent away ‘for safekeeping’, as his mother had said, meekly surrendering him to a small home in Southampton. He had yet to tell Delia of his claim, but he had watched her from afar and admired her brilliance in the air and wondered if it had been a blessing that she had been allowed to grow up in her own home as a son within a daughter’s body.
Ratusz had found the whole Upavon exercise unbelievably humiliating and refused to speak to anyone the entire first day of the course. When told he would be expected to fly with an Instructor on a Master he had exclaimed, ‘I am master,’ and stormed off, only to be reprimanded by the base CO and giggled at by a bevy of WAAFs who made jokes about Seifert and the Pole …
A chill in the air seemed to herald the
beginning of a destructive winter, and Jo Howes cursed as she climbed to a suitable altitude in a Master and realized her window was stuck open. Her instructor smiled and when they returned to the ground Jo felt she would die from the crackling cold that sapped into her bones and diluted her ability to think clearly in the air – while her instructor seemed totally unaffected. Some time had to be spent mending the window and Jo became impatient, her irritation increasing at the nearby sounds of Sally and Barbara chattering to Anthony about tennis, as they waited for their course to commence.
On this, the second morning, Jo returned with the other ATA pilots, their smart blue uniforms and splendid talents attracting mixed expressions from the faces of WAAFs. Jo was pleased to be going up again, on her last flight with an instructor before her solo testing. The pair resumed their labours in the Master, its window now tightly shut and the snugness inside giving Jo a feeling of security she had never felt inside her father’s caravan or in a room at Mrs Bennell’s. She felt a little thrill when they were airborne again. It would be a good day, she knew, and as Sally and Barbara watched the Master become a pinprick in the sky, the WAAFs envied the other girls’ special magic. Glancing down at the ground below, Jo experienced a swift pang of guilt at the thought of enjoying flight better than an afternoon in her father’s company. She knew she had outgrown his clumsy attentiveness and was grateful to have been ordered to Hatfield. Glancing down again she thought she could see his grey head gazing up, but before she could adjust her focus the figure had vanished.
Soon Barbara, Anthony, Sally the tennis ace and I, Ratusz, as Josef called himself, were airborne. Each did a dozen solos, landing at high speeds, and were exhausted by the end of their test day. They went on to twin-engined Oxfords, their tests including spinning and the perilous single-engine flying. By the time the students returned from each flight their confidence had been shaken. Only Josef endured the comprehensive course with aplomb, at one point in mid-flight feigning sleep while taking his instructor through quite terrifying aerobatics. Every one of the pilots knew they had to pass through the course if only for the honour of Valerie Cobb. Ratusz had given first-hand descriptions of the Nazi terror to his ATA colleagues, and Valerie’s plight as a prisoner of misplaced zeal had irked him because he saw her as the profoundly persecuted heroine of female aviation in a war of personalities remote from the real global apocalypse.
Raging through the skies and feeling that the finger-light touch of heaven was not far away, Ratusz left his instructor in awed silence, smirking to himself at the thought of British arrogance being cowed. Both Josef and Hana were bewildered by the islanders’ humour and only their dedication to flying kept their spirits alive. He was disenchanted with the characters he had encountered so far, and Hana had abandoned any thoughts of carnal satisfaction with an Englishmen for the time being. Now, Ratusz was ready for what everyone in the world had come to recognize: the possibility of a prolonged conflict in which ordinary love, daily habits and small commonplace deeds were to be abandoned for extraordinary acts in a timescale that could end in annihilation to the music of Wagner.
Blazing alongside Josef’s Oxford, Sally was concentrating on every detail of the flight, her first solo on the course. After so many months with ATA, alternating between being Sally Met and a regular pilot, she had lost any fear. Today, however, she had quaked at the whole prospect of her future hinging on what she saw as a few idiotic sojourns she could ordinarily do blindfold. Tension mounted to a pitch she had never before experienced within her slim body, a terror she had never felt in even the toughest centre-court match at a major final. As her Oxford levelled off and the cold but clear environs whistled past her window, she knew she could afford to relax. Sally took the aircraft further afield than regulations allowed, Barbara’s aircraft now only a dot in her peripheral vision.
Sally’s mind jumped to Stella Teague, who in passing this same course was now on to Mosquitos and Hurricanes but whose attention had been drawn most recently to the plight of her former dance master. As the air screamed past and the ecstasy of flying overtook her, Sally had a sudden realization: this war seemed a succession of brave girls losing the most important men in their lives but being too loyal to ATA ferry chits to go searching for them. Then again, she told herself: Hana had lost track of her mother, and Lord Truman, like Valerie’s Dad, was in search of a daughter. Two more diverse characters she could not imagine: Hana and his Lordship! Hana had already evinced a certain animosity towards the natives despite the kindness with which she had been treated. It was the charitable side of the English personality that had allowed Hana Bukova exemption from this very course, squeezed in at great expense before Christmas.
Turning around, Sally headed back and prepared for her first solo high-speed landing. She knew Jo would need reassuring if her head became filled with any further thoughts of Cal March and his celebrated mission. Everything had become secret in this war, so that a boy from a slum could not speak to his loved one about a task to which he had been assigned that could change the course of their Empire’s history for ever. Jo had wanted to join Hana in London to track down the bits of paper that revealed the whereabouts of Vera Bukova, but Sally wagered to herself that Jo would be rushing off to White Waltham in pursuit of Cal.
Now Sally was approaching the hilly grass and she could see Josef’s Oxford, his unmistakably daring aerobatics spellbinding to even the experienced eye. She would have to do a circuit of the airfield because he was now making a landing approach and in the distance she was pleased, and to her own astonishment, relieved, to see Barbara and Anthony on their way back to base.
Close enough to Sally to discern the colour of her smart goggles, Anthony Seifert was savouring this solo flight, the Oxford seeming to content itself with his delicate, and as yet uncertain touch. He knew he should not be ruminating but the special solitude that was flying had always made his brain tingle: never did he think so extravagantly as when airborne. Delia’s awkward figure rampaged across his mind, and he wondered if she would accept him as a brother and perhaps become a girl at last. Had his mother done the unthinkable and made her only daughter into a surrogate son and husband? He had loved the girl as soon as he had seen her getting out of a Tiger at Lossiemouth.
Now, as he approached the charming field that still boasted green patches of autumn grass, the vibrant engines of the aircraft reminded him that human contact would be minimal in this conflagration. Now the immediate task at hand was the bringing of distinction to Valerie Cobb’s prestigious organization, without which the RAF would by now have fallen on its face.
Anthony’s height made visibility excellent and he could take in the movements of every chum on this course: there was Barbara, followed by Sally, and the crazy Pole who was so famous in his own land. As he positioned himself for an approach, Anthony realized that from this war he wanted a commodity about which he had never thought until ATA had brought him back to his family’s doorstep: that commodity, he told himself, was love – and with that he raced on to the somewhat uneven landing strip of Upavon and screeched past a clutch of wincing WAAFs.
Delaying her approach and embarking on a circuit, Barbara watched Anthony Seifert blister Upavon’s landing patch. She relished this chance to fly solo in a new machine that had become second nature to the Angeliques and Edith Allams of this world. What was it about Allam that made her rise above any normal pattern for a girl of her generation? It was bad enough that she, Barbara Newman, had departed from the perpetual tedium that had been the destiny of every woman in her family’s, but for Edith it must have been a catastrophic event. Barbara’s father had always detested Americans but she felt he would not repu- diate Allam. Guiding the Oxford back towards the deceptively short path that was an excuse for a wartime runway, Barbara gasped and for a moment came close to losing control of her aircraft. All she wanted now was to land and be done with this exercise: she looked forward to the arrival of Edith and the colonials and to hatching a plan that would bring Valerie bac
k into glory. Glancing briefly to the side, Barbara could see Josef Ratusz showing off. She prayed for his safe landing, not so much for the sake of his well-being as for ATA’s reputation.
Polish and Czech pilots were taking Spitfires into air combat and men like Ratusz, now roaring into Upavon at an excessive landing speed, were also praying. They beseeched the Almighty that Valerie Cobb might be back in leadership soon and that more of the supremely talented women fliers would be taking over as Commanding Officers across Britain. Her team of aces would be brought in on the strength of their own merits, not as a publicity exercise ‘to release more men for the RAF’.
As he taxied, Ratusz was committing the cardinal sin of ignoring the instructor, but his mind travelled forcefully to thoughts of Kranz the Jew and to the gossip the Poles had already heard concerning Shirley Bryce, Amy and Jim, and Gordon Selfridge. Hana had been told that Selfridge had departed Britain desperately in love with Nora, who, it was whispered, had no real interest in men. Josef laughed to himself and the instructor glared. His mind still chattered as his Oxford slowed, manoeuvring past Barbara and Sally, each in a Master. Shirley had not been home to see her mother for six months, and this had horrified Hana more than anything she had heard in the Hatfield canteen. Amy and Jim had been the victims of alcohol, a situation that left Hana and Josef bemused: what pilots would drink so much schnapps that they would be renowned for their habits rather than for their achievements?