by Carol Gould
Did Cal have such a will to live? she asked herself.
But perhaps he had not lived long enough to want more.
Champagne glasses were chinking and Shirley left the building to run out into the dark and scream into the night.
58
Emerging from the mews in which the strange little doctor had his private practice, Angelique walked gingerly along the elaborate cast-iron railings of Harley Street. She had spent two days in London and was enjoying the looks attracted by her still shapely figure inside the superbly tailored uniform. A thin layer of ice now coated the pavement and the searing cold was making Angelique weaken. She had wanted to walk to Whitehall to hear Balfour speak but her resolve was evaporating. Taxis were rare, and when one eventually trundled down the slippery street her attire dazzled the driver at once and she was on her way to the House.
When the taxi drew up into Parliament Square the driver hesitated:
‘Free ride, miss, if you’ll tell me I’m not hallucinating.’
‘I’m not Hedy Lamarr, if that’s what you thought.’
‘No. It’s the wings, miss.’
Angelique stepped back, nearly losing her footing on the treacherous glaze as she looked down at the emblems on her uniform.
‘My wings are ATA,’ she said, smiling. ‘Air Transport Auxiliary.’
‘You’re a WAAF then?’
She resisted losing her temper. ‘There’s nothing wrong with WAAFs, but I am a pilot.’
‘Get off – you’re having me on.’ The fixed grin the driver had kept up throughout their ride was fading.
Angelique rummaged in her bag and drew out a diary. ‘A Wellington from Brooklands to St Athan, and, my God, another chit for a Beaufort out of bloody Chobham, and – would you believe it? – a Spit to Lichfield. Why can’t I have a Hurricane this week?’
‘You’re a bloomin’ actress, you are,’ he said, switching off his motor.
‘Indeed I was – until I became a full-time pilot for the war effort, my man.’
‘What was that you was reading from?’
‘Just a diary I keep – I listen to the other girls talking.’
‘There’s more of you?’ he spluttered, his eyes bulging.
‘Good Lord, yes. In fact, I am responsible for Are you pregnant? being written into the RAF medical as a routine question.’ Angelique was freezing alive, but with the relentless determination that had made her an actress, she persevered.
‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘Three days ago I got out of a Hind, and because my tummy was bulging more than I wanted it to, the male CO shouted, “What is that woman doing flying an aircraft pregnant? Did no-one notice at her Medical?” I replied, “Nobody ever asked!” and from that moment on, Are you pregnant? was written in to the RAF rule book for examining doctors.’
‘You mean they ask blokes?’
‘They ask blokes.’
He had started up his engine, and before Angelique could replace the diary and fish out her money he had zoomed off. She chuckled to herself at the memory of recent events, which now seemed so remote in the harrowing bustle of blitzed London.
‘You shouldn’t be revealing classified RAF information to men on the street.’
Angelique swung around, and if she had been kissed by the King she could not have felt a greater wave of excitement than at the sight she now beheld:
‘Dear God – Valerie!’ she screeched, throwing her arms about the tall, striking woman.
‘You didn’t see me,’ Valerie said, kissing her on the cheek.
‘What have they done with your uniform?’ Angelique asked, looking her Commanding Officer up and down.
‘Something wrong with this?’ Valerie stepped back, opening her coat to reveal an exquisitely cut dress fit for a duchess. ‘What are you doing in London? You should be helping to fend off Hitler.’
‘Yesterday I saw Balfour, and today the doctor. I thought I would pop in to hear Harold address the House.’
‘What did the doctor say?’
‘I’m healthy enough. What about you? Do we get you back? Are you free?’ Angelique felt faint from her sense of astonishment and joy. Until now, she had never realized how much Valerie’s presence had affected each girl.
‘No. And I could be stashed away in mothballs with my uniforms for the duration of the war, if anyone were to see me here.’
‘What the hell is going on, Valerie? Can you not walk the streets of your own country?’
‘Apparently not – at least for the time being. Anyway – I saw you from that window over there and just had to steal away. Why did your taxi linger?’
‘He thought I was an eccentric dressing up as a man.’
‘Did I hear you telling him about being pregnant?’
‘I suppose I shouldn’t have – what do you expect from an actress with a big mouth? Valerie – did you know Amy and Jim are divorced but he drops in on her?’
‘That’s what I mean – loose talk loses reputations, let alone wars.’
‘You’re so patriotic, Val.’ Angelique felt a foreigner in these surroundings.
‘After what’s happened to me, I ’d advise everyone to be very careful,’ said Valerie. ‘The safest people in this world are Church of Scotland crofters.’
‘Amy misses you, Val.’
Valerie did not want to reveal that Amy had visited her – she could trust Angelique with the information but her ordeal had made her reticent and frightened.
‘How is Martin?’ Valerie cast a furtive look at the window of her father’s office.
‘He’s fine – starting on those Beauforts and things. He and Oscar operate as an ATA team, a bit like Sam and Noel. Are you anxious to get back inside, Val?’
‘Walk with me.’
The two women went into the imposing building and stopped in the foyer.
‘Valerie, I can’t believe it’s you!’ Angelique enthused, throwing affectionate arms about her once more. ‘Some of us thought you were dead.’
‘In an odd way I have died, you know.’
Angelique had never before seen Valerie Cobb cry, but now she could detect a catch in the other woman’s throat, and a reddening about her eyes.
‘What about the girls?’ Valerie asked. ‘Is everyone all right?’
‘Marion and Alec are very happy, but she always looks as if someone has taken all her blood for the war effort. Sam and Noel are getting terribly chummy, and Shirley Bryce misses you terribly.’
‘Does she make a career of it?’
‘Valerie – she cares deeply for you. It isn’t her fault you abandoned your friendship with her because Friedrich fell out of the sky.’
‘The last thing I want is Shirley making a spectacle of herself. What was that you said about Noel and Sam? Chummy?’
‘Perhaps I should rephrase that,’ Angelique said, studying this remarkable woman’s fiercely intense eyes and understanding why Shirley might miss her so much. ‘Sam and Noel have become … inseparable – people do talk, you know. His wife is distraught. Alec Harborne went to visit her and she’s taken to all sorts of weird habits, like piling up newspapers in her drawing room.’
Valerie listened quietly, bowing her head.
Angelique continued:
‘I think you miss Shirley, deep down inside.’ The words had popped out, and she regretted them at once.
‘I miss all my pilots!’ stormed Valerie.
‘Please don’t be cross with me, Val,’ Angelique said meekly, wanting to hug her once more. ‘Seeing you is like a dream.’
‘It is wonderful to see you too.’ Valerie had calmed down and spoke in hushed tones, gulping at the lump in her aching, sad throat.
‘Is there anyone to whom you want me to say hello?’
‘You were not meant to have seen me, my dear,’ she said, smiling. ‘I ask just one thing: if you should learn of a definite address for Friedrich, please, please let me know––’
‘Valerie!’ A brusque voice interrupted them.
‘I’m coming, Dad.’
Sir Henry Cobb bowed briefly to Angelique and before she could say goodbye to Valerie, Hatfield’s Commanding Officer and the founder of women’s Air Transport Auxiliary had vanished down a corridor with her father. Momentarily Angelique wanted to run after her, but then emotion overwhelmed her and sobs surged into her mouth. She tried to muffle her gasps, but her weeping reverberated through the sombre chambers. She stumbled back out into the fiendish winter and a taxi took her away from Harold and the House and the expensive doctor who had said it was too late to kill the foetus. She would head towards White Waltham, where she would find a way of getting airborne and forgetting Martin Toland’s child until it had been born in Spain. Her taxi pulled away from Whitehall as, from a window above, Valerie Cobb saw a blur that was Angelique but whose form was too obscured by a flood of the Commanding Officer’s own uncontrollable tears.
59
They had waited what seemed an eternity for Barbara Newman to arrive for tea. In this part of Norfolk guests were expected to behave impeccably, even in time of war – and especially if the guest in question was a top officer of the Air Transport Auxiliary. Indeed, Barbara would be interrupting a punishing schedule of Hurricane deliveries to journey all the way to Weston Longville. Lord and Lady Truman had no staff for this grim winter of 1940, and their financial state had crumbled further when their only useful land was taken over by the RAF. The local base was being expanded and now the Trumans lived alone amid the noise of a war they had hoped to escape in this remote wedge of East Anglia.
‘Do you suppose she’s been distracted by those men?’
Truman looked at his wife and frowned. ‘What men?’
‘This girl is a pilot, and she would have been intrigued by what’s going on in our grounds.’
‘If you’ve seen one installation, you’ve seen them all,’ he grunted, scraping at the bowl of his pipe.
‘I do hope nothing terrible has befallen her,’ Lady Truman fretted, her slim figure making a perfect L shape as she sat upright in what her husband called her ‘anxious before lunch’ position.
‘Do you remember that chap I told you about – the one who stopped here for a bath?’ he asked, resting his pipe on a knee clad in thick wool trousers.
‘Oh, good lord! That awful dark man from Vienna?’
‘Didn’t know you knew him.’ Truman dug in his jacket pocket for a tobacco pouch.
‘He came to see Tim at the House,’ she said curtly.
‘Well, that Jewish scum has wrecked poor Valerie Cobb’s life.’
‘I can’t see what it has to do with us, darling.’
‘It has everything to do with us,’ he barked. ‘I feel responsible for her plight. Tibbs and the gardener made such a song and dance about the man – you’d have thought he was the devil himself come to enslave Christian England. In the end I had to give in and tell all to the police. As it turns out, the miserable wretch was part of the same gang who stole my wallet. Fagin lives.’
‘Why are you telling me all this now?’ Her face was pinched, but the beauty of a debutante still peeped weakly through her tired features.
He had tamped the tobacco into the splendidly carved wood and was holding a light over the fragrant concoction. ‘Virginia leaves – imported. Same as those poor airmen.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Americans – the ones who they say just died.’
‘Who?’ His wife’s face was immobile.
‘They were sent to deliver some new aeroplanes. There was a great hoo-hah because the aircraft had made it through U-Boat Alley on a freighter from Virginia. It seems the blasted flying machines were faulty. Two chaps went down one after the other. Terrible mess.’
‘How did you hear?’
‘Charlie Buxton – Commandant at our new base here – told me the whole story. They crashed a few minutes after leaving the factory. If you ask me, those ATA people shouldn’t be allowed to muck about in new aircraft. Think of what those two things cost. My God – it doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘Perhaps that’s why Barbara is late.’
Truman puffed away furiously, a grin on his face.
His wife gazed at the smoke curling up into the still air of the quiet sitting room and let her eyes wander to the view beyond their front window. ‘Just imagine how the families in America will suffer.’
‘What families?’ he asked, squinting.
‘Those two men – the vicars – surely they have families.’
‘Lord knows. Anyway, I’m getting fed up with this waiting.’
‘Have you any idea what she wanted to talk about?’
‘She said she had what is known as a multi-pronged plan of some sort.’ He paused. ‘Her plan relates to our Sarah.’
‘These young women are remarkable!’ But mention of her daughter had little effect these days; she was ashamed to admit that feelings of detachment had begun to creep in when people talked of her lost child.
Now Truman was scowling. His pipe had gone out. ‘Valerie is the most remarkable of them all,’ he said, fumbling with a match. ‘I want to do something to get her name cleared, and in return I shall ask for a place on one of these ATA committees.’
Lady Truman observed her faltering husband drop match after match to the floor, and she could not dispel the feeling of disgust that had crept into her in recent months. His increasing infirmity, which left him almost completely immobile, had made him flabby and irritable. Staring out of the window she could not help admitting to herself that she was finding her London job a stimulus to the fiercely sensuous female that still dwelled somewhere within her polite exterior.
‘I can’t imagine what Newman’s girl would know about our daughter that I haven’t already gleaned from the Ministry, but it’s worth a try,’ Truman said, managing to light one matchstick and thrust it into the pipe clenched tightly in his jaw.
Smoke curled once more.
‘She is forty-five minutes late. I’ve mince pies to prepare.’
‘Bloody mince pies.’
‘You’ve always liked them.’ She hated the smoke, and his unpredictable complaints. ‘It was my turn this year for the Church and with all those airmen moving in, we’ll need dozens more than usual.’
‘If you make it too obvious that we’ve stockpiles of sugar and flour, my love,’ he growled, ‘those uncouth fliers will be raiding us in no time.’
‘You will be pleased to know I’ve advertised the fact that these will be made with substitute ingredients due to rationing.’
‘Ho-ho! They’ll taste too bloody good. No-one will believe you.’ He grinned at her and puffed furiously. ‘God help us if the Yanks come in on this fracas and start bringing their peasants over here.’
‘Why ever should they do that?’
‘What – join the war?’
‘Bring peasants.’
‘Well, to be truthful, my dear, neither is too likely. Old President Rosenfeld is too busy trying to please his Congress, and even if they did join our cause their peasants wouldn’t pass military exams. These mixed races are a disaster – full of physical shortcomings.’
Lady Truman glared at her imperfect husband. ‘I shouldn’t harp too much on that, if I were you,’ she murmured.
‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ Truman’s eyes blazed.
‘Nothing.’ She looked at the floor and noticed the smoke had stopped. ‘Is it true Liverpool has had eighty-odd consecutive days of bombing?’
He was silent, pipe in hand. Then, ‘You don’t like me much, do you?’ he asked.
Lady Truman rose, avoiding his gaze. Moving to the frostbitten windowpane she craned her neck for any sighting of an ATA lady pilot on a bicycle.
‘Liking each other has never entered into our world, darling,’ she replied, fingering the curtain. ‘Perhaps it is more important to those peasants you were talking about just now.’
Truman sat back, his unhealthy colour making his wife shudder.
‘I don’t suppose she’s coming,’ he said, closing his eyes.
‘Something awful has happened, I just know it,’ she fretted, staring out at the leafless branches of their large grounds, the neatly landscaped look now gone for ever with the departure of the gardener. Focusing on one branch close to the icy window, she wondered if leaves would ever sprout again – if enough bombs fell, and enough fires were started, life on the planet might disappear.
Did people on remote exotic islands know there was a war on? she pondered. And what about those poor Britons stuck out in places like Singapore?
It was now one hour since Barbara Newman had been due to visit, and Lady Truman’s throat was constricted with a raging, painful dryness as she thought of another mother missing a daughter. In Tim Haydon’s briefings she had begun transcribing reports from Germany about medical research carried out in death camps. One experiment had involved a mother and daughter, both naked, strapped into seats facing each other. According to these sketchy details, disseminated by some valiant means to make their way into the Houses of Parliament, mother and daughter were ordered to press buttons to inflict electric shocks upon each other, the voltage increasing with every new push of the button. The Germans thought it interesting to determine the death threshold of young versus old and used the method ten to fifteen times daily.
Lady Truman had become ill and Haydon had sent her home early that day, but now, as she thought obsessively of Barbara Newman’s mother, she realized that even in England a new way of making war had dictated that girls would no longer be girls and that shock thresholds would never be the same again.
60
Amy had been infuriated to learn that two of the newest girls had made it through the appalling weather. Though conditions had worsened, she was determined to carry out the demands of her assortment of chits earmarked for this weekend. She had hated having had to spend Christmas stranded at Prestwick but had been able to make her way to Hatfield where she had been astonished to encounter Valerie Cobb. Without so much as an explanation, Valerie had appeared in her midst, handed Amy her orders and spoken a few clipped words about dinner and twenty new ATA ladies.