by Carol Gould
‘Oh, Nora, give the girl a break,’ chimed Lili Villiers, smoking in a corner.
Edith walked up to Nora and stood so close as to feel the Commanding Officer’s breath.
‘Dear old CO,’ Edith began, ‘what I have to do could be explosive. I am told it is Top Secret but I can reveal that I have been summoned to meet Wing Commander Charlie Buxton in Norfolk and I do not intend letting the guy down.’
‘We have a siege on our hands,’ Nora said, removing her spectacles as the din of newly arrived girls filled the room. ‘You are needed, Edith – for God’s sake, Sally says that when the weather lifts we may have a clear pocket for three days, and that means Spits being rescued from mothballs.’
‘Please let me go now,’ Edith said solemnly. ‘I will be back in twenty-four hours, I promise.’
‘Wait until next week, then you can go,’ Nora said, watching her pilots crowd around the big Ops table. ‘I shall notify the Wing Commander that you will be released as and when.’
Turning away, Edith shut her eyes and tried to imagine the village of Weston Longville, where Charlie Buxton had begun to negotiate with the Americans a massive plan to turn the area into a major centre for RAF–USAAF operations. She pictured a vast field with one stately home situated in its centre, the inhabitants remotely aware of a war and of the local ramifications it now held in store. Edith was awakened from her imaginings by a voice she had not heard in months of non-stop flying.
‘I ate this bloody sweat-and-trickle pudding!’ Hana Bukova had settled herself in the canteen.
‘Any news of your mom?’ asked Edith, settling into an adjoining seat.
‘Nothing,’ Hana replied, her mouth brimming over with custard. ‘That man who paid for her last trip is in this country, you know. I am going to find him.’
‘How the Hell do you know that, honey?’ Edith asked.
‘Honey – honey – I wish I had some!’ she exclaimed, looking down at the pudding. ‘Listen, Edith – Stella Teague has a letter – it’s from her ballet master – the one who disappeared. In roundabout way this guy is my last link with Momma. I have not heard from Poppa in a year, but this man Grunberg – he knows Kranz.’
‘Kranz?’ Edith asked, sitting up. This man had to be Friedrich.
‘Yeah – Kranz used to do business with my Poppa in the Warsaw Jew Settlement, and as I say, he arranged the airlift when my Momma piloted his family.’
‘I think they call it the Warsaw Ghetto in these parts,’ Edith said, cringing at the imagery of skeletons and cousins she would never know. ‘What was this guy’s full name?’
‘Friedrich Kranz – his son was my friend.’ Hana drew the photograph of Benno from her pocket. It had frayed but the corner markings were still distinct. She handed it to the American.
‘Fischtal – Berlin!’ shrieked Edith, gripping the snapshot lightly.
‘What this is?’ asked Hana.
‘I know her – she’s an old friend of mine, but I’ve lost track of her, and of Zuki,’ Edith said quietly.
‘Who are these people you talk about?’
‘Friends,’ Edith replied, handing back the photograph of the hauntingly handsome boy. She knew by now his dark eyes would be seeing atrocities to last him a lifetime. ‘Do you know the whereabouts of this man Kranz?’
Hana pushed away the now cold pudding bowl. ‘You must understand I have been told to tell nobody, not even Valerie.’
‘But Valerie! …’ exclaimed Edith.
‘Yes?’
‘He’s her boyfriend.’ As the words left her mouth, Edith knew she had spoken too freely, and Hana was appropriately mortified.
‘He is Benno’s father! He has a wife – Momma was rescuing the whole family.’
‘Maybe I’m thinking of someone else,’ said Edith, smiling at the Polish pilot as her heart pounded at the prospect of Valerie’s joy if such information were ever to reach her ears. ‘Can you tell me where he is, just as a matter of interest?’
‘He has been taken from the Isle of Man to some place in Norfolk.’
‘Where in Norfolk?’
Hana rose.
‘Please do not ask me any more questions, comrade,’ she pleaded. ‘Now I go play cards.’
Watching her stroll away, Edith observed Hana’s lack of confidence, which communicated itself in the Polish girl’s awkward gait. Edith vowed to herself she would extricate the information about Friedrich – if only to make Valerie happy for the rest of a cruel war. Hartmut had been interned and it had never occurred to Edith he might be lying in a bunk alongside Friedrich. ATA had come to accept the theory that Kranz had been separated from other internees and was uncontactable, hence Valerie’s inability to trace his whereabouts. Some of the girls thought it cruel that Sir Henry, whose connections would have given him access to such information, had withheld the facts from his pining daughter.
‘Did you hear about our escort?’
Edith looked up at the pale countenance looking down.
‘We had a squadron of RAF boys alongside the Anson,’ Delia explained. ‘It all started because the Aussie took off her flying suit and changed into a dress in full view of the heavens.’
‘I wish I had been there to watch,’ interjected Anthony Seifert, who had seated himself at the table and appropriated Hana’s cold leftover pudding.
‘Would anyone know if Stella Teague is still around?’ Edith asked.
‘She’s off in a Spit,’ Delia replied.
Edith rose without a word, her mind now fixated on the village of Weston Longville and the secret of Hana Bukova. As she left the canteen, Anthony gave a mock salute.
‘Don’t you like our Yank?’ asked Delia, sitting down with reluctance.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he responded, taking her hand. He had never touched her until now. Delia could see snowflakes in the window, and she was pleased. It meant she could stay and he could keep talking.
65
Shirley had left Mrs Bennell’s during a light snowstorm and walked through slush to meet the Commanding Officer before departing for London. When she had told Delia she would not be proceeding to Hamble for the Malta transports, the girls who were eavesdropping on their conversation whooped with laughter. It was assumed Shirley would finally visit her mother when she had run out of cash, and as the ground engineer kept a close watch on her collection of bank notes, this news had brought mirth to Hatfield Ops Room. Now, all the girls had moved on in the big Anson, its innards having been checked by Shirley herself before they departed.
On this cold, misty morning she felt the emptiness of the airfield in the absence of the ferry group.
‘Angelique would have loved these new Mosquitos,’ said Valerie Cobb, giving Shirley a rare hug around her shoulders.
Standing alongside a giant map of Britain and Europe the two women felt a tension between them that had accelerated since the Commanding Officer’s reappearance and reached a peak during this weather-bound fortnight.
‘Tell me about them,’ Shirley said, overcome by the scent that was unique to Valerie and to which she had grown so accustomed during their happy caravan years.
‘We’ve only been able to get our hands on a few but they look very versatile. They’re being used for target marking, and in a couple of cases for bombing. I am told they can carry a four-thousand-pounder. In one section of RAF they’re deploying Mossies as long-range fighters, day and night. And some of their boys have been sent out to do aerial reconnaissance photography. I’ll wager our Edith Allam would love to get herself ensconced on board with a camera.’
‘Don’t encourage her or she’ll pinch a Mossie – like the way Angelique scarpered,’ Shirley said, moving away from Valerie’s closeness.
‘Angelique did not scarper – she had some sort of Ministerial approval for her bizarre mission, whatever it may have been. God be with her.’
‘Are these Mosquitos coming out in swarms? asked Shirley.
‘Not like Spits,’ Valerie replied. ‘And they do
have drawbacks. You need to be a concert violinist to master the throttle on take-off. Maximum boost is eighteen pounds per square inch.’
‘What’s the bomber version like?’ asked Shirley, leaning against the table and wishing this day would stretch into eternity as she noticed the deep creases above Valerie’s determined chin and the eyes that had become even more piercing with age.
‘Mossie bombers’, Valerie continued, ‘have a two-handed grip on the control column. Lord help you if your take-off acceleration is poor – it needs a fiendish lot of power to keep it in the sky when the undercarriage is down.’
‘Where are the buggers?’
‘They’re expecting to churn out several hundred down the road, here at Hatfield, my love,’ Valerie said, studying the giant map. ‘So – are you ready for the mother-daughter débâcle?’
Shirley had grown accustomed to the sudden changes of subject that invariably peppered a conversation with the woman she still regarded as her partner.
‘I’d love to see one of these new Mossies before I visit Mum and hit reality head-on,’ Shirley said, willing her eyes to twinkle.
‘You just want to put off the visit until it’s too late.’
‘Rubbish, Val,’ retorted Shirley. ‘This Mossie business is making me drool. What sort of engine does it carry?’
‘Two Merlins.’ Valerie eyed her quizzically. Had the girl lost all sense of emotional attachment, even to the extent of not missing her own mother? ‘Incidentally,’ she continued, ‘it was a Yank – Ambassador Winant – who saw the first demonstration with me. He wants a few hundred to be made in Canada by Packard! It was all highly secret until a few months ago.’
‘What a pity you can’t be privy to information about Friedrich’s whereabouts,’ Shirley said quietly.
‘Believe me,’ Valerie said, ‘I would trade a top-priority demonstration of Mosquitos for a lead on my darling.’
‘What nonsense!’ screamed Shirley, throwing her kit to the floor. ‘How can you refer to him that way? The man is nothing to you. After all this time, he ought to be a blank page.’
‘After all this time, are you so devoid of feeling?’ Valerie demanded.
‘Devoid of feeling!’ mocked Shirley. ‘Pilots are flying all over the place at this very moment, in plenty of horrific, heart-stopping, death-defying predicaments, all at your personal behest as head of this organization, but all you can do is sit at a desk and dwell on some oversexed married man.’
‘That is an outrage!’ Valerie shouted back, her voice out of control. ‘I feel you ought to know that it is being put about that you and I have most definitely had some sort of unusual relationship, and do you know why?’
Shirley’s face was aflame.
‘There isn’t any place you go,’ Valerie continued, ‘where someone doesn’t pick up on your alleged pining for me, and I want it to stop, Shirl.’
‘I’ve intimated nothing.’
‘You’ve said enough and moped enough,’ Valerie murmured, her heart racing.
‘Career is your sole concern, Val, and if I have to be thrown by the wayside, you’d do it for your own advancement.’
‘If I were that sort of woman, Shirley, would I have got involved with Friedrich?’
Silence fell over the room.
Then Shirley said:
‘Mum has never forgiven me the crazy suicide business, Val .’
‘Go now, and give her a happy time,’ suggested Valerie, her hair glowing even in the dreary light of a misty April.
‘It’s been more than a year – the last time I had quality time with Mum was Marion Harborne’s wedding day. Everybody was still alive then.’
‘Don’t think about our losses – I’ve thirty more women joining and it looks now as if the sky’s the limit.’
‘Promise me a Mosquito, Val,’ Shirley said as they walked from the building on to the quiet forecourt. It was not yet eight o’clock and ice covered the landing strip. Shirley hated arguments, but Valerie was the only person she had ever known who could generate such uncontrollable rages within her soul. Stella Teague had told her that Grunberg knew Kranz and that Valerie’s lover played word games with him every night. It was something Shirley would not divulge. Now, she looked at the fiercely attractive woman and laughed to herself. Recently thirty-three members of the male crew at White Waltham had been polled in a rare moment of mirth. To a man, they had said they would rather be stranded on a desert island with Valerie Cobb than with Rita Hayworth.
‘You’ll have your Mosquitos,’ Valerie then said quietly.
And suddenly Shirley knew that was the most her partner could ever offer.
66
Watching Shirley depart on the first leg of her journey to London, Valerie ruminated about Friedrich. Had she really wanted to see him, would she not have found a way? On that last day in exile, when in the presence of Haydon and Shelmerdine her father had lain down conditions for her return to service, she had left Whitehall determined to locate her lover. One of Sir Henry’s conditions had been to prohibit Valerie from seeing Kranz, the thief and madman, until the war was over. She had pleaded with Cobb to reveal Friedrich’s whereabouts but Haydon had interrupted them, fuming on endlessly about individuals dangerous to national security and she had abandoned her desperate quest. Now, alone at Hatfield, she had put thoughts of Friedrich aside as ATA mobilized to move its women to Hamble, her job that of figurehead more than squadron leader.
Suddenly there was a distant roar and Valerie turned around to see an Anson approaching.
‘This is some sort of cock-up,’ Valerie said, watching the taxi aircraft doing a circuit. When it had made its final approach she braced herself to witness a crash but the skilled pilot mastered the treacherous surface and skidded to a halt several yards from the main building. Valerie marched to the aircraft and strained to identify the emerging pilot.
‘Sorry to arrive unannounced,’ shouted the thickly clad flier from above, the height of the Anson making disembarking a major undertaking.
‘This is highly irregular,’ Valerie shouted back.
‘Who are you?’ demanded the pilot, removing fogged-up goggles from a heavily wrapped head.
‘Commanding Officer Cobb.’
‘Valerie – shit!’
As she descended Edith Allam was followed by a skeletal man, his ATA uniform grotesquely baggy and his gait pathetically limp.
‘Why have you brought back the Anson?’ Valerie asked.
‘It was a special mission,’ she replied, offering Valerie a good-natured form of salute. ‘Do you remember our old buddy Hamilton Slade?’
Coming up behind her, his steps laboured, Hamilton looked a hundred years old, his hair white and eyes sunken into cavernous gullies.
‘You’ve been in one of those death camps, haven’t you?’ asked Valerie lightly.
Silence followed.
‘I’m on my way to see Dame Dazzle,’ Hamilton then said weakly.
‘For God’s sake, why?’ the CO asked as they walked from the Anson towards the shelter of the common room.
‘This is home for me, and I ‘d like to end my days at my local hospital,’ Slade replied.
‘All you need is a meal, for goodness sake,’ said Edith, stopping at the front entrance.
Valerie turned to her and placed a hand on her waist, squeezing and letting go. ‘It’s good to see you again.’ Valerie said, her eyes not leaving those of the sturdily built American. ‘Shirley is off to see her mum, you know.’
‘About bloody time, too,’ Hamilton said.
As the threesome entered the common room of Hatfield Ferry Pool, Edith grasped Valerie’s wrist.
‘I’ve contravened my CO’s orders, Valerie, and I am AWOL from Hamble, to be honest.’
‘I thought you had done this for me, old girl,’ murmured Hamilton.
Edith held her grip on Valerie.
‘You and I are going to see an aircraft manufacturer today,’ said the American.
‘Whatever
for?’ protested Valerie, extricating herself from Edith’s grip.
‘He calls himself Pavel Wojtek.’
67
Hamilton was astonished when a sea of young male faces looked up at him from their hospital beds. Dame Dazzle had walked with him from the specialist unit and had assigned him a bed between two badly injured patients.
‘Because they are not RAF we are allowed to treat these chaps,’ said the Dame, supporting Hamilton by the arm and leading him to his assigned bed in the ward.
‘Who are they?’ he asked.
‘One is called Sam and the other is Ludo,’ she responded, her stern expression not having changed since the day Hamilton had had his cricket injury treated twenty years before.
‘What sort of a name is Ludo for a “chap”, as you call them?’
‘He’s Romanian.’
‘I’ve not come across him in ATA.’ Hamilton had begun to undress, fingering the pyjamas neatly folded on the bed.
‘We are told he drifted in to Britain, as they say.’
‘Does he speak English?’
‘He speaks enough English for our girls to have determined he is lovesick for one Hana something-or-other.’
Hamilton was sitting on the side of the bed, his legs protruding like a pair of knobbly gentlemen’s canes in a corner of a quiet London club.
‘We’ve a Hana in ATA,’ said Hamilton, struggling to raise his limbs up on to the bed.
‘Oh, heavens, yes,’ the elderly matron murmured. ‘That Hana is one and the same.’
‘Is she indeed? Why has no-one contacted the ferry pool?’ Hamilton asked.
‘Someone did – several times, but the girl insisted she’d never heard of him and put the phone down. I was half tempted to bill ATA for the cost of the telephone connection. This is wartime, you know.’
‘As if I didn’t, my dear,’ he said, wanting to sleep. ‘Do the patients still refer to you as Dame Dazzle behind your back?’
‘Please sit up,’ she said, ignoring his query. ‘You’re due for an injection.’
As Matron left him he settled back against the sweet-smelling pillows. Closing his eyes, Hamilton could see the controls of fifty different types of aircraft glowing brightly against a dark background. During the past year he had completed more ferrying jobs than any other man in ATA including Josef Ratusz, who ran a close second to Slade’s record. In one month he had delivered sixty-one aircraft, the majority operational, having spent twenty-four hours and thirty minutes airborne. He had to forget Amy, and if marathon ferrying meant obliteration of his finest memories, he would continue tackling the Priority One delivery orders while other pilots dropped with fatigue.