by Carol Gould
‘He’s entertaining kids in the village,’ Edith said nonchalantly. She knew she would have to wait until nightfall to see him.
‘This mission ought not to be undertaken without Errol,’ Anthony moaned.
‘Perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise,’ Delia said, as they headed towards the mansion. ‘We want her to be surprised and pleased to meet his lordship’s rightful heir, and I could never see why Errol’s presence would have helped.’
‘He relaxes her,’ Edith said quietly.
‘Don’t let’s forget this whole production was my idea!’ chimed Barbara.
They had reached the long entrance pathway leading up to the house and Edith felt giddy and ill-prepared for the imminent meeting, an event she had been anticipating with fascination and dread for days. Planning the first meeting had involved Valerie Cobb herself, the Head of ATA having allowed Anthony time away from the crucial Halifax transports to accumulate courage for the meeting. Involving herself in the Truman affair had salvaged Valerie from despair; all her girls had been relieved when her seemingly inconsolable grief for Shirley had at last begun to ease as she became embroiled in the layers of the scandal.
‘We should have brought old Aunt Valerie along,’ remarked Edith, staring at the neglected structure that once had teemed with servants.
‘She’s too busy rehabilitating Friedrich Kranz in secret,’ said Delia. ‘At this rate he’ll soon be a Commanding Officer.’
All four pilots shared the same thoughts as they walked on: Kranz had risen through the ranks of ATA with staggering speed, Sir Henry having had to cave in on his demand that Valerie be banned from Friedrich’s presence after Balfour had recommended that the Austrian be allowed to manufacture in Britain. It had transpired that Kranz had known for two years the whereabouts of Valerie’s sister, but his hatred of Sir Henry had sidelined his goodwill and he had kept the information to himself. Now, he had chosen to reveal the data and a search party had been despatched to Spain. Within a day of his revelations, Kranz was awarded a contract to make aeroplanes in Norfolk, and his elation at the ire of Sir Henry Cobb, when the prototype bomber was named the ‘Valerie’, thrilled Kranz so much that he became insanely drunk for the first time in his life.
Valerie the woman, sadly, had decided with steely determination to lock physical involvement with Kranz out of her life for the duration of war, leaving her lover bewildered and deeply frustrated. Both had thrown themselves into their work, Valerie never allowing Friedrich more than two minutes of her time even when his eyes pleaded for the renewed consummation without which he felt he might go mad.
Had Shirley in fact meant more to his mistress than anyone had suspected?
Kranz had asked himself this question on the day the ‘Valerie’ aircraft was unveiled in the presence of Commodore d’Erlanger, when the woman after whom the magnificent bomber had been named had not attended. Still, her ATA boys and girls loved their head lady, who had been made an MBE in the New Year Honours …
‘Barbara would do anything for me,’ blurted Anthony Seifert as the group of fliers neared the Truman residence.
‘They call it love, I think,’ said Edith, grinning.
‘Shut up, you lot,’ said Barbara, her voice beginning to shake from the onset of nerves.
Stopping to stare at the mansion that could soon be his own, Anthony fingered the wings on his uniform and lamented the deformity, a scoliosis, that had excluded him from the regular RAF. It was only during the Errol Carnaby trial that Lord Truman’s physical handicap had come to light, his wife’s alienation a result of his inadequacy. At once Anthony had pitied the man and hated him as well.
‘Time to go in, kids,’ murmured Edith. ‘Let’s hope that radio guy hasn’t followed us.’
They walked slowly but purposefully toward the house where Lady Truman was spending another afternoon in solitude. Waiting for the time when Errol would resume his visits she fought off images of her husband’s hideously deformed ghost, a spectre that would not stop crying for the daughter he had lost and the crippled son he could have embraced.
76
Errol could not deny the overwhelming feelings of envy he had experienced when in the canteen the group of white airmen had recounted tales of heroic skirmishes in gleaming fighter aircraft. One of the men had described the disaster that had befallen an RAF base at which all arriving aircraft, delivered by the ATA, had punctured tyres. Eventually it was discovered that a convoy of dump trucks had deposited a huge covering of dirt over the runway, the load filled with forks, knives and nails. Much speculation led to the conclusion that the lorry drivers were Germans hired from the camps …
RAF men spent an afternoon attempting to sift the metal sabotage from the dirt load, but eventually a giant magnet had to be dragged over the runway …
In the village, teachers were fascinated by the black GI who was a Blake scholar and today Errol had been invited to talk to a small group of children who seemed safe from death in the remote rural setting. Errol had walked a short distance from the base but was ordered back by an agitated Frank Malone, who escorted him to the white canteen. Astonished to be allowed into these hallowed premises, Errol remained standing, but a small group of airmen invited him to sit at their wooden table. Talk of Defiants and of Mustangs distracted him but after an hour he was beside himself at the prospect of disappointing the schoolchildren in the village. He became even more alarmed when Malone entered the canteen and summoned him with a greasy finger.
Outside the compound, Errol and his guardian moved to the rear of the canteen, where a group of boys in civilian clothes hovered amongst potato peelings and other catering detritus. Dreading the possibility of a day’s secondment to kitchen duty, Errol scowled at Malone but dared not speak – he knew the combustion point of the ex cop and chose to reserve his passion for a positive activity; perhaps this evening he might be able to see Edith alone at last.
Pushed to the stinking garbage heap that festered on the edge of high grass, Errol was bewildered by the disinterest of the quiet congregation of young men. With Malone keeping a close watch on his every movement, Errol sat down on a small pail and waited for orders.
At nightfall he was allowed to rise from the pail, elated that Malone had disappeared and flattered when the friendly hand of a white cook came to rest on his shoulder.
Had this been a dream?
Another hand, and still another, helped Errol make his way in the twilight and he felt moved by the warmth emanating from the men’s touch. Soon he would be with Edith, he told himself. He walked on with the young men clinging, and in their company Errol thought of Jerusalem and as darkness descended he felt at one with Albion.
77
‘Money has not been able to save the lives of those Jews in the death camps,’ Anthony Seifert said harshly.
‘You have none of your own,’ said Lady Truman, ‘and I would be hard pressed to believe you want your title without an allowance.’
‘Anthony has enough to live on,’ Delia offered, her trousered legs crossed across the edge of the late earl’s favourite chair.
Her ladyship had been astonished by the forthright conversation pouring from the mouths of the four pilots. They had described the love affairs of numerous members of the ATA, and suggested morals had changed since the First War. She had objected that morals were nonexistent in flying circles, or so she had heard, but her words petered out as the memory of Errol came flooding into her aging but still restless loins.
‘ATA has sent a party to rescue Sarah, your daughter,’ Barbara announced. ‘One of our immoral ladies, Angelique Florian, went out to Spain over a year ago on a similar mission sanctioned by Captain Balfour. She flew off to find her brothers, who I believe knew your daughter very well. Angelique was heavily pregnant at the time, by the way.’
Something about Barbara’s tone made Lady Truman laugh.
‘We are a fertile bunch,’ Delia remarked, wondering how Alec’s Marion was coping with the child and with a ferry
ing workload doubled by Delia’s absence from her ATA pool. ‘My colleague Marion Harborne had her baby on the day ATA ferried some eight hundred and seventy aircraft in twenty-four hours.’
Voices droned on as Lady Truman continued to debate the issue of Anthony’s right to his title, lamenting the absence of her solicitor. Her three female guests had a sharp comprehension of the law and she wanted the ordeal to end. She had begun to like the boy, who reminded her so much of the man she knew Errol Carnaby had set out to murder.
Delia had begun to tire, and she closed her eyes as the others pursued the debate. Marion was now a permanent member of the Seifert household, her unbearable personal tragedy having rocked ATA for months and having jolted Delia’s father into a period of alertness and generosity. Half-listening to the voices in the Truman drawing room, Delia reflected that no-one in ATA – not even Noel Slater – had been unaffected by the events of April 1943, when Alec Harborne volunteered to transport Hamilton Slade from Hatfield to the Canadian Hospital at Taplow. On the return journey via Prestwick, where medical supplies were collected, Alec had manoeuvred his Anson through appalling weather conditions, something he had done so miraculously on previous occasions. On this mission, however, his luck expired. Somewhere above the Irish Sea, in low cloud and precipitation that merged into a cold and horrible morass, the Anson plunged into oblivion with Alec and his accomplice, Dame Dazzle, lost to eternity.
Delia would never be able to erase from her memory the sound of Marion’s cries when the pregnant woman’s second fright in the space of three days – the crash of two Wellingtons having been her first – was confirmed as truth in the form of a telegram. Marion’s sobs had torn into Delia, their poignancy all the more searing because the couple had had such a terrible argument before his last Anson trip. One by one, each member of the Seifert family read and reread Marion’s telegram, its coarse and jagged type detailing the valour of her husband’s last mission …
‘How on earth could a child have the right sort of upbringing with a pilot for a mother?’ Lady Truman demanded of Edith Allam.
‘Or a pilot for a father?’ Edith asked, grinning.
‘Marion Harborne is doing very well as a full-time pilot and mother,’ Delia remarked, her eyes puffy and bloodshot from weeks of marathon ferrying. She looked toward the unkempt gardens of the Truman estate and her mind moved agonizingly back to the day Marion and Alec’s baby had arrived, the tiny girl born six weeks before her time and delivered by a member of the ATA Medical Staff – a nurse whose husband had died in the Wellington crash. Marion and the nurse had campaigned for Air Traffic Control to be set up within ATA and shortly afterwards the first Controller was appointed at White Waltham. Marion’s baby, named Alexandra, had become Delia’s adored obsession.
‘Who the devil cares about all this paternity business anyway?’ scoffed Barbara, jolting Delia from her thoughts. ‘I was the one who got excited about Anthony’s rights, but does it matter?’
All eyes were now on Barbara.
‘If Hitler wins this war, half the occupants of this room will be exterminated – you, Anthony, for having been born in a Jewish household, Edith and myself for being daughters of Abraham, and you, Lady Truman, for having associated with a Negro.’
‘Does an alcoholic father count with the Nazis?’ Delia asked meekly.
Anthony bowed his head and sighed. ‘I only wanted to make your acquaintance,’ he said calmly, rising from his chair and taking her ladyship’s hand.
‘You are mine, somehow.’
Lady Truman had spoken. She held Anthony’s young fingers, pressing them to her face. ‘Stay with me,’ she said.
‘I have my own mother,’ he whispered.
His hand was set free. ‘Go to her, then,’ snapped Lady Truman.
‘You come too,’ suggested Delia, suddenly alert.
Lady Truman’s expression turned thoughtful. Secretly, she longed to be flown to the village in which her husband’s mistress lived. She longed to be transported by one of these remarkable young pilots but she also longed to be transported by the sounds of Errol Carnaby’s voice. Talk of Anthony’s parentage, and flashes within her mind of that night of carnal fusion between Truman and Delia’s mother a generation ago, had made her strangely restless. If only Errol were here! She knew that upon their next meeting she would have to submit to the terrible wanting that had pushed her along a relentless course to the planning and execution of the killing, to be known by posterity as Carnaby’s accident.
‘Will anyone be seeing Errol today?’ asked Edith.
‘I may be doing so, in the village,’ her Ladyship replied.
‘May I leave this for him, madam?’ Edith asked, producing a small book of sonnets.
Barbara caught sight of the book’s spine and glared at Edith. ‘Why trouble her ladyship?’ she demanded. ‘Can’t you give it to him at the base?’
‘I hate that base,’ Edith replied. ‘Burt Malone’s brother Frank is in charge of policing, and he gives me the creeps.’
Lady Truman had opened the small volume of love poems and her face was expressionless. ‘Why are you asking me to give this to Errol?’ she asked slowly, her eyes boring into the soul of a child.
‘I wanted him to have them, and I thought he might like to read them aloud to you,’ Edith said solemnly, rising from the sofa. ‘This war is getting worse, and I’ve decided to jettison certain encumbrances. Sonnets are a prime example – like love, they seem absurd juxtaposed with human experiments in death camps.’
Lady Truman studied the American closely. Her guests had moved to the doorway, as if avoiding a confrontation between two rabid dogs. Edith had expected this to be her only meeting with Lady Truman, but as the silent group walked to the front entrance, she was disturbed by a strong feeling that the two of them would meet again, perhaps over a book of sonnets.
78
Nothing had been resolved, but Edith knew Anthony Seifert had generated a firestorm of conflicting emotions within Lady Truman’s breast, and she left her colleagues to drink in the RAF club before embarking on the next step of her day’s journey. By now Edith had grown accustomed to the ATA routine: regulations provided that each pilot worked thirteen consecutive days followed by two days off, with a fortnight’s leave in summertime. White Waltham had doubled in size, and here in Norfolk Edith and her fellow pilots observed the total colonization of the countryside by the military establishment. Everywhere one turned a base was shooting up, and as Edith made her way to the tiny motorcar, she remembered a comment made by Eddie Cuomo about England becoming an American military outpost. The war had lasted for four years now, and for Edith’s British associates the end of the conflict had stopped being a point of conversation; war had become a way of life, and some even dreaded its conclusion.
Inside the car, Molly sat ready to chauffeur the flight captain to her next mission. The two friends buzzed along the peaceful minor roads, the newly arrived WAC corporal reticent in the company of one so superior in rank. Despite ATA’s non-combatant status, all participating forces regarded the organization’s officers as the elite of the nation’s civilian flying corps. Edith reminded Molly about petrol rationing and then gave up any attempt at further conversation, Molly smiling in silence and gazing sideways at the imposing ATA uniform crowned by its majestic wings.
Soon the large country house, also known as the last of the internment encampments, came into view. Edith motioned to Molly to stop the car well away from the imposing edifice and marched along the immense gravel walkway until she had reached the front door. Here, she was to meet a contingent who would endeavour to see the last of the three inmates released.
‘Is this an RAF headquarters?’ Molly asked timidly as they entered the glorious main hallway.
‘You’re kidding!’ hooted Edith. ‘This is where they kept all the foreign Jews and Wops before they realized they were good for Britain.’
‘Like concentration camps?’ Molly asked, wide-eyed.
‘Not re
ally,’ Edith replied, scanning the room for her entourage. ‘It’s not in the character of Britishers to spoil their routine for some crazy kind of extermination business.’
‘What routine is that, Edie?’
‘They have their season and their fox hunt and their shooting parties, and the Glorious Twelfth and Henley. It’s all kind of stopped for the war, but not altogether.’
‘Somehow I picture Hitler and Mussolini loving foxhunting,’ Molly observed.
‘Next time you meet them, don’t encourage it,’ Edith countered. ‘Remember, they’re just across that little channel of water, sweetheart.’
‘Isn’t it a shame Kelvin Bray had to leave us so soon after the trial?’ Molly asked.
‘He was never cut out for the service – the guy’s a softie,’ Edith replied.
‘Do you think he’s a coward, Edie?’
‘Goddammit, Molly – what a dumb question!’
‘Mario, my husband, thinks he’s a sucker.’
‘Mario, your husband, is a tough dago,’ rasped Edith. ‘Kelvin Bray could never be called a coward – he defended a Negro.’ As Edith spoke, Hana Bukova and Josef Ratusz came through the door with the American press contingent.
‘Where is Hartmut?’ Edith asked, looking around anxiously.
‘He got called back to special ferrying duty,’ Hana said glumly. ‘You know how good Valerie thinks he is on those Hudsons.’
Edith knew Hartmut had been taken on by ATA as an aerial reconnaissance pilot, his unique skills invaluable to the small team of photographers employed by the organization. Hudsons were used for the flights and Hartmut had shown exceptional skill, working in shifts with his teammate Ludo, who had shown similar talent on the surveillance assignments. All the pilots had felt great amusement in the light of Ludo’s total infatuation with Hana, a passion that had so far gone unrequited. Hana had never even been willing to speak to him, and as his English was appalling none of the ATA men took much notice of his pleading, garbled requests to tell Miss Bukova about her mother and the Kranzes at Sobibor …