Enduring Passions

by David Wiltshire

  Shouting ‘Tom,’ she ran towards him. When he reached her he lifted her up in the air and whirled her around and around, her legs bent, before lightly setting her back on the ground, still keeping his arms around her.

  ‘Oh Tom, I thought something had happened to you.’

  He shook his head as he tried to get his breath back. ‘Derailment somewhere held us up – so sorry.’

  She put her hands behind his head, brought his face down and kissed him, long and passionately, uncaring whether or not it was seemly. When she let him go, she murmured, ‘You made it – that’s all that matters.’

  With their arms wrapped around each other they walked slowly to the embarkation desk, stopping short of it.

  ‘Oh God, I’m going to miss you.’

  He felt his throat constricting.

  Tears started to stream down her face.

  ‘Tom, I’m not going. I can’t leave you.’

  He drew her tightly into him, held on, one hand gently stroking her hair.

  It took some time before he could manage it.

  ‘Darling, you must. It will soon pass, then we can be back together. I’ll never let you get away from me again. That’s a promise.’

  He felt her nod, then whisper, ‘Have you got a handkerchief?’

  He found his and gave it to her. She gave a large blow.

  ‘Sorry. Oh, Tom, I’m so miserable.’

  He tried again.

  ‘Fay, if I get accepted by the RAF, I’ll be very busy over the next few months – I wouldn’t be able to get away. It’s perfect, we get both our careers going, then we’ll never be parted for longer than a couple of weeks. What do you say?’

  ‘Right.’

  She seemed to find an inner strength. She straightened up as voices carried from the ship.

  ‘All ashore who are going ashore.’

  One of the officers on duty at the desk called across to them, ‘The gate is closing. Final call for all passengers travelling on the RMMV Warwick Castle to Cape Town.’

  They looked long and searchingly at each other, then he cupped her face in his hands and gave her a gentle, loving kiss.

  ‘Goodbye, darling. I’ll write to you every week.’

  Fay nodded. ‘You’ve got all the addresses – keep them safe and I’ll do the same, I promise.’

  Hoarsely, he managed, ‘I love you.’

  She smiled weakly. ‘But I love you more.’

  The officer called out again. ‘Gate now closing.’

  She turned and ran.

  From a few yards he watched as they processed her ticket. Another officer took her by the arm and rushed her to the canvas enclosed gang plank. She turned, pulling her arm free and blew a kiss, which he returned, then she was gently ushered out of sight.

  He stayed on the quayside, pushing through the crowds, looking up at the rows of faces and waving arms. The streamers now formed a mass of paper lines joining the ship to the shore. The band, in red jackets with white blancoed belts and white pith helmets was going through a selection of sea shanties, ending with ‘Rule Britannia’.

  The gangway was swung aside. Tugs started hooting in the Solent. The Warwick’s deep siren on its funnel blew long and hard. Hawsers were released, splashing into the water. Imperceptibly at first, and then, agonizingly slowly the white hull started to pull away, the gap of water inching wider.

  Straining, he could see no sign of Fay – it was impossible.

  The band paused and it was at that point that, incredibly he heard, ‘Tom, Tom, over here.’

  He had no idea where to look, except the voice seemed lower down – then he saw her at a porthole.

  He waved furiously and yelled back, ‘Fay, I love you.’

  It was the last she heard of his voice, as the band struck up, ‘Now is the Hour’.

  They kept waving as the liner pulled steadily away, until Fay became just a tiny dot. He kept his eyes relentlessly on her, knowing that is he looked away he might never be able to identify her again amongst all the others.

  In deeper water the Warwick’s propellers began to stir the Solent into a white leaping foam. Her siren blasted out, the tugs stood off and she began to move forward under her own power. In no time at all, the Warwick Castle’s hull was foreshortening as she turned for the open sea. Tom had lost Fay by then, and as the dark cloud of diesel exhaust from the ship’s funnel wafted over the quay, it started emptying of people, until only he was left, and a couple of dock workers. He watched as the ship slowly receded, became first a dark blob, then lost in its own haze.

  He still stayed as the paper streamers blew aimlessly about his feet. He couldn’t have moved even if he had wanted to: he seemed to have gone into shock.

  It was some time before he realized that the Warwick Castle was nowhere in sight, and that the tears that had streamed silently down his face had dried in the freshening wind.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  For both of them, the following months changed their lives for ever. At about the time Fay nervously walked on stage in Cape Town, to polite applause, and then seated herself at the piano, followed by the warm reception for Sir Trevor Keynes, Tom, with bated breath, was holding a letter marked ‘Air Ministry’. When he opened it, he read that, in reply to his communication and application form he was required to attend a selection board for the next E&RFTS course. This selection process could, if he was successful, lead to entry into the General Duties Branch of the Royal Air Force.

  By the time she was at sea again on the RMS Chitral, heading for Australia, he was waiting nervously in his only suit, freshly pressed by Mrs Chick, at Adastral House in the Kingsway. The first question was fired at him before he’d hardly sat down. It came from the central panel member of three serious looking men in Savile Row suits, ‘Why do you want to join the Royal Air Force?’ Until the last question, he had no time to think anything through. In the sudden silence, after fifteen minutes of intensive questioning the chairman’s fountain pen scratched as he signed something, then blotted it and handed a blue slip to Tom.

  ‘Take this to the commissionaire, he will tell you what to do.’

  He thanked them, then managed, to his mortification, to trip over his chair as he got up to leave. He closed the door behind him and let out a gasp. It did not appear to comfort the young men sitting in a line of chairs to his right, each waiting his turn.

  In the lobby, the commissionaire took his slip and then referred to another book.

  ‘Can you go straight to the medical board now, sir?’

  Tom looked at him blankly. ‘Medical? I didn’t know I was going to have a medical?’

  The commissionaire grinned and tapped the blue chitty.

  ‘You’ve passed, sir, that’s why.’

  Five days later a letter arrived telling him he had been assigned to No. 7 Elementary and Reserve Flying Training School at Desford, Leicestershire, for ab initio training, and to attend not later than noon on the day assigned.

  From the stern of the ship, Fay watched as the great red ball of the sun slipped through gathering purple clouds into the warm tropical ocean.

  Under that sun Tom would still be having his day. She wondered what he was doing right then. Was he flying?

  Fay leaned on the wooden handrail. He must have heard by now whether he had been accepted? The last letter she had received in South Africa had told her he was going for an interview. She pushed some hair, that had been ruffled by a warm sea breeze, out of her eye, and wondered if her father had indeed helped to expedite matters. She had, so far, only received two letters from her parents, both in her father’s beautiful Victorian script, telling her about happenings at home. Jeremy it seems had applied to the army and was waiting to go to Sandhurst. A lot of her other male friends were also applying for the forces. Some were even talking of going to Cranwell – the Royal Air Force College. It troubled her to think that one of them could end up being Tom’s superior officer.

  In Melbourne, where they would dock in a few day’s
time, they were scheduled to stay for nearly two months. She would surely find several letters waiting for her, sent via the Air Mail service run by the Imperial Airways flying boats.

  The little, warm breeze played around her exposed shoulders; she drew the stole that matched her evening dress a little higher. She was about to attend a pre-dinner cocktail party at the invitation of the captain and his officers. Fay walked across the deck to the double doors that led into the first class saloon. These were guarded by two ratings who saluted her and opened the doors. Inside was an elegant scene of ladies in the latest evening dresses, some even with the occasional white fur wrap around their shouldes despite the heat. There was a dazzling array of jewels around necks and pinned to breasts. Most of the men were in black dinner jackets, but several had on creamy white tropical ones; none of these were a match for the tropical uniforms, though, worn by some of the dashing young officers, their brass buttons gleaming in the overhead light.

  But Fay could only think of her husband. Would Tom be wearing the blue of the Royal Air Force by the time she got back?

  Tom passed out of the ab initio without a serious hitch and was accepted into the RAF as an acting sergeant pilot, and posted to RAF Cardington in Bedfordshire for basic training.

  As Fay reached Brisbane, enjoying the lovely warm weather, he was issued with his course serge uniform, and in the pouring rain, taught to march, arms swinging up to the level of the waist, an NCO shouting at him and all the other new arrivals every waking moment. There followed two weeks of square bashing, arms drill, lectures and a visit to the doctors for inoculations.

  Then came the news of where they were going for their intermediate and advanced flight training – Little Rissington in the Cotswolds, so close to Cirencester and Cheltenham.

  He was now flying the North American Harvard, and the pressure was suddenly enormous. The heavy monoplane with retracting undercarriage had a fearsome reputation for being very unforgiving. Towards the end of the month he had soloed and was doing aerobatics. The news from the outside world had an awful inevitability about it. Germany and the USSR signed a non-aggression pact and later Hitler guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium, Luxembourg and Denmark. But for Tom, working at night on his books, and all day, everyday, walking out to the line of aircraft, flying from dawn to dusk, there was no time to pay much attention to anything – except to write to Fay.

  He finished the latest letter just before lights out. In the dark he turned on his side, found her photograph, and kissed her goodnight as he had done every night since they had parted.

  Fay got back to her hotel bedroom after the performance, showered, and put on her robe. After attending to her hair she sat at her dressing-table and started to pen her latest letter to him. Tomorrow they were off to Auckland, the furthest point of the tour. Three weeks there, and they would start the return journey. After that, despite stops for recording and radio dates in Australia, and a short stay in Singapore, every day would bring her nearer to him.

  When she’d finished the letter and had sealed it down, Fay took up the photograph she had propped up against the mirror and gazed longingly at Tom.

  In bed, after kissing him she put the photograph under her pillow.

  On 1 September flying went on as usual despite the momentous news at reveille that German troops had crossed into Poland at 04.45 hours, and by 09.00 England and France had issued an ultimatum for their withdrawal.

  Walking out to the aircraft his instructor said, ‘All civil flying has been banned, and when we get back the aircraft are to be dispersed around the perimeter.’

  But Tom was lost in his own thoughts. How would all this affect Fay? Was she safer where she was?

  Two days later, they were all gathered around a wireless in an ante room as the Prime Minister, in a defeated voice, ended his announcement with the words, ‘and consequently, this country is at war with Germany.’

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER ONE

  By the beginning of May 1940 Fay was still in Singapore, staying with Aunt Blanche on the Cavanagh Road. Worried sick, she had no idea what was happening to Tom, his letters had ceased after she had left Adelaide.

  All thoughts of getting home quickly had perished in a welter of confusion and other personal matters – to wit the health and well-being of her aunt.

  A lot of passenger sailings into the European war zone had been cancelled. Already U-boats had been active, sinking the aircraft carrier Courageous and the battleship Royal Oak. To say nothing of the SS Artheria which was attacked, with the loss of 112 lives and a Dutch Liner, the Simon Bolivar, victim, in November, to a magnetic mine.

  She had thought of throwing in her lot with groups talking of going via Africa and across to France, but it always came back to Aunt Blanche.

  It had come as a bit of a shock to Fay, and would no doubt be an even greater one to her father and mother to find that Blanche was now what might be called a frail, ill, distressed gentlewoman. Although the bungalow was large it was rather dilapidated and she only had one cook-houseboy.

  It transpired that her second husband had been a big gambler and, on his death, she had had to pay off all his debts. Slowly, Fay had enticed her to come out of a semi-reclusive life, and was going to meet her later for lunch.

  At the moment she was reading all the newspapers she could get, courtesy of the Raffles Hotel as she sat drinking a coffee in the main hall.

  The frustrating thing was, all the news from home was – that nothing now seemed to be happening. It was already being called The Phoney War.

  She wondered where and what Tom was doing? At least he couldn’t be in the fighting – there wasn’t any. Some said there never would be, that Herr Hitler wanted no more than an accommodation with Great Britain.

  After she tossed the last paper down, it was immediately seized on by a gentleman in a white suit and a panama hat. She finished her coffee and ordered a taxi. It pulled swiftly in by the steps as a uniformed Sikh commissionaire in his turban opened the door for her to get in.

  ‘Cricket Club, please.’

  She was going to treat her Aunt to lunch. It was the social centre of the colony, and though she had met some very nice people, there were many ‘tuans’ whom, frankly, she found offensive.

  The way they treated their servants and the general Chinese population at large was awful, and she detected that many of them were not as top drawer at home as they led people to believe.

  Aunty Blanche was already there, a slim frail figure dressed in an immaculate, but somewhat faded linen dress, watching the tennis on the padang from the veranda. If it wasn’t for the predominance of Chinese faces above the white coats and brass buttons of the Club’s uniform – ‘the boys’, you could have been forgiven for thinking you were in Surrey she thought, or anywhere in the Home Counties.

  ‘Darling’. Her aunt stretched up her withered arms as Fay leant down and kissed her on both cheeks, then sat at the table beside her.

  ‘I’ve taken the liberty of ordering two Slings for us.’

  There was no doubt in Fay’s mind that her presence was having a beneficial effect on the old lady.

  Half a million pregnant women and thousands of children had been evacuated from London and other cities by hundreds of extra trains. Two million men had been called up for military service; there was rationing of butter, sugar and bacon, and wrought-iron railings everywhere were being cut down for scrap metal for the war effort, before Sergeant Pilot Thomas Roxham was allowed to put the coveted wings on his uniformed chest. Now, after four weeks of firing live ammunition at a coastal camp with target tugs, he had been posted directly to a front line squadron.

  He was driven in past the guardhouse, manned by RAF Regiment personnel with .303 rifles over their shoulders, tin hats on, gas mask packs on their chests. He arrived in a three tonner with four other sergeants and their kitbags.

  He looked across the field. The sleek outlines of his new steeds were dotted around, some were inside the hangars bei
ng worked on, some under camouflage netting, others on the strip, engines running.

  Hurricanes: he’d got fighters.

  For Tom life was great except for one huge, awful thing – he had temporarily lost touch with Fay. Ordinary cables didn’t seem to be getting through. He knew she should be in Singapore, but he’d had no definite news for weeks on end. At first it had been difficult to concentrate – in fact he’d nearly flunked it, but an interview with the senior instructor had helped him see the way ahead.

  They jumped out of the lorry, heaved their kitbags on to their great-coat-clad shoulders, and made for the adjutant’s office.

  A wingless pilot officer went past. Tom, as the nearest of the group, should have put up a salute on their behalf, but his mind was elsewhere, considering whether to contact her parents or not.

  ‘Sergeant.’

  He came out of his thoughts to find a very angry, very red face pushing up into his. For the next minute, he was berated, and threatened with CO’s parade before being dismissed. The others were waiting for him.

  An Australian shook his head. ‘You took that calmly. I’d have decked the bugger.’

  He shrugged. ‘Had my mind on other things.’

  The CO was a blunt speaking Irishman from Dublin, scion of an old Anglo-Irish family, the type who had led the likes of Sergeant Whelan in the trenches of Flanders Fields.

  ‘I’ll be frank, Roxham, if things weren’t so urgent I’d never accept anybody into this squadron straight from training camp. I can’t afford to have you breaking one of my precious aircraft – understand? Now – get out, see the Duty Officer, and go and fly a Hurricane – and bring it back in one piece.’

  He did a dual check flight in the ‘Master’ and seemed to get everything right.