by Janet Dailey
“That must have been tough to do,” Marty suggested in a faint taunt.
Anger was seething just below that cool surface. That vague self-mockery was all a pose to conceal how painfully foolish she had been made to feel. Granted, she had made a rather large mistake but she had no intention of letting this tawnyhaired, raspy-voiced female rub her nose in it.
“Actually, it wasn’t difficult at all,” she retorted, smiling sweetly. “One of the staff helped me go through my trunks and weed out the nonessentials.” The leopard-skin coat joined the hat, purse, and gloves already adorning the bare mattress.
“Some weeds,” Aggie murmured, staring at the coat that was again serving as a cushion for its owner as Eden sat down on the narrow Army bed. Cappy moved past Marty and returned to her cot, situated between Aggie’s and Eden’s.
“All this reminds me of a fairy tale,” Marty declared with a sweep of her hand in Eden van Valkenburg’s direction. “I have a feeling the princess is going to wake up in the morning and complain to us about sleeping on a pea.”
Eden opened the black leather purse and removed a gold cigarette case. Determinedly ignoring Marty, she took out a cigarette and tapped it on the metal to more firmly pack the tobacco. “Does anybody have a light?” she inquired. Cappy tossed her a book of matches. Eden took one and raked its sulfur head across the sandpaper-rough strip. She carried the naked cigarette to her mouth while she held the match flame to it, the fancy holder abandoned. Making a face, Eden picked the loose bits of tobacco from her red lips.
Because of her gross misunderstanding of both the training situation and the type of accommodations available, Eden knew she was off to a bad start, both with the flying staff and her fellow trainees. But it only made her all the more determined to stick it out. Besides, roughing it for a while would be a lark. It wasn’t as if she had to live under these spartan conditions forever. She took another puff of her cigarette, then crushed it out while she tried to pick the shreds of tobacco off the tip of her tongue.
As the flurry of interest her arrival had created faded, the others went back to their work. At the next cot, Cappy was drawing her sheets tightly across the mattress. Eden watched her a few minutes, then smiled to herself. She had never made a bed in her life … nor unpacked a trunk and put away her own clothes, for that matter.
“Hey, Cap.” Chicago frowned as she watched the brunette tightly tucking the ends in, “Did your father teach you to make a bed like that? I bet you really could bounce a coin on it.”
“You can, I promise.”
“Would you show me how to do mine?” she asked.
Eden watched while Cappy instructed the others in the art of making beds the “Army way,” then made an attempt at doing her own. The results were less than encouraging.
“Want some help?” Cappy asked, offering but not forcing her assistance on the redhead.
Eden straightened, faintly surprised by the friendly yet reserved gesture. “Yes. Thank you, Miss Hayward.”
A wry smile quirked Cappy’s mouth. “Better make that Cappy, or plain Hayward. In the Army, manners and formality go by the wayside about as fast as privacy, so you’d better not wait for someone to pull out your chair or hold the door for you,” she advised as she showed Eden how to pull the bedsheets and blanket taut.
“I’ll remember that,” Eden replied with a determined nod and worked to make the precise fold in the corner ends.
After some initial mistakes and ineptitude, Eden stepped back from the cot in satisfaction, the dark wool Army blanket stretched tightly, the covers turned precisely back, and the pillow situated squarely in the middle. She reached for her purse, now sitting atop the trunk with her fur coat and hat.
“Let’s see if a coin will bounce on it.” She took out a dime and dropped it onto the cot. It hit the blanket and bounced into the air, then landed again with a small hop. The sense of triumph was followed by the sobering thought, “I suppose we’ll be expected to make the beds every day.”
“Every morning and checked before every inspection. The Army loves inspections,” Cappy warned dryly. “Their motto is ‘A place for everything and everything in its place.’ And the Army doesn’t have any place for personal mementos—photos, little keepsakes, or the like. They’ll expect this bay to be spotless, and they’ll inspect with white gloves to find out if it is.”
“I don’t suppose they have—” Eden paused in midsentence as she looked around the narrow confines of the long bay, then responded to her own unasked question. “No, I guess the Army wouldn’t have cleaning ladies that come in and tidy up. We are they, I suppose.” She smiled in irony and joked. “And Mother complains about the shortage of servants since the war started. They keep quitting to go to work in the factories.”
Cappy’s mouth curved in a warm line, liking that self-mocking humor and what it told her about the redhead’s character despite her privileged and affluent life style. “Everyone wants to do their bit for the war.”
“God, don’t I know it. Mother was always volunteering me for some new war project of hers,” she declared. “Whether it was rolling bandages for the Red Cross, collecting ‘bundles for Britain’ or … once, I even helped her haul wheelbarrows of dirt up to our penthouse apartment so she could have a victory garden on the balcony.”
“No blood donations?” Cappy grinned.
“Oh yes. Me, and every one of my friends as well as a few distant acquaintances,” Eden assured her. “Dear Ham insisted he was becoming anemic from giving so much blood.”
“Ham?”
“Hamilton Steele.” Eden had an instant image of the unprepossessing man nearly twice her age with dark, thinning hair and gold wire glasses. The scion of an old established New York banking family, he had much to recommend him, no matter how staid and conservative he was. “He’s a dear man and a good friend. I probably would have married him if I hadn’t met Jacqueline Cochran at the Christmas party my parents gave. At twenty-five, what else is left? I’ve done practically everything. Made my society debut, attended Vassar, and toured Europe. The only occupations someone of my social status is supposed to seek are marriage and motherhood—in that order. I was nearly bored and desperate enough to take the plunge.”
It was an empty life Eden described. Cappy could well understand her dissatisfaction with it. “Is that how you found out about this flight training program for women—from Jacqueline Cochran?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, her exploits are what prompted me to get my pilot’s license. Flying is about the only thing that makes me feel alive.”
“I think all of us feel that way.”
For Eden, it was a feeling to which she clung. Her life had become much too riddled with cynicism, living as she did in a moneyed world. Everything, it seemed, had a purpose other than the one purported—even where the war was concerned. Like the “Buy Bonds” drive, which was not really an attempt to fund the war. The intent of the Series E bonds, as her father was wont to assert, was to absorb the “little man’s dollars” and curb inflation. She saw the way the big businesses profited from defense contracts because they had the factories, the assembly plants, and the workers already in place to grind out the war machinery. The government had to make pragmatic decisions, and Eden could see that the rich got richer and the poor did a little better than before.
“Jacqueline Cochran painted an exciting picture of her program at the party,” Eden recalled while casting a disparaging glance at her stark quarters. “But she did mislead me. She indicated I would be taking my training in Houston instead of some cowtown in the middle of nowhere. Our chauffeur is arriving with my car next week. Where will I go in it?”
“I don’t know. But you can always look at it another way. Without the car, you’d be stuck here,” Cappy suggested, a small smile edging the corners of her mouth.
“You’re absolutely right,” Eden agreed, laughing and liking the woman she’d be sleeping beside for the duration.
By late evening, nearly all
talking had died. It was a travelweary group that lounged on their cots. From the shower, Eden entered the bay wearing a rose satin robe with matching mules.
Cappy was the only one in the group not busily scribbling a letter. “Not writing home?” Eden sank onto her cot and picked up a nail buff to shine her long, professionally manicured fingernails.
“No one to write to.” Cappy shrugged with apparent indifference. She had dropped her mother a short note, informing her that she had arrived safely, but she had no longtime friends.
“No one?” Eden frowned, vaguely curious. “I thought you had a father in the Army.”
“I have a father but he doesn’t have a daughter,” she replied, then paused to meet Eden’s confused glance. “He disowned me.”
“Good lord, why?”
“Because I came here.” Cappy hesitated, then with false indifference, continued. “No daughter of his was going to fly for any quasi-military corps. Never mind that he taught me how to fly himself.”
“He’ll get over it. Parents always do.”
“You don’t know my father,” Cappy dryly countered. “He couldn’t have been more horrified if I had told him I was joining a traveling bordello.”
A smile briefly twisted Eden’s mouth. “That attitude isn’t confined to your father. I’ve often heard mine say that intelligence is wasted on women. I suppose it harks back to that old belief that we can’t be taken seriously—as pilots or anything else. Men might teach us how to fly as a cute novelty—rather like training a dog to sit up and beg—but they only want the trick performed when they say.”
“How true,” Cappy murmured with a very clear mental image of her father.
“And as for the military,” Eden continued, “it’s obviously a corrupting influence, because from what I hear in New York, a woman in uniform is somehow immoral.” Her dark eyes were agleam with mocking laughter. “You put those two things together and this is about the equivalent of a traveling bordello in a lot of people’s minds.”
Cappy laughed in her throat, losing some of her bitterness over the situation with her father. Still, the clash of personalities had been inevitable. Both of them were too strong-willed, and her father was too accustomed to imposing his authority. It was a long time since she had been the blindly obedient daughter, never questioning his orders.
From her cot, Marty paused in her letter-writing to watch the friendly interplay between Cappy and Eden down the row. They were talking in low tones so she hadn’t heard what they were saying. What a group, Marty thought. Three cots down, Aggie was tying her hair in rag curlers, using a mirror propped on her cross-legged lap. This side of her, Chicago was lying on her back atop her cot, a knee bent and one leg bobbing in the air, matching the rhythm of her popping gum while she added pages to the voluminous letter she was writing home.
Eden van Valkenburg, Marty noticed, had slipped out of her satin robe and tossed it carelessly on top of the footlocker. As she turned back the covers on her cot, she kicked off her feathered mules. The matching rose satin nightgown could easily have passed for a low-cut evening gown. When Marty saw her slip on a ruffled sleeping mask in the same rose satin material, she couldn’t help but shake her head.
“What a well-dressed trainee wears to bed,” she murmured under her breath, untroubled by her own plain blue pajamas.
In the next cot, Mary Lynn Palmer, petite and feminine in her baby-doll pajamas, looked up from the writing pad balanced on her knee. “Did you say something, Marty?” She frowned.
“No.” The strong north wind sifted through the cracks around the windows and door, creating sudden drafts of cold air. “God, this place is drafty,” Marty complained, suppressing a shiver.
“When summer comes, we’ll probably be glad of that,” Mary Lynn predicted.
“Listen.” Marty cocked her head as the wind carried the sound of deep, singing voices. “Do you hear that?”
“Yes.” Mary Lynn listened a minute. “It must be those cadets in the next barracks.”
“I guess,” Marty agreed.
For long seconds, they listened to the indistinguishable melody until it trailed away on the wind. “So far away from home,” Mary Lynn murmured in a subdued tone. Marty wasn’t sure if she was referring to her husband overseas in England, the trainees next door, or themselves, but it didn’t seem important.
“Yes,” she said simply and turned her attention back to the half-finished letter to her brother.
Chapter III
THE SUDDEN, SHRILL blast of noise woke Eden from a deep sleep. She sat bolt upright in bed and ripped off the satin sleeping mask that covered her eyes. For an instant, the completely alien surroundings threw her; she didn’t know where she was. Someone hit the light switch, and a pillow went sailing across the room at the culprit as Eden shielded her eyes against the sudden glare.
In the next cot, Cappy Hayward threw back the covers and swung her feet to the floor. “Come on, you guys. Reveille. Rise and shine.”
When Eden tried to move, muscles stiffened by sleeping on the wretchedly uncomfortable cot ached in protest. Blinking at the still bright light, she forced her body to turn so she could sit on the side of the cot. Behind the green shades, the window panes were black.
“It’s still dark outside.” The sleeping mask dangled from her hand. “What time is it?” She flexed her shoulders and neck, arching them to ease the stiffness.
“Six fifteen,” someone answered, but Eden’s mind wasn’t functioning well enough to identify the voice.
Her groan was involuntary. Under her breath, she muttered, “This is uncivilized.” Either no one heard her comment or else they all agreed with it.
“The bathroom!” It was Chicago who issued the panicked reminder of the facilities they shared with six other women. As she and the tall blonde charged the bathroom in their pajamas, Eden couldn’t help thinking that the pieces of cloth tied in Aggie’s hair resembled little white propellers all over her head.
“Better start getting dressed,” Cappy advised her, when Eden continued to sit on the edge of her cot, waiting for the grogginess to leave. “We have to get the beds made and the bay cleaned up for inspection.”
“What time is that?” With a weary effort, Eden tilted her head back to blearily gaze at the brunette who seemed so knowledgeable about the routine.
“Breakfast formation is at six forty-five.”
She was slow to calculate the time. “A half hour?!” Her eyes opened wide. “But it takes me an hour just to put on makeup and do my hair!”
“It can’t anymore,” Cappy replied with a look of sympathy.
With an effort, Eden stifled the impulse to declare it was barbaric to expect anyone to function at this hour of the morning, and pushed herself off the cot. No one else was complaining, so it seemed wisest to keep her own mouth shut.
In the mess hall proper, the women trainees filed by the steaming service troughs for their cafeteria-style breakfast, and proffered trays, sectioned by indentations to separate the food, to the kitchen help. As Aggie Richardson carried her trayful of food to one of the long tables, she paused to let the shorter Mary Lynn Palmer catch up with her. “Real butter,” she marveled to her baymate. “There’s no rationing in the Army.”
“I know. I think I’ve forgotten what it tastes like.” Mary Lynn set her tray on the table and stepped over the bench to sit down.
The others in their group were only a few steps behind them. There was a lot of scraping and table-bumping before all of them were seated. Chicago looked around at the corps of female trainees occupying the mess hall.
“I thought we might see some of those cadets at breakfast this morning.” Disappointment edged the curiosity in her remark.
“Yeah. Where do you suppose they are?” Marty swept the mess hall with a frowning glance.
“You have about as much chance of seeing them as you do of catching a snipe,” Cap declared with indulgent mockery for their wishful thinking.
“Why?” Aggie
wanted to know.
“Because the staff is going to arrange the schedules to keep us separated. You can bet if we’re at one end of the field, they’ll be at the other,” Cap predicted with a knowing light in her keen, blue eyes.
“I’ve never heard of anything so damned ridiculous.” The gravelly protest had escaped Marty’s lips before she realized what she’d said. She cast a quick, guilty look around to see if she’d been caught swearing, but there was no one in authority within hearing. Marty continued with her thought. “It doesn’t make sense to make such an effort to keep us apart. Good heavens, their barracks are right across from ours.”
“But it’s a no-man’s-land in between,” Cap cautioned.
“Or maybe you should say ‘no woman’s,’” Chicago suggested with a short laugh.
“Ha, Ha.” Marty forked a mouthful of scrambled eggs from her tray. Eden van Valkenburg was sitting across the table from her, nursing a cup of coffee and ignoring the lone piece of toast on her tray. “Is that all you’re eating?”
“I’m not hungry in the mornings.” She shrugged indifferently and fingered the unappetizing slice of toasted bread.
The tall, big-boned Aggie Richardson gazed at the sleekly fashionable redhead with undisguised envy. “Gosh, you look fabulous this morning.”
Eden smiled in pleased surprise at the compliment. “Thank you.”
“It’s no wonder,” Marty inserted. “You should have seen the mess she left in the sink when it finally was my turn to use it.”
“Sorry.” Her apology was slightly abrupt. Cleaning dirty sinks had always been the maid’s job. She was expected to do more than make her own bed, she realized, and sobered at the thought of how much adjusting she had to do.
No dawdling over breakfast was allowed as the day began in earnest. At breakfast formation, the seventy-five women trainees were split into two groups, called flights. From their ranks, a flight lieutenant and section marchers were elected for each group. It was a flight lieutenant’s duty to call her flight to breakfast formation in the mornings and command the section marchers who drilled them in columns, marching every place they went on the field.