by Jenny Holmes
‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t.’ Bobbie was also in favour of staying on at the Grange, or what was left of it. After all, her first-floor room – a light and airy space with a view over the grounds – was undamaged. She had her gramophone and a stack of jazz records, plenty of reading material to be going on with and space in her wardrobe for dresses, skirts, slacks and so on. ‘We’re only five minutes from the ferry pool as the crow flies. Besides, if we had to change our billets, the chances are we’d be scattered all over the countryside, tucked away in a poky little farmhouse or living above the village shop.’
‘Yes, it’ll take more than a few bombs for Jerry to force us out of Burton Grange.’ Angela swept up broken glass behind the counter. ‘What do you think, Teddy? Can we knock the place back into shape?’
‘Most definitely.’ Eager to show willing, Teddy had been hard at work all morning, taping up cracked window panes and setting doors back on their hinges. He was a decent handyman, having been taught how to mend things by his grandfather, a joiner by trade – much to his widowed mother’s disapproval.
‘Dad, Edward doesn’t have time to mess about with chisels and screwdrivers,’ she would complain to the old man. ‘He has to do his homework. And afterwards he must revise for his scholarship exam.’ And so it had gone on through much of Teddy’s childhood: the tussle between the generations, until he’d landed fairly and squarely in his mother’s camp by gaining entry to the grammar school with top marks for his year. Thereafter it had been mostly books and brainwork, prizes in mathematics combined with significant successes on the county athletics tracks and a growing awareness that the sky was the limit if only he, Teddy Simpson, applied himself and was careful to mix with the right people.
‘That’s right, never say die.’ Angela bustled past him carrying a dustpan full of broken glass. She took it out of the back door into the cobbled mews where she spotted Cameron stepping down from the cab of a worse-for-wear Tilly, his jacket slung over his shoulder. For once he looked in need of a good wash and a shave. With a delighted cry, she put down her dustpan and ran to greet him, flinging her arms around his neck. ‘Thank heavens; the wanderer returns!’
‘Careful. Don’t strangle me,’ he warned as he straightened his glasses then extricated himself.
‘Cameron, I was desperately worried about you. I imagined all sorts of disasters. Excuse the Mrs Mopp get-up, by the way.’ Angela’s cheeks reddened slightly as she stepped back then walked with him into the house.
‘You smell of whisky,’ he remarked. ‘Isn’t it a bit early for that?’
She laughed self-consciously. ‘It’s not how it seems. I’ve been a busy bee, clearing up behind the bar. I swear, hand on heart. Anyway, darling, I need you to give me a blow-by-blow account.’
‘Not now,’ he said wearily. He’d come from dropping the intriguing Mary Holland at her barracks at the airfield and at present all he wanted to do was sleep. ‘Perhaps later.’
Angela’s disappointment was evident. The corners of her full mouth turned down and a frown appeared. ‘This evening then,’ she murmured.
But an exhausted Cameron disappeared into his room and slept through the afternoon and evening, forcing Angela to wait in vain for him to show up in the lounge and share his experiences over a glass of the hard stuff.
Instead, she sat at the newly restored bar and twiddled her thumbs, only half listening to Teddy’s anecdote about how once, when still with the Initial Training Wing, he’d flown his Spit over the house in Manchester where his mother lived and put on a flamboyant display of aerobatics for her benefit. The inevitable reprimand from Training Command had followed but Teddy hadn’t regretted it. It was only high spirits, after all, and it showed pride in his achievements. He’d won his wings soon after and had quickly achieved his present rank of flight lieutenant.
‘I reckon I can make wing commander with a fair wind behind me,’ he concluded as he drained his glass.
‘And good luck to you,’ she replied absent-mindedly. Though Teddy was handsome in a trim, clean-cut way – tall and slim (maybe a little too angular) – it turned out he wasn’t the most entertaining of companions. He was too earnest and Angela thought she detected insecurity beneath the bravado. She yawned delicately and excused herself. ‘An early night beckons.’ She slipped from her stool and quietly made her exit. As she left the room she glanced over her shoulder to see Douglas and Hilary having a pow-wow in their usual corner and Teddy swiftly moving on to chat with Bobbie. Angela crossed the hall and passed under the torn portrait, up the staircase minus its banister, along the landing to the women’s quarters and her room next door to Bobbie’s overlooking the lawn and the road beyond.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sometimes sleep refused to come.
Angela lay awake until after midnight, listening to every creak of floorboard and sigh of wind against her window panes. She heard footsteps in the corridor, the turn of a door knob then the sound of water splashing into a bowl in Bobbie’s room. After a while the flick of a switch told her that her neighbour’s light was off. Silence then except for the tick of Angela’s alarm clock, accompanied by much tossing and turning and pummelling of pillows.
Then there was a light tap on her door and, without waiting to be invited, Bobbie crept into the room.
‘Are you awake?’ she whispered.
Angela sat up. ‘Wide awake,’ she assured her. ‘Come in.’
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ Bobbie confessed.
‘Me neither.’ Angela patted her cream satin counterpane. ‘Come and sit.’
‘I’ve tried counting sheep but it was no good.’ Bobbie cut a dejected figure as she padded barefoot across the room. She wore boys’ pyjamas and bed-socks for extra warmth and her unruly waves were held in place by a pale blue silk scarf tied gypsy-style around her head. ‘Are you sure I haven’t woken you?’
‘Quite sure.’ Reaching over to switch on her bedside lamp, Angela admitted she was glad to see Bobbie. ‘What does this remind you of?’ she asked as she made room for her friend on the side of her bed then drew her knees up under her chin.
‘Hmm. Midnight feasts in a school dorm, but without the hot chocolate and marshmallows?’
‘Quite. And without Matron eavesdropping outside the door.’ Angela’s mind skimmed back through the years to a more innocent time. ‘I don’t know about you in your school in Edinburgh, but all I needed to worry about in those days was the danger of forgetting the past tense of a French verb or the date for the Battle of Malplaquet.’
‘1709,’ Bobbie recited automatically. ‘Blenheim: 1704, Ramillies: 1706, Oudenarde: 1708 …’
‘Malplaquet: 1709,’ Angela chimed in. ‘We were mere babes in arms back then. Battles were what we learned about from musty tomes. Now we know they’re bullets and bombs, blood and Lord knows what else.’
‘Is that why you couldn’t sleep? You were thinking about yesterday evening?’
‘Partly. And I was giving myself a good ticking-off.’
‘Whatever for?’ In Bobbie’s eyes Angela was well-nigh perfect: her film-star looks went alongside an unflappable, breezy manner that she managed to maintain in the face of all dangers.
Angela tutted and studied the backs of her hands in the yellow lamplight. ‘It’s difficult to put my finger on. I suppose I’m annoyed with myself for losing my composure when Cameron didn’t show up at roll-call.’
‘That was understandable.’ Bobbie suspected that there was more.
‘And then when he did come back to the Grange, do you know what I did?’
Bobbie shook her head.
‘I threw my arms around his neck and almost knocked his glasses off! I know, I know; it’s bad form. He’s one of Lionel’s best friends, for goodness sake.’
‘But you didn’t …? You don’t …?’
‘Have any serious feelings for Cameron?’ Angela inspected a bruise on her knuckles and several raw scratches on her wrist. ‘I didn’t think I did.’
‘But now
you’re not so sure?’ Bobbie didn’t say so but she thought that there might be something in this. She’d noticed that Angela came alive whenever she talked to Cameron. There was a special sparkle in her eyes and an intimacy in her movements – touching and stroking, smiling and tilting her head.
‘I was until this morning,’ Angela said hesitantly. She recalled the knot in her stomach when she’d noticed her old friend was missing from the line-up and the way her imagination had run riot with various tragic possibilities. ‘I’ve always tried to think of him as my superior officer and a good pal from the old days; never anything more. But oh dear me, when I saw him step down from the Tilly without a mark on him, I felt my heart beat so fast that it practically jumped out of my chest.’
‘What about Cameron? Did he say anything?’
Angela gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘You know what he’s like: stiff upper lip and all that. He asked me to stop strangling him so I did.’
‘Typical. But that doesn’t tell us what was going on beneath the surface,’ Bobbie reasoned. ‘The fact is he knows that you and Lionel are practically engaged. He would do his best to respect that.’
‘True.’ Angela tried hard to sort out the muddle going on inside her head. ‘Oh, don’t ask me, Bobbie; I don’t know what to think. I suspect I’m an awfully fickle girl, that’s all. But that’s enough about me. What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you sleep?’
‘No particular reason. I read through my last letter from Mummy before I hit the hay and it must have set me thinking more than usual.’
‘It made you homesick for all that Scottish heather and fresh air.’
‘In a way. But I’m in my element here at Rixley, flying Spits and so on. The letter didn’t make me want to rush home and do the Highland Fling.’
‘With a chap in a kilt waiting in the wings.’
‘There’s no chap in a kilt,’ Bobbie insisted. ‘I was too busy riding ponies and learning to fly when I was growing up to take much notice of boys.’
‘But I bet they took notice of you,’ Angela guessed. ‘Every eligible bachelor north of the border must have beaten a path to your door at some time or another.’
‘Not that I noticed.’ Bobbie grimaced. ‘But that rather brings me to the point.’
‘The reason why you’re here, sitting on my bed and robbing me of my beauty sleep?’
‘Yes, it turns out you’re not the only one whose heart has been going pitter-patter of late.’
‘No, wait – let me guess!’ Of course! ‘Teddy Simpson,’ Angela murmured after the briefest of pauses. There had been that flirting episode at the bar on the evening of the handsome flight lieutenant’s arrival, and again tonight as Angela had made her early exit.
Bobbie’s pale colouring was suffused with crimson. ‘Oh Lord,’ she groaned. ‘Was it blindingly obvious?’
‘To me it was,’ Angela said with a nod, ‘because I know you so well, my dear. But rest assured, no one else will have noticed.’
Desperate not to be seen as one of those louche girls who flings herself at anything in trousers, Bobbie took comfort in Angela’s opinion. ‘Don’t worry; I’ll have got over it by tomorrow morning,’ she insisted firmly. ‘My mind will be back on altimeters and wind direction. I’ll be thousands of feet up in my Spit and I won’t be giving Teddy Simpson another thought.’
On the Wednesday after the bombing raid, Jean stood at the end of the single runway at Seddon aerodrome and looked at her watch. First Officer Douglas Thornton was running late. The nearby canteen looked a more inviting prospect than standing here in the drizzle waiting for him to pick her up so she thought she might as well snatch a quick cup of tea.
‘That was a first-class landing.’ The mechanic whose job it was to run out to jam the chocks under her wheels caught up with her and held open the canteen door to a burst of loud chatter, a hiss of steam from the tea urn and a clatter of knives and forks. ‘I’ve watched many an aircraft land on this airfield in my time; it’s awkward and not one in twenty manages it the way you did.’
‘It’s easy in the latest Spit,’ Jean replied modestly. Since the disastrous events of the previous Saturday the squadron leader had been keen to move out as many aircraft as possible in case Jerry decided to strike again, which meant that Jean and her co-pilots had flown out of Rixley at least twice a day, distributing planes to nearby airfields but rarely ferrying new ones back in. ‘The Mark IX handles so well you feel you’ve sprouted wings like an actual bird.’
The mechanic was having none of it; he went on praising Jean as they queued for their tea and he refused to let her pay for hers. ‘It’s on me,’ he insisted.
So she sat with him and the ground crew, allowing her new admirer to breeze through a few introductions – ‘Colin, Arnold; this is Jean Dobson. Jean, meet Colin and Arnold. My name’s Jimmy, by the way.’
Occasionally she glanced out of the window to see if Douglas’s Anson was anywhere in sight and as it got to seven o’clock she realized they would have all-on to make it home before dark so she drummed her fingers lightly on the table, scarcely listening to the chatter going on around her.
‘Are you wondering what’s keeping him?’ Jimmy picked up on Jean’s fidgety behaviour.
‘You mean my taxi ride home?’
‘Yes. If it happens to be First Officer Thornton you’re waiting for, he’s been held up back at Rixley. There was a problem with his Anson’s instrument panel, by all accounts.’
Jean’s heart sank. Her hopes of a long hot soak in the bath followed by an early night were fading fast.
But then the slow drone of the Anson’s engine told her that her lift home had arrived at last and, hastily thanking Jimmy for the tea and snatching her leather helmet and parachute pack from the table, she ran out to the end of the runway to watch Douglas land the lumbering giant then taxi to a halt.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ he called to her from his cockpit.
‘It doesn’t matter; I’m sure it couldn’t be helped.’ She scrambled in beside him, strapped herself in then waited for him to execute a slow U-turn.
He completed the manoeuvre then tapped the glass cover of his temperamental climb-and-descent indicator to check that the needle was still operating as it should. Once satisfied, he opened the throttle and built up the revs before hurtling down the runway, back the way he’d come.
Safely airborne, Jean relaxed in the passenger seat for the thirty-minute flight back to base. ‘To what do I owe the honour?’ she remarked as they rose through a thin layer of wispy white cloud to be greeted by the marvellous sight of the sun setting over a western hill. As the ATA officer in charge of masterminding each day’s operations, it wasn’t often that Douglas flew between ferry pools himself.
‘Everyone’s busy. There was no one else I could send,’ he answered, checking his dials and opening the throttle to its maximum. ‘I take it you’re enjoying the Mark IX?’
‘You can say that again.’ Below them, between the clouds, autumn fields were a pale, straw-coloured patchwork dissected by the silver ribbon of a river that gleamed in the dusk light. ‘Have you ever flown one?’
‘No, worse luck. I flew one of the early Spits for the RAF, though.’ He recalled his glory days with a rueful smile.
Jean looked with new interest at her companion. How old might Douglas be? Between thirty-five and forty, she guessed, though his tight-fitting flying helmet and goggles hid his greying hair and the wrinkles around his eyes. He wore his leather pilot’s jacket with the collar turned up and sheepskin gauntlets to protect his hands from the cold. ‘When was that?’ she asked with eager curiosity.
‘Nineteen forty-one. They designed her to fly low and fast and to turn on a sixpence. I knew the second I climbed into her cockpit for the very first time that she was streets ahead of anything I’d ever flown before. I couldn’t wait to get into combat in her, which I did for a few months but then I ran into a spot of bother over Dunkirk – in a Wellington, as it happens.’ Douglas slapped the s
ide of his injured left leg impatiently. ‘This put paid to my front-line action once and for all.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Not half as sorry as I was.’
Jean watched Douglas lean forward to tap the instrument dials – seemingly a nervous habit with him. She hadn’t expected to get so much out of her normally reserved companion during this rare shared flight but now that he’d started talking there seemed to be no stopping him.
‘It was no go for me after that; the RAF didn’t want to know. The only way for me to keep on flying was to join the ATA. But I still carry my old dog tags with me.’ He dipped his left hand into his top pocket and drew out two octagonal Bakelite discs threaded on to a thick cotton cord. One was red, the other green, and each was stamped with: Thornton, D W, 43792.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, trying to imagine what it must have been like for Douglas to have had his hopes and ambitions so cruelly dashed.
‘Yes. A chap reads in the official pamphlets all the uplifting guff about mighty engines roaring a symphony of power and speed, and so on. That kind of thing really inspired me. I was already mad about driving sports cars.’ Douglas’s voice slowed and he gazed out of the side window through the thin layer of cloud at the land below, following the course of a canal and counting off the locks before veering east to pick up the line of a railway track that would see them safely home – and not a moment too soon to judge by the fading light. ‘The day I won my wings and took up my duties as aircraftsman second class was the best day of my life bar none.’
‘A dream come true,’ Jean murmured, thinking that fate was full of twists and turns. For instance, if she’d gone straight home from work on the night when she’d run into Douglas drowning his sorrows in the pub, she might never have had the confidence she’d needed to send off the application form for the job she was doing now. ‘Your bad luck turned out nicely for me,’ she reminded him gently.