by Jenny Holmes
She glanced up from her magazine with a triumphant grin but then her habitual shyness kicked in and she quickly dropped the smile.
Cameron hesitated. He seemed to have this effect on women: their faces went from sunshine to shade as soon as they saw him – all except Angela, whom he’d known since they were kids. Mary, in particular, brought the shutters down whenever he came near. ‘Are you ready?’ he asked in his formal, precise way.
Mary jumped up and followed him outside. She saw Archie and his surly sergeant running engine checks on the Spit that she’d delivered and returned Archie’s cheery wave. Then she got into Cameron’s car, predicting a long, silent drive across the Pennines, through the Yorkshire Dales and across the Wolds to Rixley. She was surprised when, not two minutes into the journey, Cameron made a foray into everyday conversation.
‘Lucky for you the weather was perfect for your first flight.’
‘Yes,’ she answered quietly.
‘It can change quickly at this time of year.’
‘It can.’
‘The forecast for tomorrow is rain.’ Cameron persisted despite Mary’s curt replies. ‘Douglas won’t send anyone out until it clears; they say around noon. You’ll be able to have a lie-in.’
‘That’s good.’
He drove along a narrow road between well-maintained drystone walls. The massive bulk of Pendle Hill lay ahead of them, reminding him of a local legend he’d learned about in his youth. ‘According to the history books, there were witches here in the olden days; in the early sixteen hundreds.’
‘The Witches of Pendle.’ Mary knew the story. ‘The court found them guilty of witchcraft and hanged them.’
‘They were a barbaric lot back then.’ Relieved to have found a topic that interested her, Cameron went into more detail. ‘I think it had something to do with two feuding families, each accusing the other. There was a living to be made out of casting spells, apparently, and neither family liked the competition. So they say.’
‘So nothing to do with actual witchcraft?’ Mary was amused.
‘No; money was at the bottom of it. The feuding ran out of control and it ended up with the whole lot being brought before a judge. They all pleaded not guilty but it was too late. Eight were hanged.’ Cameron slowed down at a fork in the road. ‘Listen, Mary; my family used to own a country house a mile or two from here so I know this area like the back of my hand. What do you say we stop off for a drink?’
‘All right,’ she agreed without thinking. ‘Do you know a decent pub?’
‘Just up here.’ He took the narrower road that led towards the famous hill. He and Mary were making progress, it seemed. Still, it would be best to tread carefully.
‘A country house?’ she echoed. ‘Does that mean you had one in the town, too?’
‘In Liverpool. My old man made his pile in shipping insurance. That was the business to be in before the war.’
‘Two houses.’ The idea was unheard of in Mary’s world and she fell quiet as they wound their way up a twisting lane.
‘It’s not as grand as it sounds. Anyway, those days are in the past. Dad had to sell both places once the effects of the war started to bite.’ Cameron glanced sideways and saw that Mary had retreated into her shell. Luckily the Red Lion lay at the top of the hill, in the small village of Ketley. He pulled up outside the door then waited for her to get out. ‘I’ll be back in a jiffy,’ he told her as he drove into the yard beside the pub. Tread carefully, he repeated to himself. Find out what makes her tick. For Cameron was more and more fascinated by Mary’s apparent contradictions; by her mixture of fierce ambition and trembling insecurity and by the vulnerability he detected beneath the sometimes hostile exterior. Maybe I’ve got it wrong, he thought as he parked the car. Perhaps I’m just not her type. Anyhow, let’s find out.
There was quite a view for Mary to take in as she stood by the door of the Red Lion, with Pendle looming behind and a long, open sweep of farmland below. The pub itself was an old building with narrow, mullioned windows, a shallow porch and an oak door. The sign above the porch showed a lion standing on its hind legs, wearing a crown.
‘Let’s hope Beryl has lit the fire,’ Cameron said when he returned and held the door open for her to enter. ‘It’s turning chilly.’
‘Beryl?’ Mary queried.
‘She’s been the landlady here for as long as I can remember.’ Sure enough, a log fire greeted them. It belched smoke across the empty room as the draught from the open door reached the flames. The smoke caught in the back of Mary’s throat and made her cough as Cameron chose a table near the window.
Once Cameron had taken off his cap, the elderly woman behind the bar recognized him and bustled across. ‘Look who it isn’t!’ she declared, wiping her hands on her apron before embracing him. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes.’
Cameron extricated himself from the hug. ‘Beryl, how are you? You’re looking in the pink, as ever.’
‘Not too bad,’ she conceded, her grey eyes sparkling. She was a round woman with a huge bosom and apple cheeks whose movements were surprisingly light and sprightly. ‘And how are Mr and Mrs Ainslie? Both well, I hope. Did you know that the people who bought your old house lost two sons in quick succession – one in North Africa, the other in the Far East? The mother hasn’t left the house since, poor thing.’ Beryl paused for breath then eyed Mary. ‘And who is this young lady?’
‘This is Mary Holland. She’s a pilot with the ATA.’
‘Never!’ the landlady marvelled. ‘You don’t look old enough. But you and Cameron make a handsome pair, I must say.’
‘Oh, no …’ Mary began.
Cameron laughed awkwardly. ‘Hold on, Beryl; I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong end of the stick.’
‘Have I?’ Undeterred, Beryl pressed ahead. ‘I’ve got eyes in my head and they’re telling me something different. You’ve got yourself a catch in this one,’ she told Mary with theatrical confidentiality. ‘Good-looking and clever with it; a real brainbox, in case you didn’t know.’
‘Honestly and truly,’ Mary protested, her face burning, ‘Flight Lieutenant Ainslie is driving me back to base, that’s all.’
‘If you say so. Now, Cameron, will it be your usual pint of best bitter? And you, Miss Mary; what can I get you?’
‘Sorry about that,’ Cameron muttered as Mary ordered a shandy and the landlady sailed off. He fixed his glasses more firmly on to the bridge of his nose then sat down with a worried frown. ‘Beryl has a reputation for putting her foot in it, but she’s harmless enough.’
‘No need to apologize.’ Perhaps stopping for a drink hadn’t been such a good idea after all. Mary shifted uncomfortably on her chair then suddenly saw the funny side.
‘What?’ Cameron asked when he saw her smile.
The smile developed into a laugh. ‘Your face; you look as if you wish the ground would swallow you up.’
‘I’m glad you find it funny.’ He screwed his face into an even deeper frown. This was not going at all well.
Realizing that Cameron wasn’t used to being laughed at, Mary made an effort to straighten her features. ‘I’m sorry.’
Beryl was still busy behind the bar. ‘Would you rather skip the drink?’ he offered. ‘If you like, I can pay up and we’ll head straight off.’
‘No; I’m happy to stay.’
‘To celebrate your first official flight,’ he agreed. When Mary smiled, her face changed completely. The shadows fled; she looked open and relaxed. ‘Have you phoned home to share your good news?’
‘No, Dad doesn’t have a telephone in the house. And anyway he wouldn’t be that bothered.’ She spoke matter-of-factly. ‘I’ll write to my brother Tom and tell him. He’ll be pleased as Punch for me.’
‘Where’s Tom?’
‘In Tunisia, the last I heard.’
‘When was that?’
‘In June this year. He’s not a great letter writer,’ Mary added wistfully.
‘No news is good news in
this day and age,’ Cameron reminded her. The rapid changes in Mary’s mood continued to intrigue him: one moment laughing, the next drifting off into dreamy sadness. ‘You have another brother, I seem to remember?’
Mary waited for the landlady to bring their drinks before replying. ‘Frank – he’s the black sheep. Don’t ask.’
‘Your mother?’
‘She died a while back.’
‘Mary, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.’
Back behind the bar, Beryl stood with a satisfied smile, watching Cameron and Mary lean forward to talk as she wiped glasses and stacked them on a shelf.
‘What about you?’ Mary asked. ‘Do you have any brothers?’
‘No, I’m an only child.’
‘I’ll bet your mum spoiled you rotten.’
‘Guilty as charged.’ It was true; Cameron had formed only a hazy idea of how easy he’d had it until the lead-up to the war, when he’d joined a long queue inside a giant aircraft hangar to swear his oath of allegiance alongside hundreds of other would-be recruits. There were lads there from the back streets of Liverpool and Manchester, desperate to become wireless operators or gunners. All were rejected for not having gone beyond elementary standard in school. They trudged off, heads hanging – some swearing, some swaggering, saying they’d only applied for the sake of the uniform and free dental care. Sod the RAF, they’d said, and getting shot to smithereens for one and six a day.
It was still hard for Mary to picture Cameron’s comfortable, cushioned life before the war. ‘When did you leave home?’ she asked.
‘At eight.’ He smiled at her shocked reaction. ‘To go to prep school and then on from there to Rugby, then a year at Oxford before I volunteered.’
‘How old are you now?’
‘Twenty-three.’
‘What was it like – leaving your family?’
‘Hard,’ he admitted. ‘I wrote dozens of letters pleading to be allowed home: “Dearest Mother, I am very unhappy here. The big boys are bullies. The food is horrid and my bed is hard.” With rotten spelling and smudged with tears. I’ll never forget how lonely I felt that first term.’
‘But you got used to it?’
‘Eventually. I can’t say I actually enjoyed it, though. But then no one likes their school, do they?’
‘I did,’ Mary countered. ‘School was better than home for me. I loved arithmetic and composition. My teacher gave me books to read that took me out of myself for a while; Just William and King Solomon’s Mines were my favourites, and Black Beauty.’
There she went, off on one of her journeys to a destination where it was impossible for him to follow, so Cameron quietly drank his beer and waited for her to come back.
‘I had to leave school when I was fourteen to get a job – working in the local mill from seven in the morning until half five at night. I carried on reading, though, whenever I found time; I prefer history now – the Tudors and Stuarts.’
What seemed normal to Mary was strange to Cameron and vice versa, yet somehow learning about the differences brought them closer. He saw her in a new, brighter light that revealed the dreams underlying her words. ‘I was once engaged to be married.’ Out of the blue he told her something that few of his colleagues knew. ‘To a girl at Oxford.’
Mary tilted her head to one side and gave him a sharp look. ‘What was her name?’
‘Valerie Martin. Her mother was a suffragette fighting for votes for women and she passed on the beliefs to her daughter. That’s the reason I fell for her, I suppose. Equality between the sexes has always struck me as blindingly obvious. Valerie and I were too young, of course.’
‘Who broke it off?’ Mary had stopped noticing the nosy landlady or the sudden, heavy patter of raindrops against the window panes. Her drink stood on the table untouched.
‘She did; sensible girl. I’m no good with women in general – perhaps you’ve noticed.’
‘Why not? I mean, why are you no good?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose, like a lot of men, I find it hard to say what I feel. To me it’s worse than pulling teeth.’
Mary smiled at the image. ‘You expect us girls to know how you feel without you having to explain?’
‘Yes. Women have more intuition.’
‘In general?’ she teased.
Cameron gave a self-deprecating laugh. ‘Drink up,’ he prompted. ‘Otherwise we’ll be here all day.’
So Mary downed her shandy and let the conversation drift along on a less personal level – the success that Angela’s poster seemed to be having in recruiting more women into the ATA, the gaps in engine theory that Mary had noted in the course at Thame, the scandal of paying women pilots twenty per cent less than the men until as recently as May.
‘We’re paid the same now, thank goodness.’ Mary stood up first and reached for her cap. ‘It’s just a pity that they still won’t let women fly for your lot,’ she concluded.
‘For the RAF?’ Cameron considered this one step too far. ‘Personally I’m not for it,’ he admitted with a swift wave of farewell to Beryl as they left the pub and hurried out to the car. ‘I can’t see women being prepared to drop bombs and fire machine guns willy-nilly. It doesn’t seem natural.’
So much for equality between the sexes. Mary made a mental note. ‘But it’s all right to send us up without weapons or even a radio to our names,’ she pointed out, turning up her collar against the rain. ‘To make us sitting ducks.’
‘Touché!’ Always the gentleman, Cameron held open the door.
She had one foot inside the car and one hand on top of the door to steady herself when she paused and glanced at his face – smooth, unmarked skin, grey eyes with hazel specks, fair hair lifting straight back from his forehead.
Catching the moment, Cameron leaned forward and kissed her.
It was a brief, soft touch of lips but it changed everything.
‘I hope you don’t mind?’ he murmured as he drew back.
She shook her head and kissed him again in the deep shadow of Pendle Hill, haunt of witches and their black magic spells. Mary and Cameron cast caution to the wind that gusted down from the high ridge and kissed a third time, arms locked around waist and neck, lips wet from the rain.
Bobbie had flown Magisters many times before. They were slow, two-seater trainer aircraft: monoplanes with a fixed undercarriage and an open cockpit, lumbering old crates made out of spruce and plywood that were to be avoided if possible. Today, however, Bobbie scarcely cared what she flew.
Open to the elements, she sat at the controls hoping that it wouldn’t rain. The wind was bad enough, gusting in from the north-west and doing its best to push the Maggie off course. Her destination was the ferry pool at Whitchurch and she observed the various landmarks with a weary familiarity, only paying proper attention when the glistening waters of the Bristol Channel and her journey’s end finally came into view. ‘Thank the Lord!’ she said with a sigh as she began her descent. ‘The sooner this is over the better.’ She’d lowered her revs and was keeping an eye on the altimeter when, out of nowhere, an aircraft sporting the RAF insignia shot at high speed at right angles across her bow with a single Jerry in hot pursuit.
Suddenly Bobbie was fully alert. She recognized the two outlines at once: a DH80 Mosquito and a Focke-Wulf, one of the best piston fighters that the Germans had. She watched in horror as the Focke pilot released a hail of bullets at the Mosquito, which banked then increased height steeply before performing a rapid loop and coming back at Jerry, his own guns blazing.
The action was too close for comfort, Bobbie realized, and the Maggie was notoriously slow to respond. At this rate, she was in danger of being caught in the crossfire. So she descended more steeply and felt a sudden lurch in the pit of her stomach. Again the two fighter planes crossed her path, guns going at full blast and bullets strafing through the air as they dipped below her. To her horror, the Focke gained on the Mosquito and scored a direct hit on the RAF man’s tail fin and fuselage. Bobbie wa
tched the Mosquito stall then struggle on in the direction of the coast while the German pilot eased off, seemingly content to observe his stricken enemy rapidly lose height. There was no choice for the RAF man: as his Mosquito plummeted in a plume of blue smoke, he was forced to eject. She prayed that he would make a clean exit and sure enough, his parachute opened – pure white against the bright blue sky – which left Bobbie and her Maggie at Jerry’s mercy.
The Focke pilot turned. He came at full speed directly towards her, reserving his fire until he was close enough for Bobbie to see the head and shoulders of the helmeted figure at the controls. He fired wide then, with split-second timing, he banked to starboard, the wing tips of the two planes almost touching.
Jerry was toying with her – and enjoying it. As he gained height, Bobbie followed her only course of action, which was to continue her descent, hoping that he wouldn’t come at her again once she flew within range of ground-defence gunners. Gripping the joystick and with the ferry pool runway now clearly visible, she fought to hold her nerve.
The gunners on the ground reacted as she’d hoped. They let rip at the Focke, holding him off as she approached the airstrip. But he made one last attempt; roaring at her from above and behind and firing furiously before overtaking her and ascending almost vertically out of reach of British fire. Bobbie heard his bullets rip through her port wing. The tip of the plywood frame splintered with a loud crack, throwing her off balance as she went in for landing. She stamped on the rudder pedals. At 300 feet she was still in control. The green landing strip blurred beneath her, and she skimmed the tree tops then landed with a thud and a strong thrust backwards in her seat, squealing to a halt.
Bobbie slumped against her harness, head spinning, unable to believe that she’d survived the attack. Ground crew came running but she stayed in the cockpit. Her fingers refused to cooperate as she fumbled with buckles and when she did release the harness, her head fell forward and hit the control panel. For a few seconds she was knocked unconscious and when she came round she felt hands helping her and saw two faces at close quarters, too blurred for her to make out.