by Jenny Holmes
‘Take it easy,’ a voice said as Bobbie tried to fight the men off.
‘She’s taken a knock to the head,’ someone else said as he pulled Bobbie upright. ‘Blimey, she’s light as a feather.’
‘Careful; she’s bleeding. Steady now; we’ll lift you out.’
Bobbie was too weak to push them away. She felt herself being raised from the cockpit then lowered and placed gently on the ground. The sun blinded her when she tried to open her eyes.
‘What’s your name, love?’ one of the blurred faces asked as he attempted to unzip her suit.
She tried to answer but could only groan.
‘Someone, fetch a medic.’
‘Does anyone know first aid? Don’t move her.’
‘That was a damned close shave.’
A babble of voices surrounded Bobbie. Only dimly aware that she’d managed to land her plane, she lay on the ground without moving. Blood trickled from her temple and she wondered why she couldn’t raise her head or move her hands. She groaned again and gave in. What would be would be.
Olive sat in her car at Whitchurch watching planes come and go. She’d parked by the control tower to wait for Bobbie and was busy filling in a crossword puzzle when the action started. She heard the sudden rattle of gunfire and looked up to witness a fierce dogfight between a lone Focke and a Mosquito, going at it hammer and tongs while an unarmed, yellow Magister was caught helplessly in the crossfire. At first Olive concentrated on the two fighter planes but then it occurred to her that the unlucky third pilot might, in fact, be Bobbie.
With a knot forming in her stomach, Olive opened her door and stepped out of the car for a better view. As the fighters banked and looped the loop, firing furiously, she saw the Mosquito come off worst. The pilot bailed safely, thank heavens, but that left the Maggie at Jerry’s mercy. Olive crossed her fingers, hardly daring to breathe but relieved to see the gunners in two bunkers at the edge of the airfield spring into action to drive the Focke away. The end result: one lost plane and a damaged Magister. Could the pilot bring it limping in? Olive set off at a run towards the runway where it aimed to land.
‘Take it easy,’ a mechanic said to the pilot as Olive reached the scene and saw in a moment that her fears were realized. It was indeed Bobbie who lay semi-conscious on the ground, a small figure with her sandy hair fanned out around her head.
‘She’s taken a knock to the forehead.’
‘Steady now; we’ll lift you out.’
Four men had climbed on to the wing and raised Bobbie out of the Maggie’s cockpit as Olive pushed her way through.
‘What’s your name, love?’ someone was asking the injured pilot.
‘Her name’s Bobbie Fraser,’ Olive said as she came to Bobbie’s side. First aid was called for. ‘I know first aid,’ Olive said. ‘That’s the way; try not to move her in case she’s broken something. Bobbie, it’s me – Olive. Can you hear me?’
Bobbie sucked in a long, jagged breath and tried to raise her hand while Olive took out a clean cotton handkerchief, folded it into a pad and pressed it against the gash on Bobbie’s forehead. ‘Someone, fetch water,’ she instructed. ‘Grasp my hand,’ she told Bobbie as she tested her reactions. ‘That’s good; now the other one.’
Slowly Bobbie opened her eyes. When she was able to focus she recognized Olive and gripped her hand more firmly.
‘Good. Do you think you can sit up?’
‘I’ll try,’ Bobbie breathed. Her head hurt like billy-o and she felt terribly weak.
By this time a second woman was on the scene, working with Olive to raise the patient. ‘Third Officer Betty Cooper,’ she muttered by way of introduction. ‘I qualified as a nurse before I joined the ATA.’
Together Betty and Olive sat Bobbie up. Betty quickly replaced the blood-soaked hankie with a thick pad of lint, which she secured with a sticking plaster.
‘Will it need stitches?’ Olive wondered.
‘Probably not,’ Betty replied. ‘The cut’s not deep. It’s the concussion we have to worry about.’
‘I’m all right,’ Bobbie said faintly as she made an effort to stand up but her legs failed to cooperate.
‘Says you,’ Olive remarked.
‘Here; we’ll carry her.’ Two of the men who had been first on the scene gently lifted Bobbie under instruction from Betty and carried her off the runway.
‘What time is it?’ Bobbie whispered to Olive as she slowly made sense of what was happening. ‘Are we in time to drive to Walsall?’
‘Never mind about that.’ As the panic subsided, Olive began to plan ahead. ‘Let’s get you sorted out first.’
The men took Bobbie to the first-aid station then hung around outside the door with Olive while Betty cleaned the wound and applied a dressing.
‘She was bloody lucky, excuse my French.’ One of the men offered Olive a cigarette, which she refused. ‘I thought she was going to crash into those trees.’
‘Luck had nothing to do with it; Bobbie is one of our best pilots,’ Olive argued. ‘I’m proud of her, if you must know.’
In the short time that Olive had been at Rixley she’d got a fly-on-the-wall measure of most of the female ATA pilots. She’d liked Jean from the start and just lately Mary had earned her grudging respect. But it had taken her longer to warm to Angela and Bobbie. Olive and Angela were obviously chalk and cheese – worlds apart in every way – while Bobbie had seemed wet behind the ears, with an annoying childlike quality when it came to men. Despite that, Olive had to take her hat off to both women: they were daredevils in the air and willing to face any risk to get their planes from one ferry pool to the next.
Before long, Betty and Bobbie emerged from the first-aid room. ‘No broken bones,’ Betty reported briskly. ‘Still some dizziness but no nausea, and the bleeding has stopped. I’d say she was fit to carry on.’
‘I’ll keep an eye on her,’ Olive promised. Walsall was three hours away so it would be dark before they got there.
‘Don’t do anything strenuous for the next day or two,’ Betty instructed Bobbie as she handed her over to Olive.
‘I’m fine,’ Bobbie asserted. ‘Honestly, I don’t want any fuss.’ She thanked everyone who’d rushed to her rescue then refused Olive’s help into the front passenger seat. With a backward glance at the Maggie listing to portside on the runway, she sighed then looked straight ahead.
‘Sit back and take it easy.’ Olive started the engine then eased the car towards the exit. ‘By the way, I’m sorry I was offhand with you the other morning.’
‘Were you?’ Bobbie couldn’t remember.
‘Yes, when you borrowed my clothes. I was a bit hasty: too quick to judge.’
‘Apology accepted.’ Bobbie looked down at her hands. Her head throbbed and she wasn’t fine, not really. Her chest was tight and her pulse raced. She could have died up there; been snuffed out like a candle. And what would it all have been for? For King and country, she tried to remind herself. That’s what I’m meant to think.
Only it hadn’t felt like that when she’d come face to face with the Focke pilot. Beneath his helmet and behind his goggles there was a young man more or less the same age as Bobbie, with a mother and father to mourn him if his plane went down – a boy-killer with death in his heart. It shouldn’t be this way, Bobbie thought as she rested her head against the seat. War is madness when all’s said and done.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jean reached Reading without incident. She’d spent much of the short flight coming to terms with the news of Harry Wood’s death, picturing the grief that his parents must suffer and reflecting on how everyone at Rixley would miss him. Such loss was sewn into the fabric of warfare, along with heroic feats on the ground, at sea and in the air. All families in the kingdom were affected, all friends and colleagues left saddened and diminished by these events.
No doubt the Rixley crew would eventually hear from Gordon details of the bombing raid on Northgate. Jean hoped that Harry hadn’t suffered too much,
had perhaps been knocked unconscious at the time of the blast and had never come round. Tears welled up when she remembered his unmarked, eager, nineteen-year-old face.
Having made her usual textbook landing and handed over her Spit without fuss to the ground crew, Jean’s mood was subdued as she walked to the canteen to wait for Douglas. Ah, Douglas! The name was enough to conjure up the storm of emotions that she’d kept at bay until the moment earlier that day when she’d stood with him by the pilots’ hatch and he’d said in his halting way that he would never do anything to offend her. She remembered their earlier kiss in the lounge at Burton Grange and the leap of joy in her heart then the uncertainty afterwards, when Douglas had acted so coolly towards her. Have I got this right? she asked herself as she sat and stared out at the usual ferry pool activity – Amazons towing aircraft into position on runways, ground crew running hither and thither, pilots reporting in and signing off at the ops room. I know I care for Douglas, but does he care for me?
Doubt was a state of mind that Jean hadn’t had much practice in dealing with. She liked to be in control, to plan a course through life and stick to it. It seemed that love scuppered such resolve; threw you off balance in a situation where there were no rudder pedals or joystick to correct the steering or adjust the altitude. It was like blind flying without instruments to guide you.
Does he care for me? she wondered again. And how shall I find out?
She studied the sky for signs of Douglas’s Anson. A Lancaster roared down the runway and took off, followed by two Hurricanes. A plane circled high overhead, waiting for the approach to clear. Could this be her taxi-plane?
Another doubt darted into her head: shouldn’t she have tackled the thorny topic of Douglas’s poor hearing as Gillian had suggested? Yes, I should, she told herself firmly. Then, Yes, I will – soon!
Once the sky was clear, the circling plane made its approach. As Jean had suspected, it was the Anson, with Douglas at the controls. She watched anxiously and was relieved to see the pilot crank down the undercarriage and land his aircraft smoothly and without a hitch. Perhaps Gillian had been wrong, after all.
As the propellers of the old reconnaissance aircraft slowed, Douglas unstrapped his harness and peered out through the square windshield. No wonder the damned thing was mostly used as a training aircraft these days. It had taken almost 150 cranks of the handle to lower the undercarriage – an exhausting process that had left him out of breath. The aircraft had been all right in its day, with space for a bomb-aimer to lie prone in the nose section, with the pilot in his cockpit behind and two folding canvas seats to the rear for a wireless operator and a navigator. But these days the RAF demanded more speed and manoeuvrability of its front-line bombers. ‘You’re like me, old girl,’ Douglas muttered as he hitched his lame leg towards the exit door. ‘Practically on the scrap heap.’
‘Stay where you are,’ Jean called from the runway. She’d left the canteen as soon as she’d been sure that it was Douglas’s plane. ‘I’ve already signed us out to save you the bother. We can head straight off.’
So Douglas resumed his seat, restarted the engines and waited for Jean to climb aboard. She chose a fold-up seat directly behind him.
Hitching her parachute pack on to a hook beside her seat, she leaned forward to tap him on the shoulder.
He turned to find her face close to his.
She smiled and kissed him on the cheek. ‘I’m glad to see you,’ she whispered.
He gasped at the touch of her warm lips on his cold skin. Then he smiled back. ‘You’re wonderful, Jean; did you know that?’
‘You’re not so bad yourself.’ She settled into her seat then strapped herself in. ‘Go right ahead, First Officer Thornton; we’re cleared for take-off.’
‘Harry Wood was a grand lad.’ Inside Number 1 hangar at Rixley, Stan tossed a spanner towards the replacement mechanic, a seventeen-year-old cadet named Bob Cross from the Air Training Corps. ‘You’ll have all-on to fill his shoes.’
Bob reached out to catch the spanner like a cricketer fielding a difficult catch. He’d arrived at Rixley on the Tuesday following the Northgate raid. Despite a raw enthusiasm and an eagerness to prove himself, the sallow-faced, dark-haired lad found that he hadn’t exactly been welcomed with open arms. ‘I’ll do my best, sir,’ he assured Stan on the Thursday following his arrival.
‘Your best might not be good enough,’ Stan growled. ‘Pass me that wrench.’
The newcomer stared at a bewildering row of tools set out on Stan’s workbench. ‘Which one?’
Stan continued to lean over the nose cone of the Hurricane that was in for repair. Seemingly he had eyes in the back of his head. ‘Not that one; the big one next to it,’ he muttered impatiently.
Bob rushed to oblige in a pair of overalls hanging at half-mast from his lanky frame.
‘Poor sod.’ Mary stood with Jean at the entrance to the hangar, looking out at a downpour as they listened in on the bad-tempered exchanges between Stan and his hapless new apprentice. The two women were at ease, arms folded and leaning against the hangar door.
‘Stan’s still upset about Harry and who can blame him?’ It was half past eight and Jean and the other pilots had just learned that low cloud would prevent them from flying until after eleven. ‘We all are. What happened in Northgate has put everyone on edge.’
‘Have you heard the rumours that are doing the rounds?’ Mary went on. She was especially disappointed by the delay on this, her fourth day of flying. ‘They say that Jerry has Rixley in his sights again.’
‘They always say that.’ The drumming of rain on the metal roof of the hangar was a depressing sound but Jean tried to make the best of things.
‘Yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Cameron mentioned that Hilary is taking the threat seriously this time.’ Ah, Cameron! Since Monday Mary had spent three evenings on the trot with him, either walking in the grounds of the Grange or sitting quietly in the Fox and Hounds. He’d been quite open about their blossoming romance whilst Mary, true to form, had felt it was wise to be more circumspect. Wait and see, she’d told herself. If it all goes wrong between us, the fewer people who know about it the better. ‘Of course, fingers crossed the rumours could still be wrong.’
‘Yes; let’s hope so.’ Jean glanced up and saw no break in the clouds. ‘I’m thinking of making a run for it,’ she decided. ‘Are you coming?’
So they sprinted for the canteen where they found Angela also at a loose end.
‘How’s Bobbie’s head?’ Mary asked as she pushed wet strands of hair back from her face and noticed that the room was full of disgruntled, thwarted crew. The windows were steamed up and once more the rain pelted loudly on the roof.
‘Mending slowly but surely.’ All week Angela had taken meals to Bobbie’s room and run around doing her laundry and other chores while the patient recovered. Only that morning she’d changed the dressing on Bobbie’s forehead and seen for herself that the cut was healing well. But Bobbie’s mood was still low and Angela had been unable to coax her out of her room. ‘Jean, you are such a dark horse,’ she began on a different tack.
The accusation startled Jean into thinking of Douglas. ‘Why? What have I done now?’
‘You’re wearing your new flight captain stripes.’ Angela patted the three shiny gold stripes on Jean’s sleeve. ‘Why didn’t you share the good news?’
‘Congratulations!’ Mary cried as Jean blushed.
‘Actually, a little bird did inform me.’ Angela was in one of her teasing moods; her way of overcoming the boredom of not being allowed to fly. ‘A little bird who happens to be sweet on you, as a matter of fact.’
‘Angela, please!’ Desperate for her to keep her voice down before she named Douglas, Jean tried to slide away from the counter with her mug of tea.
‘A little bird whose name begins with S.’
‘S?’ Jean stopped short.
‘Yes; don’t look so surprised. I mean Stan Green; who else?’ Realizing
by the look of puzzlement then dismay on Jean’s face that she’d overstepped the mark, Angela quickly backed down. ‘Darling, it’s none of my business. I’m sorry.’
Mary’s eyes opened wide. Could it be true that Stan was keen on Jean? He’d never mentioned anything, but now that Mary considered the possibility she thought there might be something in it. It was a nice enough idea if it turned out to be correct.
‘You’re quite wrong.’ Jean gathered her dignity and prepared to walk away. ‘That’s all I have to say on the matter.’
‘Drat!’ Angela grimaced at Jean’s elegant back view then cast a sideways glance at Mary. ‘Me and my big mouth!’
That evening, after a frustrating afternoon of trying to get as many planes as possible off the ground, Douglas joined Jean in the officers’ mess at the Grange.
‘You look tired,’ she commiserated. ‘Let me get you a drink.’
‘No need; George will bring one across, and one for you too.’ He settled in the easy chair opposite, making the most of the new, relaxed atmosphere between himself and Jean. One kiss of greeting had been all it took to break his resolution to step back. ‘I took the liberty; I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Not at all.’ Jean stifled the urge to lean over and hug him; that would have to wait until the next time they found themselves alone – hopefully tomorrow evening when they planned to visit Gordon in the military hospital in Foxborough. ‘Tired and worried,’ she added.
‘I am, a little,’ Douglas admitted.
‘What about?’
‘The usual.’ Their whiskys arrived and the room began to fill up. Horace had just come in with Agnes and Fred and the trio went to join Angela and Teddy at the bar.
Angela’s choice of a simple but striking white blouse and wide black slacks teamed with a red gypsy bandana made her the centre of attention as usual, Jean noticed.
Douglas followed the direction of Jean’s gaze. ‘Angela puts on a good show; I’ll say that for her.’