Izzy's War

by Isla Dewar

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Isla Dewar

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One: Three Women Cycling to Work

  Chapter Two: Elspeth Moon

  Chapter Three: Making Friends with the Loneliness

  Chapter Four: Custard Days

  Chapter Five: How Many Fingers Do You Need, Anyway?

  Chapter Six: Elspeth and Izzy

  Chapter Seven: Careful, Careful

  Chapter Eight: Christmas and a Brief Lesson in Line Shooting

  Chapter Nine: The Flavour of the Day

  Chapter Ten: A Guardian Angel

  Chapter Eleven: Not Yet

  Chapter Twelve: Drowning the Whistle

  Chapter Thirteen: Guilt and Kisses

  Chapter Fourteen: I Love a Bit of Brahms

  Chapter Fifteen: The Toast

  Chapter Sixteen: Pork Chops to the Rescue

  Chapter Seventeen: Winning’s Important

  Chapter Eighteen: The Dance

  Chapter Nineteen: The Orange

  Chapter Twenty: You Owe Me

  Chapter Twenty-one: Earthbound and Loveless

  Chapter Twenty-two: The Bathing Belle

  Chapter Twenty-three: Wanda the Wonder

  Chapter Twenty-four: An Evening’s Extravaganza

  Chapter Twenty-five: Three Women in Love and One Woman Who Isn’t

  Chapter Twenty-six: Cream Cakes and Carpets

  Chapter Twenty-seven: Dirty Secrets

  Chapter Twenty-eight: There’s no Such Thing as Fair

  Chapter Twenty-nine: Tears Later

  Chapter Thirty: Twenty to two

  Chapter Thirty-one: A Grand Night Out

  Chapter Thirty-two: Everything I Need

  Chapter Thirty-three: Mrs Middleton

  Chapter Thirty-four: Useless, Useless

  Chapter Thirty-five: Just Round the Corner

  Chapter Thirty-six: What Have I Done?

  Chapter Thirty-seven: Mary Queen of Scots’ Teaspoon

  Chapter Thirty-eight: Someone To Watch Over You

  Chapter Thirty-nine: You Goose, Izzy

  Chapter Forty: Eating for Two

  Chapter Forty-one: The Truth About Love from Mrs Brent

  Chapter Forty-two: Not for You, It’s Not

  Chapter Forty-three: Bike Tyres and a Lucky Stone

  Chapter Forty-four: Mrs Alton

  Chapter Forty-five: To Think, We Used to Be Beautiful

  Chapter Forty-six: Should’ve, Should’ve, Should’ve

  Chapter Forty-seven: Time to Let Go

  Chapter Forty-eight: A Stranger in a Green Suit

  Chapter Forty-nine: All the Way from America

  Chapter Fifty: Do You Miss It?

  Chapter Fifty-one: You Used Me

  Chapter Fifty-two: I Don’t Want to Go, I Just Want to Be There

  Chapter Fifty-three: Nobody There

  Chapter Fifty-four: Grand

  Chapter Fifty-five: Come in

  Epilogue: A Very Good War

  Copyright

  About the Book

  ‘There was rapture in Izzy’s life. It came when she was flying. She thought she could write a book about the things she’d seen from above – herds of deer, hundreds of them, rippling across hilltops, houses… people small as matchstick men. Once, she’d seen a couple entangled in their own not-as-private-as-they-thought rapture on a sun-soaked moor. She was addicted to the air.’

  Vicar’s daughter Izzy feels hugely guilty that she’s having a very good war. Having learned to fly in a travelling circus before the war, she’s now joined the Air Transport Auxiliary as one of their few female pilots and is having the time of her life. The only cloud on the horizon is having to lie to her father about her exact role in the ATA. Her father is against the whole notion of women flying – he certainly wouldn’t approve of her becoming a ‘spitfire girl’.

  Izzy also feels distinctly out of place among the more upper class ladies of the ATA. She would love to be as worldly as her flighty housemate, Julia, or as sophisticated as society wife Clare. But when Izzy finds herself falling for the charms of a dashing American doctor it is to Julia and Clare that she turns for help…

  About the Author

  Isla Dewar was born in Edinburgh. She wrote articles for magazines and newspapers for many years before she wrote her first novel in 1995. She lives in Fife with her husband, a cartoonist.

  Other titles by Isla Dewar:

  Keeping Up with Magda

  Women Talking Dirty

  Giving Up on Ordinary

  It Could Happen to You

  Two Kinds of Wonderful

  The Woman Who Painted Her Dreams

  Walking with Rainbows

  Dancing in a Distant Place

  The Cherry Sundae Company

  Secrets of a Family Album

  Rosie’s Wish

  Getting Out of the House

  The Consequences of Marriage

  Izzy’s War

  Isla Dewar

  To Sri with love and thanks for loving Nick

  Chapter One

  Three Women Cycling to Work

  THERE WAS RAPTURE in Izzy’s life. It came when she was flying, when she had such a view – God’s view, her father called it. Well, he would. She thought she could write a book about the things she’d seen from above: herds of deer, hundreds of them rippling across hilltops. She saw houses, gardens; washing flapping on the line; people small as matchstick men, moving through streets and stopping, sometimes, to look up at her hovering above them, and point. Once, she’d seen a couple entangled in their own not-as private-as-they-thought rapture on a sun-soaked moor. She saw the shape and glide of rivers, was shoulder to shoulder with mountains. It took her breath away. She was addicted to the air. Removed from earthly worries and demands, she was truly happy.

  It had been her friend Elspeth’s idea to learn to fly. Such a fashionable thing to do, ‘Women are taking to the sky,’ she’d said. ‘They are the new adventurers. Flying to Australia, across the Sahara, looking for a new kind of romance.’ Elspeth had taken lessons, Izzy watched. Then, unable to resist, had taken it up, too. She had never been ambitious. Had no desire to become a new adventurer, cruising the heavens was joyful enough.

  In time, Elspeth had moved on to new pursuits. She abandoned flying when she became obsessed with her new accordion. She dreamed of forming an all-woman accordion band that toured the country playing wild, stomping music. But then, Hitler invaded Poland and ambitions were abandoned, everything changed.

  Izzy’s felt that rapture, though it was a lesser joy, every morning when she cycled with Julia and Claire to work. Pushing through the morning contemplating the possibilities of the day ahead. Where she might fly to, and in what?

  It was always the same, the rattle of bikes and the hum of tyres, hissing today over the glistening November frost, thick over everything, a stiff sparkle. A lone crow in the field beyond the hedge hopped over hardened ground. Above, a scattering of seagulls silently cruised the still air. Right now, apart from them, the sky was empty.

  The bus had passed five minutes ago. Everyone on-board banged on the window, waved and mocked the three cycling. They were late. When were they not?

  It was a problem, three women sharing a cramped cottage with one tiny bathroom. Mornings were a flurry. Downstairs, in the kitchen, the kettle would be coming to the boil, quietly steaming and singing, the wireless would be on. Upstairs, Julia and Claire, in their silk dressing gowns, getting ready to face the day, jostled in and out of the bathroom, bumped into one another and did polite sidestepping dances in the narrow hallway.

  Izzy always made porridge first thing, standing by the stove wrapped in a voluminous
thick flannel tartan robe, tied firmly round her waist with a bright red cord. It was an embarrassing garment, she knew, but comfortable and comforting. A gift from her mother and, indeed, exactly the sort of thing her mother would deem an ideal and useful thing to own. Izzy couldn’t deny its warmth, and often, on the winter nights when three thin blankets did little to stave off the cold, she slept in it.

  They were all used to having space. Claire and Julia had grown up in large country mansions, Izzy a manse. They were also, all of them, used to working alone. They couldn’t share a kitchen. They clattered, banged, spilled tea and burned toast. And bumped into one another. Izzy was always surprised when the others refused a share of her porridge.

  Claire and Julia would sit at the table, eating charred toast, drinking weak tea. Neither of them could cook. Izzy would eat leaning against the sink, saying this was the way to eat porridge. ‘It’s to be taken standing up.’ When the weather report came on they’d fall silent and listen. Weather was important to them.

  While Julia put on a fresh layer of lipstick, Izzy would run upstairs, wash in tepid water, run her fingers through her hair – a thick black curly mass – and put on her uniform. Then they’d bustle out into the day, leaving damp towels lying on the bathroom floor, beds unmade and the kitchen in chaos. At nine o’clock Mrs Brent would come in and clean it all up.

  Today had been worse than usual because the Pole had been there. Jacob, one of Julia’s waifs – she’d met him the night before – had sat silently, watching. His only comment was a surprised, ‘You fly?’ when Izzy had pulled back the curtain, pressed her head against the window and said that it was a good flying day. She had nodded, and he’d nodded back. And smiled. This had surprised Izzy. Often, when she told people, especially male people, what she did, they didn’t believe her.

  Still, Jacob’s presence, his bulk, his stillness, the quiet way he drank his tea, made the three feel uncomfortable. They were glad to get away.

  ‘It’s been lovely to meet you,’ Julia had said. ‘Please shut the door behind you when you leave.’

  They had collected their bikes from the side of the cottage and cycled off. Only Izzy turned to wave goodbye.

  Julia cycled up front, her usual place, face into the breeze, shouting about the temperature. ‘Bloody, bloody cold. I hate it.’ She sat upright in her saddle, her face flushed with chill. Her coat flapped at her thighs, revealing fleeting flashes of scarlet lining.

  This lining was not, strictly speaking, part of the Air Auxiliary uniform. It was her own little flamboyance. She never could resist a little bit of scarlet silk.

  When she’d first joined the ferry fleet, Julia had loved the thought of being in uniform, especially one that was blue with gold bars. She’d been so tickled, she’d had one specially made up for her by her father’s Savile Row tailor. The resulting outfit was not quite the chic ensemble she’d hoped for.

  The gentlemen who’d measured her had never measured a woman before and the business with the measuring tape and where it had to go had made their cheeks redden. They’d coughed a lot. They had left some distance between the tape and Julia’s body when measuring any sensitive area. Their recordings of Julia’s bust size and inside leg length were wildly inaccurate.

  The result of all this was that Julia’s jacket was lumpily generous from shoulder to waist and baggy at her rear. She was always hitching up her trousers. She worried about them falling down. In fact, it bothered her a lot that if ever she got into difficulties when flying and had to bail out, her trousers might slip past her knees as she parachuted to the ground. And if she landed badly, and died, she’d be found in a tangled heap, trousers round her ankles and flappy silk knickers made from old parachutes in full view.

  Pedalling along now, her breath steamed short bursts of vapour before her as she spoke. And really her complaint about the cold was half-hearted. This morning, she was happy.

  Izzy envied her. She wanted to be Julia – crisp bobbed hair and scarlet lips. Julia didn’t walk through life, she bounced; she always drew a crowd. Evenings, she never stayed in.

  Last night she’d eaten at Bertram’s, a small, dingy place in Blackpool. No, it wasn’t a place. It was a joint, a dive. She loved it. It had been busy, smoky, noisy, filled with the clamour of swaggering voices. In the corner a wind-up gramophone played Billie Holiday records that some GIs at the next table had brought with them. Billie crooned silkily about the glorious and exciting things a little moonlight could do. Oooh, it was wonderful.

  Julia had been with Charles, her number-one boyfriend – she called them her beaux – and the only young man she knew who wasn’t in the RAF. He’d joined the Royal Artillery – mostly, Julia thought, to annoy his family. His father had flown in the First World War, and now both his brothers were pilots.

  Charles had brought along Jacob, a morose Pole he’d met on the train. Charles was always taking strangers under his wing. The Pole, however, hardly spoke, but tapped his fingers on the side of his whisky glass in time to the music.

  Charles and Julia had laughed, smoked, drunk too much, swapped favourite stories, toasted absent friends and tried not to mention the awfulness of the ragout they’d ordered.

  Julia said she’d heard that the food there had always been pretty bad. ‘So in a way, it’s comforting to find something that hasn’t been changed by the war.’

  Charles said that was one way to look at it.

  Julia told him not to think about it. ‘Just eat it. One just can’t think about what might be in things these days, darling. I’ve even heard of people eating guinea pigs. Yuck.’ She made a face.

  She had a habit of calling people darling. It was a word she liked, also it pleased her to note that it irritated the Pole. She’d started to dislike him.

  Charles asked where Julia had been last night when he had phoned.

  ‘You know better than to ask me that,’ said Julia. ‘But I was stuck out. Still, got back this afternoon. And here I am, darling.’

  They never spoke in detail about where she’d been. Careless talk cost lives, everybody knew that – posters in the railway stations, messages on milk bottle tops.

  Julia had often been ‘stuck out’. She hated the frustration of finding herself caught at some distant airfield flunk-hole as fog deepened, impenetrable, dense, yellow. Often, she’d sat drinking thick stewed tea, watching the sky darken as delays kept her grounded, knowing she could not beat the sunset and she wouldn’t have time to fly home before dark descended. There would be a blackout. From above you would hardly know there were houses, streets, pubs, cinemas and factories in the world below.

  When she first started flying, it had been to take Tiger Moths and Puss Moths that had been requisitioned at the start of the war, but were now taking up valuable hangar space, north to Scotland. It had been winter and all the planes had open cockpits. She had never known cold like it. She’d worn several layers of jumpers under her flying suit, and a jacket under the flying jacket plus a couple of thick woollen scarves, and still the chill had bitten into her. Often, numb, rigid with cold, she’d hardly been able to move. Ground engineers had lifted her out of the cockpit. She’d felt her face frozen into a stiff macabre grin, a mix of shocked horror at the extreme chill she’d just experienced and relief that it was over.

  The journey, technically, took just over four hours. But often the weather had closed in and she’d had to land to wait for it to clear. So, sometimes it took four days to fly from Southampton to Perth.

  She had slept in strange small hotels, dormitories, in the huts of WAAF night operations officers whose beds were empty when they were on duty. These beds, only recently vacated, were often still warm. Once that would have appalled her, now it was a comfort.

  She remembered nights spent on the train rumbling home to London. Hours and hours sitting on her hard parachute bag in a packed and noisy swarming corridor when there were no available seats, trying to sleep, jostled by loud bantering soldiers and airmen, none of them particul
arly sober, who smoked, sang and shoved past her.

  Later, the ATA had sleeping cars set aside at the back of night trains. Then, she had been hauled from a deep and swaying sleep by gunfire or bombs as they chuntered through the Midlands. She’d leave the train at King’s Cross, have breakfast, take another train back to Hatfield, where she was based, then start the whole gruelling trip over again, exposed to the elements in another frail and rickety Puss Moth.

  Thinking about it now, humming through this icy but glorious morning, she wondered how she’d done all that without collapsing into an exhausted coma.

  But, really, when she thought about it, how hellish it had been, she knew she wouldn’t have missed any of it for the world.

  She loved this life she was leading. Though now she was posted at Skimpton, it was mostly short flights, sometimes three or four a day. And it was usually Spitfires and Blenheims she flew. But once she was in the air, the decisions she made were hers alone. She was living, now, in the moment, no plans for the future. And, for the first time in her life, the money in her pocket was money she’d earned.

  She sang as she rode along, joining Billie Holiday in her celebration of moonlight.

  While Charles was her number-one beau, Jeffrey was number two. Her reserve lover, she thought. Though she hadn’t seen Jeffrey in months, since he’d been posted to North Africa.

  ‘Why two?’ Izzy once asked. ‘That’s not very nice, two lovers. One of them is going to get hurt.’

  ‘Both of them might get hurt,’ Julia told her. ‘They offset each other. Charles is rather moody but gorgeous to look at. Jeffrey is not so gorgeous, but he’s fun. So I have a handsome lover and a fun lover. I have everything I want in a man from two men. And that stops me falling in love with either of them.’

  ‘What’s wrong with falling in love?’ Izzy wanted to know. She had always thought falling in love was what every woman wanted to do. It was what life was about. Well, that was the message in all the songs she knew.

  ‘Oh, darling,’ said Julia. ‘You don’t want to go and fall in love. It will be the end of you. You fall in love, next thing you get married and once you’re married your mother and his mother and probably the man himself will start wanting you to have children. So you have a baby. All you’ll talk about is baby this and baby that and baby has its first tooth and baby smiled. And that’s that. You’ll never fly again. Oh no, darling, you must never let yourself fall in love. Just a little lust to keep you smiling is plenty.’