Izzy's War

by Isla Dewar

  He’d led her upstairs, asked which room was hers. Inside the bedroom he’d pulled her onto the bed beside him, started to undress her. She didn’t object. He certainly knew what he was doing, when they were done and he was leaning out of the bed to get a pack of Lucky Strike from his trouser pocket, she said, ‘Gosh.’ So that was what all the fuss was about. And that’s what Elspeth meant when she’d said all those years ago that flying was almost as good as sex. ‘Gosh,’ she said again. She was sweaty, blissful, relaxed, smiling and thought she might like to do it again. There was time. It was only four o’clock, Claire and Julia wouldn’t be home for ages.

  The front door had opened. Izzy froze. Someone walked down the hall and into the kitchen. ‘Mrs Brent,’ said Izzy. ‘Oh, God.’

  Jimmy said, ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘I don’t want her to come upstairs and find me in bed with a man.’

  ‘Why not? You’re a big girl. You’re only doing what big girls do.’

  ‘But we’re doing this and we’re not married.’

  ‘Oh, Izzy. Grow up.’

  They’d heard Mrs Brent walk back down the hall and out the door. Izzy sighed, relieved.

  ‘Izzy,’ said Jimmy, ‘You were only fucking. Everybody is doing it. We are living in hard times, fucking helps. Mrs Brent will know that.’

  Izzy had turned to face him, shocked. ‘You swore.’

  ‘Yes. Haven’t you heard that word before?’

  She had, often. The language in the mess was nearly always polite, but out and about on the base, where the engineers worked, in the garages, on the runway, the air regularly turned blue. Naughty words flew.

  ‘You want to relax a little,’ said Jimmy. ‘Go on, say “fuck”. It helps in all sorts of situations. In times like these you got to fuck and you got to swear now and then. Say it.’

  ‘Fuck.’ The word whispered, squeaked out of her and sounded harmless. She’d taken the sting out of it. Still, she’d looked round, checking nobody was about. She imagined her father bellowing, ‘Isabella, WHAT did you say?’ She blushed.

  He’d told her she’d have to do better than that. ‘Say it like you mean it.’ He pulled her on top of him. ‘If you can’t say it, do you want to do it?’

  Like the good girl she was, she said, ‘Yes, please.’

  He’d left early. He had work the next day. Besides, he told her, the headlights on the motorbike he’d borrowed to get there had a grille over them, and a hood so the beam couldn’t be seen from above. He didn’t fancy travelling roads he hardly knew when the way ahead was barely lit. He’d kissed her. Told her to keep practising the naughty words. ‘You might need them one day.’

  In her letter to Elspeth telling her about her day, she’d said that she couldn’t help but think that swearing was rude. ‘But I had a wonderful time.’ She hadn’t mentioned the sex. She thought that doing it was excellent, but talking about it, especially in a letter that some stranger might read, was rude.

  Elspeth had written back, telling her about a wonderful picnic she’d had. ‘Cooked trout straight from the river, drank whisky, had a kiss, too. Actually, a little bit more than just a kiss.’ Well, Elspeth was one for exploring her passions. Izzy thought she should be more honest and in her next letter might confess that she was exploring her passions, too.

  Izzy circled the hospital, hoping to see someone below who might wave. But there was nobody. She decided to land. She’d go say hello to Jimmy. She bumped along the grass airstrip. She jumped from the plane and ran inside, asked the first nurse she came across if the Captain Newman was about.

  He was in the mess, finishing lunch. ‘Hi, Pork Chops. What’re you doin’ here?’

  ‘Just passing, thought I’d drop in. Don’t call me that.’

  ‘OK, Pork Chops, I’ll try not to call you Pork Chops.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He asked what she’d been up to that day.

  She dumped her gloves and helmet on the table, sat down opposite him and said, ‘Delivering planes. Actually, it’s against the rules to make social calls when I’m working.’

  He said he was flattered she’d risked instant dismissal to come see him. ‘Have you had lunch? There may be some pork chops on the go?’

  ‘Please don’t mention that. I wouldn’t mind some Coca-Cola.’

  He fetched a bottle, flipped off the top and handed it to her. She asked what he’d been up to.

  ‘The usual. Patching young men up, taking lumps of shrapnel out of them, shipping them home or sending them to the burns unit. The meat wagon came in at four this morning, then again at six and again at eight. The wards are filling up.’

  Izzy didn’t know what to say. She took a swig of her drink. ‘You must see some truly horrible things.’

  He said, ‘I surely do.’ Then, changing the subject, since seeing horrible things was enough, he didn’t want to talk about them, he asked, ‘What are you doin’ Saturday night?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s a dance on. We’ve got a swing band coming.’

  ‘I’ve got two days’ leave coming up.’ She was, in fact, due four days’ leave, and had planned to visit Elspeth, but this was too good to resist. She’d see Elspeth next month. Elspeth would under stand. Izzy was only hoping for some simple pleasure.

  ‘Well come, then.’

  ‘I will.’

  He said he was sorry, he had to get back.

  ‘I should go, too.’

  As he walked her back to the door, they met Nurse Irene who’d shown Izzy round on the mist-laden day she’d first arrived there, soaked, sweaty and surprised to be alive.

  ‘Hi, Pork Chops.’ Nurse Irene was pleased to see her.

  ‘You’ve been telling people about me,’ said Izzy.

  Jimmy told her she was a legend. ‘You’ll always be Pork Chops round here.’

  It was late afternoon, after five, when Izzy got back to base. She dropped off her signed delivery chits to the operations room, and was on her way to drop off her parachute when Edith came storming after her. Nobody could storm a corridor like Edith. She surged forwards as if the very air she had to push through was an annoyance. For a second Izzy thought she’d been found out. Edith knew about the social call she’d made that afternoon. Or, perhaps, it was her boots. Izzy, along with everyone else, had ignored the boot rule.

  But Edith was shouting, ‘Pee one, Izzy. Pee one!’

  Izzy turned and waited for Edith to catch up with her.

  ‘Priority One Spit for Sealand,’ said Edith. ‘Just came on the books.’

  Izzy sighed. She’d been looking forward to going home. Her plan for the evening was to write a couple of letters. One to Elspeth and one to her mother and father, enclosing, as she always did, a pound – a weekly contribution to their savings. Hamish and Joan Macleod dreamed of retiring to a cottage by the sea. Izzy’s money had doubled their nest egg. In two years’ time, they reckoned they’d have enough for a four-roomed, whitewashed home with a garden, a picket fence and a view over the water.

  ‘Can’t someone else do it?’ asked Izzy. ‘What about her?’ She pointed at Claire, who’d just come out of the locker room.

  Claire waved. ‘Not me,’ she said. ‘I’m seeing a friend tonight.’

  ‘You don’t have any friends,’ said Izzy.

  Claire said of course she had friends, and ducked back into the locker room.

  Izzy took the chit. ‘P1, W,’ it said. Priority One, Wait. She would have to wait by the plane at all times till it was delivered.

  Edith smiled and said she’d send a driver to pick her up. ‘It isn’t that far.’

  ‘Still, pee one,’ said Izzy. She went to the locker room and took out a new set of maps. She didn’t really need them – Sealand was on the coast, south of Blackpool, and she’d often flown there, knew the way – but she’d already broken the rules once today, and didn’t want to push her luck by breaking them again. Rules dictated she carry relevant maps with her, always.

  After
that, she visited the met room. Nigel told her there was a front coming in, but she should be back on the ground before it arrived. ‘Quite a downpour,’ he said. ‘The farmers should be happy, though.’

  Izzy said, ‘As long as somebody is.’ She no longer trusted Nigel.

  The flight didn’t take long; Izzy followed a route along the coast. It was more spectacular. After landing, and getting her delivery chit signed, she waited for the driver. By now, the day had changed. Standing outside one of the huge hangars, she could breathe in a fresh chill and dampness. The downpour was coming. By the time her driver arrived, it was raining.

  Izzy threw her parachute in the back, climbed in and said, ‘You took your time.’

  ‘Sorry.’ It was Jacob. There was a faint scent of beer in the car.

  Izzy guessed he’d stopped for a pint on the way. ‘You’re not meant to drink on the job,’ she said. ‘You could get sacked for that.’

  He said sorry, again. ‘It was hot. I was thirsty.’

  ‘You kept me waiting.’

  ‘I didn’t know you’d be ready to go back so soon. Often I have to wait for pilots.’

  ‘It’ll be after ten before we get back,’ said Izzy. She slumped in her seat, closed her eyes. The car bumped along, wipers squeaked against the windscreen, Izzy yawned. She fancied she might sleep.

  The sky blackened. Jacob put on the car lights, not that it did much good. Just a thin wavering light filled with sparks of hammering rain.

  ‘So how did someone like you learn to fly?’ asked Jacob.

  ‘Someone like me?’ said Izzy. She suspected this might be insulting, though he probably hadn’t meant it to be. He was just blunt. ‘My friend Elspeth had the notion she wanted to be like Amy Johnson. So she took lessons.’

  Elspeth had grabbed her arm, ‘Izzy,’ she’d said, eyes agleam. ‘I am going to learn to fly. That’s the thing to do. Explore new possibilities, new boundaries. Flying will open up new opportunities for me.’

  ‘I went with her,’ Izzy told Jacob. ‘Only I got fed up watching and wanted to learn, too. So I did. Elspeth got caught up with new passions, she always does. I carried on and got my pilot’s licence.’

  ‘Didn’t flying lessons cost a lot of money?’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t too expensive. I used the money my grandmother left me.’

  That sounded so simple. It gave away nothing about the guilt Izzy had felt at using the inheritance that had been set aside for her wedding. Izzy had thought she’d rather learn to fly than get married.

  Then again, saying in a flat tone that she’d used her grandmother’s legacy to pay for flying lessons revealed nothing about her father’s fury when he found out about it. Oh, the rage in the manse when the depleted bank account came to light. The thunder of fist on table, the doors slammed, the shouts – Izzy remembered it all. ‘You did WHAT?’

  ‘Learned to fly. Like Amy Johnson,’ Izzy had said.

  Thump of fist on table. ‘AMY JOHNSON. I’ll Amy Johnson you. You bloody fool, girl. That money was for your wedding.’

  ‘What wedding? I don’t even have a boyfriend. I don’t think I ever want to get married.’

  He’d told her not to be stupid. ‘All girls want to get married. It’s what they do.’ Then considering what she’d done with her money, he’d said, ‘Flying? What possessed you? It’s not feminine. What man would want a woman who flies planes? You don’t understand men. They don’t want to be with a woman who can do things they can’t. You are unmarriable.’

  This had been the first time Izzy stood up to her father. Usually, his rages would send her rushing from the room in floods of tears. This time there was more to his rage than fury. Pain, she thought.

  But, Izzy had found something she loved to do, and had no intention of giving up. ‘If a man didn’t want me because I can fly a plane and he can’t, then he wouldn’t be worth knowing,’ she’d said. ‘And there are plenty of things married women do that their husbands can’t. Cook. Sew. Knit. Bake. It seems to me that men like women who do the things they don’t want to do.’

  Hamish had told her she was being childish. ‘A woman’s place is in the home. A man’s place in the world is to shelter and protect her. And there’s many a man doing work he hates just to provide for a wife and children.’

  The argument had developed into a staring match that neither of them won. In the end, her father had blustered from the kitchen saying he’d work to do, a living to earn, bread to be put on the table. But the matter of flying and the amount it had cost was still a rift between them.

  Now, travelling along, head against the car window, feeling the thrum and rumble of the road on her cheek, Izzy remembered that fight with her father. It had been a turning point. There had been a moment, a slight glitch in the staring contest, just before he’d stormed from the room, when his shoulders had slumped and his glare had turned from rage to pain. Izzy had ceased to be his darling, his lovely girl, his pal and had become something else. Izzy couldn’t work out what. A woman he could no longer control? A rival? She didn’t know.

  Rain drummed on the roof of the car. Huge and sudden pools of water gathered at the roadside, sheets of spray every time the wheels spun through them. ‘You’re going too fast,’ said Izzy.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ said Jacob. ‘I know what I’m doing.’ He wanted to get back before the pub closed.

  Izzy yawned again. Too tired to argue, she shut her eyes and drifted off.

  Stillness woke her. The car had stopped. They had pulled off the road and were parked beside the gate of a field. She didn’t have to ask why. Rain was hammering on the roof of the car and the road had turned into a river.

  ‘Couldn’t see where I was going,’ Jacob said. ‘We’ll have to wait till the rain eases.’ He told her she’d been snoring.

  ‘I have not,’ said Izzy.

  ‘Snoring and mumbling,’ he said.

  ‘What was I mumbling about?’

  He shrugged and said he didn’t know. ‘It didn’t make sense.’

  They sat in silence. The windows steamed. Rain seethed down. Finally, to ease the disturbing intimacy, Izzy said, ‘Do men resent women who do things they can’t?’

  ‘What sort of things?’ said Jacob. ‘Giving birth?’

  ‘No,’ said Izzy. ‘Things that they might want to do themselves, but can’t.’

  ‘Like flying?’ said Jacob.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Izzy.

  He told her he had no desire to fly and didn’t resent the women who did. ‘I prefer to find my pleasure here on the ground.’ He slid his arm along the back of Izzy’s seat, leaned in to her, face close to hers.

  ‘You’re not going to kiss me, are you?’ said Izzy.

  He told her he was thinking about it.

  ‘Well don’t,’ she told him. ‘It’s against the rules.’ She didn’t know if this were true. Nobody had mentioned the kissing of drivers when explaining the rules to her.

  He withdrew. Said he didn’t think kissing was against the rules, but if she didn’t want to, he wouldn’t force himself on her.

  The rain stopped. He wiped the steamed windscreen with a cloth, started the car and said it was time to get home. As they pulled out into the road he said, ‘Be careful, Izzy.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘There’s an innocence about you. You doubt yourself, but you don’t doubt other people. You think their opinions and way of life are probably better than yours. You’re wrong, of course. In time, you’ll find that out. And I suspect you haven’t been kissed very much. Be careful, Izzy, you could get hurt.’

  Izzy snorted. ‘Don’t be so absurd.’

  They pulled out on to the road, started towards Skimpton. Izzy still thought he was driving too fast, but kept her mouth shut.

  It was almost eleven o’clock when they reached the village. They were rounding the steep bend at the top of the hill that led into the square. He looked over at her, watched her stretch, then rub a small hole in the steamed window to pe
er out. ‘You’re still going too fast,’ she said.

  ‘No, I’m not. I’m driving. You sit still and allow yourself to be a passenger.’

  The bend was steeper than Jacob remembered, the road wet, slippy. The car veered out of control and skimmed, sliding down the hill. Jacob hauled at the wheel, working to straighten the car’s course.

  The pub was closed, but locals always lingered late. Eddie Hicks, mechanic at the local garage, stumbled out. He was still carrying, and swigging from, a jam jar half full of beer. He never looked when crossing the road. Why should he? There was never anything coming.

  He never saw the car that hit him. He slammed the jam jar on the bonnet as he disappeared under it.

  ‘You bloody idiot.’ Izzy opened the car door and clambered out, before it stopped. ‘I said you were going too fast.’

  ‘I took my eyes off the road. I was looking at you,’ said Jacob.

  Izzy didn’t hear. She ran back to the body splayed out behind them. She knelt down. ‘Eddie Hicks,’ she said. She didn’t know him well, but they’d sometimes exchanged a few words in the queue at the fish and chip shop. He didn’t move.

  A small sliver of a moon slid out from among the clouds. Izzy put her ear close to Eddie’s mouth. Was he breathing? She couldn’t hear anything. She didn’t think so.

  She didn’t know what to do. Her knowledge of first aid was scant. She remembered something about pressing down on the injured person’s chest. Was that not something to do with saving the life of a drowning man? Perhaps not. She drew back her fist, and punched Eddie, not in the chest as she intended, but in the stomach.

  Eddie gasped, wheezed and sat up, eyes bulging. ‘What the hell?’

  And from the pavement came a voice: ‘Izzy? Izzy Macleod, what are you doing?’

  Edith, the ops officer, uniform fiercely ironed, was standing watching, rigid with disapproval.

  ‘He was lying here,’ said Izzy. ‘I thought he was dead.’

  ‘You bloody punched me,’ said Eddie. ‘That was bloody sore.’ He looked round. ‘What am I doing here? I was dreaming I was in bed.’

  Izzy’s knees were soaked. Her hair frizzed; dampness always did that. She turned to look for Jacob. He would help her explain. But the road was empty. He’d gone.