by Isla Dewar
‘Remember me?’ he said.
‘Wanda!’ Izzy threw her arms wide. ‘This is wonderful.’
A friend, a familiar face among the sea of strange faces she saw every day. The joy of it.
He took her to him, kissed her, first on the right cheek, then on the left, and lifted her from the ground, twirled her round. ‘Look at you, a lady pilot.’
‘I know, and look at you flying with the Free French.’
‘I’m plain old Jean-Louis now. Wanda has gone for ever, I’m afraid.’
‘Pity,’ said Izzy. ‘I liked old Wanda.’
She was in Yorkshire again, at Elvington, the Free French airbase. As she’d been approaching the runway, she’d seen a group of men lounging in the grass, smoking, idly watching planes land. She knew what they were up to – betting on the landing skills of pilots, betting on who would bounce on hitting the ground. She’d vowed to do a perfect three-point landing, and had.
‘You lost me two shillings,’ said Jean-Louis. ‘When I saw it was a lady pilot, I put money on the bounce. If I’d known it was you . . . ’
‘You’d have bet ten shillings.’
‘True. I remember Izzy the bouncer of Betty Stokes Flying Show.’
‘I’ve improved,’ said Izzy. ‘Hardly ever bounce. My bosses don’t like it.’ She thought a moment. ‘Still if I’d known you were betting on me, I’d have bounced. We could have split the winnings.’
They walked together towards the office where Izzy would get her delivery chit signed. She linked her arm in his. ‘How is Betty these days?’
‘She died,’ he told her. ‘In the Blitz. She tried to join your lot, the ATA, but they wouldn’t have her. Told her she was too old. She was fifty-eight. But a woman of passion, and a good pilot.’
Izzy said she knew that. ‘She was also a bit of a bitch.’
In the ops office, busy at the moment, planning the night’s raid over Germany, they found an officer who signed the chit. After that, they went to the mess for a cup of tea. It was four o’clock, the evening meals started at five, still there were buns to eat with their tea.
‘I miss coffee,’ said Jean-Louis.
‘You can still get coffee,’ said Izzy.
He shook his head. ‘That’s not coffee.’
They found a seat at the far end of the room.
‘Betty went back to London to stay with her mother,’ Jean-Louis said. ‘One night, when the bombing started, she didn’t go to the shelter. She and her mother crawled under the kitchen table. The house took a direct hit.’
‘That’s awful,’ said Izzy. ‘Betty was a one-off. Does anybody here know you used to be Wanda the Wonder?’
He held his finger to his lips. ‘Not a word.’
Unable to find a woman who could perform the feats she needed for her flying circus, Betty Stokes had hired Jean-Louis, given him a long blonde wig and told him to walk daintily. After performing his death-defying routine – loops, rolls, a long twirling, speedy plunge to the ground from eight hundred feet up, pulling level at crowd height, skimming upside down only feet from the ground – he would climb from his plane, arms aloft, beaming, curtsying, before mincing, tiny steps, one hand on his hip, to the tent where he’d whip off his wig and refresh himself with a cup of tea heavily laced with cognac, and a cigar.
Betty had often criticised the walk and the way he’d blow kisses at the crowd. ‘No woman walks like that. Only Rita Hayworth blows kisses. Stop it.’
But Jean-Louis claimed that the trouble with women was that they didn’t know how to be women. ‘They should all wear big hats and lacy things. They should show off what they’ve got.’ He did a demonstration wiggle across the tent. Betty had said, ‘Pah.’ Izzy had giggled.
Not that Jean-Louis had any doubts about his sexuality. He slept in Betty’s bed, and told everyone that if they thought she was bad-tempered, they should see what she was like when she didn’t have him to keep her sweet. He’d also bedded both the girls who stood, hair streaming behind them, on the wings of the plane Betty flew at the start of the show, the daring wing-walkers.
But Izzy had resisted his charms. ‘Oh, Izzy, I can take you to the heights of ecstasy. The reason I make a good woman is I know women, I know their secret places, I know how to make them smile.’
Izzy was sure he did. ‘Just not this woman,’ she’d said. The man was very attractive. But his skill at impersonating a woman put Izzy off. Besides, at the time, she was still trying to be her father’s good daughter. She only had to think about being naughty and images of his heaving eyebrows and pursed lips floated into her mind.
‘You always resisted me,’ he said.
‘I know. And you so irresistible. Like a teapot, you told me.’
He took her hand. ‘Small with a bit spout. That’s me. We can always make up for lost time.’
Izzy didn’t think so.
He smiled. ‘What a time that was, touring the country with Betty and two old planes.’
‘Yes,’ said Izzy, she got quite misty-eyed remembering. ‘God, all that tatty bunting and those tents – all rips and holes. And those poor girls standing on the wings, waving. Betty told them to dance. I used to have to wrap them in blankets soon as they got into the tent. Goosebumps bigger than watermelons.’
‘Yes, and Brigit fell off. Broke her arm and leg and two ribs. She was lucky at that.’
‘I know,’ said Izzy. ‘And that cracked recording of the “Toreador Song” that she played when you were doing the stunts, remember that? And the little wooden planes she sold as souvenirs that broke as soon as you touched them. And the places we used to stay. I think she deliberately hunted out the worse bed and breakfast in town.’
‘Bedbugs, lumpy porridge, one bathroom two floors down from our rooms, no baths after eight o’clock, creaky beds.’
‘Did you ever get paid?’ asked Izzy.
He shook his head. ‘And I had to provide services above and beyond the call of duty. Betty was a passionate woman.’
‘Happy days,’ sighed Izzy.
He raised his mug of tea to that. ‘Happy days.’
They drifted into silent memories.
Izzy said, ‘That’s the thing about happiness, you don’t know it when you’ve got it. It’s only when it’s gone, when you look back, that you realise you’d been having a good time.’
He nodded. ‘Never mind. This war will be over one day. Then I’ll go home.’
‘To France?’
‘To France. I’ll sit in the sun, a pavement café. Gitanes, a glass of wine and a good omelette. You?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m saving as much money as I can, so I’ll have something to live on while I look around. Don’t know where I’ll go or what I’ll do. I’ve got used to this, this war, this way of living.’
Thirteen days on, two days off, life had become a blur, filled with weather reports, maps, the slam of locker doors, roads, railways, rivers, woods and towns viewed from above, windswept airfields and chits and chatter and bad food. And, all the while, she felt that if she wasn’t flying, she was running. And if she wasn’t doing that, she was sleeping. At RAF bases faces, once strange, had become familiar. In her private life, precious loved faces were becoming distant.
She hadn’t seen her mother since spring. And she had promised Elspeth she’d visit once a month if she could, but that hadn’t happened. She spent most of her free time with Jimmy. She wrote to Elspeth apologising, saying how hard it was to get away. ‘Time,’ she wrote, ‘is just hurtling past.’
Meantime, Izzy had bought a motorbike. She’d spotted it in the cluttered forecourt of Eddie Hicks’ garage and decided it was just the thing for her. It was old, noisy, had canvas grips on the handlebars and wasn’t happy travelling at more than thirty miles per hour, but it was cheap, and didn’t use as much petrol as a car. Apart from the bike, it was the first vehicle she had owned. So she loved it. Claire had said, ‘What were you thinking, buying that? I think you’ve been done.’ Julia called i
t ‘The Beast’ on account of the clunking roar it made as it trudged along. But Izzy didn’t care. On her days off it took her out of Skimpton and into the arms of Captain Jimmy.
Izzy was in love. This surprised her. It had come upon her slowly, this love. She had no former knowledge of this condition, it had never happened to her before. So she had always thought that being in love would be like floating on a silken cloud arms spread open to the breeze, heart filled with song. A person in love would be in a constant state of happiness.
Nobody had told her about the anxiety, the sighing, the loneliness when they were apart. There ought to be lessons in love at school, she thought. Someone should prepare you for this. They could get rid of maths and hockey and replace them with basic instructions on how to deal with matters of the heart.
She worried a lot. She longed for the phone to ring, she watched for the postman hoping for a letter from him. They exchanged letters once or twice a week, but only recently had she put ‘Love, Izzy’ and a kiss at the bottom of hers. He just put his name, Jim. And he still called her Pork Chops.
On his days off, he drove over to see her in his new MG. ‘Got to have a Brit car when I’m over here.’ On her days off, she steamed over to see him on The Beast.
Still believing she’d saved his life (though she’d told him often this was not true), Eddie supplied her with his behind-the-counter, black-market, secret, touch-the-side-of-the-nose, don’t-tell-a-soul, unrationed petrol. It was the last dribblings, sneaked into a can at the end of every fill-up. Only a special few got this privileged fuel.
Izzy drained the last of her tea, shrugged, and asked Jean-Louis, ‘Do you ever get scared?’
‘All the time.’ He thought everybody got scared. ‘I cope,’ he said. ‘I’ve got used to being afraid. Wouldn’t feel right if I wasn’t.’
Izzy said, ‘I’m really scared of the war ending. What will I do? I can’t go back to my old life, not now.’ She put her hand over Jean-Louis’. ‘Different planes, different places, different faces everyday. Sometimes I feel like a stranger in my own life.’
‘You’ll be fine.’
She looked at her watch. ‘I should go. The taxi’s coming for me.’
They saw it coming in to land as they walked towards the runway. Izzy turned, kissed him. ‘It’s been lovely to see you. An old familiar face.’
He told her to take care. ‘And when this is over, you come see me in France. We’ll raise a glass to Betty Stokes.’
As Izzy walked towards the Anson, he shouted, ‘Hey, Eezzy! Ordinary steps, that’s no way to walk. Do it like Wanda.’
In flying suit, helmet and boots, Izzy minced, wiggled hand on hip. It was slow going, she preferred her ordinary walk. The girls on the plane whistled and clapped. ‘It’s Mae West.’
Claire, sitting reading The Times asked what all that was about.
‘Just being silly, met an old friend,’ said Izzy. ‘He used to be Wanda the Wonder.’
‘Wanda the Wonder was a man?’ said Claire.
‘Yes.’
‘Did anybody ever guess?’
The plane rushed along the runway, heaved into the air. The ground, and Jean-Louis, slipped away.
Izzy said, ‘No, nobody ever guessed.’ She waved to the figure below, now a speck, waving wildly. ‘Isn’t it odd the people you meet, get close to, then lose. I travelled the country with that man, stayed in the same boarding houses, made him cups of tea, shared jokes and, perhaps, I’ll never see him again.’
Chapter Twenty-four
An Evening’s Extravaganza
ELSPETH WROTE:
Dearest Izzy,
Life up here goes on. It’s hot here. I never knew I could sweat so much. Trees are falling, and we have cleared a great deal of the forest. Stumps everywhere. I have learned to fish, Tyler taught me. Caught a trout and ate it right away. Had whisky and condensed milk for afters – it’s nicer than it sounds.
Last Friday night we held a concert. It went very well – at first.
The rehearsals hadn’t gone well at all. Mostly, because the girls hadn’t wanted to be distracted from their love lives, the warm weather and long, light evenings were ideal for flirtatious excursions into the forest. Still, Elspeth believed she had discovered some talent.
Lorna admitted that as well as being able to flare her nostrils, she could tap dance. Tricia could do a passable imitation of Marlene Dietrich and Dorothy had briefly gone to ballet classes when she was seven. Costumes were a problem, since the girls only had dungarees, boots and their official uniforms with them. There were no lights. But, Elspeth thought, it will be light on the night. This time of year, it hardly got dark.
There was no curtain and the only music would be from the wind-up gramophone and Tyler’s six records. But she could always accompany acts on her accordion. It will be fine, she told herself. ‘Forest Frolics’, she would call it – ‘An Evening’s Extravaganza with the Dungareed Darlings’. She always did like a bit of alliteration.
On the morning of the grand concert, Elspeth asked Frazer if he was coming.
‘I am. But I’m a wee bit hurt you didn’t ask me to do a turn.’
Elspeth said she hadn’t known he was talented.
‘Well, I am. I do bird calls.’
‘What sort of birds?’
‘Any sort of bird. It goes down a fair treat at parties and the like.’
‘Well,’ said Elspeth, ‘come along tonight. Do some bird calls, why not? You could do requests. You know, someone will call out a bird – a raven or a corncrake – and you could do it.’
‘Ye’ve just mentioned two birds I can’t do. But, never mind. I’ll be there. All dressed up and all.’
Elspeth said, ‘Excellent.’ Then she worried.
‘The thing is,’ she said to Lorna at lunchtime. ‘It’s got to be saucy. I mean, there has been so little rehearsal, the only way we can keep the audience entertained is by being naughty.’
They had to shout. Four bombers were thundering overhead, roaring south.
‘Something’s up,’ said Elspeth. ‘That’s the third lot today.’
‘I know,’ said Lorna. ‘Really noisy. He could do rude bird calls. Like the noises birds make when they’re mating. All frenzied.’
‘I don’t think he’d be willing to do that. No, some of the girls will have to stand behind him, cupping their hands to their ears, sexily looking up into pretend trees.’ Elspeth sighed. It was a worry putting on a concert.
She was even more worried at seven o’clock that night when her audience started to throng into the open space between the dormitory hut and the dining hut where the concert was to be held. Word had spread. Men had come from other camps. Instead of the fifty or so Newfies Elspeth expected, there were over two hundred men waiting for the show to go on. Not many of them were sober.
Earlier in the evening, Tyler and one or two others had made something of a platform by putting two strips of duckboard over a long pile of logs. It wasn’t much, but it raised the performers enough for people at the back to see what was going on. A couple of chairs were placed at the side to ease the entertainers’ climb onto the stage.
Elspeth started proceedings by welcoming the audience and asking them to please keep down the noise and give the girls lots of appreciation for their efforts. ‘Let’s get on with the show.’ She played polkas for the first ten minutes because the girls, preparing themselves in the cookhouse, were scrambling about, tripping over one another, putting on lipstick and arguing. But, at last, Lorna stuck her head round the door, stuck up her thumb and nodded. Time for the cancan.
A row of high-kicking girls would always meet with wild cheers and whistles even if they were wearing dungarees instead of multi-frilled skirts and petticoats. The noise was so loud, it drowned Elspeth’s frantic rendition of Offenbach’s ‘Galop’. Still, there were cartwheels, screams, legs were shown and, at the end, the row of dancers turned their backs on the audience and wiggled their bums. It got a standing ovation.
Next up was Tricia’s Dietrich impersonation. She sang ‘Boys in the Back Room’, looking sultry, one hand on her hip, the other thumbing over her shoulder, indicating where the back room with the boys was. The audience stamped their feet in time to the song. At the end, she winked. Another ovation and calls for an encore. Adrenalin was flowing. Elspeth was getting high. Time for her comedy turn.
Tyler and Lorna’s beau, Freddie Tait, heaved a log onto the stage. Elspeth, dressed in dungarees, boots and a sou’wester hat, draped with sprigs of heather and as much jewellery as she’d been able to gather from the girls in the dormitory – beads, bracelets, brooches – came on stage. She had made two huge hands out of cardboard and attached them using elastic bands to her own hands. She carried an axe. Slowly snedding the log, she sang ‘A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening’. Trilling an octave higher than her normal voice, clutching her bosom as she delivered her heart-aching melody, she gazed at the audience in gentle rapture and whacked off branches. It took a while for the onlookers to realise that every time she raised her hand, a cardboard finger was missing. ‘Thees ees a lurvely way . . .’ she sang. She whacked a branch, lifted her hand to her breast, one finger missing. She sang with verve and passion till all ten fingers were gone, waved her stumpy hands, bowed and walked off the stage. Everyone cheered, and Elspeth wondered if this hadn’t been a bit tasteless. Heartless, she thought, but then out here – cold, homesick, hungry – everyone was a bit callous. There was nothing like sleeping in an army cot covered by two scratchy blankets, living on a diet of spam, cabbage and carrot sandwiches to harden the heart. She’d come down in life; Izzy had gone up. Much as she loved the girls she worked with, loved their openness, she couldn’t help wishing she were somewhere else. Her envy of Izzy got deeper and deeper.
Lorna came on next. She tap-danced ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing If it Ain’t Got that Swing’ with a chorus in the background singing ‘Doo wop de doo wop de doo de oooh!’ Dorothy, in bare feet, danced ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’.
The trouble started with the bird calls.
Frazer’s dinner suit, threadbare at the shoulders, fraying at the cuffs, got a roar of approval along with cries of, ‘Penguin, penguin.’ He stepped from the chair to the platform, feeling like a true trouper, a seasoned entertainer accompanied by his trusty assistant, Lorna.