Bluebirds

by Margaret Mayhew

  ‘Look at it this way,’ one of them had told Virginia, not unkindly. ‘If they sent you here, then that means they’re going to pack us off somewhere else. Well, a lot of us are local lads, or we’ve got settled down here. We’ve got families nearby and we don’t want to leave them. No offence, but we’d sooner you hadn’t come. And how you girls’ll ever stand up to the night watches beats me . . .’

  They had been told brusquely to put on headphones and to listen to the men and watch them. Instead of the magnetic-tipped rakes they had used in training, they were of plain wood and the trick of moving china arrows with them, instead of the tin ones, had to be mastered quickly. There were other differences, too. They had made mistakes, so that the men either crowed or criticized. At first there had been very little work for them to do. Even so, it was tiring. They worked in a five-watch rota and the night watch was unbearably tedious, as well as the longest. Twice as long. It was hard to stay awake from midnight until eight the next morning in an uneventful Ops Room where the silence was broken only by the ticking of the big clock on the wall or the occasional phone call to test the lines. The officers up on the dais dozed while the plotters sat huddled in blankets, fortified in their break by sandwiches and half-cold cocoa from an enamel bucket. Sometimes, when the Controller turned a blind and indulgent eye, they played a game with pennies to relieve the boredom, tossing them onto the table map and trying to get them in the centre of a square. On all watches they were allowed to pass slack periods knitting or sewing at their posts.

  Virginia had begun a diary, recording each day, though at the moment there wasn’t much to write down. Twice a week she wrote to her mother and she found these letters very hard to compose. She couldn’t write about her work and she didn’t think her mother would be in the least interested in hearing details of service life. She wrote a little about Pamela because the house in Kensington and the grand dances would be sure to please her; and she wrote about the netball games they played against teams of other WAAFS because that sounded all right too; and she wrote about Domestic Nights, station concerts, and about lectures, so long as the subject was suitable. It was impossible to imagine what her mother would have thought about the lectures they had been given at the beginning on personal hygiene and dreadful, unmentionable diseases.

  Mother’s letters had been full of complaints. The rationing was ridiculous, the shopkeepers insolent, the blackout more dangerous than any bombs would be, the ARP wardens over-familiar and interfering and, worst of all, the house opposite had been taken over by the ATS who drilled up and down the road, making a disgraceful amount of noise. And such common-looking girls! I can only hope those in the Women’s Air Force are a better class. I wish you had joined the WRNS, if you had to join anything at all, though I shall never understand why you were so determined to go off and leave me, without any consideration for how I might feel. It seems to me that you are becoming more and more like your father. The girl you are sharing a room with sounds to be from a good background, so I suppose that is something to be thankful for, at least. Perhaps you could bring her home to tea one day.

  But that was one thing that she would never do – even if Pamela were ever willing, which she doubted very much. She had never forgotten the lesson of Molly. Molly used to sit next to her in class at the High School and she had once invited her home for tea. Mother had gone to a great deal of trouble for the occasion – setting the table with a lace cloth and matching napkins, with the best china and little silver cake forks beside their plates. She had made cucumber sandwiches and a sponge cake, served on paper doilies on the silver cake stand. Molly had wolfed down the tiny sandwiches in one gulp each. She had not used her cake fork and she had spilled crumbs all over the lace cloth. The tea had been one of the most painful experiences that Virginia could remember. Molly had obviously thought it all both strange and very funny. At school next morning, when Virginia had entered the classroom unnoticed, she had found Molly loudly describing the tea to the other girls – the dainty sandwiches, the doilies, the cake forks – and giving an excruciating imitation of her mother to a sniggering audience. At home, her mother had criticized everything about Molly – her lack of table manners and polite conversation, her slovenly deportment, her common accent . . . Pamela would not be criticized for her table manners or her accent, but she would probably find Mother just as much of a joke.

  No, she would never ask anyone home again.

  The table in the scullery was covered by a mound of dead rabbits. Eyes glazed, fur dull, their forelegs protruded stiffly at all angles, like guns poking from a turret. There was a sickly smell in the air and the buzz of flies.

  Anne looked at the pile in revulsion. A fly was crawling slowly and disgustingly over an open eye, another across a patch of blood-matted fur. Enid had hurried over to the sink where she was now making retching noises. Anne went in search of Corporal Fowler.

  ‘What are we supposed to do with all those rabbits?’

  ‘Skin ’em and gut ’em, that’s wot yer s’posed ter do. Wot the ’ell did yer think they was put in there fer? I can’t cook ’em with their bloody fur on, can I?’

  ‘We can’t possibly skin them, or gut them. We haven’t the first idea how to. And Potter has already been sick.’

  ‘Too bad. She’ll just ’ave ter get used to it. I want all them rabbits ready to cook in a couple of hours.’

  ‘Well, you won’t get them.’

  ‘You refusin’ to obey an order?’

  ‘I’m saying that we can’t possibly do it.’

  ‘Then I’m sayin’ I’ll ’ave you on a charge, Cunningham. This time you’ve ’ad it.’

  Section Officer Newman wore a weary expression as Anne was marched, capless, into her office; she looked up at her more in sorrow than in anger this time. Anne kept her eyes fixed on the wall during the proceedings. Inwardly she seethed at the injustice and at the whole silly business of it all – a stupid courtroom drama over some rabbits . . .

  Section Officer Newman tapped her Conduct Sheet on her desk. ‘You don’t seem to have learned any sense at all in the time you have been here, Cunningham. You break rule after rule and now, on this last occasion, you actually disobeyed an order, which you have admitted. That’s an extremely serious offence.’

  ‘I still don’t think we should have been asked to skin and gut the rabbits, ma’am. It wasn’t fair.’ Beside her, she heard Sergeant Beaty draw an angry breath. She went on defiantly. ‘There was a huge pile of them and it was a horrible job. Corporal Fowler gave it to us on purpose. He knew it would make us sick.’

  ‘He gave it to you because it was your job, Cunningham. Skinning and cleaning game may not be very pleasant, I agree, but it’s all part of kitchen work. If we all refused to do something just because we didn’t fancy it there would soon be anarchy.’

  ‘We had no idea how to do the job, in any case, ma’am.’

  ‘That’s absolutely no excuse, and no defence. Corporal Fowler has told us that he would have shown you and you would have learned something. There’s no excuse at all for any of your misdemeanours over the past months. One week confined to camp and extra duties. Sergeant Beaty, you will assign punishment fatigues, please. Dismissed.’

  Later, to Anne’s surprise, she sent for her again, on her own. Her tone was quite different.

  ‘Sit down, Cunningham, I want to talk to you. As I have told you before, I believe you’re capable of far more demanding and responsible work than you are presently doing. Perhaps, if you are given it, you may turn over a new leaf. Squadron Leader Signals has asked for three WAAFS to train as radio-telephony operators in the Ops Room. I’m proposing to put you forward as one of them.’

  Anne was taken aback. ‘Thank you, ma’am.’

  ‘You would be replacing the men, once they’d trained you, and you’d be the first WAAFS to do the job. You would also be reclassified as aircraftwoman first class, so there would be a pay increase too. I have to tell you that there’s some doubt about our sui
tability for the job. They’re afraid the pilots may lack confidence in a woman’s voice, and they wonder if we’ll get the technical terms right. I’m counting on you to show them they’re wrong.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Section Officer Newman smiled her nice smile. She really was pretty decent . . .

  ‘Good. But please understand there will be no room for slackness or fooling around, or for disobedience of any kind. You will be concerned with men’s safety, and with their lives, not what they eat for lunch.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Very well, that’s all.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’

  ‘And Cunningham –’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘I’ve taken a chance on you . . . stuck my neck out . . . don’t let me down.’

  The Radio-Telephony cabins were at the back of the Ops Room – small, stuffy cells in which two operators worked side by side. Anne’s partner and instructor was a leading aircraftman nicknamed Lofty because he was so short. He fitted the headphones over her ears and showed her how to tune in on the RT set and how to move the lever to transmit. He indicated the upright mouthpiece in front of her that looked rather like an old-fashioned telephone.

  ‘You speak into this, see. Very clearly. You’ll soon get the ’ang of it. Just remember to write every word down in the log, and you can’t go wrong.’

  At first she found it very hard to understand the crackling, staccato voices coming into the headphones from miles away up in the skies. And the exaggerated way she was supposed to speak sounded silly: Niner for nine, fife for five, foah for four.

  ‘It’s so there’s no misunderstandin’, see,’ Lofty informed her. ‘Nine and five, f’r instance, can sound just the same over the RT. You gotta talk like a toff with an ’ot plum in ’is mouth, so’s they get it.’

  The first time she said anything over the set there was a moment’s stunned silence from the Spitfire wanting a course for base.

  ‘Christ, a popsy! Or are my ears deceiving me? What the bloody hell’s going on down there? Over.’

  She repeated her message primly. ‘Hallo Beetle Blue Two. Steer zero-two-zero. Over.’

  The pilot’s laughter hooted in her ears. ‘I say, bang on! What’s your name? And what are you doing for dinner tonight? Over.’

  Father had been right. The Germans had done more or less exactly as he had predicted. Felicity got up from her desk to open the window. It was a beautiful May morning and the birds were singing their hearts out. The only warlike sounds came from out on the ’drome, in the distance, where the new concrete runway was being built, long enough to take bombers, if necessary. She watched two flight lieutenants stroll past, chatting together as though they hadn’t a care in the world . . . as though none of the terrible events of the past month had happened, as though there was nothing to worry about. They were laughing at some joke as they turned the corner out of sight.

  It was hard to believe, on such a lovely morning, that things could be so bad: first Norway and Denmark invaded by the Germans, then Belgium and Holland, and then the Germans breaking through the Ardennes and storming their way in tanks across France, driving the French and British troops back towards the coast. Rotterdam had been bombed flat and heaven only knew what sort of carnage was taking place at this moment on the other side of the Channel. Nobody seemed to know what was happening to the RAF squadrons over there, in the thick of it all.

  George nudged her with his nose. He was looking up at her uneasily and gave an anxious whine. She bent to stroke his head.

  ‘Do you realize what’s happening, Pearl? The whole of the British Expeditionary Force is trapped on the coast, completely surrounded by the Germans . . . and Kit’s with them.’

  ‘Steady on, Anne, love. They say the Navy are going to try and get them off the beaches and bring them home. Kit’ll be all right. He’s with that posh regiment and they’ll know what to do.’

  ‘But there must be thousands of them. They’ll never manage to get them all back.’

  ‘Keep your pecker up, duckie. Never say die.’

  ‘Oh, Pearl, if anything happens to him –’

  ‘Don’t even think about it. It won’t. Come on, let’s go and cheer ourselves up with a cup of NAAFI nectar.’

  Winnie found Enid sitting crying on her bed.

  ‘The Germans are going to invade us, Winnie. They’re going to bomb us all to bits now they can fly over from France, and then they’re going to invade us.’

  ‘No, they’re not, Enid. They’re not goin’ to do any such thing. Lots of our soldiers have got back, haven’t you heard? Hundreds of ships went over to fetch them. We’ve still got an army to defend us. And the Navy. And the RAF.’

  ‘But I heard some of the men talking and they said we’re finished. Had our chips, that’s what they said. All our tanks and guns and things have got left behind in France, and we’ve lost ever so many ’planes. We’ve got nothing left to fight with.’

  ‘Yes, we have. They’ll soon make more guns and tanks in the factories, and we’ve still got plenty of ’planes over here.’

  ‘But the Germans have got lots more than us – I heard those men saying so.’

  ‘Well, they shouldn’t be sayin’ such things, Enid, and you shouldn’t listen to them. They don’t know what they’re talkin’ about. Besides, we’ve got Mr Churchill lookin’ after things now and he won’t let the Germans invade. He says we’re going to fight and we’ll never surrender.’

  Enid had stopped crying. She sniffed.

  ‘Oh, him,’ she said. ‘What can he do about it?’

  Churchill’s voice on the wireless was grave. ‘The news from France is very bad and I grieve for the gallant French people who have fallen into this terrible misfortune . . . We have become the sole champions now in arms to defend the world cause. We shall do our best to be worthy of this high honour.’

  ‘Cor,’ said Gloria, filing her nails. ‘That’s torn it! Just us left alone against the bloody Jerries. Some honour!’

  Vera’s eyes were shining. ‘We shall stand alone and defend our beloved country t-to the death!’

  ‘Speak for yourself. I’m not bloody getting killed if I can ’elp it.’

  ‘You know what’ll happen to us WAAFS if the Germans do invade England, d-don’t you, Gloria? One of the erks told me. We’ll all be raped by ten s-storm troopers!’

  ‘Only ten? What a shame! Just think of that, Maureen . . . something for you to look forward to. You’ll be ’aving the bloody time of your life.’

  Winnie was sitting in a corner of the WAAF recreation room, struggling with her knitting. She was halfway through a scarf and somehow it looked all wrong. The edges had gone wavy and a hole had suddenly appeared in the very middle. She had begun with thirty stitches and now for some mysterious reason she had thirty-six. She had stopped knitting to listen to Mr Churchill speaking and then she had listened with half an ear to Vera talking about what the airman had told her and Gloria teasing Maureen, while she re-counted the stitches. There were plenty of horror stories like that circulating and anyone could see that things were serious. The army had sent extra men to help guard the station and there were guns everywhere. Almost every day there was a parachutist scare and one of the soldiers had shot some poor sheep dead in mistake for a German. Lots more trenches had been dug and there were roadblocks on all the roads outside the gates. The last time she had been on the bus into town she had seen the concrete pillboxes, and things dotted all over the fields to stop enemy gliders landing – wrecked motor cars, old farm machinery and carts, kitchen ranges, prams and bedsteads . . . all sorts like that. The woman sitting next to her had said that every single signpost had been taken down, all over England, so the Germans couldn’t use them to find their way.

  Ken had written to tell her that he had joined something called the Local Defence Volunteers. He’d sounded very excited. Mr Eden had broadcast about it on the wireless, he’d said, and that same day every man left in Elmbury had
gone straight to volunteer, even old Ebenezer Stannard who must be near ninety. They’d been given armbands and tin hats and they drilled every week on Friday nights in the village hall. They didn’t have rifles yet, only some twelve bores and pitchforks and Colonel Foster’s punt gun. Some of them drilled with knives tied on the end of broomstick handles – just ’til they got the real thing.

  She wasn’t frightened for herself, no matter what stories the airmen told, but she was frightened for Ken, and for Mum and Dad, and Gran and Ruth and Laura. They were all in danger too. Ken could get himself shot, trying to be brave with all those old men. And Dad was as much of a worry as the Germans. On the day when war had been declared and they’d been working out in the barn, just the two of them, he’d sworn that if ever the Germans invaded England he’d take his shotgun and shoot the whole family. You’d be better off dead, you women, if the Germans ever got you. She had not known whether or not to take him seriously but before she had left home she had taken all the spare cartridges she could find and buried them.

  She made it thirty-five stitches this time, and that looked like it might be another hole there . . . How ever did Maureen manage to knit so fast without even looking at her needles? It was hopeless. The only thing to do was unravel all the rows back to past the big hole and try again.

  They’d switched off the wireless now and Gloria had wound up the gramophone and was putting on a record. It was Ramona yet again – she nearly always picked that one, which drove Maureen mad.

  Anne had just come into the room. She looked different these days somehow . . . more serious, and she didn’t lark about nearly as much. She’d been so worried about her twin brother who’d been trapped with all the troops in France. Once she’d heard Anne crying very quietly at night. His name was Kit, short for Christopher, and Anne kept a beautiful, framed photograph of him in her locker. He looked a lot like her, with the same eyes and smile, and very handsome. The whole hut had been worried about him, but then the news had come through at last that he was safe in a hospital near Dover. Wounded, but alive. Everyone had been relieved and happy for her.