Bluebirds

by Margaret Mayhew

  ‘I understand how you feel, sir.’

  He wished she would look at him. ‘However, I was quite wrong about one thing. I was convinced, I must admit, that the WAAF would panic under bombardment – cause us enormous distractions and difficulties . . . That has proved to be completely unfounded and I’m happy to acknowledge it.’

  She transferred her gaze from the wall to meet his. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  He said steadily: ‘I have nothing but praise for you all and for the calm way in which you conducted yourselves. As for that airwoman who stayed at her Ops Room switchboard throughout the entire raid at such great peril . . . what was her name?’

  ‘Gibbs, sir. Aircraftwoman Gloria Gibbs.’

  ‘Yes, well, I understand the ceiling was half down and there was an unexploded bomb within feet of her, and yet she kept vital communication lines open for us. I shall see to it that she is recommended for a medal.’

  ‘I’m so glad, sir. She thoroughly deserves it.’

  She was not only looking at him now, she was smiling too. The first time, he could swear, that she had ever done so. He smiled back. ‘On a more prosaic, but nonetheless important note, I hear your WAAF cooks have been doing sterling work producing an excellent supper for everyone without any water, gas or electricity supplies.’

  ‘Just sausages and mash, sir.’

  ‘Sounds splendid! I shall look forward to having some myself later.’

  He could hear himself sounding falsely jocular and patronizing – bloody pompous, Caroline would have said – but he could not help himself. He changed tack briskly.

  ‘I’m afraid we have to face the fact that there will be more attacks, Section Officer. The enemy are obviously planning to do their best to disable our forward fighter stations. In the circumstances, we’re going to have to billet personnel away from the station – disperse ourselves and our aircraft as much as possible.’

  ‘I can see that, sir.’

  ‘I’m moving over to the Mess myself and arranging for you to have the use of my house for as many of your WAAF as you can fit in there for tonight. They’ll have to sleep on the floor, I’m afraid, but I’m sure you’ll make them as comfortable as you can.’

  ‘That’s very good of you, sir.’

  ‘It isn’t good of me at all, Section Officer. It’s the least I can do, since all your buildings have been damaged. As to the rest of your airwomen, Sir Reginald and Lady Howard have been kind enough to offer some space at Eastleigh House . . .’ He smiled drily. ‘As a matter of fact, they hadn’t much option as the house is being requisitioned anyway. Tomorrow we’ll have to start sorting ourselves out properly and dealing with the funeral arrangements and so on . . .’

  ‘Is there anything I can do to help now, sir?’

  ‘Not tonight. You’ve got enough to cope with, and you look very tired already.’ She was very pale again. ‘That’s all for the moment.’

  She stood up. ‘I believe I should congratulate you, too, sir.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I hear you brought down a Junkers, sir. That’s what everyone’s saying.’

  She smiled at him again as she spoke and he felt himself reddening like a schoolboy. He picked up his pen and pulled some papers busily towards him.

  ‘Just a fluke, Section Officer. Just a fluke.’

  He sat up late into the night, sending telegraphs and writing letters of condolence. After a couple of hours of fitful sleep he was up again, ready to face the new day. He went out onto the Mess terrace, broken glass crunching beneath his feet, and surveyed the ruins of his station. Dawn had broken, the birds were singing, and there was a mist rising off the ground. It was going to be hot. Signals Section had worked through the night to restore all telephone links. Electricity was back on and gas and water would follow shortly, with any luck. The craters had all been filled in and the runways were operational. In the distance he could hear a fighter being run up.

  Business as usual, he thought, looking up at the empty, pale sky. Let them come. Let them come and do their damnedest. We’ll be ready for them.

  Ten

  ANNE AND PEARL lay in a dry ditch and watched the dogfight taking place high overhead. Their bikes lay at the edge of the bank where they had abandoned them when the siren had sounded.

  Since the big raid on the station, there had been more attacks and the squadrons had risen each time like angry hornets to drive off the intruders. Some raids had come at night which had meant the WAAFS sleeping in cold, wet shelters, huddled together on benches. Gradually, they had grown used to the attacks and would search afterwards for pieces of shrapnel and souvenirs. Vera had the biggest collection, hoarded carefully in an old shoe box. Nobody regretted the move to Eastleigh House; after the huts it was like a palace and Pearl swore she was going to write to Hitler personally to thank him.

  Anne tipped back her steel helmet to get a better view, squinting against the glare of the sun. The thin white skeins, drawn by the fighters, made looping patterns across the blue sky, like unravelled wool, and the aircraft, catching the sunlight as they turned, scintillated like tiny diamonds. It looked so unreal. You couldn’t hear anything and you could hardly see anything either, and yet they were all trying to kill each other up there, not just drawing pretty patterns in the sky. Pearl, comfortably settled against the ditch bank, was chewing a long piece of grass like a seasoned spectator.

  The scrambling had gone on, day after day, from dawn to dusk. All through August and the beginning of September the Spits and Hurries had taken off, time after time. The WAAFS had counted them out and then counted them back anxiously, and there were nearly always some missing. The pilots who survived all looked exhausted and there were stories of them falling sound asleep at the controls when they landed, even before the props stopped turning. In the new Ops Room, moved to an evacuated school building outside the town, it was horrible to have to listen to the sounds of battle over the R/T – to hear the frantic cries of a doomed pilot, the screams of another trapped in a burning cockpit.

  ‘Stop fussing about your Polski, love,’ Pearl said, placidly chewing. ‘You don’t even know if he’s up there. Probably sitting on his bum playing cards, safe and sound on the ground.’

  ‘I can’t help worrying.’

  ‘Well, I told you not to go and fall for a pilot, didn’t I? Bloody stupid thing to do right now. Stick to the penguins and save yourself some grief, that’s what I say.’ Pearl spat out the piece of grass and fumbled round in her respirator case. ‘Come on, let’s have a fag while we wait for this lot to see the Jerries off.’

  They lit up and then lay back again.

  ‘Anyway,’ Pearl said, after a moment, blowing smoke upwards over her head. ‘You’ve only been out with the bloke once. You don’t even know him properly, do you?’

  But once had been enough. The first time she had caught sight of Michal Racyñski across the room at that party had really been enough. And when, in the middle of all this grisly struggle in the skies, he had taken her out one evening, she had known for certain that she loved him. The country pub had been crowded with other pilots from the station all trying to forget that they might be dead the next day, and there had been so much noise that at times they could hardly hear each other. She had watched him drinking his pint of bitter and smoking his cigarette and had secretly tried to imagine what his mouth would feel like when he kissed her. And she had looked at the hands holding the beer mug and the cigarette and thought about them touching her. They had dark hairs on the backs and long, tapering fingers with nice-shaped nails . . . Polish hands, not English ones. Like his Polish eyes. Bedroom eyes, Pearl had called them warningly, when she had first seen him.

  It had seemed out of place, somehow, to see him drinking English beer. A shot glass of vodka would have suited him better, tossed back in one go and then hurled into the nearest fireplace. When she told him so, shouting above the din, he laughed.

  ‘But I like beer,’ he had said. ‘Is cheap and lasts long time. And is
Russians who throw glasses into fire, not Poles. We keep ours to drink more.’

  Driving back in the old Wolseley her stomach had been fluttering all over the place in expectation but when he had said good night he had only kissed her hand. True, nobody had ever kissed her hand so delightfully. In fact, she couldn’t remember anyone ever kissing it at all. He had made her feel like a princess, but a frustrated one.

  She watched a fresh contrail being drawn directly overhead and saw the glint of sunlight catching a wing. It could easily be Michal. There was no way of telling and nothing to be done. She had stopped saying endless little prayers for him since she had discovered that the girl who had been so busy reciting The Lord’s Prayer in the air raid shelter during the big raid had been killed. Sometimes she had nightmares about being buried down there and woke in a dreadful, heart-racing panic, struggling with bedclothes. Since Enid’s death Pearl refused to read any more tea leaves. Maybe she was afraid of what she might find, or maybe she felt responsible in a strange way.

  Enid’s body had been sent home for burial, and so had those of the two other WAAFS; but the three dead pilots and the ground personnel had all been buried in the village churchyard. A contingent of WAAFS had marched with the RAF from the station for the ceremony. The Padre’s voice had been very firm and clear, ringing out so that they could hear every word. Group Captain Palmer had looked even grimmer than usual and Section Officer Newman, standing beside him, had been serious and sad. Officers had stepped forward one by one to salute the graves and the melancholy notes of the Last Post had floated across the surrounding fields. It had been very moving and there had been a lot of sniffing in the WAAF ranks.

  Something, an insect probably, was tickling the back of her neck. She brushed at it with her hand.

  ‘Funny about Gloria, Pearl . . .’

  ‘Why, love?’

  ‘Well, don’t you remember her telling Vera that she wasn’t going to get herself killed if she could bloody help it, and then she goes and stays at the switchboard with a bloody great bomb parked beside her, and they’re going to give her a medal!’

  ‘You can never tell with people, ducks. They say one thing and mean another. And just ’cos Gloria looks and behaves like a tart it doesn’t mean she hasn’t got guts. If any Jerry tried to rape her she’d probably kick him hard in the privates. Maureen’d probably lie down for him.’

  Anne giggled. ‘I should think he’d step over her.’

  ‘Could be. Go for someone without a face like a lemon.’

  ‘The ghastly thing though, Pearl, is that it could happen. If our lot don’t see the Germans off then we’re going to be invaded, aren’t we?’

  ‘It won’t happen so don’t get your knickers in a twist. Ours are better than theirs. Simple as that. Look, there’s one of the buggers coming down now.’

  ‘Where?’

  Pearl pointed. ‘Over there.’

  Anne could make out a small dark shape spiralling downwards and trailing a long plume of smoke.

  ‘How do you know it’s one of theirs?’

  ‘I can tell.’

  ‘You can’t possibly at this distance, Pearl. Anyway, there’s a parachute opening. Thank God.’

  ‘If it’s a Jerry it wouldn’t be anything to thank God for.’

  Anne watched the little mushroom of white that had blossomed in the blue. The falling fighter disappeared behind a wood and orange flames and black smoke erupted spectacularly from the trees.

  ‘I think it was one of ours. It looked like a Hurricane to me.’

  ‘Whatever it was, the bloke got out, so why worry? And stop thinking it was your fella. Polskis are good pilots. Everybody says so. They’ve been at it much longer than ours.’

  ‘Henryk was shot down and killed yesterday. He went off after some German even when he’d run out of ammo, apparently.’

  ‘Asking for it, then, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Poor Henryk. He always looked so sad. Michal told me that his wife and children were all killed when Warsaw was bombed.’

  ‘Yeah, they’ve had a stinking deal. Must be tough to be kicked out of your own country. But you watch out for yourself. They’re not like our fellas. Not from what I’ve heard. Very passionate. Hot-blooded. That’s why they get into such a stew about the Jerries. And they get up to some bloody funny tricks. One of the MT lot was telling me about an ATS girl who’d had to be rushed off to hospital bleeding to death ’cos some Pole had nearly bitten her nipple off.’

  ‘I don’t believe a word of it.’

  ‘Laugh away, then, but watch it. No offence, duckie, but you’re still wet behind the ears, aren’t you? Don’t really know what’s what. Those Polskis have been around. Me, I’m going to stick to the English blokes with their feet on the bloody ground, like I said.’

  ‘That sergeant you went out with . . . what was he like?’

  Pearl flapped a hand in dismissal. ‘Married, that’s what he was like. Didn’t I tell you? Thought I’d got something good going there at first . . . nice bloke with prospects, then he comes straight out with it, cool as a cucumber. A wife and two kids in Macclesfield. Did I mind, he asked.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Told him to bugger off. I don’t play around with married ones. Nothing moral. I just don’t fancy someone else’s goods. Next time I’ll ask before I go out. It’ll save time.’

  Anne leaned her head against the bank. ‘At school some of the girls used to believe that there was only one man in the world who was the right one for you, and that destiny would bring you together.’

  ‘What a load of crap! There’s lots of good fish in the sea. Some of ’em are a bit better’n others, that’s all. The rest you just chuck back.’

  ‘Like the sergeant?’

  ‘Like him.’

  ‘You are unromantic, Pearl. Didn’t that old gypsy woman say you’d meet someone tall, dark and handsome one day when she read your leaves?’

  ‘No, she didn’t. She said – Christ! Get down!’

  The Messerschmitt had appeared from nowhere and was streaking towards them at tree-top height. As they ducked down in the ditch it screamed over their heads, the black crosses showing very clearly under its wings. It was followed hotly by a Spitfire, guns blazing. The two WAAFS lifted their heads to peer over the rim of the ditch, and watched the chase low over a field of cornstooks. They saw the German fighter seem to stagger suddenly. One wing disintegrated and pieces flew about. The Messerschmitt hurtled straight into the ground and exploded in a huge ball of fire.

  Pearl was on her feet, up and out of the ditch, waving her helmet in the air and dancing up and down, cheering loudly. The Spitfire banked sharply and circled overhead before rocketing upwards. Pearl blew it a smacking kiss.

  Anne stood up slowly, staring at the flames, hearing the crack-crack of exploding ammunition. Thick black smoke was billowing from the fire and there was an acrid stench of burning rubber, cordite, fuel . . . She put her hands up to her cheeks.

  ‘Oh, God, how horrible! How horrible!’

  Pearl was still jumping up and down, waving to the Spitfire.

  ‘Shouldn’t we do something, Pearl?’

  ‘What? He’ll be done to a crisp. Serve him bloody well right.’

  ‘Pearl . . .’

  Pearl stopped jumping and came over, peering at her. ‘You look as though you’re going to be sick, lovie.’ She put an arm round Anne’s shoulders. ‘Come on, don’t go and get soppy over a Jerry. Just think, it might have been the bloke in the Spit.’

  The station firetruck was already careering across the fields towards the wreckage. Anne, pedalling shakily along behind Pearl, looked back over her shoulder. Some of the corn stubble had caught fire and little rivulets of flame were spreading out from the German pilot’s funeral pyre. She shuddered.

  ‘Have some more wine, Titania?’

  Felicity covered her glass quickly. ‘No, thank you, Speedy. I’ve had enough.’

  ‘Never say that.’

 
They were sitting in the Old Ship, at the same table as before. In his usual way, Speedy had turned up out of the blue. He had driven over from Kent on a forty-eight hour leave and announced that he was taking her out to dinner. The MG now looked more battered than ever. String adorned the rear bumper as well as the front, and the hole in the floor by Felicity’s right foot seemed to have got much larger.

  ‘Brought old Whitters along with me,’ he had told her as they roared away from the station. ‘Just parked him with his grandmother. She’s got a ten-bedroomed hovel not a stone’s throw from here. I’m staying there myself tonight. Not a bad old girl, as a matter of fact. We used to go round there for a slap-up feed after sailing, back in the good old days of peace and plenty.’

  ‘Where’s George?’

  ‘Left him there too. She spoils him rotten. All the best scraps. I knew you’d do without a chaperone for the sake of George’s stomach.’

  She clutched at the door handle as they swept round a bend. ‘How is Whitters?’

  ‘A bit pooped, to tell the truth. We all are. Not a lot of shut-eye lately. Every time we go up there seem to be more and more Huns swarming about all over the place. Can’t keep pace with ’em. And most of the sprogs they keep sending us haven’t a clue, so we have to play nursemaid. Jolly tiring. Still, Grandmama will tuck him up in beddy-byes nice and early. He’s hoping the old girl’ll leave him some cash in her will so he’ll be on his very best behaviour.’

  The thought of the irrepressible Whitters on any such thing made Felicity smile.

  It was still light when they drove down the lane leading to the harbour front. The tide was out, as she remembered it had been last time, and there was that same salty seaweed smell that made her think of childhood summer holidays. And think wistfully of how it would be to come here in peacetime.