Bluebirds

by Margaret Mayhew

  Neil leaned forward. ‘We heard you had some bad raids lately. I was real worried. I tried to find out if you were OK. They said some WAAFS were killed.’

  ‘Yes, three of them.’

  ‘Friends of yours?’

  ‘One of them was.’

  He clicked his tongue. ‘That’s too bad. I’m real sorry. We’ll get back at the Jerries for it, when we get the chance. They’ll have a taste of their own medicine.’ He searched her face. ‘Didn’t you get my letter? I wrote a week or two back.’

  She went redder still. She had got it and had thrown it away in a panic, barely reading through to the end. The rather scrawly writing had asked her how she was . . . told her how great the bike ride had been . . . said something about another meeting . . . another party at the camp . . . asked her to write back.

  He went on casually: ‘She called you, Ginny. It’s cute. Mind if I call you that?’

  A lot of the other WAAFS called her the same. Mother would hate it, if she knew. She would probably think it very common. But then Mother would hate her to be in this place and think it very common too – full of Other Ranks and people like Sid and Ron. And Canadians. Not even English. She drank some more tea and stared at her plate again.

  ‘You been on any more good bike rides lately, Ginny?’

  She pushed a crumb round the edge of the plate, keeping her eyes down.

  ‘We haven’t had much time really. And we do a lot of biking anyway, just getting from place to place. We’re billeted right away from the station now.’

  ‘That makes sense. Good place?’

  She thought of Eastleigh House, which belonged to titled people, Sir Reginald and Lady Howard. Mother had liked hearing about that, at least. It was a beautiful place. The big drawing-room looked out onto a sweeping lawn with wonderful herbaceous borders. A white squirrel lived in the copper beech at the far end and they fed it with tit-bits. Sometimes it actually ate out of their hands. The dining-room had oak panelling and french windows leading out onto a flagstone terrace. There was a croquet lawn, goldfish pools, a tennis court, a walled garden and a big stable block.

  ‘It’s very nice,’ she said, still pushing the crumb round with her forefinger. ‘Much better than the awful huts we lived in before.’

  He grinned. ‘We don’t even have huts – we’re in tents. I figure it’s goin’ to be a tough winter.’

  ‘Won’t you be used to the cold?’

  ‘Sure. It’s a whole lot colder back home. But we take care of it pretty well. It’s always warm indoors. I guess we have to, or we wouldn’t survive.’ He paused and added quietly. ‘It’s just great, meeting you again like this, Ginny?’

  In the bus on the way back, Madge said: ‘Seems jolly keen on you, that chap, Neil. Rather nice, I thought. Decent manners. I heard him asking you out. Pity you turned him down.’

  ‘I don’t know him, really.’

  ‘Well, it’s your funeral, Ginny. I’d’ve gone like a shot. Good sort of chap.’ Madge rubbed her stomach. ‘Golly, I’m still famished.’

  The white squirrel was sitting on the lawn beneath the copper beech tree, nibbling daintily at something held between its front paws. Winnie, watching it from the downstairs window, thought how pretty it was. Much prettier than the grey ones that looked a bit like rats. She had never seen a white one before. An albino, someone had called it. And, less kindly, a freak of nature. Like a black sheep, perhaps, or a cow with only one horn. It seemed to live quite alone and she wondered if other squirrels shunned it because it was different. Animals could do that, she knew. She had seen it with chickens: with human beings, come to that. She had watched WAAFS being treated that way – girls who just didn’t fit in for some reason – foreigners, loners, some rookies . . . She had felt very sorry for them, but there was not much that she could do.

  Everyone seemed so sure of it all now. It was quite different from the early days when nobody had known anything much. Drill had become easy. They marched about and wheeled and turned and halted, stamping their feet very smartly. She had even learned to salute properly at last, so that meeting officers around the station was no longer the dreaded muddle it had once been. She managed quite well now – saluting three paces before reaching the officer, and holding it for three paces after. Longest way up, shortest way down. And there were all sorts of tricks the WAAFS had learned – softening their hard, uncomfortable shoes in buckets of water, and putting the black boot polish on with hot knives so that they shone better. Some, like Gloria, cut out their pocket linings to flatten their tunics and turned their waistbands over to shorten their skirts. Nobody wanted to be taken for a rookie, so they’d stick new caps in buckets of water, as well, to make them look old and press new uniforms with a hot iron to take the first fluff off.

  Vera had come into the room behind her. She addressed it at large.

  ‘Do you know s-something? The p-poor Poles never get any post. No letters from anyone, when everybody else does. Isn’t it a shame?’

  She was looking quite upset, almost tearful. Winnie felt rather grateful to her for being the same old Vera. Nobody took much notice. Maureen glanced up from her knitting.

  ‘Well, they haven’t got anyone to write to them, have they? Their families are all in Poland. The Germans aren’t going to let any letters through.’

  Sandra, busy writing a letter home, had a shocked expression. ‘Gosh, how awful! That’s so sad. The saddest thing I ever heard. I couldn’t bear not to have letters. Mummy writes to me every single week. Couldn’t we do something about it? We could send them postcards and things . . . just so’s they have something.’

  Maureen’s needles clicked sharply. ‘You know what Section Officer Newman said, Sandra. She warned us to be on our guard against the Poles. You’d only be encouraging them.’

  ‘I don’t care. I think it’s too sad for words. And I think we should do something about it.’

  ‘S-so do I,’ Vera said. ‘I’ve got a postcard of Brighton pier somewhere. It’s quite nice. I could send that to them.’

  Another girl put down her book. ‘I’ve got one of Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guard. Do you think they’d like that?’

  Vera beamed. ‘Bound to. They don’t have a King and Queen in P-Poland, do they?’

  Others in the room began to remember that they had postcards, too, and greetings cards that might do.

  ‘We could make them ourselves, as well.’ Sandra was looking happy again. ‘Draw pictures or cut them out and glue them on paper.’

  Winnie had no postcard but she thought she could manage that. She was glad that Maureen had been ignored. The Poles at Colston always seemed so nice – always bowing so politely. Everyone said how brave they were, and it must be terrible to have lost your home and not even to have a single letter from your family to comfort you. Mum didn’t often write, but that was different. She knew they were there, safe at Elmbury. Some of the Poles didn’t even know what had happened to their families: whether they were dead or alive.

  She watched the white squirrel scamper a little way across the lawn to pick up another tit-bit. It sat again with its tail neatly curled, front paws up to its mouth. When Mum did write, it wasn’t usually very comforting. There was nearly always something wrong – a ewe had died, Susie had squashed her piglets, a crop had failed, either Ruth or Laura was ill, or the Fordson had broken down. In her last letter, though – the one that felt as though it were burning a hole in her tunic breastpocket right now – it hadn’t been news of home that had worried her, but news of Ken.

  Ken wasn’t in the shop when I went in yesterday. His mother said he was in bed and very poorly with his chest again. She says he’s not right at all, and she’s very worried about him. She wasn’t a bit friendly. She seemed to think it was all your fault, with him being so upset at your being away. I told her very sharply that it was nonsense to blame you, but you know how she is about him. I expect she’s saying the same thing to everybody in the village. I must say there’s plent
y of them don’t approve of you going off like you did, Winnie, seeing as you’re spoken for. I never did see the sense in it myself.

  She had re-read the letter anxiously several times. Ken had said nothing about being ill when he’d last written, but then he never complained about his bad chests and asthma. The only time she’d heard him sound bitter was when it had stopped him being able to join up. She’d hoped him joining the Local Defence Volunteers had made him feel happier about that. Mrs Jervis had always been unfriendly, ever since she and Ken had started courting, so that was nothing new. She’d be glad of an excuse to blame her. But could it really be her fault that Ken was so poorly now? If she had been there he might not have been feeling so low, and feeling low could stop people getting better quickly, even if it didn’t make them ill in the first place.

  There was another reason to feel guilty, too. It was wrong to have gone out with Taffy – not just once, but several times. The aircraft lessons had continued in cafés and in pubs and out on walks near the station. She had listened eagerly while he had talked of coolant systems, superchargers, reduction gear, magneto timing, precision checks . . . she had wanted so much to learn.

  And he had sneaked her into one of the hangars to have a close look at one of the Hurricanes with the engine cowling off. She had been able to see the whole side of the Merlin, to stare at the great shining mass of pipes and coils and components. It had made the Fordson look so simple and she had felt a fool to have ever imagined they could be anything like each other.

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ she had asked Taffy.

  ‘Nothing, I hope. It’s just been changed.’

  ‘The whole engine?’ She had gazed in awe. ‘Is that difficult?’

  ‘Not if you know how.’

  ‘Isn’t it very heavy?’

  He had laughed at that. ‘I should say so! You have to do it with special lifting tackle. You can’t just pick it up by hand.’

  Best of all, she had been able to sit in the cockpit for a few minutes. Taffy had shown her how to climb up on the port wing, using the toe-hold, and he had hopped up after her, sure-footed as a cat.

  She had sat down gingerly in the pilot’s seat and tried to look out of the windscreen, but all she could see was the tips of two propeller blades sticking up each side and the upper part of the hangar wall.

  ‘That’s the gunsight up there right in front of you,’ Taffy had told her. ‘The pilot sits on his parachute pack so he’s much higher up than you. Though you can’t see much forward when you’re on the ground, anyway. He has to zig-zag when he’s on the ground, so’s he can see where he’s going. But when she’s airborne, the tail comes up and she’s level.’

  She had looked in bewilderment at all the switches and levers and dials and Taffy had leaned over the side of the cockpit, his head close to hers.

  ‘Look you now, here’s your ignition switches and your starter button. Your throttle’s beside you here on the left, and that’s your rudder trim control below it – that little wheel. Here’s your airspeed indicator in the middle of the panel, with your altimeter below – that tells you how high you are. Then you’ve got your rev counter up here, your rate of climb here, your turn and bank indicator . . . and this funny looking thing’s the artificial horizon I was telling you about – remember?’ He had leaned further across, his arm brushing against her breast. ‘That’s the radiator temperature gauge, the fuel contents gauge, the fuel pressure, oil temperature, oil pressure . . .’ He had gone on, pointing it all out to her. ‘But don’t you go touching anything, see. We don’t want her taking off with you.’

  She had sat there for a while, just trying to imagine what it must be like to fly away up into the sky. To be climbing, turning, banking, diving . . . doing all the things that Taffy had taught her about. One day, she had said to herself. One day.

  He had helped her down off the wing, catching her in his arms, but she had wriggled free as quickly as she could.

  Susan had come into the room now. Winnie didn’t think she’d be very interested in sending postcards to the Poles. She hardly spoke to any of them from the old hut, now that she was a plotter. Pearl always said it was no loss. Most of them, come to that, had remustered. Sandra was a radio-telephonist like Anne, Vera an Equipment Assistant. And Gloria had her medal. But she was still stuck in the Orderly Room, filling in forms.

  The white squirrel had finished whatever it had been eating and had bounded away up into the beech tree. There was a flash of white among the copper leaves as it streaked along a branch.

  Winnie took the letter out of her pocket to read yet again.

  The Free French pilot was very drunk. He was barely able to stand, let alone dance, and Anne, tired of propping him upright, manoeuvred him towards an armchair and lowered him carefully into it. He fell asleep at once.

  She was bored with the party and wished she had not come to it. Without Michal there seemed little point. Most of the other pilots were drunk too and she had been fending them off with monotonous regularity. She decided to leave and began to make her way through the crowd towards the door. On the final stretch Johnnie Somerville barred her way. He was drunk, too, she saw impatiently. He was swaying on his feet and the lock of hair flopped down over his forehead. He pushed it away, out of his eyes which were distinctly bloodshot.

  ‘Been looking for you.’

  ‘Really?’

  He looked at her accusingly and wagged a finger. ‘You’ve been avoiding me. Not fair.’

  Since Croesus Squadron had returned to Colston she had received various notes from him, all of which she had promptly thrown away.

  He was fumbling for his cigarette case and held it out to her, brandishing it unsteadily under her nose.

  ‘No, thanks. I’m just leaving.’

  ‘Not before you’ve danced with me.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’

  He caught clumsily at her arm. ‘Mustn’t be beastly to us brave pilots, Anne. Supposed to bring us comfort.’

  ‘Don’t be so pathetic!’

  There was a brand new Distinguished Flying Cross ribbon on his chest. She had heard about it but to comment, let alone congratulate, would only ask for further complication.

  He looked down at her fuzzily. ‘You’ve got all the wrong ideas about me, you know.’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘I’m not the arrogant shit you take me for.’

  ‘Then you give a pretty good imitation.’

  ‘Come and dance.’

  ‘You’re completely blotto. Don’t you think you should sit down?’

  ‘Certainly not. I want to dance with you.’

  She looked past his shoulder. ‘There’s a very glamorous blond standing over there looking absolutely furious with you.’

  ‘Oh, Christ! Forgotten all about her. Must be Penny. Or Patsy. Can’t remember her name.’

  ‘Well, whoever she is, she’s looking frightfully upset. You’d better go and do something about her.’

  As he turned his head, confused, she slipped past him. It was a while, though, before she managed to escape from the party. Other pilots waylaid her to dance and it was hard to refuse them when the next day they might be dead. She came across Johnnie again on her way out. He was fast asleep, lying on a bench in the hall. His tie was undone and he had taken off his jacket which had slid to the floor beside him. The purple and white ribbon of the DFC showed shining new above the pocket. His hair straggled across his face and one hand pillowed his cheek. He looked out for the count, she thought, as she paused beside him. Absolutely all in. How many sorties today? How many in these past desperate weeks? How many life-or-death struggles to earn that medal? There was no sign of the glamorous blond. Anne hesitated. Then she picked up the jacket and tucked it round him before she left.

  The contralto was dressed as Britannia and enormously fat. In flowing robes, burnished breastplate and plumed helmet, and carrying a trident in her right hand, she strode imperiously towards the stage footlights. A line of w
hite-booted chorus girls in Ruritanian soldiers’ hats, frogged tunics and very short skirts, marked time behind her, stepping high, arms swinging. The concert hangar was packed with station personnel – officers at the front, other ranks behind. The airmen were whistling delightedly at the girls.

  Britannia implanted her trident firmly at arm’s length in front of her, and lowered her chins to project the rich, deep voice so that it carried easily to the hangar’s very last row.

  I give you a toast, ladies and gentlemen:

  May this fair land we love so well, in dignity and freedom dwell

  For worlds may change and go awry while there is still one voice to cry . . .

  She paused dramatically and then launched forth.

  There’ll always be an England, while there’s a country lane,

  Wherever there’s a cottage small beside a field of grain.

  There’ll always be an England, while there’s a busy street,

  Wherever there’s a turning wheel, a million marching feet.

  She raised the trident and thrust it forward, shaking it vigorously at her audience.

  Red, white and blue! What does it mean to you?

  Surely you’re proud, shout it aloud! Britons away!

  The Empire too, we can depend on you! Freedom remains.

  These are the chains nothing can break.

  Felicity, sitting near the front, and to one side of the stage, looked across at the rows of young pilots below the stage. They were the chief targets of Britannia’s rallying spear thrusts. And they were the last people on earth, she thought, who needed any such urging or reminder. Their faces, illuminated by the stage lighting, watched the singer impassively. Tired faces belonging to young men who had already ensured that there was now a chance of there always being an England. She tried not to think about all the faces that were missing.

  Britannia was striding back and forth across the width of the stage, a spotlight tracking her. The soldier girls marched forward in a ragged line that would have given a drill sergeant apoplexy. The trident was being flourished triumphantly aloft, to and fro.