Kitty frowned. ‘Hang on, everyone says you built your first aircraft at seven, but now you’re saying you didn’t study aeronautical engineering before you met him. How is that possible?’
Gwen shrugged. ‘I met him when I was six. I had a little bit of studying to do before I started Bumblebee, which is why she took me so long to build.’
The Misfits exchanged glances then broke out in laughter.
Mac leaned forwards. ‘Gwen, dearest, please don’t say things like that. I’ve spent half my life building aircraft on my own and between planning and construction, each one has taken me at least ten months of working more than eight hours a day.’
Bruce grinned at him. ‘I’m betting a six-year-old didn’t spend most of her time drinking whisky, though.’ He blinked and frowned at Gwen. ‘You didn’t, did you?’
An hour later, after a few more vodkas, Gwen stepped out into the night to take a breath of fresh air. She sat on a wooden bench under the overhang of the roof with her fur coat wrapped around her and her hands in its deep pockets, warm despite the freezing air, and leaned back to stare up at the stars. The clouds had drifted away and there was no trace of the storm left, but the snow was still thick on the ground and showing no sign of melting.
The door of the hall opened and a shaft of light pierced the frozen airfield. Gwen glanced to the side to see who it was, squinting against the sudden brilliance.
‘Mind if I join you?’
‘Please do.’
The dark shape that was Kitty settled on the bench next to Gwen with a sigh and leaned back to mirror her position, looking up at the heavens.
With no raucous party going on and the fitters having finished repairs for the night, the base was completely silent. There was not even any shelling from the front, usually audible as dull thuds even so many miles away. It was almost as if the world were back to how it had been only a few years ago.
Gwen searched out Kitty’s hand in the dark and then shoved them both into her pocket.
‘I wasn’t sure if you would want company,’ the American said, her melodic voice soft in Gwen’s ear.
‘I don’t really, but that doesn’t include you.’
Kitty’s hand squeezed hers in the voluminous pocket and Gwen squeezed it back, grateful for the physical contact.
They sat like that for a while, watching their breath mist in the air above them and just enjoying the night and each other’s company, but the silence couldn’t last for long; there was too much to be said between them.
‘I’m sorry. I know how much he meant to you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I’m here for you, for anything. You know that. Is there anything you’d like to talk about? Anything you didn’t want to say in front of everyone else, but want to get off your chest?’
Gwen began to say no, that she was fine, but stopped herself; that had been her response every time somebody asked how she was for so long, even though it wasn’t true, that it had become automatic. She owed Kitty more honesty than that.
‘I spoke to Rudy just before he took off and arranged to meet him when he got back. I was going to tell him that nothing was ever going to happen between him and me because, even though I loved him, I didn’t love him the way I love you.’ Gwen caressed Kitty’s hand in her pocket. ‘And I do love you.’
‘I know.’
Gwen laughed and looked back up at the stars. ‘In a way I’m glad I didn’t tell him that this morning; I wouldn’t have liked that to be the last conversation I ever had with him, but I hate that things were left unresolved between us.’
‘Let me ask you something, did you ever lead him on? Did you ever make him believe that he had a chance with you?’
‘I...’ Gwen thought back to the night of the party when she had spoken to Drake. ‘I didn’t lead him on exactly, but I did say that I would have tea with him when we got back to London.’
Kitty gasped and stared at her in mock horror. ‘Oh, dear! Of course he believed you were in love with him if you agreed to have tea with him!’ She laughed gently, not unkindly. ‘Come on, Gwen, you’ve got nothing to feel bad about.’
‘But I...’
‘But nothing! Stop torturing yourself, OK? He would want you to be happy, right? Even if it meant he couldn’t be with you?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Well then, stop being such a worrywart and bloody kiss me already!’
Gwen chuckled. ‘Yes, ma’am!’
Gwen and Kitty stayed outside until their feet went numb. While their coats were warm and covered them to below their knees, their boots were RAC standard issue winter boots that were not even close to being adequate.
Gwen didn’t want to go back in to the mess hall, though, so they hurried to the barracks where they knew the stove would be lit.
They sat next to each other on a bed in the middle of the room, their boots off and stockinged feet stretched out towards the old-fashioned iron stove, watching the flames consuming the wood from the forest through the grate in the side.
‘Rudy asked me what I was going to do after the war and I told him I didn’t really know, but that I would probably go back to being an engineer.’ She looked at Kitty. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to go home, back to Dayton, and see the family.’
‘Oh.’
Kitty grinned at her. ‘Don’t look so downcast! I’m not going to stay there and you’re welcome to come with me if you want. I just want to surround myself with familiar faces and kids for a while. Between my three brothers and all our cousins, there must have been about twenty kids been born in the last five years.’ She sighed. ‘I missed them most of all, when I left home to join the fight in Spain - their innocence, their laughter... There was none of that in Spain; the kids there were terrified, starving, with no strength to play, and France, what I saw of it at least, was much the same. I need to surround myself with some unconditional joy and love for a while to get over that.’
‘Only for a while?’
‘Yes. Only for a few weeks or so; children are great and all, but there’s only so much shouting and screaming a girl can take before she wants to jump in an aircraft and just fly away.’
‘And is that what you’re going to do?’
‘Yes. I want to see some of those places you’ve told me about, the ones your parents took you to.’ Kitty chuckled. ‘You know, before I shipped out to Spain, the furthest I’d ever been was New York. I’d never been out of the country, well, apart from one trip to the Canadian Dominion, but that barely counts. I want to see what this world has to offer.’
‘Good for you!’
‘Us. Good for us. That is, if you’d like to come along as my co-pilot.’
Gwen had been afraid that Kitty had plans for the future that didn’t include her, that as soon as the war finished there would be no reason for the two of them to be together and she would just leave, but apparently not and, while Drake’s plans for his future with her had been nice, Kitty’s were perfect, what she would have dreamed about if she allowed herself to dream of a life after the war.
She smiled. ‘Actually, I think you should be my co-pilot.’
Kitty laughed. ‘Dream on! This is my damn trip, you’re just tagging along. That makes me the captain and you the cabin boy!’
Gwen shrugged. ‘Why don’t we both just be pilots.’
Kitty frowned. ‘You mean take two aircraft? That’s a possibility, but I don’t like the idea of going on long flights without being able to hold your hand or kiss you when I want to.’
‘No, not two aircraft, just one, but a bigger one.’
Kitty grinned. ‘Are you thinking of stealing Dreadnought, ‘cos I think I could get behind a plan like that - the wife of one of my brothers has always hated me, I could land on her precious lawn and machine gun her roses...’
Gwen laughed at the image of the beautiful blonde woman behind one of Dreadnought’s belly guns, laughing her head off as she poured hot metal into
flowerbeds. She shook her head. ‘Much as I would love to see that, I was thinking more along the lines of taking the Zeppelin I built when I was twelve. She might need a bit of work to get her airworthy, though. Her engines are still coal burning, so we’d need to convert them and we’d need to outfit her properly as well, but given a few weeks work, a month tops, she should be able to take us around the world in a bit of style and comfort. Do you think you could put off going home for that long after the war finishes?’
‘There’s nothing I would like more.’ She leaned in and kissed Gwen. ‘Thank you.’
The kiss deepened, but before they could lose themselves in each other the door opened and a blast of icy air washed over them. They hurriedly pulled back and made sure their clothing was in place; even though everybody knew they were together and weren’t ashamed, Gwen still wasn’t truly comfortable making public displays and Kitty respected her enough not to insist.
‘Oi! Close the bloody door!’
Gwen looked at Kitty in shock; her accent had been almost perfectly cockney.
The American grinned at her. ‘I like to collect accents. It’s something I’ve done since I was a kid.’ She looked up as the rest of the Misfits wandered over, shedding their coats before warming themselves at the stove. ‘Don’t I, cobber?’ She said to Bruce in an Australian accent.
‘Too right, mate!’ Bruce replied with a grin.
‘Gwen.’ Abby approached them. There was a sheath of papers in her hands - the photographs from the mess hall. ‘I’m going to send these to Drake’s family, but I wanted to know if you wanted any of them first.’
She fanned them out but Gwen didn’t have to look at them; she knew exactly which one she was going to take. ‘I’d like this one, please.’ She took the one of her and Rudy together on the flight deck of the Arturo, the first photograph that had been taken of the two of them together in more than a decade and the last.
Abby nodded. ‘I’ll have these and the flag taken to the Arturo as soon as I can, so that they can be stowed safely.’
‘Thank you.’
Gwen stared at the photo and felt the tears welling up, unable to hold them back anymore.
‘Mr Jones gave me one more photo tonight, but I didn’t put it up on the wall because it’s for you, although if you don’t mind, I’d like to keep it for the squadron, to put up in the mess when we get home with the other trophies.’
Abby held out a photograph and Gwen lifted her swiftly blurring eyes to look at it.
After a couple of shocked seconds, she began to laugh, but tears were streaming down her face as well as all her pent-up emotions escaped at once.
The image was framed absolutely perfectly, like a still from one of the old silent Hollywoodland funnies. The Misfits, as the supporting actors, their various expressions perfectly captured, were arranged around the two protagonists, who shared centre stage. The villain, Baryshnikov, had just got his comeuppance and his eyes were crossed, mouth open in an expression of dumb surprise, his arms thrown wide as he was knocked back by the force of the blow given him by the star of the movie, the hero, Gwen, the righteous rage on her face clear for all to see, her arm fully extended and her fist inches from the Russian’s face.
The moment, when a measure of justice had been done, had been caught for all eternity.
Chapter 26
What the Muscovites considered to be winter was fast approaching, the weather worsening steadily and the port at Murmansk was beginning to ice over as the temperature dropped.
The Prussians were swiftly running out of time, but finally they were ready and launched their attack.
An artillery barrage, the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the trenches of the Great War, was accompanied by a massed bomber strike, as the Prussians tried to weaken Muscovite defensive positions in preparation for a crossing of the all too narrow river that marked the border between Muscovy and Finland.
Despite knowing that the attack had to come soon, the Muscovites were taken completely by surprise by the ferocity of the assault. They had expected the attacks to be carried out at only a couple of strategic points along the line, but instead the Prussians came in devastating numbers along almost the entire length of the border, with far more troops and weapons than had been spotted moving up through the endless forests of Finland. At the same time, several divisions from the forces attacking St Petersburg broke off and began racing north, seeking to flank the Muscovite army.
It was a lighting quick assault, just as the Prussians had carried out so many times before, and the Muscovite fortifications were immediately overrun, the troops driven back in complete disarray. Even the Misfits and the Wolfpack, with the freshly repaired Dreadnought firing rockets and pouring metal down upon the enemy, could do nothing to prevent the rout as the Prussians swarmed across the border and raced into Muscovy.
However, where the Muscovites had failed to slow the Prussians, the weather succeeded.
While they had awaited the order to attack, the enemy troops had been comfortably billeted in warm barracks and they quickly became exhausted in conditions that they hadn’t been prepared for. Likewise, their equipment seized up - metal parts in weapons and vehicles alike stuck and refused to work, simply because their operators had no idea how to take care of them properly.
The Prussians’ momentum was lost and the advance bogged down, then ground to a halt, the possibility of annihilating the Muscovite army in one fell swoop completely gone.
Over the next couple of days, the Muscovites mounted a resistance and took advantage of the let-up of pressure to dig in and fortify new positions from which they launched a few counterattacks, but were unable to force the Prussians back.
The two forces settled in and for a while it looked like a new front had been established some twenty miles inside the border, but the stalemate was broken when the flanking forces from the south arrived. They were comprised mostly of Finns, who were used to the conditions, and with their Prussian-supplied weapons, they had no trouble brushing aside their badly armed opponents. Under threat of being surrounded, the Muscovites retreated and the Prussians resumed their advance, slower than before, but no less determinedly.
During this time, it was almost as if there were a gentleman’s agreement between the Fleas and the allied air forces. The Misfits and the Wolfpack were under strict orders to avoid engaging enemy fighters at all cost. They were told to concentrate solely on the ground forces to try to prevent their advance and, to Abby’s satisfaction, Baryshnikov had been warned by Murmansk command of the dire consequences if he disobeyed.
The Wolfpack had taken a few more casualties, their machines shot down by anti-aircraft fire or damaged beyond repair and had finally run out of spare Harridans. There was no point in training new pilots to fly machines they didn’t have, so Pemberton and Howard handed over their Harridans, before they and their fitters retreated to the safety of the Arturo. Vulture was packed up on a wagon and went with them; her optical instruments had been rendered almost useless by the almost constant cloud cover. To compensate, Abby ordered Charles to co-pilot Bloodhound, giving Owen a rest and allowing the radar aircraft to be in the air almost constantly.
The Muscovites fought bravely, but they could do nothing to halt the Prussians. Thousands were killed and thousands more were cut off and forced to surrender.
The last day of the retreat was not much more than a rout, as the surviving men and women abandoned their weapons and equipment and ran through the snow, heading for the boats that were waiting to take them across the river to the city and the last line of defences.
The Prussians let them escape, knowing that their panic would be infectious and make the job of taking the city easier. They followed at a leisurely pace, conserving their strength, and set up along the river facing Murmansk.
Full winter was almost upon them, though, the ice spreading across the water, creaking and groaning as it expanded outwards from the banks, and the Prussians couldn’t afford to wait too long b
efore they tried to cross it.
When Abby walked in, the mood in the command bunker was more serious than she had ever seen it. The old General, Popov, and Dorothy Campbell, were discussing tactics, animatedly gesturing at the table, but the rest of the military leaders were just staring at the map, drinks in hand, not saying anything and the support staff manning the telephones were equally silent and morose.
‘Abby!’ Dot waved her over and she went around the table to join them. She didn’t need to glance at the map to know what the situation was, but she did anyway and immediately wished that she hadn’t; there were fewer gold statuettes on the board than ever, not just in the north, but in the whole theatre, while the number of red ones seemed to have increased.
‘Thank you for coming.’ The Sky Commodore moved past Abby’s extended hand to fold her into a hug, which surprised her, but only momentarily before she returned it.
They held it only briefly, though, before Campbell pulled back and her place was taken by Popov, who settled for a handshake, a smile and a respectful nod. ‘Group Captain.’ He nodded at Campbell. ‘All yours, Commodore.’
‘Thank you, General.’
They watched Popov wander away to join the rest of his command group, then Campbell turned to grin at her friend. ‘Well, this is another fine mess Whitehall have gotten us into, isn’t it?’
Abby nodded. ‘Are we looking at another France, or is the situation salvageable?’
Dot waved at the map. ‘The Muscovites are holding the centre and south, just. It’s only really here that the situation is desperate, but as we’ve said before, if Murmansk falls, then the rest will follow and the Prussians know that. We have to hold the line.’
‘And will we?’
The Russian Resistance Page 34