Sentimental Journey (59 page)

Skip lit a cigarette he’d gotten from Eduard and listened as Cassidy started on Walker.

“Yeah, it’s only for a special few,” Cassidy was saying. “But I can cut through the red tape.”

Walker asked him something.

“Good? Yeah. You’ll love it. More like a frigging fairy tale than the Army. You see, there’s this castle in Scotland . . . ”

“SING SING SING (WITH A SWING)”

It was a great day for Charley, one she wasn’t going to forget. She drew her first Spit, fresh from the factory and gleaming in the bright, warm sunlight. Radios were most often installed after delivery, so ferrying pilots had to fly with a map, a compass, and a prayer. Sometimes they didn’t even have gyros.

But not today; this Spit had everything, including the radio. She took her plane upstairs, then played with the radio frequency until she had dialed in some great flying music.

The swing beat of Benny Goodman and the perfect handling of a Supermarine Spitfire. The two went together like rum and Coca-Cola.

The cockpit was tight, with its bubble canopy, but she didn’t feel claustrophobic as she tested the machine. It didn’t take long for her to see why this plane was so loved. It truly did move with her, like an extension of her body.

And man-oh-man, was it fun!

“Sing, sing, sing, sing . . . ” She took the plane up again, flying high to the song’s drum solo, then came the trumpets, and she flew through a billowing, cotton-white cloud, slipping and sliding, her wings rocking to the beat of the song.

They were told specifically not to do any aerobatics. But heck . . . it was just her and the sky and the sweetest plane she’d ever flown. She didn’t think there was a pilot in the world that could pass this up.

As the music spun, she put the ailerons over on one side and did a slow roll.

Perfect!

She leveled out, then rolled into another, and another, and another, coming out of it to swing her wings to the beat of the trumpet, and sing, sing, sing, singing, “Da-da-dahhh-da . . . ”

She turned the music up and climbed as the notes climbed higher, slipped into the air currents to the beat of the drums and rolled the moment the trumpets blared.

She and that Spit just danced across the sky like bobby-soxers at a school dance. The music and fighter . . . well, they played together, flew together, danced together, until the final notes, and she did a double roll, singing at the top of her lungs.

Something metallic flashed past her face.

Oh, crap! Did she break something?

It flew past as she turned over again.

It was gold. She searched the panel. Nothing on the plane was gold.

An instant later she recognized it.

Her Helena Rubinstein powder compact flew past her nose and hit the canopy. The compact popped open.

Ivory
Pearl
face powder went everywhere.

“Oh, double crap!”

A pinkish cloud filled the cockpit. She coughed and waved it away.

The powder stuck to the canopy, stuck to her face and mouth. There were clouds of it around her, settling as she tried and failed over and over again to wave it all away.

She didn’t think there could possibly be so blasted much powder in that case! A few minutes later, the whole canopy looked like milk glass. Powder was on the instruments, on the switches and the knobs.

Squinting, she reached out and tried to wipe the windshield clean. It smeared like a paste from the natural moisture. It was a warm day.

But she kept rubbing and smearing, rubbing and smearing, until she managed to clean enough of a spot for her to see. She landed half an hour later and taxied in and parked.

Now what?
She sat there, then unbuckled and opened the canopy. She took a deep breath of air that didn’t smell like the face powder, which had dusted everything inside the plane.

A mechanic came running over and spotted her, then turned around and ran back toward the command hut calling like crazy for an ambulance.

She sat there and watched him, completely stunned, then looked down at her powdered skin and hands.

Does he think I’m burned? Damn . . .

She closed her eyes. She had some explaining to do, and sure as shooting, she had some cleaning to do, too. “Well, this ought to top Connie’s Pearl Harbor story.”

She started to climb out, but stopped when she spotted her metal compact on the floor. She bent down to get it, snapped it closed, and carefully sat up, wiping her dry mouth with her sleeve, which also had powder all over it.

“What a mess!” She turned to get out.

Skip was leaning on the fuselage. He looked at her, frowning, “Charley?”

She groaned.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.” She held up the compact and shrugged. Then all she heard was his laughter.

“YOU CANT STOP ME FROM DREAMING”

Their first date was dinner at a small village pub whose owner didn’t mind that she was dusted in pale powder and wore a flight jumpsuit. Their second date was at another dance club, where they danced all night until the band played “Auld Lang Syne.” The third date was during a two-day leave in
London
, where they met at the train station and went to the cinema.

They sat in the plush ruby velvet seats of the loge so Skip could smoke, and watched two war documentaries, a Melodyland cartoon, and an episode of the
Jungle Girl
serial before they laughed through the silliness of
Buck Privates,
starring Abbott and Costello.

They were walking down a dark side street toward a pub when the air-raid sirens went off. Charley turned to look at the sky at the same time Skip did.

Searchlights crisscrossed the sky in moving trails of white light.

“I hate this,” she said quietly.

“Come along.” He grabbed her hand. “The Underground’s too far away. There should be a shelter close by.” They walked quite a distance, the sirens whining; then he was moving faster, almost running and holding her hand.

They reached a corner in a block of commercial buildings, and Skip stopped suddenly and swore. “Hurry.”

She could hear the plane engines overhead. There was no telling if they were theirs or the Germans’.

He pulled her behind him down the next dark block. “There’s an
Anderson
shelter.”

She saw the low mound of sandbags as they made for it. He pulled open the door and pushed her inside. It was empty and darker inside than outside. Blindly she ran down the few steps, and he closed the door, flicked on his lighter, and followed her. He lit an oil lamp sitting on a battered table in the corner.

There was one old fold-up cot, three chairs, a jug of water, and some thin woolen blankets stacked in the corner. The shelter looked as if it hadn’t been used much. Most people made straight for the Underground, where there was usually food, room, and light.

“Better settle in. Who knows how long this will last.”

She walked over, spread a blanket on the fold-up, and sat down, resting her chin in her hands, her elbows on her knees. She had little experience with bomb raids.
London
and the south of
England
got the worst of it. Her base was well north of
London
, and since they had been there, they’d had only one raid, where no bombs fell. She had been in two in
London
and found them unsettling because she felt like a sitting duck. Charley was someone who took action, to merely sit there and leave her fate to chance went against her natural instincts.

“I think I’d rather be in the air than here. I feel as if I have a target on my head.”

He laughed softly. He thought she was joking.

The bombs began to fall, exploding and making the ground vibrate. She looked at him. He was standing stiffly across from her.

They hit hard. It was all she could do not to jump. She clasped her hands so tightly they went numb.

The bombs hit again. Louder. The room shook, and sand spilled from some of the sandbags. She began to rub her arm. They didn’t speak. There was no sound but the bombs hitting. She looked from corner to corner to corner, to see if the sandbags would hold. “They’re close.”

He looked at her with an expression of surprise, as if he had forgotten her. He crossed over and sat down next to her. He put his arm around her the same way he had at the movies.

His body was hard and warm. “Thank you.” She leaned her head on his shoulder.

A bomb hit so close the sandbags shimmied and dirt and dust hit her arms and face.

He tightened his hold on her. The bombs came whistling down, one after another, almost every minute, shattering things aboveground and shattering her nerves along with them.

“They sound like banshees.” She was shaking.

He tightened his hold on her. “Take it easy. I’m here.”

She looked up.

A bomb hit. Dust went everywhere.

She cried out and clung to him.

Then he was kissing her and she was kissing him back. He pulled at her clothes and she at his. His hands were everywhere, on her breasts, her thighs, pulling up her dress. She wanted his touch, even in bare, moist places that no one saw but her, because feeling meant she was alive.

He pushed her back down on the cot and unbuckled his belt at the same time. He opened all the buttons on the back of her dress and pulled it down to her waist, then off.

The bombs were screaming and blasting around them. They touched and kissed as if they couldn’t get close enough.

The cot shook and her clothes were on the floor. Skip was pressing his hips between her legs, and her hands were gripping his tight bare buttocks, pulling him closer. He plunged inside and she cried out.

Bombs blasted, hard and furiously. His hips pushed into her as deeply as he could, over and over, as if each stroke could block out the blasts, the crumbling dirt, and the shaking walls and ground. The smell of smoke and incendiaries.

He raised his head mid-stroke and looked down at her. “Charley.” He hesitated. “It’s you.” He touched the tears on her cheeks with one hand. The other was under her. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop. I’m sorry.”

“Just love me, Skip.” She grabbed at his bottom, gripped it, and pressed him down into her, even though it hurt. She wanted him deeper. She wanted to see all of what this mysterious thing called sex was. She wanted it to be him in her, like he was in her dreams every night. “Do it, please. I want this with you.”

He shifted and put his hands under her and gave her what she wanted, while the bombs fell all night and London burned.

“TAKE THE ‘A’ TRAIN”

The train pulled into Victoria Station and ground to a stop in a cloud of white steam. Skip pushed away from the wall, his hat under his arm. Charley was supposed to be on the four-forty. He checked his watch. The train was late.