Spitfire Girls (24 page)

‘Florian – Stupid,' intoned Virgilio, chief torturer for the fascists.

Paul stepped forward mechanically, having by now become accustomed to his new Christian name. One of the
guards pulled his shorts down, and he stumbled out of them.

‘Florian – Ugly.'

Zack was already naked, his hairless genitals clotted with diseased sores. As on every morning, he tried to hide them with his hands.

‘No woman would ever want you, so why do you care what happens to your puny marbles?' Virgilio's speech never departed from this pattern. ‘At least you are not an imbecile like your brother, so please dig into your memory and give us some names. It is nearly Christmas and you will be rewarded.' As usual, silence prevailed, but Zack could sense an urgency about the fascists that made him uneasy.

Neither Oxford graduate had ever been given much opportunity to speak on any of these monotonous mornings – the ferocity of their reeking attackers never ceased to amaze them. Spanish spunk had soiled their female counterparts for hours the night previous to this nervous morning, eventually having driven the scarred and breastless girls insane, and yet these men had reserves of energy for further violence after little sleep. Once again, blows rained down and Paul hoped his hearing would not disappear completely, his left ear already permanently deafened by one of Virgilio's cruel techniques.

Taking a breather, the torturer lit a cigarette and smiled. ‘You are interested in the reward?' he asked, lifting a prostrate Paul's chin with his boot.

‘Not really,' Zack replied for his nearly deaf brother.

‘I didn't ask you, shit,' Virgilio snapped, moving over to crouch next to him. Cigarette dangling from his mouth,
he reached out and took Zack's lifeless manhood in his palm and caressed the pathetic testicles with his other hand. For the first time in fourteen months the Briton was overcome by terror because his torturer had never before touched his organ – but now Virgilio was grasping his penis.

‘We will give you some nourishment and this will come to life. Then you will be given some women who need finishing off.' He stroked Zack's pale appendage. ‘We have three remaining who have survived longer than we had expected.'

‘British?' Zack gasped, wanting desperately to push him away.

‘Who knows?'

Virgilio stubbed out his cigarette, the Briton's screams causing even Paul to hear as small puffs of smoke rose from Zack's penile flesh.

One of the guards was cringing but Virgilio had not seen. Paul had been thinking deeply of Angelique and as he watched his writhing brother's tears stream over the surface of boils that had once been his face, the deaf man spoke.

‘Vera Bukova,' he mumbled, hoping Zack would not hear.

At once the Spaniards scrambled around him, lifting him like a crouching chimpanzee on to the table. Virgilio motioned for his deputy to write, and Zack moaned.

‘Give him water,' one of the guards barked, pointing towards the moaning.

‘Kranz – Friedrich Kranz – he helped finance the airlifts,' Paul continued, his voice a tiny whisper. ‘Polish women
pilots – they go from Romania to England.' He paused, and because Zack had fainted he provided his torturers with what he thought could be a final gift. ‘Our cell was based in Zumaya.'

An assortment of guards removed the deaf man from the room, and for a moment Paul reached out to touch his brother but he was dragged down a corridor into a cellar where his chains were undone. Here, in a clean room that to Paul was a palace, a clean bed and immaculate furniture were arranged on a spotless floor, where his bony torso now sat. One of the guards lifted him on to the bed with a gentleness he would not have believed possible. Out of nowhere, food appeared, the aroma of fresh fish and sweet potato making Paul's head reel, his fingers probing the offerings like those of an infant before its first solid meal. His chest constricted as he downed a morsel of fish, guilt that he had forgotten his brother, and for a moment he wanted to regurgitate this glorious banquet, for which he had just betrayed that multitude of terrified comrades of Zumaya.

But now Paul wolfed the food, and a guard presented him with good wine, which he sipped in a stupor of remorse and ecstasy. When he looked up again another gift had been presented to him, in a wrapping of white sheets. Lifting his hand to push away its mangled grey hair that was matted with knots, he felt only bone under his fingertips, the creature crawling on its knees to the bed and banging, banging, banging its body against the frame, grunting in a voice so ugly as to chill the soul, but which Paul could not hear. Cries that would never reach his ears were echoing down the corridor and permeating his new palace, their agony
making the creature curl into a little ball whose head rested against the spotless mattress.

As Paul sipped the exquisite liquid, he thought he might inspire the female torture victim to look up for the first time, but she had died. This made him panic. He jumped up, and realizing he was alone with the corpse paced the room but accepted the fact that he had been left for an indeterminate time. When would he next see Zack? He shouted in Spanish but no-one came.

He languished with the decomposing body and was now being attacked by vermin himself. His misery was so acute he had stopped wondering who the girl had been, only hating her for stinking so badly and for becoming so grotesque. At the end of that day his captors returned.

‘Why haven't you fucked her?' asked a guard.

Paul saw lips moving.

‘Idiot! Why aren't you fucking her?'

He could see the guard's rage and noticed the others covering their faces. One turned away and disappeared.

‘Fuck her now.' He grabbed Paul and pushed him down next to the terrible mess of death on the floor.

‘Leave me be,' Paul screamed, thinking he could hear his own voice inside his head.

His tormentor tore off his rags and took his buttocks in both hands, forcing Paul to thrust his groin into the mound of infestation that once had been a woman. He stood up and kicked the emaciated Briton, and Paul shut his eyes. A maggot crawled up his nostril as another blow landed on his torso. Then the man was bending down again, his breath close to Paul's face. Eyes still tightly shut, he felt strong, supple hands reaching around his wasted frame and
settling on his genitals. His eyes wide open now, he looked up to see faces laughing as he was pulled by his most vulnerable extremity in supreme agony around the room. Then he was thrown to the floor, and pathetically he asked for Zack.

The men went.

She
was still there.

What were other young men doing at home at this very moment? he thought to himself. What was Britain doing?

His loins were suffering searing pain and that night his urine came in excruciating minuscule spurts. More bugs arrived in the night and he dreamed of the woman the Spaniard had wanted him to assault in death. When he awoke the next morning she was gone. The room was clean and he was given a washbasin filled with hot water. He asked for Zack and saw lips moving again. They were saying he would be brought back to him today. Later another white-haired young woman came, with good food, and he had to fuck her. Her lips moved incessantly and he was beaten when he could no longer function. He wondered what her name was as she too was beaten, but much harder than he, so that she broke open and oozed.

At least, he told himself, he could not hear anything.

Then she died.

Never had a woman been so desolate and disoriented as Edith Allam on this solo flight across the Atlantic. During her dazed episode at the hands of Beaverbrook, she had agreed to participate in the publicity exercise and had not thought beyond the excitement and the money during the preparations for the trip. Now, horrified at the prospect of an interminable journey without company, at regular intervals she recited her name, address and occupation out loud because her mind had begun to panic. She would have to endure hours airborne in a state of terror, not out of fear of the ocean below but of the frigid void inside the cabin, which refused to talk back to the aviatrix.

‘How could Amelia and Amy have done these journeys?' Edith said aloud, her voice distorted within her headgear. ‘How will I ever do the Australian leg? If I refuse, will it cause an international incident?'

Forcing her brain to concentrate on peripheral subjects she let her mind wander to Errol: when she returned to Britain, Valerie's suggestion would be put to him. He could come back to England and be part of ATA – their sole Negro! thought Edith, grinning to herself. Looking down at nothingness, she was grateful for a smooth flight, the aircraft functioning magnificently and the air currents in her favour. Now she was dropping altitude in the approach to her first stopover in Iceland.

‘My name is Edith and I live on Florence Avenue in Philadelphia,' she repeated to herself, as the aeroplane
coasted on to the runway, a thin mist obscuring Edith's vision.

Her papers cleared, the aircraft checked and refuelled, the young American woman was ready for the next leg of her crossing. Having made human contact for an hour she felt more confident, and had shut herself back inside the cabin when a noise made her freeze. Already taxiing, Edith guided the Oxford past the ground crew and drew to a halt. Turning around, she could feel the blood rushing to her head as Hartmut Weiss, blue and nearly frozen, emerged, almost crushed, from underneath the extra fuel tank that had been lagged with heavy blankets. He was whimpering and his watery blue eyes were expressionless. Without a sound, Edith put the aircraft into full throttle and they were airborne.

‘Christ Almighty, Hartmut,' she shouted as they achieved cruising altitude.

He sat up slowly, moaning.

‘It's hours before we land again. Don't you dare pee on the floor.'

‘That's unlikely – I am frozen and will never pee again.'

His lady pilot glanced around and saw a face coming to life, a dead man miraculously revived, and she was dazzled. ‘You goddam Kraut – why are you here?'

‘I got away from that crazy Isle of Man by giving my watch to a security guard, stole a ride from a pair of Austrians on the run in East Anglia, and got under this back seat while you were flirting with Sean Vine and Alec Harborne.'

‘So you didn't miss a trick.' Edith felt tense – did he still have his gun as well?

‘I was jealous. You read my letter?'

‘It was silly. I've never read anything so stupid.'

‘A great deal of effort went into it. Passion is a pig on paper.' He was trembling, but Edith did not care. ‘How many letters must I write to make you begin to feel?'

‘Feel what?'

‘Feel – like a woman.'

‘A woman lives right here.' She pointed to her chest.

‘I love you.'

‘For God's sake, we still have six hours to go on this trip. Can't you freeze up again?'

He had struggled to climb out from beneath his impossibly placed hideout, and now he sat next to the American. A brief pocket of turbulence shook the Oxford and Edith bit her lip. It bled, red droplets falling on to her jacket.

Hartmut removed his handkerchief, emblazoned with a swastika, and wiped her chin. ‘We share common blood,' he said, shivering.

‘That'll be the day.' Edith stared straight ahead, thinking of Errol and of her crowd on a hot July night drinking icecream sodas in South Philly. ‘Do you want to share the flying, Hartmut?'

He was not listening, his foot tapping nervously. ‘You must know I am Jewish,' he murmured, reaching for her hand.

‘And I'm a heavyweight pugilist,' she snapped, pulling away from his icy grasp.

‘When we get to Greenland I will show you.'

‘Not on your life! Anyway, I thought you said it had frozen.'

‘Not when I am with you.'

‘Oh, God, Hartmut. Shut up.' She turned to her right and he was grinning, holding in his hand a tiny mezuzah on a delicate chain. Looking down into the majestic space in which her aircraft sailed she had to admit to herself that his presence had turned this ordeal into a dizzying dance in the sky.

‘How did you get into the Luftwaffe?' she demanded coolly.

‘I have no living family, and very few friends who could accuse me of having Jewish connections. Besides, just look at me.'

‘Don't they give you a medical? Surely that would show.'

‘It showed, but in those days, Jews still had jobs in high places, including inspection doctor to the German air force.'

‘Okay, just try that on Burt Malone or Eddie Cuomo, or on some hardnosed reporter when we get back to Philly.'

Hartmut took Edith's hand once more and placed the mezuzah in her gloved palm. She was glad of his company and of his beautiful face and thick blonde hair. He would need her from now on and though his presence would complicate everything wherever she went, for ever, Edith believed he was one of her own. She vowed to make room for him in a future that looked more agonizing as each hour brought her closer to Florence Avenue and to the City of Brotherly Love.

‘This would be a great time for us all to go out for a soda.'

Philadelphia Airport had never received a gleaming Oxford and the crowds awaiting the city's best-known daughter were as interested in her aircraft as in Edith Allam's latest achievements.

Eddie Cuomo had been fired for his Hindenburg histri-
onics, then rehired by the local radio news station, his first job this transatlantic spectacular starring the Philly girl herself. A war was brewing overseas, but here was another reason for a fun day out alongside the oil refinery.

Edith seemed ill at ease, wanting the crowds to disperse as quickly as possible.

‘What about a soda, honey?' Eddie persisted.

‘No, thank you. Have you seen Burt Malone, Eddie?' she asked, ignoring the other reporters thrusting and shouting at her as she walked behind the aircraft.