Spitfire Girls (45 page)

Now Jo was living with the other girls at Mrs Bennell's Stone House and Bill had gone to White Waltham, their caravan taken over by a queer little man claiming to have been Lord Truman's gardener until not long ago. Amid one of the worst winters in living memory Jo would go to Upavon tomorrow and if seventeen girls could advance upwards, the thousands of aircraft needing to be delivered from the factories would have female pilots drawn from the nation's ranks and forcing the Ministry to create new centres for their activities. Already Hamble was becoming a vital location, and it was commanded by a woman …

Jo allowed her fantasies to drift to an RAF run by females and to big Boeings being transported across oceans by beautiful young aviatrices doing the job for a living. Her goal was to be commandeering twin-engined aircraft all over the place by the end of the year, and to cap 1941 by tracking down Hana's mother. She had studied hard for tomorrow's test, and when sleep arrived fantasy became the mutation of dreams in which Jo's brown-skinned mother was piloting a fighter and leading a formation of Spitfire girls to glory over the twilight of the Reich.

‘I've never understood why the daughter of a millionaire aviation manufacturer should have to be tested for ATA,' complained Kay, stretching her bronzed figure across a towel on the bright, sandy beach. Only a short distance away was Magnetic Island and Kay luxuriated in the special beauty of her native Barrier Reef.

‘Father has always bent over backwards to make me work for what I get in life,' Lili countered, sitting upright and looking through binoculars toward the island.

‘Well, if Edith Allam ever does bother to make her way here,
I
am not being tested,' Kay asserted, looking around at the neighbouring sunbathers, most of whom were women whose husbands and lovers had begun to drift away to the war.

‘Edith never even sent an apology,' Kay continued, unfolding a large London newspaper that was ten days old. ‘Now I'm reading here that more ATA girls are being seen at a place called Upavon, and the press boys are taking pictures of them. There's a tart from Warsaw over there as well – I gather the Polish boys have been flying with the RAF. We're missing it all because of that stupid Yank bird.'

Lili frowned and laid the binoculars on the towel.

‘Actually, I had a dream last night,' she said, fingering a heart shape into the sand. ‘We were on a big airship dropping bombs, and all around us were aeroplanes of every description, all manufactured by my Dad, with beautiful women pilots inside every cockpit. Suddenly we were
landing in the middle of a gorgeous field next to a glorious mansion with those landscaped gardens you only see in England. Amy Johnson greeted us – just you and me – and then she went up in our balloon. That was when my dream ended because I had banged my head on the bedside table.'

‘What boring dreams you have, mate,' Kay muttered.

Lili played with the sand and then looked out to the sea. ‘God, I miss having you in my bed,' she said, playfully dropping a grainy handful on Kay's ankle.

‘Wait until we can get away from home again,' Kay said, lying back and closing her eyes. She was feverish with the urge to tear away from home, and resented the adventures being had by the European girl pilots.

‘Don't you miss men any more?' Lili asked, her tone hushed.

‘I'm homebound, so I try not to think about anything, Lil.'

‘They're talking about stopping air joyriding, Kay – that means we can't even fly for fun anymore. All the civil aircraft are being earmarked for the war effort.'

Kay feigned sleep to stop Lili's chatter, thinking about their overwhelming physical minglings that had left Kay tingling and helpless for weeks after they had left Brisbane for home …

Edith had never come to Australia to administer the ATA tests, and the girls had had to return to their anxious parents, but Lili had been unable to settle into family life. Her father had had to take long walks after midnight to find his wandering daughter, her gaze fixed upon the Reef under
brilliant moonlight and her mind distracted by something he knew was not conventional.

Her mother had asked if she had found a young man, but Lili was jumpy when such questions were asked, always running from the spacious mansion and not stopping until she had reached the threshold of Kay's front door.

The Pelhams were always polite and plied her with beer until she was dizzy, but Kay had looked bored. At night Lili could not sleep, her hot, searching hand running down the length of her own body and hungering for Kay's strong, controlled lovemaking. Now, alone with her polite parents and the gentle servants, Lili wondered if Kay's nights were scorched with this same desperation, cured only when Lili could run into the darkness and let the seas drench the conflagration that danced around her nipples and erupted along her ripe contours …

Lili's dream had been more specific than the version she recounted to Kay: though she had never met the American, Edith Allam was clear as a day of Townsville sunshine, her smile friendly but not beautiful and her entourage just one single man, a hulking blond. Lili had been disturbed by the dream because Amy had risen above the crowd in the giant balloon, which all the girls assumed could not be retrieved.

When she awakened Lili felt depressed to be languishing in Australia. If dreams could be harbingers, however, Lili hoped the imagery might come true and she could fly away to England with her most beautiful possession and make love in a tiny room at the top of a country hotel.

She too had read about the daring ATA girls being tested
at Upavon in a county called Wiltshire, and had followed all the scandals that seemed to dominate the pages of the newspapers, war or no war. Lili and Kay had willed Valerie Cobb to overcome the hypocrisy of the characters who had sent her into exile, and had laughed together at the insinuations about Miss Cobb and Miss Bryce …

War was, after all, incidental: Lili had come to terms with the fact that she could never stop thinking about Kay, and as a sixth sense told her the balloon dream might soon unfold before their eyes Lili let the sea envelop her burning flesh before desire might drive her to insanity.

Upavon village, on the banks of the Wiltshire Avon, was home to Central Flying School. Jo, Sally and Barbara had been flown there by Amy Johnson, and the trio moved into rooms set aside for them in a house by the Avon River. Amy had flown on to Prestwick, where, she explained, three men including Alec required transport back to White Waltham. Jo, Sally and Barbara had winked at one another, knowing Amy was destined for another encounter with Hamilton Slade. She was not a good liar, Valerie always said, and now the girls knew what their absent CO had meant. Amy was so nice, and her melancholy dedication to ATA duties, desperately dull compared with her previous life of glory, made her a disarming companion for all the women in the organization.

No pilot, male or female, could endure the nerve-wracking CFS course without a few fleeting moments of wanting to abandon ferrying to return to their wartime gardens. After her successful completion of the course, Delia Seifert had returned to Hatfield spluttering to the others about having to come in to land at a speed to which they had, until then, been accustomed for cruising.

Confidence was tested by throwing a pilot into an aerobatics routine and then demanding endless solo take-offs and landings. Knowledge of constant-speed propellers, retractable undercarriages and cooling gills had to be gained with rapidity, and, most exciting of all, the girls had to learn to cope with two engines. Only a year before,
Valerie Cobb had had to fight every step of the way to convince the Committee that a tiny band of females should be allowed to transport trainer aircraft short distances. Now the gap was narrowing, and in a matter of twelve momentous months Valerie's dream had crystallized; in fact, the ATA women were progressing up the ranks faster than anyone had envisaged. The country simply could not do without the services of these immensely capable aviatrices: Germany's folly had made a dream a reality for the women lucky enough to wage war in uniform up in an airy space.

Several men had arrived at Upavon for the course, including Josef Ratusz and Anthony Seifert. Sally had talked to Anthony all afternoon, intrigued by his stories, which included a claim that his mother had sent him away to be fostered and would be shocked to see that he had amounted to something. During his infancy his father had been a menacing force sodden with alcohol, and the boy, who had always doubted his true paternity, was sent away ‘for safekeeping', as his mother had said, meekly surrendering him to a small home in Southampton. He had yet to tell Delia of his claim, but he had watched her from afar and admired her brilliance in the air and wondered if it had been a blessing that she had been allowed to grow up in her own home as a son within a daughter's body.

Ratusz had found the whole Upavon exercise unbelievably humiliating and refused to speak to anyone the entire first day of the course. When told he would be expected to fly with an Instructor on a Master he had exclaimed, ‘
I
am master,' and stormed off, only to be reprimanded by
the base CO and giggled at by a bevy of WAAFs who made jokes about Seifert and the Pole …

A chill in the air seemed to herald the beginning of a destructive winter, and Jo Howes cursed as she climbed to a suitable altitude in a Master and realized her window was stuck open. Her instructor smiled and when they returned to the ground Jo felt she would die from the crackling cold that sapped into her bones and diluted her ability to think clearly in the air – while her instructor seemed totally unaffected. Some time had to be spent mending the window and Jo became impatient, her irritation increasing at the nearby sounds of Sally and Barbara chattering to Anthony about tennis, as they waited for their course to commence.

On this, the second morning, Jo returned with the other ATA pilots, their smart blue uniforms and splendid talents attracting mixed expressions from the faces of WAAFs. Jo was pleased to be going up again, on her last flight with an instructor before her solo testing. The pair resumed their labours in the Master, its window now tightly shut and the snugness inside giving Jo a feeling of security she had never felt inside her father's caravan or in a room at Mrs Bennell's. She felt a little thrill when they were airborne again. It would be a good day, she knew, and as Sally and Barbara watched the Master become a pinprick in the sky, the WAAFs envied the other girls' special magic. Glancing down at the ground below, Jo experienced a swift pang of guilt at the thought of enjoying flight better than an afternoon in her father's company. She knew she had outgrown his clumsy attentiveness and was grateful to have been
ordered to Hatfield. Glancing down again she thought she could see his grey head gazing up, but before she could adjust her focus the figure had vanished.

Soon Barbara, Anthony, Sally the tennis ace and
I, Ratusz
, as Josef called himself, were airborne. Each did a dozen solos, landing at high speeds, and were exhausted by the end of their test day. They went on to twin-engined Oxfords, their tests including spinning and the perilous single-engine flying. By the time the students returned from each flight their confidence had been shaken. Only Josef endured the comprehensive course with aplomb, at one point in mid-flight feigning sleep while taking his instructor through quite terrifying aerobatics. Every one of the pilots knew they had to pass through the course if only for the honour of Valerie Cobb. Ratusz had given first-hand descriptions of the Nazi terror to his ATA colleagues, and Valerie's plight as a prisoner of misplaced zeal had irked him because he saw her as the profoundly persecuted heroine of female aviation in a war of personalities remote from the real global apocalypse.

Raging through the skies and feeling that the finger-light touch of heaven was not far away, Ratusz left his instructor in awed silence, smirking to himself at the thought of British arrogance being cowed. Both Josef and Hana were bewildered by the islanders' humour and only their dedication to flying kept their spirits alive. He was disenchanted with the characters he had encountered so far, and Hana had abandoned any thoughts of carnal satisfaction with an Englishmen for the time being. Now, Ratusz was ready for what everyone in the world had come to recognize: the possibility of a prolonged conflict in which ordinary
love, daily habits and small commonplace deeds were to be abandoned for extraordinary acts in a timescale that could end in annihilation to the music of Wagner.

Blazing alongside Josef's Oxford, Sally was concentrating on every detail of the flight, her first solo on the course. After so many months with ATA, alternating between being Sally Met and a regular pilot, she had lost any fear. Today, however, she had quaked at the whole prospect of her future hinging on what she saw as a few idiotic sojourns she could ordinarily do blindfold. Tension mounted to a pitch she had never before experienced within her slim body, a terror she had never felt in even the toughest centre-court match at a major final. As her Oxford levelled off and the cold but clear environs whistled past her window, she knew she could afford to relax. Sally took the aircraft further afield than regulations allowed, Barbara's aircraft now only a dot in her peripheral vision.

Sally's mind jumped to Stella Teague, who in passing this same course was now on to Mosquitos and Hurricanes but whose attention had been drawn most recently to the plight of her former dance master. As the air screamed past and the ecstasy of flying overtook her, Sally had a sudden realization: this war seemed a succession of brave girls losing the most important men in their lives but being too loyal to ATA ferry chits to go searching for them. Then again, she told herself: Hana had lost track of her mother, and Lord Truman, like Valerie's Dad, was in search of a daughter. Two more diverse characters she could not imagine: Hana and his Lordship! Hana had already evinced a certain animosity towards the natives despite the kindness with which she had been treated. It was the charitable side
of the English personality that had allowed Hana Bukova exemption from this very course, squeezed in at great expense before Christmas.