Beauty Chorus, The (12 page)

That is all you have at the end of your life, fragments. Of all the seconds of your existence, how many do you have time to recall? A fraction.

I hear the great explosion of water, feel the turbulence as the plane goes down. But oh, the sea – the cold is pure pain now. I strike out, using my flight bag as a float.

‘Help!’ I gasp, the air catching in my throat. Then something rises up in me, I fight through the shock. ‘Help!’ Someone has heard me. Lights from a boat.

‘Hold on, sir! We’ll throw down some ropes.’

The wash slaps over me, freezing dark water. My teeth are chattering so hard I can barely cry out. ‘Hurry, please hurry …’ The boat’s name is HMS
Haslemere
, I
focus on the letters, on the lights, but I cannot reach the ropes they throw to me. It is cold. So cold, the darkness closing in. I blink, once, twice. A man dives from the deck, a rope around his
waist, and he strikes out heroically towards me. He holds me in his arms for a moment. The last human touch I shall ever feel. But I am drifting away. They pull him back in, his body limp.

If Lieutenant Commander Fletcher had not died two days later without regaining consciousness, perhaps he could have told you whether there was another person in the sea with me that day, or
even two. Some think it was the door, or my bag, that the sailors mistook for the torsos of men. People make mistakes. A gunner down the coast will claim to his dying day his regret at shooting
down an unmarked plane – he believes it was me.

But I don’t think I shall share my secrets. Mystery, conspiracy, keeps my name alive and I’m not ready for someone to put a full stop at the end of my story.

I was an ordinary woman who did extraordinary things. The first to qualify as a ground engineer. The first to fly to Australia single-handed. A million people lined the streets of London when
I came home. I waved to them from an open-topped car like the Queen, the Queen of the Air. I was an International Adventurer. I was a woman. I was a pilot, no more, no less than the ATA girls whose
names you have forgotten. Their joys, their loves, their losses, the dangers they faced were mine.

I will not leave these girls. I shall be their guardian angel, flying beside their Spitfires’ wings. When they are looking for a break in the clouds, I shall be the wind that parts a
safe course home. Shackleton talked of his fourth man. TS Eliot wrote of the other who walks beside you. We who have gone before are with you when you need us most. We are there holding our dying
sons on the battlefields and beaches as they drown in their own blood. These women are my daughters, my sisters, and I shall be ‘the other’ flying with them, until this is over and we
have won our peace.

I thought I was invincible, but it’s funny how life plays tricks on you. Father ran a fish-processing factory in Hull; I spent my life fighting to stay in the air, and ended up in the
drink just like the glass-eyed mackerel they used to chop up and can.

HMS
Haslemere
has come aground now. Dread cold seizes my limbs, stops the breath in my lungs. My suit is as heavy as armour, dragging me down, down, down. I hear the engines thrust,
reverse, my eyes wide with shock as the stern rises above me, a dark cliff against the frozen, leaden sky. The cold, cold water swells, my body lifts, arms flung helplessly behind me like a rag
doll. The boat surges. Propellers spinning, dragging me in to the darkness like Jonah to the whale. The lift, the wake, the chop, chop, chop of the blades. I cannot move, I cannot cry out, I am
numb.

Then, suddenly, I am gone.

10

Stella stood patiently in the queue at White Waltham post office, holding the parcel for David. In front of her were two old ladies dressed in the Victorian fashion with long
black skirts and high-necked white blouses.

‘Morning, Miss Lee, Miss Ferguson. What can I do for you today?’ the postmaster said.

‘Good morning, Mr Hall,’ the elder said. ‘Two first class stamps please.’

Stella’s mind drifted as she gazed down at the package.
Master David Grainger
, she thought. As she smoothed his name with her fingertip, the brown paper crinkling, snapshots of her
baby came to her, stolen moments of happiness. She blinked quickly.

‘Next,’ the postmaster called. ‘Next!’

Stella looked up finally. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Cheer up, love.’

Her mother’s voice came to her:
Pull yourself together, girl! Have a drink! For God’s sake cheer up.
Cheer up? If anyone else told her to cheer up she would scream. But then,
she was afraid if she began she would never be able to stop. She handed over the parcel. ‘Do you sell air mail paper by any chance?’

‘Sorry, Miss.’ He shuffled a stack of letters. Stella’s icy stare made him uncomfortable. ‘You could try Mr Frisby in the newsagents.’

Stella walked through the village and found herself outside St Mary’s Church. As much as she was enjoying living with the girls, she was glad to be alone with her thoughts for a while. In
Singapore she had always had so much time to herself. Too much time perhaps. When Richard was away, she had loved the lazy shape of the days during her pregnancy. She remembered running her hand
over the piles of neatly folded white vests and muslins in the linen press, feeling her child stirring at the touch of her hand on her stomach. She had felt full of anticipation, certain of the
happy future that lay ahead for her family.

It was as if she was a different woman entirely then. The birth itself was a hazy memory. Disjointed fragments came back to her as she walked into the churchyard – the astonishing pain,
the trauma her body suffered as they tried to save the baby. She glanced at a weathered gravestone near the path. Sometimes she wondered how close they had both come to death. Afterwards, once all
the well-wishers had been and Richard had returned to his base, she had found herself alone with a small child, and she hadn’t known what to do. When she looked at David, asleep in his
cradle, she had wanted desperately to feel the love she knew she should feel in her heart, but instead she’d felt nothing.

She remembered hearing the sound of David’s contented gurgling as the maid played with him while she painted or sewed on the shady veranda, her hands always trembling. Perhaps because her
mother talked constantly, Stella loved the peace and silence of her home, the simple white walls and cool terracotta floors, the lush green garden. In the long, quiet hours, she had managed to
convince herself she could cope. If she managed to keep the house tidy, and the baby fed then no one would notice what was wrong with her.
What kind of monster am I?
she remembered thinking.
What kind of mother doesn’t love her child?
She waited day after agonising day for her spirits to lift, for love to fill her heart, but it never did. When her brother was killed in
action, it was as if the earth fell away beneath her feet, and she plunged deeper into the darkness.
And then
, she thought,
I lost Richard
. That was how she liked to think of it. She
lost him.

Without him, the silence that she had loved weighed heavily on her, like a palpable rock crushing her. Sometimes, she felt she could hardly breathe for the weight she carried with her. Just the
memory of that time made her tense up, even now. Stella steadied herself as the blood sang in her ears, placed the palm of her hand against the rough bark of a tree in the churchyard. She would
give anything, anything, to turn back time and be with Richard and their child as they had been in the first few moments together. She remembered the pride on her husband’s face, the tender
way he had stooped and kissed her forehead.
If only I could go back, I could make it right
, she thought.
If only …
Stella was sure she would never know happiness again, that
perhaps everyone is only allowed to know such joy once in a lifetime. And her moment had come and gone before she knew it. She had missed it. Her brief happiness had flown by unremarked.

Stella was carrying a sketchpad under one arm, and she settled down on a bench to draw the church. Whenever she had things on her mind she found sketching helped. As the lines and shading took
shape, she relaxed, lost sense of time. When raindrops began to fall, it took her a moment to come round, to see the water seeping into the textured paper, blurring the pencil lines. Quickly she
scooped up her things and ran to the steeply pitched church porch to wait out the shower. As she stood, shivering, listening to the rain on the tiles, she heard a voice echoing through the church.
She turned to the door. It creaked slowly open at her touch and she crept in.

‘And when we are surrounded by loss, we must remember to cherish that which we still have,’ the voice intoned. ‘The daily pleasures of friendship, community, the comfort of
strangers.’ Stella stepped softly through the church, her heels clicking on the tiles. The cool interior embraced her, the smell of beeswax and cut flowers, the rain drumming on the roof.
‘We must treasure each day, and celebrate all He has given us—’ The voice broke off as Stella appeared from the side aisle. Near the altar, an old lady in a paisley housecoat and
a turban was dusting the choir stalls, and she looked up and smiled.

‘Oh, hello,’ the curate said.

‘I’m sorry,’ Stella said. ‘Please don’t let me disturb you. I was just sheltering from the rain.’

He jumped down from the pulpit and strode towards her. ‘It’s nice to see you again. You were at the memorial weren’t you?’

‘Yes, I was. It was a beautiful service.’

‘Such a tragic loss.’ He shook his head. ‘Are you with the ATA too?’

‘Yes, I’m a pilot.’

‘You don’t look like a pilot.’ He tilted his head, smiled at her.

‘I’m in disguise.’

‘I thought you might be an artist.’ He indicated the sketchbook. ‘May I?’

Stella blushed, clutched the book to her chest. ‘I’m not very good.’

‘That’s alright, neither am I.’ When he came closer, she saw the amber flecks in his eyes. He took the book from her, and rested it on the pew edge. ‘This is
lovely.’ He studied the sketch of the church. ‘You have a very good eye.’

‘Do you think so?’ Stella felt the heat rising in her cheeks as she stood beside him. She traced the smooth polished wood of the pew with her fingertips. ‘You can have
it.’

He raised his gaze to hers. ‘I couldn’t possibly.’

‘No, really.’ She ripped the page from the sketchbook and handed it to him.

‘Thank you, I don’t know what to say.’ He looked down at the book. A beautiful study of a sleeping baby was on the next page. ‘Who’s this?’

Stella touched the baby’s cheek in the drawing. ‘David, my son.’

‘How old is he?’

‘He was six months when I drew that. It was the last night I spent with him.’

‘Oh dear, is he …?’

‘No.’ Stella cleared her throat uncomfortably. ‘No, he’s fine. He’s with my husband’s parents in Ireland.’ She added. ‘He … We were in
Singapore, until Richard, my husband—’

‘Your husband was killed?’

‘I lost him.’ Stella’s gaze fell to the book, and she flicked quickly on through the pages. Luminous watercolours of tropical gardens, bright bougainvillea, sang in the half
light of the church.

‘These really are wonderful,’ the curate said. ‘You must miss all this.’

‘Yes, yes I do.’

‘I can hardly remember it.’

Stella glanced at him. ‘You lived in Singapore?’

‘Only for a few years when I was younger.’

‘Where did you live?’

‘Father had one of the old black and whites in Mount Pleasant—’

‘Mount Pleasant?’ she interrupted. ‘That’s where my parents live. Well, my mother and stepfather. My father died in India when I was six. We moved to Singapore when Mummy
remarried.’

‘What a small world! My name’s Michael – Michael Forsyth.’

‘Stella Grainger.’ She shook his hand. ‘When I saw you – the other day at the service for Amy – I had the strangest feeling I knew you.’

‘Well, Stella Grainger, who knows?’ His eyes creased with an easy smile. ‘Just think, perhaps we went to the same birthday parties!’ He glanced at the cleaning lady and
whispered, ‘I may even have seen you in your bathing costume.’

Stella laughed with surprise. ‘If you did I was probably seven or eight years old.’ She looked at the stained-glass window above them as bright winter sun shed multicoloured light
across them like a cloak. ‘The rain’s stopped. I mustn’t keep you from your sermon.’

‘Oh, that old thing? I was sending myself to sleep.’ Michael smiled mischievously. ‘You must let me make you a coffee to say thank you for this beautiful drawing. I’m a
bit of an artist myself. Perhaps you’d like to—’

‘I thought for a moment you were going to ask me to come up and see your etchings!’

‘Actually they’re paintings, not etchings.’ He took her elbow, guided her towards the church door. ‘But you’ll be perfectly safe. Mrs Biggs my housekeeper is at
home.’

Stella checked her watch. ‘I’m so sorry, I have to get back to the pool for a class. Perhaps another time?’ She folded the sketchbook beneath her arm.

‘I’d like that,’ Michael said, and waved from the door as Stella walked away, sunlight glinting on the wet path beneath her feet.

11

‘Morning, Daddy, off to work?’ Evie breezed through the breakfast room, pinching a piece of bacon from his plate on the way past. She had learnt long ago that the
best way to deal with her father when he was angry with her was to pretend nothing had happened.

‘Evie? Where did you come from?’ Leo looked up from the morning paper. He sat alone at the head of the vast polished mahogany dining table, dressed in his RAF uniform.

‘It’s a beautiful morning, I walked over from the cottage.’ Evie was wearing jodhpurs, a crisp white shirt and long black riding boots. ‘I’ve come to get
Montgomery.’

‘What do you mean get him?’

‘There’s a darling little stable at the cottage, and a paddock. Now the weather’s getting better I’d like to ride him out each day. He’s getting very bored over
here with your geriatric racehorses.’