Bluebirds (41 page)

‘Well, it came over very low and there was a Spitfire chasing it all across the fields. The Spit got it and the Messerschmitt crashed and burst into flames. It was rather awful, seeing it happen like that. I felt rather sorry for the German pilot. It was such a violent, horrible end.'

She didn't add that she had seen it again many times in her mind's eye and had nightmares of it happening to him.

He shook his head. ‘I am never sorry when I shoot them.
Never.
In Poland, in France . . . here, in England, always when I see a German go down, I hope he is dead.
I say to myself, that is one less of them to fight . . . and I am very glad.'

Because their backs were turned, they did not see the fighter approaching fast from the direction of the Channel. The Pole caught the sound first and, looking over his shoulder, instantly grabbed the girl and flung himself and her to the ground. He shielded her with his own body as the Messerschmitt streaked over them, unleashing a vicious stream of bullets that stitched a pathway along the turf only feet from where they lay. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the enemy raider was gone, pelting back towards the coast and France.

Michal lifted his head. A torrent of Polish came from his lips and there was murder in his eyes. He stared after the fighter.

‘I kill him,' he said. ‘I kill them all.'

‘
FIREFLY BLUE LEADER,
this is Beehive calling. Are you receiving? Over.'

‘Hallo, Beehive. Loud and clear. Over.'

‘Vector one-eight-zero. Angels fifteen. Over.'

‘Message received and understood. Out.'

Friendly and hostile plots advanced towards each other across the plotting table. Virginia reached out with her rake to alter hers.

‘Hallo, Blue Leader. Beehive calling. Orbit. Bandits approaching you from south west. Over.'

There was a long silence. The Controller wiped his face with his handkerchief in the stuffy heat. The Ops Room loudspeaker crackled suddenly again, this time with a different voice. Urgent.

‘Blue Three calling Blue Leader. Aircraft two o'clock.'

‘OK Blue Three, I see them.
Christ! Hordes of the buggers!
Hallo, Beehive. Blue Leader calling. Tallyho! Going in now . . . Over.'

‘Good luck, Blue Leader. Listening. Out.'

The Controller mopped his face again. Beside him, Ops B lit a cigarette. Virginia passed the back of her hand across her forehead. In a moment the battle would begin, against overwhelming odds.

Sometimes she still went on plotting in her dreams. And there was a recurring nightmare in which her hands felt too stiff and leaden to move the blocks and arrows fast enough, and the rake was much too big and heavy for her to lift. She would wake up in a terrible agitation that subsided only slowly as she registered her surroundings – the high ceiling, the fancy plaster moulding, the flowered
wallpaper with the patches where the owners' pictures had hung before the WAAF had taken over the house. The other plotters on B watch, who shared the room, slept peacefully and soundly. Madge, next to her, big and noisy when awake, often snored loudly when she was asleep. When they were on nightwatch and trying to sleep during the day, Madge would wear a sanitary towel as a mask across her eyes, the loops hooked over each ear. At first, Virginia had been shocked; now, as with other things that had shocked her, like bad language and nakedness, she had become used to it.

Sometimes, too, she dreamed of Pamela – dreams in which she was still very much alive, walking and talking in her confident way. It was a shock, then, to waken and realize that she was dead. She would remember, against her will, the grey stockinged legs protruding oddly from the rubble, the black shoes, the seeping pool of blood mixing with the white dust . . . And, if she were not very firm with herself, she would start to imagine the rest of Pamela lying beneath that crushing slab of concrete.

It was tiredness, she decided, that was the cause of the vivid dreams and nightmares. They were all dog-tired. The hours of concentration demanded on the day watches, with an incessant stream of plots coming into their ears, had taken their toll. And the night watch, though far less frenzied than the day, could be even more gruelling in its way. The vigil sometimes seemed endless. They would struggle to keep awake round the plotting table during long spells of inactivity and, during their twenty-minute break in the small hours, would often fall fast asleep, their heads resting on each other's shoulders.

Once, at two o'clock in the morning, she had plotted a friendly aircraft from Coastal Command, lost in thick fog over the Channel, and with engine trouble. It had been directed to Colston and she had watched its progress anxiously, as though she herself, by moving its plot across the map, could bring it safely down. At last they had heard it droning overhead, circling unsteadily, and she
had waited in suspense until news came that the Hudson had landed safely. Later on, the pilot had come into the Ops Room and she had not been able to help staring at him as he talked to the Controller. He had looked very young to her, hardly more than a boy. Under the bright lights his face was chalk-white and she could see the marks from his mask and flying helmet. He had glanced down from the gallery and, catching Virginia's stare, had smiled at her and raised his hand in salutation. The memory of this salute, as though in personal thanks, had stayed fixed in her mind, sustaining her through further wearying hours.

It was Madge's idea to go to the Salvation Army canteen in the town. She and Virginia had gone to the pictures one rainy evening and, counting their pennies afterwards, two days short of pay day, had found they hadn't enough money to go to a café. As usual, Madge was ravenously hungry.

‘Let's try the Sally Ann place. Dirt cheap. Warm and dry. What more do we want?'

The Salvation Army had taken over a church hall in the town centre and when the two plotters entered it was crowded. Army khaki, air force blue and naval navy sat shoulder to shoulder at the long trestle tables. The big room smelled of damp uniforms, cigarette smoke and steam from the big urns at the counter.

They queued for tea and buns and Madge elbowed a space at the end of one of the tables. Three airmen, sitting opposite, nudged each other. One of them leaned across to Madge.

‘Wot's your name then, darlin'?'

In her own way, Madge could be quite as intimidating as Pamela. Her background was far less exalted – her father was a dentist and she had been brought up in a small house in Brighton, not a big house in Kensington and a vast mansion in Yorkshire – but she could be as outspoken as she was large.

She looked at the airman coldly. ‘Are you talking to me?'

‘That's right, sweetheart.'

‘Then, please, don't.'

He stopped smirking and glowered. ‘Wot's the matter? Same rank as us, aren't you?'

‘That has nothing to do with it. I simply don't want to talk to you.'

One of his companions tittered. The other, small and weasel-faced, said sourly:

‘Oh, leave it alone, Sid. Bloomin' toffee-nosed WAAFS. Officers' groundsheets, that's all her kind are. She wouldn't give you the time of day.'

Virginia had gone scarlet and was staring at the table, but Madge looked at the little airman as though he were a weevil who had just crawled out of the hall woodwork.

‘Do you usually insult defenceless women on their own? What a coward you must be.'

He shifted uneasily. Sid sniggered.

‘Squashed you, too, Ron.'

Madge ignored them and turned her attention to her plate. Ron drained his tea and stood up.

‘She'd squash me an' all . . . Built like one of them battleships.' He stood up. ‘Come on, lads, let's leave their ladyships. Not worth the bloody trouble.'

‘Good riddance,' said Madge calmly, when they had gone. ‘Now we can have a bit more room, as well as some peace.'

But before she could move round the other side of the table, the spaces left by the airmen were filled at once by three soldiers. They were all Canadian corporals, and one of them was Neil Mackenzie.

Virginia's blush deepened and she did not know where to look. If he felt any awkwardness at the encounter himself, he showed no sign of it. His face had lit up into an easy smile as he recognized her.

‘Well, hallo, there! Great to see you again. How've you been?'

Madge glanced at her in surprise. ‘You're a dark horse, Ginny.'

‘We met out biking . . .' she said lamely.

‘Well, introduce me, then.'

Madge was as gracious with the three Canadians as she had been sharp with the airmen. Virginia could tell that she approved of their pleasant manners, and wished she didn't. Before long she was roaring with laughter at some joke.

Neil leaned forward. ‘We heard you had some bad raids lately. I was real worried. I tried to find out if you were OK. They said some WAAFS were killed.'

‘Yes, three of them.'

‘Friends of yours?'

‘One of them was.'

He clicked his tongue. ‘That's too bad. I'm real sorry. We'll get back at the Jerries for it, when we get the chance. They'll have a taste of their own medicine.' He searched her face. ‘Didn't you get my letter? I wrote a week or two back.'

She went redder still. She had got it and had thrown it away in a panic, barely reading through to the end. The rather scrawly writing had asked her how she was . . . told her how great the bike ride had been . . . said something about another meeting . . . another party at the camp . . . asked her to write back.

He went on casually: ‘She called you, Ginny. It's cute. Mind if I call you that?'

A lot of the other WAAFS called her the same. Mother would hate it, if she knew. She would probably think it very common. But then Mother would hate her to be in this place and think it very common too – full of Other Ranks and people like Sid and Ron. And Canadians. Not even English. She drank some more tea and stared at her plate again.

‘You been on any more good bike rides lately, Ginny?'

She pushed a crumb round the edge of the plate, keeping her eyes down.

‘We haven't had much time really. And we do a lot of biking anyway, just getting from place to place. We're billeted right away from the station now.'

‘That makes sense. Good place?'

She thought of Eastleigh House, which belonged to titled people, Sir Reginald and Lady Howard. Mother had liked hearing about that, at least. It was a beautiful place. The big drawing-room looked out onto a sweeping lawn with wonderful herbaceous borders. A white squirrel lived in the copper beech at the far end and they fed it with tit-bits. Sometimes it actually ate out of their hands. The dining-room had oak panelling and french windows leading out onto a flagstone terrace. There was a croquet lawn, goldfish pools, a tennis court, a walled garden and a big stable block.

‘It's very nice,' she said, still pushing the crumb round with her forefinger. ‘Much better than the awful huts we lived in before.'

He grinned. ‘We don't even have huts – we're in tents. I figure it's goin' to be a tough winter.'

‘Won't you be used to the cold?'

‘Sure. It's a whole lot colder back home. But we take care of it pretty well. It's always warm indoors. I guess we have to, or we wouldn't survive.' He paused and added quietly. ‘It's just great, meeting you again like this, Ginny?'

In the bus on the way back, Madge said: ‘Seems jolly keen on you, that chap, Neil. Rather nice, I thought. Decent manners. I heard him asking you out. Pity you turned him down.'

‘I don't know him, really.'

‘Well, it's your funeral, Ginny. I'd've gone like a shot. Good sort of chap.' Madge rubbed her stomach. ‘Golly, I'm still famished.'

The white squirrel was sitting on the lawn beneath the copper beech tree, nibbling daintily at something held
between its front paws. Winnie, watching it from the downstairs window, thought how pretty it was. Much prettier than the grey ones that looked a bit like rats. She had never seen a white one before. An albino, someone had called it. And, less kindly, a freak of nature. Like a black sheep, perhaps, or a cow with only one horn. It seemed to live quite alone and she wondered if other squirrels shunned it because it was different. Animals could do that, she knew. She had seen it with chickens: with human beings, come to that. She had watched WAAFS being treated that way – girls who just didn't fit in for some reason – foreigners, loners, some rookies . . . She had felt very sorry for them, but there was not much that she could do.

Everyone seemed so sure of it all now. It was quite different from the early days when nobody had known anything much. Drill had become easy. They marched about and wheeled and turned and halted, stamping their feet very smartly. She had even learned to salute properly at last, so that meeting officers around the station was no longer the dreaded muddle it had once been. She managed quite well now – saluting three paces before reaching the officer, and holding it for three paces after. Longest way up, shortest way down. And there were all sorts of tricks the WAAFS had learned – softening their hard, uncomfortable shoes in buckets of water, and putting the black boot polish on with hot knives so that they shone better. Some, like Gloria, cut out their pocket linings to flatten their tunics and turned their waistbands over to shorten their skirts. Nobody wanted to be taken for a rookie, so they'd stick new caps in buckets of water, as well, to make them look old and press new uniforms with a hot iron to take the first fluff off.

Vera had come into the room behind her. She addressed it at large.

‘Do you know s-something? The p-poor Poles never get
any
post. No letters from anyone, when everybody else does. Isn't it a shame?'

She was looking quite upset, almost tearful. Winnie felt rather grateful to her for being the same old Vera. Nobody took much notice. Maureen glanced up from her knitting.