Churchill’s Angels (38 page)

Fred looked to the top of the stairs in the expectation of seeing others. ‘Stan’s gone home to walk his mum and his gran to church but Tomas had other plans, that right, Daisy?’

‘Yes. I asked him to come to Christmas dinner with us, Mum. I knew you wouldn’t mind, seeing as how we’ve got all that lovely ham.’ She did not see the look almost of horror on her mother’s face as she spoke and added, ‘But Nancy and Alf had asked him to spend his leave with them. Wasn’t that nice of them?’

‘Good,’ said Flora. ‘I mean it’s nice foreigners have somewhere to go.’

‘Look who we found at Sally’s,’ said Rose swiftly, pushing Grace forward.

The rest of the evening was spent drinking cocoa and catching up on one another’s news, much of it already gone over at the Brewers’. Just before half-past eleven they put on outdoor clothes again and headed for the church for the Midnight Service.

‘Seems like yesterday we were walking along here together,’ said Sally, ‘but it’s years.’

They argued happily as, arm in arm, the four girls walked along with Flora and Fred walking along behind. It was not until late next morning when the available members of the Petrie family – and George – were together in the kitchen continuing the preparations for what was going to be an absolutely superb Christmas meal that Daisy decided to question her mother about her attitude to Tomas.

‘Mum, you wouldn’t have minded if my friend had been able to come for a meal today, would you?’

‘’Course she wouldn’t, would you, love?’ Fred answered for his wife.

‘I’d give anybody as needs it a meal, Daisy, you know that. It’s just I’m not good with foreigners.’

Rather more fiercely than necessary, Daisy chopped the ends of some Brussels sprouts that Flora had bought from the local greengrocer. Grace’s little garden was no longer available to them. ‘Dr Fischer was in the shop three times a week for years, Mum, and then Dad says you did really well with the Italian priest who brought the messages from Sam. Tomas is a foreigner, yes, but he’s in our air force and risking his life every day for us.’

Fred had noted the promotion of their Mr Fischer to Dr Fischer and, afraid that tension might spoil Christmas Day, he was happy to change the subject by asking Daisy about Mr Fischer’s sudden status.

Her father’s question did not take her concern over her mother’s attitude to Tomas out of her mind, but Daisy realised at once what her father was trying to do. ‘I’ll have to ask you all to keep this under your hats because it’s very hush-hush, not even to tell Stan, Rose. Georgie,’ and she looked at him almost fiercely, ‘this really is where “talk costs lives”.’

With all four nodding vigorously she told her family all about her meetings with their former customer.

‘Well, I never,’ said Fred. ‘Always knew he were a very clever man. What do you think, love?’

‘I always liked him; he sat in the refuge room with us once, didn’t he, Daisy?’

Daisy carried on preparing her sprouts but she smiled at her mother. ‘Yes, he did, Mum, and told us a really big word for creepy-crawlies.’

‘And what’s that?’ asked Rose, but neither her mother nor her sister had the slightest idea.

The rest of the day went very well. The ham they had all saved up for each week was, they agreed, the most delicious ham ever tasted.

‘And more on the cool shelf in the larder,’ said Flora, adding, ‘Christmas, never know when someone might drop in.’

‘Don’t tell anyone, pet. We’ll be mobbed if word got round that Petries has got spare baked ham.’

All tension seemed to have drained away and the family were able to talk and laugh together. In the early evening they each wrote a long letter to Phil, wondering when they would reach him, wherever he was, and a short note, signed by all of them, to Sam. That note, Daisy thought, might well take longer to deliver across Europe than the letters to Phil who was ‘somewhere at sea’.

‘We’ve got our girls, Fred, and Sam’s alive and, please God, our Phil.’

‘Navy would get word to us, love, don’t fret, and let’s make sure the few days we have with our Daisy are …’ He could not finish since he knew what he wanted to say would upset Flora.

Flora reached out and touched his hand. ‘I know fine well what you mean to say, Fred Petrie, and I been thinking. I don’t want my Daisy marrying a foreign person; sorry, but that’s me and I can’t change. She’s a lovely English girl and I don’t want her away in some foreign place. I want her here with me. Why can’t she find a nice local boy like Stan?’

‘Because she hasn’t, and since she don’t live at home, she won’t. This new ATA station is mixed. I thought as how all the pilots was women but happens there’s more men than women in the ATA. Seems it’s not long since they had only eight women, and all of them classy women who could fly planes anyway. The air force won’t take a pilot as is over twenty-five, which is plain daft, if you ask me.’ He looked sad for a moment and then laughed, ‘But nobody ever does. The ATA pilots is well-qualified; some of them flew commercial flights, like for holidays or carrying cargo. Maybe, if we don’t keep on at her, Daisy’ll pal up with some of them.’

Daisy, however, was totally focused on fulfilling her promise to a little boy on Dartford Heath.

Christmas was over. Daisy travelled back to White Waltham in time to bring in the New Year, but, unfortunately, not in time for the dance. Not that anyone in her billet felt like dancing the old year away. Daisy had heard during her holiday that her friend who had laughed about encountering Father Christmas on Christmas Eve had, instead, met a swarm of enemy aircraft and had been shot down. It was not a happy start to this New Year.

Daisy found it difficult to believe that it was, in fact, 1942. So much had happened in a few years. She had enjoyed Christmas, being with her family, and seeing all her friends again. And, yes, it had been very … nice, she decided, having dinner with Tomas. No, it had been better than that. She had felt light and feathery, like the bubbles in champagne, especially when he had taken her hand. For a moment she had thought, hoped, which …? Now she looked out at bleak winter landscapes she realised that she had no memory at all of what they had eaten. Her memory was full of all they said. Soon he would write or telephone to tell her how his time had gone with the Humbles. He had not, he told her, looked forward to visiting Adair’s grave with them, preferring always to grieve alone. ‘But it will please Nancy, who was more mother to him than any of his family.’

Although he had spoken readily of his friendship with Adair and his feelings about the kind farmer and his wife, he had told her nothing at all about his disappearance. And he never will, she thought, until the war is over. That was when she knew that she hoped very much that they would still be friends when the war ended, no matter how many years that would be.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the train’s arrival at the station and she was delighted to find that she was not the only ferry pilot arriving and so would not be alone on arrival at the base.

She had scarcely settled in when work started in earnest: flying lessons in Class One planes such as the Magister, in which she had trained already, and the Swordfish and the Gladiator, which were quite new. Ferry trips began too. She prayed that she was ready. In the early days of 1942 these flights could be miserable. Winter weather made flying difficult, and long, cold and complicated train journeys back were exhausting. Daisy tried hard to keep up her spirits; she wanted the early euphoria to stay with her.

Occasionally she was able to fly back as a passenger. In this way, she met many more RAF pilots. Some talked and she learned a great deal from them; others preferred to concentrate on the flight and she learned by observing them. Each and every one of these return journeys was so much better than a train in winter. The most exciting one, from a purely personal perspective, was when she discovered that the pilot in the cockpit was actually one of the eight original women ATA pilots, each already a legend. Daisy said nothing during that trip; in fact she hardly dared breathe until she heard the pilot laugh and say, ‘There is enough oxygen for both of us, Daisy.’

She knows my name, she actually knows my name. Could life be any more exciting?

Letters from home reached her easily and those from friends followed her from her last station. As soon as she could she replied, giving the address of the new station. Twice she returned from a trip to find that Tomas had telephoned but he merely left a message that he would try again.

Why did he not leave a number where she could reach him?

Because he’s never in the same place twice, she answered herself.

In March she was given a real task: to fly to an RAF station, pick up a Spitfire pilot and take him and the plane to a station near Dover. Daisy was excited by the challenge and wrote to tell her parents all about it.

At first it was a flight like any other flight. Flying Officer Dorward waited to be picked up at his station near Bath. After refuelling, if necessary, she was to deliver her passenger, ‘preferably in one piece’, to his destination and then carry on with the plane to Luton, an ATA station, where she was to leave it. She was then to find her way back to White Waltham as quickly as she could.

She studied her maps carefully, as always looking for significant pointers and hazards.

Early in the morning of the flight, the weather forecast was good. Daisy breathed a relieved sigh, as cloudy, misty weather was as much an enemy of pilots – especially female pilots who relied on visibility rather than instruments – as the human enemy.

She pulled on a flying suit, taking care to wrap Adair’s cashmere scarf around her neck, folding the ends across her chest for extra warmth before doing up the fastening.

She looked at her maps – although she had spent the evening before studying them – and her little book of ‘flying instructions’, checked the plane thoroughly, and only when she was satisfied did she climb aboard. The voice in her head kept time with her own voice as she worked through take-off instructions and she smiled with satisfaction when she was airborne.

She sang to herself. ‘Oh, Johnny, Oh, Johnny’, followed by ‘The Last Time I Saw Paris’ and, because she was near the south coast, ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’. She knew none of them well, but hummed along in the spaces. It was, she decided, a very pleasant way to spend a Sunday morning.

And then everything changed. A wind off the English Channel brought mist and rain with it. Soon it became more and more difficult to see ahead of her, or below, for that matter. She looked at her compass, prayed it was behaving itself and carried on. Singing did not help. She put up her left hand and touched the soft cashmere of Adair’s scarf.

That was when she heard the roar of an approaching plane. Please let it be one of ours, she muttered as she peered through her windscreen. Coming straight for her was a German fighter plane; she was amazed to find herself trying to recognise it. A Heinkel, she thought, although she had only ever seen a line drawing of one.

What should she do? What would the Heinkel pilot expect her to do? In that split second between hearing the plane approach and seeing it, Daisy was amazed to find that she was unbelievably calm.

‘Adair, Charlie, be with me now,’ she said – and put the Magister into a dive.

Why had she not tried to go up to hide in the clouds? She would never know, but some force, something other than her brain, had guided her. The enemy plane, guns firing, went right over her head as Daisy fought to control her dive. He had turned. He was behind her. Diving, diving.

With all her strength Daisy pulled up the light plane. The enemy plane, perhaps surprised by her instinctive tactic, went straight as an arrow, past her. She was both frightened and horrified to hear a loud roar as it crashed and burst into flames.

She was down out of the cloud and mist and filled with relief as she saw that the plane had narrowly avoided a centuries-old church and had carried on into the hillside. The flames, surely, would be visible for miles.

Now Daisy’s brain was refusing to work. Was there something in their little rule book covering what to do in the event of causing an enemy plane to crash? She had no idea but her task was to pick up a pilot and get him to his Spitfire and she had lost time. She decided to carry on to the airfield.

She began to tremble and struggled to control herself. She was also beginning to feel decidedly sick. Thoughts of how humiliating it would be to be horribly sick in the cockpit of one of His Majesty’s aircraft helped her gain some strength.

Instead of singing she kept saying, ‘I will not be sick, I will not be sick,’ until she saw the runway below her.

‘Five minutes more, Daisy, that’s all. Come on, let’s have a perfect landing.’

It was not the best landing ever but the plane and its rather seedy pilot were unscathed. Religiously, Daisy went through all the instructions for taxiing and stopping.

An engineer ran along beside her as she taxied. ‘Take her straight to the fuel pumps. You’re late.’

Daisy did as she was told but the smell of fuel was just too much for her stomach and she jumped out of the cockpit and vomited all over the ground. She was ready to burst into tears of mingled fright and frustration when she heard an irate voice.

‘Damn it all,’ it yelled. ‘Did I not say women were totally useless?’ and there stood her passenger. He looked at her as she stood there shaking and controlling her tears. ‘Go on woman, get yourself cleaned up and I’ll fly the damned thing to base for you. Be quick.’

Daisy fled, first to clean up and throw ice-cold water, of which there was plenty, over her face, and then, reasonably clean but not at all sweet-smelling, she returned to her now refuelled plane.

‘In you go, Flying Officer,’ said the engineer who had met her on her arrival. ‘He’s not a bad bloke – we heard as how a plane had come down and he was sure it was ’is taxi. Glad it wasn’t.’

‘Me too,’ said Daisy, managing a weak smile.

Twenty minutes later she was beginning to recover and was even well enough to appreciate how professionally Flying Officer Dorward handled her plane. He looked round quickly and saw her watching. ‘Sorry you were sick. You look ghastly, by the way, but there’s a Thermos flask – of tea, unfortunately – rolling around there somewhere. Do help yourself.’