Spitfire Girl (6 page)

‘Haven’t got a number?’ he asked incredulously.

‘No, sir.’

‘Why haven’t you got a number?’

‘Nobody gave me one,’ I answered tearfully. He looked at me, looked at the corporal and beckoned assistance from the heavens.

‘I’m taking her to the Adj.,’ explained the corporal helpfully.

‘Yes, yes,’ answered the warrant officer wearily. ‘Do that!’ and he marched off in the rain.

The corporal and I walked on together past the hangars. ‘What was he so annoyed about?’ I asked.

‘He’s a warrant officer,’ answered the corporal as though that explained everything.

‘But...’

‘You don’t salute warrant officers.’

‘Oh.’

‘I should think he would be flattered,’ I added, after a little thought.

The Adjutant was harassed. The corporal saluted smartly. I saluted.

‘A.C.W.2 Sorour, sir,’ explained the corporal apologetically.

‘Full name?’ asked the Adjutant, pen suspended above a form.

‘Dolores Teresa Sorour.’

‘Really!’

‘Yes, sir.’

He wrote it down.

‘Number?’ he asked confidently. No, I thought, not again.

‘I haven’t got a number. Nobody gave me one,’ I added quickly.

‘Haven’t got a number?’ he exclaimed in a startled voice.

‘No, sir,’ I answered.

‘Impossible,’ he shouted. ‘You must have a number.’

‘No, sir, I haven’t.’

‘Corporal!’

‘Sir?’

‘Why hasn’t she got a number?’

‘Don’t know, sir,’ answered the corporal in a voice that disowned responsibility.

The Adjutant looked heavily at us both and then shuffled his fingers through the astronomical pile in his ‘In’ tray. The ‘Out’ tray was sadly empty.

‘I haven’t got time. Take her to the Queen Bee. Ask her to sort it out and ’phone me.’ With this he waved an arm in dismissal and stretched wearily towards the ‘In’ tray.

The ‘Queen Bee’ proved to be the senior Waaf officer on the station. She was equally as harassed as the Adjutant but considerably kinder. I explained to her, before she asked about my number, that I was not yet really in the air force and was sent here to help out until the next draft at Oxford was ready.

‘An enviable position,’ she commented dryly.

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Well,’ she explained. ‘This is in the nature of a trial. If you don’t like it, you can leave. But,’ she added confidently, ‘I’m sure you will like us.’

I was appointed as personal batwoman to two Waaf officers who lived, unmarried, in married quarters on the outskirts of the aerodrome. My duties were all-embracing but could be defined as cook, housekeeper, char, valet and butt. I was quite unsuitable for any of these tasks except perhaps the last.

My mistresses were not unduly formidable, though I envied their tailored elegance and the thin pale blue stripe on their sleeves. I washed dishes and raked cold ashes in the grey light of dawn with all the self-pity and poignancy of Cinderella. My vision was limited to coagulated frying fat, wet coal, constant conflict with authority regarding my ‘uniform’ and, overhead, the tantalizing roar of aircraft. In bed, at night, my thoughts lingered over a burning effigy of the Director-General of Civil Aviation.

My first meal was, unfortunately, dinner. I found potatoes and a cabbage in the larder. I boiled both. Profusely. With brilliant enterprise I served the cabbage water as soup (I had rarely entered the kitchen in South Africa; neither I believe had my mother) and retired to the kitchen to prepare the second course.

‘Sorour,’ commanded a voice from the dining alcove.

‘Ma’am?’ I enquired.

‘You have forgotten the salt.’

Relieved at so petty a reproof I brought it. They finished the soup. I served the cabbage and potatoes.

‘Meat?’ asked one, appraising dubiously the insipid combination of green and white.

‘There wasn’t any Ma’am,’ I answered. They glanced eloquently at each other, looked with unspeakable disdain at their plates and then commenced poking with insulting fastidiousness at my dinner. I returned to the kitchen.

‘You may serve the port,’ ordered one as I collected the flatteringly empty plates.

‘Pardon, Ma’am?’

‘The port,’ she repeated.

‘Yes, Ma’am,’ I answered confidently. Port, I wondered and repeated the word until it lost its meaning. Port, port, port. What’s Port? I recalled the red sour-sweet liquid served during Holy Communion. Of course. Port wine. Amidst a sad and dusty collection of bottles I found one that held a similar coloured liquid. I poured two large tumblers full, put them on a rusty tin tray and walked carefully to the dining-room.

‘Port, Ma’am,’ I announced with dignity, whilst suppressing the impulse to giggle.

They stared at the tumblers and exercised their already well-exercised eyebrows. ‘Sorour. Those are not wine glasses.’

I returned along the well-beaten path to the kitchen, transferred, with moderate wastage, the liquid to more elegant glasses and tried again.

I watched them proudly as they sipped luxuriantly at the warm cosy-looking liquid. Suddenly, consternation shattered this idyllic scene and a fine spray of liquid burlesqued across the spotless linen tablecloth as one of the officers spat out the ‘Port’. The other, mouthing horribly, retired hurriedly to the bathroom. On further investigation the port transpired to be vinegar.

My tears helped to soothe their ruffled feathers and brought an uneasy armistice. Dire threats of ‘putting me on a charge’ subsided to more general recriminations. I retired to the servants’ bedroom. They washed their own dishes that night.

Fiasco followed fiasco for two interminable weeks before my orders arrived to report for recruit’s training. My two officers, haggard looking, wished me a vehement farewell as I entrained for discipline. I had, however, learned something of the peculiarities of service life. So, no doubt, had my late mistresses.

I reported to the Women’s Royal Auxiliary Air Force
recruits’ training centre and was immediately absorbed into the slightly anarchic routine. Gaggles of highly individual females were to be seen entering the gates. A few weeks later, the processing completed, columns marched uniformly out again. I was canalized with moderate success. My service wardrobe was completed, thus eliminating the embarrassing necessity of appearing in a hybrid para-military pose. Also, at last, I received my service number from the orderly room clerk who, unaware of its significance, was surprised at my effusive thanks.

The barracks were solid two-storeyed edifices that served as an object lesson to the frivolously minded. Like guardians of Victorian sternness their stone floors, functional bathrooms and crisp no-nonsense beds cowed most of us to obedience more effectively than direct authority. Feminine giggles and squeals echoed hollowly in the long dormitory and reduced those responsible to self-conscious titters. A week or two was to pass before we could resist the silent intimidation of those walls, kick off our shoes and affix pinups to locker doors.

The next few days were spent in rooting out any lingering affection for anarchy or independence. We were numbered, ranked, and drilled until even our expressions became uniform. Lectures on the omniscience of ‘King’s Regulations’ and visits to the medical inspection room conveniently occupied any untoward spare time.

The final obstacle was the selection board who decided the future activities of those possessing special qualifications. Arming myself with my flying licence, log-book and correspondence from the Ministry including the letter that referred to my ‘obtaining a suitable position with the Waafs’ I presented myself to the board.

The interviewing room was sadistically long. Two unsmiling Waaf and three male officers appraised me stonily as I walked the miles from the door to the green baize table. I saluted awkwardly and stood to attention. I could feel my skirt trembling.

‘You may sit down,’ motioned the senior Waaf officer. I sat uneasily on the edge of the chair.

‘You are a pilot,’ accused one of the Waaf officers.

‘Yes, Ma’am.’

‘Have you your licence?’

I passed it across the desk.

‘You realize there are no flying posts in the Waaf?’ smugly interjected one of the men.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then why join the Waafs?’ he asked truculently.

What sort of boards had he passed, I wondered, to ask such a stupid question.

‘I love flying and the Waafs are closest to flying,’ I answered.

‘A negative approach,’ he commented, scribbling a note on his pad.

‘Tell us about your education,’ suggested the one with pince-nez, sitting on the extreme right. I half turned to him and told them. They appeared totally unimpressed. There was an uncomfortable silence. I looked longingly out of the window. The sun shone on a sparrow perkily hopping from bush to bush; faintly its twittering penetrated into the room. My mind soared to distant places; to surf and palm trees and sea shells resting on glistening sands; where ships called twice a year.

‘...prepared to volunteer for...’

‘I beg your pardon,’ I said, blushing at my insolence at begging the pardon of so august a committee.

‘We need some girls for a highly secret operation. Are you prepared to volunteer for this job without knowing what it is?’ repeated the chairman of the board. My mind soared again. This time to deeds of secret valour. Visions of Joan of Arc vied with those of Florence Nightingale. My tummy tightened with a vicarious thrill.

‘Yes, sir,’ I answered bravely, trying not to squeak.

The chairman glanced enquiringly at the others. Individually they stared at me then nodded to him.

‘Then it is decided. You will receive posting instructions in the normal manner. You are aware of the Official Secrets Act?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘That is all. You may go. Good morning.’

I got up, wriggled my skirt down, swung an improved salute and marched bravely out, my head in the air.

Orders were posted the following day for the entire draft. All but a dozen, including myself, were posted to training establishments. The dozen were to report the following day for further instructions; packed and ready to leave. We did so agog with excitement and with rumours virile and ripe.

We were shepherded into a train that crawled, backtracked and stopped throughout most of the night. I never did achieve a journey during the war on those trains that snorted imperiously to their destinations. Invariably I travelled, dirty and dishevelled, on those with insignificant priority that jarred to a halt with infuriating resignation in the blacked-out countryside and waited, their passengers cocooned in stale air, in the eerie silence broken only by an occasional tired grunt of steam or the creaking of metal.

We arrived ‘somewhere in England’ in the early hours of the morning. Escorts were changed and after marching along winding lanes with the smell of ozone wafting freshly in the breeze and bringing animation to our jaded faces, we came to a backwater jetty, mysterious and silent except for the brackish water sucking hollowly against three rowing boats moored nearby. A firm ‘Quiet please’ hushed our excited whispers. I looked primly at my colleagues. They did not appear suitable material for heroines. I could not see myself.

We rowed silently for half an hour. The waning moon played hide and seek in the trees as we disembarked at a tiny jetty that creaked protestingly and swayed alarmingly at the unaccustomed weight. We marched again until, passing through massive wrought-iron gates, the public lane gave way to the gentility of a gravelled drive and cultivated gardens. A blacked-out manor appeared, silhouetted eerily in the pale moonlight.

With our questions unanswered we were tumbled into bed.

During the following few days the sum total of our
knowledge of our future activities was the negative one of at least knowing what we were
not
going to do or be. The manor was a training school hedged and shrouded in secrecy that provoked even greater curiosity. It was not until the last day of the course, three weeks later, that the successful trainees at last discovered the great secret. Those unsuccessful were given short shrift and departed still not knowing. An unhappy fate indeed for those women. Garish posters caricaturing large mouths and black Homburged spies despoiled elegant panelled walls and warned of security.

The introductory talk given by the Commanding Officer resembled a speech by the prosecution in Kafka’s
Trial
. ‘I’m sorry girls, I cannot tell you what I’m talking to you about. But you mustn’t talk about it either and that makes it easier for you.’

The large baronial hall was converted into a neat double row of cubicles that gave it the appearance of a beauty parlour. For three weeks we sat in pairs inside these mysterious blacked-out cubicles staring pop-eyed at a small screen illuminated with a wayward fluorescent green light that glowed eerily in the darkness and threw a deathly pallor on our faces. We fiddled and fussed with knobs, endeavouring to locate any green blobs of light that showed persistence or constancy among the bewildering variety of flashes and oscillating lines appearing on the screen. At the end of the working day we emerged from our cubicles eyes red-rimmed with strain and still echoing the elusive blobs. Every night the ‘Riot Act’ was solemnly read to us with dire warning against indiscreet talk.

The blobs of light were finally baptized as ‘echoes’. The addition of a compass scale on the locating control failed to hint to us the nature of our work. By the third week those of us still remaining on the course could give the compass bearing and approximate distance of any echo appearing on the screen. Not, we thought, a particularly commendable achievement.

The monotony of our training, the secrecy and confinement – we were not permitted outside the manor grounds – brought boredom and restlessness. I might have been a submariner for all the relationship this bore to flying. The hot-house atmosphere bred turgid romance, for which the darkened cubicles were exploited unmercifully. Predatory females became peculiarly anxious to improve their echo spotting and emerged sans visible eye-strain.