Spitfire Girl (7 page)

On the last day of the course we gathered in the lecture hall for the unveiling ceremony. The Commanding Officer commiserated with us and thanked us for our patience. Our work was, of course, Radar Interception. The echoes would be, in the future, enemy aircraft approaching the coasts of Britain. We left the lecture rooms happily; the boredom and restlessness gone. Our work was simple but vital. Women rarely ask for more.

O
ur farewell party lingered far into the night as
cubicle-inspired romances jerked fitfully in the throes of rigor-mortis. I primly evaded the zero-hour attempts to storm my notorious unsusceptibility.

‘Come on, Jackie; have a drink.’

‘She thinks she’s too good for us.’

‘Just a little drink...’

‘She’s funny that way.’

‘If she doesn’t want to drink, why should she?’

‘It’s hot in here. Let’s...’

‘She’s a Brylcreem girl. Officers only.’

‘Let’s dance. You do
dance?
...
’

I stayed until the last cigarette was extinguished, the last drink quaffed and joined the also-rans on the terrace. We sucked the crisp coolness of the night into our jaded lungs and listened to the trees snoring softly in the gentle breeze. My eyes were drawn to the sky. To the stars that twinkled with remote unapproachable beauty. I was melancholy at the sky’s infidelity as is a lover, discarded and miserable, who sees his ex-mistress continuing to smile and laugh with someone new. In those days of banishment I was comforted only by rain for, in my maudlin sentimentality, I imagined the sky to be weeping at my absence.

The next day we scattered to the coasts of Britain. Our destinations were various but identical. A small camp on high ground or on cliffs overlooking the shiftless seas. A lonely wooden hut nestling beneath and dwarfed by tall spindly masts towering with functional beauty into the skies. In these huts, isolated and stark, we grappled abstractedly with the enemy. Night and day we evoked evil spirits from the ether. Like spiritualists purging a malignant ectoplasm we hunted their echoes on our screens. Once spotted, their ethereal path was plotted, analysed and telephoned through to Central Control. Minutes later a new echo would appear on our screens as Royal Air Force fighters rose to intercept. With mounting tension and in silence broken only by the clipped voice of the plotter tell-taling Central Control the evasions of the enemy we would watch the silent drama unfolding on our screen. Sometimes the opposing echoes joined without equivocation in a perfect interception as the hunters found their foes. Or, slid past each other like strangers as the enemy skulked cleverly in the clouds. A violent
volte-face
of the enemy’s echo would bring a smile to our faces and a jibe to our tongues on the few occasions that he turned and fled for home.

Anxiously we appraised the results of our work until the two echoes joined in combat in a single oscillating blur that told of
Tally-ho
, twisting evasion, screaming engines, the shrill rat-a-tat-tat of machine-guns or the throatier bark of cannon. We watched the eloquent echo as fathers, brothers and lovers fought on the razor edge of life or death and were silent if the echo, after battle, moved steadily eastwards towards enemy territory leaving behind a dying echo that remained stationary for a few tragic seconds before fading, as the life it represented faded into oblivion.

On leaving the training school four other girls and
myself were posted to a Radar station near Rye on the south coast of England. Our arrival caused considerable uplift in morale amongst the incommunicado male operators. The nearest town was seven miles away and shortage of trained personnel had virtually confined the men to camp. The air, for the first few days, was heavy with gallantries as claims were staked and counter-staked in the bid for feminine companionship. Initially, there being no suitable accommodation for Waafs in the camp, another Waaf and I were billeted with a bricklayer and his family.

We slipped easily into the unchanging routine of constant watch. Our period of duty was eight hours on and sixteen off with a team of four Waafs for each watch. One to operate the screen, one to fix the position of the echo and inform Central Control through a mouthpiece and earphones attached to the head, one to record events in a log and the fourth who acted as camp telephonist and tea-swindler. To relieve the eye-strain we alternated our duties every two hours. The hut, beneath the towering masts and situated for safety reasons 2 miles from the camp, was the first word in comfort. Completely blacked-out it creaked and groaned as the full fury of the biting wind struck from the English Channel. Inside we shivered in Balaclavas, greatcoats and scarves and interminably sipped stewed tea.

The girls were a sophisticated lot. Helen, with whom I was billeted, had come from New Zealand to study drama and had already obtained her L.R.A.M. which, she assured me, was a considerable achievement. She had remained in England to ‘do her bit’. She did that, and more. Vera was a film extra. Obviously. Her hippy walk, long flaxen hair (despite orders to cut it), scarlet nails and lips, caricatured the severity of the uniform and brought agonized frustration to the faces of the airmen as she prowled around the camp. She was in constant conflict with the Queen Bee over her hair and unofficial silk stockings but somehow managed to retain both and her freedom.

My billet introduced me to a way of life that depressed me by its monotonous indigence. Our hosts lived a pinched existence that seemed peculiarly contrived. Their income was balanced so precariously with their cost of living that an involuntary expenditure, no matter how trivial – a broken cup to be replaced, shoes to be repaired – brought crisis. These crises though never sufficient to bring disaster, dripped at their happiness with the deadly monotony of ancient Chinese water torture. Our hostess, still young but once pretty, worked indefatigably and rarely complained. I felt guilty at adding to her burden until she told me that our rent was a ‘Godsend’. This was a way of life unimaginable in South Africa where servants permit a wife the luxury of enjoying life and retaining her looks and a shock to me who envisaged the English as aristocratic scions, languishing in vast manors whilst not hunting, shooting and fishing.

This dreariness, the unkempt hair and slack figure increased my determination not to marry and, as a concomitant of my religion, not to court. It was not a difficult decision for I had failed to find the key to men that had presumably, judging by their anecdotes, been discovered by my colleagues. At this time I had been kissed once and that not with conspicuous success.

During those long winter months it was an esoteric
experience to see daylight. The normal cycle of day, night and time had vanished and was replaced by a regime dominated by the eight-hour watch. We rarely quarrelled. Always hungry and sleepy, our off-duty moments were spent in cat-naps or searching for food in Rye.

Helen, who shared my watch, felt it her duty to acquaint me with some of the facts of life. Her approach to the problem was basic and elementary and made me grateful for the gloom of the Radar hut that concealed my agonized blushes. Embarrassment and frank disbelief vitiated her endeavours:

‘But people don’t do that all the time?’

‘Of course they do!’

‘Even kings and queens?’

‘Of course.’

‘Do you?’

‘Next question, please.’

‘Does Joan?’

‘I’ll say.’

‘And Peggy and Pat?’

‘Pat does. Not sure about Peggy.’

The next day, at noon-time breakfast, I looked carefully at Pat as she munched placidly at her toast. She looked perfectly normal. Her eyes were tired but so were mine. That afternoon I went with Joan into town. She bought some lingerie that, I thought, was far too exotic and extravagant (we both earned eighteen shillings a week) and I some fruit. Later we relaxed in an olde worlde café that served dainty teas for two-and-six. She was twenty and languidly self-possessed. I brought up the subject tortuously: ‘Are you meeting him tonight?’

‘Who?’ she answered casually.

I was aghast. Was there more than one?

‘Your boy-friend.’

‘I’m meeting someone tonight, yes. Why?’

‘Is that the one who...’ I broke off in confusion.

‘No,’ she answered, misconstruing my question. ‘You haven’t met him. He’s in the army camp at Brooklands.’

‘Do you like him?’

‘So-so.’

‘Helen told me yesterday about sex.’

She turned startled eyes towards me. ‘You’re joking!’

‘Joking what?’

‘You know as well as she does.’

‘I know where babies come from,’ I answered proudly.

‘Who’s talking about babies?’

‘We are.’

‘Oh no we’re not,’ she answered emphatically. ‘Didn’t your mother tell you about it?’ she continued, looking at me directly for the first time during our talk.

‘A little,’ I replied, ‘but she seems to have left out a great deal.’

‘And nothing’s happened in the Waafs?’

‘No. Of course not.’

‘Extraordinary. Haven’t you been out with a man at all?’

‘Not since I joined the Waafs.’

‘And before?’

I blushed again. ‘Yes, at college. We kissed, once.’

‘Is that all?’ she asked incredulously. I nodded silently in reply wondering why
I
should feel so ashamed. Slowly she reddened and looked curiously at me. ‘You are normal?’ she asked.

‘Perfectly. Thank you very much,’ I answered tartly, annoyed at the reversal of roles that had made me the subject of the inquisition.

‘No,’ she explained. ‘You don’t like girls?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘No, I mean you don’t like them that way?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘How old are you?’

‘Nineteen.’

‘Nineteen,’ she mused. ‘You’re a Catholic aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘So am I.’

I was horrified. ‘But you can’t be!’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s impossible,’ I expostulated. ‘Catholics don’t do that sort of thing.’

‘You haven’t read Graham Greene,’ she replied enigmatically.

‘Who’s he?’

‘A Catholic’s Catholic.’ The bill arrived. ‘Are you ‘‘on’’ tomorrow?’ she asked as we counted out the shillings.

‘Yes, second shift. Why?’

‘We Catholics must stick together,’ she laughed. ‘Come on, let’s go.’ I got up regretfully, still ignorant.

A few days later I received a message to report to the Queen Bee at my own convenience. The implication of reporting at my own convenience brought a tremor of conscience.

She gambited circuitously. We liked her even though she was terribly old; rumour suggested thirty. How was I? Fine. How was the work and various other questions that seemed insufficiently important to warrant an interview. I waited and wondered.

‘Joan came to see me.’

‘Yes, Ma’am,’ I replied politely, wondering what Joan had to do with me.

‘About you,’ she added.

‘Oh.’

‘She told me about your talk.’ I was furious.

‘Don’t be angry. I’m here to help you. She was quite right in coming to me about you.’

She helped me. Ruthlessly and for over an hour she filled in the gaps left by my mother, experience and Helen. She assumed, correctly, that I knew nothing and left nothing to my ignorant imagination. Abstractions like love, infatuation and infidelity were dissected and explained, before the earthier physical manifestations of sex were shaded in with the skill of an artist. Page upon page was turned over like a medical blow-up that, on the first page, shows the complete body and then, with each succeeding page, reveals this and that until finally with the last page the skeleton is left distressingly bare.

As she explained certain things hitherto closed books opened magically. Coolly, ignoring my wriggling discomfort, she stripped my ignorance until I felt naked before her, then, gently and deftly, she covered me with the protective coat of knowledge. Finally she relaxed the objective expression on her face and lighted a cigarette. She had spoken without passion, almost clinically. I longed to ask her: Had she? Did she? Perhaps, I thought ingenuously, they learn these things at the officers’ school. I giggled. ‘Ladies, today we will discuss Sex.’

In conclusion she used an inelegant expression elegantly:

‘You haven’t been having me on?’

‘No, Ma’am.’

‘It isn’t unnatural you know.’ Dubiously I nodded my head. ‘Not with the right one,’ she continued, with a distant look that answered my earlier curiosity.

She stood up in a gesture of dismissal and held out her hand:

‘Take care of yourself, Jackie. I’m always here.’

The first thing I saw when I left her office was an airman. I looked at him curiously. He caught my look, preened and winked. I blushed, shuddered and fled.

By now France had fallen and Britain was alone.
Desperately, vulnerably alone. A few pilots and one man’s oratory stood between her and defeat. On our Radar screens, day and night, the opening thrusts, like the tuning of an orchestra, prepared us for the climax to come. Life had become a maniacal symphony that grew in a gradual crescendo of wailing sirens, crashing bombs, the distant crump of anti-aircraft fire and the scream of dying aircraft. In this mighty moment of history I, as all others, became submerged in the will to live. Rationing, falling masonry, broken nights and hideously impersonal death became the foundation on which Britain stood and transformed road-sweepers, housewives, shop assistants and business men into heroic comrades of those who fought in the skies.

The petty problems of life were swept away in the determination to resist. I was staggered by the spirit of this nation that hitherto had seemed flaccid, even bored. Housewives became masters of enterprise filling the marrow of the nation’s backbone with a magician’s skill at producing something from nothing. Civilian dress was the uniform of countless unassuming heroes.

I can remember little of those days. The early morning watch was the worst. Pale, eyes sore from lack of sleep, we stared at the screen with heads drooping until a change in the echoes galvanized us into action: