Spitfire Girls (18 page)

Voices could be heard nearby, and Vine stiffened.

‘Sean, Noel Slater is filth.'

‘Shall I file that as a formal complaint?' Vine was tense, and his voice had reached a high pitch. ‘Did you know we have guests about to visit the club?'

‘War folk?' asked Angelique

‘Perhaps. One of them is your lady idol, Miss Cobb. The lesbian.'

‘And I'm Armenian royalty.'

‘There's royalty, and there's royalty.'

‘Listen – Noel Slater is a lunatic and there's a new word being touted by Freudians to describe him:
misogynist
. Please file that.'

Turning into their path was the VIP brigade. Lord Brabazon, Gerard d'Erlanger, Captain Balfour and Valerie Cobb were touring the premises, and all indications were that the lady was in charge. She showed them the main building with a sweep of her hand and the men appeared fascinated, as if they had never before seen bricks and mortar in their lives. Sean Vine joined in and they talked amongst themselves.

Angelique grabbed the moment, taking Valerie aside:

‘I can't get anywhere with Vine about banning Slater. He should be locked up, Val. He put me into a reverse spin – any beginner would have been killed. Why should his deathwish kill one of our girls?'

Brabazon had come over to the two women.

‘Who was responsible for that shaky landing just witnessed by all?' he asked.

Angelique was ready to speak but Valerie put her hand up, resting it on the other girl's abdomen and silencing her.

‘That was a student pilot on his third flight,' Valerie asserted with a steely smile. ‘Shall we inspect the main building? It has an assortment of functions.'

She let the men wander on ahead, then said:

‘It serves you right, Ange, if you're stupid enough to
get airborne with Slater. If this bunch had known it was a woman bouncing in at the controls of that damned new Oxford, our cause would have been reversed, with great tut-tuts all round.'

‘How was I to know you were on your way here with the gods?'

‘Every time we do something that looks wrong, whether living under the same roof with another lady or skidding on the landing strip, we are ten times guilty. That is the way the world works. Stay away from Slater. There are men and there are men, and he belongs to the fiend category.'

‘I know a few female fiends, Val.'

‘Introduce him, then – get him mated.'

Valerie marched off, and Angelique, suddenly exhausted, walked slowly to the common room and winced at the sound of aircraft engines. She wanted to be in another place. Not stopping for her usual mug of muddy coffee made with her own Armenian brew, the actress headed for the changing room. Gone was any desire for further flying this day. As she removed her flying suit and donned skirt and bomber jacket, she could hear voices again.

Captain Balfour turned the corner of the corridor and stopped at the changing-room door. Angelique looked up as she fastened her suspenders. He blushed.

‘This is one of our top lady pilots – three-hundred-plus hours and total instrument proficiency,' Valerie announced.

‘I can see a uniformed women's unit arising from the report I'll be submitting,' Balfour enthused, eyeing the garter and the Florian legs.

Would he remember her legs tomorrow? If a women's
unit could come from a wild memory of stockings, so much the better.

Valerie and Angelique exchanged meaningful looks.

A week had passed since VIP day at Maylands, and in Hunstanton Shirley and Valerie were clearing out their hut. A pounding on their door made them share the same thought: that it could be either Kranz or Tim Haydon, and neither would be a welcome sight. Shirley was becoming wary of the Austrian, and the degree to which Haydon snooped redoubled her wariness. Anyone being trailed by an MP had to be dangerous. Kranz might take Valerie away from her, and that would destroy her life.

Did Valerie know that?

The pounding became more persistent, and Valerie went to the door. A member of the circus troupe stood at the entrance, soaked by the heavy rain.

‘Please come to our office, miss,' he said, terrified of the two females who lived without men.

They followed him out and made their way to the small room in which primitive bookkeeping recorded the transactions of their art. Taking in their surroundings, the girls found a silent collection of odd characters and freaks, crowded solemnly in a corner by a wireless. Discussing, in slow, laborious tones, news of Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland, the BBC voice could have been broadcasting a state funeral.

‘Why are these discussions of such importance to this sordid lot?' Shirley hissed.

‘They're Czech and Polish – for them the catastrophe has already arrived. They can't go home now.'

Shirley looked at the faces of the performers but none
had eyes that could see. Their vision was taking in not the dusty floor of a hovel in Norfolk but mind's-eye pictures of homelands annexed by a new master.

‘Are they safe here, I wonder?' Shirley asked, gazing at her partner.

‘Probably not – Tim Haydon will be after them, and it will be nasty.'

For a brief moment one set of eyes came back from Prague and bored into the two female figures. Before the Pole could speak they left in a hurry. As they rushed across the field they thought they could hear shouting, and they wished their door had bolts.

Inside, they resumed their housework, unable to stop shaking.

Valerie found their precious whisky bottle, rationed from the Cobb collection. ‘I've been giving Kranz advanced flying lessons.'

Shirley faced her, the tremors gone. ‘Am I hearing correctly?'

‘We've met many times since that first occasion when you were reading poetry. He even jokes now about being a Hitler operative.'

‘This makes no sense – what about all that testiness when you first met?' Shirley pushed her partner's hand away as it proffered a chipped whisky glass. ‘Why do you always give me this one, and you get the perfect crystal?'

Valerie downed both measures, one in each hand, and slammed the glasses down on the wooden table.

‘I'm going out to the Spartan.' Shirley opened the door and driving rain poured in.

Valerie followed her out.

‘Friedrich has a special mission, and I am trying to help him,' the pilot shouted to her ground engineer.

Shirley came out from the muddy underside of the plane. ‘Has he told you, Val, that his mission is to rescue a wife and two daughters?'

Valerie stood up and let the rain soak through her clothes. In the distance a Czech circus freak leaned against a shack and smoked a cigarette, puffing more frequently as she became wetter. He was far away but as her eyes cleared and tears ran into her mouth she was aware that he stared at her nipples, exposed by the relentless wetness. She drew her hands up to her chest and thought of a recurrent dream in which she stood before the Air Ministry naked and Lady Londonderry handed her a handkerchief …

She had made her way to the hut and Shirley was standing over her.

‘That circus manager has had many chats with Friedrich, you'll be pleased to know, Val.'

‘Why?' Valerie looked up at her partner with swollen eyes.

‘These people, whatever their national allegiance, should not be trusted. Obviously Friedrich never told you he was married. So, beware his motives.'

The hut was unbearably silent as the lady pilot, white and powerless against a force greater than the Air Ministry, curled up in a corner and let her clothes drip in unison with their ancient tap.

Shirley felt ashamed of herself because for the first time in weeks, since the advent of Kranz, she was explosively happy.

*

‘
The menace is the female who thinks she ought to be pilot of a bomber when she really has barely enough skill to polish the floor … too much self-assurance, an overload of arrogance, a disdain for orders, and nil experience: the combination causes crashes … this whole affair of engaging women fliers when there are so many men fully qualified to do the work, is disgusting …!
'

At Maylands the common room was hushed as the women pilots took turns reading aloud from the latest issue of the widely-circulated and highly respected
Air
magazine. Cigarette smoke and the smell of stale coffee did not deter an assortment of voices from projecting the well-researched words into every surrounding corridor.

‘
The ladies in question are only doing it as a pastime and should be ashamed … When will the RAF wake up to the fact that the good they are doing is being ruined by this abominable lot of women?
'

Angelique Florian's mesmeric reading was interrupted by the arrival of Alec Harborne.

As if electrified, all present froze.

‘There will be no more flying at this club. The Air Ministry is confiscating all civil aircraft and grounding non-RAF pilots. I'm as devastated as the rest of you,' added Alec.

Several other men had wandered into the common room and were beginning to look neglected.

‘Our only hope', Alec continued, ‘is that an air auxiliary will be formed, so we'll not all go to waste. It's what we've all been hoping for.'

One by one the girls rose from the table and soon Alec was alone with the magazine. He picked it up and read the
page left open. Nothing in the text made him laugh, and he lit up a cigarette. Noel Slater and Sam Hardwick sat down at the table and took the
Air
from his limp hand.

They read.

Noel laughed, and Sam frowned.

Alec stubbed out the fag end, stared at Slater and murmured, ‘Blind eunuch,' moving slowly to the door.

He could not expect Slater to challenge his abuse and he wandered on to the field. The girls had gathered a few yards on, and they watched busy RAF personnel scurrying amongst the manifold types of little planes.

‘They had all better start learning how to rivet,' Noel shouted from the doorway.

‘So had you,' Alec shouted back.

Angelique turned around.

‘That would be national suicide,' she said, approaching the two men. ‘Every machine he'd touch would be faulty.'

Slater was not perturbed.

Angelique glanced at him again. ‘Richard III will be mine for sure now,' she said to herself. ‘My model stands before me.'

Alec, who had overheard her, went off roaring with bitter laughter.

At Smithfield, Nora Flint found the place a ghost town. Even a few hanging carcasses would have been a welcome sight but there was no meat, and there were no men. She heard talking: in the office, Hardwick was being harangued.

‘Your section will be terminated for the duration of what looks to be a wartime future, Sam.' It was the big man.

‘It may all blow over,' Hardwick whispered.

Hardwick's boss was immense, his shoulders like a bull's. Smithfield knew him for his permanent bow tie and handmade shirts that never seemed to stain when a carcass was inspected. His tongue was prime beef, and Hardwick cowered instinctively in the company of class.

Truman.

‘People will still want meat – what about children?' Hardwick sounded weak and finished.

Nora entered the room and his face lit up. ‘Nora Flint is my assistant – the only girl allowed on the floor, as you know, sir,' he said excitedly.

Truman gave her his carcass look.

‘How do you do, young lady?' he said, eyeing her provocatively.

‘You haven't any meat to inspect today, Lord Truman,' she chirped.

‘Nora plans to fly for His Majesty, should war come,' said Hardwick obsequiously.

‘Is that what the Master of the Hunt would have his little girl doing?' Truman asked sweetly.
‘My father hates my flying,' said Nora matter-of-factly.

Hardwick watched her with envy, wondering how her class acquired the ability to talk down to one another and yet stay within one world.

‘You, Hardwick, ought to find something useful to do, too, if you have any sense,' said the Master of the other Hunt.

‘Isn't Nora remarkable, sir?' said Hardwick desperately. Anything to postpone the inevitable. ‘She has accumulated three hundred hours in the air and hopes to ferry aircraft across the country. She may even cross the Channel.'

Truman was unmoved. Nodding grimly, he said:

‘Make sure this place is spotless before closing down. I'll see to your creature comforts, Sam. Those sons of yours should be support enough for the future, but if you need anything, for God's sake …'

For a moment Nora thought she saw a tear in His Lordship's eye. He had been known for his extraordinary generosity in the past. Again he looked at Nora, only this time with a glint of menace that made her want to be near Hardwick and his East End terraced cottage.

When Truman had gone Nora shut the office door to keep her thoughts from wandering. Those men who toiled outside were still alive, but she could already feel a roll call of ghosts assembling. She did not want them to listen, just yet. ‘You can't imagine what has been going on at Maylands!' she exclaimed to Hardwick, thinking to cheer him. ‘RAF men have swarmed in and all the gorgeous planes we flew have been requisitioned. No-one can fly for pleasure, and they say Hitler is about to invade.'
Hardwick sat up. ‘Invade where?'

‘Us!'

‘He won't get any meat here if he does.'

‘Valerie Cobb is going to the Air Ministry yet again, because she's heard the RAF is planning to use fighter pilots to ferry things into France if there's a war. If we can get permission to do it, the combat fliers will be released and the women can ferry.'

‘Overnight we have become the equivalent of vagrants,' muttered Hardwick.

‘How do you mean?' asked Nora, taking a chair.

‘You will never ferry to France and I will never do anything from this day forward.'