Till We Meet Again (56 page)

“What’s up?” Freddy asked Helen Jones.

“It’s Amy Johnson. She crashed into the Thames Estuary yesterday.”

“Oh God—no!” Freddy cried.

“She was long overdue by late afternoon,” Helen said. “She must have been out of fuel and lost above the clouds because she was one hundred miles beyond Kidlington. It’s official now … they recovered her flying bag from the water. She bailed out above cloud cover and landed in the drink. She was almost rescued … a trawler on convoy duty saw her Oxford sink and tried to pick her up, but she disappeared under its stern.”

Freddy turned away abruptly from the others and went to stand at a window. She looked out, seeing nothing, in a state of deep shock. Amy Johnson, who had survived sandstorms, monsoons and dozens of forced landings when she became the first woman to fly solo to Australia, the daredevil about whom millions had sung “Amy, Wonderful Amy,” crazily courageous Amy, whose endurance knew no limits when she established a light aircraft record from London to Tokyo, dashing Amy who had set a solo round-trip record from Paris to Cape Town dressed in a Schiaparelli suit and a matching coat—it was impossible that Amy Johnson,
her
Amy, the
most experienced woman pilot in England, should be the first of them to die.

“I know, Freddy,” Jane said, putting an arm around her.

“When I was nine, she flew all the way to Australia in a little old Moth, and now I’m almost twenty-one and she’s dead trying to fly a steady twin-engine from Blackpool to Kidlington. She was only thirty-eight. I just can’t believe it. How could it happen?”

“We may never know. Freddy, come on, let’s pitch cards into your hat. Winner pays for dinner,” Jane said briskly.

“If she hadn’t been over water … if it hadn’t been so icy …”

“No
ifs
, poppet. It was up to Amy to decide if it was safe to take off yesterday. She could have stayed in Blackpool. We all have the choice at every moment we’re flying. We can land whenever it looks bad and stay on the ground until it clears. You know that and she knew that. She made the decision to fly yesterday. Almost everybody else didn’t. That route is well inland—we’ve both flown it dozens of times. She went over the top, Freddy, she went above the clouds, and got lost. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been over water. We’re not supposed to go over the top … ever. It was character as much as the weather, pet.”

“Character,” Freddy repeated thoughtfully.

“Doesn’t every one of us fly her particular character?”

Freddy looked around at the many women in the room, her eyes pausing at Winifred Crossley, who too had been a stunt pilot; at Rosemary Rees, who had been a ballet dancer as well as an explorer of new air routes; at Gabrielle Patterson, married and a mother, who had been a flying instructor as early as 1935; at Joan Hughes, who had started flying at fifteen and was no older than she and Jane; at Margie Fairweather, daughter of Lord Runciman, whose brother was Director General of BOAC and whose husband was also an ATA pilot. They were the most splendid and honorable company of women pilots to be found anywhere in the world, and yes, each of them had her own flying character, each approached every new takeoff with a different combination of courage and caution, of competitiveness and humdrum adherence to rules, of precision and chance-taking. Which of them would have taken off from Blackpool yesterday? Quite possibly none of them … or one … or even two. Impossible to say, impossible even to guess.

She turned to Jane. “I’m beginning to understand why you were Head Girl at your awful school, games or no games.”

“Are we going to pitch cards or are you going to fawn over me?”

“Let’s play. From the looks of this so-called sunrise, we may not fly again today. Did I ever tell you about sunrise in California? We have them every single day, believe it or not, even in winter. Did you know England is on the same latitude as Labrador? Odd place to settle.”

“One more word, and I get another roommate.”

The ATA anniversary party that night was canceled. Freddy, Jane, and a few of the others gathered at their local pub in Hatfield, drank one drink to the memory of Amy Johnson, and quietly returned to their lodgings through the icy, dark streets of the blacked-out town.

On the ninth and tenth of January, 1941, Freddy’s and Jane’s schedules gave each of them two days off, and for the first time since they had known each other Freddy was able to accept Jane’s standing invitation to visit her family at their manor house in Kent. Longbridge Grange was the home of Jane’s father, Lord Gerald Henry Wilmot, the fourteenth Baron Longbridge, and Jane’s mother, Lady Penelope Juliet Longbridge, born a Fortescue.

Under their heavy navy greatcoats they wore their well-tailored, strict, masculine-looking uniforms: navy trousers and a navy blue jacket, known as a tunic, with two buttoned breast pockets and two large pockets, also buttoned, below the brass-buckled belt. Above their right breast pockets they wore a pair of gold wings four inches wide, embroidered in heavy gold bullion, and sewn onto the tunic. On their shoulders were the two gold stripes of a second officer, one broad and one thin. On Freddy’s arm was a red, white and blue insignia that identified her as an American. Under their tunics both girls wore RAF blue shirts and black men’s ties. Because of the cold they had decided to wear their slacks and their flying boots, which, strictly speaking, were never supposed to be worn anywhere but at the airdrome. Each girl had packed the navy skirt and sensible black shoes and stockings that were official dress for all times when they were not flying, and tilted her navy forage cap rakishly over her forehead.

They managed to get a ride in a sturdy Anson, one of the
indispensable, workhorse taxi planes that flew ATA pilots out to pick up planes for ferrying and, once they had completed their missions, brought them back to base. Both Freddy and Jane occasionally piloted an Anson, which was big enough so that fifteen pilots carrying their parachutes could be crowded inside. The loss of a single Anson would have been a catastrophe, so the job was reserved for the most reliable pilots.

After a short hop they were dropped off at an airfield in Kent, where Janes mother, who had been saving her gas ration for the long-planned visit, picked them up. Lady Penelope hugged her daughter and put out her hand to shake Freddy’s hand, when suddenly she changed her mind and hugged Freddy as well.

“I’m so glad you’re here at last, my dear. Jane has written about you incessantly. I think she’s finally found a good influence,” the handsome, auburn-haired woman said, with a covertly proud look at her daughter.

“Actually Jane’s a good influence on
me”
Freddy protested, laughing.

“Nonsense. Impossible. We know our Jane. She’s unredeemable … but she can be rather sweet from time to time. Now get into the car before you freeze. We don’t want to be late to lunch.”

She drove rapidly and expertly, pointing out the many spots where bombs had fallen on the now snow-covered fields during the worst of the Blitz. “I’m sure they weren’t actually aiming at us—we’re not dangerous, after all—but the house is almost directly under the flight path between London and the Channel ports. Such a nuisance … one of them brought down all the plaster in the drawing room … Of course, the tennis court was ruined by that incendiary bomb last autumn, and there’s still that tiresome unexploded bomb on the road to the village. I do trust that someone will remember to come around and defuse it by the time the snow melts. Too silly. However, all the fuss does manage to remind me to make sure that the house is properly blacked out every night.”

“Who’s the warden, Mummy?” Jane asked.

“Really, Jane! I am, of course. I couldn’t count on anyone else, could I? Your poor father can’t see in the dark, try as he will, although Small, the new gardener—seventy-five if he’s a day—is rather clever. He makes Molotov cocktails in his spare time, in case of invasion. We have a most impressive stockpile of them. I’ve told him that the invasion scare is
over—it is, Jane, isn’t it?—hut he’s too deaf to pay attention.” She turned around to look at Freddy. “Jane wrote us that your parents are in London, my dear. Have they had a bad time?”

“No, not so far. Inconvenient and a bit frightening, but nothing worse than that. I went to London to see them the last time I had leave, and a house had been bombed out at the end of their street, but otherwise they’re fine.”

“Your father came to join General de Gaulle, I understand.”

“He left Los Angeles as soon as de Gaulle broadcast from London in June of 1940, and joined the Free French here. He’s working with Gustave Moutet and a group of journalists who’ve founded a daily newspaper called
France
. My mother’s working as an ambulance driver.… She’s on duty this weekend.”

“Good for her,” Lady Penelope said, careful not to ask for news of Delphine, for Jane had written that no one in the family was sure what had happened to her since Paris had been occupied. The car passed quickly through a small village and slowed down as it came to a large gate. “Well, my dears, welcome. Here we are.”

Lady Penelope drove up a long, oak-bordered driveway, and stopped in front of a house that seemed to have welled up out of the snowdrifts, so closely was it married to the bare but beautifully shaped trees and still-green yew hedges with which it was surrounded. The house was half-timbered, with thick walls made from stout oak beams and creamy brick, both materials native to the countryside with its chalky soil and wooded hills. No one had ever been able to count the various levels of roof of Longbridge Grange, nor the different styles of tiled and bricked gables and the ingeniously contrived multitude of its chimneys. The many and asymmetrical windows had rows of tiny panes of glass, most of it so old that it was lavender in color. The last time Lady Penelope had had some plaster removed in the smallest pantry, the workmen had found two coins minted in 1460. Time had been strictly selective at The Grange, preserving nothing that was not indescribably pleasant to the eye.

Longbridge Grange had five wings, all built in different periods, and reflecting the fortunes of the family. In spite of its size, nothing about the marvelously rambling building suggested the classic formality of a stately home. It had always been a manor house, and always the center of a large,
prosperous group of farms owned by the Longbridges, possessing an important cider mill, a large stable block, a carriage house, a dovecot, and any number of outlying barns and buildings. As Freddy entered The Grange, she felt as if she were walking into a welcoming, fragrant forest. Branches of pine trees decorated each doorway and lay on the mantles of the many fireplaces, and Christmas mistletoe still hung in the entrance hall. Dogs barked and bounced everywhere, in welcome.

Jane Longbridge was the second oldest of seven children. Her two younger brothers were away at school, but the three youngest, all girls—twins of nine, and the baby of the family, who was seven—were still at school in a nearby village. They had been kept out of school today in honor of Freddy and Jane’s arrival, and they shyly shook Freddy’s hand before they climbed onto Jane, almost knocking her over in rapture.

“Come along, all of you. Lunch in the kitchen,” Lady Penelope interrupted, looking at her leaping offspring and animals with detachment, as if she couldn’t imagine how they happened to be there at all.

“The kitchen, Mummy?” Jane said, surprised.

“It’s the warmest room, darling. I’ve closed off most of the house and just left it to molder quietly away. When we’ve won the war there will be the devil’s own dusting to do, but I’ll worry about that when the time comes.”

Jane and Freddy played with the little girls for much of the afternoon, reveling in their sweetly awed attentions. Finally, Freddy went to her room for a nap before dinner, first drawing the blackout curtains. She slept soundly for an hour, thinking gratefully as she drifted off that she had actually been almost, if not totally, warm since she’d entered The Grange. Five whole hours of comfort … or was it five hours and a half …?

A knock on her door woke her. Jane came in wearing a bathrobe and heavy socks and bedroom slippers. “I’ve drawn you a bath,” she said in a low, conspiratorial whisper.

“A bath?”

“A hot bath. A real bath. A prewar bath. Strictly illegal. I count on you to say nothing to anyone else. It must remain a secret, just between us.”

“You mean …”

“It has more than three and a half inches of water in the tub,” Jane announced solemnly.

“Oh, Jane, how could you?” Freddy cried. “You know you shouldn’t have. It’s against every regulation.”

“Don’t ask silly questions. Just follow me. Quietly … everyone’s busy in other parts of the house. I don’t want to hear a peep out of you.”

She put her fingers to her lips and, handing Freddy a toweling robe, led the way down a corridor to the door of a large bathroom in which a vast Victorian tub mounted on brass lion’s feet held pride of place. Freddy tiptoed to the tub, looked in and gasped. There must have been fully fifteen inches of water steaming in its depths. She hadn’t seen a bathtub with that much water in it since war had been declared. At their digs, she and Jane were allowed, by their complaining landlady, one tepid weekly bath of the required three and a half inches. All other bathing was done bit by bit in front of the basin in their room. Here were riches!

Freddy stripped naked and quickly lowered herself into the water, finding that it came just above her waist. She took the bar of soap that Jane held out to her, lathered her hair and scrubbed and rinsed it thoroughly before she started to scour herself with a huge sponge that sat on a chair placed alongside of the tub.

“Oh God, that’s good. Good, good, good! I’m going to stay in here until it gets cold. Until it freezes over. Nothing will ever get me out!”

“Is the water cooling off, pet?” Jane asked anxiously.

“Well … actually … yes. Just a bit. No, Jane, whatever you do, don’t turn on the tap. It isn’t fair to the others. I feel terribly guilty enough about this already. How can I ever face your mother?” Her wet hair was slicked back from a face suffused with pleasure. Her body was pink from rubbing.