by Tessa Arlen
“I’m more of a ground engineer,” June explained.
“A first-rate ground engineer,” said Letty with such understated but sincere loyalty that I decided that the scorn I thought I had seen on her face had been a trick of the light.
“And a second-rate pilot,” June insisted.
Letty rolled her eyes. “Fishing?” she said to laughter. “Please, don’t say that when you know it’s far from true.” She turned to me. “June’s a first-rate pilot, and she can fix any engine: plane, car, or motorbike.” Her admiration for her friend was vivid in contrast to the evident distaste she felt for the star of my film.
“Motorbike?” I must have looked surprised, because June explained.
“My father flew commercially in Queensland: he was a crop duster. We lived miles from anywhere, so I was taught to fix all engines: cars, tractors . . . motorbikes, you name it. I was a working pilot when I was fourteen. I never had the overwhelming desire to fly, to stop at nothing to become a pilot like everyone here, perhaps because it was expected of me. I am a competent pilot.” She squinted her eyes and waggled her hand in a so-so gesture. “But I am a really good ground engineer and mechanic.”
“How did you come to be recruited to the ATA?” I seized on the opportunity for more detail for my script.
“I was traveling in Europe when the war broke out, so I came to England. The ATA had just started their recruiting program: they had plenty of RAF servicemen to work on planes, but not enough pilots. Those young and fit enough were in the RAF. The ATA had finally accepted the painful fact that they needed to find women who knew how to fly.” A slightly self-deprecating smile. June was what Griff would call a straight-ahead type. “So, here we all are. All of us knew how to fly small private aircraft before the war, and now we are civilians volunteering our services for the very people who believe women should not fly in combat.”
“Our HQ at White Waltham ATA have a flying school, and the other volunteers in our ferry pool have been trained in the last year or so,” said Letty.
June looked around the room. “You are in the rarefied company of firsts: Vera Abercrombie is the first woman commander appointed to the ATA; actually, she might be the first woman commander anywhere. Letty is the first woman pilot to ever be awarded a Class Five license to fly four-engine aircraft. Sir Basil was the first flying ace of his company in the last war and then went on to design some of the most advanced aircraft of his time. Recruiting women to the ATA was his idea in the first place.” She had bowed her head to each as she acknowledged them. “And then of course there is our first star pilot: Edwina Partridge.” I glanced at June to see if she was being snide, but her pleasant face expressed nothing but acknowledgment of Edwina’s skill.
“What about you, Miss . . . Wills? Did you fly before you volunteered for the ATA?”
“We are all on first-name terms here; even our commanding officer prefers to be called by her Christian name. Please, call me Letty.” She had the clear-pitched voice of a young girl, but I could see fine lines around her eyes and realized that she was about the same age as their commanding officer. “I have been flying since I was twelve.”
After my snub from Edwina, I asked, “Do you mind if I jot this down?”
She waved away my request. “No, please go ahead. I was one of the original three women to join! My father was always keen on flying, he flew during the last war, and I was the only girl in a family of five boys. We were all taught to fly. I wanted to join the RAF, but they don’t take women pilots, and the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force is all about flying a desk.” Letty shrugged off shorthand and typing. “So, I joined the ATA. I couldn’t ask for a better job!” This was just the sort of information I wanted. I scribbled down notes as fast as I could.
“Have you ever flown?” Letty asked, and it took me a moment to realize that her round blue lollypop eyes were quite serious. “No, I would love to, but I have never had the opportunity!”
Letty looked at June, her eyebrows raised. “What do you think?”
June nodded her agreement. Edwina might be the star of the show, but after Commander Abercrombie, it was clear that June was their natural leader.
“If you don’t mind getting up really early, I’ll take you up tomorrow morning.” I didn’t know whether to be pleased or terrified at Letty’s invitation.
I glanced at my cheat sheet to see what plane she was flying in the film. “In a Lancaster bomber?”
“No, in a little two-seater biplane, as a passenger. We can take the Fairey Swordfish up if you would enjoy it. Annie will be flying it tomorrow for the film, so we have to have it back by eight o’clock. Would that be all right with you, Annie?” A brief nod of acquiescence. Annie was clearly a woman of few words.
“I’d love to, I really would.” I think she hadn’t expected me to say yes quite so quickly.
“Good for you.” She looked me over again as if she hadn’t quite seen me the first time, with that direct, assessing gaze they all seemed to possess. But there was nothing tough or challenging about Letty. I could almost see her wearing a pair of her brother’s jodhpurs and an old comfortable hacking jacket as she jumped her scrupulously groomed pony in our local gymkhana before the war.
A steward came in through a door to the left of the bar and announced that lunch was ready. Sir Basil made his way over to me. “I know it’s old-fashioned, Miss Redfern, but may I?” He was smiling as he extended his arm. As I slipped my arm through his, it occurred to me that if my father had survived the war, he would probably be about Sir Basil’s age.
“My dad was a fighter pilot in the last war,” I said.
“Lieutenant Redfern?”
I felt the hairs on my arms prickle as he said my father’s name. “You knew Clive Redfern?”
“I knew him well. He was a damn good pilot, and a courageous leader.” His face grew serious for a moment. “So, you are Clive Redfern’s daughter.” A smile broke through. “Of course you are. There is something about him in you that I recognize: he was the quiet, thoughtful type, and I suspect you are too. But clearly you are your mother’s daughter. I only met her once. She was very lovely.”
I rarely refer to the fact that I was orphaned when I was two days old and brought up by my grandparents, but Sir Basil’s informal courtesy invited confidences. “I’m afraid that my mother didn’t survive the war either. She died in the influenza epidemic after I was born. Until very recently I lived with my grandparents in Little Buffenden—they have a farm there.”
Why was it so easy to talk to this man? As an only child raised by my grandparents, I have always been more at ease with older people than those of my own age, and Sir Basil Stowe was comfortably at ease among the women he had encouraged to fly for their country. Vera Abercrombie might be the commanding officer here, but Sir Basil was the ATA’s godfather.
I heard a shriek of laughter from Edwina as she and Griff joined us in the dining area at the front of the mess and saw her put a white hand with its long red nails on his arm. Griff pulled out her chair for her and sat down next to her, his eyes riveted on her face in a most unsettling way. If I was under the impression that the delights of driving down to Hampshire with Griff, along sun-dappled country lanes, meant that he would be dedicating his time to me at Didcote, I was clearly mistaken.
Simmer down, why don’t you? You made it very clear to him how important your first assignment is to you, Ilona reminded me. He’s just giving you a little breathing room.
THREE
READY TO LAND?”
Our early morning flight over pastoral England was so beautiful it had taken my breath away. For more than half an hour I had been spellbound by a miniature world laid out below us like a meticulously arranged model world of fields, woodland, and the river. Tiny buildings sat on the edges of roads that outlined the contours of the land. The sky over us stretched to horizons farther than I had ever traveled.
Thirty minutes had gone by in as many seconds.
But would landing be as terrifying as taking off?
One moment we were above the country and then among it. We skimmed over treetops and then dropped lower to hedgerows. The vivid green of the airfield came up fast toward us. My heart was beating frantically, but I kept my eyes wide open. A slight bump, and another, and we were racing across the grass toward hangars and the massive outline of a great Avro Lancaster bomber. The first flight of my life had rushed by in an exhilarating flash of earth, sky, and sea.
We came to a halt next to the Lancaster. There was something sinister about its massive size; the Fairey Swordfish was an insubstantial Christmas-cracker novelty next to it.
“Look at the size of its wheels,” I said to Letty as soon as I had caught my breath.
“Go and stand next to one. You’re quite tall, so you should just about come level with the top of its tire.” Letty climbed out onto the Swordfish’s wing and jumped down, pulling her leather helmet off her head and shaking out her straight hair. I clambered out of the cockpit, and as I landed on the short turf I realized my legs were shaking.
“Air legs!” Letty smiled.
“It was incredible; it was wonderful. I can’t thank you enough for . . . for . . .”
“I’m really glad you enjoyed it.”
“Would the ATA have me? Could I train to be a pilot?” I asked.
“Yes, they would.” June was walking toward me with Zofia, who was holding Bess; they were both laughing. Zofia passed around cigarettes and they lit up, throwing back their heads as they blew smoke into the clear fresh air. How confident they were, the three of them standing in the morning sun, surrounded by their aircraft. “But you’re a writer, aren’t you? That’s your war work,” June said.
“Yes, I suppose it is,” I said, as an idea for my next book floated into my head. Ilona Linthwaite, the intrepid protagonist of my first book, would take to the skies!
Are you quite sure about that, darling? I know you had fun up there, but I was in fear of my life, every blasted minute.
* * *
* * *
FOR SO FEW women, and considering the early hour, the mess was loud with voices that morning at breakfast, as I went from one Attagirl to another, adding to the background notes I had worked on well into the night.
Annie Trenchard’s usually stern expression softened as she talked about her family. “My mother is an angel, a saint, really. I think my job is easy in comparison to looking after my two girls.” She took a sip from her cup.
Letty leaned toward us. “Tell Poppy about your Luftwaffe story,” she said. “Go on, tell her.” And to me: “It’s quite a tale.”
Annie shook her head, her lips pressed together, her eyes fixed down at her plate. Letty leaned across her, to me, her hand on Annie’s forearm. “Sharpen your pencil, Poppy,” she said. “Because this is a story worth hearing. Before the fall of France, Annie was delivering a plane to an airfield in Normandy. What were you flying?”
“I can’t remember.”
A sigh from Letty. “It was probably a Mosquito. Anyway, it was late afternoon—in August?”
I started to write.
“It was early winter,” said Annie in a long-suffering voice.
“She dropped down to land in a heavy ground fog. Much thicker on the ground than she had first thought, right, Annie?”
“It was mist, a patchy mist.”
“She could just about see the airstrip, and some large planes—they looked like bombers—off to the right.”
Annie nodded; now there was a faint smile on her lips as Letty continued. “As she pulled back the throttle to make her landing, the mist cleared a little and Annie saw—” Letty started to giggle. “On the tail of one of the bombers, as she skimmed past it at ground level, she saw a swastika! Can you believe it? She was about to land in a German airfield!” Letty sat away from the table and jogged Annie in the ribs with her elbow. “Come on, tell her.”
“Oh, thank you, my turn now, is it? What is there left to tell?” Despite her initial reluctance, Annie willingly took up the tale. “I had somehow lost my bearings and there was a strong wind coming from the west. I must have drifted northeast as I flew across the Channel and mistaken the coast of Belgium for France.” She ducked her head and laughed at her mistake. “I had never left England in my life, and here I was ferrying a Tiger Moth to an airfield in north France!” She shrugged her shoulders. “Well, anyway, my wheels touched the airstrip once, and then I saw that swastika! I thought my heart was going to burst out of my chest! I opened up the throttle and took off again as fast as I dared to.” She shook her head. “I must have cleared their tower by this much.” She held her hands six inches apart.
June leaned across the table to me. “She hates it when we tell this story,” she teased.
“She hates it when we tell anyone about her German boyfriends.” Grable, on my right, imitated a German accent. “Oh, Annie, mein Schatzi. Why the rush? Please come back to us!”
“That’s quite enough,” said Annie, recovering her habitual sangfroid.
“What happened next?” I asked, flexing my fingers to ease writer’s cramp.
“Well, I turned around, of course”—an impatient shake of her head—“and using my compass flew west to France. As soon as I was sure of where I was, I brought the plane down in a big flat field in Bayeux.” She made it sound like she had taken the wrong turn off the Great North Road and ended up in Sheffield instead of Doncaster.
“That’s an incredible story,” I said.
“Thank you.” A barely discernible smile as she glanced at Letty. “I hope you are happy now.” And to me: “Getting lost is easy, especially if you are flying over the sea: no landmarks! But Letty loves to tease, so does Grable, and it’s all grossly exaggerated.”
June glanced over to the next table, where Edwina was sitting. She was reading a newspaper and drinking coffee with her habitual cigarette held upright between the fingertips of her left hand.
Get it over with, I told myself as I walked over to join her, with Bess, ears down, trailing after me.
“I would love to hear what happened with you and the Luftwaffe,” I said as I pulled a chair up to her table.
“And so you shall, when you interview me on film.” She had glanced up as I sat down, but now she was looking out the window toward the Spitfire parked first in line on the edge of the airstrip.
“But we don’t actually interview on film,” I explained, remembering my briefing from Huntley. “We have a commentator who will tell your story as we show film of you flying your plane.”
Edwina clearly thought otherwise. “No, that wouldn’t work at all. I want to tell my story. Not some half-baked old twit who can’t even drive a car, droning on in the background about Britain’s finest hour.”
I didn’t like to tell her that most amateurs make terrible actors: they either become self-conscious and stumble their words or simply can’t stop talking. The commentator was trained to read from a script, and it was he who would provide understated drama to the visual of the film.
Edwina’s face was set, her mouth tight. I hadn’t noticed before, but her brows were heavy and dark, and they were drawn in a fierce scowl. I reached down and stroked Bess’s head. I wasn’t going to argue with this tough little woman—about anything. “Huntley Masters is the film’s director. I think you should talk to him about your idea to tell your story.” The little I had seen of Huntley told me that he was more than able to deal with this girl.
“Well, I will, then.” She almost tossed her head.
“But, as your scriptwriter, I must record the story so that Huntley and the film editor can refer to it later.”
She looked around the room. “Where’s your friend the American? What’s his name? Griff?”
Griff had driven us to the airfield from o
ur hotel and joined Sir Basil and Commander Abercrombie for breakfast in her house next to the mess. He was avid for details of the different types of planes the ATA delivered.
“I think he’s with your CO. Will you tell me about your Spitfire?”
A theatrical sigh as she shrugged me off with a shoulder. She reminded me so much of the girls in my village when their mothers asked them to help with the washing up that I had to bite the insides of my cheeks to stop myself from smiling.
“Huntley will need this information before he starts filming.” I strove for firm: pleasant but firm.
Another sigh. “What do you want to know?” Not waiting for my question, she trotted out some facts for me. “To be accurate you should refer to it as the Supermarine Spitfire. It can reach an altitude of forty-one thousand feet, but we don’t fly that high. Top speed is rated at three hundred and fifty miles an hour, but I can get more out of them than that.”
“I heard that you can only fly planes at a thousand feet when you are delivering them. Why is that?” I had already been informed by Letty, but I wanted Edwina to get used to answering my questions.
“So we can see the ground. That’s how we find our way.” She was slowly unbending; Edwina liked attention. “Most of us are familiar by now with the route we must fly from factory to airfield, but if it is a first-time delivery we find our way with a compass, and we have to be able to see the landmarks below us that are marked on our maps: railways lines, rivers, bridges, church spires, that sort of thing. That’s why we have to make our deliveries before it gets dark, and we don’t fly when there is fog.” She shrugged. “Though fog is an accepted hazard in autumn and winter.”
