by Tessa Arlen
“What are the greatest dangers for civilian pilots in wartime?”
Her earlier reluctance gone, she laughed. “Everything! I don’t like barrage balloons—we have them marked in red on our maps, and the airfield will bring them down when they know we are arriving. But if there is an air raid”—she jerked her thumb—“up they come. You can fly below the balloons, but the cables that tether them to the ground are the real danger.”
“What happens if you get into difficulties?”
She snorted and put out the half-smoked cigarette in her saucer. “We don’t is the straight answer. There are no radios in the planes; we can’t be chattering away and jam the airwaves. That would really mess things up for the RAF.”
“What about weapons?” I was working my way carefully toward my target.
A derisive sneer. “What, and get into a scrap with a Heinkel or a Messerschmitt?”
“What did you do when you ran into enemy aircraft?”
“I flew my bloody plane—that’s what I did. Evasive action, it’s called.”
“How many of them were there?”
A deep sigh, as if the effort to remember cost her dearly. “Two Messerschmitts. I was ten minutes’ flying time from RAF Biggin Hill. The bastards ambushed me from behind a bank of cloud. They were that good, I didn’t even spot them for a second or two.” I didn’t dare write all this down in case she stopped talking and demanded to speak to Huntley first. I was here to get this girl’s story, and if it meant flattery I was quite willing.
“Terrifying,” I ventured.
“No time to be bloody terrified. I couldn’t deliver a bullet-ridden plane to Biggin Hill, and I certainly didn’t want to go down in flames. So, we played hide-and-seek.” She lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply. She looked up and caught the look of concentration on my face and laughed. “You going to write this down, or what?”
I picked up my pencil. “So, what did you do?”
She rattled her red fingernails on the tabletop and caught her bottom lip between her teeth. I suspected that underneath that studied nonchalance was a woman on the edge of her nerves. And something else occurred to me too: she didn’t like talking about her attack. Had it scared her that much? And if it had, why wouldn’t she admit it?
As if she was aware of what I was thinking, she sat back in her chair, threw one leg over the other, and blew a lazy plume of smoke. Her pose, because that’s what it was, was almost defiant.
“One of the cheeky what’s-his-names flew alongside and saluted me. I could see him as clearly as I can see you now. It took him a moment to realize I was a girl. You should have seen his jaw drop.” She inhaled smoke with her eyes closed, then opened them to see my reaction. “That pause, that moment of surprise, gave me an edge. I peeled away sharpish, I can tell you. June Evesham wouldn’t have lasted a minute up there. The only other pilot who could lead them in the dance as I did is Zofia. Now, there’s a girl who can fly.” It was interesting to hear her express admiration for another woman. Clearly, the pair of them were close. Not as close as Letty and June, who were amiably chattering away to each other as they finished their coffee, but I had picked up on the mutual respect and admiration the countess and Edwina felt for each other.
“What happened? Did they just go away?”
“No, dear.” Her tone was flat, as if I bored her. “I did, quick as a flash. The next thing I knew I had overshot RAF Biggin Hill by twenty miles.” I raised my eyebrows to demonstrate how impressed I was, because no matter how unattractive this woman’s manner, her bravery made for great propaganda.
She smiled. “I know, it’s quite a story.”
“It certainly is. Huntley will love it and so will the public.”
“All in the line of duty.” She rolled her eyes at the credulous British public and I wondered for a tiny second if her story, like her makeup, was a bit overdone. Edwina’s outlandish manners and overt displays of sex appeal were part of a cover-up, I decided. Underneath she was just as scared as the rest of us. She looked up. “Here’s your boyfriend.” She got up from her chair. “Now, if you don’t mind, I want to talk shop. American shop.”
I bet you do, I thought, and said out loud: “Oh, please go ahead. Just one more thing: where did you learn to fly, Miss Partridge?”
A flare of annoyance—no, it was stronger, it was anger—lit up her eyes for a fraction of a second. “The circus.” I must have gaped. “A flying circus. It was my uncle’s. I was an aerial acrobat when I was six.” She looked down at me, both hands planted on her curvaceous hips. And then she said in a matter-of-fact voice, “Are you dating him?” I gaped some more. “If you are, you should watch him; he’s a right charmer.” She laughed.
In that moment I felt a wave of jealous anger so strong it took all my self-control to stay in my chair. Breathe deeply and stop making such a fuss, I told myself as I watched her saunter across the room, hands in pockets and an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips.
Now, that’s what I call a fast mover, Ilona’s voice observed. I mean really, darling, talk about obvious.
Griff turned and his smile faded a little as Edwina caught up with him and he signaled to me to join them, but I shook my head and held up my notes. I was a working girl. I looked down at my notepad and heard Ilona snigger rather unkindly. Griff might be a bit of a flirt, but he was quite a conservative chap: underneath the swashbuckler was the heart of a knight-errant. He certainly wouldn’t approve of Edwina’s chain-smoking and her dockworker’s language. Griff’s boyish charm had landed him in the consommé, and this time it wasn’t chilled.
FOUR
READY TO ROLL?” HUNTLEY ASKED HIS CAMERAMAN, KEITH, A shortish and very young man from London’s East End who wore his flat cap back to front. Griff would do well to tune in to Keith’s cockney accent, fresh from the Mile End Road.
“Soon as this war’s over I’m off to Hollywood,” he told me as he set up his camera. “Westerns, that’s what I’m going to make, with John Ford and Gary Cooper.” He was thoroughly likable—I put his age at somewhere around seventeen and hoped the war would be over before he had to join up.
“Keith!” Huntley was all business. “You can tell Miss Redfern about your Hollywood contract this evening. Now, if you are ready?”
“Half a mo’, guv.” Keith fiddled with his camera. “Right, ready when you are!”
Huntley turned to the group and all chatter died down. “Okay, girls, gather round, please. Here’s what I want you to do. Line up by the first plane, the big one, and run toward us. Keep in a straight line and at the same pace: not a full-out gallop, just a nice, controlled lope. What are in these packs?” He pointed to a heap of heavy, square bundles on the ground. “Parachutes? Good, sling one over your shoulder, just as if you are off on a mission. That’s the way.”
“They aren’t part of our uniform, you know. My rigger puts mine in my plane for me,” Edwina said as she lit a cigarette. “They weigh thirty pounds, so they’re bloody heavy to run with.”
As I suspected, Huntley knew a thing or two about getting and keeping control. “Then why are they lying there waiting to be picked up? You are only carrying them a few feet, and they make you look like serious pilots. Are you ready?”
When they were all kitted out, they stood in a line in front of Huntley, their Sidcot flying suits over their uniforms. With their heavy boots and now with their parachutes over their shoulders, they certainly looked the part. June, Zofia, and Annie pushed their flying goggles back onto the tops of their leather-helmeted heads. Edwina had refused to put hers on.
“None of us wears a helmet either, unless we’re in an open cockpit,” Edwina chimed in when Huntley tapped his head at her to put hers on. “No point in wearing a helmet anyway, because we don’t have radios on board, and they mess up our hair.”
I caught Keith’s eye and he grinned at me. “Right little twist, in’t she?
Needs to grow up,” he said under his breath as he adjusted the camera lens.
“Twist?” I could see I was going to need a dictionary to understand this chap.
“Twist and twirl—little girl.”
I turned back to the altercation going on between Huntley and Edwina. His jaw was set, but he kept his temper. Edwina had been correcting him ever since he had arrived; if she wasn’t resisting all his ideas, she was heavily flirtatious. He had gone from embarrassment to confusion, and now he was just determined to get his film wrapped up, so he said nothing when she dropped her helmet on the ground behind a campstool.
He turned back to his directing. “Okay, off you go and line up. Start to come forward at a steady pace when I call out ‘Go!’ What d’you think, Poppy, about the parachutes, I mean?”
“It’s what people expect pilots to carry.”
“But the ATA girls can’t use them effectively at the height they fly at. Most chutes deploy between a thousand and eight hundred feet at the very least,” Griff added.
“What’s wrong with that?” Huntley asked.
“The ATA have to fly at under a thousand feet, so they can find their way by landmarks,” I said, keen to show off my newly acquired aviation knowledge.
Griff nodded in agreement. “The average airmen need at least seven hundred feet to jump without injury . . . none of us are given the time to practice that kind of skill.”
Huntley hesitated and thought it over. He looked up at the sky. “If my plane caught fire lower than a thousand, I would climb higher and then I would use my chute,” he said, as if that settled things.
Griff looked away, but I could see that he was smiling. “If you had an engine to climb with,” he said.
“You ever had to jump?” Huntley asked, his face serious and his manner a little more respectful.
“Yes, once.”
“I hate heights. I don’t think I could do it,” Keith put in.
“You could if your pants were about to catch light,” said Griff.
The three of them laughed and, in the strange way that men have, became friends in that moment. Ever since Huntley and Keith had arrived, Griff had stuck close to them, clearly intimidated by Edwina’s zealous pursuit. I was polite enough to him, but too busy and completely engrossed with learning the ropes to spend any time with him, and I was still smarting at how foolish I had felt when we had walked into the mess together on our arrival and he had immediately showered attention on Edwina.
The Attagirls had reached the plane and were standing in a ragged line in front of it. “Can we have the tallest in the middle?” Huntley shouted, and they shuffled about until Annie and Grable were in the center of the line, flanked by Letty and Zofia, with June and Edwina at each end. He turned to Keith. “Focus on the one that looks like Betty Grable, the one with the legs.” He called out to Grable. “You in the middle, would you take your helmet off, please?” I could hear Letty and Annie giggling as Grable took off her helmet and tossed her hair back. “Struth,” said Keith.
“Like ripe barley,” Huntley replied. “It’s got to be natural: women like her don’t dye their hair. We’ll shoot them with parachutes first and again without. Just two takes, Keith. Are you ready?” he shouted to the lineup; Grable gave a thumbs-up. “Go!”
It took four takes to satisfy him. June, the shortest of the group, on the end of the line, fell over once. Edwina insisted on fixing her hair before each take, and I realized that filming was rather boring: more waiting around than anything else. In the third take Bess got so excited that she raced out to join them, jumping around them like a little porpoise.
The Attagirls ran toward us one last time.
“Cut!” shouted Huntley. “Very nice,” he said to Grable as she dropped her chute on the ground and plonked herself down on the grass. “Lovely, in fact. Now”—he rubbed his hands together—“let’s get these planes in the air.”
Grable tilted her head back to look up at the sky. “Perfect day for flying,” she said.
“Perfect day for filming,” said Keith as he gazed worshipfully at her golden tresses blowing in the breeze.
* * *
* * *
I HAD ARRANGED our morning so that we filmed each of the Attagirls taking off in their assigned planes, with Edwina going last to show us what could be done with a Spitfire.
“Actually, it doesn’t matter what order we film them in,” Huntley explained. “The editor will cut the film in the sequence we want it. That’s the beauty of film: you can splice together all sorts of random pieces and make it all look as if it happened in one smooth piece of action. Of course, the weather and the light have to be the same.”
He paused to finish reading the script I had written up. “You’ve done a really good job here. I like the stories you’ve included for each of them. Homey bits like Annie Trenchard being the mother of two girls who want to be pilots too, and that June Evesham was brought up on an airfield in the outback and learned to fly when she was a kid but only wanted to travel. It has appeal and that’s what we want, just as much as the adventurous bits. They are quite a tough bunch, aren’t they?”
I wouldn’t have described them that way. “I think they appear to be tough because they have to be so self-disciplined. There isn’t much room for error in their job. But when they are in the mess they are just girls together—good friends.”
“Even her?” Huntley jerked his head over to Edwina.
“Well . . . she is not exactly the chummy type, but they really respect her.”
Huntley acknowledged “chummy” as if I was joking.
* * *
* * *
VERA ABERCROMBIE AND Sir Basil strolled out to join us for a sandwich lunch at one o’clock. “Working lunch,” Huntley insisted. “We’ll lose the light at four.”
We stood around Keith and his camera to eat our sandwiches in the clear air of a brilliant autumn day. After a while Keith started to film the Attagirls as they ate their sandwiches and chattered among themselves. They were a lighthearted, relaxed group and it was evident that they were enjoying their day. Edwina for once didn’t bark instructions at us.
“How’s filming going?” Sir Basil offered me a cup of coffee from a thermos.
I shook my head; too much Camp coffee had a way of creeping up on you. “Really well. It’s fascinating to see different planes in flight,” I said as we watched June’s Mosquito come in to land. “How many pilots operate out of Didcote?”
“About thirty. They are all working out of White Waltham Airfield while we make this film. They will be back tomorrow evening. If you are not in too much of a hurry to leave, you might meet them; they are a great bunch of girls.”
His eyes rested briefly on Edwina, who was eating a sandwich and alternating bites with sips of coffee. “My God that girl can eat,” he said under his breath as he smiled at her. She frowned at him and turned her back. “I don’t think I could eat that much Spam, even with Branston pickle on it,” he called out good-naturedly, but she continued to ignore him.
Vera Abercrombie permitted herself a good-natured little chuckle as she joined us. “Can’t wait to see the film when it’s finished. When is Edwina going to do her demonstration?
“Zofia is next, then Grable, and then it’s Edwina.”
Vera smiled. “Look at her,” she said with affection as Zofia got up from the grass and strolled over to Edwina. “Head’s always in the clouds. I bet she has completely forgotten she’s even flying today.” Abercrombie relaxed her vigilance and lifted her face up to the sun for two brief seconds, and then she was the commander again. “Zofia, you don’t have time . . . for coffee.” She bustled over. She reminded me of the troop leader of our Girl Guide group at school: always vigilant, never off duty, and sometimes a bit too bossy.
Huntley sipped his coffee. “What plane is she flying?”
“Hurricane,�
�� I answered and pointed down the line to the last plane.
“Is it fast?”
“Yes, it’s a single-engine, single-seater fighter plane similar to a Spitfire. Zofia says she prefers flying Hurricanes to Spitfires.”
“Listen to you! Most people can’t tell the difference between them.” Griff’s delighted smile would ordinarily have me glowing. “Next thing you’ll be telling me is that you are joining the ATA.”
Huntley emptied his coffee cup. “No poaching. I think she’s a writer before she’s a pilot!” And lifting his megaphone, he broke up the laughter and the chatter. “Okay, Zofia, off you go. Just like the others. Take off, fly around the airfield a couple of times, and then land.” He turned to Grable, who was sitting with her face turned up to the sun. “If you could be ready to take off as Zofia comes back?” He squinted briefly up at the sun as well. “We should just about catch the light if you are ready to go after Betty,” he called out to Edwina. She didn’t turn her head or acknowledge him.
“Miss Partridge!” And then under his breath: “Oh, for God’s sake.”
She half turned her head and said, “Don’t wait for me.” Her face wore a withdrawn expression: shut off and remote as she returned her gaze to the horizon. Her defiant determination to impose her will on the way the film was directed had gone, and she had been quiet since the end of lunch. There was a brooding quality to her as she stood on the edge of things and smoked a cigarette halfway through before grinding it out and lighting another.
“Okay, Miss Partridge, off you go,” Huntley called out as Grable circled the airfield and came in to land. “Bang on time,” he said to me, and I looked at my watch; it was half past three. Edwina was already strolling toward her Spitfire.
“This will be something to watch,” said June to me. “She may be a bit tiresome sometimes, but she knows how to put on a good show.” She lifted her hand to shade her eyes, but there was no need to cover them; the sun, which had blazed all afternoon, went behind a cloud and a shadow fell over us. The hairs on my arms lifted in its chill.
