by Tessa Arlen
“The long-distance solo pilot? Yes, it was in all the papers.” I frowned because I honestly couldn’t remember much about it.
“They never found Amy’s body. But you won’t hear anyone mention either of those girls’ names around here.” She lifted her finger and placed it lightly against her lips. “This can be a very dangerous job if you aren’t on your toes the whole time you’re flying. So, we honor our dead and then move on. Not good to dwell on death.” She nodded as if she was giving me sage advice.
I stored this information away and changed the subject. “So, what are you all licensed to fly?” I asked. A gale of laughter welcomed this question.
“Don’t laugh, she’s spent the last two days in rarified company,” said Anthea with her mouth full, as she dug into her pudding with the enthusiasm of a teenage boy.
“We fly everything that has wings,” said a sturdy girl after she had doused her treacle tart with custard. “I have been away for almost a week ferrying Tiger Moths, Mosquitos, Hurricanes, biplanes, you name it. None of us”—she waved her spoon around the table—“are licensed to fly bombers . . . not yet! I did fly an air marshal from Southampton to Biggin Hill.”
“Ooh, I bet that was a bumpy ride,” called out an angular blonde with a strong East London accent.
“I flew the air marshal in an Avro Anson, for your information. You should have heard the language he used.”
“Those senior rankers are the worst.” A very young woman with a strawberry-blond victory-roll hairstyle closed her eyes in demure parody at the vulgarity of the RAF. “Most of them don’t even notice we are women,” she explained. “And some of them don’t even care to tone down their language even if they do notice.”
“Here is the drawback about being a female pilot,” a woman of forty whose name was Cheryl piped up. “You spend the day flying and end up at some measly little airfield in some out-of-the-way place in Wales, and there is nowhere for you to sleep, let alone go to the you-know-what.”
She was interrupted by my dinner partner, Anthea. “She’s right, it’s absolutely ridiculous: there are no facilities for women at most of the aerodromes. When I first arrived at Biggin Hill, I had to scramble out of my Sidcot flight suit and put on a uniform skirt, on the tarmac in the dark behind the plane, so I could report to their commanding officer in proper attire. He thanked me and sent me off into the night to try and find a place to stay. I bunked down on the sofa in the living room of a bed-and-breakfast and was only too grateful that they had a plane they needed to ferry back to Eastleigh, so I could air taxi from there.” She gave me a see-what-I-mean look.
By this time, I had long accepted that the stories I was being told tonight would not be suitable for our film, but they would be useful for my next novel. “What do you mean there was nowhere to stay at Biggin Hill?” Biggin Hill was one of the largest airfields on the south coast; surely they had accommodation for female pilots who had to stay overnight.
“Just that.” Cheryl forked down the last of her treacle tart. “Sorry, I’ve been living on chocolate and stewed tea for two days. Yes, please,” she said to the mess steward. “I’d love another piece.” She turned back to me. “There are no women flying in the RAF, so there is no accommodation for them. At some RAF airfields women aren’t allowed in the mess, not even to have a quick breakfast before we leave!”
The strawberry blonde lit a cigarette and blew a plume of smoke into the air. “The RAF is like a gentlemen’s club—very exclusive. All pilots behave like stuck-up toffs unless they want something from you. The Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, the WAAF, are only employed as clerks, typists, drivers, cooks, and cleaners, depending on their background and how rich their daddy is. But lord’s daughter or commoner, they all play a very subordinate role. There are a few female mechanics, but not that many. The WAAF gals live locally and catch the bus to their airfield. There might be one WC in some airfields for women, but they are hidden away behind the bike shed or the kitchens.” She rolled her eyes. “Anyone would think we had the plague!”
“You flew a late delivery into Biggin Hill, and they couldn’t find accommodation for you in the town. What time did you arrive?” I asked Cheryl.
“Eight, nine. I honestly can’t remember. Don’t look so shocked, ducky; if they had women’s quarters at the big airfields, you wouldn’t want to stay there. Even if you were an old mum like me.”
“I thought you had to be at your destination by dark!” I said as I shook my head to Cheryl’s proffered cigarette.
The group around me rolled their eyes. “In the summer it’s long, long days, with very little sleep.” Anthea leaned toward me as if she were sharing a secret. “Are you telling me that Lady Betty Asquith didn’t tell you about her exhausting flight schedule? And that she has to have every Friday to Monday off because of social commitments? Or that on Thursday she has her nails done, so no flying then?” She giggled. “Lady Betty has to have an ATA cadet with her to put the landing gear down for her.”
“Landing gear?”
“Anson and Fairchild air taxis have manual landing gear; you have to crank them down by hand.”
Cheryl waved for silence. “Or the famous writer June what’s-her-name will only fly two-engine planes that she has flown before. She absolutely falls apart if someone suggests she fly something she is not familiar with. Complete life of Riley those girls lead, with their picturesque cottage in Didcote, entertaining Commander Abercrombie and Sir Basil to dinner.” She looked at her friends and they laughed again, but there was no malice in them, just a lot of eye rolling as they cracked jokes at the expense of the elite members of their group.
“How do you get back to Didcote if there are no return planes to deliver?”
“By rail, which means sitting on your parachute in a guard’s van of a crowded train. Last time I made a delivery to Scotland I slept in the luggage rack of the train compartment! There were two old maids sitting below me with their knitting. One of them said how unattractive women looked in uniform trousers. I leaned down and told them in the politest way that it was immodest to fly a Hurricane fighter in a skirt. Lord knows how many stitches they dropped.” She pushed away her plate and drank some tea.
“But you all flew in just now in an Anson taxi!” I said, determined not to believe everything they chose to tell me.
“We delivered planes back to White Waltham so they can be ferried on to Supermarine tomorrow morning. The unlucky ones are probably sitting in a train siding in the dark right now, hunkered down on their parachutes, hungry, tired, and in a place they have never heard of.”
I didn’t dare ask a question that might be taboo among a group of women who were getting on with their well-earned dinner. One that would result in my being ticked off and sent to Coventry, the way Sergeant Wilson had ended my politely worded interview with him earlier that day.
“Where do you all sleep when you are here, at Didcote?” I asked.
“Up the drive, turn right toward the village, and go past your inn. Just before you get to the village there’s a row of small cottages on the left and the Pig and Whistle,” said strawberry-blonde victory roll. “There’s a little lane off to the left and at the end is the old church hall. They converted it into a big dormitory for thirty with bunk beds. Problem is there are only two loos, but at least they rigged up a shower for us.”
“I had no idea how tough your job really is,” was my weak response.
“That’s okay, how would you know what it’s really like? After all, you spent a few idyllic days with the original pilots who joined the ATA and already knew how to fly—specially recruited, they were. The Great Eight, as they used to be. All of them learned to fly at age fourteen in one of their daddy’s planes.”
“We had only six pilots in our film, not eight,” I said, “and Edwina grew up in a flying circus, as an aerial acrobat—she told me.”
Cheryl snorted into her
cup of tea. “Oh, pull the other one, ducks,” she said, looking round the table to merry laughter. “Edwina’s pop was a millionaire several times over before he went bankrupt and died. It was his brother who owned flying circuses, and flying schools. The brothers had a license to manufacture planes. There was some talk that both of them were diddled by their business partner. When Edwina flew it was only for pleasure, I can promise you that. Didn’t you know that our CO has only ever asked her to fly Spitfires? She didn’t dare suggest that Edwina might ferry an open-cockpit Tiger Moth, not even in the beginning when that was all they were allowed to deliver.”
Anthea leaned in; she was holding up eight fingers. “Maureen, Amy Johnson, and Edwina.” She put down three fingers. “The original eight are now five.”
“Anthea!” A young woman who had been talking with her friends at the top of the table looked at our gossipy little group. It was a clear admonishment. There was an ashamed silence around the table. Embarrassed looks were exchanged. How long would it be, I wondered, before they found out about Letty’s crash? How were these things handled when a pilot did not come back to the mess at the end of her working day? Did Commander Abercrombie make an announcement, or did she let the information leak out that another pilot had gone west?
THIRTEEN
I HAD EXPECTED MY NEW FRIENDS TO CRY UNCLE AND TURN IN FOR the night as soon as they had finished dinner, but they were made of sterner stuff. A few of them went off to have showers and wash their hair, calling out good night to the rest of us as they strolled up the darkened drive to their digs in the Didcote church hall.
Someone tuned the radio in to a Glenn Miller concert at the Bedford Corn Exchange. “Some lucky girl is dancing to ‘Kalamazoo’ right now, in the arms of her dreamy American GI,” said the girl with the strawberry-blond hair, whose name, it turned out, was Mavis. She closed her eyes and swayed in time to the music, her left shoulder lifted as if she were in someone’s arms. “Doesn’t seem fair when most girls don’t know how to jitterbug properly. Come on, Dolly, I’ll show you the steps. My boyfriend taught me—he’s from Boston.” The music filled the air with the clout of excitement only an American dance band could produce to bring back life into the tired feet of working girls, and we turned our chairs around to watch the dancing.
“You play darts?” Anthea was still sitting next to me. “Never played? Where on earth have you been? Come on, we’ll teach you.” She jumped up and walked over to a dartboard in the far corner. “Anyone for a game?” And with the energy of a woman who is determined to have a good time, Anthea put two teams together to play darts.
I’ve never been much good at pub games, or games of any kind, but as I waited my turn I treated my three teammates to half a bitter. It was the least I could do for them: with me on their side they had no idea how severely trounced they were going to be this evening.
“Blimey, love, you’ve gotter do better than that.” The lanky cockney pulled my darts out of the wood surrounding the dartboard and gazed with horror at their points. “How much have you had to drink?”
“Leave her alone; she’s all right,” called out Anthea. “She’s one of us.”
“Doesn’t sound like one of us. Sounds like that bloody stuck-up Lady Betty Arskiss.” The lanky one aimed and peppered the board with high scores. “Bumped into her in Didcote the day before we left for White Waltham—before your bunch came down here to film. She was doing some shopping, and she pretended she didn’t know who I was.” She lifted her beer to me. “Cheers, love,” she said by way of thanks.
The patrician Betty shopping in Didcote? What on earth would she want to buy there? Shampoo? There wasn’t even a decent chemist shop. I could hear Ilona stirring and beat her to the punch.
“Shopping for what?” I asked before I could stop myself. “There’s only a grocer and a butcher there, and the pub, of course.”
“Oh, she wasn’t in the pub, was she, love? Nah, she’s just popped in to buy herself a galvanized iron corset!” This produced a shriek of derision among the girls from East London.
Anthea whispered, “Just ignore them,” but I was too busy leaping out of my skin. Bingo, sweetie. What did Grable buy in an ironmongery? Could it possibly be rat poison? Ilona’s voice purred in my head.
* * *
* * *
I WAS A ragged wreck the next morning. My head hurt and my mouth was as parched as a desert.
“Hangover?” Griff appeared looking as fresh as a meadow flower in spring as I finished off my breakfast in the inn’s dining room: cardboard toast with margarine and dishwater tea. “I might have known if you hung out with that crowd, you’d feel like hell today. Come on, a quick spin in the country with the top down will blow away your morning blues.”
“I don’t have the time, I really don’t.”
He led me out into the bright morning sun. “Plenty of time, plenty of time. I’ll drive you back to London early Monday morning. Come on, hop in. Look at Bess—she wants a spin in Uncle Griff’s car, don’t you, darlin’?”
Bess was already sitting front and center in her jump seat: ears up, eyes shining, and her little bob of a tail working away.
“Where are we off to?”
“Elton, to see a man about a plane. Or at least a plane crash. You thought I was just loafing about with a pint in my hand last night, didn’t you? Well, I wasn’t. I put in a call to Mr. Mackenzie of Elton Farm, and he has agreed to see us. We can ask him all the questions you like, and when we are done with him, there’s a nice old senior citizen at Elton Home Guard who can’t wait to make another report: official or otherwise.”
Britain’s Home Guard is made up of sprightly sixty- and seventy-year-old men who get together every morning and play at soldiers. Up until just a few months ago they patrolled with cricket bats, shotguns if they had them, or a nice hefty golf club. Today they are armed with army-issue rifles and Sten guns. “I know everyone laughs at the Home Guard,” I said a bit defensively. “But they were all we had if the Germans had invaded during 1940 and ’41.”
“I certainly don’t laugh about them. I am completely in awe of your grandad. He commands a tight unit and is a ferocious tactician. I wouldn’t want to bump into him on a dark night as I was walking away from my German parachute.”
The sun poured down on us as the little car shot along narrow winding lanes in the sheer beauty of early autumn. And when we weren’t going so fast that he couldn’t hear me, I shouted out my conversation with the other Attagirls last night.
“Aha!” he said as I described their jitterbugging and darts matches. “Just as I expected. Of course, there are the greater Attas and the lesser variety; after all, this is England.”
Griff loves to remind me of what he considers to be our extraordinarily rigid class system. Lesser and greater? Now he was classifying the Attagirls like birds.
“Oh, no, that’s far too extreme: the girls I met last night came from a far wider cross section of the populace than that. And why do you think the British are the only ones with strong class divisions? You can’t tell me that America doesn’t have some sort of system of differentiating those who lead easier, richer lives and enjoy more privilege than others.”
“There is the opportunity in America to make a better life, though. To dream big and know you can achieve.”
I harrumphed. There were few things we disagreed on, but the disparity between the British workingman and the landowner was one of them. “And there is here too. Just look at all those English arms manufacturers’ daughters marrying into the aristocracy after the last war. And all the black marketeers who made a fortune out of it too, and then became ultra-respectable afterward, while the poor old landowners scraped together money for death duties!”
“It’s not the same. My grandfather could never have owned land in Ireland, but he owns thousands of acres in California.”
I did not say that the American West was par
t of a well-organized land grab, but I did have to set him straight about the Attas.
“It’s not just greater and lesser Attas, Griff. Take Anthea Smalley, for example. She is probably what we would call a middle Atta, if you want to be accurate about these things. Her father is a doctor, her mother a nurse. She told me that at the beginning of the war, the only Attas were the ones from the monied and upper classes, unlike now, where the ATA train their pilots.”
He nodded at me, his eyes wide, as if he were making a salient point. “When you say ‘monied,’ does that include the aristocracy?”
“I suppose I might include the nouveau riche.”
“And when you say ‘upper,’ are you referring to the landowning classes or the aristocracy?”
“Both. I think Anthea was referring to people who before the war had the time, the leisure, and the money to fly.”
He slapped his knee as if he had caught me. “Right! Until there was a war the only people who owned small planes were those that could afford them. That’s why the greater Attas keep to themselves, and the lesser ones all went to a government flying school and know their place. Wonder how things will be after we win this war? Do you think the lesser Attas will go back to scrubbing floors and being ladies’ maids?”
“The pilots I talked to last night who trained at the Central Flying School come from all walks of life. Most of them are second officers, not as senior as our original Attas only because they have just joined.”
