I walk around to the cages and am shocked to see Portia and Rogan inside. Why are they locked up? They have to be with their nest – they won’t lay eggs in here. I pull open the cage, peering around just in case. No sign of chicks – or a nest.
Perhaps it didn’t work? Or the ravens simply abandoned it overnight. Maybe it’s too early. Spring won’t come – not truly – for another month. Did someone clear away the ravens’ nest? Not the fox, who’d have left all the sticks and bark. It must’ve been a Warder. Why?
What is wrong with me? These bloody things are haunting me and I’m trying to help them breed.
‘Yeoman Stackhouse!’
The man turns, his great cloak billowing around him. ‘Private Squire.’ He almost smiles. He knows the truth, that I am no soldier, that I am back to living at the Tower with my folks, but I don’t give a toss what he thinks.
‘Why are these birds locked up? They are meant to be out at night to protect their nest. You agreed not to lock them up, remember? They won’t breed if we take them away from it.’
‘As you can see, Private Squire, there is no nest.’
‘Who cleared it away? I saw it two nights ago and now it’s gone. On the White Tower steps.’
He looks me up and down. ‘I am not the cleaner, here, Private Squire. If you have questions about the general maintenance of the Tower, perhaps you should ask your father? I am a Yeoman Warder, and it is my responsibility to look after the crows.’
‘My father is the head curator, not some retired old soldier.’ I say the last through clenched teeth. ‘And you’re about to get some help looking after the ravens, whether you like it or not.’
His eyebrows have climbed almost sheer over his head.
‘Do not lock up the birds when they are nesting, Yeoman Stackhouse.’
The noises coming out of his mouth don’t even sound like words. Just sounds, strange choking sounds like a duck that’s swallowed a rock. I push past, leave him to his sputtering and gasping, wishing I’d had the guts to give Quarter such a farewell.
*
A plane flies over and I try to imagine being up there. One mistake on the landing and you’d bash your brains in. Don’t know how Anna does it. She always was the bravest person I’ve met. A little mad, maybe, but not scared of anything.
I am trying to teach Oliver to speak again, but nothing. ‘You are worse.’
The heavy gutters stream with melted snow. The truth is, I miss Anna. I should tell her as much, but it’s not as though I ever get to see her. I know what I’ll do. I’ll write her another letter, tell her everything – how much I miss her, how I’m sorry I made a mess of everything. How I hope when the war’s all over...
What? That you’ll get married and live in the Tower together?
It’s too mad. Anna wouldn’t go for it, and neither would I. Still, I should write to her – and actually send the letter this time. Tell her the truth.
That I do nothing.
The horror of Bethnal Green flashes back for a moment before I can fight it off. I just have to do my job and get on with it. Anna needs me to be the Ravenmaster. I have to do it for her.
*
‘Still haven’t heard a peep from her, I’m afraid.’
Why am I talking like that? I sound like Oakes, or the posh Constable. Flo doesn’t notice at any rate; she just looks up at me, her eyes wide and hurt. She came right up to Mr Thorne asking to see me. Now we’re standing at the West Gate in the near freezing wind.
‘Are you sure she’s all right?’ she asks.
‘Anna? Of course. Awful busy up at the airfield, I hear. What about you, are you at the canteen?’
‘I’m preparing for university entrance examinations,’ she corrects me. ‘University College London, I hope.’
‘What? Like studying?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘That sounds interesting.’
‘What about you? Will you go to university after the war?’
‘Me?’ I laugh. Maybe talking like Oakes really works. ‘No, ma’am. Not the schooling type, I’m afraid.’
She smiles, a slow grin. ‘Well, I think everyone’s the schooling type. I’m certain you could do it if you put your mind to it. You could study more Shakespeare.’
I shake my head. Me, go to university? Shakespeare? This is madness.
‘You want to see the birds?’ I ask, triggering another smile.
Together we head over to the roost. I can feel her walking beside me, quite close, as if we’re old friends from school.
‘So what was it like, being here through it all?’ She looks up at me, wide-eyed.
‘Tough,’ I say. ‘Anna took it all well. She’s a real trooper.’
‘How about you?’
I pause, almost miss a step. I don’t mean to, I don’t mean to say a word, but it just comes pouring out.
‘New guns were being tested, in Victoria Park. A new type of rocket gun. People had never heard the sound before. No bombs, no revenge attack. Just our own guns, being tested.’
We have both stopped walking, standing in the shadow of the White Tower. Flo is quiet, listening. I tell her; I tell her everything.
‘We were told to be quiet. The policeman and fireman and the wardens, everyone told us not to speak a word of it. Not to tell anyone what had happened.’
‘For how long?’ Flo has been away for long enough to sound truly shocked. Morale is important. The illusion of safety is what keeps us safe.
‘A while.’ For ever.
‘But people will notice,’ she protests. ‘When parents don’t come home, when kids don’t show up for school. What will they say?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I am sorry, Timothy.’
I can see the faces, pressing in, the huge gulping mouths; the abandoned shoes, the clumps of hair.
Until I feel firm arms around me I don’t even realize I am crying. My whole body wracks. My eyes run tears, my nose too, but I do nothing to stop it. I can do nothing. I can do nothing but cling to the arms around me.
7
Monday, 15 March 1943
Another washout day – a ‘scrubbed day’ they call it – though I’m not sure anyone has seen anything like this. No one will be in the skies for a day at least. British or German plane, the sky is off limits. I’m not certain I’ll be able to get back to my billet tonight. The roads will be blocked thick with snow.
As long as it snows, I won’t have to fly. I hope it snows for ever.
All morning was spent helping the ground crew shovel runways and broom planes free of snow, hunching against the icy, hissing wind. I stared up, dazed, as huge soft flakes came whirling down. We finally had to give it up for a lost cause. Not until we’d wasted the entire morning sliding around in a blizzard. I have so much studying to do.
As I stumble through the hall I exchange greetings with three other cadets by the lockers, with a stiffness that seems to come more with the uniforms than the cold.
A thousand miles better than the WAAFs at any rate.
The food at the Mess does not dispel the hunger. I need more, two or three times more. My fingers are frozen stiff enough that even holding the fork proves a challenge. I swear I can feel a swirl of cold air inside the room.
Joy got out before the storm. She’s due to bounce around from airfield to airfield running deliveries over the next three days. With the bad weather, she won’t be back for a week or more.
I wish she were here. I’m properly ashamed of my fascination with her skin, her hair – a black girl, a pilot, an American – she is all but impossible to me. And she is my only real friend in this place.
Through the windows the frozen wind booms. A pilot, finished with her meal, clears up and sees me sitting alone. There is only the slightest pause before she speaks.
‘Beer-up in the crew room – you coming?’
It is Diana Gaines, the other American pilot.
‘Ah, yes. Sure.’
‘Well, com
e on.’
I hastily chew the last of my sprouts, clear up my stuff. My joints ache. I follow the pilot to the crew room – I have so much studying to do – and I am instantly hit by blue clouds of tobacco smoke.
Everyone is here, and Diana and I join a large group around the cards table, watching two women play. On the table are pound notes. Lots of pound notes. The small pilot must notice my staring because she laughs.
‘More than a few gamblers in here,’ Diana says.
‘But, that must be – hundreds of pounds,’ I whisper.
‘Drop in the ocean to those two. Tall blonde is Barcsay, a horse-riding champion and Countess of some European place with a crazy name. One in the leopard-skin coat is Bella, a ballerina.’
I was surprised when Joy told me ATA pilots get a subsistence allowance on top of our pay. What are the living expenses for these kinds of women?
The pilots all chat away. I am used to hearing it as I walk past to the crew room, women talking and laughing, muted and loud at the same time. It seems they know each other from London flying clubs, and have an endless supply of hilarious tales from Heston or Brooklands. They lounge around, with their usual air of barely withheld disgust for everything around them. Why did I cut my hair? I feel like a silly girl.
No one talks to Diana either. The Americans are not so well liked. Their happiness and general health can’t help but remind us that they’ve not been in the war – that they’ve left us to fight Hitler and survive on rations. Well, they’re here now.
I wish Joy were here. Not that she likes the crew room any better than I do.
Westin, unsmiling as ever, suddenly enters, the lone man in a room of female pilots. I am surprised, given the contempt he seems to feel towards us. Still, he has to be better company than this lot.
‘So you come here, too?’ I instantly regret the question. Obviously he is here. ‘Do you prefer this crew room?’
‘It’s the same, isn’t it? Pilots and aircraft.’ His smile does not match his words. ‘Everyone here has successfully passed the rigorous testing required to become a pilot, haven’t they?’
Well, I wasn’t wrong about the contempt. ‘Of course.’
‘So.’
I cough. This man makes Malcolm seem like Timothy Squire. ‘Cam – can I call you Cam? Is it possible that we could run into enemy aircraft on our routes?’
I have heard Gower tell me it is; I want Westin – someone, anyone – to tell me it’s not. Even Jay said it could happen.
‘You are referring to the possibility of encountering an on-going raid?’
‘Yes. Or, I don’t know, if a plane gets on your tail?’
He gives the worst impression of a smile I’ve ever seen. ‘You think a Messerschmitt 109 is going to chase your Tiger Moth to the wrecker’s yard? It won’t happen.’
I liked him better when he said nothing. But I urge him on, with a question that has been sitting at the back of my mind, having spent too many nights watching the dogfights over the Tower. I know what’s in the sky.
‘If it does though?’
‘A 109 on your tail?’ A pause, as if he’s genuinely considering my thoughts. ‘Pray to whoever you pray to. Once they have sight, they’ll never lose it.’
Well, I did ask him. ‘But Commander Gower—’
‘She is not my Commander. If you will excuse me.’
He pauses only briefly to observe the girls at the billiards table before sweeping out of the room. The air is immediately lighter all around me.
‘British men are so charming.’ Diana appears, grimacing towards the door. Why did he bother to come at all? ‘Come on. I may be new here, but it can’t be a beer-up if you’re not drinking beer.’
It turns out Diana isn’t so bad. Her father owns a diamond mine somewhere, and she told me she first took up flying to escape her mother – as the Trainers only had two seats, and prevented chaperones from tagging along.
We drink our beer and laugh.
Fall, snow, fall, I think, staring out at the massive bank of grey clouds. Amy Johnson and the officer – their bodies were never found. Did she surface on the other bank, the officer at her side, and decide that she needed to flee? Did they leave together, to start a new life in secret?
Oh, Timothy Squire. I must write to him, explain everything that’s happened.
Diana and I play a game of darts with Tracy, a girl from Canada who everyone just calls ‘Canada’, and Margot, who came from Argentina and doesn’t speak a word of English. All sorts, as Timothy Squire would say.
I throw my dart, miss wildly. Diana laughs, but her throw is just as bad. Margot makes tsk, tsk noises. I have so much studying to do, but it is suddenly the farthest thing from my thoughts.
‘Another game?’ Diana asks, after we are soundly beaten by Margot and Canada. I nod, going to the corner to pick up my lost dart. I freeze as I suddenly become aware of the music. Something about the violin is familiar. I know this music – somehow. What is it?
Mum used to play. I would hear it, from behind the closed brown door of the study. ‘Your father was the truly gifted player,’ she would always say, quickly putting the violin back in its case. I’m never certain that I remember hearing him play – and lately I’ve wondered if this was just another of Mum’s lies about him. But, really, I know for certain that he played this piece.
Almost as soon as I recognize it, it changes and some brass band takes over.
‘That song. What was it?’
Diana clinks her empty beer glass on the table. ‘Who knows? “Screeching violin number 2”? Come on, Cooper, it’s your toss.’
Wednesday, 17 March 1943
Our flight suits are new – creaky new. Across the airfield, looking very far from new, are seven Tiger Moths. The morning sun has cleared away the last of the snow. The weather cannot put this off. My hair is still long enough to blow across my face. I tuck it away, stare straight ahead at the waiting planes.
‘All right, girls. Scramble.’
‘Scramble?’ repeats another cadet – someone obviously never enrolled in armed forces training.
‘Pick up your parachutes and run to your aeroplane!’
I squeeze on the harness, already running. The parachute is heavy – thirty pounds at least – and needs both hands to keep it still on my back, but worse are the new fur-lined boots. With each step the stiff leather bites into my heel. I run – hobbling sideways – and reach my Tiger Moth.
‘Come back!’
Panting, heaving, I drag my parachute and myself back to the starting point. Only one cadet beats me.
‘Not nearly good enough. Do it again.’
This time no one hesitates. We are off, lumbering, and the Tiger Moths seemingly at the other end of a vast grass airfield. This time two girls – including a stout girl – beat me across. By the fourth time, I am last.
‘Right, gather around, girls. Cooper, we can’t wait all day. OK, so you can run around with the parachute. Now you need to learn how to use it. If you’re four seconds late to pull the ripcord, you’ll land heavy enough to break your ankles and possibly a leg. If you’re five seconds late, there’s really no point in pulling the ripcord at all.’
*
Four seconds to escape a burning Spitfire. Four seconds to pull the parachute. This is all madness. I should return to the canteen, see if Mrs Barrett will take me back.
The ATA motto is Aetheris Avidi – eager for the air. I am not certain that I am, not any more. London is only an hour’s train ride.
In the Mess, pilots call to each other, chat about the day’s deliveries, the deliveries to come. I finish my sandwich, wonder whether Joy has an overnight flight. No, she’ll be home for dinner I am sure, or she would have told Mrs Wells. Mrs Wells always needs to know whether or not ‘we’ll be eating her out of house and home’.
Suddenly there is a call for full dress.
‘Now?’ many voices wonder.
‘Imminent.’
A parade? I think of the p
ouring rain as I run to my locker for my parade uniform. A formal inspection – but why? The ATA has senior officers, but we are not a military organization. Most of these pilots won’t have any experience with drilling. At least the lucky ones.
‘Who is it?’ voices ask excitedly.
‘Churchill?’
I smile, thinking of how he came to the Tower two years ago. So much has changed. But not people’s fears, evidently.
‘This is bad. The Germans have spies everywhere. They will know. They will come.’
In the pouring rain we all inch in to stand under the Fairchild’s wing. Joy, at the last minute, hurries from the east hangar to join our line.
‘OK, pilots.’ Gower herself walks up and down, inspecting the ranks. ‘Here’s how to make a proper salute. No, not like that. Yes, well done, Cooper,’ she adds.
I almost smile. I guess the horrors of the WAAF may finally be paying off. I see the guest of honour approaching – who is it? – a woman in a fox fur and giant hat. She is very elegant, very impressive. She comes forward, an ATA fireman holding a huge black umbrella over her head.
‘Welcome, please, Mrs Roosevelt, the First Lady of the United States.’
Instinctively, I almost turn to see Joy’s face. I am so happy she made it back for this.
‘The reluctant First Lady,’ she says, acknowledging the salutes with a wave of her hand. ‘I have no interest in being a backdrop for my husband. Nor, I imagine, do any of these fine women.’ She beams a smile at us, but for a moment she is looking directly at me. ‘So sorry for making you all stand out in the rain.’
‘That’s OK,’ I blurt out.
She smiles, a gleam – of mischief? – in her eyes. It is not until moments later that I realize I am standing dry underneath one of the wings, while the pilots to my right are drenched to the bone. I can feel the angry glances from down the line.
‘Wonderful to see all you pilots. Amelia Earhart was a dear friend of mine. The CAA in America says that women are psychologically not fitted to be pilots. It seems to me that, if women can pass the tests imposed upon men, they should have an equal opportunity for service.
What the Raven Brings Page 13
