The Paris Secret

by Natasha Lester

  Midnight approached and some of the party began to drift away.

  “My apartment is nearby,” Valentin whispered to Skye.

  She considered his invitation, but she hadn’t drunk so much champagne that she believed indulging in a meaningless physical encounter with a charming Parisian would be a balm against the threat of war. So she refused, and Rose refused a similar invitation from the man at her side, but they both offered the consolation prize of dancing to the music of Django Reinhardt at a jazz club off Rue Pigalle. There, Skye twined her arms around Valentin’s neck and he wrapped his around her waist and she let him kiss her, because sometimes it was nice to have the kind of casual intimacy that came without the prospect of heartache.

  The night turned into a perfect Parisian dawn, where rain cascaded like velvet from the sky but the sun shone through too, arcing a double rainbow over the Sacré-Coeur. Surely it was a promise of a future without warfare—except that Valentin pointed to the morning newspaper and its headline that read: Hitler Invades Poland. The rainbow fell from the sky.

  The drive to the airfield was silent. Until Rose said, “I feel as if today is a day for grand gestures.”

  “It is,” Skye agreed, and she let Rose take the front seat in the Moth while she took the rear. After they’d leveled out, Skye climbed onto the wing and proceeded to perform the stunt they’d spoken of at lunch: wing-walking.

  She saw the open and gasping mouths of Valentin and the others as Rose flew in low enough to show them that yes, Skye was walking along the wing of the plane, her cerulean scarf streaming behind her and her hair flying too. She flipped into a simple handstand—she’d always wanted to cartwheel on the wing, but even she wasn’t quite daredevil enough for that—then waved to her friends on the ground.

  They came in to land, and Valentin, who really was exceptionally charming and handsome, kissed her goodbye. Skye promised nothing in the way of correspondence—Nicholas had cured her of that.

  Back in the air, she waggled her wings at Rose and the others lined up for takeoff in their newer and faster planes, before soaring upward and away, propelled by a tailwind and laughter and possibly still a few bubbles of champagne, trying hard to forget the headline in the newspaper.

  But she could no longer ignore it once she landed at the flying club outside London where she taught cocky young men to fly in readiness to join a vastly undermanned and desperate RAF. She parked the Moth in its usual place and climbed out to find Ted, one of her pupils, waiting for her.

  “It’s over,” he said.

  “What is?” Skye asked.

  “Civilian flying. It’s banned after tomorrow. The Civil Air Guard’s being disbanded too. A declaration of war is likely any day, and everyone’s grounded, unless you’re an RAF pilot. They now own the skies.”

  Ted’s words made Skye stagger backward, as if a plane had run right through her. She closed her eyes. Everyone’s grounded, unless you’re an RAF pilot. As a woman, she could never be an RAF pilot. Which meant it really was over.

  * * *

  Two days later, determined to prove Ted wrong, Skye dressed in her most demure navy suit, hoping the dramatically puffed sleeves, nipped waist and flared peplum wouldn’t be considered too modish for an earnest pilot like herself. She walked through an anxious London, where everyone seemed to be searching the skies for signs of the war they were supposedly engaged in, but the only evidence Skye could see was the closed cinemas, the absence of children—they’d all been exiled to the countryside—and the red pillarboxes with yellow squares painted on them to detect poisonous gases.

  When she arrived at the Air Ministry, she explained her flying experience to the young man before her.

  “Join the WAAF,” he said. “Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.”

  “That sounds perfect,” Skye said. “Will I be instructing? Or flying—”

  The man interrupted. “The WAAF don’t fly. They pack parachutes and monitor aircraft movements. Or chauffeur the pilots. You’d be good at that,” he said, a suggestive glint in his eyes. “In a car,” he added, as if he needed to underscore the fact that she was bound to earth.

  “I’ve never learned to drive,” Skye said flatly.

  She visited the Air Ministry every day for a fortnight. Each day, the same man, or sometimes a different man, told her the same thing. At the end of two weeks, she came to a halt in the ministry’s foyer at the sudden and painful understanding that she would never be allowed to fly.

  Her cerulean scarf sagged from her neck. She made herself walk back to the desk. “May I have the application form for the WAAF, please?”

  The man smirked. “They urgently need typists for the typing pool.”

  Skye pictured herself stuck inside a cavernous room with a hundred other women, their typewriters clacking out the frustrations hidden behind their red-lipsticked smiles. She left London then, unwilling to type her way through a war.

  Was this the future her mother hadn’t wanted to tell her? That war would come and men would die; and Skye would too, from the inside, cobwebbing over like her grounded plane.

  * * *

  In the quiet of Cornwall, she would be able to think about what to do. Skye caught the train to Helston and the bus to Porthleven and walked up the path from the village to the cottage. It was her legacy from her mother, along with the Moth, an estrangement from Liberty and enough years in France that Skye had become as close to a Frenchwoman as one born elsewhere could possibly be. Even now the accent clung to Skye’s words.

  Atop the cliff, she stared out over the sea. It was white today, bridal, lace frill after lace frill coursing down from the horizon. The sound of a motorcar made her turn around and as soon as she realized the driver was Pauline Gower, Skye cursed herself for not having thought of her sooner. Of course Pauline would know if there was any chance at all of Skye or any other woman flying while this strange war vacillated on with hardly a bullet fired.

  Skye and Pauline had flown together during Skye’s first season in Tom Campbell Black’s Air Display. Next to Amy Johnson and perhaps Skye herself, Pauline was one of the most experienced female pilots in the country. Her father was also an MP, which meant Pauline knew everyone who mattered and, as a consequence, knew about everything that mattered. She was like Rose—a blue blood who couldn’t have cared less that Skye’s blood had no blue in it at all.

  Pauline climbed out of the car and smiled at Skye. “I expect you’re the annoying woman who won’t leave the chaps at the Air Ministry alone?”

  Skye grimaced. “Yes, that’s me.” She led Pauline to the old swing seat on the porch that looked across to France. “I’ve spent the past year at the Civil Air Guard reciting my number of hours’ flying experience to the men I was supposed to be teaching, men who refused to go up with me because I was a ‘girl.’ I didn’t let it get to me because the greater good of them learning to fly was more important. The ones who did submit to going up with me behaved as if an hour together in the cockpit gave them permission to inspect my wings at close quarters. I never complained. But I’m going to chew my tongue off very soon if I have to keep pretending to be demure and compliant.”

  “Then you mightn’t be interested in my invitation,” Pauline said. “It will certainly require demureness and compliancy.”

  “How about a drink? Then I can fortify myself into the right level of decorum.”

  Skye went inside, found one of the bottles of champagne she’d brought back with her from Paris and poured out two glasses.

  Pauline raised hers. “Bottoms up.”

  “You look too jolly,” Skye said, tucking her legs up beside her. “Surely you’re grounded too?”

  “For now. But I’m recruiting.” The sudden flash of satisfaction on the older woman’s face was like sun after a week of fog.

  “What for? Do the RAF want women wearing feathers to perform some kind of stationary aerobatics to entertain the men in their downtime?”

  “You’d suit feathers better than I,” Pa
uline said, chuckling. “No. I’ve been given permission to recruit twelve women for the Air Transport Auxiliary. It’s a civilian flying service that will take planes from factories and maintenance units to RAF bases. They don’t have enough pilots; you have no idea how many planes are being manufactured, planes that need to be moved around the country. So we’ll have a women’s division too.”

  Ted was wrong. Skye would fly. And, what’s more . . . “Does that mean I’ll get my hands on a Spitfire?” Skye said, beaming, swallowing champagne and euphoria.

  “Before you start dreaming of being the first woman to fly a Spitfire, I need you to understand that I have to do things formally. Lunch with twenty women—which is about the sum total of women in England who’ve ever flown a plane—then a test flight. Even for you,” Pauline added before Skye could protest. “Not at Central Flying School though. The RAF, in a fit of pique that this unsavory scheme has been thrust upon them, have refused to allow women to sully their elite school.”

  Skye exhaled. “Thank goodness for their pique. I have more chance if you’re the one doing the selecting. So yes, I will do a test flight. And I will be one of the twelve women chosen. I have to be.”

  * * *

  “Skye!” Rose, more sober than the last time Skye had seen her after their Parisian all-nighter, greeted her with a smile at the airfield at Whitchurch.

  Skye kissed Rose’s cheek. Her friend’s light brown hair was set in uniformly arranged curls, and her green–gray suit was respectable, and Skye suddenly felt that she hadn’t given enough thought to her own costume. She was wearing trousers for a start, along with a red sweater and her usual cerulean scarf, all of which drew too much attention. She patted her hair, which she had made an effort to curl, but it had emerged from the rollers more mane than coiffure.

  “The RAF have sent someone along to watch,” Rose whispered to Skye, pointing to an air marshal who’d just arrived.

  “Then he’ll see a show he’s not expecting,” Skye replied stoutly.

  And she believed he would. She knew most of the twenty women gathered there, at least by sight. Each had at least five hundred hours’ flying experience under her wings. It was ridiculous that the RAF wanted them to prove they knew their way around a plane.

  Then, with a jolt, Skye realized she knew the air marshal. He was an older version of the man who’d once come to the Cornwall parties and whispered in Vanessa Penrose’s ear in a manner Skye could now describe as intimate. For a moment Skye wanted to step over to him, to ask him how he knew Vanessa, to revel in the bittersweet joy of talking about her mother. But she turned away before he saw her and slipped on her helmet and goggles, which would make it impossible for him to recognize her. Because the fact that she was Vanessa Penrose’s daughter was something she should keep from the RAF. Her illegitimacy would most likely bar her from even taking the test flight.

  She moved to stand as far away from the air marshal as she could, watching Rose take off into the sky. Rose landed precisely and, yes, demurely, and Skye felt apprehension push into her stomach like a storm front. Many of the women there, like Rose, were minor aristocracy—they had even been presented at court—giving them the manners and the demeanor and the connections that Pauline needed. Marion Wilberforce was the daughter of a laird. Gabrielle Patterson was the first woman in England to have gained her instructor’s license. Margaret Fairweather had a viscount for a father and her brother was the managing director of the British Overseas Airways Corporation. And then there was Skye, with a dead mother, no legitimate father and a few air pageants in her past. Her heart performed its own stall turn, and she wondered if she’d even be able to climb up into the plane, let alone fly it.

  Luckily muscle memory took over and she performed her test flight well. But she couldn’t see why Pauline would choose her. Besides her history of wing-walking, there was her youth: she and Joan Hughes were by far the youngest at only twenty-one. And the promised twelve women had been cut back to only eight. Skye’s chances were less than fifty percent.

  She waited until the very end and then blurted out her question to Pauline. “How will you decide?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” Pauline said tiredly, and Skye could see how hard Pauline had fought to get to this point. How important it was that she make the right selection and not run the risk of proving to the RAF that their reluctance to take on women was justified.

  Skye thought quickly. She had to give Pauline the evidence that would allow her to place Skye’s advantages right beside those of a viscount’s daughter.

  “I never thought I’d see this as advantageous,” Skye began, ideas forming as she spoke, “but I have no real family anymore, as you know. When I’m in an airplane, I’m not distracted by the people I love. Worrying over fathers and brothers and husbands who could lose their lives might interfere with the single-minded concentration that makes one a good flier. I would never suffer from those distractions.”

  “War changes things, doesn’t it?” Pauline smiled gently, the first time that day her face had relaxed at all. “If there’s one thing I know about you, Skye, it’s that while you might appear to be a careless daredevil on the surface, you’ve sacrificed a mother to the sky so everything you do up there is impeccable. Trust,” she said, as if the conversation had given her clarity. “Perhaps that’s how I decide. Who can I trust up there when all is said and done?”

  * * *

  On the first of January 1940, as the war floundered on with much in the way of preparations and little in the way of battle, Skye became one of the first eight women to join the Air Transport Auxiliary—the ATA. She was made a second officer, starting at the very bottom, based out of the Hatfield airfield.

  Austin Reed in London made up their uniforms: a dashing navy-blue skirt and jacket decorated with gold bars. Or it became dashing once each woman had altered it. The tailors at Austin Reed had never outfitted women before and had been overly careful not to touch anything untoward when taking their chest and inside leg measurements. The result was trousers with elongated crotches and blouses that could have accommodated two women. Skye hoped it wasn’t a sign of what was to come.

  Women didn’t receive a billeting allowance and were required to arrange their own accommodation, unlike the men. Rose, Skye and Joan Hughes, who had perfectly appled cheeks and the dimpled adorableness of a baby, found rooms at the Stonehouse Hotel within walking distance of the airfield. This further sign that things were different depending on one’s gender didn’t especially alarm Skye, until she arrived with Rose and Joan for their first day of work.

  They stood in the doorway of their new headquarters, staring into the muddy hut that was to serve as the operations office, the mess, everything.

  “This is glamorous,” said Rose.

  “Are there enough chairs for all of us to sit down?” Skye asked.

  “No.” Pauline’s voice came from behind them. “You either have to get here early or perch on an armrest.”

  At that, Rose, Joan and Skye scooted inside and claimed one of the too-few seats, whose split cushions and uneven legs made it apparent that the women’s hut was viewed by the RAF as a garbage dump.

  For the next few days, various newspaper headlines alerted the nation that something out of the ordinary was taking place. The final straw was one that read: 8 Girls “Show” RAF. Skye winced when she saw it, knowing the RAF would be furious.

  Clever Pauline invited the press to Hatfield to introduce this set of eight “girls” to the general public, reasoning that it might be easier to win over the broader sweep of opinion first, which might then soothe the tempers of the elitist men of the RAF.

  At the press call, Skye was told to arrange herself alongside the other women around a tea table, as if finger sandwiches and sponge cake would make them more conventional. The photographers snapped pictures of the silent group, then asked for some “action.”

  The women hoisted up their chutes and ran to the planes, only to be asked to do it again
because the photographers hadn’t got quite the right shot. Decorum, Skye reminded herself, smiling grimly. But after six such sprints lugging a heavy parachute and for no good reason that Skye could see other than the photographers were incompetent, she felt her patience fading. So when Pauline asked Skye and Rose to each take a Moth up into the sky, Skye flipped the plane into a single flawless and very demure loop-the-loop in order to show the press that women didn’t need six attempts to fly an airplane properly. Upside down, she felt the joy that ordinarily swept through her when she flew, but that she hadn’t experienced since she’d seen the dilapidation of the women’s ATA headquarters.

  Rose grinned at her as they landed.

  Skye jumped down from the wing and pulled off her helmet, smiling at the sensation of the midair pirouette still swirling through her. She ran a hand through her hair, combing it into a less windblown state—as befitted newspaper photographs of serious young women doing an important job—and saw the combined blaze of a dozen flashlights. She thought nothing of it; was proud of herself for demonstrating the capableness of the ATA women—until the following day when the pictures appeared in the newspapers. Every paper who’d sent a photographer ran a shot of Skye’s plane upside down and, beside it, a picture of her, hand in hair, which was swept back becomingly off her beaming face as if she were a model posing for Vogue.

  “Oh no,” was all she could think to say when Rose showed it to her; and “Oh no,” again when Pauline called her into the office.

  The newspapers sat open on Pauline’s desk, displaying Skye’s seemingly model-like stance and her stunt, which now looked like the action of a devil-may-care woman who flung airplanes upside down one minute and simpered for the cameras the next.