The Fleethaven Trilogy

by Margaret Dickinson

  But Isobel’s cool glance flickered over Kate without recognition and she turned her attention to the bed next to Mavis. ‘I’ll take this one. I see you two have already bagged the ones nearest the stove.’

  ‘First come, first served,’ Mavis said airily. She waved her hand towards Kate, making the introductions.

  Kate held her breath. Would Isobel remember the name, if not the young girl who had grown up?

  Isobel nodded briefly and glanced around, more concerned with her surroundings. ‘Well, I don’t like being under a window. They’re always draughty.’ She prodded the three-sectioned mattress with her fingers. ‘Ugh! I shall have to get Mummy to bring my own bed over from Lincoln. This is disgusting!’

  Kate heard Mavis’s splutter of laughter which she tried to turn into a cough, but failed.

  By contrast, Edith Brownlow was standing uncertainly in the centre of the floor. Kate noticed now, with a stab of pity, that the girl’s hair was plastered with an evil-smelling concoction, proclaiming to all that in the medical inspection, Edith must have been found to have head lice.

  Kate watched as Isobel glanced coolly towards Edith. ‘You’d better take a bed on that side of the hut, Brownlow. I don’t want to catch nits!’

  Obediently and without a word of complaint, Edith took the bed on the opposite side under the window next to Kate and began to unpack her belongings. Kate had a shrewd idea that the girl’s bent head was hiding tears. She remembered how she had felt under Isobel Cartwright’s scathing jibes.

  She went over to Edith. ‘Here, let me give you a hand,’ Kate said, smiling at the younger girl who was obviously feeling very embarrassed. ‘Our corporal’s not a bad old stick, actually,’ Kate continued, trying to open up a conversation. ‘We’re lucky – the girls in the next hut have got a battle-axe!’

  She kept up a bright chatter while helping the girl to sort out her kit. ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Nottingham.’ Edith’s voice was no more than a whisper.

  ‘Oh, that’s not too far away. You should be able to get home on leave quite easily.’

  The girl bent her head again and did not reply. Kate had the feeling that perhaps she had said the wrong thing.

  Isobel’s complaining voice rose again. ‘Where’s the bathroom?’

  Now Mavis did laugh outright. ‘Where on earth did you do your basic training – the Ritz?’

  Isobel shot her a vitriolic glance, sat down on her bed and crossed her shapely legs. She was wearing silk stockings, Kate noticed. She doubted if even their easy-going corporal would let Isobel get away with that! From her pocket, Isobel pulled out what looked like a silver cigarette case, opened it, extracted a cigarette and lit it, inhaling deeply.

  ‘Actually,’ she drawled, ‘we were in an hotel – in Harrogate. At least it was civilized. When we went to the place for our R/T training it was very basic – to say the least! But I thought this would be different. I mean, it’s a newly built station.’

  Kate couldn’t stop herself trotting out the well-worn phrase that was used as an excuse for every short-coming. ‘There is a war on, you know . . .’ She paused and then added with delicious delight, ‘Cartwright!’

  Isobel glared at her and instantly Kate regretted drawing her old enemy’s attention to her. But Mavis took up the cudgels. ‘New it may be, but I suppose they had to get the place banged up and operational as quickly as possible. The new squadron arrives tomorrow complete with Manchesters.’

  Kate’s interest sharpened. ‘Really?’ According to something her stepfather had said at Christmas, Danny could be on Manchesters. ‘Where are they coming from? What squadron is it?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Mavis laughed and added teasingly. ‘You should be able to get all the info – after all, you’re closest to the CO.’

  ‘That’s true,’ she murmured, her mind racing.

  ‘Close to the CO? How come?’ Isobel was watching her with renewed interest.

  ‘She’s the CO’s personal driver,’ Mavis told them with a tinge of reflected importance. ‘Hand-picked, she was.’

  ‘Really?’

  Kate glanced up to see Isobel watching her. On the girl’s face there was a rather calculating expression and something else too. Could there possibly be a tinge of respect, Kate thought in surprise. But then, she reminded herself, Isobel Cartwright hasn’t realized just who I am – yet!

  *

  More WAAFs arrived over the next two days and soon their hut was fully occupied, with the corporal in charge of them sleeping in the small single room just off the entrance into the hut. After a couple of days they were gradually getting used to being with girls from different parts of the country – from all walks of life.

  ‘God, that woman’s useless!’ Mavis moaned to Kate as they cut across the grass to the ablutions at six-thirty one morning.

  ‘Who – Edith?’

  ‘Edith? Oh no, not Edith. She’s very clever, actually, with the met reports. Seems it’s a special interest of hers. No, no, me Lady Isobel Cartwright! I would get lumbered with her on my shift, wouldn’t I? Thick as cloud at forty thousand feet, she is!’

  Kate felt a moment of sneaking glee to hear Isobel criticized. She bent her head forward so that Mavis should not see the smile on her lips.

  ‘Still,’ Mavis added, mellowing a little as her normal generous nature surfaced again, ‘she does try, I’ll give her that.’

  Kate’s head shot up. ‘Really?’ she said, without thinking. ‘You do surprise me. I’d have thought she’d think it all beneath her.’

  ‘How on earth she passed out as an R/T operator I don’t know. Dave’s getting fed up with her already. She comes in for some flak from him, I can tell you.’

  ‘And does she take it?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Hasn’t much choice, really, now has she?’

  ‘Suppose not.’ Kate paused a moment then asked, ‘Who’s this Dave?’ As they pushed their way into the wash-room, Kate glanced at her friend and saw Mavis’s cheeks were a faint shade of pink that had nothing to do with the walk through the frosty morning air. Teasing, she added, ‘Do I detect a romance blossoming?’

  ‘Don’t be daft, Kate,’ Mavis countered, but the pink tinge deepened. ‘I’ve only just met him.’

  ‘Mmm. I can see I shall have to keep my eye on you. Anyway, tell me more about Isobel.’

  Mavis launched into a list of mistakes and inefficiencies of which Isobel Cartwright had managed to be guilty in just two shifts. The catalogue was secretly gratifying to Kate, but she hugged the knowledge to herself. She didn’t want anyone – not even dear old Mavis – to have the slightest inkling that she knew Isobel.

  ‘How are you getting on with the CO? Is he as nice as he looks?’

  ‘Every bit,’ Kate said. Again she made no reference to the fact that she and Group Captain Philip Trent had met before, or that he owed his life to her. It was a secret best kept between the two of them. He had done her an enormous favour in arranging for her to be his driver, but neither of them wanted it common knowledge that he had singled her out for biased treatment.

  ‘Of course, he’s a bit old for you, isn’t he?’

  ‘Oh, Mavis, really!’ Kate laughed. ‘The thought never even crossed my mind . . .’ But then she remembered his intense gaze across the desk on the day of her arrival. It was more than just a ‘thank you for saving my life’ look.

  ‘How old do you reckon he is, then?’

  ‘Forty-ish, I should think.’

  ‘Is he married?’

  ‘Oh Mavis, really. I just drive him about – I don’t get to know his life history. It’s – all very official,’ she added, hesitating over the lie.

  ‘I’ll find out,’ Mavis said confidently and Kate knew she would.

  In the seclusion of the staff car, the CO’s attitude towards his driver was anything but ‘official’.

  ‘Is everything okay in the WAAF quarters? Are you quite comfortable? You can tell me, you know, Kate, quite unofficially. I could
try to find you a room in my office block, if you would prefer it.’

  She was surprised to hear herself saying. ‘Oh no, thank you. I like being with the other girls.’ Who would have believed it, she thought, that I could ever come to terms with sleeping in a dormitory of sorts again? ‘The only thing is, when you don’t need me – there’s not much for me to do.’ She smiled. ‘I can only polish and tinker with this car for so many hours in a day.’

  ‘Well, my demands on your time will no doubt get heavier when we get fully operational, which should be by next week. We shall have two squadrons of bombers here by then. But the station will be very stretched for staff and you may well find yourself being detailed to do other jobs, such as driving the crewbus taking the chaps out to the aircraft when there’s an op on. I shall be around myself then anyway.’ There was an expression of regret on his face as he met her glance in the rear-view mirror. ‘It’s the nearest I shall be able to get to flying with them.’

  Kate was not surprised; she had known instinctively that Philip would be a fully committed and caring Commanding Officer, nor was she surprised to hear he lamented the fact that his senior post had virtually grounded him.

  As she pulled up outside the Control Tower, and was about to jump out of the car to open the rear door for him, he leaned forward and touched her shoulder. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing you want?’

  ‘Well . . .’ she hesitated.

  ‘Go on,’ he prompted.

  ‘I – I don’t suppose it would be possible to get Danny posted to this station, would it?’

  She thought she heard him sigh softly. ‘Are you sure it’s what you really want, Kate? Wouldn’t it be worse for you knowing when he was flying, waiting for his plane to come back?’

  She gripped the steering-wheel, her knuckles showing white. ‘I – don’t know. All I know is that not knowing where he is, or what he’s doing, or if he’s safe, is unbearable.’

  There was a flatness to his voice as he said, ‘I’ll see what I can do, Kate. But I can’t promise anything.’

  Before she could move, he had opened the door himself and got out of the car, his long strides taking him towards the building without looking back at her.

  Kate bit her lip. Now she did not know whether to wait here for him or go back to the MT yard. Sighing, she got out of the car and followed him. It would be better to hang about waiting for him even if he didn’t want her, than to disappear and be missing when he did!

  He was in the Met Office on the ground floor talking to Edith who was standing, not exactly to attention, but rigidly upright, answering his questions with a clipped ‘Yes, sir,’ ‘No, sir’.

  Kate saw Philip’s glance flicker over her but he looked away and concentrated again upon Edith.

  Kate went up the concrete stairs to the upper floor. The walls were freshly painted, the top half cream with bottle-green at the bottom. The smell of the paint still lingered. She passed the Signals Room and peeked round the door of the Control Room. Directly in front of her sat Mavis with headphones over her short, springy brown hair. Beside her sat Isobel, leaning forward and listening intently to what Mavis was telling her. There were all sorts of instruments and telephones on the long desk in front of them and on the walls were maps and clocks and blackboards giving local weather conditions and target information. Most interesting of all to Kate was the large operations blackboard with ‘SUDDABY’ painted in white at the top followed by its call sign, then the squadron numbers and their call signs. In the middle was the word ‘RAID’ with a blank space for the name to be chalked in each time. Below that was a blank white-painted grid where a WAAF would stand to fill in all the details of each aircraft as it took off on a raid giving the pilot’s name, the take-off time and the column everyone watched anxiously: ‘RETURN’.

  To Kate’s left as she stood in the doorway, sat a man at a table. This must be the famous Dave, she thought.

  As if feeling her gaze upon him, the Flight Sergeant looked up and grinned at her.

  ‘Hello. Come to see what we get up to here?’

  ‘I’m with the CO,’ Kate said. ‘He’s downstairs.’

  Dave winked. ‘Thanks for the tip-off.’

  At the sound of Kate’s voice, Mavis looked around. ‘Hello, Kate.’ But immediately she turned back to the instruments on her desk.

  Dave nodded towards her. ‘She’s good, is our Mavis. Friend of yours, is she?’

  Kate nodded.

  At that moment, hearing footsteps on the stairs and seeing Philip appear in the passage behind her, she moved aside to allow him to come into the Control Room.

  Standing in the background, she watched while Philip spoke to each person there. As he paused behind Mavis, Kate saw Isobel look up at him, tilting her head coyly, her blue eyes shining and a smile curving her mouth. He spoke briefly to her and then bent over Mavis to talk to her. Kate was amused to see that Isobel bent forward with a semblance of keen concentration. She heard Philip’s deep laugh, Mavis’s giggle and Isobel’s tinkling, affected laughter. As Philip straightened up and turned away to speak to another WAAF on the other side of the room, Isobel glanced at Kate. There was a look of triumph on her face and then, as she continued to stare at Kate, a slight frown creased her smooth forehead as if she were trying to draw something out that was nudging at the depths of her memory, something she could not quite catch and hold on to. Kate felt the old fluttering just beneath her ribs.

  One of these days, Isobel was going to remember . . .

  At that moment they all heard the distinctive sound of the air-raid siren.

  ‘Right, everybody to the shelters,’ Philip said calmly, and waited until everyone had preceded him out of the room.

  ‘Come on, Mavis, don’t hang about,’ Dave’s voice was sharp but Kate noticed he made no move himself until Mavis had pulled off her earphones, pushed on her tin hat, grabbed her gas mask and followed Isobel who was already heading for the stairs. Kate felt Philip grasp her arm firmly and propel her out and across the grass to the trench shelter. The winter sky hummed and, fascinated, Kate looked up to see two fighter planes wheeling and diving around each other, guns spurting death.

  ‘They’ll crash into each other,’ she gasped.

  Beside her, Philip said grimly, ‘It happens.’

  As it became obvious that the warning had not been for a bombing raid on the airfield, personnel began to emerge from the shelters again to stand watching the fight taking place above them. The aircraft with the circular red, white and blue emblem of the RAF had the black plane in its sights. The enemy aircraft twisted and dived, but to no avail; the British pilot followed his every move as if an invisible cord tied them together. Suddenly, they saw black smoke trailing from the enemy plane. Forgetting where they were, Kate gripped Philip’s arm, her horrified gaze watching the aircraft screaming towards the ground, the smoke slashing the grey sky. As the plane hit the ground and burst into flames, around her there came the sound of cheering and against the clouds the Spitfire rolled victoriously.

  Philip was silent.

  ‘There – there was no parachute, was there?’

  ‘No, Kate,’ he answered quietly as they stood together watching the pall of smoke on the far side of the airfield marking wreckage. As fire engines set off across the grass towards it, the all-clear sounded.

  Around them there was laughter and congratulation, but Kate could not join in. Despite the fact that she had joined the battle and knew they must fight to the bitter end, nevertheless she could feel no elation at witnessing the death of another human being.

  The dead enemy pilot was somebody’s son, somebody’s brother.

  The thought pushed its unwelcome way into her mind; it could so easily have been Danny.

  Twenty-Four

  The following morning, Kate received a letter from Danny. It was enclosed in a letter from her stepfather. Kate tossed that aside and ripped open the letter from Danny. It was short and didn’t tell her very much, but he gave her an address she
could write to and he told her he was well and that he would be going home on leave in just over a week. Was there any chance she could get leave at the same time, he asked.

  Any chance? Oh, she’d get it if she had to beg on bended knee. Of course, although it wasn’t normal procedure, with her unusual relationship with the CO, she could ask Philip personally.

  She glanced at her watch. She was due to drive him into Lincoln in about half an hour to catch a train north.

  The expression on Philip’s face, when he got into the back of the car, was not encouraging. He seemed preoccupied and his eyes were tired. His face looked drawn and strained and the smile, which so altered his expression, was missing. He nodded briefly at her, but sat back in his seat, his shoulders rigid. In the rear mirror she saw him remove his cap and run his hand through his springy, short-cut hair. She could feel the tension in him. Kate bit her lip. She desperately wanted to ask him to approve at least a forty-eight-hour pass for her to coincide with Danny’s leave, but above the noise of the large car’s engine, it would mean shouting back to him.

  She drew into the station and jumped out to open the door for him. As he bent his head to climb out, she saluted smartly as always, but said softly, ‘Sir?’

  He straightened up and looked down at her, frowning. ‘What is it?’ he almost barked at her.

  ‘I – I was wondering how long you w-will be away, sir,’ she stammered, deciding instantly that he was in no mood to grant favours, and floundering to think of something – anything – to ask.

  ‘I’ll be gone about five days. If you can meet me off the train on Tuesday evening – it gets in about six – I’d be grateful.’

  He turned and strode away and Kate found herself saluting to no one in particular.

  ‘Damn!’ she muttered to herself as she got back into the car and wove her way out of Lincoln and back towards the station.

  ‘Oh, I can’t grant you leave. There’s no knowing this far ahead what “Sir” will be doing. You took the job as his driver,’ the WAAF officer said sarcastically. ‘It’s a cushy number, Hilton, so you take the rough with the smooth. You knew you would have to be on call virtually all the time. You’ll have to apply through the usual channels.’