by Milly Adams
He told of the phone calls the ‘pirates’ had scripted when Adam had still not been able to speak his heart, of Adam’s suspicion of Eric, whom he thought the better man, until finally they had received orders to head for Portsmouth, and even Cobham, the skipper, had said, ‘If we had bunting, we would be flying it, so don’t muck it up this time, or Lord knows what we’ll do with you.’
Bryony lay in bed, feeling his arms around her as they danced, kissing him farewell at her bedroom door, wishing that, for once, the house was not full of children, for how could they spend time alone while Cissie and the other three lay in their beds above them?
She remembered he had held her so tight in her doorway that she had wished they need never be apart again. They had made promises to be careful, to live, to meet when they could. He had left, riding pillion behind Geordie at five in the morning, after three hours’ kip. As the motorbike skidded down the frost-rimed drive, Adam had turned and waved, his face alive with joy.
He had telephoned on his arrival in Portsmouth, just before embarkation, to wish her well, to make her promise to take no risks, to swear that on their next mutual leave, even if it was only two days, they would use the winter weather to fetch Hannah. It would clear the decks, he said, and added that Eric had sworn that the Sunflower would eat up the nautical miles and that he would also come in order to stay with the Sunflower, at anchor, while they rowed to the cove.
Her love knew no bounds.
The girls cycled on Mrs Bates’s bicycles to the aerodrome. The other two were also experienced pilots, but nonetheless they were put through their paces day after day, extracting themselves from a spin, exploring the mysteries of meteorology, and how pressure in the Arctic could transform the sky in Britain from blue equanimity to a dark tantrum, and of the counterpressure that would restore equilibrium.
‘Sounds like someone’s mum,’ Bryony murmured.
The instructor smiled. ‘Indeed.’
They tapped out Morse code, but quite why they never knew. The stars became signposts to safety, rather than merely things of beauty. The sun and moon followed a logical sequence and Bryony thought of the woman on the train who had sung ‘By the light of the silvery moon’.
He, her beloved, would be under the same sky, navigating by the stars, checking the position of the sun and moon. She had thought she had known all about him, but no, she realised she would never know all. But at least they were gaining similar skills.
The trainees showed their ability to make tight, or loose and whatever you like turns, freezing in the open Tiger Moth cockpits, basting their faces with goose grease in the mornings and evenings to minimise the dryness. They were sent on cross-country flights, following maps torn from school atlases, and taking fixes from the contours of the countryside, always returning safely, even through, or over, weather that descended as though at the click of a switch. It always made Bryony think of the Arctic misbehaving like a naughty child and sending the consequences their way.
On the last cross-country, as she followed the contours of the Cotswold hills, Cissie’s plasticine came off, nudging her palm inside her gauntlet. Once back at Mrs Bates’s she placed it on cotton wool, inside a matchbox, and never flew without it in her pocket.
Towards the end of the six weeks they were to train to fly Harvards, it was announced in the last of their briefing sessions in the classroom. The Harvard was a single-engine trainer, which they knew they would like because of the covered cockpit. The instructor said, however, with the familiar touch of sadism that the women felt lurked beneath his surface, that he preferred the Tiger Moth, ‘Because it needs a positive and sure hand and weeds out the inept.’
‘Kills them, you mean,’ Bryony muttered.
He looked past Trixie, Joyce, Barbara and Gloria, the other girls who had survived the rigours of the training, and the men who were part of the contingent. ‘Ah, yes, you again, Cadet Miller, so, into the Harvard, if you will. Let’s see you put it through its paces.’ He paused. ‘No, on second thoughts, into the Tiger Moth with you, Cadet Miller, just so that I am totally convinced that you are not inept. I feel it’s suitably freezing and we’ll have a series of tight turns, then gain height, fall into a spin, get yourself out, and land.’
‘I did that three weeks ago, sir.’
‘And now you’ll do it again.’
She made her way to the Tiger, did the preflight checks, climbed into the cockpit, dragging on her helmet, taking out the pot of cream from her pocket, and lathering her face.
The instructor bellowed, ‘What in God’s name are you doing?’
‘Goose grease. I know you didn’t mention it in your list of instructions, but I am on the way to looking like a wrinkled walnut, and if I forget, no one will want to kiss me.’ She knew that would shut him up. It did, but the mechanic laughed as he swung the propeller, and said, ‘That’ll teach him, but he’s one of the best, Bee.’
She knew he was, and that he was determined he would give the pupils on his watch their best chance of survival. She stopped at right angles to the take-off path, completed the cockpit drill, checked the sky, the runway, left and right. She turned into the wind, opened the throttle, easing the control column forward to lift the tail. She climbed gently, loving the solitude, determined to bring Cissie into this world one day, knowing the girl’s heart would soar as hers did. Who knew, perhaps she would become a pilot for Adam and Eve’s Apple. She laughed out loud, climbing, always climbing, looking for bombers because you never knew, looking for other trainers, because you never knew.
She spun, flew out of it, did all that he who must be obeyed had demanded, and before landing, she buzzed the runway. The instructor was the only one who didn’t duck. He would make her pay for it, but it was worth it.
That evening, her punishment was to buy a round in the pub for all the trainees, and for the instructor, who had a beer and a chaser. The chaser was brought forth by the publican as though it was gold dust, which in these days of rationing it probably was. Barbara, Trixie, Joyce and Bryony shared a table. As Barbara tutted at the rings of beer on the table, Trixie said, ‘Tiger Moths are as cold as Hades.’
‘Wrong geographical area,’ Joyce said, in her dry voice. ‘But at least it’s hot down there. I vote we take a picnic and head down for a while, shall we?’
Barbara threw her arm around Joyce. ‘Let’s wait for summer. I’m not ready to choose between heaven and hell quite yet awhile and, besides, I haven’t the energy to be naughty enough to earn Hades.’
The instructor came up behind Bryony and said quietly, ‘No one talks about death in my hearing, because I forbid all accidents, all errors, all mechanical failures. Is that quite clear?’ He moved back to his group of Ancient and Tattered Airmen which tonight included Eddie, who raised his tankard to Bryony. Cards tonight at Mrs Bates’s, he mouthed. She nodded, glancing at the blackboard tucked in the corner near the fireplace. On it was a list of names. RAF and ATA pilots who would never go home. There were three new names written in glistening white chalk on the black of the board. Yes, she thought, it was quite clear.
In two days they had qualified to fly Class 1 aircraft, which meant that the single-engine trainers, Magisters, Harvards and the old warhorse, the Tiger Moth, were to be their world, until they were ready for their Class 2 training. The next day they took the train into London, where Austin Reed measured them for their uniforms. While the others returned to their billet to sleep, Bryony took the Tube through a battered and bruised London, towards the East End. She kept Wendy’s address in her hand, following the A–Z map.
She found the flat in a street of converted terraced houses. One end had been bombed, but not Number 6. She followed a man up the steps. He knocked. The door was opened by a slim woman smoking a Woodbine. He said, ‘I’m here for Sandra.’
She nodded him in, then stared at Bryony, who said, ‘I’m Celia’s foster mother. I thought perhaps I would take her sister Wendy out for tea to bring her up to date. I didn’t know if I could speak—’
The woman raised her hand. ‘She’s working. You can find her at the end of the street, on the corner. She won’t have time for tea.’
Bryony tried to smile, but failed. ‘Thank you.’
She hurried down the steps and on to the street, then along to the left, looking ahead, not to either side where young women loitered, leaning back against the walls in short skirts and no coat, some picking at their nails, some just staring into space when the pedestrian was a woman. She dug her hands into her pockets. At the end of the road she saw Wendy, also leaning back against the brick wall, her skirt short, her knees red with cold. Her top was low cut, her skin mottled. Smoke from her cigarette trailed up past her face. There was a dark bruise on her neck.
Bryony approached. Around Wendy’s left ankle was a gold chain. It might just as well have been a manacle, Bryony thought. A man approached from the opposite direction. Wendy eased from the wall, ‘Hello darling,’ she said. The man brushed past. Wendy shrugged, and looked to her right, at Bryony, who smiled. ‘Thought I’d take you for tea. I’ve just been measured for my uniform.’
‘Bee.’ Wendy coloured. She threw her cigarette to the pavement, ground it to nothing, and crossed her arms. She shivered. Bryony went right up to her, hugged her, held her close, anything to keep this woman warm even if it was only for a moment.
A man in a camel overcoat, the collar turned up, a woollen scarf floating in the breeze, came out of a doorway a few houses along. He strolled to them, and stood, waiting. Wendy stiffened, and stepped free of Bryony’s arms. The man said, ‘If you want women, you go to Osmond Street. Wendy is for respectable folk.’
Bryony stared at him. ‘Timmo?’
He shot a look at Wendy and then back at Bryony, looking her up and down. ‘Says who?’
‘Says me,’ said Bryony. ‘I’m Celia’s foster mother. I’ve come to take Wendy for tea.’
Wendy was shaking her head. ‘Not going, Timmo, course I’m not.’
Timmo took Wendy by the arm and pulled her to stand by him, smiling at Bryony. ‘No, ’course she ain’t.’
Bryony wanted to barge him, stamp on him, do whatever she could to him, then rip off his coat and put it around Wendy, and drag her back to Devon. She did none of these things, because it was not her decision to make, and if she challenged this load of rubbish it was not she who would suffer, but Wendy. She dug her hands deep into her pockets, feeling the one-pound note that would have paid for a slap up tea, and more. She palmed it, and held out her hand to Wendy. ‘I’ll tell Celia you are well. I’ll see her soon, when I have leave. She’s growing. She and the other three have painted the attic corridor with palm trees and blue pools. She thinks of you every day. Shake on it, Wendy. I promise we’ll see you again soon.’
Wendy did, and smiled when she felt the one-pound note. She pocketed it while Bryony held Timmo’s gaze, saying, ‘I’m sorry to disrupt your working day, Timmo.’
She turned on her heel, and walked back down the street, and just before she turned right she snatched a look back. Timmo was wrenching the pound note from Wendy’s pocket, before cuffing her. Bryony swallowed, and pushed it out of her mind, bringing Adam in, seeing his wholesome smile, the strength of his arms, the goodness in his eyes. There was nothing she could do here. Not yet, anyway.
The next morning the cadets, now qualified, entered the common room in which ATA men and women lounged. Some played cards, some read the paper, some wrote letters. A male Second Officer was standing on his head. ‘Yoga,’ whispered Joyce.
Bryony smiled at Eddie as he sauntered across to the hatch, which was opening. She, Joyce and Trixie followed. Their chits were to take Tiger Moths to Lossiemouth from a factory near Cowley. Eddie was the taxi pilot for today. They’d get the train back from Lossiemouth.
They clambered aboard the Anson taxi, with five others. Eddie landed at Cowley. ‘Break a leg,’ he called. ‘See you this evening.’
Four of them disembarked: the terrible trio, which is what Eddie had named Bryony, Trixie and Joyce, plus Second Officer Melvin Morton who had come from South Africa to help the war effort. ‘I’m leading today, then you’ll know the way. Use these maps to follow the route as well.’
He gave them the familiar school atlas pages.
‘It’s a well-oiled machine, I don’t think, honey pie, when school atlas maps are the best they can do,’ Trixie said, heading towards the Tigers, pocketing her map.
‘Sarcasm doesn’t become you,’ Joyce muttered.
Bryony laughed, happy to be doing her job, and even happier to be flying to Scotland because, once there, she would telephone April to see if Adam had also telephoned home, which was the plan they had arrived at. She would meet him at the time and place he gave April, if only for a few minutes, or perhaps even an hour. Every second was precious, because who knew if . . .
She shut her mind to ‘if’. It’s what Eddie had advised. Tomorrow was a mystery, the next hour too, he’d told her last night. ‘You are breathing at this moment. Make it enough.’
In the cockpit she lathered her face with goose grease and they took off, one after the other, like goslings following Mother Morton, clawing for height, up into the grey. Visibility was just enough, the cold intense. Melvin was ahead, driving through the industrial haze over the Midlands and on and on northwards.
Keeping the map folded at the right section on her lap, Bryony followed their route, leaning over, seeing moorland. The gaggle closed up as the rain began, and she peered ahead and around as visibility decreased. Her fingers ached with the cold, her face was numb, Adam’s ring dug into her finger. It made him feel close, just as the matchbox did. Where was Wendy? Still standing out in the rain?
She had telephoned Cissie at Combe Lodge, and lied, saying they had met for tea and Wendy was so looking forward to the spring, when she would come. Even here in the cold and damp, Bryony’s shoulders tensed, because she had decided that somehow she would bring this woman out of the world in which she existed, away from Timmo and the streets. She forced herself to relax, and wiped her goggles free of precipitation.
The land disappeared as they flew on through cloud. She could only see Joyce’s Tiger now. Her petrol gauge was low, so it would be the same for everyone. They needed to land, but where? And were there hills ahead of them? Her mind began to race. She leaned over and looked below – nothing but mist, or was it cloud? What should she do? She stared ahead, but Trixie had gone, sucked up by the mist. She was alone, she was lost, she was going to die and never see Adam again.
She needed to think, but couldn’t.
She looked below again, and there as the mist rolled and tumbled a window opened, and moorland reappeared. She peered ahead again, searching for Trixie, then down at the window again, and decided she had to take it, whether the others had or not, as the petrol gauge had sunk to the bottom of the glass. Steadily and slowly she took the window, knowing what was below, but not ahead. She was through the window and there were the others, leading down to an RAF airfield. Her hands in her gauntlets were slippery with sweat. She landed after Trixie and, stiff with cold, taxied to the parking ramp.
She marked the airfield on the map, and clambered out, almost staggering to the mess for tea, alongside Trixie and Joyce, while Melvin whistled, his hands in his pockets, his goggles on his forehead. ‘I do so hate cloud and mist,’ he said. ‘Such a bloody nuisance. One wonders if one is going to have to wriggle down to terra firma more by touch than anything else, only to find oneself staring up the backside of a rampant stag, when one would so much rather have a civilised cuppa. Heigh-ho.’
His hands were rock steady as he drank his tea and swapped news with an RAF pilot officer. Bryony shook so much she slopped her tea into her saucer, and so did the other two. They smiled at one another. ‘Heigh-ho,’ muttered Bryony.
They took off again within seconds, it seemed, up into the mist, flying over it this time, having been assured by the pilot officer that according to the forecast it would clear any minute now. It di
d and eventually Melvin slackened speed, dropped his nose, and they landed at Lossiemouth.
She begged the use of a telephone, as did the others, letting boyfriends and Melvin’s wife know that all was well. April had not heard from Adam, but somehow it didn’t matter too much. ‘How was it, darling?’ April asked.
‘Wonderful,’ Bryony said. ‘No problems, straightforward, the heather was a lovely sight. Bit cold, perhaps.’ She mentioned nothing of her fear, her panic, her indecision. As she replaced the receiver and listened to Trixie telling her fiancé, Brian, another pilot officer in the RAF, that it had been a breeze, not a thing to worry about, she smiled tiredly. One didn’t plant distress on relatives; it would be bad enough for them if one day they received the call that told them it had not actually been a breeze, and no one was coming home again. Until then, everything was fine, no problem, easy-peasy.
Melvin was ferrying a Tiger on to another destination but would get the train down tomorrow. The girls, however, took the overnight train to London. There were no seats. They sat on the corridor floor, leaning against one another, cold, hungry and thirsty.
They arrived in London in the early morning, and took the train to Hatfield. As they queued for their chits, which decreed Scotland again, they were told that they must rely on their map reading, because Melvin had flown into a hill. Bryony nodded when told she would lead the goslings, beating aside the shock and the sadness, just as they were all doing. They left the common room, meeting no one’s eyes. Bryony used the map from the atlas. The weather was clear all the way and she wept for Melvin, and his wife, and she thought that probably the others did the same, but when they landed to refuel, again no one said a word. Just shook out their hair as they removed their helmets and sniffed the wind. ‘An easterly,’ said Trixie. ‘Lossiemouth might be clear too, you never know.’
The others nodded, their parachutes heavy as they lugged them on their shoulders. Somewhere a sheep was baaing. In the mess they watched the pilot officer strolling towards them as they sipped their cups of tea with rock-steady hands. He said, ‘Bad show, he was a good sort.’ He swung away.
