by Shirley Mann
Bobby put her hand on the marble angel in front of her. She was struggling with this new feeling of vulnerability.
‘You see, I’ve never allowed myself to feel anything, not really. I have to achieve – all the time – I have to be the best, the bravest, the most capable, because to show emotion would somehow be weak.’
And then, as if in defiance of that statement, she felt a tear on her cheek followed by the warmth of Michel’s hand taking hers. It was a moment that gave her companionship like nothing had ever done since ‘Boy’ had left her life. She leaned against him and for a moment the two auburn heads were intertwined.
Chapter 12
As ever, Bobby’s schedule meant she had to push all the drama of the weekend behind her as the RAF began bombarding Berlin and aircraft were needing to be replaced at a rapid rate. It left her little time to mull over events while she raced up and down the country, delivering aircraft after aircraft to where anxious RAF pilots were waiting to take off into battle. After one particularly long trip to Staffordshire, Yorkshire and East Anglia, Bobby arrived back at Hamble just before dark to cycle in the pitch black back to her digs with Colonel and Mrs Mason. Without lights, Bobby always waited for about ten minutes before she pedalled off at a fast rate to allow her eyes to adjust. She normally paused on the front drive to appreciate her good luck in being placed somewhere so comfortable but tonight she was so tired, she just raced straight into the kitchen to ask Mrs Hampson for a Spam sandwich for supper and then went directly up to bed. Before she snuggled down, she read a letter from her aunt telling her that Michel was slowly building up his strength but was hardly speaking. She added that some officials had been visiting Michel and bombarding him with questions. Bobby felt a deep unease and rubbing her tired eyes, she made herself write a reply asking for more details and then scribbled off a quick letter to Harriet finally remembering to tell her about the chance reunion with Gus Prince. Bobby knew how Harriet would savour that particular piece of information and could not wait to meet her friend again to have a proper gossip about the popular young boy who had turned into such an attractive pilot. Then she pulled the covers over herself, grateful for the silk eiderdown rather than the sheet and rough blanket that WAAF had to suffer. She went down further in the bed in an effort to block out the snoring she could hear from Sally next door. The Spam churned around Bobby’s stomach and she found it hard to sleep, tossing and turning for what seemed like hours, so much so that she was surprised to be shaken awake in the morning by Sally.
‘Come on, sleepyhead. You’ll be late.’
‘I didn’t sleep,’ Bobby replied, blinking and trying to erase the visions of her shrunken father and her over-excited mother that had plagued her dreams.
‘Well, you took some waking so you must have got some shut-eye,’ was the unsympathetic response.
Both girls washed and dressed speedily and ate a quick breakfast before grabbing their overnight bags to cycle to the airfield operations room in time for nine o’clock. The late winter starts were a welcome relief on cold, frosty mornings but they did put the pilots under a great deal of pressure to get their deliveries done before dark. Bobby preferred summer timetables when they were up and running by six.
She scanned her ‘chits’ – a Hurricane to White Waltham, a Harvard to Worthy Down and then – she looked again to check . . . yes, her heart lurched – a Spitfire to Colerne.
Oh, why today? she thought. I’ve been waiting for this moment for a year and now, when I have so much to think about, I finally get a Spitfire. It’s almost not fair.
She completed the first two flights, going through the motions automatically, but when she arrived at Worthy Down she felt her knees going weak.
She walked onto the airfield trying to look more confident than she felt. She was clutching her blue Ferry Pilots Notes and her fingers were white from holding them so tightly.
She tried to clear her head of the drama from the weekend.
You have to concentrate, you have to concentrate, she told herself fiercely and then she saw it – a shiny new Spitfire with an engineer’s legs visible under the wings.
This is what being in love must be like, she thought, her heart pounding.
She walked past a couple of stunned ground crew emerging from the aircraft next to the Spitfire. They stood watching her, wiping their greasy hands on rags.
The rest of the engineer’s body emerged. ‘They said it was a girl pilot,’ he said, ‘you ever flown one of these before?’
Bobby hesitated; she was aware the nearby men were listening intently. They were all looking at her and she was almost tempted to lie, but eventually decided to come clean.
‘Nope, first time.’
There was a gasp from the men behind her. She firmly placed her helmet on her head and swung her parachute into the cockpit.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said to the engineer, waving her Pilots Notes.
‘Oh, great, she’s got a little book,’ one of the ground crew said. ‘That’ll do it then.’
The raucous laughter followed her as she clambered up the wing, but she gave them all as cheerful a grin as she could muster. Settling herself into the pilot’s seat with her parachute as a cushion beneath her, she looked round the aircraft. There was not much room and she looked for somewhere to put her overnight bag, eventually pushing it behind her where the radio would normally have gone and hoped the valuable chocolate in her bag would not melt. She compared the instrument panel with the diagrams in the notes – so far so good. There were about forty controls to watch, including sleek, black dials. Bobby reached up and pulled the canopy over her head. She took off her helmet for a moment and shook her auburn hair out. She caught sight of the image in the Perspex above her and said to the reflection: ‘’Bet you never thought you’d be flown by a girl. To be honest, I never dreamed I’d be here either, but I’ll have you know, this is what I was born for.’ The reflection grinned back at her. She replaced the helmet.
Brakes on? Fuel on? She focused, remembering her training.
She gave a ‘thumbs up’ signal to the ground mechanic but she was not sure he had seen her. ‘Ready,’ she called through the screen but her voice broke into a hoarse whisper so she shouted again, with more confidence.
‘Ready!’ She tasted the fumes and got the familiar knot in her stomach that always accompanied the first throaty roar of an engine and oh, the Merlin sounded magnificent. She felt the power surge through her, waved to the ground crew and then she was taxiing towards the runway.
She opened up the throttle and taxied from side to side to enable her to see over the long engine cowling and then felt a kick in her back as the aircraft roared into flight.
Oops, it’s much more responsive than other planes, she thought, easing the control column forward to reduce the climb rate and increase speed. She selected the undercarriage up option and experienced a liberation she had never felt before. It was as if the Spitfire was delighted to be freed into the air at last and was playing with her. It was like flying a butterfly, it was so light and, she realised, able to turn on a sixpence.
‘Let’s remember who’s boss,’ she scolded. The airspeed indicator showed 150mph – this was no sluggish Walrus. Once in the air, Bobby looked out at the landmarks beneath. She wondered if anyone was looking up towards the small aeroplane in the sky. How surprised they would be to know it was a girl at the controls.
‘Let’s see what you can do,’ she said out loud and tested out some stalls, tried out the flaps again and the landing gear. She did not want to forget to drop the undercarriage and pancake on the runway at Colerne in front of everyone. She tried out some of the controls to see what the aircraft was capable of but one thing she never wanted to have to touch, she thought with a shudder, was the metal crow-bar on the left side of her seat. It was there to help her open the canopy in an emergency.
She felt an enormous responsibility to get everything right on behalf of female ATA pilots who were determined to prov
e to a male-dominated, sceptical world that women were as capable as men but there were accidents, including her heroine, Amy Johnson, who had bailed out into the sea in bad weather while delivering an Airspeed Oxford. She had never been seen again. Some of her own friends had also been killed – girls and men. War was taking aircrew, but pilot error, weather and aircraft malfunction were also taking ATA friends she had shared cigarettes, jokes and a drink with. Without radar or a radio, she was completely alone up there and the thought made her sit up straight, straining with concentration.
‘I’m going to have to go home soon to sort all this mess out,’ she told the skies around her, ‘I can’t die now. Who else would deal with it?’
With that in mind, and the reputation of women pilots at stake, Bobby’s concentration was complete for the journey to Colerne.
She checked her altimeter – 1,800 feet and not long to landing. She checked the view below her. Yes, there was the landing strip. She thought back to the Ferry Pilots Notes and remembered that the wheels unfolded inwards, unlike the Hurricane’s that unfolded outwards and descended to 800 feet, slowing her speed to prepare for the approach. She selected the landing gear down option and then the grass sped beneath her and gradually, she touched down. She checked her radiator temperature gauge with satisfaction – 110 degrees.
The landing checks took her longer than usual, mainly because she did not want to get out of this perfect piece of machinery. All her worries about Michel and her family had seemed to evaporate with the clouds when she was flying. Eventually, she reluctantly climbed down.
An RAF mechanic had marshalled her in and he moved the chocks into place without looking up.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
He reeled up at the female voice, banging his head on the undercarriage to see a woman pilot shaking out her curls in front of him. He rubbed his sore head.
‘Bloody hell, oh, sorry miss, I was just thinking what a great landing that was – and it turns out to be a girl!’
Because he was smiling in admiration, Bobby added, ‘That was my first Spitfire.’
‘Well, you could certainly teach some of the male pilots a thing or two, good on yer, girl.’
Bobby glowed with pride and walked towards the control tower to sign off and get transport back to the station.
‘Bobby, Bobby Hollis.’ A call from behind her pulled her up sharply. It was Gus Prince, on his way out to a waiting aircraft.
‘We do keep meeting in the oddest of places.’
Bobby was surprised by how pleased she was to see his handsome face grinning at her. It occurred to her that Sally, with her insistence that she looked up from her Little Blue Book occasionally to notice men, may have opened a Pandora’s Box in Bobby’s life. She was not sure how she felt about that – especially if it meant losing control.
Gus, however, was delighted. Bobby Hollis had been in his thoughts far too much since they had bumped into each other in Scotland and then there was that really strange business in France he had wanted to ask her about.
‘How’s the family?’ he went on, at a loss to say anything meaningful.
A cloud came over Bobby’s face. ‘It’s a bit complicated. Anyway, what are you doing here?’
‘Just helping out with training some sprogs,’ he pointed with his thumb at the impossibly young men standing by some Hurricanes.
‘Come on, sir,’ said one of them. ‘We need to get these circuits and bumps done. You promised us a pint tonight if we don’t do a pancake landing.’
‘Coming,’ Gus shouted back.
He turned to face Bobby again.
‘We need to catch up.’ He leaned forward and whispered, ‘I need to talk to you. I brought a French chap back from a pretty awful mission a while ago. He asked me where your father lived. It was all really odd.’
‘Sir!’ a ground crew engineer was calling him over.
‘Gotta go, new crews – they need take off and landing practice.’ Gus kissed Bobby on the cheek, aware that everyone on the runway was staring in admiration at this pilot who knew one of the ‘Attagirls’.
Bobby called after him. ‘I’m at Hamble, get in touch . . . asap . . . I need to know more!’
Chapter 13
The days passed and Bobby had heard nothing from Gus and now fog was preventing them all from flying. She was curled up in the armchair in the corner of the restroom assigned to the women ATA pilots at Hamble but had read the same paragraph of her book twice now. In front of her, she had a letter from Harriet, which demanded more information on both meetings with Gus before she went on to enthuse about her current boyfriend, Gerry. She then spent the next page telling Bobby off for courting trouble by wandering into strange hotels on her own adding that, really, she should take more care. Bobby smiled at the admonishing tone of the letter and then looked out of the window for the umpteenth time to peer towards the buildings opposite, but the visibility was so bad, all she could see were mists swirling towards the dark shadows of their gable ends. She put her book down and glanced around the now familiar room. It had a mix of upright chairs and armchairs, a few tables and a couple of vases filled with snowdrops, shedding some brightness into the dull day. Patsy was full of cold but had spread out a pillowcase on the floor and was bent over it, with pins in her mouth, marking out the seam points. She was carefully making a blouse out of the material and had already unpicked some lace from a nightie to put around the collar. Sally was sitting at one of the tables, putting her makeup on as usual.
‘I’m starving, when’s dinner?’ Patsy said, sniffling. She moaned constantly about being hungry and always regaled the girls with stories of her mother’s Lancashire hotpot. ‘How come I never get a fever? They say you’re supposed to not be hungry when you have a fever? I only ever get colds, and they make me hungrier than ever.’
She coughed over her pillowcase. ‘I’m never flying a Moth again, they’re so cold. I feel so ill. Why can’t they put canopies on them?’
They all nodded in sympathy. The winds up in the sky were penetrating and no matter how many layers they wore under their uniforms, everyone hated flying the open-topped Tiger Moth that was normally flown at no more than sixty miles per hour, meaning that the cold journeys took longer than in other aircraft.
This was the third day that the weather had halted all deliveries and the girls were bored.
Bobby found the inactivity made her brain whirr. She was cross she had not heard from Gus and her letters from Aunt Agnes were perfunctory and minimalist in their information. Bobby hardly knew what was going on. She could not fathom how Gus had become involved and she was unable to find out any more information or to exert any influence over the next steps and she hated it. All she knew was that Michel was very weak and not talking very much. Her father spent all his time in the study and the only one who had found a new lease of life was her mother, taking charge of looking after Michel with more purpose than anyone had seen for years. Bobby huffed with frustration.
‘I know I should be pleased to be in this warm room, but I am so fed up with not doing anything,’ Bobby said. ‘I wish they’d let us go against the Germans – I’d love to fight.’
‘Oh, I’m quite happy doing deliveries,’ Patsy replied, talking through the side of her mouth since it was holding two pins. She took the pins out so she could talk more easily. ‘Think of those Russian women flying in combat against the Luftwaffe, they are going down like ninepins, and it’s freezing up there . . . they only have to touch the side of their cockpits and their skin burns off. That’s what you call real cold, I suppose.’ She sniffed.
There was a knock at the door and an orderly came in carrying a teleprinter message. They all looked up expectantly, but the message was for Bobby.
Party at officers’ mess, Gosport, tonight. Bring friends. Gus.
She felt a mixture of relief that the mystery she had been pondering might finally be resolved and irritation that Gus just assumed that she would be available.
‘There’s a party tonight in Gosport. Anyone want to go?’ she announced to the room.
That news galvanised them all into action. Sally said she knew someone who would come and pick them up, Patsy reached for the aspirin, her cold suddenly miraculously improved and then started to pack up her sewing. Bobby decided to file her nails after all. Daphne, who had been absorbed in cutting out a peppermint cream recipe from the newspaper, suddenly looked up, her eyes bright with excitement. Unlike other services, the ATA girls were allowed to wear their own clothes when off duty and they eagerly chatted about how they were going to make the most of the occasion.
‘Well, this blouse won’t be ready,’ Patsy said, holding up her morning’s work that still looked remarkably like a pillowcase. ‘I’ll have to wear my old one, which is almost threadbare, and I suppose I could wear that blue skirt.’
‘I used to have a lovely one with pleats in,’ Daphne put in. ‘Do you remember when we were allowed pleats and men had turn-ups on their trousers?’
‘Nope,’ Sally said with a laugh. ‘Can’t remember that; it was in another lifetime when we had yards and yards of material to waste.’ She grabbed the pillowcase. ‘Just think Patsy, if we all lived on cabbage for a week like they want us to, this would make blouses for all of us.’
Patsy giggled and helped herself to another carrot biscuit from the table.
*
Bobby and Sally went back to their digs to get ready. The huge rooms were freezing cold, but there was often a little fire in the drawing room, where every evening the girls were invited to join their hosts in a small glass of homemade elderberry wine. Colonel and Mrs Mason were delighted to have chatter in the house once again and fussed over the girls like long-lost daughters. Mrs Mason, in particular, loved the novelty of having girls in the house and was always offering to help them with their hair or suggesting lending them one of her scarves or a handbag to go with their outfits. Sally and Bobby’s rooms both showed signs of their previous masculine inhabitants through the sparse and functional furnishings. There was a picture of the Masons’ two boys on Sally’s dressing table and she had already suggested to Mrs Mason that the particularly good-looking elder son, a high-ranking naval officer, should write to her. The rooms’ huge windows normally looked out over the garden but today, the fog hung low on the horizon. Unlike Sally, Bobby had not bothered to put her feminine stamp on her room, and she delighted in its space and sparseness. There was a small bedside cupboard and two shelves above the bed. On them were books about the Boer War, the Napoleonic Wars and naval ships but, once Bobby had squeezed them along, there was just enough room for her aviation books. On the other side of the room, there was a wooden chest of drawers that she could use for her clothes. The one small mirror on the bedside cupboard just about allowed her to see to do her hair and pinch her cheeks to put some colour in them.
