by Janet Dailey
“What’s your name?” Helen Shaw, a doe-eyed woman with a set of dimples carved in her cheeks, asked the question.
“Van Valkenburg. Eden van Valkenburg.” The self-importance was evident.
“Funny.” The woman looked around the table. “I don’t see your name anywhere.” The others in her group laughed to themselves.
A tremor of anger stiffened Eden. “Very funny indeed,” she retorted. “This happens to be our table. We have always sat here in this corner.”
“I guess you’ll have to find another place this morning,” Rachel stated. “Because this one is already occupied.”
Marty pushed her way to the forefront. “You wanna bet, cookie?” she threatened.
“Forget it.” Cappy laid a restraining hand on Marty’s arm.
“Why should we forget it?” Marty shook it off. “We were here first. They’re the ones who don’t belong.”
“I think you have that turned around,” Rachel coldly corrected her. “Maybe you came to Sweetwater before we did, but the Houston classes before you pioneered this whole program. We Woofteds were the guinea pigs.”
“That makes you something special, I suppose,” Marty answered mockingly.
Their dispute was attracting the attention of the other trainees in the room. Cappy could tell the Houston group would vacate the table only through force. There was no diplomatic solution to the situation.
“Come on, Marty,” she urged quietly. “You can’t afford any more demerits.” For the time being, they had to retreat.
But the battle lines were drawn. Possession of the table became the symbolic center of their dispute. Eden, Marty, Cappy, and the others regarded the Houston class as interlopers on the base, while their Houston counterparts saw themselves as heir apparents of the very first classes in the pilot training program for women.
What had begun as a personality conflict in the bay between Rachel and Marty became part of a larger rivalry. The Sweet-water half of the class assumed a proprietary attitude toward everything on the base, and the Houston half contested it.
Having Rachel in their bay made the situation more awkward. An armed truce existed; her presence was tentatively accepted. But for Marty it was a case of accepting under strong protest.
Chapter IX
THE DAY WAS glorious; sun-drenched skies stretched lazily to the flat horizons. On the ground the air was hot and dry, but at four thousand feet it was pleasantly warm. Bored with her solo practice of the requisite maneuvers, Eden decided to play a little aerial hooky and enjoy some of this afternoon sunshine.
She pushed open the canopy of her BT-13 to let in the day. In preparation, Eden trimmed the aircraft until it was practically flying itself. The skies around her were empty and blue when she unbuttoned her blouse and shrugged out of it, taking care not to bump the stick held between her knees.
The lacy brassiere supporting her breasts was one of those “nothing” creations that barely covered her rose-brown nipples. It was designed to be worn under garments with plunging necklines, but Eden had found the flimsy and scanty bra ideal since its softness never chafed and its brevity allowed more freedom of movement. It was also perfect for sun-bathing.
With her blouse neatly folded and tucked behind her, Eden leaned back and closed her eyes against the sun shining on her face. The enveloping warmth was blissfully relaxing. The pleasant heat seemed to caress her bare skin; it was so soothing and sensuous. She basked in the cockpit, unconcerned, listening to the reassuring level pitch of the engine and the steady rush of air spilling over her aircraft.
Suddenly, a roaring noise intruded. Eden opened her eyes to scan her instruments, but her side vision caught the reflection of sunlight on metal off her left wing. Another trainer was flying beside her, piloted by a grinning cadet. With a sudden shock, Eden realized he had a clear view inside the cockpit of her trainer and the lace brassiere revealed much more than it concealed.
She ducked lower, trying to make herself small, and banked the plane away from him. She had expected his pursuit, but she hadn’t counted on the additional support he picked up. Within minutes, it seemed, she was surrounded by a swarm of buzzing aircraft, all vying for a glimpse inside her cockpit.
Her usually unshakable poise was fast forsaking her. Desperate, Eden tried to hold the plane steady with her knees while she struggled with her blouse. The whipping wind kept tugging at it and defying her efforts to find the opening of the sleeves. She had to keep grabbing the stick to straighten the erratic weaving of the airplane. Suddenly, the wind tore the blouse from her hands. She tried to grab it before it went sailing over the top of the canopy but failed. She swore she could hear the surrounding pilots cheer at the sight.
Hot with embarrassment, Eden crouched low in the cockpit and swung her plane into a steep turn, making a mad dash for the “off-limits” safety of Avenger Field. As she neared her destination, one by one the pursuing aircraft peeled away.
Touchdown signaled the end of that ordeal and the start of another. With all the mechanics and instructors on the flight line, how on earth was she going to make a dignified exit from the plane when she was half naked?
Sneaking looks, Eden taxied to the hangar area and shut the plane down. When she peered cautiously out the side, she noticed a group of trainees in front of the ready room. Swallowing a big chunk of pride, she called to them. “Hey! Will one of you bring me a jacket or something?” She risked one more look to see if they had heard her, then ducked back down.
In short order, someone was climbing the wing of her trainer. As a shadow fell across her cockpit, Eden looked up with relief. Her expression froze into a kind of stiffness when she found herself looking into the almond-shaped eyes of Rachel Goldman. Any hope she’d had that this humiliating incident could be kept quiet died.
* * *
Later, in the bay after evening mess, Eden fumed at the unfairness of it. “It was bad enough that it had to be one of those damned ‘Woofteds,’ but Rachel?!” she ranted to the barely disguised but sympathetic amusement of her four baymates. “You should have seen the way she gloated when she handed me that blanket.”
“At least she gave you the blanket,” Mary Lynn pointed out.
“Come on, Eden, you have to admit there’s some humor in it.” Marty had seen the regal redhead when she crossed the flight line, swathed in the blanket as if it was some royal robe, her head held unnaturally high and her cheeks flaming. If Eden hadn’t already been the butt of all the Woofteds’ comments, Marty would have poked some fun at Eden herself.
“Oh, it’s very funny,” she returned sarcastically. “On top of everything, that blouse happened to be one of my favorites. It cost the earth, too! Now some mesquite brush is probably wearing it.”
As Rachel entered the bay, there was an instant silence. The tall, supple blonde moved into the room, a catlike gleam in her dark amethyst eyes as they swept over Eden.
“How’s the sunburn?” she queried maliciously.
“I don’t have one.” Eden pushed the sweetly voiced comment through her clenched teeth.
“Really? Your face seemed very pink at mess tonight,” Rachel replied with feline slyness. “I thought for sure it was because you had too much sun today.”
Eden found herself caught in one of those irritating moments when she wanted to make some really scathing response, but her mind deserted her. She simply couldn’t think of anything. It would come in the middle of the night, when it was too late.
A new facet was added to the instrument-flying phase of their basic training when the trainees were informed they would be flying with a “buddy” of their choice. The pairing was almost a natural selection. Mary Lynn and Marty elected to fly together while Cappy and Eden teamed up to make a unit, and Chicago paired up with Jo Ann North, a fellow trainee from the adjoining bay.
As they walked to their BT-13, Cappy thought nothing about the arrangement until she was strapped into the rear cockpit seat. Then the jitters shook her. All her instrument ti
me under the black hood had been under the supervision of her instructor. Now she would have to trust Eden to correct any mistake she might make and to keep watch for any aircraft in their immediate vicinity to avoid a midair collision. She was literally trusting Eden with her life.
After taking off, Eden flew the plane to the designated practice area. Cappy fought the flutterings of unease in her stomach when Eden volunteered to go first. While the black curtain was being pulled in place, Cappy took the controls. As soon as Eden was ready, she surrendered them to her again.
Nervously, Cappy scanned the instruments and the skies around their plane, and kept an eye on the attitude of the aircraft’s nose to the horizon while Eden practiced turns, descents, and climbs. She felt a strange urge to override the controls before Eden could unwittingly put the plane in a dangerous attitude where it might stall and spin out, but gradually, Cappy came to recognize her buddy’s competence. Instrument flying was a precise skill, requiring the utmost in concentration. A calm began to settle her raw nerves as Cappy saw that Eden could fly as well as she could.
When it came time to switch, Cappy pulled the hood over herself without any reservation. She was confident of Eden’s ability in an emergency. It was a rare experience to place her life in someone else’s hands—to rely on another to keep her safe—yet that’s exactly what she was doing. What’s more, it filled her with an elated kind of relief.
After that first flight when they tumbled out of the aircraft, they looked at each other with new eyes. “Has anybody ever told you you can fly, Hayward?” Eden remarked with a hint of amazement.
“So can you,” she replied.
A second later, they were laughing and companionably hooking an arm across each other’s shoulder as they headed back to the ready room. Cappy felt near to tears. These last weeks they had eaten together, studied together, griped together, and shared the same sleeping quarters, but nothing had forged the closeness she now felt. It was respect and admiration, coupled with a hard-won trust.
* * *
Spring storms raised havoc with the flying schedules. The trainees were forced to fly when the weather permitted in order to get their required time in the air, which meant they gave up most of their April Sundays.
In May, the base command was thrown into a turmoil by the news that General George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the United States Army, as well as General Henry “Hap” Arnold, Commanding General of the United States Army Air Forces, would be visiting Avenger Field on an inspection tour. The rumor of their impending arrival swept the barracks like a fire storm.
“I don’t understand what all the fuss is about,” Eden shrugged, unimpressed by their titles.
“The Commanding General of the Air Forces and the Chief of Staff, no less. How blasé can you get?” Marty threw her arms in the air in a show of exasperation.
“You have to talk to Eden in terms that she understands,” Cappy said, good-naturedly ribbing her friend. “You see, it’s like this, Eden. Generals expect to review the troops—and we don’t have a thing to wear.”
“What do you mean?” Eden asked cautiously.
“While the government was issuing us our battle jackets and zoot suits, they failed to include a Class A—in civilian terms, a dress uniform,” Cappy explained.
“Can you see us parading past the reviewing stand in our fatigues?” Mary Lynn laughed.
For the rest of the week, rumors abounded that frantic phone calls were being made to obtain a standard outfit for all the trainees. A short three days before the generals were to appear, the outfits, consisting of tan slacks, short-sleeved white blouses, and boat-shaped flight caps, arrived. Alterations had to be made in order to ensure proper length and fit, and with so little time left, the girls had to do it themselves. They were all in a mad rush to get it done.
Perched on her cot, Eden struggled with a needle and thread, trying to hem the legs of her tan slacks. The tip of her tongue was poked out the corner of her mouth, a study of concentration, as if facial contortions could assist the wayward needle.
“Ouch!” She jabbed herself in the thumb and quickly raised the injured finger to her mouth to suck on it.
Exasperation was showing in her expression as she studied the wound for any red dots of blood. Her baymates, all busy with their own alterations, barely gave her more than an amused grunt.
“My thumb has more holes in it than a pincushion,” Eden announced bitterly, then looked at the slacks on her lap. No more than a half-dozen stitches had been sewn. Yet, for all her painstaking care, they were irregular and uneven. In disgust, she tossed the pants aside and swung off the cot. “This is ridiculous. I have no business taking a needle and thread in my hands. I’ve never done any sewing in my life and I’m not about to start now.”
“There aren’t any maids here,” Marty reminded her dryly, struggling with her own ineptitude at anything more than the cursory sewing of a button on a blouse.
“Somebody has got to help me,” Eden insisted and looked around the room for a candidate, but all heads were bowed over their own tasks. She zeroed in on Mary Lynn, the only one of their group who had any skill with a needle. “Mary Lynn?”
“I’d do it for you but I have to finish my own.” Mary Lynn’s work entailed a major alteration of the waistline, length, and hips in order for the slacks to properly fit her petite frame.
At the hint of possibly forthcoming assistance, Eden crossed to Mary Lynn’s cot to press her appeal. “Please,” she urged. “I’ll pay you five dollars. Ten.”
“Don’t say anything, Mary Lynn,” Marty advised. “Maybe she’ll make it fifteen.”
“Fifteen, twenty—I don’t care,” Eden declared impatiently. “These pants legs practically drag the ground. I’ll stick out like a sore thumb.” The remark reminded Eden of her many-times poked thumb and she made another biting suck on it.
They all looked sympathetic to her problem and slightly amused by it, too. Then, from the last cot, an unexpected offer was made. “If you want, I’ll hem them for you.”
They had been for so long in the habit of ignoring the sixth member of their bay that when Rachel Goldman reluctantly offered to help, initially they could only stare at her. The ongoing feud between the two factions prompted Eden to question the offer before she jumped at it.
“Can you sew?” She retrieved her pants from the cot and warily approached Rachel, who was putting the finishing touches on her own slacks.
“My grandmother taught me.” With a series of dexterous flicks of the wrist, the needle flashed through the cloth. Rachel tied the thread in a knot, and bit the thread in two with her teeth. Eden was impressed with the entire process.
But her skepticism returned when Rachel, having neatly folded her slacks by the creases and laid them aside, reached for Eden’s. She held on to them. “Why are you doing this for me?” She had absolutely no reason to trust Rachel.
“For you?” The pronoun was stressed with contempt. “I personally don’t care how you look, but we march in the same squad, and I’m not going to have you drag all of us down because you look like a sad sack of shit.”
The response made perfect sense, but Eden’s mouth thinned just the same as she handed over her slacks. “They’re already marked for the proper length.”
After surrendering the pants, Eden stayed by the cot to watch, playing it safe. With her shoulders pressed against the wall and one leg bent while the other braced her, Eden folded her arms in front of her. She kept an eye on the darting needle as it stitched the thread with precision. Her own proven ineptitude gave her a greater appreciation of the skill.
“Is your grandmother a seamstress in New York?” She considered passing the information to her mother. It could be worth knowing, especially now that no more designs were coming out of occupied Paris.
“No.” The sylphlike blonde didn’t let her attention stray from her work.
“Where does she work?” Eden stubbornly persisted in the quest for information, mostly
to irritate the uncommunicative Rachel.
“Vienna.”
The answer sounded so preposterous, Eden laughed. “You’re kidding?”
The blond head lifted, and those intensely violet eyes, like pansies with black centers, focused on Eden with cold challenge. “She was the wardrobe lady for the opera company there.” She returned to her sewing.
Sobering, Eden realized that Rachel was serious. “Was?” she said with a slight frown.
“My grandmother is in one of the Nazi work camps in Poland.” Rachel didn’t look up.
The others had been listening in on the conversation. Rachel’s last remark roused Mary Lynn’s curiosity. “What’s this about work camps? I don’t remember hearing anything about them before.”
“From what I’ve read, they’re Hitler’s version of our detention camps for Japanese,” Eden replied, then belatedly turned to Rachel. “Isn’t that right?”
“Maybe they look alike,” Rachel conceded derisively. “Both have high barbed-wire fences and guards with dogs and machine guns. But the Jews who have escaped have told us they go there to die. The ones that don’t starve to death, the Nazis slaughter.”
“That’s absurd,” Marty scoffed from the other end of the room.
“Why?” Rachel was quick to challenge. “In the last two thousand years, many countries have made some kind of attempt to do away with the Jews. Why should it come as any surprise that Hitler intends to try?”
“I think you’re taking an extreme view,” Eden suggested.
“I am?” Her needle seemed to fly more swiftly in and out of the material, stabbing and surging. “What do you call the White Shirts, the Lindberghs, the Henry Fords? What about Father Coughlin and his Christian Front? Or didn’t you hear about the attacks on Jewish school children after the Irish Evacuation Day exercises in Boston just two months ago in March? Don’t you think their anti-Semitic views are extreme?”
Her impassioned words prompted Cappy to inject some calm and reason in the heated air. “Eden never meant to offend you.”
