Alden did not reply to the rhetorical question. He rose to accompany Courtney to the table to help himself as well. It would provide an opportunity for a closer inspection of the fair A.S.O. with the lovely figure; and the air of competent defensiveness... dammit.
She glanced up from the Punch she was reading, and caught his eye. She could hardly have failed: he was staring straight at her. He was too startled to turn away. Her eyes were an honest pale blue. She held his gaze for a moment, then, as she resumed her perusal of the magazine, he noticed her lips twitch momentarily. With amusement, he was sure. At the humour on a printed page or at his blatant interest in her?
He carried his cup and saucer and his plate to the vacant chair at her side and sat down. She affected not to notice.
'Sorry to interrupt, but your name isn't Helen Horsbrough, is it?'
'No.' She did not look up. She did not look amused. She did not look annoyed, either.
'Oh! My name's Derek Alden and my sister was at school with a girl called Helen Horsbrough... whom I once met… I thought you...'He stopped, rebuking himself for making so lame an approach.
She looked at him. Inscrutable was the word that came to his mind. 'Where was she at school?'
'What? Oh! With my sister.'
'So you said. But where?
'Urn... Malvern.'
'What was her name?'
'Er... Maureen.'
'You seem to go in for alliteration, rather: Helen Horsbrough... Maureen of Malvern.' Her eyes were amused now.
He felt more foolish than he could ever remember. 'Those were the right names.'
'You haven't got a sister, have you?' The look of amusement had intensified.
He felt his face become unhappily warm. 'What makes you think that?'
'It would be rather flattering if you hadn't.'
'Well, then, I haven't,' he confessed quickly.
She sighed. 'Alpha-plus for effort. I'm Elizabeth Waring... nowhere near your Helen Horsetrough, you see... and I didn't go to Malvern... I went to Cheltenham, as it happens... not so awfully far away, I suppose.'
‘Sorry. I was very heavy-handed.'
They laughed together.
'What do you do here: something highly esoteric, or are you Admin?' Alden asked.
'Code and Cypher.'
'That's esoteric enough. How many of you are there?'
'Three, on separate watches. I'm afraid we're a bit of a nuisance: we've been housed in digs off camp until the station's ready to accommodate a W.A.A.F. contingent. The Service has some rather Victorian ideas about men and women officers actually living under the same roof.'
'But it's no different from a hotel.'
'Apparently the old-stager civilian batmen would be shocked to the marrow at having to bring morning tea into a woman officer's room.'
'One would have thought they'd be queuing up to do it.'
Her eyes brightened with amusement. They were not her best feature. Her lashes were unglamorously short and her eyebrows would have benefited from being plucked. But her mouth was fetching; full and sensual. This still did not make her pretty, but Alden was wondering whether it was too soon to invite her to go out with him. He tried never to lay himself open to a snub. He was about to ask her if she would take a glass of sherry with him before dinner, when he realised that someone was standing over them. He looked up. A squadron leader pilot with the ribbons of a D.F.C. and the General Service Medal was taking a manifest interest in A.S.O. Waring.
It was too early in the war for him to have won the decoration in Coastal Command. He must have been awarded it for some exploit in a distant empire post: India, Iraq or Palestine probably. Alden experienced a natural envy; and immediately wondered if it could be jealousy.
'All set for this evening, Elizabeth?' The squadron leader smiled as he spoke. It did a lot for him. He was a good looking fellow and whether practised or artless, his charm was effortless.
'Yes, I'll be ready at six.'
'See you then.' He departed, ignoring Alden.
Well, that's thirty-three and a third per cent of the W.A.A.F. already spoken for, he told himself. Probably the other two as well. Anyway, we transients haven't much chance in competition with the station staff. 'I hope you have a pleasant evening,' he said. She gave him a smile but said nothing. 'I must go and unpack.' He rose. She still offered no comment. She was already turning the pages of Punch.
He joined Courtney and a couple of other members of his squadron. Courtney broke off their conversation to give him a look of mock sympathy. 'Hard luck, old boy.'
So I have been under observation, Alden thought irritably. 'There's always another day.' Until he spoke he had not made up his mind to try again. His statement came as a surprise to him. Odd, the sub-conscious, he thought. But there was no time for psychological contemplation. His comrades were keen to return to their interrupted discussion of the Beaufort's vagaries and they immediately involved him in it.
When he walked to the car park behind the mess to fetch a squash racquet from the boot of his Minx - someone had booked the mess court and asked him to play - he saw Elizabeth Waring's admirer drive off. The squadron leader was at the wheel of a Jaguar. Passion Wagon, he thought, Sensual Six. It was still a very attractive motor car and an expensive one for a serving officer.
He played squash with an energy and determination that left his opponent breathless; and vanquished.
His instructor was a breezy Canadian flying officer and on his first flight at the dual controls the Beaufort did nothing to alarm him. Nor did he himself appear to alarm his instructor. In the afternoon, taxiing to the runway, they watched a pilot from the other squadron, also under dual instruction, take off. The Beaufort was just airborne when there was a sudden fall in the volume of noise from its engines.
'Jee-zuss!' The Canadian exclaimed.
He had hardly uttered the second syllable when the Beaufort was in a vertical bank. A few seconds later it slammed into the ground. A sheet of flame shimmered around it. Black smoke spurted from it. The sounds of the thud and explosion of petrol vapour reached Alden.
'O.K.,' the instructor said, 'carry on. The runway's not obstructed.'
But a red Verey light burst from the Duty Pilot's black-and-white chequered caravan at the end of the runway and Alden had to wait, with sweat coursing down his chest and ribs, hoping that the plugs would not oil up or engines over-heat. After a while he was ordered back to the aircraft's dispersal pan and spent an unhappy half-hour standing around until he was given permission to continue.
His take-off was the most agonising of his life. He did not enjoy his landing, either. The wreckage had not been removed. He wished it had obstructed the runway: he would have been glad if flying were cancelled. As it was, it lay there, figuratively jeering at him, daring him to set his own duplicate of itself - imbued with all the same vices - down before it, too, snatched control away from him.
In the mess that evening, before dinner, Elizabeth was chatting to an attentive flight lieutenant over a drink. She did not appear to notice Alden. He wondered - and at once felt ashamed of his bile - how impressive a car the flight lieutenant owned. He saw them go into the dining-room together; where, when he followed twenty minutes later, she was in vivacious conversation with a group of five men of varied age and rank. Well, at least she doesn't seem to be going out with anyone this evening, he consoled himself. Con soled? he asked himself. I hardly know the girl and it seems my pride is hurt. Absurd.
There was scant room in his mind for any other preoccupation than the Beaufort. He should not, in fact, he scolded himself, be preoccupied with that. An aircraft should not hold the same place in his emotions as, say, a bull in a bull-fighter's or a formidable opponent in a boxer's. An aircraft was not an adversary, it was not an entity that had to be dominated. Or it ought not to be. It was an object to which its pilot applied his skill, nothing more. Docility was not demanded, but obedience certainly was. Learning to fly it to its limits was, properly, mere
ly a process of growing familiarity leading to mastery, without any vicious resistance. That was how it had been with every other type on which he had qualified.
The undeniable fact of the Beaufort's nasty ways could not be denied, however; even if it was more the engine than the design that was at fault. His irritation with its intractability provoked a dissatisfaction with its very name. This brought to mind The Master Of The King's Horse and the Hunt of which he was also Master, rather than an instrument of war. The name had stood for centuries as a symbol of aristocracy and refinement, courtly manners and a peaceful avocation. From what he had learned of the aeroplane manufacturer's eponymous product, so far, no qualities could be further from it. Nor should they: a military aircraft was intended to be an instrument of violence, brutality, bloodshed, destruction, death. Not the auto-inflicted deaths of its crews, however.
Aircraft manufacturers traditionally alliterated the names of their aircraft with their own. He suspected that Bristol Bruiser would be more appropriate than Beaufort for this one.
He felt all the more aggrieved because he had had an affection for his earlier aeroplanes and had come to the latest prepared to embrace it with goodwill.
Any sensible pilot always handled any aircraft with caution. That was why, despite the careful ministrations of its ground crew, one never entered the cockpit without first making an exterior check of its simplest functions: ensuring that elevators and ailerons were free to move, for example. But if one brought timidity to one's task, one had no business to be a pilot at all. And Alden could see how easy it would be to fall timid of this one. Beaufort? Bruiser? Brute might be the most appropriate.
That was a pity, because it looked like a great fighting machine. When he first set eyes on one it occurred to him that Battler would have been a congruous name for it. He still thought it looked like a fine, dogged, brave battler, and that added to his disappointment in its dangerous characteristics. It was like putting your hand out to pat a bulldog on the head and getting a bite for your friendly intentions. But it was puppies that were more likely to bite than mature dogs, and the Beaufort was still very young in squadron service. He reminded himself of this and took some encouragement from it. The world's finest air force would surely waste no time in correcting its few defects.
That was all very well, but he was not the world's finest pilot and in the meanwhile he had to live with the Beaufort; and despite it.
He flew throughout another day without a tremor, in the company of his ebullient and confidence-imbuing instructor. When he went indoors at dusk that evening he was in buoyant mood. He had come from the airfield by lorry in company with the rest of the squadron. A moment after entering the mess, he remembered that he had left a spare battery for his portable wireless set in his car. There was no hurry to get to the ante-room: there would be a crowd around the tables on which stood their tea. He went to fetch his battery.
A W.A.A.F officer was propping a bicycle against the wall at one end of the long, open, roofed shed which provided shelter for cars. He would know that figure anywhere.
'Hullo,' he said.
'Oh, hullo.'
Was it indifference that he heard or merely habitual calmness? What do I know about what is habitual with her?
'Looks as if Met were right, for once: night flying won't have to be scrubbed.' Inane, he chided himself. British preoccupation with the weather. Surely I can find a more intelligent gambit for this intelligent looking girl?
'Are you on?' Not even polite interest evinced itself; merely a mechanical query to fill in time while they walked to the mess.
'No. Haven't completed my day flying yet.'
'Oh.' No encouragement, either.
He raised the battery a trifle, introducing it into their conversation. 'There's a decent concert tonight on the Home Service.'
'I know.' Her manner had suddenly changed. She sounded enthusiastic.
'Are you going to listen?'
'I don't think I'll be able to persuade my landlady.' She laughed. 'Her tastes don't include Chopin or Tchaikovsky.'
'You've tried before?'
"Fraid so.' She sounded rueful.
'Bad luck.' A thought came to him and he hurried on: 'You don't only like classical music, do you?'
'No.' She seemed surprised. 'Why?'
'There's a musical flick opening today at the cinema in Havant. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers… I was wondering if you'd like to see it.'
'Oh!' She was silent for a few paces. 'But what about your concert?'
'Doesn't matter... I've got everything they're going to play, on records... and my gramophone.'
She laughed more freely this time. 'What a gallant invitation.' Her tone added her unspoken 'I don't think.'
'Sorry. I didn't mean it at all like that. Look, let me make amends for my apparent lack of gallantry... of tact, anyway... couldn't we have dinner out first, Elizabeth?'
In the faint light her expression was serious. She was not looking at him. Her profile was not fashioned to launch a thousand ships, but, even so, there was a strong invitation about the shape of her lips, even seen in profile.
She turned and looked frankly at him. 'Thank you. I'd like that very much.'
Something told Alden that it was the sudden use of her name, introduced with no hint of pleading in his tone, that had brought her acceptance. I must be a natural salesman without ever having been aware of it, he decided. Could the emotion he was feeling be described as gloating? It was not a word he liked much. He recalled Kipling's Stalky, M'Turk and Beetle with their exultant 'I gloat' whenever unrighteousness triumphed over propriety. He had never much cared for those three. Skulking in damp undergrowth in order to smoke unhealthily had always seemed futile. He was firmly on the side of the muddied oafs and flannelled fools.
'Good. Thank you: I'm afraid it's very short notice.'
She replied cheerfully, 'Just give me time to bike back to my billet and change into my best blue, and I'll be ready. There's a bus at half-past six.'
He laughed. ‘I’m not harbouring petrol coupons. I'll call for you any time you like, if you'll tell me where to come.'
They parted in the entrance hall and he saw her again only at the far end of the room, while he sat with a bunch of the squadron and she in a group of her friends. Shop talk washed over him. It was not that he was watching her, but his mind was occupied with contemplating the next few hours. It was unlike him to act impulsively. He had never before asked a girl out on so short an acquaintance. If it turned out that they bored each other, the whole evening would be agonising for both of them. He took all his responsibilities seriously, including those of host to a guest for whose enjoyment he felt all the more responsible because he felt he had sprung his invitation on her in such a way that she could not have refused without implying rudeness and a rebuff.
'Wake up, Derek.'
'What?'
He found Squadron Leader Hanbury and the others looking at him with strange fixity.
'Sorry, sir... didn't hear what you said.'
'If you have to fly B for Beer, watch out for its inherent 'port-wing-low attitude... and its tendency to crab if you give it more than a touch of rudder… unless you happen to be in a steepish bank: in which case it'll promptly side-slip and, if you don't correct promptly, it'll stall.'
'Oh? Thanks, sir.'
Hanbury looked around with affected amazement, as though profoundly impressed by some rare phenomenon. 'He doesn't care! Did you hear the way he said it? I never suspected we had a totally dauntless birdman in our midst. Here are the rest of us, terrified, losing sleep in case we get lumbered with the dreaded B-Beer; and here's one F.O. Alden who just doesn't care!'
Alden's confusion brought a rare grin to his face. 'It's not that, sir... I was just being dozy, that's all... bit of a fug in here...'
'Balls. All right, if you're so dozy, I'll wake you up. I've got the court at six. Give you a game.'
'I'd like to, sir, but I'm afraid I can't.'
'No, sir ... I've already arranged to go out.'
'Ho! Ho! You were too dozy to pay any attention at all, or you'd have heard us agree to eat early and go and see the Ginger Rogers flick. We assumed you'd give half a dozen chaps a lift.'
His friends would think nothing of packing seven into a car built for four.
'I'm afraid I'm dining out, sir.'
An appealing look from the flight commander at this outrage embraced the whole group. 'We've lost him. Who is the charmer, Derek?'
Alden shook his head. 'Does it have to be a girl, sir, to lure me to eat out?'
'Yes!'
They were a statement and a question to evade. 'I'll see you for a pint before bedtime, sir.'
He was subjected to further aspersions before they all went their ways. It was an evening of easy talk and, for Alden, steadily growing pleasure in Elizabeth's companionship. Fragments flitted through his thoughts as he drove back to camp after seeing her to her front door.
'You must have joined the W.A.A.F. pretty early on.'
'I joined in June, when the W.A.A.F. were resuscitated from the Women's Royal Flying Corps, which was disbanded in nineteen-twenty.'
'But they were only part-time, until the war. Were you doing anything else?'
'I'd spent a year on an archaeological dig in Greece.'
'Professionally?'
'Yes. I read archaeology at Oxford...'
'Really? Where? I was at B.N.C.'
'That's interesting. Lady Margaret Hall... then I did a post-graduate year.'
'Doctor Waring… I presume?'
She grinned, and it was a grin, too, not just a smile. Her wide and inviting lips stretched in a chuckle of sheer enjoyment and dimpled her cheeks. 'Not yet. What did you read?'
'Law.' He told her that he had gone up late, and why. She made sympathetic comments.
'And you're sure your eyes aren't going to let you down again?'
'Absolutely. Unless I have another stupid prang.'
She gave him a worried look. 'You'd better be right.'
My Enemy Came Nigh Page 24
