Firebirds Soaring

by Sharyn November

Oh, what’s the matter with you, she thought with a sudden surge of irritation. I’ll show you what to do.

  She plunged after the limping Spitfire at such a speed that for a moment it made her head tingle and her vision go gray. She was unprepared for the cloud of debris the hapless plane was trailing, scraps of wire and metal and whatnot that had been invisible from a distance; something struck her windscreen with a bang and blanketed the front of it with oil, so that she was suddenly flying blind. She glanced out the side of the canopy, and through the clear Perspex there recognized the markings of the other aircraft. It was Graham’s plane. Theo flew in formation alongside him, and saw him raise his head.

  God help him, he’s been out cold all this time, she thought. Another few minutes descending on this course and he’ll fly into the cliffs, if that thing doesn’t fall to bits first.

  “Open your hood!”

  Theo pointed aloft. She did not know if Graham could hear her, so she mimed the motions of opening the canopy and the access door, making broad, exaggerated gestures. She wrenched back her own canopy. The wind off the sea was cool and salty sweet, blowing away the stench of burning oil and cordite.

  “Out of your harness—”

  She kept her own harness fastened, but he was with her now, and went through the drill obediently. They were still a good couple of thousand feet above the cliffs and out to sea.

  “Now follow me through a roll, and you’ll be out—over you go—”

  Theo had done all she could. She climbed away from the cliffs.

  She could not for some reason manage to get the canopy shut again. It was so filthy anyway, and the wind so welcome, that she did not try very hard. Theo was drenched with sweat. She tore open her jacket and collar. She circled back over the cliffs and saw an open parachute floating gently toward the rock pools below.

  “The lucky sod!” Theo exclaimed triumphantly. With all the English Channel to dive into, Graham had managed to come down twenty yards offshore.

  Theo circled overhead, watching as the parachute folded into the water. She passed within two hundred feet of the bobbing silk and saw a figure stagger out of the sea and lie down on the flint pebbles of the beach at the foot of the cliffs. There was no sign of his plane but for a patch of oil spreading over the swells. Theo roared back toward Maidsend.

  Well done, Kim, Theo told herself. Bloody well done.

  Flying at cruise speed with the hood wide open was like battling a tempest. The goggles protected her eyes, but she still found herself flying with her head turned aside and her chin tucked into her shoulder. Her unbuttoned jacket, though held down by the life vest and harness, yanked and whipped around her neck. She could not do anything about it while she flew and the wind howled. She landed, without taking the roof off the dispersal hut, and taxied away from the runway.

  After she had opened the radiator grills and switched off the electrical system Theo had spent herself entirely and sat waiting for someone to help her out of the plane.

  “Bloody hell, Lyons, are you hurt?”

  Two fitters and her squadron leader scrambled up on the wings and laid half a dozen concerned hands on her.

  “No, no, just all out.”

  “What’s all this bandaging, then?”

  Her shirt had torn open in the wind. The men had their hands around Theo’s waist, on her chest.

  “Get lost!” Theo snapped, and hit their hands away.

  They stared at her.

  “Bloody hell.” John Manston, the squadron leader, swore again. “You’re not—”

  “I’m not hurt,” Theo muttered. “I need a cigarette.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Here.”

  Manston held an unlit cigarette clenched between trembling lips; he could not light it so near the bullet-ridden fuel tanks of his own plane and the refilling cans. He passed it to Theo anyway. Then he and the fitters lifted her out of the plane and handed her down the wing into the arms of half a dozen other men waiting anxiously on the ground.

  “Get your hands off me. I can walk.” Theo pulled her uniform shut; her hands were trembling too much to fasten it.

  “Lyons—” Manston began.

  “Did everyone else make it back?” asked Theo. “Except Honeywell. He bailed out in St. Catherine’s Bay.”

  They all nodded, gaping at her.

  “Yes, that was nice work, Lyons, showing him what to do. A bit original, but you pulled it off. You got a 109, too, didn’t you? ”

  “Two.”

  “You must be joking! On your first time out?”

  “Well, there were a lot of them to choose from.”

  One of the other experienced pilots nodded and drawled slowly, “I saw them go down. I can’t count much higher than two, but I’ll confirm those.”

  “Feel like going back up in fifteen minutes?” Manston asked her.

  Theo accidentally pinched the cigarette in half. Her lower jaw jutted out. “Sure.”

  “Or shall I find someone to take over for you?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Theo, thinking she might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.

  John Manston looked from one to the other of his stunned companions. “If any one of you thinks there’s some reason Lyons shouldn’t be flying in this squadron, let’s have it now or never.”

  They were silent.

  “Now or never,” Manston cautioned.

  The two fitters turned away and set about industriously reloading the ammunition in Theo’s wings.

  John Manston gave her a thumbs-up. “Let’s go have a cup of tea, then, while they patch up and refuel.”

  No one ever said another word about Theo’s open shirt.

  During the next two weeks, the German bombers were relentless, pounding London half to dust. There was no respite for anyone, no time to think of anything but defense. After four days of seemingly incessant flying and firing of guns, of slinging her plane all over the sky to avoid flame and tracer bullets and other aircraft, then coming down for a tinned beef sandwich before being strapped in to do it all over again; after four days of such constant trial and fury, and managing to do it on two or three hours’ sleep, Theo could no longer report accurately on any details of these flights apart from their duration; she could not in her memory tell one sortie from another, unless her gunfire actually hit something. Nor was there any place in her log book for the names of her companions who did not land again at Maidsend; but these were fixed indelibly in her mind. Two weeks of glorious warm September weather passed Theo, and the rest of them, in a haze of electrifying tension and perpetual exhaustion, triumph, and loss.

  They were winning. They were turning the invasion away.

  Then came one blissful morning of thick, driving rain that let them drink tea in peace. Those of them not required to be at readiness did not even bother to put on their uniforms. After breakfast they all fell asleep in the glow of the twin fire grates in the mess hall, until the telephone rang and kicked everyone into frenzy. Sunlight was streaming through the cross-taped window panes, and Theo found her heart filling with bright and eager dread.

  “It’s stopped raining,” Graham commented, as John Manston took instruction over the phone.

  They squinted at the sky.

  “How I hate the sun,” Theo said.

  Graham laughed. “Go back to bed, then.”

  “Not on your life!”

  “Scramble! Scramble!” Manston shouted at them. “Get out to dispersal, you lazy oafs. We need an extra flight up there!”

  “We’re not in uniform!” somebody said.

  “You can still fly a plane, can’t you? This isn’t a vicar’s tea party! No offense, Lyons.”

  They snatched parachutes and helmets and raced for their planes, shrugging life vests over their civilian clothes as they ran.

  In the middle of the ensuing dogfight over the rolling South Downs, Theo’s guns ran out of ammunition, and one of the German pilots noticed it, and four of them unsportingly band
ed together to try to blow her to bits.

  “Oh, God,” she gasped aloud, glancing over her shoulder, and there was another behind her.

  She realized, as though this were the first time she had ever been in danger in the air, that she had no chance against them. One or all of them would shoot her down. She could not possibly outfly five armed Messerschmitts.

  “Come and get me,” Theo muttered, and swung into them.

  She made them chase her in circles. She could fly a tighter orbit than they could, just, and as long as they were all playing “here we go round the mulberry bush” no one could do any firing; or, at least, none of the German planes could fire at her without risking hitting one another. Idiots, Theo thought, beginning to find this absurdly funny. They must be very low on fuel. Maybe I can drag this out until they go home.

  She opened the throttle and widened her orbit enough to turn it into a corkscrew climb. She teased her pursuers further into England. The rain clouds were piling up again, but the English Channel was still clearly visible; the German fighters were obviously not worried about being lost over unfamiliar ground.

  Not giving up yet? How much fuel have you got left? Not as much as me, I’ll wager. I didn’t fly here from France. And I can land in any of these fields when I run out, but you’re over enemy territory.

  They fired at her randomly.

  She saw with immense triumph that one of them did have to make a forced landing, and laughed and laughed. Two others turned away and she lost sight of them, which worried her they might have got behind her again. There was a lot of cloud about now; she could see nothing in her rearview mirror. In sheer self-defense, sure the German pilots would not fire on their own planes, Theo flew headlong between the remaining two, and one of them had to bank so hard to avoid her that he sent himself into a spin. The last of them blew away her rudder. As Theo fought to regain control, the Messerschmitt circled back, turning for home with its guns blazing, and blasted off a quarter of her starboard wing.

  Her plane fell into cloud with a fuel tank in flames. Her instruments were all toppled and useless, and she had no rudder and no aileron. She did not know which way was up. But she must have been upside down, because that was the only way to get out, and she was out, and falling. You felt curiously safe in a cloud; cold with the wind of the fall and a bit damp, but at least you could not see where you were falling. As Theo’s parachute opened, her flaming plane fell past her, its engine still roaring reliably, a monstrous bright shadow in the white nothingness.

  She landed on the side of a hill, and the cloud was so low she scarcely had time to register where she was before she was down. Then she was lying in a potato field in a tangle of cord and silk. Her helmet was askew over her face, half blinding her; she dragged it off. The downs were on fire in a copse of trees lower down the hill, two fields to the west. Theo untangled herself from the parachute and stumbled over the furrows toward the blaze. There were four people there ahead of Theo when she reached her plane: two schoolboys scavenging for trophies, a gamekeeper, and a diminutive countrywoman with a very well-bred pair of dogs. The man and woman looked up from the bonfire with white faces.

  Theo plunged toward the flames, sobbing hysterically, and the boys and man held her back.

  “Stay away, love,” said the man. The boys let go of her, but the woman laid her gloved hands calmingly on Theo’s shoulders. “You’re all right, dear.”

  How do they all know I’m a girl? Theo wondered, until she realized it was only the gamekeeper who had recognized it. The others had just followed his lead. And she was, indeed, blubbing very childishly.

  The man shook his head in pity. “Much too late to do anything for the poor devil.”

  Theo opened her mouth in astonishment, looked down at herself, and shut her mouth. She had pulled off her life vest with her parachute; she was not in uniform. She was wearing the shapeless old green pullover that she had knitted herself. Apart from the RAF-issued flying boots, they could not know it had been her plane.

  “Did you see it? Did you see it? ” the boys clamored eagerly. “There were five of them after him, five, and he just picked them off like clay pigeons—”

  “They were out of fuel,” said Theo. The boys stared at her, goggle-eyed.

  “Aye, so they were,” said the gamekeeper. “He never fired a shot at them. Guns empty, I expect. Forced all five of them down, though; I counted. Looked like most of them landed in one piece, so we’d best get the authorities hunting for them, eh? Can’t have the countryside running wild with German pilots.”

  “It seems rotten,” said one of the boys, speaking very deliberately, his face red and shining in the glare. “It’s rotten that the 109s made it down safely, and the Spitfire crashed.”

  “But—the parachute—” Theo began incoherently.

  “There wasn’t any parachute.”

  I came down through cloud, Theo thought. They were watching the plane. They didn’t see me.

  “Rotten,” the boy repeated, shaking his head, and angry tears slipped out of the corners of his eyes. He scrubbed at them in fury. “Rotten.”

  “But what a hero,” his friend consoled him avidly.

  Theo began to choke with sobs again. She remembered Kim, suddenly, whose spirit she had meant to canonize. But it was not Kim’s Spitfire that was falling to ash and molten metal in the fields of Sussex; it was Theo’s.

  “It’s over,” said the woman bluntly, and took her hands from Theo’s shoulders. “He’s gone, dear.”

  The rain held off. Theo got a lift to the nearest railway station riding pillion on the gamekeeper’s bicycle. She had just missed a train. She hung around at the station for a while, then set out aimlessly to walk off the nerves and tears and ended up collecting the parachute and the rest of her gear. By the time she got back to the station, it was dark, and she had walked over twelve miles. The Victorian waiting room was locked, its windows barred and taped, the blackout curtains drawn. Theo slept deeply and soundly on a bench on the station platform, wrapped in the warm, billowing silk of her parachute.

  She woke to the sound of voices whispering. She opened her eyes and saw three women with shopping baskets sitting on the bench opposite Theo, eyeing her with distrustful white faces.

  My own fault for filling the woods with German airmen, she thought.

  “I’m British,” Theo said, and went back to sleep.

  The shopping women woke her just before the train came in.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Maidsend.”

  No one would let her pay for a ticket, not even the stationmaster. One of the women managed to force the parachute into submission in a string shopping bag. On the train her companions gave Theo quantities of bread and cheese, and tea from a flask, and apples. Theo had not eaten since yesterday’s leisurely breakfast.

  “Oh—” She looked down at the core of her third apple. “Have I devoured everybody’s lunch? I’m sorry.”

  “I think you’ve earned it, lad,” said the one with the string bag.

  Amazing what attention a life vest and flying helmet will get you, Theo thought. I’m not even in uniform. At least they don’t see I’m a girl, like the people at the crash.

  She wondered whether she would be killed before she was caught. She suspected that half her squadron knew she was not Kim. Sooner or later someone would let it slip, and North would turn her out in disgrace. And she would never get to fly again.

  Theo thought suddenly: I should go home now.

  She did not want to. It made her sick with shame to think of deserting her squadron.

  But it made sense. Because, she reasoned, because then everyone will think Kim the pilot was incinerated in my crash. Theo could start over. It’ll take longer, but it’ll be a clean start, because Kim will have died honorably in defense of his country. We can be our separate selves at last.

  I suppose when I change trains in Canterbury I’ll have to lose my flying equipment.

  That thought
made Theo want to cry again. She sat with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, tugging at her hair, thinking how strange and unfamiliar it was to be riding on a train.

  She made her way home. Her parents, who of course had not heard a word from her in five months, were overjoyed to see her. For all they knew, Theo had been deeply involved in the coastal defense all along; she explained to them that she had had a bit of a breakdown and had been given indefinite leave to recover. She managed to intercept the telegram announcing Kim’s second death. She wrote a grovelling letter to the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, detailing an impressive list of preparatory reading she had done over the last year, and begging them to put her to the test and reconsider her application. Miraculously, she was given a review date.

  The daylight raids stopped. The bombers kept coming by night, but the German invasion had been turned away. It dawned on Theo that she had been in the thick of it, in the very worst of the combat fighting over Britain. It seemed utterly unreal.

  She dreamed about flying. She dreamed about mist in the Thames Valley and frost on the Chiltern Hills, a quiet, empty sky and an open map on her knees.

  Two weeks before she was due to start all over again training as a radio operator, Theo found her mother standing on the doorstep with an official-looking letter in her hand. Gray rods of November rain came slamming down like bullets in the path beyond the open door.

  “Shut the door, Mother! Whatever’s the matter?”

  Her mother, stunned beyond speech, handed the letter to Theo.

  “It says your brother’s been awarded a posthumous Distinguished Flying Cross.”

  The letter was from Leland North, the commanding officer of Theo’s squadron, and explained to the bereaved Lyons family the heroic circumstances of their son’s death. The squadron would find time to have a presentation ceremony at the airfield, now that their services were not in such fierce demand, and would Kim’s sister Theodora be so kind as to accept the decoration in her brother’s place?

  “This can’t be happening!” their mother cried, choking with sobs. “Kim as a fighter pilot, flying cold-blooded into battle? My aimless, childish Kim? My God, the irony! He never had any drive, any commitment to anything—”