by Isla Dewar
Last night she’d been angry at Charles for bringing the Pole with him. ‘He’s a gooseberry,’ she’d hissed. ‘I wanted to have you to myself.’ She’d wanted to snuggle and kiss.
He’d told her not to be selfish. ‘That man has been through hell, absolute hell. His wife is still in Poland. He has no idea what has happened to her. It’s your duty to be kind to him. Besides, he’s a stranger here. Knows nobody. And, he’s starting work at your base. Be nice to him.’
Julia had hung her head, ashamed. ‘I’ll try.’
After the club, they had walked, arms linked, along the pier. Julia sang that Billie Holiday song, and broke her step from time to time with a little skip. Jacob had come with them. Though he didn’t link arms, he walked behind, hands in his pockets. Julia thought he lumbered after them, like a huge stray dog. She still didn’t like him, but now she felt guilty about it.
Thing was, she thought she’d seen him take the tip Charles had left for their waitress. It had been such a swift movement of hand from table to pocket, she wasn’t sure. Jacob had been so quietly still, standing looking at the dance floor, that Julia had decided she’d been mistaken, and didn’t mention it.
In fact, Jacob had become so attached, he’d come back to the cottage with her and Charles. He’d slept in the spare room. ‘Make yourself comfortable, old chap,’ Charles had said. Jacob had thanked him, ‘It’s kind of you.’ He’d nodded to Julia. ‘Tomorrow I report to your base. They’ll sort me out with somewhere to stay.’
Julia had smiled, relieved.
Upstairs in bed, in Julia’s small bedroom with the sloping roof, Charles had told her she was too judgemental. He pulled her on top of him. ‘I like to see you making love to me.’ He held her face. ‘A good face,’ he said. ‘Verging on beautiful. But I don’t see a lot of kindness in it. You have to learn to be kind. There’s a war on, we must all be nice to one another.’
He’d run his hands over her breasts. Kissed them. Julia had reached over and switched off the light. She was more comfortable with intimacies in the dark.
Afterwards, just before she slept, he’d told her he’d be gone when she woke up. ‘Got to get back to camp.’ But he’d be back soon. His regiment was going abroad, he’d have a week’s leave before he sailed.
He leaned back, hands linked behind his head. He started to expound on the absurdity of war, the things he’d seen at Dunkirk, men queuing to be hauled onto a ship, drowning as they waited. He moved on to talk about his socialist principles, his admiration for George Orwell, theories he’d come across while studying history and politics at Cambridge. He stopped when he heard Julia snoring.
Claire always cycled in the middle of the group. Izzy was always last. She was a slow starter, but, in time, she’d gather strength and come from behind to take the lead and be first to arrive at the base.
In the mornings, Claire complained about the others complaining. She wished they would shut up. This time of day was precious, a time when she could think about her husband and her children. She’d shut her eyes as she pedalled along, trying to precisely conjure up their faces.
It had been over a year since she’d seen her husband Richard. He’d been shot down over France and was now a POW in Stalag Luft 1. Nell and Oliver, her children, had been sent to live in South Africa with her brother-in-law, Joe, at the start of the Blitz.
There had been tantrums when Claire told Nell and Oliver where they were going, and further tears and tantrums when she’d seen them off at Southampton docks. Two tear-stained children dressed in their Sunday best, standing beside their luggage, lips trembling and looking in disbelief at their mother. How could she banish them like this? And why was she packing them off to a distant land with only their Nanny Green to look after them on the trip? Why wasn’t she coming too?
Claire had suggested she go to South Africa. But Richard had been adamant. ‘I don’t think so, old girl. We need you here.’ He had joined up when war was declared, and was now a squadron leader in the air force. He had wanted Claire at home when he was on leave.
The childrens’ first letters home had been filled with the longing of two small people out of their depths in a strange land. Slowly, slowly, the mood of the letters changed. There were hints about the good life out there – swimming every day, riding their uncle’s horses. In time, there was no more hinting. Neither Nell nor Oliver remembered the holidays in Cornwall, picnics in the garden, walks with Willy, the retriever, on Hampstead Heath. Their memories of London were of rain and dirty yellow fog. Now, they didn’t want to come back. The sun shone, they’d made new friends. Uncle Joe had given each of them a pony.
A pony, Claire thought, how could Joe do that? He knows Ollie won’t want to leave it. And how it belittled the knitted red socks and leather football she’d sent him.
Even Nanny Green had decided not to return to Britain. She was, as Claire put it, on the wrong side of forty and was to stay with the children for six weeks to ensure they were settled. She’d written to Claire telling her she’d made up her mind to stay put. She’d met a man, a delightful widower in his fifties, and, well, there was romance in the air.
God, even Willy the dog was happy. He’d been sent to stay outside Edinburgh with Claire’s sister, Virginia, and her husband, George. Bounding around chasing rabbits, Virginia had told her.
Initially, Claire had believed that the war would end, and life would return to how it had been before it started. Now, she doubted that was going to happen. A family of strangers would reunite in that house in Hampstead. The two children wouldn’t want to be there. She and her husband would be different people. She had a dreadful feeling they wouldn’t fall into one another’s arms. They wouldn’t know what to say or do. It was going to be awful. She doubted they’d make it.
At night she studied the most recent photographs of Nell and Ollie that Joe had taken with his Box Brownie. She ran her fingers over their faces, pained at the changes she hadn’t been around to witness. She wondered if they remembered what she looked like. She wrote letters to Richard, not knowing if he got them. His letters to her were heavily censored with thick black lines.
Thing was, at work, she was having the time of her life. She was enjoying this war, and that wasn’t right, was it? She loved flying. She felt useful, fulfilled. This was new to her.
Richard had no idea what his wife was up to. Claire didn’t worry about him as she cycled to work. She saved that slice of fretting till she was alone in her room at night, lying in the dark listening to the sounds beyond her window – bombers on their way down the coast, the river that was yards from their front door pushing against the shore, a heron calling a long desperate cry. She knew how it felt.
She was tired and lonely. She felt she’d spent the last year flying and running. There was an urgency about the job. If she wasn’t in the air, following the curves and lines of railways and roads below, she was running across windy airfields, delivery chit in hand. Once it was signed, she was off, running again, to a new plane or to the taxi plane that would take her to another airfield, and then, she’d be running once more. Factories were churning out planes faster than they could be delivered.
Nights, she would write letters to Richard and to the children, fill in her logbook or sit by the fire working on the quilt she was making and listening to the wireless. If she was alone in the cottage, she’d look at the empty chair across from her and wish there was someone sitting there she could talk to about the jokes on I.T.M.A. Sometimes, she’d go into the hall and stare at the phone, willing it to ring. It would be Richard, escaped from the camp, back in the country and on his way to see her. In bed, she longed for him. She wanted him lying beside her, holding her hand as they spoke, low voices in the dark, about their plans for the future. She wanted someone to hold her. She wanted long deep kisses. ‘Face it,’ she told herself, ‘you miss sex.’
She considered that and revised her longing: ‘I miss a hand in mine under the sheets at bedtime.’ She missed a body next to her, so
meone to spoon into in that quiet moment before sleep came. Though, she had to admit sex was everywhere these days. She supposed people were far from home. They’d fetched up in places they’d never heard of, mixing with all sorts of people they might never have met if the war hadn’t started. They were scared, lonely and homesick, though some, far from disapproving mothers or spouses, were tasting a bit of freedom they’d never imagined possible. Everyone was grabbing any pleasure that was on offer. And now she thought about it, sex was just about the only thing that wasn’t on ration. Still, it wasn’t really sex she missed. ‘I miss the closeness of another being. Hearing someone next to me breathe. Sharing thoughts, worries and little bits of gossip.’ Intimacy, she thought. Yes, that’s it, I miss intimacy.
Izzy, coming along behind, also had family worries. Two weeks ago she’d received a letter from her father. He said he hoped that living away from home hadn’t turned her head, made her abandon her morals. He told her that she’d been given a good Christian upbringing and he trusted she wasn’t doing anything that would disgrace her family.
‘Jeepers,’ Izzy had said. A word she’d picked up from Dolores, one of the Americans at the base, and a word she liked, used as often as she could. She knew what this warning meant. Her father had read ‘The Letter’.
Allan had been killed in North Africa. Before the war he’d been a history teacher in Perth and Izzy’s boyfriend. Their affair had turned physical after he’d been called up. Fearing he might die in some foreign country, alone and still a virgin, he’d turned to Izzy. She’d said there was nothing she could do about the alone-in-a-foreign-country bit, but she could help relieve him of his virginity.
After his death his things had been sent to his mother, who’d found The Letter and, not knowing Izzy’s present address, had sent it on to the manse at Fortham, where she’d been brought up. He father had obviously opened and read it. ‘Sorry, didn’t notice this was for you, opened it by mistake,’ said his curt note that accompanied it when he sent it on.
‘Jeepers,’ Izzy said again.
‘Darling Izzy,’ The Letter read, ‘I think of you all the time. I love to think of you naked, coming to me from across the room, slipping into my bed, lying with me. I ache to feel you touch me again. Memories of your body are with me always out here.’
‘Jeepers,’ Izzy had said once more.
She had written to Allan’s mother, thanking her for sending on The Letter, and telling her what a wonderful person he was, that she’d miss him. She would remember him always.
Nights, she would lie in bed thinking of him. She could hardly believe he was dead. She’d shut her eyes and try to conjure up his face. When she couldn’t, she’d take out the few photos of him she had and examine them. She wept for him.
They’d been better at being friends than they were at being lovers. They’d both been shy and inexperienced. There hadn’t been time before he left to learn to be relaxed with one another. Still, Allan might have died alone in a foreign country – and that was awful – but at least he hadn’t died a virgin. Izzy was glad she’d done what she had done. There hadn’t been anyone since those few stolen nights with Allan.
But now her father knew she was a wanton woman. She’d given herself to a man without first going through the holy vows of marriage. He would be furious. ‘Sex outside the sanctity of marriage is a sin,’ he’d told her often. It pained her that she must be a disappointment to him when he was the man she adored.
She didn’t want to lie to him, but lie to him she did. Not exactly lies, she thought, just a little fiddling with the truth. I keep things back to stop him worrying. One thing she’d kept from her father, the big thing, was her job. Oh, he knew she was in the ATA, but he didn’t know she flew. She’d given him the impression she was an assistant operations officer. It made life easier.
She loved her father dearly. She’d love him more if he didn’t have such fixed ideas about a woman’s place in the world. ‘Flying’s a man’s job,’ he’d said. ‘Women don’t have the brains for it.’ Then seeing Izzy’s horrified expression, he’d added, ‘Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying women are stupid, far from it. There are some pretty clever women in the world. But flying takes logic, quick thinking, making calculations. Women run on their emotions, and thank heaven for that. The world needs their shrewd nurturing natures, their unquestioning love, their beautiful soft hearts.’
He’d given sermons on the role of women in society. ‘We should fight for their right to femininity. A woman who dresses as a man is to be reviled. Women are like flowers in winter – a primrose, a daffodil in the snow, bending with the terrible travails of weather, never breaking and always beautiful. Women are wonderful and mysterious beings, strong in heart and mind, but fragile and gentle in their ways. They should not undertake the labours of men, they should not wear slacks and try to look like men.’
Obviously, Izzy hadn’t mentioned to him that she was a pilot and, therefore, dressed in pilot’s clothes. There would have been an argument. Arguing with her father, and winning, was impossible. This was why she lied to him. She’d been doing it since she was eleven.
It had started with her faith. She’d started to doubt there was a God and couldn’t bring herself to discuss this with her father since his belief was his reason for living. She fancied he’d mock her.
Later she lied about where she’d been and what she’d been doing. ‘Just out,’ she’d say, ‘talking to my friends.’ She’d been kissing Rory McGhee and sharing a secret cigarette. How were her piano lessons going? ‘Oh, very well.’ She and Elspeth, her teacher and new best friend, would lie in Elspeth’s garden on good days, on the sofa in her sitting room on not-so-good days and sigh about life’s endless possibilities.
In Izzy’s eyes, her father was a wonderful man. He adored her. He’d sweep her off her feet and dance her down the hall in the manse. He’d buy her chocolate and toys. He’d sit her on his knee when she was small, put his bearlike arm round her and read her stories – Treasure Island and Kidnapped. She adored him back. She lied because she could not suffer to be the cause of his displeasure.
She’d written to Elspeth, who was working in a forest north of Inverness, and told her about The Letter. ‘I worry,’ she wrote, ‘because he might come to hate me. I am no longer lying to him about little things. I’m lying about my whole life.’
Thinking of Elspeth relieved her from the ticking-off from her conscience when she imagined her father’s horrified face – the pulled-in lips, the heaving eyebrows – when he’d read Allan’s letter. Even here, even now, hundreds of miles away from him, she could hear the thunderous silence of his disapproval.
She imagined Elspeth singing as she chopped down trees, Elspeth whistling as she strode the forest tracks, axe slung over her shoulder. Elspeth – a lumberjill, who’d have thought it?
After fondly thinking of her friend, Izzy started to contemplate her day ahead. In less than an hour she’d be flying. If the weather holds, she thought.
Right now, Edith, the ops officer, would be on the phone finding out about conditions at the airfields the pilots were expected to deliver to that day. She’d be working out who was to fly what and where and who was to be today’s duty pilot, flying the taxi plane picking everyone up and bringing them back so they could do it all again the following day.
The CO would be in his office, dealing with matters of the day. Irene, the nurse, would be in the sick bay, getting ready for any physical examinations and any pilots who might be sent to her with flu or to be assessed after some sort of trauma.
Nigel, the met man, would be in touch with the central met office checking on any fronts coming in, making up his charts. It seemed to Izzy that Nigel, Edith, Nurse Irene and the CO had proper jobs with a desk, a pen, someone nearby clattering at a typewriter and a phone always ringing. The people who did these jobs looked strained and a little bit flustered.
She, on the other hand, flew aeroplanes. The pleasure this brought her made her doubt she s
hould get paid. It was a sin to take money for doing something that thrilled her. She’d get her comeuppance for this, she was sure. Life should be filled with onerous duties, guilt and shame. It was not to be enjoyed.
In the upper reaches of her thinking, she was sure this wasn’t true. But guilt was deeply rooted in the murky fathoms of her psyche. She had breathed it in on her childhood Sundays, sitting in the front pew of her father’s church, listening to his searing hellfire sermons.
She remembered hearing that the Lord was watching her, knew her and all her thoughts and that she would pay for her sins. Her father, Reverend Hamish Macleod, used the word ‘vengeance’ a lot. She would sit next to her mother – a diffident woman in a dark-blue, fur-collared coat and skull-hugging red hat – vowing to avoid such sins as pride, envy, greed and lust. She would, according to her father, pay threefold for indulging in such things. Gluttons, fools and proud people were all doomed.
Izzy drank it all in. She’d look down at her shiny patent leather Sunday shoes, fiddle with the velvet buttons on her green Sunday coat and silently promise to be good, kind and meek. The subliminal message, the constant undertow in her father’s ardent preaching, was that she would pay dearly for enjoying herself.
Life, at the moment, was very thrilling. Oh, how she would pay.
After her weekly verbal scouring, she’d return with her family to the manse for the routine Sunday lunch of roast beef, potatoes and carrots. By now, her father would have resumed being his usual affable self. Every week, he’d step into the pulpit and rant hellfire and damnation, then step back out again, greet his parishioners at the church door, shake hands, joke, ask after the sick and elderly, and go home for a hearty meal with his family. He was loved.
