When the Lights Go on Again

by Annie Groves

  ‘Of course I will,’ Lou agreed, wincing as the Tannoy broke into life, announcing that the two pilots whose names had been broadcast were required to present themselves at the admin block for ferry duties.

  Lou couldn’t wait until she was properly qualified. What a thrill it would be to hear her own name being broadcast. Inside her head Lou replayed the message delivered in the stentorian accents of the base’s admin controller, but substituting her own name for those of the girls called.

  Their admin controller was, like the original instructors for ATA, a BOAC employee. Now, though, the Government, in the belief that the Allies would win the war, had allowed BOAC to recall all its own instructors to start preparing post-war training for the corporation. The job of training ATA pilots had been handed over to instructors who had themselves been ATA pilots, many of them women who had the advantage of knowing exactly what the work of an ATA pilot entailed.

  Lou’s instructor this morning, Margery Smythe, who had sent her out on her first solo Grade 2 flight, was a firm disciplinarian but very fair and encouraging.

  She had been so lucky to have been upgraded on to a Grade 2 course so speedily after having first qualified, Lou reflected as she tucked into her salad lunch in the canteen. She’d be flying again this afternoon and she didn’t want a heavy meal lying on the butterflies she knew would invade her tummy. June had qualified two months ahead of her and insisted that Lou had to be ‘super good’ to have been pushed up a grade so quickly.

  Lou suspected, more modestly, that it was more a case of her being in the right place at the right time. Not that she hadn’t been thrilled and excited. She had, the words almost falling over themselves as she wrote them when she sent Sasha a letter telling her about her potential up-grade to fly advanced single-engined planes, but in her response her twin hadn’t even mentioned Lou’s triumph. What made Lou feel even more guilty now was that secretly she would much rather have spent her precious leave weekend in London with June than in Liverpool with her twin sister.

  ‘I just hope that when we finish this conversion course we’re both posted together, that neither of us gets posted to Ratcliffe,’ June announced, breaking into Lou’s thoughts.

  Lou finished chewing a rubbery piece of Spam, and demanded, ‘Why, what’s wrong with Ratcliffe?’

  June raised her eyebrows and shook her head so vigorously that the bun into which her auburn hair was knotted threatened to unravel.

  ‘Haven’t you heard about those Americans who joined ATA who are based there?’

  ‘No, what about them?’ Lou demanded.

  ‘They’ve put it about that they can outfly and outplay any other ATA female pilot, and they’ve got the reputation to prove that they mean it. There was a pilot at my last ferry pool who swore blind that she’d seen two of them deliberately racing one another to see who could put down first. They don’t like us and they’re quite happy to show it, or so I’ve heard.’

  ‘There were a couple of American pilots at my last posting and they were nothing like that.’ Lou felt obliged to defend the two senior and very dedicated American women she’d seen flying in and out of Barton-in-the-Clay.

  ‘Well, I’m only telling you what I’ve heard, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be posted to Ratcliffe. I like a good time but when it comes to some of the things I’ve heard that they get up to, I’m afraid I draw the line.’

  ‘What kind of things?’ Lou pressed her.

  ‘Like I just said – wild parties. Very wild parties. The kind where you end up in some man’s bed,’ June emphasised darkly. ‘I mean, I’m no prude, but.’

  If what June had said was true then she had to agree with her, Lou reflected as they cleared what was left on their plates into the slop bin and then placed them on the trolley for washing.

  ‘I’ve got my first solo this afternoon.’ June rolled her eyes. ‘I’m dreading it. What about you – what are you doing?’

  ‘Margery is going to go through the details of my three cross-country solo flights with me, ready for the first one tomorrow. She’s not told me yet which plane I’ll be flying, though.’

  ‘See you tonight then.’

  Lou nodded.

  Although most of the ferry pools didn’t have accommodation blocks, and ATA pilots were normally billeted with local people or clubbed together to rent somewhere between them if they could, at Thame Sir William Currie had put one wing of his Tudor mansion at the disposal of ATA to provide a ‘live-in mess’.

  After living in basic WAAF accommodation at an RAF base before transferring to ATA, Lou had been round-eyed with disbelief when she had first been shown her new quarters – a wood-panelled room with its mullioned windows overlooking the knot garden.

  She even had a four-poster bed, with the same heavy ruby-red velvet curtains as were hanging at the windows. Her room had its own fireplace, and a large polished wardrobe and a chest of drawers, both of which smelled of lavender.

  On the wall next to Lou’s bed hung a sampler, requesting ‘Bless this House’, stitched, so she had been told by the housekeeper, by Sir William’s great-aunt as a young girl.

  ‘Their’ wing of the large house was accessed via the main hall with its magnificent polished wood staircase, the banister carved with symbols from Sir William’s family crest. Since ATA did not have an officer structure – pilot seniority being denoted by length of service and ability to fly a variety of planes – there was no official ‘mess’. Instead the girls ate their meals in the base’s canteen or occasionally by invitation in the house’s elegant dining room, furnished with an antique Hepplewhite dining-room table and chairs, eating off delicate china and using silver cutlery, with Sir William as their genial host. One of the drawbacks, though, as far as Lou was concerned, were the bathrooms, with their huge baths, which they were allowed to fill with only two inches of hot water.

  ‘Yes, see you tonight,’ Lou confirmed as she set off in the direction of the hangars.

  THREE

  ‘Yes, Charlie, of course I understand why Daphne won’t be coming with you, with her own mother not being very well, but I must warn you that Mummy is bound to be disappointed. You know how much she thinks of Daphne.’ Bella Polanski pushed the thick waves of her golden-blonde hair back from her face as she spoke patiently but firmly into the telephone receiver. Her blue eyes were shadowed with disappointment as she assured her younger brother that she had got the message that his visit to Wallasey would be a solo affair.

  Privately, Bella acknowledged later, she wished that Charlie was going to be accompanied by his wife, even though that would have meant Bella giving up the comfort of her double bed to Charlie and his wife, leaving her to sleep in the boxroom’s single bed, and even though she and Daphne had never been close. And it wasn’t for her mother’s sake either that she would have preferred Charlie not to have returned home alone. Vi had been puffed up with pride when Charlie had announced that he was to marry Daphne Wrighton-Bude, the girl whose brother Charlie had rescued at Dunkirk but who had sadly not survived his injuries, and their father had rewarded Charlie very handsomely financially for his good sense in marrying a girl from such a good family. Not that Charlie was likely to get any money out of their father now that he had left their mother for his assistant, Pauline. Vi had been over the moon when Charlie had told her that he and Daphne were expecting their first child, but then just after Bella and Jan had married had come the sad news that there was not to be a baby after all. Bella, having suffered a miscarriage herself during her own first marriage, had written immediately to Daphne but the only reply she had received had been a frosty little note from Daphne’s mother acknowledging her own letter.

  From her small office at the nursery, it was impossible for her to see out into the nursery itself but she didn’t have to do that to be able to visualise the look of tenderness on Lena’s face as she worked with their small charges.

  The best thing she had ever done, aside from marrying Jan, had been to listen to her conscience the
day she had seen Lena in the street in Liverpool, distraught and heavily pregnant with her brother, Charlie’s illegitimate baby. Moved by the young girl’s plight, Bella had taken her home with her. Out of that one act of compassion had grown a friendship that had turned Bella’s own life around. Lena was happy now, a proud mother of Bella’s adored niece, a happy wife to Gavin, a mother-to-be to his own baby, and Bella’s right hand and a highly valued member of Bella’s loyal team of nursery nurses. After their marriage Bella had offered her own house to Lena and Gavin and had moved back to live with her mother. She’d been delighted when Lena and Gavin had married and Bella felt that the last thing they needed now was for Charlie to reappear on the scene to start making trouble in that way that he had.

  On the other hand, Bella also knew how much it would mean to her mother to see Charlie, especially when Charlie himself had hinted to Bella during his telephone call that he expected to be sent into action soon.

  She would have to tell Lena about his proposed visit, of course.

  She found Lena in the day room of the nursery, soothing one of their new intake of little ones, who had woken up from her afternoon nap confused by her surroundings. Small and curvaceous, with olive-toned skin and thick dark hair, Lena was strikingly attractive, her looks and colouring a perfect foil for Bella’s peaches-and-cream beauty.

  The nursery was a light airy place, with two large main rooms, a day room, and a sleeping room where the children could have their afternoon naps. The walls of the day room were painted bright yellow and decorated with the children’s drawings. High chairs for the babies were pushed back against one of the walls, ready to be pulled up to the scrubbed wooden table where the children ate their meals, whilst there were proper chairs for the older children, and four deep comfy armchairs for the staff to sit in when they settled down to read the children their afternoon story, or give some upset child a special reassuring cuddle.

  Lena, who was sitting in one of these, had settled the toddler on her lap to dry her tears. She looked up at Bella with a warm smile.

  ‘You aren’t going to be able to do that for much longer,’ Bella warned her. ‘You won’t have enough room.’

  Lena laughed and looked down at the swelling beneath her navy-blue cotton maternity smock, with its white Peter Pan collar and pretty bow.

  ‘He doesn’t like it at all when I put one of the babies on my knee. He kicks away at them like billy-o.’

  ‘He?’ Bella teased her, her own pre-war floral cotton dress slightly loose on her slender frame, thanks to the rigours of rationing. Bending down to lift the now smiling toddler from Lena’s lap and watching her whilst she toddled off happily to join a group of children who were playing with some wooden building blocks, she reminded Lena, ‘You were sure that Janette was going to be a boy but you were wrong.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but I’m really sure this time that it’s going to be a boy.’

  It would certainly probably be a good thing if Lena and Gavin’s baby were a boy, Bella reflected. Gavin was a wonderful father to Lena’s little girl and adored her, but Bella felt privately that there would be less chance of comparisons being made between the child that Charlie had fathered, and the one that was Gavin’s own, if this next baby was a boy.

  Thinking of Charlie reminded her of why she had come to find Lena.

  ‘I’ll go and make us both a cup of tea, shall I?’ Lena suggested, starting to get to her feet, but Bella stopped her, shaking her head.

  ‘There’s something I want to tell you.’

  Immediately Lena’s face lit up. ‘You’ve started a baby,’ she challenged Bella excitedly. ‘You and Jan. Oh, Bella, I’m so pleased.’

  ‘No, it isn’t that. It’s Charlie. He’s coming home this weekend. He told me that he’s expecting to be sent into action soon and that he wanted to come up and see Mummy.’

  They exchanged understanding looks.

  ‘You’ll want to tell Gavin, of course,’ Bella went on, ‘although I don’t think you’re likely to run into Charlie. He’s bound to want to give you a wide berth after the way he’s behaved.’

  ‘It wasn’t his fault that I was daft enough to think he wanted to marry me when all he wanted was a good time.’

  ‘It was his fault that he didn’t tell you that he was already engaged to be married, Lena.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ Lena assured her. ‘In many ways I reckon he did me a favour.’

  ‘A favour? When he left you carrying his child?’ Bella protested.

  ‘Well, if it hadn’t been for me being pregnant I’d never have got to meet you, and look at all the things you’ve done for me, Bella – giving me a home and a job, and being such a good friend to me. If it wasn’t for you I’d never have met Gavin, and I’d probably have come to a bad end instead of being married to the best husband a girl could have, and having the best friend in the world. Don’t you worry about me accidentally bumping into your Charlie. If I did, I’d tell him how lucky I reckon I am.’

  ‘Oh, Lena, you’re a real tonic and no mistake,’ Bella laughed.

  ‘Hug, Auntie Bella, hug.’

  The sound of her niece’s voice had Bella going immediately towards the little girl to pick her up and cuddle her close. She smelled of that lovely vanilla and baby powder scent, and Bella’s hold on her tightened as she breathed it in.

  Lena’s innocent comment about Bella being pregnant herself had caused a little ache deep inside her body. Once she had been going to have a child, but because of her first husband’s physical assault on her she had lost that baby. Jan had been there then to help her, although then she had believed she hated him.

  They had talked during the brief time they had shared together before Jan had had to rejoin his Polish RAF Squadron down on the South Coast, and Bella had told Jan then that she didn’t want to have a baby until the war was over, and until he could be with her.

  ‘I’m so afraid, Jan,’ she had confessed to him. ‘After what happened before. I couldn’t bear that to happen again.’

  ‘It won’t. It was Alan who caused your miscarriage,’ he had tried to reassure her.

  ‘I know that, but I’m still afraid. I need you to be there with me – I need your strength. Somehow I feel that if you are there then everything will be all right…our baby will be all right,’ Bella had told him.

  Jan had kissed her then and she had kissed him back, and he had told her that everything would be as she wished. She knew she had made the right decision, but that couldn’t stop her aching with longing to feel Jan’s child growing inside her. It wouldn’t be long now until the war ended. Everyone said so. All she had to do was wait.

  Wait and pray that Jan would come safely through it. Bella hugged her niece even more tightly. The Polish Squadron within the RAF had a reputation for bravery and daring. Jan had already been shot down once whilst in action. If she should lose him…but she mustn’t think of that. She must think instead of doing her own bit for the war effort, of playing her part and, of course, of dealing with the fuss her mother would make once she learned that Charlie was going to pay them a visit but that Daphne would not be with them.

  So Charlie was coming home. Lena put a calming hand on her stomach as the baby within it kicked hard as though in protest against the intrusion into her thoughts of someone else. Lena looked down at her daughter. She was a beautiful little girl with the same dark curls that Lena herself had inherited from her Italian father, but where Lena’s skin had a faintly olive tone to it, Janette was fair-skinned and blue-eyed. Everyone who saw the three of them together remarked on the fact that whilst her daughter’s hair was the same colour as Lena’s own, her eyes were the same colour as her father, Gavin’s. Only of course Gavin had not fathered her at all, even if she called him Daddy and the two of them adored one another. Charlie had fathered her. Charlie, whom Lena had so naïvely and foolishly believed loved her and had meant what he had said when he had promised to marry her.

  How silly she had been giving her hear
t and her body so immediately to Charlie. She was much wiser now, and with this new baby on the way she had everything she could possibly want.

  So why did the fact that Charlie was coming home make her feel so restless and…on edge? A sudden flurry of kicks from the baby punished her for her thoughts and reminded her of where her duty lay. She was so lucky to have what she did, Lena told herself. So very lucky.

  Katie enjoyed her voluntary work at the American Red Cross’s home from home for the American military at Rainbow Corner in Leicester Square, although she had to admit that it could be very demanding, especially on evenings like this one, when she was running late. She’d earned herself a disapproving look from the senior voluntary worker in charge on the reception area as she’d hurried in and made a dash for the cloakroom, where she’d removed her blue blazer and her neat white hat with its navy-blue bow trimming.

  There’d be no chance of begging five minutes to snatch a hot drink and something to eat, Katie thought ruefully, quickly dabbing Max Factor powder onto her nose and then applying a fresh coat of pink lipstick, before combing her soft dark gold curls. Working at the Postal Censorship Office did not require her to wear a uniform, and the warmth of the September sunshine had meant that she had gone to work this morning wearing a neat white blouse under her precious ‘good’ blazer, and a red skirt with a pattern of white daisies on it, not really thinking about the significance of the colours until a small group of British Army high-ups had passed her when she left work, one of them commenting approvingly, ‘Red, white and blue, eh? Jolly good show, young lady. That’s the spirit.’

  It was almost miraculous how things had changed since El Alamein and the Allies’ success. The air of tension and anxiety that had filled London’s streets like the dust from its bombed-out buildings had begun to lift, to be replaced by a sense of energy and optimism. The years of sacrifice, both in terms of human life and going without, of having faith and holding strong, were finally beginning to pay off. You could see it in the pride with which everyone was beginning to hold themselves, especially those in uniform, even if the shadow of Dunkirk and all the losses that had followed it were still there.