When the Lights Go on Again

by Annie Groves

  Although ATA had now opened its doors to girls from ordinary backgrounds, the ethos put in place by the original eight pilots, all young women from privileged and well-to-do backgrounds, still prevailed. ATA pilots were not subject to any of the rules and regulations imposed by the Armed Forces: there was no parading, no drill, no hierarchy, no jankers, no rules about wearing uniform instead of civvies. Instead what there was were a set of unspoken ‘rules’ accepted and adhered to as a matter of principle and honour.

  These included such practical aspects of their work as upholding the reputation of ATA for delivering planes to their destinations safely and efficiently; but, equally importantly, unwritten rules such as always presenting a feminine appearance, wearing lipstick, and nail polish, not getting out of one’s plane at an RAF base until one had removed the ugly flying helmet and replaced it with a pretty silk scarf.

  The newer intake of ATA pilots might not be in a position to take off in their cars for London to have dinner at places like the Savoy and the Ritz, and go to exclusive clubs like the 400, but when the opportunity came to attend social events ATA girls were on their honour to look good, which was why Lou blessed the insight and the generosity of her aunt Fran as she changed into her outfit for the evening.

  The arrival, for her birthday earlier in the year, of a large parcel that had contained several stunningly pretty dresses from her aunt had truly delighted Lou.

  In the note that had accompanied them, Francine had written that she hoped that Lou might be able to make use of the dresses, which she no longer needed.

  Luckily, all the females of their family seemed to share the same neat waist and slender figure, and the dresses were a perfect fit. Lou had later learned that their aunt’s birthday gift to her twin had been some beautiful Egyptian cotton bed linen for the bottom drawer Sasha had started now that she was engaged.

  Tonight Lou had decided to wear the dress that was her favourite. In a shade of soft green silk printed with large white polkadots, which somehow deepened her summer tan whilst emphasising the way the sun had bleached the ends of her hair, the dress was halter-necked, with a neat-fitting bodice, which fastened with pretty white buttons and a white belt that fitted round Lou’s small waist, whilst the semicircular skirt floated prettily against her legs. To complete the outfit there was a little short white jacket lined in the same fabric as the dress.

  Lou and June were being given a lift in her car by Hilary Stanton, one of the more senior girls, who was standing beside her car smoking a cigarette as they went to join her.

  ‘Good choice of frock, Campion,’ she praised Lou. ‘I’ve heard that several of the American pilots based at Ratcliffe, who’ve joined ATA, will be there tonight, so we’ll definitely want to put on a good show.’

  ‘Of course, we all know why Hilary disapproves of the Ratcliffe pilots,’ June had commented to Lou earlier. ‘It’s because of all the talk going round about the American pilots being real dare devils. Like I said before, there are all sorts of stories going round about them buzz-diving the general public for fun, flying under low bridges, flying above the cloud cover, and showing off.’ June had pulled a face and added, ‘They like to think of themselves as dead-end kids who are up for anything and everything, and who can fly planes when the weather is so bad that even the birds are walking.’

  ‘That’s all very well for them,’ Lou had answered, ‘but we’ve got a job to do that matters more than showing off and partying.’

  Now, as she and June piled into Hilary’s car along with two other girls, Lou acknowledged that she wasn’t all that keen to go to the dance. However, she had promised June that she would, having had to refuse to go to London with her at the weekend, and then of course there was the added lure of the fact that the music would be provided by none other than Glenn Miller’s band.

  It didn’t take them long to reach the American airbase, driving down narrow winding country lanes that lay almost hidden between high hedgerows, heavy now with blackberries and wild rosehips, and through picture-perfect villages, drowsing in the fading September sunlight.

  As soon as they got close to the base, though, the scenery changed. Barbed wire replaced the hedgerows, and the gently undulating landscape was ironed flat, and pinned down with all the paraphernalia of an air force base: hangars, searchlights, wind socks, landing strips and the obligatory guard house by the entrance, through which they were allowed to pass once they had given the American ATA pilot’s name.

  As they drove past the airfield they could see the long line of bombers outside the hangars.

  The base was a large one and, of course, relatively new, the area outside the mess where the dance was being held busy with American airmen in immaculately smart uniforms.

  Not that the girls needed to be in the least bit ashamed of their appearance, Lou decided, proud to champion her own colleagues as, once the car was parked and they had all climbed out, she and June went to join the small crowd of ATA pilots who had already arrived.

  ‘It’s not going to be Glenn Miller after all,’ one of the girls warned Lou, obviously disappointed herself. ‘They’ve got another band playing instead.’

  They all went into the mess together, exchanging greetings with the Americans who came forward to welcome them.

  The American airmen’s mess was far smarter than any mess she had ever been in before, Lou felt obliged to admit, trying not to look too impressed as she strained to listen to what the young American airman standing next to her was saying to her above the noise of other conversations around them. He was pleasant enough, with good teeth and a nice smile.

  ‘Look over there,’ June suddenly hissed directing Lou’s attention to where a diminutive blonde with a mass of curls was sitting on a table, holding court to the group of men pressing round her. Unlike the other women in the room, who were all wearing frocks, she was wearing a pair of American jeans rolled up to reveal her enviably tanned and slender ankles and calves, a leather belt drawing the fabric in at her waist to show off its narrowness. She was chewing gum, and drinking beer from a bottle, and generally acting as though it was her right to be the centre of attention. For no reason that Lou could rationalise she felt a sharp stab of hostility towards her.

  ‘Joyce Botham has just told me that she’s one of the American ATA pilots. Her name’s Frankie Truebrooke.’

  Lou nodded and was about to turn away when the sight of an RAF uniform amongst the American pinks and greens caught her eye.

  Perhaps she had stared too hard and for too long, Lou didn’t know, but Frankie Truebrooke suddenly gave her a hard look and then turned to say something to the RAF pilot, whose face was hidden from Lou’s view by the other men crowding around her. The RAF pilot moved, obviously directed to look at her by Frankie Truebrooke, and Lou’s heart did a steep dive at such speed that she could hardly breathe.

  Kieran Mallory! Tall and broad-shouldered with coal-black hair, grey eyes and a knowing smile, Kieran Mallory was strikingly handsome. And of course he knew it, Lou thought bitterly. Kieran Mallory was the very last person she ever wanted to see again. Quickly Lou looked away, not wanting to make eye contact with him, because she didn’t want any kind of contact with him at all. What had Frankie Truebrooke said to him about her? And, more important, what would he say to the American about Lou? Would he tell her that both Lou and her twin sister had once had huge crushes on him; that he had deceived them both into believing that they were special to him? Lou could feel her face beginning to burn with angry humiliation. She was a different person from the silly girl she had been then. He and Frankie Truebrooke were well suited, Lou decided, with a toss of her head.

  The band had started to play – indeed not Glenn Miller’s band, sadly, but they sounded pretty good anyway, Lou acknowledged. The young airman, Cliff, with the good teeth and the nice smile, to whom she had been introduced, politely asked her to dance and, just as politely, Lou accepted.

  Dancing sedately with Cliff to the tender strains of ‘Moonlig
ht Becomes You’, Lou noticed that towards the end of the number Frankie Truebrooke, who was dancing with a fellow American, pulled away from her partner and ran over to say something to the band leader.

  Then as the notes of ‘Moonlight Becomes You’ faded away Frankie Truebrooke, who was still standing in front of the band, clapped her hands together and announced, ‘This is an American airbase, filled with fine American airmen, and we’re gonna show you Brits that we can outdance you as well as outfly you.’

  There was a moment of uncomfortable silence and exchanged uncertain looks, and then one of the airmen whooped in approval of Frankie’s challenge and grabbed hold of her hand just as the band swung into a hot-paced jitterbug number that quickly turned into a floorshow given by Frankie and her partner whilst other dancers stood back.

  She was good, Lou acknowledged, but not as good as Lou and Sasha themselves had been. There were many many times when Lou missed her twin and their old relationship, with its closeness and its shared ambitions, but right now she really wished that Sash was here so that they could do their bit for British morale and show Frankie a thing or two about really good jitterbugging.

  Impulsively she turned to Cliff and demanded, ‘Can you jitterbug?’

  When he nodded, Lou didn’t waste any more time. Grabbing hold of his hand she hurried him onto the floor, immediately picking up the beat of the music. She and Sash had loved dancing so much, and the magic it had always held for her was still there; there were some things, some skills, that were never forgotten.

  As she let the music seize her and take her, Lou could hear the astonished and admiring gasps from the ATA girls now crowding round the edge of the dance floor to watch them, and cheer her on, their support reinforcing her determination to make Frankie Truebrooke regret her arrogant claim.

  Cliff, who had initially looked apprehensive, was now throwing himself into the spirit of things. Luckily he was a good dancer himself, but it was Lou who held everyone spellbound and who the band played for as they recognised her skill, whilst her comrades clapped and cheered her on.

  Thank goodness she’d decided not to bother wearing stockings because her legs were tanned, Lou thought, as Cliff swung her round, then up and then down again.

  Laughing up at Cliff, she wouldn’t have seen the bottle that Frankie had thrown down deliberately to trip her up if it hadn’t been for the fact that Kieran Mallory had moved, no doubt wanting to get closer to the American, and his movement had caught her attention, showing her the bottle rolling towards her. She heard her friends gasp; she could see the look of malicious triumph on Frankie Truebrooke’s face, but Lou knew what to do. In a manoeuvre that had been part of one of the routines she and Sasha had taught themselves, Lou changed feet, and hands, and spun round anticlockwise, turning under Cliff’s arm, in a movement that pushed him to the side, and took them both safely away from the bottle.

  The roar of approval and the hand clapping that resulted from the British ATA contingent said everything that needed to be said, Lou recognised, both about Frankie’s spitefulness and her own quick reaction to it.

  Of course, when she came off the dance floor all the Brits gathered round her, wanting to praise her.

  ‘Well, you’re a dark horse,’ said June, tugging on Lou’s arm. ‘You never said a word about being able to dance like that.’

  ‘It’s just something Sash and I taught ourselves,’ Lou insisted, feeling uncomfortable about all the attention she was getting now that she had stopped dancing.

  ‘You were a wow,’ another of the girls approved. ‘You knocked that show-off American sideways, you were so good.’

  Everyone was making such a fuss that Lou began to wish that she hadn’t given in to the impulse to show Frankie that she wasn’t the only one who could jitterbug.

  ‘You didn’t just outdance Frankie Truebrooke, you’ve outclassed her as well,’ Hilary told Lou, later on in the evening when they were on their way back to their own base. ‘She needed teaching that kind of lesson, and I for one am glad that one of us was the one to do it. She’s got a reputation for being spoiled and wild,’ Hilary continued, ‘and she likes stirring up trouble. One of my pals was posted to Ratcliffe and she said that Frankie was always trying to prove how much better she is than everyone else, but especially the British ATA pilots. Apparently she likes to boast that the ranch her father owns in Texas is bigger than the whole of England and that she’s been taught everything she needs to know.’

  ‘Except good manners,’ June pointed out trenchantly.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Hilary agreed. ‘You really put her nose out of joint tonight, Campion. It was about time someone showed her what it means to be British and I am so glad that it was one of us. I felt dreadfully sorry for that nice RAF flight lieutenant she was trying to lead on, though.’

  Lou had to bite on her tongue not to retort that Kieran Mallory was far from nice and would certainly not need any leading on.

  FOUR

  The first thing Lou noticed after she had stepped out of Liverpool’s Lime Street Station, packed with travellers, most of them in uniform, was how grey and grimy Liverpool looked after the pretty English countryside she had been living in. Quickly she pushed away her disloyal judgement on the city. Liverpool was her home, it was the place where she had grown, and most of all it held the people she loved.

  She was wearing her uniform, more for her parents’ benefit than her own. Her father was a traditionalist and a bit old-fashioned, and Lou suspected that he wouldn’t understand or indeed approve of the way things worked in ATA. Not that she minded wearing her smart tailored navy-blue skirt with its matching jacket worn over a lighter blue blouse. Unlike the well-to-do pilots, who all had their uniforms tailored for them at a store in London called Austin Reed, Lou had been perfectly happy with the neat fit of her regulationsized clothes. Rammed down onto her curls was the peaked forage cap that none of the girls really ever wore, her golden wings stitched proudly to her jacket denoting that she was now a Third Class ATA pilot.

  After the sleepy green peacefulness of the narrow country lanes around their base, connecting small rural villages and towns, the busyness of Liverpool’s streets, teeming with traffic and people, came as something of a shock. Her strongest memories of her home city were those of the dreadful days of Hitler’s blitz at the start of May 1941 and the terrible time after that when her sister had nearly lost her life in the bomb-damaged streets. Then the city had been silent, mourning its dead, and filled with grief, its people weighed down with the enormity of the task that lay in front of them.

  Now all that had gone and in its place was a sense of expectation and energy, brought about, Lou suspected, by the country’s growing hope that Hitler was going to be defeated.

  The city centre was busy and bustling with men and women in every kind of uniform: British Army, Royal Navy, and the RAF; American infantry and airmen, Poles, Canadians New Zealanders and Aussies.

  As she passed the street that led to the Royal Court Theatre, Lou felt her heart give a flurry of angry thuds. It was there that she and Sasha had first met Kieran Mallory, the nephew of its manager, Con Bryant. They had gone there naïvely hoping to be taken on as dancers. Instead of sending them on their way, Kieran and his uncle Con had deliberately encouraged them to believe that they had a stage future ahead of them. And by playing each of them off against the other, pretending to each behind the other’s back that he liked her the best, Kieran had cleverly come between them, fostering a mistrust and jealousy that had ultimately almost led to a terrible tragedy.

  That was all in the past now, Lou reminded herself. Sasha was happily engaged to the young bomb disposal sapper who had saved her life, and Lou herself had achieved her ambition of becoming a pilot.

  But the division between them was still there.

  Not because of Kieran Mallory, Lou assured herself. He meant nothing to either of them now and she certainly wasn’t going to give him an importance in her life that he didn’t deserve.

/>   Her nose, accustomed now to the smell of aviation fuel, hot engines, and Naafi food, set against a countryside background, was now beginning to recognise the smells of home: sea salt-sprayed air mixed with smoke and dust; the smell of vinegar, fish and chips wafting out of a chippy as she made her way up through the city streets toward Edge Hill; the scent of steam and coal from the trains in the Edge Hill freight yard, those smells gradually fading as she walked further up Edge Hill Road, leaving the city centre behind her, so that by the time she was turning into Ash Grove, Lou could have sworn she could smell the newly turned earth from the row of neat allotments that ran behind the houses and down to the railway embankment, one of which belonged to her own father. Her heart lifted, and just as though she were still a little girl, she suddenly wanted to run the last few yards, just as she and Sasha had done as children, racing one another to see who could reach the back door first, and somehow always getting there together, falling into the kitchen in gales of giggles. It had always been Sasha, though, who had still looked neat and tidy, whilst Lou had always been the one with a ribbon missing from one of her plaits and her ankle socks falling down.

  In those days, when they had got home from school they had measured the days from the way the kitchen smelled. Mondays, the smell would be of lye soap and laundry, because Monday was wash day, just as on Fridays the smell would be of fish. They were not a Catholic family but their mother had still followed the traditional habit of serving fish on Fridays. Thursday’s smell had always been Lou’s favourite because Thursday was baking day, and they would return home from school to find the kitchen wonderfully scented with the aroma of cakes or scones, or whatever it was their mother had been baking.