Blackbirds (4 page)

“No. The pilots were talking about him.” Sharon looked around. Some of the patrons were eating steak and kidney pie, others were smoking, and all were hefting a pint or four. She saw all of this through a haze of smoke. The ceiling was so low, it had nowhere to sit but in front of her face. Her eyelids felt like sandpaper. “Are you finished?”

Linda chewed the last forkful of her supper.

Sharon thought,
You eat like a man and weigh maybe one hundred
and twenty-five pounds. How do you do that
?

“I don't know. I've always had a healthy appetite.” Linda stood. “Let's talk some more on the way back.”

Did I say that out loud? She's reading my mind again.
“Fair enough.”

Outside, Sharon inhaled fresher air. The blackout made the stars brighter. She sniffed her uniform jacket and found it stank of cigarette smoke and sweat.

“No drinking. No smoking. What kind of Canadian are you?”

Sharon turned and anger lit her from within. She was greeted with Linda's smile. The anger was extinguished. “My mother died from the one, and my grandfather abused everyone because of the other. By the way, how do you read my mind?”

“Your face is as easy to read as the morning headlines.” Linda linked her arm through Sharon's.

Sharon felt flushed with embarrassment, as well as something unfamiliar, unnamed.

Linda said, “You know, when I found out who you were, I told my mother, and my father looked into you.”

“What is
MI
5, anyway?”

“Intelligence. Now, that has to stay between you and me. It's all so hush-hush, you know.” Linda did not smile.

“Really?”

Linda pulled Sharon's elbow and stopped them. “Really. We even have an official secrets act now.”

“Does that mean that what we talk about stays between us?”

“From now on, if you like. I told my mother about you because she took care of Cornelia after your grandfather beat her. They became close again. My mother told Cornelia about you coming to England after the bastard died.”

“How did he die?” Sharon asked.

The silence went on for more than a minute. Linda asked, “How did you find out about O'Malley?”

“My mother told me about him a couple of weeks before she died. She'd tracked him down through one of her old friends — someone who had worked for Cornelia for years. She gave me the letter, but the signature was blacked out. That's how I knew where he was.” Sharon had a flashback of her mother's skeletal body in the hospital bed.

“Who do you think was your mother's old friend?” Linda asked.

Sharon tried to read Linda's expression through the darkness. “It was Honey suckle! She was the one who wrote my mother.”

“Yes. Your mother and my mother were friends from childhood. Honeysuckle met your father on several occasions,” Linda said.

Sharon shook the image of her mother's last emaciated days out of her mind. “I want to meet him.”

“Yes, I suppose.”

Sharon heard Linda's reluctant tone. “Well?”

“You know that there is risk involved?”

“Of course,” Sharon said. “What's your father like?”

“Kind of distant. Smart. Lives in his own little world.” Linda touched Sharon's arm.

“I want to meet my father and find out for myself what he's like.”

CHAPTER 3

[ JUNE 1940 ]

“We have a twenty-four-hour leave coming up.
Would you like to come home with me? My father will be there. And Honeysuckle will be sure to prepare a feast.” Linda looked over her cup of tea. Her eyes were smiling and awake, even though the sun was just leaning with its elbows on the eastern horizon.

“Another meeting with Cornelia?” Sharon felt an anxious butterfly stirring in her belly. “It's a long way to go for one day.”

“That's already taken care of. We make a delivery to Church Fenton. It's near Leeds, close to Ilkley. A car will be waiting for us.” Linda pointed her finger at the dispersal hut as an elegant, white-haired, and clean-shaven man stepped outside. His hair was tinted orange by the rising sun. He looked in their direction and pointed. His name was Mr. Green — no one seemed to know his first name — and the way he fussed over “his” pilots had earned him the nickname of Mother.

Sharon stood up. “I wonder what Mother has for us this morning?”

“You seem a little off lately. What's the matter?” Linda asked.

“Did my mother write more than one letter to Honeysuckle?” Sharon looked directly at her friend.

“She wrote several, actually.” Linda tapped the bench with her palm, indicating that Sharon should sit back down.

Sharon remained standing. “She must have been writing letters while she was in the hospital. Did you read them?”

“Yes, Honeysuckle showed them to me. You must understand that she and Leslie were very close. They remained in contact over the years. When Leslie became ill, she wrote to my mother more often. Your mother was worried about what would happen to you after she died. Honeysuckle shared the letters with me. In the last letter, Leslie said that you might be coming to England. That you had talked about finding your father. She was worried about how you would be received by her family. So my mother asked my father to watch for your name on the passenger manifests of ships arriving from Canada. In wartime, men like my father have access to all sorts of information.” Linda reached into the pocket of her flight suit and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

Sharon watched as her friend struck a match and lit up.

Linda inhaled. “So, by now, you've sussed out the fact that our initial meeting was not accidental.” She looked at her friend.

Sharon said, “Your father told you where to find me?”

Linda nodded. “My mother and Cornelia wanted to make sure that you were all right — that you would be safe. The fact that we're both pilots made it easy.”

“It all seems so calculated.”

“It certainly was at first.” Linda exhaled a cloud of smoke.

“And now?” Sharon was afraid of what the answer might be.

Linda picked at the filter of her cigarette with her thumbnail. “We're friends, aren't we?”

“When the French surrender, we'll be on our own.”
Linda's father sat in the garden on the east side of their home. Harry's hair was thin on top. It was more silver than red now. Behind his glasses, there was tired worry in his blue eyes. He sat across from Sharon and Linda. Honeysuckle stepped out of the house and walked toward them.

Sharon thought,
They always seem to avoid talking about Michael.
I wonder if there is any news
?

Linda looked at her father. “Have we got anything left to fight Jerry with?”

Harry glared at her. “What have you heard?”

Linda said, “The pilots who've come back from France talk about what it was like. How the Nazis blitzed their way through Europe. I've got ears!”

Sharon added, “After a delivery, it's impossible not to hear the talk. Many say the Luftwaffe has more aircraft and more experience. Hitler has been rebuilding his air force for years, and the
RAF
has a long way to go to catch up.”

Harry smiled. “Perhaps the pair of you should work for
MI
5 in London. Your assessment is remarkably accurate.”

“Are you going to answer the question, dear?” Honeysuckle sat down at the table next to her husband. She looked across at Sharon. “Cornelia said she'd be happy to join us for lunch.”

Sharon nodded in reply. She felt tension's grip behind her navel.

“Churchill got the wrong number stuck in his mind.” Harry looked at his daughter.

Sharon noticed that Harry had a habit of taking his time revealing juicy bits of information. It often took a series of questions before he would get to the point.

“Sharon and I have already flown to most of the
RAF
airfields. We've seen the situation. We're not idiots, you know.”

Harry's face was redder than his hair. Honeysuckle put her hand on his.

Harry took a breath. “Winston has the number twenty-five stuck in his mind. He thinks we need that many squadrons to defend England. Dowding is the head of the Royal Air Force. He repeatedly told Churchill that the absolute minimum is fifty-two. On the positive side, some of our pilots are still straggling back from the continent. There are even some Polish flyers who are forming a squadron. It seems clear, however, that we're going to be below the fifty-two squadron minimum. And it's absolutely clear that the Luftwaffe has us outnumbered almost three to two. When France surrenders — and I'm saying when, not if — Hitler will feel the need to defeat the
RAF
before he attempts an invasion of England. If we're lucky, he'll put Goering in charge.” He gave Sharon a worried glance.

Sharon covered her mouth with her right hand.
I can keep my mouth
shut. Don't worry
. “Why is that?”

Harry nodded at her. “Goering is more concerned about the style of his uniform than his tactics.”

Honeysuckle smiled.

Linda shook her head and said, “You don't have to concern yourself about Sharon. She and I talk about most things. And she knows how to keep a secret.”

Honeysuckle looked at Sharon. “It appears you have picked a very bad time to come to England.”

I've been thinking the same thing
, she thought. “What are our chances?”

Harry looked out into the garden. “It's hard to say. Assembling an invasion fleet is a complex undertaking. We still have a strong navy, and our latest fighters are a match for the Luftwaffe's best. The problem is that we do not have enough Spitfires and Hurricanes, or even enough pilots to fly them.”

“So the situation is desperate?” Honeysuckle asked.

“Well, not exactly.” Harry reached for a cup of tea.

“Well? You make it sound desperate,” Linda said.

“We can track aircraft as they approach our coast.” Harry looked around the garden, checking to see who might be listening. A pair of blackbirds sat chirping at one another on a nearby branch.

“Yes, of course, the Observer Corps.” Linda wagged her finger at her father to scold him for revealing information they already knew.

Harry set his tea down and shook his head. “No, it's something new. Something quite different altogether.”

“So are you going to tell us or not?” Linda stood to force her father's hand.

“We will have advanced warning of the Luftwaffe as they form up over France and head this way.”

“Sounds fanciful,” Honeysuckle said.

“Sounds like the Druids are involved.” Linda rolled her eyes.

So that's what those towers built up and down the coastline are for
, Sharon thought.

Harry turned away from his daughter and toward Sharon. “You're a bit of a mystery. You arrive here off a ship and end up flying for the
ATA
. Where did you learn how to fly?”

Sharon looked back at him and replied without thinking. “My mother was a secretary for a construction company in Calgary. The owner and his wife took us under their wing. Their children were all grown up, so, on the weekends, we'd often go to their ranch south of the city.”

Sharon looked around the table. Harry, Linda, and Honeysuckle were leaning forward to hear every word.

Linda said, “Go on.”

“My mother's boss, Douglas, had an airplane he used for work. He'd fly around the country looking at various construction sites. He saw that I was fascinated with flying. When I could reach the controls, he began to teach me.” Sharon thought back to those flights, those weekends and summer holidays she would look forward to the way she looked forward to Christmas morning.

“How old were you when you began flying?” Honeysuckle asked.

Sharon shrugged and looked at them. “Ten. I had a license by the time I was seventeen. Not all of my time in the air is in my logbook. I've got well over twelve hundred hours of official flying time.”