Churchill’s Angels (35 page)

‘Fastenings,’ said Flora suddenly, and her daughters looked at her.

‘Fastenings?’

‘The sleeves, o’course. Fastenings on the inside of the arm, all the way up to the elbow.’

‘Clever you, Mum. I couldn’t work it out, but the dress, or dresses copied from it, I suppose, are on sale. Latest look for autumn, it says.’

They went quiet as they all realised they had been so involved with the description of the dress that they had not noticed that the noise in the world outside had changed. They could hear the clanging of the volunteer fire brigade, but it grew fainter and fainter as the trucks moved away from the centre of the town.

No one spoke as they tidied up the refuge room, gathered up their things and walked wearily back upstairs. Only then did Flora speak. ‘Don’t turn on any lights, girls. I’m going to risk a peek.’

The peek revealed nothing. There was both moonlight and starlight, but without going outside, they could see nothing. ‘Can’t see if the sky’s gone red. Can’t see any flames.’

‘I’m going down,’ said Daisy suddenly. ‘I’m a WAAF; surely I can do something.’

Before they could respond she had run back downstairs and soon they heard the back door being opened.

Daisy edged her way out and, keeping close to the untouched buildings of the street, walked further into town. Far, far beyond the centre, flames shot dramatically into the air and sparks rained down and were immediately extinguished. A haze of smoke and ash was moving slowly, shutting out the stars. Daisy stood quietly for a moment and then stepped out of the shadows.

‘Dash it, woman, wear summat white when you’re out during blackout. What if I’d been a car?’ He stopped, stared, ‘Daisy?’ Fred grasped his daughter. ‘What in the name of God are you doing? Have you been home?’

‘Hours ago, Dad. We’re all fine. I thought there might be something I could do.’

‘Yes, there is. Stay safe and well during an air raid so you can go back and do your job in the morning.’

He kept a tight hold of her hand as they hurried back home. ‘Does your mum know you’re out?’

‘Yes, but Rose’s with her. She’s fine. We were in the refuge room together. What’s it been like, Dad?’ Even in darkness she could see that he was amazingly dirty and he smelled of smoke.

‘Not near as bad as we’ve had. Too confusing, Daisy; we’ll find out in the morning. I’m that tired I can scarce put one foot afore the other.’

They had reached the back door to the flat and Fred took out his key to open it but as soon as he touched the door, it opened a crack and Rose’s anxious face peered out. ‘Thank heaven, Dad. Mum’s upstairs boiling kettles for cocoa and washing; she knew you’d be black.’

‘And too tired to do anything but wash my face and fall into bed.’ He started upstairs and then remembered Daisy’s interview and turned. ‘Daisy, love—’ he began.

‘It’s fine, Dad. I got a new job, tell you in the morning.’

‘Later in the morning,’ Rose pointed out. ‘Now, sorry, Daisy, but since I’ll be at the factory when you start talking tomorrow, you’ll have to tell me now.’

Both girls were sound asleep before Daisy had got past the first part of her story.

They were all awake at breakfast time and ready to hear all about it. Flora decided to grill the week’s ration of bacon and served it with old bread she had fried in the bacon fat and a little dripping.

‘A substantial breakfast needed after you nearly being starved yesterday, Daisy,’ said Flora happily as she put the plates on the table. ‘Now better start, so our Rose can get off to work.’

Daisy went over the entire day from the minute she had stepped on the train at Dartford Station. She told them all about the important people and the senior officers who had asked her questions. ‘And Group Captain Lamb, who’s head of the base, actually said as how several senior officers were pleased with me, or words like that, Mum, but that was the gist. I thought I was hearing things and then they sent me away to this lovely office with paintings and nice furniture and the photograph of Mr Churchill, oh, and there was one of the King too, and I had coffee. And would you believe, when they sent for me to come back, they said that – ’ and here she choked up with emotion – ‘they said that Wing Commander Anstruther told the base commander that Charlie’s mother wanted the Board to know that her husband had intended to recommend me for pilot training. That nearly did for me. I never met her and I never wrote when … it happened.’

Everyone was quiet as they tried to take in all that they were hearing.

‘But here’s what’s been arranged,’ continued Daisy, who was determined to tell the exciting, almost unbelievable story once and for all, ‘I’m in the WAAF, which is military, and the ATA is civilian and so I’m not eligible, but there is a “mitigating circumstance”, they said. Some bigwigs are discussing using WAAFs to fly with the ATA or joining the two units, but right now they’re separate. So, at a “higher level” I am being transferred from the WAAF to the ATA, and meantime I’m posted to White Waltham. I told you that already, Mum, but it’s the main ATA base and I’m very lucky. At first I’ll continue to work as a mechanic. But, listen to this, time and schedules permitting, I’ll be given serious flying lessons.’

Flora, who had been holding on to the teapot as if her life depended on it, put it down on the floral tablecloth and looked at Fred and then at Daisy. ‘Flying lessons. But you won’t go in one of them planes by yourself?’

‘No, Mum, not when I’m having lessons,’ said Daisy, adding under her breath, ‘not yet.’

At that moment there came thunderous knocking at the side door. The noise was somehow full of despair and Daisy flew downstairs, three at a time.

‘Careful, Daisy, careful,’ called Fred, hurrying along behind her, but Daisy threw open the door. George Preston, as black as a chimney sweep, almost fell into her arms.

During the air raid, while his mother and younger brother crouched, in fear and trembling, in the tiny space under the scullery sink, George slipped out, hoping that he would find hot chips – a tasty treat for his mother. There was a café on the High Street where he could sometimes buy chips at the back door. In his pocket he had a whole shilling, not nicked but given to him by Mr Petrie for giving the van a good clean-out. His mum did her best, but she wasn’t a great cook and never, never did chips, lovely hot slices of potato fried to a nice crisp in boiling hot, spluttery oil.

He hurried along, his hands over his ears to drown out that roar as the great death-dealing monsters flew overhead, freezing every now and again against a wall as he heard that most terrifying sound, the crump that told him a deadly bomb had fallen quite close to where he sheltered. Caught up in the raid, pushed into an air raid shelter, he spent several hours, protecting his chips from grasping hands, feeling them growing colder and less mouth-watering by the second. He would not eat them, no matter how hungry he became – they were for his mum. And no one else would take them from him.

Eventually George slept.

‘They’re dead, miss, dead, both of them. I only went to get Mum some chips.’ He clutched Daisy and wept.

Rose, who had followed her father, picked up George and, helped by the shorter Fred, carried him sobbing and protesting up to the kitchen where Flora was waiting.

‘There, there, Georgie, get your breath and drink some tea. Then you can tell us everything. We’ve all the time in the world, lambie.’ She took the cup that Daisy held out and lifted it to his lips.

‘They’re gone,’ he said, horror in his eyes, ‘Mam, wee Jake, the house, nothin’s left, nothin’. There’s a pile of bricks and smoke and a terrible smell, and bits keep falling, bits of glass and a pot came from nowhere – landed at my feet; it’s hellish.’

The Petries looked at one another over his bowed head and Flora held him tighter as Fred reached for his coat, nodded to his wife and daughters, and left quietly. He would find out exactly what had happened.

‘There’s porridge on the cooker, George, and a lovely sausage. Daisy’ll fetch you some and then you should have a rest.’

‘The bed’s gone,’ he whispered.

‘There’s three beds in that room just waiting for boys,’ said Flora, pointing to the door of her sons’ room.

George was too traumatised to eat, but he followed Flora into the large bedroom and sat down on a bed while she looked for pyjamas that might do. When she returned the boy was sound asleep on the bed. Flora eased off his ill-fitting boots, covered him with a blanket and went back to the kitchen to wait for Fred.

Since Rose had to get to work, Daisy pulled an apron over her striped cotton shirt-waist dress and went down to open the shop while Rose tidied away the mainly uneaten breakfast. Then she returned to the bedroom where she sat waiting and remembering other boys who had slept in these beds.

It was not long before Fred returned with his horrifying story.

‘Direct hit,’ he told them. ‘No chance for wee Jake or his mother. Had George been there …’ He shook his head and said no more.

‘He’ll stay with us, Fred. He can stay off the school too; near time for him leaving and he’s too upset now to do anything but try to recover.’

No one argued with Flora when her mind was made up, and besides, the twins agreed with her. George would be good for her and she would be good for George. Daisy was happy to leave home with the knowledge that young George, for whom she would always feel responsible, was being cared for properly.

She spent her first exhausting week at her new station working in an enormous hangar where the planes awaiting inspection were lined up. Planes came in on a fairly regular basis, depending on how many miles they had flown. The sergeant to whom she had been assigned set her to work on the engines of a Lancaster bomber. It was a challenge since she had never seen the type of plane, never mind its workings, before. At the end of her first nail-biting shift the sergeant seemed pleased.

‘You seem to know one end of a spanner from the other, girl, which is quite an achievement, considering some of the trained – it’s the adjective they gave me so it’s the one I’ll use – flight mechanics that have turned up here.’ He shook his grizzled head. ‘Why are you girls not content to be where you’re supposed to be? Dunno what the world is coming to, I really don’t. But it’s in for a penny, in for a pound, girl. The workload is unbelievable and, in the end, you’re responsible for your work, nobody else, so get used to it. Lads’ lives depend on you.’

Daisy had no need of his lecture but wisely kept her opinions to herself.

Two weeks after she started she was transferred to official pilot training.

The sergeant tried hard to congratulate her. ‘I hope you make as good a pilot as you are a mechanic, Petrie, but what a loss to the team. You don’t like it up there, come back. We’ll find a place for you.’

Daisy was touched by his brusque kindness but she could not hide the glow of happiness; she was officially a member of the Air Transport Auxiliary. The fulfilment of her dream was within her grasp.

The course would consist of hours of classroom training followed by equal or even more hours of practical training. She embraced this new regime wholeheartedly, working hard without complaint. Images of the child on the Heath, of Ron, Charlie and now Adair, seemed to smile encouragingly at her. ‘It’s also for the living,’ she told them and herself, too. More and more planes were being rushed out of the aircraft factories, the trainees were told, and more and more pilots were needed to fly them.

The more she had to learn, the more aware she became of how much she had missed by leaving school so young. Beside some of the other girls and women who were coming into the ATA from professional lives, she felt inferior, but most of them were very friendly and welcoming.

‘We’re all in this together, Daisy,’ one of the trainers assured her, ‘and what is important in the ATA is not who you are but how well you fly.’

That was encouraging, and she remembered Adair and Tomas. They had said she would make a good pilot and they were experienced professionals. For the first time she began to look forward, with more excitement than fear, to her first flight as a qualified ATA pilot. That, however, was still a long way off.

She had classes in meteorology, about which she knew nothing, map reading, which was easy as she had been reading road maps since she was eight or ten, ‘technical data’, which was a nightmare because there was just so much of it, and other subjects. Since she was a fully qualified flight mechanic she sailed through the course on engines.

‘You will be flying below the clouds, and so we won’t waste time we don’t have on teaching you to navigate. Planes are equipped with a compass, possibly a gyro, and you will have a map.’

‘Radios, surely?’ asked a sophisticated older woman.

‘Not in the new aircraft you’ll be flying, madame.’

Tomas contacted her from time to time, and twice he was there to give her a few more flying hours. She asked him questions. ‘How will I know where I’m going when I’m up there by myself?’

‘If we had all the time in the world, Daisy, we would train you to use navigational instruments but there just is not time enough. You will have a compass. The inexperienced ferry pilots will have to rely on maps of the ground beneath them, and the ground itself. You plan a route on your map, you look for features such as rivers, lakes, railway lines, church towers, bridges, anything that will help you, and then you memorise it. You listen to the weather reports; bad weather is as much a danger to you as the might of the German air force. You must be aware of barrage balloons – fly near their huge cables and you are unlikely to survive – watch out for what we call friendly fire from anti-aircraft batteries, but you cannot mark anything on your map—’

‘Why not?’ she interrupted. ‘I know there’s a huge defence gun on Dartford Heath and so I don’t need to put that on my map, but if someone else tells me to watch out for—’

He interrupted her in turn. ‘You commit to memory, Daisy. There must be nothing on your map that would prove useful to the enemy.’

‘But airfields are marked.’

‘Of course, and the enemy has always known where each one is, as we know the location of theirs. An airfield isn’t built overnight, Daisy; no point in trying to hide them. Easier to hide the planes.’