Spitfire Girls (32 page)

‘Yes, well, when he isn't here …' she murmured, pulling up a chair and sitting.

‘You mean Dad?'

‘He does terrible things – you're old enough to know now.'

‘Has he murdered somebody? Is that where the stink is coming from?'

Bridle laughed an unearthly cackle, and for the first time Cal noticed his mother had developed a wildness in her eyes that emanated from beyond their wet twinkle, as if her brain were generating two tiny picture houses running high-speed reels of horror.

‘There was an air raid and the people across the road got it,' she said. ‘The pong you're smelling is the cat and her new kittens.'

‘You took in their cat to look after?'

‘Well, after all, Cal, that was all that was left of them, wasn't it? After the raid I said I 'd go and see to those poor devils and I kept saying I wished our Cal was here, then I saw and that was it – the cat in her basket looking a stupid fool, the rest of everything flattened. All clear, all clear, they call it all clear for a few bodies, a few families
and a few truckloads of corpses. Clear them all away ready for the next time.'

‘Mum – this war's making you crazy.'

‘I'm not crazy – it's you who are.'

‘What's crazy about the RAF?'

‘Wanting to die before your time.'

‘We need to stop Hitler.'

Bridie's head was bowed and she kept silent. Mewing noises in a corner moved Cal to inspect the rescued animals, their colourful markings like a merry-go-round of painted horses on a summer's day. They looked remarkably healthy, their fur already lustrous and their narrow eyes just beginning to open.

‘How can you afford to feed them?' he asked.

‘Don't even think of destroying those babies,' she snapped, sitting up in the chair.

‘I never said I would, Mum.' He stood motionless in the middle of the dreary kitchen.

‘About your father, Cal – he's taken to all sorts of peculiar things.' She motioned for him to sit. ‘Your friend is waiting and I want to tell you before you leave me.'

Cal was close to her now, the fresh smell of his uniform and boots a disturbing contrast amid the aftermath of bombs.

‘What he does – he goes off on these trips, and drives tarts about in fancy cars. He comes home and smells of them. You aren't too young to know about this, Cal. Your father had all his faults, you know, but at my age – to have to put up with the scent of fancy ladies.'

‘How do you know – their perfume?'

‘No, my love – a wife knows, like that mother cat over
there. Instinct, or some such thing. They're not the sort who'd wear perfume – more mannish like.'

‘What are you saying?'

‘It hurts, Cal – these girls are pilots.'

‘Rubbish, Mum!' He was shouting and felt as if she were a stranger casting aspersions on his proudest loyalties. Had he not felt that ATA people belonged to each other, pledged to protect one another and do a job no human had done before at the expense of home, lover and child?

‘Our girls aren't tarts – not any of them! Besides, they're all too busy working. Just last week, a few days before her wedding, Marion Wickham did three major ferry trips in ten hours. Delia and Stella were flying all over the place and Angelique was dropping with fatigue. There aren't enough of them to go around – and I can tell you, Mum, there's none of the new recruits are cheap slags. Not one—'

A smack as hard as anything he had ever felt from his father's belt stung into his face and he thought he would lose his sight. His hands shot up as if to press eyeballs back into place and he rose to his full stature.

‘What was that in aid of?' he asked, staring stonily at Bridie.

‘Someday you'll understand what a woman goes through. I curse your flying ladies every day. They are no-good, drunken slatterns without a fibre of morality in their thick skins. Edith Allam, Sally Remington, Barbara Newman – I've heard about them all.'

‘Sally Met!' Cal exclaimed, laughing.

‘Is that what they call her? How many men call her by funny names then?'

‘She's our Met Officer,' he said, wiping his face with a perfume-laden handkerchief he had taken from Marion's car after her wedding.

Bridie looked her son up and down with a suspicion she had never held for him before.

‘You had better go before your father returns.' As she spoke voices could be heard. In strode Joe, his face animated as Alec followed on his heels looking enraged yet nervous.

‘Bloody ignoramus,' Joe snarled, oblivious to Cal's presence.

‘Your boy's here, Joe,' Bridie said, her eyes now a blank screen between features.

Joe did an about-face, his gaze meeting Cal's.

‘Here's a pretty sight, then,' he said, leaning against the sink drainer.

‘I'm not staying, Dad.'

‘So your friend said.'

Alec had composed himself, and stood to attention as if before a tribunal.

‘Mum, Dad, this is Alec Harborne, real RAF Retired – now ATA, and my tutor.'

‘Tutor in what, I ask you?' Joe moved across the room and pressed against Alec's torso.

‘As I tried to tell you on our way in, the wee lad has impressed my wife with his prowess in the air.'

‘What other prowess?' Joe demanded, his voice grinding against the thick, putrid atmosphere.

‘He's a good boy, Joe,' Bridie whispered.

‘I'Il tell you precisely, if you really want to know,' said Alec evenly. ‘Unlike the ferry pilot, who seldom flies enough hours on any one type either to reach the sublime
state of being in unity with his mount or to know its dials and knobs blindfolded, this boy will have one wedded mate, an aircraft he will come to read like a spouse.'

‘I've never heard of a man leaving his bride on his wedding day to go off somewhere with a young lad.' Joe was becoming agitated, and he was shouting into Alec's face.

‘War has that effect, sir,' Alec said, smiling.

‘I've a mind to keep my boy here,' Joe snapped.

‘Dad!' Cal screamed, moving to the door. His father was fast upon him, gripping his arm with a twisting, burning cruelty that made the boy cry out. Alec pounced on Joe, pushing him away and wresting Cal from his grasp. In the corner, the kittens squealed and Cal broke away from Alec, darting to the box and overturning its contents, the mother cat's howl reverberating against the four ugly walls.

‘Bloody devil himself, you are,' cried Bridie, crawling on her knees on the filthy, greasy floor to gather up the frail newborns, thrusting them against their mother's agitated breast. Red, swollen teats on the cat's upturned underbelly seemed to glare at Cal. He ran from the room and raced for the car, locking himself inside and hiding on its warm floor. He dreaded the sight of his father tearing out of the house to pursue him with the usual beating, but as his heart pounded and guilt at the memory of the distressed animals rose in his overworked heart he wanted to cry at the sound of the car door opening.

Alec was there, and Cal no longer wanted his mother.

He wanted to travel, and to meet other people's mothers. He wanted to leave this horrible legacy behind. He wanted to love, and he agonized to imagine the girl who was his
own private picture as some loose woman turning tricks in the back of Lord Beaverbrook's car. Jo Howes had been left in peace by the men on the base and if she were not pure, as Cal thought, then could it be everything was the opposite of what it seemed, and Hitler not so bad?

This pilot was overjoyed when handed a Heinkel Transport, knowing it would be one less aircraft destined for conversion from passenger to bomber class. Her cargo had been paid for and was causing no problems so far, but she dreaded the turbulent entry into airspace over the English Channel. Once an ace, Vera Bukova had flown thousands of hours in her lifetime and had trained fighter pilots whose medals were a legacy of her teachings, but now she had to be doubly vigilant as the years eroded her brilliance. Soon she would have to retire, but not before transporting the Kranz family to be reunited with Friedrich in England.

There had been innumerable delays in this mission, and for some weeks she had doubted the Jewish cargo could ever be collected from the ghetto and herded to the airfield. By the time they had managed to escape she had made another sixteen trips ferrying refugees to Romania. Her inebriate husband hated her, after a while, and in recent days had become alcoholically violent. She was pleased to be airborne virtually all her waking hours. Every time she arrived at Bucharest the same Romanian soldier, Ludo, harassed her about the cargo and spat out racial obscenities, but always waved at her and smiled as she taxied.

When she had brought the Kranz cargo in to Bucharest, Ludo had asked about Hana – he remembered hearing something about a boy called Benno who had appropriated the golden girl's affections and he wanted to know of her again. Vera made cheery excuses, saying Hana was on
holiday, for she dared not reveal the truth about her daughter's perilous journey to Allied shores. Ludo seemed exceptionally anguished and she wanted to tell him something more concrete about Hana – could he write to her? a postcard? – but her cargo needed transporting and her secrets needed preserving. Her tired, aging brain felt an enormous strain and she very nearly invited Ludo to come along for the ride to Britain, her exhaustion bringing momentary madness to a terrifying scenario. Everywhere around them refugees – some once rich and brilliant and now with nothing, some poor but becoming brilliant in adversity – begged for a place on air transports, but her package of people was paid for …

‘These are my special Jews.'

‘I'm impressed,' said Ludo, circling the aircraft.

‘If they were my own family I wouldn't let them all travel on one flight,' she said. ‘The father's instructions were specific: they must go together.'

‘You will wear your own parachute, and if something happens, bail out.'

Vera looked into the soldier's dull eyes. ‘What about them?' she asked.

‘If on land, they will perish. But if on sea, like flotsam they will rise to the top.'

‘You're a poet, Ludo.' Vera checked inside her holdall to see if her belongings were in order, and she ran her hands along the sides of her flying suit as if frisking herself.

He smiled. ‘When will I be seeing Hana again?'

‘I hope to bring her here on my next trip, Ludo,' she replied, studying his face more closely.

Ludo scratched his head, poking his finger underneath
a soiled cap. He looked at the aircraft, which rested in the small, muddy field unnoticed amid the usual din of confused refugees and even more bewildered officials, all of whom, deep down inside, yearned for safe refuge too.

‘Anyone who helps these worthless people without being asked will be a traitor,' he said. ‘Everywhere in the world, Hitler will be the owner and the citizens his guests. Doing something out of the ordinary will be treason.'

She gazed at him with thoughts of Hana surging through her mind, and could not control an urge to squeeze his burly arm before turning towards her aeroplane and joining the cargo.

Vera shut her eyes and thanked the Guardian Angel of Aviators for the commotion that had distracted all the officials present on this day, allowing her to leave Bucharest without a proper inspection of papers. There was an atmosphere of excitement inside the Heinkel, but she was irritated that the cargo insisted on speaking German, with which she had always had tremendous difficulty. Vera concentrated on the controls of her aircraft; the Heinkel had been lovingly designed by the race she hated, and she had to admit the specifications created a machine unlike any other she had ever piloted. When she landed in Britain, there would be joy all around: here was a technical masterpiece their geniuses could dissect.

She allowed the engines to roar with pride, skirted the runway and made a dangerous ascent, barely missing the tops of cottages peppering the village. Benno Kranz was sitting next to her now, as she manoeuvred the magnificent aircraft well out of Romanian airspace and on a course for the rain and the pallid men of England.

Were there any real men left there? Or anywhere?

Vera convinced herself that this mission had been performed for Hana. During Friedrich's visits to the ghetto, the well-dressed boy had practised his Polish with her daughter and developed a bond: he had told her about the
Dybbuk
and afterwards his father had berated him for scaring the girl. Hana had laughed – she was a woman and a pilot, and she was never scared – and on Benno's next visit she had told him the story of Our Lady of Czestochowa. It was not meant to frighten, but he had been terrified.

Listening now to the women talking, she glanced around and noticed their fair hair and small features: they could easily have stayed in Austria or in Poland, blending in with the Aryan population. Was it their intensity that made them different? Suddenly she recognized a few words: Kranz's mother was drifting into Polish, and she wanted to talk to them all.

‘How long is it since you saw Dr Kranz?' Vera shouted, mouthing her words slowly.

‘Ages!' his wife replied, her Polish perfect.

‘All this time I thought you spoke only hoch Deutsch!' Vera yelled, as the engines gained a happy momentum.

‘My mother speaks five languages fluently, and she once played a violin concerto and a piano concerto all in one symphonic concert!' Benno announced, staring straight ahead.

‘You people seem to undertake ruthless goals,' the pilot responded. ‘There is never a sense of fun. Have you ever thought of getting drunk and being ridiculous?'

There was a silence as all four Kranzes exchanged guarded looks.

‘How could we allow ourselves to get drunk?' Frau Kranz asked testily. ‘What do you think would happen to us?'

‘When you get drunk, you get drunk,' Vera said.