Spitfire Girls (34 page)

Sitting in the back of the Anson, Noel talked softly to his older pupil:

‘Why don't you leave that woman?'

‘In the middle of a war?' Sam looked incredulous.

‘Who cares?' Noel grinned.

They stopped talking as the Anson struggled through thick cloud, but even when the view had cleared the other men remained silent.

‘What a glum bunch,' Noel chimed, eyeing the congregation of pilots seated in the taxi aircraft. Not one of the men responded, but Sam whispered in his ear:

‘They're all still wary of us after the accident. I expect they think of themselves as perhaps the next Oscar and Martin Tolands in your list of intended victims.'

Noel smiled.

‘Are you having a romance with that gal?' Bill Howes broke in.

‘Which girl?' Noel demanded sharply.

‘The gorgeous Florian dame,' he replied.

‘Perhaps I am, perhaps I'm not.'

‘You either is, or you isn't,' Bill quipped.

‘What difference does it make, Howes?' Noel peered out of the small window on his side of the aircraft.

‘You been pushing her around?'

Only the engine could be heard as breathing stopped.

‘Nonsense.'

Four pairs of eyes stared at Noel as if he were about to reveal a terrible secret.

‘In public.' The American was relentless.

‘Howes, she's a tart,' hissed Noel.

‘Whom are we talking about?' asked Hamilton, who had leaned back in his seat next to the pilot, wanting to defuse a dangerous situation that would be one hundred times worse airborne than on the ground.

‘He means Angelique Florian,' Sam offered, smiling meekly.

‘Angelique is to play Richard III at RADA next term, war or not,' Hamilton said. ‘She is known as their best leading man. Not that she isn't all female. Harold Balfour is pursuing her, and she is not a tart.'

Guffaws exploded spontaneously from the men on board, and Hamilton let out a long breath. Noel stared out of his window but the other men cackled and joked and that was the way Hamilton wanted it until God saw them back down to earth.

Noel turned again to Sam as the others made what to him was a ridiculous noise. ‘You're special to me, Sam.'

‘Be quiet.' Sam looked at his colleagues with fear but Noel was still talking:

‘We could have a business partnership. It was meant to be, mate.'

Sam moved closer to him, his paraphernalia getting in the way and his pockets jangling.

‘What have you got in there, old man?' Alec shouted, winking.

‘Chronometer, stopwatch, protractor,' Sam replied colourlessly, while the men resumed their laughter.

Noel was glad; the din drowned his words:

‘If we get together I can start on something I haven't told you about. It will make you drool, Sam.'

The Anson had begun a sudden descent and soon with a tentative juddering it came to a halt.

Conversation ceased.

‘Ancient and Tattered Aviators,' shouted Alec as the door opened and the cool air drifted into the fuggy cabin full of pilots.

They had expected to see gleaming new Spitfires peppering the landscape, one for each man, but at Hamble airfield all that greeted them now was a small collection of ragged machines, one battered Airspeed Courier resembling a museum piece rather than a wartime defence offering and a spattering of Moths that seemed perfect targets for German bombing raids. Jim strolled a full circle around the Courier and smiled.

‘It's a good way of getting rid of trash,' Bill volunteered, looking up at the bright sky and brushing his hand against an aged Fox Moth's fuselage.

Sam and Noel walked away, heading for the main road leading to the Vickers factory.

‘Disgusting,' Alec mumbled as he watched the pair vanish around a distant corner.

Never in his life had Sam Hardwick ever contemplated a close partnership with another man, and he knew the ferry group resented their relationship. Noel hated women and Sam was miserable, but neither wanted the other; both men knew there was, indeed, a smouldering volcano within.

‘Did you hear Harborne just now?' Noel asked, as they walked briskly along the sandbagged road.

‘We ought to have women friends, Noel,' he said. ‘They're good for show.'

‘Punching bags are good for show, too,' snapped Noel, striding on ahead of Sam.

‘How can you hate them so?'

‘You've asked me that a hundred times before.'

Sam had caught up with him, but his breath was coming in fits.

‘Hardwick, prepare yourself for a monumental surprise.'

Turning into the entrance drive to the Vickers plant they were stopped by a guard.

‘First of the ATA Spitfire pilots,' Noel snarled, arrogantly waving his log book.

‘You have no authority to enter the premises as yet. Only the CO can.'

‘I
am
the new CO,' declared Noel.

Sam was astounded. The flight engineer's audacity was as boundless as were his flying ambitions.

‘If you do not leave the grounds you will be arrested,' the guard said calmly, surveying Noel as if he were a giant leek.

‘This is my Adjutant, Hardwick, and I must insist you allow us entry to the works,' Slater asserted, his voice grating on Sam's ears.

‘Come this way,' the guard instructed, pointing to the front entrance.

They walked, Sam wanting to run away and never be seen again. It was the first time Noel had got him involved in a situation as embarrassing as this, and in one split
second he regretted every direction in which he had allowed his life to go this year.

‘Watch this,' Noel whispered to him as they followed the guard.

In the main reception area, sitting beneath a new painting of King George, another guard perused the outlandishly-dressed aviators and smiled at them: Sam could not help thinking of a zoo-keeper cooing at the deadly lion who had escaped her cage.

‘First Officer Noel Slater reporting with taxi pilot Hardwick for Spitfire deliveries.'

‘Your CO would find this most amusing, gentlemen,' said the guard, still seated under his sovereign.

‘I am the CO,' said Noel, this time whipping out an impressive, leatherbound document book and waving it in front of the incredulous pair of guards.

‘As you know, Mr Slater, the Ministry of Supply has laid down quite specific rules about the organization of ferry trips from this factory. In the first instance, we have test pilots who take Spits out on a test run and it could be one further day before we are ready to release them from Maintenance Units for this particular operation to take place.'

‘I thought the RAF was screaming for them!' sneered Noel.

Sam nodded sheepishly – standing, as always, two steps behind Noel.

‘In any case, Slater, Miss Flint is to have overall charge of this procedure.'

‘Miss Flint?' howled Noel.

Sam retreated another two steps.

‘Indeed, sir. The new Commanding Officer, Hamble. Nora Flint.'

‘This is an outrage,' spluttered Noel with a look of helplessness.

‘She is an awfully nice girl,' Sam croaked.

‘A woman CO – this is the ruination of the Services,' Slater ranted, perspiring through his heavy flying gear. ‘This will get into the press just as we are about to receive Germans landing in parachutes in our own back yards – literally – and all the Ministry can do is appoint a girl CO.'

The reception guard was still seated, and he gazed with disdain at the flight engineer. ‘May I assume you wish to retract your original contention that you are in fact CO Hamble?'

‘How do you mean?' Noel was incoherent, his hand pressing into a creased forehead, his receding hairline glistening under the bright lights of the famous manufacturing establishment.

‘I thought perhaps you would not wish to be mistaken for a woman, having previously made claims to being Hamble CO.'

Noel grabbed Sam by the arm and marched him out of the building, nearly knocking their first escort off his feet. Walking at a fierce pace he soon reached the main road – but with Sam lagging behind, his irritation grew.

‘Move, for God's sake!' he bellowed, and the older man sped to his side, panting.

‘What an achievement for little Nora,' gasped Sam, stopping by the roadside.

Noel would not speak again that day or that evening,
his mortification addling his thoughts and curdling the small breakfast in his stomach.

Gordon had arrived with glorious delicacies from his secret cache, and the men celebrated Nora's promotion to Commanding Officer by crowding into the single ladies' lavatory cubicle and toasting her with Selfridge's own Lloyd George Vintage.

Noel experienced a vague awareness of the festivities, his mind clouded by visions of a beautiful, unobtainable woman who had given birth to him, bathed and dressed him and pushed him out into a world where he had hoped females would be extinct. His torment, however, could not cloud Sam's delight in Nora's achievement, and as the men gave generous obeisance to the prospect of her command, Noel's mind drifted to the words the Vickers guard had spoken: test pilots must take new aircraft out on a trial run …

This was of great interest to him.

Angelique had forgotten religion since war and the ATA.

Having been one of the choice eight selected for Valerie Cobb's first ferry pool, she had been in great demand, with rarely a day off between flights. She could still remember her very first assignment, which had taken all of twenty-five minutes: she had delivered a T1176 from the factory at Cowley to Wroughton. Anson-loads of ATA pilots were being dumped in Cowley for trips to Scotland. Stella Teague would drop the girls off and they would scramble, often getting only as far as Carlisle where a night-stop would be necessary. Back in their respective cockpits the next dawn, the girls would fly on and refuel at Ternhill, grabbing tea in the Mess.

‘You never eat!' was the one complaint every ATA girl's mother would shriek on the now-rare visits home, but on occasions like these time was of an absurd essence, the nation still ill-prepared for onslaught, and the barrage balloons a daily nightmare. Indeed, when Angelique, Nora and Delia managed to get through the barrage in their Moths they could barely see one another but pressed on past Liverpool and on a northerly course to Lancaster. Angelique recalled vividly one journey in which the cloud base had started to drop, and the girls were sandwiched between the hills and the cloud, with the light fading all the time. They caught sight of a lone railway line and followed it until, to their relief, they could see a major town materializing on the horizon. Having to spend the
night at an ancient inn, the three pilots spotted Sam Hardwick and Bill Howes, who were ferrying Lysanders to Belfast, though both men were officially listed as taxi pilots …

All three women vowed they would be flying ‘Lizzies' before the year was out. On that long journey, Angelique remembered her exhaustion as they flew up the Dumfries Valley in good weather, using this as a short cut to Prestwick. The trio knew this route was perilous and would eventually cost the lives of some ATA pilots, and should only be attempted in fine conditions.

‘How do you say West F-r-e-u-g-h-?'

Oscar Toland had awakened from a painful slumber and Angelique was thrilled to see the colour returning to his cheeks.

‘You must have been reading my mind,' she exclaimed.

‘Why's that?'

‘I was just thinking about all those trips up to Prestwick, and the Dumfries route. You know – the short cut around West Freugh.'

Oscar smiled, the bandages covering most of his face and his extremities. Hatfield General Hospital had been host to the Toland brothers for two days and their horrific injuries had been a new experience for the young doctors and nurses accustomed to the occasional push-bike casualty. Now that the airfield was fast becoming a centre for multilevel operations, hospital staff knew they would have to gear themselves for wartime horrors.

It was afternoon, and Angelique was grateful for the arrival of a humid summer storm front. She had become fascinated by this American clergyman, whose brother
Martin was a withdrawn, timid shadow of Oscar's vibrant personality. Both boys had been reared in a well-to-do, fiercely evangelical background, in which affluence was tempered by their father's obsessive zeal for New Testament rantings and moral speechmaking. Over the dinner table Ezra Toland had lectured his boys about the evils of temptation, and while Martin had gone out into the world and resisted the burning that had arrived with the first hairs of puberty, his brother Oscar had gone out into the world and taken on every temptation.

Much to the indignation of old man Toland, his boys had developed two unspeakable fascinations: one for flying, and the other for European history. Though they had missed out on the Spanish Civil War they were drooling at the possibility of helping fight Hitler from a base in England. ‘Europe is the home of Satan,' their father had cried as they had argued bitterly for paternal permission to board a steamer bound for Canada and the United Kingdom. They had been ordained Baptist ministers less than four years, and neither had reached thirty. Even their mother, who never spoke except in church, opened her mouth to protest and for a brief moment both lads were moved, but when Ezra went for his Bible to proclaim them almighty sinners they decided they would make a pact: one weak, and one strong, they would travel together to help Europe, birthplace of the Shakespeare, da Vinci and Euripides that they loved in secret, and home of the remarkable Valerie Cobb, who was breaking the barriers of traditional womanhood.

Jesus, they both agreed, would have liked that.

Indeed, their congregations commended the boys to the Lord for safekeeping and in spring 1940 Oscar and Martin
braved the growing threat of U-Boat approaches and boarded a ship sailing to England with magnanimous volunteers from the land of isolationist politics.