Spitfire Girls (39 page)

Jo was now flying trainer Moths and though the Battle of Britain had left her the youngest, and therefore the least
experienced, amongst new ATA arrivals, she utilized her time on the ground assisting the ‘Met' who provided weather updates. ATA's latest addition, Sally Remington, had shown a keen proficiency for meteorology and had become known as ‘Sally Met'. She was flying less frequently than the others, and that made her landlady very happy. Mrs Bennell had to find a Ouija Board and if Sally had a few hours off, they could search the town together.

‘It's my turn to go to Upavon,' Jo Howes announced, arriving back at the lodgings.

Mrs Bennell awoke from her daydream, half expecting to see Cal at the door, but just as gratified to see one of her girls, post-flight, all in one piece. She ushered the American child-pilot into the warm lounge. Then, as she placed the kettle on the gas ring, she could feel her heart racing at the whole scenario: barrage balloons, girls, Ansons, fear and munitions …

‘You'll still be stuck with us this Christmas,' Jo said. ‘I'm going to have my tests for Oxfords and Masters. Now I can fly what Edith Allam took across the Atlantic. Fourteen other girls have passed, and I'm going to be the fifteenth. Sally Met and Barbara Newman are coming along. That'll make seventeen. Just think, Mrs B, seventeen gals on their way to the next step – bombers.'

‘I hope this country takes proper pride,' said Mrs B, pouring out the tea, her thin hands showed signs of arthritic bumps where her joints glowed white. ‘Who would have thought it – young females stepping into giant air machines,' she marvelled.

‘It wouldn't surprise me if people didn't know what we've been doing.' Jo blew on the tea and stared into the
cup as if another, more peaceful world, existed at its bottom. ‘Shirley Bryce has been keeping a diary, and hiding it when she's at work. Someone told her the Air Ministry could confiscate it if she wrote about operations, so her mom puts it away somewhere when she's out during the day. The brass are supremely embarrassed that girls are being used in an RAF-associated location. Embarrassed! Can you believe it, Mrs B?'

Mrs Bennell sat down facing the American:

‘You're all children,' she said solemnly.

‘Cal says we are the first of many, or something like that.' Jo sipped the tea and winced. ‘Gosh, what I wouldn't give for a chocolate soda with seltzer.'

‘This will have to do for the time being,' the landlady said, smiling. ‘Why does Cal think you are the first of many?'

‘He says hundreds of girls are going to end up flying every type: even flying boats and four-engined advanced bombers. Valerie Cobb said he was right – before she disappeared into never-never land.'

Mrs Bennell let her cup fall back into the saucer, its angle causing liquid to spill along the side and on to the table. She wiped the spot with a rag.

‘Surely you know the truth, Jo,' she said, her face pale. ‘Did Valerie die on some secret sort of mission for ATA?'

‘Nobody knows. Now they're saying Jacqui Cochrane is coming over with her ladies and will be taking over ATA. That'll make the English flyers puke. Daddy hates her. He thinks she's going to start a new front – Britain against the USA – forget Hitler. Personally I ‘d feel real bad if Edith Allam didn't get her chance to come back in humble style.'
She had downed the tea and was tugging at the waistband of her flying suit. ‘Did you know Jacqui goes around in a Rolls Royce and wears fur coats while she flies?'

‘I'm sure she'll come down to earth when she sees how we are struggling over here,' Mrs Bennell said, not really caring about Jacqui Cochrane, and still wondering if Valerie Cobb had met a fiery, excruciating death amid a tangle of balloon cables. ‘I must get Stella Teague her Ouija Board.'

Jo had begun to let her mind travel. She thought of Upavon, where since 1912 the Central Flying School had functioned at the joint expense of the Admiralty and the War Office. Little had the men who founded the place foreseen the day when females would troop in for an air war as frenzied as this 1940s conflict. Jo hoped her conversion to Oxfords and Masters would be quick – she wanted to return to work before Cal was called up by the RAF. He was adorable, and unlike any little boy she had met at home, often behaving as if she were another lad destined for airborne glory.

‘Did you hear me, lass?'

‘I'm thinking, Mrs B.'

‘Would you help me find this Ouija Board? I'm told one has to go to pubs or to gypsy camps to get a nice one.'

‘I've been to pubs,' Jo said, rising and removing both cups and saucers from the white-clothed table. ‘They should sell chocolate seltzer.'

‘Not now, darling. Not even for twenty years, I should imagine.' She buttoned her faded coat.

‘I'll go with you.' Jo stared at Mrs Bennell, who seemed lost. ‘Are you scared or something?'

‘I am a bit.' Her eyes pleaded with the teenager for a
kind of protection. ‘Just thinking of you lot getting into monsters and flying into the clouds.'

‘Come on, old lady.' Firmly Jo took Mrs Bennell's by the arm.

Soon they were walking along the road and when they entered Hatfield town centre the sight of the aged locals made Mrs Bennell bristle. Standing in front of the pub, for a fleeting instant she remembered her late husband's expression for the place: ‘Obliteration oasis,' he would say, and now she dreaded entering its innards. Leaving Jo Howes standing in the middle of the road, she ambled to its weather-beaten oak door and pushed hesitantly. Although it was creeping past closing time, clouds of smoke and a blast of hot air confronted her as she moved forward amongst the men too old for service but too young to forget the previous conflagration started by the death of an unwitting Archduke. She recognized some of their faces from the yearly sojourn to the War Memorial, and her frame, cloaked in a thick overcoat, thrust its path away from the men and into a back room where the landlord kept his small office. Neatly stacked piles of receipts rested in a corner of an open roll-top desk and the smell of disinfectant gave an incongruous atmosphere to the otherwise bustling public house. Emerging from a corner of the heavily-beamed room, as if on cue, a slight, scowling man in spectacles looked intently at Mrs Bennell.

‘Would you be the landlord, then?' she demanded, suspicious of this man, a new face in her familiar village midst.

‘Indeed,' he said, his eyes reduced to slits as he seemed to grimace at the sight of a female. ‘Are you the new cleaner?'

‘I should say not – the impertinence!' she snapped. ‘To be specific I am in want of a Ouija Board.'

He peered at her doubtfully and pointed towards the room she had just left. ‘Come into the lounge,' he said.

She followed, and as the smoke seemed to burn into her lungs and hair she could discern Jo Howes hovering in a corner with a crowd of old men.

‘Funny you should ask about an oddity like this,' the landlord was saying. ‘Our two Polish arrivals have brought one.'

Mrs B craned to see through the haze. When her eyes had focused she saw a shiny Ouija Board, covered with esoteric symbols.

‘Do you think they would sell it to me, for the war effort?' she asked the landlord.

‘They
are
the war effort, my dear,' he retorted, crossing his arms and scowling. ‘Apparently the chap is a Great War ace and the girl is one of Poland's top pilots in active service. This country seems to have some sort of soft spot for Poles at the moment. Barbarians, if you ask me. And you: what's your business?'

‘My business is keeping this Pole-mad country's native pilot population happily bedded. I run the Stone House and my clientele is mostly female.'

‘WAAF?'

‘ATA .'

‘I see.' The landlord looked puzzled. ‘Valerie Cobb's organization?'

‘Exactly. Good girls.' Mrs Bennell studied him for a moment. ‘Yours is a new face.'

‘I was a butler in one of the best Norfolk houses until
my retirement last month. It has always been my dream to run a pub.'

‘As a former butler you should know a cleaning lady when you see one.' Mrs Bennell moved towards Jo and tapped the girl's arm.

‘That Ouija Board – they're not supposed to bring it out during the day,' Jo said excitedly, ‘but these old guys made them do it. It's really bad luck.'

‘Can you speak Polish?' Mrs Bennell asked.

‘Yep – but both of them have some English.'

‘Ask them if they would sell the Ouija Board.' She was shouting above the din of male voices.

‘I get no pleasants from this game!' Hana Bukova whined, waving her arms as if to disperse her elderly admirers.

‘Would you sell us your board?' Jo shouted.

‘Why?' Josef Ratusz looked up, the sharp blue of his eyes piercing the American like the sudden cut of a blade.

‘She is a pilot, can't you see?' Hana said, smiling tentatively.

‘I sure am – are you?'

‘I am adamanted!' Hana screamed, and the others lowered their voices. Suddenly the pub was quiet.

‘We are Polish Air force – deposed. I am Ratusz.' As if expecting his audience to fall to its collective knees, Josef clicked his heels and smirked, but none of the British war heroes budged.

‘One of our pilots, a lady, is dying to get one of those things,' Jo explained to a receptive Hana. ‘It would mean everything to her, to have a real Ouija Board.'

‘Stella Teague – a former ballet star,' offered Mrs Bennell, her wide forehead now beaded with perspiration.

Hana rose. ‘I am Bukova, daughter of Vera, the great aviatrix.'

‘You must be Hana,' Jo squealed, delight blossoming on her flushed face. ‘We're expecting you at Hatfield.'

Hana approached so close that her breath tickled the reddened surface of Jo's skin.

‘Has my mother appeared – Please?'

‘Your mother?' Jo felt cornered.

‘Vera Bukova was expected in England, with a cargo of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto,' Josef said nonchalantly, gulping from his pint of beer.

‘You miss her – I can tell,' Mrs Bennell nodded, sitting on a stool. The other men had dispersed, their stooped shoulders now clustered in a smoky nook at the far end of the room. Tibbs, the former butler to Lord Truman, listened carefully to the Poles.

‘I do hope your credentials are in order,' he murmured, slinking over to their corner.

‘I can vouch for these two – they're legends in their own land,' Jo exclaimed.

For the first time, Josef grinned.

‘Where did you guys get the Ouija Board?' asked Jo.

‘It was a gift from a boyfriend,' Hana said, fingering its smooth surface gingerly.

‘Is he here?' Jo pressed.

‘He is from Austria – Benno. Black Magic is forbidden by his religion, but he bought this beautiful one from a gypsy and gave it to me for my birthday. I only met him three or four times. His father used to visit relatives in our ghetto. They say it is very luxurious inside that place, by the way.'

‘So I hear,' Jo said, her eyes meeting those of the English landlady. ‘Real Ritzy and all that jazz.'

‘We intern foreigners now.' A voice had broken in, and all four turned sideways. Tibbs had perked up:

‘I was responsible for the capture of a German-speaking spy.'

‘What was his name?' Hana asked, folding the board and smiling provocatively.

‘Pavel Wojtek.' Tibbs hesitated. Had he said too much, bewitched by her remarkable eyes? ‘That is believed to be a false name, however,' he added. ‘The man had stolen his lordship's wallet. Apparently he has something to do with aircraft back in Germany, according to the papers. It's good that we caught him.'

Jo was looking at her watch, knowing that her forthcoming ordeal in Upavon would require a bit of homework.

‘Please come back with us,' she said, taking Hana's arm.

Josef had risen to his full height and was eyeing Tibbs strangely. Jo wanted them to leave as quickly as possible – the atmosphere had made her feel closer to the enemy than had any trip alongside an unexpected Luftwaffe fighter.

‘We have been sent from place to place,' Hana said, as the foursome left the pub. ‘Every time we are moved somewhere I am promised a rendezvous with my mother, but it never happens.'

‘I've long given up on ever seeing a mother,' said Jo. ‘Mine died when I was a few days old. My father is a pilot with ATA.' Now they were outside, and Mrs Bennell was walking behind the others. She still wanted her Ouija Board.

‘What was that man talking about – interns?' asked Hana.

‘People are being interned here,' Mrs Bennell asserted, moving up alongside them. ‘But you needn't worry. Poles are regarded as a better risk than Jews, my dear.'

‘This is true,' Josef boomed, smiling broadly. ‘The question is – what does one do with Polish Jews? Are they Poles? I don't think so.'

‘America has loads of Jews,' Jo remarked. ‘My aunt says they aren't real Yanks. And they sure aren't Polish.' She paused and grinned at Hana. ‘How about that Ouija Board?'

‘If we are all working in the same place, and we look after it, I don't mind,' Hana said, her mind racing through a flip album of images of Benno and the ghetto and her father's business there. She handed over the Board and Mrs Bennell beamed. They were near the perimeter of the airfield and a giant of an aeroplane was coming in to land …

Out of it emerged Delia Seifert.

‘That's Delia and her Hind – non-operational, of course,' Jo said, as they stopped to observe the aircraft, like a gigantic Tiger Moth, being serviced. ‘It's got a sixty-four-horsepower supercharged Rolls Royce Kestrel engine and can cruise at two hundred miles per hour. It climbs at fifteen hundred feet per minute. Nice, huh?'

When they arrived at the Stone House the lounge was empty. Jo was happy to have Hana at Hatfield. She had a strong compulsion to pursue the search for Vera Bukova, on Hana's behalf, and hoped ATA might give her some extra time off to go to London and make enquiries. She chuckled to herself. What would the senior men in the Ministry make of a teenager from the American backwoods
descending on Whitehall? It irked her to think that because of the cultivated accent she had acquired by listening to Valerie, Cal would be a hindrance if she were to bring him along on such a trip.