Smythe, who had sent her out on her first solo Grade 2 flight, was a firm disciplinarian but very fair and encouraging.
She had been so lucky to have been upgraded on to a Grade 2 course so speedily after having first qualified, Lou reflected as she tucked into her salad lunch in the canteen. She’d be flying again this afternoon and she didn’t want a heavy meal lying on the butterflies she knew would invade her tummy. June had qualified two months ahead of her and insisted that Lou had to be ‘super good’ to have been pushed up a grade so quickly.
Lou suspected, more modestly, that it was more a case of her being in the right place at the right time. Not that she hadn’t been thrilled and excited. She had, the words almost falling over themselves as she wrote them when she sent Sasha a letter telling her about her potential up-grade to fly advanced single-engined planes, but in her response her twin hadn’t even mentioned Lou’s triumph. What made Lou feel even more guilty now was that secretly she would much rather have spent her precious leave weekend in London with June than in Liverpool with her twin sister.
‘I just hope that when we finish this conversion course we’re both posted together, that neither of us gets posted to Ratcliffe,’ June announced, breaking into Lou’s thoughts.
Lou finished chewing a rubbery piece of Spam, and demanded, ‘Why, what’s wrong with Ratcliffe?’
June raised her eyebrows and shook her head so vigorously that the bun into which her auburn hair was knotted threatened to unravel.
‘Haven’t you heard about those Americans who joined ATA who are based there?’
‘No, what about them?’ Lou demanded.
‘They’ve put it about that they can outfly and outplay any other ATA female pilot, and they’ve got the reputation to prove that they mean it. There was a pilot at my last ferry pool who swore blind that she’d seen two of them deliberately racing one another to see who could put down first. They don’t like us and they’re quite happy to show it, or so I’ve heard.’
‘There were a couple of American pilots at my last posting and they were nothing like that.’ Lou felt obliged to defend the two senior and very dedicated American women she’d seen flying in and out of Barton-in-the-Clay.
‘Well, I’m only telling you what I’ve heard, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be posted to Ratcliffe. I like a good time but when it comes to some of the things I’ve heard that they get up to, I’m afraid I draw the line.’
‘What kind of things?’ Lou pressed her.
‘Like I just said – wild parties. Very wild parties. The kind where you end up in some man’s bed,’ June emphasised darkly. ‘I mean, I’m no prude, but.’
If what June had said was true then she had to agree with her, Lou reflected as they cleared what was left on their plates into the slop bin and then placed them on the trolley for washing.
‘I’ve got my first solo this afternoon.’ June rolled her eyes. ‘I’m dreading it. What about you – what are you doing?’
‘Margery is going to go through the details of my three cross-country solo flights with me, ready for the first one tomorrow. She’s not told me yet which plane I’ll be flying, though.’
‘See you tonight then.’
Lou nodded.
Although most of the ferry pools didn’t have accommodation blocks, and ATA pilots were normally billeted with local people or clubbed together to rent somewhere between them if they could, at Thame Sir William Currie had put one wing of his Tudor mansion at the disposal of ATA to provide a ‘live-in mess’.
After living in basic WAAF accommodation at an RAF base before transferring to ATA, Lou had been round-eyed with disbelief when she had first been shown her new quarters – a wood-panelled room with its mullioned windows overlooking the knot garden.
She even had a four-poster bed, with the same heavy ruby-red velvet curtains as were hanging at the windows. Her room had its own fireplace, and a large polished wardrobe and a chest of drawers, both of which smelled of lavender.
On the wall next to Lou’s bed hung a sampler, requesting ‘Bless this House’, stitched, so she had been told by the housekeeper, by Sir William’s great-aunt as a young girl.
‘Their’ wing of the large house was accessed via the main hall with its magnificent polished wood staircase, the banister carved with symbols from Sir William’s family crest. Since ATA did not have an officer structure – pilot seniority being denoted by length of service and ability to fly a variety of planes – there was no official ‘mess’. Instead the girls ate their meals in the base’s canteen or occasionally by invitation in the house’s elegant dining room, furnished with an antique Hepplewhite dining-room table and chairs, eating off delicate china and using silver cutlery, with Sir William as their genial host. One of the drawbacks, though, as far as Lou was concerned, were the bathrooms, with their huge baths, which they were allowed to fill with only two inches of hot water.
‘Yes, see you tonight,’ Lou confirmed as she set off in the direction of the hangars.
‘Yes, Charlie, of course I understand why Daphne won’t be coming with you, with her own mother not being very well, but I must warn you that Mummy is bound to be disappointed. You know how much she thinks of Daphne.’ Bella Polanski pushed the thick waves of her golden-blonde hair back from her face as she spoke patiently but firmly into the telephone receiver. Her blue eyes were shadowed with disappointment as she assured her younger brother that she had got the message that his visit to Wallasey would be a solo affair.
Privately, Bella acknowledged later, she wished that Charlie was going to be accompanied by his wife, even though that would have meant Bella giving up the comfort of her double bed to Charlie and his wife, leaving her to sleep in the boxroom’s single bed, and even though she and Daphne had never been close. And it wasn’t for her mother’s sake either that she would have preferred Charlie not to have returned home alone. Vi had been puffed up with pride when Charlie had announced that he was to marry Daphne Wrighton-Bude, the girl whose brother Charlie had rescued at Dunkirk but who had sadly not survived his injuries, and their father had rewarded Charlie very handsomely financially for his good sense in marrying a girl from such a good family. Not that Charlie was likely to get any money out of their father now that he had left their mother for his assistant, Pauline. Vi had been over the moon when Charlie had told her that he and Daphne were expecting their first child, but then just after Bella and Jan had married had come the sad news that there was not to be a baby after all. Bella, having suffered a miscarriage herself during her own first marriage, had written immediately to Daphne but the only reply she had received had been a frosty little note from Daphne’s mother acknowledging her own letter.
From her small office at the nursery, it was impossible for her to see out into the nursery itself but she didn’t have to do that to be able to visualise the look of tenderness on Lena’s face as she worked with their small charges.
The best thing she had ever done, aside from marrying Jan, had been to listen to her conscience the day she had seen Lena in the street in Liverpool, distraught and heavily pregnant with her brother, Charlie’s illegitimate baby. Moved by the young girl’s plight, Bella had taken her home with her. Out of that one act of compassion had grown
