Only your wireless set does not shiver and weep and curse and beg for water and be sick and wipe its nose in its hair as its wires are short-circuited and cut and fried and knotted back together. It just sits there stoically being a wireless set. It doesn’t mind if you leave it tied to a chair for three days sitting in its own effluvium with an iron rail strapped upright against its spine so it can’t lean back.
Von Linden was not any more human grilling me about Orwell last night than when he was grilling me about those blasted codes two weeks ago. I am still nothing more than a wireless set to him. But now I am a rather special wireless set, one he enjoys tinkering with in his spare time – one he can secretly tune in to the BBC.
Well – four days have passed, three of them mentally and/or physically draining, and I have lost the thread. I haven’t got my prescription forms to look over or even Engel to remind me where I was. I suppose she must have other duties besides me and may even get a day off every so often. Beastly Thibaut is here with another man today hence I am writing like a demon, any old drivel, so as not to draw attention to myself. I hate Thibaut. I am not exactly afraid of him the way I am afraid of the cook or the Hauptsturmführer, but buckets of blood, I despise Thibaut – as I suppose he despises me – turncoat thugs that we are. He is crueller than von Linden, I think, enjoys it more, but has not v.L.’s genius or commitment. As long as I am writing Thibaut leaves me alone. I wish he did not fix these cords so savagely tight.
I forget where I had got to and I am also panicking a bit about Time. It is the 9th day since I started, and v.L. said I could have 2 weeks. I don’t know if that includes the past 4 wasted days or not, but at this rate I am not going to reach a conclusion (I think we all know I am never going to look at that stupid List again).
I will beg him for another week, in German, this evening. It puts him in a civil humour when people are formal and polite. I am sure that part of the reason I am treated as such a dangerous lunatic, apart from biting that policeman when I was arrested, is because I am always so foul-mouthed and foul-tempered. They had another British officer in here one time, an English airman, very I-say tip-top well-bred chap what, and though he was kept under guard he was always allowed to walk about with his hands free. (I’ll bet he had not got my amateur escape artist’s reputation. And I really can’t help my foul temper.)
No, I will take a look at that List again after all. Perhaps it will give me some idea of where to pick up the story. Also, Thibaut and his mate will have to scurry about to find it, which will be entertaining.
Random Aircraft
Puss Moth, Tiger Moth, Fox Moth
Lysander, Wellington, Spitfire
Heinkel He-111, Messerschmitt 109
AVRO ANSON!
Air Taxi with the ATA
How could I forget the Anson!
I don’t know how you manage to keep the Luftwaffe supplied with serviceable aircraft. The Air Transport Auxiliary is how we manage with the RAF, ferrying planes and taxiing pilots. A constant and steady supply of broken planes coaxed back to repair sites, new ones delivered from factory to operational base – all flown by civilian pilots, no instruments, no radio, no guns. Navigating by trees and rivers, railway tracks and the long straight scars of Roman roads. Hitchhiking back to base for the next assignment.
Dympna Wythenshawe (remember her?) was one of these ferry pilots. One blustery autumn afternoon when the frantic days of the Battle of Britain had faded and flared into the explosive nights of the London Blitz, Dympna landed at RAF Maidsend in a twin-engined transport plane, delivering three pilots who were to fly broken Spitfires away for repair. (Three lads. They didn’t let lassies fly fighter planes, not even broken ones, till a bit later in the war. Not much later.) Dympna came into the canteen for a hot cup of something and there was Maddie.
After they’d finished hugging and laughing and exclaiming (Dympna knew where Maddie was stationed, but Maddie hadn’t been expecting Dympna), and had consumed cups of Camp Coffee (chicory extract and hot water, blechhh), Dympna said, ‘Maddie, come and fly the Anson.’
‘What?’
‘You can have the pilot’s seat. I want to see if you remember how to fly.’
‘I’ve never flown an Anson!’
‘You’ve flown my Rapide a dozen times. The Annie’s got twin engines too, not so different. Well … a bit bigger. And quite a lot more powerful. And it’s a monoplane, with a retractable undercarriage –’
Maddie gave an incredulous bark of laughter. ‘“Not so different!”’
‘– But I’ll take care of the undercarriage. It’s a right pig to raise and lower, you have to do it by hand, 150 turns –’
‘Done that on a Wellington,’ Maddie said smugly.
‘There you are!’ Dympna cried. ‘No worries then. Come along, I’ve got to make a hop to RAF Branston and drop off another ferry pilot.’
She looked around the canteen approvingly. ‘It’s so nice to land at an airfield where you can get hot buttered toast. So many airfields are strictly Boys Only, with a cold sitting room for the ladies, usually empty. Heaven help you if you can’t get off the airfield before blackout – I had to spend the night in the back of a Fox Moth once. I nearly froze to death.’
Maddie looked away, her eyes welling with tears of envy at the thought of a frozen lonely night in the back of a Fox Moth. She’d not touched an aircraft’s flight controls since before the war started. She’d never flown anything so big or so complicated as an Avro Anson.
Queenie was walking towards them, carrying her own cup of steaming black engine oil. Dympna stood up.
‘I’ve got to get going before I lose the light,’ she said casually. ‘Do come, Maddie. I’ll drop you here again on my way back. It’s only a 20-minute hop each way. Take off, fly straight and level –’
‘– “Second to the right, and then straight on till morning,”’ Queenie said. ‘Hello! You must be Dympna Wythenshawe.’
‘And you must be Maidsend’s impromptu crack gunner!’
Queenie gave a little bow. ‘I am a gunner on Tuesday mornings only. Just now I am in Bomb Disposal. See?’ She held up her own half-slice of dry toast. ‘Out of butter already.’
‘I’m about to take your friend Maddie for a flight lesson,’ Dympna said. ‘An hour off base. There’s room for one more, if you’re free.’
Maddie saw no flinch or blanch pass over the fair skin. But Queenie said calmly, putting her cup on the table, ‘No, I don’t think so.’ Then she repeated every one of Maddie’s own objections. ‘She’s not flown this type. She said so. And only as a civilian.’ She articulated exactly how long since Maddie had piloted a plane, a known fact. ‘A year ago. More than a year.’
Reason had been hammering at Maddie. She’d thought in rapid succession: I shouldn’t leave base, I don’t know what I’m doing, it’s probably illegal, I’ll be court-martialled, and so forth. But now she made up her mind. Reminded how long it had been since she had flown a plane herself, Maddie made up her mind. It had been far too long.
‘Now,’ Maddie said. ‘Now I wear Air Force blue and already this year I’ve been fired on in the air and I’ve shot down an enemy plane myself, or as good as. And Dympna’s my instructor and I’m a pilot and you –’
Queenie needed twisting. She was still on her feet, still clutching her untouched toast.
‘Pretend,’ Maddie told her, inspired – ‘Pretend you’re Jamie. Your favourite brother, the one you worry about, on a training mission. You’re sure and full of yourself. You’ve done your solo in a Tiger Moth, and now you’re going along as a stooge, and all you have to do is raise and lower the undercarriage, which will leave the instructor free to concentrate on the tyro pilot –’
Suddenly she faltered. ‘You’re not really afraid of heights, are you?’
‘A Wallace and a Stuart, feart o’ anythin’?’
Maddie thought it must be like having a little brass peg in your mind, like the hinged switch on an electric hall light, and when you flipped it, you turned instantly into another person. Queenie’s stance was different, her feet slightly further apart and flat on the floor, her shoulders squared back. Perhaps more like a drill sergeant than her Eton-educated older brother, but certainly more man than any WAAF Flight Officer. She cocked her blue cap back at a rakish angle.
‘High time they put the RAF in kilts,’ she remarked, flipping the hem of her uniform skirt disdainfully.
Maddie said a silent, secret thank-you to Adolf Hitler for giving her this utterly daft chameleon for a friend, and chummed Queenie out to the airfield, following Dympna.
The sky was low and grey and wet. ‘You’ll get an hour in your log book, P1 under training,’ Dympna told Maddie over her shoulder as they crossed to the Anson. ‘Taxi, takeoff and a full flight to RAF Branston. I’ll talk you through the landing there, and you can try it yourself when we get back to Maidsend.’
There was a lad (a real one) giving the aircraft the once-over when they reached it, and chatting with a couple of ground crew. He turned out to be Dympna’s other passenger, the other ferry pilot on her taxi run. He glanced up at Dympna as she approached and gave a laugh, and exclaimed in a broad American accent, ‘Well, look what we have here – three gorgeous English gals to fly with!’
‘Yankee idiot!’ cursed the youthful, blue-kilted bomber pilot. ‘I am a Scotsman.’
—
Maddie climbed in first. She crawled forward through the fuselage (ex-civil passenger aircraft, impressed by the RAF like Dympna’s Puss Moth) and into the left-hand seat, the pilot’s seat. Then she sat scanning the collection of gauges and instruments. She was surprised by how many of them were the friendly, familiar faces of dials she knew: rev counter, airspeed indicator, altimeter – and when she took hold of the flight controls and felt the ailerons and elevator responding reliably to her command, for one moment she thought she was going to cry properly. Then she glanced over her shoulder and saw her passengers climbing in behind her. Dympna slid her elegant length into the right-hand seat beside Maddie, and Maddie pulled herself together. On her behalf a random squall peppered the panes of the cockpit with fat raindrops for about ten seconds. Then the shower stopped suddenly, like a squirt of machine-gun fire.
What’s a lass like you need with a big toy like this?
Maddie laughed aloud, and said to Dympna, ‘Run me through the checks.’
‘What’s so funny?’
‘This is the biggest toy ever.’
‘We’ll get bigger ones soon,’ Dympna assured her.
Maddie felt like the last day of school, like the summer holidays beginning.
‘Two fuel tanks in each wing,’ said Dympna. ‘Two oil pressure gauges, two throttle levers. But only one mixture control – set that to normal for start-up. The ground crew takes care of the priming pumps –’ (I am making this up. You get the idea.)
