Chapter Thirty-Six
It never ceased to amaze Doris when male pilots walked over to her after she’d climbed out of a Spitfire and asked, “Are you the pilot?” She always wanted to bang their heads against a brick wall, not least because the Spitfire was a single-seat fighter. The higher the rank of the officer, the more irritating she found it. A little surprisingly, she rarely had the same level of ignorance from the ground crew. They were usually happy to get a new aircraft, or one recently repaired and so shouldn’t cause them as much work as the hard-used aircraft already on strength. Personally, Doris had delivered enough aircraft requiring defect reports that she didn’t share their enthusiasm in that regard.
Perhaps the war was making her too pessimistic? She hopped off the port wing, grabbed her travel bag, and stalked off, resisting the temptation to discuss why a woman could handle a hot aircraft like a Spitfire. Striding toward engineering, she rubbed her forehead, cursing herself in banging it as she’d climbed into the Wellington she’d delivered earlier in the day. The number of times she’d flown one, and she chose today to hit her head, and exactly in the place she’d been wounded. Since then, a headache had built up which was on the point of being classified as splitting.
“Didn’t you hear what I said?”
Doris didn’t bother to turn her head, let alone reply. If the idiot of a navigator behind her couldn’t tell from her body language—she let out an overblown groan and rubbed her head—then he didn’t deserve to be spoken to.
“Excuse me. I’m talking to you, young lady.”
Big mistake. Being young was one thing, as was being a lady. However, put them together, they were simply—wrong. Ordinarily, she’d take some time to educate the man in the error of his ways, but she was pressed for time. The Anson taxi was due to pick her up in around thirty minutes, and she still had to hand over the aircraft. More importantly, she wanted to go to the bathroom and take some aspirin. She turned.
“And why are you talking to me, young man?”
From the look on his face—which didn’t appear to be old enough to grow a moustache, let alone a full beard—being talked back to was not what he’d expected. She’d certainly never seen a jaw drop so far so quickly. He then made his second mistake. Doris later mused that if she’d been armed, it could easily have been his last.
Grabbing her arm, he attempted to stop her as she made to turn away. In one swift and totally unexpected movement, she grabbed the pilot officer’s wrist, twisted it, and rammed his arm behind his back. He let out a squeak of pain and immediately tried to squirm out of her grip, making another mistake, as Doris simply shoved his arm farther up his back, adding a little pressure on his wrist.
“Listen closely to me, little man,” she said into his ear, not bothering to keep her voice down and thereby causing a couple of mechanics who’d begun to run toward them to do a swift about-face and pretend they hadn’t seen or heard anything. “I’m a pilot. You’re a failed pilot, so go and bother someone who does give a damn about anything you have to say. I don’t.” Doris then released the flustered man, turned her back on him, and proceeded in an unhurried fashion toward engineering again. “Oh, and if you come across a two-seat Spitfire, do tell me,” she threw at him as she turned the corner around a hangar.
It didn’t take long for Doris to run into him again. Whilst she was handing in her delivery chit to the junior engineering officer in the operations room, the door behind her crashed open and the pilot officer’s extremely red face appeared in the busy room.
“There you bloody well are!”
Resisting the urge to waggle an eyebrow at the flight lieutenant she’d been talking to, Doris put on her most innocent yet outraged face, making certain he saw it, before turning to face him. “Why, Pilot Officer. Whatever is the problem?” Also making certain she put on her best New York accent, so everyone from the JENGO to the lowest ranker knew she was an American lady performing a duty in a foreign country. More than one head perked up upon hearing her voice.
If anything, her ultra-polite way of speaking made him even more adversarial. “What do you mean, what’s the problem? I asked you a simple question, and the next thing I know you’ve got my arm halfway up my back. You nearly broke it!”
A bit later, when she told the story to her friends over fish and chips around the kitchen table, she’d feel a little ashamed of her behavior, but right then, she gave him both barrels. Canting her head slightly to one side, Doris fluttered her eyelashes at him. “Me? Little old me, assault a big, strong man like you? I think you must have me confused with someone else.”
The navigator opened his mouth to splutter out a reply. However, before he could get any words out, there came a loud burst of laughter from somewhere toward the back of the room.
“Who said that?” he demanded. “Come on, speak up—I demand to know who laughed!”
“Greer Garson,” was the yelled reply, which only elicited more laughter. The poor JENGO had a hand over his mouth, though he couldn’t keep his shoulders from shaking with silent laughter.
Doris could see her adversary was getting more and more wound up. For a moment, she considered apologizing to him. He probably hadn’t deserved the armlock. Then her headache decided to remind her of its presence, as she felt a bundle of needles gouging into the rear of her eye. All right, he hadn’t deserved it, but going by the response to his outburst by the room’s occupants, it appeared he may not be the most popular of people around the station.
Before she could say anything, the pilot officer struck himself on the back of his head. Then, his eyes flashing as he quickly looked around the room, he addressed her but forgot to lower his voice, so everyone in the room could hear what he said. “If we ever meet again, I’ll… I’ll…”
Doris leant in, making certain only he could hear what she told him. “If I were you, I’d make certain we don’t meet again.”
At hearing this he went, if it were possible, even redder, almost puce, his little fists clenching and unclenching before he did a swift about-turn and left the room.
Taking a deep breath, Doris turned back to the JENGO and asked, “Have we finished?”
Her words had the same effect as opening a safety valve. He let out a burst of laughter, and soon the whole room was rocking with mirth. Eventually, the junior engineering officer managed to control himself. “All right, everyone, back to work.” He turned to where Doris was watching, slightly bemused. “Do I want to know?”
“Know about what?” Doris asked, trying to portray the picture of innocence.
It took another pointed stare around the room for everyone else to realize they should find something more important to do than trying to listen in to this conversation. “I mean”—he leant in across the counter top—“was there anything in what Dawson there said?”
Doris batted her eyelashes again, nearly causing him to laugh again. “Do I look like I could break someone’s arm?”
“Yes, you do,” he answered without hesitation.
“Fair enough,” she replied, grinning and dropping the act. “He’s…overreacting,” she decided to say.
When Doris didn’t volunteer any more information, he swiftly decided he wasn’t going to get anything further out of her. Making sure to look around once more, staying stretched over the counter, he told her, “If this gets out, I’ll deny everything.” Doris nodded to show she understood, and he continued, “I shouldn’t really say this, but Dawson there is a pain in the ass. Comes from landed gentry and never stops boasting about it. Whenever something goes wrong, it’s never his fault. Currently he’s grounded.”
“I’ve got to know why,” she couldn’t help but ask.
“Was flying in a Halifax tasked with bombing Berlin, only they wound up halfway to Switzerland before the pilot realized something was wrong. He had to take over navigation and they ended up ditching their bombs in the sea, as they didn’t have enough fuel to get to the real target. Would have been too dangerous as well, going alone across half of Europe.”
“Bloody hell!” Doris couldn’t help saying a little too loudly. “Sorry, go on.”
“Consequently, we’ve got him as an admin officer before he goes back on a refresher course.”
Doris stood up straight and shook her head. “You do know we at the ATA navigate by map and fixed points on the ground?”
The JENGO whistled. “I’d heard, but wasn’t sure whether to believe it.”
Doris’s needles made another appearance, and she couldn’t stop her hands from automatically kneading her eyes.
The engineering officer noticed and asked, his voice full of concern, “Are you okay? Is there anything I can do?”
Once her vision cleared enough, Doris looked up and asked, “I don’t suppose you’ve a couple of aspirin?”
“Jones!” he called out without looking around. A corporal appeared at his side. “Go to my office and get a couple of aspirin for this lady. They’re in a little tub on the windowsill. You can’t miss them.”
“Thanks,” Doris said with a smile when the corporal came back. “I’ve needed them for a bit.” Once she’d knocked the tablets back, she was surprised to see his eyes were wide and fixed on the strip of plaster she still had on her forehead. She didn’t think she needed it, as the cut had healed, but Walter had insisted, once he found she was back on flying duties, she put some over the wound site for a week. After knocking it in the Wellington, she was very glad he had, for she could have ended up with worse than a headache.
“What happened?” the corporal asked.
“Took a knock on the head when a Nazi bomber decided to jettison a bomb near where I live.”
“Bloody hell.”
“Jones!” the JENGO warned the corporal. He then smiled at Doris once the man had gone. “What he said.”
****
“You never did!”
Doris was slightly regretful of having told her friends what had gone on at her last delivery of the day. Only the girls were gathered around the kitchen table, barring Penny, with Walter being on a night exercise and Lawrence, still worried about his aunt Ruth, deciding he couldn’t come around.
The slightly older voice of reason, Betty asked, “But why? Yes, he sounded like an officious little oink, but you do also know how lucky you were no one saw what happened.”
Doris decided to keep to herself the two mechanics. “I know I shouldn’t have,” she agreed, “but I had a splitting headache, and he only made it worse. He was in the wrong place.”
“Still,” Mary uttered whilst choosing her next chip, “I wouldn’t make a habit of it.”
“Habit of what?”
Everyone turned to find Ruth in the doorway, Lawrence hanging behind her.
“You came!” Shirley declared, getting up from her chair and giving her a hug. “I’m so pleased. Come on, there’s plenty left,” she informed her landlady, taking her by the hand and sitting her down at a free seat.
After contemplating her dear friend, Betty got up, grabbed a clean plate, placed it in front of Ruth, and piled it high with large, crunchy chips and a succulent piece of battered fish. “Don’t speak if you don’t want to. Not yet, anyway. I want to see you make some headway on your meal. You look like you haven’t had a square one in ages!”
Only when Ruth picked up a fork, cut into the flaky fish, and began chewing did Betty take her eyes from her. Instead, she fixed Lawrence with a glare.
Ruth noticed and laid her fork down. “Don’t blame Lawrence,” she told her best friend. “It’s not his fault I haven’t been eating.”
In spite of what Ruth told her, Betty still took a moment to think things through before inviting Lawrence to sit down. As was becoming normal, Doris shifted along until she could share her seat. Nobody bothered to ask if this were an American thing anymore. They knew it as a Doris thing.
Silence now reigned until Ruth noisily threw her fork down. “For goodness’ sake! I’m okay, honestly.”
“And we’re supposed to take your word, are we?” Only Betty would say such words to her friend.
For the first time in a while, Ruth allowed a ghost of a smile to grace her face.
Betty, rather too forcibly, stabbed a couple of chips before looking up. Her face didn’t match her actions, though, being only full of concern. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be mean, only we’ve all been very concerned about you since, well, since you heard about your son.” Betty was in full flow now, though Ruth showed no signs of protesting or interrupting. “All we’ve wanted to do is to help, any way we can, but you haven’t let any of us in. We’re family—everyone around this table is family. Family shares, family sticks together, especially in the times we’re living through. We’ve all tried to help but gotten nowhere. Now, here you are, stating you’re okay. Which means what? Have you done anything? Called anyone?”
Ruth sat back, an enigmatic expression upon her face. “I’d forgotten how fiery you can be when your dander’s up,” she remarked. “To answer your question, yes, I have done something. I managed to track down someone from the Red Cross.”
When she didn’t elaborate, Shirley, who’d been on the edge of her seat since Ruth began to speak, couldn’t wait any longer. “And?”
Ruth glanced at her, held out a hand, which Shirley willingly took, and then sighed. “I kind of wish I hadn’t. But at least I know more about POWs being repatriated, now.”
This announcement caused a minor storm, and Ruth had to wait for the various cries of, “What?” to quieten down before she was able to continue. She squeezed Shirley’s hand because this was going to be hard for her to hear, as she wouldn’t have been able to help but get her hopes up.
“Joe doesn’t qualify.”
“Not even now he’s got…you know…” Mary didn’t quite manage to get the complete sentence out.
“One foot,” Ruth finished for her. “You’d better get used to saying it, Mary. If I have to, you should too.”
“Blimey.” Lawrence shook his head. “Makes you wonder how you have to suffer before you’d qualify.”
“I didn’t ask,” Ruth replied, lowering her head. “I’m sorry, Shirley. I hope I didn’t get your hopes up for Ted.”
Shirley swallowed yet managed to tell Ruth, “I didn’t think it’d apply to my other half. Just as well I told him not to be a silly bugger in my last letter, then, eh!” She forced out a small laugh.
Doris had the last word and accomplished the impossible by causing the whole gathering to burst out laughing.
“Look at it this way—he’ll save a fortune in socks!”