‘You are here at the Priory for a number of weeks, depending on which of the courses you are here to attend. Priory estate, as you will be aware, is for the most part given over as a centre in which you people may train and learn from older hands. There are six other houses here; only the one allocated is for you to be interested in. You will ignore anything you might see or hear. You will hear other languages spoken, but these are not your affair.
‘We had hoped that women could be given a house to themselves, but as there are so few of you, and there is a group of men undertaking the same training, then it’s sharing – the house, not the beds. You will need to give all your attention to training.
‘The course of instruction is intensive. Map-reading, morse code and weapons training are central. Fitness and mental alertness are, of course, what is required in an agent. Special Operations! Those of you who complete the course and are successful will become operatives with very special skills.’
The candidates had not been introduced to the suited man who addressed them. His eyes roamed the room and alighted here and there on a rookie.
‘You have each been selected for some attribute, craft or knowledge that SOE requires. Each of you has something to offer. Suffice it to say that whatever your field of expertise you have a limited time in which to learn other strategies and techniques. Less than perfection is not good enough and you will be OUT.
‘You know all about the Official Secrets Act. The safety of the realm is at stake and we are at war. What goes on here is highly classified. You will not use the telephone; you will not leave the estate at all until your training is complete; all letters in and out will be read – censored if necessary. The Priory is a very pleasant place in which to train, but, but, but,’ his forefinger fired shots all around the room, ‘the Finishing School is not a resort. However, the accommodation is very good and the food is plentiful and excellent.’ He straightened his uncreased jacket. ‘Any questions?’
‘Sir, those who are successful – what happens next?’
‘No leave, if that is what you are wondering. If appropriate, you will go on to other short intensive courses, e.g, use of parachute. Not all successful candidates will be required to undertake this. It would be poor use of manpower; those of you who propose to sit out the war far from the madding crowd, engaged on cipher and encoding work, will not need to know how to jump from a moving aircraft.’
Before he could be asked any further questions, the anonymous man left the room.
And so the training started.
The women in Beauchamp House were Eve, Elizabeth Carstairs, Catherine Pugh, Cilia Haddington, Anomie Nash and DB.
DB arrived after the rest. She came up quietly behind Eve and caught her in a bear-hug. Eve’s reaction put DB on the floor.
‘Hey, man, what will you be like when you’re trained?’
They had a joyful reunion.
Liz Carstairs and Cilia Haddington had ‘come out’ together.
‘What did you come out of?’ DB wanted to know.
Liz and Cilia looked at one another. ‘Out of girlhood and into the big, wide world.’
‘We were debutantes.’
‘What must you do to be one?’
Liz and Cilia grinned conspiratorially, ‘Have the right sort of mummy and daddy.’
Eve said, ‘And plenty of money.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Cilia confirmed, ‘one needs to be of a certain set.’
Liz said. ‘“Coming out” is being presented to the King and Queen. When you have curtsied to them in your virgin-white gown, you become a debutante.’
‘And somebody gave you a ball.’
‘And that was where you were supposed to find a young man to marry.’
‘You’re not joking, are you?’ DB said.
‘No, of course we’re not joking. It is the system.’
‘Don’t take me wrong if I laugh, but I’ve never heard of such a rotten way of parents getting daughters off their hands.’
‘I know. I can remember standing in this long line of girls in white satin thinking to myself, this is pathetic. I would rather be a virgin in a pagan ceremony.’
‘For God’s sake,’ Cilia said, ‘I was pagan. I felt as though I was being paraded before potentates who were choosing girls for harems.’
‘It’s the ball that starts you off, gets you into the marriage market.’
DB thought that very funny. ‘What’s the price of a girl in a virgin-white gown these days?’
‘No price will get you a couple like us,’ Liz said.
Cilia linked arms with her coming-out partner. ‘Not in marriage. We rebelled – told our people we were going to become pros.’
Anomie said, ‘Streetwalkers? You two? Your accents alone would frighten the clients.’
‘Oh, we didn’t plan to do it on the streets. We thought maybe a flat in Mayfair, and only take the ones in our own set.’
‘We thought it made better sense that instead of marrying them and letting them get it for free, we would pick and choose the best and charge them for it.’
‘Good scheme, eh?’
‘Did you try it?’
The two girls burst into laughter. ‘We’re still virgins and got picked up to come here.’
‘To become pros?’ Anomie asked.
‘So why didn’t you just jump ship like I did?’ DB asked.
‘Oh, we did.’ The two young debs laughed. ‘It’s a long story, but we ended up here. Cilia has a second cousin Bazil who thought, with our corners rubbed off, we might do something worthwhile.’
An earlier Eve – one without her own corners rubbed off – might have thought: There you go. Their type always knows somebody to fix them up. But this new, happier Eve liked their cheek and honesty.
Four out of five had ‘jumped ship’. Maybe Anomie Nash had too, but during the first days, she was as much an enigma as Eve.
DB’s family was newly rich and she didn’t mind who knew it. ‘The Debs’ families were on close terms – their brothers were known to one another – so that Cilia and Liz would reminisce about Spiffy, Old Tosh, Bobbity and Jay without realising that they were being exclusive of the others. Not that any of them appeared to mind; true or not, the family stories were jolly and kept everyone entertained.
There were five men – ‘The Chaps’ – in Beauchamp, whom Anomie described as ‘interchangeable’, which wasn’t a bad description as none had any particularly striking feature except for accent: a Geordie, who had a language all his own for the first couple of days and the rest learned it; a ‘posh’ chap, who spoke like Liz and Cilia; two who spoke with London accents – one white and one black, both named John; and a fifth who slipped between accents very much as Janet McKenzie did – ‘Tommy’, but only because his chin was as elongated as that of the popular comedian Tommy Trinder.
So as well as Tommy, there was Geordie, Posh, Jim and Johnny. A sixth was expected later in the course.
The sergeant PT instructor – known to the girls as Pecs, in honour of his extraordinary pectoral muscles – had to forget Aldershot where he had knocked a good many concave-chested young recruits into shape. The Finishing School teams were to be exercised into a state of fitness but not put into hospital with strained backs and torn ligaments. It went against the sergeant’s athletic grain but he was secretly glad to heed the directive because he was pushing forty and preferred the life here to Aldershot. Even so, the press-ups, arm-swinging and bicycling on their backs soon proved his warning about the evils of tobacco to be valid, and he organised a ritual disposal of ‘coffin nails’ in a fire pit he lit on the slipway at Bucklers Hard where they had all flopped down breathless after a very long trot.
The weapons training sergeant instructor – ‘Finger’ in honour of his ability to swing a shooter in Hollywood cowboy fashion – handed out ear plugs and threw the trainees in at the deep end. On the first morning they were shown almost every automatic weapon and handgun known to man; and by the time they went off duty with ears ringing they were able to put names to Schmeissers, Lugers and Colts, to make a good fist of taking weapons apart and putting them together again.
That same afternoon they were required to fire several of the weapons. Eve, who had fumbled a lot with the concealed weapon, redeemed herself by proving to be a crack shot with a rifle. Having spent a good deal of her early years in the country, where she had learned how to take rabbits and pheasants, she now found shooting at a man-sized target easy. Cilia and Liz had been taken on shoots with their brothers, and they too were well practised.
Small arms were another matter.
‘Concealed weapons – it’s one movement: one… one… one. Hand in your shoulder-bag or pocket, release safety catch, double-handed grip, aim, fire. Bang, bang, you’re dead! But you, Anders – you woulda been dead first. You ain’t looking for your lipstick. You’re about as quick as a pickpocket wearing motorbike gloves.’ Finger was right. Eve resolved she wouldn’t want telling twice. Whether it was learning to drive, learning a foreign language, understanding ‘difficult’ plays and books, her attitude was, ‘If other people master it, so can I.’
Weapons training was followed by signalling, followed by jujitsu, the art of throwing people.
Here a jujitsu champion – known as ‘Mr Wham’, whose accent was as far from oriental as a London East Ender’s could be – repeated over and over, ‘Fall soft, you lot. You ladies might have a bit of fat on your arses, but you got to learn to fall bleedin’ soft. Fall relaxed and recover in one movement. Soft and gentle. There won’t be no bleedin’ rubber mat when you’re going to need this.’ The fall bleedin’ soft technique took hours to perfect. But the ten of them glowed with satisfaction once they had learned the trick of tumbling hefty soldiers – seconded from Aldershot – to the floor.
Liz said, ‘Now let’s see what can happen to a chap with a stiff goose finger.’ Her eyes quite glittered with enthusiasm.
Each of the instructors had some reservations about the females, but treated them as honorary men as they would be expected to perform as such.
The trainees became so caught up in the speed and variety of learning new skills that they hardly thought about the reality of killing, until one day Cilia Haddington, apropos of nothing that was being discussed at that moment, said, ‘I would never be able to do that.’ The others knew she was referring to methods of removing human obstacles by stealth.
Anomie Nash pooh-poohed Cilia’s lofty comment. ‘It isn’t going to be for real, it’s just that we are supposed to do everything the chaps do. In any case, at five foot three, I could only reach the neck of most chaps.’
The other four laughed at their bouncy colleague, but Cilia wouldn’t let the matter drop. ‘OK, Miss Shortass, how would you take out a border guard?’
In a second Anomie had removed the long, tortoiseshell clip she always wore to keep up her abundant red hair, and flipped back the bar. The blade she revealed was as fine and as sharp as a scalpel.
‘Go for the throat so they can’t shout, and then slash on to the carotid artery.’
‘It’d be bloody messy. The neck crack is how I’d do it.’
They could joke about it now, but it was essential to master the techniques of silently stalking the enemy, taking them from behind, arm tightly around the throat, and a quick jerk of the head to break the neck.
‘Heads are twenty per cent of body weight, so you’ve got help there. Weight helps you: knee in the back, then crack, it’s over. Easy as breaking a chicken’s neck,’ their tutor explained.
‘Can you imagine how you’d feel when you heard that crack and you knew that you’d broken a guard’s neck? I think I’d be sick on the spot,’ Eve complained.
‘No you wouldn’t, Anders,’ the tutor insisted. ‘Me or him – that’s what it comes down to. You’d be as capable as me of taking the arm-lock to its final stage.’
‘Trouble is,’ DB said, ‘none of us is ever going to know until we’re in the “me or him” situation.’
Later, sitting drinking tea as they often did at the end of the day, the ten of them together, Anomie asked, ‘Do you chaps have problems with this arm-hold and garrotte thing?’
‘Why would they?’ DB said. ‘Chaps don’t have doubts about themselves as we do. “Break that guard’s neck, Geordie.” “Yes, sir, which vertebra would you like?”’
‘Get away with you,’ Tommy said. ‘Geordie’s a big softie. He’d just sit on his face and wait for death.’
‘His own or the guard’s?’
‘Both.’
Geordie was known for his placid nature.
Macabre humour was a way of dealing with the brute facts of the kind of work they had volunteered for. Not surprising – the entire situation was macabre. It was drummed into them every day – ‘No mistakes’, ‘No second chances’, ‘Self-preservation’.
Gradually they were becoming hardened: ‘Don’t think human being – think Evil!’ ‘Think jackboots on babies’ heads!’ ‘Think No right to live!’ ‘Think, Bastard!’
Even though she was aware that her attitude had changed totally over the last two or three years, Eve still wondered how well she would perform now in a real situation. They all wondered that about themselves, and seeing the others in action at the firing range led all of them to believe that they were the only ones to have doubts.
Often they surprised one another. DB made no bones about her sexual variance. ‘I just prefer girls to boys, and I don’t like washboard chests. But none of you have to worry that I’ll put my hand up your skirts. I was fixated on black skin since I was nursed by my Swazi nanny.’ The Chaps nicknamed her the Black Pussy, which DB rather liked.
Although it was not desirable that groups of trainees formed bonds, it was inevitable under the circumstances, especially with the five women. Not only did they have menstruation, with its physical and emotional disturbance to deal with, it had to be endured without the men being aware.
Pecs was the only one to embarrass them. ‘Nash! What the bloody ’ell’s wrong with you today? Got your rags out?’
Anomie flared red with embarrassment and rage, then left the rest of them drop-jawed with wonder. ‘What’s it to you, you fucking pervert? Give you a kick? Like to dip your wick in red – if you’ve got one to dip?’
As soon as it was out her face drained of colour, and she continued the exercises as though the incident hadn’t occurred. But she had turned on the bully and respect for her was raised a few notches, to say nothing of curiosity about her past – such language from a nice girl like Anomie.
After weeks of practising the same things time and again, the recruits all began to feel their spirits slump.
DB complained, ‘It’s boring, boring, boring. I thought it would be more exciting than this.’
Cilia, always confident, said, ‘What did you expect, Puss, that you would be sent out in the field half-cocked?’
Eve, feeling as irritated as DB, retorted, ‘You’re so bloody sure that your big brain is headed for a cipher team next – what if it doesn’t come off.’
‘I’ve got it screwed on the right way.’
They laughed like schoolgirls at the flimsy joke.
An evening of boredom almost got them into deep water. It started out light-heartedly, playing a variation on the game of charades in which each of the ten would enact what they had been before Bureau, or, to save face for any of them who didn’t want to reveal it, what they would like to have been.
Tommy played it for laughs, and did a fair mime of Tommy Trinder on stage.
Liz and Cilia did a double act, walking with simpering faces, curtsying and then going into a wild exhibition of waltzing together.
Geordie brought Johnny into his mime, having him kneel. Geordie made the sign of a cross with two fingers and then on Johnny’s forehead. It seemed easy. ‘A priest.’ Geordie shook his head whilst the others went through the various nouns that would describe his calling.
It was Cilia who said, ‘It’s to do with Johnny… because he’s black. You were a missionary.’ Geordie nodded. They knew instinctively that this was the truth.
Then Johnny rose to his feet and stood before Geordie. ‘You think you did good for us blacks, Geordie? Making good little Christians of us, saving us from our own nice, black gods?’
The few seconds of confrontation seemed long minutes until Geordie said, ‘Naw, Johnny, I never did no man good except me. I got the call – big white man taking the message to Africa, when you had your own damned message. The best I can say to you now, Johnny, is that I was no damned good at it. But can you understand being so full of wanting to do something good, that you never asked, did anyone want it done?’
‘We all have… well, I have,’ Eve said. Eyes now swivelled to her. ‘I once tried to form a trade union that people were afraid to join.’ The heat was suddenly off Geordie and Johnny, and the group all turned to her with puzzlement.
‘Go on, then,’ Liz said. ‘Do what you were at the time.’
It flashed through Eve’s mind that she might be honest and act out factory work, but she couldn’t bear that they should know that. She might have done driving a heavy truck, but there again she didn’t want the same curiosity that had come Geordie’s way – wanting to do good to people. But she had once been taken to Paris by the factory manager to model one of the latest corselets he had designed. In the end she opted for the modelling.
Jim said, ‘Do models have trade unions? Or was it a model trade union? I say that Anders modelled women’s fashions and tried to get the others to get into a union.’
Eve gave it to him by saying cheerfully, ‘The pay was so poor, but starvation kept us thin.’
Then Johnny said, ‘If you’ll just hold a second, I have to get my props.’ When he returned he went to Geordie and asked him to unbutton his shirt. ‘Maybe you’ll feel better about yourself when I’ve finished.’ Then he hung a stethoscope around his neck, took Geordie’s pulse, and proceeded to put a thermometer under his tongue. He was so practised in his actions that he had to be a doctor.
‘I’m not saying what you did was good, Geordie, but my grandfather went to a mission school – and here I am. You think my bedside manner is OK?’
Nobody quite knew what to do or say. Johnny lightened it by saying in a fair go at the cadences of a Tyneside accent, ‘Y’know, mon, me grandfather never did stop reading the chicken bawnes.’
DB was last. Aware of what she could do to them, she opened up the lid of a dusty piano that no one had yet tried out, and played a few chords. Starting with a low, clear note, she began to sing.
There was total silence when she finished.
A soft voice from the shadows of the unlighted kitchen broke the silence. ‘Hey, man, never heard you better.’
‘Paul!’
His entrance into what was becoming a highly charged emotional group stopped the game.
Eve, DB and Paul sat up till the early hours of the morning, connecting, laughing and letting down their guard; no dynamic gestures, but small, reassuring hints that suggested here was strong friendship.
‘Keep a secret?’ Paul asked.
DB at once said, ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’
Eve said, ‘Who would ever think that voice came from this wit?’
‘I’m going to be a father… a dad.’
Eve leaned across the sofa and gave him a hug and a kiss. ‘God, Paul, what a thing to spring on us. Does that make us aunts?’
‘Oh, you…’ DB said, ‘I didn’t know you had it in you. More to the point, who’s got it in her? Anybody we know?’
Paul grinned. ‘Give you a clue. I’m going to be the next “The Dad”.’
‘You’re joking! Electra! Really? Electra Sanderson?’
‘Soon to be Electra Smyth.’
DB added, ‘With a Y but not an E. How does she feel about it?’
‘Ecstatic… so am I. I can’t believe my luck, finding a super girl exactly suited to me, and she says I’m suited to her.’ He held on to his friends, one to each hand. ‘A small light in a dark world, eh?’
‘Small?’ Eve said. ‘To me it’s a blinking great searchlight. I don’t know when I’ve felt so pleased with things. I’ve got two friends whom I love with all my heart, and one of them is going to be a dad… an absolutely super dad.’
‘Go on,’ DB said, ‘I’ll be the one to ask. When is it due?’
‘Just after Christmas.’
DB held up her fingers, emphatically counting. ‘You have to add on three to the expected date due. Eve, the dog! He was doing it to her whilst we were working away undercover on the Windsor op.’
Eve ruffled Paul’s hair. ‘No wonder Electra was so giddy at times. Riding that bike and singing her heart out, a Deanna Durbin song… “Can’t help singing, dah dah dah on the crest of the wave with the pleasure that April is bringing.” Wasn’t it just?’
DB said, ‘Come on, we need to celebrate… put our night training into practice. I’ve got a flask of brandy, and I know you’ve got some cigarettes stashed away. Let’s break bounds and go on the razzle just for the hell of it.’
‘It’s three o’clock in the morning.’
‘So what?’
It wasn’t really very difficult to get out, and they didn’t go far, only as far as where there was a slipway where a few dinghies were beached, and there the three of them sat in a cocoon of closeness.
Paul swigged from DB’s flask. ‘Apart from Electra and me – this is as good as it gets.’
Eve took a large mouthful of the brandy. ‘Cheers. I don’t make friends easily, but what we have is such a special thing to me,’ she gave a nervous little laugh, ‘I honestly don’t know what to do about it.’
For once, DB didn’t hop in with a witticism to cover her vulnerability. ‘I was going to say we should bottle it.’
Paul said, ‘You just did.’
‘I’ve had lovers galore, but because I was a white, and known as a nigger-lover even before I knew about sex or nigras, I could never keep a friend. Sooner or later some mother would tell her kids, “You keep away from that de Beers girl,” or some father would come to the door and tell my mom that unless she taught me what was what, and what being white meant, then I should keep away from his kids. The irony was… is… most trekker families have got black blood somewhere along the line. They couldn’t keep me out of school because it’s the law that white kids get an education, but I can’t say it was much fun. Best I could do was to make the kids laugh, make a fool of myself for them. But friendship? Nah, man. Never. Singing in American clubland isn’t that conducive to making friends, either. So I never had one. Not till I met you guys and Fran. Those days working in the Scrubs when we went about London together – I wished to hell I could have sent a picture home to my pa and told him, “This is civilisation, Pa. These are my friends, they don’t care if I like black pussy.” Oh sod it! I’m going to cry.’ DB sobbed for a long time, then cupped water from the lapping shallows and splashed her face.
On the way back to within bounds, they walked slowly, mostly talking about Fran and possibly trying to get in touch with her again. Eve offered to try. ‘I know somebody who is in one of the coding departments. I’ll write and hope he gets the letter.’ Like DB, Eve felt almost overwhelmed by the tenderness and loyalty she felt towards three people who, had it not been for the vagaries of war, she would never have met. War had brought her Dimitri too; but this friendship was something quite different – built on a thousand small acts and gestures, looks, intuition, insight, trust, shared experience, exposure, plus happiness being in their company.
‘Tell you what,’ Eve said, ‘we’ll give the others a surprise tomorrow. As it’s our last day I think we should have a treat,’ and she told Paul and DB her plan.
Next morning at breakfast, envelopes containing travel documents and orders were given out and lists went up on the notice board.
Eve had applied for air training, but instead she had orders to return to London and report directly to Colonel Linder.
DB leaned across the breakfast table. ‘Hey, man, have you been told to swallow your instructions – or wipe your ass with them?’
‘You can see them if you like. It’s not fair! It’s just not bloody fair! They know I’m right for air training. I’m a natural.’
Liz, Anomie, Tommy and Paul were the selected ones. Paul, of course, knew already that he’d been selected, which was why he had turned up now at the Finishing School.
Incensed, Eve went rocketing off to the administrator’s office. ‘Why have I not been included in the piloting tuition, ma’am?’
‘The list was not made up by me, Agent Anders.’
‘But, ma’am, it is exactly what I should be trained to do. I have years of experience of driving any vehicle. I would make a very good pilot. Please, ma’am, please, put me on that list.’
‘I will need to speak to your immediate superior.’
‘Please do that, ma’am. It’s Lieutenant Hatton. He knows that I can handle anything that has an engine. I can even repair engines.’
‘Leave the matter with me, Anders, and I will let you know. By the way, I understand that your house is going to Boscombe Down airfield today. Nothing to say you can’t have a flight if you can get someone to take you up. Sergeant Musgrave will bring the transport out front at 09.30 hours — tell the rest of your group, please.’
The idea of an outing together before they split up had come from Liz saying what the rest must have been thinking: ‘Do you think that we shall ever see one another after this?’
Cilia had said, ‘If you are going to suggest that we might all meet up again ten years from now, don’t even think of it!’
Liz, whose suggestion had been going to be just that, had said, ‘Oh, come on, Cilia, you know me better than that. Am I likely to suggest such a sentimental gathering. And even if I had—’
Her friend had almost growled her response. ‘You useless deb, would you really want to stand there waiting at some prearranged spot on some prearranged day, and none of us turning up? Or at best one of us limping up on a wooden leg or, worse, somebody’s sister coming with a message? Really, if any of you get yourselves captured or injured or dead, I just don’t want to know.’
Jim had said, ‘OK, then let’s have our reunion before we leave, and the rest of you go flying off. I can arrange for us to go over to Boscombe Down and probably get us taken for a spin in the planes they’re working on.’
Boscombe Down airfield was not far from the Priory, but halfway there the group stopped, scraped a pit and brewed tea just for the hell of it. As well as a kettle and mugs, Pecs had brought a box of jam tarts. ‘Peace offering, girls and boys.’
DB then produced a box she had been hiding under her seat. ‘Ta-raa!’ It contained an enormous cottage loaf and a basin of the most delicious-smelling beef dripping.
‘Oh my God,’ Geordie said. ‘If I got captured and an interrogator offered me this in return for my secret, I’d have to take the bread and dripping.’
Johnny, dipping a chunk of bread into the brown jelly, said, ‘And, oh my black monkey god – I’d be just as weak.’
‘Where—’
‘Don’t ask, Jim.’
‘Eve stole it.’
‘Miss Butter-wouldn’t-melt et cetera stole it?’
‘Where—’
‘Shall I tell them, Eve?’
‘Let Paul. He’s less likely to be hauled over the coals.’
‘I don’t even know what it’s called – the big manor house…’
‘Where the Dowager lives?’
‘I’m impressed.’
‘Her guards have become complaisant. It was a doddle.’
‘So,’ DB said, ‘we girls are a success then – eh, Pecs?’
‘I never heard a word of that.’
Inevitably somebody said, ‘Where do you think we’ll be tomorrow?’
Cilia said, ‘On my way to cipher school. I’d like Liz to come too, but you haven’t the brains, have you?’
Liz flicked a dough-ball at her friend, which started more let-out-of-school behaviour until Pecs called a halt.
‘I went to a half-ass school near Southampton Docks where we was taught better manners than you society ladies.’
‘Pecs darling,’ Anomie said, ‘I’d have put a skirt on if I thought we were going to be ladylike.’
‘I’ll tell you something – and if you repeats it I’ll put in a report on you. But when I heard that I was getting a bunch of wimmin to train up, I asked them what the hell they thought I could do to get a bunch of tulips as fit and hard as my men. But you have… By God, girls, you proved yourself as good as the blokes. I’m proud of you – honest to God, I’m proud of you – and I reckon I deserve a putty medal for doing it.’
They joked and jeered, but his praise was sincere, which made them all feel good, so that when they reached Boscombe Down airfield, Jim’s friend who had organised the visit joked about them being the entertainment from ENSA.
In ones and twos, they went up for short spins and came back full of enthusiasm. When Eve heard that a Tiger Moth would be coming in, she asked if she could go up in that. The Moth landed shortly before Paul and Tommy were taken up in the training aircraft in which they would soon be learning.
The Tiger Moth pilot was willing to do a quick turn-around for somebody as enthusiastic about the plane as he was himself.
‘Why didn’t you want to go up in the trainer?’ he asked Eve.
Helmeted and goggled, Eve smiled broadly.
‘Just because…’ indicating that her reason for wanting the Moth must be self-evident: flimsy-lookings double wings, open cockpits, with what looked like pram wheels on sticks.
The pilot sat in the rear cockpit. The take-off was quick, the little aeroplane rocking a little from side to side until it was clear of the airfield, when it became as beautiful and well-behaved as any of the more stable-looking training craft. After five minutes of flying straight out over the sea, the pilot banked, turned and flew in the direction of Boscombe Down.
Ahead, Eve saw something she couldn’t at first quite believe: a column of thick, black smoke.
Turning to the pilot, she indicated what she was seeing and he put up a thumb, indicating that he understood. Even before they approached the runway, Eve felt a terrible feeling of dread.
It could only be Paul and Tommy. They were the only ones in the air when the Tiger Moth took off.
Lower and lower Eve and her pilot came in. First she saw an indistinct mess of smoke from which protruded an upended tail and one bent wing. The crash was encircled by little figures. Then she saw a green fire engine and a white ambulance with a red cross. And fire. The pilot landed the Tiger Moth on a runway well away from the accident.
Eve tried to scramble out. In her hurry she managed to get herself caught in the safety harness. The pilot climbed out and helped. ‘Stay here.’
‘It’s my friends… my friend.’
‘You can’t do anything.’
‘Don’t be so bloody stupid, of course I can’t. They’ve crashed.’
As she jumped to the ground she was violently sick, the one time in weeks that the rejection of what she had eaten was spontaneous. The pilot, a burly, middle-aged man, held her tightly.
‘Hold on there, girl. We don’t know yet what happened.’
The white ambulance moved away, its bell ringing. When Eve tried to run, the pilot still held on to her. ‘No!’
With the foul taste of bile in her mouth, and her limbs weak, she was glad of his strength. ‘He was going to be a father at Christmas.’
‘You don’t know…’
She nodded but she knew all right. It was just the kind of card Fate dealt. Think for a moment that you are happy. The ace of spades is flicked at you.
An RAF driver took her back to the Priory alone. The others had been taken away to be treated for shock and to give evidence of what they had seen. There would be an inquiry. Two passengers together should not have been allowed to take off.
Tommy and the pilot were badly burned. Paul had been killed.