Chapter Eight

“Anyone seen my socks?” Mary shouted the next morning from her bedroom.

“While we’re on the subject,” Betty said, poking her head out of the bathroom, “if anyone sees my cream slip, please let me know.”

“My lucky bra’s still missing, if anyone’s interested,” Penny added.

“No one is,” Doris shouted from the foot of the stairs. “Get a move on, you lot. Breakfast’s getting cold!”

When Betty, Mary, and Penny joined Doris, on breakfast-making duty that morning in the kitchen, they were just in time to catch her feeding Bobby some toast.

Helping herself to a cup of tea and some fresh toast, Betty waved it at the cocker spaniel’s retreating rear end as it disappeared through their dog-flap. “I wouldn’t let Ruth catch you. She’s quite serious about putting poor Bobby on a diet.”

“Well,” Doris said, popping the remainder of her breakfast into her mouth and washing it down with a sip of tea, though not without the usual grimace of distaste, “I’d better not let her catch me, then. Betty, can you ask Jim if he can get hold of some more coffee for me, please? I’ve run out.”

“You’re batting those eyelashes at the wrong person.” Betty laughed. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

Doris danced over and planted a loud kiss on the top of Betty’s head. “Bless you.”

With a small smile, Betty looked at her friend. “If you really want to put me in a good mood, go and check that Duck isn’t lying in wait for us, okay?”

Five minutes later, Doris stood alone on the other side of the garden gate, carefully looking up and down the riverbank, making certain the coast was indeed clear of her fiendish feathery friend. She turned back to face her human friends, none of whom had yet made a move to open the gate. “You can come out now. I don’t think he’s going to attack you today,” she teased them.

“You’re sure?” Penny asked, unable to keep a catch from her voice as she gauged the distance to the trees in case she needed to climb one again.

“Oh, my God,” Doris said, shaking her head. “Would you take a look at yourselves? Wouldn’t Hitler shake in his boots if he could see you now!”

“Hey!” Mary exclaimed. “Give us that one-balled bastard any day. Your duck? That’s quite something else. I’m sure if we could train the bugger to lead our army, we’d win the war in a thrice!”

Doris folded her arms, then changed her mind, marched forward, and flung the gate open. “One, he’s not my duck, he’s just attached himself to me, and two, you’re probably not wrong. Now, come on.”

Instead of going to the mess, as was their normal routine, the group went straight to the ops hut. Leading the way, Betty pushed the door open and was immediately greeted by a loud buzzing noise.

“What the hell’s that?” she asked.

“I think it’s coming from Jane’s office,” Mary said, peering around the hut.

She was right, as the four found when they crowded around the open door of the office. Down near floor level was the lady in question, fully clothed and flat out on her back on a camp bed beside her desk. A sixth sense must have clicked in as her eyes snapped open and landed upon her friends staring down at her.

“Please don’t tell me you’ve spent the night here,” Betty remarked, in complete contradiction to the evidence before her eyes.

Jane wiped the drool from the side of her mouth before swinging her legs to the side and hauling herself into a sitting position. Looking up at the concerned expressions of her friends, Jane didn’t bother to deny it. “I didn’t have the energy to go back to my bunk.”

“But you had the energy to go and get this camp bed,” Betty commented, not troubling to hide the annoyance in her voice.

With a hand-up from Mary, Jane stretched out the kinks from her back. “Not really. I knew we had one somewhere in the flight line hut. Didn’t take long to find it.”

Allowing herself one more glare, Betty softened enough to grab her friend’s hand and proceeded to tow her out of the office, absently noting Jane hadn’t taken off her shoes.

“Where’re we going?” she asked, making a grab and just barely managing to snatch her hat and bag.

“We need to get some tea down you,” Betty told her, adding, “even if it is Mavis’s.”

As Betty half-dragged Jane toward the mess, Doris asked Penny and Mary, “I know a shock to the system sometimes helps, but isn’t this taking things too far?”

Fortunately, Mavis wasn’t a mind reader, so when they entered an unusually somber mess, they weren’t met by an irate blue-rinsed elderly woman. Instead, as soon as she saw the group enter, she rushed out from behind the serving counter and enveloped Jane in a hug. This was quite possibly the first time any of the girls had physical contact with her other than the occasional clip around the ear.

“Jane! I mean, boss. Come sit down, and let me get you a cuppa. You look dead on your feet, my dear.”

Before the bemused stares of her friends, Jane allowed herself to be led to a table next to the sheet hung on the rear wall which visitors were invited to sign. Whilst Mavis scurried away to get the promised beverage, Jane allowed her eyes to rove over the, by now, crowded sheet.

“Getting pretty full, eh?” Penny said, pulling up a seat.

Jane nodded, not trusting herself to speak, as her eyes had been drawn to a spot on the sheet where Thelma had signed. Leaning forward, she took the glasses she’d begun to use for close-up work and placed them upon her nose.

First Officer Thelma Aston.

Until the end…and beyond!

She jumped a little when she felt a hand lightly grip her shoulder. “She had a way with words, didn’t she?”

Without taking her eyes off the words, Jane nodded and reached up to grip the hand, knowing it would be Betty’s. “That she did. Come on, tea’s up.”

Nobody uttered a word until Jane had finished the cup before her. When she finally pushed it away, she quite rapidly wished she hadn’t.

“Are you ready to leave now?” Betty asked without preamble.

Jane let out a sigh. “I really should be here.”

Penny was first to speak. “Not a chance, boss. You did a deal with Betty, remember?”

“And I doubt very much if you got a good night’s sleep on that cot,” Doris added.

Jane looked around the table, and all she saw was a sea of concerned faces. She allowed a small smile to creep across her face. “I’m not going to win this one, am I?”

Betty retook her seat, nodding in agreement. “Not a chance.”

Looking out the window, Jane gave an involuntary shudder. This didn’t go unnoticed.

“What is it?” Doris asked.

After a moment, Jane admitted, “I’m not sure I want to go back to my room.” At everyone’s curious looks, she elaborated, “Thelma’s room is next to mine.”

Almost immediately, Betty clicked her fingers. “We can’t have that.” She fished in her pocket and handed Jane a key. “Here, take my key, and get yourself back to the cottage. My bed’s got clean sheets on, so I expect you to use it.”

As Jane went to open her mouth to politely decline, all her friends stood up and leaned over toward her.

“No arguments,” Mary said. “It’ll be quiet, and you need to rest.”

“Understand?” Doris asked.

Slowly, Jane nodded her head. “I’m not going to win this one either, am I?”

Everyone shook their heads.

“In that case, let me just tell you what I’ve found out about…” She had to stop to quickly wipe her eyes and take a deep breath before continuing, “…about how Thelma died.”

This unexpected announcement caused everyone to collapse back onto their seats, though Doris had to recover her balance quickly as she nearly missed hers. “What about everyone else?” she asked, looking around at where they were being scrutinized, quite openly, by the rest of the personnel present.

Jane looked briefly around, causing everyone who’d been staring at them until that moment to suddenly find their fingernails to be of intense interest. “No, everyone else knew her, but she was our friend. Apart from…Mavis!” she suddenly shouted, and the whole mess jumped.

Mavis’s head appeared around the corner of the kitchen. “You hollered, boss?”

Instead of speaking again, Jane waved her over. “Pull up a chair, please, Mavis.” She waited until the elderly woman had done so before saying to her, “What I’m about to tell you goes no further than this group. Understood?”

By reply, Mavis gave her a salute, which seemed to satisfy everyone present, though Doris couldn’t resist teasing her. “I wouldn’t have had you down as a Girl Guide.”

Mavis half-turned and treated her favorite Yank to a rather toothless grin. “I make a very good hangman’s noose.”

Doris returned the grin with interest. “I’ll bet you do. Had much practice?”

Betty cleared her throat to get the pair’s attention. “Much as I enjoy some good banter, now is not the time.”

Both Doris and Mavis merely turned back to face Jane and proceeded to ignore each other.

“Thank you, Betty. Okay, I’ll keep this short. After we’d finished last night, I did plenty of telephoning around, and this is what I’ve managed to put together about what happened to Thelma.”

Mavis drew in a sharp breath, causing all eyes to turn to her. “Sorry. Should have guessed. Please carry on, boss.”

Jane nodded, and they all saw her draw herself up before continuing. “I suppose you could call it lucky, but the police were able to find a ground witness, a farmer. He told them he saw her Anson coming out of some low cloud, and as it cleared, it was almost immediately attacked by two Nazi fighters. Each made only one firing pass at her before making off toward the coast at high speed. From his statement, her aircraft was on fire from the first pass, and already going in.”

“So no need for the other to attack?” Penny asked from between trembling lips.

Jane shook her head. “No, not if what this man says is true, and the policeman I tracked down swore blind the man had never told a lie in his life.”

“She never stood a chance, did she,” Mary said, shaking her head.

“Bastards,” Doris simply stated.

“If I could get hold of them…” Mavis began, leaving the statement hanging, as everyone else nodded in agreement.

Silence reigned around the table as everyone became lost in their thoughts.

Jane looked at her watch. “Time to get to work.”

Betty placed a friendly hand upon Jane’s on the tabletop. “And time for you to go back to my place and get some sleep.”

“You weren’t going to forget, were you?”

“Not a chance.”

Mavis got to her feet and told Jane, “Thank you for trusting me, sharing this information with me. I appreciate it.”

Fortunately, she didn’t expect a reply as Jane was too choked up to speak, so Jane just gave her mess manager a quick nod of thanks.

“Hey, Mavis!” Doris surprised everyone by yelling. “Any chance of a cup of coffee, instead of this muck?” she held up her empty tea cup to illustrate her point.

“Doris!” everyone at the table reproached her.

However, Mavis didn’t appear to need anyone to fight her fights for her, as she swiveled around, picking up a ladle from the counter as she went, and waved it at her antagonist. “Look here, you bloody Yank! How many times do I have to tell you, the whole blinking lot of you haven’t got a decent taste bud in your whole flippin’ country!”

Apparently satisfied with giving as good as she got, Mavis put the ladle back down with a clang and barged into the kitchen.

“What the hell?” Jane rounded upon her American pilot, her face scarlet with fury.

For her part, Doris didn’t appear affected by either Jane’s or anyone else’s anger and confusion at her behavior. “Trust me,” she merely said, getting to her feet and making her way toward the exit.

As she got level with the kitchen door, it opened a crack and, much to the surprise of all, Mavis’s voice was heard saying, “Be safe up there, Doris!”

“See you later, Mavis!” Doris replied as she exited the mess, leaving her friends exchanging bemused glances before hurrying to catch her up.

It wasn’t until the girls had nearly finished climbing into their Sidcot suits that Doris explained. Plonking herself down on the bench to pull on her boots, she looked up into the still half-mad, half-curious faces of her friends. “Look, I’ve not gone bananas,” she began. “I know Mavis’s type. The last thing she’d want when anything terrible happens is to be treated like some delicate thing. It’s normality she craves, and that’s what I gave her, someone to have a go at.”

After a while, Penny finally broke the silence and said the only thing possible. “You, Third Officer Doris Winter, are a wonder and a force of nature!”

“Guilty as charged.” Doris flipped her friends a salute.