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‘Who’s there?’
‘It’s me.’ The shadows changed into the shape of a man and out from the side of the building came Will Bates – one of the RAF mechanics who worked on the base. He was funny and charming and I knew Rose was quite sweet on him.
‘Hello, Will,’ I said, gripping my bag slightly tighter. There was nothing incriminating in it; I’d given everything to April, but his level stare was making me nervous.
‘You’re always carrying a load of stuff,’ he said. ‘I just wondered what you were lugging around the whole time.’
We all carried overnight bags whenever we went on a trip because sometimes we couldn’t get back to HQ. But the way he said it made me feel uncomfortable. I raised my chin.
‘Been watching me, have you?’
To my surprise, Will looked a bit sheepish. ‘I have as it happens,’ he said.
I narrowed my eyes and stared at him. ‘Why?’
He coughed in a sort of nervous way and I relaxed my grip on the straps of my bag, just a bit.
‘Because you’re pretty,’ he muttered. ‘And you look fun. I thought you might like to go dancing one evening, when we’ve both got the same day off.’
I closed my eyes briefly, feeling relief flood my senses.
Will smiled at me. He was a good-looking chap, with dark red hair and deep brown eyes. When he smiled, I got a glimpse of the little boy he’d once been – probably thanks to the sprinkling of freckles across his nose. I couldn’t help but smile back.
‘Dancing?’ I said.
‘Dancing.’
I leaned against the rough wall of the mess hut and took a breath.
‘Will,’ I began. Oh, how to even start explaining the mess my head was in, and the difficult feelings I had about men and women and the relationships between them.
‘I’d like that,’ I said. ‘But maybe we could go as part of a group?’
Will studied me closely. ‘A group,’ he said.
‘At first, at least.’
He grinned again. ‘You’re on,’ he said. ‘See you later.’
He pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one, the flare from the match shining on the curl of his lip and the twinkle in his eye.
‘Bye, Lil,’ he said, sauntering away across the airfield.
I watched him go. ‘Bye,’ I said.
But as I turned towards the barracks, he stopped.
‘Oh, Lil,’ he said, with that boyish grin again. ‘I know you’re up to something.’
Unease gripped me, but I pretended I hadn’t heard. I shifted my bag up my shoulder and carried on walking away from him. I didn’t look back.
* * *
‘He said what?’ Annie said, when I told her about the conversation.
‘That I was up to something,’ I said. I was lying on my bed in my nightgown, even though it was still early. Missions like tonight’s always exhausted me, and Will’s appearance hadn’t helped.
‘You are up to something,’ Flora pointed out. She was on my bed too, sitting by my feet. She had a sheaf of paper on her lap.
‘That’s why I’m so nervous,’ I said. ‘Between Rose sniffing around and Will Bates lurking in the shadows, I’m worried people are starting to suspect.’
‘I am positive Will Bates knows nothing,’ Annie said. ‘He’s just teasing you. Flirting.’
I scowled at her.
‘I’m positive,’ she repeated. ‘He may be pretty …’
She paused to give Flora and me time to appreciate Will’s handsome face in our imaginations.
‘… but he’s not the sharpest tool in the box.’
I smiled at Annie’s bluntness. She certainly told it how it was and she did not suffer fools gladly. Her sharp brain made her a real asset to our little group, while Flora’s organisational skills kept the whole thing running smoothly. I’d lost count of how many times I thanked my lucky stars that they’d both joined the ATA instead of using their skills in the War Office or behind a desk somewhere.
The first time we’d helped a woman, it was just by chance. Back in 1942 when we’d been doing our training in Luton there had been a girl in our pool called Polly. One evening we’d all been out – it was fun there, and there were a lot of army regiments stationed nearby, lads doing basic training just like us. Their presence always made for a good night. But that one evening, Polly didn’t come home. She eventually arrived, much later, with her dress torn. She hadn’t told us what had happened – she didn’t have to. Quietly, me and Annie gave her a bath and cleaned her up, and tried not to wince at the bruises on her thighs.
A few weeks later, Annie caught Polly being sick in the toilet and realised she was pregnant.
‘What am I going to do?’ Polly had hissed at us in the bathroom that day, her face pale and her forehead beaded with sweat. ‘I can’t have a bloody baby.’
She’d gagged, just with the effort of speaking.
‘I didn’t even know his name.’
‘We need to help her,’ I told Annie.
‘But what can we do?’
I’d shaken my head. ‘I don’t know,’ I’d said. ‘But we need to do something.’
I’d not known Annie long at that time, but I already knew she was someone I’d trust with my life.
‘Someone helped me once,’ I’d admitted. ‘Not like this, not …’
Annie’s eyes had searched my face. I’d squeezed my lips together in case I cried.
‘And now you think we should help Polly?’ she’d said.
I’d nodded.
‘We’ll find a way.’
And that’s where Flora came in. She knew someone in Manchester. Someone who’d helped a friend of her sister. A doctor. At least, that’s what he said he was and we never checked. Flora made the arrangements, Annie and I worked out the logistics and the transport, and Polly went off to Manchester just a fortnight later. She came back even paler, but after a couple of days’ rest – we told our officers that she was having some women’s troubles and they didn’t push it – she was fine again.
We had thought that was it. But it wasn’t. Polly told someone what we’d done for her, and quietly, word got round. Turned out there were women all over the place who needed help of one sort or another and it seemed we were the ones to help them. Gradually we built up a network of people, all over the country. Truth was, the network had existed long before we came along. We were just lucky that we could put people in touch with each other. Doctors who could do what we needed them to do, women desperate to adopt a baby, others willing to shelter a pregnant woman for a few weeks – or nurse someone who’d picked up an infection after their, you know, procedure.
We criss-crossed the country delivering planes, and sharing information or arrangements with women while we did it. In two years, we’d helped eleven women – April was number twelve. We’d seen five babies born and adopted and the rest, well, they’d been sorted. And we’d had one death, a young woman called Bet who lost too much blood after her op, and who’d been too scared to go to hospital in case she got into trouble. We didn’t use that doctor again and we’d made sure we checked out new places now, but we were all haunted by Bet’s death. Never thought about stopping though. Not once. And if losing one of our women wouldn’t stop us helping others, nor would Will Bates and his clumsy flirting.
I sat up in bed and looked across at Annie, who was lying on her own bed next to mine.
‘April’s going to let us know when the baby comes,’ I said. ‘Don’t reckon it’ll be long.’
Annie nodded. ‘Glad we got there in time.’
Flora was opening letters. We had a box at the local post office where people could contact us.
‘Too late for this one, though,’ she said, scanning the paper. ‘She wrote this last month and she says she was already eight months gone then. She’ll have had the baby by now.’
Annie shrugged. ‘Can’t help ’em all.’
But I wished we could.
Chapter 6 (#ulink_304672d5-ff96-5bab-922d-987aacd23212)
Helena
May 2018
It seemed Miranda and I weren’t the only ones to be thinking about Lil. On Monday morning, just before lunch, the office receptionist phoned me to say I had a visitor.
‘This is a nice surprise,’ I said as the lift doors opened and I saw it was my dad. ‘Are you working nearby?’
We were based in Soho, and Dad often worked close by when a film he’d composed the music on was in post-production. It wasn’t unusual for him to pop by and say hello when he was in the area, but he normally phoned first.
Now he gave a vague nod over his shoulder. ‘Nearby,’ he said.
‘I’m a bit busy at the moment but we could go for lunch in about half an hour if you like?’
But Dad shook his head. ‘I wanted to ask you something,’ he said. ‘Could we nip into another room, perhaps?’
Behind his back, I saw Elly studiously bashing away at her keyboard, pretending not to be listening.
‘Of course,’ I said, a flicker of unease in my stomach. ‘Follow me.’
I led him into the meeting room where I’d met Jack Jones the week before, and shut the door.
‘Are you okay? What’s the matter? Is Mum okay?’
Dad smiled. ‘Nothing’s the matter,’ he said. ‘We’re both fine. Fit as fiddles.’
He gave a little skip as though to prove how fit he was even though he was approaching eighty. Mum wasn’t far off seventy.
I raised my eyebrow at him and he pulled out a chair and sat down. I did the same.
‘So what’s up?’
‘I wanted to ask you a favour,’ he said.
‘Go on.’
‘I know you said you weren’t supposed to do your own research, but any chance you could have a quick look into this Lil stuff for me?’
‘Dad, no,’ I said. ‘I can’t.’
‘It’s important.’
I stared at him. ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why is it important?’
Dad looked at his hands. ‘No actual reason that I can put into words,’ he said. ‘I’d just like to know more about my family. Before it’s too late.’
He took a breath.
‘I never really asked my parents much about the war, and that generation just didn’t talk about it, did they?’
I shook my head. More than once I’d come across the most amazing stories in the course of research that had never been mentioned in the family.
‘I think the war was so awful, more awful than we could ever imagine, and those who lived through it found it hard to talk about,’ I said.
‘My father – your grandfather – was in the RAF.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen his medals.’
Dad nodded. ‘Never mentioned it, not really,’ he said. ‘Not to us, at least not often. He had some old air force friends I remember him meeting up with, and I imagine they talked about what they’d done.’
‘Their own version of group therapy,’ I pointed out. ‘Must have helped.’
‘I wish I’d asked him more about it,’ Dad said. He looked really sad and I thought suddenly that even though my grandpa had been dead for more than twenty years, he must still miss him.
I reached out and took his hand. ‘He might not have talked, even if you’d asked,’ I said. ‘Did Grandma ever say anything?’
‘Not about Dad in the air force,’ Dad said. ‘But, of course, I remember bits about the war. Not much, because I was very small. But I remember living with Mum, and not really knowing Dad when he came home.’
He paused.
‘And I remember Lil,’ he said.
‘What do you remember?’ I asked, intrigued by this little insight into my own family history.
‘I remember her wearing a uniform,’ Dad said slowly. He tilted his head to the left and looked far away over my shoulder. ‘I remember sitting on her lap and playing with a toy plane and her arm round me felt scratchy, the material I mean. It was a uniform.’
