I stopped to breathe. Nick said evenly, ‘And there’s me worrying you’d be upset by your friend’s funeral. Instead you’re after shooting down doodlebugs. What’s going on, Rose?’
‘How do you topple a doodlebug?’ I asked. ‘The girls say you can do it with your wing tip.’
Nick laughed. Then he paused. I didn’t say anything, because I knew he was thinking. ‘You couldn’t,’ he said at last. ‘Yes, I’ve heard that too, but you need to be flying something fast, not a taxi Anson or a Spitfire with only enough fuel to get you to the maintenance airfield. An ATA pilot couldn’t topple a V-1 flying bomb.’
‘Celia did. She tried to anyway. We think that’s why she crashed. How do they do it? Do you just bash it with your wing tip? The Polish pilots have a word for it. Taran. Aerial ramming.’
Another longish pause. I had stuffed in the entire contents of the cigarette tin right away, more than two shillings’ worth – after feeding thirty of those gigantic pennies into the telephone, I felt like I’d just thrown away a pirate’s treasure hoard. At any rate it added up to more than ten minutes. I didn’t want to be cut off.
And, of course, the operator was probably listening in. Nick’s job is very secret. I didn’t want to get him in trouble.
‘No,’ he said at last. ‘No, for God’s sake don’t try that, Rose, you’ll kill yourself. Is that what Celia did? Good God almighty. The idea is not to touch them at all. The doodlebug’s a bloody brilliant bomb, but it’s not a brilliant aircraft. It’s unstable, and if you get your wing tip just beneath the bomb’s wing, half a foot or so away from it, you can upset the airflow around it and make it stall. But you have to fly fast enough to keep up with it, and it’ll still go off when it hits the ground. Promise me you won’t try?’
My turn to be silent. Because I couldn’t make that promise. I guess I’ll never get the chance anyway, but if I did – well, I’m a better pilot than Celia was.
‘Rose, darling?’ Nick had to prompt me. ‘I’m not a fighter pilot either. They also serve who only stand and wait.’
Show-off, quoting Milton. He knows I like poetry.
‘That’s garbage, Nick, and you know it,’ I said hotly. ‘You’re not standing and waiting. You’re dropping off –’ I choked back what I was going to say, thinking of the operator listening in. I’m not supposed to know what he’s doing, and I don’t know much about it, but Maddie’s boyfriend is in the same squadron – that’s how I met Nick – and you figure a little bit out after a while. They’ve been flying spies and saboteurs and plastic explosive and machine guns in and out of France for the past two years – secret supplies for the D-Day invasion.
‘You’re on the front line,’ I insisted.
There was this long, guilty silence at the other end.
‘Oh, you really are at the front,’ I guessed angrily. ‘What? They’re going to transfer you, aren’t they, now that the front’s moved back? Or are they getting the Royal Air Force Special Duties squadron to do ferry work so they can weasel out of sending civilian ATA pilots into Europe?’
‘They’re moving the squadron,’ Nick gave me cautiously.
I didn’t ask where. He wouldn’t have told me anyway.
‘Far?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh.’
That means out of the United Kingdom. Maybe the Mediterranean. ‘Well –’ Nick hesitated. ‘We’ve got three days’ leave before we go. It’s not much time, but it matches up with your next two days off. We could get married.’
I am sorry to say that I laughed at him.
I mean, it is just so stupid. He is sweet and funny and kind and brave, and we talk so easily when we are together, and he is so proud to have a pilot for a girlfriend – ‘Looks like Katharine Hepburn and flies like Amelia Earhart’ is how he introduced me to his parents (an exaggeration in both cases but oh how I burned with joy and embarrassment when he said it)! But we still haven’t ever even been on a real date, dancing or to a film or anything like that – it’s always lunch in a pub or a quick cup of tea in the coffee shop at the train station just outside Portsmouth, which is halfway for both of us. It is so hard to get time together. Apparently Maddie has supper with her boyfriend Jamie at his airbase something like once every two months. And the last time Nick and I had the same day off, I had to stand him up because Uncle Roger and Aunt Edie were taking me out. Of course, it never occurred to me to stand up Uncle Roger – but I am in debt to Uncle Roger, I mean morally, for pulling the strings that got me here. Nick doesn’t get that. I know he was hurt.
And now I hurt him again, by laughing at his proposal. I tried to make it up to him by promising we would have a whole day, a real day to remember, all to ourselves before he went away.
It makes me angry. Why should it have to be like this, for all of us, all our generation? That the only way for a young couple to be together is to get married? No chance of a honeymoon, no flowers or champagne because the gardens are all full of cabbages and turnips and France is a war zone? No pretty silk dress unless someone manages to steal a parachute for you? No. I know I wouldn’t get married suddenly even if it weren’t wartime. I’d never do it without Daddy there to walk me down the aisle – with only a telegram to let him know!
It is the same for every young couple. We are all panicking that one of us will be killed next month, next week, tomorrow. All of us panicking that if we don’t do it now, we’ll never get a chance. Well, I don’t care, I’m not letting the war take over my life.
Maddie laughed too when I told her about Nick’s proposal.
‘I know where he got that idea,’ she said. ‘Jamie and I are getting married on the twelfth of August. Next week!’ She gave another hoot of laughter. ‘That is Nick all over. He’s like a puppy. You said no, didn’t you, Rosie? The poor lad! Tell you what – you can give him a good excuse and say you’ve a previous engagement. Come be my bridesmaid.’
‘Oh, how could I!’
What a thoughtless thing to say. Her dead friend wasn’t going to do it, was she? And all it did was remind her.
Anyway, of course I will.
I asked her if she knew where Nick and Jamie are going, and she gave me a funny look.