When We Fall Read online

  Only when Sonia asks if she wants to come to the parish hall does Vee remember that it is election day. She shrugs and says all right. A walk will be better than sitting brooding all afternoon in the school-dinner stuffiness of the mess. She wonders why any of them bothers coming here at all. ATA may still be paying their wages but hardly anyone gets to fly.

  Despite the humid weather, Vee puts on her uniform jacket and fastens the belt. At least when she is wearing it, she can say that she is a pilot without raising a laugh. Sonia sets off in her jacket too but once they leave the aerodrome through the wicket gate and are on the path along the roadside verge, she takes it off. Vee does not even loosen her tie.

  Sonia uses her jacket to wave away a bumble bee. ‘Do you know, I think I might vote for Mr Attlee.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘We’re all grateful to Mr Churchill and so forth, but I imagine everyone could do with a change.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  Sonia throws Vee a sideways glance as she hooks her finger in the jacket’s coat-loop and hoists it over her shoulder. ‘I hear Frank Spratley is leaving.’

  ‘Got a job, has he?’

  ‘BOAC.’

  Sonia sounds as if she might actually be pleased for him.

  Vee sniffs. ‘Thought so.’

  Frank is about the fifth ATA pilot she has heard of to get a job with an airline. All of them men.

  The hedgerows hum in the dull warm air and wood pigeons coo from the high elms.

  ‘Do you have a plan, Vee, for when they finally give us our cards? It can’t be long now, can it?’

  ‘Well, I won’t be working for BOAC, that’s for sure.’

  ‘You never know, it might be worth asking.’

  Vee shoots her a look and Sonia shakes her head, chuckling. ‘I know. But there could be other openings for you as a pilot. Aerial photography and such.’

  ‘You mean where there are no passengers to see that their pilot is a lady?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But I’m not even going to get a job like that ahead of a demobbed RAF pilot who has a family to support.’

  ‘Well, yes. I take your point. So what will you do?’

  Vee shrugs. But she has little doubt that her path is leading back to the factory office, and it will be as if everything she has achieved in the past two and a half years never happened.

  ‘How about you, Sonia?’

  ‘Oh, I shall travel.’

  Vee frowns for a moment as she imagines Sonia taking a series of buses and trains without going anywhere in particular.

  Sonia’s wry smile acknowledges her confusion. ‘A cousin in the Argentine has invited me out to his ranch.’

  ‘Goodness.’

  ‘Yes. Should be a hoot.’

  Sonia tries to rein in her smile and Vee wonders if the cousin might be rather more to Sonia than that.

  ‘As soon as ATA bids me cheerio, I’ll buy my passage. There’s marvellous flying to be had down there, I believe.’

  ‘That sounds grand.’

  Sonia always does her best to imagine what it is like to live without much money, but she can never quite manage it. And Vee cannot properly explain to her how it feels to work all week in some airless office just to pay for a half-hour circuit around Surrey. Vee has already decided that if she cannot work as a pilot, she will not fly at all.

  Sonia puts her hand to her brow to survey the grassy expanse of the landing ground. ‘I doubt there’s much more flying for us here.’ Then she looks at Vee with her head to one side. ‘You’d like to go out with a bang though, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Make the last flight one to remember?’

  Vee shrugs with one shoulder. ‘Any chits, such as they are, will go to people more senior than me.’

  ‘Perhaps that won’t be the case next week.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Because there may be a very nice chit indeed with both of our names on it.’

  ‘Are you sure? Where to?’

  Sonia taps the side of her nose, conspiratorially. ‘Let’s just say that we’ll be needing the reserve fuel tank on the Anson.’

  ‘The Continent?’

  Vee cannot believe that such a thing will happen. Everyone wants a crack at a foreign flight. How good it would look in their logbooks – not Tangmere or Ringway or Cosford, but Brussels, Bordeaux or Berlin.

  ‘Only first officers have been on the foreign flights so far.’

  ‘Well, I shall simply tell Captain Mills that Second Officer Katchatourian is by far the best placed to be my co-pilot because she has had all of the necessary inoculations: cholera, paratyphoid and what have you.’

  ‘But I haven’t.’

  ‘Well, your name makes it sound as if you have visited exotic parts. And he won’t dare disbelieve me if I put on my best voice when I tell him.’

  Vee smiles but doubts Sonia has that much influence over Captain Mills. Despite the almost flawless record in Vee’s logbook, she suspects that he still regards her as a reckless pilot. And he still hasn’t got the hang of pronouncing her surname.

  At the final perimeter of the landing ground, the afternoon bus from Maidenhead lumbers past and the red brick cottages of the village come into view. Vee’s pace slows. She cannot imagine what she will do for the rest of the day let alone the rest of her life.

  At the parish hall, a POLLING STATION sign hangs on the fence. Sonia goes on to the path lined by pink and yellow snapdragons that leads to the half-open door. But Vee stays by the road.

  ‘Are you not going to vote?’

  Vee shakes her head. ‘I’m not sure that I have the right papers with me.’

  ‘That shouldn’t matter. Come in and speak to the clerk.’

  ‘I think I’ll pop back to my digs, to see if I can find the letter.’

  ‘As you like.’

  Sonia seems to suspect that Vee is lying and looks miffed. But Vee cannot bring herself to consider any part of the future. Even putting an X on the ballot paper is too much of a decision to make. The simple choice: Conservative or Labour, Churchill or Attlee requires more energy than she can muster.

  Further down the road, the bus is pulling away from the stop. A few people have got off; women with headscarves knotted under their chins and a man in uniform. After the bus and the other passengers have departed, the man stands looking around. It is an RAF uniform – stripes on both sleeves and a side-cap. Something about the man’s stance, as Vee walks towards him, makes her pulse quicken. Then he raises his hand and she stops dead.

  Her legs want to move but cannot decide which way to go; to run towards him, or turn on her heel and scuttle away. Embarrassment still lingers. And she has been so certain that he was not coming back.

  She decides to smile and walk on, to be cool and grown-up in the way Sonia might be.

  ‘Hello there.’

  She keeps her smile fixed.

  ‘Hello, Vee.’

  He has grown a moustache. Perhaps that is what makes his cheekbones seem more prominent. He is not gaunt exactly, but thinner. It could be ten years not two since she last saw him.

  ‘What a surprise.’ She tries to sound airy. ‘It’s like you’ve come back from the dead.’

  ‘No, from Northolt.’ Stefan’s moustache twitches into a grin. ‘Not quite so bad.’

  He takes off his cap and looks more like the man she remembers even though the dark hair that used to fall over his brow is slicked flat and eroded at each side by his forehead. Vee wonders if they should kiss cheeks or shake hands or something. But he makes no move. She puts her hands in her pockets.

  ‘So, you just happen to be passing this way, do you?’

  ‘I come to see you, Vee, obviously.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She does
not quite know what to say. Or what to feel. They stand, smiling stupidly at each other, until Vee cannot bear it any longer.

  ‘I’m going this way, if you want to come for a walk.’

  He nods and there is almost a click of heels, but maybe that is her imagination.

  ‘How are you, Vee?’

  ‘Oh, you know.’

  As she indicates for them to turn on to the lane, she slides a look at him. His body seems shrunk inside the bulky belted jacket but his eyes are still the palest, fiercest blue she has ever seen.

  There is no pavement and they walk alongside each other a pace or two apart on the asphalt.

  ‘So…’

  She cannot think what to say next. Even the safest question like how are you? or where have you been? could open up topics fraught with pain or embarrassment. The war has made small talk impossible.

  ‘Do you mind me coming here to see you?’

  ‘Of course not. I often wondered where you were.’ The admission sounds pathetic and Vee feels herself colouring. ‘I mean, at first, when they told me you had gone and I thought… well, I didn’t know what to think.’

  ‘You asked about me?’

  ‘Only once. Northolt told me not to bother again.’

  He snorts and shakes his head. ‘It was all hush-hush then.’

  ‘And is it still?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where you’ve been for the last two and a bit years?’

  He sighs then gives a sardonic smile. ‘Well, this year, I have been on a guided walking tour of central Europe. But the accommodation was third rate and the service terrible.’

  It is coming back to her now, how he used jokes to side-step awkwardness.

  ‘You were a prisoner?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He fiddles with the button of his top pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. Vee shakes her head as he offers her one. His long fingers cup the yellow flame as he strokes it across the tip of the cigarette. His hands are trembling.

  ‘And you, Vee? Still flying, I see.’

  ‘I wish.’

  He frowns, quizzical and Vee waves a hand.

  ‘Well, it’s all coming to an end, you see. Most of the air movements have gone to Transport Command. And there are too many RAF pilots idle for them to worry about giving any flights to ATA.’

  They are almost at the railway bridge.

  ‘But you still want to fly?’

  She cuts a smile on to her mouth. ‘More than anything.’ They stop on the bridge and Vee leans her arms on the parapet. Iron tracks curve into the distance. ‘I can’t bear the thought that I might never see it all again.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know. The sun glinting off a Spitfire’s windscreen and England spread out below me like a giant map.’

  Her voice wavers and she blinks, irritated at the blur in her eyes

  Stefan taps his cigarette on the edge of the bridge. ‘You think you know what is in the future, but no one does.’ White ash flutters towards the dark track. ‘And was it only aeroplanes that you loved while I was gone?’

  She laughs and turns to look at him. ‘Cheeky bugger!’

  There has, indeed, been no one else since Stefan disappeared. No one else quite measured up. But she will not yet give him the satisfaction of saying so.

  In the distance, a train’s clatter builds. Stefan drops the cigarette, stamping a thick sole on to the pavement.

  ‘If you want me to go now, Vee, no problem. There is another bus in three hours.’

  She laughs again and starts to say that it would be quicker to walk back to London along the train track, but then the bridge begins to shudder. In a sudden roar from below, coal-infused steam rushes up, engulfing them both. As the mist melts and the train thunders away, Stefan is closer; his grey-blue sleeve is almost touching her dark ATA navy. Without quite thinking, Vee leans in and Stefan’s finger touches hers. Then he pulls her to him. Vee finds that she is wrapping herself around him and kissing him back. Even with the moustache, his lips, his mouth, his tongue, taste like a favourite half-forgotten treat. As they kiss, something inside her, something tense and fearful, seems to disconnect and lighten.

  Vee pulls her head away and looks into the bluest of eyes. ‘Three hours you say?’

  ‘If the bus comes when it should.’

  ‘That’s more than enough to finish what we started last time.’

  He takes a breath. ‘Are you sure, Vee?’

  She nods. She has never been surer of anything. ‘My digs are over there. At the farm.’

  The harvest is getting started so the house, as far as Vee can tell when they go in, is empty. Stefan follows her up the narrow stairs and strokes the edge of her hand. He has to stoop under the doorway to her bedroom. She turns the drooping key in the lock and unbuttons her jacket.

  Stefan smiles, very wide and steps towards her. He looks down and touches the loose point of her tie. He starts to say something but before the word forms, their bodies fold into each other. Shirts, shoes, underthings, peel away. Vee does not think or speak but only feels – his skin, his lips, his tongue. He pulls her, quickly, roughly almost, on to the low bed. Her mouth stings from the scratch of his moustache.

  He is on top of her and she knows that this time it will happen. His hand is under her spine, pushing her up and bringing her to the right place. He whispers.

  ‘Is this all right, Vee?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Yes.’

  He covers her mouth with his and swallows her cries. Vee has heard that everyone thinks the first time is no good. But they are wrong.

  Afterwards, she and Stefan stay, hardly dressed, plaited together on the bed. When they were together before during the war, everything was rushed and breathless. She’d never imagined having a chance to spend long leisurely hours simply being with him. But perhaps now, that is not such an impossible idea.

  Vee’s gaze swims around the room – from the picture in a frame, like a school photo, of herself and the other woman pilots, to her winter greatcoat hanging on the back of the door. She wonders if the last two years would have been any different if she and Stefan had done this before, in the alleyway behind The 400 Club. The thought makes her feel as if she has lost forever something that should have been hers.

  Stefan seems to read her thoughts and strokes a finger across her cheek. ‘I am sorry, Vee, about before, in London.’

  ‘What happened then, Stefan?’

  He blinks slowly. ‘I was not myself. It was that day we heard about the bodies. In the forest. Thousands of our Polish comrades shot by Soviets.’

  She remembers vaguely a newsreel. Ragdoll corpses lifted from the soil as Nazis in long coats looked on. She has seen worse newsreels since.

  ‘I thought the Germans were to blame for that.’

  ‘Only if you believe what the British want you to believe.’

  She flinches. He makes it sound like she is the enemy. She pulls away from him and sits upright on the bed. The candlewick bedspread is becoming threadbare and she pulls at a loose tuft of cotton.

  ‘And it was this news that put you off, was it?’

  ‘I suppose.’ Sweat coats his brow. ‘I felt… I felt useless. And so I was with you.’ His body beside hers does not so much tense as become silent. ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘You don’t need to apologise for that. It was the running away…’

  ‘I know. There is no excuse.’

  ‘Then I began to think maybe you couldn’t contact me because you had been shot down. And I suppose at some point that became true…’

  ‘No, I was not shot down.’

  ‘So how did you end up as a prisoner of war?’

  ‘Long story.’

  Vee’s finger circles a bare patch on the bedspread that looks like a blue cloud in a milky sky. St
efan shifts his weight on the bed and cool air rises between them. The silence is suddenly unbearable.

  ‘Tell me, Stefan. We have time.’

  He sighs. ‘I went to Poland.’

  ‘To fight?’

  ‘Yes. And to find something and bring it back. But I failed. So I must go back and try again.’

  He glances up at her from the pillow and holds her gaze. She senses then, with a jolt, why he is here.

  ‘Please don’t say you’ve come looking for a lift.’

  His eyelids lower and she knows that she is right.

  He raises himself on the bed and takes hold of her hand, entwining his fingers with hers. ‘Listen, Vee, if you cannot help, it does not matter. But this thing I must find in Poland is something very important for my government. For my country.’

  She stifles an urge to laugh. His excuse sounds so implausible that she cannot bring herself to ask what he means.

  ‘There must be plenty of RAF flights from Northolt to the Continent. Can’t you go back on one of those?’

  He shakes his head. ‘This is a private matter. Best RAF does not know.’

  ‘Top secret, then?’

  She hears a sneer in her voice but when she sees his face, regrets it. She thinks for a horrible second that he might weep. But his voice, though quiet, is steady.

  ‘The truth, once proved, will change everything.’

  ‘You sound very sure.’

  ‘I am. Can you help me?’

  Vee’s finger traces the arc of his shoulder. ‘I’ll see.’

  Berlin, British Sector

  Friday 13 July

  Sunlight drills into the cockpit as the Anson turns to the east. Vee squints at the dazzle, her hands clammy on the steering yoke. She bends her head from left to right, tendons crunching. The cockpit stinks of worn leather and greased metal. Engines drone.

  Below, a sparse open landscape rolls past – unfenced fields, dark woodland, a scattering of towns. Some settlements are still red-roofed, others are pummelled grey as ash. Clouds cast giant shadows on the empty sunlit ground. It is nothing like England.

  Sonia holds up the map to Vee and their bare forearms brush above the hydraulic levers. Vee follows Sonia’s scarlet fingernail that is pointing out their position then glances down at the gap between propeller blur and wing. The same angle of railway line and river is reproduced on the ground. She gives Sonia a thumbs-up.