I unlatched the door. ‘Uncle Roger, if you can engineer getting me to fly you to France, you really are a Royal Engineer. They haven’t let any ATA pilots go to France yet. And when they do, it’ll be the men.’
Roger gave his characteristic ‘harrumph’ of disgust. ‘There were American women on the beaches of Normandy four days after D-Day. Army Nurse Corps – plucky girls, carrying all their own gear just like the lads. And our British ladies began to arrive only a few days later. They’re at the front now, or just behind it. I know you’re “civilian pilots”, but at least in a plane you can scarper on home when you’ve dropped me off!’
‘You’re preaching to the choir, Uncle Roger!’ I hauled myself out on to the wing and reached back in so he could pass me our bags. ‘If you pull the strings, I’m ready to go.’
I don’t really believe he can pull those strings. But it gives me a warm, excited feeling in the pit of my stomach that he thinks he can, and might actually try.
August 14, 1944
Hamble, Southampton, Hampshire
Doodlebug Bride / Bomb Alley
(Poems by Rose Justice. Not yet written. I just like the titles.)
Maddie had her two days off for her wedding, but I did not, so it was kind of a marathon for me to get to Scotland. I managed to squeeze it in as a series of ferry flights up and took the train back with Maddie. Everyone was as nice as could be, bending over backwards to make sure I got the right delivery chits that would take me all the way to Aberdeen and let me stay there overnight. Mostly they were doing it for Maddie. Thank heavens the weather also cooperated. It has been terrible all summer; even the Brits say it’s not usually this bad. Great cover for the flying bombs, but no visibility for living pilots, and the ground-to-air gunners can’t see what they’re shooting at.
It was thick overcast as usual the day after the wedding when Maddie and I came back on the train together – poor thing, she and Jamie only had one night together. Maddie was in Scotland for two nights, but the night before the wedding doesn’t really count because she and Jamie were still in separate rooms then!
She is marrying into another world. Jamie is the son of an earl and his family lives in an honest-to-goodness Highland castle. Her name has changed from Maddie Brodatt to the Honourable Mrs Beaufort-Stuart! There are a lot of Beaufort-Stuarts – Jamie is one of six children, though the war is thinning them out. Ugh. His oldest brother was killed in Normandy in June and his younger sister was killed last year. She is the one who was Maddie’s best friend. It was through her that Maddie met Jamie.
I don’t know how Lady Beaufort-Stuart copes – I really don’t. She has got eight refugee children living with her – all boys, evacuated from Glasgow so they won’t be bombed (for the wedding they all wore kilts borrowed from the Beaufort-Stuarts). Before the wedding this rabble formed a chain across the church door and refused to let anyone in until the bridegroom paid them, which Jamie staunchly refused to do, arguing that if he could kick their soccer ball over the church, he was exempt from their entry fee – and he did it too, amid a huge amount of cheering and yelling. Maddie gave them each a sixpence anyway. Then they tried to carry her into the church, but her grandfather took over at that point and made her walk sedately down the aisle on his arm.
Jamie’s family didn’t talk much about their dead. They were so happy to have something to celebrate – almost desperate with it. There were flowers and champagne after all. They have got an amazing rose garden, like the one at the Hotel Hershey, and it hasn’t been dug up for vegetables because they have so much ground that there aren’t enough gardeners to take care of it all. So their own garden is where the wedding roses came from. And of course Jamie brought the champagne back with him on one of his clandestine Special Duties trips.
The church they were married in is part of the castle estate, a tiny crooked building built from local stone (the boys’ ball did not have to go very high to be kicked over the top of it). Maddie had white heather in her bouquet, and pink and yellow damask rosebuds. Jamie was in a kilt too, the same tartan as the eight kids, and his Royal Air Force tunic; Maddie wore her ATA uniform (so did I).
Her grandfather brought a wine glass that had been his mother’s in Russia, and Maddie and Jamie used it, instead of the traditional Scottish loving cup, for the couple’s first drink together at the reception afterwards. Then they smashed it, on purpose, as per her grandfather’s instructions. It was not a Jewish wedding, but Maddie’s grandparents are Jewish and breaking the glass is part of the ceremony.
Lady Beaufort-Stuart was rather shocked that Mr Brodatt had wanted them to break an antique Russian glass that had belonged to his mother, thousands of miles away and a century ago. And he said, ‘I do not want to wait for Hitler’s doodlebugs to get to it first.’
Maddie did not throw her bouquet. There would have only been me to catch it anyway, and we both knew how I felt about that. Instead she left it below the family’s memorial plaque in the church, where her friend’s name is carved. The older boy’s name is not there yet, but the girl died last year. Her dates were carved there too. And it was her birthday. They got married on her birthday, August 12th.
I like that. Because now they will have a reason to celebrate on that day, a new reason and a good one, instead of being miserable every year.
They didn’t mention the dead girl on the day, but Maddie said something about her on the train on our way back. It was when we were admiring Maddie’s ring. It is French rose-gold from the nineteenth century, a small, square-cut ruby flanked with little triangles of tiny pearls. It belonged to Jamie’s great-grandmother, and was handed down the generations eventually to his sister, and now Jamie’s family have given it to Maddie.
‘I love it fiercely,’ she said. ‘Because it is a little bit of Julie as well as Jamie, and of their lovely mother, and I will have it with me always. Fifty years from now, if I live that long, it will be part of me. It is all of ours and they are part of me. And I love that it is French too – their mother’s family is French – they are all fighting for France as much as for Britain. Julie too –’
Maddie shut up suddenly. But I got it, suddenly, and I knew that she’d meant me to get it – her friend died in France. She must have been a spy or a saboteur or something. Maddie is very discreet, but she is closer to that clandestine side of warfare than the other ATA pilots. She does a good bit of specialised taxi flying – like me taking Uncle Roger places, only Maddie’s passengers are incognito. I don’t ask who they are and I know she wouldn’t answer if I did.
Her friend Julie’s name is on the family’s memorial stone in Scotland, but I know Julie’s not buried in that church. Maddie said she didn’t get a funeral.
‘Do you know how she died?’ I asked.