up.
But they hadn’t, and as a result, she made two wrong turns and had to retrace her way for a tense few minutes, and it was half past twelve by the time she reached Dulwich.
The garage was empty. They’ve already left for the V-1 that fell at 12:20. Good, that means I can have my tea before the next one. But she’d no sooner pulled in than Fairchild and Maitland piled in beside her. “V-1 in Herne Hill, DeHavilland,” Fairchild said. “Let’s go.”
“They’ve had three in the last two hours,” Maitland said, “and they can’t handle it all.”
And for the rest of the night, Mary clambered over ruins and bandaged wounds and loaded and unloaded stretchers.
It was eight in the morning before they came home. “I heard you got stuck with my job, Triumph,” Talbot said when she went into the despatch room. “Which one was it? I hope not the Octopus.”
“The Octopus?”
“General Oswald. Eight hands, and cannot keep any of them to himself.” Talbot shuddered. “And very quick, even though he’s ancient and looks like a large toad.”
“No,” Mary said, laughing. “Mine was young and very good-looking. His name was Lang. Flight Officer Lang.”
“Oh, Stephen.” Talbot nodded wisely. “Did he convince you he’d met you somewhere before?”
“He attempted to.”
“He uses that line on every FANY who drives him,” Talbot said, which should have been a relief, but part of her had been secretly looking forward to the possibility of seeing him on her next assignment.
“I wouldn’t set my cap for him,” Talbot was saying. “He’s definitely not interested in wartime attachments.”
“Good,” Mary said. “I’m not either. If he rings up saying he needs a driver, would you—”
“I’ll see to it the Major sends Parrish.”
“Thank you. Talbot, I wanted to apologize again for pushing you down. I am sorry.”
“No harm done, Triumph,” Talbot said, and the next day she hobbled into the common room on her crutches and kissed her on the cheek.
“What was that for?” Mary asked.
“This,” Talbot said, waving a letter at her. “It came in the post this morning. Listen, ‘Heard about your accident. Get better soon so we can go dancing. Signed, Sergeant Wally Wakowski,’ ” she read. “And in the parcel with it were two pairs of nylons! Your pushing me down was an absolute godsend, DeHavilland! As soon as my knee’s healed, I’ll take one—no, two—of your shifts for you.”
But over the next week, the Germans increased the number of launchings till nearly two hundred and fifty V-1s were coming over every twenty-four hours, and everyone, including Talbot, went on double shifts. If Stephen had called and pretended he needed a driver, there wouldn’t have been any drivers or vehicles to send.
Mary and Fairchild drove the Rolls to three separate incidents, and the Major spent most of her time on the telephone attempting to talk HQ into an additional driver and/or ambulance.
But the next week, the number of V-1s arriving abruptly dropped. Mary wondered if the Germans had finally begun acting on the false information Intelligence had been feeding them and recalibrated their launchers to send the V-1s to pastures in Kent. Or perhaps Stephen had thought of a way to shoot them down. Whichever it was, the ambulance unit was able to go back to regular shifts and going to dances.
Parrish, Maitland, and Reed dragged Mary to one in Walworth. Since she now knew what a V-1 sounded like— she’d heard one on a run to St. Francis’s—and since there weren’t any within a twenty-mile radius of Walworth on the day of the dance, she thought she could risk it.
She was wrong. She met an American GI with exactly the same “Haven’t we met somewhere before?” line as Stephen Lang, none of Stephen’s charm or wit, and no dancing ability at all. She came home limping almost as badly as Talbot.
The GI rang her up every day for a week, and on Thursday, when she and Fairchild got back from their second incident of the day—one dead, five injured—
Parrish met them as they came in from the garage with “Kent, there’s someone waiting to see you in the common room.”
“American?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I’m only relaying a message from Maitland.”
“I do hope it’s not that GI who couldn’t dance.”
“Would you like me to come rescue you?” Fairchild offered.
“Yes. Wait five minutes, and then come tell me I’m needed at hospital.”
“I will. Here, give me your cap.”
She handed it to Fairchild, went down the corridor to the common room, and opened the door. Maitland sat perched on the arm of the sofa, swinging her legs and smiling flirtatiously at a tall young man in an RAF uniform.
It wasn’t the GI. It was Stephen Lang. “Isolde,” he said, smiling crookedly at her. “We meet yet again.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Do you need a driver?”
“No, I came to thank you.”
