We went back to work at twelve-thirty. Sergeant Hickman – that was his name; I knew it would come back to me – and his neophyte stuffed me into a pair of grey overalls three sizes too large for me, and strapped a parachute pack around me. They made me jump off a table a couple of times, onto an old sisal exercise mat. It was supposed to cushion my fall, but had about the same amount of give as a battleship’s armoured deck. They told me all the usual scary stories about what can go wrong with parachute jumps. I was, however, particularly worried by a statement that one in ten jumps go wrong one way or another. I’d already got away with one jump safely, so I calculated that I’d shortened my odds to one in nine. But which of the nine, I wondered.
We were waiting outside in the cold sunshine when our lift turned up. I heard it before I saw it, and thought I recognized the engine note. Twin Cheetahs that buzzed like a swarm of bees. When I saw it minutes later I even recognized the bloody aircraft as well: it was one of ours . . . an old Airspeed Oxford painted as red as a pillar box. It belonged to Halton Air, and a few weeks earlier I had been the one giving its pilot his orders. I suspected immediately that Old Man Halton’s refusal to defer my recall to the colours was tied to some sort of deal he had made with the WD to keep his fleet in the air. It led me to wonder if Elaine knew that as well.
The pilot was Randall Claywell Junior, an American journeyman flier I’d known since 1945. He was so big that the aircraft shifted from side to side as he moved back from the office to its side door. He stepped down back first. We had all trooped out to meet him and when he turned around, he looked genuinely surprised to see me.
‘Hiya, Charlie, what y’ doin’ here?’
‘Jumping out of your fucking aeroplane I think,’ I muttered bitterly. ‘Did they send you over here to make me feel better?’
‘Do you know anyone who cares that much? Naw, I’m doing a coupla these stunts every week. The RAF’s short of appropriate aircraft. They’ve committed their jumpers to the Paras, and we get to pick up the small stuff. Never thought I’d see you here.’
Appropriate was a big word for Randall: seeing me trussed up like an Egyptian mummy must have thrown him for a minute.
The sergeant didn’t waste time with an intro – they all knew each other. He just said, ‘No point in hanging around, folks. The sooner we’re up there, sir, the sooner you’ll be back down on terra firma.’
‘That’s exactly what I’m worried about,’ I told him.
Randall unshipped the door, which was an odd, off-centre shape and not very big, and stowed it at the back of the cabin. Then he clambered in, and moved forward to the driving seat. Hickman and the corporal followed him, and sat in the next two seats. Then Ivy climbed up, and then me. We two took the next row back; I sat nearest to the space where the door should have been. Both the regulars turned back to look at us and talk, while Randall taxied out. The corporal shouted to me, ‘When it’s time for you to go, sir, I want you to squat on the door coaming with both your hands on the door frame, but with your fingers outside.’
‘OK.’
‘When I pat you on the shoulder, roll forward and dive out and down, pushing back hard with your hands. You’ve got to dive down to avoid the tail: if you hit it you’ll break your back.’
‘Thanks for that. What about the toggle?’ In fact the pull was a hard leather handgrip on a piece of cable: I hadn’t seen one like that before, which either meant that this was a museum piece, or something new undergoing test. I do so love the way the RAF cares for its people.
‘Hold it between your teeth; grab it and pull as soon as you like, once you’re outside the aircraft, sir, but don’t leave it too late.’
‘No. I’d thought of that as well.’
‘The other thing you gotta know, sir, is that once you’re in the exit position, I can’t get you back into the aircraft. If you don’t jump, I’ll have to kick you out.’
I said, ‘Thanks.’ My voice sounded just a bit shaky.
He grinned, and showed all his front teeth. They were improbably white. Falsies. I still couldn’t work out why he and his boss were looking back at us all the time, instead of ahead, where we were going. Randall gunned the motors and got us really rolling, cold air smashed into the cabin, and Ivy’s skirt blew over her head.
I couldn’t make out if her shrieks were of laughter, anger, embarrassment or fear. She had pale stockings, a white suspender belt and a lovely pair of pink knickers – so she looked like a girl on a roller-coaster ride at a funfair. Every time she pushed her skirt down again the slipstream took it out of her hands. Eventually she gave up, and scrunched it down around her hips, and finally I worked out what the noise was. Ivy was laughing: this was fun. I also worked out why the regulars had turned back to look at us – they’d pulled this trick on a girl before.
By the time
