Elsie shook her head. It just wouldn’t be right, given her circumstances; and she could only imagine the look of horror on Agnes’s face at being told that she would be going to a dance with a chap from the RAF. ‘No, sorry.’
The dejection cut genuine sadness into his face. ‘Please? The last one was a hoot. I’ll be all lonely—all you WAAF girls are going,’ William pleaded. ‘I know your situation—I won’t try any funny business.’
‘Sorry, but no,’ Elsie maintained.
From somewhere behind him, a telephone rang and all the colour drained from his face and his eyes widened with fear as a bell began to ring.
‘Oh, damn,’ William murmured. ‘Sorry.’
‘What is it?’ Elsie asked, drawing closer to the wire.
‘We’re being called up to help those poor bastards in the Defiants—they’re likely being torn to ribbons up there.’
‘Scramble! Scramble! Scramble!’ one of the pilots yelled from behind him.
‘Goodbye,’ William whispered, barely able to draw breath. He turned and ran towards the waiting aircraft.
‘I’ll come!’ Elsie shouted. But he never turned back, just kept running. ‘I’ll come,’ she repeated loudly, watching as he climbed into a waiting Hurricane. She stood at the fence, biting her lip, wondering if he had heard her, as she watched plane after plane roaring into life and coursing across the grassy runway. Twelve went up.
‘Oh! Will you just shut up, moaning Minnie!’ she suddenly yelled in the general direction of the air raid siren. Where was the damned thing, anyway? The sound appeared to be coming from everywhere—as if the trees, tarmac and all the surrounding houses chimed in like some awful tone-deaf choir, stuck on the same tune. Given a weapon and half the chance, she would quite happily have shot the bloody thing off its pole.
Elsie stood holding her bicycle, watching the Hurricanes until the only trace of them was the dispersing cotton wool vapour trails hanging loosely in the blue sky. Then she made for home.
She noticed that the closer she drew to Cliff House, the slower she was cycling. Any slower and she would fall off. The house came into view and she dismounted, preferring to walk the last stretch. She remembered, then, what William had said about the Defiants being torn to pieces and suddenly felt guilty for having earlier wished those aircraft into battle. Those planes were full of Daniels and Williams.
In her mind, she was dissecting William’s choice of phrase: torn to ribbons. What did that mean, exactly? She hoped that it meant that, although they were being shot at, they were still capable of flying. Then the answer came, in part.
A pair of Defiants, clearly in trouble, were making the left-hand circuit approach for landing at the aerodrome. One of them had only got one wheel down in preparation to land, and the other was flying with an odd tilt to its left wing.
Elsie held her breath and watched as, one after the other, they disappeared down behind the aerodrome fence. Her sense of relief was cut short and she fell to the ground as another flew in—what felt just a few yards above her head—ablaze from wingtip to wingtip. She shrieked, as the searing ball of heat passed overhead. ‘Get out! Get out!’ she shouted at the stricken pilot.
He wasn’t going to make the hill that lead up to the aerodrome—he was far too low. She couldn’t bear to watch and covered her eyes at the last moment. Then came the explosion. Opening her eyes, all she could see was an orange and red ball funnelling thick plumes of black smoke into the air. ‘Oh, you poor, poor man,’ she sobbed quietly.
Above her, came another roar as two more Defiants swept up towards the aerodrome. ‘Please make it, please!’
She wanted to close her eyes, but she needed to know if they had made it over the fence safely. She held her breath as the two aircraft banked around then went in, one after the other.
She grabbed her bicycle and pedalled furiously up the hill towards the house. She swept down the long drive, dropped her bicycle near to the front door and ran inside. Thankfully, the house seemed deserted and she didn’t need to explain herself. Upstairs, she dashed into Laurie’s old room, grabbed his telescope and carted it into her bedroom, setting it up at the window. The eyepiece took some fine-tuning, but finally she had a clear, unobstructed view of the aerodrome boundary.
And there, almost without blinking, Elsie watched and waited.
It seemed to take an age for the first of the Hurricanes to arrive back. They flew in low, appearing like a flock of crows in the viewfinder, in the standard formation of groups of three. Thank God, there were four groups; all the Hurricanes had made it back to the aerodrome. William had made it back safely.
Elsie felt her heart rhythm change a gear and slow down to something like a normal beat. For the first time in what felt like hours, she started to relax. She changed out of her uniform, putting on a light cotton dress and went downstairs. Aside from the continual siren droning on and on, the house was still and she wondered where Agnes, Kath and Gwen had got to. Not that she really cared; they had done very little to make her feel welcome since her arrival and every conversation seemed to underline the fact that they didn’t want her in the house. The more that she thought about it, the more minded she was to find another billet.
She ran herself a glass of water from the kitchen tap and stood drinking it at the window, looking out over the coast. Then, at last, the war maestro changed his tune and played the single continuous note that announced the all-clear.
The
