The Last Letter from Juliet - Melanie Hudson Page 0,90
on for good. It was simply her way. And there was something else too, a sense of things beginning to draw to a conclusion.
She wouldn’t let us see her off at the station – said it would ruin her make-up. Instead Marie hugged us at the door and with the parting words of, ‘I love ya, you crazy sonofabitches.’ She walked away. Nothing at Hamble was ever quite the same once Marie left and little did we know, things were about to get much, much worse.
Chapter 32
Juliet
An angel in the cockpit
The weather conditions were marginal as Anna and I sat chatting with our fellow pilots in the mess, grounded by the weather, waiting for the cloud base to lift, killing time. Anna was thrilled that we’d been tasked again to deliver two Spitfires to Predannack and was particularly anxious to go. Bill, Anna’s new boyfriend, was still flying with his squadron and would be waiting for us on arrival, so long as we arrived that day, because the following morning he was being posted to another squadron in Scotland. Anna, standing at the window literally watching the clouds roll by, insisted we were to get airborne the moment the weather started to improve, which wasn’t like her, she was always the cautious one – overly, sometimes. But I wanted to delay our departure, even if that meant Anna would not see Bill. Yes, it was usual for ATA pilots to fly at the edge of the weather envelope, but too many names had been rubbed off the chalkboard by now, fellow pilots who had fallen to the perils of flying in bad weather and I was determined that our names would still be written on the board at the end of the war.
I pointed to a poster on the mess wall at a copy of the top three rules for ATA flying and read two of them out loud to Anna:
i) Bad weather flying strictly prohibited.
ii) No flight shall be commenced unless at the place of departure the cloud base is at least 800 feet, and the horizontal visibility at least 2,000 yards
Nevertheless, an hour later, the cloud base lifted to seven hundred feet and the visibility improved to 2000 yards with the forecast of a cold-front clearance moving in from the west. Anna grabbed her kit.
‘Come on, Foxy,’ she said, excitedly tapping me on the leg. ‘Remember the ATA motto, Juliet, anything to anywhere!’
Reluctantly, I also began to gather my things, but I refused to fly on her wing. If we hit a bad spot of weather it would be difficult to retain the required visual references to stay in close formation, especially if she began to make unpredictable turns in attitude and height while trying to navigate around low cloud, so we agreed to depart twenty minutes apart.
Anna went first. She dashed out of the ops room and blew a kiss in my direction, grabbing her flying jacket as she ran. But it wasn’t her jacket, it was mine, which had my father’s compass in the pocket. I couldn’t fly without it.
I dashed out after her. She was already in the cockpit, the canopy pulled back, going through her checks, the rotor blade not turning yet. I climbed on the wing.
‘That’s my jacket,’ I said, but she was already strapped in. She began to unstrap. ‘No, don’t worry. I’ll fly in yours, but I need my compass. It’s in the right pocket. Sorry, I know it’s ridiculous, but I never fly without it.’
She reached through her parachute straps and delved into the pocket.
‘And don’t forget,’ I shouted above the noise of the airfield, taking the compass, ‘if the weather closes in, turn back.’
‘It won’t!’ she said, smiling. ‘And anyway. It’s time I was a little more confident, you said so yourself.’
‘But not in bad weather, Anna. And remember I’ll be twenty minutes behind you, so if you turn back, watch out for me coming the other way!’
She shoo’ed me off the wing. ‘I won’t be turning back. I’ll see you there.’ She pulled on her helmet and goggles. ‘And don’t worry, I’ll be fine.’
I kissed her on the cheek. ‘Stay safe.’
‘Safe? In a few hours we’ll be dancing in the mess hall,’ she said. ‘Now off you go.’
I watched Anna let off the break and open up the throttle. She waved as she taxied past me and I couldn’t help but remember another smiling woman waving at me from another aircraft in another field, many years before.