Christmas with the Spitfire Girls Read online

  Jenny Holmes

  * * *

  CHRISTMAS WITH THE SPITFIRE GIRLS

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Q&A WITH JENNY HOLMES

  READ MORE

  About the Author

  Jenny Holmes has been writing fiction since her early twenties, having had series of children’s books adapted for both the BBC and ITV.

  Jenny was born and brought up in Yorkshire. After living in the Midlands and travelling widely in America, she returned to Yorkshire and brought up her two daughters with a spectacular view of the moors and a sense of belonging to the special, still undiscovered corners of the Yorkshire Dales.

  One of three children brought up in Harrogate, Jenny’s links with Yorkshire stretch back through many generations via a mother who served in the Land Army during the Second World War and pharmacist and shop-worker aunts, back to a maternal grandfather who worked as a village blacksmith and pub landlord. Her great-aunts worked in Edwardian times as seamstresses, milliners and upholsterers. All told stories of life lived with little material wealth but with great spirit and independence, where a sense of community and family loyalty were fierce – sometimes uncomfortable but never to be ignored. Theirs are the voices that echo down the years, and the author’s hope is that their strength is brought back to life in many of the characters represented in these pages.

  Also by Jenny Holmes

  The Mill Girls of Albion Lane

  The Shop Girls of Chapel Street

  The Midwives of Raglan Road

  The Telephone Girls

  The Land Girls at Christmas

  Wedding Bells for Land Girls

  A Christmas Wish for the Land Girls

  The Spitfire Girls

  The Spitfire Girls Fly for Victory

  and published by Corgi

  For the courageous few:

  the surviving heroes and heroines

  of the Second World War.

  CHAPTER ONE

  November 1944

  ‘Make hay while the sun shines – that’s my motto.’ Viv Robertson twirled in front of the long mirror in her bedroom at Burton Grange. She was dressed to impress in a red satin dress with a sweetheart neckline and a cinched-in waist. Her thick dark hair refused to conform to the current fashion for sleek, smooth tresses and instead tumbled down over her forehead to frame her delicate features with a mass of shiny curls.

  Her fellow Atta girl, Bobbie Fraser, stood in her black lace petticoat, trying to decide between green silk and russet-brown crêpe de Chine.

  ‘Definitely the green silk,’ their friend Mary Holland advised from her position by the bay window. She was trying on a pair of black high-heeled shoes that belonged to Viv. ‘It suits your colouring.’

  Bobbie held the green dress against her pale skin. ‘I wish my hair wasn’t so ginger,’ she said with a frown.

  ‘Your hair’s sandy, not ginger,’ Viv soothed. ‘And it does what it’s told – which is more than can be said for mine.’ A second twirl and a flare of red skirt and white petticoat confirmed that she was almost ready to dance the night away with the RAF boys at nearby Aireby training camp.

  ‘You’re sure you don’t mind me borrowing these?’ Mary was pleased with Viv’s peep-toed evening shoes. They made her legs look more shapely and gave a sophisticated impression to match her off-the-shoulder dress in purple jersey knit.

  ‘Feel free,’ Viv assured her as she snatched the brown dress from Bobbie and threw it on the bed. ‘Get a move on, Roberta McFlirta. At this rate all the decent dancers will be snapped up by the time we get there.’

  Bobbie slid into the strapless green dress. ‘Zip it up for me, then,’ she told Viv in her soft Scottish brogue. The boned bodice gave her slight figure a more womanly outline and she responded shyly to the whistle of approval from Viv and the smile and wink from Mary.

  ‘Not bad,’ Viv said with a grin. ‘Now that only leaves make-up and hair.’ She swept to one side her bottles of perfume, hairbrushes and powder puffs to make room at the dressing table for Mary and Bobbie to sit down. ‘Slap it on nice and thick, girls. The aim is to knock those RAF boys clean off their feet when we finally make our entrance.’

  Mary and Bobbie knew from experience that Viv’s exaggerations had to be taken with a pinch of salt. It was the Canadian girl’s way of letting off steam after another strenuous week of ferrying fighter planes and heavy bombers from factory to RAF base, or from a maintenance unit in the Midlands to secret airfields in the south. It would be the same with the jitterbugging when they got to Aireby: vivacious Viv would be first on the dance floor, loving the attention and making everyone smile. But her pilot friends knew Viv’s flip side: the gritty, determined, fearless flier who had grown up in Vancouver and made her way to this remote corner of Yorkshire to do her bit and help win the war.

  ‘More lipstick,’ Viv advised Mary. Then, ‘Perhaps a touch more eyeshadow,’ she recommended to Bobbie.

  Bobbie hesitated. ‘Are you sure? I don’t want to look like a clown.’

  ‘Honey, that’s impossible.’ Viv picked up a bottle of red polish and gave her nails a quick extra coat while she waited. ‘You’re the perfect English rose.’

  ‘Except that I’m Scottish.’ Bobbie gave a peal of laughter. She’d been born into money on a Highland estate north of Loch Lomond, complete with grouse moor and salmon fishing.

  Mary put down the lipstick then studied the overall effect in the mottled mirror, which reflected Viv’s room in all its faded glory. She took in the floral wallpaper that curled at the edges, the old-fashioned iron bedstead in one corner and the frayed rug placed in front of a small iron fireplace. It had to be admitted that Burton Grange was well past its prime – built in the eighteenth century as a grand manor house with extensive grounds but now requisitioned by the War Office to house the twenty or so civilian volunteers who made up the Air Transport Auxiliary in the North Riding village of Rixley.

  Mary turned her attention back to her own reflection. ‘I wish my nose wasn’t so big,’ she grumbled quietly.

  ‘It is not big, silly!’ Bobbie studied her image in the mirror. ‘You’d have cause to complain if you had my sticky-out ears. And on top of that, my toes are all squished.’

  ‘Ears, noses, toeses, schmozes!’ Viv blew on her fingernails to dry the varnish. ‘Since we’re in confessional mode – do you two want to hear my least favourite feature?’

  ‘Yes, please!’ Mary and Bobbie sang out in unison.

  Viv turned to present her back view. ‘It’s my derrière!’

  More laughter filled the room and the other two girls sprang to their feet. ‘“Head, shoulders, knees and toes!”’ they chorused with the accompanying actions. ‘“Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes!”’

  ‘And derrières!’ Viv added as she led the charge out of the room, down the wide, bomb-damaged staircase and out into the cold, dark night.

  A maroon Morris van was parked outside the RAF Aireby venue, its sides emblazoned with the words ‘ENSA Roadshow’. Big band music filtere
d out through an open door of the Nissen hut where the Saturday evening dance was being held.

  ‘See – we’re late.’ Viv got out from behind the wheel of the borrowed Ford. ‘The fun has started without us.’

  Bobbie and Mary slid gracefully from the back seat, turning up their coat collars against the blustery wind and clutching their handbags to their chests. As they rushed towards the door, ignoring posters inviting recruits to ‘Make the RAF Supreme’ and insisting that ‘Every New Aircraft Needs a Crew’, a gang of raucous cadets from the Initial Training Wing jumped out of the back of a Tilly wagon and made a beeline for the girls.

  ‘Here’s a sight for sore eyes,’ one crowed in loose-jawed admiration.

  ‘Blimey O’Flippin’ Riley!’ said another. ‘Are you three girls real or am I dreaming?’

  Viv, Mary and Bobbie found themselves surrounded by smiling, jostling suitors, all dressed in uniform and with brutal short-back-and-sides haircuts, and all smelling of shaving soap and Brilliantine.

  Viv sailed on ahead of Bobbie and Mary. ‘Make way there, guys. Let the dog see the rabbit.’

  ‘Can I have the first dance?’ a tall, gangly youth implored Bobbie. ‘Make my night – say yes!’

  ‘We’ll see.’ She followed Viv inside. ‘Let me at least take my coat off.’

  ‘I’ll be waiting by the bar,’ he promised as he was shouldered aside by two others eager to secure a similar promise from Mary.

  ‘Hold your horses.’ Mary fended them off with her handbag. ‘Give a girl a chance.’

  With the evening already well under way, Viv, Mary and Bobbie were greeted by a swirl of dancers in close ballroom hold – the men in uniform and the girls in bright, shiny dresses, bedecked with silk flowers, pearls and diamanté. From a temporary stage at the far end of the room a stout, young chanteuse with brightly rouged cheeks crooned ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’ into a microphone, accompanied by a four-piece band.

  ‘In all the old familiar places – just as the song says.’ Mary turned to find her fiancé, Cameron Ainslie, murmuring the words from Bing Crosby’s recent hit song.

  ‘Cameron,’ she breathed. There he was, in his flight lieutenant’s uniform, waiting for her just inside the door – by far the most handsome man there. And by far the tallest and most distinguished – the most everything! ‘You managed to get back from Liverpool in time.’ She hadn’t been sure that he would; as head of Training Command here at Aireby, answerable only to Group Captain Hubert Norris, Cameron’s duties often interfered with his weekends off.

  ‘Wild horses wouldn’t have stopped me.’ Mary took his breath away, even after all these months of courtship. He thought she looked beautiful in her dark dress, the colour of ripe plums, with a silk spray of lily of the valley pinned to her shoulder strap. Her grey eyes sparkled as she looked up into his face and smiled. ‘I’m so glad.’

  He smiled back and took her by the arm, leading her to the trestle table where drinks were being served. ‘After I finished my meeting I was obliged to show some wireless operators around a Supermarine Walrus – they’d never seen the inside of one before.’

  ‘Say no more.’ Mary knew the difficult reputation of the amphibious biplane: a hulking great thing that flapped around all over the sky in crosswinds and was considered by many pilots to be almost uncontrollable. ‘I just hope they don’t put me in one of those lumbering crates now that we girls are finally allowed to cross the Channel.’

  Permission to do so had been a long time coming and had only come into force since D-Day, thanks to the ATA’s doughty commander, Pauline Gower, and her deputy, who had pushed hard for women pilots to fly beyond the south coast and into foreign parts.

  ‘No, you stick to your Spitfires.’ Cameron turned to the makeshift bar and ordered Mary’s Dubonnet and lemonade without having to ask. ‘And a pint of bitter for me, please,’ he told the barman. ‘Anyway, if the met boys in Liverpool have got it right, we’re facing a bad winter so there’ll be plenty of washout days where we all sit twiddling our thumbs.’

  ‘Worse luck.’ Mary preferred to be busy, liking nothing better than to collect a Wellington (no finesse needed, like flying around in an old railway carriage) from a maintenance unit and fly it up to Lossiemouth, where she would pick up a Dakota (tail wheel-lock positioned under throttle, not, as described in her Pilots’ Notes, next to the oil controls), bound for Wolverhampton, then finally (joy of joys) back home to Rixley in a beloved Spitfire. All in one day, mind you, and so from the ferry pool straight back to the Grange, a hot-water bottle and bed.

  Cameron and Mary carried their drinks to seats close to the stage. The blowsy ENSA singer had given way to a boy of eighteen or so with straw-blond hair, who began his stint with a lively tune on the piano. The dancers responded to the change of tempo by launching into a daring jitterbug, recently stolen from American GIs who had brought the craze across the Atlantic along with nylon stockings and a seemingly endless supply of chocolate.

  ‘This lot make me feel old,’ Cameron complained, though he was only twenty-four.

  With a grin, Mary took his drink from him and pulled him to his feet. ‘Come on, Granddad – let’s dance.’

  Soon they were rocking to and fro, tripping the light fantastic and twirling with the best of them. Across the dance floor, Bobbie’s gawky but persistent cadet had claimed her and was stumbling around, stamping on her feet and bumping into Agnes Wright and Horace Jackson, two ATA pilots from Rixley whom Bobbie knew well. Poor Agnes was sent flying and had to be picked up off the floor.

  ‘Sorry!’ Bobbie gasped at Agnes as her clumsy partner whirled her away again.

  ‘How about the next one?’ her cadet demanded when the piano player went into a slow waltz. His hands strayed down to Bobbie’s backside as he tried to steer her into a space at the back of the room.

  ‘No ta.’ Escaping his clutches, she headed for the bar. ‘Lime juice, please,’ she ordered, only to find that she hadn’t shaken off her dogged dance partner after all. ‘Look,’ she told him in a no-nonsense way, ‘there really is no point.’

  ‘How’s that?’ The persistent suitor slid a long arm around Bobbie’s waist.

  She swallowed hard. ‘Well, my … my young man’s not here tonight but I’m afraid I’m already spoken for.’ What a ridiculous, schoolgirlish thing to say! Bobbie immediately wished that the floor would swallow her up.

  ‘She may be spoken for but I’m not!’ Viv rushed in to save her incorrigibly demure friend’s bacon. With a wink in Bobbie’s direction she yanked the lanky air gunner into the centre of the dance floor and flashed him her most vivacious smile. ‘Anyway, live for today – that’s what I always say. My name’s Vivienne, by the way. What’s yours?’

  ‘My poor tootsies!’ It was Monday morning and Viv had taken off her fur-lined boots and put her sore feet up on the canteen table at Rixley ferry pool. ‘I near as dammit got trampled to death on Saturday night.’

  Sitting at the same table, Mary cleared a patch in the steamed-up window of the Nissen hut and gazed out at a dismal, foggy scene. She could scarcely make out the small patch of lawn, let alone the two-storey concrete block containing the control tower, ops room and office where the met boys and girls worked. ‘Washout,’ she mumbled. ‘We’ll be lucky if we get off the ground before midday.’

  Bobbie moved aside a vase of wilting yellow chrysanthemums then laid out a pack of playing cards for a game of patience. The canteen was crowded with bored pilots and ground crew, all waiting for the go-ahead once the weather cleared. ‘Open that window,’ she suggested to Mary. ‘Let in some fresh air.’

  ‘Oh no, please – we’ll all f-f-freeze to death!’ This was Viv’s first experience of a British winter and it was proving very different from the ones she’d recently experienced in California, where she’d worked for a couple of years as a stunt pilot.

  ‘Softie,’ Bobbie chided. ‘Anyhow, you’re Canadian – I imagine winters there are ten times worse.’

  ‘Open or closed?’
Mary raised her voice to ask for a general vote.

  ‘Open! … Shut! … Suit yourself.’ Pilots and ground crew came and went, carrying trays with steaming mugs of tea, dishes of porridge and plates of sausage and egg.

  ‘Closed,’ Agnes told Mary through a bunged-up nose. ‘I’ll catch my death if you leave it open.’

  ‘Hey, Agnes!’ Viv caught her attention as she passed by. ‘I had no idea that you and Horace … well, you know.’

  Agnes shot her a warning glance then rolled her eyes towards Horace, who was queuing up at the counter with his back turned. ‘We’re not,’ she retorted. ‘Not after Saturday night, at any rate.’

  ‘Ooh, tell us more!’ Viv lowered her feet and scraped back the vacant seat next to her. The dance at Aireby had ended satisfactorily for Viv, who had had no shortage of partners and who had ended up with a wonderfully handsome flight lieutenant, no less. His name was Brian Wheeler; a square-jawed, smooth-shaven type. He drove a Morgan sports car and spoke with the kind of clipped British accent that Viv had only previously heard on newsreels. He’d been keen to see her again and she’d agreed to let him visit her at Rixley the following weekend.

  Agnes sat down and began to tuck into her porridge. She was dressed for action in her Sidcot suit and boots and, like the rest of the pilots, was disappointed by the delay that the bad weather had imposed. ‘Horace has two left feet,’ she reported sniffily. ‘Anyhow, he’s not my type.’

  ‘And why’s that?’ Viv asked.

  ‘He can’t keep his hands to himself, for a start.’

  ‘Horace Jackson?’ Mary and Bobbie had overheard. They leaned in, eager to hear more from an unusually chatty Agnes, who was normally aloof and generally regarded as a bit of an old maid. ‘Never! You don’t say!’

  Everyone at Rixley viewed Second Officer Jackson as mouse-like and inoffensive. He was slightly built with an already receding hairline – not at all God’s gift. Mind you, Agnes herself didn’t exude the glamour of someone like Viv. She was a bit too prim and proper, with her scraped-back hair and her long, serious face; a teetotaller who went by the rule book and had a tendency to tell others what to do.