Rose Under Fire (Code Name Verity, #2)(5)

‘You’re on the front line,’ I insisted.

There was this long, guilty silence at the other end.

‘Oh, you really are at the front,’ I guessed angrily. ‘What? They’re going to transfer you, aren’t they, now that the front’s moved back? Or are they getting the Royal Air Force Special Duties squadron to do ferry work so they can weasel out of sending civilian ATA pilots into Europe?’

‘They’re moving the squadron,’ Nick gave me cautiously.

I didn’t ask where. He wouldn’t have told me anyway.

‘Far?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh.’

That means out of the United Kingdom. Maybe the Mediterranean. ‘Well –’ Nick hesitated. ‘We’ve got three days’ leave before we go. It’s not much time, but it matches up with your next two days off. We could get married.’

I am sorry to say that I laughed at him.

I mean, it is just so stupid. He is sweet and funny and kind and brave, and we talk so easily when we are together, and he is so proud to have a pilot for a girlfriend – ‘Looks like Katharine Hepburn and flies like Amelia Earhart’ is how he introduced me to his parents (an exaggeration in both cases but oh how I burned with joy and embarrassment when he said it)! But we still haven’t ever even been on a real date, dancing or to a film or anything like that – it’s always lunch in a pub or a quick cup of tea in the coffee shop at the train station just outside Portsmouth, which is halfway for both of us. It is so hard to get time together. Apparently Maddie has supper with her boyfriend Jamie at his airbase something like once every two months. And the last time Nick and I had the same day off, I had to stand him up because Uncle Roger and Aunt Edie were taking me out. Of course, it never occurred to me to stand up Uncle Roger – but I am in debt to Uncle Roger, I mean morally, for pulling the strings that got me here. Nick doesn’t get that. I know he was hurt.

And now I hurt him again, by laughing at his proposal. I tried to make it up to him by promising we would have a whole day, a real day to remember, all to ourselves before he went away.

It makes me angry. Why should it have to be like this, for all of us, all our generation? That the only way for a young couple to be together is to get married? No chance of a honeymoon, no flowers or champagne because the gardens are all full of cabbages and turnips and France is a war zone? No pretty silk dress unless someone manages to steal a parachute for you? No. I know I wouldn’t get married suddenly even if it weren’t wartime. I’d never do it without Daddy there to walk me down the aisle – with only a telegram to let him know!

It is the same for every young couple. We are all panicking that one of us will be killed next month, next week, tomorrow. All of us panicking that if we don’t do it now, we’ll never get a chance. Well, I don’t care, I’m not letting the war take over my life.

Maddie laughed too when I told her about Nick’s proposal.

‘I know where he got that idea,’ she said. ‘Jamie and I are getting married on the twelfth of August. Next week!’ She gave another hoot of laughter. ‘That is Nick all over. He’s like a puppy. You said no, didn’t you, Rosie? The poor lad! Tell you what – you can give him a good excuse and say you’ve a previous engagement. Come be my bridesmaid.’

‘Oh, how could I!’

What a thoughtless thing to say. Her dead friend wasn’t going to do it, was she? And all it did was remind her.

Anyway, of course I will.

I asked her if she knew where Nick and Jamie are going, and she gave me a funny look.

‘Careless talk costs lives,’ she said.

I do know things I shouldn’t know. I know a lot about what Uncle Roger is doing, because Aunt Edie tells me. She’s not supposed to know either. I am a little uncomfortable about it sometimes, but I think they see it as keeping me Ready for Action – Roger always asks for me when he needs to be taxied anywhere. Felicyta thinks it is very funny that this highly important person wants to be piloted by a lowly Third Officer, and a girl too! He is building pontoons in France at the moment, as the Allies fight their way inland. The next big push will be to cross the Seine. Then Paris.

It is a week since Celia’s accident. I have submitted my report. I didn’t draft it on these pretty gold-edged pages after all, because I didn’t have this notebook with me when I wrote it. The day after her funeral I was stuck at RAF Maidsend for a whole day due to lousy weather, and I couldn’t go home because there was a top-priority Tempest (of course) that I had to ferry away for repair as soon as the visibility was good enough to take off. It felt a bit ironic, and spooky, to spend the day writing about Celia’s accident and then take off strapped into a broken Tempest. The plane had a big hole punched in the windshield. It was perfectly flyable, but WOW was it ever windy! Even with goggles on my face I felt like I had frostbite by the time I landed – absolutely frozen. It’s true I was going 225 mph at 3500 feet, but you’d never know it was August. It’s been such a cold summer.

You have to fly that high to get across Kent, because you have to be higher than the barrage balloons they have got tethered there to try to catch the flying bombs.

I can’t get over how beautiful the barrage balloons are. I can’t even talk about it to anyone – they all think I am crazy. But when you’re in the air, and the sky above you is a sea of grey mist and the land below you is all green, the silver balloons float in between like a school of shining silver whales, bobbing a little in the wind. They are as big as buses, and me and every other pilot has a healthy fear of them because their tethering cables are all loaded with explosives to try to snarl up enemy aircraft. But they are just magical from above, great big silver bubbles filling the sky.