The Spitfire Girls(20)
They sat quietly then, the rumble and vibration of the train helping May to block out her thoughts. She snuggled deeper into her jacket, drawing it tighter around herself as she gave in to a few stolen moments of the sleep that she needed more than she’d ever needed it before. Before the nightmares clawed at her and made her too terrified to fall into slumber until the next night, when it started all over again.
‘Benjamin,’ May said to her flight mechanic, her hands so cold she could barely wiggle her fingers as she stood in the hangar the next morning at dawn, ‘I need you to double-and triple-check everything for me again. I just, I don’t know, I have this feeling that we’ve pushed our luck, that we can’t keep on flying without one of the girls . . .’
‘Stop,’ he said calmly, passing her his mug of coffee. ‘Have some of this. How long have you been up? Did you even sleep last night?’
She looked down at the coffee, and when he bumped the mug gently upwards she finally raised it and took a sip. She wasn’t about to tell him that sleep was a luxury she could barely afford with the workload and stress that she’d been under lately. Or that she’d merely catnapped the night before on the train ride home.
‘Thanks,’ she murmured.
‘Now come with me. I want to show you this Spitfire.’
May followed. Within minutes her pulse slowed as Ben walked her through every part of his drill, and every important part of the engine.
‘When you understand how an engine works and what I do to make sure it’s running well, you don’t have to fear the unknown,’ he said, taking back his coffee and drinking down what was left of it. He led her around the Spitfire to another that was in the same hangar. ‘We can do this every day, and I can walk you through what I’ve done, and triple-check what I’ve already double-checked, or you can trust that I want to keep our pilots safe, too.’
May stared at him, painfully aware that he was treating her as his equal, just as her brother always had when it came to planes. He’d loved nothing better than to beat her in the sky, but he’d never made her feel that she wasn’t every bit as capable as he was.
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’ He grinned. ‘But you do owe me a coffee.’
She nodded. ‘Of course. And sorry for being such a pain, making you show me around when you have so much work to do. I’m just so grateful you transferred here to White Waltham with us.’
Ben’s laugh was belly-deep. ‘You’re not a pain, May. You’re in command of a squadron of pilots, and you’ve shown me that nothing is more important to you than keeping them alive.’
She smiled back at him, wanting to be happy, wanting to enjoy his company. But smiles no longer came easily, even when she wanted them to. Not after the trauma of the last few years.
Three hours later, with her head pounding from the rough sleep she’d had on the train home and the multiple cups of coffee she’d already consumed, she walked inside the main office building to a heated argument that made her forget all about Ben for the moment. There were a handful of pilots gathered, standing quietly on one side of the room, and a very angry-looking Elizabeth Dunlop standing in the centre with her hands planted on her hips.
‘Absolutely not!’ Lizzie exclaimed, her voice loud and her accent unmistakable.
May looked between a furious, red-faced Lizzie with her four pilots standing demurely beside her, and Doc, who appeared as livid as the American.
She fought the urge to collapse onto the nearest chair and massage her temples. It had already been a long morning, and by all accounts it wasn’t going to get any easier now that their guests had arrived.
‘What’s going on in here?’ she demanded. When Polly had come running for her, she’d made it sound like a bloody war was about to break out, and she hadn’t been wrong.
‘This imbecile is trying to tell me . . .’
May interrupted her, holding up her hand. ‘By imbecile I am to presume you’re speaking of our good doctor here? The doctor who presides over all of White Waltham and is highly respected in his field?’
Face like thunder, Lizzie glared at her, while Doc appeared ready to explode. It wasn’t a situation May had ever had to handle before. What was it with this American woman? She seemed to rub everyone, herself included, up the wrong way.
‘How dare she speak to me like that!’ Doc threw his hands in the air. ‘Commander Jones, please tell me you’re going to reprimand this, this heathen of a woman? I will not stand for it!’
In truth, May had no idea what she was supposed to do, other than get to the bottom of the problem and put an end to the ugly name-calling. The Americans were guests here, not to mention well-trained pilots, but the doctor was equally as important to their operations. A big boom echoed outside and May grimaced, wondering what on earth the mechanics or male pilots were doing. It certainly wouldn’t have been one of her girls causing such a noise.
‘Doc, Miss Dunlop and her pilots are very important to our squadron, and vital to our relations with the United States,’ she said firmly, looking between the two of them as if she were reprimanding naughty children. ‘And Elizabeth, Doc here is a very capable and highly respected doctor, and I would like you to treat him as such. Can we keep all of that in mind, please, as we move forward?’