The Spitfire Girls(99)
‘Little Polly,’ May cooed, passing her to Ruby, who looked desperate to get her hands on her. ‘It’s lovely that you named her after our Polly. It means so much to all of us.’ It was true; it allowed Polly to live on in a way, and kept the memory of her alive.
As Ruby held little Polly, stroking her hair and soaking up every inch of her, May took Lizzie’s arm. ‘Come on, let’s go into the garden. Polly can crawl around on the grass and we can sit and talk. How long do we have you for?’
‘A month. So you’ll be well and truly sick of me by the time I leave,’ Lizzie teased.
May pushed the doors wide open, sunshine greeting them as they stepped out. Once she’d wished for Lizzie to go home and never come back, but that seemed like a lifetime ago. Now, she’d relish every moment with her until the very last second.
‘You look good with her,’ Lizzie told Ruby. ‘It’s the best thing, having a little one. Who would imagine me, all clucky over a child?’
May laughed. ‘Not me, that’s for sure.’
‘I, we . . .’ Ruby stuttered, kissing Polly’s little hand. ‘I’ve lost two, pregnancies I mean. We’re trying.’
Lizzie embraced her, so much softer than she’d once been, so much more open and understanding. May stood for a moment, not able to take her eyes off her friends as they sat on her lawn under the shade of the oak tree. Suddenly everything in the world felt right. They were a country at peace after six years of devastation; they were safe, they weren’t going to lose any more soldiers or pilots or civilians. And now the two women who meant the most to her in the world were sitting in her garden.
She went to make them tea, listening to the laughter and baby talk, imagining a day when she and Ben might have a brood of their own playing out there. After half a decade of everything feeling so painful, of not being able to see the light, suddenly she felt as if she were bathed in it.
‘You didn’t die for nothing,’ she whispered, as she looked skyward. They’d lost so many men, but they were free now. And without all that sacrifice, there would only have ever been darkness.
EPILOGUE
WHITE WALTHAM AIRFIELD, ENGLAND,
AUGUST 2008
RUBY
Ruby held on to her grandson’s arm as they walked out towards the airfield at White Waltham on the sixty-fourth anniversary of V-J Day. She smiled over at May, Ben, Lizzie and Jackson as she stepped onto the grass, remembering the first time she’d eyed up a Spitfire, ready to prove her flying skills, and the moment she’d stood beside May, her commanding officer, and received news that she was to transfer to Hamble and fly four-engine bombers. It was a lifetime ago; a time that her grandson would never be able to comprehend, no matter how many times he asked her about the planes she flew and the near misses she’d had in the sky. He was an impeccable young pilot himself; she was hardly able to believe that she was old enough to have a grandson dressed in a Royal Air Force uniform, serving his country as she’d done at the same age.
‘You okay, Grandma?’ he asked, patting her hand.
She smiled up at him. ‘I might be old, but an itty-bitty Spitfire isn’t enough to scare me,’ she said. The truth was, she wondered if she still had the nerves to go up in the aircraft at all, but at almost ninety years of age, she wasn’t about to turn down the opportunity to fly one last time. She could imagine confessing her fears to Lizzie afterwards and the old biddy telling her to toughen up, and the thought only made her more determined to climb into the cockpit.
‘You don’t have to be brave for me, Grandma,’ Lewis said with a grin.
He reminded her of the men she’d met when she’d been flying, except that her grandson had grown up seeing women doing anything and everything, and back then they’d been the first of their kind. She’d never forgotten the look on most of the male pilots’ faces on seeing her climb out of a plane, especially a Wellington or a Walrus. They’d almost tripped over their jaws.
Ruby looked back at the gathered crowd and wished her husband were there to see her. He’d been her biggest advocate, her Tom, even when his mother had refused to attend the christening of their first child in protest at her daughter-in-law’s flying for the RAF; he would have been so happy to see her in a Spitfire once again. You’ve made me the proudest husband, Ruby. She could still hear his words: he’d said the same thing to her every year when they’d quietly toasted the anniversary of V-J Day. How many men can say their wives actually helped to win the war from the sky?
‘You know, these were my favourite planes, even though I did like being in charge of those big bombers,’ she said.
Lewis laughed. ‘I know, Grandma,’ he said, and she realised she’d probably told him a hundred times. ‘I’m embarrassed that you’ve flown more planes than I ever will.’
‘The perfect ladies’ plane, that’s what they used to call the Spitfire. Although I doubt they were ever designed with women in mind.’ She stood beside it now, a wave of nostalgia hitting her harder than she’d expected. She took a deep, shaky breath as memories flooded back from her flying days. Sometimes it only felt like yesterday – the adrenaline rush of flying high, the dread of seeing a pilot’s name erased from the board in their mess room or the stomach-curling feeling of limping back to base in a plane that was no longer airworthy. Seeing the wreckage of the plane that had killed her friend Polly. They’d done things that even now seemed impossible.