Rose Under Fire Read online

  I never thought about it. I just assumed that all he did was build bridges and dig trenches. Or tell people to do it anyway. I think of Uncle Roger as having a ‘safe’ job.

  I got back to the airfield at Hamble in time to pick up the last delivery chit for that evening, a new Spitfire to be delivered to Chattis Hill for testing. It’s only a twenty-minute flight there, but it took me a couple of hours to get back – no more trains and, of course, since I was the last flight of the day, there weren’t any other ferry pilots heading home for me to tag along with. By 10 p.m. the best offer I’d had was from a canteen dishwasher who said I could borrow her bicycle if I brought it back before lunchtime the next day, and I had to bribe her with today’s chocolate ration (you get a bar of Cadbury’s milk chocolate with every completed ferry flight). I’d already handed it over when a fireman who was going off duty took pity on me and offered me a lift on his motorcycle.

  By the time I got home I was absolutely whacked. It was 11 o’clock and I was hungry enough to wolf down one of Mrs Hatch’s awful spam stews (she assures me the veg in it is cabbage and not nettle). Late as it was, she’d very kindly reheated it for me. I fell into bed and thought briefly of Maddie and Jamie, newlyweds too tired to make love; and then I fell asleep too.

  I dreamed about the Rheinmetall fuse. I dreamed it detonated in the boy’s hands and blew his fingers off.

  It was so vivid – like seeing a moving picture shot in close up. All I could see was the boy’s hands, palms spread, with the silver cylinder lying across them, smooth, round fingertips sticking out just beneath the shining metal, then all of it flying apart. I woke up gasping.

  I am spooked by the image. I can’t get it out of my head. I was hoping I could forget it by writing about the wedding – I started out to do a poem, didn’t I? And all I’ve done is write about buzz bombs. I just learned that the TNT mix they use in them is called Amatol. It is a good word, if a bad thing. Perhaps I should try writing poetry about bombs.

  Silver tube of fuse and hollow

  Cylinder of detonator

  Cap and gyro

  Blah. It would be good if my heart was in it – like Edna St Vincent Millay’s ‘Counting-Out Rhyme’. But I don’t want to think about it. Small smooth fingers blown to bloody bone.

  I am determined to do that wedding poem for Maddie. I am afraid it will be inevitably bomb-themed, but I have an idea.

  Wartime Wedding

  (by Rose Justice. I think this poem is too serious to call it ‘Doodlebug Bride’.)

  In a storm of cocktail ice

  their silver plane is tossed

  from a silver bowl of sky

  to a runway rimmed with frost.

  The summer evening’s long and cold,

  the ground crew shovels snow like glass.

  Under their feet the crunching hail

  breaks frozen blades of grass.

  The house without a roof

  seventh along the row

  has shed its windowpanes like tears

  over the street below.

  A woman shovels glass like snow

  from the sidewalk as they pass,

  under their feet a mirrored hell

  of bomb-strewn broken glass.

  The dead beloved names

  march down the grey and cold

  walls of the little church.

  He gives her the warm gold.

  The loving cup is shared,

  the crystal goblet smashed.

  Their brave, determined, joyful heels

  dance in the broken glass.

  It is so hard trying to say what you mean. Of course Maddie and Jamie don’t fly together – I don’t know if they’ve ever flown together – and I’m pretty sure they haven’t been for a walk in London together since the buzz bombs started. But it’s meant to be metaphoric. It never quite comes out the way you want it to, and you always feel it is a little petty to write such floaty stuff about such serious things.

  I am going to slam this notebook shut and see if I can raise Nick again on the telephone to plan our Big Date.

  August 17, 1944

  Hamble

  Nick is gone.

  We had a wonderful afternoon – he came here and we borrowed the Hatches’ canoe and took it down the Hamble, out into Southampton Water. He brought a bottle of champagne along, booty from one of his secret trips to France, and we drank it on the water. We sort of grazed instead of actually stopping for a picnic – it made the spam sandwiches seem more romantic. We sang camp songs and taught each other rounds. Mine was,

  ‘My paddle’s keen and bright,

  Flashing with silver,

  Follow the wild goose flight,

  Dip, dip and swing.

  Dip, dip and swing her back,

  Flashing with silver,

  Swift as the wild goose flies,

  Dip, dip and swing.’

  Nick’s round was,

  ‘Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose,

  Will I ever see thee wed?

  I will marry at thy will, sir,

  At thy will.’

  I refused to sing it until I made him promise it was not a binding contract!

  I was in the stern, steering, because he had never been in a canoe. He was a bit of a pill about me being in control – he would not take orders from me at first, and kept trying to stand up when he wanted to point things out, or to climb back to get to the hamper. He can’t swim. I really didn’t want to have to drag him out of Southampton Water before I kissed him goodbye and sent him off to wherever. Why are boys always so sure they’re right about everything?

  But I’m not complaining. Because it was so nice. I don’t think I’d have been brave enough to go out into Southampton Water except I knew that Mrs Hatch’s daughter Minna had taken her mother out there a couple of weeks before D-Day, when the harbour and the Solent were PACKED with battleships and landing craft, and they got away with it. We did too. Only one person even bothered to ask what we were up to – everyone else just waved and laughed. I guess the picnic hamper and the bottle of champagne were appropriate non-spy accessories. Nick was wearing his RAF blues and I had on a flowery summer top I’d borrowed from Felicyta and we were clearly on a date.

  The one character who did call out to us was a patrolman on a motor launch. It seemed to take about ten minutes for him to putter across to us – exaggeratedly slow once he’d got us in his sights. I had to back-paddle like crazy to stay in the same place. He played Twenty Questions for a while, and told us that the Rules of the Road did not apply to hand-powered pleasure craft in wartime (or something like that), and no one would give way to us when on manoeuvres so we’d better stay out of the way.

  Then he tipped his cap to me and told us to enjoy ourselves. The innocent American broad act is always a sure winner for getting out of trouble!

  It was actually hard work paddling in Southampton Water and I didn’t need the coastguard’s warning to stay out of the way of the shot-up aircraft carrier that came looming towards the maintenance docks behind a pair of tugboats – even without power it made a wake that tossed us around as if we were on the open sea.

  On our way back a trio of Spitfires tore out to sea in formation over our heads – probably just a test flight from Chattis Hill, since most of the squadrons around Southampton have all moved to France now. But the noise was tremendous, echoing on the water. We were working hard to get back upstream and we didn’t dare stop paddling – breathless, arms aching with effort, necks aching too because we couldn’t look away from the planes in the sky.

  It was such an adventure of a date!

  Oh, I like Nick – and I’ll miss him. He makes me feel so pretty and clever, playing with my hair while he gets me to test him on wind-direction calculations. He is funny and earnest, a bit puppy-like, but game, you know? Ready to do nutty things like try canoeing among the battleships. First time in a canoe.

  I wanted to write something for him, to send him off with, but it hasn’t come out as a true-lov
e sonnet. I am always too ambitious, and also I just can’t seem to write about ANYTHING but the darn doodlebugs. I guess I won’t show it to him.

  Song of the Modern Warrior

  (by Rose Justice)

  My paddle’s keen and bright,

  flashing with silver,

  swift as the Spitfire’s flight –

  Dip, dip and swing.

  Dip, dip and swing her back,

  flashing with silver,

  follow the V-1’s track,

  dip, dip her wing.

  Scour her fuselage,

  strip back her paintwork,

  pare off her fittings

  to keep down her weight,

  polish the plane

  till she’s slicker than silver,

  slicing the sky

  with her propeller’s blade.

  Smooth as the water’s face,

  cannon fire flaming,

  follow the V-1’s trace,

  dip, dip her wing.

  My paddle’s keen and bright,

  flashing with silver,

  follow the Spitfire’s flight –

  Dip, dip and swing.

  I guess the influence of Make Bright the Arrows is pretty obvious. I don’t think I’m as warlike as Edna St Vincent Millay, but she has a lot to answer for as far as Rose Justice, Poet, is concerned – urging me off to Europe! I am a little blue. No more champagne to look forward to now that Nick’s squadron is gone – nothing but spam sandwiches for the foreseeable future. Oh well – back to work tomorrow.

  August 19, 1944

  I had that dream about the exploding fuse again – only this time it was Karl who had picked it up and was holding it out to Kurt. GOD.

  I bawled so loudly that Mrs Hatch came in to wake me up and made me come downstairs and have a cup of tea. And I am pretty sure that she telephoned Aunt Edie about it, because when I got to the airfield, along with my ferry chit there was a note saying that I’d been invited to have lunch with her in London on my next day off.

  Wonderful Aunt Edie! I am looking forward to it.

  August 24, 1944

  Hamble

  Wonderful Aunt Edie and wonderful Uncle Roger!

  Uncle Roger has sent me a fuse. What a completely goofy family I have. Concerned, but goofy. When I called Edie to arrange our lunch date, she asked me about the exploding fuse dreams, and I told her about the boys dismantling the bomb by the train tracks, and she must have told Uncle Roger – and his solution to my bad dreams is to send me a fuse from a German bomb. In pieces, with a timing device that attaches to the bottom to delay it going off. It is not a doodlebug fuse but a ‘Type 17 from a 250 kg UXB’ that someone successfully took apart without exploding himself a couple of years ago. Uncle Roger sent it with a diagram and note explaining how ‘demystification’ stops you being afraid of something – I guess the idea is that if you know how something works, it becomes less menacing. Like me taking my friends from school flying so they’ll stop being scared of it.

  It was such a weird thing to have delivered to me at the airfield, and I had to show it off. Everyone was interested. Of course nobody had ever seen one, and I very much doubt if it is legal for me to have it. Felicyta naturally wanted to know where Roger had got it, which I couldn’t answer. Maddie had to take it apart and put it back together about ten times. She is a mechanical nut. Felicyta didn’t say anything for a long time, just sat watching Maddie poking at electrical relays. (I was watching her too, watching her small, quick fingers with the French gold and wine-red ruby glittering there, and I thought grimly: now I’m going to dream it’s Maddie’s hands exploding.)

  Suddenly Felicyta’s face shrivelled in a look of hatred and she said viciously, ‘I wonder if we could reload it.’ Her heart is in Warsaw, battling for her country with the Polish Resistance.

  ‘And drop it back on the factory where it came from,’ I went one better.

  Felicyta and Maddie gave me awkward, pitying looks. Ignorant American schoolgirl is what those looks said.

  ‘My sister is at work in a German munitions factory,’ Felicyta said coolly. ‘And my mother. “Political prisoners.” That is German for “slave labour”. They are in a concentration camp.’

  The embarrassing thing is, I already knew this, or sort of. But of course I hadn’t really put it together. Anyway, being an Ignorant American Schoolgirl gives me an open ticket to ask brazen, awkward questions, and I’d already put my foot in my mouth, so I just went on.

  ‘What is a concentration camp, Fliss?’

  She shrugged. ‘A prison for civilians – for anyone the Germans don’t like. Poles because they are Poles, Jews because they are Jews. My mother because she gave a blanket to a Jew. My sister because she told the German police my mother was right to do it. People disappear all the time, and you never hear from them again.’

  ‘But how do you know where your family is?’

  Felicyta kept her voice steady, her face still wearing an expression of patient tolerance for ignorant foreigners. ‘Two years ago my father got a postcard from a cousin in the same camp, who was allowed to ask him to send her a food package, and she told him she had seen my mother and sister alive.’

  How utterly impossible it is for me to imagine – Felicyta’s mother and sister have been missing for two years. That was what Maddie was talking about on the train. She thought it was worse than being told someone was dead – not ever knowing what happened to them.

  You can see why Felicyta is so angry at everything.

  ‘Fliss, how did you escape?’

  She smiled a close-lipped, evil smile, only the corners of her mouth turning up, and said, ‘I stole a plane. OK, it was my own plane, but I did have to steal it! I was doing courier work for the Polish Air Force when the Germans invaded. I knew they would take over all communications aircraft, or destroy them, so I took this one myself. I flew to France. It took me three days, mostly flying in twilight, hiding the plane in woodland by day. France was still free then . . .’

  It must have been in 1939. I was thirteen. I was in junior high school. I was oblivious to what was going on in Europe. Or anywhere except right where I was – Justice Field, Mount Jericho, Pennsylvania, the centre of the known universe.

  Here is what I already knew about Felicyta’s sister – what I’d forgotten about hearing before. It happened just after I came to Hamble. I was sitting in the Operations room with a few other girls, waiting for the day’s ferry chits to be handed out. I was new enough to be shy and a little bit nervous about sitting down next to people I didn’t know, so I was sitting by myself – it was even before Celia had turned up.

  The wireless was on, and because I wasn’t talking to anybody, I was listening to the radio. And it was this ugly story about a prison camp in Germany where they’d been running medical experiments on Polish prisoners, all women, mostly students – cutting open their legs and infecting them with gangrene, simulating bullet wounds, in the name of ‘medical science’ – to find treatments for German soldiers wounded on the Eastern Front. The BBC announcer read through an endless list of names that a former prisoner had secretly memorised when she knew she was going to be released. I was interested because the woman who’d memorised the names was an American citizen. It was compelling stuff – you couldn’t stop listening – but it was so absolutely awful that I couldn’t believe it, and I said so.

  ‘That’s got to be propaganda!’ I burst out. ‘You English are as bad as the Germans!’

  ‘You should read the Guardian,’ Maddie said. ‘It’s not all propaganda. The reports from the concentration camps are pure evil.’

  ‘Poisoning girls with gangrene?’ I objected. ‘It’s like trying to get us to believe the Germans eat babies!’

  At that point Felicyta slammed her teacup down so hard she broke her saucer right in half, and stormed out of the room. The floor shuddered as the door thundered shut behind her.

  Maddie thrashed her newspaper into submission and nodded towards Felicyta’s s
lammed door.

  ‘Her sister’s in a German concentration camp,’ Maddie explained in a level voice. She looked back down at the paper without meeting my eyes. ‘Felicyta thinks the Germans do eat babies.’

  That was three months ago.

  I am starting to understand why the Polish pilots are so fanatical about their hatred of the Germans. Thank goodness I haven’t got a ‘good old Pennsylvania Dutch’ name like Stolzfuss or Hitz or Zimmerman. Felicyta doesn’t know my middle name is Moyer, Mother’s maiden name, or that my grandfather still speaks old-fashioned Pennsylvania German sometimes. I will never tell her.

  I can’t believe I have only been in England for three months – it seems like forever. And yet the war hasn’t really touched me. I haven’t lost my fiancé or my best friend or my mother or my sister. I’m not in exile. I have a home to go back to, and people waiting for me. I have an aunt who is going to take me to lunch at the Ritz and an uncle who sends me fuses!

  But I am very glad that Kurt and Karl are only ten years old, far too young to be drafted, and that they are safe at home in Pennsylvania.

  August 25, 1944

  Hamble

  Felicyta and Maddie came over to play cards with me at the Hatches’ last night, and there was an air raid. The siren doesn’t scare me at all when it first goes off – it sounds exactly like the hooter at the Volunteer Fire Company in Conewago Grove. I always think, That’ll be a fire somewhere – I’m glad Daddy’s not on duty here. Mrs Hatch shooed us out through the vegetable garden to get to the shelter. The house is on a high slope and as we stumbled over the cabbages in the dark, we got a frightening glimpse of half a dozen flying bombs travelling across the sky. All you could see were the red exhaust flames of their engines – from far away it looked like a line of glowing balls of fire moving slowly along the horizon.