Philly #2
We’d arranged to meet in London one Sunday in May.
As soon as I saw him standing on the platform as I alighted from the train, I knew something was wrong.
He enveloped me in his arms, but instead of his face lighting up with its usual smile, his expression was serious, his mood preoccupied.
It was a glorious day and we wandered through Hyde Park, where the sweet chestnut trees were coming into leaf.
It was one of our favourite places to spend time together.
The surrounding city streets were filled with piles of sandbags (my older brother, Frank, was busier than ever in Dundee running the jute factory at full capacity to produce the material needed to make them) and the shop windows were blacked out.
But in the park’s calm green spaces, you could almost forget there was a war on.
To fill the silence, I chatted away about the delivery to Scotland of a ‘Maggie’ I’d made that week.
I’d cadged a ride back down south as a stooge in a much larger Wellington bomber and been overawed by the sensation of power.
Ben smiled and nodded in all the right places, but I could tell his mind was elsewhere.
Eventually, we made our way to the Lyons Corner House at Marble Arch and ordered a pot of tea and some dry Madeira cake, which was about all there was on the menu that day.
I reached across the table and took hold of Ben’s hands.
‘I know you can’t tell me where you’re going,’ I said, ‘but I just want you to know that wherever it is, I’ll be flying with you in spirit. ’
He lifted my fingers to his lips and kissed them.
‘I know that, Philly. Sorry, it’s stupid of me.
Why is it that the more action I see, the more I doubt myself?
And things are really hotting up now – I can’t say more than that, but we know what we’ve seen so far has just been the beginning.
With the invasion of France, we’re going all in now.
Am I going to be good enough to face what comes next? ’
‘Of course you are. You and the rest of your squadron. Your Spitfires give you the edge, and you’re some of the best pilots in the world. Europe needs you. Keep those Jerries away from our cities!’
He tried to smile, but his eyes were sad. ‘There’s something else I have to say. And I’ve thought about this a lot. So please, hear me out, Philly.’
He withdrew his hand from mine, and my heart plummeted with the dread of knowing what was coming.
I tried to stop him, shaking my head, refusing to listen.
But he went on. ‘There are tough times ahead, for everyone. And my squadron is going to be fully committed. I don’t feel it’s fair of me to ask you to take on the strain of being in a relationship with a fighter pilot.
’ He swallowed hard, as if a lump of that horrible Madeira cake were lodged in his throat, then continued.
‘For the time being, I think it’s better if we part.
Until this is all over. I’ve properly fallen for you, Philly.
I’ve never met a woman I’ve wanted to marry, until now.
But war is not the time. Especially not in my risky line of work.
It wouldn’t be fair to you, and I have to focus all my energy into the fight that’s ahead of us. ’
I sat in stunned silence, hardly able to take in the words he was saying as he went on. ‘You’re still so young, and I will understand completely if you meet someone else, someone in a nice, steady job who can look after you and provide you with the life you deserve.’
I felt the blood drain from my face, and I thought my heart would burst with anguish. I didn’t know it was possible to feel your heart breaking so literally. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t care about the risks. I can’t bear to lose you simply because you think you’re somehow protecting me by walking away.’
He’d dropped his eyes to the crumb-strewn tablecloth, but now he raised them to meet my pleading gaze.
The pain I saw written in them silenced me.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I just can’t, Philly.
Please don’t make this even more difficult.
Let’s make it a clean break, shall we. We both know it’s better this way. ’
For a fleeting second, I thought I saw another expression flit across his face.
And it stopped me in my tracks because what I’d seen was sheer, raw terror.
I realised then that it wasn’t the relationship he was afraid of.
It was death. It sat on the shoulder of every fighter pilot like a constant, unwanted incubus, every time they climbed into a plane.
I would only be adding to that burden, loading him with an extra responsibility.
Young and selfish though I was, I somehow understood that it would be easier for him to face the fight ahead alone, without distractions.
That realisation, and the glimpse I’d caught of his deep-seated fear, silenced me.
The skies overhead were bluebell-clear that day as he walked me back to the station, and I tried not to picture them filled with flak and smoke and wheeling machines of war, intent on the kill.
We walked side by side, in silence, not touching.
I knew that if we spoke, it would only make things harder.
And I knew that if we touched, our parting would be impossible.
And so I walked away from him at the station and refused to allow myself to look back. If he’d been standing watching me, it would have been hard. But if he’d already gone, I’m not sure I’d have been able to hold myself together and get on to the train at all.
Little did we know that just a few short weeks later there’d be a desperate scramble to evacuate hundreds of thousands of troops from Dunkirk.
Ben’s words came back to me as we pored over the newspapers in the mess hall.
Spitfires – flying at the very limits of their range – had been reported to have taken part in the operation, providing what cover they could from the air as hundreds of little boats pulled Allied soldiers away from the slaughter on those beaches.
I felt sure he’d been there, and I scanned the lists of those killed in action with trepidation, relief flooding through me when I didn’t find his name.
Just a few months after that, London was in the throes of the Blitz and those same skies we’d walked beneath in early May saw scenes of devastation far greater than either of us could have imagined on that day. The piles of sandbags in front of the shops and houses would be needed more than ever.
In the weeks that followed Dunkirk, I kept an eye out for any mention of Ben’s squadron.
I knew from the gossip in the mess hall that Spitfires were seeing action in the skies above Holland and France.
But he was true to his word about making it a clean break and he didn’t contact me.
Each night, I simply prayed he’d returned safely from the latest sortie.
And then the war threatened us all a great deal closer to home.
At first, the faint scribbles of vapour trails far, far up in the summer skies were the only signs to those of us on the ground below that the Battle of Britain was flaring overhead.
Squinting against the glare, you could just make out the diamond glint of a plane, scintillating in the sunlight, engraving white curlicues on to the blue, which would then slowly dissipate in its wake.
Being situated inland, very rarely did we witness an actual dogfight, although we heard other aerodromes around the coast were being heavily targeted by German bombers, and RAF crews were being kept on constant readiness.
Once, we ferry pilots stood on the field in silence, watching as a plane spiralled down trailing a plume of grey smoke behind it before we heard the impact of its final contact with the earth, the crash muffled by distance.
‘A Heinkel, I reckon,’ said one of the engineers, spitting into the grass before turning back to finish readying another machine for delivery.
Worrying about Ben and then witnessing that crash affected me profoundly.
I couldn’t shake off the image of the plane spiralling out of control and my mood seemed to follow the same trajectory, plummeting me into a depression from which I struggled to pull out.
I thought I was managing to disguise it, but one morning as I was running through my pre-flight checks beside the runway, Amy came over and stood watching me.
I pasted on a smile as I turned to her, about to make some outwardly cheerful remark about the flak-damaged crate I was going to deliver back to the factory in the Midlands, but she put a hand on my arm to stop me.
‘You can’t let it get to you, Philly,’ she said. ‘Not a plane crash nor a heartbreak. When we fly, we have to have our minds clear, our focus sharp. Otherwise we put ourselves at risk.’
I began to protest that I was fine, but she smiled a little sadly and shook her head.
‘I can see how much all this is getting to you, no matter how hard you try to hide it. You’re not yourself.
And if you aren’t careful, you’ll find yourself in a tailspin you can’t get out of.
I’ve spent enough long, lonely hours flying over grey seas to know how you’re feeling. ’
I thought at first she must be talking about her record-breaking flights to the other side of the world, but then I realised she was telling me something else. She was giving me a glimpse into something more, something with which she had struggled within herself too. She understood.
She squeezed my arm, then squared her shoulders and marched off to her next job, but I could still feel the imprint of her fingers through my sleeve, as if she was trying to give me a little of her strength.
That simple act of solidarity was a turning point for me.
I shook off the clouds of heartbreak and managed to fly straight and true once again.