“No,” I said, “I was just trying to place the uniform. Are those really wings on her tunic?” I felt a thrill of something between envy and admiration. The high, compact breasts under the tunic had caught my attention, too, but that was more than I was ready to admit to myself. I watched her movements with more than casual interest as she descended the stairs and took a table in a dim corner.
“Yeah,” he said with some bitterness, “can you believe it? They brought in women for the Air Transport Auxiliary. They get to fly everything, even the newest Spitfires, ferrying them from factories or wherever the hell else they happen to be to wherever they’re needed.”
His tone annoyed me, even though I knew he was anxious about whether he’d ever fly again himself. But then he pushed it too far. “I hear women are ferrying planes back in the States now, too. Thousands of ’em. Next thing you know there won’t be any jobs left for men after the war. I ask you, what kind of woman would want to fly warplanes, anyway?” His smouldering glance toward the corner table told me just what kind of woman he had in mind. “Give me a cozy red-headed armful with her feet on the ground any day,” he said, with a look of insistent intimacy.
“With her back on the ground, too, I suppose,” I snapped, and stood up. “I’m sorry, Frank, I really do wish you the best, but I don’t think there’s anything more I can do for you. Maybe you should catch the early train back to the base.” I evaded his grasp and retreated to the powder room; and, when I came out at last, he had gone. The corner table, however, was still occupied.
“Mind if I sit here?” I asked. “I’m Kay Barnes.”
“Cleo Remington,” she said, offering a firm handshake. “It’s fine by me. Afraid the boyfriend will try again?”
So she’d noticed our little drama. “Not boyfriend,” I said, “just a patient who’s had all the nursing he’s going to get.” I signalled a waitress. “Can I get you a drink to apologize for staring when you came in? I’d never seen wings on a woman before, and… well, to be honest, I had a flash of insane jealousy. I’ve always wanted to fly, but things just never worked out that way.”
“Well,” Cleo said, “I can’t say I’ve ever been jealous of a nurse’s life, but I’m sure glad you’re on the job.”
“Tell me what being a pilot is like,” I said, “so I can at least fantasize.”
So she told me, over a cup of the best (and possibly only) coffee in London, about persuading her rancher father that air surveillance was the best way to keep track of cattle spread out over a large chunk of Montana. When her brother was old enough to take over the flying cowboy duty, she’d moved on to courier service out of Billings, and then to a job as instructor at a Civilian Pilot Training Program in Colorado, where everyone knew that her young male students were potential military pilots, but that Cleo, in spite of all her flight hours, wasn’t.
Then came all-out war and the chance to come to England. Women aviators were being welcomed to ferry aircraft for the decimated RAF. I watched her expressive face and hands and beautifully shaped mouth as she talked of Hurricanes and Spitfires and distant glimpses of German Messerschmitts.
As she talked I did, in fact, fantasize like crazy. But visions of moonlight over a foaming sea of clouds kept resolving into lamplight on naked skin, and the rush of wind and roar of engines gave way to pounding blood and low, urgent cries. Her shifting expressions fascinated me; her rare, flashing smile was so beautiful I wanted to feel its movement under my own lips.
I didn’t know what had come over me. Or, rather, I knew just enough to sense what I wanted, without having the least idea how to tell whether she could possibly want it too. I’d admired women before, but only aesthetically, I’d rationalized, or with mild envy; and, after all, I liked men just fine. But this flush of heightened sensitivity, this feeling of rushing toward some cataclysm that might tear me apart… This was unexplored territory.
“So,” Cleo said at last, looking a bit embarrassed, “that’s more about me than anybody should have to sit through. What about you? How did you end up here?”
“I’m not sure I can even remember who I was before the war,” I said, scarcely knowing who I’d been just half an hour ago. “It seems as though nothing interesting or exciting ever happened to me back then. Not that ‘interesting’ will be a fair description of life now until I’m at a safe distance from it.”
She nodded. We were silent for a while, sharing the unspoken question of whether the world would ever know such a thing as safety again. Then I told her a little about growing up in New Hampshire, and climbing mountains, only to feel that even there the sky wasn’t high and wide enough to hold me. “That’s when I dreamed about flying,” I said.
“Yes!” she said. “I get that feeling here, once in a while, even in the air. Somehow this European sky seems smaller, and the land below is so crowded with cities, sometimes the only way to tell where you are is by the pattern of the railroads. The Iron Compass, we call it. I guess that’s one reason I’m transferring back to the States instead of renewing my contract here.
“The main reason, though, is that I’ve heard women in the WASPs at home are getting to test-pilot even Flying Fortresses and Marauders. And that’s only the beginning. Pretty soon they’ll be commissioned in the regular Army Air Force. In Russia women are even flying combat missions; ‘Night Witches’ the Germans call them. If the war goes on long enough…” She stopped short of saying, “If enough of our men are killed I’ll get to fight,” and I was grateful. “History is being made,” she went on, “and I’ve got to be in on it!”
In her excitement she had stretched out her legs under the table until they brushed against mine. I wanted so badly to rub against the wool of her slacks that I could scarcely pay attention to what she was saying, but I caught one vital point.
“Transferring?” I leaned far forward, and felt, as well as saw, her glance drop to my breasts. The starchy wartime diet in England had added some flesh, but at that moment I didn’t mind, because all of it was tingling. “When do you go?”
“In two weeks,” she said. “I’m taking a week in London to get a look at some of the sights I haven’t had time to see in the whole eighteen months I’ve been over here. Then there’ll be one more week of ferrying out of Hamble on the south coast. And then I’m leaving.”
Two weeks. One, really. “I’ve got a few days here, too,” I said. “Maybe we could see the sights together.” I tried to look meaningfully into her eyes, but she looked down at her own hands on the table and then out at the dance floor where a few couples, some of them pairs of girls, were dancing.
“Sure,” she said. “That would be fun.” Her casual tone seemed a bit forced.
“I don’t suppose you’d like to dance, would you?” I asked, with a sort of manic desperation. “Girls do it all the time here when there aren’t enough men. Nobody thinks anything of it.”
“They sure as hell would,” Cleo said bluntly, “if they were doing it right.” She met my eyes, and in the hot grey glow of her defiant gaze, I learned all I needed to know.
Then she looked away. “Not,” she said carefully, “that any of Flight Captain Jackie Cochran’s handpicked cream-of-American-womanhood pilots would know anything about that.”
“Of course not,” I agreed. “Or any girl-next-door nurses, either.” I could feel a flush rising from my neck to my face, but I ploughed ahead. “Some of us might be interested in learning, though.”
She looked at me with an arched eyebrow, then pushed back her chair and stood up. Before my heart could do more than lurch into my throat, she said lightly, “How about breakfast here tomorrow, and then we’ll see what the big deal is about London.”