Pauline climbed out of the car and smiled at Skye. “I expect you’re the annoying woman who won’t leave the chaps at the Air Ministry alone?”
Skye grimaced. “Yes, that’s me.” She led Pauline to the old swing seat on the porch that looked across to France. “I’ve spent the past year at the Civil Air Guard reciting my number of hours’ flying experience to the men I was supposed to be teaching, men who refused to go up with me because I was a ‘girl.’ I didn’t let it get to me because the greater good of them learning to fly was more important. The ones who did submit to going up with me behaved as if an hour together in the cockpit gave them permission to inspect my wings at close quarters. I never complained. But I’m going to chew my tongue off very soon if I have to keep pretending to be demure and compliant.”
“Then you mightn’t be interested in my invitation,” Pauline said. “It will certainly require demureness and compliancy.”
“How about a drink? Then I can fortify myself into the right level of decorum.”
Skye went inside, found one of the bottles of champagne she’d brought back with her from Paris and poured out two glasses.
Pauline raised hers. “Bottoms up.”
“You look too jolly,” Skye said, tucking her legs up beside her. “Surely you’re grounded too?”
“For now. But I’m recruiting.” The sudden flash of satisfaction on the older woman’s face was like sun after a week of fog.
“What for? Do the RAF want women wearing feathers to perform some kind of stationary aerobatics to entertain the men in their downtime?”
“You’d suit feathers better than I,” Pauline said, chuckling. “No. I’ve been given permission to recruit twelve women for the Air Transport Auxiliary. It’s a civilian flying service that will take planes from factories and maintenance units to RAF bases. They don’t have enough pilots; you have no idea how many planes are being manufactured, planes that need to be moved around the country. So we’ll have a women’s division too.”
Ted was wrong. Skye would fly. And, what’s more . . . “Does that mean I’ll get my hands on a Spitfire?” Skye said, beaming, swallowing champagne and euphoria.
“Before you start dreaming of being the first woman to fly a Spitfire, I need you to understand that I have to do things formally. Lunch with twenty women—which is about the sum total of women in England who’ve ever flown a plane—then a test flight. Even for you,” Pauline added before Skye could protest. “Not at Central Flying School though. The RAF, in a fit of pique that this unsavory scheme has been thrust upon them, have refused to allow women to sully their elite school.”
Skye exhaled. “Thank goodness for their pique. I have more chance if you’re the one doing the selecting. So yes, I will do a test flight. And I will be one of the twelve women chosen. I have to be.”
* * *
“Skye!” Rose, more sober than the last time Skye had seen her after their Parisian all-nighter, greeted her with a smile at the airfield at Whitchurch.
Skye kissed Rose’s cheek. Her friend’s light brown hair was set in uniformly arranged curls, and her green–gray suit was respectable, and Skye suddenly felt that she hadn’t given enough thought to her own costume. She was wearing trousers for a start, along with a red sweater and her usual cerulean scarf, all of which drew too much attention. She patted her hair, which she had made an effort to curl, but it had emerged from the rollers more mane than coiffure.
“The RAF have sent someone along to watch,” Rose whispered to Skye, pointing to an air marshal who’d just arrived.
“Then he’ll see a show he’s not expecting,” Skye replied stoutly.
And she believed he would. She knew most of the twenty women gathered there, at least by sight. Each had at least five hundred hours’ flying experience under her wings. It was ridiculous that the RAF wanted them to prove they knew their way around a plane.
Then, with a jolt, Skye realized she knew the air marshal. He was an older version of the man who’d once come to the Cornwall parties and whispered in Vanessa Penrose’s ear in a manner Skye could now describe as intimate. For a moment Skye wanted to step over to him, to ask him how he knew Vanessa, to revel in the bittersweet joy of talking about her mother. But she turned away before he saw her and slipped on her helmet and goggles, which would make it impossible for him to recognize her. Because the fact that she was Vanessa Penrose’s daughter was something she should keep from the RAF. Her illegitimacy would most likely bar her from even taking the test flight.
She moved to stand as far away from the air marshal as she could, watching Rose take off into the sky. Rose landed precisely and, yes, demurely, and Skye felt apprehension push into her stomach like a storm front. Many of the women there, like Rose, were minor aristocracy—they had even been presented at court—giving them the manners and the demeanor and the connections that Pauline needed. Marion Wilberforce was the daughter of a laird. Gabrielle Patterson was the first woman in England to have gained her instructor’s license. Margaret Fairweather had a viscount for a father and her brother was the managing director of the British Overseas Airways Corporation. And then there was Skye, with a dead mother, no legitimate father and a few air pageants in her past. Her heart performed its own stall turn, and she wondered if she’d even be able to climb up into the plane, let alone fly it.
Luckily muscle memory took over and she performed her test flight well. But she couldn’t see why Pauline would choose her. Besides her history of wing-walking, there was her youth: she and Joan Hughes were by far the youngest at only twenty-one. And the promised twelve women had been cut back to only eight. Skye’s chances were less than fifty percent.
She waited until the very end and then blurted out her question to Pauline. “How will you decide?”
“I haven’t a clue,” Pauline said tiredly, and Skye could see how hard Pauline had fought to get to this point. How important it was that she make the right selection and not run the risk of proving to the RAF that their reluctance to take on women was justified.
Skye thought quickly. She had to give Pauline the evidence that would allow her to place Skye’s advantages right beside those of a viscount’s daughter.
“I never thought I’d see this as advantageous,” Skye began, ideas forming as she spoke, “but I have no real family anymore, as you know. When I’m in an airplane, I’m not distracted by the people I love. Worrying over fathers and brothers and husbands who could lose their lives might interfere with the single-minded concentration that makes one a good flier. I would never suffer from those distractions.”
“War changes things, doesn’t it?” Pauline smiled gently, the first time that day her face had relaxed at all. “If there’s one thing I know about you, Skye, it’s that while you might appear to be a careless daredevil on the surface, you’ve sacrificed a mother to the sky so everything you do up there is impeccable. Trust,” she said, as if the conversation had given her clarity. “Perhaps that’s how I decide. Who can I trust up there when all is said and done?”
* * *