#bernadette noel 21: a necessary promise of somewhere else

[sergeant-spoons]

21. A Necessary Promise of Somewhere Else

Bernadette Noel

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The old sayings go that absence makes the heart fonder, and that time heals all wounds. Berni wished she could say the same about the waiting. In the month that had passed since Tare's split, the women on the English side of the ocean had seen little improvement in their company spirit. Even the welcome guidance of the long-missed Major Harbridge couldn't do much to encourage the girls when all they could think about was their other half on the other side of the Atlantic. When would they see their sisters-in-arms again? Would they find themselves in battle before then? Would they end up in Europe while Polly and the rest shipped off to the Pacific at the whim of some American commander with strong ties to English air command? Berni didn't like these thoughts. They made her upset, and being upset made her angry. The girls didn't deserve an angry captain, but when she got a little too harsh with them during a flight drill or a landing test, they went easy on her. They understood how she was feeling. They felt the same.

Some of the crew adjusted better than others to the unpredictable hours and the risks and stressors of their commissioned undertaking. Ferrier flight orders could be issued around the clock and canceled just as readily. They all started paying greater attention to the weather than they had before, and that was saying something, coming from these seasoned pilots. After a week straight of touch-and-go runs, interrupted drills, air raid sirens, and near-misses in uncontrolled airspace, Berni had had it with her superiors. She had to send Fiona to bed to catch up on the sleep she'd missed for three days straight, make Délia take a shower to destress after a male pilot caused an oil spill all over the tarmac and nearly set Délia's plane up in flames, and drop Addie off at the hospital to deal with a case of walking pneumonia. After all that, Berni promptly marched into Battalion CP to put in her two cents and barged right into the head office. She took a bit of a tongue-lashing for her insolence, but she took the reprimand in stride, and in the end, her boldness paid off: her efforts grounded Tare for the next two days. It meant no planes or flying at all, sure, but it also meant no ferrier runs—it meant they could finally catch their breath.

For the first time in weeks, Berni could finally go to bed sure of what tomorrow would bring.

The sun rose through a haze of mist on Ellis Osbourne's birthday. The temperature had dropped overnight, and the resulting early-morning fog was pleasant to look out upon as the girls got up that morning. Berni would have let them sleep in, but today was a special day and warranted early celebration. They could sleep in the next day (more of a promise to herself than the others, made privately as she frowned at her disheveled appearance in the bathroom mirror). She brushed her teeth as the rest of the girls slowly got up and got ready for the day, noticing how, fortunately, the two-day grounding and the birthday plans seemed to have bolstered spirits enough to mess around a little despite the early hour. Fiona and Délia came into the bathroom and play-fought with Berni for space at the mirror; she almost won, but then they teamed up to tickle her into surrender, and she lost.

"You want me to stab you with this?" she giggled as she waved her toothbrush back and forth. "Because you know I will."

She knew she couldn't dissuade them, but she didn't really care. Fiona attacked again, and Délia cackled as Berni squeezed her toothpaste tube too hard and squeezed it onto the sink, the mirror, and her and Fiona's pajamas.

"Oh, now look what you've done," Berni laughed, backing out of the bathroom in surrender but taking a dampened towel with her to try and clean herself up. In the bedroom, Addie and Thelma were making their bed while Ellis, the birthday girl, sat on the tiny couch by the window and read a postcard from the States. It had a painting of the ocean and a boardwalk and a long row of buildings, and Berni thought it looked faintly familiar but couldn't quite place it.

"Who's that from?" Thelma asked as she lit up her customary morning cigarette, then offered one to Berni. The captain declined.

"Just somebody," Ellis answered vaguely, and Thelma snorted as Addie pushed her towards the courtyard, insisting she smoke outside.

"So it's from McClung, then?" Thelma figured, then snickered her way out the door as Ellis blushed and got defensive.

"As long as he wished you a happy birthday," Berni supposed, and Ellis begrudgingly informed her captain that Earl had, in fact, remembered her birthday. After a moment, Ellis lifted up her pillow and showed Berni that McClung hadn't just sent a postcard, he'd sent a gift as well. Ellis looked embarrassed at the nature of the gift, but Berni said it was the nicest pair of lingerie she'd ever seen—

"Seems he likes your ass more than I thought."

—and Ellis forgot her embarrassment in favor of smacking Berni with her pillow.

Once Fiona and Délia left the bathroom and Berni was able to step back inside to finish freshening up for the day, she used the toothpaste mess as an excuse to stay behind and asked Ellis to wait with her. Ellis didn't seem to suspect anything out of the ordinary—the captain just liked to have company; she asked all the girls to hang back with her an equal amount—and Berni made casual conversation about the foggy weather and the fortune of having today off to celebrate. Ellis responded more often than until she didn't, and Berni had just finished wiping down the mirror and brushing her teeth (again) when she realized Ellis had gone silent. She poked her head out the bathroom door and dropped her towel right on the ground when she saw Ellis slouched over on the end of her bed, crying. Realizing she'd just drooled toothpaste all down her shirt, Berni swore under her breath. She jumped back into the bathroom, hurriedly spit into the sink, and haphazardly wiped her face with a fresh towel as she left the bathroom for good. Ellis kept her head down as Berni approached, and Berni felt bad for interrupting her in her embarrassment, but she would have felt worse for not trying to comfort her.

Sitting on her legs on the floor in front of Ellis, Berni tilted her head and asked, "What's wrong, El?"

"It's my birthday," Ellis admitted sadly, "and I miss my sister."

Berni felt suddenly and deeply guilty. It had been her that had separated the two. Ellis here in England; Erma back in the States. She winced and took Ellis' hands.

"You won't be apart forever," she reassured, giving Ellis' hands a squeeze. "I swear, you won't. Life's not that cruel. Not even the daft tossers we landed as higher-ups are dumb enough to keep our company split up like this for long. It just doesn't make sense. Hardly makes sense why they did it in the first place, but to hell with them, and here's to you—and Erma."

Ellis shrugged and tried not to smile, but Berni had coaxed one out of her, and the captain jumped on the opportunity.

"In the meantime, well..."

She leaned back to steal a glance out the screen door. Délia, Fiona, Thelma, and Addie had gathered in the courtyard just as they'd planned last night while Ellis was taking a shower. Délia shot Berni a thumbs-up, and Berni turned back to her less-tearful comrade.

"Maybe we can celebrate your birthday in our own way?"

Ellis looked confused, but before she could even finish asking what Berni meant, the four other women in their party leaped through the door, carrying decorations and balloons and birthday pancakes. Ellis looked alarmed, but then they—plus Berni—burst into the happy birthday song as loud as they could sing it, and she started to cry again, but less so out of sadness. They spent the next half-hour decorating and eating and swapping stories of their own birthdays, especially during childhood, until Major Harbridge poked his head through the door to say hello, to lightly scold Berni for being clever enough to steal her girls a break but not enough to get him her flight logs on time, and to inform them that their singing had woken him up in his officers' quarters two doors down far earlier than he would have liked this morning. He waved off their apologies and wished Ellis a happy birthday, and all was well again—until that afternoon, when Berni found Ellis crying for the second time that day. Ellis didn't cry much, so twice in one day was real cause for concern. Again, all she could say was she missed her sister. Berni felt even guiltier, so much so that she let Addie take the reins.

"She made me a cake, last year," Ellis remembered, getting choked up. "She makes the best cakes."

"That she does. But hey, you know, I just happened to have a few hours free last night, sooo..."

At Addie's gesture, Berni popped the lid off the platter Fiona and Délia had just snuck in the back door.

"Who wants cake?"

It was a ridiculously ugly cake, and that had more to do with Berni trying to help Addie bake it than Addie's own skills. They didn't have any baking powder and Berni dropped their last two eggs on the floor before they could make it to the mixing bowl, but the one thing they hadn't lacked was sugar. Hopefully, that could make up for its lopsided, half-baked existence somewhat. Ellis acknowledged it was the thought that counted, wiped away her tears, and indulged them in a few bites before everyone agreed the cake was basically inedible and they should just go out for dinner and drinks at the pub instead. Berni bought everyone a round (and then a second round for Addie and Ellis to apologize for the cake), and they had a merry old time. It was enough to forget, for a little while, their grievances and small bickerings and the people they missed that should have come home by now. The feeling didn't last past morning, but for the moment, it was enough.

The rest of the summer of '43 passed in a slog of repetitive paperwork, risky (but necessary) missions, and a general sense of uncertainty towards what the future might hold. On both sides of the Atlantic, the pilots of Tare made the best they could out of their unfortunate lot. The separation did little for their belief in the designs of their superiors, but it cemented their sense of camaraderie, and it was the only part of the distance that Berni could earnestly be grateful for. Even flying wasn't the same without her whole crew behind her. She missed them just as much as anyone. Maybe even more, though she wouldn't claim it aloud. She had to be tough for the women she'd been trusted to look after here in England. If she couldn't keep her head on her shoulders, how could she expect them to?

Frank sent her letters every week to report on the happenings with Easy and the rest of the 506th. When he could, he gave news of the pilots he could get ahold of between the women's training drills and Sobel's near-constant revoking of weekend passes. Berni always found time to write back, even if it had to be in the wee hours of the night, waiting for two of her pilots to return from a midnight delivery. Though she couldn't have known it, from army base to army base across the States, Frank wrote his letters and pretended not to notice Joe Liebgott looking over his shoulder when he read Berni's replies aloud to his cabinmates. Any mention of him in her letters would have sufficed to calm the fitfulness he'd carried with him since the day she left, but Berni never did. She wouldn't even hint that she thought of or remembered him by description or name.

Maybe it was what he deserved, not knowing.

There was one thing. She always ended her letters with give the lads my love. Joe wanted to assume her wishes included him, but he couldn't be sure, and he never had the balls to write her himself and ask. Especially not with how they'd parted ways last April.

Damnit, Joe, get your head out of the clouds. Flygirl's not comin' back. Not to you, anyway.

Berni had her share of scares that summer. They had more close calls than she would have liked; more than she could count on both hands. In May, her and Thelma's plane took a beating in a freak hailstorm over Guernsey and almost didn't make it back to England. Thelma nearly lost her fingers thanks to the rough emergency landing they had to make on an airfield just six kilometers from their home base. Thelma broke four of her fingers in total. She couldn't fly for two weeks after that, which meant Berni couldn't, either. Not without her flight partner. And she wouldn't have wanted to fly without Thelma, anyway. That would have felt, in a word, insensitive.

In June, Fiona suffered a broken wrist and a dozen bruises during an air raid on Norwich. She'd gone there on furlough, just in time to witness a German bomb topple a church steeple and send its bell careening down towards the street where she stood. Thankfully, Fiona's instinct was to run, and the impact only blew her back a few yards and knocked her straight through the glass door of a local deli. The owner of the place, seeing her military uniform, quickly pulled her into the cellar, where they and the owner's family waited until the sirens stopped and the raid was declared over. At first, Fiona didn't want to touch a plane, but after a week, something snapped in her, and she begged Berni to put her back in the air. Berni told her she had to wait until Fiona's wrist healed—it was regulation, and besides, Berni had Fiona's safety to think about—and Fiona gave her the cold shoulder until Délia shook some sense into her.

In July, Ellis and Addie were nearly shot down over the Channel. Their plane made it back to the base badly damaged, and it was all the girls could do to get their friends out safely before something went terribly wrong and exploded the whole thing. Berni had never seen fireworks like it. The combustions lit up the night sky like daylight, so bright that Major Harbridge declared a state of emergency and enforced a blackout across the entire base in case the Germans testing their luck over the Channel tonight had spotted the accidental pyrotechnics show. It took until the end of the summer to get that part of the runway back into shape. They needed new cement, new regulations, new everything. The paperwork was a headache and a half, but Berni wouldn't have traded it for the world. Addie and Ellis were safe—if a little scorched—and that was all that mattered to her.

In August, nothing much happened until the end of the month. With a third of the runway out of commission and a solid excuse to focus on the maintenance and repair of their planes, Berni and her crew spent the majority of the month with their boots on the ground. She hardly wore her flight jacket, half because she didn't have a reason to and half because it had gotten so hot out. This had to be the warmest English summer she could remember. She said 'English' summer, because even this heat couldn't compare to the day she and her girls had first set foot in Georgia. She didn't envy those still in the States for the humidity they must be facing all over again this sweltering season. Then again, they were over there, and not here where they belonged, so what did she have to be jealous for?

On the second-to-last day of August, Berni received a telegram from Colonel Sink of the 5-o'-6. Major Harbridge ought to have read it before her, as was customary, but he passed it along to the captain without so much as breaking the seal.

"Good news, or maybe bad, I think," he mused from behind his bushy mustache. "Whatever it is, I expect they'll think better of it from you, not me. Especially if it's nothing good."

That didn't do much to bolster Berni's nerves, but the official-looking envelope did invoke a level of seriousness that she hadn't seen from Sink since the last time she'd shaken his hand goodbye. He'd sent her, Major Harbridge, and their shared superiors telegrams many times over the summer, but none had given Berni the sense of change to come. She tried to tell herself it was nothing other than the coming fall cheating her reason and getting her hopes up, but by the time she sat down in the summer grass with her girls to crack the envelope open, she felt as jumpy as a hare listening for a hound on the hunt.

"'...wish you well'," she read aloud to eager ears. "'Important news to relay. Knight takes queen, pawns follow to king. Checkmate.' And that's... that's all it says."

Berni looked up from the letter. Only Addie seemed to have caught on to Sink's meaning.

"What?" Thelma asked, looking between her girlfriend and her captain. "What does it mean?"

"It's chess," Addie explained. "Now, if England's the queen, and we're the king, I expect you can guess who the knight is supposed to be."

"They're coming to Europe," Berni realized, a smile stunned right onto her lips. "All of them."

After a beat of personal amazement, she looked up and saw she was being watched with wonder equal to her own.

"You mean...?" Ellis asked tentatively, too afraid of guessing wrong to finish the question.

"You think?" Fiona chimed in.

"Could it be?" Délia added with wide eyes.

"Bloody hell," Thelma cursed, and Addie squeezed her hand, tight-lipped.

"That's right."

Berni thought she might cry a little, and for once, she didn't think herself any less tough for letting a few tears fall.

"Our girls are coming home."

"And," Fiona added with a grin, "if I ken my chess, an' I do, those pawns the colonel's on about may well be our bonnie, braw paratroopers along for the ride. And not just a few of them, either."

"That so, Fee?"

Berni's smile grew and grew.

"Bring 'em on."

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Yet another long-overdue update. Cheers!