to my Tiger Moth, my performance coming later. I waved back at her, proud and happy. But then Pa lost control somehow and didn’t pull up in time, and I was no longer waving but screaming and running, not believing such a thing could possibly be true, already aching for a feeling I would only ever know once again – that feeling of unquestioned security and unconditional love.
But back to Cornwall and Christmas 1938.
The little Tiger Moth, its Gypsy engine humming a familiar tune, clung to the Cornish coast as I peered over the side, my face tight against the freezing slap of the winter air. I was looking for my final navigational landmark – three small craggy mounts known locally as the Angels – that sat a few hundred yards out to sea next to a little fishing village called Angels Cove. All I had to do was to find the mounts, then a mile or so further along the coast I would find my destination, a rather grand-looking house called Lanyon and in turn, my landing strip.
I took a moment to glance down again and cross-reference the river arteries on a map before turning at Lizard Point to follow the coast northbound. If my calculations were correct, the mounts would be on the nose in two minutes exactly. They were, and looked exactly like stepping stones plopped into the sea for the convenience of a Cornish giant. After circling around the Angels a couple of times to take a closer look, I headed inland and descended, slowing to almost stalling speed looking for Lanyon – a large, red-brick manor house, with four gables and twelve chimneys. And suddenly it was there, sitting above a little patch of sea haze, in majestic reverence, on the cliffs above the cove.
The landing strip was nothing more than the lawned area in front of the house, but drat it all, a downdraft from the cliffs pulled at the aircraft’s little wooden frame as I approached, dragging me far too close to a line of very tall cedar trees as I turned finals. I powered on, overshot the approach and climbed away, waving cheerily at a couple of gardeners just a few feet below, who were leaning on rakes, open-mouthed, watching. The performer in me not dead but simply sleeping, couldn’t resist throwing the Moth into a tidy little barrel roll, before disappearing off over the horizon, to find pastures new and within these pastures, hopefully, a safe place to land. Within a minute I had found a stretch of level grass on the cliffs, directly above Angels Cove. There was a large barn in the corner of the field, too, which, if empty, could act very nicely as a store for the Moth. I turned into the wind, began my final decent and moments later, to my great relief, landed safely.
With the propeller slowed to a stop, I tore off my goggles and wool-lined leather helmet, unclipped the harness and jumped out to gather my bearings. A minute later found me jumping back into the wing’s stepping plate because a dozen or so cows approached at speed with a collective air of indignant and inquisitive over-confidence.
From my position of height, I attempted to shoo.
Shooing proved fruitless.
Help appeared almost immediately in the form of two men and a dog. They were walking towards me from the direction of the barn. The first man was wearing a long coat, his collar turned up against the wind. On closer inspection he was frowning. Definitely frowning. The second – the stockman by the looks of things – was shaking a stick in my direction. Even the dog seemed to walk with an air of peeved annoyance.
The men slapped fat sashaying backsides as they walked towards me, saying things like, ‘Get on with you,’ and ‘Away, away.’ On seeing the younger man’s face more clearly, and suffering from sudden and complete amnesia regarding the existence of Charles, my fiancé, who was waiting for me at Lanyon, I attempted to tidy my hair, which was beyond redemption. I quickly glanced down at my clothes. I was wearing a flying jacket (my father’s, far too big for me and ripped on the right sleeve) and, over thermal long-johns, men’s overalls, covered in oil, rolled up at the ankle and pulled in at the waist with a wide belt. The icing on the cake was my footwear – muddy, fur-lined flying boots.
Taking a cloth from my pocket, I gave my face and hands a quick wipe. The two men were only a few steps away now. The younger one paused out of earshot to speak to the other man, who snorted in my direction before turning tail and heading towards the barn, using a long stick to usher the cows with him.
The man approached. His expression did not soften.
‘Well, hello, there,’ I said, cheerily.
He stood there for a moment, not speaking. A kind of apoplexy seemed to have set in (this often happened to a man who found himself unexpectedly face to face with a female pilot. It was the shock, you see). I decided to wade straight in with an apology. Farmers could be ever so touchy about aircraft landing in their fields without invitation. It was best to take the wind out of their sails with a smile.
‘I’m so sorry for the …’ I glanced towards the cows. Their backsides lumbered from side to side as they began to disperse. Tails flicked with annoyance ‘… disturbance. I meant to land in front of a large house, up the way there.’ I paused to look in the direction of the house. ‘It’s the one with the four gables and twelve chimneys … or is it four chimneys and twelve gables, I can never remember …? Do you know it?’
‘Lanyon?
‘Yes.’
‘Of course. But look here …’
My bright smile and humble apology fell on blind eyes and deaf ears. He began to chide – really chide – something about the utter irresponsibility of landing an aircraft in a field full of cattle … could have killed myself, etc. etc. He went on for quite some time about all kinds of things that might possibly have happened had luck not been on my side, but I really couldn’t concentrate because he was just so damn gorgeous and to top it had a slight American twang in his accent, too, and I had a very definite soft spot for a soft American accent on a man, probably because of all the movies we watched in those days.
I was just trying to work out what an American was doing working on a Cornish farm when he stopped preaching and returned to his preoccupation of staring at me. I realised he was waiting for me to respond to his disciplinary lecture, but not knowing quite how to respond, and rather than answer and annoy him further, I simply kept quiet and ran my fingers through my tangled mop of thick hair, just as the cold wind nipped at my face and turned my nose into a dripping tap. I wiped my nose with the cloth and we stood in a kind of ‘what now?’ silence while the Tiger Moth rocked on its wheels in the wind. He was obviously going to wait it out until I spoke. There was nothing left to do but to shrug and apologise again.
‘You’re absolutely right, of course,’ I said, adding a suitably big enough sigh. ‘Landing on a cliff in a field full of cows was not my finest spot of airwomanship, but to be fair, I didn’t see the cows and if you think about it, nothing bad actually did happen so I wonder, could we start again because, you know, ’tis done now, and what else can I do but say to that I’m so very – very – sorry.’
I tried my best to look remorseful.
He took a deep breath. His eyes were cold, steady.
‘I’d say that was a perfunctory apology.’
‘Perfunctory?’ I repeated.
‘Yes, perfunctory.’
He had more.
‘You think that because you’re a beautiful woman you can do whatever you want – gallivant around, hither and thither …’
Hither and thither? An American saying ‘hither and thither’?
I let him rant on again, completely unaware of what he was saying because frankly, he could say what the hell else he liked. No person on the planet (other than my parents) had called me beautiful before – even my fiancé had never called me beautiful.
‘Listen,’ I interrupted, eventually, ‘we seem to have got off on the wrong foot.’ I turned towards the cows again who were quite a way away now. ‘You’re absolutely right in everything you say. Perhaps we could shake hands on the matter and start again – shall we?’
I removed my right flying glove and held out my hand. He hesitated, as if some kind of trickery might be involved, but then my