Beauty Chorus, The by Kate Lord Brown Page A

life.
    ‘The plane’s ready,’ the rigger says, standing to attention, ‘but the Duty Pilot says not to leave.’ I check my watch. 11.47 a.m. I jump out, and hand him my
lunch in a brown paper bag.
    ‘I shan’t be needing this where I’m going.’ If I’m getting out of here today, against orders I shall be going over the top. My gut instinct is I can make it.
Planes are needed urgently at the fighter stations. We have the right to say no, but in truth we fly all craft, anywhere. Ours is one of the most dangerous jobs in the war, yet few people know we
exist.
    He looks up at the impenetrable sky. ‘Are you really sure, Miss? It’s ten-tenths.’
    ‘I know the cloud’s on the deck, but I shall smell my way there.’ I load my pigskin bag into the back, and look up as a dark car parks beside the runway. The passenger door
opens and a man in a black fedora steps out. That is one of the theories, you see, that I was flying a top-secret mission. The missing hours. Apparently I was ferrying a spy into Europe, or helping
a lover escape. Was I? It was expressly forbidden for us to fly to the Continent but we bent rules, steadily broke new ground all the time.
    Others think I was shot down by friend or foe, maybe even faked my own death. Perhaps I am still holed up in South America somewhere, laughing into my dotage. Or perhaps it was an elaborate
suicide – after my disappearance someone came forward and said I had always predicted I would end up in the drink. They conjured the same stories about Amelia when she went down. Funny,
isn’t it, the truths and lies people weave around your life once you are not there to contradict them.
    As I settle into the cockpit for the last time, I am in my element – senses heightened, adrenalin pumping through my veins. At last the door slams closed, the Oxford’s propellers
are swung and the twin engines sputter into life. I bump over the rough grass, everything rattling and creaking. Once I ease back, the wheels leave the earth for the last time, and I glide over the
hedge. Soon I am in the air. Rising through the cloud is as unnerving as ever but then I break through and I am speeding over a dazzling white sea in glorious sunshine. This is more like it. Here
you lose all sense of speed and time, of yourself even. Below the world is at war, but here I have a taste of the eternal as I tool along. It’s bliss to be alone, the shadow of the plane
skimming along the clouds, a luminous halo refracted around it. This is why we fly. This is the pilot’s private ecstasy.
    Up here, I am still ‘Amy, wonderful Amy’, who has soared over shark-infested waters, and flown eleven thousand miles in little more than a wooden crate with wings. I earned my
money, but they had the cheek to call me the ‘gimme gimme girl’ for a while. Still, if you ride the bucking peaks and troughs of celebrity long enough you become a national treasure. If
you have the sense to die in mysterious circumstances you become a legend.
    After soaring beyond the clouds for a couple of hours, I realise I must have passed Kidlington. Still no break in the cloud. Now my heaven has begun to feel like a prison. I
don’t panic immediately. There was enough fuel to fly for four and a half hours in all. There is still time. A strange calm settles as the minutes tick away. I check my fuel for the last
time, and realise I must risk going down. I hold my breath as I descend slowly through the cloud. My ruddy cockpit ices up. Now I really can’t see a thing. I have to go back, and as I ease
the nose of the plane up, panic clutches at my stomach. I am trapped between heaven and earth. This is the first time I have ever really been afraid flying. But wait, what’s that? Ahead I see
a barrage balloon. Land! By this hour I calculate I am near the Kent coast. There’s fuel left for another quarter of an hour. If I trim the plane to fly straight on out to sea, there will be
no casualties and I can bail out