All Clear

Fairchild could just as easily have driven him through Golders Green or down Tottenham Court Road and they’d both have been killed, Mary told herself. And either way, you can’t change the outcome. If you could have, the net wouldn’t have let you come through.

But just because historians couldn’t affect events didn’t mean they should intentionally create problems, so she made certain she was unavailable when Stephen rang up, spent her off-duty time away from the post, and volunteered to go after the supplies the Major constantly wangled out of other posts, hoping Stephen would get bored and turn his attentions to Fairchild, where they belonged.

But he continued to ring her up. Fairchild looked more and more wan, and nothing, not even the arrival of a new ambulance—which the Major had managed against all odds to talk HQ out of—stopped the FANYs from discussing “poor Fairchild.”

And on the first of September, the Major made it worse by issuing a new duty roster on which she and Fairchild were no longer partnered, leading to endless speculation over whether she or Fairchild had asked for the change.

Mary was almost grateful when the V-2 attacks began in September. It gave them all something else to think about, and it gave Stephen’s squadron a new challenge. His calls became less frequent and then ceased as the RAF wrestled with the problem of how to stop these new, much more deadly attacks.

Even Spitfires had no chance of catching up to the V-2s—they flew at nearly four thousand miles an hour, which was faster than the speed of sound, and took only four seconds to reach their target. As a result, there was no siren or warning rattle. The only sound they made was a sonic boom, and if one heard that, one had already survived the explosion.

The rockets struck out of nowhere, and it was amazing just how terrifying that was. Even the unflappable FANYs began staying indoors and stealing surreptitious glances at the sky when they were on a run. Sutcliffe-Hythe moved all her belongings down to the cellar, and Parrish told a GI who wanted to take her to a jitterbugging contest that she had to stay in and wash her hair.

On the way home from a run one morning, they saw a group of children with suitcases and with pasteboard tags around their necks being loaded onto buses.

“What’s happening?” Mary asked.

“They’re being evacuated to the north,” Camberley explained, “out of range.”

Reed said wistfully, “I wish I could go with them.”

The damage from the V-2s was terrifying, too. Instead of smashed houses, there were entire flattened areas, so obliterated it was impossible to tell what had been there. The number of victims taken away from incidents in mortuary vans went up sharply, and so did the number who died en route to hospital. Some casualties simply vanished, vaporized by two thousand pounds of explosives. And the things the FANYs saw at the sites became markedly more grisly and unspeakable.

But within the month they’d adjusted to the V-2s and invented a new—and totally spurious—mythology regarding them. “They never land where any other rocket’s hit,” Maitland pronounced, “because of the magnetism. So we’re perfectly safe while we’re at the incident. The trick is in getting there.”

But they had that covered as well. “They never come till an hour after the first V-1 volley of the day,” Sutcliffe-Hythe said, and Talbot reported that one of her beaus at the motor pool had told her the V-2 motor wouldn’t work when it got cold, so the number would be less as winter approached—neither of which was true.

But it made it possible for the FANYs to face sleeping and working and driving to incidents every day, knowing they might be blown to bits at any moment.

And by the time another fortnight had passed, they were back to discussing clothes—Mary’s blue organdy had got a tear in the skirt, and there was a debate over whether to mend the sheer cloth or take out an entire width—and men. Sutcliffe-Hythe had met an American sailor from Brooklyn named Jerry Wojeiuk, and Parrish had broken it off with Dickie.

Unfortunately, they also went back to discussing “poor Fairchild.” “Perhaps you could get engaged to someone else,” Reed suggested to Mary when Stephen began telephoning again.

“Or married,” Maitland put in—suggestions which were so ridiculous that it was a relief when Talbot came in and said the Major wanted her to drive to Streatham to pick up bandages.

“I suppose I’ve got to drive Bela Lugosi,” Mary said.

“No, it’s in the shop. And Reed’s not back yet. She had to drive the Octopus to Tangmere. Your luck is in. You get to drive the new ambulance. Camberley’s going with you. I’ll tell her to meet you in the garage.”