Page 13 of Times Four Something unseen upsets the normal order of things. It is a little like being with chickens in a coop anticipating a visit, whether from farmer or fox as yet unknown. On the surface everything is normal, but underneath everyone is on edge. What is different? I look around to see the Bridge Club still in their normal place and the yoga devotees like unwanted and abandoned sporting equipment still propped upside down behind the door. Most of us flick through magazines or the papers as we wait, like Meg and me. It looks the same on the surface, but there is an undercurrent of emotion that I cannot place. A woman walks up to join us. Perhaps her face is too strong for beauty, but her strength and her style give her an attractiveness most women lack. I know her, I know that I know her well but for a moment her name escapes me. I scrabble through my memories of this time to identify: “Kitty!” I greet her. She nods acknowledgement, then pulls out a chair. “This just isn’t good enough” she drawls in her transatlantic accent. “You Brits will put up with anything” “What’s wrong now?” I query. Kitty is one of our new fliers who crossed the Atlantic to join us, but who is honest to the point of brashness. Whatever Kitty thinks, she says, and she does not care who hears her or who she upsets. I remember that Kitty disparaged our warm beer and cold pies, our weather, our buildings, our beds, the shyness of our British boys, their standard of their courtship rituals, our ATA medical examination – well she did have a point there. I suspect that the RAF doctor really is a pervert. He did take a very long time to examine us and to admit that women like us in our peak years, most of us in our late teens or early twenties, were fit enough to fly planes. But really, Kitty could be just a bit too outspoken at times. She had called that RAF doctor a pervert to his face and refused to undress for her examination. It caused quite a stir at the time.
Posted on: Wed, 15 Jan 2014 22:55:11 +0000
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