Sample Chapters &World War 2

Memories

SEABIRDS, Love & Monsters and the name Rikki Sharp © 2012 Rob Sharp. All rights reserved

The right for Rob Sharp to be identified as the author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Further information can be obtained by contacting avalonrjs@gmail.comThis Sampler should only be copied or transmitted by any means for the sole purpose of advertising the full novel,

SEABIRDS by Rikki Sharp. It must not be reprinted in any other way.

Further information can be obtained by contacting avalonrjs@gmail.comThis Sampler should only be copied or transmitted by any means for the sole purpose of advertising the full novel,

SEABIRDS by Rikki Sharp. It must not be reprinted in any other way.

Illustrations & Design © Rob Sharp 2012. Photographs copyrighted to their original owners.

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Up above the clouds, touching the very edge of the sky, fly the Seabirds!

On the eve of war between Great Britain and Nazi Germany, every man is expected to do his duty – but what about the women?

Turning their backs on becoming simple housewives, leaving the pots in the sink and the beds unmade, three girls from very different backgrounds strive to beat the men at their own game and become pilots.They are the Seabirds, flying from Britain to France on missions for the secret service, they are a force

to be reckoned with! But when the adventures end and they are back on the ground, how do the men in their lives fit in?

Diana Barnato & SpitfirePauline Gower and the girls of the ATA

Maureen Dunlop becomes the pin-up girl from the Picture Post

4 SeabirdsDad (Kenneth Sharp),

enlisted in the RAF, aged 20 in 1942.

Dad and pals in Burma, 1944.

Mum (Dorothy Gibson) on right, 1946 in Peel, Isle of Mann, aged 18.

Radio installation inside a Douglas Dakota transport plane, circa 1945.

Douglas Dakota being refueled,

No.194 Squadron, Palam, India, 1945.

Dad on left, in signal section,

Karachi, India 1945.

London Blitz, 1942. Dad billeted there

and had his tin helmet whipped

off his head when a bomb hit his street.

Intake of new RAF conscripts, 1942. These boys ended up being sent all over Europe as

air support to the troops on various

Fronts.

Seabirds 5

Chapter One“It’s an eyesore, that’s what it is,” Vernon Finch the Postmaster started off the complaining.

Having begun to build an air-raid shelter smack bang in the middle of village green, the Civil Defence were not the most popular folk with the villagers of Babbacombe-on-Sea.

“So when this farce is over and the Germans don’t invade, are you going to

put the pond back and restock it with ducks?”

The stout Cockney in charge of the work gang, who had first dug a huge pit and were now lining it with industrial-sized bricks, glowered back at Finch.

6 Seabirds

“There never was any ducks on it, Vernon, as you well know. And how you’ve the flaming cheek to call that muddy overgrown puddle a duck pond, I’ve no blooming idea!”

“Bah! I haven’t got time to waste talking to likes of you, George Butcher! I’ve fifty yards of blackout material at the shop that needs sizing up!”

Anne Finch grinned as she cycled passed the hullabaloo. Trust her dad to start a row out of nothing! Like it or not there was a war coming, even to tiny hamlets like Babbacombe-on-Sea nestled on the sleepy south coast of England. Personally, Anne couldn’t help but feel a little bit excited. Nothing could spoil her buoyant mood, because today was the day she was about to change her whole life.

As she peddled up the rutted earthen path, her battered Hercules bicycle wobbled dangerously until she finally reached the brow of Horseshoe Hill. There she skidded to a halt and looked across the rolling fields and beyond, out over the dark, choppy sea. With a sigh, she breathed in the wonderful salty smell of it blowing in her face.

Below was her sanctuary. This was her future.

At the end of the thin bitumen-covered runway, several brightly painted wooden sheds could be seen. Above the largest, a tattered windsock showed the direction and force of the wind coming in off the English Channel. On the side of the same large hut was a pair of crudely painted seagulls within a blue circle. It was their symbol, hers and Pixie’s.

The sign of the Seabirds.

Outside the hanger was sat a biplane with silver wings and tail section, with its fuselage painted canary yellow. The De Havilland Gipsy Moth stood out proudly at the head of the runway, waiting for someone to take her into the air. Because today, dear Lord, today, that person was going to be Anne Finch.

Today she was taking her commercial pilot’s examination.

She almost felt faint with the thrill of it all.

***

It was Pixie Oliver who first introduced the shy Postmaster’s daughter to flying. The local heiress, Pixie, had started her education in the time-honoured way, by being sent to a girls’ convent school on the outskirts of the city. If Pixie were honest, she’d admit she had hated every minute of it. Consequently, after a series of truancies followed by a rather mysterious fire in the Art Room, she’d been expelled in disgrace.

News of the Oliver’s wayward daughter soon got around, so with a heavy heart her parents, Lord and Lady Oliver, had had no choice but to send their offspring to the local village school. At the tender age of 13, Pixie Oliver first met Anne Finch and something just clicked.

Pixie began to improve in her studies with Anne’s help, and timid little Anne came out of her shell. Pixie still attracted the odd detention for smoking behind the bike sheds (probably the cause of the aforementioned fire), but the moment she discovered an after-school mechanics class run by the metalwork teacher, she found her purpose in life.

“You’re a girl, sweetheart,” said her mother, staring in abject horror at the grease-smeared teenager. “Messing about with automobiles is for boys.”

“Who says?” Pixie said asked belligerently. “Where is it written down?”

“Talk to your father,” Lady Oliver said with a sigh of desperation.

Unfortunately, Montgomery Oliver thought it was a wizard idea. Following her father’s passion for cars, Pixie’s interests rapidly expanded to all things

Seabirds 7

mechanical. But there was one travelling machine that tempted her beyond all others. It sat there at the end of Lord Oliver’s private runway, just begging for someone to take it into the sky—the Gypsy Moth, patriotically christened Britannia, gleaming in the day’s early light.

Britannia and Pixie were made for each other.

By the time she was nineteen, the heiress had already started flying lessons, despite her mother’s protests. The first time she went up solo and Lady Oliver found out, the poor woman had a dose of the vapours. After each lesson, Pixie would excitedly tell her best friend all about the flight.

“It’s like being a bird!” She stood up, arms outstretched, soaring around the stable yard. Anne laughed at her pal’s exploits. “Oh, I wish you could join me, Anne! It would be such fun!”

Which was how the Postmaster’s daughter’s interest in flying first began.

***

In that long tongue of land that separated the village of Babbacombe-on-Sea from the coastal cliffs, the Oliver ancestral home of Eagle Hall had nestled amongst the woods almost totally hidden from the air for over 800 years. Lord of the manor and master of all he surveyed, when Pixie’s father had been bitten by the aviation bug in the 1920’s he had the land to construct the aircraft sheds and a small runway to feed his new hobby.

In those pioneering days, a chap with a bit of money could purchase a plane and virtually teach himself to fly, which was what Lord Oliver had done. Then when Pixie had reached her teens—her elder brother, Laurence, had showed absolutely no interest in the sport—her father had paid for lessons for her.

The fact that a mere slip of a girl of nineteen could gain her aviation licence

8 Seabirds

seemed to annoy some people. ‘Pulled strings’ were hinted at.The village as a whole never really took to Pixie. With her tomboyish figure

and the way she dressed, she was rather cruelly referred to as Lord Oliver’s second son. But she had a skin as thick as an elephant’s hide and laughed off the jokes and the jibes. Whilst they were at school, and during their teenage years, those cruel whispers hurt Anne more than they did the eccentric Pixie.

“Really, Pixie, you could make a bit of an effort,” she’d said to her friend on more than one occasion, one time as they attended a village dance with Pixie still dressed in her brother’s trousers, engine oil under her broken fingernails.

But that was Pixie, like it or lump it. With her short, tightly curled brown hair, if she hadn’t have been so naturally good looking with wind-tanned skin and deep brown eyes, most folk would have taken her as a boy.

“Now you, you’re the real princess of the village.” Pixie used to tease her friend. “Though how you ever turned out so pretty with that lump of a father of yours, I’ll never know!”

With straight blond hair usually tied up in a bun, Anne had the longest eyelashes anyone had ever seen and a generous, smiling mouth. In another life, if she had lived in one of the major cities, she’d have been a much sort sought after catch. As it was there was only one romantic interest in Anne’s life—Jimmy Mulligan, the farmer’s lad. But both Jimmy and Anne were both far too shy to do anything about it.

Boys be hanged. As Pixie drew her friend deeper into the thrill of flying, she said she would pay for three lessons on Anne’s behalf and see what she thought of the sport. Initially the Postmaster’s daughter turned the offer down.

“Anyway, Dad would never let me do something so . . . so . . . ”

“Exciting? Exhilarating?” Pixie laughed. “It’s only like a driving lesson!”

Seabirds 9

Finally, Anne agreed.

She approached that first lesson with equal mixtures of fear and excitement, as the instructor took her up in Britannia. But after that, Anne knew this was what she wanted to do with her life. She and Pixie, queens of the air. So the two girls persevered, with Anne handing over a little nest egg her grandma had left her in her will three years before to pay for further lessons. So, barely three weeks apart, both the girls passed their pilots licences that would allowed them to fly solo, shortly after their twentieth birthdays.

Of course, for the precocious Pixie Oliver’s master plan to continue, they had to take things one step further. Both girls needed a commercial licence if they were going to fly paying passengers.

***

Boys, her father, and the coming war were the last things Anne was thinking about as she took the Gipsy Moth up with a flight instructor from RAF base at Beachy Head who sat in the second open cockpit behind her. This was the moment when she fulfilled her friend’s trust in her. After all, it had been Pixie who’d paid for Anne’s initial tuition.

“You can pay me back when we’re making a profit!” The heiress laughed whenever the topic of that money came up.

What Anne’s father had had to say on the subject was unrepeatable, especially since she had drawn her grandma’s money out of the Post Office without even consulting him.

“That was meant for when you get wed!” he had berated her.

“Who says I’m ever getting married?” she had parried back.

10 Seabirds

On many nights, the girl had stormed out of their cottage after yet another blazing row, but every time her dad put her down made Anne all the more determined to do this incredible thing. Pixie was right. Where was it written down that only men should be able to experience the thrill of flying? That thought above all others kept her striving to achieve her goal. Following in her best friend’s footsteps, she was going to pass this latest test and show her dad just what a great pilot she was!

***

Pixie perched on an old empty oil drum smoking a roll-up cigarette, watching her chum flawlessly circle the small aerodrome as the examiner put her through her paces. Whereas the heiress was a technically sound flyer, Anne was something of a natural. She became the plane. Pixie admired her all the more for that.

Finally, the Gipsy Moth made a perfect landing, its twin wheels touching down on the runway with hardly a bounce, the tail slowly dropping to rest on the small rear guider.

The flight inspector pushed his goggles back and scribbled on his clipboard for a few moments. Paralysed with a sudden fear, Anne said nothing as Pixie ran over to the plane.

“Well?” she cried, flinging her arm open wide in expectation.

“Congratulations, Miss Finch. You’ve passed your commercial pilot’s exam.” The man was about to drone on about where to pick up her proper certificate, when Pixie flung her arms around his neck in glee before facing her friend.

“You’ve done it, Anne! There are less than thirty women in the country that can fly and carry passengers! Welcome to our very special club!” Then the she

Seabirds 11

threw her arms around Anne.“Funny thing,” said the inspector, easing himself out of the cockpit, red-

faced and straightening his glasses rather embarrassedly after Pixie’s ambush. “You’re the third female pilot I’ve passed this month. Always struck me as a chap’s hobby.”

“You’re as bad as Anne’s father! Why do you say that?” demanded Pixie, immediately on the attack.

“Well, if we do go to war, we’ll need every able-bodied aviator we can get. But I’m not sure you ladies could cut the mustard,” came the honest, if biased, reply.

“You mean the RAF are too scared let us play with their big planes, Norman?” Pixie asked, affecting a prissy female voice. “You think we are just fluffy-headed little things who should be at home making our husband’s tea!”

“I never said those words, Miss Oliver. I’m one of the few instructors who judges a pilot by their merits no matter what gender they are!” the inspector replied in a huff.

“Sorry, old thing. It’s just when you read about the likes of Amy Johnson and Margaret Fairweather, one feels public opinion should be changing. I guess it’s still a man’s world,” Pixie said with a frown.

“Well, I’m under no delusions where women are!” Anne said, clambering out of the Gypsy. “Try living with my dad and brother for a week and you’ll soon know your place!”

Both Pixie and Anne grew silent, lost in their thoughts as they left their tiny airdrome that afternoon. The tides may have been turning in the political seas across Europe, but ladies of skill and independence like themselves were still just women in the eyes of the world.

12 Seabirds

It was frustrating to say the very least!

***

Still walking on air, Anne cycled back home with a smile galvanised to her face. She had passed her final aviation test! Wheeling the bike into the yard, still floating on air, she let herself in through the back door and shouted, “It’s only me!”

“Didn’t think it was blooming Hitler’s storm troopers,” her dad muttered from behind his newspaper.

Sitting in her mum’s chair on the other side of the smouldering coal fire was her brother, Martin, on a twenty-four-hour leave from his regiment.

“Army training going alright?” Anne asked, automatically tidying up and putting the blackened kettle on the gas ring.

“Pretty hard,” Martin replied, trying to read the back page of his father’s paper. “We’ve a Scottish Sergeant-Major, tough as old boots he is! You remember Jamie Vickers, two years above you at school?”

“Sort of.” She warmed the china pot first, then spooned in the tea, only half listening. Still soaring up amongst the clouds inside her head.

“Well this Sergeant-Major, he only goes and reduces Jamie to tears!”

“Right . . . and that’s a good thing?” Anne passed her brother his cup and placed her father’s next to his elbow.

Martin shook his head, exasperated. “Well the lads thought it was funny.”

“They would.” Bursting with pride, she grew fed up with waiting for either

Seabirds 13

of the two men in her life to ask her about the test. “I did it! I passed my commercial licence today!”

Her dad lowered one corner of his newspaper and looked her up and down.

“Oh,” he finally came out with, and resumed his reading.

“You’re still doing that flying lark? Our Sergeant-Major says it’s a boys’ game, flying planes. That the war will be lost or won by Tommies like me—men on the ground, with guns in their hands.”

Anne bit her lip as she lifted the whistling kettle off the stove and filled the teapot.

“I can fly a double or single-winged plane, Martin. I can now take passengers—legally take passengers, and carry official mail and parcels. Me, your soppy little sister. Doesn’t that count for something?”

“Well, when you put it like that . . .” Martin sighed, watching Anne strain the leaves as she filled his cup. “So, what’s for dinner then?”

He was lucky he didn’t get the entire contents of the teapot tipped over his head as Anne let out a frustrated scream and stormed out of the back door.

Father looked at son. Martin simply shrugged.

“What was that all about?”

“I told you, since this flying lark began your sister has become a bit of a big head.” He glanced at his empty cup, as if it had just landed from the Moon. “Stir yourself, son. Pour me a brew before you find where Miss Hoity-toity has beggared off to. Some of us have been working all day!”

14 Seabirds

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Seabirds 15

Coming Soon from

Soul Mate Publishing...

China always knew there was a secret in her past.

When she returned to the

isle of her birth, she discovered

there was more than one!