LITMIR.BIZ

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My dear Sam

       How is life at sea treating you? I know I say it too much for your liking, but I’ll say it again – I’m so very proud of you (and a little jealous of all that fabulous flying, too!).

       Anyhow, I’m sure you must be busy so I’ll get to the point because I’m worried, Sam. Worried that my older memories are starting to fade and that one day soon they may leave me completely. Sitting here in my little cottage, able to do less and less each day, watching the tide ebb and flow, I have felt suddenly compelled to remember and record what happened in my life during the war. I read somewhere that if you wish to tell a story of war, do not tell the basic facts of the battle, but tell instead of the child’s bonnet removed from the rubble of a Southampton street, or the smell of twisted metal from a burnt Hurricane crashed by a friend, or the lingering smell of a man, robbed of his prime by typhus, as he lays in a strange bed in a foreign land, dying. I’m not sure I shall be able to do this, but even so, I have begun to write everything down. My friend Gerald is helping me. I aim to write one instalment per month – the first one is written already and attached – and send you copies as I write them. It’s an heirloom, I suppose, for you and your children (or if nothing else to give you something sensational to read during those long nights at sea!).

       As you read each instalment, remember that my words will be as accurate as my aging mind allows them to be. Certain days stand out more than the rest. Just lately, I find that I can remember 1943 like it was yesterday, and yet events from yesterday elude me as if set in 1943. But what is truth of any situation anyway? I really do feel that life is made up of a constant stream of living, punctuated only by that otherworld of sleep. The fact that we choose to put a time and date to everything is merely a paper exercise. I used to think that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever, resigned only to memory. But now – now that I can no longer take my memory for granted – I realise that this is not the case. Love, for example, once thought lost, can be captured forever, just so long as someone out there strives to keep the memory of that love alive.

       And so here is the first in a series of my memories that consist only of certain vivid days. They are memories of a time when suddenly, for a woman, absolutely anything (both the good and the desperately bad) became possible.

       Anyway – enough of my ramblings!

       Drum roll, please …

      ‘Ladieeeees and gentlemen! Lift your eyes to the heavens and prepare to be amazed, to be wowed and bedazzled! Here she is … the fearless! The death-defying! The one and only – Juliet Caron!’

      I rested the letter on my knee just as a crash outside coincided with the sudden outage of the lights and the television turned to black. The glow from the fire provided sufficient ambient light for me to reach into the sideboard and find the torch, but the battery must have been an old one because the torchlight was weak and to my disappointment, within a few seconds, petered out.

      Determined to take on some of the inner strength of the remarkable woman who had written a note to herself at ninety-two years old to never give in, I surrounded myself with candles, stoked the fire and wrapped the russet shawl tighter around my shoulders. And despite knowing that I shouldn’t waste my phone battery on a little light reading, not tonight of all nights, I got myself cosy on the sofa, abandoned Harry Potter, enabled the torch on my phone and began to read.

       Chapter 4

      Juliet

      1938

       A Cornish Christmas

      Newspaper Cutting: The Bicester Herald

      FREE AEROPLANE FLIGHTS FOR TEN LUCKY READERS!

      AIR DISPLAY EXTRAVAGANZA!

      Reach for the stars with the one and only

       LOUIS CARON FLYING CIRCUS!

      Old Bradley’s Field

      1^st July (for one day only)

      2.30 p.m. till dusk

      Star Attraction

      JULIET CARON

      The daredevil darling of the skies and Britain’s finest child star &aerobatic pilot

      Admission 1s. Children 6d.

      My name is Juliet Caron and although it would be difficult for anyone to believe if they saw me now (age has a dreadful habit of throwing a dust sheet over the vibrancy of youth) I was once the celebrated flying ace and undisputed star of the one and only Louis Caron Flying Circus.

      I do not say this to boast, well, maybe a little bit, but to explain how it was that my father taught me to fly almost as quickly as I learned to walk and how, on a bright winter’s afternoon just a few days before Christmas 1938, I found myself soaring one thousand feet above Cornwall in my bright yellow Tiger Moth, looking for angels. It was a simple time in my life. Simple in the way that only those brief years before we know the agony of love, can be. My lungs were exploding with the exuberance of youth and my face was tight against the freezing air. In sum, I was living a life that was just about as alive as it is possible for a human life to be.

      But first I must tell you a little of the flying circus, because my childhood was the circus, it moulded those formative days when the personality begins to take shape. My circus years were wonderful years. They were the years I had my parents with me, parents who were – and always would be – my inspiration, my warriors, my rocks.

      When I was fourteen a journalist asked me to describe what being part of a flying circus was like. My father stood by me while I thought of my answer. We were in Sam Bryant’s field near Bicester, Oxfordshire, our aircraft lined up side by side, waiting to display. The crowd was arriving and the buzz of expectation bounced in the air while a cornflower blue sky kissed by a soft, silky breeze heralded the chance of a wonderful display. Tongue-tied, I looked at my father, who knelt next to me, and stalled as to what to say. He said to close my eyes and imagine how it feels to fly – to say the first thing that came into my head. The answer I gave was the answer of a child, but I would have given exactly the same answer as an adult, because the euphoria of flying – that feeling of absolute freedom – never left me.

      ‘Imagine heaven on earth,’ I said, ‘or rather, heaven in the skies. Imagine you’re in a dream and in that dream you somehow shrink down to the size of a doll and strap yourself onto the back of a golden eagle. You cling on to his feathers while he swoops and dives and soars and loops. And then you realise that if you’re very gentle with him and pull lightly on a feather here and there, you can control him a little, and then you’re flying too, every bit and just as naturally as the bird, and every element hits you with a freshness that can’t be matched, every sense is bright and alive. And then the bird dives towards the earth, barely missing the ground, before turning on a hairpin and soaring away. You are not in control at that moment, I think, but you are not in danger either, not so long as he – you – pull up in time. But that’s the best thrill of all – the not completely knowing if you’ll pull out of the dive in time. You simply have to trust, have faith in your judgement and let go of all fear. But you do pull out, because instinct and survival and an understanding of how to fly and how to move through the air kicks in, and you climb higher and take a breath, but not for long, because then you jump off the bird and into your father’s arms and cling on while he spins you around and around and the whole world is no more than a line of spinning colour. And your hair and skirt and legs are flung out at ninety degrees and you know that if he lets you go, you’ll fly out of the dream and into oblivion. But again, you have to trust, to become a part of the motion, to know that he will never let you go, you’re safe.’ I glanced up at Father and smiled. ‘I suppose I just feel full of joy and completely free. That’s all, really.’

      An hour after the interview, my Father and mother died. Father was flying and mother was his wing-walker, her

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