THROUGH A PLUM TREE DARKLY

This is a blog, but written up as a story with just a touch of elaboration. I had it on file (it dates from last summer) and prompted by SuffolkMum's lovely piece today I thought I'd share it. Aged Mother occurs in several of my blogs (most recently in the piece of about coincidences). Even the fruit tree - the wretched greengage that had the one piece of blossom this year - appeared in a recent blog. Several of you offered welcome horticultural advice of which the tree shows no sign of taking notice.

The only problem with the wartime story is that it is the only one that Aged Mother remembers and being a trifle demented and forgetful I get the story repeated to me (her version of it at least) every hour on the hour as it were. I think if I hear it again I shall scream! But I try to remember to smile. Won't be long before I shall be in much the same position, I remind myself.

THROUGH A PLUM TREE DARKLY

"Of course, I used to fly Airspeed Oxfords during the war," came this voice through the leaves of the fruit tree.

Helen had deposited her Aged Mother with a glass of wine at Fennie's garden table, while she busied herself with more important preoccupations, like checking on lunch.

"I was a cook," said Aged Mother, but when war came I wanted to do something more useful than making plum puddings. So I volunteered for the Royal Air Force.

"Didn't they want you to cook, too?" asked Fennie, parting the verdant foliage. After all, those pilots must have got awfully hungry on extended missions over enemy territory. "Although maybe if people are shooting at you for several hours at a time, you could be excused for being off your food."

"Can't you move that plum tree, Fennie?" said Helen reappearing with some olives. "I can't see you."

It was true the tree was rather awkwardly placed with regard to the table. Helen sat down next to Aged Mother.

"It's not a plum tree, Helen. It's a greengage. And no, I can't move it. When I took out the rose tree there was a big hole and a young greengage was the only thing that would fit. And I can't move the table as that would unbalance things. You'll just have to put up with the tree. When it's a little bigger we'll cut a hole in the foliage."

"That's ridiculous!" exclaimed Helen.

"It will remind me of your mother," rejoined Fennie, "Who is never ridiculous and besides has just joined the Air Force and refused to cook."

"So they set me to work mending aeroplanes," continued Aged Mother after this interruption, and apparently unconcerned whether the tree was a plum or a gage. "You know, after they had been shot at or had been damaged in some way. I was clever, good with my hands, so they made me a fitter. That's what they call people who maintain the planes. I did the training and they made me the boss. Well, of our unit anyway. I was a fitter 2A, you know. That meant I was in charge."

"But you said you flew aeroplanes, too," said Fennie, taking an olive and passing one to Aged Mother.

"Oh we had to do that. It was for quality, you see. After you had repaired an aeroplane you had to fly it. Just to make sure it was all right. You knew that if you had to fly in it afterwards you had better make sure you did a good job. The system worked. None of the planes that I repaired crashed, and as you can see I am still here."

As Aged Mother was still hidden behind the greengage, Fennie mused that she would have to take Aged Mother's word that she did indeed have a corporeal presence and was not simply a spirit voice.

"Fennie once learnt to fly too" said Helen, who had always been slightly jealous of Fennie's long standing aerial accomplishments.

"Oh did you? I did so enjoy flying," exclaimed Aged Mother from behind the tree. "Though I was never taught. At least not as such. I had to learn on the job, you see. Usually there were others there. I would sit in the co-pilot's seat as I would have to check this or that and then they would just say to me 'Right, you take over.' I guess you pick things up quickly when you are young."

"Like father!" snorted Helen.

But Aged Mother was not to be put off by such interventions. Instead she launched into a flood of memories.

"I remember once, this Canadian pilot. He was just a boy. Still in his teens probably. His aircraft was in for repair and I went up with him on the flight test. Well, we were flying around and I was checking the nuts and bolts and instruments and so forth, when he says 'I can't go on' and collapses over the controls, weeping inconsolably.

"Well, I am left trying to fly this plane and keep track of where we are while at the same time providing a species of airborne good sister service. I start navigating a wide circuit of the airfield and begin to inquire ask him what is wrong.

"Turns out he has just learnt that his elder brother has been killed on a mission. He had bottled it up for a time - put a brave face on it - but then when we were alone together in the cockpit of that plane, he must simply have let go."

"A sympathetic female shoulder," ventured Fennie.

"I was trained to repair aeroplanes, not pilots, but I did my best."

"That wasn't"….Fennie hestitated……"Helen's Dad?"

"No, silly," said Helen. "This was just a chap who had a soft spot for Mum. Everyone had a soft spot for Mum. When a group of German prisoners were landed at the airfield and Mum guided the plane towards the hangar the first thing they said was 'Look, there's a English girl!'"

"So what happened," asked Fennie, "to the inconsolable pilot?"

"Oh, I managed to get him straight. It took about half an hour, but I said that we couldn't stay up in the sky all day. I had other planes to repair and unless my running repairs to the fuel gauges had failed already we should soon be running out of petrol, unless we landed soon. I had to get him straight, so I pretended that I didn't know how to land the plane. Said I could only take-off and fly around. Well, he believed me, and do you know, as suddenly as he had started, he simply changed back from being a weepy teenager into a pilot again. He landed the plane, dropped me off, re-fuelled and then took off into the sky. I often wonder what happened to him, whether he lived or died, whether he remembers me……."

Aged Mother's voice trailed off.

"I'm certain that he remembered you, Mother," said Helen. Everyone remembers you.

"And," said Fennie, "you remembered him, which is much more important! Anyway, if I am not very much mistaken, it's time for lunch."