Diana Walker looked out at the airfield and sighed. Her sister was playing some of that new American dance-band music much too loudly in the next room, and between that and the housekeeper singing maudlin Irish ballads whilst battling with the laundry it was difficult to hear herself think. ‘Stupid family, stupid house!’ she cried, and shut herself out of the house with a slam of the door. She tramped through the kitchen garden in a huff, not even bothering to avoid crunching snails underneath her tough boots as she usually did. She worked in an ironmonger’s four days a week and she loathed having to leave her little realm of methodical, ordered, interesting occupation every Friday. Her employer, Mr Newman, was an efficient little man with a neat moustache and kept his shop in a similarly shipshape manner. It was a world away from her cluttered shambles of a home – she could hardly believe that they both resided on the same planet, let alone the same village. Unfortunately every week as Mr Newman prepared for his Shabbat day of rest, Diana had to prepare for chaos.

Her sister Iris, unfortunately, did not share Diana’s taste for the calm and tidy. Whilst Diana’s room had a book-case full of the classics and a few quality modern novels, and some prints of Mr Burne-Jones’ serene stained-glass angels on the walls, entering Iris’ cosy attic room was like visiting some souk or bazaar from a far-off land. Apart from the usual debris of young women such as discarded stockings and film-star magazines and those awful cigarettes girls everywhere now seemed to smoke, Iris had somehow accumulated a quantity of more unusual bedroom décor such as silk damask throws, Chinese paper lanterns, a comb with an elaborate ivory handle, and the most beautiful fox-fur stole. Diana didn’t dare ask how Iris how she had got all of these things – she suspected that she wouldn’t like the answer very much. Whilst Diana worked for most of the week at her (admittedly most enjoyable) job, Iris was at an expensive finishing school – the latest attempt by their poor mother to knock some sense into the silly girl, and likely to use up the last of what little money they had saved. Iris had been thrown out of her boarding school for ‘inappropriate behaviour’, and again Diana dreaded to think what that entailed.

Oh Mother. She was such a dear, kind woman but Diana wondered (impertinently she supposed) if what Iris needed more than money lavished on her air-headed ways wasn’t simply some tough love. Diana simply could not comprehend how two sisters could be innately so different – if she could earn a wage, and live up to her responsibilities, why could Iris not do the same? There had been nothing stopping her from working hard at school and achieving something, rather than frittering away her (admittedly considerable) talents on, from what had been whispered around the village, cocktails, jazz and dissolute living. Her mother was too proud to take up work, protesting that ladies of her class simply did not do such a thing, leaving Diana to bring home the bacon – of course, there was never any talk of Iris doing the same. Unless something changed, they would have to let the housekeeper go and live in much reduced circumstances, and Diana shuddered at the thought of her father seeing them in such a situation. No, she thought as she walked along the path to the airfield, not caring that aeroplanes circled just a few miles away; no, she could not let her family fall into ruin! Her sister was worrying wild to say the least, but she was not a total degenerate, and certainly Diana could not tolerate the thought of ladies of their standing living in a hovel.

Rain started to fall, spotting her grey worsted coat with little dark patches and speckling her skirts. Mud was caking her boots, but Diana cared very little about any of those things. She had never been particularly concerned about her appearance – being clean and tidy was good enough for her, and she was not as bothered as she should be when that didn’t happen. She cared a lot more about the state of her mind and soul than her body – she took pains to read widely, though avoiding the cheaper sort of novel that was so popular at that time. Unlike her sister, she made the effort to exercise the muscle of her mind that the Good Lord gave her, and was unruffled by any accusations that she was a blue-stocking. If she was, then that was better than being a debauched layabout! Diana paused for a moment to watch the aeroplanes soar above her. She had always admired their sleek birdlike forms, their neat tails, their graceful wings. How she longed to be as free as they were! Though they were but wood and metal, they were truly alive in their liberated existence – free to be what they were created to be, flying in the boundless blue. If only she could do that! Then shame crept into her heart. How selfish she was – she could not abandon her family simply on the whims of a foolish daydream! But still those feelings of being caged like a songbird persisted, and that night she could not sleep for thinking about them.

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