Spontoon Island
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Extracts from a Diary
by Amelia Bourne-Phipps
-edited by Simon Barber-
13 March, 1936 to 15 March, 1936


Wednesday 13th March, 1936

Well, at last I have my ticket to Pinafore Island, the main land mass of the Gilbert and Sullivan group. Fortunately we were told to arrange them ourselves – this morning I took my Macau passport down to the Shawnee Pacific Airpaths booking office at the docks and bought a ticket for “a friend” – made out in the name of Kim-Anh Soosay. Things are going well so far, as our Tutors only want the receipts for the money, and do not look at the tickets themselves. I have an open Return, with no specified date for the homeward leg.

Prudence and Beryl are taking a later flight, which is handy too since I do not really want to explain to Beryl why I have turned into a half-breed Siamese all of a sudden. If she radically changed her fur colouring, we would just shrug it off and assume she was off to pull a confidence trick somewhere – but I have a reputation to maintain. I am not too sure what it IS any more, but in general principles I would like to keep it (or Kim-Anh’s, anyway. This is getting confusing. I hope the passport Lars gave me was made from scratch and not stolen goods, I hate to think of running into myself someday.)

Although Shawnee Pacific do not run a direct service to the Gilberts, I only have to change once on Ile de Croissant in the French Sandwich Islands, and the ticket covers the transfer flight. That part of the trip should be fun; I have not been in an aircraft someone else flew since our return from Vostok. The rest of it I will just have to “play it by ear” as Beryl says, and she always manages very well. Then again, one must consider the size of her ears.

Molly has been working hard on her classwork, I am glad to say, and seems quietly confident. As our tutors keep telling us, at five hundred feet above the approaches to a busy airport there is no time to read reference books, and everything we need we must have in our heads. The past week our class has been very quiet, with Sunday our last relaxation for awhile. I am even sorting out some textbooks to take with me on the trip, though not the ones with my real name printed inside. Being detained at customs on suspicion of stealing from Amelia Bourne-Phipps’ library would be rather unfortunate.

Molly and I had rather a shock when we turned up for our regular evening at Madame Maxine’s; Madame M herself gently told us that our six months of training was almost up, unless we wished to purchase more. Very odd – I thought our Tutors were paying for this? Although some of them might not at all like us visiting here, they are a pragmatic lot and I assumed they sent us here for skills we were likely to need. I hardly liked to ask who our real benefactor was, as for one thing it would be awfully embarrassing to admit we have no idea, and for another – Madame M might not tell us. We can hardly ask her to be discreet about us and to “spill the beans” about other customers, after all.

Still, I made the best of it and asked for two applications’ worth of fur dyeing supplies to take away with me, which she granted. We helped out with some of her other customers transforming their fur; some are dancers and such who are starting rehearsals at this time of year, and finished their evening here looking suitably exotic.

I have been studying quite hard in the Kim-Anh “character”, and the two real Siamese who work here seem fairly happy with the performance as regards mannerisms and general style. They point out that the big hole in the story is that I speak only English and Spontoonie, while Macao is Portuguese – fortunately I am not going there, but to an Empire base where the language should not be a problem. Real Portuguese or Thai pilots are not too likely to show up there, after all.

Helen has been worrying quite a lot over my trip, the first time I have been entirely on my own abroad, let alone technically illegally – I will not want to involve Prudence or especially Beryl. Helen at least will be glad I have almost finished at Madame Maxine’s, as she shares our tutors’ dislike for the place and often asks me to take another shower after I return quite nicely scented. Still, she admits I need a passport right now, and Kim-Anh’s is what I have; it is only like learning a character in a play. I studied to play Shakespeare’s Juliet in the last term at St. Winifred’s, and this is more important for my career. (Beryl claims she played Madame Defarge in a very modernist Saint T’s play about the bloody excesses of the French Revolution; she was “red-hot on the guillotine action” but complains learning the knitting was hell.)

Thursday 14 th March, 1936

Dear Diary. It is always a mistake to make too many assumptions. When we were called out to settle another “Native revolt in First-Year Territory” as Maria quaintly puts it, my main thought was whether we would find Liberty Morgenstern half-submerged in a vat of used sump oil by Brigit Mulvaney or the other way around.

Actually it was nothing to do with their dorm at all, although Maria did find it hard to believe and insisted on checking exactly where that four were at the time.

For someone whose family are unrepentant Puritans, Florence Farmington seems to spend rather a lot of time completely “off her skull” as Beryl puts it. She was yelling and carrying on like a stage drunken sailor, having already broken one window and threatening to bite anyone who comes close. She has a good set of teeth, to be sure – but Maria grabbed her shoulders at arms’ length like a dockside crane, while I went in behind and practiced the Roedean Nerve Pinch. It worked jolly well, and she collapsed like a roll of carpet.

While Molly went running off to get our Matron, I grilled the rest of her dorm, who shamefacedly produced an opened Nootnops Blue bottle. The odd thing is, it was still half full, and they had each had exactly one glass (I made certain to examine the glasses carefully.) None of the other three seem at all affected, only scared, so it can hardly be “spiked” with anything more potent. As Missy K quite truthfully told us the first time, it is a non-alcoholic drink, whatever else is in it. Otherwise Florence would hardly have tried it.

When not passed out or raving drunk, Florence is quite a model student and started off as the head of her dorm. I am not sure, but I doubt this year’s class has enough students with the right interests to make a full dorm to match Prudence’s – if it had, at least Florence’s classmates Coral Fensbury and Phillipa DeGama would be candidates. Coral was rather tearfully telling me how wonderful and beautiful a leader Florence had been, until she lost all her dorm’s points while they were de-greasing engine blocks in their first term.

I think I see a pattern here. When Mrs. Oelabe arrived, I had to confess about the incident last week with the fabric dope – and pointed out how little Nootnops Blue Florence actually had. Our Matron nodded thoughtfully as we laid Florence out on the bed, and commented that some people are hugely over-sensitive to certain chemicals. I know Maria’s nose breaks out in blotches if she eats strawberries, even though she says she loves the taste and the smell.

Molly whispered that it was a good thing everyone else was not like that – her Father could hardly have made the family rich if the customers only needed to buy one bottle a year. I must have Words with her about that, it is hardly funny. Well, I can see the funny side of it, but not for Florence. When Beryl finds out, I expect she will try to sell her a Great War respirator and gas cape against dangerous boot-polish fumes – and plant open saucers of fabric dope around Florence’s room till she gives in and buys it. Molly’s family is not the only one who have offered to provide customers “protection” that is more threatening than useful.

Friday 15th March, 1936

Farewell to Molly, Helen and Maria! A big Sikorski left at lunchtime today with them and the other Manila-bound students onboard, determined to return as proudly licensed pilots. As they used to say in classical times, “return with your shield or carried on it” – that is, they are primed and eager to see what the examiners throw at them, but our Tutors warn that commercial aviation standards are high and getting tougher by the year.

Maria has been warned to keep her snout firmly shut about what folk do in the Italian exams. I spent the day studying hard, the last time I will have access to all my books. Tomorrow morning I have arranged to meet Saimmi here, and she will help me dye my fur in Siamese style hopefully without our Tutors finding out. I don’t know how I’ll manage changing my fur on my own on the return trip, but I will cross that bridge when I come to it. Of course, I can hardly carry someone else’s diary through Customs, in case I am searched – Molly speaks from great experience when she says Customs Officers often unravel a carefully built story from just one carelessly loose thread of fact. Arriving with no luggage at all would be suspicious (I need a respectable “Euro” costume and my flying kit at least) but will make sure everything is as unremarkable as possible.

So, I will have to take a blank notebook and trust to luck, pluck and fast thinking. They are awaiting Amelia Bourne-Phipps at the Pinafore Island Empire Flying Test School – then the hard work will begin. First, I have to get there!


(And she did – as she described in “Flying Solo”.)

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