Page 10 of The Lost Story of Sofia Castello

9

LISBON, 1939

In the event of my untimely demise, various men scuttled like lice from the woodwork, eager to share tales of their encounters with me. Another fascinating aspect of being alive when everyone else thinks you’re dead is that you get to see what other people thought of you. What fascinated me the most – and when I say fascinated, I really mean infuriated and astounded – is how people I’d seen as mere extras in my story, people who wouldn’t have even warranted a line in my autobiography, suddenly claimed to have been a central character. Perhaps that’s more to do with my fame and their wanting to cash in, but still, it annoyed the hell out of me, not being able to tell the world that that’s not how it happened at all, and how little they meant to me.

Bing Jefferson is a perfect example. Bing was an American pilot for the Pan Am clipper line that began flying from New York to Lisbon in the summer of 1939. I can’t stress what a big deal those flying boats were back then, and I have to admit that I was absolutely fascinated by them. I’d seen photographs of them in the papers, but I hadn’t realised quite how huge they were until I saw one on the Tagus River – like a giant metal whale with wings! Given the technical challenges of having to land on water, and often in harbours dense with fog, the crew had to be the best of the best, so being a clipper pilot around town in Lisbon made one akin to a Hollywood star. And Bing Jefferson had the chiselled jaw and dazzling smile of a Hollywood star to boot, so his fame was assured.

By the late summer of 1939 when I first met him, I’d graduated from selling fish and singing in the Santo Antonio tavern and had secured a regular slot in the bar of the Hotel Tivoli on Lisbon’s swankiest boulevard, Avenida da Liberdade. The manager of the hotel had spotted me singing in the taberna and offered me the slot, and although the clientele in the swish bar with its chandeliers and cocktails were a lot easier to please, and the increase in income meant I could now afford to rent an apartment by Commercial Square, I missed the raucousness of the tavern and the banter with the audience.

Most of the Tivoli clientele were businessmen and their glamourous lady friends. So when Bing strode in, clad in his pilot’s uniform complete with the telltale gold lapel pin, all the female eyes in the room, and I dare say a couple of the male, swung his way. I was midway through singing a particularly emotional fado ballad, so I was less aware of his presence. It was only when the song came to an end and I was graciously receiving the audience’s applause that I noticed he’d sat down at a table close by the stage and was gazing up at me. I’d been hit on enough times by married men by then that my eyes were always instantly drawn to his ring finger. Seeing no ring and no companion, I returned his smile and gave him a swift nod before exiting the stage.

About ten minutes later, I was relaxing on the chaise in my dressing room, having a cigarette and practising blowing smoke rings, when there was a knock on my dressing-room door.

‘Come in,’ I called.

In walked the concierge, Francisco, holding a folded sheet of the hotel’s creamy thick writing paper. ‘You have some fan mail,’ he said with a grin.

‘Oh, not more,’ I quipped, putting the back of my hand to my brow in mock despair. Francisco was also from a small town in the north of the country, and I felt a natural affinity with him – far more so than with the uppity hotel guests.

I took the paper from him and began to read.

Your singing is divine , it said in Portuguese. Please will you join me for a drink. You are a wonderful carrot .

I frowned at the note. ‘Who is this from?’

‘A pilot in the bar.’

‘He called me a carrot!’ I showed Francisco the note, and he burst out laughing.

‘ Senhora , cenoura – it’s an easy mistake.’

‘Yes, if you’re a dummy,’ I replied. ‘But it is a wonderful opportunity for me to have some fun at his expense.’

Francisco grinned and raised his eyes heavenward. ‘Heavenly Father, please protect that poor soul from what’s about to hit him.’

I stood up and spritzed myself with scent.

Returning to the bar, I found the pilot still at his table but now with a bottle of wine and two glasses. My first thought was that he’d found another woman to call a wonderful carrot. But as soon as he saw me, he raised one of the glasses in my direction with a beaming grin.

‘You came!’ he said in English with a slow American drawl.

‘I did, but only out of pity and a touch of morbid curiosity,’ I replied, also in English, as I sat down.

‘Say what?’ He stared at me, eyes wide with shock.

‘I had to see what kind of man doesn’t know a woman from a root vegetable.’

‘What do you mean?’

I showed him his note. ‘A cenoura is a carrot.’

He burst out laughing. ‘Gee, I’m sorry. But, in my defence, I did just fly all the way across the Atlantic and I’m seriously deprived of sleep.’

‘Hmm, I’m not sure I’ll be taking a clipper flight any time soon,’ I quipped. ‘Who knows where we might end up.’

There was a moment’s silence, and I watched his face keenly, wondering if he’d pass my test. I cannot bear a man who can’t take a little gentle banter at his expense. I love it when they give it back too. It’s so much more fun than gushing platitudes. To my relief, he gave a hearty laugh.

‘OK, you got me.’ He threw his hands up in mock surrender. ‘It could have been worse though.’

‘Really? How?’ I widened my eyes in surprise.

‘I could have accidentally called you a potato. I feel like a carrot is a far more attractive vegetable.’

‘If I were you, I’d quit while you’re not even ahead and pour me a drink,’ I said.

‘Of course!’

While he poured us both a drink, I lit a cigarette and gazed around the bar. I was trying to look cool as a cucumber, but inside my pulse was quickening. With his square jaw, sandy hair and blue eyes, Bing was undeniably handsome, and he could take a joke and he knew how to fly a clipper! How could I not be excited?

We spent the next few hours talking effortlessly, although the conversation mainly revolved around Bing and his opinions and achievements; he only asked me a couple of cursory questions about myself. At the time, I wasn’t all that bothered. I was still so young and trying so hard to fit into a grown-up world. I didn’t yet have the life experience to fully flesh out the feisty, wise-cracking persona I was busy creating for myself. Hell, I was still a virgin – although not for long.

After I’d quizzed Bing endlessly about the clipper, he asked if I’d like to come and see it down in the harbour. Now that was an offer I really couldn’t refuse, so off we set, arm in arm, along the avenue. I guess it must have been about three in the morning and the city was finally quietening down. The trams had stopped running, so the streets felt deathly quiet without their constant rattle and bell ringing. Every so often, we’d hear a burst of music and laughter from the last of the night’s revellers, and I felt so happy as we strolled along. I’d seen enough of life’s dark underbelly by then to know that fairy tales were works of fiction – but still, on that balmy summer’s night, walking arm in arm with a clipper pilot after singing at the Tivoli, I allowed myself to imagine that maybe, just maybe, my fortunes really had changed, and that this was the start of my happily ever after. Oh, the irony, knowing what I do now about what was to come.

As soon as we reached the banks of the Tagus, the temperature dropped a little and the tiny hairs on my arms pricked up in the cool sea breeze. Bing quickly whisked off his jacket and placed it around my shoulders. It was such a simple gesture, yet it triggered a yearning in me that made me realise how long it had been since I’d felt taken care of. I’d become so accustomed to being the carer, for my mother and then myself. I have to admit that part of me began to melt.

We made our way through Commercial Square and past a man sitting on the ground playing the guitar. I thought for a moment of the guitarist at the Santo Antonio taberna, and I marvelled again at how much my life had changed. Finally, the bulky outline of the clipper on the water came into view. A gangplank had been lowered onto the dock, and a man in uniform stood guard at the end.

‘Good evening, Pedro,’ Bing said, causing Pedro to instantly tip his cap.

‘Good evening, Captain.’

Now, with hindsight and the wisdom of age, I can see that Pedro’s lack of surprise at Bing suddenly appearing with a woman on his arm in the middle of the night should have set alarm bells ringing, but I was so excited at the prospect of going on board, I couldn’t think straight. To my mind, this was going to be the closest I ever got to flying on a clipper.

We followed Pedro up the gangplank, and he opened the door in the side of the craft, then stepped aside.

‘Thank you.’ Bing took some money from his pocket and handed it to him, then ushered me inside. As he turned on a lamp, I let out a gasp. It was like stepping inside a luxury salon, complete with leather armchairs and gleaming wooden coffee tables.

‘This is amazing!’

‘You’re amazing.’ He stepped towards me and took hold of my hands.

‘Can I see the cockpit?’ I asked, too enraptured by the plane to pay attention to his advances.

‘Of course.’

He took me along a narrow passageway and up some stairs and there I was, inside a clipper cockpit. I gazed out of the window. The moonlight was forming a silvery path on the water like a magical runway. As a nineteen-year-old who’d never left her home country, the notion of flying across entire oceans and continents was entrancing to me.

‘It must be such an incredible experience, flying one of these.’

He nodded. ‘Take a seat.’

I sat down, and he showed me some of the controls. At one point, his hand brushed mine, and my skin prickled with goosebumps. I felt as if I was a character in a movie.

‘Shall we go get a drink?’ he asked softly after he’d given me the full inventory of the cockpit. I nodded and followed him back downstairs and into a bar.

‘This is more like a hotel than a plane!’ I exclaimed.

‘Sure is. There’s even a bed in one of the rooms. We call it the honeymoon suite.’ He gave me a look that was so charged, I felt as if my legs had turned to liquid. And then, just like that, we were kissing.

A couple of hours later, we emerged from the clipper into the pale dawn sunlight.

‘Thanks, Pedro,’ Bing said as we reached the bottom of the gangplank.

‘You’re welcome, Captain.’ Pedro winked at Bing but looked right through me like I didn’t exist.

Not that I cared. I’d lost my virginity to a clipper pilot and this was the start of a beautiful relationship, surely. As I gazed up at the wisps of cloud glowing like spun gold in the rays of the rising sun, it felt like the perfect backdrop for such a momentous occasion.

When we reached the street, a tram rumbled past, and one of the newsboys that rode them, yelling the day’s headlines, hopped off right in front of us, wiry as a monkey.

‘Germany has invaded Poland!’ he shouted before scampering off and hopping onto another tram travelling in the opposite direction.

Bing stared at me.

‘What does this mean?’ I asked, a chill passing right through me.

‘It means that Europe will soon be at war,’ he replied, ashen-faced, and just like that, the seeds of my fate were sown.