“Aye, well! I don’t ken them all myself. Some of the lads are new.” I tried not to think about the old ones, the missing ones. “The young man I came in with, fair hair and fox’s face, that’s Jamie Stuart. He’s got a heart of gold. You have any trouble with the others, Louisa, you take it straight to Jamie and he’ll put it right. He’s a pilot, the commander for B-Flight. Two sections, Pimms and Madeira, six aircraft, eighteen men. They take him pretty seriously.”

Did they? They used to. Silver still seemed to take him seriously.

“His best mate is his navigator, the Prince Charming with the good manners,” I added. “David Silvermont. He plays the fiddle, proper classical stuff—you’ll like him too. They get called Silver and Scotty.”

“Aren’t they all Scotty?” Louisa asked.

“Jamie’s the only Scot in the squadron,” I said, keeping my voice down. “The RAF squadrons come from all over. Aw, look at them. They’re like Nan’s bairns, her own babies. She doesn’t even ken half of them—those Aussie lads are all new.”

“Chip Wingate, the American, he’s her favorite,” Phyllis said. “He doesn’t need to be here: the USA is neutral, they haven’t entered the war. But he came anyway. She thinks he’s the most heroic of the bunch.”

Jane rapped her fingernails against her teacup.

“I don’t understand,” she said, “how anyone fighting the principles of Nazism, which envisions a master race that does not include the Negro, can articulate a complaint against a colored person visiting a free establishment and not choke on his own hypocrisy.”

I shrugged. “Everybody thinks the world belongs to them. The Scots and the English aren’t any better. Just different. Chip’s a bit of a lad, never shuts up, always looking for a fight. But look. See why Nan loves him?”

He had his silvery toothbrush head down on the bar with his chin resting on his hands, and he was blinking up at Mrs. Campbell like a loving pup. She swiped at him with a dishcloth. He was minding her rules, but he was making her sorry.

Louisa gave a wee superior sniff and looked away.

“Chip’s the gunner for Jamie and Silver now,” Phyllis said. “They’ve all swapped round. They had a rough time this month.” She yawned, and added anxiously, “We ought to introduce them by their proper ranks, you know. Scotty’s got a name a mile long, the Honorable James Gordon Erskine Murray Beaufort-Stuart. Volunteer McEwen is much too familiar with him.”

“Och, he’s no’ fussed about his name!” I protested. “And I’ve known him longer than you. Since he was in school. I knew his family from before the war.”