The Boy with Wings
Berta Ruck
Adventure Romance
Published 1915
Synopsis
Gwenna Williams is a spirited young Welsh woman who leaves her rural homeland for London on the eve of World War I, and becomes captivated by the emerging world of aviation and its daring pilots. At a flying meet, Gwenna meets Paul Dampier, a charismatic pilot who becomes the focus of her youthful dreams of love and adventure. This sets in motion a romance that weaves through London society, amid the looming shadow of global conflict. Gwenna and her working-class friends have to navigate the stifling class dynamics of early twentieth-century England, while her admiration for the freedom represented by airplanes deepens into genuine affection for Paul. The novel is richly set against the historical backdrop of pre-war and wartime England, capturing both the exhilaration of early flight and the disruption of ordinary life by war. This also highlights the deep contrast between conventional expectations of women during this period and the potential aspirations created by the modernizing world.
Novel Excerpt
Now, just imagine that! thought the country girl. Here it was already half-past ten at night; but he was going on to meet some more people somewhere else. This wonderful party, which had marked an epoch in her life, was nothing to him; it was just the beginning of the evening. And, after days in the skies, all his evenings were like this! Hadn’t Mrs. Smith said when he came in, “We know you are besieged with invitations?” Oh, the inconceivably interesting life that was his! Why, why was Gwenna nothing but a girl, a creature who, even nowadays, had to stay within the circumscribed limits where she was put, who could not see or be or do anything, really! Might as well be born a tortoise….
Here the voice of Mr. Hugo Swayne (to which she’d paid scant attention so far) said something about taking Miss Long and her friend up to Hampstead first, and that Paul could come along.
Gwenna, enraptured, discovered that this meant in his, Mr. Swayne’s, car. The four of them were to motor up to her and Leslie’s Club together. All that lovely long drive?
But though “lovely,” that journey back to Hampstead, speeding through the broad, uncrowded streets that the lights showed smooth and polished as a ballroom floor, with the giant shadows of plane-tree leaves a-dance upon the pavement—that journey was unbelievably, relentlessly short.
Mr. Swayne seemed to tear along! He was driving, with Leslie, gay and talkative and teasing, beside him in front. The younger girl sat behind with his cousin. The Airman was hatless; and he wore a light loose overcoat of which the big sleeve brushed the black satin of Gwenna’s wrap.
“Warm enough?” he asked, gently, and (as carefully as if she’d been some old invalid, she thought) he tucked a rug about her. Eagerly Gwenna longed for him to return to that absorbing question he’d put to her at the dinner-table. But there seemed scarcely time to say a single word before, with a jarring of brakes, the car drew up in the slanting road before the big square block of the Club. The arc-lights blazed into the depths of the tall chestnut-trees beside the street, while the four young people stood for a moment clustered together on the asphalt walk before the glass-porch.
“All over now,” thought Gwenna with quite a ridiculously sharp little pang as good-nights and good-byes were said.