by Tessa Arlen
“Yes, he borrowed the idea from Air Raid Precautions—siren suits are all the rage in London these days!”
“I could have sworn you were on your way to stoke the church boiler.” Pursed lips and regretful eyebrows as she gave my uniform a second chance. “It’s a shame they couldn’t have come up with something really smart like the Auxiliary Territorial Service: the Bradley girls look smashing in theirs.”
The last thing I needed was comparisons to the wonderful Bradley sisters, who were having the time of their lives up in London with their permanent waves and Elizabeth Arden Victory Red lipstick. While they were driving high-ranking officers in and out of the Admiralty, I was clumping about the village in my size nines as Little Buffenden’s first ARP warden.
“Have you secured the blackout in your cottage, Mrs. Glossop? We must be even more careful now with our new American airfield—”
“I most certainly have, Miss Redfern—I do it before I leave the house in the morning.” She turned away to lock the door of her tobacconist and sweet shop, which doubles as Little Buffenden’s post office, and I mentally flipped to the third page of my ARP training manual: “Section 2A: On Dealing with Difficult Members of the Public: Remember an ARP warden holds a legal position of authority. Speak in a firm tone and engage eye contact!”
I am not naturally assertive, but I had learned a thing or two in my weeks of training in London. I looked directly into Mrs. Glossop’s fierce little eyes and held her gaze.
“I am sure you don’t want me knocking on your door when you are enjoying your evening cocoa,” I said with as much severity as I am capable of, and, summoning a more convincing tone of command: “We can check your blackout right now . . .” I extended my left arm in the direction of her cottage at the bottom of the High Street as if I were directing traffic.
And, to my amazement, all she came up with was a retaliatory, “That dog should be on a lead,” as she put her shop keys into her handbag and snapped it shut before falling into step beside me. “Not one aircraft, ours or theirs, has flown over our village since the start of the war. But I’m sure I don’t want to be the cause of our being bombed.”
I remembered the smoking rubble of East End Clegg Street when I had last seen it in the early hours of this morning. “You wouldn’t believe what one five-hundred-pound German bomb could do to our little village, Mrs. Glossop,” I said as we walked down our High Street, renowned for its pretty Georgian shop fronts and bow windows.
Even with the neglect of wartime, it is the sort of village that looks perfect at Christmas, with a dusting of snow, and carol singers exhaling breathy clouds as they sing “Silent Night” on the church porch.
“All this”—I waved at an ancient stone horse trough and the white verandah of the Edwardian cricket pavilion on the edge of the village green—“would be gone in a flash, reduced to blackened timbers and broken brick, just because a Luftwaffe pilot saw a spark of light on his way home and ditched his last bomb.” I didn’t belabor the point by adding that the new American airfield would increase our chances of an air raid by eighty percent—my job is not to cause panic.
She gave me a quick sideways glance, her face disbelieving. Mrs. Glossop is the one who informs in our village, not girls with a mere two weeks of ARP training. “I am surprised that your grandmother agreed to your taking on this job: walking around the village on your own at night. That little dog will be no protection when the place is swarming with American airmen.” She opened the diminutive white gate into the postage stamp of her front garden.
“I am not sure there will be enough of them to ‘swarm,’ Mrs. Glossop, and my uncle Ambrose still talks about his years in New York as his happiest. I think a change might wake us up a bit!” My suggestion, designed to jolly her along, was instantly shot down by a pitying look.
“Bert Pritchard says he won’t serve them in the Rose and Crown. He says he had more than enough of them in the last war.” I bit the inside of my cheeks to stop myself from smiling. Bert Pritchard, with his ebullient welcome and his lavish mustache, was a particularly good businessman. He would remember the day the American Army Air Force arrived in Little Buffenden as heaven-sent when he balanced his account books a month from now. I followed Mrs. Glossop up the crazy paving path between the rigid lines of vegetables growing in her victory garden.
“I feel sorry for anyone who has a daughter in this village, because from what I hear, those Americans are girl-mad. That’s what Mrs. Wantage told me. Her sister’s daughter is seeing a Yank, and she has become a right handful: out all hours of the night and talks back something shocking if she’s asked to do the slightest thing around the house.”
Mrs. Glossop pushed open her front door and looked over her shoulder. “Stay,” she commanded, and Bess dropped to the ground and lay arrow straight, her long nose resting on the path well ahead of her front paws. She knew Mrs. Glossop didn’t appreciate dogs, and her tabby was an old battle-scarred tom with a short fuse.
It was dark in the narrow hall, and I could see, even from where I was standing, the last rays of a subdued sunset through the uncovered front parlor window. “Blackout before electric light,” I quoted from my ARP manual as she lifted her hand to the switch on the wall.
“I could have sworn I closed them before I left this morning.” Mrs. Glossop darted to the window and dragged a heavy curtain across it. “There now, that’s better—fits like a glove!” She gave it a final twitch to cover a chink in the corner.
I was careful not to catch her eye. “I hope you are coming to our talk in the village hall on air-raid preparedness. We are going to organize the best place for everyone to go to for shelter—”
“I was planning on an evening of bingo.”
“Oh good, come half an hour early. Six o’clock, then?” I was given a reluctant but acquiescing nod and heard her sigh as she followed me back to her front door.
“It’s a crying shame your grandfather had to give up his house and all his land for these Americans and their airfield—it’s not as if your family didn’t lose enough in the last one.” She meant of course the death of both my parents: Clive Redfern, in the Great War, and my mother at its end, just two days after my arrival. Mine was not an unusual fate for my generation: I was the only war orphan in our village, but one of many in England. I couldn’t remember my parents of course, but they were very much alive in my heart. My grandparents had made sure of that by sharing their memories of my parents as I was growing up: my father, Clive, was a quiet man with a wicked sense of humor that surprised those who did not know him, and my mother, Olivia, had been described by Granny as a warm, vibrant young woman whom she had loved as if she were her own.
“Grandad didn’t give up all of his land, Mrs. Glossop, just enough for the airfield. And Reaches is on loan for the duration. Please don’t forget the blackout in the rest of the house before you turn on any lights.” I lifted my hand to the front-door latch.
“You heard about the Chamberses’ eldest, then, about Brian?” My hand dropped from the handle and Mrs. Glossop nodded—she had me at last. But there was no pleasure in her being the first to break bad news; her deep-set eyes were sorrowful.
“They sent a telegram after you left for London—a week last Tuesday it was.” She pressed her lips together for a moment before she continued. “That’s both their boys lost in this bloomin’ war. Mrs. Chambers went into shock when they told her. She still doesn’t seem right to me.”
I stood there like a stricken fool with a lump filling my throat. One summer when I was a gawky and self-conscious fourteen-year-old, at home for the holidays from school, I had a brief crush on Brian. But then everyone loved Brian Chambers; he was the kindest and brightest boy in our village, with a wholehearted zest for life. I swallowed hard so I could ask, “Where?”
“North Africa—some terrible place with an unpronounceable name—Allymain, is it?”
“El A
lamein—yes, I heard the casualties were pretty bad. Poor Doreen, she must be heartbroken; they only got engaged at Easter, didn’t they?”
“I am quite sure Doreen Newcombe will survive Brian’s passing. His parents are the ones we should pity. I doubt his mother will pull through.” The stuffy corridor felt oppressive. I lifted my hand to the door latch again. “And Mr. Edgar, as runs the Wheatsheaf, got his call-up papers a week ago—he must be all of forty. I dread to imagine . . .”
But what Mrs. Glossop dreaded to imagine would remain unheard, for all I could see of Bess as I stepped out onto the path was her round, feathery bottom. She was head-deep in Mrs. Glossop’s victory garden.
“Oh my goodness.” I turned to face a woman who believes a dog’s place is on a chain attached to its kennel and put my hands on my hips to block her view of flying earth. “Is that the time?” I prayed that the deepening dusk would prevent those sharp eyes from seeing the havoc created in neat rows of carrots and cabbages. “I must run.” But I didn’t move. I stayed there at the bottom of the path to prevent her from following me to the gate.
She gave me a look of disgusted pity and closed her door, leaving me to lift Bess out of a sizable hole. I tucked her under my arm and replanted parsnips as fast as I could with one hand, thumping the earth firm around their wilting tops. Then I made off down the High Street, dusting dirt from Bess’s muzzle as we went. She still had half a carrot clamped between her teeth. “How often do I have to tell you not to dig? No dig-ging!” I kissed her grubby nose. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, you might as well have the carrot.” I could feel her stump of a tail stirring in agreement.
TWO
I had said, “Hullo, yes, it’s lovely to be back, and please secure your blackout,” to half of Little Buffenden before I circled back into the village at half past eleven that night. We climbed the hill to the church at its crest and down again to the foot of Reaches Lane and the lodge where we now live. Out of habit, Bess ran on up the lane in the direction of our old farmhouse. The night was warm: lilies and pinks in the vicarage garden scented the serene air, and I was more than happy to follow her as she ran low-backed and silent in the grass-filled ditch on a hunt for rabbits. We avoided the old cart track to the new airfield: acres of concrete, a petrol dump, airplane hangars, and Nissen huts now populated beech-fringed pastures where once cows had grazed. Instead we crossed the cattle grid that separated the lane from the drive, and our old stone house with its deep gables came into view, sitting high on the land and looking out over the rolling hills of the Chilterns.
The finest feature of Reaches’ many simple beauties is its stone-mullioned leaded-glass windows. Out of which I was horrified to see bright light shining onto the unkempt flower beds under the window of my grandfather’s old study.
I trotted up the path, lifted the forged-iron knocker, and pounded on the front door. Who on earth had left a light on? I counted to five before I banged again more energetically. Silence. Stepping back onto the path, I looked up at the darkened house. The only light was the one beaming out of the study. Mrs. Wantage must have left it on when she cleaned this morning. I trod through the weed-filled flower bed to the offending window, unbuckled the strap on my helmet, tipped it back on my head, and angled my cheek against the glass. The room was quite empty, and so was the hall beyond.
Seething at the utter carelessness of a village that had never given a serious thought to air raids since war had been declared, I continued around to the south side of the house. All its windows reflected the opaque black of a moonless sky. There was a key under the boot scraper outside the kitchen door. I could at least switch off the light, even if I didn’t solve the mystery of who had left it on.
As I came through the open gate into the dense black of the kitchen courtyard, I paused to get my bearings, and in that split second thought I heard a rasping, mechanical double click.
I was halfway across the yard when the distinct aroma of a freshly lit cigarette drifted toward me on the night air. In the time it took to register that I was not alone in this hedged-in dark place, a strong hand clamped down on my shoulder and jerked me backward. My helmet went flying as a grip of iron tightened on my upper arm. Adrenaline prickled up the backs of my legs and my heart bounded up into my throat. Only one thought flashed into my mind: German paratroopers—we had been invaded!
I resisted a panicky impulse to struggle free and run for safety: after the blood, toil, and tears of the last three years, I would go down fighting—or he would. I moved sideways into him, caught hold of his belt, and slid his weight over my hip to land him heavily on the ground. There was a satisfying grunt of pain and surprise from my German paratrooper.
I had been more startled than scared when he had grabbed me in the dark, but now my legs felt as useless as wet wool. Run, I told myself, run fast! I spun on my heel, praying that I could outdistance him and sound the alarm before he came after me. I was almost through the wicket gate when I heard a string of profanity: “Goddam it . . . goddam it to hell . . .” Blasphemy gave way to cruder Anglo-Saxon epithets of the kind no one I know uses. I recognized the accent immediately, and it wasn’t German.
I turned back to my attacker, and in the dull light of my blackout torch, I saw a man in American uniform getting to his feet. Now it was my turn to curse. And I chose my old school friend Lucy’s brother, Ted, as the target for my “damns” and “bloody hells.” On a wet spring break from school he had taught us five basic judo moves, one of which I had played out just now with exemplary dedication to his instruction.
The American straightened up, spanking dust off his uniform trousers as I walked back to him, my cheeks flame red with embarrassment, apologies stuttering from my lips. “I am so—”
“Whoa, whoa, hold it, son.” He was laughing as he lifted both arms in mock surrender. “I thought for a moment our airfield was under attack. I had no idea how well trained the local Home Guard was.”
“I’m just the local air-raid warden. Look, I’m most frightfully sorry . . .”
He reached out a hand and turned my torch toward my face. I heard a low whistle. “Well, I’ll be damned. I can’t believe I was just thrown by a girl—who taught you judo? Are all Englishwomen this feisty?” I took back my torch and, in its light, I watched him pick up his cap and slap it against his thigh before putting it back on his head. It took him a while to get it set the way he liked it. It’s interesting how male vanity emerges in the most unlikely situations.
“Get you in action and England wouldn’t need help from us to win this war.” He tugged the peak of his cap a little to the right and then gave me his full attention. “What did you say you were doing here?”
Indignation washed away embarrassment. Why, for heaven’s sake, hadn’t he asked me what I was doing here before launching in with the heavy-handed rough stuff?
I drew myself up. “I’m assuming you are American Army Air Force?”
He said something about the name and number of his fighter squadron. “We call our wing the ‘Midnight Raiders.’”
“Oh really? Then I would have thought you would know something about blackout. The study window of this house is leaking light, which can be seen quite easily from up there.” I waved a hand at the night sky in case he didn’t know where it was.
He closed the distance between us. He was tall, over six feet, but all Americans are tall, aren’t they? It was difficult to see his face under the peak of his cap; the closest feature in my line of vision was his mouth, smiling widely over teeth of film-star-white evenness.
“Perhaps we had better introduce ourselves. I’m Lieutenant”— he pronounced his rank as lew-tenant—“Griff O’Neal.”
It was at this moment that Bess decided to show up; she burst out of the shrubbery and threw herself at the lieutenant’s beautifully pressed trousers. She was so pleased with him that she threw back her head and howled a long, melodic warble. The lieutenant crouched do
wn and rumpled her ears with both hands. “Would you look at these ears? Why no tail—is he a mutt?” Bess was prancing on her short hind legs trying to cover his face in kisses.
“A what? No! She is a Welsh herding dog.”
“She’s a cutie—what’s her name?”
“The blackout,” was the only conversation I was prepared to have with this man.
He straightened up. “So, let’s go into the house and see about that light you’re so worried about.” He walked ahead of me, Bess running back and forth between us barking in delight, past a car parked under the lee of the courtyard hedge: it was long and low, undoubtedly a sports model.
“Nice car,” I muttered to cover how awkward I felt at being frightened into using violence by a man who had every right to be here.
“Yeah, got it as soon as I arrived; it’s an Alvis 4.3 liter with a special drop-head coupe.”
My grandfather still drove his old 1928 Humber Tourer and I knew nothing about it other than on cold mornings it took a lot of cranking to get it started. I found this thing’s shiny newness and size even more irritating than the lieutenant’s facetious attitude. “Going to be hard to run it on petrol rationing,” I said before I could stop myself. As soon as he had secured the study window, I would explain British blackout procedures to this American and leave.
“Great old house, isn’t it?” he said as we crossed the paneled hall with its carved oak staircase soaring to the floors above. “Apparently, it’s hundreds of years old—goes back to the civil war.” He laughed. “Yours, of course, not ours.”
Bess and I went ahead of him to my grandfather’s study. I pointed to the blackout curtain hanging at the edge of the window. “Every window in every room in this house, Lieutenant O’Neal, has a blackout curtain. Please draw them before you switch on any lights and secure them at the edge of the sill with these grommets. Like this.” I had unconsciously adopted the clipped tone of the village schoolteacher, Mrs. Ritchie. “We issue one warning. After that it is a fine of ten shillings.”