by Clare Flynn
She woke, bathed in sweat, gasping for breath as though she had run across those empty, sun-scorched, Indian fields again. Rolling onto her side, she wiped her forehead and took deep gulps of air as her heart thumped against her ribs.
If Roger had been here he would have held her in his arms until her breathing returned to normal. Gwen had never been able to tell him what she dreamed about, so he would say, ‘Another bad dream, darling?’ and stroke her hair until she calmed. But Roger wasn’t here. Something inside made her believe he wouldn’t ever come back. Not this time. This time his departure had felt final. That was why she had not wanted to linger saying goodbye in the station forecourt, unwilling for him to recognise the fear, not wanting to transfer that fear to him. Behaving as though she was seeing him off to London from the station on a normal day – a charade to convince herself that he would come back to her.
Gwen dragged herself up the bed and leaned back against the pillows, drawing her knees up in front of her. If only she had been able to tell her husband how she really felt, to open herself up to him. She couldn’t afford to be so exposed: to take such a risk, to allow the possibility of feeling such pain again. Instead she wore a carapace of cheerfulness and smiled through the pain. There was going to be all the more need for that now if Roger wasn’t coming back. She would have to make a life for herself, scrape a future out of this mess. Smile through her tears at the world. Put on a brave face. Be practical. Try to make a difference. Until the need for that had passed and she could swallow down the codeine or jump off the top of Beachy Head and join Alfie again.
The telephone was ringing as Gwen came downstairs. She picked it up with a sense of dread, fearing a summons to attend the aftermath of another bombing. But there had been no sign of planes overhead and she’d heard no explosions.
It was Roger’s mother. Maud Collingwood was a kind-hearted contrast to Gwen’s own mother, dead for more than twenty years, and Gwen was fond of her mother-in-law. Now in her early sixties she had lost her husband to the last war. A stalwart of the Women’s Institute and, since war broke out, the WVS, she was perennially cheerful and bursting with energy.
‘Darling, thank heavens you’ve answered. How are you? I’ve been worried. When are you coming to Biddington? Everything’s ready – I’m putting you in the little room at the back as it’s cosier and gets the morning sun. Quieter there too so you won’t hear the milkman. Do you know, darling, he’s joined the LDV and he’s doing his round at four in the morning to make more time for his duties. Terribly patriotic but I do hate being woken by all that rattling.’
As she took a breath, Gwen managed to get a greeting in at last.
‘When are you coming? I’ve been anxious about you all on your own over there. Is it true what I read in the paper that they’ve been bombing Eastbourne? Do you think it was a mistake? Surely they can’t have meant to drop bombs there? I thought the seaside would be safe.’
Gwen swallowed and said, ‘It was probably a one-off. A practice run. No need to worry. Look, I can’t get away, Maud, much as I’d love to see you.’
‘Why ever not? Roger told me I was to be most insistent. The paper didn’t give any details about the bombs so I’ve been ringing and ringing all morning and when there was no answer you can imagine I was worried sick. Miss Brown at the telephone exchange is fed up with me trying your line all morning.’
‘I’m perfectly fine, Maud. Quite safe up here at the top of the town. I saw all the damage though. Houses flattened. An elderly man died. Another is in the Princess Alice and it doesn’t look good for him. And so many injured.’
‘Shocking. Then you absolutely must get out.’
Gwen twirled the telephone cord around her finger. ‘I can’t leave. I’m needed here. We’re already short-handed and after what happened yesterday we’ll probably be even shorter as more people leave town.’
‘But why you? Someone else could do it. Roger was emphatic that I try to persuade you.’
Gwen smiled. ‘Try to persuade me? So he realised I wasn’t going to budge.’
‘Do be sensible, darling.’
‘It’s easier for me to stay than it is for the women with children. Besides, Maud, I want to stay.’
The operator’s voice broke into the call. ‘Still on the line, Mrs Collingwood?’
‘Yes, I am,’ said Maud. ‘And I don’t like to be interrupted. This is an important call.’
‘Just doing my job. Need to keep the lines open.’
‘I think we’re done now. I do have to dash, Maud,’ said Gwen. ‘Need to get some supper on.’
‘Can’t Mrs Woods do that?’
‘She’s gone. Back to her son’s in Hailsham.’
There was a long sigh at the other end of the line. ‘But, Gwen, darling, you’re surely not thinking of cooking for yourself?’
Gwen bristled. ‘I’m not completely helpless, Maud. Please let’s close the subject. I’m staying put.’
‘But I promised Roger.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll tell him you did your best but I dug my heels in. He won’t blame you. He knows what I’m like. We have been married for fifteen years!’
‘Perhaps I should come and join you there. I could help out too.’
Gwen didn’t want that. Having Maud to stay for a few days was always a pleasure but to have her mother-in-law under the same roof for an indefinite period was not an enticing prospect. ‘Out of the question, I’m afraid.’ She searched around for a reason. ‘The town is off limits. You need a permit to come and go now as it’s classified as a garrison town.’
‘Surely not?’
‘I don’t make the rules, Maud. Anyway, you’re much better off at home in Biddington, What would the WVS there do without you to organise them? Please don’t worry about me. This place is a ghost town. I’ll write every few days.’
‘Have you had any news of Roger?’ Maud’s tone was light – trying not to convey anxiety about her son.
‘No, but he warned me not to expect any. It’s all very hush-hush. I don’t even know where they’ve sent him or what he’s doing there.’ She twiddled the telephone cord again, weary of putting on a brave face, tired of trying to be strong. She wanted to yell, Don’t you think I don’t worry? Every minute of every day? She breathed in slowly and said in her chirpiest voice, ‘Roger will be fine, wherever he is. I try not to let myself wonder about what he might be doing. He’s a strong man and he’s always been able to look after himself. He told me not to worry and that he’d come home safely. Roger never breaks a promise.’ She said the words, knowing them to be a white lie and remembering how at the station he had feared he might not survive the war. She hoped Maud couldn’t hear the tremor in her voice.
‘You’re a strong woman yourself, Gwen, darling. Remember if things get too much and you change your mind there’s always a welcome for you here.’
When she’d replaced the receiver, Gwen sank into a chair. Anxiety about Roger mixed with relief that she had got the conversation with Maud out of the way and managed to hold her ground. She would never admit to her mother-in-law that she worried all the time about him. It was the not knowing that was so hard. Listening to the wireless and reading the newspaper she was unable to know if the triumphs or setbacks reported were connected to him. He had prepared her – warning her it would be a long time before she would hear from him, possibly the entire duration of the war, but that made it no easier. It didn’t stop the pain. If she were to be with Maud they would each reinforce the other’s anxieties. Here alone, she hoped she would be occupied with war-work.
Joining Up
Toronto
The queue at the recruiting office was already lengthy when Jim arrived soon after it opened. Nearly a year into the war, he’d expected to be one of only a few.
There were forms to be completed, a doctor’s examination, a physical fitness test and an interview with a recruiting panel. Filling in his personal details on one of the forms, Jim’s hand hesitated at the section on n
ext of kin. The overhead fan twirled slowly, ineffective against the stuffiness of the room. For a moment he thought of writing “None”, then pictured his mother, strained and thin with worry. He couldn’t protect her from pain that may lie ahead and she had a right to know if her son were to die. Besides, there’d be a payment if he were killed. It would be selfish of him to let that windfall go to waste. He pictured her opening the telegram, reading it, then letting it fall onto the table, tears welling. His father would jump up to comfort her, wrapping her in his arms, before turning, his face disfigured by anger and grief, upon Walt. “This is all your fault,” he’d shout, and Walt would hang his head in shame. Jim held his breath, moved his pen across the paper, wrote his mother’s name and signed his own at the bottom of the page. It was done now.
Perhaps it was because of the events of the past few days, but the nerves Jim would normally have felt at the prospect of being grilled by men in uniform were replaced by fatalism. He no longer gave a damn what happened to him.
Many of the would-be recruits were desperate for the King’s shilling – or in this case the dollar-a-day pay and three square meals, but the army wasn’t greeting everyone with open arms. Many fell by the wayside after the medical once-over. The man in front of Jim, a smoker with a hacking cough, was shown the door. Flat feet and bad teeth saw off a few more and the fitness tests ruled out a large number of pale-faced weaklings accustomed only to desk work, or coming from the ranks of the unemployed and undernourished.
Jim’s muscular body, height and the strength honed by years of labouring on the family farm, meant he sailed through the physical tests. The interview which followed took less than a minute.
‘Why do you want to join up?’ a man with stripes on his sleeve barked at Jim.
‘I want to serve King and country.’
‘We need farmers more than we need soldiers.’
Jim said nothing.
‘Any soldiers in the family?’
‘My father served in the last war.’
‘And he expects you to serve in this one?’
Before Jim could answer, the man stamped his form, handed it back to Jim, and shouted, ‘Next!’
Jim looked at the piece of paper as he left the office. He’d passed. The following morning he was to report to barracks, where he would be issued with uniform and become a serving member of the Second Canadian Infantry Division. Feeling numb, he was unable to care that he’d signed his life away. He doubted he would care about anything again after what Walt and Alice had done to him. His emotions had been eviscerated like ripping the guts from a slaughtered chicken.
Jim’s last evening as a civilian was spent in a picture house, away from the beverage rooms and brothels of Toronto. In the dark of the cinema he slumped deep in his seat, eyes fixed on the screen as the newsreels played. The images flowed together: a collage of ships and planes, falling bombs and shattered buildings, English people gathered in the London Underground, singing as bombs rained down upon the city above them, and the brave young pilots of the RAF battled the Luftwaffe over the fields of southern England. Images of war and destruction were played out against an accompanying soundtrack of chirpy music and a commentary voiced by an upbeat American who spoke of the war as if it were the World Series.
The main feature began. At the ticket booth he’d hesitated, torn between My Favourite Wife and The Grapes of Wrath, but had decided the travails of itinerant farm workers were too close to home. The antics of Cary Grant, Irene Dunne and Randolph Scott were causing great hilarity among the audience but did little to raise Jim’s spirits. Grant was playing a man who had accidentally ended up with two wives, while Jim had failed spectacularly in his efforts to acquire just one. He stared at the screen, defying the actors to make him crack a smile. But such is the power of moving pictures that by the time the characters lined up in front of a judge, trying to untangle the mess they had woven, Jim heard laughter and realised it was coming from him.
As he left the movie theatre, a weight descended on him again, and yet underneath it something had lifted in his chest. Life would go on. Life must go on… unless the war had other plans for him. He even hoped it had. In the meantime he determined that Walt and Alice would no longer inhabit all his waking thoughts. He would not let them. They had stolen his future and tainted his past but the present would be his alone.
The following weeks passed in a blur of drilling, eating and sleeping. Jim kept himself to himself, answering when spoken to but making little effort to ingratiate himself with his fellow recruits. He liked wearing uniform, liked the anonymity it granted him, liked the way he could become almost invisible.
Not long after he’d signed up, he found himself on a troop carrier, due to sail from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Liverpool, England. Before the war, the ship had been a luxury transatlantic liner, comfortably housing around a thousand passengers, but now it was crammed to the gunwales with five thousand troops.
As they left port the deck was crowded, everyone wanting to catch a last glimpse of Canada, knowing they might never see home again.
Regardless of what happened in the war, he swore he would never return. If the Germans didn’t get him he’d stay in England – or move to the United States. He’d had enough of Canada.
Jim found out he was bunking side-by-side with other soldiers on the bottom of the now-drained swimming pool. Every available corner of the ship had been used to squeeze in sleeping space. The men were squashed, pressed up against each other so that Jim, if he were able to sleep at all, was often woken when the man next to him rolled over in his sleep. The dormitory smelled stale and sweaty, undercut with a lingering whiff of chlorine. Meals were no better. With so many mouths to feed, the strain on the kitchens was such that the troops were limited to two meals a day on short rations and were obliged to stand queuing for long periods.
Jim leaned against the ship’s railings, puffing experimentally on a cigarette. Everyone in the army seemed to smoke, but so far Jim hadn’t taken to it. The sea air was bitterly cold. Jim shivered. But you didn’t grow up in Southern Ontario without being used to extremes of temperature. He stared out across the empty expanse of the North Atlantic, picturing the acres of wheat on the day he had left, golden, ripe and ready. Walt and his father would have long finished the harvesting. The seeds he had bought before he left the farm would be sown by now. The dark earth, tilled and brown, would be planted with winter wheat and root vegetables. He thought of the creek that ran along the bottom of the slope behind the farmhouse: the old rope dangling from the branches of the cottonwood tree. Walt and he had played there as boys, swinging from the rope, sweeping out over the creek, whooping and laughing, hanging on as long as they could before letting go and screeching as they hit the cold water. That spot had been special, almost sacred. It was there that he’d asked Alice to marry him and now he knew that it was there she had first betrayed him with his brother.
He pushed away the image of Walt and Alice kissing under the tree and imagined his mother, hands covered in flour, the muscles on her arms tense as she kneaded dough. He saw her eyes, red and puffy, the narrow ridges running down the middle of her forehead, the down-turned mouth. Jim knew he’d caused her pain by disappearing without saying goodbye – he wished he hadn’t – wished he hadn’t needed to. He pictured his father, rocking slowly in his chair in front of the empty hearth, pretending to read the newspaper but looking over the top of it, anxious for his wife. Then there was Walt, bag packed and slung over his shoulder, kissing his mother goodbye, hesitating beside his father’s chair, then having elicited no response, slinking silently out of the door. Jim had imagined so many variations of this scene, but they always ended with Walt leaving. He couldn’t bear to think of the alternative – Alice arriving. He couldn’t face the prospect of the four of them seated around the kitchen table, chatting about the weather, selling the heifers, or who would win the prize for the biggest marrow in the local farm show.
‘Where’re you from, buddy?’ Th
e accent was unfamiliar.
‘Hollowtree, Ontario,’ Jim said. He was in no mood to talk but the man was not to be put off.
Stretching a hand out, the soldier said, ‘Name’s Greg. Greg Hooper. I’m from Regina. Saskatchewan.’
Jim tossed the cigarette butt into the sea and went to turn away. Then he remembered that these men would be his only companions for who knew how long. A man he snubbed today could be the man who’d save his life tomorrow. The enemy was Hitler. No point in making any others. He accepted Hooper’s hand and told him his name.
The First Kill
Eastbourne
In the aftermath of the Whitley Road bombing Gwen kept trying to imagine how she’d react if her own home were crushed to rubble. It wasn’t the fabric of the building, the furniture or the furnishings she would miss. It was the irreplaceable things – photographs, letters, gifts, each of which bore memories and associations. She stood at the window and let her hand graze over a pottery vase in white lattice work sitting on the sill. Belleek. Bought for her by Roger on their honeymoon in Ireland. She used to fill it with roses from the garden, but had fallen out of the habit. Today she would pick some and place it on the mantelpiece. There may be a war on, but little things like that could lift the spirits.
What Churchill was calling The Battle of Britain had been raging in the skies of southern England since around the time of the bombing. Now, about a month later, Gwen heard an aircraft in the sky and looked up. Her heart always lifted when she saw the concentric rings on the wings and fuselage of the little planes and she was learning to spot the difference between Spitfires and Hurricanes. But more often than not the planes were German bombers with their big black crosses, advancing on a path of destruction. Since the attack on Whitley Road the Luftwaffe had passed overhead, their sights on more strategic targets than Eastbourne.