They had been warned of course, indeed there was an official written document they had all been issued with on leaving home from the commander of the American armed forces. ‘Two actions on your part’, it had said, ‘will slow up friendship with the Tommy: swiping his girl and not appreciating what his army is up against. Yes, and rubbing it in that you’re better paid than he is.’
Balls, Brendan had thought, real balls, what kind of schmuck would do any of those things; but a few days’ close proximity with the Tommy had left him for one positively itching not only to swipe as many girls as possible from under his upturned nose, but to wave a fistful of dollars in his face while he did it.
Even worse than the Tommy were the civilians: the people in the shops, in the pubs, on the streets who appeared to consider the smiles and the Howdys of the boys as a natural prelude to large-scale rape and pillage. They had tried to be polite and friendly to all of them, addressing all the ladies as ma’am and any gentleman over the age of around twenty-five as sir, always ready to buy drinks for anyone in earshot in the pubs – and godawful places they were, most of them – and passing around gum and Lucky Strikes and offering lifts to anyone they passed on the road, although that was officially not allowed, but they might as well have goose-stepped through the streets and daubed swastikas on the walls for all the good it did them.
Only the children were friendly, running up behind them and saying, ‘Got any gum, chum?’ and trying to copy their casual salutes. But the children knew the soldiers were out of bounds and that they would get called swiftly to heel if their mothers were around, ‘as if they were in danger of being kidnapped or molested,’ said Brendan disgustedly to his crew chief in the mess one night. The crew chief had laughed and patted Brendan on the back and told him to be patient. ‘Not all the boys have been behaving entirely well. You have to try and put yourself in these people’s place. Most of them have men in France or the mid East, they’re lonesome and fearful and very hard up; it’s hard to see us arrive with apparently not too much to do and apparently also in not too much danger. Give ’em time; they’ll come round.’
‘Are we talking years here,’ asked Brendan, ‘or decades?’
Even the countryside was a disappointment; Brendan, who knew his Old Masters, had expected something closely resembling a Constable painting (particularly as they were in Constable country), all small golden fields, stiles and, yes, goddamnit, haywains, and he had found merely a flat grey landscape under a flat grey sky, that echoed his sagging spirits exactly. The joke was that there were only two seasons in England: winter and July. It didn’t seem very funny to Brendan.
In the normal way of things, his spirits did not sag easily; he was sanguine, sunny, easy-tempered. He came right in the middle of a family of five, from Brooklyn in New York City, with two sisters above him and two below, adored by them all, and by his mother as well; but the adoration had never done him any harm, merely fuelled a natural self-confidence, an easy, extrovert charm in an entirely positive way. Brendan was an actor, or rather he was about to be an actor; he had majored in drama at high school, done a summer school at Juillard in between working in various food markets and gas stations, and had just got the understudy of Stanley in Streetcar in a small but highly respected company in the Village when he had been hauled off the stage, into the air force, and thence to England. Even then he had remained cheerful: he would get a chance to see Stratford-upon-Avon, he said to his sisters as they commiserated and wept over him, and breathe Shakespeare’s air; might even, when the war was over, get a chance to study at RADA. Some of the finest actors in the world were English moreover, look at Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson. His sisters, who had seen Wuthering Heights but had not heard of the others, all pronounced Brendan as greatly resembling Olivier, but better looking and felt that the English stage would be enormously enriched by his arrival. The nearest he had actually got to the English stage was the one constructed in a hangar on the base where a terrible band and a worse singer had performed twice; they had been promised visits from real stars, such as Vivien Leigh, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, but that seemed about as likely to happen as the Suffolk folk taking them to their hearts and asking them home for supper after church.
In time both things happened; in the meantime, Brendan was almost literally homesick. He was a New Yorker; the noise and trouble and energy of a city, any city, but particularly that city, were what fuelled him, mobilized him; as day after day of quiet, stultifying rural England settled upon him, he became more and more morose. In the first few weeks he had gone out in the evening with the other boys to try to pull a girl, not even to pull one, just to talk; but he was a sensitive lad, he found it hard to take the general hostility in the pubs, and to accept that the girls who finally came over to talk to him, dance with him, were regarded, in their own community at any rate, as little better than tarts. He even scored once or twice, but they had been joyless occasions; Brendan liked a woman to talk to him, to joke with him, as well as to screw him, and all he achieved from these girls was a wham, bang, thank you ma’am in reverse, and being given the impression he was a mighty fortunate fellow. And so he gave up, went out less and less; he was still training, there was no proper flying yet, so he didn’t even have the excitement, the release of danger and the raids to lift his depression. And so it was at the end of three months that he found himself sitting in the bar at the Crown, dragged there reluctantly by some of his more pragmatic companions, cold, depressed, and achingly randy, with a sense of nothing, absolutely nothing to look forward to.
At precisely the same time, Caroline Miller was walking up Quay Street towards the Crown, with a sense of desperation and hunger that was equal to, indeed greater than, his own.
She had heard about the GIs of course; everyone had. They were the talk of the countryside.
‘Have you met any of them yet?’ Mrs Blake in the Co-op at Wickham Market had asked her only the week before, wrapping up the week’s cheese ration carefully.
‘Met who, Mrs Blake?’
‘The Americans. Now there’s just about a half-ounce extra in there, tell Cook. I had to give her a bit less last week, and promised to make it up. Tea did you want?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Caroline. ‘And tell me about the Americans, Mrs Blake.’
‘Well, there’s a whole lot of them arrived,’ said Mrs Blake, ‘over at Martlesham.’
‘What sort of Americans?’
‘Well, airmen, I suppose, as it’s Martlesham. Come to help, or that’s the idea. I can’t see it myself; they won’t know where they’re going or what they’re doing, will they? I mean it’s a long way away from America here, isn’t it? They won’t know which way they’re meant to be flying their aeroplanes, will they? More of a hindrance than a help I’d have thought they’d be.’
‘Well, I suppose someone will tell them what to do,’ said Caroline carefully.
‘Yes, well maybe they will. I don’t like the idea of it myself. Filling the English countryside with a lot of strangers. Bad enough having the prisoners of war. At least they’re under lock and key most of the time. Those Americans certainly aren’t that, from what I’ve heard. Heaven knows what they’ll be getting up to. Well, of course we can all imagine, can’t we? Got your points, Caroline?’
‘Yes. Here you are,’ said Caroline, fishing in her bag for the family ration books. ‘Er – when did they actually arrive, these Americans?’
‘Two weeks ago. And they’ve been into Ipswich every night, I heard. And Woodbridge. They have all the petrol they need or so it seems. Well that can’t be right, can it? And they’ve got plenty of money too. Five times what our soldiers earn, they do. And they’ve brought all sorts of stuff with them.’
‘What sort of stuff?’ said Caroline curiously.
‘Oh, nylon stockings. Sweets, or candy as they call it. And chewing gum. Stuff like that,’ said Mrs Blake darkly.
‘I hear they’ve been trying to get friendly with our girls as well,’ she added, as if the American soldiers were committing some unspeakable crime. ‘Offering them drinks and cigarettes and asking them out for dinner, and that sort of thing. Well, no nice girl is going to fall for that, is she?’
‘Of course not,’ said Caroline.
She had been walking down the village street when the liberty truck arrived. A big jeep, full of men: young, laughing, healthy, noisy men. Caroline tried not to look at them and failed; she felt exactly as if she had been starving for years and someone had just offered her a plate of delectable food. They saw her watching them and laughed; she tossed her head and walked quickly away from them. They parked the truck, and got out; and then followed her, walking at exactly her pace, so that if she hurried they hurried and if she slowed they slowed. The whole length of the village she walked, into the post office and out again, and then turned, and went slowly back towards the Moat House; still they followed.
Finally, irritated now, rather than flattered, even slightly embarrassed, she turned on them. ‘Is this the sort of thing you do at home?’ she said.
They stopped at once, plainly disconcerted; the one in front, assuming the position of spokesman, gave her a loose salute. ‘Oh no, ma’am,’ he said, ‘no we wouldn’t, not at all. No offence, ma’am.’
‘Yes, well I suggest you get back to your barracks,’ said Caroline, ‘and find something more useful to do.’
They shambled off down the street, muttering to one another, looking over their shoulders once or twice; she felt ashamed all of a sudden for being so unfriendly, and sorry for them being so far away from their own country. She also, for the first time for what seemed like years, felt the stabbing intrusion of sexual desire.
‘Mama, I absolutely have to go into Woodbridge tomorrow.’
‘Really. Why?’
‘Well, I just can’t manage without a pair of shoes any longer. I’ve been saving up coupons. And it’s Friday. There’s the bus. All right?’
‘I suppose so. Don’t miss the bus back though. I certainly haven’t got enough petrol to come and fetch you.’
‘I won’t. Actually, on second thoughts, I might cycle. Then I’ll have more time.’
‘More time for what?’
‘Mama, I am so tired of this.’
‘I do assure you, Caroline, so am I. Now I do not want you cycling into Woodbridge, it’s much too far, and before you start making any devious plans I had in any case told Cook she could borrow your bike tomorrow. And I shall need the trap.’
Caroline didn’t believe her.
But God was on her side: she woke up to hear the now-familiar groans of pain and her father on the telephone to the doctor, and smiled to herself in the darkness. Not only would she now be able to escape, her mother would be quite incapable of noticing and her father would have taken refuge in his bedroom at the factory.
‘Yes. I’ll take those,’ said Caroline, looking rather unenthusiastically at a pair of lace-up brown shoes, the only ones in her size, in the Woodbridge shoe shop. ‘They’ll do. Now what about stockings?’ She spoke casually; she had planned this piece of dialogue with care.
‘Stockings,’ said the girl. ‘You’ll be lucky. The only people got stockings are the Yanks. Sweet-talk them into giving you a pair. That’s your best bet. Isn’t hard,’ she added. ‘And they’re real nylons.’
‘I just might,’ said Caroline with a grin. ‘If I can find any of them.’
‘Well, that isn’t difficult. Problem’s avoiding them.’
‘Really? I heard they didn’t come to Woodbridge. Prefer Ipswich.’
‘Don’t know who you’ve been talking to. They love it here. Come every night to the cinema. And the Crown of course.’
‘Really? Well I’m surprised. I’ve never seen them.’
‘Well maybe you go home too early. They don’t arrive till about eight.’
‘Oh well, that explains it,’ said Caroline. ‘That’s much too late for me.’
Brendan FitzPatrick was not shy, but he was nevertheless hopelessly tongue-tied just at the sight of her. He had never seen anyone so indisputably a lady, just walking into a bar, quite plainly looking for a pick-up. Twice he cleared his throat and tried to galvanize his long limbs into moving towards her and twice he found himself rooted to the spot. He decided he would have to have at least another pint of their disgusting, warm, bitter-tasting beer before he tried again.
Caroline knew Brendan was watching her and she liked it. He was extremely good-looking, she thought to herself, hardly able to believe her good fortune in almost immediately finding so glorious an example of her prey. He was tall, about six foot two, with broad shoulders and large hands (giving her cause to wonder pleasurably about the size of other segments of his anatomy), dark curly hair, and bright blue eyes, with very long eyelashes; he had slightly tanned skin and a heavily freckled nose and forehead, and a mouth that was almost girlishly soft and sensitive.
She watched him for all of sixty seconds before deciding to take positive action; terrified that if she didn’t, he would turn his attentions to one of the large number of pretty girls thronging into the Crown. She stood up, paused for a moment, almost faltering and then, with an almost visible rush of courage, walked towards him.
‘Good evening,’ she said. ‘I wonder if you could possibly give me a cigarette.’
And Brendan FitzPatrick had taken her thirstily in, all her tall, English well-bredness, her massing red hair, her high forehead, her clear, light skin; her blue eyes, her straight nose, her neat, full mouth; had looked at her rangy body in its rather severe brown tweed suit, relieved by a sweater that clung to her full, high breasts; glanced briefly even at the long, slender legs, and then, clinging to his self-control along with his warm remaining quarter-pint, fumbled in his breast pocket for a pack of Lucky Strikes and handed it to her in total silence. Caroline took one out, and then another one for him, and in a gesture of odd intimacy, replaced the pack in his pocket. She smiled. ‘Thank you. Here –’ She produced her own lighter, a Dunhill, from her bag. ‘Light?’
‘Thanks,’ said Brendan, taking the cigarette and putting it in his mouth, allowing her to light it, watching her light her own, and then remove the cigarette and take a tiny shred of tobacco off her tongue with the tip of her finger, all without taking her eyes from his. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’
‘Yes, you can. Thank you. Gin and French.’
‘Ice?’
‘Oh – no, thank you.’ She smiled. ‘In any case, I don’t think ice has reached Woodbridge. Not its pubs anyway.’
‘You know I just don’t understand that,’ he said, realizing with a rush of relief he would be able to talk easily to her. ‘What it is about ice here. Or rather what it isn’t. It’s not a hard thing to manufacture after all. The ingredients aren’t too tricky.’
‘No, but people just don’t like it. They think it spoils the taste of things. You should hear my father on the subject.’
‘What’s your father’s drink?’
‘Scotch.’
‘Scotch what?’
‘Scotch whisky of course,’ said Caroline, amused.
‘As in bourbon?’
‘I believe it’s a bit the same. I’ve never tasted bourbon.’
‘Well you should. Before you are even the slightest bit older.’
‘Not with the gin,’ she said, laughing. ‘I should be drunk.’
‘That’s perfectly fine by me. Barman, a bourbon please.’
But bourbon, mercifully for Caroline, had not reached Woodbridge either.
They left the Crown at half past nine. ‘I have to go home,’ said Caroline desperately.
‘And how do you get home?’
‘Well, I have my bicycle. But I have to make a start.’
; ‘How far is home?’
‘About eight miles.’
‘Jesus. You’re going to ride eight miles on a bicycle? You’ll never get there. Besides, you might get raped or something.’
‘Not very likely,’ said Caroline, resisting the temptation to say ‘no such luck’ with difficulty. ‘And anyway, the bicycle has become standard transport down here.’
‘I know. But for girls? After dark?’
‘Of course,’ she said, laughing. ‘There’s a war on. And I know every inch of the way. I grew up here.’
‘Well, it doesn’t sound too good to me. Would you allow me to drive you? I just happen to have a Jeep outside.’
Caroline looked at him, up and down, her eyes lingering just momentarily on his crutch.
‘I think I would. That would be very kind.’
Kindness was not the sensation Sergeant FitzPatrick was primarily experiencing.
The Jeep was parked at the bottom of the hill, near the station and the estuary; Brendan looked longingly at the water, with the moonlight glancing off it, the masts of the boats knocking gently against one another as they rocked in the tide. ‘I’ve yet to see this place by daylight. It seems really nice-looking to me. Real pretty. Real old too.’
‘You could call it quite old I suppose,’ said Caroline. ‘The shire hall is medieval. Now look, you can just take me as far as Wickham Market which is fairly straightforward; you shouldn’t get lost and then I’ll cycle the rest and you can get back.’
AN Outrageous Affair Page 4