by John Wilcox
The tears came again and she closed her eyes. A touch on her knee made her turn. “Cigarette, love?” The soldier next to her extended his packet of Players. “Don’t worry,” he smiled, “it may never happen.”
She nodded, forced a smile back and took a cigarette, making sure that he saw her wedding ring.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked.
“If you don’t mind, no. I just want to sit and think for a bit, thank you all the same.”
She changed trains at Birmingham New Street and bought a spam sandwich and a cup of tea from a stall just outside the entrance. A kind of fatalism had taken hold by the time her train pulled into Brecon and she had begun to address a future as a widow and single parent. Her brain, weary from grief and delayed shock – for in the past few weeks she had stubbornly refused to face the fact that Bill might have been killed – became bleakly pragmatic. Would she be able to keep the house on without Bill’s money? Would they pay her Bill’s wages until he was officially declared dead? And what sort of widow’s pension would she receive? The cold March wind howled across the platform and she huddled into her woollen coat, her best, and pulled that flowerpot hat down as she gave up her ticket and began the walk to the bus stop. She looked at her watch. Nine thirty. She was cold, tired and hungry and just wished to be home, by the fireside, with Caitlin safely tucked into bed.
Head down, she did not notice the Morris Ten pull up at the kerb beside her. “Come on, get in,” said Fred. He was leaning across towards the open passenger window, his oiled hair reflecting the interior light in the saloon.
“Oh, Fred. I didn’t expect… Have you been waiting for me at the station, then?”
“Don’t argue. You look cold and fed up. Get in. I think you need a drink.”
“No, Fred. Thanks all the same. I think I’d better…”
“For God’s sake, get in. I’m freezing with this winder open.”
She shot a quick glance up and down the deserted street and then pulled on the door handle and lowered herself onto the seat beside him. The car was snugly warm – he had told her that he had had a heater fitted by one of the factory hands – and she was glad to put her head back against the cracked leather and close her eyes for a moment. Then she jerked them open.
“I’d rather not go to a pub, if you don’t mind, Fred,” she said. “It’s just that… you know.”
“Yes, yes, I know. But I want to know how you got on and we both definitely need a drink. We’ll just pop into the Plume of Feathers. It’s out of town on the Abergavenny road, so nobody will know us there. We won’t stay long – there’s only twenty-five minutes to closing time, anyway. Now you just relax and you can tell me all about it when we get there.”
She sighed. It was so comfortable in the car after the draughty train and, she had to admit it, it was wonderful to be cared for. A thought struck her. “How did you know which train I was on, Fred?”
“I didn’t. I just waited for ‘em all from half past seven. Knew you couldn’t be earlier than that.”
She turned her head away without reply but smiled into the darkness outside.
*
Inside the lounge bar, there was a wood fire beginning to burn low and only two other customers at the bar, who regarded them without interest. Fred ordered two large scotches and water and led her to a little banquette near the fire. “Now,” he said, “tell me what this bloke said.”
Kathleen recounted all that the Squadron Leader had told her. He listened impassively and, at the end, they both stared silently into the fire.
“So, what d’you think?” he asked eventually. “Think he’s gone?”
She was not shocked by his directness. It was one of the things she liked about him. “Oh Fred, I don’t know what to think. But, coming back on the train, I tried to weigh the odds, so to speak, and I can’t help thinking that I would have heard by now if he was safe. It’s been nearly five weeks.”
He took her hand. “You’d better wait longer than that, love, before you make up your mind – if only to be fair to Bill. He could be swimming across the Channel back to you at this very moment, for all you know.”
She smiled. “Fat chance. He’s a terrible swimmer.”
They both laughed and then she began to cry, in great gulping sobs. He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him and she continued to weep, her tears rolling down onto his blue worsted.
“You need another drink,” said Fred.
At the bar he confided to the landlord, who had been watching them covertly. “Works for me,” he whispered. “Husband’s just gone missing. Trying to cheer her up a bit.”
The landlord nodded. “Oh ah,” he said. But he didn’t sound convinced.
They drove home in silence – Kathleen had arranged for her mother to keep the baby overnight in case she was late back – and Fred opened the door for her, gave her a quick peck on the cheek and said, “Sleep well. See you in the morning.” Then he was gone. Whether it was because of the whisky or just her great tiredness, Kathleen didn’t know, but she slept very soundly that night.
*
Among the girls the next morning, Kathleen was not very forthcoming about the result of her great trip to the Air Ministry. “They just don’t know,” she kept repeating to the kindly enquiries and her workmates, with a sensitivity perhaps unique to their gender, did not press her, although, behind her back, they caught each other’s eyes and sadly shook their heads. Later that week, they made up a party to go to the Odeon to see ‘Two Girls and a Sailor’, because this lovely new chap Tom Drake was in it, and they persuaded Kathleen to join the party. Then they all had gin and its at the pub next door. Kathleen began to feel that life wasn’t all that bad after all. You had to look on the bright side, didn’t you?
On the second week after her visit to London she received a little note from Fred. It had been placed in the tiny locker allocated to her in the cloakroom. It read: ‘the Feathers has started doing fish suppers. Fancy a trip out there tomorrow night? No pressure – just a happy hour to cheer you up’.
Her first reaction was a tiny frisson of excitement. Her second thought was that this could all be getting too much – she was a married woman with a young child, after all. The third response, however, was the strongest: what the hell! Let’s go!
She had to tell her parents, of course, because she must ask them to look after Caitlin. Nevertheless, she felt it only right to explain that the invitation was quite innocent. Nothing was ‘going on’. Fred was a nice, much older, happily-married man, whose wife lived in Birmingham. He had a reputation for being kind and caring to the girls who worked for him and it was natural that he should get a bit lonely, “stuck out here, living in digs on the edge of bloody Wales”. There was no question of misbehaviour and, anyway, she deserved a bit of relaxation once in a while, not knowing what had happened to Bill and all.
Her father gave his slow, mirthless smile. Tubercolosis was taking its toll now and his face was sunken and his eyes as bright as black buttons on a dirty shirt. The sing-song Welshness in his voice seemed to have grown more pronounced as his illness had worsened: “Slippery slope, Kath love,” he said. “Slippery slope. Now what would Bill think, then, eh?”
She tossed her head. “He wouldn’t say a word. He wasn’t like that. I’m not doing anything wrong, Da, I promise.”
Indeed, there was nothing shifty about Fred when he called to pick her up. He sat and exchanged pleasantries with her parents as though he was a neighbour just popping in for a chat and she was glad that he had not bought flowers for Mum, whisky for Da or anything patronising like that. In fact, he became so engrossed with her father in talk about the timing of the Second Front in Europe that she had to pull him away. It was all easy and civilised.
So, too, was the supper. The lounge bar had become a place for snacks as well as drink and it was clear that the landlord was supplementing rations by catching brown trout in Llangorse Lake or one of the rivers. But she didn’t care whether i
t was above board or not because it was good to have fresh fish again with lovely, golden chips and parsley sauce. The bar was quite crowded and they fitted in, just like any other couple. Kathleen felt at ease and not at all guilty.
Nor did guilt appear when Fred kissed her in the car before getting out, as he always did, to open the door for her. It seemed quite a natural thing to do. It seemed natural, too, that, after a gap of a couple of weeks, they slipped into the habit of making the trip to the Feathers a regular event – usually on Friday evenings when she was on the day shift, to celebrate pay day, as Fred put it. There was no harm in it, Kathleen argued, and Fred treated her like a lady. It made her feel good.
Gradually the routine of her job, of looking after Caitlin and of seeing Fred on Friday evenings began to wrap around her like some healing balm, so that the pain of wondering about Bill began to recede, almost imperceptibly. She still started at an unfamiliar knock on the front door, fearing that expected telegram, but that too began to slip away with the passing of the days. She no longer shed a tear as she cradled Caitlin in her arms. It was impossible, she told herself, to live on a knife’s edge every day. What would be would be.
She began to look forward more and more to those now deliciously indiscreet evenings at the Feathers, and to catching Fred’s eye when she clocked in every morning or evening – he always supervised the arrival of the night shifts, even though he did not work through the night himself. They exchanged conspiratorial winks, like two spies working deep in enemy territory. Whether the other girls were aware of their trysts, Kathleen neither knew nor cared now. After all, it was still all very innocent, wasn’t it?
In fact, she had to admit to herself, that was no longer quite true. The goodnight kiss had now escalated into deep snogging – as Fred put it with such cheerful innocence – in the car park behind the Feathers before the drive home. It had got to the point where she no longer applied her lipstick when she visited the toilet on leaving the pub, only putting it on awkwardly in the car on the way home. She now looked at Fred in the factory with a new eye: admiring the confident way he moved between the lines of girls, adjusting a machine here, exchanging a piece of banter there. It was his machine shop, his factory; he was in charge. He was much taller than Bill and with broader shoulders, and he treated her with a respect and real affection that her husband had never showed. More and more, she found herself comparing the two men, with Bill always emerging detrimentally. Bill had been self-occupied and almost morose, except for the early days, whereas it was difficult to stop Fred chatting away amusingly. Fred always stood up when she returned to the table, while Bill had hardly noticed her presence, keeping his face buried in his book. Fred was caring in his love-making, taking his time and knowing where and how to touch her. Bill, on the other hand, seemed now in retrospect to have been harsh, hurried and selfish. Not that she and Fred went all the way. She had made it quite clear to Fred that that remained out of bounds while she still considered herself a married woman. However, he seemed quite content with that. He was, she had to admit, the perfect gentleman – and oh, so much fun to be with!
The winter slipped away into a windswept spring, and Kathleen found herself beginning to enjoy life again.
CHAPTER 8
It was almost dark, very near curfew time, before Gladwin and Marie reached the farmhouse. He wanted to linger longer with her but Jacqueline was in the kitchen, so they parted with a smile and Gladwin descended into the cellar. He found Proctor reading through the English-French dictionary.
He looked up. “Done the books, now, have we?”
His New Zealand twang seemed somehow incongruous in those surroundings, although Bill couldn’t think of what would be congruous in the circumstances.
He unbuttoned his greatcoat. “No accountancy,” he said. “Just been helping chop some wood, while the husband is away. It’s the least I could do.”
“Hmnn.”
*
It was well into the following morning before Henri de Vitrac lifted up the hatch and walked down the stony steps into the airmen’s domain. He seemed quite composed and relaxed, indeed there were no marks of violence on his face or person and his clothing was not dishevelled. He could have been out for a stroll, rather than returning from interrogation by the Gestapo.
“Thank God you are all right, Henri,” said Gladwin, meaning what he said.
The Frenchman walked across the floor with hand outstretched. “Flying Officer Proctor, I think,” he said. “Welcome to our underground hotel.” The two shook hands and then de Vitrac turned to Gladwin. “Nothing dramatic happened to me, as you can see. No beatings, no decapitation. Just a lot of questions.” He smiled his cold smile. “To be honest with you, I do not know quite what it was all about, but nothing was revealed, of course.”
He perched on the edge of Proctor’s bed and indicated for the others to sit also. “The point is,” however, that the net is clearly closing in and we must get you out now as soon as possible.” He paused for a moment, as though he was enjoying the way the two hung upon his words. “I have been to see Chauvin, who, of course, you have both now met, and we are going to try and have you out of here by tomorrow evening.”
Proctor’s eyebrows shot up. “Off to Spain, are we?”
“No. We think we can fly you out, from somewhere near here.”
“Good lord,” said Gladwin. “Isn’t that a bit risky and even damned expensive?”
“Yes to both of those questions. But, you know, in terms of the training that has been lavished on both of you, I understand that you are worth a total of something like thirty thousand of your pounds to your people back home. Many air crew are being killed and to have two experienced men back to fly again is important.”
The two nodded.
“But there is something else. We think that we can combine flying you out with another operation and that is why I have been working with the Maquis.” His lip seemed to curl for a moment then he gave them his ironical smile. “What is it that you English say: ‘needs must’, or something like that? Anyway, we should know in the morning if the pick-up can be arranged. Much depends on the weather, of course, but it is full moon and there should be little cloud about.” He got to his feet. “We are trying to get your work permits with your photographs back for you by late tomorrow evening. They will not be needed, of course, if everything goes according to plan but it is as well to have them in case,” he paused ominously, “they are necessary.”
Proctor and Gladwin rose to their feet also. As befitted the senior officer, Gladwin spoke. “This is all dangerous and arduous work for you in the middle of all the other troubles which the occupation is bringing, and I want you to know that we appreciate it very much.”
He put out his hand and de Vitrac exchanged handshakes with both of them, although Gladwin noted that he did not catch their eyes.
“It is nothing,” he said, shrugging. “It is our duty, you know.”
“Just one thing,” said Gladwin. “This ‘other operation’. Can you tell us what it is? Perhaps it would wise to let us know, just in case we can help you in some way.”
De Vitrac shook his head. “I am sorry, but I cannot tell you. We have a rule about such things. They must remain secret. I am sure you will understand.” He gave both of them one of his wry, distant smiles, nodded and climbed back up the steps.
As the trapdoor slammed down, an uneasy silence descended on the cellar. Eventually, Gladwin caught Proctor’s eye. The pilot was sucking in his lower lip. “I don’t like it, Taff,” he said, his eyes darting round the room. “I don’t want to go that way.”
“What way?”
“By air. Too dangerous.”
“Too dangerous! For God’s sake, man, we’re supposed to be flyers. Nothing could be as dangerous as bombing Berlin. This will be the quickest, easiest way to go home. Blimey, within thirty six hours we could be eating bacon and eggs in the mess.”
Proctor hunched his shoulders and looked at his boots. “Huh. I
t’s all right for you, you’re not a pilot. But I know what’s involved.” He looked up defiantly. “You know what they’ll send for us, don’t you?”
“No and I don’t much care, as long as it will get us home.”
“Well, that’s just the point. It’ll be a bloody Lysander, I’m sure.”
Gladwin shrugged. “What’s wrong with that? Ugly little kites but handy, I’ve heard.”
“Handy my arse. Oh, they can land on a cricket pitch, all right. That’s why they are used for this kind of work – 138 Squadron are flying ‘em out of Tangmere, for night pick-up jobs behind enemy lines, like this. But they were designed before the ark – high, strutted wings and fixed wheels, for God’s sake, with spats over ‘em. Slow as hell, probably no more than 200 mph, and with no armament. The last one I saw was even being flown with a bloody long fixed ladder hanging down from the cockpit, so that passengers could board easily. I ask you! If there’s a Messerschmitt within a hundred miles we shall be dead meat.” His voice started to rise. “It’ll be suicide, mate, I’ll tell you. I’d rather give myself up now. I’m fed up with living in places like this, anyway. We’d be better off in a prison camp. Probably get better food, too.”