‘They reflect the colour of my hair,’ he grinned. The grin quietened on his face as she leaned across from the arm of the chair and kissed him on the mouth. They kissed a second time, each holding a half-full coffee cup in one hand, each searching for the table to set the cups down.
‘Silly,’ she said. She eased away from him and took both cups, setting them on the table. Then she turned and knelt on the fireside rug, her face forward, her hair covering his lap.
‘Could you spare an hour for a lonely girl?’ she said.
‘Could you spare an hour for a lonely soldier?’
She looked up, her eyes moist, warmth in her face. ‘I took the liberty of putting two hot water bottles in the bed,’ she said. ‘It ought to be warmed through by now.’ He put his face down to hers and kissed her again.
Before the first ten days of April were finished, the plans for the Allied assault on the coast of Europe were all but final: as close as they could ever be. Now the factors were of the same family – the tides, the moon and the weather. There were days in May when they might simultaneously be right, the tide full early in the morning, the moon rising late; only the imponderable weather being in doubt. There were three days in early June, one later that month and another in July. After that the chance would have gone. Perhaps for ever.
An anxiety to get on with the battle now spread throughout all the troops along the southern coast. The weeks of work and training now resolved themselves into the soldier’s enemy – the waiting. At Telcoombe Beach, on 12 April, a squadron of the latest amphibious tanks arrived and stood impressively on the concrete hards, their rockets pointing with token belligerence towards Normandy. Out to sea loitered the old former American destroyers, HMS Oregon and HMS Florida, and the large, unsteady Tank Landing Ships and Troop Landing Craft – the LSTs and the LCTs – two now armed at the stern with the spiky but elderly Bofors guns. On the same day as the amphibious tanks arrived, so did Miss Sherree Ann Lorner. She was taken to the US officers’ mess at the Manor House and allotted an escort of an officer and six men. Captain Scarlett, the general’s ADC, was given the task of appointing the officer. He appointed himself.
‘Me? I don’t even want to hear about it,’ said Pfc Ballimach on receiving the news of the star’s arrival. ‘What’s the use of showing a guy something like that, something he can’t even touch? I don’t want to hear the dame sing. I heard her sing and she sings lousy. So, you tell me, what’s in it for me?’
‘You’d never get near her with that stomach anyway,’ mentioned Albie. They were in the bar of the Bull and Mouth at six o’clock. Miss Lorner’s appearance was scheduled for nine o’clock in the Victoria Rooms, Totnes.
Gilman and Catermole were standing against the bar, smiling. ‘With her big bangers, mate, and your big gut, you’d just have to send messages,’ suggested Catermole.
‘Okay, okay,’ shrugged Ballimach. ‘Now I get it from everybody’s goddamn army. But, I ask you, buddy, what good is this dame to me? Is she going to help me die with a smile on my face? Is she hell. I ain’t even gonna check her out.’
Gilman said: ‘At least you get some glamour. We get Vera Lynn.’
‘What’s the matter with Vera Lynn?’ demanded Catermole aggressively. ‘Maybe she don’t have the big bangers, mate, but she can sing like fuck. She makes me cry.’
Gilman nodded: ‘That’s the bloody trouble. She makes everybody cry. “White Cliffs of Dover” and “We’ll Meet Again”. Christ, when I’m out there on that tin tub with that Bofors going off in my ears, I want to remember something funny.’
Catermole nodded. He stared almost challengingly at the Americans. ‘You blokes don’t get anything like the bloody liberties what they take with us,’ he asserted. ‘Jesus, we say we want something to make us laugh, you know, like proper entertainment, and they send down a bleeding Punch and Judy Show. Punch and Judy, for fuck’s sake! And a ballet dancer, some old cow who creaked like a shithouse door every time she opened her legs. That’s what we get.’
‘Which of the LSTs are you on?’ Albie asked Gilman.
Gilman said: ‘It’s the one that goes up and down like a lift.’
‘Those guns, those Bofors guns, are they very smart? We’re going to be hoping they are.’
Gilman shrugged. ‘Depends what comes at you. They’re fast and noisy, but they’re not exactly the latest craze. I thought they were going to go in with rockets.’ He leaned closer to Albie because they talked together more easily than with Catermole and Ballimach. ‘Do you realize we used rockets at the battle of Waterloo?’ he said.
Albie appeared only a little puzzled. ‘Did you win?’ he asked. Gilman grinned. ‘We only talk about the battles we win,’ he said. He drained his beer. ‘Are you on to this stuff yet?’
Albie sighed: ‘I’m sorry. It gives me dysentery. I’ll have a Coca Cola if that’s okay.’
Ballimach said: ‘I don’t get dysentery. Jeeze, I wish I did sometimes. It takes the pounds off so quick you can hear them falling. I guess I’ll have some cider.’
Catermole put his tankard down silently and Gilman ordered a pint. ‘Let me pick up this tab,’ said Ballimach. ‘I want you guys to shoot straight with that crazy-looking gun and especially for me. I’m keeping in good with you.’
The bar was crowded from end to end now. Smoke moped a foot off the ceiling and Horace Smith the poacher began to bang on the corner piano with his small knotty hands. He was a poor player, so poor that the songs frequently emerged as totally changed. Minnie, his wife, supported him powerfully, standing at the upright, holding her great fist around the brass candlestick holder and moaning grotesquely along the approximate theme, every now and then bursting into words when she recognized something.
‘Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart,
Will you love me, evaaah.’
‘Bloody ’ell,’ grumbled Catermole. ‘Hitler’s secret weapon is on the go again.’
Ballimach and Albie looked at each other. ‘Maybe,’ said Ballimach, ‘we’ll go and see Sherree Ann Lorner after all.’
‘Minnie is real,’ pointed out Gilman wryly. ‘You can touch her.’
‘And how,’ answered Albie. ‘I think maybe Sherree Ann wins by a short vote.’
‘Go and see ’er,’ suggested Catermole. ‘Get ’er fixed in your ’ead and then go back, get into your pit and close your eyes tight. It ain’t too bad like that.’
‘Why is it,’ asked Ballimach, ‘that all the things I hate are real? And all the things I like I have to pretend?’
Minnie, attempting to reach an impossible pitch, choked noisily over the piano, spitting all over Horace’s balding head. He stopped and wiped his pate with his hand. She took a monstrous swig of beer and choked even more spectacularly.
‘Oh boy,’ said Albie. ‘That Sherree Ann Lorner seems more lovely all the time.’ He said to Ballimach, ‘Let’s go.’ They went.
The Victoria Rooms, Totnes, was a staunch grey building, one hundred and twenty-three years old, which had received visits from famous men. Gladstone, the fading Wellington, Livingstone, Robert Scott, raising money to go to his death in the Antarctic, Le Petomane, the famous theatrical farter of Paris, Asquith, Lloyd George, Elgar and Lewis Carroll had appeared on its wide stage.
Sherree Ann Lorner was, in her way, staunch also. She was blonde and younger than the Victoria Rooms by a century. In her shorter history, however, she had received even more visits from outstanding men. She was naturally sensual; a young woman gifted with breath-taking breasts and lovely lips; she had been married three times, although, as she, with sweet banality, pointed out to newspaper and radio interviewers, any girl is allowed three mistakes.
Her tour of Britain in the spring of 1944 had been a trail of triumph. The all-American blonde had not stinted in this simple service to her young countrymen committed to one of the most dangerous missions in history. She stood bravely in camps, cinemas and concert halls and sang loudly, if not very well, the spotlights for ever nosing her famous cre
amy cleavage. Her dresses always shimmered, her hair waved goldenly, her lips had a lovely red sheen. When she gave them ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ at the conclusion of her performance, standing erect and beautiful in the splashing lights, her chest wonderfully extended towards the khaki audience, there was not a man who would have not gladly gone at once from there to die in battle. She was not, as some commentators attempted to represent, the cosy woman these men had left behind. She was America and they were fighting for her, tits and all. Many a young soldier, as he watched, had a lump in his throat and another in his pants.
Captain Scarlett, the lady’s officer escort and the six GIs detailed as her euphemistic guard of honour watched from the wings of the old hall in Totnes, enjoying the profile view of that famous bust, expanding and contracting like a beautiful bellows, as she sang her songs. The place was full of faces, each one a small, longing reflection of the lights upon the stage. One section of the auditorium was allocated to, as distinct from reserved for, black troops. No faces could be seen from there; instead, two hundred eyes glittered like a colony of fireflies.
Miss Lorner did her sincere best. She sang songs of home and Hollywood, she told a few cosy stories, two naughty, and danced with a hapless soldier brought at random on to the stage to perform as her stooge. She dragged the gangling boy across the boards, plastered against her, in an exotic and exaggerated tango until the place was uproarious with the howls of soldiers in frustration. The callow rookie, pressed against those breasts and that shimmering stomach, could only lie there, eyes shut tight, like a child against its mother.
Scarlett witnessed the performance with respect and some admiration. He had to take her back to the officers’ mess at Telcoombe Manor after the last riotous applause had gone, the hall was empty and the soldiers had wandered to their tents. He sat between her in the back of the roomy staff car, a padded armrest between them.
‘I think they liked me?’ said Sherree Ann, provoking a compliment.
‘Oh sure, they loved every minute,’ said Scarlett. He touched the driver on the shoulder and directed him towards the mess. ‘How couldn’t they? You were wonderful, Miss Lorner.’
‘It’s all I can do,’ she said surprisingly. He half glanced her way in the dark. ‘I feel just terrible when so many of those poor boys are going to die.’
At first Scarlett felt a gob of anger rising in his chest. He thought she was reciting the sentiment like some weary Hollywood war script. Her voice sounded like that, as though she were mouthing the words on the screen; but then he realized it was the way she always spoke. She had been taught and conditioned to it. He looked sideways at her and saw that her face was fixed and full of sadness.
‘We have some other guys,’ he said cautiously, ‘who couldn’t get there tonight because they have a duty assignment, or they’ve been on exercise all day and they have to remain within the security perimeter.’
‘Oh,’ she sighed. ‘That’s a real pity.’
‘It is,’ said Scarlett. ‘They have to be out at dawn again. In this area we use live ammunition to simulate real battle conditions.’
She remained looking ahead. She had a mink coat wrapped around her fine body. Even in profile he detected her pout of surprise and dismay. ‘You mean, our soldiers are shooting at each other? They get wounded and killed?’
Scarlett said: ‘Not shooting at each other, although it happens. But we’ve had some dead and wounded over the past few months.’
‘What a waste, captain,’ she said, her already low voice going to a whisper. ‘That’s the most terrible thing I ever heard. They’re not even using up their lives on the goddamn Germans.’
‘That’s how it is,’ shrugged Scarlett.
‘Can I go and see these guys?’ she asked. ‘I mean, I have to go some other place tomorrow, I don’t know where, they’re all the same to me in this country. But I could go right now. I could see them and sing to them tonight.’
‘It’s an idea,’ admitted Scarlett. ‘Will you have to clear it with somebody? You know, your producer or somebody?’
‘Herbie?’ she said scornfully. ‘He’s with the band – full of booze by now. I should check it’s okay, but I don’t feel like it. I don’t see why I should have to ask every time I want to do something. I’ll have to put my hand up to go to the bathroom next.’
She turned to half face him. Again Scarlett realized how beautiful in her full, fleshy way she was; a real dish, all eyes and lips and bosom. ‘Do you know, captain,’ she said huskily. Scarlett swallowed. ‘I think I’m going to ask you to take me right to those soldiers – and now. Can I get to see them?’
Scarlett grinned at her in the dimness. He decided he liked her, as well. ‘Maybe that could be arranged,’ he said. ‘Even at short notice.’
‘Terrific,’ said Sherree Ann. She had an idea and her face lit with excitement. It was the first time he had seen her animated off the stage. Her pale soft hand flapped towards him and he felt its frank, brief and unmeaning touch on his face. ‘Let’s make it a party,’ she suggested breathlessly. ‘I’ve got a crate of bourbon in the back of that car we left here, at the old house. It’s Herbie’s, but he’s had enough for one year. I can borrow that.’
‘Are you sure?’ he grinned cautiously. ‘It will probably foul all sorts of things up. For me too. No unauthorized civilians are permitted in the combat area.’
‘I’m not an unauthorized civilian,’ she said stoutly. ‘I’m Sherree Ann Lorner. I could go tell Eisenhower to go take a jump at himself and he’d have to do it quick. Anyway …’ Her voice dropped. ‘Anyway, I feel like a party myself. All I’ve had in this country is driving and getting up there, and sticking my chest out, and singing, and meeting goddamn ancient boring officers who hand me nice glasses of lousy sherry. I feel like kicking the can around tonight.’
Scarlett sniffed in the dark. ‘I think it’s my duty to arrange that,’ he said solemnly.
He drove her into the prohibited area through one of the isolated northern checkpoints, where there were only two dozy sentries. He had taken over the car himself now and the six GIs of the escort were following, puzzled, in a jeep. Scarlett had told them they could slope off quietly if they liked, but to a man they requested to remain in the company of Sherree Ann Lorner.
As they approached the checkpoint Scarlett suggested that she might think about concealing herself below his gas-cape, so as not to alert the guard, but she refused indignantly. ‘Listen, soldier,’ she said, the conditioned Hollywood voice unknowingly dipping into an accentless dreamy, ‘if I go anywhere, I go as me. Keep your gas-cape for the gas.’
The sentry’s eyes opened to wakefulness when he saw the passenger. She smiled like the moon at him and he called his buddy from the guardhouse to take a look. The second man came out scratching and his face fell, then rose in delight when he recognized the captain’s passenger. Sherree Ann leaned from the car and blew a kiss to both. One lifted the barrier dopily, the other went at once to the back of the guardhouse to relieve himself.
‘Where did all the people go?’ asked Sherree Ann as they drove through Burton and Mortown, black shadows at the roadside, with the pale light of the night sky showing in patches through roofs and gutted windows.
‘They left,’ said Scarlett briefly.
‘I don’t blame them,’ she muttered, staring out at the rubble. ‘When you play games in this army you sure play games. The real thing won’t come as such a surprise, I guess.’
‘A shock,’ he corrected. ‘That’s the general idea. The place we’re going is a church, by the way.’
‘Oh, I just love churches,’ she said, Hollywood taking over again. ‘I’m crazy about those priests’ dresses and the way they swing that smoking bucket around. I’ve been married in three different sorts of churches, you know. Not that any of them made any difference.’
‘Are you married right now?’ asked Scarlett. He explained: ‘I don’t have a chance to keep up with the movie gossip.’
‘Sure,
I think so, Charles Damare. But he’s a lush. I mean, how could any guy get hitched to somebody with a body like this and prefer a slug of whisky?’
‘It takes some believing,’ he said honestly.
‘I’ll say. The studio thought it would be a great idea. The studio is a bum.’
‘We use the church as a recreation centre because we don’t have any building big enough inside the combat area,’ he said. ‘There were some village halls but they were made of wood and stuff and they tended to collapse easily, catch fire, you know during the exercises.’
There was a silence until she said, as if seeking reassurance, ‘What do you think about me? Do you think I’m dumb, captain?’
‘No,’ he said, embarrassed. ‘I think you have a great act.’
‘That, as they say, is the story of Sherree Ann Lorner’s life.’ She peered from the window of the car. ‘It’s such a dark place, England,’ she murmured. ‘I can never see it properly. Even in the day it seems dark. Just look out there. It’s like looking up Trigger’s ass.’
He blinked at the expression but confined himself to a shrug. ‘We’ve had some real nice weather,’ he said defensively. ‘Down in this area, that is. Maybe it’s been different other places where you’ve been.’
‘It’s after California,’ she shrugged. ‘I think I’d go blind, if I lived in this country. Have you noticed how people don’t look up? They walk around looking at the kerb.’
‘I guess they’ll look up again one day,’ he said. He thought how odd it was that he should resent her comments about the British. ‘Okay,’ he went on, driving up the last hill. ‘Here it is. St Peter and St Paul, Telcoombe Magna.’
‘Double billing,’ she said. ‘St Peter and St Paul. That’s cute.’
He pulled up at the lychgate with its gun emplacement, opened the car door and she stepped to the dewed grass. One of the gunners in the lychgate saw who had arrived and ran into the church with the news. The others, two young, pale soldiers, stood in panic to attention.
The Magic Army Page 45