Gunner Girls and Fighter Boys

by Mary Gibson

  ‘Dear old pals, jolly old pals. Always together, whatever the weather!’

  Pat was about to say something, when May put her finger to her lips and cocked her head to one side. It was her mother singing, and that was something she hadn’t heard since before Jack’s death.

  The front door was unlocked and they came upon her in the kitchen, rinsing potatoes at the sink. At the sound of her name, Mrs Lloyd spun round, a delighted expression on her face. ‘May!’ She held out muddy hands to hug her daughter. ‘Oh, your uniform!’ and she managed to encircle May without brushing mud onto the pristine jacket. Quickly wiping her hands down her pinafore, she shook Pat’s hand.

  ‘Stay for a cup of tea!’ her mother said, as Pat made her exit. But May was glad that the girl declined. She wanted to enjoy the sight of her mother, happy for once.

  ‘Just let me put this stew on. I should have had it done by now, but I’ve been up at the big house.’ Her mother lifted the pan on to the range.

  ‘What have you been doing up there?’ May asked, intrigued.

  ‘Oh, I do a bit of cleaning for the major. He’s been so good, it’s the least I can do, and to be honest, love, when I arrived his place was a shithole. His cleaner was a bit of a girl that don’t deserve the name. People take advantage of his good nature, you see. But the dust on the skirting board, that thick!’ she said, indicating with finger and thumb a coating which, if it were true, must have taken fifty years to accumulate.

  ‘So you’re getting on all right with him then?’

  May sat at the kitchen table with her tea, quietly marvelling that her mother was actually making sense. It was as if she’d left her damaged mind behind in the ruins of Bermondsey.

  ‘He’s a diamond. What I call a right old English gentleman, no side on him, straight as a die.’

  May nodded. ‘He’s not dotty then?’

  ‘Him? Nah, sane as I am!’

  A few months ago that would have been no recommendation, but now May smiled and said, ‘So, he was wearing his slippers outdoors.’

  ‘Oh that! He’s got terrible trouble with his plates. All that bloody square-bashing when he was younger.’

  After changing into her civvies, May sat down to a plate of her mother’s rabbit stew.

  ‘The major catches ’em himself. And the veg is all from his garden,’ her mother said. ‘And wait till you see this!’ She dived into a little pantry and carried out, like the blessed sacrament, a dish of butter.

  ‘Mum! That must be a pound at least!’

  ‘I tell you, love, they don’t know they’re born out here.’

  Her mother put the dish on the table for them to gaze upon. May hadn’t seen so much butter all in one place since 1939.

  After their tea, they sat in the tiny downstairs parlour, while her mother sewed and asked about May’s experiences on the guns. Though it was spring, the nights were still cold and they’d made a fire. The warmth in the little room and tiredness from her long journey soon caused May to nod off, and it was barely dark when she made her way through what looked like a cupboard and up the narrowest stairs she’d ever seen to the upper floor. She dropped on to the tiny bed and fell asleep to the sound of wind rustling through trees outside the window. At first she was restless, alert for the warning siren that normally dragged her out to the guns, but when she heard the faint whinny of a horse travelling over from the stables she allowed herself to relax and fall into the most peaceful sleep she’d had in a very long while.

  She was woken abruptly early the next morning by the sound of a klaxon blaring. She leaped from the bed and ran in a little circle round the room. Feeling about for her tin hat, she hopped on one foot as she tried to pull up her trousers. It was a full minute before she realized something was amiss. It couldn’t be the alert because she wasn’t at the gun site. Her heart stopped thumping and she moved to the window. What the hell was that racket if not a klaxon? She shoved up the stiff casement and looked down into the front garden.

  The major was standing by the hedge, blowing a hunting horn. He was dressed in pale yellow pyjamas beneath a tweed jacket, and had a gun crooked over one arm. ‘Morning! Rabbits!’ he called to May at the window.

  Putting down the horn, he dug into a leather bag and lifted a pair of dead animals for her to see, before laying them on the front step. ‘Tell your mother!’ he ordered, before striding off down the path. He was still wearing the carpet slippers from yesterday and May smiled that she was already providing a very reasonable explanation for the pyjamas. After all, didn’t she regularly run out to fire a gun, dressed in a similar fashion?

  After a morning’s shopping in Moreton-in-Marsh with Pat and her mother, May couldn’t wait to get back to the farm. She was finding the mixture of pure air and peace addictive and after a slice of bread, spread with a guilty thickness of butter, she insisted her mother come on a walk in the surrounding countryside.

  ‘There’s not much to see here,’ her mother said, as they set off down the lane leading away from the house and cottage.

  ‘That’s the point! It’s never quiet on the base. Sometimes the noise hurts my ears. If we’re on parade we get bawled at, and then there’s the noise of the guns… well, you know what they’re like from a distance, but imagine being yards away? It’s like being stuffed inside a bass drum while someone’s thumping on it! Quiet’s a luxury and so is this.’ She swept her hand across the vista of pastureland, dotted with sheep, and the clumps of trees, stretching towards a long, low escarpment.

  ‘Ahhh, emptiness!’ She smiled, but her sweeping gaze was checked. She had spotted the figure of a man on the ridge top, silhouetted against the clear blue sky. ‘Spoke too soon,’ she said, almost resenting his presence.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can’t you see him, up on the ridge, by those trees?’

  Her mother shook her head and squinted. ‘We ain’t all got eagle eyes like you!’

  But May had definitely seen someone up there. She scanned the hilltop and caught sight of him again, as sunlight glinted off something in his hands.

  ‘Look, there, he’s got binoculars!’

  ‘Fifth column!’ her mother whispered.

  And May instantly wished she’d not pointed the man out. The last thing her mother needed was the spectre of fifth columnists entering her newfound haven.

  ‘Don’t be dozy, Mum, out here? There’s nothing to spy on.’

  ‘Well, you never know. The army’s requisitioned the top floor of the major’s house. It’s all very hush-hush. We just see them coming and going; no one’s even allowed upstairs. I think they’re doing top-secret stuff…’

  ‘Oooh, yeah, and the major’s really a Nazi spy giving away all our secrets!’ May said, her eyes exaggeratedly wide.

  ‘Saucy cow. Don’t you take the mick. We’ve got to be vigilant. Haven’t you seen that film yet, where this little village gets taken over by Nazis?’

  ‘No, I’m too busy fighting the Germans to watch films about them, Mum.’

  Which wasn’t strictly true as she and Emmy often spent their half-day leaves at the Gant’s Hill Odeon, but she was eager to diffuse her mother’s forebodings.

  They continued on their walk and when May next looked up towards the ridge the man was gone. They came to a paddock full of horses and, as they leaned on the fence, she called to the nearest animal, a large white mare, which as it turned revealed a smaller version of itself, trailing behind.

  ‘Oh, look at the white foal, Mum! It’s so pretty! I’d love to be able to ride.’

  Her mother scrutinized her. ‘You, ride a horse? You’re getting adventurous.’

  May shrugged. ‘It’s the army, Mum. You get used to doing new things...’

  ‘That lovely boy up at the stables, he might get you a ride.’ It was May’s turn to be surprised. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Young stable lad. I know ’em all. They don’t get many home comforts, so I take ’em up cakes when I make a batch for the major. But he’s my favourite.’ />
  ‘What’s his name? It’s not Mark, is it?’

  ‘No, I’m talking about Tom, the one who picked you up from the station. You must have noticed him – he’s the spittin’ image of our Jack.’ May’s mother stared at the white foal and gave a sad smile at the memory of Jack. Then, coming back to the present with a start, she said, ‘Poor Mark got the sack!’

  ‘Oh no, Pat said her uncle might not like her going out with him.’

  ‘Well, Tom told me it was a shock and no one knew what he’d done wrong. But it wasn’t the major sacked him.’

  ‘No? Who then?’

  ‘Arnold, the head lad, just sent him packing one morning, no reason. But he’s a mean bastard to all the stable lads. I don’t think the major had anything to do with it. He’s good as gold, May, but he leaves most of the day-to-day running of the place to that Arnold.’

  ‘Well, you make quite a good spy yourself, Mum! At least I can let Pat know what’s been going on. It’d be terrible if she thought her uncle had got rid of Mark. But don’t you say anything about it, will you? She might want to keep it to herself.’

  With her mother sworn to secrecy, they turned and strolled back to the cottage, following a stream through a small wood. May was getting the lie of the land and tomorrow she thought she might like to walk up to the ridge herself, just to see what the man with the binoculars might have been looking at. She didn’t for one minute believe he was a fifth columnist, but she was, after all, a soldier, and perhaps as her mother had said, they ought to be vigilant.

  21

  Invasion

  Spring 1942

  The next day, May decided to walk to the village. The square church tower of buttery stone stood above all the surrounding trees, and she used it to navigate by. Pat had told her the village consisted of a pub, a post office and a parish hall, with a few pretty stone cottages strung along the street, finishing at the church. Her walk took her along the same stretch of road as yesterday, and she thought she would climb up, just to see what was visible from the ridge. The slope was steeper than it looked and even with all her ATS training, she was puffing halfway up, and forced to stop and rest. As she gained the top, her eye was caught by a bird, hovering high overhead. Wings stretched flat, with the tips furling in the wind, it was cushioned on a current of air, so that it appeared almost stationary. The hawk was watching, waiting to pounce, no doubt on an unsuspecting field mouse far below. It reminded her of the watcher on the ridge. Without warning, the bird dropped out of the sky and disappeared from view. Something had died somewhere and May felt a chill reach up her spine.

  She descended to the little wood they had passed through yesterday, and as she neared the margin, there came a sharp crack. From the corner of her eye, she saw a figure disappearing beneath the tree canopy. He moved swiftly, ducking out of sight. She was sure it was the man with the binoculars, and all at once the peaceful countryside was shot through with menace, and her isolation no longer seemed so soothing. She hurried on, glad when she reached the sleepy village and the ordinary concerns of its chatty postmistress, who sold her stamps and a newspaper.

  She decided not to tell Mrs Lloyd about her glimpse of the man. He was probably just a birdwatcher, the hovering hawk some rare species he was trying to spot. Still, May was annoyed that she’d let her fears spoil her excursion. But nothing could ruin her pleasure in seeing her mother so bright. Sometimes Mrs Lloyd would look up from her sewing or pause over the range, seemingly lost in thought, and then May feared the old vacancy and disorientation were returning. But they were only brief moments and May was sure that the country cure was working when her mother announced that she’d agreed to become the major’s full-time housekeeper.

  ‘Do you really want to, Mum?’ she’d asked, fearing Mrs Lloyd might still be too fragile for the responsibility.

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind. It can get a bit boring out here. There’s only myself to cook and clean for, and this place is so small I can go round it in an hour. And it’ll do him a favour. He might look well off, but he’s had to pull in his horns since the racing’s been cut back. He can’t afford much help – besides, the gardener’s joined the navy and the cook’s gone into the NAAFI. Gawd knows what he’d be eating if I didn’t send him over a dinner now an’ again – bread and jam probably.’

  ‘Well, if you think you’re up to it…’

  Her mother looked at her. ‘I do know I lost me marbles for a bit, love. And I was ashamed of meself, I was. But the dear old major says to me when he asked me to be his housekeeper, he says, “No disgrace, Mrs Lloyd, you’ve not been put out to pasture just yet, you only needed a bit of peace and quiet.” And no truer a word’s been spoken. I believe I’m better now.’

  May took her mother’s hand and squeezed it. ‘He was right, Mum, you’ve nothing to be ashamed of.’

  Later that night, after she had gone up to the tiny bedroom, which was little bigger than their coal-hole in Southwark Park Road, May pulled aside the blackout curtains. The night was so dark it was hard to make out the line of trees marking the wood. Whatever she’d seen earlier, there was nothing moving there now, and the inky sky was relieved only by smudges of indigo cloud. The moon was the merest fingernail. She yawned, sinking into the little bed, which was narrower but much softer than the ‘biscuits’ on the bunks back at camp. Whether it was the mattress or the fresh air, sleep here was delicious, unbroken as it was by the cacophony of war. She drifted off and dreamed of a hobbit, up on the ridge, watching with binoculars as a fire-breathing dragon hovered above the farm. The dragon’s breath cast such a bright glow that it lit the bedroom, with flickering incandescence. But in her dream, she knew that couldn’t be right. She sat up with a jerk, completely awake and aware now of light sweeping the room. This was no dream and the voices she could hear outside weren’t hobbits’, but neither did they sound English. She leaped out of bed.

  Her eyes were still getting used to the dark, but the lights and the foreign voices could mean only one thing. They were Germans and this was the invasion!

  She dashed to the little window and, clutching the sill, watched as pale mushroom-shaped parachutes filled the sky above them. Flashlights glimmered beyond the wood and from somewhere high above came the pulsing drone of an aeroplane. May spotted tiny black figures dropping in a seeming unending stream from the plane’s bowels.

  Oh, Mum, I should have listened to you! May thought. That feller we saw was a spy after all!

  From the window she could see the surrounding fields where clusters of paratroopers were bundling up their chutes and shouting to each other in their foreign accents. It was impossible to make out what they were saying, but she had no doubt, their intentions were not friendly.

  When she saw the first groups heading towards the cottage across the fields, she knew the time had come to act. They would have to make a run for it, now!

  Trembling, she ran to the bedroom opposite to wake Mrs Lloyd. But as she did so, May heard sounds downstairs. She froze, putting her hand over her own mouth before she could scream.

  They’re in the house! May’s breath came in short harsh gasps. She dashed back into the bedroom, picked up the iron poker lying next to the fireplace and crept down the stairs, her legs feeling like water. She had no idea how she would fight off German paratroopers with nothing but a poker, but she gripped it tightly and eased open the living-room door. She could see no activity and quickly moved to the kitchen. Holding the poker above her head like a sabre, she swallowed hard, threw open the door and charged.

  ‘Don’t kill me, don’t kill me!’ Her mother raised both hands.

  ‘Mum? What the bloody hell are you doing?’

  Carrie Lloyd, wearing a long coat over her nightdress, was pulling tins of food from the cupboard and stuffing them into her battered suitcase.

  ‘If it’s the invasion, we’ll need these!’ she said, continuing to throw in spam and soup, and whatever else came to hand.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mum, we can’t carry a
ll that – we’ve got to go now!’

  Yet her mother, with shaking hands, managed to close the suitcase and attempted to drag it off the table. But it was far too heavy and May gently prised her hands away.

  ‘Come on, Mum,’ she said.

  And leaving the suitcase behind, they hurried out into the night. May, instinctively stooping low, led them out through the front gate and on to the gravel path that swung round to the big house.

  ‘This way!’ she hissed, heading towards the wood. ‘They’ll be avoiding the trees – we can hide there for a bit.’

  She grabbed her mother’s hand and felt the rigid fear in Mrs Lloyd’s body. The idea that the Germans had followed her poor mother, even into this seemingly safe haven, filled May with rage. It was fortunate that anger and indignation had displaced all her own terror, for they weren’t five paces into the wood before she was brought up short by a pair of German jackboots dangling in front of her face. She came to a sharp halt, so that her mother collided with her beneath an old beech tree. The dangling boots suddenly began kicking and May dodged out of the way, pushing her mother into the undergrowth.

  She still had the poker with her and now began bashing at the boots till they were still. She looked up into the tree to see a white face glaring down at her. His body twisted slowly, suspended from the tangled parachute cords entwined around the tree branches. May thought he looked like a broken puppet rather than the fierce invader she’d imagined. A strangulated voice came from high up.

  ‘Help me!’

  ‘Help you? Why should I help a bloody German?’ She was betrayed by an undeniable trembling in her voice, but she steadied the poker and said as fiercely as she could, ‘You’re my prisoner!’

  The parachutist laughed, and then choked.

  ‘German? I’m sorry, ma’am, but this German was born in Kamloops, and last time I checked my birth certificate I was Canadian. Now, are you going to help me down or not?’

  His laughter came again, and suddenly Mrs Lloyd was at her side. ‘Don’t believe him, May, they’re trained to talk like us… He’ll slit our throats if you help him down.’