by Leah Fleming
Suddenly she saw Digger Carstairs in his leather jerkin and flying boots, scattering clods of weeds in all directions like Crocodile Dundee. That was who he looked like, Crocodile Dundee, without the muscles.
‘None of them knew how much of myself I put into that café. How much I nurtured it, cherished it like a baby; nothing was too much trouble. But it was no substitute for real flesh and blood and Digger was certainly that.’
March 1944
‘Behold it cometh,’ shouts Belle, pointing to a boy wheeling a barrow of steaming manure, wobbling like a drunken navvy.
Sid Sperrin, eleven going on seventy, with ears like jug handles and a helmet of tufted black hair, has kept his promise to deliver horse manure at a tanner a bucket to the allotment, for the Cub Scouts Spitfire campaign.
‘Here, mister, ’eard the one about Utility knickers,’ he pauses for their attention. ‘One Yank and they’re off! Get it?’
‘Sid Sperrin, if your aunties hear your sauce, you’ll be on that bus back to Birmingham, faster than a V1 rocket,’ warns Belle.
‘Nah . . . they’s all deaf,’ he quips. ‘What they dain’t hear, dain’t trouble them.’ He turns to Digger. ‘Got any souvenirs, mister, shrapnel . . . so I can swop.’
Digger fishes in his pocket for a packet of fruit gums and some cash.
‘Thanks, tah for now . . . toodle pip,’ says the boy, trundling his load to his next customer.
‘No flies on him,’ laughs the airman, as he forks in the muck. ‘How will a kid like that settle down after the war is over?’
‘I wonder how any of us will be the same after five years of all this,’ is the woman’s reply.
Digger watches a handful of planes circling the nearby airfield, his expression distracted. ‘Just look at those poor buggers trying to keep themselves from pranging each other. I’ll give ’em two ops if they’re lucky . . . lads out of short pants, that’s what we’re left with . . . schoolboys. Breaks yer bleedin’ heart.’
Belle watches him tense like a coiled spring. However much she keeps him busy, amused or entertained, his eyes are always searching the sky, his ears listening for the bombers’ return overhead. She lifts her spade and jabs into the claggy soil with a sigh.
Later, after closing time, Digger aims his cap at the coatstand and wings it onto the hook with unfailing accuracy. He waits discreetly until the waitresses have swept and mopped the floors, tidied out the ashtrays and fireplace, tucked all the kitchen paraphernalia to bed; until all the hundreds of menial tasks the women do each evening, before scuttling home to egg and chips or a date at the picture house, are done. That is when Belle feels loneliest of all, in the quiet kitchen, with only dish mops and tea towels for company. Then the bell rings twice and he does his trick, waltzes her around the dining room, until she feels dizzy and plonks her down in a chair to deliver a smacker, somewhere in the general direction of her lips.
‘For a navigator, your aim is rotten,’ she laughs.
‘Near enough, I reckon, you old fusspot.’ He is always tanked up, his grey eyes brittle as slate, cheeks flushed, with tiny veins like routes on a map. Stale ale and cigarettes are not the best aphrodisiac but it beats Lysol and Vim anytime.
‘Where shall we go tonight?’ he demands. ‘Your place or mine?’ They laugh, remembering the débâcle in the cellar, the shocked faces of the Prin and the staff.
‘My back is giving me jip, after all that digging this afternoon,’ moans the cook. Tonight they will go to her flat in Beacon Street, creep up the stairs to the first floor apartment, risk the twitching curtains, for the privacy of her three rooms. ‘Not much to show for a life is it?’ she had apologised the first time, as she closed the blackouts and switched on the dingy lamp.
The shabby room shimmered with faded furniture and worn linoleum flooring. All Belle’s funds are sunk in the Vic, not in her wardrobe or furnishings. Digger flops down on the sofa, roots in his greatcoat for a bottle and a packet of ciggies, making himself at home. Sometimes Belle catches him staring into the gas fire, watching the flames, his eyes far away. A curtain of steel encloses him, cutting her out from any further conversation.
Her turn will come later, much later, in the middle of the night when he screams out, ‘Skip! Bail out . . . Skip! Jeez move, Christ look at his face . . . his eyes. I can’t find his eyes. Aw. Jeez . . . I can’t . . . can’t.’ He wakes screaming, thrashing through the sheets. ‘Get out! Bail out!’
‘Shush . . . it’s only a dream, shush . . .’ He cannot hear at first, in that far off unspeakable world of flying metal coffins and ack-ack. The horrors he endures there are not for the conscious mind to recall. It is then that she holds him and nurses his fear, strokes and comforts that frightened child, lets him nuzzle her breast, suckle her until her nipples are hard as buttons. He feels for her body in the darkness and covers it with his own but rarely comes in climax. Belle does not mind much. Being nursemaid to his terror is enough. He cannot help himself. This need for her soothes an aching heart. For the first time in her life, she is wanted, caressed, sexed and satisfied. He wakes and reaches for a cigarette. She makes a cup of tea.
‘I’m going back on ops, love. Got a posting.’ She gulps back the tears.
‘Surely you’ve done your whack . . . why volunteer for more?’
‘Someone has to show those schoolboys how to duck and dive. I can’t keep training them and not be man enough to go up there with them. I can’t stand being grounded. Women can’t understand.’
‘Can’t we? . . . I see what it does to you. I see the sweats, the shakes, the nightmares.’
‘That’s only cos I’m not up there, in control. I feel like a conchie stuck on that tarmac . . . I have to go back.’
‘No one’s stopping you, mate,’ she replies, with a heavy heart, watching the dawn light sneak under the curtain, snuggling into the curve of his body for warmth. ‘If this is all there is for me, it will do for now.’
Saturday Afternoon
Isobel felt knee joints stiffen and click, legs ache in protest at her effort. The afternoon sun was too watery to warm her thin blood. She sat on a stool, admiring the outdoor housework.
‘In the beginning I loved every minute of the Victory Café; all my win-the-war cookery campaigns and daft schemes. Then came Digger halfway across the world to make a woman of me at last, to shore up the gaps for a while, a wonderful distraction, a dizzy darling of a man.
‘ “You only come round once, girl, so enjoy yerself. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?”
‘We dug into those drunken moments, savoured the taste of loving, but the little we had was never enough. It was tiring being nursemaid to his nightmares. Silly how I thought sex would be the answer. I need a stiff gin!’ She gathered up the tools, nodding her head tiredly. ‘That will have to do. I don’t suppose she’ll even notice.’
Saturday Evening
Dorrie sat on a bench in the sunken Remembrance Garden, listening to the roar of the Saturday traffic, heading home to Match Of The Day and Bruce Forsyth.
‘We are strangers to each other, Lichfield and me, like old friends grown apart with no point of contact now. Where is the spirit of the place I once knew?’
A tramp had already spread out his sleeping bag for the night, eyeing her with suspicion as she rose to place a bunch of red carnations on the marble flagstone. She fingered old poppy wreaths and read their rain-spattered messages, bleached under plastic.
She listed long forgotten names from schooldays, etched in gold on the slate memorial wall, pausing only at Solomon’s precious name, bending to the little crosses; the most personal of all tokens to the fallen. Soon they would be replaced again, for the Armistice ceremonials.
‘This is where I belong, alongside old pals, just another casualty of war . . . I suppose their sacrifice was worthwhile. It makes me boil to know how much we were fobbed off with half truths and propaganda. We were all so gullible, patriotic, generous with children’s lives. Now us oldies are not safe alone in
the streets.’
She felt the dampness numbing her toes and stamped her feet. Twilight shadows held no fears. There was no birdsong; only the chimes of a church clock, to jolt her back again into the final remembering.
3
DANCING AT THE VIC
Menu
Parsnip, Leek and Bean Soup flavoured with Fennel Seeds
Lamb Chops with Rosemary and Spring Onions or Welsh Pork
Rhubarb Cobbler with Custard
March 1944
Maggie Preece sits in the window of the Vic, puffing hard on her last cigarette, savouring each drag. ‘Yer dad’s on the warpath again, Dorrie, hoverin’ over Beacon Park, shining his torch in the bushes after dusk. Them Yanks bin at the flowerbeds again, he says, givin’ the park keeper the third degree. He roots in the Air Raid Shelters . . . in all the love holes. He knows them all. Likes to catch them pants down, hard at it . . . if you catch my drift.’ She pauses for her shocked audience to sit down and continues. ‘Marvin . . . you will take me home to Idaho.’ She mimics. ‘Sure thing, hon, but shift yer skirt up a bit more.’ Then up pops P.C. Plod, like the Angel Gabriel, to put the fear of God into the couple, with his one-man Crusade. I’m telling you, if the fellas ever catch him again, he’ll be singing soprano. They’ve even got the local lads on the lookout . . . blanket watching. Allied co-operation at last! . . . what a carry on! Bribing Boy Scouts to blow their whistles for a pocket of change or a candy bar. I bet Sid Sperrin’s getting an education he’ll not find in any school books! So don’t do any courtin’ in the city. It’s not safe. He’d have you on a charge as soon as look at you. Sorry, I know he’s yer dad.’
‘He’d kill me, drag me to the pulpit as a fallen woman, daughter or not,’ whispers Dorrie, her eyes ballooning at the very thought. ‘That’s not the only co-operating going on. I’ve heard the boys from the Base are parking trucks carelessly . . . doors unlocked while they wet their whistles . . . just time for a few locals, mention no names and I’ll tell you no lies, to help themselves . . . tins, tyres. If it’s not tied down it walks. Labels ripped off. Lucky says the warehouses are always losing spare parts; no one seems to care.’
‘Tell Lucky boyo to keep his trap shut,’ Maggie mouths.
‘But it’s not fair. Here we are, all doing without, while others cheat and mark down sugar as scrubbing brushes. Belle is ever so strict.’ Dorrie hesitates, remembering how the search for the blue pudding was bringing temptation even to their door.
It is Chad Dixon who delivers the solution, plonking three huge cans on the kitchen table that very evening. ‘There, Belladonna. That will solve your problem.’ The labels read: Blueberries in Syrup. ‘What can be more American than blueberry pie?’
‘But I can’t, Chad. Thanks. You’ve all been so generous.’ Belle wipes floury hands on her apron and fingers the tins like crystal.
‘Nonsense, lady. You have given us real hospitality. So we’s payin’ you back, our style, while we can . . . who knows where we’ll be soon.’
That puts a different perspective on the deal, Belle figures, telling him all about her Victory Pie Menu and about her Boston beans in spicy sauce.
‘Say, you’re gonna need a real southern sauce, like we puts over charcoal grilled steaks!’ He sees the look of disbelief on their hungry faces and laughs. ‘Just you guys wait. I got a great idea. Give us the kitchen for the night and we’ll dish you out the best steaks this side of Texas. Come on, boys. We’ve got work to do . . . sweeten up the cookhouse, boys. We’ll show these fine ladies some real American chow!’
On the next Saturday night, the waitresses chivvy up any lingering customers, closing the café door promptly, drawing the blackouts onto the Square, while Chad, Abe and Lucky take over the kitchen. From under their greatcoats emerge tins of sauces, steaks the size of rabbits, real butter and a tub of almost liquid ice cream. They push the dining tables together, light candles and set the table for the feast. After a glass of hoarded sherry, they settle down to the sampling of rye whisky, root beer and soda pop.
The aroma wafting from the kitchen whets appetites better than any aperitif, rising up the stairway into the Prin’s open door. She sidles down, her panda eyes peering nosily over the bannister. ‘Vous eat wizout me? . . . bad boys.’
‘No sweat, princess . . . there’s enough sauce for the whole damn street in the back.’
‘Pity Mrs Spear’s not here to share it,’ Belle adds half-heartedly.
Connie had sent a message that she had ‘one of her backs’. Dorrie puzzles how being a martyr to her back so often coincided with the charabanc outings of the Women’s Bright Hour at the Chapel.
They spin out the dinner to last all evening, savouring the warmth of their friendship, the secrecy, relishing the tastes of long-forgotten treats: the smell of fresh coffee, cigars; nectar to starved nostrils. Dorrie feels the hard liquor turning her legs to jelly and her head to cotton wool, as the booze winds its way around the table, slurring speech turning up the volume to a raucous happy sound. They spill out into the yard on the spring evening. Belle tunes the wireless to music on the Forces waveband. They jitterbug and jive to the Big Band rhythm, under a starlit sky.
‘I’m dancin’ with my baby.’ Lucky twirls his girl on the flagstones. ‘Cassie in the starlight . . . that’s you, honey.’
Their noise, however, does not go unnoticed. Suddenly a loud banging on the front door interrupts the party and familiar voices holler through the letter box.
‘There’s a bleedin’ light full on upstairs . . . don’t you know there’s a war on! Stop that racket!’
Dorrie freezes to the spot at the sound of Constable Goodman’s wrath. ‘God help me if he finds me here, Lucky. I must disappear.’ There is no escape, the wall’s too high to scale and no back exit either.
‘Quick . . . wiz me, up ze stairs! You two up . . . quick,’ Prin comes to the rescue.
They race up the wooden stairs, past the first floor living rooms to the attic bedrooms, once servant quarters in the old house. They hide in a little bedroom with windows blacked with paint, a dismal space with bare boards and a brass bed. The constable bawls at the assembly like naughty children. The Prin whines her apology and wails her anguish, like a prima donna. ‘It all my fault . . . I forget. I zink I smell the burnings . . . I fire watching . . . I getting old and forgetful.’
‘This isn’t the first time this old biddy’s had a warning. Do you think she’s signalling up there?’ argues the Air Raid Warden in all seriousness. ‘These foreigners!’ The policeman shakes his head and surveys the scene carefully. ‘Do you hold a licence for hard liquor, Mrs Morton?’
‘No, no this is a private party, I can assure you.’
‘And these foodstuffs . . . all presents are they?’
‘Of course.’
‘For services rendered?’ His tone bristles with disapproval as he looks the soldiers up and down.
‘I can explain, sir.’ Chad intervenes. ‘We owe this lady for her hospitality. We wanted to return the honour. Didn’t we?’
Abe nods.
‘Oh yes, you lot are very generous with all your favours. I am surprised to see you here, Wyn Preece. I’m glad Dorcas isn’t mixed up in this . . . shindig. I can see two other places . . . who else is here.’
‘No one, some guys left early. We’re going to wash up now,’ Belle replies.
‘I hope your passes are in order, there are enough rowdies on the street without you adding your dollar’s worth.’ He lingers as the men collect coats and caps and escorts them onto the street, slamming the door behind them with a flourish.
‘Little Hitler!’ yells the Prin, as she collects the dirty plates from the tables.
Once the danger is over, quietness descends upon the café like a soft blanket, muffling sound, soothing shattered nerve endings. Lucky and Dorrie sit on the bedstead, with hands firm on the mattress, eyes down shyly, waiting for the All Clear. Prin’s voice floats up from her living room.
‘Is all right, darlink
s, but you stay there . . . till horrid Hitler go away, I keep watch out of the window.’
For Dorrie and Lucky, in love, alone, in hiding, there is only one place to find warmth and comfort. Here at last is a safe place for them to express all they feel in the most physical of ways. Only one thing left to do and they do it, over and over again.
In the early hours of Sunday morning, Dorrie creeps through the darkened streets, down the winding alley, letting herself into the cottage by the back door key. The reception party is waiting.
‘Where have you been ’til this time of night? Answer me!’ screams her mother.
‘Out,’ she replies.
‘So we noticed. Answer your mother properly, Dorcas,’ the policeman spits, the veins on his temple bulging, pulsating with rage.
‘I have been out with my friends.’
‘You’ve been in that café . . . canoodlin’, making a whore of yourself with your chocolate soldier boyfriend. I can smell it on you.’
‘So what if I do have a boyfriend!’
‘There, Mother, what did I tell you . . . that Yankee Sergeant did warn me. She’s been deceiving us with her lies . . . the Jezebel!’
‘Calm yourself, Father, Dorcas will explain. It’s nearly morning and we’ve been worried stiff. How could you? . . . dancing, smoking, drinking in such company!’
‘What if I was . . . it’s none of your business!’ Dorrie stands firm.
‘I’ll give you none of our business. I am your father and you do what I say in this house.’ He moves forward, raising his fist over her.
The girl jumps backwards to the door. ‘Oh no you don’t . . . none of that or else I’ll be telling Pastor Gillibrand and your precious fellowship of believers just what an evil man you are!’