Part Two
CHAPTER 12
Chris sat on the old mac which Laura had handed him. He looked across at Mary and smiled; the egg sandwiches tasted good. The hens were laying well this week. They must have known it was spring. He looked up at the branches of the elm. He could see the blue sky through the leaf buds. There were bluebells in the copse, not many but enough to colour the ground.
‘What did your mum say?’ Mary asked, pushing a piece of crust into her mouth. ‘Is she coming down yet? Did you say thank you to her for getting me out of old Ma Turnball’s house and into Mrs Simpson’s?’
Chris dug deep into his pocket, pulling out the letter he had received this morning. He read it to Mary.
London
May 1942
Darling Chris,
Well, though the bombs have tailed off I can’t say that it is quiet here in London. As Mr Leonard grumbles, ‘The Yanks are over-paid and over here.’ We seem to have foreign soldiers everywhere now. Not just the Free French, the Poles but all these Americans. It is wonderful to see them. At last the end must be in sight, though of course it won’t be as soon as we would like.
I was so pleased that it is working out better for Mary at Mrs Simpson’s. Laura seemed to think that she was a kind person and believe me, the money I have to pay does not matter at all.
I am almost allowing myself to believe that I will be able to get to Norfolk soon. The Labour Exchange have said that it should be possible to exchange one form of war work for another but I need the permission of my employer and a replacement. They suggest that I apply for work in a sugar beet factory for the winter when even the permanent farm workers are laid off and then start work on Mr Jones’s farm in the spring because I have his offer of a job in writing. If I apply to the Land Army I could be put to work anywhere and I can’t be parted from you for very much longer. I will be able to get over to you every weekend once I start at the factory.
It seems a long time until the winter – another six months – but I have somehow to get Mr Leonard’s agreement and you know how very difficult that will be. I will come though. I promise you that.
The vicar is still staying at the flat and is a constant support to everyone in the area and Marian is well and so too is Rob. He is stationed in Scotland still, in the Stores, and sometimes comes home on leave.
London is no longer the place you knew. In fact, I wonder if you can remember it. There are so many buildings destroyed. A bomb landed on the park and blew up the balloon and the horse-chestnut tree.
Write to me with your news when you can. Are you all right? Really all right?
All my love,
Mummy
Chris put it back in his pocket. She was coming. Not until the winter and then not to the village but he would see her every weekend.
‘I’m glad she’s coming,’ Mary said, reaching forward and taking the last piece of bread. ‘You need your mum. You’ll have to tell her, you know.’
Chris crunched up the greaseproof paper, smaller and smaller but when he threw it to the ground it sprang out into a larger ball. ‘Shut up’, he said. ‘Just shut up. She mustn’t know. No one must know.’
He took a drink of water from the bottle, wiping the top before passing it to Mary. She took it and drank and now there were crumbs in the water but he didn’t want any more anyway.
‘She should know because they’ll get you one day. They won’t be satisfied with a postal order soon, you know.’ She passed the bottle back and he pushed it down into the canvas bag which Laura had packed the picnic in.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Chris said, getting up. ‘Come on, let’s see how they’re getting on.’
He didn’t wait for Mary to catch up but picked up the canvas bag and walked to the edge of the trees, looking out towards the fields which had once grown wheat and barley but which were now churned up as men built huts at one end and hangars at another. The row of elms was still standing, though, hiding the airfield from the village. The runway markers stretched and stretched across three fields and Laura had said that they would never get it back as it used to be once the war was over. Chris looked back into the copse. Mary was coming, bringing the old butterfly net. It was too early but sometimes if the spring was really warm, Laura had said, you could be lucky.
He looked back again to the airfield and then to the village. There was no sign of Joe or the gang on the road. Maybe they wouldn’t be waiting by the crossroads today, but he knew they would. They always were on a Saturday. He felt the postal order in his pocket. They would be there because today was the day he had to give them his pocket money or they would tell the whole village that his dad had been a German.
‘My sister says the Yanks are good fun. They give her stockings and gum. Chewing gum, you know. And comics and cigarettes.’ Mary stood next to him. ‘When they come d’you think they’ll give us gum? I’ve never ’ad it.’
Chris turned towards her. It was only two o’clock. Joe wouldn’t be there until four and maybe today he’d be brave enough to stand up to him. Yes, maybe today he would but now he wanted to see the toad spawn. Yes, that’s what he wanted to do. They walked round the edge of the copse to the pond and there, in long spotted strings were the spawn, stretched out in the water, crossing and recrossing one another.
‘Blimey, I thought they was in one big blob like tapioca,’ Mary said, and Chris laughed.
‘So did I but Laura told me last night.’
They lay on their stomachs, their hands in the cold water. The moss on the stones was close to him, like a miniature forest. His breath blew up puffs of dry earth and there was a smell of spring in the ground. In the summer, Laura had said, fly agaric grew here, the red and white spotted toadstool which was poisonous for humans but which slugs loved.
‘Maybe I should push one down Joe’s throat,’ he said to Mary and smiled when she laughed.
They walked over to the hollow which was where the badgers had a set. Where would they walk to now that the airfield had been built across their path? They looked for the long scratch marks on the other bank and there they were, made with the long digging claws.
‘I never want to go back to London, do you?’ Chris asked as they walked on down the deep rutted track where the cartwheels had churned the earth.
‘No, it’s lovely, ain’t it? Just so quiet and lovely, except when it’s harvest time. Then it’s too bloody busy. Like Piccadilly.’ They had reached the larger pond now, where the old tin bath was still stuck, half submerged out in the middle. Chris crouched, and together they discussed whether they could get a rope out to it and bring it back and have another go this summer.
‘Maybe it won’t sink this time if we put a couple of empty drums either side,’ Chris said.
Mary was breathing heavily next to him, sucking at a new blade of grass. ‘How d’you fix the drum, clever clogs?’
Chris shrugged. ‘Well, how about a plank going across the top and tie everything to the plank?’ It sounded good to him and she smiled.
‘All right, but how do we get it back? I’m not going in after it.’ Mary was scrambling to her feet, dusting off her dress which hung from her shoulders like a sack.
Chris pushed himself up too, taking the butterfly net from her, heaving the canvas bag on to his shoulder. He didn’t want to go in either and feel the sticky mud under his toes again, the soft wriggling which could have been anything.
‘Oh well, we’ll think about it,’ he said, walking on.
They didn’t take any eggs from the nests today. Laura had said they must only take one or two otherwise there would be no birds for the mothers to hatch. Somehow they had not thought of the eggs turning into birds before and now they did not want to take any at all.
Chris felt the jam jar filled with diced laurel leaves in his pocket and wondered if he would really be able to catch a butterfly if he saw one and ease it into the jar with the bitter almond smell, leaving it to die. He remembered Mr Reynolds’s butterflies pinned
into position with their wings fixed so that they were beautiful. But were they really? Weren’t they only beautiful in flight or resting on a plant with the sun on their wings? Would he ever be able to bring his net down and capture them, kill them, mount them? He didn’t know but saying that he would gave him a reason to come out into the woods, to leave behind the games of Germans and British convoys, not cowboys and Indians. It gave him a chance to keep away from Joe and his gang.
It was four o’clock now, they could hear the chiming of the church clock from here and Mary had to be home for tea. They walked towards the village. There were fresh young nettles growing on the verges and Joe was there, in the distance, down by the crossroads. Mary had seen them too.
‘Tell your mother, Chris, or Laura, or someone. There’s too many of them to fight, you know.’
But he couldn’t tell anyone because Joe had said he would tell the village and Chris couldn’t bear the thought of the stones again and the shouting. Not here, not in this countryside that he loved.
He shook his head. They were closer now. He could see Joe swiping at the verge with his stick, and Chris stopped, staring at Joe and then he slowly and deliberately bent and gripped the nettle by the side tightly, jerking his hand upwards, knowing that this way it would not sting you. He pulled it from the earth, holding it up so that Joe could see.
He watched as the other boy laughed and did the same but he pulled it downwards, touching the top of the leaves, stinging his hand and his fingers.
‘Blimey, that was a good one,’ Mary said.
Chris nodded, looking with satisfaction at Joe’s red face, at his hand which he clutched between his arm and body and it didn’t matter so much when the boys came and grabbed him, digging in his pocket for the sixpence, but not Joe. Joe was holding his hand and swearing.
In August the sun was hot, so very hot. Chris had sat up with Laura last night, making another butterfly net from a forked oak branch and thin hoops of hazel which they threaded through the hem of an old net curtain sewn to the correct shape. He had then twisted old fuse wire round the hazel and the oak, fixing it into place with wire. Chris did not tell Laura that since the nettles Joe had been waiting for him more often. He had beaten him twice and then broken his butterfly net, but his father had suffered too, hadn’t he, in the internment camp, and so he must be as brave.
‘Are you going out to the copse with Mary today?’ Laura asked, frowning when he said no.
‘But why? You’re spending too much time on your own. You’re only nine. You need friends.’
Chris took up the canvas bag. ‘She’s a girl,’ he said. ‘She can’t keep up.’ But that wasn’t the reason. It was because she cried when she saw them waiting for him and it made his eyes water too.
He walked through the long grass of the two meadows leading to the copse. The cornflowers and red poppies hung limp in the hot sun and the Common Blues rose in front of him. He stopped, waiting for them to settle again and they did, with closed wings, the undersides of which were a medley of orange and black spots and rings on a grey background. The female was dark brown touched with blue, edged with orange rings and she lifted up into the air and then settled. Chris didn’t catch them. He never did. Laura knew it, he knew it, but nothing was ever said.
The copse was cool and dark and nightingales used to sing when he and Laura walked in the evenings but that was before the bombers came, two weeks ago. They had thundered over in wave after wave, coming in low over the village and the evacuees had thrown themselves on the ground, some screaming, while the village children laughed. But they had never been bombed had they, the teacher had said, his face white with anger at the village children’s laughter.
Where had the nightingales gone, Chris had asked Laura but she didn’t know. He looked around. The fly agaric were bright against the greens and browns and he wondered if Mary came to the copse at all. He walked to the larger pond. The tin bath was still half sunken. He missed her. Really missed her.
It was dark, too dark here, he felt suddenly. He wanted the sun on his face, pushing the shadows back, away from him. He ran through the wood, leaping over gnarled roots, skidding round trees, going faster because there could be Indians. Faster and faster. Quick, the arrows could be coming. Thwack, thwack into the trees, but missing him, always missing him. He was out into the daylight now, the breath was heaving in his chest but he felt better. He walked towards the airfield, seeing the great dark shapes of the planes behind the elms.
The planes were so huge and dark and, at dawn each morning, seemed to claw through the air, climbing higher and higher, but so slowly and heavily, pushing their noise down on to the earth, the village, the cottage, his bed, until the buildings shook. This morning he had watched from the window and seen the planes turn at last into silver specks in the clear blue sky.
He walked up to the perimeter fence, seeing the heavy equipment and vehicles running more easily over the heavy clay ground now that the summer was here. A jeep roared along the edge of the tarmacked runway, skidding to a halt beside a towering B-17. Nissen huts clustered together and there were Quonset huts too with flat roofs and straight sides.
He had cycled up to the wire with Laura and Mary when they were building the airfield. They had watched as the curved corrugated iron plates of the Nissen huts were buckled together and Laura had said they would hold twenty or thirty men. Chris had listened to the shouts, the laughter of the men, seen their mouths endlessly chewing the gum, some of which they had thrown through the wire for them, though Laura had forbidden them to pick it up.
It was a disgusting habit, she had said, but Mary had slipped it into her pocket when Laura blushed and turned away as the men whistled at her.
They had watched all morning as they heaved the panels up and locked them together and he remembered how his father had built the Anderson shelter and he had cried, standing there at the wire he had cried, then ridden home when Laura had seen. He had cried all night and she had stayed with him but did not know that it was more than grief, it was because he was still too afraid to let the village know about his father and he was ashamed.
Chris felt the sun on the back of his head, his back. On his hand which held the butterfly net. He was thirsty and moved off, down the road waiting for two jeeps to pass before crossing. The horse manure had been squashed flat and dry by so many trucks and he smiled. Each morning he had to collect the cow pats from the field behind their cottage to put on the vegetable garden and on dry days it was easier. Today had been a dry day.
He sat on the edge of the copse again, watching the air base. They were only training, the publican had told Laura. The Americans came into his pub each evening and on the first night they had drunk him dry.
The water in Chris’s bottle was warm but he drank it, taking deep long gulps, watching the rolling walk of the airmen in the distance as they strolled about the airfield. They didn’t march like the English. They had rubber soles which were quiet and they rolled their feet. He stood up, rolling his, slipping his hands into his pockets, chewing his sandwich as though it was gum. He didn’t hear the man until he laughed.
‘Well, I guess that’s a pretty good imitation,’ he said, and Chris turned, whipping his hands from his pockets, standing silent, fearful, watching the flyer who stood in his uniform, his back to the trees, the sun on his face.
‘Hey, ease up, fella. I was just out taking in some of the countryside. It’s different. You know. Kind of different.’ The man turned and looked out over the flat fields to the low undulating hills in the distance. He had his hands in his pockets and his leather jacket was unbuttoned, his cap was slipped back on his head. He turned back to Chris who was chewing his sandwich, trying to make it small enough to swallow.
‘You like candy?’
Chris shrugged. He didn’t know what candy was.
The man laughed again. He had dark eyes like Chris with deep lines running down from them, like Chris’s father. But he had a moustache too; it was brown like h
is hair.
‘Well, I guess I mean, would you like a sweet?’ The man rounded his mouth and said again. ‘Would you care for a sweet?’ He almost sounded English.
Chris watched as he brought out boiled sweets, a bag full, from his pocket. He hadn’t tasted sweets for over a year because Joe had taken his pocket money for that long.
Chris took one but the man said, ‘No, take the pack. There’s plenty more on base.’ He pushed them at Chris, nodding to him. ‘Thank you,’ Chris said, reaching out, feeling the bag heavy in his hand. ‘Would you like one of my sandwiches? They’re egg. Straight from the hen this morning.’
The man laughed again. ‘Is that so? Sure. That’d be great.’
He looked round sizing up the ground, then sat next to the canvas bag, picking at the long grass while Chris took out the sandwiches. He unfolded the greaseproof paper and offered them.
‘Have two if you like,’ he said. The man’s hands were brown and strong and his nails were short and square. He wore a heavy wrist-watch which glinted in the sun.
‘One’ll be more than plenty. I guess I was just coming out for a stroll and here I am, eating homegrown hen’s eggs. My name’s Ed. What’s yours?’
Chris was chewing the sweet, swallowing its sweetness. He wiped his hand across his mouth before replying.
‘Chris,’ he said. ‘Chris Weber.’
The man tipped his hat even further back on his head. ‘Well, Chris Weber, you must be mighty proud of where you live. This is a nice little corner.’ He waved his hand across the view. ‘You born here?’
Chris was drinking from the bottle again and now he hesitated, wiping the neck with his sleeve, looking at the man. Then he passed it to him. Ed took it, looked at him and grinned, and then drank. Chris smiled, taking it back, burrowing it back in the canvas bag out of the sun. He brought out a stick of rhubarb and a twist of sugar saying as he did so, ‘No, I wasn’t born here. I lived in London but when the bombing started I was evacuated here. I like it.’
Somewhere Over England Page 20