by Andrew Greig
*
I hadn’t kissed or been kissed like that for ages. The kind where your heart is in your mouth. The kind I never shared with Evelyn, however nice it was.
My lips got swollen. Every so often I took a break to wind the gramophone and turn over the records. So we played the same selection over and over. From that night I would never hear Rhapsody in Blue without living again that shabby little room, those kisses, his scratchy blue uniform and my hammering heart pressed up against it.
I unbuttoned his uniform jacket. I untied his tie and put my hand on his throat.
‘One more time?’ I asked.
His skin was hot, his eyes were very bright and close. I made no attempt to stop him touching me and going as far as modesty and common sense would permit.
Honestly, if it wasn’t for the dread of getting pregnant, I think I’d be a fast lot.
*
I walked home through the dark town and into the countryside, then with my torch took the short cut across the fields where cows stood pale and glimmering in the moon’s light and the dew soaked my shoes and socks. It was very late; I’d have to take a good blast of oxygen tomorrow to get fully awake, though adrenalin did a lot of that for you.
I walked on through the long grass and thistles and cowpats towards the distant mass of the pile we’d commandeered as our barracks. My thoughts were as if I was very drunk, though I wasn’t. Everything normal seemed to have stopped, slipped away somewhere, and all that was left was the cool mystery of the night, my humming, and some high-flying thoughts. Everything we have, we lose. So to want something, anything, someone, is the beginning of tragedy.
And yet, and yet.
I jumped over the last fence and crunched up the gravel path towards our billet, and narrowly avoided being shot by our guard who had Fifth Columnists and German paratroopers on the brain.
*
I straightened the crumpled bed covers, washed and got into bed. Though dog-tired I lay awake a long time with the moonlight coming pale between the curtains and striking the silent gramophone and the end of the bed where we had sat.
The night before with Evelyn seemed an age away and everything had changed. I was in it now. I pictured the slogan that was everywhere these days: GO TO IT. Len’s youth and vulnerability and kisses had dragged the heart out of me, and it lay so open I wondered it couldn’t be seen beating in the moonlight. And yet this was such a bad idea, not because he wasn’t a good man, I’d wager anything he was, but because there was a strong likelihood he’d die and that would kill me if I let him grow more important.
I lay awake a long time, ‘Mood Indigo’ running through and through my head, my body singing softly to itself.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Early August
His letter is still in its small, faded envelope. Typed little sheets, the folds darkened and paper yellowing. Smudged with the sweat of sixty years back. A faint whiff of grass, plus hair or engine oil. That summer! His hands closed this, hers opened it.
Inside, pale pages like opaque windows, showing dimly through to his world.
Dear Stella,
Had a bit of a shaky do yesterday – but no flap, don’t worry, I’m fine, near as dammit. Yesterday we scrambled to bust up a swarm of bombers over When we got there the Spits had already engaged the fighters above, so we went in line astern, real copybook stuff (they want to throw that book away – like a lot of things, it’s gone out of date fast). A case of Tally-ho bambambam, a cross between the hunting field and the school playground. Still, got to admit some of these university types have guts, flying in to 10 to 1 against, and we just have to follow.
Hellofagoodshow as Billy Madden would say, totally wiz. More just hell and leave it at that, I say. Johnny Staples got an He111 then baled out, Tad and Coco Cadbury shared another, I added another probable (Me110, seeing you ask). Then more 109s bounced us from above, total shambles all round, glare through the glass, chaps squalling on the headphones, hot metal breakfasts whizzing about the sky.
I’m sorry to say Geoff Prior’s had it, saw him blow up, a shame because he was a good leader and, I think, a good man. And one of our new blokes, can’t remember his name, went down in a flamer. Then I spotted Tim Baker with one of the bastards (‘scuse) on his tail roughing him up, and I went down to put my oar in – got him, I think, but of course can’t prove it – and must have stopped looking behind in the excitement and one of the opposition must have gone down to look after his mate because this banging starts. Then he nails me good and proper. Starboard wing starts to fold, nose goes down and there’s a bonfire blowing through by my hands (thank God I wore Mum’s leather gloves) and my kite is definitely on the way down and out. Trouble was, she wanted to take me with her. I switched everything off, got out of the harness but the cockpit hood jammed and I was stuck in there and things got a bit hot and bothered till I suddenly fell out. Banged my arm on the way. Dropped a while then remembered to pull the cord and I’m floating down towards Merrie England, beating out the last of the flames round my legs, missing a shoe but the foot’s still there so I ain’t complaining!
So I landed smack in a plum orchard somewhere near Wateringbury and I’m dangling up a tree with half a dozen giggling Land Girls trying to decide what to do about it when this wrinkly old fella comes along, takes a look then shouts up, ‘Just dropped in for a cuppa, then?’ and nearly ends himself laughing. I was lost for a reply, so confined myself to a simple gesture.
So that was that. I got down then woke up on a ride to hospital where they’ve looked after me and where I’m sending this under the eagle eye of Matron (God rot her!). I’m all right, really. A wonky wrist, something funny with my elbow, and for the rest a bit like your toast the other night – a little burned, a little scraped, but sound enough underneath.
The good news is, I’ve a week’s leave till I’m fully operational again (they want to keep me from writing off more expensive machinery), and I’ve an Immodest Proposal. Could you, would you, care to spend a couple of days at an aunt’s cottage out Ludlow way (minus aunt, who’s with another sister in Wales). It’s in a valley by the river, real quiet place, guaranteed no air-raid sirens.
So can you? No strings attached. You know. But nice to revisit ‘Mood Indigo’ a few more times, especially the crackly bits. It would be good to spend more than a few hours together – sun, cider, sweet nothings. Can do?
Love, Len
PS Like the typing? Hand temporarily SNAFU.
The truth? The truth is more in his diary. Those pale pencil-written (neat at first, a draughtsman’s hand) battered pages.
He was slow that morning, even a blast from his oxygen bottle before taking off couldn’t make him alert. Their flight went up early, round 7 a.m. From the start he was struggling to stay in formation as they climbed (Geoff Prior insisted on a tight V till the end, which this morning turned out to be for him). His snap decision to go down after Tim Baker was a mistake. Just before scramble they’d been talking about their families over a mug of tea in the dispersal hut, and he’d briefly felt connected with him, so when it happened he had to follow him down.
And when the bullets and cannon shells started hitting home, he was so astounded he did nothing for a couple of seconds. And when he did, he was flustered. Then terror-struck. Going down in a flamer was the flyer’s biggest dread. Hammering on the canopy as the plane went spinning down, he was trying to twist away from the flames blowing into that tiny space. Lord knows how he got out, for he doesn’t.
Whatever he typed laboriously and one-handed in the cool, near-empty hospital ward, the reality had charred him deeply, and from then on he notes nightmares of falling and burning. His hopeful proposal to Stella, which he didn’t think very likely she would take up, may well have been a way of keeping his thoughts trained forward onto one good thing.
‘I am excited,’ I admitted to Maddy. ‘I didn’t think I’d get leave but Foxy Farringdon offered to stand in.’
‘She sounds all right for a
toff,’ Maddy agreed.
‘I’m starting to warm to her,’ I said. ‘But now I can see Len and me going away to live together for a few days, I’m a bit nervous.’
‘Not half as nervous as Len, I’ll bet,’ Maddy said. ‘Stands to reason.’
‘How’s that?’
Maddy laughed her deep, gurgling laugh and drained her glass.
‘I’ll bet you next week’s chocolate coupon it’s his first time and it’s not yours.’
I thought about it. I removed a lemon pip from my mouth, all yellow-white and slippery, and wondered why I didn’t feel more embarrassed. Maybe because she thought sex was natural and funny. Hard to remember, but in those days women friends didn’t even admit to having their period.
‘I don’t gamble with something serious like chocolate,’ I said.
She laughed, loud and free and slightly drunk. A couple of middle-aged men at the bar turned and stared at us. We stared back at them till they looked away.
‘Seducing the young and innocent,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what your mother would say.’
‘I know exactly what my mother would say,’ I replied. ‘But that’s a different generation. As long as I can keep it from my father. For all his casual ways, he wouldn’t be happy about it.’
‘So what’s the invisible but?’ Maddy asked.
I looked into the last of her gin and picked out the lemon.
‘It’s a terrible thing to say,’ I said, ‘but when I got that letter I almost hoped …’ I sucked the lemon, made a face and looked away, blinking. Maddy put a hand on mine and waited. Sometimes she knew when to wait.
‘… Hoped he’d been injured seriously enough to get him out,’ I said quickly. ‘I want him alive.’
‘Then you’ve chosen someone with the wrong occupation,’ Maddy said quietly. ‘Better keep it light, or go back with Evelyn.’
As Maddy went up to the bar, ignoring some of the looks she was getting, I sat frowning as I drew with my little finger in a pool dripping from the lemon. I doodled a circle, put a line through it, then a stick man. Out of the stick man’s (or woman’s?) mouth came a speech bubble. I hesitated then entered a question mark, frowned down at it, then made four blobby asterisks and added an exclamation mark just in time to look up smiling as the drinks came.
‘Still,’ I said, ‘might as well live for the day. Everyone else is. By the way, what’s SNAFU, Maddy?’
She threw back her head and laughed and laughed. She looked at me and shook her head like I was a sweet but silly child. Then she leaned closer and said it in my ear.
‘“Situation Normal, All Fucked Up”, love. The Yanks use it.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Of course. How very useful.’ Then to cover my embarrassment, I added, ‘So who have you been flaming it with this week, Maddy?’
‘I been out with a sweet sailor boy I was looking after for a while,’ she said. Then she propped her arm up on her elbow so her sleeve slipped down. On her wrist were four bangles, blue-green with rosy lights, and a chain of tiny fish carved round them. Not my taste but looked expensive.
‘Golly!’ I said. ‘You must have looked after him well.’
‘Oh!’ she said. ‘I did, believe me.’
She laughed and shook her wrist and the bangles rattled together. She never said what happened to her ‘sweet sailor boy’ but she wore those bangles pretty much all the time, and their light clacking followed her wherever she went, and became one of the sounds of that summer.
Our trains crawled westward through that day, but I didn’t care that we had to stand. The carriages were packed with soldiers, a few sailors, evacuees, some exhausted pale-faced people coming back from long shifts in the factories and workshops. I’d left my RAF uniform behind and got a few curious, a few hostile looks.
As we waited in a bombed siding for another train to pass, she leaned against me where we stood. The weight and warmth of her body pressed into mine, and I felt for the first time the real ache of tenderness. I felt for her tired feet, the heavy, sleepy lean of her head against my chest. I put my arm round her back to hold her up and looking down over her auburn head I saw some curls escaped to swing like bells against her white skin at the nape of her neck, and I felt faint with the near-certainty that tonight I would know her.
She sighed, her head shifted against my jacket as the train jerked and I held her more tightly with my unbandaged arm. At her feet was her small blue suitcase and next to it, mine. Also a large basket of food queued for and bought with ration book in hand. I had a newspaper and a book by James Thurber – a present for her that I hoped she’d approve of – in my coat pocket.
I shifted on my feet, felt patient, at peace with time in a way I hadn’t been since that evening in childhood I calculated how long I had to live and felt the precious seconds trickling away even as I wasted time calculating them. Some unseen shutter clicked as I was looking down at her case, and I knew that stray moment would stay, labelled On Holiday, August 1940. The blue case, her new brown shoes, the way the sunlight fell across them both, confirming them precious.
A long day and my feet were killing me in too-small shoes I’d bought in the hope of making myself look dainty. We stood by the window, shamelessly letting our bodies melt together through coats and jackets. I was thinking how we didn’t know each other yet but very soon we would, and wondering how I felt about that. Nervous, mostly. Not at the thing itself but at how much I wanted it.
In mid-afternoon, on the second train, someone offered me a seat. I peeled myself away from Len and took it gratefully. Towards evening the crowd thinned out and we got a seat together and sat hand in hand heading west into a golden pool of light I’d have happily drowned in.
Finally we got out at the tiny station in nowhere and looked for a taxi. The stationmaster seemed to find this very funny. A taxi, here?
‘So,’ I said to my guiding light, ‘how far is it to walk?’
He shrugged, looked a bit shifty I thought.
‘About three miles.’ Pause. ‘Maybe four. And … there’s some uphill in it.’
I silently cursed my shoes and my vanity. He took the two cases, I carried the food, and we set off.
If the cottage was in a valley, it was one near the top of a hill. The road went up and up. It began to rain lightly, then not so lightly. A wind got up and drove the rain through my light coat and plastered my suit and stockings to my legs.
He apologized several times for the weather and the gradient. I said he might have arranged it better. He apologized again. I said that it must be tough carrying the responsibility for the world on his shoulders.
He put down the cases, grimaced, flexed his unbandaged hand. ‘It certainly is,’ he said. ‘It’s not far now,’ he added.
‘You’ve said that so often, one time it must be true.’
He strode out in front, humming tunelessly. When I recognized it was ‘Tipperary’ I had to kick him.
‘Ouch!’ said my fearless fighting man. ‘That’s sore.’
The rain got heavier and we sheltered behind a tree for a while.
‘Thought you was once a bit of a tomboy,’ he said. ‘Outdoor activities and that.’
‘Was was a long time ago,’ I replied.
Still the thought cheered me and I tried to look on it as an adventure as we set off again. Eventually we came to a track that branched off to the right. It was downhill, which was good, and muddy from an undrained stream, which wasn’t. We carried on through the mud. I didn’t like those brown shoes that much anyway, and what’s another pair of stockings?
And finally we were there.
‘Well done,’ he said. ‘Sorry it was a bit of a hike.’
‘Oh, did you think so?’ I said carelessly.
The cottage was half-way down a hollow, a sort of gutter, with trees on both sides. It was built of old brick, with a slate roof and little diamond-shaped panes in the windows. Across the lane was a small orchard and a stream at the far side made watery sounds in the dimnes
s. The rain had stopped, the wind dropped and there was a glow in the western sky and I had to admit it was all rather pretty.
He went round the back into a shed, came back with a key and let us in. It was a bit unused-smelling, cool but dry. We opened a few windows, he lit the fire, I started heating the main meal I’d brought. It was an adventure, and felt vaguely naughty, like playing grown-ups. I kept expecting someone to come in and tell us to go to bed.
Which, come to think of it, wasn’t half a bad idea.
*
After we’d finished eating, we stood a while in the doorway, looking down the valley and listening to the last sleepy birds calling in the woods. The few clouds were high and pink, the breeze had dropped. A dog barked somewhere in the distance, a sheep responded faintly. I leaned into him, felt his arm come round me all lean and young.
‘You must have a very understanding aunt,’ I said.
‘I do,’ he replied. ‘And yes, I did tell her about you.’
‘And what did she say?’
‘Enjoy yourselves. She didn’t add “while you can” but she might as well have. I hope that’s all right?’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I like to be acknowledged, even if it’s as a loose woman.’
‘There’s nothing loose about you,’ he protested. With some conviction, I thought.
‘Oh yes? Take me upstairs and find out.’
We went up the creaky narrow stairs. First room was his aunt’s bedroom, all faded chintz and a few books and photos. Second was a little side room, a narrow-looking single bed, a lovely but curtainless casement window looking out over the darkened woods, a chest of drawers, a chair.
I went over and opened the window and heard the water sounds from the stream. He stood awkwardly in the doorway.