The old man pointed to a sack in the basket. ‘Brought a few seed potatoes for you. An’ some peas an’ broad beans . . . I’d plenty spare from mine, so you’re more’n welcome to ’em.’
She managed to speak quite ordinarily. ‘It’s ever so kind of you. Thank you, Mr . . .?’
‘Stonor’s the name. Ben Stonor. Bit of trouble they had at the drome last night.’
‘Yes—’
‘One of the Lancasters took off an’ came down again with a big bump, so it seems. Poor lads. Canadians, they were.’
‘Canadians? All of them?’
‘That’s right, Mrs Banks. All Canadians. So it wasn’t your boy’s aeroplane, that’s for sure. You can rest easy.’
‘How do you know, Mr Stonor?’
‘Oh, the village hears everythin’. We know what’s goin’ on. Why, Mrs Dane at the shop, she even knows what they’re bombin’. It’s Essen tonight, she’ll say, or Bremen, or some such, an’ she’s always right. Don’t know how, but she always is.’ He touched his cap and went on his way, walking down the road towards the farm.
The world was normal again – everything going on as before. The sun was shining and it was going to be a beautiful day. She was sorry about the Canadians but Charlie was alive. Alive!
Dorothy wheeled the old bike through the gate and round the back, where she leaned it against the shed door. Later on, when she’d finished work, she’d give it a clean-up and maybe Charlie could get a spot of oil for the chain and the wheels. She took Mr Stonor’s sack out of the basket and noticed a paper bag underneath. Inside she found six brown eggs that he’d left for her as well.
Six
HOWEVER HELLISHLY CONFUSING it might seem from the air when you were trying to find your way around, Van acknowledged that on the ground, and in full summer, the English countryside was glorious. Pennsylvania was a pretty good-looking state, but he’d never seen anything to match this. It was partly the sheer oldness of it all, he reckoned – history that had been going on for a heck of a long time. Old brick and stone, thatch and tile. Ancient churches embedded in the landscape, bridges that had spanned rivers for hundreds of years, winding lanes trodden by generations of people. Fields and woods and hedges that went back to the Domesday Book. It didn’t hurt either that, for once, the sun was shining.
He’d appreciated Piers’ invitation to spend some of his leave at his home in Northamptonshire. On other leaves he’d gone to London, hit the theatres and the clubs and the restaurants and had a pretty good time, but staying with an English family in an English home would be a new experience.
Piers drove through yet another village. They passed an old man sitting on a bench who looked as though he’d been there since the Flood. More cottages, with front gardens like flower shows. The village pump by the village green. Another Norman church, mossy tombstones leaning at drunken angles in the shade of a gnarled yew tree.
It was obvious that Piers came from a well-off family, but, even so, Van wasn’t prepared for the mansion that lay at the end of the long driveway. Piers brought the car to a halt outside the front door. He looked embarrassed. ‘I ought to tell you that my parents have got a title . . . just so’s you know.’ He sounded as though it was something to be ashamed of.
‘What do I call them?’
‘Well, my father’s Sir William . . . and my mother’s Lady Wentworth-Young. Actually, you needn’t call them anything at all, if you don’t want to.’
In real life, Lady Wentworth-Young was every bit as daunting as in her photograph. He watched Piers take off his cap and peck her cheek respectfully.
‘This is Pilot Officer Lewis VanOlden, Mama. Captain of our crew.’
As he shook her hand, her eyes assessed him rapidly; he saw relief in their chilly depths. That he didn’t appear to be a total savage? Some hick Yank come to pollute the ancestral home? An unsavoury influence on her well-brought-up son?
The house was what he called olde-English-beautiful: panelled walls, oriental rugs, antique furniture, classy portraits, fine porcelain and flowers and gilt-framed mirrors to reflect it all. There was no shiny newness. No vulgar glitter. No ostentation. And not much affection either, he thought, observing the parents with Piers. If he was a beloved son, you’d sure never have guessed it.
Dinner was served at a table that could have seated twenty. Sir William barked at him from one end and his wife addressed him graciously from the other. Piers’ older sister was home on leave from the WRNS and sat opposite, inspecting him critically during the soup course. What the hell was the soup, anyway? Lukewarm, thin as water and almost colourless, it gave him no clues.
The conversation limped on.
‘You come from Philadelphia, I understand, Mr VanOlden?’
‘That’s right, Lady Wentworth-Young.’
‘One of your oldest cities, of course. Have your family lived there long?’
‘My great-grandparents settled there. From Holland.’
He guessed it would have been better if he could have added a couple or so more ‘greats’. Better still if they’d come from England . . . preferably on the Mayflower. Lady Wentworth-Young didn’t know it but she’d be right at home in Philly where blue blood was all, where old money and old families reigned supreme and everyone else stayed outside the pale.
‘Well, your chaps have joined in at long last.’ Sir William dabbed at his moustache with his napkin. ‘We could have done with a hand sooner, but better late than never.’
‘We’ll try to make up for it, sir,’ he said. ‘Now that we’re here.’ He might have pointed out that he himself had given a hand sooner.
The daughter spoke up. ‘We had some American Navy personnel with us for a bit recently. Rather different from our lot. Nothing like the same discipline. Pretty casual, actually . . .’
She spoke in exactly the same clipped way as her mother and she had the same ice-blue eyes. A chip off both old blocks, Pamela. How come they’d managed to produce a nice guy like Piers?
‘I guess what really counts is whether they can cut it.’
‘Cut it?’ She looked at him blankly.
‘Do the job.’
‘Oh . . . Well, I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.’
After the unknown soup there was some kind offish, equally tasteless. An elderly woman in a white apron plodded about, offering dishes of soggy cabbage and gluey mashed potatoes. Sure, the rationing was tough, but he wondered what they did, or didn’t do, to food that screwed it up so much. Mostly it was over-cooking, he reckoned. Vegetables boiled to pap, liver fried to leather, fish steamed to flannel.
After dinner, to his relief, Piers took him off to play billiards. The only problem he had there was winning too easily so he had to make some dumb shots on purpose to even things up. Pamela came to watch them, draped sideways in a chair, smoking a cigarette in a long ebony holder and showing off a lot of black silk-stockinged leg. He could tell that he’d passed the test and that she was interested. Only he wasn’t. Not the least bit.
Stew picked the redhead up in a bar off Piccadilly. He’d checked into a small hotel in Bayswater, had a couple of grogs at the Boomerang Club in Australia House and then sank a couple more at a nearby pub where there was nothing on offer that took his fancy. He’d pushed on to try his luck elsewhere and spotted the girl as soon as he walked in the door. She was just the job: a good-looker there to pick up someone like him. She’d been giving some Pom Army bod the big brush-off and he moved smoothly into the vacuum. He never usually had much of a problem – all it took was nerve and as much charm as he could muster.
Her name was Doreen and she’d taken him for a Yank at first because of his odd-coloured uniform. He guessed she’d been a mite disappointed to find out he was only an Aussie, but he didn’t blame her for that: the Yanks had the loot, after all. He’d seen them cruising about with fistfuls of notes and pockets loaded with change, grabbing taxis and restaurant tables and girls. Money talked. Still, he’d saved up enough for a decent meal and plent
y of booze. She wouldn’t need to grumble.
He shot the usual line about what he did, tapping the side of his nose. ‘Can’t tell you, sweetie. Top secret.’
She peeked at him around a Veronica Lake hairdo. ‘Aw, come on. I’ve heard that one before. You blokes think we’re all born yesterday.’
‘Well, I can tell you I’m on bombers.’
She leaned forward from her bar stool, showing a nice bit of cleavage, and tapped the one-winged badge on his chest with its woven ‘B’. ‘What’s that for, then?’
‘B for Bombers, like I told you.’
‘So, what happened to the other wing?’
‘Got shot off, darling.’ He put his thumb and forefinger a quarter of an inch apart. ‘It was that close.’
She laughed. ‘Pull the other one.’
He knew they liked it best if you were a fighter pilot, but bombers were OK too, so long as you played your cards right. Not so glamorous maybe but by the time you’d spun a few horror stories they ended up thinking you a helluva brave hero.
He took her to the Strand Palace for dinner. He’d been there before and the food was all right, even if the steak was horse. She was a notch above most of the girls he’d picked up on leave and good company, too. He found out that she worked as a counter assistant in the hosiery department of Swan and Edgar’s and lived with her widowed mother out in the suburbs.
‘She know what you get up to?’
Doreen widened her eyes. ‘Get up to?’
‘Going to bars on your own. Talking to strangers.’
‘That’s what you do, isn’t it?’
‘Different for men.’
‘Why? You Aussies are the end. I met some of your Army blokes once. You treat women like muck.’
‘No we don’t. We’re just a bit old-fashioned.’
‘Must be something to do with living upside down. The blood stays in your head.’
He grinned. ‘You’ve got that wrong, sweetheart.’
They went back to his hotel and nipped in past the receptionist when she had her back turned. Doreen was everything he’d hoped and guessed she’d be, and they both had a bloody good time. It reminded him of the old joke: Question: Have you ever slept with a redhead? Answer: Not a wink. Not that Doreen was a real one; it came out of a bottle, he could see that, but she was worth the steep price of the dinner. Too bloody right, she was.
He lit two cigarettes in his mouth and passed one to her as she lay beside him.
‘What d’you say, we meet up again?’
‘Mmmm. If you like, Stew.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Better not. I ought to go home and see Mum.’
‘Day after, then.’
‘OK.’ She turned her head to smile at him. ‘You’re not half bad, you know . . . and I’ve never seen anything like what you’ve got.’
He took it as the considerable compliment it was intended to be. It wasn’t the first time he’d been told that.
He saw her several more times during his time in London and though it cost him all his savings, he still thought she was worth it. Any amount was worth it, he thought grimly, when it could be the last time ever. They talked about meeting again next time he got leave.
‘When’s that?’ she asked.
‘In six weeks.’ If I haven’t copped it, he added to himself.
She laid a hand on his bare stomach, fingers playing the piano up and down, twirling the dark hairs. ‘That’s a long way away, Stew.’
‘Well, maybe you could come up to Lincolnshire before then. I can get a night pass. I’d send you the fare.’
‘Where would I stay?’
He thought for a moment. A bed and breakfast with a nosy landlady wouldn’t do. There was The Saracen’s Head but it always had a mob from the station. He racked his brains for somewhere a bit quieter.
‘There’s a place in Lincoln called The Angel.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘Bit of a morgue. Stags’ heads and potted palms, but the bedrooms’re probably OK. I’ll go take a dekko.’
She sighed, fingers still playing. ‘It’ll be a long time to wait.’
He rolled over towards her. ‘Who said anything about waiting?’
When his mother opened the door to him, the first thing Jock noticed was the bruise at the corner of her right eye. It didn’t surprise him. She’d had bruises on her ever since he could remember – usually starting on a Friday night because that was when his father got paid and drank most of his wages on the way home. Her face lit up with a pathetic gladness.
‘Jock . . . oh, Jock.’
He set down his kit-bag on the step and took her in his arms. She felt thinner and frailer than ever – skin and bone under the pinafore. She was wearing a scarf tied like a turban round her head, and a few wisps of hair, the same dark red as his own, straggled free at the front. When she drew back he saw tears in her eyes. She wiped them away quickly with her hand.
‘I didna expect you yet.’
‘I was lucky with the trains.’
He’d stood all the way on the long journey from Lincoln to Glasgow and it was a trip he’d never have made if it hadn’t been for her. She was the only reason he hadn’t walked out of this slum the very first day he could and never come back.
‘Come on in,’ she was saying, tucking her arm through his. ‘You’re all wet and you’ll be very tired. I’ll put the kettle on.’
He closed the door on the rain and the cobbled street. His mother hurried to take down the line of washing strung across the ceiling, as though he were some sort of honoured guest.
‘Leave it all be, Mother.’
She stopped, his father’s patched and yellowed combinations pressed to her chest. How he’d always hated the sight of those things hanging up there. How he’d hated anything and everything to do with the brute: the very sight, sound and smell of him.
‘They’re dry,’ she said timidly. ‘I’ll put them away.’
She went into the bedroom. He took off his forage cap and stood looking round at the kitchen, noting that nothing had changed, unless it was to get even more squalid. She kept it as best she could, he knew, but it was an uphill struggle against hopeless odds. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something dart along the wainscoting. The whole building was crawling with vermin of one kind or another. And that included his father.
When his mother came back she had taken off her pinafore and the turban scarf and brushed out the hair that was her one undimmed beauty. She smiled at him. ‘I’d just got back from the factory. Lucky you didn’t come sooner.’
‘How’s it going there?’
‘Och, it’s no so bad.’
She was slaving long hours and overtime at a bench making ships’ rivets. He hated the thought of it but there was nothing to be done. Before that, she’d charred all day and taken in washing and sewing, so seeing her worn out was nothing new to him. And it wouldn’t make any difference how hard she worked; most of what she earned would be drunk away by his father.
The kettle started whistling on the hob and she spooned a small and carefully measured amount of tea into the pot and poured on the boiling water.
‘I saved some extra, Jock. And we’ve a tin of spam for later. For a treat.’ She fetched a cup and saucer and set it on the table. ‘Sit yourself down.’
‘Are you no having some?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s just for you. Would you like a bite to eat now? I’ve got some bread and a bit o’ marg.’
‘No. I’ll wait.’
She sat down opposite him and poured the tea. Compared with the brew out of the Mess urns, it was weak as water.
‘Do they feed you enough in the Air Force?’
‘Aye. I reckon we do better than civilians.’
‘Well, that’s only right. They’ve got to keep the forces strong an’ fit.’ Her eyes searched his face. ‘You’re looking well, Jock. I was worried they might be working you too hard.’
‘We get plenty of rest
,’ he said. She’d no idea that he was flying on bombing raids and he’d no intention of telling her.
‘Well, drink up your tea, then.’
He drank a mouthful to please her and then fished in his breast pocket. ‘I’ve brought something for you.’
‘For me?’
He slid the little brown paper package across the table towards her. ‘Aye, Mother. A present.’
She took it as wonderingly as a child.
‘Go on, then. Open it.’ He watched her unwrap the paper and stare at the shiny tube. ‘It’s a lipstick,’ he said when she made no move to touch it. ‘I hope the colour’s right.’
There hadn’t been much of a choice. The spiv in the Lincoln pub had fanned out a palmful of them and he’d tried to pick out a colour that seemed right for her. Calypso Coral. It had been a shot in the dark, since he could never remember her ever wearing any.
‘A lipstick,’ she repeated. ‘I’ve never had one.’
‘Well you’ve got one now.’
‘Wherever did you get it? It must have cost a fortune.’
He could tell by the tremor in her voice and the way she was blinking that she was fighting back tears.
‘Och no. Look, you take the top off and twist the end so it comes up . . .’ He showed her. ‘Do you like the colour?’
‘It’s beautiful, Jock. But whenever will I wear it?’
‘What’s wrong with now, this minute?’
She bit her lip. ‘Your father’ll be back any moment. I don’t know what he’d say—’
‘What does it matter what he says? Who cares?’
To his shame, she flinched at his outburst. ‘Well, you know how he is, Jock.’
‘Aye,’ he said dourly. ‘I know how he is.’
How could he not know? His earliest memories were of his father coming home blind drunk and taking his belt to him for no reason at all. Of his mother’s terrified pleadings as she tried to shield him with her own body, and the blows that then rained on her as well. Of lying on his mattress bed in his dark corner behind the plywood partition, shivering and shaking beneath the ragged blanket and listening to more blows falling, more piteous cries, mingled with the foul-mouthed abuse and threats that froze his blood.
The Crew Page 9