The train jolted him out of his dream. They were coming into a station and a five-deep crowd of army blokes, kit-bags on shoulders, elbows up at the ready like battering rams, lined the platform. He braced himself for the scrum.
In London he took the tube out to Rickmansworth and walked from the station to Sycamore Avenue. As he opened the gate to number sixteen, he caught a glimpse of a child’s face at one of the upstairs windows. It was gone in a flash but it must have been Paulette. He went up the crazy-paving path and rang the bell. He felt hot and grubby after the long journey and knew he must look it. When Rita opened the door he could tell she was pretending to be surprised to see him.
‘Harry! We weren’t expecting you.’
‘I wrote I’d be coming. I’m on leave.’
She was still pretty, he thought. Still all dolled-up in smart clothes and make-up in spite of the coupons and the prices and the shortages. He wondered how she managed it.
‘Well, we didn’t get the letter.’
He knew she was lying but there was no point arguing. ‘Anyway, I’m here. To see Paulette.’
‘She’s out for the day, I’m afraid. She’s gone to a friend’s.’
He looked at her steadily, at her hard, painted face. ‘No, she’s not, Rita. I saw her just now at an upstairs window.’ She opened her mouth to deny it, but he cut her short. ‘I’d like to see her, please – just for a while. And I’ll remind you that I’m her father and the law says I’ve a right to do so. It was agreed in the court.’
‘It always upsets her. She’s a very sensitive child.’
‘She’s my daughter, Rita, as well as yours. And I’ve come a long way to see her.’
She shrugged. ‘All right, if you must. I suppose you’d better come inside. I don’t want you taking her off somewhere – it only tires her.’
He’d never been into the house before, always collected Paulette from the front door. It hadn’t been built that long, he guessed, probably only a few years before the war had started. The hall floor was made of varnished wood blocks, fitted together in a herringbone pattern, and there was a solid oak staircase and nicely moulded doors. Must have cost a bob or two, he reckoned, looking around.
‘I’ll go and fetch her,’ Rita said. ‘You can wait in the lounge.’ She opened one of the doors. ‘Len’s in there.’
He stepped into a long room with french windows facing onto a back garden. More wood-block flooring and a patterned rug, and pictures on the walls with lights over them. The furniture must have cost a bit, too: a blue moquette three-piece suite, a swanky standard lamp, a set of side tables that fitted inside each other, and some sort of big cabinet in the corner with mirrors all over the front.
The man sitting in one of the armchairs got to his feet, newspaper in one hand, cigar in the other.
‘You must be Harry. I’m Len.’
He’d never met Rita’s second husband before and now that he saw him he could understand why she’d gone for him. He was good-looking, no doubt about it, in his flash civvy suit with smooth black hair no Service barber had ever got his hands on and a little moustache like Ronald Coleman.
‘Have a drink, old boy?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Think I will, if you don’t mind.’
The mirrored thing in the corner turned out to be a cocktail cabinet. A light went on when the doors were opened to show more mirrors inside and a dozen or more bottles of spirits – unless he was seeing double with the reflection.
Len held up a dimple bottle of Haig. ‘Sure you won’t join me?’
He refused again, though he could have done with it. He’d never fancied drinking with people he didn’t like, and he didn’t like Len. Never mind about him and Rita; he wouldn’t have liked him anyway.
‘Busy lot, you Raff, bombing the Jerries night after night,’ Len was saying through his cigar, pouring himself a stiff one.
‘Aye.’ He wasn’t seeing double with the bottles – there were at least twenty. Must be black market.
‘Give ’em hell, that’s what I say. That’s the ticket. Smash ’em to smithereens.’ Len waved the big cigar. ‘Wish I could do the same myself. Failed the medical though. Believe me, I envy you, Harry.’
He didn’t believe him. He’d heard that before from other men like Len, and from men that really meant it. And he knew the difference. Len looked as though he’d done very nicely, thank you, safe out of it all. Doing whatever business he did.
‘Here she is, then.’
Rita was standing in the doorway, holding Paulette by the hand. He hardly recognized his daughter, she’d grown so much. And changed. He could see now what she was going to look like when she was grown up – just like Rita. There wasn’t a trace of him, or of his side of the family, not that he’d’ve wished that on her. The frock she was wearing looked like a party frock to him, made of some shiny pink material with puffed sleeves and bows and a ribbon in her hair to match. All dressed up, just like her mother.
He took a step forward. ‘Hallo, Paulette. Remember me?’
His daughter didn’t answer. She went on staring up at him as though he were a total stranger.
Rita gave her a push. ‘Go on, then. Say hello.’
‘Do I have to, Mummy?’
‘I told you—’
Paulette stayed where she’d been pushed, staring down at the floor instead, not speaking and refusing to look at him now.
‘I’ve brought you a present, love,’ he said desperately and then remembered that it was still in his kit-bag in the hall. ‘I’ll just go and get it.’
When he’d come back Paulette was sitting on the sofa with Rita beside her. Len was back in the armchair drinking his whisky and smoking his cigar. They all stared at him.
Harry cleared his throat. ‘Here you are, Paulette. Hope you like it.’
She turned to her mother.
‘Go on, take it,’ Rita said in a let’s-get-this-over-with tone.
He stood waiting anxiously as his daughter unwrapped his gift. When the luminous rabbit appeared he said, ‘It’s got special paint that shines in the dark, love. If you keep it by your bed you’ll be able to see it when you turn out the light.’
But now that he looked at the rabbit again it didn’t seem nearly so nice as it had in the shop: rather cheap and ordinary – like something you got at a fairground.
‘I don’t like it. It’s ugly! I don’t want it.’ Paulette threw down the present, jumped up and ran out of the room. He could hear her sobbing as she pounded up the stairs.
Rita bent to pick up the rabbit. One ear – the upright one – had broken off as it hit the floor. ‘What a thing to get her!’
‘I’m sorry.’ He stood there, dismayed. ‘I thought she’d like it.’
‘Paulette likes pretty things – you should know that, Harry. I told you, you always manage to upset her.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again miserably. ‘I didn’t mean to.’
‘I’ll have to go and see to her. You’d better leave. She won’t want to come down again.’
Rita dumped the broken rabbit in his hands and went out of the room.
‘Bad luck, old boy,’ Len said. ‘Tricky things, females.’ He drained his glass and put it down. ‘I’ll show you out.’
At the front door he clapped him hard on the back. ‘Give the Huns hell, Harry. That’s the ticket.’
‘Will you be all right in here, Jock? Sorry it’s not better, but we haven’t used the attics for years.’
He looked round the spotless room: at the white-painted iron bed and chest of drawers, at the nice old washstand with its rose-patterned china jug and basin, at the rag rug on the floor and the starched cotton curtains. Compared with the Nissen hut, it was a palace.
‘Och, it’s grand, Mrs Gibbs. I like it just fine. Thank you.’
The farmer’s wife smiled at him. ‘I ought to be thanking you, Jock. We’re glad to have you. Grateful for the extra help.’ She went to the door. ‘I’ll leave you to get your
self unpacked and settled. When you’re ready, come down and have something to eat.’
He put his kit-bag down and opened the attic window to chase out a wasp buzzing against the glass. The hens were scratching about in the farmyard below – some white, some black and some red-brown like the one Charlie’s mother had been given.
Ruth came out of the barn with a bowl of feed and he watched her scattering it and the hens scrambling about. He could hear her talking to them, ticking them off for being so greedy and bad-mannered. She stayed out in the yard for a while, going about, doing odd jobs, and he drew back from the window so he could go on watching her, unseen.
‘I’ve got some leave coming up,’ he’d said to her when there’d last been a stand-down and he’d gone over to give them a hand and do a bit of maintenance on the tractor engine. ‘I could spend it working here if you think they could do with the help.’
‘I’d’ve thought you’d want to get away, Jock. Go home, or something. That’s what they all do, isn’t it? Get as far away as possible?’
‘I went home last leave.’
‘Well, there’s plenty to do. Why don’t you ask them?’
He hadn’t wanted payment, he’d explained to Mr and Mrs Gibbs, he wouldn’t take it. That had caused a spot of bother because they didn’t like the idea of him working for nothing. In the end they’d settled that it would be in exchange for all his food and that he was to live in with them, like Ruth did.
‘One of the family,’ Mrs Gibbs had said. ‘We won’t have it any other way.’
Ruth had been right about there being plenty to do – he soon found that out. He was up early the first day, cleaning out, feeding and watering the livestock and then working with the thresher until evening. Ruth fed the monster with sheaves from the top while he heaved away the full sacks of grain, and the old man, Ben Stonor, made a rick out of the straw left over. In between hauling the heavy sacks he had to keep clearing out the chaff at the bottom before it gummed up the whole works. It was filthy, dusty, noisy, hot work but he’d never felt more content in his life.
‘You’re a bit of a mystery, Jock,’ Ruth said to him when they were taking a midday break, sitting on a stone wall in the yard. ‘You never talk about yourself and you shut up like a clam if anyone asks anything.’
‘There’s nothing to say.’ He took a bite of Mrs Gibbs’s home-made pork pie and chewed on it.
‘I’ve told you all about me.’ She’d told him quite matter-of-factly about the orphanage. Her mother had handed her over when she was a baby, she’d said, and gone away. She didn’t know any more than that. Sometimes she wondered about her, but mostly she didn’t because what was the point? As soon as she was old enough she’d left the orphanage, gone to London and got a job in Bourne and Hollingsworth in Oxford Street, and lived in a hostel. She’d joined the Land Army because she’d seen a recruiting poster showing a smiling girl carrying a bucket to feed two little calves frolicking about in a daisy-covered field. It had been a bit of a shock when she’d found out it was nothing like that, but she’d soon got used to everything.
‘So, it’s your turn, Jock. No getting out of it. Spill the beans.’
He said slowly, ‘Well, I was born in Glasgow. And my mother and father still live in the same place. I went to school there until I got an apprenticeship with the RAF, at Holton. I was a fitter before I remustered as a flight engineer after the war broke out. That’s about it.’
‘Is that all? It’s not much.’
‘I warned you. I’m no a very interesting person.’
‘You interest me.’ She flapped away a fly with her hand. ‘Why did you become a flight engineer, for instance?’
‘I wanted to serve in bombers, rather than on the ground.’
‘So what does a flight engineer do?’
‘Pilot’s mate. There’re four engines and they’ve got to be monitored all the time. The skipper can’t do it all on his own. And I’m Mr Fixit if anything goes wrong when we’re in the air.’
‘Could you fly the plane yourself?’
‘I’ve done some link training, so I could keep her straight and level at least. Mebbe land, if anything happened to the skipper. We all have to know something about each other’s jobs.’
She said through a mouthful of the pie, ‘That Aussie who came here with you that day . . . Stew. What does he do?’
‘He’s our bomb aimer,’ he said shortly. ‘He aims and drops the bombs when we’re over the target.’
‘I bet he’s good at that.’
‘He’s no so bad.’
‘You’re not much like him, are you? Or like a lot of the others.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, for one thing you never swear and for another you don’t drink. You wouldn’t touch a drop of Mrs Gibbs’s potato wine. That’s unusual.’
‘I’ve got my reasons.’
‘You’re supposed to be telling all, Jock. Come on.’
He hesitated. ‘Well, I don’t swear and I don’t drink because my father does far too much of both. He’s a foul-mouthed drunkard who beats my mother – if you must know.’ As soon as he’d said the words he regretted it. Family troubles were nobody else’s concern.
‘Sorry, Jock. Shouldn’t have asked.’
‘It’s all right. I shouldna’ve answered.’
In his attic room that evening he stood by the open window with the light turned off, gazing out. If he survived the war, which seemed very unlikely, he knew he’d never again be able to look up at a night sky without seeing it in bombing terms. Hardly any cloud tonight, probably nice and clear over the target, only a fingernail moon. People talked about a full moon as a bombers’ moon, but that was in the old days before the modern navigation aids. Fighter’s moon, more like now.
He could hear the mounting activity in the distance at the drome: the snarling progression round the peri track to line up for take-off.
‘Jock . . .’
He turned to see Ruth standing in the doorway.
‘They’re going tonight, then?’
‘Aye.’
She shut the door and came to stand beside him at the window. They listened together to the bombers taking off – engines crescendoing to maximum power and then fading away into the night. He was with each one as though his own hand had been on the throttles.
She said, ‘I hate hearing them go. Imagining what they’ve got to face.’
‘They know it has to be done.’
‘Don’t you get afraid?’
‘We all do. We’d be fools if we weren’t. But it doesna stop us.’
‘Brave men.’
‘Just men getting on with the job of fighting a war that’s got to be won. That’s all.’
‘Do you think we will win? In the end?’
‘Aye, I think so. Now we’ve the Americans with us. I wasna so sure before.’
‘Hope you’re right, Jock.’
‘So do I. I’d better be.’
‘Yes, you had.’ She leaned her elbows on the window-sill. ‘What’s that bright star up there?’
‘Venus. It’s a planet.’
‘Do you have to know about the stars – or is that just the navigator?’
‘I’ve a pretty fair idea. It could come in handy.’
She was silent for a while, standing close to him, leaning on the sill. He didn’t speak or move. Didn’t dare.
‘I haven’t told you everything about myself, Jock.’
‘You don’t need to.’
‘I want to. It’s not fair otherwise. I made you tell me.’ She looked upwards, speaking to the stars. ‘The people in charge at the orphanage were a husband and wife. When I was about fifteen they gave me a room of my own and the husband came and got into bed with me one night. I couldn’t stop him . . . it was revolting. Made me physically sick. I told him if he tried it again I’d tell his wife.’
‘Ruth—’
‘I want to tell you. All of it. After I’d gone to London to live in the hostel I picked
up a man in a cinema one evening and I went to bed with him as well. I wanted to see if it would be any better. Only it was worse. Much worse. Even more disgusting. He was like an animal . . . I thought I’d never ever feel clean again. I cut off my hair. Dressed in men’s clothes. I didn’t want to look like a woman and I never wanted a man to touch me again.’
He waited, not knowing what to say, and presently she went on. ‘But lately I’ve been thinking that maybe it could be quite different with someone else. If I liked them, and they liked me? I just wish I knew. What do you think?’
He thought of his own one joyless experience on leave in Glasgow. And how it must be with his parents. And how Ruth must feel. And how he felt about her. ‘I think it could be.’
‘Do you think it’d be worth a try?’
He said quietly. ‘Aye. I do.’
‘So do I, Jock.’ She turned her head towards him in the darkness. ‘So do I.’
Stew got out his best blue and cleaned the buttons. He hadn’t bothered with them for months, but he thought he’d smarten up a bit for The Angel. Show that girl he hadn’t come straight from the outback, like she seemed to think. He even borrowed a decent suitcase from someone. Walking along the Wragby road, he cadged a lift from a doctor going on his rounds, and entertained him with a lively and totally false account of an op in which they’d come back on one engine, tail shot off and with a jammed undercart. Well, who wanted to hear about easy ones?
The doctor set him down on the outskirts of the city and he walked the rest of the way to The Angel, noting any local talent that he passed. There wasn’t much worth looking at, and he was already wishing he’d gone to London instead of doing this bloody stupid caper. Still, a couple of days rest and he’d be fighting fit to move on for some proper fun.
The Crew Page 16