A Winter Love Song

by Rita Bradshaw

  They slept that night in a large bamboo hut with several rooms. Bonnie hadn’t expected to fall asleep quickly – her mind was taken up with her father as she lay under her mosquito net watching the bush rats that ran about in the roof of the shelter – but exhaustion must have played its part because when she felt her arm being shaken and Enoch saying, ‘Wake up, sleepyhead,’ it was ten o’clock in the morning.

  She was due to visit two hospitals that afternoon before doing a show at another camp. More travelling along bumpy tracks, and for a moment, full of aches and pains from lying on the makeshift bed that was identical to so many others she’d slept on during the trip, and her mind full of her father now she was awake, she wanted nothing more than to sink back into oblivion. She was so tired, in mind, soul and body, and felt cut off from everything and everyone back home. She had been able to write letters to Art although she knew some would get lost, and had received one back at the beginning of May, but it wasn’t like hearing his voice.

  Because she was so worn out, she didn’t register the excitement in Enoch’s voice at first. Not until he said, ‘Come on, Bonnie, wake up properly. There’s great news,’ did she sit up, moving her mosquito net aside as she asked, ‘What news?’

  ‘The Allies have landed in Normandy, the invasion of Europe has begun. The tide’s turning, Bonnie. At last the tide’s turning.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘The CO here told everyone this morning that Eisenhower’s made an announcement so there’s no doubt. It’s the biggest combined land, sea and air operation of all time.’ Enoch was fairly bubbling with excitement. ‘Rome’s been liberated by the Allies too. They say the Italians are wild with excitement – women are throwing flowers at the troops and men are handing out bottles of wine and shouting Viva the English and Viva the Americans.’

  His excitement was infectious. Suddenly she didn’t feel tired any more. There had been rumours for months about an Allied invasion but now it had actually happened. Her thoughts went immediately to Art fighting in Italy. Since he had rejoined his unit abroad there had been months of harsh and bloody battles against crack German troops, and her fear for him was always there in the back of her mind. Dampened down most of the time, because she had found early on in the war that no one could live in a state of heightened anxiety all the time, but always ready to spring into sharp terror, like now.

  Her face must have betrayed her thoughts, because Enoch said, ‘Art’ll be fine, Bonnie. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ How many times had she had that said to her, and how many times had she said the same thing to others worrying about their loved ones? They all knew the words were pointless but what else could you say?

  After Enoch had told her all he knew, she tidied herself and then joined him outside the hut on a kind of narrow verandah that ran the length of it. One of the army cooks had brought over their morning meal – sausage-shaped soya links that had been seasoned with something or other but still tasted of very little, and white boiled rice with an indistinguishable green vegetable mixed in with it. The camp was going about its daily business, but even from where Bonnie and Enoch were sitting they sensed a different atmosphere from that of the day before. The news of the invasion had lifted everyone.

  Bonnie forced down the food – she always ate everything she was given, conscious that she couldn’t afford to fall ill. They were on the last leg of the tour now and it wouldn’t be long before they did the outward journey in reverse. But for leaving her father, she would have been relieved she had nearly accomplished what she’d set out to do and could go home. As it was, she felt as though she was abandoning him to his fate and would have given anything to be able to remain in Burma and nurse him herself. But the war machine said otherwise.

  She sighed, fending off the flies as she finished her meal and feeling totally helpless. She wanted to jump up and run back down the track they’d travelled the day before and not stop until she reached her father’s side. The knot in her stomach that had been there since the day before tightened as she thought about his injuries. Losing his leg would have been bad enough, but she knew it was the wound in his stomach that was the main concern. And accepting that there was nothing she could do was the hardest thing. It seemed such a cruel twist of fate that having found him, they’d had such a short time together.

  Their driver walked across to them in the next moment and she knew it was time to go. Every stage of the journey from now on would take her further away from her da and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.

  It was another week or so and many more shows and hospital visits before they reached Jorhat and the little airport from where they would fly to Calcutta. For the first time in weeks the bed was soft and comfortable that night, and Bonnie enjoyed the luxury of a bath.

  They were delayed in Jorhat for some days due to the weather being too bad for planes to fly, and it was there that Bonnie and Enoch heard that US bombers had reached the Japanese mainland. According to the District Commissioner, the long-prepared-for air offensive against the heartland of Japanese imperialism had finally begun in earnest, and as he put it, the beggars would now have a taste of their own medicine. The strategy of heavy bombing, used so effectively against Nazi Germany, was now being adapted to destroy the Japanese war industry and weaken morale.

  ‘Even their Emperor must see they are going to lose the war,’ one officer said to Bonnie and Enoch over dinner, the talk at the table inevitably about strategies and counter-strategies. ‘But whether they’ll admit defeat easily is another question. What possessed them to take on the United States of America in the first place is beyond me. Talk about catching a tiger by the tail. But it’s this Emperor-worship thing that makes them so formidable. It produces a desperate form of courage that is beyond the European mind. Bushido, the way of the warrior, is everything to them. Did you know that words such as “surrender”, “retreat” and “defence” were removed from the language of the revised 1928 Field Service Regulations in Japan, because their negative connotations might adversely influence morale? I mean, what can you say? What is going to have to happen to make such a nation surrender when losing face is worse than death itself?’

  ‘You think they’ll fight on no matter what?’ said Bonnie, thinking of her father and all the men she had sung to and visited in the camps and hospitals over the last weeks.

  ‘I fear so, yes. If fifty Japanese are holding a position, forty-five of them will have to be killed before the last five kill themselves rather than be taken prisoner. It’s self-destructive bravery on a scale I’ve never seen before. If it wasn’t for a supreme lack of grasping tactics by their officers that starts right at the top of the tree, they’d be invincible. As it is, they make the most elementary mistakes and become easy targets for our boys. You’ll find this hard to believe, but one of our patrols climbed a low escarpment a few weeks ago and surprised two Japanese machine-gunners, capturing them and their weapon. These two Japs had been told by their officer that no one could climb to where they were, and so they hadn’t resisted our boys when they did just that even though it was happening right in front of their eyes.’

  The officer shook his head, clearly still finding such behaviour unbelievable. Bonnie found it terrifying. Such blind obedience was unnerving.

  She went to bed that night with the officer’s words ringing in her ears and wondering how many of the men she had sung to on this trip would make it out of the jungle. The officer had wound up their conversation by stating that of course the Allies would win the war and Japan would be defeated, but it would take time.

  Time, she thought as she lay listening to the mosquitoes buzzing outside the net surrounding her bed. In the jungle a day seemed like a week, and a week, a month to the men so far away from home. Time was perhaps the greatest enemy of all . . .

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The journey home took longer than the one out. The air over Europe was thick with aircraft as the Allies continued their off
ensive. They were delayed for some days in Gibraltar, and the talk there was about the Nazis’ terrible new weapon that was targeting England, the pilotless, jet-propelled aircraft that carried nearly a ton of explosive and fell indiscriminately wherever they liked.

  ‘They’re calling them doodlebugs,’ Enoch said grimly, passing Bonnie a newspaper he had been reading. They were sitting in a café drinking coffee, hoping they would be able to leave Gibraltar that day. Bonnie had visited a hospital that morning, and no one watching her would have thought she was counting the minutes until she could leave for home. ‘Apparently you’re all right if you can hear the engine – it’s when it stops you have to worry.’

  The newspaper article was full of the fact that Londoners were bracing themselves for another blitz, having been free of bombs and air battles for a while, warning that Goebbels’s use of the phrase ‘V-l’ when describing the weapon hinted that the bombs were just the first of several such secret weapons Britain would have to face. Apparently anti-aircraft guns were proving to be ineffective against the remote-controlled weapon although hundreds were being rushed to the south coast, and RAF fighter pilots were seeking new techniques to counter the high-speed menace that was purposely bombing civilians.

  ‘They’re not even pretending to be targeting munition factories or docks or military camps,’ Enoch said as Bonnie finished reading the article. ‘This is just plain murder of as many men, women and children as possible.’

  Bonnie nodded. Art had been worried to death about her going to Burma, but in reality, especially with this new terror, it was just as dangerous at home. Nowhere was safe. You simply had to get on with your life and do what you wanted to do, Hitler or no Hitler.

  She knew Enoch was aching to get home to Gladys and she was longing to crawl into her own bed and sleep for a week. She had hoped that there might be a letter from Art waiting for her somewhere on the route home, or some notification as to how her father was, but there had been nothing. And in truth she was so exhausted that she couldn’t think straight which was perhaps a blessing in a way. She didn’t have a moment’s regret on embarking on the Burma trip, but it had taxed her body, soul and spirit. She had lost over a stone in weight and she had been slim to begin with; her clothes were hanging on her and her skin was a funny colour, but thanks to a hairdresser in Gibraltar who had soaked her hair in some oil or other before cutting and shaping it, at least it felt as though it belonged on her head again.

  They flew home the next day, and when Bonnie’s feet landed on British soil she felt quite emotional. The first thing Enoch did was to call Gladys, his relief palpable when she answered the phone and said all was well.

  Once home in the little cottage in Kingston upon Thames and being fussed over by Annie, Bonnie did nothing but eat and sleep for a few days. But when she was rested, and before she started in the new show at the Empire which was opening after the weekend, she was determined to pay a visit to Manchester. She wanted to tell Nelly face to face about her father, not write or telephone her. Nelly deserved that at least. And Bonnie wanted to do it discreetly when Thomas wasn’t around in case Nelly got upset. It troubled her that she had no way of finding out how her father was before she spoke to Nelly, but in spite of that she felt she couldn’t delay putting her friend in the picture. She could wait for weeks, months, before she heard anything. Enoch had seen to it that the army had her full particulars as next of kin, and everyone in the hospital in Burma had been very kind, but the situation was what it was. Her father was lying desperately ill in the middle of enemy-occupied jungle, and she had seen for herself how stretched resources were for the doctors and nurses in the hospital. The medical staff didn’t have time to write to her on her father’s behalf, she understood that. But it left her not knowing. And that was worse than anything.

  It was even worse than the scourge of the doodlebugs that were now falling day and night on the south-east. The second mass exodus of children was under way, many of the little ones returning to their former billets in the country, and more purpose-built deep shelters were opening to cope with the new threat. But terrifying though the bombs were, Bonnie and Annie had made the decision that they were going to sleep out raids in their steel-built Morrison shelter that had replaced the dining-room table at the beginning of the war.

  ‘I’m too long in the tooth to go dashing about in the middle of the night,’ Annie had said when they’d discussed it. ‘Freddy –’ as she had called their Morrison shelter – ‘got us through the Blitz, and he’ll get us through this.’ And so they retired to Freddy when the sirens began to whine, snuggling down on the thick mattress under a thin sheet because the weather was so warm, and managing to sleep very well, considering everything.

  Bonnie did wonder at times if she and Annie and lots of other Londoners like them had become hardened to bombing through the Blitz, and she supposed there was an element of that in their decision to stay put through this new attack by Hitler. But she didn’t want to die, and she didn’t think she was foolhardy, it was just that enough was enough. Hitler had instigated a war that had taken the lives of millions of men, women and children and caused untold suffering, and she was blowed if she was going to be reduced to running underground like a rat in a sewer every time the sirens sounded. And just as she’d told herself during the first Blitz, if a bomb had her name on it then it would find her wherever she was. But she had to admit that when the doodlebugs whizzed overhead she prayed the noise wouldn’t stop, and that made her feel guilty because she was wishing them on someone else.

  Selina and Cyril were expecting their first baby in September, and Bonnie knew the arrival of the doodlebugs had affected her friend’s nerves badly. Cyril had been invalided out of the navy in the autumn of the previous year so at least he was with her most of the time, but during one raid in broad daylight in a crowded shopping street Selina had been by herself and had arrived home terribly shaken.

  ‘It’s not me I’m bothered about,’ Selina told Bonnie, the night before Bonnie was going to Manchester to see Nelly. ‘It’s the baby. If anything happened to it I don’t know what I’d do.’ She put her hands on her rounded stomach, her face pensive. She had confided in Bonnie months ago that the baby hadn’t been planned, but once they had known it was on the way Selina had been thrilled even though previously she and Cyril had decided to wait until the war was over before considering bringing a child into such an uncertain world.

  ‘Nothing is going to happen to you or the baby.’ Bonnie hugged her friend. She had popped round to see Selina and Cyril and give them some bananas she had bought in Gibraltar before they had flown home. No one in Britain had seen bananas since the war had begun, and Selina had been delighted, peeling one and eating it immediately while Bonnie and Cyril had laughed at her expression of ecstasy.

  ‘I try to keep telling myself that but then I think of Betty and Cyril’s mum and dad. They were having a sing-song that night, the night they died, you know how they were, and then within an hour or so of us leaving they were all dead. And you hear such horrible things, people killed or maimed or blinded—’

  ‘Stop it.’ Bonnie took Selina by the shoulders. ‘You’re all worked up because of the baby and that’s understandable, but you can’t worry yourself like this. It’ll be all right, I know it will.’

  ‘I keep regretting that we fell for a baby and then I feel guilty. It’s not that I don’t want it, not really, and I already love it more than anything in the world.’

  ‘Of course you do.’

  ‘But what if everyone’s wrong and we don’t win the war? I mean, no one knew about the doodlebugs, did they? What else have the Nazis got up their sleeve? And what if it drags on and on for years – what sort of life will my baby have?’

  ‘Selina, we are going to win the war, and soon, and your baby will have a wonderful life with parents who love it to bits. And that’s all that counts in the long run.’

  Bonnie had said a lot more and by the time she left the house Selina was mo
re cheerful, but Bonnie was worried about her. Cyril had told her his wife cried for hours at a time some days and no matter what he said or did, she wouldn’t be comforted. That wasn’t like Selina. She had continued in her post as a schoolmistress right through the war until she had become pregnant, and at one point she had marshalled all her small charges out of the school playground when an unexploded bomb had been discovered, not leaving until she was sure every child was out of the school and safely away. She had received a commendation from the School Board for that and had been in the local newspaper.

  Annie was waiting up for Bonnie with a mug of cocoa when she got home, and as soon as she told her about Selina, Annie nodded. ‘Baby blues,’ she said sagely. ‘Some get it before and some after, but that’s what it is, all right. You won’t get any doctor tell you that, mind you, but you ask any woman who’s suffered from it and they’ll tell you it’s real. An’ of course with the war and all, that don’t help.’

  ‘Baby blues?’

  ‘I had it real bad with my first all the time I was carrying him, but the minute he was born I was as right as rain, thank goodness, and a friend of mine had it after. Months before she was her old self, poor thing. Look, if you’re going to Nelly’s tomorrow, I’ll nip round and see Selina and take Hilda with me. We’ll put her right. It’s never so bad if you know what you’re dealing with, is it, and I don’t expect Cyril’s much help. Worse than useless at a time like this, a man.’

  Bonnie blinked. She had never wondered why Annie and Hilda hit it off so well. They were two of a kind. ‘She’d appreciate that, I know she would.’

  ‘And I’ll have a quiet word with Cyril and put him to the wise. My husband, God rest his soul, just used to tell me how fortunate I was and that I should pull myself together and count my blessings. It was my old mum who got me through.’

  ‘Right.’ Bonnie stared at Annie. It was the first time she had heard of the baby blues. ‘Does every woman suffer with it then?’