by Lizzie Lane
Her mind raced and her blood ran cold as the man in front of her saluted smartly and offered to take her case.
‘Yes … yes … of course.’
‘My name’s Sergeant Paul Innes. It’s a bit late to go straight to the hospital, so I have strict orders to make you comfortable tonight and take you to the hospital tomorrow.’
Mary tried not to let her mouth hang open, but it wasn’t easy. It was difficult to take her eyes off the damaged side of his face. Suddenly she became aware of her bad manners.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said apologetically and tried to sound light-hearted, as though nothing was out of the ordinary and his face was unblemished.
My voice sounds shaky, she thought. My smile is too stiff, and as for my hands …
She curled the fingers of one hand into her perspiring palm. Luckily she was wearing gloves otherwise she would have left red crescents behind. Her teeth ached with the effort of smiling and pretending that nothing was wrong.
Sergeant Innes didn’t appear to notice, or if he did, he hid it well. It was no good. She just had to apologise properly.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to stare.’
He smiled a lop-sided smile. ‘Oh, don’t you be sorry about that, Mrs Dangerfield. I’m afraid it’s a legacy of a burning Hampden bomber. I’m still alive. That’s all that matters. The wing commander sends his apologies, Mrs Dangerfield. He would have collected you himself, but he’s on Ops tonight. I’ve been ordered to take you to your cottage. I’ve got you some food in and lit the fire.’
He was affable and kind, but she shuddered as she wondered how many times he’d had to carry out this duty.
After placing her luggage on the back seat, he helped her into the car. They moved off, away from the town and into a dark, flat landscape. It took about an hour travelling along unlit country roads before they finally arrived at Woodbridge Cottage.
Once out of the car, he grabbed her luggage from the back seat, helped her out from the front seat and switched on a torch. They followed the flashlight’s circular beam the length of the garden path.
‘Where are you from, Sergeant?’ Asking a question helped to keep their conversation light and friendly, away from the taboo subject of Michael’s injuries.
‘Birmingham.’
She couldn’t help remarking that he was a long way from home, simply because she felt she had to say something, however innocuous.
‘We’re all a long way from home, Mrs Dangerfield.’ Sergeant Innes didn’t seem to have noticed her anxiety. ‘But that’s the nature of war. All hands to the pumps, no matter where they come from. Right. Open sesame.’
The beam from the torch picked out a bird box on the right-hand side of the cottage door. She couldn’t remember it from her last visit but then she’d spent so little time here. It had been just somewhere to sleep after spending most of her time with Mike at the hospital. A huge iron key hung on a hook just below it.
‘Here it is,’ he said. He took the key and swivelled the torch ahead of them to pick out the keyhole. Now she noticed that the cottage had a sweet little front door. The key clunked as it turned in the lock.
Although the sergeant wasn’t that tall, he had to duck to enter, and the top of her head barely missed the frame too. She smiled at the thought of Michael hitting his head on its low oak lintel. A pang of regret clutched at her heart. If only she’d come here sooner. They could have enjoyed some time together, talking about the baby, walking through the surrounding countryside. On the first visit she had stayed here all alone. Hopefully on this visit she wouldn’t be alone for too long.
Precious as it was, some time together was all it would have been if she had come up earlier. Nothing she could have done would have prevented what had happened.
Because it had been dark, she hadn’t seen much of the garden and had been too preoccupied to notice anything on her first visit. Tonight she smelt damp green leaves and fertile earth and imagined that in summer it was a riot of smells and colour thanks to sweet-scented stock, honeysuckle and lavender. Although the countryside was flatter than at home, the smells at least were the same.
The door opened directly into the living room, where a welcoming fire glowed in the grate. Once the blackout curtains were pulled, Sergeant Innes switched on a table lamp. The room echoed the look of a summer garden with its chintz-covered armchairs and flowery curtains. Despite the fact that the seats of the chairs sagged a little, they looked comfortable.
The sergeant offered to take her suitcase upstairs for her.
‘There’s no need. I can manage.’ She wanted him to go. Her legs felt terribly weak. She reached out and grasped the back of a chair.
Sergeant Innes reached out as if to steady her. ‘I think you need to sit down, Mrs Dangerfield. You’ve had a long journey in your condition.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about me,’ she said, attempting a light laugh. ‘You surely have more important duties with the air force.’
‘Not at all. That’s what I’m here for, Mrs Dangerfield. Would you like me to make you a cup of tea before I leave?’
‘No,’ she said, managing a weak smile. ‘I’m quite fine now.’
There was kindness in his eyes. ‘Now this here’s the kitchen,’ he said. The door he opened was almost a mirror image of the front door, planks of pine nailed to two cross braces.
‘I remember,’ said Mary.
‘Ah, yes. Of course you do. Well, there you are. It’s small but cosy. I’ve got you in a few tinned things, your bacon ration and some eggs. Had a hard job getting those,’ he said to her. ‘But where there’s a will there’s a way – and a farmer over the back field willing to gamble just about anything in a game of cards.’ He winked. The corner of his damaged right eye drooped downwards, giving him a strange, almost roguish look. ‘Trouble is he isn’t much of a gambling man. Oh, and I persuaded Mrs Catchpole, who does a bit of cleaning for the officers, to make a nice toad in the hole. Not that there’s likely to be many toads in it, but I guarantee it’ll be tasty.’
For the first time since seeing his injured features, Mary controlled her fear and looked him directly in the face.
‘Thank you, Sergeant. I think I’ll be very comfortable here.’
‘No bother, Mrs Dangerfield. Not sure what time I’m to pick up your husband, but don’t count on it being too early.’
‘Whatever time is fine. It gives me a chance to settle in.’
Once the door had closed behind him and the big iron key was hanging on yet another nail to one end of the fireplace, Mary sat down and thought about things. Just as she’d composed her expression to face Sergeant Innes, she’d have to do the same for her husband when she saw him tomorrow. It wouldn’t be easy and she thought about it long and hard, so long that she hardly noticed that the only light in the room was from the glowing fire and the meagre table lamp. Dancing shadows played over the walls, but they didn’t worry her. Today was almost over. It was tomorrow she was worried about. How would she cope?
She took a deep breath. Control yourself. Be calm.
The words popped into her mind and she took instant notice. The best thing to do is to keep yourself occupied.
Determinedly, she got to her feet. Sergeant Innes had gone to a lot of trouble. It was only right that she should enjoy what he’d arranged for her. She recalled Michael telling her that although far from town, the cottage had some degree of electricity downstairs.
‘Upstairs it’s candles or oil lamps,’ he’d told her.
Her first stop was the kitchen. Besides the eggs and bacon Sergeant Innes told her about, she found bread and cheese, tinned meats and fresh vegetables set in the middle of a simple pine table. She couldn’t help wondering whose ration card had been used.
A covered pan containing the toad in the hole was keeping warm on top of a cast-iron range. The coals in the fire bed glowed hot and red. Despite the iron cover, the smell escaped, made her nose tingle and her stomach rumble. However, eating could wait. This was the
cottage Michael had earmarked to be their home for the duration of the war – or at least as long as he was stationed here.
There was no gas stove. Not surprising, really. They were in the midst of fertile agricultural land, some of the best in England. She guessed there was no gas for miles. As long as she kept the kitchen door open, the range would heat the house and cook the food. Hunger hadn’t been much of an issue the first time she’d been here as she was so worried about Michael. But now he was coming home and she had it in mind to make sure the house was well presented. In the morning, she would explore the garden and pick some flowers, even if she had to put them in jam jars around the house.
After placing the tinned things on to a dresser and the rest into a metal meat cupboard, she wandered back into the living room.
Downstairs, the cottage had only the two rooms, the kitchen and the living room. The large inglenook fireplace took up one third of a wall, and while the furniture was shabby and the carpets worn, the atmosphere was warm and cosy. The smell of polish lingered in the air, evidence that someone cared for the cottage and was doing what they could to make the old furniture last that bit longer.
Armed with a wax candle she’d found in a kitchen drawer, she made her way upstairs. The candle flame flickered in the draught as she explored the two bedrooms. The front bedroom, the largest, held a double bed with a plain wooden headboard and smaller, matching footboard. The floors were of bare wood, a rag rug in pink and red to one side of the bed, a smaller green one close to the window. The curtains were of a Paisley-patterned fabric in matching colours. A wine-coloured satin eiderdown sat on top of a faded candlewick bedspread that might once have been yellow but was now a very pale lemon.
The second bedroom had a small square window, a chest of drawers and a single bed with a patchwork cover. She opened the window at the exact same time as the moon chose to emerge from behind a navy blue cloud. The air was crisp and cold. The flat land of Lincolnshire was spread out before her like a patchwork counterpane.
The blackout curtains were not drawn. She wondered at that, then recalled that Michael had said something about the pilots using the escaping light from this cottage as a kind of marker buoy, situated as it was at the very end of the runway. ‘Against blackout regulations and all that, but we don’t get many enemy bombers up here. Too far and not too much for them to bomb when they get here. Except us, that is.’
He’d laughed at his own joke, at least she’d thought it was a joke. Perhaps that business about bombers being able to see a light from ten thousand feet was rubbish.
The sight of the moon stirred a vein of anger inside her. She slammed the window shut and pulled the curtains, blotting out its silvery light. She didn’t want to look at the moon, the bomber’s moon, as Michael had described it.
‘It’s great for navigation,’ he’d told her. ‘The moon shines on a river, the water reflects light so we follow water or a river all the way to our target. Once we get there we can see everything.’
He’d been more reticent about adding that because they could more easily see the ground, those on the ground could also see them. After she’d challenged him, he’d admitted that there was a greater chance of being hit by an anti-aircraft gun on a clear night such as this.
Just for once in her life she found herself hating the moon, yet there had been a time when she’d loved it. She didn’t know for sure whether the moon had been shining on the night Michael had been hit, but she couldn’t help hating it in case it had aided his plane being shot down.
She managed to eat some of the toad in the hole, and left the rest for the next day. In the morning, she ate only a slice of toast and drank a cup of tea, and even had trouble keeping that down. Yes, there was the usual feeling of nausea, but this morning it was coupled with a sickening fear that lay in her stomach like a bag of rocks.
Closing her eyes, she willed it to pass and uttered a heartfelt prayer. ‘Please, God, don’t let him be too badly scarred. Please!’
CHAPTER TWO
It was a day in autumn 1942, not long after Mary had left to join her husband Michael, when something happened that made her cousin, Frances, determined to find her mother. Perhaps it might never have entered her head if it hadn’t been for her cousin Ruby’s hand-me-down red dress and her friend Pearl – suitably armed with her ration card – insisting on calling in at ‘Mother’ Powell’s for a packet of Woodbines before they went to the dance that evening at the church hall.
Gertrude Powell’s shop meant a bit of a detour, but Pearl had been insistent. ‘I can’t go without a smoke, Frances. Sure you don’t want to join me?’ Smoking didn’t appeal to Frances. The taste was bad enough; the smell of people who did smoke was even worse. ‘I’ve no wish to smell like an ashtray,’ she’d countered.
Pearl was seeing a freckle-faced boy named Ty. He was from New York and kind of boastful because he came from the ‘Big Apple’, as he called his home city.
‘He wants us to go the whole way before he heads for France,’ Pearl whispered as they tottered on three-inch heels down Court Road to the village store.
Frances sucked in her breath. ‘Are you going to?’
‘I don’t know. I want to, but … well … my mum would kill me if I got pregnant.’
‘So you won’t let him.’
‘I didn’t say that. I might. I mean, you know how it is. There are times when you just can’t help yourself.’
Frances thought about Ed, his sweet words pouring like honey into her ear, the feel of his body against her, the boyish face and the touch of his hands … Although she was fond of him, she wasn’t sure whether she was inclined to give in.
Mrs Powell looked up when they entered, her black eyes fixing them with a dull glare, her nostrils flaring. Her face was white and her hair and clothes as black as her eyes. She wore no discernible expression, said nothing and stood stiff as a poker. If they didn’t know better, they might think she was made of wax, not real at all.
‘Five Woodbines, please. There’s my ration book.’
Pearl slammed her mother’s ration book down on the counter.
While Mrs Powell stamped her ration book and reached for the cigarettes, Pearl held her skirt some way above her knees and asked Frances if her stocking seams were straight. Not that they were real stockings, of course. Real stockings were hard to come by these days.
‘My little brother drew them with the brown from the box of crayons he had for last Christmas. The trouble was he wasn’t wearing his glasses.’
Frances fancied that one seam was a little crooked, but not enough to worry about. ‘They’re fine. Did you use gravy browning?’ Gravy browning turned white legs a more subtle shade of brown, almost like stockings but not quite.
Dropping her grip on her hem, Pearl shook her head. ‘I got some of that natural brown stuff in Woolworths when I last went to Kingswood. I heard it doesn’t go all streaky in the rain like gravy browning. What did you use?’
‘Bisto. But I think I’ll get some of that stuff you’ve got when I’m in town next.’
‘Bisto does run something terrible. That stuff I got in Kingswood works okay.’
Pearl said ‘okay’ with an American drawl that Frances found quite fascinating. It was as though Pearl was readying herself for a life with her American among the skyscrapers of New York.
Mrs Powell, who had progressed from wax-like stiffness to outright impatience, began tapping her fingers on the counter. ‘Anything else?’
Pearl didn’t hear her, busily whispering in Frances’s ear about her freckle-faced American. ‘He has such a nice body—’
‘Excuse me!’ Mrs Powell’s voice rattled into their conversation. ‘I have other things more important to do than wait on a couple of young floozies out to throw themselves at anything in trousers!’
Pearl’s mouth dropped open.
Frances was taken aback but rebounded swiftly. ‘There’s no need for that, Mrs Powell. We’re paying customers!’
Glower
ing, Mrs Powell snatched the cigarettes back and threw the ration book across the counter, where it slid off the edge and on to the floor.
Pearl turned bright red. ‘What about my cigarettes?’
‘You’ll have to do without,’ snarled Mrs Powell. ‘Get some off your American friends. I dare say you’ll be giving them something in return.’
‘I don’t like your insinuation,’ declared Frances. Although she was seething inside, she lifted her chin high and spoke with cold precision.
‘Insinuation? Insinuation?’ Gertrude Powell, a middle-aged woman who looked older than her years, laughed, though not jovially. It conveyed nothing but contempt. ‘There’s no “insinuation” about it! You come into my shop and keep me waiting while you hitch up your skirts and show your knickers!’
Pearl looked horrified. ‘I was only checking my seams …’ She sounded as though she was about to burst into tears.
‘That’s a disgusting thing to say,’ snapped Frances. ‘She was just showing me her stocking seams that her brother drew on her legs. So let’s have the Woodbines.’
‘I’ve told you, no,’ said Mrs Powell. Her pointed features jutted forward over the counter, reminding Frances of a gargoyle on a church roof. ‘Now get out of my shop.’
‘No,’ Frances said, her expression just as adamant as that of the shopkeeper.
Eyes unblinking and without sparkle, Mrs Powell ignored the ration book Frances was holding out to her.
‘As for you,’ she said, looking Frances up and down, ‘you’re no better than that fancy cousin of yours. Always with a different feller. Is that a red dress you’re wearing beneath that coat? Yes, I can see it is. Well, that’s no big surprise, is it? Given what your mother was like – a scarlet woman if ever there was one. I hear tell that she liked soldiers too, and the more the merrier!’
Up until this moment, Frances might have treated this whole affair differently. She and Pearl would probably have laughed about it all the way along the road. But she’d slighted Ruby and her mother. Frances could barely remember her mum, but she couldn’t stomach the older woman’s insults.