‘Of course. Everybody knows that.’
‘Alors . . . chantez.’
She began by singing only to him, leaning on the piano, and he watched her, smoking his cigarette and accompanying her quietly.
There’ll be bluebirds over
The white cliffs of Dover
Tomorrow, just you wait and see.
There’ll be love and laughter
And peace ever after
Tomorrow, when the world is free . . .
People standing near had turned to listen and gradually the room fell silent.
The shepherd will tend his sheep
The valley will bloom again.
And Jimmy will go to sleep
In his own little room again . . .
It was then that she saw Johnnie. He was standing on the far side of the room, leaning against a wall (as usual) watching her. The jolt of seeing him so unexpectedly sent the blood rushing into her face and almost put her off her stride. She collected herself just in time.
There’ll be bluebirds over
The white cliffs of Dover
Tomorrow, just you wait and see.
Everyone was applauding and a woman nearby was actually wiping away tears. The pianist leaned towards her.
‘You sing again mademoiselle?’ He fingered the keys encouragingly.
But she shook her head. Johnnie was making his way across the room; there was no escape. She waited until he reached her.
‘You sing awfully well, Anne. I remember telling you that once before, long ago. And you’re wearing that blue dress. It brings back memories too.’ He smiled.
She ignored that. ‘What are you doing here in Brussels?’
‘I might ask the same of you. Did you desert your bomber boys?’
‘I changed horses. I’m admin now. They posted me here two weeks ago.’
He looked amused. ‘Admin? Not really your style, I’d have thought.’
‘That’s exactly what Kit said.’
‘How is he?’
‘He was killed last November in France.’
His face changed. ‘I’m so very sorry, Anne. That’s dreadful news. I know you were very close.’
‘Well, there we are . . . I always had a feeling it would happen. Right from the first. Have you got a cigarette? I could do with one.’
He produced the gold case and lighter. The gold signet ring was back on his hand but she saw that the fingers still looked painfully red and crabbed, though the burns on the side of his face had faded so that they were not so noticeable.
‘Are you back on ops now?’ she asked him.
‘I have been. The powers that be finally decided that I could hold more than a cigarette and a cocktail glass.’
Even so, he was doing both awkwardly, she thought, and it had taken several attempts to work the lighter.
‘Do your hands still hurt?’
‘Sometimes. There’ll be more work to do on them eventually, so I’m told, but they function pretty well and that’s the main thing.’
‘You were lucky.’
‘So you have frequently told me.’
‘The war will soon be over anyway. You’ll be handing in the Spits.’
‘I’m going to regret that. The Moth won’t seem quite the same. Actually, I haven’t done any flying for a while. They sent me off on a long lecture tour of America.’
‘What on earth did you talk about?’
‘The RAF. Told them what fine chaps we are . . . how hard we’ve been fighting . . . all that sort of thing. Drumming up sympathy and goodwill. When I got back they roped me in for liaison work over here. I’ve been in Ghent for the past month.’
‘Liaison work?’
‘I read French and German at Oxford.’
She’d forgotten that, and that he’d been bound for the Foreign Office. ‘Another gong, I see. Congratulations.’
‘Consolation prize.’
‘Hmm. The DSO’s usually a bit more than that. When did you get to be so modest?’
‘Since you taught me to be. It’s hellishly hot and crowded in here, Anne. Let’s go out onto that balcony over there and get some air. Then we can talk without having to shout.’
‘I’m supposed to be here with someone.’
‘Someone?’
‘A very nice American major. I met him on the ’plane coming over. He’s been showing me around.’
‘Well, he won’t miss you for a moment.’
French windows opened onto a narrow balcony overlooking the street. The party chatter and music faded behind them; the early April night was cool and still. Anne leaned on the railings. Johnnie was silent for a moment, smoking.
‘I’ve a suggestion to make, Anne. A proposition.’
She turned her head suspiciously. ‘What?’
‘That we start all over again. Pretend that this is the first time we’ve met. There you were singing, just like before, and I’m asking you to have dinner with me, just like before.’
‘And I’m refusing, just like before.’
‘So you’re turning down my proposal flat?’
‘We’ve had a similar conversation once before, I think.’
‘I remember it well. Have you nothing more to say?’
‘I can’t think of anything.’
He tossed his cigarette away. ‘The fact is, Anne, you’ve never let yourself think at all where I’m concerned. You’ve had this preconceived notion about me from the very first and you won’t let yourself change it. You’re stubborn as hell. You came very close to it in Gloucestershire – I thought you had – and then you suddenly backed away. I’m asking you, for the very last time, to give it another try.’
‘You’re giving me once last chance to have the honour of falling at your feet?’
He said, exasperated: ‘That’s not what I meant. You know perfectly well how I feel about you. Why are you so set against me?’
She straightened up. ‘That’s what you’ve never been able to understand, isn’t it, Johnnie? How I could possibly resist you.’
‘You didn’t – once. Far from it.’
‘And I’ve regretted it ever since.’
They faced each other in the darkness. At last he spoke in a cool tone.
‘If that’s really your final answer, Anne, then I accept it. The subject is closed for ever. And now you’d better go and find your American major. He might be wondering where you are.’
She found him in conversation with a Belgian couple and drew him aside. ‘Do you mind if we go soon? I’m rather tired.’
‘Sure . . .’
As they left, she saw Johnnie talking to a pretty, dark-haired woman – smiling down at her, laying on the charm with a trowel. Well that’s that, she thought, turning away. End of story. Finis. Over and out.
Twenty-Eight
VIRGINIA WATCHED THE rocket climbing high into the sky above the cliffs. It exploded in an umbrella of coloured stars that fell towards the sea below. Then a second one rose up from the direction of the town, and another, and another, sounding like gunfire.
But the guns were silent now. The war in Europe was over. Mr Churchill had broadcast to the nation, announcing it officially, and everyone on the camp had gone mad, cheering and hugging each other, laughing and crying. Madge had gone off into the town to join the crowds there, but Virginia had come up onto the cliffs by herself to think.
It had been drizzling all morning but the weather had cleared now and she thought she could just make out the faint smudge on the horizon that was France. Neil was buried over there and one day she would go and find his grave. One day she might even go to Canada and meet his family. His mother had written, inviting her.
Everyone had plans for peacetime. Madge wanted to get demobbed as soon as possible and work as a stewardess on a passenger airliner and travel all over the world. ‘How about you, Ginny?’ she’d asked.
‘Well, I thought I might stay on in the WAAF for a bit.’
Madge had looked at her as though she w
as loopy. ‘You don’t want to do that. Not when the war’s over. It won’t be the same at all.’
Virginia walked along the cliff path, head bent. What else was there to do? Go back to the Falcon Assurance Company and turn into another Miss Parkes, spending the rest of her life among the filing cabinets? Live alone in a bed-sit and cook out of tins on a gas ring? ‘We want you to come and live with us,’ Dorothy and Father had said every time she went to visit them, but that wouldn’t be right. Visiting was one thing, living there was another. They had their life and she had hers – such as it was, or would be. She was sure that she would never marry now and so she must somehow make her own way.
She stopped for a moment, staring at the ground. If she stayed on in the WAAF she could make a real career of it. Try for the commission she’d always dreamed about. Set herself to get as high as she could – maybe even to the top. The WAAF wouldn’t be disbanded now. It had proved itself too useful. Women had been accepted in the service. Madge was right – it wouldn’t be the same after the war, but there would be a new role for them to play in the postwar world. There would be work to be done. New goals to achieve. A whole new life. A purpose. A future.
She lifted her head and walked on with it held high.
The church bells were ringing out victoriously over London. The sound, not heard for five and a half long years, carried far across the rooftops in peal after glorious peal.
Felicity stood by the open hotel window, listening. Drinking it in. Later, as darkness fell, the lights would be coming on – shining in the streets, floodlighting buildings, pouring out of windows all over the city. No more blackout! No more put that light out! London was going to a glittering blaze of celebration tonight.
She peered downwards to watch a long line of people approaching down the middle of the road. They were wearing red, white and blue paper hats and were dancing, one behind the other, hands on the waist of the one in front, doing the Conga. The line snaked its way along, legs shooting out in unison, right, then left, right then left, like a prancing centipede. It was led by a young man wearing a policeman’s helmet and playing the trumpet. He was holding it high, his head tipped back, as though he were some modern-day Pied Piper. He reminded her of Speedy; and of Whitters and Dumbo, and all of them, as they had been. There was a telegram in her pocket: ’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Snodgrass.
She turned round. ‘Let’s go out later, David.’
‘There’ll be huge crowds.’ He was opening a bottle of champagne, easing out the cork with both thumbs.
‘But it’ll be fun. Let’s join in and see all the lights when they come on.’
‘All right.’
He smiled at her across the room. They had been married the day before, quietly in a registry office in London, and if she had suggested that they went to Timbukto in the morning he would have done his best to arrange it for her. One place that he would not take her, though, was the house in Kensington. After Caroline’s death he had shut it up, and the one in Gloucestershire too, and he had no wish to re-open either, or for them to be any part of this new beginning. Eventually, he supposed, he would have to sell both and he knew what he was going to do with the proceeds. He was going to give the whole damn lot to the RAF Benevolent Fund – for those who had been badly wounded and maimed during this war, and for the dependents of those who had died. He had not the slightest doubt that Felicity would agree. Caroline’s money would do some good in the end. He and Felicity would find a place of their own. Something quite different. Somewhere to spend leaves, to raise a family, perhaps, if they were so fortunate. He looked at his wife standing at the window, marvelling at his present good fortune, and hoped he wasn’t too old to make a decent father.
The cork popped and he filled two glasses and carried them over. More people were coming along the street below, marching and waving Union Jacks and singing raucously.
There’ll always be an England,
And England shall be free
If England means as much to you
As England means to me . . .
Palmer raised his glass. ‘To victory.’
Felicity raised hers. ‘And to the Royal Air Force.’
‘And to the WAAF,’ he countered. ‘Thank God for you all. Each and every one.’
She smiled at that. ‘And to us.’
‘To us.’ He was smiling too. He touched her glass lightly with his. ‘May we live happily ever after.’
The RAF corporal singing Scotland the Brave at the top of his lungs, was doing so standing on a narrow ledge no more than a foot wide and six storeys high. He had climbed out of a window in the Palais Résidence, glass in hand, and was entertaining the crowd in the Place Dially below.
Drunken fool, Anne thought, watching him in horror from below. He’s survived the war and now he’s going to kill himself on VE Day. She could see faces at the window behind him, hands reaching out cautiously trying to grab hold of him. All around her in the crowd people were pointing and laughing and clapping, shouting up to him in different languages. At the end of his song he bowed unsteadily, teetering on the edge, and Anne held her breath. Then she put her hand over her eyes as he started to walk along the ledge towards the next window, holding his drinking glass aloft in one hand and balancing like a trapeze artist. The crowd had fallen silent. Anne kept her hand over her eyes until a great roar broke out. She expected the corporal to have toppled to his death but instead saw that he had reached the window and was being hauled headfirst over the sill to safety.
The square was now packed with people, swirling and eddying like a moving mass of water. Somewhere among them she caught a glimpse of a fair head that might have been Johnnie’s, but it was lost to view almost immediately. She had been rehearsing for some time what she would say to him if they should happen to meet again. ‘I’ve been thinking, actually,’ she was going to say very casually. ‘Maybe we should give it a try . . . that is, if you still want to.’ Or, she might say, equally casually: ‘About that dinner invitation, if it’s still on I could do with a square meal.’ Or, ‘I’m game, if you still are . . .’ Something very offhand and throw-away so that he wouldn’t know how hard she’d been kicking herself since the party, and in case he’d changed his mind. That’s the sort of thing she’d say. If they ever met again.
She linked arms with a group of RAF and stepped out with them, doing the Lambeth Walk.
A Belgian civilian in a beret caught hold of her and pulled her into his arms, kissing her full on the mouth.
‘You want zis flag?’ He gestured to a Union Jack flying above a balcony window. ‘I get for you.’
Before she could stop him he had scaled the wall and clambered up onto the balcony’s rim to pluck the flag from its pole. When he had brought it down he presented it to her with a bow and kissed her again.
‘Vive l’Angleterre!’
A chorus of Land of Hope and Glory had started up and was swelling across the square. She began to wave the flag in time and a Tommy soldier crouched down and hoisted her onto his shoulders, up above the heads of the crowd. This is conduct extremely unbecoming to a flight officer, she thought, but not caring, as he marched along with her. She held the Union Jack high in the air.
. . . how shall we extol thee, who are born of thee?
The swell had become a roar. The mass of faces surged towards her and other flags fluttered – the Belgian, the French Tricolour, the Stars and Stripes . . .
And then she saw Johnnie for certain. He was only yards away from her but separated by a solid body of people.
‘Johnnie,’ she yelled. ‘Johnnie!’
He heard her and turned his head. When he saw her brandishing her flag, he started laughing.
She forgot all her careful rehearsals, and she forgot her silly pride. ‘Johnnie!’ She waved the flag frantically. ‘I love you!’
He was trying to fight his way towards her and she beat on the soldier’s head to make him set her down. When she landed on h
er feet, the momentum of the crowd swept her still further away and she struggled helplessly against it. Suddenly, the flow ebbed and she was swept back in the other direction. The surge carried her along and, like a wave breaking onto a shore, dumped her unceremoniously in Johnnie’s arms.
An RAF airman elbowed his mate, grinning. ‘Cor, look at them two! Talk about a clinch! Effin’ officers get all the bleedin’ luck!’
Winnie leaned her arms on the top of the five-barred gate and looked out over the field, across the green corn towards the line of elm trees where the rooks circled, cawing, overhead, and to the church tower beyond. The bells were pealing – a forgotten and beautiful sound ringing out across the countryside. She gave a huge sigh, part happiness and part sadness. This was her England. Her country. At peace. But soon she would have to leave it and go to live in a vast and strange land far away across the sea. Sometimes her heart sank at the thought of it, but Virgil was there and where he was she wanted to be. They would be together and make their life on the farm in Ohio.
The baby moved inside her. She was sure it was a boy and it was funny to think that he would grow up an American and talk like them. But she could teach him about England. Tell him all about it. And one day perhaps he’d come back here to see it – not to fight in a war like his father. And maybe there’d be more sons, and a daughter too. When Pearl had read the tea leaves all that time ago she’d seen several children. Four kids, or maybe even five, that’s what she’d said. Long life and happiness.
The breeze stirred her hair. The sun was warm on her upturned face. She closed her eyes.
She missed the WAAF badly but they wouldn’t let her stay in any longer because of the baby. She missed the work and the companionship, and even the uniform. When she looked back, it had been a wonderful time from the very beginning. In spite of the war and of all the sad things that had happened, and in spite of all the difficulties and discomforts and dangers, they had been the happiest days of her life. She thought of the arrival at RAF Colston when she had been sick as a dog over the tailgate of the three-tonner. Anne, Pearl, Gloria, Enid, Sandra, Maureen and the rest had been there with her at the start of it all. She could picture it easily. Company Assistant Newman had given them that little speech of welcome and the airmen had been laughing and whistling at them from the windows. So much had happened since that first day. Everyone had tried so hard. Done their very best. And in the end they’d succeeded. The war had been won. The world was saved from Hitler and the Nazis. The lights would be going on again everywhere and everyone said it was all going to be different from now on. A better world.
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