‘Mmm,’ Edna agreed. ‘Terrible. But the Featherstones were nice, were they? Their—er—their boy, he was a decent lad, then?’
Ivy swallowed, took a sip of tea and nodded emphatically.
‘Young Tom? Oh, yes, charming boy. So polite. He went into the air force, you know, became a navigator. Such a worry for poor Mr and Mrs Featherstone. They were very proud of him, of course. Well, who wouldn’t be? We’re all proud of our boys going to do their bit. But some of those aircraft do get lost. Not as many as the enemy ones we shoot down, of course, but even so—why do you ask?’
The question took Edna by surprise.
‘Oh—er—my Annie heard he was a POW in Germany,’ she said, unable to come out with a suitable lie.
‘Your Annie did? How on earth did she know that?’
‘He—er—he wrote to her,’ Edna confessed.
‘He wrote to your Annie? Well, I never. How extraordinary. Well, if you’ll allow me to give you some advice, Edna, and you know I mean this kindly, but if I were you, I shouldn’t encourage it. Firstly, Annie’s far too young to be writing to servicemen, however nice their families might be. I certainly wouldn’t allow my Beryl to do such a thing. Girls are growing up far too fast these days. The things you hear! Going and drinking in public houses and making exhibitions of themselves, and smoking in the street. I don’t know what the world’s coming to. I’m sure you wouldn’t want your Annie to be thought fast.’
‘Oh, no, of course not,’ Edna agreed meekly.
Ivy reached for another bun.
‘And secondly,’ she said, carrying on her train of thought, ‘the Featherstones are an important family in their town. Business people, you know. It would only end in tears, you know. These unequal matches always do.’
‘Yes,’ Edna agreed again.
She hadn’t the heart to say that it already had ended in tears.
It only went to prove that Ivy Sutton was right about most things. It was for the best that Mrs Featherstone had told Annie about her son’s fiancée. Otherwise poor Annie would have been living in a fool’s paradise.
So when she found a strange letter in the post one day addressed to Annie with foreign writing on it, she whipped it into her apron pocket before Walter could see it, and presented him with the bill that had come with it. She hardly heard his tirade over the price of things as she debated with herself what to do.
It had to be from him, this Tom Featherstone. No one else ever wrote to any of them, and certainly not from abroad. There was no point in upsetting Annie all over again, Edna decided. The kindest thing would be to destroy it. She waited until she had the house to herself again, opened up the door of the range and thrust the letter into the flames.
‘There,’ she said out loud. ‘That’s the end of you. Now you can’t hurt my little girl no more.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
AROUND him, Tom could hear the familiar snoring and grunting of a hut full of men. Bright moonlight was flooding through the windows, illuminating the hunched bodies beneath their grey regulation issue blankets. Life was not so grim now that summer was here. The nights were no longer penetratingly cold. The rations were slightly better quality. Even the guards seemed better tempered.
Tom raised his head and looked through the window. It was practically clear as day out there—silver light and thick shadows. You could read a newspaper, if by some miracle a newspaper could find its way here. The forest was still black and menacing, though. He hated that thick wall of trees. It seemed to lean in on him, imprisoning him more surely than the barbed wire.
‘Bombers’ moon,’ a voice whispered close to him.
It was another airman, a Canadian named Douglas in the next bunk. Tom got on well with Doug, at first liking him simply because he had had such a good time in Canada doing his crew training, and later because he was good company.
‘They’ll be out on ops tonight,’ he agreed.
He pictured the planes lumbering through the cloudless skies, keeping close formation in the stream, bearing their full loads towards the target for the night. Europe would be lying silvered and wide open beneath them, but they in turn would be clearly seen against the moon and the stars. Perhaps even now they were lining up for the final run, while the enemy flung everything they had at them. Even in the silence of the forest, he could hear the noise, feel the tension. His weak leg ached in sympathy, the nerves jumping and twitching uncontrollably. Silently, he sent a message of luck to his colleagues in the night sky.
‘Lucky bastards,’ Doug said. ‘Wish I was still there with them.’
‘Yes. At least they’ll be getting a pint when they get home.’
It was the acceptable response, and he genuinely longed to be out of the dreary limbo that was prison camp life, but just a part of him, a small voice of honesty, was glad simply to be safe. He was lucky to be alive, he knew that. Lucky to be in one piece. It had been touch and go. On top of the bullet and shrapnel wounds, he had smashed his leg up badly on landing. The doctors at the German military hospital could have amputated it rather than going to the trouble of fixing it. The continual dull ache was a small price to pay.
‘They’re flying. They’re doing something. They’re not cooped up here day after flaming day,’ Doug was saying.
Tom merely grunted in reply. His mind was still on his last op. He had no idea if any of the rest of the crew had survived. He hoped that at least some of them were sitting out the war in other Stalags.
‘This place is getting to me. I’m going to go mad if I have to stay here much longer. I’m a man, not a flaming farm animal,’ Doug said.
His voice had risen above a whisper. There were grumbles from nearby bunks. They all subsided into silence again.
Tom was too wide awake to go back to sleep. He lay on his back and thought about the letters that must be due to arrive soon. His mother, his sister, even his father wrote regularly, telling him about all the things that had happened back in Noresley. He read them over time and time again, for even the most boring little details were welcome as a reminder of home. In his mind he could open his front door, walk down the street, buy a paper at the corner shop. Simple things, taken for granted once but impossible now that they were nothing better than caged animals, as Doug would have it.
Moira wrote even more faithfully than his mother. Her letters were always lively and chatty. Better still, she always told him how much she was missing him and promised to prove it the moment he came home. It was enough to fire up a whole chain of wonderful fantasies.
The one person who did not write was the one he most wanted a letter from. Annie. He had sent letters to her, via Gwen and direct to the farm, so he was almost certain that at least one of them must have been received. But not one note had he got in reply, not even a Dear John. It was as if she did not exist. He couldn’t understand it. Sometimes he thought that she must have met someone else and was no longer interested in him, even as a friend. At other times he worried that something terrible had happened to her. A stray bomb might have fallen on the farm, or her father might have completely lost control and beaten her to death. The worst of it was not knowing. Annie had been a big part of his life ever since the day they had met. He couldn’t bear to think that he would never see her again. Perhaps the next batch of mail would be the one that would bring that long awaited letter from her, explaining everything.
As the long hours of the night passed, Tom thought about that week he had spent at Silver Sands. When he finally fell asleep, it was Annie he chased through his dreams. At least he knew it was her, though he couldn’t see her. She was a phantom figure in a swirling mist, always just ahead of him, for ever out of reach.
The next day brought a break in the deadly routine. Right after Appel one of the men tried to make a break for it by hiding in a supply truck, but was discovered in a routine search. The first Tom knew of it was a sudden flurry of activity by the gates. Men were shouting, guard dogs barking, all the drums and boxes on the truck were dra
gged out and thoroughly searched, and then a man Tom recognised from the next hut was marched off towards the Commandant’s office.
‘Hard luck, mate!’ Tom called out.
‘Good try!’ someone else shouted.
Others joined in.
‘Better luck next time!’
‘Don’t let the bastards get you down.’
The guards rounded on them, trying to disperse them. The prisoners refused to be dispersed.
Tom felt a hand touch his shoulder. Doug was speaking urgently in his ear.
‘Cover for me.’
Tom did not look round. Instead, he redoubled his efforts at shouting, taunting the guards so as to distract them. It worked. One of them came over and jabbed a rifle in his chest, then motioned with it that he should move.
‘You. Come. Now.’
Tom spread his hands in mock innocence.
‘Why? What’s the problem?’
Around him, other men protested.
‘What’s he done?’
‘Leave him be!’
And then there were more shouts behind him in German and a clatter of machine gun fire. A sick feeling sank through Tom’s guts. The prisoners fell silent and turned as one man, each of them knowing what had happened. Just feet beyond the open gate, Doug lay dead in the dust, blood still welling from the bullet wounds in his back.
Their outburst of protest was quelled in minutes. They were all confined to their huts for twenty-four hours. There were heated arguments in Tom’s hut as opinion divided sharply between those who admired Doug for attempting a break and those who thought he had been just stupid to do it on the spur of the moment like that, when he hadn’t a hope in hell of succeeding.
When they were let out again, the Commandant had them all lined up and lectured them for half an hour in his slow, heavily accented English on the futility of trying to escape.
‘Yeah, but it’s worth it just to rattle you lot, ain’t it?’ the man next to Tom muttered under his breath.
‘Not when you’re dead, it isn’t,’ Tom replied.
As an extra punishment, the mail that had arrived while they had been confined was not given out for a further twenty-four hours. The loss of his friend made Tom long even more for news from home. This was going to be the one, he decided. This time he would get a letter from Annie.
His name was called. He went forward. Two letters were handed to him. Eagerly, he scanned the handwriting, only to be disappointed. One was from his mother, the other from Moira. Anger came to his aid. Annie didn’t care for him. So he no longer cared for her. He wasn’t wasting precious thoughts on someone who couldn’t be bothered to write one single line to him. Unlike Moira. Moira never missed a chance to let him know that he was always in her heart. Moira was waiting faithfully, just for him. He opened her letter first.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
March 1945
‘WHAT’S that?’
Annie paused in her job of heaving the churns of milk on to the roadside platform from which they were collected each day. She looked down the Wittlesham road to where the traffic noise was coming from. There were vehicles in the distance.
‘What’s what?’ Walter growled. ‘Get on with it, you useless girl. Shift y’self.’
Annie did as she was bid, but kept half an eye on the road. It was usually so quiet that anything coming along was of interest.
‘Looks like a convoy. It’s certainly something military,’ she said.
Her father just grunted.
The road ran in a gentle curve round the old coastline and as the Marsh Edge Farm land was so flat and there were no trees or hedges in the way, Annie could see for some distance. There was definitely a short line of lorries and armoured vehicles approaching, led by a Jeep with a flag fluttering from its bonnet.
‘They’re Yanks!’ she cried, unable to control her excitement even though her father was beside her. ‘Look, you can see the Stars and Stripes.’
‘Useless airy-fairy lot,’ Walter snorted.
‘They’re helping us win the war,’ Annie dared to contradict.
‘Ha. Only come in when they were forced to. Like last time. Let us take the worst of it, then come along and claim all the glory. Got no time for ‘em.’
Annie didn’t try to argue further. It would only invite a clout round the ear. But she did pretend not to hear her father when he told her to come along. She wanted to see them go past.
The small convoy swept by, all five vehicles packed with sharp-uniformed GIs. Annie just had to wave. She couldn’t help herself. Rushing along the road like that, they seemed to embody the optimism that everyone now felt. Soon the war had to be over. Everything was going our way.
The GIs waved back, grinning with their strong white teeth. One of them had red hair, Annie noticed. She only just stopped herself from wondering out loud whether they had any gum or nylons to spare. She’d heard all about nylons. They were like silk stockings only stronger and even more glamorous. If you wore a pair of them, you felt like a film star.
‘They must be from that new camp,’ she said.
Her head swayed and her ears rang as her father caught her with the back of his hand.
‘Stop acting like a bitch on heat,’ he growled. ‘And with them lot too. Only come here to go over and do the mopping up.’
Annie turned away. She knew when it was time to obey.
Today life seemed brighter than usual. The farm looked fat and prosperous, a far cry from the place it had been at the beginning of the war. Her father had been forced to adopt modern farming methods, the quality and quantity of their crops and milk yields had increased tremendously and everything they produced was bought at a fair rate. Not that Annie got any credit or any profit out of it, but at least she felt that she had done her bit towards winning the war. People might have been on short commons but there had been enough food to go round. The farmers of Britain had managed to feed the population.
And now winter was coming to an end, the war was coming to an end and she was going out dancing tonight. Annie flew through her tasks, ate her tea, did the evening chores and raced upstairs to change. What to wear was a great problem. Even if she had something suitable for a dance, she couldn’t have worn it since she couldn’t possibly admit to her father where she was off to. He had never been keen on her going to the pictures with a girlfriend, so he certainly wouldn’t hold with her meeting with young men. Annie wasn’t even going to risk asking. She knew what the answer would be.
She put on her only smart skirt and blouse, both made by her mother so they fitted beautifully. Then she got her one pair of summer sandals out of the cupboard, brushed her hair and fixed it up at the sides with combs and looked at herself in the tiny spotted mirror. The skirt and blouse showed off her small waist and full breasts nicely and, after all, very few girls had proper dance dresses these days. More than a dress, she longed for nylons and high heels. She had good legs, but nobody could look glamorous in lisle stockings and flat sandals. Still, it would just have to do. She bundled the sandals into a shopping bag together with the combs from her hair, a brush and her precious lipstick that she had bought eighteen months ago and used only for special occasions. Then she put on her sensible lace-up shoes and her mac. Nobody would know that she was going dancing.
Before she left, her eyes were drawn to the window and the view beyond, across the flat fields to the sea wall, the water—and Silver Sands. Once she had got ready like this, but ten times more breathless and bubbling with excitement, to run across the fields to meet Tom. However much she told herself that if he didn’t care for her, then she didn’t care for him, still the mere sight of the little wooden chalet never failed to stir her. She had been so happy then. Those had been Technicolor days, full of wonderful possibilities. For the umpteenth time she wondered where Tom was now. What if the part of Germany where he was imprisoned was nearer to the advancing Russian army than the Allied troops? Would he still get home all right?
‘That’s for his dar
ling fiancée to worry about,’ she told herself out loud, and tried to push the niggling worry away.
Half an hour later she met a group of girls from Sutton’s outside the Palais. It wasn’t the same since Gwen had been called up, but at least she had someone to go out with.
They were all in a state of high excitement.
‘Annie, Annie!’ they shrieked. ‘The Yanks are here! Come on, we’re missing all the fun!’
Eyes bright, lips parted, the girls were ready for the night of their lives. After years of all the young men disappearing the moment they were old enough to join up, of having to quickstep with other girls and make do with the army rejects, now they had a glut of men. And not boring local men, but big, virile, glamorous Americans. They were beside themselves.
Annie was caught up in group hysteria.
‘The Yanks? At our dance?’
‘Dozens of them! Enough for everyone!’
‘Oh, she doesn’t need one. She’s keeping Little Jeffy with his tongue hanging out.’
‘I am not!’ Annie shrieked. ‘I can’t get rid of the silly boy.’
Jeffrey Sutton was one of the minor plagues of her life. He was always hanging around, asking her to dance.
‘He’s only got eyes for you—’ one of the girls sang.
‘Oh, stop it!’
‘Come on,’ another girl interrupted, ‘all the best ones will be gone.’
Squealing and giggling, they pushed their way into the cloakrooms, did each other’s hair and passed around scarce lipsticks and powder, each girl eyeing all the others up to assess just where she stood in the pecking order. At last, they were ready for the fray.
The dance hall was full. Its pre-war splendour was fading and peeling now, but still it had a magic about it, with its blue and cream decor, ornate lighting and sprung floor. Up on the stage, a five-piece combo was struggling to sound like a full dance band as it belted out ‘Goodnight Irene’. On the floor, a widely assorted crowd was waltzing. There were older men and adolescent boys in suits, a few women in dance dresses, a lot more women of all ages in whatever finery they could lay their hands on, and a sea of uniforms. That was all much as usual. What was different was the proportion of males to females. For once, there were hardly any women left sitting round the edges of the room on chipped gilt chairs, the sad wallflowers watching the others enjoy themselves, for there were more than enough men to go round.
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