People were crowding the cavernous hall now, admiring the soaring wood fire. The three young soldiers who made up the band began to play, not very well, on drums, maracas and saxophone. A boy who looked too frail to be a soldier, shook the maracas, and began to sing mournfully about buying a paper doll instead of having a real girl.
Some avid young girls gathered around the dais and swayed to the lament, their eyes on the scanty singer as he swirled the maracas. The other players, a plump pink youth, pinker as he blew into the saxophone, and the drummer, eyes ringed with melancholy, cast glances at the girls.
‘They forgot to invite the village lads,’ pointed out Dr Macaulay.
‘Busy tonight, doctor, I ’spect. Telling their jokes down the pub,’ said Bert Cook.
The doctor smoothed his sporran and took in the youths on the platform, wondering how they could be expected to fight real German soldiers. Geoffrey Paget caught his gaze and muttered: ‘Don’t look very threatening, do they, doctor?’
Margaret came through the door, escorted by a fleshy American sergeant who had contrived a special journey in his jeep to pick her up. He entered behind her with proprietorial pride. Four soldiers, two of them black, all wearing white jackets, took trays of drinks around the village people, chanting: ‘Chow coming up.’ Trays of food appeared, American food.
‘They does theirselves well, these Yanks,’ said Mrs Cook, biting swiftly around a doughnut.
Margaret led her fussy escort to the group where Martin and his parents were standing with Miller and the doctor. ‘Sergeant …’ She paused, then remembered in time. ‘… Smith kindly offered to bring me. Dad’s not well. He’s got flu. I had to get my children to bed.’
Martin noted the cloud briefly crossing Sergeant Smith’s face. The American said: ‘Kids come first.’
Lieutenant Miller asked: ‘How long has this house been occup— used by the military? We found some traces, things written on walls.’
‘In the latrines,’ put in Sergeant Smith.
‘In Polish,’ said Miller. There was an equality between the American officer and the sergeant. Geoffrey Paget noted it, so did the doctor.
‘We have some guys who come from Polish families but nobody has translated it for me,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Maybe they don’t think I’ll understand.’
‘The Poles were billeted here about two years ago,’ said Dr Macaulay. ‘It was rumoured that they wore hairnets in bed.’ He pursed his lips professionally. ‘Although who made that discovery I don’t know.’
‘They certainly did wear hairnets,’ put in Emma Paget. ‘Their commanding officer told me. Colonel Walinski, an impressive chap.’ She turned to Miller. ‘They were a choir, you see, lieutenant. A Polish Army choir. Wonderful singers. We went to one of their concerts in Bridgwater.’
‘Not that you needed to go to a concert because you could hear them marching about the grounds here, singing,’ said Geoffrey. ‘In the middle of the night sometimes.’
‘“Loch Lomond”,’ said Emma.
‘Fine song,’ said the Scots doctor. ‘Even for Poles.’
‘They were very … aristocratic … if that’s the word,’ remembered Emma. ‘Rather … well … haughty. And so smart. Their buttons so bright.’
‘And they wore hairnets in bed,’ reiterated Geoffrey carefully, looking into his glass.
‘They hated only one race more than the Germans,’ observed the doctor. ‘And that was the Russians.’
One of the polite, white-coated black waiters offered the doctor another drink, handing the glass to him with a shy smile before moving away. A tray appeared with thick chocolate biscuits. Macaulay took one. ‘Just like India,’ he mused. ‘Pre-war.’
The musicians had struggled and eventually stopped. ‘We guys just don’t know each other,’ the plump saxophonist shrugged at the clustered village girls. ‘It’s only a scratch band.’ The maracas player was fumbling with some sheet music but it slid to the floor. The girls giggled and gathered it, handing it back with blushes. The drummer said: ‘We gotta find some songs we all know.’
As though they had been lurking outside, a double line of twenty young soldiers appeared abruptly, marched into the room, and in a moment had formed a cordon around the girls. Sergeant Smith said: ‘Okay, you guys. Spread out. Talk to some of these other nice people.’
The girls simpered at them. ‘Go talk,’ the sergeant ordered sternly and the soldiers reluctantly broke the circle, some shifting to other parts of the room but others lingering. ‘And no drinking, men. Coffee and lemonade only. Or there’s sarsaparilla.’
‘We’ll need more than sarsaparilla when we go into battle with those Nazis,’ said one young man, tall and olive-skinned, directly to a village girl. ‘Maybe to die.’ He thrust out his hand determinedly. ‘Benedict J. Soroyan,’ he said.
No boy had ever introduced himself like that to her. She bit her lip, almost made to curtsy, and said: ‘Kate Scratchpole.’
‘I’d be honoured if you called me Ben,’ he said.
The band had found some music they could play and Benedict held both hands out, bowed in a courtly way and invited her to dance. ‘I’m not very good at the quickstep,’ she hesitated.
‘This,’ said the GI dramatically, ‘is called a jitterbug’.
‘But … I can’t … I’ve never …’
‘Let’s try,’ said Ben. He took her hands from her sides, his eyes widened and his feet flew sideways, his knees buckled and his hips swivelled.
‘I can’t,’ repeated Kate faintly. She backed away.
A thin girl in a lace blouse, who had experience of Americans in Bristol, held out her hands. Soroyan took her, whirled her and hoisted her in the air. The others formed a circle and clapped and shouted. Kate Scratchpole thought she was going to cry.
The villagers watched with amazement. As the youth flung the girl over his shoulder her dress flew up to her suspenders. ‘Okay, okay, big star,’ bellowed the sergeant. ‘That’s plenty. Quit.’
The GI slowly let the girl to the floor and looked away from the glowering sergeant. The girl staggered, stood, and straightened her hair moodily.
Margaret approached Martin and asked quietly: ‘Would you like to walk in the cold?’
Chapter Four
Thick in their coats they went from the main door. In the stony outer hall as they left, the GI Ben Soroyan was sitting shyly with Kate Scratchpole on an oak coffer. The door rasped rudely in the cold as it opened and the village girl giggled and said: ‘Got rheumatics.’
Martin and Margaret half turned and smiled at the sitting pair, young and awkward. The white wintry moon was framed by the doorway. Martin closed the door behind them and they crunched along the stiff gravel at the front of the house. Only a triangle of Margaret’s face was visible between her collar and her warm hat. She took his coated arm.
They idled through the eerie moonbeams caught among a framework of branches over the worn road that led from the house. Encumbered as they were in their coats, Margaret half encircled his waist and he put his arm about her. ‘You’re like a polar bear,’ she laughed. ‘How do they expect anybody to fight a war in those coats?’
‘Plod,’ he said. ‘That’s what they have to do in Russia. Fighting in slow motion.’
‘I bet you do something really dangerous, dramatic,’ she said, eyeing him sideways. The path there was so layered with weeds that their footsteps scarcely sounded on the gravel.
Martin shook his head. ‘I almost fell off my chair at the Air Ministry once. Oh … and one day I spilled my afternoon tea.’
She said: ‘You’re lying. Am I asking top-secret information?’
‘I don’t think the enemy would be helped by knowing what I do. I’m at the ministry most of the time. I sit at my desk and admire the changing seasons out of the window. In my lunch-hour I walk in St James’s Park, what’s not occupied by Nissen huts and tanks and suchlike.’
‘They drained the lake,’ she said. ‘I wonder what happened to the pe
licans?’
‘Eaten, probably.’
‘Stop it, Martin. Do you remember where this path goes?’
‘Down to the stables,’ he said.
‘We used to creep down there, didn’t we, after school. Remember?’
‘Among the horses.’
‘And their droppings. My mother always knew where I’d been.’
For a moment it was as though there had been no years in between. She put her head against his shoulder and said: ‘Just think what might have happened.’
They stopped on the path, turned to each other and kissed. She undid the buttons on the front of her coat and then undid his. Again they kissed and this time held each other close. ‘You were there inside that coat all the time,’ she said.
She pulled away suddenly. ‘But it’s a bit hopeless, all this, isn’t it, Martin? Trying to recapture the past times.’
He concluded the thought for her. ‘And knowing they’ll never come back? That it’s all gone?’ He looked at her kindly.
They walked on in silence until she said: ‘It doesn’t have to be the same.’ There was a note of desperation underneath the sadness. ‘I’ve missed you, Martin. We could still meet, couldn’t we, maybe if you’re ever in London? I could easily make some excuse.’ She looked down and sighed heavily. ‘Not that Clifford would mind, anyway,’ she said. ‘He really doesn’t care. And I have someone who could look after the boys.’
‘You really want to?’
‘I’m sure. I don’t know how I got into this bloody mess. I can’t even blame the war, like everyone does. I just blundered into it. So did he.’
They had reached the stables, where there was a farm gate across the path. ‘We used to jump over this,’ he said.
‘In shorts.’
There was a rusted chain on the gate and an immovable padlock. ‘They’ve locked up our memories,’ she said.
He said: ‘Shall we give it a go?’
She unbuttoned his coat again and said: ‘You go first.’ He took the coat off and climbed the gate, holding up his hands to her from the other side. She opened her buttons before clambering over and dropped softly against him. He could feel her breasts and he kissed her face. ‘Let’s take a peep inside,’ she said. Their eyes held for a moment. He pulled the bolt.
It was smelly and dim and warm. Something was stirring. ‘There are still horses here,’ she said. ‘Two.’
She turned and put her flushed face against his. ‘They won’t mind,’ she said. Both horses fidgeted and snorted quietly. They were in stalls next to each other. She patted their rumps. One of them let off a puff of wind and she said: ‘Thank you.’
‘They were always doing that, making us laugh, remember?’ said Martin.
‘Perhaps they recognise us,’ she said.
Almost politely she pushed him against the wooden side of a vacant stall, the deep, warm, rotten, animal smell all around. She opened her coat and pressed her breasts against him. ‘I need some comfort,’ she said quietly. ‘I want to forget everything, wipe it out.’
‘We’re here together,’ he said. ‘Like we were once before.’
He felt her giggle. ‘In that corner on the straw,’ she said. ‘But we never did anything, did we? Not properly.’
‘We weren’t sure how.’
He began kissing her deeply, his hands stroking her face, her neck and her covered breasts, the odour of the stable close around them. One of the horses whinnied. ‘This time,’ Martin said. ‘We can make up for the time that’s gone missing.’
In the hall the youthful GI and the village girl both glanced back into the main room, then at each other, before he lifted the great iron latch and opened the door like a hint. Kate gave a short smile and nodded. ‘I’ll get my fur.’
He waited until she reappeared from the cloakroom overwhelmed by a scraggy fur coat, her hands lost up its sleeves, her round and tentative face peering over it. ‘You look a million dollars, Kate Scratchpole,’ he said.
She was pleased. ‘What about you?’ she said. ‘Don’t they give you a coat?’
‘I’ll get one.’ He came back with an outsized US Army padded jacket. She saw on the sleeve a coloured shield and the words: ‘Hell on Wheels’.
‘This is okay,’ he said. ‘It’s not mine.’
‘It looks lovely and warm.’ They walked into the moonlight, tiptoeing through the crackling gravel. ‘What’s “Hell on Wheels” mean?’ she asked.
‘Tank man,’ he told her. ‘It’s just a spare coat.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Let’s take a ride,’ he said with a swagger, placing a protective hand about her furry waist while straightening his cap with the other.
‘What on?’ she asked nervously. ‘A bike?’
‘My jeep,’ he shrugged. ‘Okay, Uncle Sam’s jeep.’
‘You can drive?’ She turned to him in genuine astonishment.
‘That’s what I do. I drive the jeep.’
Kate was deeply impressed. ‘I don’t know any boys who can drive,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Not one. Dopey Daniel has a funny cart for grocery deliveries but it’s not like a proper car.’ She gave him an anxious glance. ‘You won’t get into trouble, will you?’
‘Not a chance. I drive it all the time. All we need to do is to get by the guy at the gate. Keep your head down low.’
‘Oh, I will.’ She began enjoying the excitement. She squeezed his arm.
‘It’s just over in the vehicle park,’ he said.
With no hesitation now she slid her arm about his uniformed waist. The padding of the thick, silky jacket felt luxurious. Her eyes were becoming accustomed to the night and the moon. ‘What are those?’ she said, pointing. The ground that fell away was lined with low buildings.
‘Quonset huts,’ he said. ‘Quarters. There’s going to be two thousand GIs here soon. Remember – I saw you first.’
‘I will,’ she promised. ‘I really will, Ben.’
‘This fur feels good,’ he said, rubbing her ribs. ‘Is it bear?’
‘Bear!’ she laughed. ‘It’s fox. Imitation, not even a real fox. It was my gran’s. She was bigger than me but she’s shrunk now. She bought it years ago, with some insurance money after my first granddad got killed in the war. She said it always reminded her of him, mouldy though it is. She’s still got the receipt.’
‘Your grandfather was killed in the …’
‘The first one, nineteen whatever to nineteen whatever it was. What they always call the Great War, I don’t know why.’
‘There’s nothing great about war,’ he said sombrely, hugging her waist.
‘Careful,’ she giggled. ‘You’re squashing granddad.’
They reached an open area where outlined vehicles were parked, jeeps, trucks and the single shape of a Sherman tank. Kate stared at it. ‘You don’t have to drive that, do you?’
‘Not yet, but you never know in this man’s army.’ He led her to a jeep and opened the door for her. ‘This thing ain’t cosy,’ he said.
When she was in the metal seat he climbed in beside her. She still felt unsure. ‘We’ve got our love to keep us warm,’ she said throatily, adapting the words of a song.
She surveyed him from inside her collar and tapped his glowing nose. Awkwardly they kissed.
‘Are you frightened, Ben?’ she asked in a whisper. ‘Scared?’
In the dark he nodded. ‘Scared? Hell, am I scared? Excuse my language … but I’m scared, Kate. I’m only twenty and I have to go and fight those Nazis, invade France, and I don’t even know where France is, and be gunned down and maybe get …’
‘No, I didn’t mean that, Ben. Really I meant, like, nervous. Being in this jeep with me. I am – scared, nervous, Ben, I really am.’
He kissed her reassuringly. They had difficulty in embracing because of their volume of clothing and the shortness of her arms. He disengaged himself and started the jeep’s engine. ‘Are you sure you can just drive it away like that?’ she said. ‘Won’t they not
ice? What about the petrol?’
Ben’s laugh emerged as a nervy gurgle. He had never driven the jeep on the open road; he had only been in the country four days. ‘I’ll get it back in one piece,’ he said. ‘We’ll require it for the invasion.’
‘Oh, Ben.’ She put her furry arm around the back of his neck. It gave him confidence and he drove the vehicle with its hooded lights out of the parking area and down the path to the main gate.
‘It’s this dim-out, blackout, you call it,’ he said. ‘How does anybody see where they are, where they’re going?’
‘You get used to it. But we’d better not go far.’
Nearing the gate he said: ‘Now’s the time to lie low.’ She shrank down in the seat but there was no need. The sentry was in his box, only the red tip of his cigarette showing in the dark. They drove past. The red dot waved.
Kate uncurled and pushed herself close to the young soldier, enjoying the feel of him. ‘You’re on the wrong side of the road,’ she pointed out.
They had driven only for a few minutes, in a circle around the village when he pulled the jeep in to the side of the road and they sat, side by side, awkwardly in the dark.
Eventually Kate said thoughtfully: ‘You know, here we are, in a US Army jeep, and we don’t know anything about each other really.’
‘We don’t,’ agreed Ben. ‘Just fate brought us together, Kate Scratchpole.’
‘How did you get over here?’ she asked. ‘To England?’
‘On a ship,’ he said. ‘The Queen Mary.’
She was astonished. ‘The Queen … oh, now you’re telling me fibs.’
‘It’s true,’ he said. He began to fumble with the ancient buttons of the fur coat. ‘The ocean liner.’
‘The Queen Mary is very posh for just soldiers.’
He took no offence. ‘Sixteen to a cabin,’ he said. ‘Doubling up. One squad slept at night and one squad stayed on the deck, then switched. And when you were on deck all you did was watch out for Nazi submarines. I was scared. I didn’t like the look of that ocean, no, sir.’
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