For all he knew sherry was on the ration too. It would certainly be hard to get. ‘No, thank you, sir.’ He wasn’t certain what else to call him other than ‘sir’. Father wasn’t right; maybe reverend, or plain mister? ‘Is it OK if I smoke?’
‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry I don’t have any cigarettes to offer you. I don’t smoke myself and nor does Agnes.’
He lit one of his own and sat down. The chair reminded him of the ones in the Mess; he could feel a loose spring sticking into him. The rector sat on the opposite side of the fireplace and smiled at him. Nice guy, Ed thought.
‘We’re all of us in the village extremely grateful to you young Americans for coming over to lend us a hand. Very grateful indeed.’
He said frankly, ‘It doesn’t always look quite that way to us, sir. A lot of people figure we came over too late again and that we haven’t done much since we got here.’
‘Oh dear. Perhaps some of the older inhabitants . . .’
‘Yeah, sure.’ He was sorry he’d said anything; the guy was looking upset. ‘The kids are real friendly, though. But maybe that’s just the candy and gum.’ He refrained from adding that most of the girls were pretty friendly too.
‘I don’t believe it’s that, Lieutenant. Perhaps you don’t quite understand. In many cases, fathers and older brothers have been away for months, even years. You’re providing what many of our children – especially the boys – are missing. Men to look up to.’
He said slowly, ‘I guess I’ve never thought of it like that.’
‘Believe me, it’s true.’
‘Well, maybe the others’ll think better of us when we start combat missions. When we start losing a lot of men, like our bomber squadrons.’
‘I’ve heard about their losses . . . terrible. Truly terrible, Lieutenant. Six hundred on one raid alone last month, I believe.’
‘Same number back in August when they got started on the big ones and a couple more missions in October lost thirty ships each. I guess you could say we’re not doing too well so far.’
‘To go in broad daylight seems a great risk.’
‘That’s what your RAF says. Only we think it’s harder to do what they do – go at night. Maybe we’ll be proved wrong in the end.’
‘Perhaps you’re both right – for different reasons. And with our weather I don’t suppose there’s much difference sometimes. In that bad fog we had recently I could hear some of your bombers going round and round, trying to find their airfields when they came back.’
‘Yeah, that’s a big problem when you’ve learned to fly somewhere like Texas.’
The rector leaned forward and prodded at the coals with a poker. A small flame flickered up and then died. ‘I’m afraid the village has very little to offer you in the way of entertainment.’
‘You’ve got seven pubs, sir.’
He smiled. ‘There used to be even more, believe it or not. There are the Saturday night dances in the village hall, of course. Have you been to one?’
Mochetti had heard about them from some of the other guys. A three-piece band with that same old girl playing the piano, some old-timer squeezing the guts out of an accordion and another banging away on the drums. No liquor and more of those paste sandwiches. ‘Not yet, sir.’
‘They’re really most enjoyable. Almost the whole village goes. It’s a family occasion.’
‘That so?’
‘There’s a modest entrance fee of one shilling – just to cover the costs and the refreshments, you know. You might enjoy it.’ The clock on the mantelpiece started chiming. ‘Agnes will be home any moment now.’ The rector cleared his throat. ‘She’s engaged to be married, I expect you know that?’
‘Yes, sir.’ If he was being warned off it was being done real nicely.
‘Clive, her fiancé, comes from one of our old farming families. He’s away in the army – still in England at the moment, thank goodness. Training for the day when we invade the Continent, I imagine. Like your people. Though that day still seems a little far off at the moment. We’ll just have to hope that you Americans will be able to speed things up, now that you’re here. Ah, I think that’s my daughter now . . . you’ll stay to lunch, of course, Lieutenant?’
As she came into the room, he got to his feet. He noticed that she coloured up as soon as she saw him there.
‘Lieutenant Mochetti was passing by, Agnes. I’ve asked him to stay to luncheon.’
‘It’s only bubble and squeak.’
‘I’m sure he won’t mind, will you?’
‘Sounds find to me.’ What the hell was bubble and squeak? And where was the wife? She hadn’t been mentioned and he couldn’t remember her at the Welcome Party either.
‘That’s settled then. While we’re waiting, I insist that you have that sherry, Lieutenant.’
It was sweet and syrupy – like medicine – and he drank it down in two gulps – like medicine. The rector was asking something about the Group’s function. No harm answering in general. ‘We’re here to escort the heavy bombers, sir. To see off any enemy fighters who try to bounce them. That’s our job. Little friends, they call us.’ He’d passed over the grim fact that if the target was beyond a certain distance the P-38s couldn’t go all the way there and back with the bombers. No fighter could – not yet.
‘You make it sound almost simple, Lieutenant.’
He smiled. ‘Ask me the same question in a couple of months’ time, sir, and maybe I’ll give you a different answer.’
After a while the daughter came back to tell them that lunch was ready. He followed them down a dark passageway into a kitchen that was another museum piece. Some kind of big cooking range – though not as ancient as Mrs Hazlet’s – heavy pots and pans hanging from hooks, blue and white dishes ranged along shelves, a large wooden table in the centre, scoured pale from scrubbings. They sat up one end of the table and the girl served out something from a frying pan and put it in front of him.
‘It’s cabbage, onions and potatoes,’ the rector told him. ‘My daughter grows them all here in the garden.’
He tried a forkful cautiously. He hated cabbage, even more than he hated Brussels sprouts; wouldn’t ever touch it if he could help it. It wasn’t bad, though. In fact, when he ate some more, he reckoned it was pretty good.
The girl sat in silence but her father seemed determined to be friendly. ‘How long have you been in England, Lieutenant?’
‘Since August, sir. We came over on one of the big liners from New York – close on twenty thousand on board. It was a real shock to us guys when we got to Liverpool, I can tell you. First time we’d seen what the Luftwaffe had done to your cities.’
‘And where do you come from in the United States?’ The guy was trying real hard to be nice – a lot harder than his daughter.
‘New York City. I was born in Manhattan.’
‘We’ve heard of Manhattan, of course, but I’m afraid we’re rather ignorant about American cities. What part of New York is that exactly?’
‘Well, Manhattan’s where all the famous landmarks are: the Empire State, the Rockefeller Center, Central Park . . . It’s kind of an island. See, you’ve got the Hudson river on one side and the East on the other. To get to other parts of the city you have to cross one of the bridges.’ He drew with his finger on the wooden table. ‘The Bronx is up there, Queens is over there, Brooklyn’s down there and Staten Island’s over this side. That’s the layout.’
‘And you were brought up in Manhattan?’
‘Yes, sir. My grandparents emigrated from Naples in the last century. My parents run an Italian restaurant on 53rd street.’
‘How interesting. Do they do the cooking themselves?’
‘They sure did when they first started. Now, they’ve got help. They’re wonderful cooks, both of them – all the great Italian dishes. I guess they wouldn’t know how to do this one.’ He’d meant it as a compliment to the bubble and squeak but the minute he’d said it he realized it could be taken two ways and, fr
om the look on her face, the girl had taken it the wrong one.
‘Agnes makes some Italian dishes, I believe, don’t you, my dear?’
He watched her colouring up again. ‘Not really, Father. Only things with macaroni.’
He said easily, ‘Well, I’d sure like to try one of them sometime. I haven’t eaten macaroni in ages.’
She didn’t answer that and the father tried some more. ‘Do you speak Italian, Lieutenant?’
‘Sure. We speak it all the time at home. But I consider myself an American, sir. One hundred per cent.’ He paused. ‘That’s why I’m here.’
‘It seems a very long way from New York to King’s Thorpe. You must find it very different.’
‘It sure is.’ He couldn’t come up with a bigger contrast.
‘Forgive me for asking so many questions, but what made you become a fighter pilot?’
‘Well, I saw a movie years ago when I was a kid – all about a barnstormer – you know, someone who goes round doing stunt flying to entertain crowds. I made up my mind then that I’d learn to fly like that one day, if I ever got the chance. So, right after Pearl Harbor I quit college and enlisted as a cadet with the Army Air Corps. Trained in Georgia and Texas and here I am.’
‘I rather think you’ve left out some of the story.’
He’d left out plenty: the whole way he felt about flying. That being in an airplane was the place he really belonged to in the world. That it was as natural to him as being on the ground was to others. That whereas most guys were real nervous when they first soloed, he’d felt like he’d come home. ‘I put it in a nutshell for you, sir.’
‘And what do you think of our country, now that you’re here?’
The Limeys always wanted to know that. He answered truthfully. ‘It’s straight out of a storybook. I’ve never seen such beautiful green countryside. Or such great old houses. Or such beautiful old churches.’
‘Surely there are a great many of those in Italy?’
‘I’ve never been to Italy, sir. This is my first trip to Europe. First time outside the US. And I sure didn’t reckon on my first visit ending up this way.’
When they had finished the bubble and squeak the daughter cleared away the dishes. ‘There’s baked apple and custard for pudding, if you’d like some.’ She said it as though she knew damned well he wouldn’t.
‘Sounds good to me.’
It was good. She’d put some sort of dried fruits in the middle and sweetened them with honey. He skipped the custard, though. His turn to ask some questions, he decided. That way she’d have to talk to him.
‘How long’ve you been teaching at the school, Miss Dawe?’
‘Two years.’
He reckoned she must be about twenty. ‘You teach the little kids, that’s right?’ He knew very well that she did and she knew that he knew that she did. She’d seen him looking in through the window. ‘What do you teach them?’
She was going pink in the face again. ‘The alphabet. Numbers. Counting. Painting and drawing. Reciting and singing.’
‘Anything else?’
She hesitated. ‘Well, we have a Nature Table.’
‘What’s that?’
‘We collect things on walks – leaves, fir cones, flowers, nuts, feathers, snailshells . . . whatever we can find. They’re put on a special table and labelled. The children learn something about nature. They have a rabbit, too, and some guinea pigs that they look after themselves.’
The British were in a class of their own, he thought. Their country had been engaged in total war for four years, bombed to bits, struggling all alone for survival, but these little kids were still busily collecting stuff for their Nature Table.
A telephone started ringing somewhere and the rector headed for the door. ‘Excuse me. I must answer that. Agnes, will you take care of Lieutenant Mochetti?’
She didn’t look too thrilled about that and he reckoned it was time to leave and said so. He followed her back down the dark passageway to the hall and collected his cap and jacket. She was holding the front door open for him; outside it was still raining cats and dogs. He shrugged on his A2 and zipped it up. ‘Say, we’re having a dance Saturday at the Officers’ Club. We’ve a pretty good band and we’ll lay on the transport. How about you coming?’
‘I’m afraid I couldn’t.’
‘That’s a shame.’ He twirled his cap round on one finger. ‘How about the next one after that? It’s going to be a regular thing.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You don’t like dancing?’
‘Sometimes, yes.’
‘Then why not come along?’
‘I’d just prefer not to, thank you.’
‘Come on, give it a try?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘You that sure?’
‘Quite sure.’
She’d got him figured for just another skirt-chasing Yank. No point going on. There were plenty more fish in the sea. He put his cap on. ‘OK. Maybe I’ll see you around. Thanks for the lunch.’ He made a dash through the rain for the jeep, fired up the engine and worked the windshield wipers. As he drove off he could see in the side-view mirror that she’d already shut the door.
Tom always sat at the very end of the choir stalls nearest the altar. That way, he could read a comic without anyone in the congregation seeing. He didn’t mind the singing part but the rest of the service was boring. He’d only joined the choir because Mum had said he needn’t go to Sunday school any more if he did, and Sunday school had been even more boring – babyish games and feeble stories, making silly things out of raffia, pretending to be ‘little birds that sing’ and soppy stuff like that. He’d got into real hot water once when he’d cut off one of Jessie Hardwick’s plaits with the raffia-work scissors. Being in the choir was a lot better than Sunday school, even though he hated having to wear the girly clothes and Mum always made a big fuss about starching and ironing his surplice and getting it whiter than anyone else’s. They got paid a halfpenny for each service, too, but he thought it was stingy that they didn’t get paid so much as a brass farthing for rehearsals.
The church was full. Squinting sideways from his vantage point he could see them all sitting there, always in the same seats and all dressed up in their Sunday best and wearing holy looks on their faces, never mind what they were like the rest of the week. Farmer Dixon, the mean old skinflint, never put more than threepence on the collection plate so he wasn’t sorry about the rabbits. Or about the eggs. They were coming to the end of the ‘Benedicite’ which went on and on about ye Sun and Moon, ye Stars of Heaven, ye Showers and Dew, ye Fire and Heat, ye Whales, ye Fowls of the Air, ye Beasts and Cattle . . . and ye everything else whoever wrote it had been able to think of. A lot of the congregation had given up even pretending to sing. Tom swallowed a yawn before they started on the Glory be to the Father bit and then they all sat down for the Second Lesson. Brigadier Mapperton was marching across to the lectern, footsteps ringing out on the flagstones. ‘The Second Lesson is taken from the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, Chapter Five, beginning at the first verse.’ There was a sound like a dog growling as the brigadier cleared his throat. ‘“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God . . .”’
Tom had already stopped listening. He was thinking about where he’d try next for some eggs for the Yanks. Maybe from one of Mr Barnet’s coops behind the bakehouse? With all the chickens they’d got, he’d never notice a few missing. Better not to go back to Farmer Dixon’s again. He’d climbed out of the bedroom window one night, so Mum wouldn’t know about it, and slid down the washhouse roof below. There’d been a full moon which had made it easy as anything to nip across the fields, though he’d sooner have had it darker so he couldn’t be seen. Some bombers had gone by in the distance, droning along. RAF bombers coming back from a raid on Germany, most probably; the Yanks didn’t go at night. He’d skirted the farmyard until he came to the henhouses parked in the apple orchard – three of them side by s
ide. The funny thing was there’d been a fox there, too, watching and waiting. He’d seen its eyes shine at him before it turned and trotted off, trailing its brush. He’d waited, too, just like the fox. All quiet. Farmer Dixon and his wife must have been snoring away in their beds. He’d shinned over the orchard gate, made his way without a sound to the back of the nearest henhouse and lifted the lid of the nesting boxes, feeling in the straw for the warm, newlaid eggs. There’d been seven stowed safely away in his pockets when he’d disturbed a hen sitting in one of the boxes and she’d made a real to-do. The farmyard dog had heard it and started barking and growling and leaping about at the end of its chain. By the time Tom had vaulted back over the gate Farmer Dixon had come bursting out of the house with his shotgun, firing it in all directions.
He’d raced back over the fields as fast as he could, afraid that the dog would be set on him, and he hadn’t felt safe until he’d scrambled back up onto the roof from the water butt and got in through the bedroom window. One of the eggs had got smashed but the rest were all right. He’d taken them up to the ’drome the next day, together with six loaves from the baker’s. Sally had slipped him a dozen rock cakes for free when he’d told her who the loaves were for. ‘Don’t tell my dad,’ she’d warned him. ‘He hates the Yanks.’ He’d gone straight into the radio shack and they’d paid him a penny each egg and given him a whole lot more toast and peanut butter. He’d kept one penny for himself and put the rest in Mum’s Oxo tin on the kitchen shelf. When she asked where he’d got it he’d told her the Yanks had paid him for running errands for them. Well, in a way it was true.
‘“. . . in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Here endeth the Second Lesson.’
The brigadier stumped back to his place. Tom heard Miss Hooper kick the side of the organ to give the signal to the verger and then the wheeze of the hand pump starting up. The service dragged on with the Jubilate. He liked the next hymn and sang it his best.
Lift up your hearts! We lift them Lord, to thee;
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