‘Be quiet, Doris. I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘You don’t want to talk about anything.’ Doris looked resentful. ‘It’s not the same any more.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry but it never will be.’
It was kind of weird to be back. A trip through time again to Merry Olde Englande. Not so merry these days and now that he took a long, hard look after spending time in the US he could see how badly battle-scarred the old country was and how weary. On her knees after five years of war. From the train window he saw people in the back streets of bomb-scarred towns looking like ragged scarecrows, thin kids staring up with pale, unhealthy faces. He wondered what would have happened if the Yanks hadn’t joined the party. OK, they’d been late, but they’d got there in the end.
But, boy, was he glad to be back. That was the other weird part of it. Any guy in his senses would have thanked his lucky stars to have been home, stateside, away from it all, but, as Ben had told him, he was nuts. His family had thought he was nuts, as well, and there’d been a whole lot of weeping and wailing and hand-wringing about it, Italian style, with most of the folks in the neighbourhood joining in. They’d all made a real big fuss of him, as though he’d been winning the war single-handed, and he’d eaten like a king, and drunk like one. Must’ve put on pounds. When he’d had a moment to himself, he’d called Ben’s family in LA and spoken to his mother. He’d tried to say something that might help but she could hardly speak for crying.
At the end of his leave, he’d got roped in by the Air Force to do some talks to people who wanted to hear the US was winning the war in Europe and to see some guy who’d just been over there, doing it. He’d spoken at bond drives and scrap drives and to kids in school saving defense stamps and he’d done visits to aircraft factories and told the workers there what a great job they were doing.
And, all the time, he’d thought of Agnes: kept on seeing her face and hearing her voice, even when he was with other girls.
When he’d finally arrived back he’d almost gone straight round to the rectory before he’d stopped himself. No change in the rules that he could see. His second tour hadn’t even begun and the war wasn’t over by a long shot. He could still hear the sound of Ben’s mother sobbing.
He took a bag of laundry down to Mrs Hazlet, driving the jeep fast down the hill, skidding round under the railroad bridge and on into the village. The high street was just as he’d left it. Still the same beautiful old stone houses, the butcher’s, the baker’s, the grocer’s, the candy store. Still some old woman tottering slowly across the street, getting in his way. One or two people waved at him and he waved back. They hadn’t done that at the beginning – or not those sort of waves. Goddamit, he thought, grinning to himself, it’s like coming home.
Tom’s mother looked real pleased to see him too, so pleased she gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Nell had grown big and was running around. He picked her up and gave her a kiss and some candy.
‘Tom and Alfie are at school, Ed, but they’ll be out in the playground just now.’
‘I’ll swing by there. See if I can see them.’
He drove down the high street and turned into School Lane. The kids were out in the playground – girls in one half, boys in the other, separated by a mesh fence. The girls were playing nice quiet games like skipping and hopscotch; the boys running around yelling and fighting. He stopped the jeep and got out and looked through the railings. Alfie saw him first and came tearing over, beaming all over his face.
‘Hallo, Ed. We heard you were back.’
‘Hi there, kid.’ He tossed him a pack of Wrigleys through the bars. Some of the others started crowding round. ‘Got any more gum, mister?’ ‘Sorry, guys. Next time.’
‘We won the Conker Battle,’ Alfie said, chewing away. ‘Tom and me and our side.’
‘That’s great.’ He’d no idea what a Conker Battle was, but it sounded important.
‘Robbie and Dick and Seth and all their gang ran away.’
‘Good for you, kid. I’d take you on my side any day.’
He looked round for Tom and saw him coming over, kind of shy and dragging his feet. ‘Hi, Tom. Good to see you.’
‘Hi, Ed.’
‘You OK?’
‘Sure.’
He was tickled to hear the way the kid could speak American now. ‘Got a brand new P-51 Tom. A new Bashful. You coming up to the base to take a look soon?’
‘Gee, thanks . . . that’d be great.’
‘You do that. Don’t forget.’ He searched the playground. ‘Are the kindergarten kids out here?’
Tom shook his head. ‘They don’t let them out the same time as us, case we knock them down. They’re indoors.’
‘Well, I’ll just go by there and say hello. See you guys later.’
He went in through the gateway and walked round to peek through the window. They were all in there, sitting at the little tables, busy painting pictures, and Agnes was leaning over helping one of them. He saw Jessie lying nearby, her head on her paws. Charlie, who was fooling about painting his fingers blue, caught sight of him. He watched him run up to Agnes and she turned around. By the time he’d got to the classroom door and opened it they were all there, waiting. They gathered round him, jumping up and down and squealing like a litter of piglets while Jessie bounded about, barking. Little Joan tugged at the sleeve of his A2 and he bent down and swung her up high into the air so that she squealed louder still.
Agnes had stayed standing just where she was. He looked at her over Joan’s chubby arms which were wound tightly round his neck.
‘Hallo, Miss,’ he said.
The smell of pork roasting was delicious. Miss Cutteridge sniffed the air appreciatively and her mouth watered. Roast leg of pork with crisp crackling, roast potatoes, apple sauce and winter cabbage, steamed the quick way advised in the Kitchen Front recipe book, rather than Brussels sprouts because she knew Joe hated those.
She had laid the table in the dining room in honour of this very special Sunday lunch: a celebration of Joe’s twentieth birthday. The best dinner service – and she didn’t care if any of it got broken – the solid silver knives and forks, all polished up, and the double damask table napkins. She had put her present for him beside his place and dressed in her best day dress, with her pearls and her mother’s cameo brooch.
She opened the oven door again to baste the joint. If it had been Porky Pig, she would never have been able to cook, much less eat, any part of him. But this wasn’t him. This was some unknown pig that she had never met in her life and so it was quite a different matter. Joe had found the solution to the terrible dilemma. ‘See here, ma’am,’ he’d said on one of his visits. ‘You can’t keep Porky here for ever. Sooner or later he’s got to go and the way I figure’s best is for you to give him over to the butcher and ask him to give you another one, already slaughtered in his place. Get him to come round when you’re out and that way you won’t have to see Porky go, or anything like that.’
She’d had a word with Mr Ford and he’d been most understanding. ‘Don’t you worry, Miss Cutteridge, you just leave it to me and don’t think about it any more. I’ll bring you a nice joint of pork and some for you to keep. As much as you can manage.’ He was such a nice man that she felt that all the poor animals who passed through his hands would be kindly dealt with. He had come round on the day she had taken the train into Peterborough to visit the dentist and when she had come back, there had been a leg of pork in the larder and a side all salted down in the scullery. She had walked down the garden to the empty Anderson shelter and wept for Porky Pig but it had been for the best.
She checked the oven again and turned the potatoes. The cabbage would only take ten minutes with the Kitchen Front method and everything would be ready on time. Back in the sitting room, she glanced at her reflection in the glass above the mantelpiece. She saw the face of an old woman, to be sure, but one who looked lively. Happy, one could say.
&nbs
p; But something was missing – she could feel that in her bones. Something she had not done that she should have. She searched her mind and then, suddenly, knew what it was. William’s photograph should be present at this celebration. She took it out of the drawer and set it on top of the bureau. ‘You would have liked Joe, William,’ she said. ‘You would have approved of him very much.’ It looked rather dusty and so she went to fetch a cloth and was just giving the frame an extra polish when there was a knock at the door. Joe was a little early but that didn’t matter. She was quite ready.
It wasn’t Joe; it was Tom Hazlet, holding out a letter. She thanked him and went and sat down to read it. She had a little difficulty with the writing.
Dear Miss Cutteridge,
I’m real sorry I can’t come to lunch today for my birthday. They’re sending some of us from the Signal Company overseas to help fix things up for the guys fighting over there. They never told us nothing till today so I couldn’t let you know before or get down to say goodbye, like I wanted. I’m real sad about that.
I hope you enjoy the roast pork, now it’s not Porky Pig.
Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I won’t ever forget it. It was like another home for me. Maybe I’ll get back one day when the war’s ended to see you again.
love from,
Joe
Miss Cutteridge put her hand up to her eyes.
Fourteen
Christmas Eve wasn’t a Friday but Mum had got the tin bath down from its hook, dragged it in front of the range where it was warmer and filled it up from the copper and the buckets. The water was steaming away and she was giving Alfie an extra scrubbing and he was making a really silly fuss about it. Mum wasn’t taking any notice, though. ‘I’m not having you going all dirty, Alfie, so you may as well keep still.’ More howls and splashes and scrubbing noises. When it came to his turn the water’d be worse than soup. Mum had washed and starched their surplices and ironed them so there wasn’t a single crease. She put Alfie’s on over his cassock and brushed his hair flat. His face was all clean and shining. Mum said he looked like an angel, which made Tom retch.
He didn’t know why they’d let Alfie in the choir in the first place. He never sat still in church and kept blowing dried peas across at Seth and Robbie and Dick with the pea-shooter Tom had stupidly made him out of a bit of elderwood. He never ought to have done that. Miss Hooper was always saying his voice was one of the best she’d ever heard which was just the sort of thing that nobody ought ever to say to Alfie either.
Tom got into the lukewarm soup, washed himself quickly with the Yank soap and got out again. It was going to be a special Christmas; he could feel it. For a start the church choir were singing at the Yanks’ carol service. The whole village had been invited and afterwards there was going to be a big party for everyone: a real feast. Only, Dad wasn’t home because he was too busy with another airfield. As Mum said, the war didn’t stop just because it was Christmas. She couldn’t afford to buy them presents, but that hadn’t mattered because the radio-shack Yanks had given him and Alfie a great big box all wrapped up in red paper and when they’d opened it they’d found bars of chocolate and candy and two oranges and two bananas. Of course, Alfie had eaten his banana straight away and he’d had to hide the box from him or he’d’ve scoffed the lot before Christmas had even started.
Best of all, Ed had come down in the jeep – not with washing but with presents he’d brought back from America. Very special thin stockings for Mum and a lipstick which had made her so pleased she’d cried. Nell had been given a soppy doll but Alfie had got a toy Cadillac car in a cardboard box with a picture of it on the outside. It was made of shiny green metal with rubber wheels that went round, doors that opened and shut and a steering wheel that moved. He’d been really envious until Ed had given him his present in another box: a wooden model kit for a Mustang, just like Ed’s, and he’d promised he’d help him make it. They were going to paint it with Ed’s letters on it and the name Bashful.
There was a thick fog outside and the trucks they’d sent down to collect people went grinding very slowly back up the hill in a long convoy to the base cinema where the service was being held. The choir were all together in one truck and when they got there the Yank padre took them into a room at the back where they formed up for the procession. Of course Alfie had got his surplice creased already and there was a dirty mark down the front, and his hair had curled up again. And he’d got something in his mouth.
‘What’re you chewing?’
‘Black Jack,’ Alfie mumbled.
‘Let’s see. Open your mouth.’
Alfie did, but shut it again so fast that Tom couldn’t see inside properly to know by the colour if he was telling the truth. More likely he’d found the box the radio-shack Yanks had given them and pinched something out of it.
‘Well, hurry up and finish it. You’re starting in a minute.’
Alfie had been chosen to do the solo at the beginning of the service and he sang the first verse of the first carol from the doorway.
Once in royal David’s city
Stood a lowly cattle shed,
Where a Mother laid her baby
In a manger for his bed . . .
He was holding a lighted candle and looking all goody-goody, like he never ever did a single thing bad or wrong, and everyone had gone very quiet while they were listening to him. Then the organ joined in and so did everybody else for the rest of the carol. The choir walked slowly down the middle aisle between the rows and rows of Yanks and the villagers, and up onto the stage where there was the biggest and brightest Christmas tree that Tom had ever seen in all his life. There were so many people squashed into the hall that when they were supposed to sit down there weren’t enough chairs. The padre said the prayers and the Yanks read the lessons, except for the final one which they’d let Brigadier Mapperton do, and the rector gave the blessing at the end. The very last carol was ‘O come all ye faithful’ and everyone roared it out so loud, Yanks and villagers together, that Tom couldn’t hear himself singing. Some people were smiling and some people were crying. He could see the tears trickling down their faces. Women were always crying but he’d never seen men cry before.
Carl could see Erika across the packed room, but he couldn’t get to her. A woman with a voice like a foghorn off Nantucket had him pinned in a corner while she went on about mobile canteens. He could vaguely remember meeting her before.
‘That’s very interesting, Mrs . . . ?’
She gave another blast in his ear. ‘Vernon-Miller. We’ve met twice before, Colonel.’
‘Of course, I’m so sorry.’
‘As I was saying—’
He interrupted her firmly. ‘I wonder if you’d excuse me for a moment, I rather wanted a word with Lady Beauchamp over there.’
‘That’s a coincidence, so do I. I’ll come with you.’
It was near the end of the evening before he had the chance to speak to Erika alone.
‘It’s been wonderful, Carl,’ she said. ‘The carol service and then the party. The children are having the Christmas of their lives. You Yanks are incredibly generous. All that marvellous food . . . I expect Alex will be sick as a dog when we get home.’
‘I sure hope not. That wasn’t exactly the idea.’ He met her eyes. ‘You know, I thought I was never going to get to talk to you. How are you?’
‘All the better for seeing you. How are you?’
‘The same applies. I’ve missed you like hell.’
‘Ditto. Don’t look at me like that, or people will wonder why.’
‘Don’t smile at me like that either, or they won’t wonder for long. Erika, I’ve got to see you again soon—’
‘Careful, she warned. ‘Brigadier Mapperton is coming up fast on your port side.’
‘Oh, Christ . . .’ With an effort, he turned round politely. ‘Hallo there, Brigadier. Good to see you.’
Agnes watched Father Christmas giving out presents to the village chil
dren after the feast, sitting them on his knee and making them laugh. Santa Claus, the Americans called him, but it was all the same to the English children. She knew perfectly well who it was under the snow-white locks and bushy eyebrows and long beard, dressed up in the bright red costume; knew it easily by the way he was with them and by the way they clustered round him. He delved once more into the sack and came out with yet another present. ‘Ho, ho, ho. This says Miss on it, kids. Who’s Miss? I don’t know any Miss.’ ‘She’s there,’ they chorused, pointing. ‘That’s Miss.’ ‘Where? I don’t see her.’ ‘Over there!’ they yelled, dragging him across to where she was standing, and jumping up and down with excitement.
He put the present into her hands. ‘Merry Christmas, Miss.’ His false whiskers tickled her face and the children shrieked in delight as he kissed her.
Alfie felt sick on the way back in the truck.
‘Serves you right,’ Tom said. ‘You shouldn’t’ve eaten so much.’
‘I couldn’t help it.’
‘Yes, you could. You had three helpings of everything.’
‘I was hungry. Anyway, I sang all right for them, didn’t I? A Red Cross lady said I sounded like something from heaven. She said I made her cry.’
‘I’ll be sick as well in a minute.’
Luckily they were sitting at the back of the truck so if Alfie was sick he could do it over the tailgate and not over everyone else. Tom thought about the carol service and all the singing, and the great Christmas tree with its hundreds of coloured electric lights and the grown-ups smiling and crying. And the big feast they’d had after with the roast turkey and the jelly and ice cream. And the presents. Of course, he’d known all along that Father Christmas was Ed, who’d given him a huge wink, but he hadn’t said anything, specially not to Alfie or he’d’ve told everyone.
He’d known it was going to be special and it was being the best Christmas he’d ever had. So special he felt like crying too. He wondered if he’d ever have one like it again.
Our Yanks Page 29