Bluebirds (67 page)

‘Don't, Taffy, please.'

‘No harm in that, is there?'

He kept his arm round her and after a while shifted a little sideways so that his head was nearly touching hers. She leaned sharply away from him.

‘It's all right, Winnie, there's nothing to fret about.'

But she sat so rigidly that he dared not make any further move in case she took flight. He burned with frustration in the darkness. He had had such hopes, such dreams about her . . . of how glad she would be to see him and how she would realize at long last what she had been missing. Now that feeble husband of hers was dead there was nothing to stand in his way. Nothing for her to feel guilty about. He was a good lover, he knew that. Women had always told him so – showed him so. He had imagined making love to Winnie many times and he longed to make it reality. Never before had he had any difficulty in getting a woman whom he wanted and he wanted Winnie more than he had ever wanted any of them.

They caught the last bus back to the camp. It was full of other RAF and WAAF and reeked of beer and cigarettes, of cheap perfume and damp greatcoats. Taffy pulled Winnie into a seat near the back where other couples were sitting with their arms round each other. As the bus jerked away from the stop the single dim blackout bulb was switched off and the necking began.

Taffy didn't say anything; he didn't speak a word. He simply turned to her as she shrank against the window and started to kiss her.

At the front of the bus the airmen had begun singing loudly.

She was struggling but he was taking no notice at all. It was just like it had been in the stores shed that Christmas at Colston, only this time there was no escape and he was going on and on, and worse and worse.

She could feel his hand sliding underneath her skirt now and his fingers on the bare skin of her thigh above her stocking top. She pushed his hand away but after a while it came back again. And all the while he went on kissing her, his tongue deep in her mouth. The bus veered round a sharp corner and swayed on through the blackness. The singing had become a roar.

Her head was pressed back so hard against the window blind that she could not turn it away, nor could she get her hands against his chest to push him off; he was holding her too tightly.

At last the bus jolted to a stop and the light came on. A girl's voice hissed frantically at the very back: ‘Christ, Bert, we're there! Help do me up, quick!' Taffy let Winnie go and she rubbed her mouth, trembling. She stumbled after him off the bus past grinning, leering faces.

The rain had turned to sleet, driving into their faces as they walked to the guardhouse. When he tried to take her arm she shook him off. As they reached the gate he said contritely: ‘I'm sorry, Winnie. I didn't mean to be like that . . . couldn't help myself, see. I love you. More than I've ever loved any girl. I want you more than I've ever wanted anyone. I can't help it . . . You could love me, too, if only you'd let yourself. You know you could –'

‘
Stop it
!' She turned on him furiously. ‘I don't want to hear any more. I don't love you and I
never
will. Can't you understand that?' The taste of him was still in her mouth and the feel of his hands still crawled on her skin. She shivered with revulsion.

But he went on fiercely, relentlessly. ‘I'll
make
you love me, Winnie. I won't give up. I'll write to you and I'll come and see you when you're home on leave.' He gripped her arm tightly and forced her round to face him. ‘Promise me you'll let me know when you're home next. Promise me you'll write and tell me.
Promise
.'

‘No,' she said. ‘I
won't
promise. I don't want to see you ever again.'

‘You'll see me again all right, Winnie. I swear it. I told you, I'll never give up.'

She tugged her arm free of him and ran off through the camp gateway without a backward glance. Taffy stood for a moment, looking after her, then he turned up the collar of his greatcoat against the sleet and trudged off to the Lamb and Flag. And every step of the way he thought of Winnie.

‘Turn on the lamp, please, Virginia. I can't see to count these stitches.'

Virginia rose to switch on the standard lamp close by
her mother's chair and then returned to her own seat and picked up her knitting. She was turning the heel of a thick woollen sock and her mother was halfway through a balaclava helmet. Sometimes she wondered whether all the knitted garments being produced in almost every home in Britain found wearers in the services or whether there was an enormous storehouse somewhere piled to the roof with sweaters and scarves, socks and gloves and balaclava helmets, all knitted with varying degrees of skill but all with patriotism in every stitch. It was rumoured that the saucepans appealed for by the Government to turn into Spitfires and Hurricanes, Blenheims and Wellingtons lay unused in great metal mountains. Who would wear her socks? Some serviceman fighting in the cold of Northern Europe or on the Atlantic, or on a convoy to Russia? She hoped they would give him some warmth and comfort, whoever he was.

They listened to the nine o'clock news on the wireless, as usual. The Chindits had crossed into Burma, the Russian Army were advancing on Rostov, the American forces were fighting fiercely in the Guadalcanal . . .

Her mother began another row. ‘Those Americans . . . There were two of them outside the newsagents today, chewing gum and slouching about. I thought they were Canadians at first by the way they spoke. If it wasn't for the uniform it would be impossible to tell the difference. They both appear to be quite uncivilized. I'm glad you never brought that Canadian sergeant here again. A very rough diamond, I thought.'

Virginia's hands went very still and the sock hung motionless from its heel. ‘I couldn't bring him here again, Mother, because he was killed last August. He died when they raided Dieppe.'

‘Oh. You didn't tell me.'

‘Why should I? You wouldn't have cared. You made it very clear that you didn't like him.'

‘There's no need to use that tone of voice, Virginia. I really don't know what's got into you these days. It must
be the bad influence of the WAAF. I never wanted you to join. You should never have associated with anyone like that. I brought you up to have some standards.'

She put her knitting down on her lap. ‘No, Mother, you brought me up to be stupidly snobbish, like yourself – to have all the
wrong
standards. You think that just because someone speaks or eats or behaves differently, or comes from a different background then they're not worth anything. That's not true and I found it out long ago. Neil was a wonderful person – decent and kind and brave – and I loved him. We were engaged and we were going to be married as soon as we could and live in Canada after the war was over. And I was glad that we'd be far away from you. I'll never forgive you for the way you treated him when he came here.
Never
.'

‘Have you gone quite mad, Virginia? You couldn't possibly have married him. It would have been a ridiculous mistake and you would have lived to regret it. There's no need to make all this fuss. It wasn't my fault that he was killed. I hear that raid on Dieppe was completely useless. No point to it at all. I sometimes wonder if Mr Churchill knows what he's doing.'

Virginia stood up, clutching the sock to her breast. ‘I'm not going to listen to you any more. I'm not going to listen to anything you say again in my whole life. I'm not surprised Father left you. You probably drove him to it.'

‘
Virginia
! That's a wicked thing to say, and to your own mother! After all I've done for you . . . You will apologize this instant.'

‘No, I won't. I'm not a bit sorry. I meant every word of it.' She picked up her knitting bag and put the sock and needles away. Her mother was gaping at her, white and shocked. ‘I'm going to bed now. I have to leave very early in the morning so I won't disturb you. And I'm not sure if I shall ever come here again.'

She went out and slammed the sitting-room door behind her.

The snow lay thick and white over the aerodrome and the wind whipped it up into stinging flurries that made Winnie blink as she drew the nozzle of the de-icing equipment along the leading edge of the Hurricane's wing. The cold fluid trickled back down her arm, finding its way under her sleeve and leaving an uncomfortable sticky trail. It was a horrible job and she hated it. She blinked hard again and wiped the snow away from her face. It clung to her wool mittens in frozen little lumps like burrs that she would have to pick off. Her fingers looked like purple sausages and were too cold to feel any longer; her throat felt as though it were on fire. She had had a bad sore throat for several days that had started after she'd been out helping to clear the runways, and got steadily worse. She'd been to the sickbay and they'd given her something to gargle with, but it hadn't helped much. Today her limbs ached, too, and the glands in her neck were swollen right up. She swallowed hard.

The sound of an aircraft approaching made her look up and she saw that it was coming in to land – a big, two-engined one that must be visiting. From habit, she tried to identify it and, as it came closer, saw that it was a Hampden. She watched it land and lumber down the runway and then went back to the de-icing job and finished it somehow. After that, she gave Ginger a hand changing a radiator, holding the fairing bath for him while he undid the screws.

He clicked his tongue at her. ‘You look that bad, Winnie. You ought to be in bed.'

‘I'm all right. It's just this sore throat,' she croaked. ‘It'll go soon.'

The Hampden was trundling noisily round the peri track.

‘Well, if it's not better by tomorrow, mind you report sick. I don't want to see you out here in this weather. You'll go and make yourself really ill.'

‘All right.'

She helped him lower the radiator, wondering how
much longer she'd be able to keep going. Her throat hurt so much now that she could hardly swallow at all. Ginger looked at her anxiously.

‘You go and sit down in the 'ut for a while, love.' He tucked her scarf higher round her neck. ‘Get yourself a bit warm. I'll finish this off. NAAFI van'll be round in a tick so you can 'ave a nice hot cuppa.'

She went and sat on her toolbox in the hut, close to the coke stove and with her arms wrapped round her body. She felt dreadful. Worse than ever. If it went on like this she'd have to do like Ginger said. She couldn't remember ever feeling ill like this in her life; she'd never had anything worse than a cold. Chiefy would probably think she was putting it on just to stay in the hut by the stove . . . After a while she went to peer out of the window. The visiting Hampden had parked close by and shut down its engines – Peggy eighteens, she remembered from the training course. She also remembered the instructor's warning about the Pegasus engine's nasty habit of suddenly kicking over and spinning a few revs after they'd been switched off.

‘NAAFI up!' someone shouted outside.

She saw the NAAFI van drive up and people started running towards it from all directions. You had to be quick off the mark if you didn't want to be at the back of the queue. Ginger flung open the hut door.

‘Bung us your mug, sweet'eart. I'll get yours for you. You stay there in the warm.'

She watched him as he ran, a mug in each hand, in the direction of the van. The Hampden stood in his path and she saw him duck under its starboard wing, close to the engine nacelle, taking a short cut. Then, all of a sudden, his body arced high up into the air as the Pegasus kicked over without any warning and its propeller caught him. His head went one way, his limbs another and what was left of Ginger fell to the ground in a bloody, mangled mess. The enamel mugs rolled over and over across the concrete.

Winnie ran out of the hut. She stood there with her hands to her cheeks and her mouth opened in a scream that went on and on and on. It was Chiefy who caught her in his arms and turned her face into his chest, away from the sight, and, as she slumped against him, picked her up and carried her away.

The head floated above her, its eyes looking at her from behind a pair of hornrimmed spectacles. Like Ginger's head it had no body. Winnie tried to speak to it but her throat seemed to have closed up completely. She was lying on a bed somewhere, she knew that. The room was dim and behind the floating head there was a green screen.

Its mouth was moving now, making sounds that she could vaguely hear but not really understand. The head disappeared and then another head appeared, wearing a white cap. She made another great effort to speak.

‘Ginger . . . Ginger . . .'

‘It's all right,' the second head told her. ‘I'm here. Go to sleep.'

Winnie drifted away.

She was in the isolation hospital for a month, lying flat on her back and wavering deliriously between life and death. At last she turned towards life. She was not allowed any visitors but when she was feeling better a WAAF officer came to see her. She was plump and smiling, in a uniform that was too tight for her, and she sat on the end of Winnie's bed, making the springs creak.