Gunner Girls and Fighter Boys (36 page)

‘The only thing I’ve been spying on was this one!’ he said, looking down lovingly at Pat.

Pat was laughing and crying all at once. ‘May thought you were fifth column! But where have you been staying? I’ve asked all over.’

‘I suppose I did look a bit suspicious, but I’ve been camping out in the wood and I had to talk to you before I left, Pat,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want you thinking I’d just gone off and abandoned you!’

Pat was clinging to Mark’s arm. ‘But you’re not going anywhere now!’ she said. ‘Uncle had nothing to do with it. It was Arnold’s idea. Once the major knows, he’ll take you back.’

‘It’s good to know the old major didn’t get rid of me. I wouldn’t mind a reference. But, Pat, I couldn’t go back anyway. I’ve had my call-up papers.’

Pat’s smile disappeared and May could see tears brimming. She was beginning to feel superfluous now.

‘I’ll leave you two together,’ she said.

‘You won’t know your way,’ Pat said, but her eyes were still on Mark.

‘I’m a homing pigeon – I can always find my way.’ May smiled and squeezed Pat’s arm.

She walked back down the hill, thinking of the sad farewells being said on the gallops, right now, and she played out in her mind all the sorrowful partings of this war. At least Pat had the one consolation she’d never had with Jack, that of being able to say goodbye.

When she passed the stables, Tom was there. She explained where they’d found Mark, and who she’d mistaken him for.

‘Wait till you tell Mrs Lloyd who the fifth columnist really was!’ he said, laughing.

*

Later Pat came to the cottage. ‘Come for a walk. I need to talk to you. I’ve got news!’

Grabbing her jacket from the hook behind the door, May called back to her mother in the kitchen.

‘Just popping out with Pat!’ She hurried the girl out.

‘Hold on, I’ve got some cake for the major! She can take it up to him,’ her mother called out.

May raised her eyes and whispered, ‘She’s gone baking mad now she can get hold of the butter. I didn’t know there was a black market in the country!’

‘It comes from the dairy farmer down the road. Uncle’s given over some of his land for the cows.’ May’s mind, formed in Bermondsey, had imagined some rustic version of George roaming the lanes.

Her mother came to the door with the cake tin. ‘Did she tell you about us silly sods last night?’ her mother said, laughing, and Pat nodded. May looked at her mother’s face, flushed from the heat of the kitchen, and untroubled. That the woman could now laugh at her own fear flooded May’s heart with gratitude, which spilled over to Pat. She put her arm round the girl as they walked away. ‘What’s happened, Dobbin? Has Mark gone?’

‘Not yet, but he’s asked me to marry him!’

‘Blimey, that was quick work. Congratulations! But what about your uncle?’

‘I made Mark come and see the major with me. As soon as I told him what had happened and that Mark was going into the army, he gave us his blessing! Oh, May, I’ve never been happier.’

May was genuinely pleased for her friend; there was only the merest sliver of pain lodging in her own heart, as she hugged her. It wasn’t jealousy; it was regret.

‘Oh, you two will have to come to the dance with us tonight, to celebrate!’

And when the time came for Doug to pick her up she was glad not to be alone. They were all ready and waiting for him at seven-thirty, and as he rounded the hedge, she saw disappointment briefly cloud his face. He obviously didn’t appreciate the company. But he recovered enough to smile broadly as he took her arm. ‘Your carriage awaits,’ he said as he led her to the gravel drive where a jeep was parked.

‘Your pals can come too. I think there’ll be enough room, but it’s a good job one of you two is on the short side!’ He grinned at Pat and Mark.

‘Where did you get this?’ May hadn’t expected transport.

Doug pointed to his sergeant’s stripes. ‘Commandeered it! We’re always being told to keep the locals happy!’

They all clambered up into the jeep and Doug drove at breakneck speed down the hill, along winding narrow roads, till they reached the mercifully flatter country beyond Moreton-in-Marsh where the airfield was situated. Still, by the time they arrived at the RAF base, May was feeling sick and she was relieved when Doug brought the car to a screeching halt outside the NAAFI.

The dance was being held in the sparsely decorated canteen. Not that May had time to notice much, for as soon as they pushed through the door they were greeted by a stampede of eager fighter boys. Doug put a proprietorial arm round her and without asking whisked her away to the brash music, blaring out from the band on the stage. They danced to the jolly, jazzy tune of, ‘Somebody Else Is Taking My Place’
,
while a Peggy Lee lookalike girl in WAAF uniform sang the incongruous words of heartache and regret. The tune won out and, ignoring the words, May gave herself up to the whirlwind that was Doug McKecknie. He swung her round and negotiated the dance floor as if it were a sky filled with Messerschmitts, steering her in and out of the other couples until she felt like one of the Spitfires he piloted, and that they were in a dogfight, not a dance. She hoped he was a more skilful fighter boy than he was a dancer for by the interval, May was suffering. She made her excuses and hobbled with bruised feet to a chair, while Doug went to get them drinks. When the band started playing again, ‘Apple Blossom Time’, Doug took her hand. May had been praying for the respite of a slow dance, and she thought she could manage this one. Doug pulled her in close as the WAAF girl sang from the stage: ‘
One day in May, you’ll come and say, happy the bride, that the sun shines on today.
’ The singer’s yearning voice was not happy at all. Jolly tunes to sad words and sad tunes to happy words – it seemed the whole world was confused, not just her. But glancing over at Mark and Pat in a close embrace, oblivious to the melancholy music, May had a glimpse of something certain and longed to know it for herself. Perhaps it was this longing that persuaded her to follow Doug out into the wide, dark night of stars, and let him kiss her.

*

Carrie Lloyd hadn’t said a word against him, but the next morning, when she’d asked about the dance and May had mentioned Doug, the look on her mother’s face had told her all she needed to know. It was the sort of look she’d have given to a piece of inferior butcher’s meat, along with the words ‘not much cop’. And although Doug called every day for the rest of that leave, and her mother gave him tea and cakes every time, that look on her face told May he wasn’t truly welcome.

But May enjoyed his fast, strange ways and the offhand manner in which he spoke about the danger he faced daily. Perhaps if she’d cared more she wouldn’t have wanted to see so much of him, for he made it clear there might be a day when he just didn’t appear. Just the other night, a plane had crash-landed, when almost home, into one of those tranquil hills that May found so comforting. When he asked if he could visit her in Essex on his next leave, she agreed. But when she told her mother as they were packing up May’s kitbag on the night before her return to Barkingside, she shot May that disapproving look again. Mrs Lloyd folded the last of May’s civvie clothes then hung up the dress uniform, ready for the morning.

‘What’s the matter with Doug, Mum? Why don’t you like him?’ May asked, exasperated. ‘I’ve waited long enough to find someone. I’d have thought you’d be pleased for me.’

Her mother shook her head. ‘He won’t make old bones,’ she said, in tones reminiscent of Granny Byron.

‘What do you mean? No one’s safe in this war, are they?’ She didn’t want to hurt her mother with a reference to Jack, but the thought was there. Walking home from a party, or flying a Spitfire – both could be equally lethal.

‘No, but you don’t have to take chances and I’ve seen the way he drives, and I’ve seen the way he is with you. Careless with other people and careless with himself. I’m telling you, love, don’t get attached. Besides, I’ll bet a pound to a penny he’s handy, ain’t he?’

May blushed. Mrs Lloyd had guessed rightly, but this was a conversation she never wanted to have with her mother.

‘Thought so. If he comes down to visit you at Barkingside, you be careful. You’re a bloody innocent, you are!’

May didn’t feel this was fair. ‘That might have been true once, before I joined the ATS. But I’ve seen more life in the past year, than I ever have. It’s the education I never had, Mum, and I’m not talking about Goldsmiths.’

Her mother seemed to relent. ‘All right, love, I’m sorry. It’s just you were always the soft one, happy to be in your home. I can’t get used to you going out in the world, all on your own. Still, I suppose you had to grow up quick when you went away. Gawd knows I wasn’t there to help, was I?’

‘Don’t say that.’ May put her arms round her mother. ‘I’m just glad to have you back. Promise not to worry about me, and I’ll promise to be careful, all right?’

When her mother left her, May turned out the lights and pulled open the blackout curtains. Looking out towards the wood, she remembered the night of the ‘invasion’ and her first view of Doug, coiled around a tree, unconcerned at his plight and laughing at her. She wondered, what if it hadn’t been an exercise, but a landing on enemy soil? And what if she’d been a German, not a frightened girl? How long would he have lasted? Perhaps her mother was right, and it would be better not to learn to care for such a careless person as Doug McKecknie.

Early Summer 1942

After a week’s bed rest the doctor had said Peggy could do most things, so long as she didn’t spend hours on her feet. The terrifying thought that she might have lost her baby had convinced Peggy that her days of climbing ladders in the powder room were long over, and besides, she was happier to be doing war work, even if it meant sitting for dull hours at the stamping machine, marking anonymous plane parts with serial numbers. She could only hope they would mean something important, to someone, somewhere.

The hardest thing to give up had been the mobile canteen. But Harry had already nearly lost one child, and she certainly wasn’t going to endanger this one by over-stretching herself. So she took on a job in the WVS clothes depot, where she could sit and sort out donated clothing. Much of it was for children, often from the colonies or from generous Americans in places like Florida, where the climate was reflected in the beautifully made, but thin, cotton shirts and skirts. Her job involved finding suitable clothes for children of bombed-out families. Little girls would eye with undisguised desire the pretty American dresses, and young boys would covet the cowboy-style checked shirts. It made Peggy smile when they looked at themselves in the mirror and saw reflected back a child of the colourful fantasy land of America, instead of their own ash-dusted black-and-white world.

Her supervisor had said she could choose a layette from the donations for her own baby. It would certainly be a help, for in spite of the extra clothing coupons she received for the coming baby, whatever clothes she bought would have to last a long time. But so far, she’d resisted the romper suits and bonnets coming through the depot. She knew it was foolish, but the scare back in January had unnerved her and revealed a seam of superstition that she’d obviously inherited from Granny Byron. She felt that it would be tempting fate to dress the child too soon. That is, until she saw the dress.

It came, tissue-wrapped in a pretty box along with a shipment of other exquisite clothes, from a small town in California that she’d never heard of. A handwritten tag declared it:
A gift from the folks of over here, to the kids over there
. As she held up the dress, extravagant folds of the softest white cotton fell from elaborate pink smocking on the bodice. At the neck was a delicate lace collar, the like of which could no longer be found in the plain utility ranges. The dress would be too large for a newborn, and there were other far more practical items she could have chosen, but at the end of the day she folded the tissue-wrapped dress back into its box and took it home. It wasn’t until she was placing the box at the bottom of her wardrobe that she realized there’d been no doubt in her mind that the baby would be a girl. And there again she’d been influenced by Granny Byron, for her grandmother had begun referring to the baby as ‘she’ almost immediately, and Peggy had followed suit.

Nevertheless, it was hard making all these preparations for the baby, without Harry. He was in North Africa, which was about all she knew. His uninformative letters had been loving, but his passion did not translate well on to the page, and she dreaded forgetting why she had loved him, so instantaneously and so recklessly, in the first place. She pulled her mind away from visions of tanks rolling over desert sands and went to the kitchen to see what was left of this week’s rations. Food was becoming an obsession, and her child obviously hadn’t heard of austerity because Peggy’s cravings never seemed to be on the ration list. At the moment it was cheese. She could have eaten a pound of the stuff at one sitting; instead her two ounces had gone in a minute. But whatever the privations or the difficulties, she still preferred the freedom of living with her own choices to the prison of submitting to George’s.

It was undeniable that without George’s regular restocking with brand-new furnishings, her little palace on the Purbrook had begun to look as shabby and down-at-heel as everywhere else did in this war, but that didn’t bother her. As she debated whether to use the last of the cold meat, she heard a knock on the door. It was Granny Byron: she was holding a pot of stew, wrapped up in a towel.

‘I’ve brought your tea. You haven’t done nothing yet, have you?’

Peggy wanted to kiss her, but the pot was in the way. Instead she followed her grandmother into the kitchen, where she took off her broad-brimmed green-feathered hat and placed it carefully on a chair.

‘You sit down and let me warm this up. Take the weight off them legs, look at ’em, swollen up like elephants!’

‘Thanks, Nan!’ Peggy laughed and gave in; it was comforting to have her grandmother’s flamboyant figure bustling around in the kitchen.