I'll Be Seeing You (24 page)

During the time that he was there, Hamilton learned a whole lot about French cooking: how to make sauces and cassoulets and carbonnades and fricassées, and how to cook a perfect omelette. He even got used to eating trotters, cheeks, tongues, livers, kidneys, brains – things he'd never touched before. Sometimes German soldiers came to the restaurant and he watched them through the hatchway from the kitchens as they guzzled away. The patron ritually and ceremoniously spat in their soup before it was carried out.

His next safe house was close to the Channel port of St Malo – the neat little home of two elderly spinsters who feigned loony senility in front of the Germans, but, behind closed shutters, were sharp as tacks. He played cards with them every night, gambling with matchsticks, and they beat him every time. When the war was over, he promised to honour his debt in real money. The ocean was so damn close now, England only the other side, but, again, he was told that he must be patient. There were rumours that the Allies were preparing to land somewhere on the north coast of France, but nobody knew where or when – least of all the Germans.

He had been moved on, yet again, when the invasion finally happened. More rumours, more waiting – several teeth-grinding weeks of it – until, with the sight of American and British planes daily overhead and the sound of gunfire only a few miles away, he decided, the hell with it. He started walking towards all the noise and fury. As he reached a village, a tank came rumbling round the corner. He was lucky: it was American.

An American army truck gave him a lift to Cherbourg and he hitched another on a plane to England. He spent three days at an officers' club in London being interrogated before they let him go on leave. He checked into the Savoy Hotel and phoned the Lay tons' number in Suffolk. Mrs Layton answered the phone. She remembered him at once and sounded knocked sideways to hear that he was alive, not dead. Kept saying how wonderful it was, how sad they'd been, how she almost couldn't believe it – they'd been so sure he'd been killed. All of them had thought so. Daisy too.

‘Is she there? I'd like to speak to her – give her the news myself.'

A pause. ‘Daisy's not with us any more, Ham. She was very ill indeed – with pneumonia – soon after you were shot down. She nearly died. They kept her in the hospital at the base for several weeks and then sent her home to convalesce.'

He was shocked. He'd never thought of anything happening to her. Jeez . . . is she OK now?'

‘Yes, as far as we know. But she's left the WÀAF.'

‘Oh? Why did she do that?'

Another pause. ‘She got married, Ham. To somebody she'd known a long time . . . a friend of the family. We had a letter from her the other day, telling us. Of course, she thought you'd been killed. Your people told her there was really no hope, you see. They said that you and all your crew were presumed dead.'

For a moment he couldn't speak. He couldn't believe what he'd heard. Within a few months she'd gone and married some other guy . . . Jesus Christ! A few months! Was that all he'd meant to her? Was that all the time it had taken her to get over him? She hadn't even waited to be sure he really
was
dead, not just presumed so.
Jesus Christ!

‘Ham? Are you still there?'

He collected himself. ‘Yes, Mrs Layton, I'm still here. Do you have her address?'

‘I'm not sure . . .'

He said levelly, very calmly, ‘I'd like to have it . . . to write and congratulate her.'

He got the address and went down to the hotel bar to get drunk. There were other Yanks in there, and after a few drinks he got talking. He found out they were Glenn Miller's band and someone took him over and introduced him to the great man himself. Then he carried on drinking.

When he'd sobered up the next day, he wrote a letter to Daisy. He couldn't help sounding bitter, though he tried not to lay it on too much. Within a couple of days he had a reply.

Oh yeah, he thought. Oh yeah . . .

They wouldn't let him back into combat. If he was shot down again, they said, he could give away too much about the French who'd helped him. The Gestapo had too many ways of finding things out to run the risk. Instead, he was sent back stateside. He travelled home on the liner
Queen Mary
, which had been spending the war ferrying troops across the Atlantic. She went unescorted and lickety-split – too fast for any goddam U-boat to catch her. At dawn, as they approached New York, he went up to stand in the bow and get the first sight of the Statue of Liberty and the city's skyline beyond: the great sight that he'd never believed he would see again. It choked his throat right up.

There was a girl standing beside him at the rail – an English girl, he discovered, who'd married a Yank colonel and was going to join him. She looked happy and excited – eyes shining, a beautiful smile on her face. It could have been Daisy, he thought, and it could have been him.

He watched his country coming closer and closer – the skycrapers, the quayside, the customs sheds, the people. The New World.
His
world. To hell with the old one! Forget it! That was yesterday. This was today. And, come to think of it, now, at last, he had a tomorrow.

The wireless shop was in the middle of the high street, in between a greengrocer and an ironmonger. It sold wirelesses, gramophones, electrical goods and records. Daisy passed it whenever she was shopping, and, one day, she stopped and went inside. Yes, the counter assistant told her, they had a copy of that particular recording, and, if she would care to step into the soundproof booth at the back of the shop, she would be able to try it. He showed her how to work the turntable and left her alone. She pressed the button, the needle arm moved across and descended.

She listened with the tears running down her face.

In September the watercolour evening classes started up again and Monica and I continued our Thursday visits to the coffee bar. I had already told her about discovering the old airfield, Halfpenny Green, in Suffolk, and as much as I wanted her to know of the rest – not that there was much to tell. Privately, I'd been doing some counting on my fingers and worked out a few dates. I had been born in late September 1944 and, therefore, probably conceived in late December 1943. Joe Deerfield had implied that the crew in the photo had already done a number of missions to earn their tough reputation before they went missing, and so they would have been flying from Halfpenny Green throughout the last half of 1943. I'd done some more reading on the Yanks in my airfields book. Twenty-five missions made an American tour – later on in the war they upped it to thirty, but not then. How long a tour took depended on the planners and the weather, but it must have stretched over months, maybe a year or more. The crew chief had said that the photo had been taken early in 1944, probably January, just before the crew had been shot down.

It made sense. Ma obviously hadn't yet realized she was pregnant which was why the pilot had never known about me, and when he had come back from the dead, months later, she'd already got married to Da. I had given that bit of the story a lot of thought. For the first time, I'd stopped thinking about me and thought about her instead – about how wretchedly miserable it all must have been for her. To have believed the man she loved dead, and then to hear that he was alive after all – but to find it out too late. I began to see things through her eyes.
I never forgot him or stopped loving him. Not for a single day
.

She'd married Da for my sake and she'd given up her American for both our sakes. It must have been a heart-breaking sacrifice.

Over the coffee cups, Monica said, ‘Any luck with any of the American mags?'

‘Not yet. Two of them sent me their latest issues with the photo and my letter in them, but I haven't heard a thing so far.'

‘Don't give up. How about giving the American Embassy another go? Now that you know a bit more. You might get someone more helpful.'

‘I already have. It's hopeless. They just repeat all that jargon about having to apply to the Pentagon and fill up forms. And go on about their Privacy Act.' In fact, the American voices at the other end of the line had been even less helpful and more openly hostile. I wasn't keen to give it a third try.

‘What about the woman in the newspaper – the War Children one?'

‘I rang her and told her about Suffolk and the little bit I found out. She said she'd pass it on to her contacts in California – see if they could come up with anything. I don't see how they can, though. There's practically nothing to go on.'

Monica put down her cup. She said briskly, Of course, you know what you should do next, Juliet.'

‘Do I? What?'

‘Go to California.'

‘
Go
there?'

‘That's what I said. Get on a plane and go.'

‘What's the use? I wouldn't know where to start when I got there. Besides, he's probably not living there any more. He's probably already dead.'

‘I thought you wanted to find this chap?'

‘I do.'

‘Then stop making excuses and being so negative. Get out there and find him.'

Adrian invited me to dinner at his favourite fish restaurant – secluded, discreet, quiet, positively no flash trash. He was sitting at his usual table in the corner and rose to his feet to kiss my hand.

‘Wherever did you find that coat, darling?'

‘Petticoat Lane market. It's an old Balmain, believe it or not.'

‘I do believe it. One of your better buys. It suits you very well.'

Praise from Adrian about any item of my clothing was praise indeed. Usually, he kindly refrained from comment.

Over the sole, I mentioned Monica's suggestion.

‘Well of course you should go, darling – if you've still got that bee in your bonnet. I did hope the trip to Suffolk might have got rid of it, but clearly it hasn't. It's still buzzing around. Pack your bags and catch a plane. You've never been to America, have you? Now's the time. Especially when one considers that you're half American.'

‘I don't consider myself anything of the kind. And I can't up sticks just like that . . . I've got a commission to finish. And there's the evening classes. I can't let them down.'

‘Don't they stop for the Christmas hols? You could go then. Spend Christmas in California. Eric and I did that once. Rather a pleasant change. They go right over the top with the decorations – it's quite a sight. Who do you know there that you could stay with?'

‘I've got an old schoolfriend who lives in Santa Monica but I haven't seen her for years.'

‘Santa Monica's right next to Los Angeles but very civilized. A sort of Wimbledon-on-Sea but much nicer. You'd like it. Write to your friend and invite yourself for Christmas.'

‘Rather a cheek. And there's Flavia to consider.'

‘Flavia is grown-up, darling, and she has her live-in lover to keep her warm. I'm sure your old friend would be delighted to see you. How is your
Véronique?
'

‘Wonderful, thank you.'

‘You must try the monkfish next time. It's superb.'

I started making feeble excuses again. ‘I don't see much point in going to California, Adrian. I've got so little to go on. Almost nothing.'

‘It's more than you had at the start. You've had a positive identification from the photo. You know that his first or last name is almost certainly Ham something – Hamlyn, Hampton, Hampshire, Hammond. American first names often sound like last names, so it could be either way round. You also know that he served as a pilot in the United States Eighth Air Force during the Second World War and that he was in England in 1943 and early 1944, based at Halfpenny Green in Suffolk. And that he came from California. That's quite a lot.'

‘California is a
huge
state. I looked in my atlas. It goes a long way down the Pacific coast of America. He'd be a needle in a haystack.'

‘But you know something else about him, too, darling.'

‘Do I? What?'

‘You told me that the crew chief from Arizona who recognized him in the photo said they used to joke about our ghastly English weather because they were both used to living in much warmer temperatures. Now, northern California can get quite chilly and rainy at times, which rather suggests to me that your father came from down south – the Mexico end. A reasonable deduction, don't you agree, my dear Watson?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘Furthermore, he was a bomber pilot and an officer of the American Air Force – not some barn-storming backwoodsman. A college man, I'd say, from a town or city in southern California. Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, San Diego . . . there aren't that many, you know. There's an awful lot of mountain and desert, if you take another peek at your map. So you'd be well placed in Santa Monica to do some sleuthing. If I were you, I'd find a native out there to help. Hopeless, I agree, to try on your own. Employ someone who knows how to go about tracing people. A private detective or an attorney, or some such. Your friend might know somebody she can recommend.'

‘It would have to be somebody I could trust not to go trampling around, making waves.'