I'll Get By (26 page)

‘Vaguely.’ Esmé made soothing baby noises that sounded like complete and utter nonsense to anyone except Johnno, who stopped crying to listen intently.

It was something so unlike her aunt that Meggie giggled, and said, ‘Who’s got an ickle lickle baby boy, then?’

The warble was replaced by a sucking noise. The two younger women and the cat crawled from their lair into daylight, and stretched.

The cat headed for the back door, leaving a trail of footprints in the dust where a chunk of plaster had fallen from the ceiling. When he turned and stared pointedly at them. Judith laughed and opened the door. ‘I’ve got the message, you’ve certainly trained us well.’

‘I’m going upstairs to look around.’

Esmé said from the comfort of her mattress, ‘I’ll come with you. I need to go to the toilet.’

‘No Aunt. You can stay there until I’ve checked that everything’s safe. There’s too much glass around. Judith will take you to the outside one. It’s closer, and the baby won’t mind being left under the stairs for now.’

The house was still intact, except for the sash windows, of which the upper ones were cracked or shattered. Pots, pans and ornaments had been thrown about. A mirror was broken; glass and dust littered everything, curtains hung askew, with big rents in them. She tried to straighten them, to no avail. The upper rail they hung from was bent.

When she gazed out of the window a warden gazed up at her. ‘Do you need help?’

‘A couple of windows are broken and the telephone is dead.’

‘The best we can do is board the windows up, but you won’t be able to open them. Gas, electricity and water supplies are still functioning though.’

‘Thanks. The rest is just dust and glass. We did have a baby born here last night while it was all going on. Could you take a message to the district nurse? She only lives a couple of streets away.’ She gave the man the details then went down to help her aunt.

While Judith made porridge for breakfast, Meggie filled a bucket with warm water and then filled a kettle to make some tea with. ‘The window has been broken in your bedroom. I’m going to give it a mop out first, and sweep all the broken glass to the bottom of the stairs. You can rest on the sofa until the window has been fixed. They’ll have to board it up, but there will still be light coming through the top. Once the bed is made you can move in.’

‘I’ll wait until it’s been boarded. I don’t want strange men clumping about my bedroom when I’m trying to rest. Now, stop being in such a rush and eat your breakfast first.’

Judith went off to work with a message from Meggie to Nick, advising him she wouldn’t be in for a few days.

The midwife arrived and helped Esmé wash. She detached the baby from his soiled towel. Both were pronounced healthy, and Johnno now looked clean and deceptively peaceful in his little crib. He slept peacefully, the red pressure patches caused by the trauma of his birth quickly fading.

Taking advantage of the midwife’s visit, and remembering the telephone box outside the corner shop, she said, ‘I’m going to see if the telephone box is working. If it is I’ll ring the base and leave a message for Leo, as well as giving my mother the news.’

It seemed as though every man and his dog had the same idea . . . the queue stretched for miles. Meggie abandoned her quest.

Nick arrived at lunchtime bearing a picnic basket containing egg and bacon tart, smoked salmon and cucumber sandwiches, and a bottle of champagne.

‘You have a good cook.’

‘I have rather. I’ll pass on your thanks.’

Nick admired the infant and said all the right words over him to his proud mother, to which Johnno smugly belched.

Esmé shrugged off his bad manners with, ‘I’ve just fed him.’

‘You’ve gone all gooey over him,’ Meggie said. ‘I suppose this is all we’re going to hear from you . . . baby talk and nonsense.’

Nick looked her up and down, and then smiled. ‘Your aunt will be a wonderful mother, I’m sure.’

‘I know she will.’ Meggie was flustered by that look. She didn’t exactly look her best in her paisley patterned apron, and the turban protecting her hair. ‘I’ve been cleaning up the glass and dust from the raid.’

‘So I see. You look sweet . . . like a proper suburban housewife. Is there anything I can do to help.’

‘Scrub a floor, perhaps.’

His gaze said the idea was totally insane. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Esmé asked him. ‘Could you find a way to contact Leo at the air base? Our phone is out of order.’

‘The office phones are still working. I’m going back later. I’ll do it then. If I can’t get hold of him I’ll leave a message. Write down what you want to say.’

‘Would you ring my mother as well, just to let her know that both Esmé and the baby are well.’

‘Of course I will. He placed a piece of paper on the table. ‘By the way, as of now you’re on a fortnight’s leave. Here’s your pass.’

A son called Johnno. What a beauty! When they got back to Australia he’d teach the boy how to fly a plane, and they’d go to visit his cousins at Fairfield Station and take him out horse riding. He might even teach him to shear a sheep, if he could remember how himself. Leo felt like thumping on his chest. As soon as he got back from this sortie he intended to try and wrangle a couple of hours off so he could go and see Es and his son.

His mind wandering, Leo had chased a Messerschmitt halfway across the channel. He came down to earth when a line of tracer bullets from a Dornier nearly cut his wing in half. They missed the fuel tanks by a couple of inches, thank God, but silenced the radio in mid squawk.

His aircraft shuddered, and then slipped sideways.

He managed to get out of his straps and pulled the canopy back, and then pushed himself out when the plane began to roll. As he was trying to make sure he was clear of the aircraft he collected a passing blow. Something gave a crack as he pulled the ripcord and the lines tangled and knotted. He swore when the chute only partially opened. The person who’d packed it had been careless. He counted his few blessings. Better than not having a chute at all, he supposed, as he descended a little too rapidly towards the grey, rippling expanse of water, and better than landing on hard ground – though water wasn’t that soft when put to the test, either.

He was having a quick thought or two on Isaac Newton’s law of gravity when the plane hit the water. It gave a muted whump. A spark ignited the fumes in the almost empty petrol tank, causing it to explode in a large bubble of air.

Leo landed safely, yelping at the pain in his leg as he hit the resistance the water presented. His parachute billowed. Collapsing on top of him it was caught on the tail of his Spit. Dragged under, he collected a clout on the head, so hard that for a moment dizziness nearly got the better of him.

Be damned if he was going to die here!

The insufficient air he had in his lungs was slowly depleted as he was dragged down, struggling with the parachute straps and cords, which were now tangled in knots. The fire hissed out as the sea swallowed the aircraft, taking him with it. Bubbles of escaping air rose to the top.

Then he was free of the plane. His life jacket carried him to the top. He sucked in a huge breath of cold air tainted with petrol fumes. He tried to swim away from the fuel floating in the water but his leg wouldn’t work properly and he cried out and swore with the pain. The left one was broken. At least it wasn’t the femur.

Praying nothing would ignite the fumes he discarded his boots with some reluctance as they filled with seawater, swiftly unbuckling the front tag and swearing when he eased the one from his broken leg. It would have made a fine splint without the boot attached. With a small penknife he kept in his pocket he was able to make a hole in the parachute silk and tear off a long piece of the silk. He wrapped it firmly around both legs, using the good one as a splint.

‘Some bloody merman I’d make,’ he muttered, splashing around like a stranded fish as he tried to find a direction.

Blood clouded his vision. He washed it away and used another strip of the silk as a bandage for the gash in his head. He pulled his helmet over it. It would provide some pressure, which would help stop the bleeding. He wasn’t too worried about the cut though. The head always bled like crazy, on account of its many blood vessels.

It was only twenty miles across the channel. He might be able to swim back to England. He
had
to get back for Esmé and the baby.

A son.
His boy, Johnno!
He couldn’t wait to get home and see him.

Judging from the position of the sun it was late afternoon. He could see land but couldn’t quite make it out. His ears began to buzz. Elevated blood pressure, probably caused by concussion, he thought. That would cause problems if he wasn’t careful.

Hampered by his broken leg and the awkward splint, which meant that he couldn’t use his legs, only drag them behind him, he headed for the land. It was hard going. Now and again he turned on his back and floated, resting. He heard planes fly across the sky, hundreds of them. Something big seemed to be happening.

The second time he woke it was dark, and he was cold and shivering. Hypothermia and shock, he thought . . . a combin-ation that could easily prove to be fatal. He must stop himself from falling asleep.

There was the smell of tobacco smoke and he heard whispered French nearby. There was a hollow sense of disappointment in him. He thought he’d been heading for England, but the land he’d seen must have been France. His head ached too.

He could make out the scruffy, peeling hull of a fishing boat and took hold of an anchor rope, knowing he was at the end of his tether, literally as well as metaphorically. When they pulled the anchor up he’d go with it, however bleak the pain. There were faint signs of dawn on the horizon.

‘Help,’ he whispered.

After a moment of silence he heard a cautious,
‘Qui êtes-vous?
’

Leo filtered it through his school French system. ‘I am
Anglais
pilot – no
parler
French good
comprenez-vous? Fracturé
. . . leg. Concussion.
Aide s’il vous plaît.
’

Someone whispered in accented English, ‘Can you see us?’

‘I’m at your stern holding on to a rope, and need urgent medical attention. I can’t walk and I’m concussed. Where am I? I was trying to swim to England.’

‘France.’

‘Would you take me to England?’

A man gazed down at him, eyes concealed under the peak of his hat. He spread his hands and there was a gleam of a smile.
‘Impossible!
You haven’t even seen us . . .
comprendre?
We’ll get you to shore.’

Leo did understand. Fifteen minutes later he had a tot of brandy tucked under his belt and was in a dingy. Carried ashore in an aroma of fish and sweat, and in a lot of pain, he was gently deposited on the beach at the high tide mark, with the tide going out. Someone stuck a peppermint in his mouth. To disguise the smell of the brandy, he supposed.

His shoulder was patted and there was a whispered,
‘Bonne chance mon ami.’

He heard them scuffing the sand as they left, so it would look as though he’d crawled from the sea. He began to shiver as the mist closed around him and the pain made him seek some respite in sleep.

He woke to a thick fog and a muted murmur of voices that his knowledge of French soon exhausted.

Someone put a finger over his lips when he groaned. He was bitterly cold, in pain, and ravenously hungry, in that order. His body was racked with shivers and his head and body bumped on a wooden floor.

The engine noise said he was in the back of a truck.

He tried not to yelp when the movement stopped and he was lifted on to a stretcher. He supposed he’d be forced to spend the rest of the war in a prison camp somewhere.

A man bent over him. He was pale, as though he spent most of his life indoors.

‘I need a doctor, my leg is broken,’ Leo said.

‘I know.’ The man opened a box and took out a syringe. ‘Morphine . . . I fix.’

‘Are you a doctor?’

‘No.’ Leo felt a prick in his arm. His tongue dried and he fell asleep. When he woke again his leg was in a plaster cast. It throbbed like hell.

‘My brother and I had to pull it back into place. You won’t be doing much for the next six weeks.’

He felt like vomiting, and his face must have told its own tale because someone thrust a bucket within his reach. He dry retched into it.

He became aware of a smell in the room and looked around. It was an ordinary room with an operating slab, a sink and several dishes. A suspicion formed in his mind. ‘If you’re not a doctor, what are you?’

‘A medical orderly.’

‘And where am I?’

‘In the morgue. You were pronounced dead by drowning. The death certificate says you are Louis Gaston.’

‘By whom?’

‘A cousin. He’s a doctor in the hospital here. You need not know his name.’

Leo realized he was naked. ‘Where are my clothes?’

The man smiled. We had to take them off and hide them. They’ll be returned to you later. In the meantime you will be loaned something less noticeable to wear. Try not to worry,
mon ami
, you are in the hands of the Resistance. We will have you out of here in a day or two.’

Leo relaxed.

The telegram boy had handed over the yellow envelope later that afternoon.

Esmé hadn’t opened it, of course. Leo had promised to telephone her – and he would. Her husband always kept his word.

She had been seated on the chair next to the telephone for two hours, the baby tucked up next to her in his pram, a shining navy blue conveyance with chromed fittings and frilly furnishings. Leo had brought it home, balanced upside down on top of the car and tied in place with ropes.

‘What do you think?’ he’d said, looking slightly anxious. ‘The salesman said that this is the very best money can buy. It has a weatherproof hood and cover, coach springs and a foot pedal brake.’

Esmé had smiled and said, ‘What’s the engine like, Leo?’

‘Very funny.’

‘It’s a splendid carriage, Leo. Our baby will look like royalty in it.’