The Girls They Left Behind (29 page)

‘How about that, then? A teapot they must have pinched from the NAAFI, enough sandwiches to feed an army and a dirty great pile of rock cakes. And scones, and a pot of real live strawberry jam. I told you this was a wizard place to come.’

They spread the feast out on the table and fell to with much noisy laughter. How did the café manage to provide such a tea? Betty wondered. But it was true that in the country there

didn’t seem to be the shortages there were in towns, even though stocks were supposed to be shared fairly round everyone. Still, you could get food offration in restaurant and teashops, and if you could have a tea like this every day-or even once a week — it would certainly help the rations go round the rest of the time.

The girl came out three times to replenish their teapot bringing them more milk and a fresh plate of scones and cake as well. Betty looked at her face to thank her and glimpsed a strange expression as she gazed at the airmen. A mixture of pain and pity, as if she could see further than the sunny afternoon, into a darkness that lay beyond. She caught Betty’s eye and her mouth twisted a little as she turned hurriedly away.

The noisy banter went on, with Yvonne joining in with gusto. But Erica sat silent, her slender body in the white dress pressed close against Geoffrey’s side. And for the first time Betty felt some compassion for the girl.

We’re all in this together, after all, she thought. And it’s as bad for her, saying goodbye to her chap, even though he’s only sttationed a few miles away, as it is for me seeing Graham off to his ship. And all that daft talk of babies and big weddings doesn’t mean she doesn’t love him just as much.

She got up to go into the teashop and find a lavatory. The waitress met her at the door. She looked older than Betty had first thought her, about twenty-seven or twenty-eight, perhaps. She nodded her head towards the noisy group on the lawn.

‘It’s awful, isn’t it? They’re just kids. They come here a lot, them and their pals, some of ‘em haven’t even started to shave … And then there’s a raid and next day there’s one or two missing. They never come again. And you know what the rest say if you ask?’

Betty shook her head.

‘They say “Old Buster? Oh, he bought it last night.” Or he “copped a packet”, or “pranged”, or something like that. And then one of ‘em’ll make a joke and they all roar with laughter and never mention his name again.’ She looked at Betty, her eyes bright with tears. ‘It’s not that they don’t care. It’s that

they can’t let themselves care. Otherwise it’d break ‘em up. And they wouldn’t be able to fly. They’re all tired out as it is. They’re seeing their mates die all around them, all the time. They just wouldn’t be able to take it.’

Betty stared at her, appalled. Like everyone else, she had known the facts, known that pilots were being killed. She had never wondered what it was like for those who remained alive, who knew that their chances of being next were greater every time they took to the skies.

‘That’s why we give ‘em a good tea,’ the girl said. ‘You never know but what it might be their last.’

Their last. Betty came slowly out of the teashop. She looked at the little tableau across the lawn, the table set under the cherry tree, the three young men still laughing and joking around it. Geoffrey was sitting back on the garden seat, his arm around Erica, smoking a cigarette. Duff had shifted his chair closer to Yvonne’s and was playing with her hand. Sandy was lying on his back on the grass, his arms behind his head, gazing up into the sky. The sky that was so strangely peaceful today, but which could at any moment turn into a bedlam of fury and killing.

I don’t understand it, Betty thought. And she remembered Dennis, the strange young man who had turned his back on the fighting and refused to go to war. Maybe he can explain, she thought. Maybe he’s the one who can help me.

Jess and Peggy Shaw had been in the habit of sharing an

afternoon cup of tea together, often with Annie as well. Now they included Kathy Simmons in their little group. They were over at Kathy’s one afternoon when they heard a knock on the door.

Kathy heaved herself to her feet and went to answer it. Jess heard her give a cry, almost a scream, and ran to see what was the matter.

‘Mike! Mike! Oh God, tell me it’s you, tell me it’s really you, tell me it’s not a dream!’

‘It’s not a dream. It’s really me.’ He was holding her in his arms, a tall, rather skinny man with straight brown hair and blue eyes. His face had a rubbery look about it, as if he could pull it into any shape he wanted, and as he caught sight of Jess over his wife’s shoulder he twisted his mouth into a grin that must have been meant to be comical, but instead brought the tears to Jess’s eyes. ‘I had to ask my way to find out where I lived,’ he said wryly. ‘Last time I looked, it was in Portchester Road.’

‘Oh, Mike,’ Kathy said again. She drew herself away slightly and laughed a little selfconsciously. ‘This is Jess Budd, from April Grove. She just came in for a bit of a chat. Her sister and Mrs Shaw are here too.’

He nodded, but his eyes were already on Kathy again and Jess knew she and the others must make themselves scarce. They gathered together their bags of knitting and sewing and

slipped out of the room and through the front door. It had closed before they were on the pavement.

Inside, Kathy and Mike Simmons were once again in each other’s arms. Kathy was trembling, the tears streaming down her face, and Mike held her close, comforting her.

‘It was so awful,’ she wept. ‘Hearing the bombs, knowing they were falling on our house — knowing there’d be nothing left when we came out. And there wasn’t, not a thing. And our Muriel’s baby doll, the one you brought back for her — oh, Mike, its face, its poor little face!’

‘There,’ he said softly, moving his hands over her back. ‘There, it’s all right now, Kathy love. It’s over. It’s been over a long time.’

But for Kathy, it had not been over. Unable to share her experience, having no one she could talk it over with, and having to keep a bright face for the children, she had bottled it all up inside her. Every night she had relived it, until there were times when she had thought she was going mad. And whenever the sirens sounded, the terror slid down her spine once more, sending her scurrying for the shelter where she would crouch with Stella and Muriel close in her arms, praying that the same thing would not happen again.

‘Why don’t you go out to the country?’ Mike asked as he ate the supper she cooked for him. Her first storm of weeping over, she had pulled herself together and made rissoles from a recipe she had heard on the Kitchen Front programme on the wireless. There were just enough potatoes, if she didn’t have any herself, and a tin of peas. There was no pudding, but Mike declared himself quite satisfied with bread and margarine and a tiny pot of blackberry and apple jam.

‘Jess Budd gave it to me. She makes it. It was nice of her, wasn’t it, when you think how scarce sugar is now.’

‘It’s good jam.’ He spread it thinly on his bread. The girls, having come in full of excitement to find their father at home, had gone out to play again, with strict instructions not to go beyond the end of the street and to come back at once if the warning sounded. ‘I still think you ought to be out in the country.’

‘But I want to be here for you. In any case, I thought you didn’t believe in it.’

‘I’ve changed my mind.’ He looked at her seriously. ‘This

war’s not going to be over quick, Kathy. I’ve seen some of it, and it isn’t pretty. I’d rather you and the girls were out of it.’

‘I’ve seen it too,’ she said obstinately. ‘But where would you have gone tonight if I hadn’t been here? What would you have done?’

`I’d have stayed aboard ship, like I do other times.’ He pushed his plate aside and took her hands in his. ‘Kathy, I went and had a look at Portchester Road. They’ve patched it up a bit now, but I could see what it must’ve been like. And our house, there’s nothing left of it, Kath.’

‘I know,’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘I know.’

He came round the table and put his arms around her

shoulders. ‘I can’t stop thinking of you and the kids in there,’ he said. ‘Having to manage by yourself and look after them and everything. And what about when the baby comes?’ He laid his hand on her stomach and felt the kicking of unborn feet, the punch of unborn fists. ‘That’s three of them you’ve got to get down the shelter in the middle of the night. What

, sort of a life is that? And suppose you get bombed out again?’

‘We’d have to move again, I suppose.’ She shrugged, then collapsed against him. ‘Oh, Mike, I know you’re right, I know we ought to go away. Every time the siren goes it’s like a knife slicing through me. And I’m scared stiff the girls will be out in the street and won’t be able to get back. There was a woman strafed in the street the other day, just going home with her shopping she was, and a plane came right down low and fired a machine-gun at her. In the street! If they did that to our girls… But I just can’t face it, somehow. Going away, living , with strangers. And you know I’m scared of cows!’

Mike burst out laughing. ‘Cows? You’re scared of cows?’

; But there was more pain than mirth in his laughter. ‘Kathy, if

I that’s what it’d take to make you move I’ll write to Hitler personally and ask him to send cows instead of bombs.’ He

‘ held her against him again. ‘Let’s get the washing-up done now, love, and talk about it again later on. I want to have a bit of time with the girls.’

As he spoke, the air-raid warning sounded for the third time that day, and Kathy flew to the door to call the children from their game. Mike got his wish to spend some time with

the girls, for they were in the shelter for the rest of the night after that, not coming out until after the All-Clear at six in the morning. But there was no more time to talk, for by eight he had to be back on board his ship and although Kathy waited all the next evening in the hope that he would be able to come

ashore, he never arrived. The ship had sailed, and there was no knowing when she would see him again.

She touched her swollen stomach. By the time Mike came home, the baby might be born. Might be sitting up, walking, talking. Might be out at work, earning a living, she thought bitterly, and cursed the madman over the Channel who had taken her husband away from her.

She thought again about asking to be evacuated. If only Mike had been home a bit longer, if only he could have helped her, she might have agreed to go. But now that she was on her own again, she knew that she had spoken the truth. She really couldn’t face it.

And still they came. That one day of peace, when no bombers approached the south coast, when no air-raid warnings sounded, when Betty and Yvonne and Erica spent the afternoon having tea on a sunny lawn, proved to be no more than a flicker of bright light; a brief, teasing reminder of what life could be, and once had been. The next day the raiders returned in force and continued their bombardment of the city of London, paying attention to other towns and cities while they did so. The sound of the sirens became commonplace and while some people remained terrified, others began to develop a defiant, almost blasé attitude towards them. Peggy and Bert Shaw, playing whist with their daughters, finished the hand before gathering up their belongings to run down the garden to the shelter. Jess’s mother Mary refused to budge until she had completed a row of her knitting. ‘You never pick it up at the same tension again,’ she said when Arthur urged her to hurry. And Granny Kinch flatly refused to go to the shelter at all. ‘I’m too old to go gallivanting at night,’ she told Tommy Vickers with a wink. ‘I leave that to the younger ones.’

‘Like your Nancy,’ he said, and then wished he could bite

his tongue. Who was to say Nancy Baxter wasn’t doing a service to the young soldiers and sailors who were facing

death every day? He thought of Graham Philpotts, desperate to know what sex was like before he went to sea, and of Graham’s sweetheart Betty, too ‘respectable’ and too inhibited to share it with him. Well, you couldn’t blame the girl, but neither could you blame Graham for going home with Nancy, as Tommy was certain he had. What else could a young feller do?

Granny Kinch said nothing. She knew Tommy of old, and she wasn’t going to apologise to him for what her Nancy did. Of all the people in April Grove, he was the only one who might understand and make allowances. After all, he’d been in the Navy, he must have met other Nancies in his time, yes and made use of them too. He knew what their lives were like, even if he didn’t know what drove them to it.

The old woman turned and hobbled back indoors. Nancy was making a cup of tea, a cigarette hanging from her lip. She had the baby Vera balanced on one hip, grizzling.

‘This hot weather plays hell with my feet,’ Granny Kinch said, sinking into her sagging armchair. ‘Look ‘ow swollen my ankles are. And there’s flea-bites all up my legs. It’s that cat of yours, mangy thing, it must be riddled with vermin.’

‘Go on, Ma, we always has fleas in summer.’

‘Only because of your cat. It ain’t healthy, Nance, having it around with a baby just starting to crawl. You don’t know what she’s putting in her mouth. There was a dead mouse under the chair for days last week, she could’ve ate it any time.’

‘What, our Vera?’ Nancy gave a short laugh. ‘It’s hard enough getting her dinner down her, let alone dead mice. She wouldn’t eat a Christmas dinner if she found it on the floor.’

Granny Kinch sniffed and said nothing. Nancy passed her a cup of tea and she sucked at it.

‘Where’s young Micky?’

‘I dunno. Out somewhere. He’s bin running errands for people for a bit of pocket-money.’

‘Is that where this come from?’ Mrs Kinch picked up a china ashtray. It had a picture of a beach on it and the words

‘A Present from Brighton’ printed round the edge. ‘Run as far as Brighton, did ‘e?’

‘Oh, that’s just something someone give him. Didn’t have no money, see, so they give him that instead.’ Nancy glanced out of the back window. ‘Here he comes now. Looks as if he’s got a bag full of groceries.’