The Gunner Girl (19 page)

She padded up the stairs and along the corridor to Joan's room. Her father's voice was just a low rumble from the hallway. She carried on walking. She pushed open the door to the
yellow room with her foot, careful not to spill any of the cocoa on the cream carpet. Joan was opening a packet of cigarettes. She offered them to Edie.

‘No, thank you, you know I don't. Anyway, Mummy wouldn't like it,' Edie said.

‘Mummy doesn't need to know.'

‘I know, but still . . .' she put the mugs of cocoa down on the bedside table. Everyone else seemed to smoke, but she never had, and now it seemed too late to start. She didn't
want to make a show of herself, coughing and spluttering the first time.

‘Well, you can just share mine if you want,' said Joan, striking a match. Edie sat on the bed next to her and picked up her cocoa. She took a sip; it wasn't half bad, with
honey instead of sugar. She watched how the match flame connected with the tip of the cigarette and how the cigarette suddenly hissed and flared orange as Joan inhaled. When Joan breathed out, the
smoke swirled all around them. It smelled pungent, grown up.

‘I don't know about you, but I'm a bit chilly. Shall we?' said Joan, pulling back the bed covers. They both got into bed together, pillows plumped at their backs and legs
just touching under the blankets. Edie put down her cocoa and Joan held out the cigarette.

‘You hold it like this,' she said, demonstrating. ‘Not like this – you don't want to look like Sheila-blooming-Carter.' Edie giggled. ‘Right, now, when
you bring it up to your lips, you let them pout – see – like you're about to kiss a boyfriend.'

Edie felt herself blush. ‘I've never kissed a boy.'

‘Never?'

She shook her head.

‘Edith Elizabeth, I am shocked!' said Joan, in a voice that sounded so much like Mummy that Edie couldn't help but laugh. ‘Stop laughing and concentrate,' said
Joan. ‘Bring the cigarette up to your lips and breathe in. Try not to cough. When you breathe out again, do it gently, like you're blowing a kiss.'

Edie took the cigarette and brought it to her lips. She dwelt briefly on what didn't happen with Kenneth in the cinema, puckered up, and inhaled. The smoke hit her lungs like a punch, and
she doubled up, coughing for what felt like for ever. Joan took the cigarette off her. When she finally calmed down, she wiped her teary eyes on the sleeve of her nightie.

‘How was that?' said Joan.

‘Dreadful,' said Edie, feeling sick.

Joan tapped ash onto the china ring tray on the bedside table. Edie didn't want to mention that it wasn't actually an ashtray. ‘You have to persevere,' she said.
‘It's never great the first time. But before you try again, tell me who you were thinking about when you put the fag to your lips?'

‘Nobody!'

‘Nobody called . . .?'

‘Oh, give over, Joan.'

‘Come on, out with it. What's his name?'

‘Kenneth.'

‘Kenneth, eh? And?'

‘And nothing. Anyway, he's MIA.'

There was a pause while neither of them spoke. Joan continued to smoke. Edie heard the chiming clink as the telephone receiver was put down in the hallway.

‘Still feeling sick?' said Joan at last. Edie said she was feeling fine now, thank you.

‘Right, let's give it another shot. Here, try it like this; open your mouth and I'll just blow the smoke inside. It won't be as strong, so it'll be easier for you
to get used to.'

Joan inhaled and then put her face right up close to Edie's and Edie could see her hazel-flecked eyes and the way her lashes curled. Edie parted her lips and Joan blew smoke into her
mouth. Their lips were so close they almost touched. Edie breathed the smoke in and this time she didn't cough, just felt it warm inside her and it made her feel swoony She said she felt
giddy, and Joan smiled and said that it would do, the first few times.

‘Want to go again?' said Joan, taking another drag. Edie nodded and they shared smoky breaths over again, until the cigarette was finished and Edie felt as if she were floating away.
She closed her eyes. She could stay here for ever. Downstairs, the grandfather clock chimed. Edie opened her eyes.

‘I suppose I'd really better go,' she said. ‘After all, we have to be up for church in the morning.'

‘You don't have to. We can top and tail if you want?'

‘Top and what?'

‘Tail. Your head at that end and mine at this.'

Edie thought that wouldn't be half a lark, but she needed to say her prayers first. It was cold out of bed, and the room was still shifting slightly. She knelt down and closed her eyes and
quickly recited the Lord's Prayer under her breath, and then mentally thanked Him for the health of her family and friends and asked Him to please help them all to stay strong and beat
Hitler. She knew she ought to do more, but she was desperate to get back under the warm covers. When she opened her eyes, Joan had lit another cigarette and was blowing the smoke upwards in a plume
towards the ceiling rose.

‘Aren't you going to say your prayers?' said Edie.

‘I don't think so,' said Joan.

‘Why? Don't you believe?' said Edie, getting into the other end of the bed. Joan just tossed her a spare pillow and she lay down. Their bodies were a comfortable muddle under
the bedclothes. Joan stubbed out her cigarette and turned out the bedside light, saying nothing.

‘Goodbye,' Joan called. She doubted whether Edie would hear her through the thick glass windows. Edie waved from the platform, beginning to walk to keep pace with
the moving train. She was smiling as she began to jog, but she looked forlorn, like a schoolgirl chasing a missed bus. Edie kept running, right until the end of the platform, and then stood,
waving, a redheaded girl in a green serge coat, getting smaller and smaller, until the train rounded a corner, and she was gone.

Joan turned her attention inside. It was pointless trying to find a compartment – everywhere was jam-packed – but she thought she could maybe just sit on top of her kit bag in the
corridor. People could still get past if she tucked up her knees. She was about to sit down when a white-faced woman stopped right next to her, and there was no longer any space to sit. The woman
held a grizzling toddler on one hip. ‘Why don't you look out for the moo-cows, Annie?' she said in a tired voice, pointing outside. But Annie wasn't interested in the
moo-cows. She shook her blonde curls and whined.

The cheerless countryside pulled past the grimy windows: grey skies; brown ploughed fields; and charcoal smudges of hedges and ditches. The very motion of the train seemed to echo the War
Office's nagging phrase:
Is your journey really necessary? Is your journey really necessary?
Yes it is, thought Joan. Because I'm going to see Bea – and because
I've nowhere else to go on leave.

She remembered the last time she was on a train: down to Devon to the recruit training camp. Edie had been with her then, wittering on about Glenn Miller and parties, and piano exams and how she
should have gone to finishing school in Paris, but Hitler put paid to that. Every time Edie asked Joan a question about herself – family or school – her mind had gone as blank and empty
as the dull skies that were now streaming past the train windows. All she'd known was that she was Joan Tucker and she was joining the ATS. So they'd ended up talking about films, and
film stars, and she'd found that she'd known an awful lot about that, funnily enough.

The woman was trying to put the toddler down, now, but every time her little bootied feet connected with the corridor floor, the girl started to chunter again. The woman sighed and Joan gave her
a sympathetic look. A fair-haired young man in army uniform came striding down the corridor towards them. Joan shifted back against the window, ready to let him pass. But as he reached her, he
stopped. Her eyes scanned his uniform – no flashes on his upper arms, but a pip on his epaulette: a second lieutenant.

‘Crowded, isn't it?' he said, pulling a packet of Sweet Afton from his pocket. She nodded. He was standing quite close to her, and the motion of the train meant he kept rocking
in, closer still. She wanted to move away, but the woman with the toddler was still stood right next to her. ‘Care to join me?' He held out the open packet. He had an Irish accent, she
noticed. She was gasping for a fag, but if she shared a smoke with him, he'd take it to mean something. And although he seemed nice enough, she really wasn't in the mood to be chatted
up.

‘I'm sorry, I don't smoke, but thank you,' she said, hoping he wouldn't notice her nicotine-stained fingertips. She inched away, nudging into the washed-out woman,
whose child was still mewling intermittently. ‘Would you like me to take her for a bit – give you a rest?' she said, turning to the woman.

At that, the woman smiled, and Joan thought what lovely blue eyes she had, and how she'd be pretty, if she weren't so obviously at the end of her tether. ‘Would you mind? Only
she's been up half the night, and I'm desperate for a smoke,' said the woman.

‘Not at all,' said Joan, reaching out and taking the child. ‘You giving your mum a hard time?' she said, smiling and jiggling the little girl, who gave a sudden chortle,
and clapped her sticky hands.

Joan turned to look back at the soldier, who was just about to spark up. He took the hint, retrieving the packet of fags from his pocket and offering it to the woman, who said, how very kind of
you, and took one. Joan swapped places with the woman, and the soldier lit both of their cigarettes. Joan started playing ‘round and round the garden, went a teddy bear' with the little
girl's hand. After a few moments, the soldier cleared his throat and said he'd better get on, his stop was due soon, edged past them, and strode off to the next carriage.

‘You missed your chance there, ducks,' said the woman, grinning at her and flicking ash onto the corridor floor.

‘Maybe,' said Joan, hugging the little girl and looking out of the window. The sky was turning blue in the distance, as the clouds cleared: grey-blue, like an airman's uniform
– like Rob's uniform. ‘Maybe, or maybe not,' she said, as the train sped on.

‘Here we are,' said Bea, stopping outside the door of a tiny terrace. Joan could hear laughter from inside, and music from the radio. ‘The door's
unlocked. You go on in, they know you're coming. I'm just off to the chippy – the twins finished the bread and there's nothing in the larder.'

‘I'll come with you. Let me get the chips,' said Joan.

‘No, you're our guest.'

‘But I didn't bring anything with me. I feel like I should have brought a box of chocolates or something.'

‘You seen many boxes of chocolates in the shops lately? Even if you did have the coupons.'

‘Well, let me get the chips, at least.'

‘Oh, go on, then. Leave your bag on the step. No one will take it from outside ours.'

The chippy was round the corner, past the pub. There was no moon. Most people had already blacked out, even though it wasn't quite dark yet. They picked their way over the cracked paving
slabs, passing mounds of rubble and gaps in the terrace where the cloudy twilit sky and the wreckage of bombed out houses formed a grey collage of misshapes.

‘You got it bad in the Blitz then?' said Joan.

‘Who didn't?' said Bea, tramping along beside her.

‘Why weren't your little brothers and sisters all evacuated?'

‘They tried. We should have been, but Ma wouldn't let them go. She said nobody was taking her babies away from her.'

They walked on, passing the black pub doors, rimmed with amber light and leaking piano music and singing.

‘You had a good time at Edie's?' said Bea. Joan nodded. She didn't want to be disloyal. She didn't want to say that Edie's house was both the largest and the
loneliest home she'd ever visited.

Inside the chippy, it was warm and light and smelled of hot fat and vinegar. Joan squinted her eyes against the sudden brightness. She began to order nine bags of chips but Bea said that the
twins could bloody well share, after all the bread they'd scoffed, so she ordered eight bags from a man with a droopy moustache and a missing tooth, called Mr Lavery.

‘You sure about this, Joan?' said Bea, when Mr Lavery had totalled up. Joan smiled and nodded, even though she was thinking, bang goes that powder compact I was saving up for.

Mr Lavery took her money with an air of sadness, and asked Bea how she was getting on in the ATS. Bea said very well, thanks for asking, Mr Lavery, grabbing the hot paper packets of chips and
nudging Joan towards the door.

Yesterday's newspapers bled ink all over the chips and stained their fingers as they rushed back to Bea's house through the darkening streets.

Inside, they were assailed by children. There seemed to be faces and hands everywhere as the chip bags were grabbed and fought over. Bea introduced her to them all, but the names swirled and
flew and Joan knew she'd never remember them. Voices yelled and laughed and nothing stayed still. Bea cuffed a couple of them for not saying thank you for the chips, and then suddenly
everyone fell silent. A figure had appeared at the bottom of the stairs: a wiry, knotted woman. The children melted out of the way as she moved towards Joan.

‘It's nice to meet a friend of our Bea's,' she said, wiping her hand on her apron before holding it out. The handshake was tight and swift. ‘How do you like your
tea, girl?'

As Bea's mother turned to go and put the kettle on, it was as if the room came to life behind her. It reminded Joan of a game from school called Grandmother's Footsteps, where
everyone froze when Grandmother turned to face them. Bea's mum had the kettle on the hob and was getting out the tea caddy when there was the sound of a baby crying. Joan saw the mound of
blankets in the armchair begin to writhe, and a little foot kick out.