The Gunner Girl (36 page)

‘It's quite all right; they're very discreet here,' she said to Edie as she hung up. And Edie nodded and looked out of the window to where a dove-grey cloud was beginning
to form behind the spire.

Dr Bloomberg came out of the bathroom. Meredith stood with one hand on the cheval mirror frame, biting the inside of her lip. ‘Well,' said the doctor. ‘How many weeks is she
gone?'

‘I'm not sure,' said Mrs Cowie, and turned to Edie. ‘When did you last have the curse, dear?' The doctor and Mrs Cowie were both looking at her, waiting for an
answer. Edith felt flustered; it was such a personal question. Nobody talked about such things, ever.

‘Come, come. I'm a doctor. I need to know.'

‘Just tell Dr Bloomberg, dear.' Edith thought back. It must have been a couple of weeks before the royal visit, she supposed. Mrs Cowie and Dr Bloomberg discussed how long ago that
was, Mrs Cowie counting out the weeks on her fingers. Her fingernails were dark red, like the hotel carpets.

‘Good,' said Dr Bloomberg, nodding importantly in Meredith's direction. ‘You've caught her early. It shouldn't be too problematic at this stage.' He
began to roll up his sleeves.

There was another knock at the door and a muffled voice called out, ‘Room service.' Mrs Cowie called out to say leave it outside, and they all waited as the maid's footsteps
retreated down the corridor. Only when they heard the ping of the lift did Mrs Cowie open the door and bring in the trolley. On it was a huge ewer steaming with hot water and two neatly folded
claret-coloured towels. They matched the carpet, and the shiny satin bed cover.

Dr Bloomberg opened his bag. ‘Perhaps you should refresh yourself before we begin,' he said. It was more of a statement than a question, but Edie didn't really understand what
he meant. She looked over at Mrs Cowie, who was making shooing motions with her hands, ushering Edie towards the ensuite. So Edie got up and went into the bathroom. Mrs Cowie's head appeared
round the door.

‘Just go to the loo and wash yourself
down there
,' she whispered, gesturing. Edie nodded and locked the bathroom door. Her urine stung and the water in the toilet bowl was
yellow. She took off her shoes and the hateful lisle stockings and khaki bloomers. She hung the bloomers and stockings on the towel rail, not knowing what else to do with them. She took off her
skirt and lay it over the edge of the bath. She filled the tiny sink with lukewarm water and used the hotel flannel to soak herself, down there, as she'd been told. And she rubbed her pubic
hair with the soap, lathering it up. The soap was already soft, used. She thought of the doctor's chubby pink palms all over it. She wiped off the soapsuds with the flannel. It made a wet
patch on the floor, so she covered it over with the bath mat. The tiny window here was frosted glass and the church spire just a sliver of pale green.

There was a knock at the bathroom door. ‘The doctor is ready for you,' said Mrs Cowie.

But I'm naked from the waist down, thought Edie. He can't see me like this. She quickly put on her skirt, but she left the bloomers and stockings hanging limply from the rail, like
game waiting to be butchered.

She unlocked the door and went back into the bedroom. The doctor turned to look at her. He was fiddling with a long orange latex tube. There was a basin of water at the foot of the bed. The
sheets had been pulled back and a bath towel placed over the middle of the mattress.

‘I don't want to ruin your uniform,' said Dr Bloomberg.

‘Take your skirt off, dear,' said Mrs Cowie.

Edie looked at them. Surely, they didn't expect her to just strip. The doctor was putting one end of the tube in the basin. The water was cloudy. The tube had a sort of round blob in it.
It looked like one of the puffball spritzers on Mummy's perfume bottles. The doctor turned his back and took something out of his bag.

‘Come along,' said Mrs Cowie. Edith fumbled with the catch on her skirt and it slid to the floor, exposing her. Mrs Cowie motioned for her to get onto the bed, so she did. The towel
was scratchy under her buttocks. Mrs Cowie pulled a sheet over her middle, but bunched it up, so it barely covered her thighs. She half sat, looking down at her legs thinking distractedly about how
her toenails needed trimming.

The doctor still had his back turned to them. He'd taken off his suit jacket and his braces cut into his shirt. There were dark patches under his arms. It looked like he was wringing his
hands. The air smelled suddenly sharp: surgical spirit, she thought. That's good. It means he's clean. He turned back and picked up one end of the latex tube. It had a white end. It
reminded Edie of a duck's bill.

‘Lie back and lift up your knees,' he said.

As she lay, Edie heard the bathroom door open and close and the lock click. Mrs Cowie had shut herself in the ensuite. Edie was alone with the doctor. She turned her head on the pillow; outside,
the sky was darkening, the clouds building up behind the church spire, purple and lumpen. Dr Bloomberg's hand was warm and sticky, pushing open her thighs underneath the thin cotton sheet.
She could smell the surgical spirit, and soap, and the smell of his sweat. She couldn't look. Then there was the thing, hard and probing, there. She didn't mean to, but she kicked
out.

‘Keep still, now, there's a good girl.' He talked to her as if he were talking to a horse. And his hand was on her again and the thing was there and she couldn't help it
but she lashed out and he tripped backwards. He made an ‘ouf' sound as he fell. And then said, ‘Good God!' quite loudly. She heard the sound of the bathroom door being
opened.

‘Is everything all right?' said Mrs Cowie.

‘Can you please control your daughter?' said the doctor, brushing himself down and picking up the tubing again.

‘She's no daughter of mine,' said Mrs Cowie and slapped Edie, hard on the cheek. It stung. Mrs Cowie said, ‘Don't be a silly little tart; you've caused your
father enough trouble already. Have you any idea how much this is costing him? Just lie still and let the doctor get on with it.' And outside, the sky was now bunching up beyond the church
spire and the sun had gone in.

Then someone held her knees apart and they put the thing there, right in, all the way in, and it hurt like it had done outside the 400 Club and they kept saying. ‘That's it, be a
good girl now. It doesn't hurt, does it?'

But it did hurt. It hurt as the hot water shot up the tube and hit her womb like a lead weight and everything ruptured and gave and the air was taut with pain as her stomach contracted and
heaved and the bed groaned and everything was hot and wet and full of hurt and the wetness spread like the bed was blotting paper and the pain went on and on and the towel was claret-coloured like
the carpet and someone patted her hand and said, ‘There, there, that wasn't too bad, was it?' And she wanted to say, yes, it was too bad; it was all too bad – it was all bad
and there was no goodness left, but she couldn't talk at all. And then someone propped her up and made her take a tablet in water and they stabbed a needle in her arm and everything began to
go soft and blurred at the edges, and she heard the doctor say, ‘It started so nice, but it looks like rain, now.'

And the spire in the window turned charcoal and then darker and then the voices all went quiet and it was black.

The little gold ring on her right ring finger winked in the sunshine as Joan rubbed a second coat of oil into the gunmetal. Cleaning the predictor was one of the jobs she
didn't mind. There was something satisfying about getting every blackened speck out of the corners, and re-oiling the whole thing until it gleamed. She liked the rhythm of it, and the feel of
the metal under her fingertips. She and Bea had been working together, but Bea had just been called off by Staff Farr to take a telephone call. Joan decided to take a break, dropping her cleaning
rag down next to the oilcan.

Joan closed her lids against the hot sun and leant back against the concrete wall. She listened to the other girls talking as they tackled the Bofors in the next emplacement. They were
discussing a new film out at the flicks, called
First of the Few
and the reserve troop were all planning to go and see it on their next evening pass. That dishy David Niven was in it,
apparently. It was all about Bomber Command.

She thought about Rob. She still hadn't given him an answer. She thought of his face, as she looked down, after he'd asked. That look he had. It made her feel all wrong. Bea said she
should have said yes straight off. Joan didn't know why she hadn't; except there was that dizziness and the buzzing noise and it didn't feel right. She would have phoned or
written to Rob that night, but then that chap turned up in the NAAFI, calling her Vanessa, saying that he was Joan Tucker's fiancé. He said his name was Fred. He said they'd got
engaged before he went off with the arctic convoys last year. He thought she was dead, he said, but he saw her photo in the paper and came to find her. He said, ‘Funny, Joan, you look exactly
like your little sister, Vanessa.' And he pushed his face right into hers. When she thought about him, she felt sick. Thank God, Edie had turned up. Joan told everyone he was a nutter, just
some poor sailor back from the North Sea, not right in the head, obsessing about a girl in the paper. But she recognised him. She knew his name before he told her. And when he said,
‘Vanessa' like that, it was like someone pulling back the elastic on a catapult, ready to hurl.

But he'd gone away, hadn't he? He'd gone. Maybe he was just a nutcase. He probably wouldn't come back. What she needed to do was have a good time and forget all about it.
Maybe Bea could help? Maybe they should go to the flicks with the others? She opened her eyes and turned round and began to say, ‘Hey, how about . . .' forgetting Bea wasn't
there. But someone else was. It was Billy who was standing so close; he must've sidled up while she had her eyes shut. His thigh was right next to hers.

‘How about it? Any time, just say the word, Tucker,' he said, grinning, pulling out a packet of Craven ‘A'. She shifted away.

‘I'm sorry, I thought you were Gunner Smith,' she said.

‘Nope. Just me. Just little old me,' he said, offering the packet to her. She hesitated, then took one. The match flared and she inhaled and the smoke was as hot and dry in her mouth
as the midday air behind the guns. ‘How's tricks?' said Billy, slipping a hand familiarly behind her waist.

‘Not here,' she muttered through an exhalation.

‘Quartermaster's on leave,' said Billy.

The group of girls cleaning the Bofors gun broke into uproarious giggles. Where was Bea? Where was she when you needed her? Billy's hand began to slide downwards. His fingers made a
pointed shape, which he shoved under her arse and in, down there. Goosing, that's what they called it.

‘No, Billy,' she said under her breath, moving sideways.

‘I'm on me own in stores for the rest of the day,' he said.

The gemstones on her ring flashed in the light, as she brought the cigarette to her lips again. ‘I'm with Rob,' she said, and inhaled deeply.

‘That's not what you said the other week, when the coppers was here.'

‘That was different,' she voiced through the smoky exhalation.

‘I kept me trap shut for you.'

‘Thank you. I'm grateful, really I am.'

‘How grateful?'

How could she get out of this without making a scene? Where the hell was Bea? Billy was back again, his fingers probing and feeling downwards from the base of her spine, under her arse.

She took a drag on her cigarette so that the tip was really smouldering, flicked the ash off and rolled it against the wall, so that it was a little white-orange cone of heat. She held it in her
right hand, listening to the other girls, just out of sight in the next emplacement. Someone was talking loudly about the new junior commander who was due in post, wondering if they'd get
someone decent this time. Nobody had liked the one who'd just left. Good riddance to bad rubbish – Joan recognised Sheila Carter's voice. Casually Joan let her hand fall, still
staring ahead. Billy was so close that the burning tip of her fag contacted with the cloth of his trousers, at the top of his thigh, near his groin.

‘Ow, what did you do that for, you silly bitch?' He jumped away. There was a little black singed circle on the khaki trousers.

‘Sorry,' said Joan, dropping the fag on the concrete and grinding it into the dust with the toe of her boot.

‘These are new issue and all,' said Billy.

‘I said, sorry,' said Joan, not looking at him, still looking ahead. She could just glimpse out of the top of the emplacement. A figure was walking up the main drag: a man striding
towards them. He was too far away to see what uniform he had on, but he was getting closer by the moment. He walked quickly, eyes fixed straight ahead, eyes fixed on her. Her chest contracted as
she realised who it was.

Rob saw her way before she noticed him. Some lad was chatting her up, it looked like. But he'd gone now. There was always some lad. It wasn't her fault, he thought.
He'd have given it a go, if he was in Hyde Park Battery, if he was down on the guns, instead of up in the sky, dodging flak. He glanced round to say as much to that merchant-navy chap
who'd been on the bus with him. Strange bloke. Awkward talking to him with that huge burn on his face, hard not to appear to be staring at it.

The tube was closed and the bus from Victoria had been full; they'd ended up sitting next to each other. Rob hadn't wanted to talk, not to anyone, but the navy chap had started,
saying he was off to meet his girl in Hyde Park Barracks, and Rob had admitted that he was also on his way there too. Rob watched London trail past, lit a cigarette, listened mostly, tried not to
stare at the angry burn on the man's face. ‘I'm taking her to a posh hotel – lucky she'll still have me, like this,' he gestured and Rob was forced to look at
the indecent rawness of it.