The Gunner Girl (38 page)

‘Oh, I intend to.' He held her elbow, and she let him guide her, underneath Marble Arch, like a church entrance, and across the street, through the slovenly afternoon traffic.

She concentrated on the moment, trying to ignore her rising panic. One foot in front of the other, left-right, face front, over the road, up the kerb, beyond the rubble at the end of Oxford
Street and on behind into Bryanston Street, past the church with the green spire like mould, the delivery vans and the discarded paper bags. How could she get out of this? There was a smashed milk
bottle on the pavement, flies delighting in the sickly smell of gone-off milk.
No point crying over spilled milk.
Who said that? She thought of a floral pinny, flour-covered hands, and a
kind voice.
No point crying over spilled milk.

Fred still had her elbow. It doesn't matter, she told herself. He can do what he wants, and then I'll leave. So what? A few minutes of him heaving and groaning on top of me,
that's all. Then it will all be over, and I can go back, back to being Bombardier Joan Tucker. But an image came into her head of an unshaven man with a milky-blind eye, and the feeling of
cold concrete under her thighs, and the lumpen-thump of bodies under a torn quilt and the moon-faced clock with its hands stuck at midnight.

‘Nearly there,' said Fred, grasping her elbow tighter and steering her up the street. ‘Told you it wasn't far, didn't I?'

He propelled her up the stone steps and into the entrance, past the tubby doorman, who looked away as they passed, and then on again, up a wide varnished wooden staircase that opened into a vast
cream marbled lobby, with low-slung stained-glass lampshades like Christmas baubles, and a lugubrious receptionist with a grey moustache. Fred said that he had a reservation: Mr and Mrs Cripps. The
receptionist handed over the room key, without making eye contact, muttering that it was top floor, far end of the corridor. The key was attached to a circular wooden fob. The cream paint was
chipped. Three-four-seven, it said in faded black lettering.

Fred shunted her in the direction of the lift. She could feel bruises beginning to form where his fingers dug in. The lift pinged and the doors slid open. A woman in a tight pink frock swept
past, smelling of old perfume and sweat. She didn't acknowledge them. Nobody looked at anyone else in the Mount Royal Hotel. Everyone looked the other way.

Fred let go of her arm once they were inside the lift and the doors had closed. She could hear him breathing, panting like a dog. She felt her heart sink as the lift rose. The walls were
mirrored, and she took out her lipstick from her gas-mask case and quickly slicked on a coat of summer geranium.

‘My Joan doesn't wear paint,' said Fred.

‘This Joan does,' said Joan. The lift stopped and the doors opened.

‘Get out,' said Fred, shoving her ahead of him. The corridor was low, dark and endless, like a tunnel with no light at the end of it. The air was dank and smoky. The crimson carpet
muffled their footsteps.

‘In here,' he said, as they reached the end of the corridor. He fiddled with the key in the lock. The door opened to reveal a tiny room, almost filled with a double bed with a red
eiderdown. There was one small window. The curtains were open, and in the distance she could see a grey-green spire, almost touching the bruised mass of clouds. She went inside and heard him close
the door behind him. He didn't even bother locking it, before he had her up against the wall.

‘Joan, I've waited so long for you,' he said, but as he looked at her, his eyes were unfocused. He was pawing at the buttons on her uniform, muttering: ‘Why did you stop
writing, Joan? Why did you stop? I kept all your letters, and then you stopped. You didn't stop loving me, did you?'

The air shivered and there was the faraway rumble of thunder. His hand was on her breast, now, his face in her neck.

‘They told me you were dead. But I found you again, in the paper. All that time we spent apart. But it doesn't matter. None of it matters, now we're together again, like you
promised.' The air was thick. Her head throbbed. ‘Joan, why aren't you wearing the scent I bought you for your birthday? And your hair – what have you done to your beautiful
hair? It used to be the colour of sunrise at sea – remember I wrote you that – but you've bleached all the colour out. Why did you do that, Joan, when you know how I loved
it?'

There was an insistent humming in her ears, muffling his words. Her throat was sandpaper dry. His lips were on her skin, his long fingers probing inside her bra. Joan shunted him forwards,
towards the bed. The quicker she could get this over and done with, the better. He stood by the end of the bed, gazing at her with that strange look. She thought she could smell chrysanthemums.
There was a faint flash, and a pause. The thunder was louder this time, closer in. Soon the storm would be right overhead.

‘Come on then, Fred,' she said, looking into his eyes. ‘Come on now; there's a good lad,' she talked to him like a child, and she started to unbutton the fly on his
trousers. He looked down at her hands, fumbling with the catch. She could see the point in his face where the burnt flesh met the good, like port seeping into milk.

‘Where's your ring?' he said.

‘What ring?'

‘The engagement ring I bought you, Joan, where is it?'

She looked down to where he was looking, at her left hand, outstretched. And it seemed to her that for a moment she could see an engagement ring: thin gold with little sapphires and seed pearls,
and for an instant her nails weren't chipped from shifting clunky army machinery, they were perfect ovals, buffed, fingernails clean. Joan always had such lovely clean nails, she thought,
because of that new manicure set she got for her birthday. She brought her right hand across meet the other; it wasn't yet cold.

She glanced away. There was a flash and a deafening crack. Then she heard him: ‘Get down! Get down!' He pushed her back onto the bed, pinning her down. His knee was in her groin. The
buttons on his jacket dug into her. In her face, the damp-cloth-sweat smell of his clothes. The suffocating weight of him on top of her and her skull whipping back against the bed board. She tried
to breathe, couldn't, shoved at the weight on top of her. A button grinding into her cheek; acrid smell in her nostrils. They rolled together, slow motion wrestlers. A sound in her head, deep
and painful: bomber engines thudding like bluebottles buzzing inside her skull.

She bit down hard on flesh until she felt the metallic warmth of blood. There was a blinding flash and the sound of someone screaming. She turned her head to see where the noise came from. It
was him, clutching a bloodied cheek, howling feral noises. She wrenched free. And then the acid rush of vomit up her throat, as the bile upsurged. She tried to stop it; the effort was like
swallowing acid.

‘I'm not Joan. I'm Vanessa!' she yelled, above the roar and crash. ‘I'm Vanessa!'

A man shoved past her as Bea reached the hotel doorway, drenched already in the sudden storm. She noticed his face, fleetingly, as he passed: livid red on one side, and
dripping blood, like a freshly picked scab. He was in a merchant navy uniform. ‘Watch yourself, pal,' she said, but he ignored her, breaking into an uneven run as he hit the corner with
Oxford Street, then disappearing into the sheeting rain. There was another crack of thunder.

She caught the eye of the fat doorman, who held out his giant umbrella and rolled his eyes at her. ‘Dunno why he was in such a rush to get away, he's only been here about ten
minutes,' he said, then caught himself, cleared his throat, and looked away across the street.

‘Was he here with a girl?' said Bea, thinking of Joan, thinking of how the hell she was going to find Joan.

‘I couldn't possibly say, madam,' said the doorman, who had suddenly regained his professional demeanour.

‘It's a friend of mine. I'm worried about her,' said Bea. ‘Some lad said he was taking her to the Mount Royal, but I don't think she wanted to go with
him,' she said.

‘I'm afraid it's not hotel policy to give out information about the guests,' he said snootily, still looking out into the middle distance, where the gutters were gushing
grey water into the drains. She moved a step closer to him. She could see his thinning hair, black streaked with grey, slicked back greasily across his shiny forehead under the cap. Was that a
touch of rouge on his cheeks? He smelled sweet, like spilled cider. She'd heard about the staff at some of these posh hotels: what went on with young cavalry officers and waiters, in
basements and broom cupboards.

‘I suppose it's more than your job's worth to say anything?' she said. The doorman cleared his throat, nodded imperceptibly. She felt the advance wage packet, fat in the
manila envelope in her pocket. It was meant for doctors' bills, for Ma: a whole month's wages, ahead of time. ‘How much is your job worth?' she said.

His eyes flicked quickly up and down the street. There were a couple of people sheltering from the storm in the church doorway, at the far end. Other than that, the place was empty. Rain drummed
on the awning. The doorman cleared his throat. ‘A guinea,' he said.

‘A guinea?' she said. ‘I'm only a bloody soldier, chum. I'm not one of your hoi-polloi.'

‘All right, then. Three shillings.'

‘Two.'

‘Go on then, two.' Bea pulled two notes from the wage packet and slipped them into his palm. He quickly stuffed them into his trouser pocket. ‘Top corridor, far end,
don't know the room number, but that's where Mr Simeon puts all the t—' She could tell he was going to say ‘tarts' but he stopped himself – ‘. . .
type of clientele,' he finished.

There was the sound of a car drawing up. A large black Ford stopped at the kerb and a chauffeur in a grey uniform rushed round with a black brolly and opened the rear passenger-side door. Bea
glimpsed a stockinged leg and the hem of a powder-blue skirt. ‘Thank you, and enjoy your stay at the Mount Royal,' the doorman said loudly, ushering Bea inside.

She didn't notice at first, because it was dark up in the top corridor, much darker than it had been in the mirrored interior of the lift. She stepped through the doors,
noticing only the serried ranks of bedroom doors, like a row of gravestones, grey oblongs stretching away into the darkness. She wiped the wet hair off her brow and walked forwards into the
gloom.

‘Joan?' she called out hesitantly. Nobody answered. What to do? Knock on each bedroom door individually? What if Joan wasn't here at all? The doorman hadn't actually said
. . . Her feet made no sound on the burgundy carpet, as she began to walk down the corridor.

‘Joan?' she tried again, louder this time, but still there was no response. She was thinking about what had happened with Edie; how they'd noticed too late. Not Joan, too. Not
again. She began to run down the corridor, calling out Joan's name. But the doors all stayed shut and silent, and the corridor was empty. At the end was a fire door, and the corridor turned
to the right, another empty row of blank doorways leading off into the gloom. Bea paused; caught her breath.

She thought again about what that bloke had said to Joan outside the hut. What was it he'd called her? It was the same name she'd used when she got drunk in the pub, on leave. What
was the name?

‘Vanessa?' she called out, louder still. There was a murmur from the very far end of the corridor. A pile of shadows lurched into life.

‘Vanessa!' someone was calling her. She thought the voice must be inside her head. Her eyes swam. The carpet was like lava flow. The voice called again. She
hadn't imagined it, then. She looked up. A young woman in uniform was walking towards her.

‘It
is
you,' said the woman, she had an accent – not cockney, Kent maybe? – and a round, concerned face, bending over. She looked familiar. There was a hand on
her shoulder.

She nodded, shifting position. Her head was pounding. ‘Yes, it is me,' she replied, but the words were thick, like gobbets of dough plopping unchewed from her lips. She had her back
against a wall. All around were doors, doors shut tight, unseeing eyes.

‘What the hell did he do to you, girl?' said the woman, bending over her, touching her arm.

‘Fred? Nothing. It's Joan he wants, not me,' she replied.

‘Well, you're safe now,' and the woman knelt down beside her, put an arm round her shoulder. The woman's arm was on hers, khaki on khaki – she was in uniform, too,
just like the woman. It made no sense. Her mind groped in the murk. ‘What are we going to do with you, Bombardier Tucker?' the estuary accent rolled like a river round her.

‘Bombardier Tucker?'

‘That's you, girl. Bombardier Joan Tucker, ATS. Deary me, you're not yourself at all, are you?' The woman's voice was soft and kind. The buzzing had almost stopped.
There was a vile taste in her mouth. The woman took out a clean hankie and reached forward to wipe her face. ‘Need to get you looking presentable before we can go back,' she said.
‘Come on, let's be 'aving you.' A hand outstretched in front of her. She grasped the hand and let herself be pulled up. The ground shifted and lurched. She bashed into a
bedroom door as she struggled to get up; the door opened.

‘I didn't order room service,' said a tired-sounding posh voice.

When Edie woke up, the room was empty. Mrs Cowie had left a note, on the bedside table with a phone number, and an old copy of
Harper's Bazaar.
It was the one
with the red-and-black-patchwork-clothed woman on the cover, the same one she'd read the day she joined up, Edie remembered. The letters of Mrs Cowie's neat rounded handwriting swam
about on the paper, like goldfish in a bowl.