The Silent War (21 page)

On these Saturday winter afternoons, Sunday had taken
up
young Ronnie Cloy’s invitation to let him show her around the place. She found him great company, for he seemed to have such a love for everything he did that, even though half the time she couldn’t catch everything the boy was saying, he somehow always managed to communicate such enthusiasm for wanting to share with her everything he knew.

‘I once saw the Home Guard take this German pilot prisoner. Actually there was two of them, but the other one got killed when his parachute didn’t open and he crashed down through the roof of the old Dairy near Clare.’

Ronnie was in a sprightly mood. For the past hour or so, he and Sunday had been on a trek through the woods around the village, and he was greatly enjoying his role as a country guide. At times, Sunday found it hard going, for the snow had turned to ice, and they spent a lot of the time trying to avoid falling over.

‘We’ve had a lot of bombs ’round here, you know.’ Only occasionally did Ronnie forget to look directly at Sunday as he talked to her. ‘’Specially when the war started. They had a big one over near Meadows Farm, and quite a lot at Halstead. We had a flying bomb at Hedingham,’ he said, as they climbed a snow-covered stile, and then added ghoulishly, ‘and a rocket that killed loads over Chelmsford.’

Sunday forgave him for the way he related the morbid details of local air-raids. She knew only too well that all boys his age had a morbid fascination with war, even that snotty-nosed lot back at ‘the Buildings’. To them, death and destruction was all part of one big adventure. Nonetheless, it did cross her mind to wonder how he would cope if he were to live much closer to the daily human tragedies of war, in a town or city, like London.

They trudged across a wide stretch of field, their feet leaving deep imprints, and crunching in the snow as they went. When they reached the edge of some thick woods, Ronnie came to a halt and paused for a moment. Turning
round
to gaze out at the snow-covered landscape behind them, he said, ‘This is my favourite view. I always come here when I want to get away from Dad.’

The sun was just managing to squeeze out from behind the clouds, and quite suddenly the whole scene before them was transformed into a dazzling glare.

Sunday relished the moment of warmth on her face, which prompted her to pull down the hood of her duffle coat. ‘Don’t you like your dad?’ she asked Ronnie.

The boy swung a look at her. ‘Are you joking!’ he spluttered, his face crumpled up in disdain. ‘He thinks I’m a cissy. But I’m not!’

‘Why does he think that?’ asked Sunday, curious.

‘’Cos I don’t like living on the farm,’ he answered. Then he took out a packet of chewing-gum, and offered her one. ‘Gum?’

Sunday looked surprised. She hadn’t seen chewing-gum for a long time. So she took one.

‘We get lots of it from the Yanks,’ he said, his mouth already moving rapidly as he softened the gum with his teeth. ‘They give us a lot of things – sweets and stuff. My dad’s always on the fiddle. Gets petrol off the ration, and all sorts of buckshee things.’

Sunday had guessed as much the moment she saw that half-finished bar of American candy on Cloy’s desk. ‘Why don’t you like living on the farm, Ronnie?’ she asked, her voice even more difficult to understand as she chewed the gum.

‘I don’t like seeing things killed,’ he said, before stooping down to roll himself a snowball. Then looking up, he added, ‘Pigs and chickens. I give them names. They’re like pets to me. Then
he
sends them all off to be slaughtered.’ He stood up and threw his snowball as far as he could. ‘D’you know what he did once?’ he said, turning back to Sunday again. ‘He brought a chicken out into the yard, and told me to watch. Then he cut off the poor thing’s head right in front of me. I couldn’t bear it. He knew I couldn’t. That’s why he did it. I ran away.’

Sunday felt a wave of maternal fondness for the boy.

‘D’you know why I come here?’ Ronnie asked.

Sunday shook her head.

‘See that house over there?’ he asked, stretching out his hand and pointing with one finger across the field. ‘That red house – just to the left of that big tree that’s bending over to one side.’

Sunday nodded. She could see the house he was indicating on the far side of the field in the distance, distinctively red-coloured, the only one set in the middle of a row of white distempered cottages with thatched roofs.

‘I used to come here with my dog, Rupert. He was a golden Labrador. We used to have a smashing time. While I spent the time looking at the house and wondering why it was the only one painted red, Rupert used to sniff around for rabbits. I like that house. I like it ’cos it’s different.’ Ronnie sighed. It was the only time he revealed his true feelings. ‘Dad made me get rid of Rupert. He said he didn’t want him chasing the pheasants. Dad doesn’t like things that move. He just has to shoot them. By the way,’ he asked, ‘are you a Cockney?’

Sunday was taken aback by the boy’s sudden change of mood. ‘In a way – yes,’ she replied, a little flustered. ‘But I wasn’t born close enough to the sound of Bow Bells.’

‘I knew some Cockneys once,’ said Ronnie, stamping the heel of his wellington boot on the hard crust of the frozen snow. ‘There was this man, used to live over Toppesfield way. Came from this place called Walthamstow, or somewhere like that. ’Course, they weren’t real Cockneys, but they liked to think they were ’cos he used to have a pub, spoke all sort of funny-like.’

The boy’s observation amused Sunday.

Ronnie responded to Sunday’s smile with a smile of his own. ‘I like you, Sunday,’ he said without any awkwardness. ‘Will you be my friend?’

This remark confirmed to Sunday what she had begun already to know. In his own adolescent way, the boy was attracted to her.

‘We
are
friends, Ronnie,’ she replied, holding out her hand to shake his.

Ronnie beamed brightly as he shook hands eagerly with her.

Suddenly, however, there was an explosion in the distance, which caused the ground to shake, and snow to come cascading down from the branches of the leafless trees. In one swift movement, Ronnie seized hold of Sunday, dragged her to the ground, and shielded her with the upper part of his own body.

As soon as the ground and snowfall had settled, Ronnie helped Sunday to sit up.

‘Sorry about that, Sunday,’ he said, worried about how she would react. ‘In the distance, over there. Can you see?’

Sunday looked to where the boy was pointing, and in the distance she could see a tall funnel of smoke rising up from the snow-covered landscape.

Ronnie tried to explain exactly what had happened. But rather than use words, this time he illustrated that the explosion had been caused by a ‘doodlebug’ or a V-2 rocket. This he did by using both his hands to show a vivid imitation of the clipped wings and burning tailplane flame of the ‘doodlebug’, and then went on to do the same with an animated illustration of a V-2 rocket.

Sunday, her face and duffle coat covered with snow, watched the boy with intense fascination. Suddenly, in a reaction that bewildered Ronnie, she grabbed hold of both his hands, stared hard at them for a moment, and held on to them.

Ronnie thought his new friend had gone mad.

For Sunday, however, it was a moment of enlightenment.

Soon after Sunday arrived back at the barn, Ruthie suddenly collapsed to the floor, suffering from an epileptic fit. Sunday’s first response was fear, for she had never seen such a thing before. But as only Maureen and
Sheil
were present at the time, she had to think quickly what to do.

‘Sheil!’ she called. ‘Give me a hand – quick!’

Sheil, who until this moment had been curled up on her bed drawing her umpteenth sketch of Algie, shook her head and retreated towards the kitchen door.

‘Get back here, Sheil!’ yelled Sunday angrily, whilst kneeling down beside Ruthie to try to calm her.

But Sheil ignored Sunday’s pleas for help, and rushed out.

Sunday then turned to Maureen, who was by this time also kneeling on the floor at Ruthie’s side. ‘Maureen,’ she said, using her hands to show that Ruthie needed a pillow.

In what to her was a perfectly natural response, Maureen used sign language back at Sunday to show that she understood, then rushed across to Ruthie’s bed, brought back a pillow, and whilst Sunday gently raised Ruthie’s head, Maureen placed the pillow beneath it.

‘It’s all right, Ruthie,’ said Sunday several times. ‘Just try to lie still, and we’ll get some help.’

All this time, Ruthie, unaware of what was happening, lay twitching and jerking on the floor. Soon after Sunday arrived at the farm, Jinx had briefed her that should she ever have to deal with this kind of situation with Ruthie, then the first thing she should do would be to force something between Ruthie’s teeth to prevent her from biting her own tongue. But, quite instinctively, Sunday thought this a risky thing to do, and decided to just keep Ruthie as calm as possible.

Whilst this was going on, little Maureen tried to soothe Ruthie by placing one of her cool hands on Ruthie’s forehead. This greatly impressed Sunday, who, without fully realising what she herself was doing, spoke not only with words to convey what she wanted to say to Maureen, but also her hands, which she used as a rough and simple attempt at sign language. ‘I think she’s going to be all right now,’ was what Sunday seemed to be saying.

Maureen’s face beamed when she recognised the effort Sunday was making to communicate with her. So she nodded eagerly and accompanied her reply with sign language that indicated that she understood perfectly what Sunday was saying to her.

By this time, Ruthie had calmed down completely and was fast asleep.

A few days later Gary Mitchell called on Sunday at the farm, and asked her out to have a meal with him. After the way she had treated him when they last met, Sunday felt a little guilty. But Gary was very persuasive, and early that evening he took her to the British Restaurant in the nearby town of Halstead. It was quite an austere establishment, but as the country was still in the grip of food rationing, there was very little choice. When they got there they found the lower floor dining-room crowded with young evacuees from London, who were encouraged to use it as a common feeding place by the local District Council. However, once Sunday and Gary had climbed the stairs to the second floor, there was a table available by the window overlooking Trinity Street below. The three-course meal they collected from the counter consisted of soup, roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and veg, and baked milk macaroni and jam, which cost Gary the princely sum of two shillings and threepence. Once he had handed over a half-crown to the ebullient elderly lady cashier, he collected his threepence change, and followed Sunday back to their table.

‘I’m sorry for the way I behaved at the canteen the other day,’ said Sunday, before she had even started on her tomato soup. Although she had already apologised once to Gary, the guilt was still preying on her mind. ‘I’m amazed you should ever want to see me again.’

‘Just try and stop me,’ replied Gary.

For a brief moment, their eyes met. Sunday noticed his for the first time. They were pale blue, and his eyelashes were just as fair as his short wavy hair.

The meal wasn’t exactly what the Sergeant had in mind for his first date with Sunday, but at least it gave him a chance to take a few admiring glances at her, and to get to know her better than the last time they had met.

‘You haven’t told me yet where you come from,’ said Sunday, struggling to cope with her tiny ration of tough roast beef.

‘Ah!’ replied Gary. ‘Good point.’ He put down his fork, and leaned back in his chair. ‘Ever heard of Montana?’ he asked.

Sunday shook her head.

Gary then leaned forward and rearranged the table so that he could illustrate with his own style of map. ‘U.S. of A,’ he said, making an outline on the tablecloth with one of the prongs of his fork. ‘Idaho State on – this side,’ he said, placing his knife on the outline. ‘North and South Dakota – on that side.’ He did the same with his fork. ‘And right here in the middle,’ he plonked down his glass tumbler, ‘Whitefish, Montana.’

‘Whitefish!’ exclaimed Sunday incredulously. ‘What’s that!’

Gary stiffened. ‘A little respect for my home town, if you please, ma’am!’ His strict reprimand was soon accompanied by a broad grin. ‘We may not have the Crown Jewels and Yorkshire pudding, but we have mountains – beautiful, snow-capped mountains. And not too far away we have our “Big Muddy” – the good old Missouri river.’

Sunday thought for a moment, then asked, naïvely, ‘Is it anything like the River Thames?’

Gary, shaking his head, was amused. ‘No, ma’am. Our river is big, wide, and deep. When I was a kid, my dad used to take me fishing there.’

‘Is that where you caught your whitefish?’

Gary went along with Sunday’s teasing. ‘White, blue, yellow, brown. You name it, I caught it.’

They both laughed, and whilst they carried on eating, Gary told Sunday everything about his life back home in
Montana
, about his father, who worked as a track-layer on the Great North-Western Railroad, about his kid sister, Jane, who was so bright at college that she was clearly heading for a career in Law, and about his mother, who took part in nearly every social activity in the town that you could think of, despite the fact that she had been deaf since birth. Sunday read Gary’s lips with rapt attention. Everything he was telling her was totally alien to anything she had ever experienced in her own life, and he made it all sound so much more appealing than life in ‘the Buildings’. She also told him about herself, about her mum and the Salvation Army, and Aunt Louie, and Pearl, and her time at Briggs Bagwash. Most of all she told him how she had always missed not having a father, someone who could have helped her to balance out her life between a well-meaning mum and a domineering aunt.

When they had both finished their meal, Gary offered Sunday a cigarette. Her first reaction was to shake her head. But quite suddenly, she had second thoughts and took one. As they were lighting up, two of the evacuee kids from the downstairs dining-room came chasing each other up the stairs, and when they saw Gary, they immediately shouted out to him, ‘Got any gum, chum!’ The cashier lady was furious, and chased them down the stairs again. ‘Sorry about that, sir,’ she called to her GI customer. ‘Those Cockney kids are such cheeky little . . .!’