The Silent War (30 page)

Gary paused a moment before answering Sunday’s question. When he finally did speak, he pulled her gently round to face him. ‘Look, honey,’ he said, talking with lips and sign language, ‘I’ve got two weeks’ furlough. Let’s make the most of it, huh?’

Sunday’s eyes were anxiously taking in every part of Gary’s face. ‘But how can they send you back when—’

Gary stopped her saying anything more until he had made her take off her gloves, so that she could use her hands for sign language.

Sunday’s hands struggled to continue what she wanted to say. ‘But how can they send you back? You were very nearly killed.’

‘I have to go back, Sunday. That’s what I’m here for. It’s my duty.’

Sunday knew she was breaking her promise to him not to be anxious. But she couldn’t help herself. ‘You’ve done your duty, Gary,’ she said, trying desperately to find the right fingers for the letters and words he had been teaching her. ‘It’s other people’s turn now.’

This irritated Gary. With a scolding expression, and after wagging a finger at her, he answered, ‘It’s up to all of us to end this war, Sunday. And that includes me.’

For a brief moment Sunday looked hurt. So she turned to gaze out towards the sea again. In the distance, a flock of seagulls was swooping down into shallow water just off the beach. She couldn’t hear the screeching and squealing sounds the gulls were making, but she guessed that a shoal of fish had strayed into their view.

Gary, concerned that he had upset Sunday, turned her round to face him again. ‘You know what,’ he said, a warm smile on his face. ‘One of these days I’m going to take you across to the other side of that water. Have you ever been there?’

Sunday smiled, and shook her head. ‘My Aunt Louie went there once. Before the war. She said they eat snails and frogs’ legs.’

This made both of them laugh.

‘I prefer fish and chips,’ said Sunday, impressing Gary with the accuracy of her sign language.

‘I prefer you,’ replied Gary. He pulled her to him, and kissed her full on the lips.

A special constable nearly fell off his bike as he passed
them
by. ‘Bloody Yanks,’ he said to himself. ‘Overpaid, oversexed, and over here!’

Mrs Baggley bought her house on the seafront long before the war. In those days Thorpe Bay was very popular with holiday-makers, and there was hardly a day during the summer months when every room in her Hotel de la Mer wasn’t taken. Since the war started, however, it had been a different story, for, with the constant threat of enemy invasion, most seaside resorts had been more or less declared restricted areas. But she did get the occasional guests, usually soldiers and their girlfriends down for a dirty weekend. However, Gary was the first American visitor she’d had, and when he had checked in earlier in the day with his ‘companion’, she had gone to the most enormous trouble to assure him that he had booked into a ‘truly international establishment’.

‘I’m sorry you can only stay for the weekend,’ said Mrs Baggley, as she poured tea for her only two guests in her downstairs parlour. ‘Thorpe Bay has such a lot to offer the holidaymaker. In my humble opinion, our beaches are some of the finest in the whole of East Anglia. And you can get a really wonderful suntan.’

Gary exchanged a look with Sunday, but resisted taking a glance out through the window, where it was now snowing quite heavily.

‘And we’ve had our share of Jerry’s bombs, yer know.’ The hospitable hostess was determined to get as much out of her tea party as she possibly could. ‘Oh yes. It was terrible during the early part of the war, planes going over day and night. My dear hubby nearly copped it when a parachute bomb come down on a pub just along the road. Blew him right off his feet into my neighbour’s vegetable garden.’

Gary enjoyed talking to Sunday in sign language in front of Mrs Baggley, mainly because the old lady was so fascinated to watch him doing it. ‘Mrs Baggley says Thorpe Bay was bombed at the beginning of the war.’

Sunday nodded her head, indicating that she understood.

‘Oh yes indeed!’ Mrs Baggley was determined to make a meal out of her wartime experiences. ‘We’ve had everything here – including these terrible “doodlebug” things, and now the V-2s.’ She leaned across to Sunday, to make sure she could read her lips. ‘And have you heard about the butterflies?’

Sunday looked puzzled, and shook her head.

‘Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about the butterfly bombs? These terrible things ’Itler’s dropping to kill poor little kids?’

Sunday swung a questioning glance at Gary.

‘They’re a small explosive device, usually dropped in rural areas. They’re really booby-traps, designed to kill civilians, especially kids.’

Sunday was horrified. ‘But that’s wicked!’ she said.

‘Oh yes, dear,’ said Mrs Baggley, patting her head of tightly permed ginger curls. ‘It’s wicked all right. If anyone ever tries to tell me that it’s wicked to bomb Germans in their own homes, I always remind them that it wasn’t us who started this war, thank you very much. And when you think of what they do to us! Those poor people in Halstead today.’

Sunday swung a startled look at Gary.

‘Pardon me, Mrs Baggley,’ said Gary. ‘Did you say – Halstead?’

‘Yes, dear,’ she replied. ‘My hubby’s a special constable down the Police Station. They heard there’s a V-2 come down there. Sounds like it’s done a lot of damage.’

She suddenly realised that her two guests were looking shocked and anxious.

‘I’m sorry, my dears,’ she said. ‘I hope it’s not anywhere near where
you
come from.’

Although the King’s Head pub at Ridgewell was ten miles or so away from Halstead, most of the people drinking
in
there had heard the explosion from the V-2 that had dropped there earlier in the day. In fact, the blast had been so powerful that some of the old timber-framed cottages had shuddered, as if in an earthquake. Despite the fact that V-1s and V-2s were still crossing the east coast every day and night of the week, the suddenness of the powerful Halstead bomb had shocked everyone.

‘Somebody’s got to stop those bastards!’ snapped Jinx, who was playing darts with Erin and some of the other crewmen from the base. ‘I thought this bloody war was supposed to be over. And yet Jerry keeps sendin’ those things over from France without anyone doin’ anythin’ about it!’

‘They ain’t comin’ from France,’ sniffed Erin, a smoking cigar butt protruding from his lips as he aimed his dart at a double eleven. ‘They’re hidden in underground bunkers on the Dutch coast.’

‘I don’t care where they are,’ Jinx grumbled, as she watched Erin remove his unsuccessful darts from the board. ‘Somebody’s got to find them and get rid of them!’

‘Fer Chrissake, Jinx!’ growled Erin. ‘What the hell d’yer think we’re tryin’ ter do day after day, night after night?’

‘That’s right, Jinx,’ said one of Erin’s buddies, who was lining up his own darts for a double six and a two. ‘It’s like lookin’ for a needle in a haystack. But we’ll find those goddamn rocket sites – sooner or later.’

‘I’m sorry boys,’ said Jinx, guiltily. ‘It’s all right for me to go on while you lot go out there and risk your lives. But finding those things later is going to be too late if they go on much longer like this. That rocket in Halstead was a real killer.’

‘’Scuse me, mate. Could I ’ave a quick word wiv yer?’

The young British soldier who had made his way across the bar to talk to Jinx waited until after she had thrown her third dart.

‘’Allo, darlin’!’ said Jinx, with a huge smile. She had already noticed the young conscript in rough British Army serge as soon as he had entered the bar. The place was usually so full of GIs from the base that it made a change to see a local on the scene, especially a good-looking local like this!

‘What can we do for yer, Tommy?’ asked Erin, sourly.

The ‘Tommy’ smiled and, without turning to look at Erin, continued to direct his questions to Jinx. ‘I was told yer work up at Cloy’s Farm?’ he said in a distinctive London accent. ‘I was wonderin’ whevver yer could give me some ’elp – ter find a friend of mine.’

‘
I
could be a friend, darlin’,’ quipped Jinx, mischievously, unable to take her eyes off the boy’s newly grown Clark Gable ’tache. ‘Where yer from?’

Erin glared at her, but only jokily. He had come to know only too well how his new wife liked to tease him.

‘Shoeburyness,’ replied the soldier-boy. ‘The barracks on the uvver side of Soufend.’

‘I know where Shoeburyness Barracks are, kiddo,’ interrupted Erin. ‘What’s the fascination with Ridgewell?’

Again the boy soldier answered to Jinx, without turning to look at Erin. ‘Like I said. I’m lookin’ fer this friend of mine – a very old friend. She’s in the Women’s Land Army. Gel named Collins? Know ’er by any chance?’

‘Sunday?’ gasped Jinx. ‘D’you mean
our
Sunday? Sunday Collins?’

‘Yeh, that’s ’er. Sunday Collins.’

‘Good ’eavens, boyo! ’Course I know Sunday. My best friend. Maid of honour at my weddin’! Erin!’ she said, all excited. ‘Get this boy a drink!’

Erin was relieved when the boy shook his head and said, ‘No, fanks. I’ve got one waitin’ for me at the counter.’

The boy’s intervention had clearly brought the game of darts to a halt. Even so, a small group of Erin’s
buddies
were gathered around, curious to see a ‘Limey Tommy’ in what they had considered to be their own out-of-camp pub.

‘So ’ow d’you know our Sunday?’ asked Jinx, desperate to know more about this boy, whose strong muscular build, dark cropped hair, and devastating smile were driving her mad. ‘You come from those “Buildin’s” she lives in? Up London?’

‘Somefin’ like that,’ was all the boy would tell her. ‘Where is she now?’ he asked. ‘Know where I can get ’old of ’er?’

‘You’re out of luck, boyo,’ replied Jinx. ‘At this precise moment, she’s otherwise engaged!’

This comment brought hoots of dirty laughter from Erin and his buddies, which somehow spread to the rest of the customers in the bar. The rowdiness immediately prompted one of the locals to start playing the pub’s piano, and in no time at all, everyone started singing ‘Bless ’Em All’.

The boy soldier was not amused, and continued to stare at Jinx with a fixed look of suppressed anger.

‘Take no notice of this lot,’ said Jinx, knowing only too well how the Yanks always tended to take the piss out of anyone who wasn’t one of their own. Then leaning closer, so that he could hear above the singing, she said, ‘Sunday’s gone away for the weekend. Won’t be back ’til tomorrow night.’

‘Fanks a lot,’ replied the boy soldier. ‘When yer see ’er, could yer tell ’er I’ve bin lookin’ for ’er.’

‘My goodness!’ purred Jinx, who was beginning to irritate Erin by pretending that she fancied this guy. ‘Sounds like you’re a really
good
friend of our Sun,’ she quipped, nudging him in the ribs with her elbow.

‘Oh yeah, we’re good friends all right,’ replied the boy, coolly. ‘As a matter of fact, me an’ Sun are goin’ ter get married.’

The shilling that Gary had put into the gas fire meter
was
lasting longer than he and Sunday had thought, for their sparse bedroom in the Hotel de la Mer was far more snug and warm than they had dared to expect when they first arrived. For Sunday, this had been one of the happiest days she had had for such a long time. She had even enjoyed the journey down from Ridgewell, during which she and Gary had had to change trains twice and wait endlessly in the freezing cold on bleak railway station platforms for their connections. But the best part had been taking a taxi from Southend along the seafront, and feeling the excitement swell up inside her stomach as the broken-down old banger gradually made its way towards the holiday resort of her dreams – glamorous, exotic Thorpe Bay. And if Mrs Baggley’s evening meal of boiled chicken, boiled potatoes, boiled carrots, and boiled greens hadn’t been exactly the dream menu of all time, well even that went down a treat on a frozen winter’s night.

But the best part of the dream was just lying there in Gary’s arms, and feeling the warmth of his body against her own. The huge double bed with its rock-hard mattress may not have been the most comfortable in the world, but at least it was warm, with their feet sharing the heat from a hot-water bottle, and a thick eiderdown to cover their naked bodies right up to their shoulders. Making love with Gary was not like anything Sunday had experienced before, mainly because it really was love, and not just sex. Before they even started to do anything, Gary had gently caressed her body, planting his kisses on her mouth, her ears, her breasts, and her stomach. And she did likewise to him, exploring as much of his flesh as she dared, moving her lips sensuously over the stubble on his face and chin. And when he finally lowered himself on to her, she gave herself to him willingly, utterly convinced that this man really loved her, and that she loved him more than any other person in her entire life.

After it was over, they lay back together in each other’s arms for what seemed like hours. The room was not
entirely
in darkness, for they were bathed in a bright white glow from a wintry moon, which was bursting through the windows and transforming night into day. Sunday hoped that these precious few moments would never end. Unfortunately, however, it was not to be.

‘Sunday.’ Without warning, Gary suddenly sat up in bed and looked down at her. ‘I have to tell you something.’

Sunday was unable to read what he was saying, because his face was turned away from the direct moonlight. Realising this, Gary turned on the small bedside lamp.

‘There’s something I want you to know,’ he said, pulling himself up into a position where Sunday could watch his lips.

Even though the combination of electric and natural light was dazzling her eyes, Sunday could see the anguished expression on Gary’s face.

‘I once killed someone,’ he said, staring straight into her eyes. ‘It was a long time ago.’

A cold chill shot up and down Sunday’s spine. Slowly, she pulled herself up. ‘What d’you mean?’ she asked.

For a brief moment, Gary carried on staring at her, finding it almost impossible to say what he knew he would some time have to say to her. Clearly agonising, he pulled back the sheets, and got out of bed.