by Shirley Mann
The more Lily looked at Hannah, she started to suspect there was more to her shining eyes and wondered whether she had met someone, but Hannah was giving nothing away, changing the subject rapidly when Lily started to probe. Lily shrugged, war romances came and went, and she was sure Hannah would reveal all when she was ready.
Hannah and Ros’s war seemed much more mundane and Lily tried hard not to feel superior. She found herself underplaying the dramatic existence of a WAAF wireless operator. Lily told them briefly about Ted and Ros nodded in sympathy. Her cousin, Alan, had been killed on the Prince of Wales during its battle with the Bismarck off the Danish coast. Sitting curled up on the bed, they all talked about how their lives had been altered by the war. Lily told them about meeting the ATA pilot. She did not mention that she had had the temerity to apply to join and become a pilot herself. Now she was back at home, she felt it had all been a feeble attempt to raise herself above her station in life.
‘Now I come to think of it, Han,’ Lily said suddenly, ‘that pilot came from Norwich. Her name was Roberta, Bobby for short.’ She felt as if she were claiming an acquaintance with royalty and said the name with reverence.
‘That’s the name of the daughter of the farm I’m at. It must be her, she’s in the ATA,’ Hannah exclaimed delightedly. ‘Well, fancy that! She’s a bit terrifying. I’ve only met her once. Apparently, she was a strange child, something about her twin brother dying at birth. If you ask me, the whole family’s a bit batty.’
Lily refused to have a word said against her heroine and pushed Hannah playfully off the bed. During a midday meal of potato pie and peas in the cosy morning room she plied Hannah with questions, but Hannah was billeted half a mile from the farm and had little to do with the family. Lily was disappointed she could not find out more but was thrilled that she had a small connection with the pilot who had made such an impression on her. One day, she would love to meet her again and tell her she was doing something meaningful, quite what, though, now the ATA did not seem to want her, she had no idea.
After their meal, they all raced upstairs again to talk in private, revelling in the gossip and banter that they had all missed so much. The familiar noise of them giggling and arguing over who had had the most teenage spots sent a reminder downstairs to her mum of the innocent days before the war. She listened in from the bottom of the stairs and breathed deeply in satisfaction.
‘Ginny, come here,’ she heard her husband’s voice from the front room. ‘Ginny,’ he sounded more urgent. She ran down the corridor to find him staring out of the bay window onto Slade Lane.
‘There’s three Yanks coming up the road. You don’t suppose they’re coming to see our Lily do you?’
She had no time to wonder before the front door bell went. The two born and bred Mancunians took a moment to stare at each other in horror before Ginny started to clutch frantically at her pinny to tear it off and stuff it behind the settee.
‘You get the door, John, I’ll get Lily.’
Chapter 35
John Mullins could see his neighbours’ curtains being fingered to one side as the smart figures of three American airmen stood nonchalantly on the doorstep in the cold December air.
He could barely manage a polite ‘Yes?’ as he took in their olive-green uniforms and ‘Ike’ short jackets. No wonder our Tommies are worrying about these Lotharios being over here, he thought as he waited for the visions to speak.
‘Hi sir, I’m sorry to bother you. We wondered, is Lily in?’
Behind him, there was the familiar sound of footsteps racing down the stairs.
‘Kit! What the hell are you doing here?’
U.S. guests notwithstanding, John Mullins uttered a very sharp ‘Lily!’ to his daughter. She had never sworn in front of her parents before.
‘Sorry, Dad,’ Lily blushed at her outburst.
‘Please come in’, Ginny said from behind them both, her hair freshly combed.
‘Yes, of course, please come in,’ Lily said quickly, standing to one side to let the men in through the door. They all swept off their caps, put them under their arms and stood to attention in the hall. She started down the corridor towards the nice, informal morning room but was steered to the left into the front room by her mother, who had already rashly put the gas fire on.
‘Would you like some tea?’
‘Yes, please, ma’am.’ The Americans had been schooled in visiting English homes and knew that the hot, brown liquid that tasted of tar was a pre-requisite to international relations.
Her parents stood waiting patiently as Lily stared at the three men.
‘Sorry, Mum, Dad, this is Kit and Wally and . . .’ She tailed off.
‘Chuck,’ the small blonde one supplied, creasing the dimple on his cheek with a grin.
‘Yes, of course you are,’ Lily said, smiling, taking in this piece of Hollywood that had walked into her terraced house in Manchester.
She turned to Kit accusingly. ‘So how did you find me?’
‘Wally’s going out with one of the admin staff and she forgot to hide the file with your address on it.’
Lily couldn’t decide whether to admire his nerve or condemn his cheek. Her mother had disappeared into the kitchen to rustle up some cake but her dad sat determinedly down in the armchair next to the window to watch the most amazing scene he had ever witnessed. Lily gave up trying to subtly signal to him to leave them all to it and sat down, waiting for Kit to speak. She could hear Hannah and Ros creeping halfway down the stairs, whispering excitedly.
‘We had some leave so we got a train to come and see what Manchester was like. We’d heard so much about it, sir,’ he added, turning to Lily’s dad. John Mullins nodded approvingly.
‘Aye, well, it’s the second capital of the country and it does have beautiful buildings and heritage. That’s if the Germans would leave it be.’
Lily could see that her dad was warming to a theme about his beloved city so interjected. ‘I have two friends here; we were thinking of going out for a walk in a bit. How long have you got?’
No sooner had she said that than two faces appeared around the door. She noticed they had both borrowed her hair slides and had brushed their hair. She put a hand up to her own hair, which had not been brushed since that morning and suddenly felt very shy.
John took over and introduced Hannah and Ros, who were blushing with excitement.
Lily regained her composure and turned to Kit. ‘Honestly, Kit, how could you? You didn’t even know if I’d be here.’
‘It was a calculated risk but one worth taking,’ he said. Lily felt her own blush careering up from her neck to the top of her scalp.
‘Here’s the tea,’ Ginny announced, bustling in to put the best tray with a doily on the sideboard. ‘And I’ve found some fruit cake I thought you might like.’
Knowing the cake had been made in readiness for Christmas using up valuable rations Lily smiled warmly at her mum but Ginny Mullins was too busy serving the three young men to notice. Her mother’s hands were shaking, Lily noticed, and she stepped forward to help.
‘Kit’s in Oxfordshire with me,’ she explained, passing out the side plates. ‘We are in the same crowd.’
Ros glanced at Hannah. Was this really the sort of company that their school friend was keeping? She immediately elevated her dizzy friend to the status of goddess and sat in awe as Lily kept up an incredibly natural banter with the three Americans. As Lily was the only person in the room to have met a real-life American, the others sat in silence. Ros took mental snapshots of the scene to recount at the munitions factory on Monday. It would be an impressive tale.
Watching Lily chatting to the three boys, John glanced at his wife. He knew what she was thinking . . . what about Danny? They had been so sure Danny was the one for their daughter but looking at the handsome Kit, with his tuft of hair tumbling onto his forehead, they suddenly had doubts.
‘So how do you boys like England?’ Ginny gushed. ‘Where do you come f
rom in America? How are your families coping without you? Would you like another piece of cake?’
The rush of questions made them laugh and they tried to answer each one in turn, but Ginny was only listening to Kit.
‘I come from New York,’ he said. ‘So it’s cold there too in winter but England is beautiful. Everything’s so small and cute.’
John Mullins winced at the word ‘cute’. He was not ready to be father-in-law to a movie star.
‘Our lads have just got to Italy,’ he said with a meaningful look at Lily, ‘although I don’t think they’re getting much time to enjoy it.’
Lily butted in, knowing that the resentment against the Americans for their late arrival into the war had been thoroughly dissected and augmented over a pint at her dad’s bowls club since 1941. ‘Kit’s a navigator,’ she said hurriedly, feeling she had entered a private battle between who, out of Danny and Kit, was making the most impact on the war.
‘Uh, huh,’ her dad replied, cutting a piece of cake for himself.
‘That sounds very exciting,’ her mother said brushing meaningfully past her husband’s arm as she went to pour more tea. ‘It must be very dangerous though.’
‘Aw, we just try ‘n’ give Hitler a bit of his own medicine,’ said Kit, blissfully unaware of the British torpedoes that were heading his way.
He hadn’t taken his eyes off Lily, who was by now trying to introduce Wally to Ros.
‘Did you say you were going for a walk, Lily?’ he said. ‘Maybe we could come with you when we’ve finished this delicious cake?’
‘Um, yes, I suppose so,’ Lily said, looking round for approval from her friends, who were nodding far too enthusiastically.
This was going to be a problem, Lily decided. She had managed to fend Kit off on her own patch at camp but here in her front room, he did look devastatingly handsome, and for a girl who had previously been just one of the crowd at the Boys’ Brigade dances, she suddenly gained new heights of glamour and that was all due to a United States airforceman who had landed in Manchester’s suburbs like an alien from another planet.
Chapter 36
Danny had discovered that the Opera Houses in Italy served beer and he was now on his second. The taste seemed alien and certainly not like a pint in The Albion, but the alcoholic hit was welcome. He had been given two days’ leave and was desperately trying to enjoy them, but it was impossible when he knew he had a letter to write to Frank’s family when he got back to his billet. It was nearly Christmas but none of the 8th Army felt like celebrating. They had heard a rumour that Monty, the General they all believed was the one top brass they could rely on, was going to be moved on. Over the past few months, he had provided a cohesion and purpose that had kept them all going. Danny looked around him at the faded grandeur of the building with the torn posters on the walls for Tosca. He closed his eyes to picture the scene before the war when the red velvet seats would have been filled not with soldiers, but with people in evening dress, sipping Campari and soda. He wondered at the irony that the poster was of Puccini’s tale of the Kingdom of Naples’s control of Rome being threatened by Napoleon’s invasion. How history repeats itself, he thought.
As the army made its painful and relentless trek up the Gustav Line, the soldiers had two enemies – the Germans and the weather. Winter had arrived with a vengeance in Italy. The rain fell constantly and it was bitterly cold. Danny’s company had all been given time off, unable to move on until the troops in front of them had blown up every house to prevent more explosions. Word had reached them that the 5th Army were making desperate attempts to unlock the key to the Liri Valley – Cassino – so that the allies could then get on the road north to Rome. It was a tortuous, and costly, progress.
The picture books of Italy that Danny had seen as a schoolboy bore no resemblance to the devastated villages and landscape the army was passing through. The trek to the mountainous town of Orsogna had been a hard slog with rivers in spate and the surrounding countryside a swamp – a nightmare for the heavy transporters. The memory of piles of dead bodies in the deep mud along the route suddenly threatened to overwhelm his few precious hours relaxation so Danny concentrated on the strains of Tosca that had started to play in his brain. The former chorister at Manchester Cathedral School recalled a black-gowned teacher waving his arms to the music to try to inspire a classroom of angelic looking choristers who were just gagging to get out onto the cricket field.
He was playing with his glass, drumming out the tempo of one of the arias when he heard a noise behind him. It was Eddie, also on leave, who had come in with a girl on each arm. He, too, had been badly affected by Frank’s death but in one way, it had made this shy geography teacher more anxious to live every moment.
One girl was small with brown hair and the other had luscious jet black locks. They both had that Italian swagger that made them so irresistible to so many of the troops. Danny stood up. ‘Ciao signora come stai?,’ he said, in his improving Italian. The girl with the raven coloured hair looked impressed. She sat down on the stool next to Danny and gave him her full attention. Danny dropped his shoulders and gave in.
*
As the sun rose, Danny moved his arm to relieve the pins and needles travelling down towards his hand. The girl stirred but did not wake. Looking round the basic room above the café where he and Eddie had drunk too much wine the night before, he quickly realised that oblivion had not been such a good idea and searched his memory to find out how far he had gone. They both still had their clothes on, Danny was glad to see, unlike Eddie, whose bare leg was sticking out from a brown blanket on the other side of the room.
‘Buongiorno,’ the girl whispered, her eyes still closed. She was not quite as beautiful as she had appeared last night and her skin was pitted with marks, but she had been good fun and a welcome relief from the squalour and mud that had dogged their journey north. Her name was Carla and her friend was Gina. Since the Italians had surrendered, local girls had fraternised shamelessly with the troops, knowing they would no longer be called collaborators. The soldiers with their constantly replenished rations were desperate for some company and the local girls were desperate for food. The two girls had spotted the slightly inebriated soldier and had made a beeline for Eddie. The English were more relaxed than the Germans with their tightly done up collars and they were certainly more generous at buying drinks. Gina and Carla had giggled at the boys’ attempt to speak Italian but Danny had been really pleased at how his language was progressing. He thought he might take a class in it when he got back so he could bring Lily back on holiday. At that thought, he sat up sharply, causing Carla’s head to fall onto the pillow.
‘Dammit, how could I have been so stupid? After all my promises to myself.’ He looked down at Carla. ‘Did we . . .?’ he ventured, not really wanting the answer.
‘My leetle English soldier,’ she murmured at him from her sleepy position.
He held his breath.
Carla sat up languidly on the crumpled bed and smiled at him, holding up a bent little finger. ‘You have to come back when you are not so drunk, I tink.’
Danny thanked the strong beer and cheap red wine and nodded with relief.
Eddie sat up looking blurry eyed. Gina was still asleep.
‘Time to go,’ Danny said, straightening his uniform. ‘We’re on duty this morning.’
Eddie hurriedly got dressed, gave Gina a quick kiss on the cheek and they both left, leaving the girls to sleep it off. They knew there would be a new company through town that evening and that they would soon be forgotten for a few rations from another army pack.
Danny was furious with himself but Eddie seemed more pragmatic.
‘Nice night,’ he said with a smile, ‘what I can remember of it.’
‘You’ll have to get tested,’ Danny reminded him.
‘Worth it,’ was the casual reply.
Most of their company had moved on, leaving just a small cohort of tank transporter drivers to follow on wh
en the roads had been made safe. The two men had to re-join their unit by 1200 hours and they rushed to the other side of town where their colleagues were bivouacked. Danny did not feel like talking. He kept seeing Lily’s face, his father’s disapproval and his mother’s shock. He knew that Frank’s death had affected him badly but that was no excuse. The cases of VD were increasing and more than one husband was going to have to be treated before going home to confess to his wife. They rounded a corner and Danny was so intent on giving himself a severe telling off that he didn’t see the German patrol until they were almost on them.
Chapter 37
Kit linked his arm casually with Lily’s as they walked towards the park. She glanced sideways at him. He was keeping up a stream of chatter and jokes about life in Oxfordshire and the other service people there. Ros and Hannah were enjoying every moment, knowing that passers-by were looking on in awe as they strolled along the pavement. This moment would be discussed in detail in every pub in the area.
Hannah began teaching them the Land Army girls’ song and before long they were all chanting the words in time with their steps.
‘Back to the land, we must all lend a hand.
To the farms and the fields we must go,
There’s a job to be done, though we can’t fire a gun,
We can still do our bit with the hoe.’
It was a freezing cold day but the sun was out and they ran races in the park, with Kit always managing to catch Lily in his arms as she reached the pretend finishing line. She blushed as he pulled her towards him, puffed from her last exertion.
‘I knew you’d have to give in,’ he challenged her.
‘I’ve given in to nothing. I’m not that much of a pushover,’ she retorted, but by the time they all got back for yet more cups of tea with condensed milk, she had softened towards him a little.
‘Mrs Mullins, I’m trying to get this gal of yours to go out with me, will you help me in my cause?’ Kit suddenly said, casually pushing his cup to one side.
