by Clare Flynn
They all started to answer at once, then stopped to give way to each other, then started again simultaneously, stopping as quickly with awkward grins.
Gwen smiled and said, ‘Why don’t we start with you, Gordon?’
When they had each told her the names of their home towns and established that no, Gwen had never heard of them, she asked them what they had done before the war. Gordon told her he was an apprentice in an engineering works. Mitch looked embarrassed and said he’d been out of work for a time and that was why he’d joined the army. ‘It’s terribly hard, Ma’am. Work’s thin on the ground, you know.’ Finally Jim spoke, telling her he had been a farmer in Ontario.
‘Isn’t farming a protected occupation?’ she asked. ‘I thought it would exempt you from military service.’
‘We’re all exempt, Ma’am. There’s no conscription in Canada. We’re all volunteers.’
Gwen blushed at her mistake. ‘I’m sorry. Of course. I should have known. And we are all extremely grateful here in Britain that you have come to our aid.’
Gordon and Mitch sniggered and exchanged glances. Gwen blushed again, self-conscious and wondering whether she had committed another faux pas.
Jim elbowed Mitch in the ribs and muttered something to him, then said, ‘I’m sorry, Ma’am, but we’re all getting twitchy. Some of the boys have been over here in England since the end of ’39 and we’ve not seen any action. We’re going stir crazy. Can’t wait for a chance to come to Britain’s aid as you put it, but mostly we’ve been sitting around in barrack rooms and crawling through mud on our stomachs in exercises. All we want is to take a crack at the enemy.’
His voice was melodic, softer than the American accent she knew from the cinema. He was a good-looking man. She noticed his eyes were blue and there was a sadness in them. In fact as she looked at his face she thought there was something melancholic about him generally. He had a scar running from his hairline to the corner of his eye. Rather than detracting from his appearance it seemed to highlight the handsomeness of his face. His features were strong with a long straight aquiline nose and he reminded her of the Greek statues in The Victoria and Albert Museum. There was an openness about him and, despite the sad eyes, he gave off a warmth that made her feel drawn to him. The other two men clearly looked up to him. He exuded a quiet authority.
‘And you, Ma’am? How has the war been for you so far?’
Gwen smoothed out her skirt and lowered her eyes. ‘I’ve got off lightly. Poor Mrs Simmonds lost her home to the first bombing of the town. Her grandfather was killed in his bed, poor soul. She and her children were lucky to escape. Their house was flattened. They were supposed to be evacuated but she was determined to stay in Eastbourne so I invited her to stay with me. Her husband is serving in the navy.’
‘You’re good friends then?’
‘I only met her after she was bombed out. I work for the Women’s Voluntary Service. I was helping in the clear up. She lived at the other end of town.’ As she said the words “other end of town” she wondered if she sounded snobby. Then in a flash of self-knowledge she acknowledged that she was indeed a snob. She would never have so much as exchanged the time of day with a woman like Pauline Simmonds before the war – unless Pauline had been serving her in a shop or a restaurant. But she had been much the poorer for that.
‘That was kind of you. To take her in I mean.’
‘Not at all.’ She looked up at him and felt obliged to be straight. She shot him a smile. ‘Entirely self-interest. My cook had left and I haven’t a clue in the kitchen.’ She hesitated then added, ‘But we have now become friends. Pauline has been a tremendous help to me and I enjoy her company. She makes me laugh. Cheers me up.’
'Anyone who can make a person laugh has to be good to have around. And her children?'
Gwen nodded. 'The baby is very quiet if that’s what you’re worried about. Sally is a character but she's a good girl. They shouldn't disturb you boys too much. They are delightful children and a credit to their mother.'
'I don’t doubt it, Ma'am. And I’m not worried at all. We've been shut away with other fellas for so long it will be nice to hear children's voices again.'
'Do you have a family yourself, Private Armstrong?'
'I'm not married, Ma'am.' He smiled and added, ‘But I have a dog. He's called Swee'Pea. After Popeye's baby. You know – in the comic books.'
'He must miss you.'
Jim shook his head, his eyes sorrowful. 'I doubt he'll be there when I get back to the farm. He's old. Ma said she feared he wouldn't last the winter. Miracle he's gone this far.' He rotated his cap in his hands and looked down at the floor.
Gwen felt a rush of sympathy for him. 'I had a dog once. When I returned from living in India. After my…' Her voice dried up. 'A long time ago. She died while I was away at boarding school so I know how you feel.'
Gordon and Mitch were now engaged in a side conversation. Jim got up from the sofa and took up a seat in the chair next to Gwen’s, turning his body to face her.
'What was your dog called?’ he said, leaning in towards her.
She could see the outline of his legs straining at the fabric of his uniform. They were long but muscular, and reminded her of Roger's. That was Roger’s chair he was sitting in too.
'I don't remember,' she said, trying to mask her sudden irritation. 'It was so long ago and I was a child.'
They lapsed into silence and Gwen wished he hadn't come to sit next to her, forcing her to sustain a conversation. She struggled to think what to say next but then he spoke. ‘Before Mrs Simmonds moved in did you live here alone apart from the cook?’ he asked.
Gwen bristled. She hated discussing her personal affairs with strangers. And she didn’t like the way he had created this side conversation. She wanted to keep him grouped with the other two – three anonymous soldiers billeted here. Injecting some frost into her tone, she said, ‘No. My husband is in the army.’
Jim nodded. ‘Overseas?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’ She paused. ‘I mean yes, I think so, but I’m not allowed to know where.’
Feeling uncomfortable, she got up before he had a chance to reply. ‘Now I need to get on. Please feel free to come and go as you wish. The front door is never locked. I’d appreciate it if you were as quiet as possible when you come in at night as there are two small children sleeping. I don’t want any drunken carousing in the small hours. Follow me and I’ll show you where you will be sleeping.’ Without giving the men a further glance she moved to the door and out of the room, leaving them to follow.
Out of a Job
Eastbourne
Over the coming weeks, Gwen saw little of her Canadian house guests. Her shifts at the signal listening post were often overnight and on any free days she was occupied with WVS duties, including ambulance driving and as a back-up fire warden. The Canadians took their meals in their mess a few roads away and it was not hard for Gwen to imagine that they were not actually staying in her house at all. The men shared a bedroom and bathroom out of the way on the top floor of the house and were quiet in their comings and goings.
Sometimes Gwen felt bad for the young men, being so far from home, in unfamiliar surroundings and waiting on a possible call to a more active role in the war with its attendant risks. But mostly it was not difficult for her to think of the soldiers as a collective entity, thus avoiding the need for her to distinguish one from the other and get to know them as individuals. After all, it wasn’t her job. She’d allowed these strangers into her home. That was enough. No one said she had to treat them as part of her family. Pauline and the girls were one thing, a bunch of soldiers passing through another. So she referred to her lodgers collectively as The Canadians and didn’t bother to differentiate between them as individuals after that first day.
One morning in May, a couple of months after the Canadians had arrived, Gwen had been working a night shift at the listening station and on returning home at around six in the morning, t
umbled gratefully into bed and into a deep undisturbed sleep. It was lunchtime before she woke but she wasn’t hungry. When she went to make herself a cup of tea, the sun was streaming through the kitchen windows. Swallowing the tea quickly, she dressed and on impulse went out for a walk. The heavy sleep had left her feeling groggy and a good tramp over the Downs might clear her head. She climbed up the hill, the soft turf bouncy under her feet. These days she needed to skirt around the slope making a longer, less direct ascent, as the main footpaths were in an area that was marked out of bounds. In the distance, she could see a group of Canadian soldiers crawling up the hill on their stomachs, heavy packs on their backs and rifles tightly gripped. They looked like giant spiders working their way up the steep slope. They must be weary of these endless exercises. She tried to make out whether any of the men staying with her were among them.
The previous week she had been having a cup of tea with Daphne in the Oak Room and they had overheard some Canadian boys – for they were mere boys – moaning about the way they were cooped up in this little town and given no chance to see action. Their wives and mothers back in Canada were doubtless grateful that the only sight of the enemy they’d had was when they looked up at the sky.
Gwen thought of Roger, bit her lip and tasted blood. A wave of emotion swept through her and she sank to her knees on the thin springy turf. Why hadn’t he explained fully what he was about to face? And why had she given him such a cold send-off? It had been so selfish. All she had thought of was protecting herself, reining back what she really thought, putting on a brave face. So she had sent him away to what may well prove to be his death without a word of love, a sign of affection, a touch to remember when he was alone and afraid. And he would surely be afraid. How could he not be? It was now almost two years since they’d parted at the railway station.
She stumbled up the hill and sat down at the top of the slope. The grass was slightly damp but the need for a rest was greater than the need for a dry bottom. It was so peaceful up here, yet the signs of war were inescapable. Barbed wire curled along the top of the cliffs, tanks had churned up the turf in places and below her in Whitbread Hollow was a Canadian firing range, silent at the moment. She could see the anti-aircraft gun emplacement on the footpath at the end of the seafront below Beachy Head. The cries of seagulls and jackdaws broke the silence as they flew over the Downs, swooping back down towards the town. Gwen picked a buttercup.
She had walked here with Roger when they first came to Eastbourne – he had bent down as they were strolling on the downs, plucked a buttercup and held it under her chin. She had pushed him away. Told him not to be silly. It was a child’s game. But he had refused to let go and had gathered her into him, bent his head and kissed her. She had given in to the kiss, enjoyed it, returned it. A rare moment in their marriage when she had allowed herself to be carried away. Stop it, Gwen. Stop remembering. Stop tormenting yourself. Live in the present. That’s all you have.
It was just before two. She had promised to look after the girls that afternoon while Pauline went into town. One of the greengrocers had some oranges coming in and he’d said he would save two for the children. Gwen scrambled to her feet. At full height now she was able to see the sea and her heart almost stopped beating. Coming in low, barely skimming the tops of the waves, was a group of enemy aeroplanes. She counted them. Nine. All Messerschmitts. If she remembered her training correctly they were 109s. They swooped in low over the town and Gwen could hear the distant sound of machine gun and cannon fire. The planes, in perfect formation, roared upwards, flying towards where she was standing on top of Beachy Head. Instinctively she flung herself to the ground. Was this how she would die? Strafed by enemy aircraft on top of a cliff in the English countryside?
But the planes had more pressing and important targets than a lone woman lying on her belly in the grass, for they screamed into a steep-banked turn and headed back over the town. In shock, Gwen heard the explosions. Close below her in Meads she could see flames rising and then further across the town towards the flat meadowlands of the Willingdon Levels, a huge explosion lit up the afternoon sky. The gasworks? The thud of munitions filled the air. In seconds, the town was hidden in a pall of smoke and Gwen heard the whine of the retreating planes as they turned back towards the Channel.
For several minutes she was rooted to the spot. How many times had she stood here before, looking down at the town spread out before her? It had always been a beautiful sight, the sea peppermint green under a blue sky, the pier stretching out into the water like a slender finger, the elegant Edwardian hotels lined up along the front, the town houses in their neatly regimented boulevard-like roads and the flat stretch of grassy fields dotted with cows and sheep stretching out to meet the marshes around Pevensey. Today she looked out over an unfamiliar, dystopian world. Meads, the area where she lived, was on fire. The spire of St John’s church, a familiar landmark, was a flaming beacon, the roof below it already collapsed. Through the thick cloud of smoke over the town, fires blazed everywhere. In a matter of moments her peaceful seaside home had been transformed into a battleground.
The fear she’d felt was replaced by anger. Fury that Hitler could turn his Luftwaffe on a small coastal town. The attack on Whitley Road, and the almost daily bomb raids that had followed it, was nearly two years ago and the townspeople had begun to think they could relax again. Several evacuees had returned to Eastbourne, believing it safe. The Messerschmitts that had attacked today were smaller faster planes than the Dorniers that had been the main aggressors in 1940. They were more frightening – the big bombers flew over, dropped their load and went home again, but these little single-pilot fighter planes somehow made it more personal – especially when they opened their machine guns and fired on civilians in the streets.
Gwen began to run down the grassy slope, tripping and stumbling over the tussocks of grass and the ridged ground that had been churned up by tanks on practice manoeuvres. Her heart was thumping but it wasn’t fear now. It was rage. Twenty minutes later, when she reached the house, mercifully undamaged, Pauline was waiting for her.
‘Dear God, Mrs Collingwood, don’t tell me it’s starting again.’
‘I watched it happen,' said Gwen. 'They targeted us deliberately. They weren’t going or coming from somewhere else. They intended to hit Eastbourne.’
Pauline reached into the pocket of her apron, brought out a packet of cigarettes. Gwen noticed the usually calm Pauline’s hands were shaking.
‘Hells bells, Mrs C, the Jerries can nip across the Channel and here we are like sitting ducks.’ She shook her head and exhaled a plume of smoke.
Gwen stretched out a hand and laid it on her arm and gave it a squeeze. Then in an unplanned gesture she flung her arms around Pauline and hugged her. Afterwards she was as surprised as Pauline was.
That day was the first of what were to be regular “tip and run” raids on the town. The raid had lasted less than four minutes. As well as St John’s church, the gasworks, railway sheds, a brewery and a lot of houses, a large chunk was blown off the end of the Cavendish Hotel on the promenade. The death toll included two Canadian soldiers, two RAF airmen, five civilians and thirty-six injured. The airmen had died in the Cavendish Hotel where hundreds of RAF crew were stationed. Their colleagues had a lucky escape as they were out of the town participating in a sports day.
As the planes had turned back over the sea to head home, they spotted a fishing boat at Langney Point to the east of the town, and attacked it, badly injuring the two fishermen on board. That night Lord Haw-Haw described the little fishing boat as a heavily-armed trawler. If the radio propagandist hoped to demoralise the townspeople, the attack and his words had the opposite effect. Eastbourne was angry.
A few days after the tip and run attack, Gwen was lying on her bed, notebook and pencil in hand, sleep eluding her. Instead she was drawing up a list. All her life she had resorted to lists as a way to fortify herself with order, not always successfully. Now with the inescap
able impact of the war, the long absence of her husband and the presence in her home and her life of Pauline and her daughters and the Canadian soldiers, the act of compiling and curating her daily to-do lists was a means of anchoring herself. She was exerting a small but significant control over the circumstances that, since war had begun in earnest, had thrown her world into chaos and torn control away from her.
Writing the list was also a distraction. There was the usual anxiety about Roger – always there in the background and often moving centre stage, prompted by bad news on the radio, a familiar song that reminded her of him, or by one of the regular monthly telephone calls from his mother. But today her worry was more immediate and was not for Roger.
Sandy Pringle had asked her to come to his office. Gwen was anxious about the out-of-the-blue summons and decided it could only be bad news. The radio traffic had been quieter lately and she had overheard Warrant Officer Irving, her uncongenial RAF colleague, discussing rumours that all the listening posts were to be consolidated into the south-eastern control centre at Hell Fire Corner in Kent. The hours she spent in the cramped and uncomfortable little hut on the Downs had given meaning to her life, had made her feel that she was at last doing something useful, something that might in some small way make a difference to the progress of the war or the saving of a life. Her duties with the WVS were of course important, but they didn’t offer her the same satisfaction. Being valued for her knowledge of German was a source of satisfaction that dressing wounds, driving ambulances and making tea could not compete with.
The following day, she made her way to HMS Marlborough – she would never get used to calling it that – to her it would always be The College – for the meeting with Sandy Pringle. She stood outside the heavy oak door of Sandy’s office and knocked tentatively. Her palms were sweating and there was a hollow ache in the pit of her stomach. He was going to tell her they were shutting down Beachy Head. She was sure of it. Not the main radar station up there. Just her little leaky-roofed hut with its single wireless. She swallowed and entered.
