Dad had to go on duty after that. The bicycle was still wobbly, but it seemed to work all right when he rode it round the kitchen table—after Mums had gone, of course. The gas was off again, so Minnie and I raced around assembling bread and cheese and salad, then settled down to play Happy Families under the table. She was beating me hands down; my thoughts were going round and round in circles with Mr Bridges and my airman and whether it meant anything and Frank and what to do about him, and I couldn’t concentrate at all.
Minnie said, ‘Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?’
‘I’m sorry.’ I threw my cards down in disgust.
‘I knew you’d got Master Bun. And Mrs Flower. Honestly, Lucy…’
‘Oh, who cares? Minnie, can I ask you something?’
‘Why not?’
‘Do you believe there’s life after death?’
She stopped collecting cards and looked at me. ‘What a funny question. I don’t know. Why?’
‘I was thinking about it. Just trying to make sense of things, I suppose.’ I meant about my airman, really, and the bird’s wings and wanting it to mean something, but I didn’t want to tell her that.
She said, ‘Do you mean angels and paradise and all that?’
‘I don’t know, really. Just some sort of survival.’
‘Well, maybe. But not harps and clouds. I mean, people floating about with wings when they’d been bank managers or something, they’d feel pretty silly, wouldn’t they? And if it is bank managers and…I don’t know, dentists, then it must be full of people one wouldn’t want to see again. Like those gravestones you see, the huge, heavy ones—it’s probably the family making sure that Great Aunt Maud or whoever it is can’t possibly get out, because the thought of a reunion is too grim for words. And as for hell…’ she rolled her eyes. ‘Where’s Miss Dose the doctor’s daughter?’
‘You’re sitting on her.’
‘So I am.’ She yawned. ‘It’s awfully quiet. Do you think we might go upstairs?’
I looked at my watch—quarter to ten—and the idea of being in bed suddenly seemed far more tempting than a serious discussion. ‘Come on. But for heaven’s sake be quiet.’
We tiptoed past Mums’s cupboard like naughty children—the door was closed and loud snores issuing from inside—and up the stairs.
Minnie whispered, ‘This is mad!’
The first thing I did was to check that the brooch was still under my pillow. I didn’t undress, just changed my skirt for slacks and rinsed out my stockings before I got into bed.
I was woken up by planes at two, and was wondering whether I should go downstairs when there was a crash from below. I flew down the stairs in bare feet. Minnie was in her nightdress in the hall, struggling with the front door.
‘Incendiary bomb!’ she shouted, swinging round, her eyes huge and terrified in a stark white face. ‘Out there!’
‘Don’t open the door, you’ll burn the house down!’ I grabbed her arm. ‘The stirrup pump—where is it?’
‘By the—’
‘It’s gone.’
‘It was there this morning.’ Minnie’s voice was shrill with panic. ‘And the sand—where’s it gone?’
‘The kitchen!’ We rushed in and looked wildly round— nothing. For a second, we stared at each other. ‘Lucy—the house—what are we going to do?’
‘Come on!’ We raced out of the back door into the garden. No sand, no pump, and we were tripping over things because we couldn’t see properly. ‘Get some earth!’ I grubbed up handfuls from the flowerbed, then realised I didn’t have anywhere to put it. I was about to ask Minnie to hold out her nightie, when I spotted two boxes by the shed, full of soil. ‘These’ll do!’ I put my torch between my teeth and we took one each and ran round to the front of the house as fast as we could. The incendiary was on the doormat—the crash we’d heard was when it fell through the porch roof, and it was fizzing and spluttering and flames were coming up in spurts, like giant matches being struck.
‘You do this,’ Minnie panted, ‘I’ll get water,’ and she raced back round the house.
I tipped on all the earth, which seemed to do the trick pretty well, then hared off to get the dustbin lid, which I clapped over the top, and Minnie charged back and forth with saucepans of water until the mat stopped smouldering.
‘Not bad, for our first effort,’ Minnie said, afterwards. I could see in the torchlight that she had a huge grin on her face, and I’m sure I did, too.
‘There aren’t any others, are there?’
We looked round the front garden, but couldn’t see anything. Minnie said, ‘Do you think we ought to move it?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, we don’t know it’s out yet, do we?’
I was just about to get some more earth in case it wasn’t, when Dad appeared with one of the other ARP men, Mr Fenner. We showed them the incendiary, and Dad told us to go inside while they fetched a shovel and carted it away to safety. When we got to the back door we heard a lot of banging and crashing coming from inside the cupboard under the stairs, and the most peculiar bellowing noises. Minnie pulled the door open and Mums almost fell out on top of her. It took me a moment to realise who—or what—it was, because Mums was wearing her gas mask, and appeared to have been trying to put on her corsets over her dressing gown. We tried to calm her down and make her take the gas mask off, but she was completely hysterical, flailing about and making noises that sounded like something at the bottom of a well. The three of us ended up in a heap on the floor, which is how Dad and Mr Fenner discovered us.
When we finally managed to pull Mums’s gas mask off, she took one look at Mr Fenner, uttered a wild shriek and retreated back into her cupboard, and no amount of coaxing by Minnie could make her open the door.
Dad said goodbye to Mr Fenner and told Minnie to go and make some tea. As soon as they’d gone, he said, ‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’ It was like a slap in the face. I was so elated about putting out the fire that I didn’t understand immediately what he was talking about. I was taken aback—I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so angry. ‘Where’s the stirrup pump?’
‘I don’t know, Dad. We couldn’t find it.’
‘What do you mean, couldn’t find it? It’s by the kitchen door.’
‘It isn’t, honestly. The sand isn’t there either.’
‘Of course it’s there, you stupid girl. I left—’ He broke off suddenly, and looked towards the cupboard door. ‘Where is it, then?’ he asked, more quietly.
‘I don’t know, Dad. Honestly.’
‘I see.’ He went into the kitchen and sat at the table, looking grim. He didn’t say anything until we’d drunk our tea. Minnie must have heard our exchange in the hall, because she didn’t say anything, either.
‘Oh, well,’ he said, finally. ‘I’m proud of you. Even if you did use my seedlings.’
Minnie clapped a hand across her mouth. ‘That earth! Oh, no…oh, Dad!’
I stared at him. ‘You mean, those boxes?’
He nodded, and said, ‘Still, not much use having a lot of cabbages and no house to eat them in, is it?’
‘Oh, Dad, I’m sorry.’
‘I know, love. But you did well. Both of you.’
Minnie said, ‘Shall I take some tea to Mums?’
Dad shook his head. ‘Leave her. The best laid plans of mice and men, eh? I’ll explain it to her in the morning. Again.’ He grimaced. ‘The most sensible thing we can do now is get some shut-eye.’
The three of us spent the rest of the night under the kitchen table. When we took down the blackout in the morning, the first thing Minnie said to me was, ‘Heavens, Lucy! your face is filthy. And your slacks! I didn’t notice last night.’
‘You look as if you could do with a good scrub yourself.’ Her nightdress was covered in dirty marks, and her feet were black.
‘Better hope there’s some hot water.’
We cleaned ourselves up, and were on our way down to breakfast when we heard Dad sa
y, ‘Did you move the pump from the hall?’
Minnie whispered to me, ‘Wait till they’ve finished.’
Then we heard Mums’s voice. ‘I kept tripping over it. I don’t know what you have to have it there for—it ought to be in the garden. It’s untidy.’ She sounded cross.
Dad said gently, ‘It’s important, Ethel. The house might have burnt down.’
‘Well it didn’t, did it?’
‘If it weren’t for the girls—’
‘Oh, stop it, Billy! My head’s terrible, and my back. I never get any peace with it.’
‘It has to be there, Ethel. And the sand. It’s important.’
‘I know that!’ she snapped.
‘Come on,’ I said, ‘we’d better go down. She’ll only start a row.’
When we went into the kitchen, she said, before either of us had a chance to open our mouths, ‘And a very good morning to you, too.’ Honestly, she’s impossible! I don’t know how Dad puts up with it. I sat through breakfast in a state of suppressed fury, not trusting myself to speak, while Mums talked in a martyred tone about having to clean up the porch. Minnie said, after, ‘Anyone would think we’d been making mud pies out there!’ She was smiling, but I couldn’t see the humour in it. I left the house feeling so frustrated and churned up that by the time I got to the station, I was almost in tears.
Everything looked grey and mean and squalid—battered houses and broken windows, the drizzle and heavy sky, the tired, pale people, cats picking their way across scorched gardens, a great plume of smoke rising up in the distance, and the horrible, acrid smell. These are our homes, our lives, yet it all seems so flimsy, so tawdry. But this is normal, now, like the tinkly noise of broken glass being swept up, which one seems to hear all the time. And at the end of Union Road, the old man was standing in front of the rubble that had been his house, staring as if he couldn’t believe it was no longer there. He looked like a big, stupefied animal. Again, I thought, this is what we are reduced to, and felt such a wave of hatred towards the Germans that I almost wanted to be sick. I remembered how the old man had asked about a woman—Peggy, I think. But he was alone, so… God, it happens so quickly. They can be as jolly as they like on the wireless, but it’s a horrible world where people can do this to each other.
I felt hot, headachy and very tired all day. Think I’ve got a sore throat coming. Took the opportunity to put my head down for a doze while the others were out, and woke suddenly after about ten minutes to find Mr Bridges leaning against the doorway, staring at me. He smiled in that awful ingratiating way he has and said, ‘Hello, Sleeping Beauty.’
I said, ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me,’ snatched my handbag and rushed off to the Ladies’ to put water on my face, which I did, but then, standing up straight in front of the mirror with a hairgrip between my teeth, I felt such a strong sense of unreality that I was almost surprised to see any reflection there at all. It could have been any female with brown hair and blue eyes—Minnie, or even that prostitute from the shelter, or anyone at all, really. I thought in a detached way that the person in front of me needed some powder on her nose, and duly provided it, but it didn’t make much difference. I still didn’t recognise her.
I tried telling myself I was tired, I wasn’t feeling well, all sorts of things, but it didn’t work. I don’t want to be Frank’s wife, I certainly don’t want to have anything to do with Mr Bridges, I don’t want to have to put up with Mums for another minute. I don’t know who I am or what I want. In fact, there’s only one thing clear in my mind: somehow, I want to meet him again. My airman.
Then I heard the siren. I wouldn’t have bothered—most people ignore the daytime raids now—but Miss Henderson appeared and herded all of us down to the shelter. The others were talking, but I shut my eyes, thought longingly of my bed and wished with all my heart that I was there, bathed and clean and sound asleep.
Wednesday 25th September
Jim
Waiting for a flap. Just stooging around the last couple of days. Pretty uneventful, thank God. I’m feeling bloody tired, though. Everyone is: lounging around in armchairs, dozing behind newspapers. Mathy’s staring at Prideaux’s car, which is still outside the dispersal hut. I saw him kicking the tyres. ‘Can’t somebody move the bloody thing?’ he asks.
Webster puts a hand on his arm.
‘Lay off, Adj.’
The car’s getting on Mathy’s nerves. He keeps on about it, so now it’s getting on everyone else’s nerves as well.
I heard Mathy telling Webster about his sister yesterday. Nobody else was in the mess when he said it, and they thought I was asleep. She died years ago, apparently. A car ran into her. She was only sixteen. Mathy sounded cut up about it, said it should have been him. Older brother and all that, should have protected her. God knows how—the way he told it, he wasn’t even there. She died in hospital, and he was too late to see her. I don’t know why he told Webster that. Interesting, though.
I can hear Gervase pestering Flint, now. He knows he’s not going to get any change out of me. ‘How do you manage to hit anything? I can’t even think, let alone fight.’ Christ Almighty.
Flint shakes his head. ‘Don’t worry about that. You’ll get the hang of it. Watch your tail, watch the sun—always climb towards it—don’t fly straight for more than thirty seconds when you’re in a scrap, because if Jerry gets on your tail, you’re dead. What else? Oh, yes. Stick to Goldilocks like glue, and then you just might have a chance.’
‘What if I lose him?’
‘You find somebody else. Got that?’
‘Yes. But what about shooting?’
‘Don’t bother about deflection or any of that fancy stuff. Your best chance is to get right up his jacksie, and wham! Don’t ponce about taking pot-shots from miles away. Waste of time.’
Flint’s right. We never got taught to shoot, either, apart from taking the odd pop at a drogue, and most of us were just as likely to hit the plane that was towing it. But there’s no point stuffing the new boys’ heads with technical business—they won’t remember it. Up there, it’s all instinct and reflexes. You can’t do it by numbers. Like going in line astern, so you can see bugger all except the plane in front. Waste of time. We just have to make it up as we go along, but it’s no good telling him that. At least it’s Flint he’s bothering this time, and not me. He keeps bleating out questions there’s no answer to. What can we tell him? You can’t prepare someone for combat. You’ve just got to learn to throw the kite about, and hope like hell that when it all starts and you’re scared shitless, you can manage to stop yourself freezing up, or panicking and dashing for cover because you’re so fucking desperate to stay alive. But then, when the urge to chase and kill overrides the fear, it’s the most exciting thing imaginable. And then the first kill—supposing he gets that far—the sheer amazement of watching bits fall off and disintegrate, the plunge down, and then the pleasure, the jubilation, of realising you’ve done it.
The best thing is not to think about it. Better to be too tired, or too pissed, to start taking it too seriously. But that moment: when you’re closing in for the kill, and the Spit’s not even a plane any more, it’s a gun-platform and you’re not even aware that you’re flying it. All this business about pilots being heroes is just a load of cock. Being able to fight and kill is something primitive and fundamental.
Dying’s not so frightening if you’re responsible for your own fate, unlike those poor buggers on the ground, and I don’t think I shall mind, much. I’d never thought of it at all before the war started, couldn’t take it seriously. Still can’t now, that’s the odd thing. Strange how you can be terrified and blasé at the same time, but chaps here manage it all right, that’s something I do know.
No sense wondering who’ll be next—could be me. No reason why it shouldn’t be. That puts the wind up the new ones all right, when one of the experienced pilots goes for a Burton. Some of the new ones won’t last five minutes anyway. I can’t put my finger on it
, but there’s a particular type—a natural victim, like that tart. You can see it straight off. I don’t know about Sinclair, I just know I don’t want to talk to him. He wants to have it all down pat. Play by the rules. I said to him, ‘There aren’t any rules. There used to be, but there aren’t any more. It’s not a bloody cricket match.’
He blushed like fury, then looked at me all innocent and said, ‘It doesn’t matter, you know.’
‘What doesn’t?’
‘What school you went to.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s rot. Schools, who your people are, all of it.’
I said, ‘What do you know about my people?’
‘Nothing. But it doesn’t matter.’
‘Oh, bugger off.’
Doesn’t matter. Of course it bloody matters. He went to a decent school, didn’t he?
Like Rodney Bowers. He lived down the road from us, where the good houses were. I can see him now, standing in front of his big, half-timbered house with the neat garden, his trunk in the driveway beside him, waiting to be driven off to school for another term, and me, squatting in the leaf mould, staring through a gap in the hedge at what I wanted—what I should have had—and thinking it should be me, me, not him, but instead I went to the local dump and came back day after day to a cramped, shabby life of putting up and making do and no space or time that wasn’t filled with my stupid, dribbling cretin of a sister, what she needed, what she wanted, so I couldn’t go to a good school or have anything new. And Bowers just took it all for granted, that he should have what I did not, in that easy way those people have as if it’s their birthright, when it should have been mine.
We’d go about together in the holidays, and it was easy to make him do things because he was younger than I was…the two of us in our garden, up a tree, pelting Maisie with apples. She was about sixteen then, a formless, tented lump on the grass, gazing up with eyes like currants folded in dough, twisting her head round, not understanding what we were doing up there, crying when the apples hit their mark and trying to crawl away. When I tired of that, we went down the lane and found a dog turd on the path and I persuaded Bowers to scrape it up on a seaside spade and creep back to the garden and throw it at Maisie over the hedge. She sat there, shrieking, red-faced, with shit in her hair and Mother came out and caught Bowers and marched him back to his house in disgrace and told his mother what he’d done. That got him in trouble, all right. I remember seeing his face, and knowing that he wouldn’t pass the blame to me.
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