by Val Rutt
Val Rutt lives in London where she divides her time between writing and teaching.
To find out more, visit her website:
www.valrutt.com
First published in Great Britain in 2009
by Piccadilly Press Ltd,
5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR
www.piccadillypress.co.uk
Text copyright © Val Rutt, 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
The right of Val Rutt to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978 1 84812 014 3
1 3 5 7 9 10 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, CR0 4TD
Typeset by Carolyn Griffiths, Cambridge
Cover design by Simon Davis
Cover photo © Corbis
Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders to gain permission for the use of copyright material in this book.
For my mother
and in
memory of
Jean and Laurie
Contents
August 2006
May 1944
May 1941
August 2006
May 1944
August 2006
May 1944
August 2006
June 1944
August 2006
June 1944
August 2006
June 1944
August 2006
June 1944
August 2006
June 1944
August 2006
June 1944
August 2006
June 1944
August 2006
June 1944
August 2006
June 1944
August 2006
June 1944
August 2006
June 1944
August 2006
June 1944
September 2006
After Word
August 2006
The letter is unexpected. Its arrival, in this hot summer where nothing much has happened, is startling. There has been no hint of change; no sign of cloud in the blue morning sky for a month. And then the letter arrives.
Dear Kitty Danby,
If this letter finds you, and you are the person I am looking for, then I hope that it’s okay to ask you some things about the war. I believe that you knew my grandfather Samuel Ray Bailey. I am trying to find out about the time he spent in England during World War Two where he saw active service as a fighter pilot in the Air Force. I found your address in the back of his pilot’s logbook and it would be great if you could give me any information you might have. I need to find out for a school assignment and I am real interested in history.
Yours sincerely,
John F. Bailey Rowe
Kitty looks out through the window and sees five starlings swagger across the parched lawn. Something disturbs them and they take off in a group, leaving the garden empty. Kitty continues to stare but she does not see. She is remembering the summer evening that she met Sammy Ray Bailey.
May 1944
The hedges were high and dense, a tangle of bramble and honeysuckle winding through the hawthorn. Kitty was cycling home from choir. It was deliciously cool pedalling slowly in the shade with the breeze lifting the hair from her forehead.
She had borrowed Charlie’s bicycle because she had been late; usually she walked. Last week, dawdling home, she had discovered a nest and four tiny gaping birds. Now, repeating the journey by bicycle, she hoped to see the birds again.
She watched the hedge not the road, aware even as she did it that it was foolish, but pleased to be getting away with it. She took furtive glances ahead and adjusted her course, then continued to gaze back into the hedgerow. As the greenery flitted past, she stared hard into the tiny shadows of space, trying to catch sight of a bird or a nest. Beneath her the wheels whirred and crackled on the grit. She turned the pedals as slowly as she could while keeping upright, and the bicycle wobbled and snaked along, until, at last, the front wheel rose awkwardly over a hump in the road and Kitty lost control of the machine.
As Kitty yanked hard on the handlebar and the bicycle veered wildly into the middle of the road, her stomach felt the wash of fear. Even so, the thought arrived in her head that this was inevitable; had been bound to happen. She began struggling to regain control, but her movements were too jerky and sudden – the bicycle was completely independent of her and gathering speed on a decline.
And so she was partly resigned to her fate, even as she attempted to keep her feet on the spinning pedals and resist the force that lifted her from the seat. When she took off over the handlebars, Kitty became curiously aware of the brilliant sunshine in the blue sky above her. She registered the beauty around her and somehow had time to hear and see where a distant skylark sang and hovered. She experienced the briefest moment of weightlessness followed by a sickening rush as she fell. Then she hit the ground – although it felt to her that the road hit her. As if she had been still, suspended in space and the road had been swung at her like a gigantic cricket bat.
Kitty was lying in the road when Sammy found her a few minutes later. He heard her crying as he turned the corner. He quickened his pace and stooped to a crouch at her side.
‘Shh, shh, hey you’re okay, let me help you.’
She was slight and dark and her hair was a mess of half-tamed curls. Blood was running from both her knees, down her shins and as she wept she turned her arms and placed a hand to her side then her head, searching out the places that hurt her.
‘Ow ow ow,’ she moaned through her tears as Sammy helped her to her feet. He steadied her and told her to ‘hold tight’ while he picked up the bicycle. ‘It’s in a bit of a mess – the wheel’s buckled,’ he said.
Charlie’s bicycle. Charlie’s pride and joy.
‘It’s not mine,’ she sobbed.
‘Yeah, I figured that,’ he said. ‘It’s not a girls’ bike,’ then, as if seeing her properly for the first time and realising his mistake, he corrected himself. ‘I mean, it’s not a ladies’ bike.’
Kitty limped towards where he held the bicycle.
‘It’s my brother Charlie’s and he’ll kill me. I never asked him if I could use it.’
They stood with the bicycle between them and she was still crying though she was trying to be quiet. He told her later how her eyes had amazed him – they were large, set far apart and so dark they appeared to be black. And the tears literally pooled up and overflowed in a way that had suddenly struck him as funny. Afraid he would laugh out loud, he looked down at the bicycle.
‘Well, I can fix it up for you if you like.’
‘Oh, do you think you could?’
‘Sure thing!’ He was smiling at her and Kitty blinked away tears and looked at him for the first time. His smile made him handsome and Kitty was suddenly self-conscious and dismayed. His accent and the khaki uniform he wore told her that he was an American pilot. Heat began to prickle her scalp and she could feel her nose running. Trying to wipe her face discreetly, she glanced down at her legs. Both knees were grazed and the blood was drying on her shins. She felt a new discomfort as the breeze stung the torn skin.
‘Well, I’d better get home now,’ she murmured and made to take the bicycle from him. He held on to it.
‘Look, I’ll come with you – make sure you’re okay.’
Kitty hung her head, she t
hought of saying no and sending him away, but she did not want to be rude. So she murmured her thanks, sniffed and nodded her head. Since her sixteenth birthday she had been feeling grown-up. She had started styling her hair and wearing a little face powder. She considered herself to have made the transition to womanhood. Here she was, alone with a handsome American serviceman – a situation if ever there was one that called for a girl to be ladylike and dignified – and she had two grazed knees and had bawled like a baby. Her hair that she had carefully brushed and pinned was hanging round her face. She needed to blow her nose, but she had tucked her handkerchief into the leg of her knickers and couldn’t imagine how she might retrieve it. Which just went to show, she thought miserably, how much of a child she still was – when would a grown woman ever go rummaging in her knickers for her hankie?
Sammy lifted the bicycle and put it through a gap in the hedge where it couldn’t be seen from the road.
‘I’ll come by and get it later,’ he said. Then, ‘Can you walk? Is it far?’ He offered his arm and Kitty let him lead her down the hill to Aunt Vi’s house. She walked with her head down and noticed her scuffed shoes and the rhythmic throb of pain in her knees.
‘Do you remember what happened? Did you hit a pothole?’ he asked.
‘I was . . . I wasn’t paying attention.’ Kitty’s voice came out in a feeble croak and added to the things that made her wretched. She could not believe how suddenly and utterly the day had changed from good to bad.
Choir practice had been fun. In between songs, Dora had whispered that her sister was coming home for the weekend and had promised to help her alter her clothes. Gwendolyn knew all about London fashion. Dora could barely wait for the end of each song, before grabbing Kitty’s arm and chattering about skirt lengths, box pleats and necklines. Her excitement was infectious and Kitty had left the hall grinning, with an invitation to spend Saturday afternoon dressmaking with Dora and Gwendolyn.
Then the lanes had been so beautiful and the bicycle had given her a sense of freedom. Kitty had felt that the world was good and life worth living, despite the war and all the bad things that could happen. And now everything had gone wrong. Charlie was going to be so angry with her and most probably Uncle Geoff would too. And as for being discovered in such a mess by an American pilot, the humiliation was unbearable. Without meaning to, Kitty groaned aloud.
‘I’m sorry, I’m making you go way too fast – does it hurt a lot?’ Sammy stopped walking and Kitty glanced up to see his brow furrowed with concern. Kitty felt another wave of heat rise through her face as she mumbled an apology for making a fuss.
‘Hey now, it’s okay – it must hurt, I can see that. Will your mother be at home?’
‘No, she doesn’t live there – I mean, I live with my aunt and uncle. My aunt will be there; well, at least she should be – um, she, she usually is.’ Kitty clamped her mouth tight shut and shuddered at the way the words had stumbled awkwardly from her mouth. What was she doing? Why could she not put a simple sentence together?
‘I’m sorry, miss . . . I didn’t mean to . . .’
Kitty had enough wits left to notice his embarrassment and managed to pull herself together.
‘My name’s Kitty,’ she said as brightly as she could, ‘Kitty Danby, and my brother and I live with our aunt and uncle but our mother is still living at our home in London. We came here during the Blitz, to be safe, you see.’ She looked up and for a moment stared straight into his eyes before quickly lowering her gaze.
He held out his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Kitty. My name is Sammy, Sammy Ray Bailey.’
Kitty put her hand in his. ‘I’m pleased to meet you too,’ she said, and this time her voice came out all right.
They carried on walking down the hill and, as the chimneys of the first of the houses appeared through the tops of the trees, Sammy spoke. ‘It was pretty bad for folks in London from ’40–’41?’ Kitty nodded and he continued. ‘We got to see some of the newsreels at the movies. I came over back then, end of ’41. I was seventeen. My Uncle Joe flew in the last war – still flies, does crop spraying, or did. He first took me up when I was five years old; let me have a go on the controls when I was ten.’
‘It must be amazing to look down on the world – like the birds,’ Kitty said.
‘That’s it, that’s exactly it: you’re as free as a bird and the whole world looks small and tidy.’ He had turned his face towards hers and smiled broadly as he spoke, but then he frowned and shrugged and added quietly, ‘Well, that’s how I used to feel, you know, back in Pennsylvania when I was a kid.’
Kitty pointed ahead. ‘That’s Uncle Geoff and Aunt Vi’s place there.’
As they approached, the front door swung open and a middle-aged woman stepped out to meet them. She dried her hands on her apron and her pale eyes widened as she took in the state that Kitty was in. Kitty murmured her thanks to Sammy and moved quietly into the hallway and stood behind her aunt.
Aunt Vi made no attempt to be discreet as she took a moment to study the young man who had brought her niece home. She eyed him up and down while Kitty explained that he had found her hurt in the road and had insisted on helping her. Aunt Vi nodded as she listened and at last her face softened and she smiled. She shook his hand and asked Sammy in for tea. The young American declined.
When Aunt Vi heard that he was going to fix Charlie’s bicycle, she insisted that he would stay for tea on Sunday afternoon when he planned to return it. This invitation he accepted with a wide grin, a nod of the head and a ‘Thank you, ma’am’, in a voice so warm that Kitty felt the glow from it on her skin and some previously unknown source of happiness stirred in her.
After Sammy had left, they went through to the kitchen and Aunt Vi pulled out a chair and sat Kitty down at the table.
‘Well, you hear all sorts, but he was a thoroughly charming young man, I thought. Lucky for you, Kitty, that he came along when he did.’
Aunt Vi took an enamel bowl from behind the curtain under the sink. It roared like homemade percussion as she half-filled it with a jet of water from the tap. She placed the bowl on the kitchen table then, taking a cloth to the range, she lifted the kettle from the heat and warmed the water with a splash from its steaming spout.
‘Now, young lady, let me clean up those grazes while you tell me what happened.’
Aunt Vi crouched down and Kitty winced as she lifted a flannel from the warm water and began wiping away the blood and grit.
‘Charlie’s bicycle went out of control.’
‘You shouldn’t’ve had Charlie’s bicycle, Kit – we’ll never hear the end of it.’
‘I know.’
Aunt Vi took the top off a tube of Valderma antiseptic and Kitty reached out and took it from her. The back door opened abruptly and Uncle Geoff came in and plopped a rabbit in the sink.
‘What’s happened to you, Kit – been fighting the war have you?’
Aunt Vi left Kitty to apply her own antiseptic and stood up.
‘Oooh, what a whopper – we’ll have a stew. Young Kitty’s taken a fall from Charlie’s bicycle. It’s come off worse than Kitty has, by the sound of it.’
‘Eh? And what does Charlie have to say about that?’
‘He doesn’t know yet. A nice American lad – pilot from the airbase, he found Kitty and he’s going to mend the bicycle.’
Uncle Geoff had hold of the rabbit and was working his fingers under the skin tearing the fur from the flesh.
‘Not a young’un this, Vi, he’ll need longer in the pot.’
‘I don’t think I need you to tell me how to cook a rabbit,’ Aunt Vi grumbled.
‘I was just saying.’ He took up his knife and cut the skin from the animal’s legs. ‘You want to watch the Yanks, Kitty. They took their time getting into this war, but in other ways they’re not backwards in coming forwards, if you know what I mean.’
Before Kitty could reply, Charlie came through the front door shouting.
‘Kitty, are you all
right? Mrs Parkes said she saw you coming home with a Yank and you were covered in blood —’
Charlie had reached the kitchen and looked with disappointment at Kitty.
‘You look fine,’ he said. ‘What’ya do anyway?’
Aunt Vi turned away from him and joined Uncle Geoff at the sink. Kitty stood up carefully.
‘I’m really sorry, Charlie. I’ve crashed your bicycle. Only it’s all right – it’ll get fixed.’
‘My bicycle? Of course you crashed it – you’re just a stupid girl. I never said you could ride it anyway. Where is it? I hate you, Kitty. If you’ve —!’ Charlie had raised his hands as if he was considering grabbing his sister by the throat. He was a year younger than her but already he was a head and shoulders taller.
‘Now, that’s enough. Leave your sister alone,’ snapped Uncle Geoff.
Aunt Vi stepped in now and herded Charlie towards the far end of the table where a bench stood beneath the window.
‘Sit down and calm yourself. An American pilot is bringing your bicycle over on Sunday. It’s not damaged at all – he brought Kitty home and couldn’t manage the bicycle as well that’s all. It’ll be good as new when you see it – you’ll not know the difference. And you’ll get to meet a pilot into the bargain. I’m thinking it’s you as should be thanking Kitty. Now eat this bit of bread up and let’s not have any of your nonsense.’ As she spoke, she cut and buttered a slice from a loaf and gave it to Charlie. The bread was still warm and normally Aunt Vi wouldn’t allow it to be cut until the old loaf was finished. Kitty sat down quietly and marvelled at Aunt Vi’s powers of persuasion and her economy with the truth.
Uncle Geoff had finished skinning the rabbit and he placed it on the table. Its rose pink flesh was marbled here and there with purple and a few yellow-white threads of fat.
‘There you go – supper!’ he announced proudly.
‘Tomorrow’s dinner more like – we’ve got leftovers to use up,’ replied Aunt Vi. ‘Now, do you think you could all get out from under my feet while I get Mr Bun here in a pot?’
Charlie left the kitchen and Kitty followed him.
