by Val Rutt
Sammy broke from his story to ask Kitty if she could swim. She told him that she could. She had never spoken before of her only memory of her father, but she told it to Sammy. Kitty remembered running across the hard flat sand holding her father’s hand. And how he had swung her up into his arms and carried her into the sea. She could still feel the shock of the cold water around her legs and how she had squealed and clung to her father and tried to climb higher up his body. Inch by inch, he lowered her into the sea and then gradually loosened his hold on her until she was able to float alone for a moment.
‘When I noticed he had let me go, I panicked and thrashed around and then, of course, I was going to go under! But he never let that happen, he held me up – not completely, but just enough so that I felt safe again; until I got a sense that the sea would hold me. When we came out of the water, my hands and feet were as white as paper and wrinkled like prunes. I remember feeling very pleased with myself.’
Sammy had moved closer to her and they walked on, their sides touching, her arm about his waist, and his arm across her shoulders. He kissed her hair.
‘That’s a wonderful memory to have, Kitty. How old were you?’
Kitty thought. ‘I was four. We were visiting Aunt Vi and Uncle Geoff and went to the seaside for the day. That was the last summer Dad was with us. He died when I was five.’
Sammy murmured his sympathy and asked her what had happened.
‘His appendix burst and they couldn’t help him.’
They took a few more steps in silence before she continued. ‘And I can remember something that he said to me that day too. I remember it because he said that some people say that kittens can’t swim and he said, “You can do anything you put your mind to.” There are other things I can remember, but they’re vague – just feelings really, more a sense of him than a specific memory. Things like his rolled-up shirt sleeves, and watching him shave – and I think I can remember him and my mum kissing in the garden.’
They stopped walking and turned towards each other and kissed then. They kissed and clung to each other for a long time, and Kitty lost herself in the pleasure of being held against Sammy’s body and the desire that made kissing him the only thing that mattered and drove everything else from her mind. They stopped kissing at last and stood facing each other, foreheads touching, fingers entwined and gasping for breath. Slowly, Sammy let go of one of Kitty’s hands and pulled the other to his lips and kissed her palm. Then he leaned down and retrieved her handbag that had fallen to the ground as they embraced.
Sammy kissed her mouth and took her hand and they continued to walk. Kitty spoke first.
‘You didn’t finish telling me about the cabin – you said that your mother and your aunt didn’t want it to be for fishing.’
Sammy laughed. ‘You’re not kidding; we came back from swimming expecting them to be laying out the picnic only to find them hanging pretty curtains at the windows. You should have seen my pa’s face! Anyhow, that was just the start. Now there’s furniture – a cloth on the table, pictures on the walls and roses by the door.’
‘It sounds beautiful.’
‘It is. I just got a letter from Annie: she says that Hal and Ivy had their honeymoon at the cabin. We’ll do that too, Kitty, what d’you say? Just you and me, the birds singing in the trees – the river running by outside.’
He talked on and, as Kitty listened and imagined, she knew with certainty that she could do anything, would go anywhere with Sammy beside her. She knew that she was young, but she had experienced loss and uncertainty in her life and she understood that she could never know for certain what lay ahead. And yet, on that walk, Kitty believed that she was seeing her future and she both wanted it and believed it would happen. As they walked along the lanes, moving from darkness into pools of moonlight then back into shadow, she imagined them taking another walk together. She believed that one day, when the war was over, she and Sammy would hold hands and stroll through sunshine across the fields to the cabin by the river.
For a long time, Kitty had been oblivious to the discomfort of her slightly too-small shoes but, as they climbed the steep hill that would bring them within minutes of home, she began to tire. There was a farm gate in the hedge leading to a field and just inside the gate there was a hay barn. Kitty knew it well; the land belonged to a neighbouring farmer, Uncle Geoff’s friend Tom Farrell. She and Charlie had often played there when they had first come to live in Kent and sometimes she and Dora met there still and nestled amongst the bales of hay for a chat.
‘Can we stop for a little while, Sammy? I need to sit down for a few minutes.’
‘Sure, anything you say. You’re not worried about getting back?’
‘We won’t stop for long – just for a minute. I have to take my shoes off.’
They climbed the gate into the field and Sammy followed Kitty along the wall of hay bales to where the store had been dismantled for use and a few single bales stood. It was known as High Field and with good reason. They could see down the slope of the field to the road and the village beyond. It was a clear night and the moon was bright enough to bathe the grass in a silver sheen. Kitty sat down on the edge of the nearest bale and all but disappeared in the shadows. She leaned forward, reaching out into the light as she undid the laces of her shoes. She slackened them off, letting one, then the other, fall to the ground. As soon as her feet were free she knew she had made a mistake and that it would be agony to push her raw toes back into the shoes. She winced and Sammy turned from where he had been moon gazing and went to where she sat. He caught hold of her bare foot and gently pulled it towards him out of the shadow of the barn roof and into the moonlight.
‘Hey, Kitty,’ he said softly, ‘you’re bleeding.’
Kitty mumbled that she hadn’t noticed and that it didn’t really hurt. She felt her embarrassment burn her cheeks. For a second, she worried what he thought of her, but he took her face in his hands and kissed her.
‘I’m sorry Kitty, I shouldn’t have let you walk all this way.’
As she replied, he kissed her again and her words were muffled against his mouth.
‘It’s not your fault,’ she repeated as Sammy let go of her. He sat beside her and leaned forward to unlace his boots.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked then.
‘I’m going to give you my socks – you can’t put your shoes back on without socks.’
He kicked off one of his boots and started unlacing the other. He yanked off his sock, held it under his nose for a moment, shrugged and passed it to Kitty who squealed. Her eyes were wide,
‘I won’t get my shoes back on over your socks!’ she said, laughing.
‘Then you can wear my boots as well,’ he replied. He had both socks off now and he stuck his bare feet out into the moonlight beside Kitty’s.
‘But what will you do?’ she asked.
Sammy looked down at their feet. ‘I will go barefoot.’
He spoke slowly and carefully and somehow his words changed the quality of the moment. Kitty stopped laughing and held her breath. He was sitting so close to her that, from her shoulder to her knee, there was no space between them. Kitty followed his gaze. Slowly, Sammy hooked his foot beneath Kitty’s heel and raised her leg so that her foot rested on top of his. He sighed and shook his head.
‘Oh Kitty . . .’
A sudden creep of shadow loomed across the grass towards them. Kitty looked up and saw Uncle Geoff standing a few feet away. He turned his head at that moment and Kitty saw his eyes widen and a look of shock registered on his face.
‘What the bloody hell’s going on here?’ he snarled, moving towards them.
He carried a gun and all Kitty could think was that he meant to shoot Sammy with it. She sprang in front of Sammy and held up her hands. Uncle Geoff stopped and didn’t come any closer. His expression wavered between bafflement and anger. He lowered the barrel of the gun.
‘Get dressed,’ he muttered and he turned away as if looking a
t them disgusted him. Then Kitty saw the gutted rabbit strung across his back, its delicate front feet pointing downwards as if it were diving into the ground.
August 2006
The memory is so vivid and intense that Kitty stops walking. She stands in the street on her way to the postbox and her heart is beating faster than it should. She shakes her head and almost laughs. It seems funny to her now, her mistake, her thinking that Uncle Geoff had hunted them down. Such bad timing, she thinks, Uncle Geoff arriving at that moment. We were so unlucky. Kitty resumes walking and she thinks about luck and chance and fate and how things might have been different.
June 1944
Kitty had hurriedly put her own shoes on and, even though it did hurt every bit as much as she had expected it to, it no longer mattered. Sammy approached Uncle Geoff in his bare feet and began many sentences of explanation that the older man dismissed with a wave of the gun. He interrupted him with growled reproaches and refused to let him finish.
‘Sir, it is not . . . Kitty’s feet, sir, she – we got caught in a raid and – look, if you’d just let me —’
The two men circled each other in the moonlight. At last Uncle Geoff yanked his shoulder away from Sammy’s reach and seeing that Kitty had her shoes back on he marched over to her, grabbed hold of her wrist and set off with her down the hill. Sammy called to them to wait for him but, when Uncle Geoff ordered him to clear off, he called, ‘Goodnight, Kitty!’
Kitty called back to him, then twisted her arm free and slowed her pace from a trot to a walk. Uncle Geoff stopped and glared at her. ‘What in God’s name are you thinking of, Kitty? We expected you home hours ago.’
‘Sammy was trying to tell you what happened but you wouldn’t let him.’
‘Now, Kitty, please don’t take that tone with me. You have no idea of the danger you were in there.’
Kitty stopped walking. She had been shocked and upset. She had felt something confusingly like guilt, though she knew they had done nothing wrong, but now she felt angry. A storm of rage rose through her body and she turned on her uncle.
‘How dare you! I don’t even want to think about what you might mean by that. You have no idea – no idea at all. Sammy loves me and I love him, and the only danger I was in was when you came along and waved that gun at us. You could have blown our heads off!’
Kitty pushed past him then and quickly reached the gate at the bottom of the field, which she climbed easily. She was still seething with anger when she reached the house. As she went though the gate, the door opened and Aunt Vi looked out from the dark hallway.
‘Oh my dearest girl, there you are, thank goodness. Get inside and let me look at you.’
Aunt Vi led Kitty by the hand down the passageway to the back of the house. In the kitchen she took a long look at Kitty in the gaslight, then hugged her close.
‘Oh Aunt Vi, I’m so sorry. We got caught in a raid and it was ages before the all-clear and by then we had missed the bus. We got a lift part of the way then we had to walk.’
Uncle Geoff came in the back door and tossed the rabbit into the sink.
‘Go to bed now, young lady,’ he said. He didn’t look at Kitty as he spoke but turned to hang his jacket on the back door. Kitty had time to glower at his back before Aunt Vi squeezed her hand and held her gaze for a moment.
‘Go on – you run along now and get some sleep.’
Upstairs, Kitty locked herself in the bathroom. She got ready for bed slowly. She undressed and washed herself in tepid water, last of all placing her sore and blistered feet one after the other in the sink and letting water from the cold tap run over them. She dried herself and lifted her nightdress from the hook on the back of the door and slipped it over her head. All the while she could hear Aunt Vi and Uncle Geoff talking in the kitchen. When Kitty opened the bathroom door, she was surprised to see Charlie coming up the stairs towards her in his pyjamas. He took the stairs three at a time, treading lightly on the balls of his feet and supporting his weight on the banister rail. His approach was silent and Kitty thought that it was as if he were flying. Arriving on the landing, Kitty saw that his eyes were wide and excited. He gave Kitty a small notebook.
‘It’s from Sammy. He’ll come round and pick it up tomorrow,’ he whispered.
Kitty began to question Charlie but at that moment the kitchen door opened downstairs. Charlie nodded towards Kitty’s room and mouthed ‘Look outside’, before sliding into his bedroom and quietly closing the door.
Kitty went to her window, opened it and leaned out. Sammy was standing in the lane beside the rowan tree. She could see his head and shoulders above the hedge. She waved and he blew her a kiss. Kitty watched Sammy walk away out of sight before closing the window and securing the blackout. She found the matches and lit the candle beside her bed.
Kitty sat down and looked at the book. It was Sammy’s logbook and it fell open where a slim pencil was tucked inside. A folded note was there too, a quartered page torn from the back of the book. Kitty saw her name and experienced a rush of joy as she carefully unfolded it. She trailed her finger across the neatly sloping handwriting as she read.
Dearest darling Kitty,
I hope you’re okay. Thank you for the best day of my life. I’ll see you tomorrow. I love you.
I’m going to need your address – I could find my way here blindfolded but the postman might need a bit of help! Write it for me at the back of this book.
Sleep tight,
Sammy x
Kitty read it twice more then tucked it under her pillow. She picked up the pencil, turned to the end of the book and carefully wrote her name and address.
August 2006
Kitty reaches the postbox and, as her letter falls with a soft patter, she wonders if this will be the end of it. It has been unsettling, and she thinks of Bert and recalls what June had said when she phoned to make sure that he was all right.
No point dredging up the past – you can’t change anything.
Kitty turns for home. She walks slowly, her arms behind her back, one hand loosely clasping her other arm just above her wrist. She has no plans for the rest of the day and she feels at a loss. There are various jobs to do around the house but she dismisses each one as soon as it comes to mind. She remembers waiting for Sammy to come for the logbook. Her current mood matches the way she felt that morning and she is irresistibly drawn to reliving the memory. Kitty arrives home and decides to go shopping. Perhaps, she thinks, perhaps I can distract myself.
June 1944
In the morning Uncle Geoff left the house for a trip to Ashford. Some time after he had gone, Kitty looked out of her bedroom window and saw Sammy in the lane. She scuttled down to meet him, rushing through the door as he came in the gate. He grinned when he saw her, and Kitty knew that he was as pleased to see her as she was to see him. They kissed and Sammy lifted her off her feet when he hugged her.
‘Are you okay, Kitty? Is your uncle still angry?’
‘He has nothing to be angry about – he should have been thanking you for taking care of me.’
Sammy nodded, but said, ‘He was taking care of you too, Kitty – in his way. Is he here? I want to talk to him, to explain about last night.’
‘You’ve just missed him, but come and speak to Auntie Vi.’
They went inside and Kitty called out to her aunt as they walked through to the kitchen.
‘Is that Sammy I hear with you?’
Aunt Vi was butchering the rabbit and she glanced up at them as they came through the door. Sammy approached the table where Aunt Vi stood with a meat cleaver in her hand. The carcass of the partially jointed animal lay on a wooden block in front of her.
‘Mrs Bellamy, I want to apologise for Kitty being so late home last night.’
‘Kitty’s told me all about it. Sit down, lad. I’ve got the kettle on the stove. Kitty, make the tea please, dear.’
Kitty took the tin tea caddy from the shelf and set about warming the teapot. Everything’s going to be
all right, she thought. Kitty looked over her shoulder and smiled at the two of them. As she lifted the second spoonful of tea into the pot, Aunt Vi asked Sammy if he knew yet where the war was taking him next. Kitty jumped and caught the spoon on the edge of the caddy. Tea leaves showered across the table.
‘Do be careful, Kitty, you know it’s like gold dust.’ Aunt Vi reached out to a ceramic pot containing wooden spoons and utensils and passed her niece a pastry brush. ‘See what you can salvage with that.’
Kitty could sense Sammy watching her as she waited for him to answer Aunt Vi’s question. She brushed the scattered leaves into the palm of her hand and transferred them to the teapot. She picked up a cloth and lifted the kettle from the stove. Carefully, she poured the boiling water on to the tea. She did not look up.
‘Mrs Bellamy, would you mind if Kitty and I stepped out for a little while? I do have news but, with your permission, I’d like to speak to Kitty about it first – if I may, ma’am?’
Aunt Vi nodded. ‘We’ll have this tea now it’s made and then you can be off. But don’t go far – no missed buses today, please.’
Kitty sat opposite Sammy and sipped her tea, swallowing it down past the lump in her throat. At the end of the table Aunt Vi seasoned a saucer of flour and placed the pieces of rabbit in it. She turned each piece over and around until the flesh turned a dusty grey, then she placed it in a skillet.
