by Val Rutt
‘Charlie, Charlie, wait!’ Kitty called as she rushed to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Do you think that was a plane coming down?’
‘Stay here, Kit. I’ll go and find out.’
Charlie disappeared into the dawn and Kitty ran to get dressed. Her heart leaped painfully behind her ribs and her hands shook as she struggled to fasten buttons. All the while, one sentence repeated itself over and over in her head. Please, please not Sammy. Please, please not Sammy. Please, please not Sammy . . .
It was a beautiful morning and the sky was a brilliant clear blue, but up ahead a black and billowing pall of smoke climbed vertically into the air. As Kitty ran down the road, she heard two smaller explosions – the first made her stop dead in her tracks, then the second, following the first by half a minute, had her running again as fast as she could go.
She took the uphill curve in the road, panting hard, and passed the spot where she had fallen from Charlie’s bicycle. It had been a matter of weeks ago, she still had red scars on her knees, but Kitty felt utterly disconnected from the girl cycling home from choir. She could hear shouts up ahead now and she turned one more bend and found herself at the gated entrance to Broughton’s Farm and her eye fell on two things. The first, she recognised immediately – Charlie’s bicycle thrown against the hedge. The second object mystified her.
She was breathing hard and gradually recovering her breath while staring at the peculiarly displaced object that hung above her head in the tree beside the gate post. It was a pale and creamy cylinder, the size of an umbrella stand and encircled at both ends by what seemed to be a withered garland of red and blue roses. She puzzled over it for several seconds until, suddenly, it came to her what it was. It was someone’s leg. Kitty let out a small cry and turned her head away and looked now through the open gates into the chaos of the camp.
Everywhere there were men, some were running – some staggered around with blood on their faces or pouring down their arms. Others sat with their heads in their hands and still more lay groaning on the grass. Some, she could tell by the twisted distortion of their bodies, and heads pressed face down into the ground, were dead. Then, an officer came hurrying towards her with his arms outstretched, as if she were a goose he wished to shoo into a pen.
‘This is no place for you, go home.’
Kitty pulled herself together, stood up straight and looked him in the eye. ‘I can help – I can dress wounds.’
Aunt Vi and Uncle Geoff arrived then. Aunt Vi climbed out of the car carrying a bundle of sheets, blankets and towels and the officer pointed towards the farmhouse.
‘I’ve been directing men with minor injuries over there – Mrs Markham will be pleased of your help. I’ll send a medic over shortly.’ Then he spoke to Uncle Geoff. ‘Sir, I’m Captain Horton. I’m going to have to requisition your vehicle to help transport the walking wounded to the cottage hospital at Canterbury.’
Kitty took half of what Aunt Vi carried and hurried with her across the orchard towards the farmhouse. Glancing back over her shoulder, she surveyed the scene behind her. Nissen huts had been flung aside in the blast or had collapsed where they stood, as if made from matchsticks and trodden underfoot. Entangled in the debris were electricity cables, their severed ends burning with a brilliant blue flame.
The impact had come at reveille and men had been going about their morning activities. One young man, wearing a greatcoat over his underwear, was searching among the ruins of a destroyed washroom. He repeatedly bent down as if to pick something up, then stood again empty-handed, saying, ‘I can’t find my shoes. Has anyone seen my shoes?’
Kitty looked for Charlie among the confusion but couldn’t see him.
The evenings that Kitty had spent at the church hall learning first aid were poor preparation for the task before her and it was Aunt Vi who made the better nurse. Mrs Markham bustled to and from her kitchen bringing the things that Aunt Vi needed to bathe cuts and pull splinters of wood, and shards of glass and metal. And all the while Kitty spoke to the men, asking them about their homes and families, telling them about her life in Kent, her home in London, the jars of cherry jam they were making. There was something beguiling about Kitty when she spoke. The gentle, musical rise and fall of her voice seemed to soothe the men and they were calm and sipped the hot sweet tea that Mrs Markham brought them.
Captain Horton came to them after a few hours and thanked them. ‘Will you kindly follow me, ladies. I wish to speak to you before you go.’
Kitty and Aunt Vi followed him into the kitchen. Uncle Geoff was sitting at the table cradling a mug of tea in his gnarled hands. Mrs Markham pulled out chairs for Aunt Vi and Kitty and placed cups of tea in front of them. Two elderly men stood in a corner, holding their hats in their hands, their eyes lowered.
‘Where’s Charlie?’ Kitty asked.
‘Charlie?’
‘Her brother, our nephew,’ replied Aunt Vi. ‘He arrived here before us this morning.’
‘Ah yes, he helped as a stretcher bearer – I’ll have someone find him.’ The Captain cleared his throat before continuing. ‘I am asking that you do not discuss any details of the tragedy that you have witnessed here this morning with other persons – neither military personnel nor civilians. We are very grateful for your help and I shall be including you all in my report, but it is of the utmost importance that no information about what has occurred here becomes available to enemy intelligence. So, I have to ask that you go about your daily business as if none of this happened. Is that understood by everyone?’
They nodded and murmured their assent and Captain Horton excused himself.
Uncle Geoff and Kitty waited quietly, finishing their tea, while Aunt Vi talked to Mrs Markham. Then the three of them walked slowly to the gate and waited beside it for Charlie.
‘I’ve not had time to think about Charlie,’ said Aunt Vi and she began to tut and sigh.
Uncle Geoff patted her shoulder and said, ‘Now then, he’ll be all right.’
Without thinking, Kitty glanced up into the tree but the gruesome object had gone, and she half wondered if she had imagined it. She folded her arms around herself and turned to look again into the camp. She watched a guardsman sorting through wreckage and slinging planks of wood into different piles. A thin soldier swept the cleared concrete base of a Nissen hut with a broom, stopping every few sweeps to run his hand across his eyes. Near him another man was welding.
The shouts of a group of men drew Kitty’s attention. They had roped a tipped-over truck and were yelling to each other about the best way to right it. Beyond them, a mess table had been set up and cooking smells were beginning to waft across the orchard, carried on the gentle morning breeze. Kitty saw Captain Horton talking to a young soldier. The Captain glanced over and met her gaze and then dismissed the soldier. Kitty watched him walking towards them.
‘Apparently your lad’s not been seen for a while – I’m sorry, what with the confusion and everything, but Corporal Harman thinks he went home over an hour ago.’
‘He’s only fifteen,’ Aunt Vi said quietly.
Kitty walked through the gate then and out on to the road.
‘Uncle Geoff!’ she called. ‘Charlie’s bicycle – it’s still here.’
August 2006
Bert has not been able to look at Kitty while she speaks. He listens as she recounts what she saw and stares down into his lap. Then he tells her what he knows and has always known about the day that the bomb fell on Broughton Farm.
‘The V1 was shot down, Kitty.’
Kitty removes her glasses; her hands are trembling. She blinks away her tears and reaches into her handbag for a tissue.
‘Yes, I heard that rumoured, I think that’s what Uncle Geoff thought had happened.’
Bert lifts his head and watches her and his blue eyes are troubled and enquiring.
‘It was shot down by an American – it was Sammy, Kit. Sammy shot down the flying bomb.’
Kitty gasps and stares at him. Bert’s
head wavers as if it is suddenly too heavy for his neck. He leans forward, his elbows stick out, his hands grasp the arm wings and he begins the slow, painful process of standing.
‘I’m sorry, Kitty. I thought that you must have known and that you had agreed not to see Sammy anymore. But when you said the other day about him having a sweetheart back home and that you thought that he didn’t really care for you – saying about him coming to his senses and going back to her – I realised then that you didn’t know anything. I saw how terrible it must have been for you to think that he’d just disappeared without a word. But it wasn’t like that at all. He didn’t forget you, Kitty.’
Bert has risen from his chair and, taking up his stick, he shuffles to the door. Kitty sits as if dazed.
‘Can I make you some tea, Kitty?’
Slowly, Kitty follows him to the kitchen where Bert opens a drawer and takes something from it. It is Kitty who moves to the sink and fills the kettle.
‘I, I knew about it, later on – that the fighter planes brought down the V1s. But no one told me at the time that Sammy . . . that . . . that Sammy . . .’ She begins to cry again.
‘Well, it wasn’t common knowledge obviously, everything was hushed up.’
Bert gradually, shakily, lowers himself into a chair at the kitchen table. Kitty pulls out a chair and sits opposite him. She blows her nose and sits straighter.
‘Tell me, Bert, please tell me everything – I want to know everything now. Was . . . was Sammy hurt?’
‘No, no, he wasn’t. He was lucky there. Many pilots died shooting down V1 rockets; they got caught in the blast. In those first few weeks after D-Day any pilot would have a go at them – later on, when we knew more about them, the RAF put Hawker Tempests on to them.’
‘Yes,’ Kitty interrupts him, ‘but what about Sammy? What happened to Sammy?’
‘Well, he’d been coming back in from an escort mission when he spotted it over the Channel and his team leader sent him after it. His brief was to stop it getting to London at all costs. He was a pilot in wartime doing his duty – but he knew he was close to your house, he tried to bring it down over open land.’
‘Would he have known how many men died at Broughton? Poor Sammy. I don’t know how he could have lived with that.’
‘He knew and he knew about Charlie too . . .’
Bert tries to say something else but his voice falters. He tries again and begins to cough. Kitty stands and gets him a glass of water from the kitchen tap. She returns to the table and sees an envelope in Bert’s hands.
‘I’m afraid that you might not be able to forgive me, Kitty. I hope you can – but I’ll not blame you if you can’t. I think what we did was wrong now, but at the time, with you so young and all – we thought it was best for you.’
‘What are you trying to say, Bert? And who is we? Whom are you talking about?’ She places the glass of water on the table beside Bert and sits.
‘Me and your Uncle Geoff – it was wrong. What we did was wrong.’
‘Uncle Geoff?’ Kitty feels her heart begin to beat harder. ‘What’s Uncle Geoff got to do with anything?’
‘Sammy gave me a letter for you, Kitty, but your Uncle Geoff wouldn’t give it to you. He said that Sammy would ruin your life and it was best if you didn’t hear from him anymore. Best to do it then before you got any more involved. He said that you were young and you’d get over it. I tried to reason with him, but he said thousands of girls were being let down and worse by Yank boyfriends and we’d be doing you a favour.’
Kitty slowly shakes her head as she remembers Gwendolyn and the son she raised alone in England, not in Chicago as her GI boyfriend had promised. But Bert is still speaking and she turns her attention back to what he is telling her.
‘Geoff said that you weren’t strong and it would be burdening you with nothing but sorrow and, God knows, Kitty, I saw enough of those young pilots die – they left girlfriends, fiancées, wives – he wanted to protect you from that. Geoff refused to take Sammy’s letter from me. He said you weren’t to have it. He told me to destroy it. I am so sorry, Kitty. I thought he knew what was best for you.’
Kitty stares at Bert and then at the manila envelope that he holds towards her. It waves in his trembling hand and Kitty sits and frowns at it. She does not understand and, seeing her confusion, Bert says, ‘It’s for you . . . from Sammy . . . it’s the letter, Kitty, the one he wrote to you. I couldn’t destroy it – it didn’t seem right to do that.’
Kitty gasps and one hand flies to her mouth, but the other reaches out to Bert and takes hold of the letter. She pulls it to her lap and sees the familiar handwriting before it blurs.
June 1944
The search for Charlie continued through the day and into the night. Uncle Geoff and Tom Farrell drove round the lanes and out to the nearest villages checking the barns and outhouses. They came home for meals and looked in whenever they passed by in case he had come home. Meanwhile, Aunt Vi and Kitty stayed at the house and waited in case Charlie returned. As the day wore on into afternoon and then evening, Aunt Vi became increasingly distressed. She seemed to have lost her capacity to cope, and it was Kitty who spoke reassuringly, made them all dinner and later, tea, while Aunt Vi paced the rooms, stopping suddenly when she thought of somewhere Charlie might be, or when she was convinced that she had heard him outside.
‘Do you think that we should have left the bicycle where it was?’ Aunt Vi studied Kitty’s face for an answer.
‘It’s not far to walk – he’ll guess that we brought it back,’ Kitty replied.
‘But you know how he is about that machine. I don’t understand why he would leave it.’
‘Please don’t fret, Auntie. Shall I make us some more tea?’
Gradually, anxiously, the long day passed until finally, well after ten o’clock at night, Tom Farrell dropped Uncle Geoff back at the house.
‘I think we should call London and get a message to your mother, Kitty,’ Aunt Vi said when the clock struck eleven.
Uncle Geoff disagreed. ‘You’ll give her the scare of her life. And what can she do from there? Nothing. Anyhow, knowing that boy, he’ll like as not turn up by morning, happy as Larry.’
‘And what if he doesn’t turn up? What do I say to Win? Oh, we lost him yesterday, but we thought we wouldn’t worry you with it until Geoff decided that he wasn’t coming back!’ And, as she said this, Aunt Vi snatched a cup from the dresser and moved it to a different hook. In a moment she had snatched up another and soon all the cups were swinging on their hooks. Neither her niece nor her husband could understand her intention as Aunt Vi continued to swap the cups around until each hung in a new place.
‘I think that perhaps we should telephone Mum in the morning,’ Kitty said gently.
‘Yes, that’s right, Kit, that’s what we’ll do,’ said Aunt Vi, frowning at the dresser, not yet happy with how it looked.
Uncle Geoff and Aunt Vi went to bed and Kitty lay awake in the next room, listening to the murmur of their voices through the wall – Uncle Geoff’s low and constant, Aunt Vi’s by turns shrill and urgent then muffled, despairing.
Kitty could not sleep. When she closed her eyes she saw the leg in the tree. She pulled out Sammy’s letters from beneath her pillow but she didn’t read them. It didn’t feel right to her to wander into that state of mind where only she and Sammy existed and nothing else mattered. But the thought of Sammy made her realise that she could not lie in bed and wait for morning while Charlie was missing. And, thinking what Sammy would do, she got up and dressed quietly in the dark. Holding her breath and avoiding the creaky stair, Kitty went down and let herself out to look for her brother.
Kitty wheeled Charlie’s bicycle away from the house before climbing on to it and pedalling towards the village. Aunt Vi was right – it was odd that he had left the bicycle behind. Kitty couldn’t understand why he would do that either. As she pedalled, she thought about Charlie and tried to imagine being him. What would he do? Where woul
d he go? She tried not to think about what he would have seen at Broughton that morning, but she knew that that would be part of it. Charlie had known those men – he had been proud to know them. The wheels crunched on the gritty road and Kitty gripped the handlebars and pushed on the pedals and thought about how it would feel to be Charlie.
When, at last, it came to her, it seemed so obvious she couldn’t believe that it had taken her so long to think of it. Charlie was on his way to France – he hadn’t taken his bicycle because he wasn’t planning on coming back.
Just as she had this revelation, Kitty saw a faint light flickering in the church graveyard. She slowed to a halt and dismounted the bicycle and left it leaning against the wall beside the lych-gate. Instinctively, she avoided the gravel pathway and stepped silently across the grass towards the dusky figures moving purposefully in the lantern-lit scene ahead of her. She recognised the tall, lean form of Captain Horton. He was writing on a clipboard while beside him a guardsman held up a lantern.
The glow lit the officer’s face and Kitty saw a man who was just managing to control his emotion. His forehead was furrowed with lines and his lips were rolled inward and pressed together. He stood on the edge of an enormous grave, several metres square and deep, so that only the heads and shoulders of the gravediggers were visible near Captain Horton’s feet.
Kitty watched as two soldiers approached carrying a stretcher. They lowered a shrouded body into the arms of the soldiers in the grave. Behind them more soldiers approached. Kitty watched on as, one after another, bodies were lowered into the earth. It was so quiet that she could hear the laboured breathing of the burial party and the Captain’s pencil scratch across the paper as he recorded the names of the men he would now be leaving in England.
Kitty began to cry and bit against her knuckle to keep quiet. She tried to count the bodies as they were passed downwards but became lost as more than fifty men were lowered into the dark earth. At last the guardsmen climbed out of the ground and a weary assembly pulled themselves to attention beside the mass grave. Captain Horton read a committal prayer.
