Out of the Blue

by Val Rutt

  It occurred to Kitty that it was dreadful that she was the only ordinary person to witness this secret ceremony. She began to imagine the grief of the countless women and girls involved in the lives of these dead men. How many sisters, mothers, daughters, sweethearts and wives would soon be hearing that their loved one had been killed? And the thought that these women did not yet know, that tomorrow they would wake hopeful and ignorant of their loss, began to overwhelm Kitty. She felt a wave of unbearable sadness surge through her; a physical pain as if her ribcage might suddenly split open and she could not bear it. It was as if she alone bore the burden of grief for three generations of women. And with the grief came a terrifying dread that she too might have cause to mourn and the knowledge that she was powerless to protect the men she loved. The horror of it engulfed her and she cried out and fell to the ground.

  Kitty came back to herself as one of the soldiers, hearing her cry, reached her, and the lantern he carried revealed her kneeling and wretched in the damp grass. More men came to her side and someone helped her to her feet.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,’ she said through her sobs.

  They hushed her and told her that it would be all right, each man repeating a version of a platitude that he felt little conviction for.

  ‘Come and pray with us – do you feel well enough?’ Captain Horton studied her with serious eyes. Kitty nodded and they walked back to the grave. The servicemen stood to attention while the officer led them in the Lord’s Prayer and then recited:

  ‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

  Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

  At the going down of the sun and in the morning

  We will remember them.’

  Captain Horton led Kitty away as the men slowly took up the spades and began to fill in the grave.

  ‘I’ll get Harman to drive you home. What are you doing wandering around at night anyway?’ Before she answered, he called out and the Corporal hurried towards them.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep, I was looking for my brother,’ Kitty said.

  ‘Good God – has he not turned up yet?’

  ‘No, but I think I know now – I think he will want to go to France – to fight. After the . . . after this morning, Charlie will have wanted to go and do his bit – he has said so before, since D-Day, and before that really.’

  ‘How old is he? Seventeen?’

  ‘No, he’s fifteen – he’ll not be sixteen till Christmas.’

  The Captain told Harman to bring transport to take Kitty and the bicycle home.

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t worry too much. If he tries to enlist they’ll send him home to you. I can put word out if you like. Warn the local boards to be on the lookout for him.’

  Kitty thanked him.

  ‘And remember – you’re not to speak of this?’

  ‘Yes, but can I ask you one thing? Charlie spoke of someone called Solly – one of your men. Do you know if he – did he . . . ?’

  ‘I’m afraid the man you’re speaking of was killed this morning. I’m sorry.’

  Kitty nodded and moved towards the waiting vehicle when she thought of something else.

  ‘And can you tell me . . . when will they know . . . the families of . . . ?’

  It was too dark to see his face properly and, when he didn’t answer for several seconds, Kitty thought that she had asked too much and should apologise. As she went to speak he gave his reply.

  ‘Soon.’

  Kitty asked to be set down at the corner because she did not want to wake her aunt and uncle. Her head was throbbing, and as she wheeled the bicycle through the gate and left it under the lean-to beside the house, she began to shiver. By the time she was in bed, her trembling had become out of control and caused her teeth to chatter. Her head was sticky with perspiration. She felt cold and sick. Kitty pulled the covers over her shoulders and tucked her knees up to her chest. Had Charlie found Solly’s body that morning? What horror had he witnessed? Again, the image of the severed leg returned. Kitty moaned out loud.

  ‘Oh, where are you, Charlie? Where are you?’

  The next morning Kitty could barely lift her head from her pillow.

  Thinking that she must be exhausted after the previous day’s ordeal, Aunt Vi left her to sleep. Soon after nine o’clock, she came to Kitty’s bedroom bringing a letter from Sammy and found her niece lying awake with a fever.

  ‘Dear child, whatever’s wrong with you!’ cried Aunt Vi, as she opened the curtains and the sunlight fell on Kitty’s puffy face. She quickly closed the curtains again and went to Kitty’s bedside. She touched the back of her fingers against her niece’s forehead and exclaimed at the heat emanating from her. Kitty could not speak above a whisper, her throat was sore and her neck was swollen. She managed to tell Aunt Vi where she thought Charlie had gone.

  ‘Come on, let’s get you to the bathroom and into a clean nightdress.’

  Kitty whimpered as she moved; every joint and muscle ached and her throat felt as though it had been scrubbed with wire wool. As Aunt Vi helped her from the bed she began to shiver and shake. Aunt Vi held her round the waist and gently coaxed her out to the landing.

  ‘Come on, sweetheart, that’s my girl. There now, we’ll get you better.’

  In the face of Kitty’s illness, Aunt Vi recovered her resourcefulness. After helping Kitty to the toilet, she washed her and dressed her in a clean nightdress. She sat Kitty in the chair with a blanket over her while she stripped the sodden sheets from Kitty’s bed and remade it with fresh linen. She sent Uncle Geoff to call out the doctor and got busy in the kitchen. Soon, the smell of simmering soup filled the house.

  ‘Now then, Kitty love,’ Aunt Vi said as she carried a tray into the room and placed it beside the bed. ‘I want you to try and gargle for me – it’s just warm salty water. Come on, dear – you’ve got to, it’ll help you get better.’

  Kitty allowed herself to be helped up until she rested on her elbow. She opened her mouth as Aunt Vi raised a cup to her lips and held a bowl beneath her chin. Kitty tried to tip her head back but, as the salt water hit the raw flesh of her throat, the shock of the sting made her gasp and the water poured from her mouth into the bowl. Kitty shuddered and began to cry.

  ‘Now then, sweetheart, come on, crying won’t do you any good. It’s just going to make you feel worse, that’s all.’ Aunt Vi took the bowl away and wiped her chin. She raised a spoon to Kitty’s lips. ‘This is just some warmed honey with an aspirin crushed into it – try and get it down dear, come along.’

  Kitty took the honey mixture and sank back on to her pillow. She closed her eyes while Aunt Vi stroked her hair back from her brow. She fell asleep.

  Aunt Vi glanced in the hall mirror as she tied her headscarf and repeated her instructions that Uncle Geoff was to keep an eye on Kitty until she got back. ‘And what did the doctor say?’

  ‘He’ll drop in this afternoon,’ Uncle Geoff called from the kitchen as he peered inside the stockpot.

  ‘Out of there,’ Aunt Vi said from the hallway as she recognised the sound of the pan lid being lifted. ‘I’m making that for Kitty – there’s bread and a bit of luncheon meat for you.’ Aunt Vi put her head round the kitchen door. ‘I’m worried about that girl, Geoff – I hope it’s not diphtheria.’

  ‘Oh, she’ll be all right, Vi,’ he answered irritably.

  ‘Well, I hope so. I’m going to ask Mrs Parkes if I can borrow her telephone and get a message to Win. To think that last night I was lying awake wondering how on earth I could tell her about Charlie, and now there’s Kit too.’ She sighed. ‘I won’t be long.’

  It was while Aunt Vi was out using Mrs Parkes’ telephone and Kitty slept feverishly upstairs that Sammy came to the house.

  August 2006

  Bert tells Kitty about Sammy’s visit the day after the V1 was shot down. Kitty sits quietly in Bert’s kitchen where a wall clock ticks loudly and the tap drips intermittently. She hears how Sammy, after p
ursuing the flying bomb and shooting it down, returned to his base in East Anglia and learned of the casualties in the debrief. Bert tells Kitty that Sammy risked a court martial when he took a plane and flew to Kent after the next day’s operations.

  ‘I felt sorry for the lad, Kitty. I took the letter and said I’d get it to you. But your Uncle Geoff wasn’t having any of it. I let him convince me. I didn’t see Sammy again after that – his lot were sent to Italy.’

  Kitty takes a deep breath and lifts her chin to meet Bert’s gaze. She attempts a smile.

  ‘Do you know, Bert . . . in a funny way, it’s a relief.’ She glances down at the envelope in her hands. ‘It never made any sense to me that Sammy could just disappear from my life.’ She begins to nod slowly then says softly, ‘I was very ill after the tragedy at Broughton – I had a fever. The doctor said it was tonsillitis but that it was compounded by nervous exhaustion. But, when I was well enough, I wrote to Sammy twice a day but I never heard back.’ A look of horror crosses Kitty’s face. ‘Uncle Geoff took my letters to the post office. Do you think he . . . ?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ Bert says, shaking his head. They fall quiet while the ticking clock measures the pause in their conversation. After a minute Bert says, ‘You know, Betty and I saw quite a bit of Geoff and Vi, after the war. Geoff and I played darts every Friday at the Queen’s Head. Whenever I asked after you, Kitty, it was all good. He was proud of you and said you were doing well.’

  Bert leans across the table towards her. ‘Do you remember that August Bank Holiday we met you and Vi in Hastings, when your little girl was small? In the early Sixties it would have been. You made such a lovely family – I thought then that it had all been for the best. I had forgotten I even had the letter until last week.’ Bert stops speaking and looks hard at Kitty. Then he brings his hands to his face and draws them up his cheeks and over the dome of his head.

  ‘I am sorry, Kitty, I didn’t think it was my place – you know, back then, to question what Geoff wanted to do.’

  ‘But, you let me have the book – do you remember that, Bert? After Broughton, after they found Charlie, I begged Aunt Vi to go to the airbase and find out what had happened to Sammy and you gave her the book to give to me.’

  ‘I thought no harm in giving you that – as a memento, like.’

  ‘But you had the letter then?’

  Bert moves uncomfortably in his chair and his chin trembles. ‘Oh, Kitty I’m sorry. I had promised Geoff, you see – he was fiercely adamant that you weren’t to have it. I promised him that I wouldn’t give it to you.’

  Kitty does not think before she says what comes to her mind. ‘And you promised Sammy that you would.’

  June 1944

  Uncle Geoff looked up from his raspberry canes as Sammy arrived at the gate. He straightened his back, took a quick glance up at Kitty’s window, and then went to meet the younger man. Seeing him approach, Sammy stopped at the gate and held out his hand in greeting.

  ‘She’s not here,’ Uncle Geoff said as he wiped his hands on his thighs and levelled his gaze at Sammy. The boy looked terrible. His eyes had sunk into his face; he was gaunt and pale. There was a look of desperation about him.

  ‘She’s not here?’ he repeated and peered past Uncle Geoff towards the house.

  ‘Charlie’s gone missing. Seems like he’s run off to enlist.’

  ‘Charlie? But, he’s too young.’ Sammy’s eyes flicked from Uncle Geoff to the house and back again.

  ‘Looks old enough though, doesn’t he? He might fool anybody, size of that lad.’

  ‘When will Kitty be back?’

  ‘I couldn’t say. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do.’

  Uncle Geoff began to turn away, but Sammy reached out and caught hold of his shoulder.

  ‘Please! Please . . . sir, I have to see her. It’s real important.’

  Uncle Geoff moved towards the gate and leaned his face into Sammy’s.

  ‘Just leave the girl alone, can’t you? You know you’re going to break her heart.’

  Sammy’s head jerked backward as if he had been hit. He began shaking his head in denial.

  ‘No sir, I’ve no intention of . . . This isn’t what I wanted to say right now, like this, but I mean to marry Kitty, sir. I love her.’

  ‘She’s sixteen years old – you’ve swept her off her feet. You’re going to ruin that girl’s life and you know it.’

  ‘No, you’ve got me all wrong. I’d never do anything to hurt Kitty. I want to look after her and make her happy.’

  ‘So you say – but she wasn’t being looked after the night you brought her home from Ashford. Lord knows what sort of carry on —’

  ‘No, sir, it wasn’t like you say at all, there was never —’

  Uncle Geoff raised his hand, pointed his finger in Sammy’s face and interrupted him.

  ‘You’re thinking about yourself, about what you want. You’re not thinking about Kitty at all!’

  They stood facing each other with the closed gate between them. Uncle Geoff spoke in low clipped tones. ‘So you survive the war – are you going to marry Kitty and settle down in England?’

  ‘Well, we’ve talked about going back home – you see there’s the farm and —’

  ‘You’ve talked? Have you? Have you really? Did she tell you that their father died when she and Charlie were little more than babies? You think Kitty is going to break her mother’s heart and move to the other side of the world?’ He paused, one wild eyebrow raised. When Sammy hesitated, Uncle Geoff continued. ‘No, I thought so – this is all about you and what you want. Kitty’s young, she has her whole life ahead of her. You hardly even know her.’

  Sammy had fallen quiet in the face of Uncle Geoff’s tirade, but at this he steadied himself and looked him in the eye.

  ‘I know Kitty. I know her better than I’ve known anyone in my entire life. I know I love her and I know that she loves me.’

  Uncle Geoff banged his fist on the gatepost.

  ‘Leave her alone!’

  Sammy stepped away from the gate, his face stricken with anguish.

  ‘Will you tell her I came to see her?’

  ‘Get along with you now – I’ve got things to do.’

  Sammy walked away and Uncle Geoff watched him go.

  Bert saw Sammy sitting on the wing of his plane, his back curled and his head bent over. As Bert walked towards him he saw that he was writing.

  ‘That you, Bailey? They sent you here or what?’ Bert squinted into the sun.

  Sammy looked down and Bert was shocked. He was used to seeing men’s faces altered by fear and fatigue, but this was something else.

  August 2006

  Kitty sleeps with Sammy’s letter beneath her pillow. She dreams that she is with him and they are young. He kisses her goodbye and she wakes. In her mind she sees him clearly: he is waiting for her just as he promises in his letter. As dawn comes, Kitty stands at the open window with the folded pages in her hands. She listens to the birdsong and imagines she hears other sounds: the rumble of a truck convoy, reveille played on a distant bugle. And then she hears the ghost of a clatter downstairs and Aunt Vi is in the kitchen baking bread while Uncle Geoff sits at the table, slowly turning the pages of his newspaper. It is not her vinyl-floored marble-surfaced modern room that Kitty sees, but the stone floor and distempered brick walls of the kitchen as it was sixty years ago. And she hears the screech of Charlie’s brakes as his bicycle arrives at the gate. My poor brother, Kitty thinks, and she wonders if Charlie ever knew about Sammy.

  The question stirs her and Kitty turns from the window with a plan forming in her mind. She dresses and while eating her breakfast she considers what she should do for the best. As the morning wears on, she potters about the house thinking of Charlie. At last she decides. Moving from the kitchen with sudden purposefulness, Kitty picks up her bag and takes her keys from the hall stand. She will visit Charlie and ask him what he remembers, find out what he kn
ows.

  Kitty reverses her car out into the lane. She drives for forty minutes before turning the car into the long drive. Gravel shifts beneath the tyres. Shadow, then yellow sunlight, then shadow fall on her as the car flits past the beech trees that line the road. Ahead of her, the house sits above a sloping lawn. Kitty pulls into a bay marked ‘visitors’ parking’ and climbs out of the car beside a bush that is heavy with bees.

  When they found Charlie in 1944, he was in a bad way. He had lost weight, having had little to eat in three weeks, and he had been involved in a fight. Aunt Vi soon fattened him up and his bruises faded but the greatest change in Charlie was not physical. He was silent and secretive; he had no enthusiasm for anything and if Kitty tried to talk to him he simply gazed at her before looking away. She wonders if she could have tried harder to reach Charlie. But she recalls how sullen he had been and the worry he had caused their mother, and how she had swung between feeling afraid for him and angry with him.

  In the spacious lobby, Kitty is drawn to a water cooler. Her shoes make a pleasing sound as she crosses the tiled floor. She pulls a waxed-paper cone from a dispenser and fills it with iced water. The machine glugs as it refills.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Poll.’

  Kitty turns and greets a tall woman. She is not in uniform but a plastic identification card bearing her photograph swings on its beaded chain around her neck.

  ‘Mr Danby is in the dining room – it’s lunchtime.’

  Kitty checks her watch.

  ‘Oh, yes of course it is. I wasn’t thinking. I can wait for him.’

  ‘Why don’t you go on up? I’ll pop into the dining room and let him know that you’re here.’

  Kitty climbs the curving staircase and walks along the corridor to Charlie’s room. He has left the door open and she pauses for a moment before going in. Sunshine pours through the open window and lights half the carpet, a slice of Charlie’s neatly-made bed and a dusty triangle of his wardrobe. Kitty goes over to the mantelpiece and picks up the carved wooden bear and cradles it in her hands. She remembers how, after the war, Charlie could not settle to anything. He took temporary jobs and he moved from town to town. For over ten years he drifted. He was arrested again and again for vagrancy, for being drunk and disorderly. Kitty feels sadness constrict her throat as she remembers driving to collect him from a police station with her mother weeping beside her.