by Marie Joseph
‘You’re too nice, Sally Barnes. That’s your trouble. We’re all surprised that Miss Duckworth hasn’t got preggy long before this. They don’t call her “The Forces’ Sweetheart” for nothing. My guess is she’s lucky she can pin the blame on Nigel whatever-his-name-is. At least he can keep her in the way to which she’s accustomed. His father owns three mills out Bolton way, and they live in a house called Something Hall. There’d have been a right to-do if it had been a private in the Pay Corps or someone like that. Then the fat would really have been in the fire. They’d probably have got rid of it, knowing them. You know – booked her into a posh nursing home for a D and C for painful periods to get rid of it. I mean they say a baby is only like a little tadpole at that stage. People with money and an obliging doctor don’t go to backstreet abortionists these days, you know.’ The friendly smile widened. ‘You’re not shocked, are you? Honestly, Sally, I realize you miss a lot not being able to hear. You just opt out, don’t you? That’s why some of the girls think you’re a bit stuffy. But there are things you should know. And I’ll tell you something else for nothing …’
On Sally’s face there was nothing but an intent listening silence. Nothing to show the turmoil of her thinking but a dilation of her blue-grey eyes. She was remembering the night the bomb fell on David’s house, the night when her brother stayed out all night with Christine Duckworth. She saw again the adoration in his eyes as he lifted a strand of Christine’s auburn hair away from her ear to kiss her tenderly. She saw again the naked joy on his face when he came home the next morning as if he had returned from a happiness too much to bear.
And she remembered his last words to her: ‘She’s my girl now, Sally, and when I come back I’m going to marry her.’
Sally stood up suddenly, leaving Jean in mid-sentence, her mouth agape and her eyes stretched with surprise.
‘Excuse me, Jean,’ she said. ‘I don’t want any pudding. Excuse me.’
She walked quickly out of the canteen. She would really have liked more time to think, but already she knew what she had to do. She had to hear from Christine’s own lips that she was going to marry some other man in September. And she wanted to ask if Christine had written to John explaining her broken promise. She sensed that something was very wrong, because in spite of what Jean had said, Christine Duckworth and her brother John had been drowning in love for each other that terrible night.
She quickened her steps, taking the stairs two at a time, running down the long corridor to Amos Duckworth’s office. She was trembling with the realization of what she was about to do, but the fierce abiding love she had always felt for her brother was urging her on, making her strong and determined.
She saw Christine as soon as she opened the door, slumped in a black leather chair by the window of her father’s office, smoking a cigarette and leafing idly through a magazine. A drawer of a tall filing cabinet was open and a pile of folders balanced precariously on top. There were papers everywhere, spilling from the folders themselves and littering the wide desk. As Christine swung the chair round she kicked over a mug on the floor by her side, and a thin trickle of coffee snaked over the carpet.
Christine’s green eyes opened wide in astonishment. ‘Sally Barnes! You’ve a cheek coming in here without even knocking! You know my father’s away for a week, so if you want to speak to him you’ll have to wait.’ She indicated the spilled coffee. ‘As you can see I was just having my lunch. So if you don’t mind …’
With a violent twist of the chair she swung it round so that her back was turned, forcing Sally to walk round the back of the desk to stand by the window where she could see Christine’s face.
‘I came to see you,’ Sally said clearly, then stopped, her mouth drying and her heart beginning to pound. Christine Duckworth looked terrible. It wasn’t merely the thickening of her waist-line – you’d have to be looking specially to see that – but the cowed look about her. The beautiful reddish hair hung lifeless as if it hadn’t been washed for weeks, and her nose, the distinctive Duckworth nose, seemed to have grown peaked and bony. All the arrogant confidence had somehow been beaten out of her, and the green glitter of her enormous eyes was dimmed into an apathetic dullness.
‘I hear you’re getting married, Christine.’ Sally said the words bravely.
‘And …?’ Christine’s chin jerked up. She turned her head to stare out of the window.
‘Have you written to tell my brother that?’ Sally felt her stomach lurch. ‘Before he went away he told me you were going to marry him. Have you written to tell him you’ve changed your mind?’
‘You interfering little so-and-so!’ Christine jerked upright in the swaying chair. ‘I never liked you, Sally Barnes, and now I like you even less. How dare you ask me a personal question like that?’
‘I dare because of John.’ Sally clenched her hands into fists. ‘He’s a long way from home, and it’s going to break his heart when he hears you’re going to marry someone else. I’m not interfering. It’s just that my brother doesn’t fall in love easily.’ She took a step forward. ‘He’s wanted you for years, and that night before he went away you gave him hope. He sailed with that hope alive inside him, and he deserves to know why you’ve let him down. John doesn’t love easily, Christine. It’s always been you. You must know that.’
For an unbelievable moment Christine thought she was going to burst into tears. They were there, choked in her throat as they had been for weeks now, frozen like the rest of her into a terrifying acceptance of the way things were and the way they had to be. The room was very quiet – no sound at all even from the goods yard way below. She got up quickly, sending the chair spinning, to fumble with a folder on top of the filing cabinet, her back turned completely to Sally.
‘I wrote to John last week if you must know,’ she said quietly. ‘I told him all he needed to know, and he’ll understand. Now can I get on with my filing?’
‘I can’t hear you.’ Sally felt the familiar rage of frustration. ‘I’m sorry, Christine, but unless you turn round I can’t hear you.’
Christine closed her eyes, feeling the tears behind the closed eyelids. It was too much, too bloody much having to repeat it. And why had she never noticed before how alike Sally Barnes and her brother were? The colouring was different, but there was the same open freshness about their faces, the same directness in the eyes. And who would have thought that little mouse of a girl would have found the courage to confront her like that? Deaf she might be, but a coward she certainly was not. A sudden overwhelming desire to push Sally bodily out of her sight overcame her so that she whirled round, her eyes sparkling with tears.
‘I have written,’ she shouted. ‘So go away! Go back to your typewriter and leave me to manage my own life. Right?’
Sally hesitated, held out a hand, changed her mind and hurried towards the door. She walked down the corridor, down the stairs and into the main office, wanting nothing more than to creep back into her customary shell and immerse herself in her work, ignoring the curious glances being directed at her.
Jean came at once to stand by her table, her teeth and eyes shining with eagerness. ‘Sally?’ She touched Sally on her arm. ‘There’s an Air Force officer downstairs in reception asking for you. Where’ve you been? I’ve been looking everywhere.’
‘For me?’ Sally looked startled, trying to collect her thoughts. ‘For me? An Air Force officer?’ Then her bewildered expression cleared. ‘David! It must be David!’ She smiled at Jean’s raised eyebrows. ‘He’s just a friend, that’s all. Almost a relative. From down the road.’ She glanced over her shoulder. ‘If Miss Graham comes back, cover up for me, will you? I won’t be long. Okay?’
With the feeling of desolation lifting from her heart, she ran quickly down the stairs into the wide reception hall at the front of the building.
The receptionist was busy at the switchboard, but over by the far window a tall boy in uniform with his cap held underneath his arm turned round when he heard Sally’s footstep
s on the parquet floor.
‘Sally? Sally Barnes?’ He looked somehow humbled and desperate as he held out a hand.
‘Yes?’ Sally looked into the boyish face and asked simply: ‘It’s about David, isn’t it?’
‘It happened at the end of last week.’ The boy’s brown eyes held a dreadful sadness. ‘We’d been on a night bombing operation to Cologne. We’d taken a real hammering from flak.’ He swallowed hard. ‘No one actually saw what happened, but four planes failed to get back. David’s was one of them.’ He took Sally’s hand and held it tight. ‘He asked me to promise to let you know if ever anything like this happened. It’s the least I could do, and I’m on my way home for a spot of leave anyway. Oh, God, I didn’t mean it like that, as if I’d just dropped by. Oh, God, I’m sorry.’
‘Thank you.’ Sally felt the blood actually drain from her face, leaving her cheeks as cold as marble. ‘David was my friend.’ She stood still, staring into the embarrassed anguish on the young officer’s face. ‘At least his mother never knew,’ she managed to say at last. There was a loud and shouting bitterness in her voice as she forgot to keep it low-pitched. ‘I suppose that’s one terrible blessing. That she never knew.’
‘Can I organize a pot of tea?’ The middle-aged receptionist came scurrying round from behind her counter, her homely face creasing into lines of concern. ‘It won’t take long.’
Five
AS THE GREAT bomber turned and banked away from the city of Cologne, David knew with certainty that this time they would not be making it back home.
He had seen the fires, started by their incendiary bombs, shown as twinkling lights far below the starboard wing. The skipper had acknowledged the ‘Bombs gone’ call seconds before the flak came at them yet again, shattering the port engine and front turret. He had then pointed to the hatch, giving the thumbs down sign, and David’s stomach had lurched, flopping over in his body as the bile rose in his throat.
Well trained, David obeyed the instruction immediately, sending up a silent prayer that the course he had plotted had by this time taken them clear of German territory.
By his reckoning he knew they should be over occupied Belgium, but for the moment all his concentration was centred on getting down safely and in one piece. His practice jumps were far in the distant past of his initial training, before the war in fact, when he had actually enjoyed the feeling of dropping through space. Now it was for real, and he gasped his relief aloud as his harness jerked at his body.
‘At least the bloody thing has opened,’ his mind screamed silently.
Through the black all-enveloping darkness he sensed rather than saw the ground rushing up to meet him.
‘Bend the knees! Relax! Roll over!’
The remembered instructions pierced his muddled thinking too late. With a sudden terrifying crash he was down, feeling his left leg fold beneath him, and the branch of a tree tear at his face. A sharp blow to his head left him stunned, so that for a time he just lay there, vomiting wretchedly into a clump of grass.
In spite of the warmth of the late summer’s night, he was shivering, his teeth chattering uncontrollably. The pain tore through him, and when he tried to raise his head, he fell back with a moan.
Half an hour later, a lapse of time which he would have sworn was only seconds, he managed to free himself from his harness and sit up. He blinked, trying to get his eyes to focus, but all he could make out was a blurred and uneven horizon fringed by strangely elongated top-heavy trees.
Far too dazed to remember to roll up and bury his parachute, he began to drag himself, inch by painful inch, over the rough ground. Instinctively he realized his duty was to go for cover. He shook his head from side to side like an injured animal, then felt the blood run slowly down his face, seeping into the fur-lined collar of his flying jacket.
Panting and retching, every inch a screaming torture, with his broken leg dragging behind him, he crawled for the next five minutes. Then he saw, not fifty yards away, a parachute hanging from a tree.
At first, in the darkness, it reminded him of the old net curtains his mother used to throw over her fruit trees to protect them from the starlings. So he must be in some sort of orchard. Maybe near a farm? Slowly edging his way closer, David felt his throat close in horror as he realized his mistake.
In the darkness, which seemed to be paling slightly, he saw the sightless eyes of his wireless operator staring straight down at him, set in a head lolling on an obviously broken neck. Vomit rose in David’s mouth and he clenched his teeth to hold it back.
Jack Thomson, the joker in the pack, a boy with a wit as dry and coarse as emery paper. His pretty wife, back in Bolton, had stitched a Saint Christopher medallion inside his pocket so he had to be okay.
‘You’ll be okay, Jack. I’ll get you down.’
David clawed at the air as his strength gave out. He sank back into the long wet grass.
When he opened his eyes again the sky was a pale milky white. He tried to move his mouth and his jaw felt sticky with blood. The pain as he attempted to stretch out his leg sent shock waves of agony through him, tingling his armpits and bringing him out in a cold sweat.
He sat up, holding out both his arms to the body of his wireless operator. Some way, somehow, Jack had to be got down. Okay then, for Christ’s sake, Jack was dead, but he couldn’t go on hanging there. David knew the score, and the score said that dead aircrew had to be buried, or at least concealed from sight. He wasn’t leaving him for the Jerries to find. Not old Jack.
David ran a hand over his gummed-up face. He had to see to Jack, then he had to set off himself, to God alone knew where, walking by night and holing up by day. He had to find a house.
‘Je suis Anglais …’ Oh, hell, what use was his matriculation standard French here? He wasn’t even in France. Oh, hell, his mind had gone as numb as his face. He raised himself on an elbow, and the movement jarred his leg into agony. Whimpering, he lay down again.
Poor old Jack. Only the week before he had confided that before being called up he’d never left his native Lancashire.
‘We always went to Fleetwood for the July Wakes week,’ he’d said. ‘We stopped at the same lodging house, me and Mam. And now Shirley’s living with me Mam till the war’s over. They get on a treat. None of the old motherin-law lark there. I suppose I’m lucky, really.’
Now Jack’s luck had run out, and he hung from a tree miles away from his mam and Shirley in Bolton. If David didn’t get him down from that blasted tree he could swing there for days till the birds pecked at his staring eyes.
David gritted his teeth, rolled over onto his knees in a frantic effort to stand up, swayed for a moment, then fell face downwards into a black and velvety darkness.
‘He’s coming round.’
The voice was deep, rough-edged. White wrinkles fanned out from Fernand Colson’s brown eyes as he showed tobacco-stained teeth in a satisfied grin.
By his side in the hayloft, his son Louis nodded his over-large head up and down twice like a puppet. The flat planes of his face lifted into a smile as wide as his father’s.
‘He’s waking up. The Englishman is waking up!’
Slowly David raised his swollen eyelids. He tried to move his leg, leaden now and weighted as if it was clamped in a vice. A wave of nausea beaded his forehead. The musty sweet smell of hay filled the air, and when he turned his head painfully he imagined he saw stars in a midnight blue sky.
He struggled to get the better of the deep languor creeping over him. Something was wrong. The last time he had seen the sky it was pearl white with approaching dawn. Jack’s eyes, those terrible blank eyes, had stared at him, willing him to help. David frowned. Help him to do what?
Suddenly memory flooded back. ‘I must cut him down. I have to … have to …’
Fernand Colson’s understanding of English was limited to a few simple words, and he guessed that his own Flemish tongue would have as little meaning for the airman. But he tried. By gestures and a simple
formation of words he tried his best:
‘You must lie still, M’sieur.’ He pushed David back gently with a huge brown hand. ‘I have set it for you.’ He pointed to the wooden staves holding the injured leg fast. ‘I am not a doctor. Not medico. Your head needs stitching.’ He made the appropriate signs. ‘I have bound it tight. Do you think you could swallow some broth?’
The farmer smiled as he met David’s pleading stare. ‘You are safe, M’sieur. My son and I found you in the far field this morning.’ He saluted. ‘I am loyal Belgian. My wife is angry with me for bringing you here, but Fernand Colson will fight the Boche in his own way. I was in the last lot, and if the Germans think they can get away with it twice in my lifetime, then they are very badly mistaken.’
He muttered to his son, then as the top of the unnaturally flat head disappeared down the ladder, he went on: ‘Louis is a good boy, but that is what he will always be, just a boy.’ Fernand stroked his bushy greying moustache. ‘We took your friend hidden on the back of the farm cart over the other side of Bruges.’ His eyebrows lifted as David’s swollen eyelids flickered at the sound of the last word. Fernand smiled. ‘You know Bruges, heh?’
He mimed the actions of a hanging body from a tree. ‘Over the other side of Bruges. Your friend. Heh? I am sorry, M’sieur, but it was necessary.’ He flung out a hand. ‘This is not a safe house, and if the Boche come – which they would surely do if we left your friend on my land – they would show no mercy.’ Spitting on a finger, Fernand drew it across his throat. ‘They are pigs, M’sieur.’ He spat a stream of tobacco-stained saliva into the straw. ‘I am just a farmer, but I will find someone to help you, never fear.’ He made the noise of a train. ‘Bruges to Brussels, okay? Over the border to Paris, then down the Pyrenees to Espagne. Heh? It is possible.’
