War Girls

by Adele Geras

  Kate was very nervous about singing, especially in front of Fred. The only way she could do it was to pretend that he wasn’t there. So she closed her eyes, her hands clenched tightly at her sides, and tremulously began, struggling to steady the shiver in her voice. She sang her mother’s favourite song, ‘A Bird in a Gilded Cage’. The other performers stopped chattering and looked at each other, surprised by the natural strength and sweetness of her voice. They gave her a spontaneous cheer of support and smiled across at her as she sat down again, trembling now with nerves. Sadie patted her hand and joined two other girls to practise their ‘Three Little Maids from School’ routine.

  Fred came over and sat next to her. ‘You have a lovely voice,’ he whispered.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, blushing.

  ‘But no one will hear you in the hall if you sing as quietly as that.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He brushed the dark flop of his hair away from his eyes. ‘You have to learn to project your voice. I bet you can, really. I think there’s a lot of power in your voice if you weren’t so nervous.’

  Kate bit her lip. She could sing much more powerfully than that, she knew. Sometimes, when she was quite sure she was on her own she would let her voice really float out, just for the joy of hearing its sound. But it would seem like showing off to do it in public. It was as if she had two voices really; the quiet one and what her father called the ‘belter’.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ he said. ‘How would you like to do a duet with me?’

  ‘With you? But I’m not good enough. You’ve just said, my voice isn’t strong enough.’

  ‘Don’t be timid,’ he said earnestly. ‘I know it took a lot of courage to stand up and sing in front of all of us just now. But you proved you can do it, and I think you should let more people hear you.’ He looked away and then back again, grinning. ‘I think if you sing with me you won’t feel so lonely on the stage. Shall we try?’

  He sent the Three Little Maids off to get a cup of tea and sat down at the piano. He played the opening chords of ‘Silent Night’ and Kate began to sing, very softly, because it was even harder to perform just for Fred.

  ‘Louder,’ he said. ‘My grandmother’s coming tonight and she’s deaf. Sing so the hairs on the back of her neck tremble like reeds in the wind.’

  Kate giggled, but managed to keep on singing, and then Fred slipped his voice into hers, supporting her first with the same melody, and then, as she began to sound more confident, sliding into harmony. She let her voice ring out, pure and strong, thrilling at the sound of the music they were creating together.

  ‘Good grief! You really can sing!’ he said when they had finished. ‘What a voice! We’ll do that tonight and we’ll bring the house down.’

  She couldn’t eat that evening; when she walked back to the hall with Sadie she was silent and tense with nerves and doubt. The only thing she knew for sure was that she didn’t want to make a fool of herself in front of Fred. She was excited, too, because she would be standing next to him on the stage – she alone of all the people in the company would be singing with him.

  She hardly heard any of the other performers as the concert progressed. At last Fred caught her eye and held out his hand to her. She joined him on the stage, her breath quaking like a trapped bird in her throat. ‘Breathe steadily. Take your time,’ he murmured, and she nodded to him and smiled. She was ready. Their voices wound round each other, and then he stopped singing and gave her a solo. Her voice had never sounded so full and rich before. She let it soar. Her eyes were open and sparkling; for the first time in her life she knew the absolute joy of singing to a silent, rapt audience; she knew the sweetness of applause. Fred squeezed both her hands in his own and kissed them.

  As they walked home together after the concert he edged his hand into hers again. She pretended not to notice.

  ‘I wish the show would go on,’ she said. ‘I’d like to sing it lots more times with you.’

  ‘Ah, Kate. Sweet Kate. You must carry on singing,’ he said. They stopped under the cascade of light from a gas lamp. ‘But not with me. Sing and sing, and think of me every time.’

  ‘Why not with you?’ she asked, deeply disappointed.

  ‘Because I’ve signed up.’ He lifted her hands to his lips. ‘I’m going to the War.’

  ‘You’ve signed up! But I don’t want you to go,’ she blurted out. ‘I don’t want you to be a soldier.’ She turned away, clenching her hands, clenching her eyelids against the rush of hot tears, clenching her throat against the tremble of her voice.

  He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her round to look at him. ‘I’m not going to be a soldier. I’ve joined the Royal Flying Corps. I’m going to be an airman.’

  ‘Not an airman, Fred! That’s so dangerous!’

  ‘I know how to fly. A couple of years ago my uncle and I built a triplane – well, it looked more like a bicycle with wings – but I learned to fly it and I love it! I’m crazy about flying! Now our country needs airmen and I’ve signed up. I can’t wait to be there. Part of it all. When you watch birds flying, think of me. Sky dancing!’

  She smiled, caught up in his excitement, then shook her head. ‘But you’ll be so exposed up there. I can’t bear to think of it.’

  ‘All the same, what the airmen do is very important. They spy from above. They see the enemy lines. They bring back essential information.’

  ‘Will you write to me?’ she asked, awkward. After all, they hardly knew each other.

  ‘Oh yes!’ His face was close to hers now. She could feel the warm flutter of his breath on her cheek. ‘I’d love that. And when I come home, we’ll sing together.’

  Fred wrote to her every other day, letters full of nonsense and fun about his training. She shared his letters with Sadie, giggling over his jokes and his funny spidery drawings. He’s having a good time, she thought. I shouldn’t have worried about him.

  And then, two weeks later came the letter that she had been dreading. He really was going to war.

  Dear Kate,

  It’s been fun with the chaps here. I’ve learned a bit more about flying. My uncle’s triplane is like a butterfly compared with the great dragonfly I’m piloting here. But, by Jove, she doesn’t half rattle! Had my first solo flight today. I’m free! Free! I’ll dance for you over the fields of France. Tomorrow, Kate! I sail to France tomorrow!

  Your sky dancer,

  Fred

  She kept that letter under her pillow, taking it out to read whenever Sadie wasn’t in the room. He sounded so happy, so full of life. ‘Your sky dancer’ he had signed it. She stroked the words. Was he really hers? Was that how he felt about her? And yet they had hardly spoken. They had sung together once. Held hands once. And when he had left her at her door that night of the concert, there had been a swift, shy kiss. He’s safe with the Royal Flying Corps, she told herself. She’d heard about soldiers in the trenches, crawling through mud, itchy with lice. She’d heard about grenades being thrown at them, blowing them to pieces as if they were made of seashells, nothing more. Fred was safe from all that. Safe. He would be safe.

  Fred’s letters from France came frequently at first, sometimes daily. He still spattered them with comical drawings of himself in his plane, flying upside down or dancing on the wings, blowing kisses at her. But as the war progressed, the tone seemed to change. The letters gave little news of what he was doing, though she knew that censors would block any real information. She searched them for hints of how he felt, away from her, but there was little of that either. There was a grim sort of cheeriness to his writing, a detachment from the War itself. It was as if he didn’t see himself in any danger, or didn’t care about it if he was. She tried to imagine the happy, dancing young man she had fallen in love with, but he wasn’t there in his letters now. And his image was slipping away from her – she couldn’t even remember what he looked like any more. The letters began to be less frequent. He’s too busy to write, she told herself. Or maybe he d
oesn’t think about me now. When his letters did come, she ran upstairs to read them in private. There was nothing that she wanted to share with Sadie now.

  ‘Lost my gunner today,’ he wrote tersely one day. ‘Pity. Nice chap.’

  She read his letter again, bewildered by his tone. ‘Pity’? A life lost, and it was a pity? Was that all he could say about a man who had died? Was Fred really so callous? Is that what war had done to him?

  And it was news to her that Fred flew with a gunner. She thought he did reconnaissance flights. Why hadn’t he told her before? What did they shoot? Other aeroplanes? Was that what Fred did? What if he had been shot along with his gunner? She had a picture in her head of a plane spiralling out of the sky like sycamore wings. She was cold with the terror of it. Maybe it happened all the time that aeroplanes were shot down, that fellow airmen died. But how could he be so callous as to write in such a way? She tried to reply, and couldn’t think of any response to make. He must have had to carry on flying with his gunner dead in the plane with him. Maybe he was still being shot at while there was no one to defend him. What would have happened when he landed the plane? Did he just walk away from it and find another man to replace the gunner? ‘Pity. Nice chap’? Didn’t he care at all?

  She kept starting a letter and not finishing it. She was haunted by the idea of him flying in a plane with a dead man beside him, and not caring. I don’t know him, she told herself. I thought I loved him, but I don’t really know him at all. She had no idea what to write about now. He has nothing to say to me, she thought, and I have nothing to say to him; here, safe in Liverpool, working in a shop. What has Fred’s war to do with me? I was just hanging on to a dream, but I don’t really know what that dream was. That’s it. He was just a dream.

  I will write back, she thought, folding away his letter yet again. But not yet.

  ‘Oh, but keep him safe!’ she whispered. ‘Fred. Be safe.’

  Not long after this, one of the Three Little Maids from the Christmas concert came into the grocery shop where she worked. Kate was weighing out tea for her when the girl said, ‘Did you hear about poor Fred Sweeney?’

  Kate was suddenly chilled to the bone on that hot Monday morning. Tea leaves trembled from the scoop, pattering back into the tin like dry tears. Don’t tell me, she thought. Don’t say anything. Don’t give me words.

  ‘Shot down. They didn’t even find his body. Poor Fred.’

  Kate stared after the girl as she left the shop. Flies were buzzing against the window; shoppers strolled by. I’ve lost him. He’s gone. I never wrote back to him. And now he’s gone.

  Feathers in the air. Dancing bird stilled in flight.

  After that Kate went inside herself and nobody could reach her, not even Sadie. There were no giggled secrets at bedtime. No singing. She put Fred’s letters away in a tin box and hid it under the bed. If only she had replied to his letter – just one last letter, maybe he would have received it before his plane was shot down. All she had needed to say to him was: Fred. Be safe. For me. Please be safe. But she hadn’t written, and he never knew how much she cared. ‘I loved you,’ she whispered. ‘And you never knew.’

  ‘You can’t go on like this,’ Sadie told her. ‘He’s gone, Kate. You can’t keep grieving for him. Nearly everybody we know has lost somebody now; the whole country would come to a stop if they all gave in like you. You didn’t really know him, after all. You have to find something to do. Something to take your mind off him.’

  ‘I’ll never take my mind off him,’ Kate muttered. ‘I want to follow him. I want to go to France.’

  ‘How?’ Sadie laughed. ‘As an airman? A soldier?’

  ‘He gave up his life for people like us. I don’t even know what happened to him. How can I just sit here and do nothing?’

  ‘You could do what Mum and I are doing, and work down in the munitions factory like all the women. Leave the shop.’

  ‘Munitions? More weapons for killing people?’

  Sadie stared at her, astonished. ‘For killing the enemy, Kate.’

  But she knew Sadie was right. She had to get out of the house. It stifled her. She couldn’t go back to work in the shop, where she would forever hear the dry patter of tea leaves that had accompanied the news of Fred. Besides, her job had gone to a young mother who had just lost her husband. She wandered aimlessly round the streets, and paused to read a notice board outside the YMCA.

  Miss Lena Ashwell is seeking artistes to form concert parties to entertain the forces in France. Professional performers only to apply. Auditions today between 9 a.m. and noon.

  She read and reread it; excited and dazed. She knew the name; Lena Ashwell was a famous actress. She and Sadie had seen her at the Playhouse. What kind of ‘artistes’ was she looking for, Kate wondered. Singers? If only she could apply!

  She forced herself away from the board, telling herself it was nothing to do with her, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it. It would be a way to do it, a way to go to France. She would be doing something to help. Surely making music was better than making weapons? She might even find out what had happened to Fred. She would be walking on the same soil as him, under the skies of France. It would be a way of saying a final goodbye.

  But she was far from being a professional. She hadn’t had any training. She didn’t even have any sheet music; everything she had learned was from the recordings that her father listened to on his great horned gramophone, mostly Gilbert and Sullivan, but some Italian and French operas too. She knew the arias off by heart.

  But she was too shy, surely?

  She sat on the wall opposite the YMCA hall, her legs dangling over a snoring dog. She watched people walking in and out carrying violins, briefcases of music, suitcases of costumes. Noon approached; it was her last chance. Panicking, she jumped off the wall and went inside. After all, nothing worse could happen than if they turned her down.

  When she went in, the two women who were conducting the auditions looked bored and tired. One of them was sitting at a piano, shuffling together sheets of music. The other she recognised as the famous actress herself, and immediately felt too much in awe to speak. They must have chosen their performers already, she told herself, and were longing for twelve to strike so they could go home. I won’t bother them. She turned away, crestfallen. How on earth would she have the courage to sing?

  ‘Ah, just in time!’ Miss Ashwell said brightly. ‘I hope you’re a singer?’

  Kate turned in her tracks. She nodded and swallowed. No backing out now.

  ‘Your name?’

  ‘Kate Hendry.’ It was scarcely more than a whisper.

  ‘No music?’ the woman at the piano said crossly.

  ‘Just sing anything, dear,’ Miss Ashwell said, more gently.

  Kate tried to remember everything Fred had told her: breathe slowly, take your time, fill the hall. Remember my deaf grandmother. She began to sing, gently, as if he was standing behind the two women, listening. She sang him the Christmas song they had performed together, imagining his light voice weaving around hers.

  ‘Pretty girl, pretty voice,’ Miss Ashwell said.

  The pianist picked out a sheet of music from her pile and began to play softly. Kate recognised the aria straight away: ‘One Fine Day’ from Madame Butterfly. She smiled at Miss Ashwell and started to sing. Now Fred was at the back of the hall; she would fill the space between them with her powerful voice. For you, Fred. Hear my voice.

  ‘Oh, wonderful! You’re just about perfect, dear!’ Miss Ashwell stood up and grasped Kate’s hands warmly. ‘We were short of a soprano to make up a new concert party, and here you are!’

  ‘Not married are you?’ the pianist asked.

  Kate shook her head, overwhelmed with the enormity of what was happening.

  ‘That’s good. Can’t send ladies whose husbands are already over there.’ She checked her list and looked up briskly. ‘We’ll write to you, Miss Hendry. You’ll be travelling with a contralto, Miss Rowena Rumble, of whom
you have no doubt heard? The fine tenor Mr Donald Bentley and the acclaimed bass baritone Mr Arthur Poacher make up the quartet. You will be singing duets and quartets from the operas with them, as well as solos, and you will be accompanied by a pianist. You will have one week’s rehearsal with the other members of your party. They are all professional, very talented.’

  ‘I know you lack experience, Miss Hendry,’ Miss Ashwell interrupted. ‘But what a voice! Such a surprise, my dear! Our men out there will be thrilled to hear it, and completely charmed by a young pretty girl like yourself. It’s what they need. Good music to cheer their hearts, pretty smiles to remind them of their sisters and sweethearts. It won’t be easy. Some of your concerts will be in base hospitals, you realise? Oh, and there’ll be an entertainer – conjuror, juggler, comedian or something like that.’ Her voice tailed away – Kate was already over there; she was already singing.

  The Channel crossing was dreadful. Too sick to go downstairs, Kate stayed on deck wrapped in rugs, watching how the waves lurched up as the ship lurched down, praying she would not die before she reached French soil. The other members of the concert party had retired downstairs. The huge, disdainful contralto Miss Rowena Rumble had turned a pale shade of green as soon as she had stepped on board. ‘Why do I do this?’ she had moaned. ‘There’ll be nothing left of me by the time we reach France!’ The shy, fussy pianist Peter Castleton was anxiously guarding his portable piano, which he called ‘Little Peter’. Mr Poacher sat with his handkerchief over his face, groaning softly to himself, and remained like that for the whole crossing.

  Halfway through the voyage Kate was joined by Donald Bentley, the tenor. She had been surprised to see how young he was; not much older than herself. She thought all the young men had been called to fight; only conscientious objectors stayed away, and they were pilloried for cowardice. He lurched across the deck, holding his bowler hat firmly on his head with both hands. When he reached Kate he removed it and held it across his chest like a shield. ‘May I join you, Miss Hendry?’