With a Kiss and a Prayer (The Cliffehaven Series)

by Ellie Dean

  As the lines of mules and packhorses were relieved of their heavy loads and taken to the water for a well-deserved drink, the men rested, snatched a hurried meal, filled their bottles and also drank to their heart’s content. But their respite was short, for the officers returned from inspecting the sand bar which was the proposed landing site for the gliders that would bring in their urgently needed supplies and take out their wounded. Having found the sand to be flat and hard enough, and the surrounding area clear of the enemy, they began to issue orders.

  Jim, Ernie and Big Bert were sent to dig defence trenches while signallers unloaded their sets, driftwood was collected for signal fires, and men were sent out to reconnoitre their surroundings.

  Jim kept an eye on the transport officers as he supervised the digging and got stuck in himself. They’d gone to the water’s edge to try and work out the best way to get two hundred and forty mules to swim a mile-wide river from a high and unstable sandbank to a narrow beach and soaring eighty-foot cliff.

  ‘I certainly don’t envy them that task,’ he muttered to Big Bert. ‘Mules are awkward bastards at the best of times.’

  ‘You can bet your life it’ll be us poor buggers having to get them over there,’ growled Big Bert. ‘When in doubt, send for the bloody sappers.’

  They were all sweating profusely as the humidity soared and the black monsoon clouds began to gather overhead. The atmosphere was heavy with electric menace as lightning flickered back and forth and gunfire continued to the north. The hairs on Jim’s arms and neck prickled and he could feel the air crackling around him as he regarded the tinder-dry fields and tall reeds. One lightning strike and the whole lot would go up and spread faster than a steam train – but at least they had the advantage of water at their backs should they be faced with such an inferno.

  The trench digging was finally completed at dusk and having bathed in the shallows of the river, eaten that day’s K-rations and smoked a cigarette, Jim was feeling very much better, so he dug out his notebook from his backpack and scrawled a hasty few words to Peggy.

  There wasn’t very much he could tell her, for censorship wouldn’t allow any real detail of where he was and what he was doing, which in a way was a blessing. Peggy didn’t need to know what he was going through, for it would only make her fret even more. So he didn’t tell her that General Wingate had been killed in a plane crash some weeks before, and that the new commander, Lentaigne, had changed their orders. Neither did he mention that the battle of Imphal was raging and Jim’s brigade were on their way to operate against the Japs’ lines of communication – which meant they would be heading many miles north-west once they’d crossed the river.

  So he wrote that he was fit and well, but that the heat was getting worse, which was a sure sign that the monsoon would break soon. Once that happened, they could all breathe again, as it would force the opposition who didn’t have the same amount of back-up to retreat.

  He told her he was eating properly and thankful for the knitted socks she’d sent as he seemed to be going through them at a rate of knots. He apologised for the brevity of his recent letters, but his army duties didn’t allow much time for anything but to march, eat and sleep. He finished with a kiss and a prayer that the war would soon be over and they could be together again.

  Reading it through, Jim saw how his sweat had stained the paper, but it was legible enough in the circumstances, so he folded the slip of paper into the army issue envelope, addressed it and handed it to the officer in charge of communications. His letter would be checked by the censor and then flown out with all the others on the next supply plane – which with luck would be tonight.

  Jim lit another cigarette and gazed out over the wide, rushing river which was now a pale gleam of silver in the twilight. It bugged him to think that somewhere back in India there could be a huge sack of mail waiting to be delivered to the men in the jungles of Burma, and in it were likely to be letters from home. It was such a joy to hear from everyone and to receive their photographs and small gifts of socks, underwear and copies of the local newspaper – but there again, it was a two-edged sword, for they merely underlined the fact that he’d been away too long, the distance between them almost immeasurable.

  His little Daisy and the boys were growing up without him, as were his two granddaughters – Peggy was revelling in her new-found independence at Solly Goldman’s factory, and his two daughters, Anne and Cissy, were young women treading their own paths while they waited for their men to be freed from the POW camp in Germany.

  Everyone was doing their bit to hasten this war to victory, and even Pauline had rolled up her sleeves to help out at the WVS while Frank and Brendon had got involved in something down in the west of England – and with the news being relayed by radio to the troops in the Far East, it seemed the tide was at last turning in the Allies’ favour.

  Jim crushed the last of his cigarette under the heel of his boot and then stretched luxuriously to ease the stiffness in his muscled back and legs. Life had changed radically for all of them – except his father, Ron, who remained as strong and purposeful as always – but when Jim thought of the easy, careless life he’d lived before this war, it was as if it had belonged to someone else, a stranger far removed from the hardened fighting man he’d become.

  He stared out at the thundering river, the memories of past battles, the sights and sounds of gunfire and the screams of wounded men flashing in his head like a reel of film. He’d seen enough blood, gore and horror in the dying days of the First War, but the trenches had been nothing like this cat-and-mouse game they were involved in now. Jungle warfare meant being on alert twenty-four hours a day, the tension rising at every sound coming from the steaming jungle, knowing that at any minute they could be involved in a fight to the death against men who seemed to have no concept of fear or compassion.

  Jim had seen things that would live with him for the rest of his life, but for now they had to be firmly pushed to the deepest recesses of his mind. Survival was all – he’d deal with the aftermath once the war was over.

  His dark thoughts were broken by the familiar drone of Air Commando C-47s advancing. It was now fully dark, but against the star-filled sky he could see that each plane was towing a single glider which would be released over the line of signal fires that had now been lit along the perimeters of the sandbar runway. It was to be a swift turn-around in case the Japanese had spotted the C-47s and came in pursuit, so everyone was on alert.

  As Jim was part of the unloading party, he kept his men on stand-by as one by one the gliders whooshed overhead. But they were coming in too high and too fast, so overshot the runway and ploughed into the soft sand, narrowly missing the few trees that hadn’t been cleared.

  Muttered curses went through the ranks, for now it meant that the assault motorboats they were delivering would have to be dragged over half a mile to the designated river crossing place.

  Jim and the others ran with difficulty through the shifting sand and hot night to fetch them. It was a long, painfully slow process as men and mules dragged and hauled the heavy boats through the sand, along with outboard motors, ropes, life jackets, petrol and oil drums, back to the crossing. But the news that the fighting patrols in Inywa and Ma-ugon had driven off the Japanese was cheering and boosted their efforts, so their task was completed well within the allotted time frame.

  Returning to the gliders and loading one with mail sacks and the wounded, the men manhandled the gliders into position in readiness for their pick-up. It was a practised and highly skilled manoeuvre which had been used throughout the Burma campaign, but one that only a few of the men had seen, so once all three gliders were in position, they avidly lined the sandbanks to watch how it was done.

  Each glider carried two long poles, both armed at the ends with a blue light powered by its own battery, with a third shining above the pilot’s cockpit. As the pilot gave his orders the poles were stuck in the sand about two hundred feet in front of the glider and fifty fe
et apart. One end of a double-length nylon tow rope was fastened firmly to the hook in the glider’s nose, and then fixed to the first pole, stretched to the second and then tied very firmly to the nose hook.

  The first glider pilot waited, all three lights glowing, brakes off and controls set for take-off. Everyone watched with bated breath as the approaching C-47 lowered a long steel boom from beneath its tail which had a self-operating catch.

  The C-47 came in low with its engines throttled back, flaps down, propellers at full pitch. The trailing hook grabbed the taut rope between the poles and snatched it up. The C-47 took the strain, its engines screaming, and as its pilot rammed his throttles fully forward and lifted its nose, the glider – jerked from nought to eighty miles an hour in a matter of seconds – was catapulted into the air, and they both swept away into the darkness as the second C-47 came in for the next glider.

  As the last plane disappeared into the night, Jim let out the breath he’d been holding. ‘Bloody hell,’ he gasped in awe. ‘Now that’s really something to write home about.’

  6

  Ron opened a bleary eye and wondered where the hell he was. He felt as cold and stiff as a corpse, his mouth tasted foul, and this was definitely not his bedroom. He blinked to clear his muzzy sight and was immediately assaulted by Harvey climbing all over him and eagerly licking his face.

  ‘Gerroff, ye heathen beast,’ he grumbled. ‘To be sure your breath is worse than mine.’

  He gently pushed the over-eager lurcher away and sat up, only to realise that he must have passed out on the scullery floor, and the snoring leviathan beside him was his son Frank – of Brendon there was no sign. He concluded that his grandson had been sober enough to be allowed to spend the night in a proper bed. Someone had brought blankets and pillows, but he and Frank were both fully clothed, still with their boots on – which meant they must have been comatose, and were now in deep trouble with their women.

  Ron wrinkled his nose, recognising the smell of his compost heap emanating from Frank, and memory slowly returned in all its awful clarity. He glanced down at his chest, saw the remains of vegetable sludge glued to his sweater and trousers and grunted in disgust. Rosie had certainly made her feelings plain about his behaviour, and although he hadn’t thought he’d been that bad at serenading her, he’d clearly been deluded in thinking she’d appreciate it.

  He struggled to his feet and stood there unsteadily for a moment to get his bearings and will his reluctant muscles to work again. He was getting too old to be sleeping on a concrete floor, and should have known better than to drink so much, even though the rare luxury of good whiskey had been impossible to resist.

  ‘Never again,’ he muttered – a promise he’d made to himself too many times before, and subsequently broken.

  With trembling fingers he drew back his sleeve and looked at his watch. It was five in the morning and much too early to go visiting Rosie to apologise about his attempts to serenade her – besides, he had the ferrets to sort out before he could wash and find clean clothes, and then there was the small matter of appeasing Peggy and Pauline, and of course escorting Brendon to the railway station. It was going to be a busy day.

  He dipped his hand into the deepest pocket of his coat and realised with horror that his ferrets were no longer there. He searched each pocket in turn with growing alarm, for he was unable to remember whether he’d put them in their cage before passing out. He stumbled over Frank and staggered into his bedroom – only to come to an abrupt halt. The ferret cage was empty.

  He searched his room, his panic rising by the second, but there was no sign of them. Returning to the scullery, he noted that the door to the kitchen had been firmly closed; there had been no kerfuffle to stir him in the night, so it was unlikely they’d got into the rooms upstairs. With deepening dread he dug Frank in the ribs.

  ‘Wake up, Frank. Wake up and tell me what I did with Flora and Dora.’

  Frank mumbled something unintelligible and pulled the blanket over his head.

  Ron ripped it back and gave him a good shake. ‘Frank. Wake up. This is important. I’ve lost me ferrets.’

  Unlike his father, Frank really suffered the morning after a long drinking session, and he painfully sat up, holding his head. ‘What happened? Why am I on the floor in your scullery?’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ Ron said impatiently, ‘but by the smell of you, you landed in my compost at some point – just like your brother used to.’ Ron squatted beside him. ‘Frank, I need you to concentrate,’ he said urgently. ‘Flora and Dora have disappeared. Do you know where they might be?’

  Frank shook his head, which made him wince. ‘I don’t remember anything after you tried to serenade Rosie,’ he groaned. ‘To be sure, Da, it was the most fearful racket, so it was.’

  Ron realised he’d get no sense out of his son, so he went outside into the garden in the faint hope that his precious ferrets had hidden away in the shed, the outside lav, or the Anderson shelter. The cold, damp air cleared the vestiges of his hangover as he and a fretful Harvey searched every nook and cranny. But they were nowhere to be seen, so with Harvey trotting alongside him, he tramped up the alleyway towards the hills, softly calling for them in the hope they’d hear him and come running as they usually did when out hunting.

  A damp blanket of fog was rolling in from the sea, making it hard to see anything, and Ron stood at the top of the track, his spirits plummeting as hope faded. They’d been fine beasts and excellent rabbit catchers, and as he’d raised them from small pups, he’d grown very fond of them. The thought he would never see them again made him immeasurably sad, and it was a long while before he had the heart to turn back for home.

  ‘Come on, Harvey,’ he said on a sigh. ‘Better get back and clean up before Peggy and Pauline wake to give us an earful. I’ve a nasty feeling this is only the start of what could turn out to be a very bad day.’

  He returned to Beach View to find Frank had stripped down to his underpants and was washing himself in the scullery sink. ‘I didn’t think it’d be wise to wake the household by using the bathroom upstairs,’ he explained, drying himself off with several of Peggy’s clean tea towels. ‘We’re probably in enough trouble with Peg and Pauline as it is.’

  ‘Aye, to be sure ’tis our own fault – so we must take whatever they dish out with suitable humility and dignity.’ He grimaced as he shed his spattered sweater. ‘I’ve searched everywhere, but Flora and Dora have gone,’ he said. ‘I can only hope they found their way into the hills so they can run free and wild. But I still can’t work out how they escaped from my pocket. I didn’t take them out after we left the Crown – I’m positive of it.’

  Frank laid a meaty hand on his father’s shoulder in sympathy. ‘I’m sorry to hear they’ve decamped, Da, but there’s not much we can do about it, and there are rather more important things to worry about today.’

  He eyed the pile of his dirty clothes on the floor. ‘Would you have anything half-decent I can borrow for the day? I can’t be seeing my boy off to war in that lot.’

  Ron nodded. ‘You’re welcome to anything but me best suit and shirt,’ he said gruffly, still mourning his lost ferrets. ‘I’ve some humble pie to eat today, and I can’t persuade Rosie to forgive me unless I’m dressed for the occasion.’

  Frank followed him into the basement bedroom and let out a gasp when he saw the mess it was in. ‘How can you live like this, Da? It looks as if a bomb’s hit it.’

  ‘It might look untidy to you,’ he replied, picking his way over discarded boots and clothing which were tangled up with old newspapers, dog blankets and hunting equipment. ‘But I know where everything is.’

  He edged past the open drawers which spilled underwear, old trousers and sweaters, and opened the wardrobe door. ‘It looks like someone’s ironed me some shirts,’ he said, rifling through the crammed hangers, ‘and there’s me second-best trousers.’

  Frank eyed the trousers, which looked clean and pressed, and pulled them on. T
he turn-ups were a bit short and showed rather too much sock, but at least he could do them up at the waist. Slipping on the shirt he found it strained over his chest, so left the top three buttons undone, but the sleeves didn’t reach his wrists. He rolled them neatly up to his elbows and then went hunting through the jumble of clothes in the wardrobe. He found a tweed jacket that was clean but had seen better days, and soon discovered it was at least two sizes too small. ‘To be sure, I feel daft in this get-up,’ he grumbled, tossing the jacket aside and picking out a thick sweater which appeared to have fewer holes in it than the rest.

  ‘You’d look even dafter covered in my muck heap,’ said Ron, reaching for his best dark blue suit and fresh white shirt. ‘Go upstairs and put the kettle on while I wash and change. Wee Fran’s on earlies today and I suspect Peggy will be up and about soon.’

  Once Frank had left the bedroom, Ron sank onto the unmade bed and let his shoulders slump as Harvey rested his muzzle on his knee, his hazel eyes limpid with sympathy. Ron had loved those ferrets – and now, through his own carelessness, he had lost them. He eyed the empty cage and gave a deep sigh. He could only pray that Flora and Dora were the only things he lost today.

  Deciding he had to carry on regardless, he quickly washed in the scullery sink, cleaned his teeth, and then had a shave before getting dressed. Eyeing his reflection in the fly-spotted mirror above the chest of drawers, he grimaced. His eyes were bloodshot and even after a shave he looked old, wan and tired – hardly the most dashing of suitors. Perhaps he was a fool to think that someone as glamorous as Rosie could love him enough to keep on forgiving him – but he had to remain hopeful and really put an effort into changing his ways so he became the man she deserved.

  Rosie had been woken by Monty whining to be let out into the back garden. She blearily eyed the bedside clock, and was horrified to discover it was barely six in the morning. Stumbling out of bed, she pulled on her warm dressing gown and padded down the stairs in her slippers to let him out of the back door.