‘Well, be good,’ I said.
‘Rather be good with you,’ she said, ‘good an’ lovin’.’
‘Wouldn’t be good, would it, if I got run in for it.’
A gurgle of laughter issued. She looked over her shoulder. There was no-one in the little hall. ‘Kiss, then,’ she said and pushed herself close.
‘Get off—’ Too late. Her arms were around me, a warm girlish mouth clinging. I was aghast. I thought of the village eyes that were always at the ready behind curtains. Young Minnie was incriminating me on her doorstep in the light of the summer evening. And what a figure she had. One like that should be forbidden to girls of her age.
She let go. A little noisy breath escaped her. For a moment an actual blush seemed to show. ‘Oh, you Tim, ain’t you bliss to a girl?’ she breathed.
‘Min, I’ll thump you. Don’t do things like that at your front door, they’ll be written down by old Mother Goggle opposite and used as evidence.’
‘Course they won’t,’ said Minnie, ‘everyone knows I’m goin’ to be your best girl.’
‘Oh, everyone’s had a visit from a dicky bird, have they?’
‘No, me,’ she said. ‘Told everyone, I ’ave.’
‘Everyone? The village bobby as well?’
‘He likes me. He likes you too, said you were a good ’un.’
‘You little monkey, the stories you make up.’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Minnie. She smiled, then turned and called. ‘Dad, Tim’s come round. Mum, you can take your apron off, Tim’s ’ere.’ She was away to Aunt Flossie’s then. Down the street she whisked, a threat to civilization, although I’d heard from her mum that she was doing so good at school that her teachers thought she could be an asset. Yes, I thought, to the Windmill Theatre.
Jim and his old hat and pipe appeared. He drew me into the parlour. ‘Min’s gone off, I reckon,’ he said.
‘Gone off at fifteen?’
‘Eh?’ said Jim.
‘What? Oh, see what you mean, gone off to Aunt Flossie’s.’
‘Well, Aunt Flossie’s fond of ’er,’ said Jim. ‘’Elping to bring ’er up.’
‘Some help. Aunt Flossie sounds a dubious old haybag to me.’
‘Now that ain’t nice, Tim lad. You come to see Missus, to enjoy a nice talk with ’er and so on?’
‘I don’t mind a nice talk, I’ll fight any so on.’
‘Well, I tell yer, Tim, ’er mind’s made up to be educational to you an’ she always sees any job through to a good finish. Likes to do things proper.’
‘You’ve got some gall, you have, using a word like proper about something that’s indecent.’
‘Ain’t indecent, Tim,’ he said. ‘Nothing more natural than a good woman bein’ special ’elpful to a young bloke.’
‘Natural?’ I said. ‘Pornographic, more like. It’ll take us all over.’
‘Won’t ’ave time to, I reckon,’ said Jim. ‘Your lot’ll soon have to go an’ start firin’ yer guns again. Still, there’ll be time enough for you to get some good learning in. Friend of the fam’ly, you are.’
‘I’ll talk to Missus. But before I do, can I inspect your shed?’
‘Now that ain’t no place for learning, lad. Cushions an’ things, that’s best.’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I just want to see what’s in your shed. I’m after some wood.’
We went around to his garden shed. It was as big as his cottage. In it he stored everything he collected, lifted or otherwise acquired. It was a little bit like a run-down bargain basement.
‘What kind o’ wood?’ asked Jim.
‘Just an old three-feet door that nobody wants and some other junk not worth anything.’
‘Ain’t got no stuff like that,’ said Jim, ‘it’s all got a price. I ain’t Father Christmas.’
‘We’ll see,’ I said and I searched around. He had enough old seasoned timber to build a new Ark, with lifeboats. ‘This’ll do.’ I spotted a solid three-footer with peeling paint. ‘It’s for a crippled old war widow in Elsingham. It can’t be worth more than a pint of old and mild. And I’ll have some of that rotten stuff there as well.’
‘Ain’t rotten,’ said Jim. ‘Them’s high fence posts, four by four.’
‘Just right. I’d like two eight-foot lengths to use as doorposts. Nice you’ve got a van and can cart the stuff over.’
‘She’s a widder you said?’ enquired Jim. ‘What widder?’
‘Mary Coker, Beech Cottage.’
‘’Ere, she ain’t old nor crippled, she’s a lively London body and I ain’t sure I can deliver to Elsingham with a war on. It ain’t our parish. But if I can get to cart it over, it’ll cost yer, lad. Anyway, we’ll see, eh? Missus is in the kitchen.’ He sloped off to the pub. I was left with the choice of standing up to Missus or running another mile. Best to do some standing up.
I did it in the kitchen. Missus was just taking her apron off.
‘So there you are, Tim. Come right in, ducky.’
‘It’s no go, Missus. It’s kind of you, I’ll say that much, but it’s not decent.’
Missus smiled. In a yellow button-up blouse and a brown skirt, she was a countrified knockout. ‘Tim, you’re shy again, love.’
‘No, I’m not, I’m like iron. You’re my best friends here, you and Jim. So it’s not on.’
‘No, course it isn’t, love, not in the kitchen. Kitchen’s for cookin’, not cuddlin’. You go and sit yourself down on the sofa and I’ll be with you directly. Oh, by the way, our Min wasn’t hardly too pleased you cyclin’ up Elsingham way with that lady sergeant of yours on Sunday. I told you she’d get jealous, Tim. Kicked your bike over, did she?’
‘Nearly. Well, Missus, for the sake of our friendship—’
‘Yes, friendship’s valuable, like, ducky. You go and sit down and I’ll come and be nice and valuable to you. Oh, and come to tea Sunday.’
Her mind was made up all right. So I slipped silently out of the cottage and ran a fast mile.
*
On Sunday morning I looked for Kit. Finding her, I asked if she’d like another afternoon bike ride. We could call on Mary again I said and let her know Jim Beavers was going to deliver a door and some timbers. Kit said shoot, I should have asked her earlier. She was otherwise engaged. I asked who with. An higher-up, she said. I suspected it was Major Moffat. I had a feeling he was after her, although not in the same way he was after me. However, Kit did say she’d keep next Sunday open. I said OK, next Sunday.
I read a book in the afternoon. Gunner Dunwoodie showed me his face at four-thirty. It was wearing an idiot’s grin.
‘Yer wanted, Tim,’ he said.
‘Who by?’
‘Jim Beavers’ girl.’
‘Tell her I’m ill.’
‘Can’t, can I?’ said the idiot. ‘I already told ’er you’re in the pink.’
‘Well, tell her I’ve had a sudden breakdown.’
‘Can’t, can I, because you ain’t, ’ave yer?’
What a twit. I had to go. The terror was waiting outside the gates, in her best Sunday dress of pastel blue.
‘Well?’ I said.
Minnie, her bike propped against the hedge, let a smile run about all over her face of honey. ‘Crikey, don’t yer look manly, Tim? Ain’t yer grown up lovely?’
‘What’re you after?’ I asked.
‘Mum sent me. Go an’ find our Tim, she said, he should be here by now, ’e knows I invited ’im. See what’s keepin’ ’im. Oh, am I glad it’s not that fat American sergeant.’
‘Now, Min, she’s not fat—’
‘She will be,’ said Min, looking triumphantly certain. ‘Mum ’eard they eat more starch than elephants an’ Dad said that at the Yanks’ base there’s some Wacs nearly as big as elephants. Six feet big ’e said an’ nearly as wide. Can you get a bike out of your stores now and ride ’ome with me? Mum’s goin’ to do a nice tea.’
‘And what’s on after tea?’ I asked.
‘Oh, Dad and
me’s goin’ up to the chicken farm near Sudbury in ’is van to collect some new layers. Mum says you can keep ’er company till we get back.’
‘Sorry, Min,’ I said, seeing the trap, ‘but I’m housebound, I’m standing by for fire picquet duty.’
‘Oh, blow,’ said Minnie, ‘Mum’s not goin’ to like that. She’s baked a cake special, she won’t like the old war messin’ you about. All fiddle-diddle the old war is.’
‘I know, Min, I feel as mucked about as anybody. But I’ve got to stand up like a man to it.’
Minnie wrinkled her nice nose. ‘Blessed old fire picquet,’ she said. Then she smiled. It gave her the look of a sunripe dairymaid. What with that and what with Missus, I felt my best bet was to ask for a posting to Australia. ‘Still, there won’t always be a war, Tim. Best you give in when I’m sixteen.’
‘Give in to what?’
‘Lovin’ me,’ she said.
‘I’ll give in to thumping you, I’ll give in to that much, you cheeky infant.’
She laughed. ‘Like you best of all when you’re bein’ comical,’ she said and swung her bike from the hedge to the road. ‘Well, I’ll tell Mum you can’t come.’ She hitched her dress and drew one leg up to put herself in the saddle. Her Sunday stockings flashed. I growled at her. ‘Got good ’uns, ain’t I, Tim?’ She smiled, seeing me looking.
‘Hoppit,’ I said.
‘Don’t you go out no more with that American sergeant,’ she said. ‘Tear all ’er hair out, I will, if you do.’
She rode away, dress whisking, legs shining.
Minnie was trouble. So was her mum.
Aunt May and I wrote regularly to each other. She wanted to know more about this American sergeant I mentioned from time to time. So I told her that Kit Masters was a very efficient American soldier, but that I didn’t know if she was just as efficient as a civilian woman in a kitchen. I said she looked very picturesque on a bike and that I liked her. On or off a bike.
Aunt May wrote back to say it was time I answered questions seriously, as she couldn’t make head or tail of anything I’d said about this American girl. She also let me know that Mr Clayton had called again, just to ask how she was and that they’d shared another pot of tea and an interesting talk. And he’d been nice enough to ask her out. So they were going to have a walk round Hyde Park on Sunday.
I cornered Gunner Simpson in the vehicle workshop. He was a motor mechanic.
‘Listen, mate,’ I said, ‘this uncle of yours, the one who delivered the rabbits to my aunt, what’s he like?’
‘Me Uncle Bill? Oh, a bit short an’ fat.’
‘Eh?’
‘Yes, Little Tubby they used to call ’im in the last war. But he’s got a kind heart and six kids. To look at him, you wouldn’t think he could’ve managed one, let alone six. He liked yer aunt, by the way. Pretty woman, he said she was. I think she put a twinkle in ’is mince pie—’
‘All right, don’t go on, I’ve got the picture.’
I wrote a quick letter, telling Aunt May not to go walking round Hyde Park with her new short fat friend who was a married man with six kids and still had a twinkle in his eye.
Aunt May replied by return, informing me that Mr Clayton was a forty-five-year-old widower, that he had two daughters who were both married, that he wasn’t short or fat, but tall and lean, with nice manners, that he was just a friend and didn’t have any dishonourable intentions, if that was what I was thinking. Still, she said, she liked it that I was thoughtful about her welfare.
I went after Gunner Simpson again. He saw me coming and shut himself up in the workshop loo. Staff-Sergeant Dix came and took a look at me.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘I’m waiting for Gunner Simpson to come out,’ I said.
‘What for?’
‘Nothing very much, staff, he’s only going to lose a leg,’ I said.
‘Not in his working time, he’s not,’ said Sergeant Dix. ‘Get back to your chicken shed.’
I lost out on that happening.
CHAPTER TEN
WHEN BRIGADE HQ ASKED for site commanders and a number of NCOs and gunners to report for instruction on the new Bofors Mark V, Sergeant Johnson put my name forward. Since the personnel required were all supposed to be from sites and since they weren’t doing very much at the moment, I asked why I’d been put on the list. He informed me that as I’d been a member of a gun crew and was now rusted up, I was a special case. And Major Moffat concurred. His concurrence, according to Sergeant Johnson, had been terse. ‘Send the fiddling peanut.’
Not that I was upset. Courses of instruction, compared to field exercises, were a doddle. You only did a six-hour day and were excused all those duties that dated from Waterloo. A week away at Brigade HQ would give me a chance to get back to normal.
My normal was being nice to people. Missus had turned all that upside-down and Minnie hadn’t helped. I felt short-tempered at times. Aunt May had written to say that in my last letter I sounded as if I was having problems, was it anything to do with the American lady sergeant I’d met and said funny things about? You’re not in love, are you? That was what she asked in her letter. I expect it’s something like that, she wrote. I replied to say yes, it was something like that, but that I wasn’t sure of my ground, or if it would suit me to be in love with a sergeant who was nuts about efficiency and ran a store in Boston thousands of miles away.
The course at Brigade HQ was very instructional. I did it standing on my head, a Bofors gun not being unfamiliar to me and the Mark V being a beauty. My instructor, a sergeant, said if my mouth didn’t hold me back I might be a passable gunner one day.
‘One day soon?’ I asked, thinking of the Second Front, as everybody was.
‘Well, one day in the next war,’ he said.
‘What’s all this talk I’ve been hearing about rockets?’
‘Top secret. You shouldn’t have been bleedin’ listening.’
On my return to BHQ, I ran into Kit and Cassidy. Cassidy gave me a smile and a wink and left me to Kit, who was getting to look like Rita Hayworth.
‘How’s tricks?’ I asked.
‘Excuse me?’ she said impartially. It made me sound as if I could be anybody. Even Gunner Dunwoodie, who was more anybody than anyone.
‘Yes, how are you, lovey?’ I asked, shifting my shoulder. I had a soldier’s best friend with me, my rifle. Slung.
‘I’m fine,’ said Kit. ‘Who are you, by the way?’
‘That’s not very friendly.’
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘You’re back.’
‘Pleased, are you?’
‘I wasn’t aware you were away until Sunday came round and I found I’d been stood up.’
‘Hell, what a lemon, I clean forgot. We were going to cycle to Mary’s. Sorry.’
‘It’s OK,’ she said, but she was still cool. ‘Major Moffat filled in.’
‘That’s historical, you don’t often get a battery commander standing in for a gunner.’
‘He took me on a comprehensive tour of Suffolk,’ said Kit, leafing through a file she held busily to her face.
‘Serves me right. Did you enjoy it?’
Kit’s mouth twitched. ‘I’d have enjoyed it more if that crazy great dog of his hadn’t been so hungry. It tried to eat half my skirt.’
‘Lucky you, it could easily have been half your—’
‘Skip half my whatever,’ she said, ‘I can read your mind, Hardy.’ She looked at my best friend. ‘What’s that?’
‘A rifle. Didn’t you know?’
‘Yes, but I wondered if you did. It’s the first time I’ve seen you wearing one.’ She laughed. ‘Well, I guess that’s all for now.’
‘No, hold on a tick. Can I make up for last Sunday by making chits out for both of us tomorrow?’
‘Why not?’ she said. ‘I think you owe me. See you around, old buddy.’
After teatime bread and cheese, Frisby took me aside and mentioned that his relationship
with Cecily was a mix-up.
‘Had a relapse, has she?’ I asked.
‘Listen, cock. I offered myself to Cecily as a father figure. Now I’ve got an ’orrible feeling she doesn’t want me as a dad, after all. What’s more, she’s got sex appeal she doesn’t know about. Know what it’s done to me? Knocked me fatherly feelings for six. I’m human, y’know.’
‘I know, that’s a problem for all of us.’
‘Point is, mate, how can I think of doing anything unkind to a bird who wants to believe some men would make a good Christmas present?’
‘With an effort, you could think about it quite easily, couldn’t you?’
‘Don’t talk like a cup of cocoa,’ said Frisby. ‘I can’t do things to a trusting American violet with her kind of history. But I can’t make her out, she’s talking about us going steady. Listen.’ He recounted.
On their way back from the pub last night, he and Cecily had taken to the by-ways instead of the road. The by-ways were rural and romantic and were making Cecily twitch. Frisby assured her nothing was going to happen. But Cecily came up with a surprising invitation.
‘Claud, you can kiss me, if you like.’
‘No, you’ll only get pent-up. Just enjoy the walk. We might get to see a fox or two.’
‘But you want to kiss me, don’t you?’ said Cecily.
‘You’ll kill me,’ said Frisby.
‘Claud, of course I won’t,’ she said. ‘Oh, I guess I’m no good at this, trying to get a guy to be nice to me.’
‘OK,’ said Frisby, ‘here it comes, then, but don’t drop dead.’ He put his hands on her shoulders. Cecily quivered. He admitted the self-tormented Wac had unearthed a protective instinct in him, which was a surprise to him. So he kissed her nicely, that was all. There was another surprise coming. Cecily gave her all in her response.
‘Steady,’ he said.
‘Do it again,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Kiss me again.’
So he kissed her again and Cecily wound herself around him. He came up for air.
‘Now how’d you feel?’ he asked.
‘Crazy,’ said Cecily. ‘Claud, you know you’re important to me, don’t you?’
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