A Song At Twilight

by Lilian Harry

  She met his gaze. ‘Yes, Stefan. I really would.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  On the first Saturday of the new year, Ben cycled down to the Prettyjohns’ cottage to take May to a dance.

  The dance was being held at the old school, which now did duty as a village hall. May had told Ben how families from Plymouth had slept there at night during the Blitz, arriving in double-decker buses that had groped their way carefully along the narrow lanes and down the steep hill. ‘Slept in rows, they did, on camp beds or mattresses on the floor, and us used to come in of a morning with fresh milk from Mr White’s farm and make tea for ’em before they went home again.’

  They walked down the hill together. The cottages were all darkened by blackout curtains but Ben could imagine how it would look in peacetime, with the stars above and the lights shining from each cottage along the tiny, twisting streets. The valley was so deep and narrow that the cottages looked almost as if they’d slipped down the two sides, landing in a higgledy-piggledy heap at the bottom, with those on the higher terraces clinging on by their fingernails. The inn, standing at the end, faced them as if trying to call them to order, but those windows too were blacked out.

  ‘It used to be really jolly down here of a winter’s evening,’ May said, evidently thinking along the same lines. ‘All the windows bright, and yellow lamplight in the pub. They’d leave the door open if it weren’t too cold, and if someone got a sing-song going you could hear the voices all through the combe. Now, us daren’t leave a door open even a crack in case Tom Prior, the air-raid warden, starts shouting the odds.’

  ‘Well, it’s his job,’ Ben said. ‘And they’re right, it’s amazing how you can see even a tiny pinpoint of light when you’re in the sky. You don’t want bombs dropped on the village.’

  ‘Oh, we’ve had a few. There were some dropped up the hill, and you know there’s an anti-aircraft gun up in the top fields. Us knows all about there being a war on, even down here in Milton Combe.’

  The village was filled, as usual, with servicemen, some on their way to the dance, others to the inn. Just lately there had been a lot of Americans who were camping in the grounds of Bickham House. There were black as well as white soldiers – the first time many of the villagers had ever laid eyes on a black man – and although Mrs Stamp, in the pub, was willing to serve either, there seemed to be some rule that if the blacks were there first, the whites wouldn’t come in, and vice versa. May shrugged her shoulders impatiently at this. ‘Us don’t make no difference between them. They’m all fighting on the same side.’

  ‘Is the shop still open?’ Ben asked, noticing someone emerge from the little tea room on the other side of the road, carrying a heavy shopping basket. ‘What time does it close?’

  ‘When Miss Kirby goes to bed!’ May said with a laugh. ‘Opens at eight in the morning, her do, and don’t shut up shop till eleven. You can always knock on her door for something you’ve forgotten. Haven’t you ever been in there?’ Ben shook his head and she laughed again. ‘You ought to! She’s a real character – smokes cigarettes in one of they long holders. Used to organise all the village trips, her did, before the war, and if you go in there for your Christmas shopping she’ll give you a glass of sherry. Real piece of Milton Combe, she be.’

  ‘Strikes me the village is full of characters,’ Ben said, and May nodded.

  ‘I reckon it is. But us don’t know no different – us’ve growed up with them. I dare say all villages are much the same, when it comes down to it.’

  ‘Probably.’ Ben thought of his own village in Hampshire, and chuckled suddenly. ‘There’s a bloke in ours who rides round on an old bike, towing a brazier behind him. We call him Smoky Jack.’

  ‘A brazier? One of those things roadmen use?’

  ‘That’s right. He keeps it burning, too. He lives in a shack in the woods and does odd jobs round the village, and it’s his fire and cooking stove. He never lets it go out. Not unless the weather’s very hot, anyway.’

  They had passed the church now and crossed the little bridge to the old school. Like every other building, it was dark, but as they walked up the path they could hear the music of an accordion and a piano, and when they pushed open the door and thrust aside the blackout curtain, they were met with a kaleidoscope of bright lights and whirling colour.

  ‘That’s a shilling each, please,’ said the plump woman sitting at a rickety table just inside the door. ‘Oh, hello, May, didn’t see as it were you. And who be this, then?’

  ‘His name’s Ben,’ May said, shrugging off her old tweed coat to reveal a dark green skirt and white blouse with flowers embroidered on the front. It was an old school blouse and the skirt was cut down from her gymslip, but both were still serviceable, and not many people had anything special in the way of clothes by this stage in the war. And she was pleased to see by the expression in his eyes that Ben thought she looked nice, anyway.

  ‘From up the airfield, I dare say,’ Mrs Carter observed, taking Ben’s money. ‘You can put your coats over there, my handsome. We’ve got Minnie on the piano tonight, so you’m sure of a good time.’

  She was right too, they found as they joined the couples on the floor. The two musicians, their fingers busy on their respective keyboards, hardly seemed to need a rest and certainly didn’t intend to give the dancers one. From foxtrot and waltz, to quickstep and tango, they scarcely took a moment until the interval, when the breathless dancers fell upon the tables set out with lemonade and sandwiches. Ben, who had never thought of himself as a good dancer, found that with a partner like May, as light as a feather in his arms, his feet seemed to take on a life of their own and soon he was steering her round the floor and twirling her at the corners as if he’d been born to it.

  The evening passed so quickly that soon it was ten o’clock and time for everyone to go back home. As they made their way out into the crisp night air, Ben kept his arm around May.

  ‘I wish you lived further away,’ he said.

  May giggled. ‘Well, that’s not much of a compliment! Would Scotland be far enough?’

  ‘I don’t mean that,’ he said, laughing in his turn. ‘I mean, I wish we had further to walk tonight so that we could spend longer together. I don’t want to say goodnight, May.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ she said, suddenly solemn. ‘But – I don’t know as we ought to be getting so serious, Ben. We only met a few weeks ago. We hardly know each other.’

  ‘Yes, we do.’ He stopped and drew her into a corner. The other dancers passed by, chattering and laughing. Ben stroked May’s cheek with one hand and then kissed her gently on the lips. ‘I feel as if we know each other very well. I feel as if we’ve always known each other.’

  They stood quietly for a moment, then she raised her face again and he could see the faint glimmer of the starlight in her eyes.

  ‘I feel like that too,’ she whispered. ‘But don’t let’s go too fast. Let’s go slowly, Ben, can we? Please?’

  He touched her face again. ‘A stroll through the meadows rather than a mad dash up the mountain – is that it?’

  ‘That’s it,’ she said, and he could feel her smile. ‘A stroll through the meadows. I like that.’

  ‘Then that’s what it’ll be.’ He kissed her again. ‘With a few stops along the way, though. I insist on that.’

  May chuckled and kissed him back. For a moment or two, he could feel her soft body against his, muffled by the thick tweed coat. Then she pulled away and he drew her out of the corner.

  They walked on along the darkened village street, their hands held tightly together, and began to climb the steep hill back to the Prettyjohns’ cottage.

  In February, the Germans started to bomb London again. Alison’s heart turned cold as she listened to the news on the radio and thought of Andrew and the squadron, on readiness last night. Had they been sent to fight off the raiders, or had he been on yet another escort mission with their own bombers?

  As she gave Hughie his breakfast, th
e icy dread she felt seemed to match the grey chill of the February morning outside. When they had finished eating, she wrapped him up in his thick coat, scarf and gloves, pulled on her own jacket and set off for the airfield. To her apprehensive eyes, there seemed to be the normal number of aircraft standing in the bays or outside the hangars, but from the fence she could see only a part of the whole area, and she had no idea where Andrew’s plane might be.

  The sentry knew her and shook his head at her anxious enquiry. ‘No, we didn’t have no losses last night, not that I’ve heard of – and I would have heard. You go home in the warm, Mrs Knight, and don’t worry, he’ll be back for his dinner as sure as eggs is eggs.’ He thought for a minute, his humorous face screwed up a little. ‘Well, sure as eggs used ter be eggs, anyway. These days, they’re just yellow powder!’

  Alison laughed and thanked him, feeling her heart lighten. She turned away from the gate and walked back, but instead of going home she continued on to the Prettyjohns’ cottage. ‘We’ll go and say hello to May and the others,’ she said to Hughie. ‘We haven’t seen May’s daddy for a week.’

  William Prettyjohn had stayed downstairs after Christmas. It was warmer for him, and more companionable, although his wife complained that she was lonely upstairs in their bed by herself at night. ‘Still,’ she added philosophically, ‘I’m the one that can run about, so I shouldn’t complain.’

  Old Mr Prettyjohn was in the living room, with the door open into the kitchen, when Alison and Hughie arrived. He pulled the door wide to usher them in.

  ‘Here’s a sight for sore eyes! Have you come to help me with a bit of mending?’ he asked Hughie.

  ‘What mending? I can’t darn socks, Mummy does that.’

  ‘No, my handsome,’ the old man told him. ‘I’m not mending socks, but you’m not far off. ’Tis shoes I’m mending this morning, down in the shed.’ He held out his hand. ‘Come with me, tacker. Have you ever seen anyone do a bit o’ cobbling?’

  Hughie shook his head and looked at his mother. Alison nodded at him. ‘You go along, Hughie. I’ll stop here and talk to May’s daddy for a while. Unless you were doing anything else?’ she added to the man in the bed.

  William Prettyjohn laughed. ‘I’m not going anywhere! Got me war work to do.’ He looked towards the scraps of leather scattered over his bed. ‘Making bags for service-women. Even an old crock like me can be a bit o’ use in wartime.’

  ‘You’re not an old crock,’ Alison protested, but he just patted her hand and called through the open kitchen door to his wife, who was busy preparing a stew with carrots, turnips and swedes from the garden and a few scraps of shin beef from the butcher in Yelverton.

  Mrs Prettyjohn came hurrying through, wiping her hands on her apron and beaming. ‘Well, here be a nice surprise. Is Father taking Hughie down the shed? I’ll make him a cup of cocoa in a while. You’d better have one too, maid, you look shrammed. Come over to the fire – ’tis raw cold out there.’ She pushed the big black cat from the armchair where he had settled for the day. ‘Get off, Blackie, you lazy great lump. Sit you down here, Alison, and I’ll put the kettle on.’

  Alison did as she was told and leaned her head back against the chair. The warmth of the cottage and the welcome she always found there lapped around her like a balmy sea. After the anxieties of the night, which she always felt when she knew Andrew was ‘up’, and the news of the fresh wave of bombing over England, she felt suddenly exhausted and grateful to be looked after.

  William Prettyjohn glanced at her and said, ‘You’m looking a bit washed out, maid. Taking care of yourself, are you?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’m just a bit tired. You’ve heard about the bombing, I expect?’

  ‘Ah, had it on the news this morning. Bad job, but I can’t say it’s a surprise. We been giving they Germans such a hammering, they were bound to hit back sometime. Tell you the truth, maid, and I don’t want you to be upset about this, but I wonder if all this bombing really works. I mean, look at it. Look at the way they blitzed London and Coventry and Plymouth and the rest – all those big cities, smashed to bits. But has it stopped us? No. We’ve just gone over there and done the same to them. And it hasn’t stopped them, neither. They’m coming here again. Seems to me nobody’s going to stop till there’s nothing left at all, and what good’s that going to do, eh?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Alison said wearily. ‘I don’t know at all.’

  ‘I’ll tell you summat else,’ he said. ‘What our boys have been doing – and I’m not saying a word against them, mind, not a single word, brave lads every last one of them and deserve every medal going – but what they been doing, bombing factories and such – well, that’s not working either. We’re supposed to be going for their production – stop them building planes and making ammunition, but from what I heard this morning on the wireless, they’ve got plenty of planes and plenty of bombs too. We haven’t stopped them at all. So what’s the point of us sending our boys over there to be killed? I can’t see it meself.’

  Alison felt a cloud of dread settle over her. He was saying what she had been thinking, or trying not to think, for months. Perhaps ever since the war had begun. Was Andrew risking his life every day, every night, for something that had no end, no achievement but the destruction of the world they were actually fighting for? The warmth she had felt seemed to recede, leaving her cold and shivering as if she had come out of the sea to find the weather changed and an icy wind blowing.

  Mabel came out of the kitchen, bearing two steaming cups of cocoa.

  ‘Now, what are you doing, Will? I heard you, frightening the poor girl and making her all moithered and miserable. That’s unpatriotic, talking that way, and you know it. I’m ashamed of you, I am really. You ought to know better.’

  Alison opened her eyes. ‘It’s all right, Mrs Prettyjohn. I often think that way myself. Sometimes it seems as if this war’s been going on all my life. It doesn’t seem as if it’ll ever end.’

  ‘Well, it will,’ the countrywoman said stoutly. ‘They Germans aren’t going to have things their way much longer. Look at how they’m being driven out of Russia, and Italy. I know it’s awful, the fighting there, same as everywhere else, but they can’t hold out much longer. We’m winning, you mark my words. Things are getting better.’ She picked up that morning’s copy of the Western Morning News and flipped through the pages. ‘Look at this. Men’s suits can have turn-ups and pockets again, and us ladies can have all the pleats we wants in our skirts. If that’s not good news, I don’t know what is!’

  Alison stared at her and then began to laugh. ‘Pleats in skirts? Turn-ups and pockets? Oh, Mrs Prettyjohn!’

  ‘There, that’s better,’ the plump little woman said comfortably. ‘Now, don’t you go talking like that no more, Will. Alison didn’t come here to be made miserable.’ She went back to the kitchen, leaving the door open so that they could chat through it. ‘May’ll be sorry to have missed you. She’ve gone over to the Leg o’ Mutton to do a few hours as Betty’s been took poorly.’

  ‘The pub isn’t open this early, surely?’

  ‘No, bless you, they’m not open, but they asked May to go in and do a bit o’ cleaning before dinner-time. Then she’ll be behind the bar, ready for all they airmen. Talking of airmen …’ She came back into the living room, holding a swede that she was peeling. ‘Have you seen much of that young Ben Hazelwood? He’m in your man’s squadron, so I understand.’

  ‘Ben? Yes, he pops in sometimes during the evening. He’s a nice boy. Why?’

  ‘It’s just that I think he’s a bit sweet on our May, that’s all. He came round on Christmas night – not deliberate, he were just walking past when May went outside for a breath of air and she asked him in for a bite of supper. He seemed a bit low – upset about his brother – ’tis only natural. He’s been a few times since then and he took her to the picture show at the garrison theatre, up at Buckstone, and they’ve been to a dance or two together in the village. I wondered if she’d said an
ything to you about him.’

  ‘No, she’s never mentioned him. It’s not serious, is it? He is a nice boy,’ Alison repeated. ‘His father’s a vicar. You don’t need to worry that he’d take advantage of her, or anything like that.’

  ‘No, I don’t think he would. It’s just – well, like you said, he’s a vicar’s boy, and we’m just plain, ordinary folk. And May’s two or three years older than he. To tell you the truth, I think she’m just sorry for him, what with losing his brother and all. I don’t think she’m likely to let her head get turned, but as I said, he’m just a young chap, and you know what it’s like in wartime – folk gets muddled up a bit, specially the young ones, away from home and all.’

  Alison thought about this, then said, ‘Well, if you want my opinion, I’d say May was good enough for any man. But I don’t suppose it’s serious anyway. I expect you’re right, she’s just being kind to him.’

  The door opened and Hughie and the old man came in, carrying armfuls of shoes and boots. Mabel Prettyjohn went back to the kitchen to make more cocoa and Hughie dumped his load on the floor.

  ‘Look, Mummy, we’ve mended all these. Grandpa’s got a foot in his shed, all made of iron, and he puts the shoes on them and takes off the old sole and he makes a new one out of leather, and nails it on with a hammer, and there it is, all mended. Isn’t he clever?’

  ‘He is indeed.’ Alison picked up one of the shoes and examined it. The workmanship was neat, the shoe as good as new. ‘Would you have time to mend mine as well?’ she asked. ‘I’ve got a pair of old shoes with holes in. I was going to take them in to Tavistock to the cobbler there.’

  ‘You bring ’em to me, my pretty,’ the old man said. ‘You don’t want to go to no cobbler – charge you the earth, he will.’

  ‘Oh, I’d want to pay you, though. I can’t ask you to do it for nothing.’