Waiting For the Day

by Leslie Thomas

  ‘Oh, you poor love.’

  ‘Is there anywhere … anywhere we can go around here? It’s kinda tight in this jeep.’

  ‘You have to sit side by side,’ agreed Kate. ‘Nowhere to stretch out.’ She thought, then smiled in the dark. ‘I know somewhere, Ben.’

  ‘Show me,’ he said, kissing her and starting the jeep in one movement.

  In the dark and aromatic stable Margaret leaned close to Martin as he stood against the partition of the horse stall. They were warm in their opened coats and their embrace. He could feel her breasts harden.

  ‘I’m wearing my winter woollies, I’m afraid,’ she confided. ‘My mother still makes me.’

  ‘You must keep warm,’ he said.

  ‘She used to make me wear a wool liberty bodice to school. And a vest.’

  They kissed deeply. ‘You were beautiful,’ he said. ‘Just as you are now.’

  ‘I used to get the tingles about you. But all you were really interested in was cricket and rugby.’

  Martin whispered: ‘That’s what you call a wasted youth.’

  Her hand went to his groin and she began to stroke him.

  Then the door opened and the moon beamed in. ‘Fuck it,’ muttered Margaret.

  Martin held her against him, her hand caressing him a little. Two young voices sounded at the door, one American, one Somerset. ‘Here ’tis,’ said the girl. ‘Bit niffy.’

  ‘Horses,’ said the American soldier. ‘In the States we have hundreds of horses.’

  ‘There are ’undreds in England, too,’ she argued. ‘These are only two of the horses we got in England.’

  ‘I mean on our ranch. My dad has a ranch.’

  ‘There’s some cows in the field at the back of our house,’ said Kate defensively. There was a soft impact as he eased her against the wooden stall at the side of the two horses. Martin and Margaret remained close together at the other side. She began laughing silently against his chest.

  ‘Now, Ben,’ warned the girl after a silence. ‘Not like that. It’s dark in here.’

  ‘But baby, I want to hold you. I’ve got to. I’m not getting fresh. I … I could be leaving this earth next week.’

  ‘Where are you goin’?’

  ‘I could die. Invading that France place with those damned Nazi machine-guns shooting at me. Tonight could be my goodbye to life.’

  ‘Oh, it won’t be so bad as that,’ Kate responded confidently. ‘My dad works in the Food Office in Taunton, one of the ’eads, so ’e knows a thing or two. He reckons all this invasion talk is mazed. It won’t be for a year, if ever.’

  ‘He says that?’

  ‘’E knows it, Ben. Secrets. And ’e reckons that they’ll just keep on bombing the Jerries, bombing them and bombing them until they pack it in, give up. Then you won’t have to go and do the invasion at all.’

  Benedict breathed deeply. Martin was holding Margaret’s mouth against his chest. Her body was gently trembling.

  ‘You mean that?’ breathed Ben. ‘So we could be together, Kate. Get married and …’

  ‘Married, Ben? But I only just met you.’

  She became silent. Ben began to caress her. ‘You’ve got such a beautiful body,’ he breathed. ‘And see what I have …’

  There was a short gasp from the girl. ‘Ben! … You put that gurt thing away this minute.’

  ‘But baby, hold it for a while … Just touch it …’

  Martin and Margaret eased away from each other. Her finger went to her lips.

  The horses shifted restlessly. Then came Kate’s voice. ‘All right, just once I’ll touch it. Just one tap. Only one. I be a Sunday-school teacher.’

  The young soldier began to groan. Kate’s voice became softer.

  ‘There, there,’ she comforted. ‘You’re a poor boy.’ The two older people, fifteen feet away, stood transfixed.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Kate decidedly, her voice firm. ‘There’s no further I be goin’. I bet you got a girl in America.’

  ‘Kate Scratchpole, I’ll never be able to love anybody but you.’

  She was impressed. ‘Nobody’s ever told me they loved me before. No boys, ’specially. Not around this hole of a place. Somerset boys don’t talk like that.’

  She made up her mind. ‘All right. Let’s go to the pictures in Bridgwater where I works, next week. What about Wednesday? I could meet you off the six o’clock bus from the village.’

  One of the horses began to urinate, followed by the other.

  *

  ‘Poor fellow,’ said Margaret as they walked back towards the big, darkened house. The music was still drifting from it but one of the trucks had its engine running and they could see figures climbing into the back. ‘He really expected she would do it, just like that, first time.’

  ‘Who knows what he was told,’ said Martin. ‘“The natives are willing and you are a hero.” Some of these boys had no idea where this country even was before they were sent over. They’d never moved outside their own state, hardly outside their own town, and they thought England was full of beautiful and willing girls.’

  ‘And the girls think the GIs all live on ranches or in skyscrapers,’ she said. ‘Just like in the films.’

  They were walking a little apart but now she slid her arm around him and he enclosed her waist. He said, ‘It was just the same with our farm boys who rushed to join up in the 1914 war. Suddenly they were going to France and Mademoiselle from Armentières, ooh, la, la. Then they were slaughtered wholesale.’

  ‘You think about things rather deeply, don’t you, Martin,’ she said. ‘Even when we were at school you were a bit like that.’

  ‘I must have been dull,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I still am.’

  They stopped and kissed again. She said: ‘You really will meet me in London, won’t you?’ He said he would. She paused and he saw her smile in the moonlight. ‘That girl’s father in the Food Office in Taunton – “one of the ’eads” – seems pretty well informed. No need for an invasion.’

  ‘There are people at the top who think that. They believe our bombers could make Germany surrender just by dropping more and more high explosives.’

  ‘And no invasion?’

  ‘Absolutely so,’ he said. ‘But they forget the Russians coming from the east. We don’t want them across the Channel instead of the Germans.’

  ‘It seems never-ending,’ she sighed. ‘What would I give to be back in the old days.’

  ‘You might find they weren’t there,’ he said. ‘Perhaps they never were.’

  They had almost reached the house.

  Paget said: ‘You’re not going back just yet, are you? How about coming for a run in my car tomorrow? I want to go and see the sea. If that’s still there.’

  Chapter Five

  Paget walked along the village street, so empty and hushed that mid-morning that he could hear his own footsteps echoing sharply against the walls of the cottages. Then there came the distant sound of a vehicle and a US Army jeep, followed by a bouncing dispatch-rider motorcyclist, came rushing along the confined road. They were racing as they entered the village and the motorcycle rider overtook the jeep on the blind corner by the church, waving a taunt as he passed. Then they were gone and the scene again fell into silence.

  Hannaford’s Garage was between Hemmings, the butcher’s, and the vicarage, set back from the road up an overgrown path that led to its open double doors, sagging on their hinges. There was a dingy light showing from inside. ‘No regulations to stop you having a bulb on in the day,’ said Bert Hannaford. ‘And letting it shine out into the world. And, my goodness, this world needs a bit of commonplace light, sir.’

  He wore a brown overall, like a grocer’s but grubbier. He would have retired two years before but both his sons had been called into the services and somebody had to look after the business, such as it was. The single petrol pump went unused now. It stood rustily where the path met the street, its pumping handle hanging limply.

  ‘I been l
ookin’ after your pretty little car,’ Hannaford said to Paget. ‘And I’ve enjoyed it. In a way it’s kept me going, doing the bits and pieces, trying all over the place to get the parts. Gave me something to do, something to get me out of bed in the morning. There’s not a lot else going on.’

  He was small and bald and bent as a clerk. ‘The military won’t bring their tanks in ’ere,’ he joked. ‘Everybody’s so busy with this invasion business ’cept for me.’ His eyes were deeply incised; it was as if years of oil had got into his crevices. ‘I expect that’s keeping you occupied, Mr Paget.’ He put a grimy finger to his lips. ‘But then I shouldn’t be asking you that. Come and look at your car.’

  He led the way, shuffling towards the inner workshop, past dusty benches and oily parts. There was a wooden wireless set, big as an orange box, on the bench. The signature tune for ‘Music While You Work’, broadcast to factories, was playing. Hannaford turned it off.

  ‘Powerful set this. It’s got “Melbourne” on the dial,’ he said, pointing proudly. ‘Be able to hear the cricket after the war. Don Bradman.’ On the walls old tyres hung like pictures in a gallery. ‘I never did work on a motor like yours,’ said Hannaford. ‘Never ’ad the chance. But I’ve ’ad all this time and, like I say, it’s kept me going through hostilities.’

  He rattled open a sliding inner door and turned on a fly-encrusted light bulb. Below it the car stood, jauntily red-bonneted, her metalwork gleaming softly. ‘She looks terrific, Bert,’ breathed Paget. ‘Terrific.’

  ‘And what’s more she goes now, she works.’ A small frown appeared on the garage man’s face. ‘Well, she ought to. I haven’t taken ’er out, of course, although my boys both wanted to when they came on leave, but I wouldn’t ’ear of it. One drives a ten tonner.’

  ‘I’m going to drive her,’ said Paget. ‘Today.’

  ‘You can, sir. I hope. The tank’s still full, fifteen gallons, except for the sparse drop when I’ve been turning the engine over, once I’d got all the parts. I think she ought to drive fine. You want to take her now then?’

  ‘Yes, I certainly do.’

  ‘Drive her up the street and back?’

  ‘No,’ said Martin. ‘I’m going to drive her to the sea.’

  It was a 1937 MG TA Midget, a beautiful, low car with swept-back mudguards and running-board, and a drop-head top, capable of speeds up to seventy-six miles an hour.

  ‘They didn’t build many,’ the man who had sold it to him had told him three years before. ‘I’m selling it reasonably because there’s a few things wrong with it. It was my son’s. He died in France – pneumonia. He’d only been out there three weeks. I’ll take one hundred and seventy-five pounds.’

  Paget had not hesitated. He would have to borrow some of the money from his father.

  ‘You’ll have to get it taken,’ the man had said. ‘It won’t move like it is. The parts might be hard to come by but somebody, somewhere’s got them.’

  ‘I’ll have it,’ Paget had repeated touching the paintwork.

  ‘Anything else you want?’ the man had asked, half seriously. ‘I’m getting rid of everything. House, beds, lawnmower, everything. There’s not a lot of future in England. This country’s finished.’

  Paget wondered what had happened to him.

  Hannaford now opened the low door of the car. It swung easily, silently. ‘I thought I’d drive her over the Quantock to Watchet and get a sniff of the Bristol Channel,’ said Paget.

  ‘Good idea. That ought to be far enough. You can’t get on the beaches because they’re still mined. We used to go to Watchet and Ilfracombe a lot before the outbreak. Every summer. I’d like to go again sometime.’

  Paget said: ‘You had better give me a bill.’

  Hannaford croaked a short laugh. ‘It won’t cost you the earth, sir. She’s been good company. The spares and the work on the engine will be a bit. I’ll write it all down and pass it to your mother when I see her going to the butcher’s.’

  Paget closed the car door and opened it again with one silent twist of the shining handle. Hannaford nodded in a pleased way. ‘It’s cold but the roads are dry,’ he said. ‘Who knows what it’ll be like this afternoon. We have to do our own weather forecasts these days, don’t we.’

  A little embarrassed, Paget dropped two leather flying helmets in the passenger seat.

  ‘Ah,’ said Hannaford. ‘There’s more uses for they than bein’ a pilot in a Spitfire.’

  Paget grinned and climbed into the confined space. His eyes were close to the windscreen and his chest almost on the steering-wheel.

  He found the adjusting ratchet and moved the seat back. Each time he had been home on leave he had gone to the garage just to sit in the car, feeling it around him, touching his head on the canvas roof. ‘Now,’ he said quietly. ‘This is the real thing.’

  He eased out the choke. The key was in the dashboard. He ensured the gear lever was in neutral and turned the key, touching the accelerator at the same time. The roar filled the garage, rattling the corrugated-iron walls, making even Hannaford step back. One of the old tyres fell from its hook and bounced until the old man stopped it with his boot. Paget lightly pressed the accelerator again and the exhaust smoke shot from the back. ‘What I call a healthy row!’ shouted Hannaford amid the fumes. ‘Take it steady as you drive out, sir. One of those Yankees might be coming along the street.’

  Paget released the handbrake, put the car into first gear and moved forward cautiously from the garage. Hannaford saw him out into the close lane and followed him through the wafts of yellow smoke. ‘Hold her there, sir.’

  Paget braked and the old man ambled ahead down the short path to the village street. He waved both arms like a windmill, calling the car on, and in a moment, with a half-turn of the wheel and a brief salute to Hannaford, Paget was in the main street, in second gear and then into third. He called out with the excitement of a boy as the low red car moved forward. Gently he pushed in the choke. Outside his parents’ house he sounded the horn and they both came to the door. ‘She goes!’ he shouted. ‘Started first time!’

  The street remained empty, the wintry sun streaking it. Cottage curtains moved as he drove. Margaret was waiting by the church. ‘Oh, my God,’ she said, putting her hands to her face. ‘It’s so gay … And red … It’s just lovely. How my boys would love it. They’ve never even been in a car.’

  Paget climbed out and opened the door for her. ‘This is for you,’ he said once they were in the car. He handed her one of the flying helmets and put the other on himself. ‘Bags being Biggles,’ he said.

  ‘Who can I be?’ She was trying to look in the mirror to see her face enclosed by the flying helmet. ‘I’ll be Amy Johnson that was. Except I won’t crash. I’ve brought a Thermos and some sandwiches. Where are we going?’

  ‘Watchet. Over the hills to the sea.’

  She lowered herself in the seat and nestled against him. ‘I bet this can do a speed,’ she said.

  ‘In excess of seventy. This is the first time I’ve driven it. It’s been in Hannaford’s garage. I bought it one day and I went into the Air Force the next.’

  Leaving the village they moved across Somerset, low, long hills rising before them. They passed a line of parked American trucks, one after the other for half a mile. The soldiers stared and half waved as they drove by. ‘Hi, where you goin’?’ ‘Where d’you get that auto?’ ‘Baby, come and drive with me!’

  ‘Shall we put the hood down?’ said Margaret.

  He pulled the car into the farm gateway. ‘It’s cold,’ he said.

  ‘We’ve got our helmets.’

  With difficulty he eased back the creaking roof. Some dust fell. A farm labourer with two dogs observed them from the gate, the dogs with their heads between the bars. ‘Joyriders,’ said the man, shaking his head and talking to himself. ‘War must be over. And no bugger told Oi.’

  Paget was back in the car by then. He drove easily in the sharp air, the engine splitting the silence. They we
nt into the modest hills, down into the still green coombs and villages locked into the landscape. There was no wind and the cold air only brushed their faces as they crouched behind the windscreen, encased in the leather flying helmets. The car had no heater.

  They did not speak nor even try to shout. But as they increased speed and dipped into a valley where there were a few cottages and a grey church, and up again on the rise the other side, Margaret called out like a girl.

  They rounded a bend and were confronted by a camouflaged truck lying half sideways in a ditch, surrounded by shapeless British soldiers standing with their hands in their pockets. A red-capped military policeman bounded into the road and waved a white glove towards Paget.

  ‘Daft sod couldn’t take the bend,’ he announced. He abruptly realised that one of the car’s passengers, under the helmet, was a woman. ‘Silly billy,’ he said.

  He was joined by a military police sergeant who scowled. ‘Where are you going in this?’

  ‘We’re heading for the Bristol Channel,’ said Paget.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘To make sure it’s still there.’

  The hard face below the red cap became a touch pink. ‘There’s a war on,’ he sniffed as if they might not know. ‘I’d like to see your papers. Identity card, please, miss.’

  ‘I haven’t got it,’ said Margaret flatly. ‘I do have my ration book.’ She handed it over.

  ‘Mrs Margaret Hallstead,’ the sergeant recited slowly. ‘From London.’ He glanced at Paget. ‘And you, sir?’ He handed the ration book back. Paget produced his RAF identity papers and the man perused them even more pedantically. ‘Right, sir,’ he said. ‘Didn’t realise, you being in civvies and in a car like this.’ He decided to become helpful. ‘If you go back half a mile there’s a road to the left. This mess won’t be cleared up for hours.’

  He threw up a stiff salute and Paget thanked him for his help. The man guided his reversing of the car. ‘Nice motor this, sir,’ he commented. ‘Take much petrol?’