Waiting For the Day

by Leslie Thomas

  Paget said: ‘It sounds like the sort of thing that could happen in France. As long as it doesn’t get in our way. The Allies.’

  MacConnel regarded him sternly. ‘Then we’d have to move the silly sods on,’ he said. ‘And sharpish.’

  Now that it was almost summer the village looked much as he remembered it in boyhood; the heavy green oaks and horse chestnuts by the station, the renewed fields, the flowers crowding the cottage gardens.

  ‘You wouldn’t know there was a war on, would you, Mr Paget?’ said Hughie Skinner, pedalling his wavering bicycle hung with a brace of rabbits. Paget walked from the station, in uniform, carrying one bag, feeling the West Country morning warmth on his face. Reaching the cricket ground he saw that Charlie Merry, who for years had tended the pitch, was out there with his grass cutter and garden roller. There were daisies on the outfield.

  Then a haphazard formation of Italian prisoners of war rounded the curve in the road, languidly marching, wearing their chocolate-brown uniforms patched with gaudy colours, and hats of various shapes at jaunty angles. They did not look as though they had escape on their minds; it was an untidy squad, cigarettes in the edges of mouths, guarded by a solitary soldier, his rifle slung, his step as lazy as theirs and with his own fag dangling. When he saw Paget’s rank he panicked and somehow concealed the cigarette in his mouth, then attempted to shoulder and slap the rifle butt in a salute which Paget acknowledged. The Italians smirked, made rude, subdued remarks and continued shuffling.

  ‘They’re up at the Grange,’ his father told him after they had greeted each other. The old man was in the small front garden trimming his privet hedge for the first time that year. He did it annually on the same day. The deep scent of the commonplace shrub was like that of a tropical plant. His mother came from her shopping and embraced her son gratefully. She then examined his face, stepping back to do so, and saying: ‘Let me see you, Martin.’

  ‘She thinks that some bits may have fallen off,’ laughed his father when she was making coffee.

  ‘It’s perfectly all right,’ his mother called from the kitchen. ‘I can see he’s in one piece.’

  ‘This has got to be a quick leave,’ he told them. ‘Three days at the most.’

  His mother looked hurt. ‘But you haven’t been home since Christmas. You must be most important.’

  He smiled. ‘It won’t be long now. Not too long.’

  ‘Peter Branscome has been home three months,’ she said, as if it were unfair. ‘And he was a prisoner in Germany.’

  His father said: ‘Repatriated. He was ill, in and out of hospital. He says he was coughing so hard he was keeping the guards awake.’

  ‘At least he’s home,’ she said stubbornly. ‘His mother told me he’s going to get married as soon as his TB has cleared up.’

  The two men laughed. ‘I can do without the TB,’ said Paget. ‘But if you want a cushy war, become a prisoner. Those Italians I saw on the road. They looked happy enough.’

  ‘Glad to be out of it,’ said Geoffrey Paget. ‘Don’t blame them. They were always on the wrong side.’

  His mother poured coffee from the pot. ‘Nice fellows, too. They work on the farms and there have been no complaints. The local girls think they’re handsome.’

  His father said: ‘The rumour is that the Grange is going to be a refugee centre once things get going in Europe. That house has had a lot of lodgers in this war.’

  ‘And nobody is pleased about it,’ said his mother. ‘Refugees. As Betty Forsyth was saying the other day at the Women’s Institute, who knows where they come from, what their background is, what they’ll do here and how long they’ll stay? They’re not going to be very popular. Betty thinks they’ll be riff-raff.’

  ‘Not good-looking like the Italians,’ mentioned her husband.

  Emma turned to her son. ‘Bert Hannaford died,’ she said with a sort of embarrassment. And, as if it were necessary: ‘From Hannaford’s Garage.’

  Paget was shocked. ‘Bert? That’s terrible … Oh, how sad.’

  His father said: ‘Even in a war death goes on, just as life does. Ordinary everyday death.’

  Slowly Paget said: ‘Of course, but you don’t think of it like that. Poor Bert was looking forward to after the war. Listening to the cricket on his wireless. And he put together my car and looked after it. I must go and see Mrs Hannaford.’

  Emma said: ‘She told me she’s expecting you to see her when you can. About the car.’ She paused. ‘That girl Margaret Carne who you know – I can’t remember her married name – she’s back from London, been at her parents’ house for some time. I’ve seen her with her two children, no husband in sight. Goodness knows what’s happened there.’

  ‘Refugees,’ said her husband. ‘The place is full of them.’

  Summer weeds were growing energetically through Bert Hannaford’s path. Paget bent and pulled out a couple of handfuls of dandelions while he waited for an answer at the door, and hid them behind his back when Mrs Hannaford opened it. She looked frail and sad, but she made herself smile when she saw him.

  ‘I can’t say how very sorry I am to hear about Bert,’ he said inadequately as she invited him into the cottage. Secretly he threw the dandelions aside before he entered, then leaned forward, put his hands gently on her shoulders and kissed her on her cheek. ‘He was a great man.’

  ‘In his own way,’ she agreed. ‘It was quite sudden, quick really – one day he was in the garage and the next he was in Taunton hospital and then the day after that he was dead. He asked me to look after your car for you. Almost the last thing he said. It was important to him, that car. It kept him going through the worst times, the bits to put into it arriving after waiting weeks, and the building it all together.’ She offered him a cup of tea and he accepted. She needed someone new to talk to. They discussed Bert for half an hour. ‘It was a pity the boys couldn’t be at the funeral,’ she said. ‘But they’re away at the war and that’s all there is to it.’ She smiled.

  ‘I’ll come tomorrow. If that’s possible,’ he said, unwilling to impose on her. ‘I may not be home long and I’d like to take the car out just once. Will that be convenient?’

  ‘Bless you, of course,’ she said. ‘You can leave it here until you need it when the war is all over. I like it being there, Mr Paget. We was married for fifty-five years and it’s something he liked.’

  Sadly he left the cottage and walked in the sun towards the village centre. The pond which had been iced over at Christmas was now thick as cabbage soup, fish in its shadows, the ducks noisy. Margaret was leaning over the iron rail while her small sons threw bread. She looked up and saw him without surprise.

  ‘I heard you were back, Martin,’ she said quietly. ‘I am so glad to see you.’

  They both looked up and down the street and then at the preoccupied children before exchanging a brief kiss. He held her hand. ‘I’m sorry I had to go away after that night,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t get in touch.’

  She giggled. ‘When we were bombed.’

  ‘The next morning I had to go. I’ve been trying to contact you but it was difficult. For both of us.’

  She said: ‘I’ve finally left now and brought the children down here. We’ll have a divorce. Divorce goes on even in the middle of the war. In fact, it’s thriving.’

  Paget said: ‘Old Mr Hannaford died, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I heard. I remember him being here for ever. Apparently when they took him to hospital it was the first time he’d been to Taunton since the King’s Jubilee.’

  ‘I’ve been to see Mrs Hannaford. I’m going to get the car out tomorrow. It may be my only chance.’

  ‘Our only chance,’ she smiled. ‘Again.’

  The Somerset hills, the Quantocks, were backed with a peaceful haze; sheep grazing on their flanks, pockets of soldiers lying in the sun by their tanks and guns, everything quiet and ready.

  ‘Where will we go?’ asked Margaret as the red car crested a hill and the rich summer sc
ene spread in front of them as if a curtain had been raised.

  Paget did not know. ‘There’s a ten-mile exclusion area around the coast now and a car like this turning up is not going to go unnoticed,’ he said.

  She leaned closer to him in the small seat. ‘Martin, I want to go to a small inn with a big bed,’ she said.

  ‘Great Bedly,’ he laughed and turned the car off at a right angle. ‘The Little Angel.’

  They dipped into the warm valley, and the narrow road ran into the village square with the inn at its corner, built with the same ancient stones as the square itself. ‘I hope they’ll give us a room,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll say we are married.’

  ‘No. I’ll say I am married because I am. And I’ll show them my ring if they want proof.’

  ‘Isn’t it madness that we’re in the middle of battles and deaths and they are still snotty about you sharing a room if you’re not man and wife.’

  ‘How do those Americans manage?’ she said as they went in.

  As if he’d heard them, the shabby porter at the desk muttered: ‘Those Yanks. There was wenches climbing through the windows. In and out. We found one hanging on to the ivy outside. Not much on her in the way of clothes, either.’ He looked at Paget’s identity card. Margaret said she had forgotten hers. She waved her gold wedding ring under his narrow nose. ‘I’m Mrs Paget,’ she said.

  ‘Of course you are, madam,’ said the porter. ‘And I’m Mr Sealy. Anything you want, just ring the bell on the landing. I generally hear it.’ He glanced up at Paget. ‘Just one night, is it, sir? I expect it is. Nobody seems to have time for more than one night these days.’

  Paget said: ‘I’m afraid I have to get back.’

  ‘Very important, the war, sir. Top priority, you might say.’ He took a huge key from a board behind the desk and asked if they had any baggage. ‘In the car,’ lied Paget. ‘I’ll get it later.’ Margaret was already going up the dark staircase. Mr Sealy lowered his voice. ‘Those Yanks, sir. I’ll be glad when they’re all gone.’ He reduced it to a whisper. ‘Making water, urinating that is, in French letters, tying the tops up and throwing them from the bedroom windows. The ruddy things was exploding like bombs or bouncing outside like hobgoblins, frightening the life out of people.’

  He ponderously opened the wide oak door. ‘Oh, it’s a huge bed, darling,’ said Margaret. ‘What a size.’

  ‘Two centuries old, that bed is,’ said the porter. ‘There’s a lot of people been in there.’ He guffawed. ‘Though we ’ave changed the sheets now and again.’

  He was still laughing at his own joke when he left them. Paget tipped him two shillings and he said that if they rang the bell he would bring them a tray of tea. ‘We got some digestive biscuits in from Bath,’ he said.

  Margaret sat quite primly on the bed, her knees together, her smile quizzical. ‘I wonder if we will manage it this time?’

  Paget moved in front of her and she put her arms around his waist and pressed her face to his stomach. He kissed her hair and placed his palms on either side of her face. ‘Enough of the preliminaries,’ she suggested. ‘Lock the door, Martin.’

  ‘What about the tea and biscuits?’ he smiled.

  ‘I can wait. Even for the digestives.’ Decisively she looked up at him. ‘Well, I’m going to start taking my clothes off. You can just amuse yourself, if you like.’

  They stood close to each other while they undressed. She carefully unfastened her blouse and her brassière. Her breasts looked creamy.

  ‘Say hello again,’ she said. He cupped them in his hands and kissed them.

  She was pulling down her skirt and her knickers at the same time.

  He was naked now, too. She slipped her hands between his legs and began to caress him. She encouraged him into the bed, pushing back the counterpane and the sheets with one housewifely hand while she still held him tethered with the other.

  They rolled into the cool sheets. Outside the window there were afternoon birds singing. She suddenly released him, eased herself from the bed and closed the old shutters, then drew the frayed flowered curtains against the sunshine. ‘There’s a time and a place for birds,’ she said.

  Now they lay naked together at last, rolling in the luxury of each other’s friendly flesh. He kissed her and entered her deeply. They made love and then lay still against each other. ‘Don’t let’s promise anything, Martin,’ she said. ‘Like being faithful. There’ll be plenty of time for all that when the war is over.’ Eventually she opened her eyes and surveyed the cracked and yellowing plaster above them. ‘At least this time, darling, the ceiling stayed up.’

  ‘I’m afraid I have to suddenly report for duty,’ Paget told the porter as he paid the bill.

  ‘Of course, sir. It’s all rush, isn’t it,’ said the man. ‘Sorry you didn’t have time for the digestives.’ Paget gave him another two shillings. ‘God bless you, sir,’ he responded. ‘And your wife.’

  They drove back, mostly in silence. It was now early evening and the war seemed at a great distance. A man drove sheep over the slope of a green hill and there were children playing hopscotch in a village street.

  ‘I wonder if it will all be the same again,’ he mused. ‘Everything back in place like it was. I doubt it.’

  He pulled over and they kissed fondly before they reached the village. She got out of the car two hundred yards from her gate. As he drove away he looked in the mirror and saw her two sons hurry from the house to greet her.

  His father was at the gate. ‘PC Wottle came around,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to go back. They’re sending a vehicle for you.’

  ‘Damn it,’ muttered Paget. ‘I’ll take the car back to Hannaford’s.’

  An air force saloon with a uniformed driver was there within half an hour. Paget kissed his moist-eyed mother. ‘Would you like me to tell Margaret Carne you’ve been called away?’ she asked. He said yes. He shook hands with his father. The couple stood at their flower-hung gate, waving in slow motion.

  ‘Don’t you hate this war, sir?’ said the young driver.

  ‘All the time,’ said Paget.

  By midnight he was at Tangmere in Sussex. It was a calm, half-moon night, with the beams outlining the clouds. He walked in his worn French civilian clothes to the runway where the Lysander was already warm. A man who came with him, whose name he did not catch, shook hands and wished him good luck. Ten minutes later he was aboard the rattling aircraft and heading south below the moon.

  Chapter Nineteen

  By the last week of May everything was ready, except the weather. In the early part of the month it had been promisingly warm throughout southern England – on Whit Sunday the temperature had touched eighty degrees – but as June approached, days became sullen with low cloud, rain and a choppy English Channel. The tides also needed to be timely to land the massed army safely and fit to do battle; the skies had to be right for the airborne assault. The expansive plan was to send a great fleet of ships to the beaches of Normandy to land, in the first day, battalions of fighting men, tanks and armoured vehicles, and machines of bizarre design which threw up explosive mines with their flails or laid out their own road as they moved forward. It was the most ambitious, imaginative and widespread strategy of any war in history, scientific, mighty, awesome.

  Harris and his men set out by bus.

  ‘It’s a ruddy bus, sarge,’ complained Blackie loudly when they confronted it, standing red, commonplace and expectant on the Salisbury Plain road.

  ‘Southampton Corporation,’ Warren read ponderously from the emblem at the side. ‘Will we ’ave to pay fares?’ He laughed, equally ponderously, at his own joke. Nobody else did. He was not adept at jokes but he tried again. ‘Thirty tuppences, please.’ Still nobody laughed.

  The platoon began trudging towards the bus. Harris looked briefly back over his shoulder at the shabby camp with its hump-backed huts, the grey-green plain and the washy sky rising behind it; his home for four years. Now the games were over, the
reality was about to begin. ‘Packs on the bottom deck,’ he instructed briskly. ‘Men upstairs.’

  ‘A bus,’ said Jock Gordon, taking up the grumble. ‘It’s like goin’ ta school.’

  Harris ushered them aboard. ‘Go on the top deck and you can have a fag.’

  That cheered them. They took seats on the upper deck and began to drag at the Woodbines which they had shared out. ‘Snout?’ ‘Wanta snout, mate?’ ‘Ta. I owe you one.’

  The driver appeared up the stairs, a warm-faced man with a dangling moustache. His buttons and badges were bright and his uniform pressed like a guardsman. He doffed his peaked cap before he spoke. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said in a rounded Hampshire voice. It was as if he had rehearsed his words. The soldiers viewed him with surprise. ‘It’s my privilege to be driving this bus this morning. I would like to be with you going to fight, but I’m too old and I’ve only got one lung.’ Then he looked lost for words.

  May said: ‘Nice bit of bull you’ve done on your kit, mister.’

  Looking suddenly pleased, the driver gave his buttons a rub with his sleeve. ‘Well, I did it specially. I thought I ought to look smart even if I’m not doing much. It’s my invasion outfit.’

  He prepared to retreat down the stairs. ‘Anyway, good luck to you.’ He put on his cap and gave them a shy salute.

  Harris said: ‘Thanks.’ He called to his men: ‘Three cheers for the driver!’ They cheered.

  ‘He can go instead of me if he wants,’ said Blackie.

  Treadwell said: ‘He’s the first bloke I’ve heard who reckons all this caper is serious. Every other bugger thinks it’s just a game.’

  The bus quivered strongly as the engine started. ‘He’s tuned it up as well,’ said Gannick, who had lit his pipe and began to puff.

  ‘Sit back and enjoy it, lads,’ suggested Harris. ‘We’re on our way. Hitler’s already quaking in his boots.’

  Hitler was, in fact, insisting with his customary bile to his commanders that the invasion would be launched in the Pas de Calais at the narrowest neck of the English Channel. Normandy, he told them with the conviction of a man who had never been wrong, was out of the question, just a bluff. He knew best. The commanders saluted and went away knowing the game was up.