Our Yanks

by Margaret Mayhew

  ‘Hi, there.’

  ‘Hallo, Ed.’ He didn’t say anything else for a moment: just went on looking at her. She was still holding the garden fork up in the air, like she’d frozen stiff. ‘Thank you for the note you sent. Tom delivered it safely.’

  ‘I thought you’d wonder why I didn’t show up for that dance, I was real sorry to miss it. I hear it went pretty well.’

  ‘It was a wonderful success. We raised nearly fifty pounds. Part of that’s going to the Red Cross – Father thought that was the right thing to do. The rest will be towards the dry rot. They’ve already started work at the church.’

  ‘I’m real glad. Can’t have that nice old place falling down. I’d have called by sooner, but this is the first chance of getting off base. We’ve been pretty active.’ He nodded at the row of plants. ‘Potatoes, right? You know, I’ve never seen them growing before, or anybody digging them up. Can I take a turn?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she handed him the fork. ‘It’s a bit like lucky dip.’

  ‘Lucky dip? Never heard of that.’

  ‘It’s a game where you try to unearth a prize.’

  She showed him how to dig the fork down under the plant to bring up the potatoes and then turn the dirt over to find the ones that had got away. He added his to her basketful. ‘They look good.’

  ‘“Eat-More-Potatoes,”’ she quoted with a smile. ‘That’s what the Ministry of Food have been telling us to do since the war started. Potatoes feed without fattening and give you energy – that’s the general idea.’

  ‘I guess that’s right.’

  ‘And carrots help you to see in the dark – useful for the blackout.’

  ‘You don’t say. Do you grow those too?’

  ‘Carrots, onions, beans . . . anything and everything. Everybody grows what they can. Congratulations on your promotion. And on the medal.’

  ‘I can’t figure out how you heard about that.’

  ‘Everyone in the school knows. I think it was Tom who told them. They look on you as their special property, you see. Ever since you gave that talk.’

  He grinned. ‘You don’t say. Tom’s a real nice kid.’

  ‘He’s one of the brightest in the school. We’re hoping he’ll get a scholarship next year. That means a free place at the grammar school.’

  ‘Sure hope he does, then. He hangs around up at the base quite a bit and all the guys like him. He gave me a rabbit’s foot for luck. I guess I’m not sure I really believe in good-luck charms but I always take it with me, just the same. He’s got a pretty cute brother, too.’

  ‘Alfie?’ She smiled. ‘I taught him in the kindergarten. He’s lovely.’ She stuck the fork into the ground. ‘I’ve got to pick some peas now.’

  ‘I’ll give you a hand. Never picked peas either.’

  She handed him another basket and they went up and down the rows of peas.

  ‘How’s Ben?’

  ‘Fine. Never happier than when shooting up the enemy. Ammo trains are his favourite target. I keep telling him he’s never grown up. He’s got a puppy now. A Scottie. He saw her in a pet-shop window.’

  ‘They let you keep dogs?’

  ‘Sure. A lot of the guys at the base have them.’ He picked away, snapping off the pods at their stalks. It was peaceful, pleasant sort of work, and, boy, was it a contrast to what he’d gotten used to doing in the past months. ‘Mrs Hazlet does laundry for some of us guys. We feel bad, the way she has to work. No running water, no electricity in that place, but everything done real well. We can’t see how she manages it.’

  ‘There are a lot of women like that in the village. They manage everything somehow.’

  ‘Not exactly a lazybones yourself, are you? Teaching those kids, running the house, helping your father, growing all these vegetables.’ He showed her the basket. ‘How am I doing?’

  ‘That’s plenty, thank you. I expect you have to get back.’

  ‘In a couple of hours or so.’

  She hesitated. Then: ‘Would you like to stay for supper?’

  ‘Thought you’d never ask me.’

  They walked back across that sunlit, very English lawn. With double summer time it would be light until around eleven o’clock. He liked that: the long, long evenings, the golden light fading very slowly into purple dusk before darkness finally fell.

  ‘The supper won’t be very exciting, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Bubble and squeak?’

  She laughed. ‘No, a bit better than that. The hens have been laying well, so I’m doing a soufflé. We’ve saved up some cheese.’

  ‘I can’t eat your cheese ration.’

  ‘We’d be very offended if you didn’t.’

  ‘Guess I’ve got no choice then. Anything I can do to help? I’m pretty useful in the kitchen.’

  ‘You can shell the peas, if you like.’

  He sat at the kitchen table, popping the pods and thumbing the peas into a colander; and watching her as she scraped the potatoes and whisked the eggs and grated up the minuscule cheese ration.

  ‘What happened to the ring?’ He’d noticed it was missing when she was showing him how to pod the peas.

  ‘I gave it back.’

  ‘End of engagement?’

  She was busy looking inside one of the cupboards. ‘Yes.’

  He picked up another pod. ‘None of my business, I guess, but was that him or you ended it?’

  She still had her head in the cupboard, moving things around. ‘Me. I realized it was a mistake. That’s all.’

  He wondered what else lay behind it and whether there was any chance it had anything to do with him. She sure wasn’t giving much away. He said easily, ‘Well, it’s a whole lot less trouble to figure that out now than later.’

  She came out of the cupboard and went back to stirring things. He didn’t ask any more questions and he was careful not to look too damned pleased.

  The rector came into the kitchen after a while and they had supper at the big table. The cheese soufflé was terrific and the fresh potatoes and peas tasted great. He almost felt sorry for the guy she’d dumped. Afterwards, he helped do the dishes, putting them to drain in a big wooden rack over the sink. Her father had gone off back to his study.

  ‘How about taking a walk?’ he suggested. ‘There’s still plenty of daylight.’

  She nodded. ‘We could go along by the brook, if you like.’

  He liked anywhere with her. Anywhere at all. There was a door in the old stone wall at the bottom of the garden and the creek that she called a brook was only a stone’s throw away. The trees growing along the banks trailed pointed leaves in clear running water, the grass was long and lush and the late evening sun glowed like firelight. They followed the creek as it wound through fields shaded by great spreading trees and the incredible peace and beauty of it knocked him sideways. So did the girl he was with. She’d done that when he’d first seen her in the church, standing there with the light coming down on her from the high window, and every time he saw her, it was just the same.

  She was keeping a safe distance from him, though. Same as she’d always done. Fending him off. He walked along, hands in pockets, and he thought soberly to himself: this isn’t one of those tough cookies like Ben and I picked up in London. This is Miss. All right, she’s fancy-free now, but I’ve got no right to get something started. Not now. Low-level strafing’s sure as hell no picnic and enemy ground fire’s knocking down us guys over there like clay pigeons. One truck, train, barge, loco, airfield too many and I could run out of luck, rabbit’s foot or no rabbit’s foot. Ben’s right – for the wrong reasons. It’s not me I need to think of, it’s her. Get something serious going – and I mean serious because that’s what it’d be – and the next thing she hears I’m a smoking hole in the ground. I can’t do that to her. I’ve got no goddam right at all.

  He said, ‘We’d call this a creek back home, and this one sure is pretty. Any fish in it?’

  ‘Grayling and perch, not many trout. The village bo
ys, like Tom, catch them when they can. There are otters too.’

  ‘Never seen one of those.’

  ‘We hardly ever see them either. They’re really nocturnal and they’re very wary.’

  He glanced at her, walking along, keeping at a safe distance. ‘I’d say you’re kind of wary, too, Agnes. Of me. I guess us Yanks can be real hard to figure out and you and I come from two different worlds. You’ve never seen skyscrapers and I’ve never seen countryside like you’ve got here. When I get home this is going to seem dreamland.’

  ‘When will you be going back?’

  Did she sound sorry about that, or was it just him hearing things? ‘Hard to say. Haven’t finished my tour yet. Maybe a month or so more to go. But we don’t count chickens; not in our game.’

  ‘Will you be given leave then?’

  ‘Yeah. A good long one. Guess I’ll go back home to New York. Spend some time there with my family. See what comes next.’

  They followed the brook for another half-mile before they turned back. The daylight was going and by the time they reached the house it was that purple English dusk. He said goodnight on the doorstep like a good boy, got in the jeep and drove away. He’d passed up a hell of a chance out there alone with her. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was right. Time would sure as hell tell.

  ‘It’s called a weaner.’ Miss Cutteridge peered anxiously at the small pig snuffling round inside the Anderson shelter. She had barricaded it in with some old chicken wire tied up with garden twine. Corporal Bilsky crouched down to see better. ‘Looks a real fine one to me. Where did you get him, ma’am?’

  ‘From one of the local farmers. Our butcher suggested it.’ She’d bought him from old Mr Quince with his smallholding, rather than someone like Mr Hobbs who would have been far too busy and important to sell one piglet. She had never much cared for the Hobbs and had been quite delighted to hear that dear Agnes had broken off her engagement to Clive. An arrogant sort of boy in her private opinion. Rather a bully. Like father, like son: it so often happened.

  The piglet had come to take a look at them now, its flat pink snout pressed against the wire. She said delicately, not quite knowing how to put it, ‘The farmer said he’s been seen to.’ Castrated was the actual word that Mr Quince had used, quite baldly, but she didn’t feel able to say it to the corporal.

  ‘Yeah, you couldn’t keep a boar, ma’am. He’d be a heck of a handful when he got bigger. This one’ll stay nice and docile. It’s the ladies often give the trouble; they can be real mean sometimes. I remember some of the sows Dad kept when we had our farm. How old’s this little guy?’

  ‘Eight weeks. I’ve been feeding him on vegetable peelings and scraps.’ She saved everything she could in a pail and boiled it up in her jam-making pan and then mixed it with a few handfuls of barley meal from the sack Mr Quince had sold her with the piglet. He’d also sold her some bales of straw to use for bedding. ‘He seems to be doing all right.’

  ‘Like I told you, ma’am, I’ll bring you stuff from our kitchens. You won’t have no problem fattenin’ him up.’

  ‘The farmer said he’d be ready at six months.’ That was the part she preferred not to think about but Mr Ford, the butcher, had promised to deal with it all for her.

  Corporal Bilsky was scratching his head. ‘Seems to me that wire’s not goin’ to hold him, ma’am. Not once he gets bigger. I could get fencin’ wire from the base and some wood posts an’ fix somethin’ a whole lot stronger. We could make a bit of a run for him, so’s he could get outside and root about. He’ll like that. He won’t want to foul his beddin’, see. Pigs are clean animals, though most people don’t know that. He’ll have a corner out in the run, see, an’ I’ll clean it out for you an’ put it all on a heap, an’ keep it turned till it’s well rotted, then we can use it on the vegetables. How’re they doin’, by the way?’

  She showed him the rows of potatoes, cabbages, carrots, broad beans and beetroot plants and the runner beans climbing the poles he’d put up for her. ‘As soon as they’re ready you must come and help me eat them,’ she told him. ‘I’m going to open your tin of ham then.’

  ‘Gee, that’s for you.’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly eat it all.’

  He’d brought her another tin of something called Sloppy Joe Sauce. Ground beef he’d called it. From the picture on the label, it looked like some kind of mince that you apparently put inside a bun. She had put it to one side of the store cupboard.

  ‘Had a letter from my brother, Frank, the other day,’ he told her as they went back into the cottage. ‘The one that’s with the heavies over here.’

  Heavies, she knew, were the big bombers: Flying Fortresses and Liberators. She’d seen and heard them in the distance and occasionally one would pass low over the village. It was easy to tell that they were American because of the big white star. ‘How is he?’

  ‘Doin’ OK, far as I could tell. They censor the mail so he can’t say much. I reckon he won’t have too much longer before he’s finished his tour. Then they’ll send him home. Boy, is he lucky. I figure they won’t be sendin’ me back till the war’s over. Got a feelin’ they might send us Signal guys over to France, though. Must be plenty needs doin’ there.’

  His words worried her. Here in England he was quite safe; in France it would be another story. According to the newspaper reports, the fighting was very fierce indeed over there. Thousands of men had died in the Normandy landings – ten thousand Americans, she’d read somewhere, let alone the rest. And since then the Allies had been battling away for weeks to gain ground in Northern France. ‘Have you heard from your other brother? The one in the Pacific?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, ma’am. Not in a real long while. I guess the mail’s not too good from the sort of places Jack’d be fightin’ in.’

  ‘She said encouragingly, ‘The newspapers say that the American marines have been making great progress against the Japanese.’ She didn’t mention the price in lives that had also been reported.

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I heard, too.’

  She’d cooked him some fairy cakes with a glacé cherry on top of each one, and he sat at the small table in the kitchen eating them in two bites and drinking tea out of a china mug. ‘Real good, these are, ma’am. Thank you.’

  ‘You mustn’t bring me any more tins,’ she told him firmly. ‘It’s very kind of you, but I really don’t need them. I manage quite well.’

  ‘If that’s the way you want it, ma’am.’

  ‘Yes, it is, Corporal.’

  ‘Joe’s the name, ma’am, if you felt easy with that.’

  Putting on his cap at the door, he said, ‘I’ll bring the pig food though. And I’ll come by and fix that run, soon as I can.’

  Miss Cutteridge went to look at the piglet again. He had gone back inside the shelter and was lying dolefully in a corner with his snout on his trotters. Missing his mother and his brothers and sisters, she thought, conscience-stricken. Oh dear, oh dear.

  Instead of the maid in the white apron, it was Erika herself who opened the front door to him. He said, without preamble, ‘I’m playing truant again. Will you come out for another drive?’

  ‘Another guided tour?’

  ‘Let’s just go anywhere. If you don’t mind.’

  She got in the car straight off. No questions asked, no going off to get dolled up. No hat, no coat, no gloves, not even a purse. What a woman! Carl drove out of the village and took the first turning he came to. It turned out to be one of those one-track, winding lanes that wandered all over the countryside in no particular direction to fetch up God knew where. There were no signposts, quixotically removed to confuse the enemy, but even with them the result would have been the same. They would have pointed to lost-in-time places that only figured on big-scale maps. Places with names like Little Buggins, Nether Wallop, Big Snoring.

  She didn’t talk; just sat quietly beside him as though she’d judged his mood right on. He drove uphill and down dale, following other lan
es at random between cornfields dotted with bright red poppies like drops of blood. Finally, they came to a high point overlooking a valley. He stopped the car on the grass verge, switched off the engine and wound down the window. ‘Cigarette?’ She took one and he lit it for her and then his own. ‘Thanks for coming out. You’re the one person I wanted for company.’

  ‘Anything in particular wrong, Carl? Or is it just the war?’

  ‘I guess it’s just the war. We’ve lost some good kids lately. Twenty-six pilots killed in action in just the last couple of months.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. That’s dreadful for you.’

  ‘They were all great guys. After a while it gets so you start to feel responsible, even when you know you’re not. And it’s not only our kids. When you’re doing our escort job you see what happens to the bomber boys if we foul up and some Luftwaffe shark gets to them. Or maybe it’s enemy flak that you can’t do a damn thing about and you’re in a ringside seat, watching. Either way, it’s not pretty.’ He drew on the cigarette. ‘After the war, when they get around to building some kind of memorial to all those guys, it’s sure going to have a hell of a lot of names on it. Same with the RAF. I guess we just have to hope it’s going to be worth it.’

  ‘It has to be, Carl. There’s no alternative, except to give up.’ No cosy platitudes trotted out for his benefit, but he knew she understood what he was talking about.

  ‘Yeah . . . and we sure can’t do that.’ He smoked some more in silence. ‘How do you figure we’re doing with the villagers these days?’

  ‘They give you ten out of ten.’

  ‘We got a zero last week from some farmer guy. One of the Mustangs lost a full belly-tank bang in the middle of one of his fields, taking off. It bust wide open and ruined the crop. He was one real angry farmer, I can tell you. Name of Hobbs. Do you know him?’