Our Yanks

by Margaret Mayhew

  ‘Gettin’ some good meat on him,’ Joe observed. ‘He’ll make a nice roast for you. And a real nice side of bacon. Time to think about gettin’ him slaughtered soon. You don’t want to leave it much longer. Older he gets the more fat there’ll be on him and he’ll start to get tough. You want him porker size.’

  Miss Cutteridge closed her eyes. She preferred not to think about it at all. In fact, she wasn’t sure she was ever going to be able to bring herself to send him to slaughter, let alone cook and eat him. Growing vegetables was one thing – the potatoes and beans and cabbages and carrots had all been a wonderful success – but growing a pig was quite another. They were friendly creatures – or at least hers was. Whenever she went down to the Anderson he would come trotting over, grunting a hello.

  Joe brought the scraps regularly and she had taken to cooking meals for him whenever he had some time off. She had never bothered much with cooking for herself but now she began searching through recipe books and reading hints in newspapers and magazines and leaflets. She’d pored over everything she could find: Making the Most of Meat, Seven Appetizing Meals Without Using the Meat Ration, A Hundred Cheese Recipes, Thrifty Wartime Recipes, A Kitchen Goes to War, Gert and Daisy’s Wartime Cookery Book. She’d cooked him vegetable marrow with liver stuffing, national roly-poly with mince and potato and vegetables, rabbit stew with dumplings, cabbage stuffed with sausage meat, beef hash, devilled cod, savoury onions, tomato macaroni au gratin, and all manner of English puddings.

  They always ate at the kitchen table off her cheap Woolworth’s china because he was still afraid of breaking her best set. Afterwards, though, they sat in the sitting room with Ginger curled up companionably on the best chair. Sometimes they listened to the wireless and Joe would twiddle the tuner until he found American dance music. It wasn’t all as loud and terrible as she had feared – in fact, some of it was rather pleasant. Other times they played cards or ludo or snakes and ladders, and occasionally Joe read out letters from his father about what was going on in Henryetta. She’d heard all about the Fourth of July celebrations – the flags and the picnics and the fireworks, and she’d learned a lot about baseball: about pitching and hitting and fielding; about home runs and curve balls and fast balls and screwballs and knuckleballs; about singles and doubles and triples and exactly where Jack, who had got picked up by the Brooklyn Dodgers, stood at third base. And when the football season had started she’d learned about touchdowns and conversions, about coin-flips and snaps and huddles and Frank’s quarter-back position on the field at kick-off, behind the centre. ‘I’ve written to my dad all about you, ma’am,’ Joe had said, ‘and how you’ve invited me into your home.’ And he’d read out the bit where his father had sent his thanks. Please say hello to Miss Cutteridge for me and let her know how much I appreciate her kindness to you. I hope she comes to Henryetta, one day, so I can repay some of her British hospitality.

  She had told Joe a little of her earlier life, growing up as an only child in the house in Oundle where she was expected to be seen but not heard. She had showed him the old sepia photographs of her parents – sombre, upright, Victorian figures, stiffly posed against a velvet curtain beside a potted palm. And she had told him about her father dying before his time and how she had taken a course in shorthand and typing and held a post in a solicitor’s office for many years until she had been obliged to give it up to look after Mother until she died. That was when she had sold the Oundle house and bought Lilac Cottage. Left on her own, the idea of being part of a small village community had appealed to her.

  Once, she had shown him the photograph of William – something she had never shown anyone before. She had taken it out of her bureau drawer where it was kept out of sight, partly because it saddened her too much to look at it and partly to shield it from the prying eyes of visitors. William was her private grief: an agony she had not shared with anyone – until Joe.

  ‘He was my fiancé,’ she had explained. ‘But he was killed in the second Boer War. At Ladysmith.’

  ‘Gee, that must have been sad for you, ma’am. He’s a fine-lookin’ gentleman. Real handsome.’

  ‘He was. And a very fine person. And a brave soldier. I have his medals here.’ She had taken them out of the same bureau drawer and Joe had held and admired them respectfully. ‘Don’t know nothin’ about that war, ma’am, but he sure must’ve been a great guy. I guess you never met anybody else you wanted to marry, after that, then?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t.’ William had come into the office one day and into her life and when he was gone from it she had never even wanted to meet another.

  ‘Never had a girl of my own,’ Joe had told her. ‘Not yet, leastways. Met a few English girls since I’ve been over here an’ they’re mostly real nice, but none I’ve taken a real shine to, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I’m sure you will, one day.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe when I get back home. Maybe I’ll get myself married an’ settle down an’ raise a whole lot of kids. Maybe in Henryetta. Maybe somewhere else. It’s a big country, America. Lots of places to go.’

  He had become like a son to her – the son she had never had – and her heart was heavy at the realization that, like William, she would lose him. One day, when the war was over, he would return to America to live his life and, of course, she would never go there. He might write to her sometimes, perhaps even over a few years, and always send a card at Christmas, but she would never see him again.

  ‘You’ve been eating them again, Alfie.’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘Yes, you have. I can tell by your face. If you go on eating them we’ll never get enough.’ Alfie’s mouth was stained purple and the level in the wicker basket had gone down, not up. Tom moved the basket to where he could keep an eye on it while he picked. It was a good patch of brambles he’d found along the hedge, full of juicy big blackberries, but a lot of them were high up, out of reach, and Alfie ate more than he picked. ‘We’ve got to fill the basket up before we take it to the Yanks.’

  ‘How much’ll they pay us?’

  ‘Dunno yet. Get on with it, Alfie, and mind your Sunday best. We’ve got to get some money for Mum.’

  They’d gone off straight after church. He couldn’t pinch eggs any more, not since he’d got caught. He still shuddered to think of the dog with its teeth sunk in the sleeve of his coat, snarling like a wild beast as it dragged him to the ground, and of Mr Hobbs jerking him up again. Mum had burst into tears when he’d been marched home with the police constable, then Nell had started up and so had Alfie. There’d been a real to-do. All of them upset. Then all of a sudden he’d been let off the hook with a warning: next time he was caught nicking anything he’d be up before the magistrate. So, now he had to think of something else. The hedges and woods were full of good things: elderberries and wild crab apples, rose-hips, haws and sloes, but they were no good to the Yanks. Blackberries was all he could think of.

  He went on picking and, of course, Alfie went on eating though he swore he wasn’t. When the basket was full at last they set out for the airfield. Tom didn’t see why Alfie should come too but he couldn’t be bothered to argue about it. Shaking him off was like getting rid of a burr. The sun was quite warm, even though it was almost October, and the grass full of silvery spiders’ webs. Alfie was kicking his boots through them and lagging behind because he kept stopping to pick and eat more blackberries along the hedgerows. ‘Come on. I’m not waiting for you.’

  He plunged on downhill to the stream at the bottom and crossed by the two stepping stones, balancing himself and the basket carefully to jump. Sure enough, there was a loud splash behind him as Alfie missed one of the stones again but he took no notice. He toiled on up the hill towards the airfield. A Mustang was taking off and he watched it climb and circle.

  ‘What’s it doing, Tom?’

  He didn’t know but Alfie would expect him to. ‘Test flight.’

  ‘Whose is it?’

  He
shielded his eyes. ‘Can’t see from here.’

  A whole lot of new pilots had come and he hadn’t learned their letters yet. It wasn’t as much fun as it had been with Ed and before Ben had been killed. Some of the new Yanks brought their washing down for Mum to do and they gave her washing powder and soap and sugar and things, just like the others had done, but it wasn’t really the same. He missed Ed a lot. So did Mum. Alfie kept saying he did, too, but that was probably only for the candy and the chewing gum.

  ‘When’s Ed going to come back, Tom?’

  ‘He may not ever. Not if they send him somewhere else.’

  ‘I hope he does. I liked Ed.’

  They walked in by the main gate, ducking under the pole. ‘What’re you eating now, Alfie?’

  ‘A crab apple.’

  ‘It’ll give you a bellyache, stupid. You’re supposed to cook them. Throw it away.’

  They went round to the radio shack. His Yanks were still there: Mitch and Wally and Russ and Dan . . . all of them sitting at the workbenches in their overalls and their flipped-up caps.

  ‘Hi there, kids! What’ve you brought us?’ They crowded round the basket.

  ‘Blackberries,’ he told them. ‘I thought you might like to buy some.’

  They each tried one and pretended to be poisoned, clutching their throats and rolling their eyes up and falling about. Alfie roared with laughter but somehow Tom couldn’t. Mitch clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Just kiddin’, Tom. They’re real good. How much do you want for the lot?’

  He wasn’t sure what to ask. It’d been a lot of work picking the blackberries but they weren’t as valuable as fresh eggs. A shilling seemed too little but two shillings seemed too much. ‘One and six,’ he said in the end.

  ‘OK. Pay up, you guys.’

  He put the money away in his shorts pocket and they passed the basket round between them, taking handfuls of the berries. Somehow Alfie got his hand in too as it went by.

  ‘How’s that little sister of yours, Tom? She growed up any? How old’s she now?’

  ‘She’s two.’

  They all grinned. ‘Tell her to hurry up else the war’ll be over ‘fore any of us can take her out.’

  ‘What’s that Sally of yours done to our Chester?’ Mitch said. ‘He’s been goin’ round with a face long as a fiddle. She gone and dumped him?’

  He didn’t know the answer to that. All he knew was that Sally didn’t smile nearly so much and she didn’t always give free cakes with the bread, like she used to. He hadn’t seen Chester around the village for a long while.

  Wally turned round from his bench. ‘Hey, Mitch, how about we take the kids over to eat with us? Reckon anybody’d mind?’

  ‘Wouldn’t think so. Everybody knows Tom. Like to come and get some lunch, guys?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ Alfie said quickly.

  They queued up at the airmen’s Mess and held out tin plates for great dollops of fried chicken, sweetcorn and mashed potatoes and, after that, vanilla ice cream. Alfie had three helpings of the ice cream.

  ‘You’ll be sick.’

  ‘No, I won’t. I could go on eating it for ever.’

  Afterwards, they walked back across the fields, Tom lugging the blackberry basket that was heavy with tins of meat and fruit, chocolate bars and candy. Alfie sighed. ‘I wish I was a Yank. They have lovely food.’

  ‘That’s all you ever think about. Food.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. I think about other things too.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Lots of things.’

  ‘Name one.’

  ‘I will in a minute when I’ve thought.’

  He couldn’t, of course.

  Sam Barnet pulled the hessian sacks off the dough trough. Underneath the dough had risen up into a yeasty mountain. He punched both fists hard down through its crust so that it collapsed like a pricked balloon and then he started to knead. The sweat formed on his brow and his back began to ache but he forced himself on, working away steadily, his arms deep in the dough. Work was pain but it was also a blessing: it helped him not to think about Roger. He could concentrate on the mixture forming and re-forming rather than on his only son fighting his way across France with the Allies. He kneaded on, pounding his fists into the troughful of dough, turning and pummelling, turning and pummelling until it was ready. The sweat was rolling down his face and he wiped it away with his handkerchief and brushed the flecks of dough from his bare arms before he lined up the baking tins on the table.

  When the dough had risen up again he cut great slabs off with his knife, as much as he could lift at a time, and heaved it up onto the table to weigh it out on the scales and mould it into the tins. Bloomers and coburgs were shaped in his hands and cottage loaves fashioned from two dough balls, smallest on top. He set them all on trays to prove in the warm space under the oven before he slid the tin loaves into the hot oven on the peel. The bloomers were slashed across their tops and he punched the cottage loaves in the centre with his fist, nicking them round the edges with his knife. In they went as well, together with the coburgs, balanced in a line on the long wooden slip to be tipped off neatly sideways onto the brick floor.

  He heaved the oven door shut, wiped his forehead again and sank down on a stool. His left eye felt sore in one corner – probably another ulcer starting like he’d had before – and he could hear himself wheezing. The flour always got to him. What he needed was a bit of a rest; for him and Freda to take a holiday somewhere. Skegness or Cleethorpes or somewhere like that. Breathe some good clean sea air. If Roger was home they might have managed it, but as things were it was hopeless. He sat there wearily until it was time to get up and turn the tins halfway through. Towards the end he got up again to check to see how close they were to being ready. He put on his sacking mitts and hauled one of the tins out on the peel, tipping it upside down quickly to see the bread underneath.

  The loaves were all cooked and he was stacking them on end to cool when Mrs Trimwell arrived to start on the cakes. Sally was late again and when she did turn up, after nearly half an hour, there was no good morning and no smile. He didn’t know what was the matter with her. She’d been a cheerful, hard worker once and very good at the cakes, now she couldn’t seem to care less and the customers were complaining. He watched her put on her white overall and start the sponge mix in the bowl. She looked pale to him. Quite peaky. Perhaps she needed a holiday too?

  He wiped the tins out with a cloth and stacked them away before he went off to get a cup of tea. Freda was in the kitchen, making a pot, and he sat down at the table and waited while it brewed.

  ‘What’s up with Sally? She’s been out of sorts for weeks. She got the sulks about something?’

  Freda poured the tea: it was good and strong, the way he liked it. None of that ‘none for the pot’ nonsense. ‘You haven’t noticed, Sam?’

  ‘Noticed what?’ He sipped the tea and felt better. ‘All I’ve noticed is she’s not doing her work properly. Late down every morning, making a mess of the cakes . . . it’s not like her at all.’

  Freda sat down opposite him. ‘You may as well know, since you’ll find out soon enough. She’s expecting.’

  His cup stopped halfway. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘She’s going to have a baby.’

  The shock hit him like a blow in the chest. He felt his heart leap violently, the breath knocked out of him, and for a moment he couldn’t speak and felt quite faint. The feeling subsided but his heart was still pounding. ‘It’s not true. It can’t be. She can’t be.’

  ‘She can and she is,’ Freda said calmly. ‘Nearly six months gone. I don’t know how you haven’t seen, to tell the truth, though she’s been clever with hiding it and she’s not big.’

  He stared at her. ‘You’ve known about this – all along?’

  ‘Not for a while, I didn’t, but I’ve got eyes in my head. I asked her straight out in the end.’

  ‘And you didn’t tell me? You kept it a secret from me?’

/>   He was bitterly enraged, as well as badly shocked. ‘It’s one of those bloody Yanks, isn’t it? I’ll kill whoever’s done this to us. The disgrace’ll finish us. We’ll never be able to hold up our heads, it’ll ruin us—’

  ‘It won’t do anything of the kind, Sam. It won’t be the first child in the village born the wrong side of the blanket, not by a long chalk. I could name half a dozen or more. Ellen Turner’s little Ned, for instance. That was never her husband’s: it was a Pole from the army camp down the road, but it’s never made a difference. Nice-looking boy, he is.’

  He said furiously, ‘She happens to be married. Sally’ll have to marry the man, whoever he is. That’s for a start.’

  ‘She doesn’t want to. She’s told me that.’

  ‘Doesn’t want to? I don’t give a damn what she wants. She’ll bloody well marry him. I’m not having a bastard in this house, under my roof.’

  ‘Don’t swear, Sam. And do try to keep calm. You’ll go and have a heart attack or something at this rate.’

  He clenched his fists and took a deep, slow breath. ‘Six months, you say? That means she was fifteen when this happened. Under age. That’s rape. I’ll have him in prison.’

  ‘You were going to kill him a moment ago.’

  ‘It’s that Yank’s been hanging around the bakehouse all these months. I’ve seen him. I’ll know him. I’ll make sure he’s court-martialled.’

  ‘Make up your mind, Sam. No point in doing that if you want her to marry him, unless you’d like a jailbird for a son-in-law. And do you really want to put Sally through giving evidence in court – lawyers saying things about her, him denying it and all that. What will that do to your precious family name, let alone Sally’s? Besides, we don’t know it was that one you’re talking about at all. She won’t say who it was.’

  ‘She must know. And by God, she’s going to tell us.’ He stood up and blundered towards the door leading into the bakehouse, shouting his daughter’s name.

  She came into the kitchen and stood by the door. He saw at once what he should have seen long before – the telltale swelling under the white overall – and he wondered how he could have missed it and how many other people had noticed it. He said harshly, ‘Your mother’s told me about your condition. I want to know who the father is.’