A Summer Promise (27 page)

She made the comment more as a statement of fact than a question, but Susan answered enthusiastically. ‘Oh, yes, your Tom’s really nice, but what a pity he had to go back before we finished our leave. Still, as he said, he and Ricky have got a war to fight. Only he said he now had something to look forward to, meaning seeing you again, I suppose.’

Alice tucked in a last pair of shoes and began to close her suitcase. ‘Do you know, I’ve never been certain how I felt about Tom. When we first met we were just kids, and though there was much I admired about him I sometimes thought he liked Maddy more than he liked me, so of course I treated him rather coolly. Then there was this other girl, Marigold. She definitely liked him, but how he felt about her I couldn’t be sure . . .’

‘And are you sure now?’ Susan said, closing her own case – or rather trying to do so – with a bang. ‘Oh, hell, it won’t shut.’ She smiled beguilingly at Alice. ‘Do you have space for a tiny bathing costume, and possibly some of those extraordinary sandals which lace right up to your knee? Because if you can’t get them into your case I don’t know
what
I shall do!’

Tom and Ricky re-joined their unit in time for the worst weather they had encountered since leaving England. As they moved forward into Tunisia, the rain fell steadily and constantly. Freezing cold, it soaked into blankets, clothing and, horribly, food, so that even when the NAAFI supply vehicles drove into camp they brought little comfort. Tom and Ricky told each other that unless there was a Noah’s Ark round the corner the rain was simply bound to ease, and ease it did, eventually, as the long line of men and materials continued to slog onwards. And then, at last, the sun came out. Blankets steamed, mud began to dry on clothing and boots and hot food was once more delivered daily. The NAAFI, Tom remarked, had its faults but the issue of hot bully beef stew and tinned potatoes went a long way towards cheering up the column.

The night after the rain ceased, Tom and Ricky lay for the first time for ages in dry blankets, smoking cigarettes which the NAAFI had thoughtfully provided and thinking back to their leave. In the end Ricky had only had three days at the rest camp because the doctors had not released him until his wounds were completely healed, but he had arrived there in time to attach himself firmly to Tom and Alice, though he had speedily added another nurse, Lucy, to ‘even up the numbers’ as he put it.

Now, Tom stretched lazily. ‘Are you going to write to Lucy?’ he asked. ‘The two of you seemed to get on awfully well.’ He took a drag of his cigarette and watched his friend’s face in the tiny glow.

Ricky was grinning reminiscently. ‘Lucy is a very generous girl, and runs her life like clockwork,’ he said. ‘Yes, I’ve no doubt we shall exchange letters. One of the reasons we got on so well is because she’s not the clinging type.’ He gave a subdued chortle and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘She’s had an exciting sort of love life. First she was engaged to a bomber pilot, only he bought it over Berlin. Then she took up with a Frenchie in de Gaulle’s little lot; he left her and probably joined the Resistance. Then there was a petty officer aboard a merchant vessel going to and fro between New York and Liverpool, and after that . . .’

‘My God, she’s certainly experienced,’ Tom said, laughing. ‘What number are you, twenty-five?’

Ricky chuckled. ‘I tell you what, that girl knows a thing or two, and even if I am number twenty-five, probably half the nurses’ boyfriends are in the same position. Do you know how old she is?’

‘About a hundred, I should guess, judging from her history with men, only she’s most awfully well preserved for her years; like those mummies we saw in the pyramids at Cairo,’ Tom said. ‘Go on, surprise me! I suppose you’ll say she’s seventeen.’

‘As a matter of fact she’s thirty-eight; she really doesn’t look it, does she?’ Ricky said. ‘And if that surprises you, hard luck! Little Lucy taught me more in three days than I’ve learned in my life so far. How about you? Did Alice come across? It was pretty obvious she thinks you’re something special, though God knows why.
Did
she? Did you . . .?’

‘Don’t be so bloody nosy,’ Tom said. ‘Alice is a decent girl, not the sort to go bestowing her favours on any Tom, Dick or Harry. To tell you the truth, I had a thing about a girl called Marigold – I’m sure I told you – but by the end of our leave Alice had sort of taken over. In fact, when I try to visualise Marigold, Alice’s face keeps getting superimposed on hers . . . know what I mean?’

Ricky pursed his lips and then expelled air in a shrill whistle. ‘I know what you mean, but I doubt if you know yourself,’ he said. ‘If you ask me you’re in love with the girl. Not Marigold – Alice. Has it never crossed your mind that liking might have turned to love? Could you bear to spend the rest of your life with her?’

‘I’m not sure, but I think you may be right, and I am in love with Alice,’ Tom said slowly. ‘But can someone love a girl when they’ve never . . . oh, you know, gone all the way, as you’d put it.’ He leaned out of his blanket as a tiny snore escaped from his friend’s open mouth, and flicked his shoulder. ‘Ricky! Wake up, will you? I’m asking you a very serious question because you’re older than me, and your Lucy is older than either of us. Do you honestly think that I could be in love with Alice Thwaite?’

Tom waited, but Ricky did not stir. Thinking about it, Tom realised that his question had been a foolish one anyway. Ricky had only known Lucy properly for three days, and although he was clearly going to keep in touch with her if it was humanly possible to do so, in every other way their two cases could hardly be less alike. From what Ricky had said, he must at least have slept with Lucy, but when Tom and Alice had parted he had given her a chaste kiss and promised to write. Apart from anything else, he realised now that he knew the adult Alice scarcely at all, because she had changed almost out of recognition in the three years since they had seen each other. He decided he would write to her, meet her whenever the exigencies of war allowed, and make a mature decision when they had shared more than one shy kiss.

He wriggled further down into the cocoon of his blanket and thought about Alice. Wide blue eyes, a straight little nose, and a way of looking at him which made him feel he was really one hell of a feller. I believe I really do love her, Tom thought. But when the war’s over and I can see her more often, I shall find out for sure how I feel.

He was on the very verge of sleep when an unexpected thought flashed into his head: won’t Dad be pleased? Then, surprisingly, a mental picture of his father formed in his mind, and Jim Browning did not look pleased at all, but quite the opposite. Odd! Tom tried to claw back the image to examine his father’s expression more closely, but it was too late.
For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health
, he thought confusedly.

And Tom was asleep.

MADDY WALKED ACROSS
the parade ground, heading for the Mess. The war was surely in its final stages, with the Allied troops now chasing the enemy, taking prisoners, and closing on Berlin, where everyone assumed the war would end. It was a difficult time for the girl gunners, Maddy mused. But with the easing of hostilities it was no longer necessary for her battery to spend every night targeting enemy aircraft. Even the unmanned doodlebugs they had been shooting down lately had disappeared, although the rockets which had replaced them seemed to be causing great devastation.

Maddy knew she was not the only one who felt flat, almost let down, as a result of the sudden change in their lives. Yet they were still all members of the forces, still programmed to obey orders, and when there were no orders being given, and the war had not officially ended . . .

But it was the same for all of them. Maddy and Marigold had gone their separate ways after Marigold had failed the examinations which would have enabled her to become a gunner, and at first it seemed as though the army did not know what to do with her. She was in the cookhouse for a couple of months, but had then rebelled and been given a desk job. She had not minded the work, she had explained to Maddy, but felt she was not doing anything particularly useful. Then, the previous year, the censors had been overwhelmed with mail and Marigold had been posted to an office in the far north of Scotland. She had said grandly, in her first letter after the move, that she was doing an extremely hush-hush job, though she could not say what until the war ended, but Maddy believed her old friend had been one of the many in the ATS to be seconded as what the girls irreverently called ‘censor-snippers’. Marigold often bemoaned the fact that she was in Scotland, in a location too remote to allow her to get home to Yorkshire, where her mother still worked, or to visit Maddy, who had been constantly on the move until very recently.

At this point in her musings Maddy opened the door and went into the Mess. The first person she saw was a tall young infantryman who had been injured in the last stages of
Operation Overlord
and was now fretting to be off to re-join his unit. The MO had said he could leave when he no longer needed his crutches, but that day had not yet come, so now Maddy raised her brows. ‘Have you been to the cookhouse yet, Cassidy?’ she asked. The young soldier’s name was actually Ben Travers, but he was nicknamed ‘Hopalong Cassidy’ after the cowboy film star. ‘I thought I’d pick up my mail – if I’ve got any – and then go along to get something to eat whilst I read.’ She grinned at him. ‘I’ve heard there’s a rasher of bacon to go with the dried egg; aren’t we the lucky ones?’

Cassidy returned the grin. ‘I wondered why you were so early,’ he said. ‘But I can’t accept your kind invitation to brekker as I had mine half an hour ago. And as for letters, you’ve got several.’

‘Oh, marvellous,’ Maddy said happily. ‘Sounds as though they’ve all caught up with me at once.’ If working out just where Marigold had been posted was hard, Maddy’s correspondents must have been driven half crazy by her constant moves. Once the girls knew the drill by heart, they could be sent to any gun site in the country, and Maddy’s battery had one of the highest records of hits in the regiment, which made them popular.

She began to take her letters off the board, smiling as she did so. Lovely! One from Gran; her impeccable copperplate handwriting was unmistakable, Maddy thought, and was probably the reason why Gran’s letters were always short. Then there was one from Marigold – a nice fat one. Taking it off the board, Maddy reckoned that the envelope probably contained at least three of her friend’s closely written sheets. There was one from Alice – no, two – and one from Tom. Maddy’s heart gave an excited little hop. Despite telling herself that Tom meant nothing to her, save as a good friend, she always read his letters slowly and luxuriously, whilst a picture of him formed in her mind.

Since becoming a gunner she had been far too busy – and too tired – to even think about forming relationships amongst the men with whom she worked. Besides, almost all of them were elderly. They had been seconded to the gun sites so that younger men might go to the front line, and they often resented the girls who were quicker, more intelligent and keener than they were themselves. A rather nice – and happily married – man in his forties, on a searchlight battery, was the only one Maddy could recall who gave the ‘girl gunners’ their due. ‘You’re young and keen,’ he had once told Maddy. ‘You aren’t afraid of making mistakes, yet you hardly ever get the maths wrong. I do my best, but I can’t mimic your speed and accuracy on the guns.’ At the time Maddy had beamed at him and thanked him for the compliment.

She was turning away from the board when she saw that there was one more letter bearing her name. It was not an official brown envelope – thank God, oh, thank God! – but a blue envelope which she did not recognise, addressed in a hand that was strange to her. Was it a mistake? But then it was perfectly possible that one of the friends she had made in her wanderings might have decided to get in touch. Maddy took the last letter off the board and placed them all in her gas mask case, then set off for the cookhouse.

‘Well, and ain’t you the early bird!’ The corporal doling out breakfasts grinned widely at Maddy as she reached the head of the queue. ‘Did you hear as how there were bacon this mornin’? I’ve only got another five pieces, so anyone what arrives after I’ve doled them out has only theirselves to blame.’ He stabbed a weary-looking slice of bacon and dropped it on Maddy’s tin plate. ‘There you are, chuck! That’ll put hairs on your chest!’

Maddy heaved an artificial sigh. ‘I do believe I’ve heard that one a mere thousand times before,’ she said, helping herself to a slice of cold burnt toast. ‘No thanks, Cooky, no jam.’

As she left the queue, several people called out to her to share their table, but Maddy shook her head. ‘I’ve got a pile of letters to read,’ she explained. ‘And one of ’em’s from my feller, so excuse me if I grab a table to myself.’

It was the one excuse which would be acceptable, she knew, and presently she began to eat whilst reading the letter from Marigold. Dear Corporal Stein, Maddy thought affectionately, I miss you most dreadfully, but it won’t be long now before we meet again. Everyone says the war’s all but over, and once we’re in civvy street we’ll be able to resume normal relations, and that means friendships.

The letter began with the usual grumble; it was colder in Scotland than it had any right to be, considering that spring was well advanced. Then Marigold demanded why Maddy hadn’t written more often and said that she had had to rely on Alice, who was not even in the country, to find out what was going on back in dear old Blighty. Which, when you considered that Alice was nursing in field hospitals all over the Continent and had very little time for herself, was fair criticism of Maddy, who wrote very rarely.

Reading Marigold’s reproaches, Maddy thought of long nights on remote sites, when the planes had raced overhead and she and her fellow gunners, soaked to the skin and icy cold, had worked out the maths, adjusted the angles, shouted ‘On target!’ and watched as the planes they caught in the searchlight’s beam crashed to the ground. If that wasn’t hard work . . . but it was no use getting into a state. It was typical of Marigold to assume no one else held an important place in the war effort.