Apple Blossom Time (25 page)

It’s the little things that get on one’s nerves. The big things are too awful to worry about. Dick Chambers whistles hymns through his teeth all the time. He used to be a chorister, but he sounds more like a groom. Frank Maitland does nothing but play patience and if anyone else wants to use the table, all Frank’s cards have to be moved carefully off and then moved back again. Clive Vernon files his nails as often as a French madam and when he clips his toenails, the bits fly out across the dugout. It’s enough to make me volunteer for the next trench raid. Silly, really, to allow myself to get so irritated when we could all be blown to kingdom come by the next big one. Tom is far more tolerant than I am. He just laughs and tells me that I should get my own back by practising golf swings or fly casting at every opportunity. He’s so good humoured and I’m an insufferable little prig.

I had a letter from Diana Lampard the other day. That was a surprise and a very pleasant one. She told me at Christmas that she would write, but I hadn’t really expected it. Girls often make promises that they don’t keep. She writes very sweetly about life at school and says that she intends to become a VAD when she is old enough and if the war goes on. I hope she doesn’t. There are things that any woman, especially a young one, should not be obliged to see.

My regards to Father

Your affectionate son

Edwin

Our little intelligence section was shift-working as frantically as any at Bletchley Park. The signal traffic flowed both ways. Messages to and from our commanders in the field required encryption or decryption. The text of enemy messages, their codes broken at BP, were received by us and decrypted for onward transmission to the staff of the Commander 21st Army Group, General Montgomery, at his headquarters in Creully.

On my fourth morning, I answered the phone in the approved manner.

‘Int section – Sergeant Kenton speaking, sir.’

‘Hier ist Funf spikkig!’ a husky voice replied.

‘Who?’

‘Funf, dummkopf!’

I giggled. It could have been anyone. The ITMA spy, Funf, always answered the phone that way. The voice on the other end of the phone burst into laughter, rich and promising all sorts of naughtiness. I knew that laugh!

‘It can’t be! Grace – that can’t be you!’

‘Oh, yes it can! I’m in the transport pool. When’re you free?’

She breezed into my tent/office, bringing with her the smell of engine oil and Rochas
Femme,
and everyone stopped scribbling to stare. Her overalls were filthy and her nails painted. She had a spanner in the breast pocket and her hair tied up in a turban, but her lipstick was fresh.

‘Oh, my,’ she exclaimed in mock admiration of my stripes. ‘Oh, my.’ She breathed on them and polished them up with her sleeve. ‘
Sergeant
Kenton!’

‘Idiot!’ I put my arms around her and gave her a hug.

‘Mind out – you’ll get that smart battledress covered in oil.’

I took a quick step backwards. ‘What’re you doing here?’

‘Driving fuel tankers. We go from the Rear Maintenance Area at Bayeux to front-line fuel dumps – up and down, up and down – it’s a bit like being a tram driver. Well, someone has to. The Americans have theirs piped in. Imagine – I thought that PLUTO was a chum of Mickey Mouse and now I find that it stands for Pipe Line Under The Ocean. You live and learn.’ She pushed all my papers to one side of the desk – secrets, secrets, I rushed to turn them face downwards – and perched on the corner, swinging her legs. ‘What about you?’

‘Oh, still driving a desk.’

‘Close-mouthed as ever. Honestly, you make a clam seem positively chatty.’

‘Grace – I’m so glad to see you.’

‘Won’t we just paint the town red. Meet you in the village tonight. Café des Bons Amis, eight o’clock – OK?’

*   *   *

It was easier for us, now different in rank, to meet on neutral ground. Most of the camp seemed to have squeezed into the little café, anyway. The smoke was thick enough to have alerted the fire piquet. Someone was thumping an old piano in one corner, vamping his way round the sticking keys, telling us all what he was going to do when the lights went up in London. His voice was like a tomcat on a garden wall.

In another corner, a man was twiddling the dial on a wireless. There were howls and squeals as he whizzed through the stations – Hilversum, Luxembourg, Toulouse. No-one paid any attention.

‘Laura. Over here.’ Grace stood up and waved across the room. She was hanging on to the back of a chair. A stocky soldier in a Highlander’s Glengarry was trying to take it away from her. ‘Hands off,’ I heard her snap. ‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you that it’s good manners to give up your seat for a lady?’

There was a carafe of sour red wine on the table. Grace poured me a tumblerful. The first sip made my mouth feel as though it had been scoured with Vim. The second was just about bearable, and by the time I took a third sip it was beginning to taste quite nice. We had so much to talk about, so much to catch up on.

‘I’ve had three stripes up, too, you know,’ Grace confided in me. ‘But they’d only give them to me one at a time!’ She gave a little whinny of laughter at her own joke. ‘Every time I got caught sneaking in after lights out, my stripe was taken away again. I ought to get some press studs put on my sleeve. It’d be quicker than all that sewing and unpicking!’

A bunch of lads dragged their chairs over and sat at our table with hopeful smiles on their faces – they looked just like dogs waiting to be thrown the scraps from a sumptuous meal. You could almost see them drooling.

‘Shove up, girls,’ said a burly sapper with a gappy grin. ‘There’s plenty of room for another little one. Can’t have pretty girls like you sitting all on your lonesomes. What’ll you have?’

‘Sorry, boys. Put your tongues away,’ said Grace with a smile as promising as a whole book of sweet coupons. She patted me on the hand. ‘There’s nothing here for you. We’re dykes. Aren’t we, sweetie?’

‘Bloody hell. Wouldn’t you just know? Sodding queers.’

They were off. They picked up their chairs and scarpered, far quicker than they’d come, to another table where the pickings were richer.

‘Grace, how could you?’ I protested, embarrassed into a weak whisper.

‘You’ll learn. It’s the best way I know to guarantee a bit of privacy. Anyway, half the men think we’re raving nymphomaniacs and the other half think we’re all screaming queers.’ She shrugged. ‘Who cares? So, what about Vee? Have you heard from her lately?’

So I told her all about Carlton and Jennifer and the coming baby.

‘No! A Texan millionaire? Called Carlton?’ shrieked Grace. ‘I don’t believe it. Tell me you’re joking!’

‘Well, so far there’s no proof that he’s actually a millionaire, but he’s certainly a Texan and Vee acts as though money’s no object.’

‘Lucky girl. She’s got the right idea. You don’t suppose he’s got any pals, do you? Preferably, but not necessarily, single. In fact, I wouldn’t turn a man down even if he’d got a whole harem stashed away. I’m rather in need of a handy millionaire myself, at the moment.’

‘Aren’t we all!’

The soldier on the piano seemed to be gaining on the one with the wireless. He plonked the keys inaccurately but noisily enough to attract a group around him. He was already as lit up as the lights he was singing about. They all were.

‘Now, Laura, tell me…’ Grace leaned forward, her arms folded on the stained table, her voice dropping to a sympathetic whisper. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine. Of course. How are you?’ I answered in a tight little voice.

‘You know what I mean. Are you happy? How’s your sex life? Is there a man on the horizon? Come on – tell!’

‘There’s nothing to tell.’

‘I thought as much. You look pretty frightful. You look in need of a good … a good man!’

‘Thanks awfully. It’s so nice to have friends!’

‘Don’t mention it. It’s what friends are for. Silly. You look rather … rather lost, that’s all.’

‘Well, I’m fine,’ I snapped. ‘So let’s talk about something else.’

‘If you say so.’

Grace topped up my glass. I hadn’t realized it was empty. She took an elegantly engraved cigarette case from the breast pocket of her battledress blouse, offered a cigarette to me and, when I shook my head, lit one for herself. She sat back with a sigh of contentment, blowing twin columns of smoke through pinched nostrils.

‘Ah, that’s better. You’ve no idea how I suffer when I’m driving tankers. One of these days, I’ll just light up and to hell with the consequences. Better go out with a bang than a whimper, eh?’

Freshly set hair, freshly made-up face, tailored and pressed uniform – how did she manage it? She looked very like that ATS recruiting poster – the cool blonde in profile – the one that had been withdrawn at the beginning of the war because the woman looked too elegant. Don’t want to give the wrong idea to impressionable girls, do we?

‘I saw a friend of yours the other day,’ said Grace, with a knowing, come-on-why-don’t-you-ask-me look on her face. ‘A very good friend, so I’m told.’

‘Oh?’ I replied calmly, not rising to her bait.

‘Go on. Ask me who. You know you’re dying to.’

‘You’ll tell me, anyway.’

‘Martin Buckland, that’s who. He’s rather a dreamboat, isn’t he?’

‘Who told you … I don’t … I’ve never…’

‘Oh yes, you
have,
’ Grace insisted. ‘Don’t come the innocent with me. Pansy may get away with it, but you certainly can’t.’

‘Martin is an old friend. I’ve known him since I was five. And that’s all,’ I said firmly. Grace’s coyly cocked head and disbelieving expression infuriated me. It was none of her business, anyway.

‘Old friend. Of course. That’s why you’re blushing like a bride.’

‘Shut up, Grace. Where did you … where did you meet him, anyway?’

‘In hospital. Hey, steady on. It was only a scratch. Here – drink this.’ I saw her reach over to the next table and pick up a bottle of cognac. She sloshed some into my glass and rather more into her own, then put the bottle back with a sweet smile for the surprised owners. ‘Medicinal purposes. Thank you so much.’

I felt very cold. Not again. Oh, please, not again, I prayed. Don’t let me lose Martin, too.

I hardly dared to ask. ‘What happened?’

‘He picked up some shell splinters during the breakout from the bridgehead. That’s all.’

All.
All?

Grace tipped up the wine bottle. Somehow, it seemed to be empty. How surprising. She trotted off to the zinc-topped bar, came back with another one and filled our glasses.

‘Whoops – that’s a bit full. Steady as she goes. Anyway, some of the girls decided it would be good for morale to go hospital visiting – you know, cheer the boys up with a spot of feminine charm – and he was there, looking frightfully pale and interesting with his arm in a sling. We had a bit of a chat. In fact, we had quite a long chat.’

‘Oh.’

‘About you – you goose! You know he adores you, of course. Not that he said so. Well, he wouldn’t, would he. Men don’t. Damn them. But I could tell. Really, I don’t know how you do it. There you are – a scrawny chit of a thing – and you marry one lovely man and have another one dangling on a bit of string. Honestly. It’s not fair.’

‘That’s not funny, Grace.’

‘Oh, God, I know it’s not. I’m sorry, darling. I’m such a bitch.’

‘I know.’ Then I giggled. ‘That’s why I like you.’

That’s what friends are for, I thought, hazily. You can say what you like to each other and know that it will still be all right. You can lean as hard as you like and know you won’t be let down. Pansy, Vee, Grace and me – we needed each other.

And their children. And their children’s children. Grace’s hair had a sort of misty aureole. She wore a halo of light. Anyone less deserving of a halo … she was saying something, but I wasn’t sure what. I saw Jennifer and Jonathan and Vee’s unborn child and Grace’s children – lots of them, she’d have lots, I was sure. She’d treat them like puppies and train them up like young hounds.

And I saw myself as a sort of benevolent aunt to them all, a maiden aunt – that wasn’t right, how could I be a maiden? – but I was. I would preside over their marryings and christenings and their Christmases and seaside holidays. There would be peace and sunshine and crisp white winters and nights without bombs and plenty to eat and … and we’d always be friends.

‘Aunt Laura?’ the children would say. ‘Oh, we must ask Aunt Laura. We can’t have Christmas/New Year/Easter or … something … without Aunt Laura.’

I could feel the smile growing wider and wider. It was splitting my face.

‘Laura? Laura?’ Grace was saying anxiously. She was staring at me, leaning forward.

It’s all right, Grace, I tried to say, but the words wouldn’t come out right: don’t worry, we’ll always be friends.

And young men won’t be burned to death and wives will still have husbands and children will have fathers and …

And I wasn’t smiling any more.

Grace shook my shoulder, none too gently. ‘Laura. Come on. Time to go.’

I think I answered, but I’m not certain. At any rate, I didn’t move.

‘Laura. Get up. You can’t stay here. There’s going to be trouble. Get up, blast you.’

Then noises did begin to penetrate the haze. There was a splintering of glass. A woman shrieked and jabbered in French.
‘Salaud!’
Someone overturned a table. A whistle blew an urgent blast and was answered by another. Grace grabbed my arm and pulled me after her. We squeezed into the empty space left in the wake of the military police patrol as they began to clear the room. Their sticks whistled through the air, cracked off tables and heads. Boots met flesh with a sound that reminded me of a butcher’s shop, a soft, succulent thud, meaty and yielding, oxtail being chopped. The quarrelling soldiers were rounded up into a corner, meek, now, as sheep. The headquarters clerks would be pretty busy writing out charge sheets in the morning.

There was dead ground between the MPs and the door, so Grace and I used it to slip out. The lads were good. No-one turned us in. Then we ran.