Bluebirds (52 page)

Like the other WAAFS on the site, Virginia and Madge were billeted in the village and they found themselves staying with a Mrs Parsons, an elderly widow. Her small cottage also housed a budgerigar and a large black cat who passed much of its day staring at the caged bird with its yellow eyes – motionless but for the twitching
of its tail. Every shelf and every surface in the cottage displayed Mrs Parsons' collection of spindly blown-glass ornaments – souvenirs, she told them, from trips along the south coast when her husband was alive. They both lived in fear of knocking them off and breaking them.

It was soon clear that nobody in the village had any idea of the true nature of the work done on the station. There were rumours that the huge towers could shoot death rays at the Germans, but Mrs Parsons had her own ideas.

‘I can guess what you're doing, dears. You're making bad weather to keep the Germans away. That's right, isn't it? Don't worry, I shan't breathe a
word.
You just carry on.'

‘We'll carry on letting her think that,' Madge said later, snorting with laughter. ‘Though heaven knows why we'd need to be making bad weather in
this
country!'

Security at the site was very strict and passwords were constantly changed. They worked in windowless blocks, camouflaged and protected by blast walls, and in a world of Stygian gloom. Three watches rotated all round the clock and when on watch they were supposed to rest hourly from the strain of staring at the flickering green tube trace and switch to other watch duties – plotting, telling, tracking all the plots, or recording them in the log. In practice, they often spent much longer in front of their screen, operating the tube. The tall towers with their far-ranging, all-seeing eyes were never off-duty.

A spell of hot, clear weather did not shake Mrs Parsons' faith in them.

‘It's on purpose, isn't it? To
lure
them over? Make them
think
it's all right?'

The budgerigar twittered in its cage. Madge put a finger to her lips.

On their day off they went on a long bicycle ride, making the most of the chance to be out in the sunlight and fresh air. Madge rode a bike as Virginia walked – at full steam ahead. She swooped round a blind corner in
the middle of the road and had to swerve to avoid two bikes being ridden from the opposite direction. Virginia watched in horror as she careered across the road and fell. over the handlebars headfirst into a ditch. She jumped off her bike and ran to her.

‘
Madge!
Are you all right?'

Madge lay face down in the ditch, bottom sticking up, her skirt nearly to her waist, so that stocking-tops, suspenders, large thighs and grey summer-weight WAAF knickers were all clearly on view. Her shoulders were shaking hard and at first Virginia thought she was crying, until she realized that she was actually laughing.

‘Golly Moses, I took a real header! Lucky there's no water in here.'

‘Gee, I hope she's not hurt . . .'

Virginia turned her head to see Neil Mackenzie standing behind her and another Canadian soldier staring anxiously over his shoulder. It had all happened so quickly that she hadn't noticed who had been riding the other bikes. She pulled down Madge's skirt hurriedly.

‘She's all right, thank you.'

She hoped they would go on their way, but they came forward and helped Madge to her feet, apologizing. Madge was still laughing and saying it was all her fault, while they were saying it was all theirs. Then Madge recognized Neil.

‘I know
you!
We've met before . . . at the Sally Ann canteen. You're Ginny's friend. Fancy bumping into you again!'

They all laughed and after that Virginia knew there was no hope of continuing their ride alone. They went on together in a foursome – Madge in front with the other Canadian whose name was Tom, apparently, and Neil weaving alongside her behind them.

He grinned at her. ‘Seems like we're always runnin' into each other. Never reckoned I'd ever see you again, though. I asked a WAAF I met who was from Colston and she said you'd been posted.'

‘I went on a training course.'

‘You back at Colston now, then?'

She shook her head. ‘At a different station.'

‘Near here?'

‘Oh, several miles away.'

‘Well, that new badge you're wearing gives me a clue, but I guess it's all mighty secret, so I won't ask any more questions.' He started whistling cheerfully.

They stopped at a country pub and sat outside on a bench in the sun. Madge asked for half a pint of bitter.

‘Go
on
, Ginny, try it,' she said. ‘It'll build you up.'

She gave way weakly, not wanting to argue about it in front of the two Canadians, but the beer, when it came, tasted horrible to her and she couldn't drink enough to quench her thirst.

‘I'll get you somethin' else,' Neil said, seeing her trying to pretend that she liked it. ‘Don't drink it.'

He went off into the pub again and came back with a glass of lemonade for her. She was grateful to him for that.

‘How are your family?' she asked politely as he sat down beside her again at the end of the bench. She remembered the snapshot he had shown her of them all.

‘They're doin' great, far as I know. Heard from Mum a week or two back. It's real hot there now. They've been at our cottage, takin' a vacation.'

‘How nice.' They had vacations, not holidays.

‘Well, it's not really what
you'd
call a cottage – more like a cabin, I s'pose. All made of wood, with just a coupla rooms – no electricity or anythin' like that . . . real simple. Lots of people have them for vacations. There's some great lookin' country not too far from Hamilton . . . pine forests, lots of lakes. Our place is about an hour's drive – fifty or sixty miles, I guess – and it's right on a lake. Great fishin'. Trout, pickerel, bass . . . they just jump right out. We cook 'em on an open fire. They taste real good. We go huntin' too – mostly rabbits,
some quail . . . Once in a while we've gone deer huntin' in the fall. Some people go after moose and bears too, but I don't like killin' animals like that.'

‘Bears
?
'

‘Sure.' He nodded, and smiled at her expression. ‘There's lots of 'em, an' you want to watch out for 'em too. It's a mighty wild place, Canada. You ought to come and see it one of these days – when the war's over. We'd take you to the cottage. Dad and I were buildin' another two rooms onto it, but then the war came before we'd finished. I guess we'll get it done when I get back.'

She could hear a wistful note in his voice. ‘You must miss it all a lot.'

‘Yeah. I sure do. I try not to think too much about it, but sometimes you get kinda homesick. It seems a long way away. Not that I don't like England,' he added quickly. ‘It's a wonderful country – especially in summer. All this green . . . and everythin' real pretty and old, like it's out of a storybook. I had a picturebook when I was a kid with things in it just like I've seen over here . . . cute little olden time houses with thatched roofs and a yard full of all kinds of flowers.'

‘I'm afraid England doesn't really look at her best at the moment,' she said, thinking of the wartime greyness of everything – allotments instead of gardens, cabbages and potatoes instead of flowers, no time or materials or labour for painting and repairs, and ugly scars everywhere from bomb damage.'

‘That's not your fault. You've been at war nearly two years and you've had a real struggle this last one on your own. The Jerries've been givin' you a heck of a lickin' . . . I've seen what they've done to London. Southampton, too. I guess most of the big cities've caught it. I sure can't wait for the chance to get back at 'em for you.'

She had noticed something different about him while he had been speaking – there were three stripes on his arm where there had been only two, which meant that
he had been promoted to sergeant. Something else struck her as well, looking at his face. A whole year had passed since she had first met him speeding round the corner of the lane, and in that time he had turned into a man. She had seen the same thing happen with rookies in the RAF; after a while they lost the raw look of schoolboys. She wondered if she herself looked any different from when she had first joined: whether she looked more grown-up and assured. When she was working on duty she felt full of self-confidence; it was only in other situations, like this one, that the feeling seemed to desert her. She couldn't think of anything interesting or clever to say, and all her shyness and clumsiness returned. Madge could be clumsy too – three of Mrs Parsons' blown-glass ornaments had already come to grief – but she was never at a loss for words. At this moment she and Tom were talking about a dance the Canadians were going to give. Instead of living in tents on a camp site they had now taken over a boys' school, apparently.

‘Great place for a party,' Tom was saying. ‘And we've got a great band, too. We'll lay on the transport. You'll both have a real good time.'

‘You're coming, too, Ginny,' Madge told her in the same tone she had used about the beer.

‘You don't have to,' Neil said quietly. ‘Don't let her bully you. But I sure hope you will.'

That was probably why she went in the end – because he had been so understanding about it and not tried to press her. The boys' preparatory school was a huge Victorian building near the sea, with a big assembly hall that seemed to be full of people. Tom had been quite right about their band – it was far better than the station band at RAF Colston. The only trouble was that she didn't really know how to dance.

‘I was hopin' you'd teach me,' Neil said easily. ‘I'm a real clod-hopper. I've never learned. Say, why don't we
give it a try, though . . . see how we go? We can always chicken out.'

She put a tentative hand on his shoulder and her other hand in his; he put his arm around her waist. She was nearly as tall as him – but not quite. Being so tall had made her few previous attempts at dancing a misery since her partners had all been shorter. She had stumbled round the floor in an agony of embarrassment, looking over the tops of their heads. Now, instead, she looked at her feet, trying to keep them from treading on Neil's toes. She suspected that he was better at dancing than he had pretended, and was going slowly only out of kindness, keeping to her pace, rather as he had done on the bike ride. Everyone else seemed to be whirling round, and there was a great deal of whooping and yelling.

He steered her to a quieter corner. ‘Sorry, some of these guys are a pretty wild bunch.'

She had heard that before about Canadians. One of the RAF had once told her that they didn't switch electric lights off, they shot them out. The evening got a lot wilder and the noise worse, and some of the men got very drunk. Neil never left her side.

Finally, the band stopped playing and a sudden quietness came over the big room as the lights were dimmed and a spotlight switched on. Into the silence came the harsh skirl of bagpipes. A solitary, kilted piper stepped into the circle of light and the crowd fell back as he began a slow, measured march around the floor.

Virginia glanced at Neil's face as he stood beside her and saw how moved he was by the pipes' lament; she found the sound chillingly sad.

Madge had had too much to drink and another of the blown-glass ornaments fell by the wayside as she blundered through the darkened cottage on their return. She tripped over the cat who yowled and spat indignantly, and eventually collapsed on her bed, giggling.

‘Don't look so worried, Ginny! I'm not drunk – just
a teeny bit squiffy. Never drunk Canadian whisky . . . or
any
whisky.'

She clutched her head in both hands. ‘Golly, I hope I don't have a hangover in the morning. I'll never be able to read the bloody trace.'

She pulled off her clothes anyhow and fell headlong into bed. Virginia thought she had gone straight to sleep, but after a moment she said in a muffled voice: ‘Tom says Neil's absolutely loony about you. Did he ask you to go out again?'

Virginia had gone red. ‘Yes.'

‘So . . . what did you say?'

‘Well, I said I might.'

Made grunted. ‘Should hope so too. Jolly nice chap.' She turned over heavily. ‘Funny old Ginny . . . you never know what's good for you.'

Soon she began to snore.

Anne waited for Kit outside the Piccadilly Circus entrance of Swan and Edgars. She watched people going by: Londoners looking as drab and war-weary as their city. Faces were pinched and pale, clothes worn and shabby. Those in uniform looked much better: better fed, smarter and brighter. The ATS girl standing near her, obviously waiting for someone as well, was positively blooming with health and vitality. But then, unlike the civilians she had probably not had to endure the months of bombing – the nightly raids, the broken sleep snatched in shelters or huddled with hundreds of others in the depths of the Tube, the struggle to get to work and back somehow . . . and all on meagre civilian rations. The Blitz might be over but she could see that it had left its mark on more than buildings.

She tried to remember how the Circus had looked before the war when the lights came on after dark; when Eros had shot arrows airily from his plinth in the centre and the advertisements had dazzled the eyes.
Ever-Ready Batteries Are Marvellous, Defy The Rain
–
Wear a Telemac, Wrigleys After Every Meal
, the big
Bovril
sign, and
Gordon's Gin
, and
Schweppes Tonic Water
, and the Guinness Time clock with
Guinness Is Good For You, Gives You Strength
underneath. Would the lights ever go on again?

A sailor was greeting the ATS girl. He was laughing as he swung her round, lifting her in his arms. The girl was laughing with him and they looked so happy and so much in love that it hurt her to see it. She turned away quickly and saw Kit striding towards her, tall and good-looking in his army uniform. There were two pips on his shoulder now.