Gunner Girls and Fighter Boys (51 page)

This was only the first of her hiding places. In the following days her grandfather’s string of bolt-holes was put to good use, as each night he moved her to what he called a ‘fresh crib’. The first two MPs had indeed been dealt with by Granny Byron, who’d kept them talking for half an hour and then sent them off to May’s Uncle Jim in Blackheath. The family saw very little of him, so May could only imagine his surprise when two MPs knocked on his door. But her grandfather assured her they would be back, so he moved her to a place she never thought to see again. Her second night was spent in the little palace on the Purbrook.

It seemed Grandad Byron had persuaded George Flint that the needs of his estranged wife’s family came before his own, and though May did wonder where her brother-in-law was spending the night, she was glad to have the flat to herself. She could do without George’s wheezy presence reminding her of Peggy’s doomed bid for a new life.

But the little palace was looking the worse for wear since Peggy’s eviction and, from the sparse, untended look of the place, George’s fortunes must have taken a turn for the worse too. Next morning May realized why, when, hunting around for a clean cup in the kitchen, she came across a quantity of empty whiskey bottles. George was obviously drinking away his contraband instead of selling it on.

When a knock came on the front door, she froze. It could be George, or it could be the MPs, and she didn’t want to see either. She squatted down under the sink, so that she couldn’t be seen through the kitchen windows. She heard a tapping on the window. ‘It’s me, open up!’

She breathed a sigh of relief. It was Granny Byron and she had Mrs Lloyd with her. May put her arms round her mother, who smelled of train smoke and lavender; the hankie she was clutching must have been laid on a bag of it. As she pulled back, May saw that she had powdered her face to hide the bruised rings beneath her eyes.

‘I’m so sorry, Mum.’ She didn’t feel she had strength to carry her mother through another swamp of grief. Her mother shook her head and said, ‘He wanted to protect our home, that’s why he stuck it out here. He died in the place he loved.’

Now May understood that her mother had discovered her own comfort and strength. She wouldn’t fade away again.

‘Oh my gawd, this is a shithole!’ Granny Byron was pulling her finger across the greasy tabletop. ‘And it stinks to high heaven of booze. George’s gone to pieces since Peggy left him. I never could see why you liked him, Carrie,’ she said to May’s mother. ‘He’s a cold bastard. Anyway, I’ve brought you some civvies, May. Mrs Harris give me some of her daughter’s. I think you’ll be all right to come to the hospital today. I give them MPs so many addresses they don’t know if they’re coming or going.’

Her mother looked surprised. ‘MPs?’

May took the clothes. ‘Thanks, Nan. I’ll get changed.’

She heard her grandmother’s whispered explanation as she dressed and wondered how long she’d be able to evade capture. Long enough to bury her father? Long enough to see her sister come back to life? But her ability to predict the future seemed to have deserted her.

May had expected her mother to berate her for absconding, but there was an imperturbability about her that was quite new, as though she had surrendered to all the tides of life and now was floating wherever it took her. She had accepted everything.

‘Your family comes first, May. What you fighting for if not that?’ Was her mother’s response when May emerged from the bedroom.

It was a shock to hear her meek mother say such a thing, and now she wondered if some of her grandparents’ rebellious spirits had made their way into her conventional mother’s blood after all.

But at the hospital, as the women kept vigil for hours at Peggy’s bedside, Mrs Lloyd’s strength finally gave way and, nearly fainting from weariness and hunger, she let Granny Byron whisk her off to a nearby café, leaving May to watch. She drew closer to the bed and took her sister’s hand, willing her back into the world. And it was as if Peggy had waited to be alone with her sister, for at that moment her eyelids fluttered. She woke and smiled. ‘I saw Harry, and he’s all right.’

‘Peggy! You saw Harry?’

Her sister nodded. ‘He sent me back for the kids.’ She winced and tried to sit up. ‘I saw Dad too.’

May patted her hand, glad to feel its warmth and aliveness and not wanting to talk about her father.

‘He told me to tell you… ow!’ Her face creased with pain and she sank back.

‘Don’t try and speak, love, just rest.’

‘No, he wants you to know something. He said, tell May the further you fly, the nearer you get to home.’

‘Did he say that, love?’ She let her tears fall on to the warm hands that she clasped in her own. ‘That’s so lovely, Peggy, but Dad…’

‘I know,’ Peggy said, before closing her eyes and falling into a calm sleep.

Once May had assured herself that Peggy was finally out of danger she set her mind to her own future. That night her grandfather found her another hiding place, a room above a pub in the Blue. But when he began discussing plans to get her out of London the next day, she stopped him. ‘I’m going back tomorrow, Grandad.’

He stared at her incredulously. ‘What d’ye want to do that for, you dozy mare?’

‘Because I can’t spend my life hiding away.

*

She walked back into the camp in Barkingside four days after leaving it and found her sergeant.

‘Where the fuck have you been, Lloyd?’ he said when she presented herself to him. He was in the NAAFI, enjoying a well-earned sausage sandwich and a jar of tea, the mugs having all run out.

‘Home, Sarge.’

‘Home, Sarge! I know you’ve been home – I mean where the fuck have you been?’

May realized she needed to put it another way. ‘A V-1 buried my dad and sister. Dad died.’

‘I’m sorry about your dad, Lloyd.’ His broad flat face softened. ‘Sit down.’ His fat fingers pushed the jar of tea towards her. ‘And drink that.’

She did as she was told. She felt calm, knowing that she had done what she needed to.

‘Now listen to me, Lloyd. When I take you to the CO, you let me do the talking. You keep shtum. I need them fucking cat’s eyes and that nose of yours sniffing out these bastard buzz bombs. And whatever you’ve got to say, the CO don’t want to hear, right? Anything to do with my gunner girls, he hears from me!’

He led her first to the barrack hut to smarten herself up, then quick-marched her into the CO’s office. After a minute’s interview with the CO he came out, roaring at her, ‘Quick march!’ And as she stood before the CO, he announced: ‘W271932. Acting Sergeant Lloyd. Absent without leave, sir!’

The CO turned his long face towards her. ‘These charges are very serious, Lloyd. Very serious indeed. What have you to say for yourself?’

May saw the sergeant raise an eyebrow. ‘Nothing, sir.’

‘Exactly so, Lloyd. Nothing you can say to alleviate the gravity of the offence. I think I explained when you requested compassionate leave there were to be no exceptions and you directly disobeyed my order.’

He gave a swift look in the direction of the sergeant, who was staring over May’s head.

‘Your sergeant is of the opinion that you are needed in the defence against these latest weapons and so you are to be stripped of your stripes. You will forfeit two weeks’ pay and in addition to your usual duties, you will be on ablution fatigues for one month. Needless to say, you will not be granted leave for the foreseeable future. Dismissed.’

‘Quick march!’ The sergeant hustled her out of the room before the words were out of the captain’s mouth, and he didn’t come to a halt until they were back at the barrack hut.

‘Thanks, Sarge,’ she said, wanting to hug his pigeon-chested frame, but standing to attention lest he change his mind and march her back to the CO.

‘Don’t thank me, Lloyd, not till after you’ve cleaned out the carseys. On the double!’ he roared.

‘Yes, Sarge!’ she said, turning on her heel.

‘And get yourself on post tonight, two hundred hours!’

When the girls found her she was on her knees, scrubbing the toilet-block floor, with tears streaming down her face. Emmy kneeled down and held her. She more than anyone knew that all the words in the world would make no difference to May now. But they each came and sat beside her, on the cold damp floor smelling of disinfectant and bleach, gradually coaxing the story from her, so that it was her own words that gave her the most comfort.

‘At least I was there, to hear him say he was proud of me.’

***

In the coming months, as the V-bombs continued to roar over the south-east, those that got through the coastal barrage, through their fighter planes and through the barrage balloons had only one last hurdle between them and the civilian population: the heavy artillery batteries, like May’s, that formed a ring round London. May’s team, with Mac as their new Number One, would go to bed at seven in the evening, wake at one-thirty a.m. and be on post in minutes. The routine was punishing, but at least they were getting results and they had almost begun to feel hopeful that they had the doodlebugs beaten when a new threat filtered through. Some people were calling them flying gas mains because of the rash of supposed exploding gas mains all over London. The battery was told to prepare for a threat that no predictor could track and few guns could reach, weapons that travelled at the speed of sound and only announced their coming after they had arrived, so that at least you never heard the one that killed you.

Through all this, May had little news of Bill. She had not received a letter from him in months. Though she hated such long silences, she had grown used to them. Learning to love him at a distance was nothing new to her – it seemed to have been their way from the moment they met, and sometimes she wondered, if the day ever came when they could live together, would they even get along? But in the meantime she sent off her own letters, written sometimes in the early mornings, straight from the gun park, or in the evenings with a torch under the blankets, eating into her precious sleeping times. She tried to pour out all the forestalled emotion that their separation had forced upon them, wanting him to know how, if he were there, she would hold him, kiss him. Yet all she could really do was match the number of X’s on the bottom of the letters to his own. Knowing Bill as she did, he would die of embarrassment to think the censor might ever read her most private thoughts about him. The delays in the mail were always explained eventually, usually caused by a move from one camp to another, or sometimes to a completely different country. The hiatus would be followed by a flurry of letters. But this had been the longest silence since he left and, because she was on constant duty except when asleep, it came as a surprise when she actually had time to count the weeks since his last letter and began to worry even more than she usually did.

Then one day in October she received a huge bundle. Seventy-six letters! They were jumbled up and she had to force herself to hold back from plunging midway into the treasure chest, so that she could arrange them in date order. Then she spent every spare minute reading them, quickly at first, then slowly, twice and three times. She never tired of reading them, embellishing each small detail in her imagination. The mention of prickly heat and the discomfort of sleeping beneath a mosquito net had her looking up remedies and issuing warnings about malaria in her next letter, which no doubt he was already only too aware of. Out of one letter slipped a small, fuzzy snapshot and at first she didn’t recognize him. Although he’d told her to stop imagining him in RAF blues long ago, still the predominant image in her mind was always the dark wavy hair beneath his blue cap and belted air-force blue tunic, with its gunner armourer insignia. The young man in the photograph was so thin he hardly looked like Bill. Stripped to the waist in just a pair of khaki shorts, she could see that his skin had darkened in the baking sun. In front of a long, open-sided, palm-covered building, foot resting on an ammunition case and elbow on knee, he was leaning forward, looking intently into the camera. May knew that sometimes the fighter boys would use old film from the gun turrets in their cameras, and the resulting snaps were always grainy. Although half his face was shadowed by a tilted bush hat, he looked out at her with an expression designed, she knew, to show how much he loved her, but which revealed only a deep sadness. The face told her, more than all his words, how much he missed her.

It was still almost impossible to work out exactly where he was in the world, though there’d been long stationary periods where she could fix him. She knew that after the troopship, he’d arrived in India, with mention of rupees, annas, women in saris and char wallahs making that much obvious. He’d told her the story of the poor boy who sat on the ground outside their billet from seven in the morning till eleven at night, serving them tea and biscuits and how, one day, he’d asked the young chap what he felt about his job.
Imagine my surprise, May, when he answered me in perfect public-schoolboy English, ‘Well, sir, I’m pretty browned off about it!’ So I gave him a couple of rupees, poor little tyke. I tell you, May, some of the working conditions out here make Garner’s seem like a picnic!

At the Indian airfield, his daily routine seemed very like Morecombe, with long hours of boredom, waiting for orders, interspersed with trips to the nearby big town, eating in local cafés and going to the flicks, compared to which, he said, the Star in Abbey Street was a palace. Then followed a gap of many weeks, after which he wrote of a trip further into the jungle, and his most frightening experience to date. Stirrings and rustlings in the jungle had announced the appearance of a huge, dragon-like lizard, walking slowly towards him as he sat on the pole latrine.
I wasn’t at my best, as you can imagine, and I couldn’t have been more scared than if the enemy had come running out of the jungle at me, bayonets fixed!

So he was near an enemy. And then she’d had to stop reading for a while, until she could trace on a map the most likely place near India he might be. With the information that there were Japs around every jungle path, and the help of another clue, the name of the local horse-drawn transport, which he’d said were gharries, she concluded that it must be on the border with Burma. The reports that had come back from there made her blood run so cold, she wished she’d never checked.