Our Yanks (28 page)

‘You must be, then. What are you going to do? Whatever will your dad and mum say?'

‘I'm not going to tell them,' she said. ‘Or Chester. He doesn't know either. I'm not going to say a word and don't you dare, Doris.'

‘Of course I won't, but they'll have to know sooner or later. I mean, it'll show, won't it? You won't be able to hide it for ever.'

‘I'm going to try and get rid of it. There's some woman in Peterborough does that – I heard a girl talking about it at a Yank dance.'

‘Don't go, Sal. It might be dangerous for you. They say girls can get poisoned and die. Why don't you try jumping off a chair?'

‘I've already done that. Lots of times.'

‘You could try with a table; that's higher. Mum's out so we could go downstairs and you jump off the kitchen table.'

‘In a minute. I'm feeling a bit funny.' She sat down on Doris's bed. When she wasn't feeling sick, she felt faint and the smell of the yeast in the bakehouse made her retch.

Doris sat down too, still staring at her. ‘What if it doesn't work, Sal? You'll have to marry Chester as soon as you're old enough.'

She said fiercely, ‘No I won't. I'm not going to get married yet. Not for years and years. I want to have some fun first. Enjoy myself. Get away from this place – to London, perhaps. Get a job doing something different.'

‘If you married Chester, you could go and live in America. That'd be different.'

‘I don't want to marry
anyone
yet, can't you understand? I haven't had any sort of life.' She could feel tears coming into her eyes and blinked them back quickly. ‘I don't want this baby. I hate it. I
hate
it.'

Doris looked even more shocked. ‘It's not its fault.'

‘I know, but I can't help feeling like that. If I don't get rid of it, then as soon as it's born, I'm going to give it away.'

‘What would Chester say? It's his baby too, isn't it?'

‘I'm not telling him.'

‘You'll have to. He's going to notice, isn't he?'

‘I won't see him any more. I haven't seen him since the Invasion, anyway. He gave Tom Hazlet a letter for me. Says they've been working all hours with the fighters . . . he doesn't know when he'll get away next. I'm going to write him back and tell him I don't want to see him any more. Get Tom to deliver it for me. That's what I'm going to do.'

‘But I thought you liked him, Sal. He's so nice.'

‘I do. But I don't want to marry him, or anybody else. Not yet.'

‘He'll be so upset when he gets the letter.'

‘I can't help that either.'

‘Of course, it's his fault that it happened, isn't it? I mean he shouldn't have taken advantage of you.'

‘He didn't. It wasn't his fault at all. I led him on. On purpose. You know how we've always wanted to know what it was like.'

Doris leaned forward. ‘Do tell me, Sal. Please. What
was
it like?'

She shook her head. ‘No, Doris. That's between me and Chester. It's private.'

‘How good to see you again, Ed.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘It's Captain now, isn't it? Congratulations.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘And a medal. Well done.'

‘How did you know about all that?'

‘Oh, news travels fast in a village. We were quite anxious a while ago – when we heard you were overdue on that mission.'

‘Yeah, I had some trouble but it worked out.'

‘I prayed for you.'

‘Thank you, sir. I reckon that must have helped.'

‘Lately, of course, the thoughts and prayers of everyone in King's Thorpe have been with you American fliers. We had a special service in the church after the Invasion.'

‘Sure appreciate that, sir.'

‘You're our Yanks, you see. You belong to us.' The guy gave him a real nice smile. ‘Agnes is in the kitchen garden, if you wanted to see her.'

What the hell was a kitchen garden? Indoors, or out? ‘If that's all right, sir.'

‘She's digging up potatoes for supper. You'll stay, I hope.' The rector came out of the front doorway onto the steps and pointed to the side of the house. ‘If you go round that way, you'll come to a lawn. Go straight across and you'll find the kitchen garden at the far end, behind the row of apple trees.'

The lawn was one of those English things that you never saw anywhere else in the world. England green, flat as a billiard table and with the early evening sun lighting it in gold. Sometimes he couldn't get over the contrast: the war and the peace. One moment you were up flying in a kind of hell, the next back down here in a sort of heaven. Ed walked down the length of a border of plants which didn't happen anywhere else in the world either: flowers of all kinds and colours, growing together in a haphazard glory, except that he figured it was all arranged artfully on purpose. He came to the apple trees and the kitchen garden beyond turned out to be a large vegetable patch with rows of different sorts growing – this time in an entirely orderly fashion. Agnes was digging with a fork at the far side, turning over the dirt and picking things out of it. He stood watching her for a while before he walked round the edge of the patch towards her. He was within feet of her before she looked up. She was already flushed from the digging but she coloured some more.

‘Hi, there.'

‘Hallo, Ed.' He didn't say anything else for a moment: just went on looking at her. She was still holding the garden fork up in the air, like she'd frozen stiff. ‘Thank you for the note you sent. Tom delivered it safely.'

‘I thought you'd wonder why I didn't show up for that dance, I was real sorry to miss it. I hear it went pretty well.'

‘It was a wonderful success. We raised nearly fifty pounds. Part of that's going to the Red Cross – Father thought that was the right thing to do. The rest will be towards the dry rot. They've already started work at the church.'

‘I'm real glad. Can't have that nice old place falling down. I'd have called by sooner, but this is the first chance of getting off base. We've been pretty active.' He nodded at the row of plants. ‘Potatoes, right? You know, I've never seen them growing before, or anybody digging them up. Can I take a turn?'

‘Yes, of course,' she handed him the fork. ‘It's a bit like lucky dip.'

‘Lucky dip? Never heard of that.'

‘It's a game where you try to unearth a prize.'

She showed him how to dig the fork down under the plant to bring up the potatoes and then turn the dirt over to find the ones that had got away. He added his to her basketful. ‘They look good.'

‘“Eat-More-Potatoes,”' she quoted with a smile. ‘That's what the Ministry of Food have been telling us to do since the war started. Potatoes feed without fattening and give you energy – that's the general idea.'

‘I guess that's right.'

‘And carrots help you to see in the dark – useful for the blackout.'

‘You don't say. Do you grow those too?'

‘Carrots, onions, beans . . . anything and everything. Everybody grows what they can. Congratulations on your promotion. And on the medal.'

‘I can't figure out how you heard about that.'

‘Everyone in the school knows. I think it was Tom who told them. They look on you as their special property, you see. Ever since you gave that talk.'

He grinned. ‘You don't say. Tom's a real nice kid.'

‘He's one of the brightest in the school. We're hoping he'll get a scholarship next year. That means a free place at the grammar school.'

‘Sure hope he does, then. He hangs around up at the base quite a bit and all the guys like him. He gave me a rabbit's foot for luck. I guess I'm not sure I really believe in good-luck charms but I always take it with me, just the same. He's got a pretty cute brother, too.'

‘Alfie?' She smiled. ‘I taught him in the kindergarten. He's lovely.' She stuck the fork into the ground. ‘I've got to pick some peas now.'

‘I'll give you a hand. Never picked peas either.'

She handed him another basket and they went up and down the rows of peas.

‘How's Ben?'

‘Fine. Never happier than when shooting up the enemy. Ammo trains are his favourite target. I keep telling him he's never grown up. He's got a puppy now. A Scottie. He saw her in a pet-shop window.'

‘They let you keep dogs?'

‘Sure. A lot of the guys at the base have them.' He picked away, snapping off the pods at their stalks. It was peaceful, pleasant sort of work, and, boy, was it a contrast to what he'd gotten used to doing in the past months. ‘Mrs Hazlet does laundry for some of us guys. We feel bad, the way she has to work. No running water, no electricity in that place, but everything done real well. We can't see how she manages it.'

‘There are a lot of women like that in the village. They manage everything somehow.'

‘Not exactly a lazybones yourself, are you? Teaching those kids, running the house, helping your father, growing all these vegetables.' He showed her the basket. ‘How am I doing?'

‘That's plenty, thank you. I expect you have to get back.'

‘In a couple of hours or so.'

She hesitated. Then: ‘Would you like to stay for supper?'

‘Thought you'd never ask me.'

They walked back across that sunlit, very English lawn. With double summer time it would be light until around eleven o'clock. He liked that: the long, long evenings, the golden light fading very slowly into purple dusk before darkness finally fell.

‘The supper won't be very exciting, I'm afraid.'

‘Bubble and squeak?'

She laughed. ‘No, a bit better than that. The hens have been laying well, so I'm doing a soufflé. We've saved up some cheese.'

‘I can't eat your cheese ration.'

‘We'd be very offended if you didn't.'

‘Guess I've got no choice then. Anything I can do to help? I'm pretty useful in the kitchen.'

‘You can shell the peas, if you like.'

He sat at the kitchen table, popping the pods and thumbing the peas into a colander; and watching her as she scraped the potatoes and whisked the eggs and grated up the minuscule cheese ration.

‘What happened to the ring?' He'd noticed it was missing when she was showing him how to pod the peas.

‘I gave it back.'

‘End of engagement?'

She was busy looking inside one of the cupboards. ‘Yes.'

He picked up another pod. ‘None of my business, I guess, but was that him or you ended it?'

She still had her head in the cupboard, moving things around. ‘Me. I realized it was a mistake. That's all.'

He wondered what else lay behind it and whether there was any chance it had anything to do with him. She sure wasn't giving much away. He said easily, ‘Well, it's a whole lot less trouble to figure that out now than later.'

She came out of the cupboard and went back to stirring things. He didn't ask any more questions and he was careful not to look too damned pleased.

The rector came into the kitchen after a while and they had supper at the big table. The cheese soufflé was terrific and the fresh potatoes and peas tasted great. He almost felt sorry for the guy she'd dumped. Afterwards, he helped do the dishes, putting them to drain in a big wooden rack over the sink. Her father had gone off back to his study.

‘How about taking a walk?' he suggested. ‘There's still plenty of daylight.'

She nodded. ‘We could go along by the brook, if you like.'

He liked anywhere with her. Anywhere at all. There was a door in the old stone wall at the bottom of the garden and the creek that she called a brook was only a stone's throw away. The trees growing along the banks trailed pointed leaves in clear running water, the grass was long and lush and the late evening sun glowed like firelight. They followed the creek as it wound through fields shaded by great spreading trees and the incredible peace and beauty of it knocked him sideways. So did the girl he was with. She'd done that when he'd first seen her in the church, standing there with the light coming down on her from the high window, and every time he saw her, it was just the same.

She was keeping a safe distance from him, though. Same as she'd always done. Fending him off. He walked along, hands in pockets, and he thought soberly to himself: this isn't one of those tough cookies like Ben and I picked up in London. This is Miss. All right, she's fancy-free now, but I've got no right to get something started. Not now. Low-level strafing's sure as hell no picnic and enemy ground fire's knocking down us guys over there like clay pigeons. One truck, train, barge, loco, airfield too many and I could run out of luck, rabbit's foot or no rabbit's foot. Ben's right – for the wrong reasons. It's not me I need to think of, it's her. Get something serious going – and I mean serious because that's what it'd be – and the next thing she hears I'm a smoking hole in the ground. I can't do that to her. I've got no goddam right at all.

He said, ‘We'd call this a creek back home, and this one sure is pretty. Any fish in it?'

‘Grayling and perch, not many trout. The village boys, like Tom, catch them when they can. There are otters too.'

‘Never seen one of those.'

‘We hardly ever see them either. They're really nocturnal and they're very wary.'

He glanced at her, walking along, keeping at a safe distance. ‘I'd say you're kind of wary, too, Agnes. Of me. I guess us Yanks can be real hard to figure out and you and I come from two different worlds. You've never seen skyscrapers and I've never seen countryside like you've got here. When I get home this is going to seem dreamland.'

‘When will you be going back?'