Our Yanks (8 page)

More lorries were grinding up the road; a long convoy of them. He watched them slow and stop outside the 'drome entrance and the striped pole swing up to let them in. The guard was busy talking to the driver in the first lorry and Tom saw his chance. He was across the road in a flash, slipping between two lorries and in through the open gateway, under the raised pole. Nobody stopped him or seemed to notice and he kept on walking towards some huts. As he reached the nearest, the door opened and a Yank came out. He was wearing overalls and a cloth cap with the peak sticking straight up in the air. ‘Hi, kiddo. Want somebody?'

He shook his head boldly. ‘Just looking round.'

‘Sure. Want to see the radio shack?' The Yank opened the door behind him again and beckoned. ‘Come right on in.'

The hut was long and narrow with wooden workbenches all round the sides and electric lights with metal shades hanging low from the ceiling. More Yanks, dressed the same, looked up from valves and coils and wires and grinned at him. ‘Hi there! What's your name, kid?'

‘Tom,' he said. ‘Tom Hazlet.'

‘You from the village, Tom?'

He nodded. They let him wander round the workbenches and watch them repairing and testing things and warm himself at one of the two iron stoves that heated the hut. His wet clothes steamed as they began to dry out.

‘Like some toast, kid?'

‘Wouldn't mind,' he said casually. He was starving hungry.

They opened the stove doors and started toasting thick slices of bread on the end of screwdrivers. When they were done, they spread something on them out of a jar and handed one to him. ‘Peanut butter, kid. Ever tried it?'

He shook his head. It tasted sweet and nutty and kept sticking to the roof of his mouth. He unstuck it with his tongue and swallowed.

‘Like it?'

‘Yes, thanks.'

‘Want some more?'

‘Yes, please.'

He had three more slices, sitting on a crate by the stove. They'd painted pictures of girls in their underclothes on the whitewashed wall near him – skimpy, frilly things nothing like the women's underclothes he'd ever seen hanging out on clothes lines. He turned his head sideways to look at them more closely.

‘Say, kid, can you bring us some bread from that bakery in the village when you're next up? We'll give you the money.'

‘Course I can. Easy.' They tossed him over some coins. He counted them up quickly and stowed them in his pocket.

‘How about eggs?' another said. ‘Real, fresh eggs? Not that powdered garbage. We don't get none, 'cept for our pilots. A penny each if you can get us some.'

He hesitated. He could get the bread all right because it wasn't rationed, but fresh eggs were different. They were hardly ever in the shop. Mam kept a few hens but he couldn't take those eggs. Lots of other people kept them, though, including Farmer Dixon. ‘I might be able to manage a few,' he said at last. ‘I'll try.'

‘You got a sister, Tom?' one of them drawled, chewing gum.

‘Yes.'

‘What's her name?'

‘Nell.'

‘How old's Nell?'

‘She's ten months.'

They all crowed with laughter and he laughed, too, though he didn't really see the joke. He was finishing his last bit of toast when the fighters started coming back. The first one went roaring over the hut, rattling the windows. He jumped up and ran to look out.

‘Know what those are, kid?'

‘They're P-38s,' he said. ‘Lightnings.' He knew because he'd asked the Yanks in the village.

‘Want to go an' watch 'em?'

‘If it's all right.'

‘Sure it's OK. You ain't no spy. Come on.' One of them took him outside and called to another Yank going by on a bike. ‘Hey, Chester. This is Tom. Wants to take a look at the planes. Can you take him out there with you?'

He rode in front, balanced on the crossbar, and they raced round the concrete track at the edge of the aerodrome and out to the far side where there was a hoop-shaped corrugated-iron hangar, some canvas tents pitched on the grass and several huts that looked as if they'd been made out of old wooden crates. A Lightning was taxiing along the track from the other direction and two Yanks in caps and overalls were standing watching and waiting for it. Chester propped the bike against the nearest hut. ‘Stay right here out of the way, Tom. Don't come any closer, case you get hurt.' He did as he was told. The fighter turned off the track and onto a concrete stand and the engines stopped, the propellers turning slower and slower until they were still. Chester and the other two Yanks had gone forward to put chocks in front of the wheels and Chester got up onto the wing and helped open the cockpit cover. The pilot climbed out. He stood there on the wing with his goggles pushed up onto the top of his helmet, oxygen mask dangling, a yellow life vest over his brown leather jacket, a white scarf round his neck. Tom gazed at him. He had seen lots of pictures of fighter pilots in comics but this one was really real. The pilot jumped down to the ground and stood talking to the three Yanks for a while until a jeep came fast along the track and stopped. The pilot walked over towards it, carrying his dinghy pack, and when he saw Tom standing there and staring, he grinned at him. ‘Want a lift back, kid?'

He sat in the front in the space between the driver and the pilot. There were four more pilots squashed in the back with their packs and the jeep roared at top speed back round the track. His heart was pounding again with excitement. When they stopped outside a hut and all of them had spilled out his pilot said, ‘You from the village, kid?'

‘Yes, sir.' The pilot would be an officer and he knew that you always called them ‘sir'. He pulled up his socks. ‘I'm Tom Hazlet.'

The Yank lit a cigarette and snapped his lighter shut. ‘Know anyone who'd do laundry there, Tom?'

He thought of the often-empty Oxo tin on the kitchen shelf. ‘My mum might.'

‘Where do you live?'

‘Number 14, in the high street, past the bakery.'

‘Great.' The pilot ruffled Tom's hair with one hand. ‘I'll come by and see her.'

‘What name shall I tell Mum, sir?'

‘Lieutenant Mochetti.' He pronounced it Loo-tenant, like the Yanks always did. ‘Call me Ed. Like some gum?' Tom caught the Wrigley's packet neatly.

He walked straight out of the main gate, ducking under the striped pole and past the sentry on duty, who gave him a wave. On the way down the hill towards the village, the old bus that had been converted into a WVS canteen passed him going up. He could see that bossy old trout Mrs Vernon-Miller looking out. He swaggered down the high street, chewing a piece of Wrigley's, and ran into Dick and Robbie and Seth. Dick barred his way.

‘Where d'you get that gum?'

‘Yank pilot.'

‘You been up at the 'drome?' Seth asked suspiciously. ‘You get inside?'

He knew they were always hanging about up there. ‘Nah. No use trying. They won't let you in. It's Top Secret.'

He wasn't going to tell them about it, not for all the tea in China. He sidestepped Dick and sauntered on down the street, hands in pockets, chewing his gum and whistling.

Sergeant Chester Somers freewheeled down the hill towards the village. He'd bought his bike in a secondhand shop in Peterborough and it had cost him ten shillings, even though it was real beat-up. He reckoned it had been through a lot more than two owners, like the guy had told him, but he'd paid up. Soon as he'd arrived in England, he'd cottoned on that you couldn't get about without one. For a start, the base wasn't like the ones back home where everything was close together. Over here, the RAF had put buildings all over the place and kept the planes scattered round the airfield so the Germans couldn't bomb the lot together. It made good sense but it meant ground crew had a long way to go, to and fro. And off base, if you weren't taking the liberty truck into one of the towns and you hadn't got a bike and couldn't hitch a lift, you walked. He'd done some work on it – fixed the loose chain and the bent mudguard and the dud brakes and now it was pretty good. He'd taken a while getting used to the British lever brakes on the handlebars instead of coaster brakes like back home, and when he'd first hit them he'd gone clean over the handlebars. And he had to keep remembering to stay on the wrong side out on the roads. He'd got lost a couple of times riding around the countryside because the lanes twisted and turned so much he never knew where the hell he was heading, and the signposts had nearly all been taken away to fool the Germans if they invaded. He'd found out that if there
was
a signpost it had probably been turned round the wrong way, or borrowed from somewhere else. He reckoned the British needn't have bothered – the Jerries would get lost anyway.

He reached the foot of the hill and swung round to the left under the brick railroad arch and then round to the right again once he was through. Another half-mile and he rode into the village. He liked King's Thorpe. Coming from a small place himself, he felt more at home there than in one of the big towns and he'd never seen such quaint old houses; there was nothing near as old back home. Only trouble was, King's Thorpe didn't seem to like Americans. He'd found that out the first day he'd gone down with some other guys from the base and spent an evening in the Black Bull. He wasn't much of a drinking man, but he'd heard that the British pubs were friendly places. Well, the locals had been real unfriendly. They'd turned round and stared like they didn't want them there at all. Then things had got a whole lot worse when some of the guys had started shooting their mouths off and passing remarks about the beer. Hal had told the barmaid she ought to put it back in the horse, and Don had kept grumbling about how Americans were always charged more. ‘The only thing cheap over here's the women,' he'd said in a loud voice. If the landlord hadn't stepped in there could have been a fist-fight.

Chester reached the first houses and slowed his speed. It wouldn't be smart to be seen tearing through the village because that was another thing the locals didn't like. Well, he could understand that. They'd got kids playing in the street and old folks crossing. It was mostly kids and old folks left as nearly all the men had gone off to fight unless they were doing something essential. Any girls he'd seen around had generally come in from other places and he didn't reckon much to the look of them.

He pedalled slowly down the street, aware of curtains twitching and unseen eyes watching him from dark windows. At the end he turned right into the street where most of the stores were – the high street, they called it. There was one halfway along that sold cigarettes and what they called sweets. He tried to learn the British words for things and use them because it seemed more polite. Sweets and biscuits, pavements and shops, petrol and lorries and torches. English cigarettes, he knew, were in short supply but he liked them a whole lot more than the American ones. He dismounted and leaned the bike against the wall outside the shop. ROBERT LAW, Tobacconist and Confectioner it said over the doorway. Whoever Robert Law was, he'd never seen him in there; it was always an old woman behind the counter. The bell on the door jangled loudly as he opened it. He had to stoop to enter because the lintel was so low and there wasn't much room inside either.

It was so dark that, at first, he didn't spot the kid. Like all the village boys, he was dressed in grey shorts and a grey jumper, woollen socks and black lace-up boots, and everything was darned or patched all over and near worn out. The old woman was halfway up a ladder, reaching down one of the glass jars from the shelves. She unscrewed the lid and shook out some kind of striped candy onto the scales and then tipped it into a paper cornet and folded the top over. The boy reached up with a big copper penny and a ration book so she could cut the coupon out. The English kids had had it tough, no question. They looked skinny and undersized to him – like they hadn't had a square meal in years. And their clothes were either too small or too big – never fitting just right. In his own family, there hadn't been the money for fancy stuff but they'd always been dressed decent – never in old cast-offs or hand-me-downs. And they'd never known such a thing as clothes rationing.

He asked very politely for a packet of Players. ‘No cigarettes. Only pipe tobacco,' the woman told him curtly, pointing to the near-empty shelves behind her. Somehow he figured she
did
have some, stashed away for other customers, not Yanks, but he thanked her as he left. The little kid was starting on his candy outside and he gave him a Baby Ruth bar from his pocket. The boy's face lit up. ‘Thanks, mister.'

‘What's your name?'

‘Alfie. Got any gum, mister?'

He searched in his pockets and found some. ‘Here you are, Alfie.'

‘Thanks.' The kid put it carefully in his pocket, like it was treasure, and ran off.

Chester pushed the bike along the street, hoping to find another store selling cigarettes. He passed a butcher, a grocer's and a hardware store and came to a baker's. A green and gold HOVIS sign was fixed to the wall above the window. When he'd first seen the same sign at a railroad depot he'd thought it was the name of the place. Then when he'd kept on seeing it, he'd finally figured it out. Metal letters alongside the sign spelled out S. BARNET and underneath them, but smaller, High Class Baker. He peered in through the window and saw big wooden trays set out with loaves of bread stacked on end and different kinds of small cakes. They looked pretty good and made him feel hungry so he lifted the latch on the door and went in. Another bell jangled with a hollow sort of sound as he stepped down into the store but this time it wasn't an old woman serving, but a young girl.

There was no counter, like in the candy store – just the wooden trays set out on two tables – the one under the window and another against a wall. And it was real warm, with a good smell of fresh baking. He stood by the door, waiting while the girl attended to a customer, and he watched as she put cakes into the woman's shopping basket and the money into a tin in a drawer. She was quick as anything with the change, he noticed. He still couldn't figure out the English money; all those halfpennies and pennies and shillings, never mind the sixpences and the threepenny bits and the farthings. She had quite a chat with the woman, smiling away at her, and he went on waiting patiently until they had finished talking. As the customer turned to leave he opened the door for her, making the bell jangle again on its leather strap, but she gave a loud sniff instead of thanks as she passed him on her way out. The girl smiled at him, though. She had some lipstick on – a soft pink colour – and she wore a blue and white spotted scarf tied in a bow at the top of her head with a lot of blond curls showing at the front.