Out of the Blue (11 page)

‘It was after the flying bomb, you see, Kitty – what it did to your brother and that, it was meant to be for the best – that’s what he thought – at the time
that’s what we all thought.’

Kitty sits perched on the edge of her seat but, as she begins to consider the meaning of what Bert is telling her, she slides back into the chair and reaches for the armrests because she feels
as though she is falling.

Uncle Geoff picked up the knife, stabbed a slice of bread and held it out across the table at Kitty.

‘Late home for his tea last night and not here for breakfast . . .’

Kitty took the bread and Uncle Geoff made a quick bayonet-jab into the next slice and held it up in Aunt Vi’s direction. ‘Did you hear him go out this morning, Vi? If he’s not
back before I’m ready to leave, he’ll spend the day digging ditches with an empty belly and it’ll serve him right.’

Since D-Day Charlie had hardly been at home. On the afternoon that the invasion began, he cycled miles exploring the deserted staging camps, fascinated by the evidence of rapid departure. There
were guards at the field gates but, leaving his bicycle and crossing through the trees behind one camp, Charlie was able to wander through empty Nissen huts that a day ago had been full of men.

In one he discovered a piece of wood, the size of a cricket ball that had been half-carved into a bear – unfinished and left behind. The carver had seen the potential in the wood, a curve
in a branch like a swollen elbow suggesting the haunches of the animal. The head and back were complete, but the underside and legs were roughly hewn as if the bear had yet to come fully to life
and walk free of its mould. Charlie brought it home and that night began whittling wood with his pocket knife. He sat by the fire in the evenings, skinning the bark from sticks and flicking the
curls into the flames.

The front door opened then banged shut and Charlie appeared in the doorway of the small dining room beside the kitchen. He was flushed and glistening with sweat. His short-cropped dark hair was
shrouded in dust and smudges of grime marked his face.

‘They’re waterproofing the tanks up the road at Broughton’s!’ He grinned at them, then his gaze fell immediately to the table. ‘I’m starving.’

‘Have you forgotten that you’re working for Tom Farrell today?’ Uncle Geoff asked. ‘I’m leaving in one minute.’

‘Go and wash before you think of sitting at the table,’ said Aunt Vi as she set about pouring Charlie a cup of tea.

They heard the jet of water from the kitchen tap blasting into the stone sink and Charlie shouted to them over the noise of it.

‘One of the soldiers, Solly – he’s my friend, he told me that they’re going over soon, any day now. They’ve had orders to stand to.’

Returning to the room, he flung himself into his chair at the table. Immediately reaching for his teacup, he raised it to his lips while simultaneously reaching for a slice of bread with his
other hand.

‘They’re a mobile workshop. As we push the Nazis out of France, they’ll follow the front line, fixing up the damaged tanks.’ Charlie spread a spoonful of jam on his bread
and took another slice, which he pressed on top of it.

‘I’m to go back later.’ He took a large mouthful and gobbled it down, turning to Aunt Vi. ‘Solly said I should take some more cherries – the orchard’s full of
them and they’ve been told to pick what they can before they go.’

Uncle Geoff stood up. ‘Come on, lad, let’s get on now. I told Tom we’d be there at eight.’

Charlie downed his tea and followed his uncle, taking his bread and jam with him.

‘We’ll have a job to make more jam, Kitty,’ remarked Aunt Vi. ‘We’re all but out of sugar. I’ll see if your uncle can get a couple of rabbits so as we can
make a swap. The next thing you know, the raspberries will be ripening.’

Charlie had taken to visiting the soldiers who were camped in the orchards at Broughton Farm whenever he could, and had brought home cherries by the pound which Auntie Vi and Kitty had made into
pies and jam. As Kitty ate the cherries, she kept a tally with the rhyme –
Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief
– smiling to herself when she ate
the third and imagining herself married to Sammy. If she ate on, she kept account of the rhyme in her head – happy to pause at
rich man
but always eating on until she could stop at
soldier
.

She hadn’t seen Sammy since the day after they went together to Ashford when he had come to say goodbye. But, as he had promised, a letter arrived for her each morning and some days she
received two. His letters began,
Kitty, my darling
or,
My dearest, darling Kitty
and ended,
All my love, ever yours, Sammy –
and those words popped into her head at any
given moment each day, filling her with a happiness that made her giddy.

One morning, a week or so after D-Day, as Aunt Vi stirred the preserving pan over the heat and the sickly-sweet smell of cherries and sugar filled the air, they heard the
chugging drone of passing aircraft. Kitty had been cutting circles of greaseproof paper and she dropped the scissors and ran outside. Directly overhead was a dark plane trailing a red flame. It
passed over the house and was followed by another. A fighter plane appeared and tailed the second. Kitty watched until they were out of sight. She was shielding her eyes with her hand and staring
into the sky when Aunt Vi came to the door.

‘What was it? Did you see?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know . . .’ Kitty struggled to describe it. ‘It was strange, two planes with flames out the back.’

‘What do you mean – were they on fire?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Well,’ said Auntie Vi, ‘they certainly sounded strange – more like enormous motorbikes.’

They returned to the kitchen and Kitty was bothered by what she had seen and the uncomfortable feeling stayed with her all day.

That night, before she went to sleep she read Sammy’s letters. She read each of them through in order and, when she got to the last one, she went back to the first and read them all again.
She read on until her eyes were closing and then she slipped the bundle of letters beneath her pillow as she fell asleep.

Kitty had been dreaming, a dream where Sammy had been with her and they were happy. It was not a dream she would recall. The explosion ripped her from sleep to wakefulness, so that she stood
fully alert and shaking beside her bed, her bare feet staggering on the linoleum. She had no idea what had happened to her. Coming to her senses, she heard Charlie’s bedroom door wrenched
open and banged shut. Uncle Geoff and Aunt Vi’s voices called from their bedroom as she hurried on to the landing. Charlie hurtled downstairs, pulling on his clothes before yanking open the
front door.

‘Charlie, Charlie, wait!’ Kitty called as she rushed to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Do you think that was a plane coming down?’

‘Stay here, Kit. I’ll go and find out.’

Charlie disappeared into the dawn and Kitty ran to get dressed. Her heart leaped painfully behind her ribs and her hands shook as she struggled to fasten buttons. All the while, one sentence
repeated itself over and over in her head.
Please, please not Sammy. Please, please not Sammy. Please, please not Sammy . . .

It was a beautiful morning and the sky was a brilliant clear blue, but up ahead a black and billowing pall of smoke climbed vertically into the air. As Kitty ran down the road, she heard two
smaller explosions – the first made her stop dead in her tracks, then the second, following the first by half a minute, had her running again as fast as she could go.

She took the uphill curve in the road, panting hard, and passed the spot where she had fallen from Charlie’s bicycle. It had been a matter of weeks ago, she still had red scars on her
knees, but Kitty felt utterly disconnected from the girl cycling home from choir. She could hear shouts up ahead now and she turned one more bend and found herself at the gated entrance to
Broughton’s Farm and her eye fell on two things. The first, she recognised immediately – Charlie’s bicycle thrown against the hedge. The second object mystified her.

She was breathing hard and gradually recovering her breath while staring at the peculiarly displaced object that hung above her head in the tree beside the gate post. It was a pale and creamy
cylinder, the size of an umbrella stand and encircled at both ends by what seemed to be a withered garland of red and blue roses. She puzzled over it for several seconds until, suddenly, it came to
her what it was. It was someone’s leg. Kitty let out a small cry and turned her head away and looked now through the open gates into the chaos of the camp.

Everywhere there were men, some were running – some staggered around with blood on their faces or pouring down their arms. Others sat with their heads in their hands and still more lay
groaning on the grass. Some, she could tell by the twisted distortion of their bodies, and heads pressed face down into the ground, were dead. Then, an officer came hurrying towards her with his
arms outstretched, as if she were a goose he wished to shoo into a pen.

‘This is no place for you, go home.’

Kitty pulled herself together, stood up straight and looked him in the eye. ‘I can help – I can dress wounds.’

Aunt Vi and Uncle Geoff arrived then. Aunt Vi climbed out of the car carrying a bundle of sheets, blankets and towels and the officer pointed towards the farmhouse.

‘I’ve been directing men with minor injuries over there – Mrs Markham will be pleased of your help. I’ll send a medic over shortly.’ Then he spoke to Uncle Geoff.
‘Sir, I’m Captain Horton. I’m going to have to requisition your vehicle to help transport the walking wounded to the cottage hospital at Canterbury.’

Kitty took half of what Aunt Vi carried and hurried with her across the orchard towards the farmhouse. Glancing back over her shoulder, she surveyed the scene behind her. Nissen huts had been
flung aside in the blast or had collapsed where they stood, as if made from matchsticks and trodden underfoot. Entangled in the debris were electricity cables, their severed ends burning with a
brilliant blue flame.

The impact had come at reveille and men had been going about their morning activities. One young man, wearing a greatcoat over his underwear, was searching among the ruins of a destroyed
washroom. He repeatedly bent down as if to pick something up, then stood again empty-handed, saying, ‘I can’t find my shoes. Has anyone seen my shoes?’

Kitty looked for Charlie among the confusion but couldn’t see him.

The evenings that Kitty had spent at the church hall learning first aid were poor preparation for the task before her and it was Aunt Vi who made the better nurse. Mrs Markham bustled to and
from her kitchen bringing the things that Aunt Vi needed to bathe cuts and pull splinters of wood, and shards of glass and metal. And all the while Kitty spoke to the men, asking them about their
homes and families, telling them about her life in Kent, her home in London, the jars of cherry jam they were making. There was something beguiling about Kitty when she spoke. The gentle, musical
rise and fall of her voice seemed to soothe the men and they were calm and sipped the hot sweet tea that Mrs Markham brought them.

Captain Horton came to them after a few hours and thanked them. ‘Will you kindly follow me, ladies. I wish to speak to you before you go.’

Kitty and Aunt Vi followed him into the kitchen. Uncle Geoff was sitting at the table cradling a mug of tea in his gnarled hands. Mrs Markham pulled out chairs for Aunt Vi and Kitty and placed
cups of tea in front of them. Two elderly men stood in a corner, holding their hats in their hands, their eyes lowered.

‘Where’s Charlie?’ Kitty asked.

‘Charlie?’

‘Her brother, our nephew,’ replied Aunt Vi. ‘He arrived here before us this morning.’

‘Ah yes, he helped as a stretcher bearer – I’ll have someone find him.’ The Captain cleared his throat before continuing. ‘I am asking that you do not discuss any
details of the tragedy that you have witnessed here this morning with other persons – neither military personnel nor civilians. We are very grateful for your help and I shall be including you
all in my report, but it is of the utmost importance that no information about what has occurred here becomes available to enemy intelligence. So, I have to ask that you go about your daily
business as if none of this happened. Is that understood by everyone?’

They nodded and murmured their assent and Captain Horton excused himself.

Uncle Geoff and Kitty waited quietly, finishing their tea, while Aunt Vi talked to Mrs Markham. Then the three of them walked slowly to the gate and waited beside it for Charlie.

‘I’ve not had time to think about Charlie,’ said Aunt Vi and she began to tut and sigh.

Uncle Geoff patted her shoulder and said, ‘Now then, he’ll be all right.’

Without thinking, Kitty glanced up into the tree but the gruesome object had gone, and she half wondered if she had imagined it. She folded her arms around herself and turned to look again into
the camp. She watched a guardsman sorting through wreckage and slinging planks of wood into different piles. A thin soldier swept the cleared concrete base of a Nissen hut with a broom, stopping
every few sweeps to run his hand across his eyes. Near him another man was welding.

The shouts of a group of men drew Kitty’s attention. They had roped a tipped-over truck and were yelling to each other about the best way to right it. Beyond them, a mess table had been
set up and cooking smells were beginning to waft across the orchard, carried on the gentle morning breeze. Kitty saw Captain Horton talking to a young soldier. The Captain glanced over and met her
gaze and then dismissed the soldier. Kitty watched him walking towards them.

‘Apparently your lad’s not been seen for a while – I’m sorry, what with the confusion and everything, but Corporal Harman thinks he went home over an hour ago.’

‘He’s only fifteen,’ Aunt Vi said quietly.

Kitty walked through the gate then and out on to the road.