Polly's Angel (32 page)

‘That sounds very good to me,' Polly said, going over to the door. ‘You get yourself dressed and ready then, Gracie, and I'll go downstairs and tell Sunny to slope off. He and Ivan can go down to the Pier Head or – or off somewhere, and come home here like I said in the first place, for a snack at one o'clock.'

Sunny, with his kitbag slung over one shoulder, was walking to Lime Street Station, on the first stage of his journey back to his ship. He and Dempsey had had a telegram saying that the
Poppy
was due to sail in forty-eight hours and requesting their presence. Or at least, if the telegram had not been worded quite like that, it was what it meant.

Dempsey had set straight off for the station that morning, although they both guessed their train would be late, but Sunny had nipped round to Titchfield Street first, because he wanted to thank the O'Bradys for making his leave such a good one. He had arrived, unfortunately, after Polly and Deirdre had both left for work, for Polly had only taken five days off from her job since that was all the time that Grace had been able to spend with her, but Peader was in. Sunny thanked him with real sincerity and told him that he would be writing to Polly, of course, and hoped that she would write to him too.

‘But she's a great hand wi' a pen, unlike meself,' he said cheerfully, shaking Peader's outstretched hand. ‘I know she won't let me down, not your Polly.'

‘I daresay Polly isn't the only one you'll be gettin' letters from,' Peader said in his slow, amused way. ‘The t'ree of you got on so well I'd be amazed if young Grace doesn't write an' all.'

‘Well, the more the merrier,' Sunny had said, but he hadn't really believed that Grace would write to him as well. He had left after that, striding along the pavement in the brilliant August sunshine, beginning to remember just how good this particular leave had been – and he had not been exaggerating either – from the first moment that he had met up with Polly to last night, when they had said what they thought was a brief goodbye until next day, he had thoroughly enjoyed himself.

Despite the fact that there were three of them most of the time as well. Oh, at first he had had to be very careful not to get on the wrong side of Polly, but Grace was a real little smasher, for all he hadn't thought so at first. At first he had thought her rather plain, but after a day in her company, he had begun to see that she was a very pretty girl indeed, only beside Polly's bright blonde hair and vivid eyes, her own paler colouring seemed insipid. Grace was tall and slender, with light brown, shining hair which she wore in the popular fashion, curled round a piece of hair ribbon with the front of it swept up. But once Polly had pointed out severely that she was no longer in uniform and could relax a bit, Grace had let her hair fall from a centre parting into a long, soft page-boy style, which suited her very well indeed. And though her skin was pale and her eyes hazel, that skin was very clear and those eyes very bright. Oh aye, Sunny considered that Grace was a pretty girl, and a pleasant companion too.

There had been one afternoon, furthermore, when he and Grace had gone off together, because Polly had been called back to the office. Grace had announced her intention of going up to the Strawb to say good-bye to Matron and the rest of the staff and Sunny, because he'd never been to the Strawb, had decided to go along. Sunny remembered various institutions he had visited as a youngster, the chill of the places and sheer soullessness that filled them, but the Strawb – well, no wonder Grace liked going back to the Strawb, he told himself now, remembering that visit. The staff were mostly quite young and very friendly, talking and laughing with Grace and himself as though they had known each other all their lives.

The kids had been fun too, swarming all over Grace and not saying a word when she gave the sweets into the care of a member of staff. They all knew that the sweets were meant for them and would be given to them at the appropriate time. One little girl in particular had taken a great shine to Sunny. She was about seven, he guessed from the gaps in her front teeth where the baby ones had fallen out but had not yet been replaced by the grown-up ones, and her name was Suzie, only due to the lack of teeth she called herself ‘Thuthie', which amused him very much. Suzie had proved to be very good at Grandmother's footsteps and when Sunny consented to be Grandmother (to delighted shrieks from the children and broad smiles from the staff and Grace) she managed to sneak up on him without his once seeing her move, so that her final quick dash, and her climbing all over him and breathing stickily into his face was a great triumph. Cooing like a contented little pigeon, she had pressed her hot little face against his cheek and told him in a breathy whisper that when she was growed up, she meant to marry him. Sunny, laughing, had told her that he would be an ugly old man in his thirties or forties before she was in a marrying mood, but Suzie had just shaken her head and continued to clasp his hand and climb on to his lap whenever she could.

But now he was entering Lime Street Station, and began to look around for Dempsey.

‘Sunny! Over here! So you made it, me ole pal – the next one in is supposed to be ours, so look lively, feller! I've kept a place for you by me.'

It was Dempsey of course, in what Sunny now realised was a vast queue. ‘Thanks, Demp,' he said. ‘It looks like we'll soon be on our way, ole mate.'

‘Yeah, this is goodbye to the ‘Pool for a time,' Dempsey agreed.

‘Hope it still looks as good next time we come home,' Sunny said.

Dempsey, pushing his way ahead shoulder to shoulder with Sunny, turned and grinned. ‘You comn' up this way again?' he asked. ‘Wharrabout the disturbed nights then, la'? I thought you'd be glad to get some peace, in Pompey.'

There had been fairly constant enemy activity over the city for a couple of nights, but though the docks had been bombed in Wallasey and Birkenhead there had been no actual raids on the city itself. Sunny, battling through the crowd towards an emptying carriage, snorted. ‘If you think the jerries are goin' to leave Pompey alone once they get goin', you're a bigger fool than I thought you were, Demp,' he declared. ‘I reckon they'll home in on the south of England and start givin' us hell any time now.'

‘Only we shan't be there,' Dempsey panted. ‘Gerrin this first carriage, Sunny, then at least we're aboard. We can worry about gerrin' seats later.'

Chapter Ten

Grace and Fanny soon settled into their new station, and Grace began to enjoy her new job, for though Fanny was still on cookhouse duties Grace had been promoted. She would be tried out as an RT operator, which meant that she would be working in the control tower, talking the planes off and back, would be doing shiftwork, and would most definitely be learning new skills.

‘The jerries were talking about invasion at the time of Dunkirk,' the officer who began to train Grace told her. ‘Everyone believes that will be their next move, but before they can carry it out without the risk of being wiped off the board they'll have to gain air supremacy. That means we'll need every plane we've got to fight them off, and every girl with enough intelligence to help in the fight must use her wits and strain every nerve to see our chaps get down safely. Savvy?'

He was probably no more than forty, with a huge blonde moustache and a sprightly way of walking which the girls imitated when he was out of sight, but he was talking sense and Grace knew it, so she threw herself into her training with the greatest enthusiasm and very soon was as useful as any other WAAF RT operators on the station. ‘It stands for radio telephone operators,' she said in a letter to Polly. ‘I think that's because we hear the chaps over their radio sets, but we talk back to them on a sort of telephone thing which hangs down just by our mouths. I really feel I'm being useful, Poll, at last. This is a million times better than adding up columns of figures and paying a queue of men their wages.'

She wondered whether the censor would start clipping out half of this letter, but did not worry overmuch. She would see Polly when she next got a decent leave and would be able to tell her in person much of what was happening to her.

And what was happening was a great deal more exciting than just being a RT operator. For the first time in her life, Grace had met a young man who really mattered to her, though the fact that he was Polly's boyfriend might have taken the gloss off Grace's feelings for Sunny had she ever considered herself as being in competition with her young friend.

For Grace, who had dreaded meeting the dreadful young man who had set her darling Polly's feet on the road to wickedness, found that she liked Sunny more than any other young man she had met. He was incredibly handsome, she had guessed that he would be, but that he was kind, understanding, sympathetic and good company had come as a total shock to her. Most of the handsome young men she met – and she met a good few now that she was in the WAAF – were not in the least bit interested in a tall, shy, rather plain WAAF, but Sunny had not even seemed to notice that Grace was no looker, that compared to Polly's bubbly prettiness she was plain, gawky and shy. Sunny had simply seen someone who could share in the fun of a brief leave in the city.

But he was Polly's feller. That was understood, and funnily enough it did not worry Grace in the least. After all, she did not have the slightest intention of trying to wrest Sunny from Polly; she knew it would be impossible for a start, and would not have dreamed of doing such an unfriendly thing in any circumstances. What she felt for Sunny, she supposed, was a sort of hero-worship, combined with gratitude because he was so nice to her and never made her feel left out.

She had thought, however, that it was no use her writing to him. He would not reply; she might only make a fool of herself. Nevertheless she had written, just a funny, jokey sort of letter about the journey down from Liverpool to her present station, how she and Fanny had managed in the train and a little bit about her new job. She had sent the letter off immediately on arriving at her new station and had not expected much of a reply, if any, for months, but instead had got one from Sunny within the week which had clearly crossed in the post with hers. It was a nice letter too, telling her of his experiences on the train returning to Devonport and all about the friends who had joined himself and Dempsey before they had gone very far on their journey.

Grace had gone around in a daze of happiness, almost unable to believe her own luck. And oddly enough, it must, she thought, have given her confidence a boost, because next time she, Maria and Annette, who were all budding RT operators, went off to one of the RAF dances together, she got quite as many partners as they did and, what was more, found it easier to talk and laugh naturally with the young men instead of becoming tongue-tied and awkward.

Next time she wrote to Polly, she told her about Sunny's letter and said how happy it had made her feel that Sunny, who was Polly's feller, still wanted her to write to him as a friend. Polly's reply was warming, too:
Of course Sunny liked you; anyone who doesn't is plain daft
.

Her letter went on to describe the fun she had had, dancing with a very motley assortment of young men at Daulby Hall and making it plain to Grace that much though she liked Sunny, she did not consider the two of them in any way tied to each other.

Not that I've the slightest intention of being serious about Sunny, Grace told herself that evening, as she prepared for bed in the long, blacked-out Nissen hut which was the nearest thing to a home the girls had on the station. He is awful nice, I like him a good deal, but even if he wasn't Polly's – and he is, whatever she may pretend – him and me would never do together. I'm too serious and he's too – well, unserious, I suppose. I'd begin to bore him and I expect he'd go back to his old ways, like when he led Poll astray, and then I wouldn't be able to respect him, and respect's ever so important. You have to respect someone before you can love them . . . not that I'm thinking of loving anyone, not yet . . . And Grace's thoughts broke down in confusion, leaving her with only two really coherent ideas. It was good that she and Sunny could be friends without any strings, and better that she was now finding it easier to mix with people of both sexes.

And then Grace forced her mind back to RT operating and the way the war was going and she thought about the fighter pilots, and the girls who loved them, and the number of planes that she and her fellow-operators saw off as they scrambled from their stations, and the number – quite often less – which came back. And she thought about the dangers which faced sailors, all sailors, and the bombing of Liverpool docks, which had taken place soon after they had left the ‘Pool. And she remembered that those dangers were faced every day by Sunny, and she found, suddenly, that she was glad that she was just his pal, that if anything bad happened it would not be her tragedy, her gut-wrenching, pain-filled loss.

She turned over in bed and buried her face in the pillow. She wanted to be friends with fellows, of course she did, but she suddenly realised that real involvement, the sort that poor little Polly had with Sunny, was a cruelly sad business in wartime.

And presently she went to sleep, telling herself firmly that it was better to be uninvolved, fancy-free. And woke in the middle of the night to the terrible knowledge that if anything happened to Sunny – who was just a friend, and Polly's fellow – she would carry the scar of it on her heart to the end of her days.