Sarum (189 page)
Authors: Edward Rutherfurd
“Our best men seem like coiled springs,” Patricia had once remarked to Forest-Wilson; “theirs are like rubber.”
“And just as indestructible,” he assured her.
Despite their respect for the fighting men, however, it was less easy for the townspeople to accept it when they heard their modest terraced houses referred to as slums; and although there was some fraternisation, it was soon clear to the girls of the town, the English nurses and the women in the services stationed nearby, that the visitors found them and their rationed clothes dowdy. When the first American nurse arrived at the hospital with the unheard-of luxury of nylon stockings, there was an outcry.
Of course, there was the problem of money. The further down the scale in rank one went, the more striking the difference. For instance, the generals or senior officers that Patricia drove around the plain were about as well off as their American counterparts. A colonel was a little poorer, but not so much as to be noticed. A major, however, was paid only two-thirds as much as his American colleague; a captain, half; an American second lieutenant was two and a half times as well off as his English equivalent. But below this, in the bulk of the enlisted men, the difference was truly extraordinary. The private in the U.S. Army made, in English currency, the princely sum of three pounds, eight shillings and ninepence a week. This was almost five times the pay of an English private.
Faced with this spending power, the people of Sarum were simply flabbergasted. It was for most of them the first time that they had realised that their island, at the heart of the mighty British Empire, was poor.
The lingering misunderstanding between the locals and their visitors however, concerned two things: attitude, and food.
The problem lay partly with the G.I.s who, being homsesick, endlessly told the Sarum folk how much better life was back home. Partly the fault also lay with the U.S. authorities who, to counteract this homesickness, sent their men a vast selection of foodstuffs utterly unobtainable to their hosts, and who, it seemed, had also forbidden their men to drink British milk on the grounds that it was dangerous. And partly, the everyday habit of America was to blame: for the people of Sarum had never seen waste like this. Food was left on the side of plates, paper, string cheerfully discarded, things were used once, and thrown away, on the simple principle, completely incomprehensible to the islanders, that there would always be more.
There was blame to be apportioned on the other side too, and this was even simpler: the people of Sarum thought their country was the best. Were they not still the British Empire?
But on one thing both visitors – to whom it was a novelty – and townspeople came to a surprising and total agreement; this was the benefit of British fish and chips, eaten off British newspaper. The G.I.s’ consumption of this impressed even the locals.
The most important rendezvous and general information post for the G.I.s in Sarum was the Red Cross Club in the High Street. Besides the usual canteen and recreation rooms a most important service was provided by volunteers at the information desk: the flower service. Nowhere else in Sarum was it possible for an American G.I. or officer to arrange for flowers to be sent home.
It was here that Patricia Shockley went immediately after leaving John Mason. She felt in need of reassurance, and her friend Elizabeth, a sensible young married woman, who was doing a stint at the desk that afternoon, always provided sage counsel.
“I did right, didn’t I?”
“Absolutely. You couldn’t do anything else.”
“Thank God for that. Will he leave me alone now?”
“I shouldn’t think so. He looks persistent.”
“Damn.”
The young American Air Force officer who now entered made his way towards them. He had a light athletic walk: his blue eyes seemed to take everything in.
“I must be off,” Patricia said. But she lingered for a moment.
“This is flowers?” he enquired of Elizabeth.
“It is. To America, I assume?”
“Right. Philadelphia.”
“You will wish to send red roses, of course, with long stems?”
“That’s right. How did you know?”
Elizabeth groaned pleasantly.
“Because no American we have yet encountered at this stall has ever sent anything else. Except one, who sent his mother a poinsettia for Christmas, but I expect he came to a bad end. We couldn’t I suppose interest you in carnations, tulips, gladioli . . . ?”
“Roses. Red,” he laughed.
“For your fiancée?”
“No such person. My mother. It’s her birthday.”
“Red roses, to Philadelphia, then.” Elizabeth leaned forward with mock confidentiality. “Do tell us though, Lieutenant, why is it always red roses with American servicemen?”
“Because it’s what they expect us to send.”
“Ah.” She nodded. “You wouldn’t like to surprise them?”
“No.”
“And the name?”
“Shockley. Adam. For Mrs Charles Shockley.”
It did not take them long to find out all about him, including the fact that he had never been to Salisbury before.
Yes, his family had come from England once, but he did not know from where. Yes, the name Adam was common in his family. Patricia tried to remember. There had been an Adam Shockley, she was sure, on the family tree that her father had lovingly preserved in his study. He had gone to Pennyslvania, she thought.
“There’s a chance we may be related,” she told him. “There aren’t that many Shockleys about, you know.”
“And what is there to do in Salisbury now that I’m here?” he asked.
“If you’ve a couple of hours I’ll show you around,” she offered.
“Are you sure . . .”
“I’d be happy to. I’m off duty,” she replied. Besides, it would be a relief to put John Mason out of her mind.
She showed him the cathedral and the close, with its sedate old houses and the shady plane trees round the choristers’ green. She showed him the river with its long green river weeds and its swans. She took him past the poultry cross and into the market place. He was astonished by the age of everything he saw.
“You really mean that little gabled house,” he had pointed to a little timber house with an overhanging front in New Street, “has been there just like that for six and a half centuries?”
“Yes. Funny isn’t it?” She grinned. “And you realise, don’t you, that this is only the new town? The old town’s up there.” And she waved in the direction of Old Sarum.
“It’s incredible,” he admitted.
They wandered through the market. It was a market day, but there were not many stalls and the place seemed rather bare. In particular he was puzzled by the odd assortment of crockery that seemed to be on sale on a number of stalls.
“Don’t they have any that matches?” he asked, “any sets?”
“Not nowadays,” she answered. “This is wartime. People are glad to pick up any old cup and saucer they can.”
He nodded. It was foolish of him to have forgotten the terrible shortages over here.
“What do you miss most?”
“Nylon stockings,” she told him at once.
They had tea at the Bay Tree, where they had one more attempt at establishing their family connection. It did not get far, but they cheerfully swapped information about their respective families. His father was a successful lawyer, she learned, living in that large, comfortable and endless suburb, the Philadelphia Main Line. She told him something of her own family: about their rambling house with its two paddocks in the New Forest, a few miles from Christchurch; her father, a retired colonel, “Who organises anything that moves within a five-mile radius,” she explained; her brother in the navy.
“When this is all over, you should come and see us, Cousin Adam,” she laughed.
How delightful she was. She seemed to find everything so amusing. He wondered how one asked for a date in the ancient city and concluded there was only one way to find out. He asked.
“That sounds very nice. When did you have in mind?”
“I’m flying tonight. But tomorrow I’m not.”
“Tomorrow then. But you must let me pick the restaurant. I know the territory.”
When he asked himself, towards the end of that extraordinary and frantic period before June 1944, exactly when he had known – known with absolute certainty that they were going to have an affair – he concluded that it was at the precise moment when she had opened the door of that dark, Victorian house she shared with a dozen other A.T.S. drivers on Milford Hill.
He had been thinking about her – except for the harrowing moments just before he had released two 1,000-pound bombs at a target spitting a fury of fire at him the previous night – he had been thinking of her almost continuously. Her golden hair and her laughing eyes were before him, like a lighted beacon that makes a great halo in the cloud, through that night all the way home.
It was a time of high excitement: for those who flew the P-47s from the bases at Ibsley and Truxton, or the P-38s from Stony Cross in the New Forest. They were either relaxing and bored at the base, or caught up in the heady game of sweeping over northern France, often face to face with death, as they pounded the enemy in preparation for Operation Overlord.
Was it really possible that during this existence, when life was being lived at the edge, Patricia Shockley was also going to happen?
She would know what it must mean. A few, snatched moments – passion caught and taken when you can, in the knowledge that each time may be the last.
All day he had wondered about her, and asked himself: was she, also, thinking of him? He had made arrangements in the hope that she was.
It was when she opened the door, and gave him a shy smile, that he knew in a flash that she had been.
“I brought you a present,” he said.
It was two pairs of nylon stockings.
“Oh, you lovely man.”
They did not dine in the city, but just outside, across the meadows in the place used by the cognoscenti of the area: the Old Mill at Harnham.
“It really is a mill,” he said delightedly, as they mounted the rickety oak staircase with its wide treads to the upper room. It had window seats, dormer windows, and a grand piano.
“It was a flour mill – and probably a fulling mill before that,” she told him. And she explained the significance of the term. “You’d never think this sleepy old place had once been one of the foremost cloth towns in England, would you?”
“What else?” he grinned.
“Constable painted some of his best known pictures, of the cathedral, from here.”
“It’ll do then.” He smiled. “Every damn thing around here has some piece of history attached to it.”
“It does,” she agreed.
It was an excellent dinner – the best that could be had in Sarum. He ordered a very passable bottle of red wine. And then, when it was over and they were both bathed in a warm glow, they walked together across the moonlit water meadows with the silent grey shape of the cathedral rising in front of them. At the little wooden bridge over the river, she let him kiss her.
After some time she asked:
“What are your plans now?”
He smiled.
“Funny you should ask. I’m staying over until the morning at the White Hart.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I booked the best room they had, just in case my wife turned up.”
“I see. Her name, of course, would be Shockley.”
“I guess it would.”
She put her arm through his.
“Lead me there, Shockley.”
Half an hour later, looking up at the lovely figure who had suddenly rolled over and was now triumphantly astride him, Adam remarked in some surprise:
“You seem to be taking control of this situation here, Shockley.”
“Not at all,” she murmured happily. “I’m just a little hungry.”
It was nine o’clock when John Mason called at the house on Milford Hill to see her.
The girl who had answered the door went in to look for her. He heard voices inside, then one calling from her room:
“She went out with an American airman. Nearly two hours ago.”
He felt a sensation in the pit of his stomach.
“She seems to be out,” the girl said tactfully.
He turned and walked away. The night was warm. He wondered if she would be out late. Perhaps if she came back soon, he could speak to her.
John Mason paused at the bottom of the hill and waited.
At ten o’clock he decided to go: except that since she was bound to return soon, it seemed foolish not to wait a few minutes more. At ten thirty, a drunken G.I, came by. He wondered whether to do anything about him; the drunken man was waiting near the A.T.S. house. After a few minutes Mason walked back up the hill and told him to leave.
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