Somewhere Over England (26 page)

‘Maybe I should push one down Joe’s throat,’ he said to Mary and smiled when she laughed.

They walked over to the hollow which was where the badgers had a set. Where would they walk to now that the airfield had been built across their path? They looked for the long scratch marks on the other bank and there they were, made with the long digging claws.

‘I never want to go back to London, do you?’ Chris asked as they walked on down the deep rutted track where the cartwheels had churned the earth.

‘No, it’s lovely, ain’t it? Just so quiet and lovely, except when it’s harvest time. Then it’s too bloody busy. Like Piccadilly.’ They had reached the larger pond now, where the old tin bath was still stuck, half submerged out in the middle. Chris crouched, and together they discussed whether they could get a rope out to it and bring it back and have another go this summer.

‘Maybe it won’t sink this time if we put a couple of empty drums either side,’ Chris said.

Mary was breathing heavily next to him, sucking at a new blade of grass. ‘How d’you fix the drum, clever clogs?’

Chris shrugged. ‘Well, how about a plank going across the top and tie everything to the plank?’ It sounded good to him and she smiled.

‘All right, but how do we get it back? I’m not going in after it.’ Mary was scrambling to her feet, dusting off her dress which hung from her shoulders like a sack.

Chris pushed himself up too, taking the butterfly net from her, heaving the canvas bag on to his shoulder. He didn’t want to go in either and feel the sticky mud under his toes again, the soft wriggling which could have been anything.

‘Oh well, we’ll think about it,’ he said, walking on.

They didn’t take any eggs from the nests today. Laura had said they must only take one or two otherwise there would be no birds for the mothers to hatch. Somehow they had not
thought of the eggs turning into birds before and now they did not want to take any at all.

Chris felt the jam jar filled with diced laurel leaves in his pocket and wondered if he would really be able to catch a butterfly if he saw one and ease it into the jar with the bitter almond smell, leaving it to die. He remembered Mr Reynolds’s butterflies pinned into position with their wings fixed so that they were beautiful. But were they really? Weren’t they only beautiful in flight or resting on a plant with the sun on their wings? Would he ever be able to bring his net down and capture them, kill them, mount them? He didn’t know but saying that he would gave him a reason to come out into the woods, to leave behind the games of Germans and British convoys, not cowboys and Indians. It gave him a chance to keep away from Joe and his gang.

It was four o’clock now, they could hear the chiming of the church clock from here and Mary had to be home for tea. They walked towards the village. There were fresh young nettles growing on the verges and Joe was there, in the distance, down by the crossroads. Mary had seen them too.

‘Tell your mother, Chris, or Laura, or someone. There’s too many of them to fight, you know.’

But he couldn’t tell anyone because Joe had said he would tell the village and Chris couldn’t bear the thought of the stones again and the shouting. Not here, not in this countryside that he loved.

He shook his head. They were closer now. He could see Joe swiping at the verge with his stick, and Chris stopped, staring at Joe and then he slowly and deliberately bent and gripped the nettle by the side tightly, jerking his hand upwards, knowing that this way it would not sting you. He pulled it from the earth, holding it up so that Joe could see.

He watched as the other boy laughed and did the same but he pulled it downwards, touching the top of the leaves, stinging his hand and his fingers.

‘Blimey, that was a good one,’ Mary said.

Chris nodded, looking with satisfaction at Joe’s red face, at his hand which he clutched between his arm and body and it didn’t matter so much when the boys came and grabbed him, digging in his pocket for the sixpence, but not Joe. Joe was holding his hand and swearing.

In August the sun was hot, so very hot. Chris had sat up with Laura last night, making another butterfly net from a forked oak branch and thin hoops of hazel which they threaded through the hem of an old net curtain sewn to the correct shape. He had then twisted old fuse wire round the hazel and the oak, fixing it into place with wire. Chris did not tell Laura that since the nettles Joe had been waiting for him more often. He had beaten him twice and then broken his butterfly net, but his father had suffered too, hadn’t he, in the internment camp, and so he must be as brave.

‘Are you going out to the copse with Mary today?’ Laura asked, frowning when he said no.

‘But why? You’re spending too much time on your own. You’re only nine. You need friends.’

Chris took up the canvas bag. ‘She’s a girl,’ he said. ‘She can’t keep up.’ But that wasn’t the reason. It was because she cried when she saw them waiting for him and it made his eyes water too.

He walked through the long grass of the two meadows leading to the copse. The cornflowers and red poppies hung limp in the hot sun and the Common Blues rose in front of him. He stopped, waiting for them to settle again and they did, with closed wings, the undersides of which were a medley of orange and black spots and rings on a grey background. The female was dark brown touched with blue, edged with orange rings and she lifted up into the air and then settled. Chris didn’t catch them. He never did. Laura knew it, he knew it, but nothing was ever said.

The copse was cool and dark and nightingales used to sing when he and Laura walked in the evenings but that was before the bombers came, two weeks ago. They had thundered over in wave after wave, coming in low over the village and the evacuees had thrown themselves on the ground, some screaming, while the village children laughed. But they had never been bombed had they, the teacher had said, his face white with anger at the village children’s laughter.

Where had the nightingales gone, Chris had asked Laura but she didn’t know. He looked around. The fly agaric were bright against the greens and browns and he wondered if Mary came
to the copse at all. He walked to the larger pond. The tin bath was still half sunken. He missed her. Really missed her.

It was dark, too dark here, he felt suddenly. He wanted the sun on his face, pushing the shadows back, away from him. He ran through the wood, leaping over gnarled roots, skidding round trees, going faster because there could be Indians. Faster and faster. Quick, the arrows could be coming. Thwack, thwack into the trees, but missing him, always missing him. He was out into the daylight now, the breath was heaving in his chest but he felt better. He walked towards the airfield, seeing the great dark shapes of the planes behind the elms.

The planes were so huge and dark and, at dawn each morning, seemed to claw through the air, climbing higher and higher, but so slowly and heavily, pushing their noise down on to the earth, the village, the cottage, his bed, until the buildings shook. This morning he had watched from the window and seen the planes turn at last into silver specks in the clear blue sky.

He walked up to the perimeter fence, seeing the heavy equipment and vehicles running more easily over the heavy clay ground now that the summer was here. A jeep roared along the edge of the tarmacked runway, skidding to a halt beside a towering B-17. Nissen huts clustered together and there were Quonset huts too with flat roofs and straight sides.

He had cycled up to the wire with Laura and Mary when they were building the airfield. They had watched as the curved corrugated iron plates of the Nissen huts were buckled together and Laura had said they would hold twenty or thirty men. Chris had listened to the shouts, the laughter of the men, seen their mouths endlessly chewing the gum, some of which they had thrown through the wire for them, though Laura had forbidden them to pick it up.

It was a disgusting habit, she had said, but Mary had slipped it into her pocket when Laura blushed and turned away as the men whistled at her.

They had watched all morning as they heaved the panels up and locked them together and he remembered how his father had built the Anderson shelter and he had cried, standing there at the wire he had cried, then ridden home when Laura had seen. He had cried all night and she had stayed with him but did not know that it was more than grief, it was because he was
still too afraid to let the village know about his father and he was ashamed.

Chris felt the sun on the back of his head, his back. On his hand which held the butterfly net. He was thirsty and moved off, down the road waiting for two jeeps to pass before crossing. The horse manure had been squashed flat and dry by so many trucks and he smiled. Each morning he had to collect the cow pats from the field behind their cottage to put on the vegetable garden and on dry days it was easier. Today had been a dry day.

He sat on the edge of the copse again, watching the air base. They were only training, the publican had told Laura. The Americans came into his pub each evening and on the first night they had drunk him dry.

The water in Chris’s bottle was warm but he drank it, taking deep long gulps, watching the rolling walk of the airmen in the distance as they strolled about the airfield. They didn’t march like the English. They had rubber soles which were quiet and they rolled their feet. He stood up, rolling his, slipping his hands into his pockets, chewing his sandwich as though it was gum. He didn’t hear the man until he laughed.

‘Well, I guess that’s a pretty good imitation,’ he said, and Chris turned, whipping his hands from his pockets, standing silent, fearful, watching the flyer who stood in his uniform, his back to the trees, the sun on his face.

‘Hey, ease up, fella. I was just out taking in some of the countryside. It’s different. You know. Kind of different.’ The man turned and looked out over the flat fields to the low undulating hills in the distance. He had his hands in his pockets and his leather jacket was unbuttoned, his cap was slipped back on his head. He turned back to Chris who was chewing his sandwich, trying to make it small enough to swallow.

‘You like candy?’

Chris shrugged. He didn’t know what candy was.

The man laughed again. He had dark eyes like Chris with deep lines running down from them, like Chris’s father. But he had a moustache too; it was brown like his hair.

‘Well, I guess I mean, would you like a sweet?’ The man rounded his mouth and said again. ‘Would you care for a sweet?’ He almost sounded English.

Chris watched as he brought out boiled sweets, a bag full, from his pocket. He hadn’t tasted sweets for over a year because Joe had taken his pocket money for that long.

Chris took one but the man said, ‘No, take the pack. There’s plenty more on base.’ He pushed them at Chris, nodding to him. ‘Thank you,’ Chris said, reaching out, feeling the bag heavy in his hand. ‘Would you like one of my sandwiches? They’re egg. Straight from the hen this morning.’

The man laughed again. ‘Is that so? Sure. That’d be great.’

He looked round sizing up the ground, then sat next to the canvas bag, picking at the long grass while Chris took out the sandwiches. He unfolded the greaseproof paper and offered them.

‘Have two if you like,’ he said. The man’s hands were brown and strong and his nails were short and square. He wore a heavy wrist-watch which glinted in the sun.

‘One’ll be more than plenty. I guess I was just coming out for a stroll and here I am, eating homegrown hen’s eggs. My name’s Ed. What’s yours?’

Chris was chewing the sweet, swallowing its sweetness. He wiped his hand across his mouth before replying.

‘Chris,’ he said. ‘Chris Weber.’

The man tipped his hat even further back on his head. ‘Well, Chris Weber, you must be mighty proud of where you live. This is a nice little corner.’ He waved his hand across the view. ‘You born here?’

Chris was drinking from the bottle again and now he hesitated, wiping the neck with his sleeve, looking at the man. Then he passed it to him. Ed took it, looked at him and grinned, and then drank. Chris smiled, taking it back, burrowing it back in the canvas bag out of the sun. He brought out a stick of rhubarb and a twist of sugar saying as he did so, ‘No, I wasn’t born here. I lived in London but when the bombing started I was evacuated here. I like it.’

He broke the rhubarb in two and handed a piece to Ed. Then he spread out the paper. ‘Dig the end in the sugar and then eat it.’

Ed did and Chris laughed at his face, at the strings of rhubarb which hung from his mouth.

‘Jeez, what the hell’s this?’ Ed said, his face screwed up.

‘It’s a bit sour, makes your teeth feel funny doesn’t it? But it’s
nice when there’s nothing sweet left to eat.’ Chris was smiling and now Ed was too. Chewing but asking for more water.

‘I forget that there’s rationing over here. You must excuse us if we tread on your toes. We don’t mean to but little England sure takes some getting used to.’

‘My mum says we’re very lucky Mr Roosevelt decided to come in after all, even if it took Pearl Harbor to do it. She says we can’t win without you.’

Ed threw the remains of his rhubarb right across the field and Chris watched. He threw the remains of his too but it fell far short of the man’s.

‘Your mom is here with you, is she?’ Ed asked, stretching out his arms, flexing his shoulders.

‘No, she’s in London. How do you throw that far?’ Chris said, kneeling now, looking out across the field, trying to see where the rhubarb had landed.

‘I was a pitcher back home in college. You know, baseball. You call it rounders.’

Now Chris did know but the boys at school called it a girls’ game and sniggered at the American comics which showed pictures of the game. But this man wasn’t girlish.

‘I’ll show you one day. How about it?’ Ed leaned forward, pulling up another grass shoot, chewing it. He turned and looked at Chris who was nodding, his blond hair bleached almost white by the sun.

‘So we’re both away from home then, Chris Weber? Get’s kind of lonesome, doesn’t it?’

Chris nodded, packing up the sugar carefully, to take home and use again tomorrow. ‘I’d like to learn to throw,’ he said.