Somewhere Over England (34 page)

‘What about you, Helen? Are you going to unpack your grip now?’

She turned. It seemed too intimate somehow, to take her clothes out in front of him, to put them into drawers while he watched.

‘In a minute,’ she said, turning back to the window. She heard him move across the floor, the boards creaking beneath his weight. He put his arms around her from behind.

‘It feels kind of strange, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘I had a girl in college, you know. We lived together for a year. I just thought of her then because she would never take her clothes out in front of me, or undress either.’ He kissed her hair. ‘I guess maybe you’re thinking of Heine.’

She turned and put her arms around him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was but I’m not now.’ It was true, she wasn’t, because Ed understood and she smiled as he lifted her up and carried her to the bed.

Later they walked by the river in the cool of late afternoon, talking of Chris and how much fitter he was, of Mary who spent more time at Laura’s cottage than in her own billet. Of her sister who never came any more because she had an American GI and so she did not have time.

Ed hired a boat and they punted down the river, under bridges, laughing when he was almost too late dragging up the pole. She trailed her hand in the water, looking up at him as he pushed and pulled, lifting the pole from the water, hearing the water dripping back into the river. His arms were so strong, his body so lithe, his face so tired. The water was cold but she did not feel it, she only felt his arms as he had held her in that small room, his warm lips, and she smiled.

They ate at the hotel and the meal was frugal but it did not matter because they were impatient now, and that night Helen did undress in front of him. Her body was fit from the farm and her hands were not hard because she wore gloves and so she stroked his body and kissed his chest, his arms, his legs and held him to her.

In the morning they looked around the town and Ed took photographs of the colleges, but then handed his camera to Helen because she knew the angles to take. He wanted the sharpness of the shadows on the ground, the age of the buildings etched against the sky. She told him then of Claus and the business in New York and he nodded but said nothing.

They had lunch in a pub and as they walked in the afternoon
along the river they watched other punters, other lovers, but none could love as much as they did, Helen thought, her hand in his. They walked in and out of the shadows, dragging their hands along the weeping willows, not seeing anyone else, only one another, and for a while the world stood still. But then they heard the straggling bombers return over to the east of the town and Ed grew quiet and that night he told her of his guilt at remaining on the ground but he did not tell her of his fear of being sent back into the air because they all had that.

Sunday was overcast but not cold and they walked again but Ed was quiet today and Helen too because tomorrow the war began again. They ate in a small café, watching the people going into the church, some women with hats and very few men, and that afternoon they sat on the bank while a mallard dived in the turgid water. A woman walked past, pushing a young man in a wheelchair. They were pale and thin.

Helen talked as they heard the wheels receding on the path but Ed’s answers were short and his shoulders were tense and he counted the planes which flew back over at four, not looking at her, and she felt a distance grow between them. As the last roared over he pulled her to her feet, hugging her, but his mind was not with her. She lifted her face for his kiss but he turned from her, walking to the bank, throwing a pebble and watching it bounce three times. Helen felt cold for the first time that summer and tried to push aside the hurt of his rejection, but could not and walked in silence to the car.

It was a silence which was not broken until they approached Greater Mannenham as the day was drawing to its end. Ed pulled in to the verge by the hayfield and took her hand and asked her to marry him, come back with him to Montana when all this was over. After all, she already had a business set up over there.

Helen sat looking up at him, into his eyes which were still dark. She looked beyond him to the field with the cut grass; she saw the leaves turning on the trees, the clouds thick and full of rain. She looked at him again, his brown eyes, the deep lines. She loved him, so much, so very much, but there had never been thought of a future, the present was enough. Hadn’t he learned that yet? The future was too dangerous. She did not dare to challenge the gods, to ask for more than she had. Couldn’t he see that?

She looked ahead. There was drizzle on the windscreen now blanking out the road. That is what the future was.

She turned to him then, pointing to the glass.

‘That’s the future. We have enough. Darling, we have enough.’

She gripped his hand. ‘Let’s keep what we have, we don’t need to talk of tomorrow.’ She held his hand to her face. ‘Don’t ask for too much.’

He pulled his hand away then, looking at her strangely. His eyelid was twitching. He looked so tired, so scared, and she reached for him again but he brushed away her hand, staring out to the fields at the side, talking in their direction, not hers. His voice was tense, taut. ‘It’s too much, is it? All you want is today, is it? I thought we felt more than that. I thought we loved one another.’

She looked at her hand. ‘That’s not what I meant. For God’s sake, Ed. That’s not how I meant it. You know that. Surely you know that. I love you. I love you so much.’

He turned and looked at her now but she couldn’t see any feeling in his eyes. She put her hand out to him, smiling because she couldn’t understand what was happening; where all this had come from. But he shook her off and reached for the ignition, starting the car, grinding it into gear, skidding the car off the verge on to the road.

‘I need you. I need to know you’ll always be there,’ he said.

Helen caught at his arm. ‘I will always be here for you. You know I will, but marriage is different.’ How could she tell him she was frightened she would kill him. Heine had died, hadn’t he? ‘I love you,’ she said but he shrugged off her arm.

‘Forget it, Helen. Just forget I said anything. Just for Christ’s sake forget what I said. Just think of the two nights you’ve had with a guy with cash in his pocket.’

The car was speeding down the road, swerving past a cyclist, hooting at a jeep and Helen clung to her seat, feeling as though she had been hit. How could this have happened?

‘You goddamn Limeys,’ he shouted, his hand hard down on the horn as another cyclist came out of a turning, but Helen knew he was shouting at her, not the old man and now she was angry because all this had taken the sun from the weekend and smashed it into darkness.

Helen watched the fields as they drove home, she didn’t
watch him, couldn’t watch him, because it had all been too quick, all too sudden. Didn’t he understand that in the war you lived just for now because you never knew when another bomb would fall, when a telegram would come? Why didn’t he understand?

Chris didn’t understand either when she told him later that Ed would not be coming to see them again because they had quarrelled.

‘But he needs you, Mum.’

She knew that, but one husband had already died. Wasn’t that enough? But she didn’t say that to her son.

She said instead, ‘But it would mean living in a strange country.’

Chris said. ‘Dad did.’ His face was fierce and he wouldn’t look at her.

Helen replied, ‘I know.’ She didn’t say, ‘And look what happened to him,’ but that night in bed she tossed in the darkness of the blackout and again the next night and the next until two weeks had passed, filled with endless hours, minutes, seconds, and as dawn broke in mid September she knew that she was wrong. That she loved him and had let him down and would marry him rather than live without him or let him be alone. Other people married and did not die. He would not die.

That morning as she listened to the planes taking off, she thought of the war. She thought of the GIs who were working their way up Italy, of the Nazis, who were being beaten in Russia, of Hamburg, which had been flattened, of the Jews who had been taken from Warsaw, the British who were winning the battle of the U-boats. She hurried from her bedroom and cycled quickly to the farm. She must see him, he would come, he had always come on Wednesdays. They had shouted but he would come, he hadn’t last Wednesday, but he had been angry. Today she would tell him that she was wrong. That he was right, time could be short and they must take what they could.

But he didn’t come. All day he didn’t come. The next day he sent comics as usual for Chris but there was nothing for her, no message, nothing. She cried in her room, pacing up and down, but he never came.

The next day she herded the cows, scrubbed the cow-shed floor, always looking and listening for him. That evening she
put on nylons that he had given her but they laddered on her chapped hands and so she painted her legs instead and walked down to the village pub because he might be there. He was not.

But Scoot Wheeler was, standing outside leaning on the wall, talking to the landlord’s daughter.

‘Hi, Helen, how’re you doing?’

Helen smiled but she was impatient. Where was he, she wanted to shout, but instead asked, ‘Have you seen Ed?’

‘He’s back on base. He’s flying tomorrow.’

‘Flying? But he’s grounded.’

Scoot laughed and eased himself from the wall, taking a swallow of watered beer and pulling a face. ‘I guess he was, Helen, but he ain’t now. There was the most humdinger of a row and in the end the CO said OK, he could go. Guess the Major never did like being down here when his boys were up there. Do you want a drink?’

Helen shook her head. No she didn’t want a drink, she wanted to see Ed. She started walking then to the base, but she had no pass and the guard wouldn’t let her through the wire gate, so she walked back working out the words she would write to him, telling him, begging him to forgive her.

She passed Mrs Vane with the vicar near the church carrying dahlias and chrysanthemums for the altar.

Mrs Vane caught her arm and smiled. ‘My dear, I had no idea your little liaison had finished. I’m so sorry.’

Helen stopped and stared. The red dahlias clashed with the purple chrysanths, didn’t the woman know that? ‘It hasn’t,’ she said trying to walk on. ‘It was all a mistake. A stupid mistake.’

Mrs Vane smiled again, stroking the petals. ‘If you say so, my dear, but I’ve just seen your Major McDonald driving towards the town with Madge Wilcox. They seemed so close you know.’

Helen looked at the woman’s face and saw her mother and felt the cupboard, the darkness of the cupboard, and she said nothing, just ran home and up to her room. She did not speak for the next two days, just worked all day and cried throughout the night, and then she came down and told Chris and Laura that she would not try to see Ed again. But the darkness of the cupboard was still there and the scent of chrysanthemums was all around.

The controls of the
Emma B
were heavy but honest, Ed thought as he operated the four throttles with palms upwards. She had been cussed to begin with but he had pretty soon got into it again. For God’s sake, he hadn’t been away for that long, he had said to his co-pilot on that mission back in late August, when Helen had told him she didn’t love him enough; or as good as said that anyway. He looked over to the tower, waiting for the green flare. Damn the woman, damn the Limeys, expecting us to come over and win their damn wars for them. Didn’t she know he needed her?

Joe, his co-pilot was tapping his knees. Ed ignored him. They were both tense, they were all tense. He had watched the film of the target area last night at the briefing, it was near the ball bearing factory they had got last time, but what they really wanted now were the rest of the factories, the CO said, and then the group navigator had taken over, smoothing back his hair which was grey now, though it had been brown at Christmas. He had explained the route that would be flown before calling on the weather expert who had said the weather would be thick fog in East Anglia, but then it was almost the middle of October. At 2000 feet they could expect to break out of it and it would be clear over Europe.

But not clear of Messerschmitts, Joe had murmured, and Ed had nodded. When would they get long-range fighter cover? It was crazy, the losses were getting close to twenty-five per cent for God’s sake. Ed shook his head. He shouldn’t think of that now but if he didn’t he thought of her. He eased his helmet. He had tried other women but it hadn’t worked. He couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t eat but at least now he was flying he had the fear which stopped him thinking of her every minute of every day – but still, every minute of every night, she was there.

Joe was still drumming his fingers and Ed wished to God he wouldn’t. He checked his watch, five-thirty a.m. It had been cold when they had crammed into their jeeps, four in one, the rest of the crew in the other and driven out to the
Emma B
as the dawn was rising over the airfield. He had stood by as they climbed in, checking they were OK, laughing at Patrick who wanted to pee but then he always did.

The engines had spluttered into life all around them, coughing, roaring, until all the propellers were turning except
for the
Emma B
’s. He and Joe clambered into the cockpit, hearing the leather seat creak with his weight as his saddle in Montana did. They checked the levers, the dials, compasses, light switches and control yokes. There was a smell of paint and gasoline because the
Emma B
was new.

Still there was no green flare. Ed inched round and checked Joe again. He was still drumming his fingers. He looked back out across the countryside. She had never come to find him, never written and he wished that he no longer loved her as he did.

‘There it goes, skip.’

Ed swung back, the flare was hanging in the air and they waited their turn, taxi-ing, lifting off thirty seconds behind the
Mary Rose
, climbing to the assembly point, then flying in formation with more than four hundred bombers from other bases.