The Crew (4 page)

Somebody bumped into her and sloshed beer over her sleeve. Peter took hold of her arm. ‘Let's get away from this bloody mob.'

They found some space in a passageway off the bar and she mopped at her uniform with her handkerchief.

‘I hoped it'd be you de-briefing us, Cat.'

‘Not my turn. Sorry.'

‘We had that bastard Pilson. I think he takes pleasure in spinning it out as long as he can.'

‘He's only doing his job, Peter.'

‘Is he? Sometimes I think he just wants to throw his weight about – show what an important chap he is, safe and sound on the ground while we risk our bloody necks.'

The strain was getting to him, she thought. He never used to sound so bitter. Never took any notice of wingless wonders like Flight Lieutenant Pilson, who'd never flown anything but a desk in his life. He looked very pale, with dark marks under his eyes like bruises, and these days he rarely smiled.

She touched his arm. ‘You need a break. Haven't you got some leave due?'

‘Well, we've moved up a couple of places on the roster since last night . . .' He was referring to the missing crews – obliquely.

‘Will you go home?'

‘I'd sooner go somewhere with you, Cat.'

It wasn't the first time he'd asked her and she'd always refused. This time she couldn't have gone anyway. ‘I can't get leave at the moment, Peter. It's too busy.'

‘Surely you could get a forty-eight at least?'

She shook her head. ‘Honestly, I couldn't.'

He looked hard at her. ‘You could if you really wanted.'

‘I've told you, I can't.'

‘And I don't believe you.'

‘I'm sorry but it's the truth.'

He stared down into his beer. ‘I want a lot more than just a quick forty-eight somewhere, Cat. I'm
talking about us being permanent. I want us to get engaged and married – asap. You know that. I've asked you enough times.'

‘I still think we ought to wait, Peter.'

‘Because I'll probably get the chop?'

‘No, that's got nothing to do with it.'

‘Then why won't you?'

She said truthfully, ‘I don't know. I just think we should be very sure. We've only known each other six months.'

‘
I'm
perfectly sure.'

‘Please try to understand. Don't make it so difficult.'

‘It's you who's making it difficult. So bloody complicated when it's perfectly simple.'

‘Oh,
Peter
 . . .'

‘Oh,
Catherine
,' he mocked her, and then smiled suddenly. The tension went from his face and he looked more like his old self. A different person. ‘Oh well, I suppose I'll just have to learn to be patient.'

She smiled, too, relieved at his changed mood.

More people had come into the bar, and among them she noticed the American pilot with one of the Code and Cypher WAAF officers. Fast worker, she thought. She couldn't see any of the rest of the crew, but then he wouldn't want them around on a date, cramping his style. She wondered what the others were up to and whether they'd stuck together like crews usually did.

‘Lend us five bob, would you, Harry. Just till pay-day.'

‘Five bob!
What for?'

‘I've asked this WAAF from Parachutes out to the flicks in Lincoln, see. A real smasher, she is.'

‘You shouldn't've asked her, Bert, if you can't afford it.'

‘Aw, come on, Harry. You were young – once.'

‘I've forgotten what 'twas like.'

‘You'll 'ave it back next pay-day.'

‘Aye, that's what you said last time, and it was two of 'em before you coughed up, lad. I don't know what you do with your money, Bert. You never seem to 'ave any. You ought to learn to manage it a sight better. Save some of it. That's what we do up north.'

‘Blimey, I didn't ask for a lecture, Harry. Just five bob. Come on, do us a favour. She's a corker!'

‘I don't know . . . you and your girls, Bert. You'll 'ave to settle down one of these days and stop your larkin' about.'

‘'Ave an 'eart, mate, I'm only nineteen. Don't want to lock myself up for life yet, do I . . . not if I've got any sense. Got to get about a bit first. Find out what's what. Part of me education, see. Come on, be a sport.'

Harry sighed. ‘All right. Just this time. But no more, mind.' He handed over two half-crowns and Bert was out of the door faster than a greyhound out of its starting gate, leaving him alone in the hut. The other crew sergeants they shared with were away on leave, and even Charlie had gone off somewhere.

He sat down on his iron bed, beneath the line of threadbare RAF blankets slung to dry from the roof. Without the other lads around, the place got him down. It was a right slum and no mistake: what with the blankets overhead, the greatcoats stuck on pegs all along the walls, muddy boots lying around, Stew's girlie magazines strewn over his mattress, tin-lid ashtrays overflowing with cigarette stubs, unwashed
Thermos flasks left under beds, a sorry collection of broken old chairs, the empty coal bucket upside down in a corner, an oil drum for a rubbish bin – overflowing. No wonder they got rats.

They tidied it up now and again, but on an operational station nobody bothered much about inspections and bull like that. Too much else to worry about. And you didn't notice the mess when everyone was there. It was different then – with all the talk going on and the joking and leg-pulling and the laughs they had.

He picked up a tattered paperback from the floor.
No Orchids for Miss Blandish.
It fell open where the saucy bits were. They'd all read it in turn but he wasn't sure that Charlie ought to have read it at all. Personally, he hadn't thought much of the story, but he'd kept that to himself. He rubbed his hands together. It might be May but he could have done with a bit of warmth from the coke stove – if there'd been any fuel. He felt cold and depressed, and Bert had set him off thinking about things again, which never did any good. There was no girl he wanted to take out. Once bitten, twice shy, that was the trouble. Perhaps if he'd got about like Bert beforehand, he might have known better.

He sighed and took the creased snapshot of his ex-wife and their daughter out of his breast pocket and stared at it for a while. It had been taken more than four years ago when Paulette had only been a toddler; Rita was holding her in her arms, turning her round to face the camera. When he'd taken the picture the two of them had been all the world to him. Now, he didn't want to look at Rita at all because the sight always gave him pain, but he hadn't a photo of
Paulette on her own, so he couldn't look at one without the other.

When he'd first set eyes on Rita she'd been working in a tobacconist's shop in Leeds. He'd gone in for some cigarettes, in the days before he'd taken up a pipe, and she'd been standing there behind the counter – all dressed-up like she was going to a party in a white frock and rows of beads. He'd fallen in love with her there and then. He'd gone back a lot more times and bought a whole lot of cigarettes he didn't need before he'd finally screwed up the nerve to ask her out. It'd been a couple of years, though, before he'd found enough nerve to ask her to marry him. Luckily he'd had his steady job with the toy company and a bit put by, so he'd got something to offer, and Rita was tired of working in the tobacconist's shop. She liked nice things and it had cost him a tidy penny to keep her happy because she got bored and restless so easily. He hadn't minded, though. He'd thought she was worth it. And when Paulette had come along he'd felt like he was the luckiest bloke alive. He'd sooner have called the baby something simpler – Susan or Joan – but Rita had found the name in one of her film magazines and he'd gone along with it to please her, same as he always did.

Then Rita had met another man: someone from down south with much more money than he had and with a house for her and Paulette to live in, not a poky rented flat. And that had been that. He'd let her divorce him because she'd said it would be best for Paulette, and he sent money regularly as clockwork for his daughter's maintenance. But he hardly ever saw her. At first he'd tried travelling down south every fortnight or so and taking Paulette out for a day, but after a time
he'd come to realize that his daughter dreaded his visits. She hated wandering around the park, or sitting in tea-rooms, or doing any of the things he tried to think of that might please her, and when he returned her to the posh house in the avenue, she always ran in without a backward glance, as though she couldn't get away from him quick enough.

Sometimes he wondered what Rita had said about him to her, what stories she might have made up to set his daughter so much against him. One thing was very clear to him: he wasn't wanted in their lives any more and, except for the payments, he wasn't needed. He'd kept on visiting doggedly, but less often, and the older Paulette grew, the more she showed her contempt for him. Then the war had started and he had joined up. He'd given up the flat and spent his leaves at his parents' semi on the outskirts of Huddersfield, sleeping on a divan in the bleak little spare room. He'd only seen Paulette half a dozen times in the past two years.

Harry went on staring at the photo for a while before he put it away in his pocket. He pulled himself together. No point in dwelling on things. It wouldn't do any good. Brace up and cheer up. The hut was no place to spend an evening so he'd pop along to the Mess and sink a pint or two. Maybe Jock and Stew were there. Funny about young Charlie sloping off like that on his own. Maybe he'd got some girl on the quiet, too. Happen the lad would surprise them all.

Charlie got off his bike at the cottage gate. There was no name on it but it had a blue front door like Mum had said in her letter, and it was in the right place, on the other side of the drome. He leaned the bike
against the front hedge and padlocked it so nobody could nick it while he was inside. As he pushed open the gate, the door opened.

‘Hallo, Charlie.'

‘Hallo, Mum.'

They stood looking at each other for a moment and then he moved forward quickly and gave her a hug. She searched his face. ‘You're not angry with me?'

‘
Angry?
Why would I be?'

‘I know I shouldn't have done it – not without telling you, anyway. Without asking you. You might not want me here.'

‘It's all right,' he said gently. ‘I don't mind. I'm glad you're here. It's all right.'

The worry and guilt left her face and she smiled at him. ‘Well, come on in, then. It's not much of a place, but I've given it a good clean and made it as nice as I can.'

He followed her inside and looked round the dingy little front room. He could tell how hard she'd tried. There was a smell of furniture polish and Brasso and carbolic, all mixed up with a fusty smell of damp, and jam jars of bluebells on the table and the mantlepiece and the windowsill. Upstairs, in what was, apparently, to be his bedroom, she had somehow transported some of his books, an old model aeroplane he'd made years ago, even – he blushed to notice – his old teddy bear, propped against the pillow on the bed. She picked it up.

‘I know it's silly of me, but I thought he might make a mascot for you. I read in the newspaper that air crews have all kinds of lucky things they take with them – some of them toys – and I thought of Sam.'

She held out the bear to him and he took it
awkwardly. It had one ear and one glass eye missing and most of its light brown fur had been rubbed away. Sam had once gone everywhere with him – dragged by ear, arm or leg – badly treated for nearly seven years and, for the last ten, forgotten in some cupboard. He'd have to think of some excuse to leave him here. It was bad enough with the poems; if he turned up with a teddy bear he'd never hear the end of it.

Mum cooked him a huge supper of sausages and potatoes with baked beans and fried bread – far more than he wanted, but he managed it to please her. She didn't eat much herself, but then she never had. She kept on smiling and talking as they sat at the table, but he knew she must be worrying about him, and he didn't know what to say to comfort her. The fact was he could get the chop easily any day – with or without Sam.

She wanted to know about the rest of the crew, and what they were like.

‘Oh, just ordinary sort of blokes,' he said.

‘Is the pilot good?'

He thought of the skipper's kangaroo landings and some scary moments in the air. ‘One of the best. He's American.'

‘
American?
' She looked astonished. ‘That's not ordinary. What's he doing with the RAF?'

‘Not quite sure. He joined the Canadian Air Force and they sent him over. Our bomb aimer's Australian.'

‘My goodness, he's come a long way as well.'

‘There's quite a lot of Aussies in the crews. And New Zealanders. And Canadians. Some South Africans, too. From all over.'

‘Goodness,' she said again. ‘I'd no idea. What about the rest of your crew?'

‘Well, one's Scottish – the flight engineer. But
the other four of us are English – the navigator, the wireless operator, the mid-upper gunner and me.'

She fiddled with the salt cruet. ‘They didn't tease you – about my coming here? I wouldn't want that, Charlie.'

‘Of course they didn't,' he said stoutly.

But the truth was that he hadn't told them, and he felt ashamed of that. He hadn't told them because he was afraid they'd pull his leg and that it'd get all over the camp. Charlie Banks's mum has come to hold his hand for him . . . He wished to goodness she hadn't come here, for both their sakes. It was going to make it twice as hard for him, knowing she was alone in this run-down place, and twice as hard for her, seeing and hearing the bombers coming and going the whole time. Probably counting them out and back.