The Gunner Girl (32 page)

‘I do love you,' she said at last.

‘Then why won't you say yes?'

‘I don't know.'

‘What do you mean, you don't know?'

‘Just that,' she searched for the words. ‘Just that I feel as if you don't really know me, not really.'

‘Don't be ridiculous. I know all about you. You're Joan Tucker and you're eighteen and you're in the ATS and you've just got your first stripe and
you're the prettiest, bravest girl I've ever met and you're my girl and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.' He banged his palm on the table, making the crockery
clatter, and the waiter look over in consternation. Robin frowned and picked up the teapot. His hands were shaking.

‘But the day we met—' she began.

‘I know. And that makes me love you more, because you were so brave then, so very brave, and after all that, I just wanted to look after you, and I still do, for ever. Can't you
understand that, Joanie?' he said, spilling the tea all over the lace cloth. He scooped a spoonful of sugar into his cup and stirred like it was a trowel in a bucket of cement. ‘What do
I have to do, Joanie?'

‘Give me time.'

‘We don't have time. Anything could happen.'

‘I know that,' she said, shaking her head, looking down at the tea he'd poured her. She pushed her foot towards his, under the table, but he pulled his away. The surface of the
tea rippled in the cup, the concentric circles criss-crossing and cancelling each other out.

‘Joan,' he said, his voice hard and impatient, ‘is there someone else?'

‘Of course not,' she replied, lifting her eyes to meet his. It was true, but she still felt like a liar.

The rattle of rain slowed to a patter and then a drip, and she was left sitting on the bed with a handful of red thread, and still thinking about Rob's face. Then the
door thudded open and Sheila fell inside, back from the NAAFI, face shiny with exertion and rain, hands full of chocolate bars.

‘Your fella's in the NAAFI,' she said to Joan, pulling off her coat.

‘Rob's here?' said Joan, starting. Sheila nodded, handing out KitKats and change. Joan caught Bea looking at her from behind the sewing machine. ‘Cheeky blighter, I
haven't said yes, yet,' said Joan, ‘but if he really can't wait, I suppose I'd better put him out of his misery.' She could feel a dozen eyes on her as she
headed for the door. Outside, she pushed up her umbrella and it quivered above her like a giant flower. She began to walk: best foot forward. Left-right, left-right, past the lines of Nissen huts,
grey-brown in the drizzle, like sleeping tortoises. Bea was right: Rob was a good man, and he loved her, and that's what was important, wasn't it?

Behind the wad of rainclouds the sun still hadn't set. A splatter of raindrops fell on her as she passed under the beech tree. She blinked and wiped them away and then she could see the
NAAFI in front of her. The blackout curtains were open and there was a little amber square of light on the curved side of the building. Rob would be inside. Would he be propped up at the counter,
chatting to Mrs Cripps, or would he be sat at a table with a cup of tea and an open packet of Player's?

Joan's scalp tingled with damp static as she approached. She was almost there now; the hut side curved like an upturned boat. She'd been stupid this afternoon; she shouldn't
have let those memories get to her like that. She reached the doorway and took down her umbrella. Then she pulled the ring off her right hand. Her fingers were cold and slippery from the drizzle
and the ring slid easily onto her left. She paused to look at it, splaying her fingers. The ring gleamed dully in the twilight.

She pushed open the NAAFI door. The radio was on inside and the big band music flooded out along with the light and the smell of stewed tea and smoke. She looked round. Elsie was behind the
counter, flicking a feather duster about and swaying her ample hips to the music. The rest of the hut was empty except for some chap in a merchant navy uniform having a smoke at a side table. She
saw his profile: long nose and glasses. The man turned at the sound of the door closing, dropping his cigarette in the ashtray.

She looked round the hut again. Had she missed something? Sheila had definitely said Rob was here. She'd said your fella's in the NAAFI. Joan shifted from foot to foot and made
little puddles on the wooden floor. Elsie waved vaguely with her feather duster, the red polka dots on her apron matched her poppy-coloured turban. Steam escaped from the urn. Joan's eyes
moved round: the corrugated metal walls, the wooden floorboards, the rickety table and chairs, and the man in the dark uniform. He was looking down at something he was holding, a slip of paper. It
looked like a newspaper cutting.

The familiar buzz began to take hold, quietly at first, like an undercurrent to the music. Out of the corner of her eye, she could still see the polka-dotted shimmer and sway of Elsie. Where was
Rob? Was this Sheila's idea of a joke?

She tried to focus on something, stem the sick-dizzy feeling rising upwards. She looked at the man's bony hands on the table. One of them was reddish, knotted, fingers curled. In the
other, the good hand, he held a piece of newsprint. He was stroking it, flattening it out against the tabletop. Her eyes travelled up from his hands to his face, and he looked at her. He looked
familiar, or at least the good side of his face did. The other side was just an angry scrawl, the result of some explosion at sea, probably. But the good side: the serious expression, the long
nose. She knew him from somewhere. She saw a change in the man's expression, and his chair scraped back from the table.

‘Vanessa, what are you doing here?' he said, picking up the newspaper cutting. ‘I came to find Joan. They told me she was dead, but I saw her picture in the
Mail
'

‘Call for you, Gunner Lightwater,' said the voice, but to Edie it was just another voice, just more white noise. Everything had been white noise recently; nothing
made any sense any more.

Bea said, ‘Edie, someone's on the phone for you,' and Edie looked up. Their staff sergeant was standing, frowning in the doorway, looking like a bad-tempered games mistress.
Edie got up. She followed the stiff figure of the staff sergeant through the veil of drizzle and into the office. It was warm on the inside, and the smell reminded her of classrooms at
Queen's College. The staff sergeant left her at the door. Inside, a telephone receiver lay on the large ink blotter on the desk. She picked it up.

‘Hello?'

‘It's your mother.'

‘Hello, Mummy.'

She felt something, then, like the feeling when you look down after a fall and see blood. Until that moment, it had been like falling from one's mount: a winding pain, everything blanked
out – she remembered almost nothing from the night of the raid. But something began to change at the faraway fuzzy sound of her mother's voice down the line.

‘How are you, dear?'

‘Fine,' she said automatically.

‘Mrs Carson showed me the pictures from your battery in the paper. Shame there wasn't one of you, but I thought I saw your friend Joan in one of the shots.'

‘Yes,' said Edie, remembering the sunny day, and the photographers and how marvellous Princess Elizabeth had looked in her cadet uniform. Staff Farr had given them the night off,
hadn't she?

‘And you had that dreadful raid, too,' said Mummy. But Edith couldn't remember the bombs, only the sound of an air raid siren and the feel of cold water on her thighs.
‘Apparently the mews caught it, but I haven't had a chance to speak to your father about it,' she continued. ‘Have you seen Pop recently?'

Edie remembered how it was Pop's cheque that paid for tea at the Ritz, and then after the Ritz they'd gone on to the Savoy, with those Americans.

‘No, I don't think so,' said Edie.

There'd been three of them: Ron and Hal and Art. Yes, that was his name. She'd thought it a strange name, exotic. You didn't meet Englishmen called Art; they were all John or
James or Robert or Kenneth. Poor Kenneth – she could barely remember his face any more.

‘What do you mean, you don't think so? Please be clear, Edith Elizabeth, either you have seen your father, or you haven't.'

It felt as if something was opening up, like water breaking through a dam, or a sudden rush of blood from an arterial cut. She remembered seeing Pop and Mrs Cowie, among the roses in Kensington
Gardens. Mrs Cowie's face like an upturned flower, Pop's tie loosened, top button undone, face pink. Then, a couple of days later, a cheque in the post, from Pop. How long ago was
that?

‘I've been busy with work,' she said into the receiver.

‘Indeed,' said Mummy, and Edie could imagine her expression, at the other end of the phone. ‘He's not been home for an age,' she added. ‘I've tried
calling the town house, but he's never there, and he's impossible to catch in the office.'

‘I expect he's been busy, too,' said Edie, thinking about Mrs Cowie, the flush in her cheeks, the smudged lipstick. And then thinking of that American, Art – breath
smelling of whisky, and her own lipstick smeared over her wet lips.

‘I daresay,' said Mummy.

‘Why don't you come up to town, Mummy? I haven't seen you in an age,' said Edie. Mummy said how impractical it would be. She had all her WVS commitments; she
couldn't let Mrs Carson down, what with everything so busy at the moment. ‘We could have a picnic in the park,' Edie continued. ‘Like we used to, remember, with Marjorie
sometimes, and – and Kenneth.'

‘Surely, you're too old for picnics in the park,' said Mummy, her voice sounding tinny and far away. ‘You're not a little girl any more.'

‘No,' said Edie. ‘No, I'm not a little girl any more.' There was a silence then, just the hiss and crackle of the phone line. Then a click. They must have been cut
off.

When she was little, Nanny had always taken Edie to see Mummy after her bath and before her evening cup of milk. Mummy would be getting ready for dinner. Nanny would drop Edith
off at the door to the dressing room. The open wardrobe was a forest of satin and tulle. A rope of pearls hung from the cheval. The glass-topped dressing table had three joined-up mirrors on it: a
triptych of Mummy. There were crystal bottles and jars with powder, rouge and mascara, and bottles of perfume with puffball spritzers. Outside, the sun would be lowering, Turkish-delight pink,
suffusing the room with rose-coloured light. Mummy would ask Edie about her day, and read her one of the stories from the big Perrault book:
Cendrillon
or
Le Petit Chaperon Rouge.
Back then, Mummy and Pop always had visitors: men in dark suits with cigars, and women who flitted like moths. Mummy would hear their cars in the drive and break off mid-sentence, giving Edie a
lipsticked kiss on the cheek before wafting off downstairs. And Edie would be left among the silks and the furs, with nothing but her reflection and a half-read French fairy tale for company.
She'd have to finish the story herself. She felt like that now.

After she'd replaced the receiver back in its cradle, Edie stood for a while in the empty room. If she could go back home now, crawl under her covers, with a book and a torch, would she be
happy again? Would this horrible ripping, tearing feeling go away?

Staff Farr was nowhere around, so she switched off the light and shut the door. Outside, the rain had stopped. It was almost dark: purple shadows and sighing trees, the crescent moon just
beginning to emerge from the retreating clouds. She should go back to the hut, sort out her locker, clean her teeth, and say her prayers. But there was a sound, behind the next hut, some low
voices, a scuffle of feet. Edie walked round the side of the building. She was so bound up with the sudden onslaught of memories that had begun to resurface that it didn't occur to her to
feel scared. The ineffectual moonlight just picked out the edges of two figures, standing close together.

‘Hello, there!' Edie called out.

‘Edie?' came the reply. It sounded like Joan. That was all right then. Edie began to walk towards them, thinking about offering congratulations – it seemed as if Joan and Rob
had sorted out their lovers' tiff.

‘Oh, Joan, dear, sorry to interrupt. Hello, again, Rob.' She wondered if he'd still remember her from that day back in early spring when he'd come looking for Joan on
camp.

‘Who's Rob?' It was another man's voice.

‘Oh, I'm terribly sorry, I thought you were—' she stopped herself. She must have been mistaken.

‘No, Edie, please, it's fine.' It was Joan. But there was an edge to her voice. ‘This is Fred. Fred, this is Edie.'

Edie couldn't see very well. The chap was side on. Joan turned her head, looking as Edie approached. It was hard to tell, in the twilight, but there was something taut, anxious about
her.

‘I don't believe we've met,' said Edie. ‘But any friend of Joan's is a friend of mine.' She held out a hand. The man took it. His handshake was swift
and bony. Up close, she could see that one side of his face was pitted and scarred. They stood like three corners of a triangle. Edie looked at Fred, and at Joan. Joan was biting her lip, and her
hair was all messed up. Something wasn't right.

‘I'm so sorry to interrupt, but I thought I'd better remind you about the rule,' said Edie, thinking quickly. ‘There's a rule about no visitors after dark, so
I'm afraid you'll have to leave now, Fred.' He didn't move an inch. He was staring at Joan. With the damage to his face, and in the near-dark, it was impossible to make out
his expression, but Edie could hear his breath: sharp hissing bursts, as if he had a blockage in his airway. ‘The thing is, Staff Farr normally does the rounds about now, and she does tend to
make a fearful fuss about it,' she continued. Still he didn't shift.