The Rainbow Years (38 page)
Authors: Rita Bradshaw
‘Did she?’ Gertie slid off her bed and onto Amy’s, perching at her side as Amy reached into the drawer of her locker and brought out the precious little portrait.
‘Oh, she’s lovely, Amy. Beautiful. And she looks ever so like you. What about your father? Did he bring you up by himself or did you have any brothers and sisters to help?’
‘My father had already been killed in the First World War and I was an only child. An uncle took me in, Bruce’s da. You know my cousin here? His da. So Bruce and I are like sister and brother. I didn’t get on so well with the rest of my cousins though, or my aunt. She . . . she didn’t like me.’
She didn’t know why she was telling Gertie all this; she rarely spoke of personal matters.
Gertie said nothing, continuing to stare at the picture in her hand for so long that Amy assumed the conversation was at an end. Then Gertie said in a very low voice, ‘My mother doesn’t like me. Oh, she pretends she does, she’s always going on about how nice it was to have a girl after five boys, but she doesn’t, not really. Was your aunt like that?’
Amy stared at Gertie’s bent head. The pain in her young friend’s voice was upsetting. ‘My aunt made it very plain to everyone she didn’t like me,’ she said quietly.
‘That’s better than pretending.’
‘Gertie, I’m sure your mam does love you. It’s just that some people have a job expressing their feelings.’ She didn’t know what else to say.
‘She doesn’t.’ Gertie’s head was still bowed. ‘Oh, she loves my brothers, she can’t do enough for them, but I’ve always known she doesn’t like me. If ever my father or one of my brothers made a fuss of me she’d go all cold and huffy, and ten to one when we were alone she’d make some excuse to go for me. It got so it was better for me to try and stay out of their way because I got fed up with being knocked about. It’s like she’s jealous of me, of having another female in the house, but I can’t help being a girl, can I?’
‘Of course not.’ Amy took Gertie’s hand.‘What about your da? Can’t he tell her to leave you alone?’
‘She never does anything in front of him or the others. And once when I tried to tell him she changed it all round and made out I was lying and said all sorts of things. There was a terrible row and my dad said he was bitterly disappointed in me. I’ve never forgotten it. He . . . he said why couldn’t I be more like the boys were with my mother? Why did I have to upset her all the time and be so awkward?’ Gertie was crying now. ‘And it’s got much worse lately since I left school.’
Well, if Gertie was right and her mother was jealous of her, she could understand that, Amy thought, because Gertie was showing signs of developing into a very pretty young woman.
‘So I joined up. I just went and did it and left a note. I knew my mother would persuade my dad not to do anything, she’d be too glad to get rid of me,’ she added pathetically. ‘It was my chance to escape everything, if you know what I mean.’
Amy nodded. ‘I know what you mean,’ she said quietly, giving Gertie a hug. ‘I know all about escaping.’
‘I thought so. I sort of felt there was something.’
Suddenly it was easy to begin talking. She told Gertie all of it, not leaving out a thing. It was the first time she had spoken of the death of her baby and the operation that had robbed her of ever being a mother, and she couldn’t say she felt better afterwards. In fact she felt so worked up she didn’t know how she felt. But Gertie cried for her and they hugged some more before Amy made them each a mug of cocoa and some toast. After this Gertie got undressed and climbed into her bed, falling asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.
Amy picked up her pen. The words to Kitty flowed quite easily now. She asked Kitty’s forgiveness for not writing before and said if Kitty wanted to write back she would love to hear from her. She mentioned she’d seen Bruce and asked her not to say anything to Perce.
Once it was finished, Amy breathed a sigh of relief. By the time the other girls began to dribble back to the hut, she was fast asleep in bed, curled up like a small animal under the blankets with her hot water bottle clutched to her stomach.
The next few weeks were hectic, but despite the often gloomy news bulletins and busy work day, Amy was conscious of feeling more at peace with herself than she had in a long time. She didn’t understand why, and perhaps it didn’t matter, but in facing up to what had happened by voicing it to Gertie, something had settled deep inside. Her child would always be part of her, a secret sorrow held close to her heart, and she knew his loss and the certainty that no other babies would follow would always evoke a depth of emotion nothing else could, but she had to live with that. She couldn’t do anything else if she wanted to make something of her future.
Since they’d had their heart-to-heart, Gertie seemed happier too. A side of her friend was emerging that showed Gertie to be bright and witty when she was with people she could relax with, and there were times when she positively sparkled. Bruce seemed to have taken Gertie under his wing a bit,Amy had noticed, and Gertie had certainly gained confidence from this and was no longer a shy wallflower at the NAAFI dances. Amy was glad for her, and it also meant she didn’t feel wholly responsible for Gertie any more.
Cassie and her pilot were getting on like a house on fire which made for happy working relations; she walked about with a big grin on her face all day despite the constant ribbing she got from the RAF cooks. When she and Amy and sometimes June, another WAAF cook, took the sandwiches they prepared to the aircrews, along with their rations of chocolate, fruit and other items, Cassie always managed to grab a few moments with her pilot if he wasn’t in the air. The three girls would sit for a few minutes on the grass watching the planes being overhauled and inevitably Cassie’s man would stroll over, sometimes accompanied by other pilots.Amy didn’t mind as long as they didn’t include Nick. She saw him in the mess often, sometimes with Bruce or other friends, and again in the NAAFI in the evening, and it always disturbed her. Bruce was his normal friendly self, chatting with Gertie as much as her and pulling the younger girl’s leg and teasing her, but Nick was more serious, often just sitting and staring at Amy with unfathomable green eyes. It was unnerving. Amy almost thought she preferred the womanising Casanova approach of the early days. And she still felt faintly unsettled about Bruce. Try as she might, she couldn’t see him in the old way any more.
Kitty had written back a warm letter that made Amy glad she had contacted her. Nell and Pamela wrote too; it appeared Nell was training to be a fabric worker on a balloon squadron and Pamela was doing something so top secret she couldn’t say what it was. Isobel married her Philip the first week of May, just as the weather changed and nightingales began to sing in the trees around the camp, and suddenly before they knew it the warm sunshine they’d all been longing for had arrived. This had less impact on Amy than most of the others because she was worried sick about Winnie.
The second week of May had seen a night raid on the capital that even Londoners, hardened by the horrors of nine months of the Blitz, were shaken by. In brilliant moonlight German planes had indiscriminately dropped hundreds of high-explosive bombs and incendiaries over the city, the Nazi High Command describing the ferocious attack as ‘a reprisal for the methodical bombing of the residential quarters of German towns, including Berlin’.
The NAAFI had been silent when the newscaster had reported that historic London had been shattered and civilian casualties were high, and immediately Amy had written to Winnie, asking her friend to let her know she was safe. That had been on the morning of the eleventh of May. It was now the last day of the month and Amy had just received the news she had been dreading.
She stared down at the piece of paper in her hands, unable to believe she would never see Winnie’s plump, bright-eyed face again. One of Winnie’s sons had written informing Amy of his mother’s death.
‘Bad news?’ Isobel noticed Amy’s stricken face. Isobel’s own eyes were pink-rimmed; her brother had been on HMS
Hood
which had been sunk by the
Bismarck
a week before, and he hadn’t been among the handful of crew who had survived.The newspapers might have gloated that it was sweet revenge when the Royal Navy sank the German battleship three days later, but it hadn’t comforted Isobel much.
Hood
which had been sunk by the
Bismarck
a week before, and he hadn’t been among the handful of crew who had survived.The newspapers might have gloated that it was sweet revenge when the Royal Navy sank the German battleship three days later, but it hadn’t comforted Isobel much.
‘It’s Winnie.’ As Amy spoke, Gertie and a number of other girls who were nearby gathered round, sensing another tragedy in their midst. There had been far too many lately. ‘She’s gone.’ She brushed back a wisp of hair from her brow, her hand shaking. ‘The café, everything’s gone.’ All Winnie had laboured and sweated and strived for. The Germans had destroyed it all and taken her too. Her dear old Winnie.Their plans for the expansion of the business after the war and Winnie becoming more of a sleeping partner so she could spend time with her grandchidren wouldn’t happen now, and Winnie had been so looking forward to it.
Amy went about her duties on automatic in the kitchens, and her state of mind wasn’t helped when the camp grapevine reported A Flight had left at first light to join other squadrons in a mass fighter sweep escorting Stirlings to knock the hell out of the shipping in Brest.
Cassie’s pilot, along with Nick Johnson, was in A Flight, and as was usually the case when there was no chance of seeing him hanging about the airfield, Cassie wasn’t too enthusiastic about taking sandwiches to the airmen and airwomen manning their various posts there. June was in the sick bay with stomach cramps so Amy agreed to accompany the RAF driver, a cheery soul with a face as brown as tanned leather.
There were Spitfires dispersed around the airfield when they drove onto the fifty-foot-wide perimeter track, and as Amy’s eyes took in their beautiful lines she remembered a recent conversation she’d heard in the NAAFI. Nick and an ex-Hurricane pilot had been arguing about the monoplanes’ different attributes. She had been sitting with Bruce and Gertie and a couple of other airmen and had pretended not to listen, but out of the corner of her eye she had watched Nick’s face as he’d spoken with passion about his machine.
‘The Spitfire has all the speed and grace of a greyhound,’ he insisted when the other pilot declared the Hurricane was more solidly built and reliable, ‘and that’s what you want when Jerry’s on your tail, not a bulldog. She’ll get you out of trouble and poke Jerry in the eye while she’s doing it.’
She hoped his Spitfire was getting him out of trouble now. The thought popped into her head from nowhere and as though she had voiced it out loud she blushed, hastily jumping out of the van when it stopped outside the squadron commander’s office. The ankle-deep grass in front of the buildings was bespeckled with myriads of tiny daisies and yellow buttercups, and in the distance she saw some members of B Flight stretched out on the warm green carpet with Monty, a springer spaniel who belonged to one of the flight lieutenants.
The airmen’s yellow Mae West life-saving jackets shone brightly in the hot sunshine, and far in the distance the sound of a farm tractor added to the lazy scene. But the presence of the life-saving jackets meant the pilots were on a state of readiness and had to remain within a few yards of their machines.
Amy stood looking over at the somnolent group for a few moments before she opened the back of the van for the crate of food. One moment those young men could be lying dozing on the grass in the soft summer air, the birds twittering in the trees surrounding the airfield and bees buzzing in and out of the flowering white clover, the next they were called to action and all that that entailed. No wonder they played as hard as they fought. This made her think of Nick again and she felt a stab of self-reproach at her treatment of the tall, handsome pilot officer. She shrugged it away and got on with the job in hand.
She was on her way back to the van after dishing out all the food when Monty gave one sharp, piercing bark. The dog was well known for his ability to hear the sound of an approaching air engine well before his human friends did and could often be seen, according to Bruce, tail wagging and tongue lolling, scampering to greet his master on his return from an operation. But now the dog was rigid, tail straight out behind him and nose pointing upwards.
Amy turned, shading her eyes with her hand as she looked up into the blue sky, trying to see what Monty had heard. She hadn’t expected A Flight to return so soon. It was the shouting from the airmen and then the sound of the warning siren that made her realise the dog had been trying to warn them that the approaching plane was not one of theirs.
She stood rooted to the spot right out in the open, distantly conscious of the pilots running to their planes, the dog barking, the RAF driver calling for her to get into the van and the siren going on and on. And then it was upon them, a lone raider zooming out of the blue, machine guns firing and passing by so close she could see the markings on the aircraft and the German pilot in the cockpit.
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