The Silent War (31 page)

Sunday watched him in bewilderment as he retrieved his uniform trousers from a hardbacked chair, and started to put them on. All the joy she had succumbed to over the past few hours started to evaporate as she saw his naked buttocks gradually disappear into the well-tailored army-issue trousers.

Gary searched around for a cigarette. He found one, lit it, then went to the fireplace to crouch in front of the antiquated gasfire. Sunday waited a moment, then got out of bed, put on her old towelling dressing-gown, and kneeled in front of him.

Gary inhaled as much smoke as his lungs could cope with, and exhaled the residue. When he looked up again,
he
was face to face with Sunday, so he rested his cigarette in a small glass ash-tray in the hearth. ‘When I was sixteen,’ he said, his hands suddenly bursting into life with sign language, ‘I used to have a motor-cycle. My dad bought it for me. It was his way of helping me grow up like a
real
guy.’ He picked up his cigarette again, pulled on it, and blew out a funnel of smoke away from Sunday’s face. ‘I didn’t really want the bike. I just didn’t feel right on it. But Dad wanted me to have it. It was his way of tryin’ to stop me foolin’ around with poetry.’

Sunday was puzzled. She had been trying hard to follow the signs Gary was making, but frequently returned her attention to reading his lips. ‘Poetry?’ she asked.

‘I like to read it,’ he said. ‘An’ I like to write it. Pretty dumb for one of Uncle Sam’s Army Air Corps, huh?’

Sunday didn’t really understand what he meant, so all she could do was to shrug her shoulders.

Gary exercised his fingers before explaining. ‘In my dad’s eyes, poetry doesn’t add up to being a guy in a guy’s world. And Dad should know,’ he added bitterly. ‘He’s been pretty much of a roughneck all his life.’

He picked up his cigarette from the ash-tray, and pulled on it. ‘Anyway,’ he said, stubbing it out unfinished. ‘I got to usin’ the goddamn thing more an’ more, because that’s what my old man wanted me to do. Until one evening, I had one hell of a bust-up with him, and the only way I could get the steam out of me was to go out on
his
bike, and tear the guts out of it. Trouble was, it was raining hard, and the roads were full of grease and mud and hell knows what else. So when I turned this sharp bend, just past Mr Peterson’s service garage, a truck came out of nowhere, headlights blazing straight into my eyes. All I remember is that I swerved, and my hands just kind of – left the bike handles.’ For a moment, his hands stopped moving, and his eyes were too distraught to meet Sunday’s. But he continued as suddenly as he had stopped. ‘There was this kid,’ he said. ‘A girl. Not more than ten or eleven years old . . .’

Sunday grabbed hold of his hands, and stopped them from talking. She knew the rest and didn’t want to know any more.

The light from the gas fire was flickering now, and when Sunday looked down to see how low the flames were on the mantles, it was obvious that the shilling’s worth of gas was at last running out. So she reached for the tap at the side of the fireplace and turned it off.

Whilst she was doing this, Gary got up from the floor and strolled across to the window. Sunday joined him, put her arm around his waist, and leaned her head against him.

As they stood there, they were flooded with ice-cold moonlight, which turned them into two ghostly, statuesque figures. ‘Tell me about the poems you write,’ said Sunday, as they looked out on to the bay, with the sea bathed in light but calm and still as a pond, no gales, not even a breeze.

Gary paused before answering. Then he turned and looked at her. ‘I killed someone, Sunday. A kid who hadn’t even begun her life.’

‘It was an accident,’ Sunday replied, looking directly into his eyes. ‘You must have killed an awful lot of people in this war. You and every soldier, or sailor, or airman. Some things are meant to happen.’

Gary suddenly pulled away and turned to face her. ‘It’s not like that, Sunday,’ he said tensely. ‘That’s why I had to tell you. If I’m asking you to love me, you had to know.’

‘Well now I do know,’ replied Sunday, trying to reassure him. ‘Gary, we all have things that we have to live with. But you can’t go on blaming yourself for the rest of your life.’

‘That kid!’ Gary snapped, grabbing hold of Sunday’s hands and holding them in a vice-like grip. ‘She was from the local Deaf School. Don’t you understand? She was like my own mother. She was like you. And
I
killed her!’

Sunday suddenly felt like she looked, a stone-cold statue bathed in dazzling white moonlight.

Outside, the bright flame of a V-2 rocket headed towards the bay from the open sea, and darted high across the black sky, only just missing the galaxies of tiny twinkling stars that did their best to impede its journey.

Not many people saw it, nor wanted to. But they knew it was there.

Ernie Mancroft’s visit to the King’s Head at Ridgewell caused quite a stir amongst Sunday’s pals at Cloy’s Farm, and by the time she had got back from her weekend with Gary, the place was buzzing with rumours. Sunday was horrified to hear that Ernie had called on her, and absolutely furious to be told by Jinx that he had presented himself as her future husband. But the person she blamed most of all was her Aunt Louie, who had stirred up all the trouble in the first place by giving Sunday’s address to Ernie.

‘Forget all about ’im, girl,’ was Jinx’s advice, as Sunday washed out her smalls in the bathroom sink. ‘If ’e comes back—’

‘Not
if
, Jinx,’ interrupted Sunday. ‘
When
. You don’t know Ernie. He’s persistent.’

‘Stop worryin’ yerself, girl!’ insisted Jinx. ‘If ’e turns up again, we’ll just tell ’im to bugger off back where ’e comes from.’

Sunday shook her head. ‘There are things you don’t know about him, Jinx.’

Jinx let out a dirty laugh. ‘I know that if it weren’t for Erin, I’d be shackin’ up with that lovely bit of arse quicker than I could get me drawers down!’

For once, Sunday couldn’t share Jinx’s sense of humour. ‘He’s not like that, Jinx,’ she said, turning from the sink to stare directly at her. ‘Ernie’s got a thing about me. He’s always been so – possessive. There was a time once when he nearly killed someone I was going out with. I tell you, he scares me,
he
really does. I’ve often thought that he could kill me too.’

Sunday’s concern persuaded Jinx to take things more seriously. ‘Look, girl,’ she said, putting her arm around Sunday’s shoulder, ‘if anyone ever tried to harm you, we’ve got enough fellers ’round ’ere to deal with ’im.’

Again Sunday shook her head. ‘Ernie’s made of iron, Jinx. Back home he was always getting involved in brawls with people, then beating them up till they had to go to hospital.’

‘But, honey,’ replied Jinx, picking up on some of Erin’s slang, ‘he won’t stand a chance against that lot at the base. They’ll make mincemeat out of him!’

Sunday was still shaking her head. She was unconvinced. ‘Let me tell you something, Sun,’ said Jinx, caringly. ‘No ’arm can ever come to you as long as you’ve got someone to love you. An’ you’ve got Gary now.’

Sunday thought about this for a moment, and about what Gary had told her in the bedroom at the Hotel de la Mer the previous evening. Yes. Until that moment she had been absolutely sure that Gary did love her. But now she questioned
why
he loved her. Was it for herself, or was it guilt for having killed someone who was handicapped, just like herself?

‘’E’ll look after you, girl,’ Jinx said reassuringly. ‘Gary Mitchell is one hell of a nice bloke. Mark my words – ’e won’t let you down.’

Sunday did her best to feel reassured. But it wasn’t going to be easy. Especially when Gary heard about Ernie Mancroft.

Towards the end of January, the blizzards which had ravaged East Anglia for so much of the winter gradually began to ease off. There was still plenty of snow, in some places drifts up to four feet deep. In Ridgewell, the villagers were getting tired of having to dig themselves out every morning, and at the Base snowploughs were in constant use on the runways. Sunday also began to
worry
more and more about her mum, for in her letters Madge had talked about the endless gas and electricity cuts caused by the bad weather, and how difficult it had been for everyone in ‘the Buildings’ to keep warm. But the thing that was worrying Sunday most of all, however, was knowing only too well how her mum would be sacrificing her own personal comforts in favour of her sister, Louie. In fact, even when she had been home during the Christmas break, Sunday had noticed how her aunt had ignored the Government’s appeals to use as little bathwater as possible, and continued to have her regular evening bath filled to the brim with piping-hot water.

These were difficult times for Sunday. Since the start of the New Year, so much seemed to have happened to her. What with Gary’s return from the dead, that revealing weekend away with him at Thorpe Bay, and the worrying thought that Ernie Mancroft was determined not to leave her alone, her mind was in turmoil. Sooner or later, Gary’s buddies were bound to tell him about Ernie’s appearance at the pub in Ridgewell, and his assertion that he and Sunday were going to get married. How was she going to be able to explain Ernie’s actions to Gary? Would he ever believe her? And what about Gary himself? Could she really trust
him
? Or was he merely trying to use her to ease his own feelings of guilt? What would happen if he were to ask her to marry him? Would she really want to go all the way to America and start a new life amongst the type of people she had only ever seen at the pictures? Surely it just wouldn’t make sense, it wouldn’t be natural. And if Gary wasn’t the person she thought he was, what would happen if he left her alone in a strange country, with no way of getting back home?

And what of Ernie? How would she ever be able to break free of him? What if he should turn up again and turn nasty on her? What could she say or do that would rid her of him for ever? Then she thought about going home after the war. How would she be able to settle down to life again in ‘the Buildings’, with her
well-meaning
mum and Aunt Louie? How would she be able to cope with the prospect of being deaf for the rest of her life? As she tossed and turned in her bed, unaware that Jinx was snoring loudly in the bed next to her, she suddenly yearned for someone she could confide in, a dad she could really call her own, not an adopted one, not just a face in a snapshot photo. And then she got to thinking about what her real dad would have been like, what he would have told her to do when she had such painful problems. And her real mum? Who
was
that strange creature who had turned her back on such a tiny baby? Who
was
this woman? What did she look like? So many questions. Why? Why? Why?

As the long nights gradually began to get shorter, there were signs that the number of ‘doodlebugs’ and V-2s passing over from the coast were becoming fewer. During March, however, a handful of German bomber planes broke through the coastal defences and started to attack local airfields, including the Ridgewell Airbase. There were also warnings from the Civil Defence that small decoy bombs had been dropped in the area, and that local people should exercise the utmost caution if they came across such lethal weapons.

During February and the early part of March, Sunday saw very little of Gary, for after his two-week furlough, he had very quickly been returned to his unit for active combat duties. However, whenever they did meet, Sunday spent a lot of the time trying to get to grips with her sign-language therapy. Gary turned out to be a determined teacher, and there were times when he became really angry with her increasing lack of concentration. This was never more apparent than on one occasion in the Forces’ Canteen in the Congregational chapel, when, in front of Jinx, Erin, and the girls from Cloy’s Farm, Sunday was displaying tantrums, protesting over and over again that she was sick to death of trying to learn sign language, and that it meant absolutely nothing to her.

‘Concentrate, Sunday!’ Gary scowled, taking hold of
both
her hands and slamming the palms together. ‘Think with your hands, for Chrissake!’

‘I don’t want to think with my hands,’ she snapped back. ‘I want to hear with my ears!’

‘You’re stupid!’ yelled Gary, straight at her. ‘I always took you for a bright young dame,’ he said, his own hands working frenetically to illustrate what he was saying. ‘But you’re nothin’ of the sort. You’re just plain stupid!’

‘If I’m so stupid,’ Sunday yelled back, ‘then why the hell d’you bother with me!’

‘Because I happen to love you, you stupid broad!’

‘I can’t learn sign language!’ insisted Sunday. ‘It’s just not in me!’

‘Don’t be so silly, girl!’ interrupted Jinx. ‘You’ve got a far better ’ead on you than all us lot put together.’

‘Mind your own business, Jinx!’

Jinx was a bit taken aback by Sunday’s temper. ‘Well, pardon me for breathin’!’ she said.

‘Look here, you dumb blonde!’ growled Gary, grabbing hold of Sunday’s wrist. ‘D’you want to go around for the rest of your life living in a dark, silent world?’

‘I
am
living in a dark, silent world,’ blasted Sunday, whose own distorted voice was far louder than anyone else’s in the place. ‘I’m the one who’s got to live with it, not you.’

‘Sunday, you don’t have to live with it, believe me,’ Gary replied, trying to be more conciliatory. ‘Why can’t you realise how important it is for you to communicate in a language that people like yourself can understand?’

‘I
can
communicate!’ insisted Sunday. ‘In my own way!’

‘No, Sunday,’ Gary replied firmly, staring directly into her eyes. ‘Your way is not the right way.’

Sunday tried to pull away from him, but he held on to her.

‘Look guys,’ said Erin, chewing hard on the remains of a cigar butt. ‘Don’t you think we could call a truce or somethin’?’

‘Keep out of this, Erin!’ snapped Gary.

Erin hunched his shoulders in guilt. Now it was his turn to be snubbed.

Sunday tried to struggle with Gary, but he suddenly grabbed hold of her arm, dragged her to the stairs, and led her outside the chapel.