Time to Say Goodbye (18 page)

As they waved enthusiastically at Jill they saw that their noses had not deceived them: the queue was already a long one and Mr and Mrs Ryder were working like demons, he dipping the fish in batter and frying it whilst Mrs Ryder dug into the pile of golden chips with her stainless steel scoop and tipped the contents on to squares of newspaper, added salt and vinegar as required and handed the packets to the customers at the head of the queue.

Jill was waving back and pushing her bicycle towards them at a dangerous speed considering the weight of the goods on the handlebars. Rita hurried towards her and gripped the handles, straddling the front wheel. ‘Is that the accumulator we were supposed to pick up from Mr Tidnam? And do you need any help carrying fish and chips?’

Jill laughed, but she was looking strained and worried, Imogen saw, her normally fresh complexion pale. ‘Yes, I’m going to buy chips to go with the meat and potato pie that Auntie made earlier. But I’m going to make a telephone call first. You lot can join the queue . . .’ she delved into her pocket and produced a handful of change, ‘and get five portions of chips. You lads won’t need any because it’s after five now and you’re supposed to be back at the Pilgrims’ by half past, aren’t you? Their place is in an uproar because of the raid, so I don’t suppose it will matter if you are a bit late. Did you know that Flotsham airfield has been bombed? From what I can gather, Laurie and Dave should have been airborne and halfway to the coast before the attack happened, but I’m just going to ring the Mess to – to see how they got on. It would be awful if the Luftwaffe caught them on the ground.’

‘Oh, they didn’t,’ Debby said, clearly anxious to relieve Jill’s mind of at least one of its worries. Josh kicked her ankle, but having started Debby obviously felt it would look strange to stop. ‘We saw the Hurricanes take off and it was ages before we heard enemy engines.’

Jill had been heading towards the red telephone box, but at Debby’s words she stopped short and turned round. ‘Are you sure of that?’ she asked eagerly. ‘Where were you, exactly?’

Debby looked baffled and Woody struck in. ‘Dunno; there are so many woods and streams and meadows, and we don’t know the names of any of ’em,’ he said vaguely. ‘Just you telephone, Jill. Laurie was telling me a couple of weeks ago that they only have fuel for a couple of hours and can’t chase the Nazis right across the North Sea or the Channel or whatever, so they have to return home quite soon.’

‘What time would you say they were scrambled? Oh – that means—’

‘That means they reached the planes and got into the air,’ the children said in a laughing chorus, Rita adding: ‘We may not be supposed to go into the bar but we hear everything that’s going on because Auntie leaves the door ajar.’

Jill laughed with them. ‘Kids are the same the whole world over; ears on legs,’ she said, causing her audience to giggle helplessly. ‘Tell you what, join the queue and ask for chips for five but keep your eye on the telephone box and if I come out and give you the thumbs up sign make it seven instead.’

Just before they reached the head of the queue they saw Jill give the thumbs up sign. On the walk home, however, her relief at knowing Laurie and Dave were fine – Laurie had added a Ju88 to his tally of ‘kills’ and Dave and another Hurricane pilot had both claimed responsibility for downing the Stuka – didn’t prevent her from enquiring more closely into her charges’ afternoon activities, and in the end they had to reveal that they had been near enough to the airfield to see the action. Jill’s broad smile faltered for a moment and a frown creased her brow, but then it cleared. ‘I suppose if you were exploring in that direction you had little choice, because aircraft cover large areas so very quickly,’ she said. ‘But I think we won’t mention to Auntie that you were near enough to see anything. I don’t want to worry her, and anyway, there’s nothing anyone can do about it. If you were in a town or a city you’d be in a much worse position. As for being near a port . . . well, you understand what I mean, I hope. I know Flotsham is only a couple of miles from the Linnet, but it’s a small airfield with only fighter planes and unlikely to be targeted a second time, especially if two of the attackers were downed as they made their way home.’

Woody and Josh agreed fervently with this. ‘Our school was bombed weeks ago – not Hemblington Hall, of course, the one outside Southampton,’ Josh said. ‘Besides, we none of us want to be moved, do we?’

Four heads were shaken in a very determined fashion. ‘If they move us, we’ll wait a couple of weeks and then come back here,’ Imogen said at once. But at this point they reached the pub and Woody and Josh made their farewells and headed for the farm, whilst the girls and Jill joined Auntie around the kitchen table, and watched eagerly as she cut generous portions of meat and potato pie and surrounded each wedge with chips.

There was a knock on the door and Jill jumped to her feet as Laurie and Dave entered. Imogen saw how her cheeks flushed and her eyes glowed with pleasure and relief, and guessed that the same expression must have appeared on her own face. She cast a cautious glance around through her lashes but saw that no one was looking at her; attention was fixed on the two pilots. They were sliding out of their jackets and hanging them on the hook behind the door, talking animatedly as they did so, and Auntie was extracting the rest of the meat and potato pie from the depths of the Aga. Jill took the opportunity, whilst urging the two young men to sit down, to squeeze Laurie’s hand tightly, and although he swung his broad shoulders between the children and Jill for a moment Imogen saw him lift Jill’s hand, uncurl her fingers and drop a kiss into the palm. Then he led her back to her place at the table and sat down in the vacant chair next to her. ‘There you are, sweetie,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Back home with scarcely a scratch. And that includes the good old Hurricane.’

Dave, pulling out the chair next to Rita’s, grinned up at Auntie as she handed him a laden plate. ‘I reckon the attacks are getting weaker and weaker,’ he said triumphantly. ‘I tell you, looking back on the early days of the Nazi offensive, there were times when the air was so full of Messerschmitts that you could scarcely fail to down two or three. It was good for morale as well as for the war effort, and even though the Luftwaffe have finally got their act together I reckon we could have finished them off by now if only our radar – and the Royal Observer Corps – could pick them up more quickly so we could attack from a height.’

‘Well, it seems to me you put up a pretty good show today,’ Auntie observed, placing full plates before the young men. ‘There are several chaps in the bar talking about the raid, and it seems not one hut was touched, and the only casualty was a guard with a bullet through his shoulder.’

‘There was nearly another . . .’ Debby began, and was immediately nudged into silence by Rita’s elbow.

‘Yes, one of the cows had a narrow escape, someone said,’ Rita broke in. ‘The poor thing had an ear shot off. Bloody Nazis. As if the cow could know anything about the war!’

Auntie pulled a rueful face. ‘Do you suppose that all the children – some of them little more than babies – who were killed when the Nazis entered Poland knew, or cared, anything about the war?’ she asked quietly. ‘War doesn’t discriminate, my love, which is why we have to stop it. And now let’s forget all about it until we turn on the news.’

When they had finished their meal the children began to wash up and clear away whilst Auntie turned up the volume of the wireless so that those in the bar could hear.

Imogen herself paid more attention to the news, she realised, than she had ever done before. The raid had brought the war into their lives and it had become real. As the announcer’s voice, calm and authoritative, began to relay the war news she saw again the fighter plane spitting bullets and the huge size of the dive bomber. She remembered the chaos the bomb had wrought and she knew that it had changed her view of the war in a way no mere announcements could. She saw again in her mind’s eye the way the guard had been bowled over like a ninepin and realised how, if the bomb had been nearer, she might not be standing in Auntie’s kitchen calmly washing up the supper things and listening to Alvar Lidell, in his calm unhurried voice, telling of raids in other parts of the country.

Every now and then she stole a look at Laurie, noticing for the first time that there were dark circles under his eyes and he seemed thinner than when he had rescued her from that ice-bound ditch. Astonished, she found herself understanding something Auntie had said: that a boy had brought her home that night, but the boy had become a man. And she knew, now, that it was the war which had done it to him. She had never tried to imagine what it was like to fly a Hurricane into battle; now she realised that it must be a lonely thing. She opened her mouth to voice the thought when the news had ended, but quietly closed it again. A day or two ago she might have questioned him; now she knew better. What Laurie wanted was to rest, relax, and forget, for the time being at least. So she smiled at him as he came back into the kitchen from the bar, holding a foaming pint pot in one hand. ‘We’re going to ring our mums tomorrow to let them know we’re all right, thanks to you fellows,’ she told him. ‘Do you phone your mum and dad regularly, Laurie? I know Dave does.’

Laurie grinned at her and Imogen thought all over again that he was not only the nicest man in the world but also the best-looking. However, he was shaking his head. ‘My dad is in Rhodesia, pilot training,’ he informed her. ‘And my mum rings the Mess two or three times a week. Now, when I’ve finished this beer Dave and I are going to trot home to our little beds so we’re fresh and fit if the call to scramble comes as soon as it’s light. Isn’t it time you were off to bed as well? Oh, and I never asked you about your boyfriends. They okay?’

‘They’re very well indeed, thank you,’ Debby cut in before Imogen could answer. ‘We’ve been with them all day.’ She cast a rather apprehensive look at Auntie and Jill. ‘We meant to go the Broad – can’t remember the name of it, the one nearest us – but we caught up with shopping and things so we never got there. Still, we can go another day.’

Laurie’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Good thing you weren’t there. That was where we had a dogfight with the Messerschmitts and a couple of Junkers,’ he told her, and Imogen, listening eagerly, thought his voice trembled a little. ‘There were bullets flying everywhere. There was an old fellow in a rowboat . . . everyone else seems to have kept well clear. I’m glad you’d not got that far.’

Dave broke in, wiping a moustache of froth off his upper lip before he spoke. ‘You’ve never seen anything like the way that old chap worked at the oars, though, once he realised what was happening,’ he said. ‘He fairly skimmed across the water, like one of those water boatmen you see on the Broad – the insects, not the people – so let’s hope he got clear away.’

The children agreed fervently with this wish and then at Jill’s insistence made their way up to bed. Imogen, slipping between the sheets, knew that the war had truly come home to her at last. She realised that in her heart of hearts she had believed that those one loved would in some miraculous way be kept safe. As a small girl on holiday in the country she had grazed on the hedgerows in a similar manner to that adopted by sheep and cows, telling herself that God would not let a little girl eat anything poisonous. Her mother had remonstrated, pointing out that the prettiest berries were likely to be the most poisonous, but she had simply not believed her. God loved little children, therefore he would not let harm come to the young Imogen. But now, having actually seen the fighter planes strafing the airfield and the bomb bursting dangerously close, having believed for several terrible moments that her darling Rufus was dead, she no longer considered herself safe, because why should God let one sparrow fall and save another? It didn’t make sense.

Next morning when she woke she would telephone her mother and get her to check on other friends and relatives. She closed her eyes and slept, only to be haunted by a vision of the Stuka as it dived to deliver its bomb and the picture of Rufus as he lay against the perimeter fence, to all appearances as dead as mutton.

She was not the only one to suffer from nightmares. Rita slept soundly, as usual, but Debby wept in her sleep and cried out a couple of times, and when at last it grew light Imogen got into the other girl’s bed and they talked softly of various plans for the future, including a trip back to Liverpool before the school holidays ended.

‘I know our mums and grans and so on don’t want us to go back into danger,’ Imogen admitted. ‘But after yesterday . . . well, I’d just like to see the city for myself.’

Debby agreed and Rita, when she awoke, agreed too, though somewhat reluctantly. They went down to breakfast feeling that, for the time being, they had done all they could, but later that day, going into the village to fetch the second accumulator, they heard some news which hardened their resolve to return to Liverpool, if only for a couple of days.

Queuing in the post office, they heard an old man discussing the raid with a friend. ‘A cow got a bullet which took a lump out of its lug,’ he told his friend. ‘But that in’t the wust, not by a long chalk that in’t. You know old Ebenezer what sets his eel traps on Flotsham Broad? He were out there when the planes were overhead and them bloody bullets flyin’. They say he fair flew across the water and into the reeds, probably hopin’ to keep his hid down and stay clear. But his old woman got worried when he din’t come in for his tea, and went a-searchin’. Found him lyin’ in the bottom of his old boat, wi’ bullet holes right across his back. Dead as a herrin’, so they say. Bled to death, poor old bugger.’

Afterwards, Rita said that her companions had actually turned green, but since Imogen immediately said that they were not the only ones Rita had to admit that the news had shaken her too. ‘It’s because Laurie and Dave were talking about it last night,’ she said. ‘Poor old man. And the worst part is . . .’

‘Shut up!’ Imogen and Debby said in chorus. They all knew what the worst part was: it was impossible to tell whose bullets had killed the old man. Apparently a Spitfire had been only yards behind the Ju88 and the bullets could have come from either aircraft.