Wartime Brides (3 page)

She offered her hand, judging that the young woman would consider it impolite not to take it. ‘My name’s Charlotte Hennessey-White,’ she said. ‘How do you do?’

‘Edna Burbage,’ answered the young woman.

Charlotte held on to her hand a little longer and said, ‘He’s very fond of that aeroplane you know. I got it locally from a man who serves on an aircraft carrier. Apparently he made it in the lull between battles.’ I’m prattling, she thought and, although she wanted to continue and tell Edna that she was more excited than the children that her husband was coming home, she was an adult and was therefore expected to control herself.

To her surprise, Edna’s gaze went straight to the little plane as if it were very familiar to her, but she had only just been reminded of it.

‘I got it in Nutgrove Avenue near Victoria Park,’ Charlotte went on.

Edna smiled a little pensively. ‘I know. I saw you there. The man that made it is my fiancé. I was round visiting his mother.’

‘Well,’ said Charlotte in a very slow and thoughtful manner, ‘that is a very strange coincidence.’

Edna frowned then smiled. ‘He’s coming home on the midday train. His name’s Colin Smith.’

‘That’s the man!’ said Charlotte, her pent-up excitement endowing the exclamation with more enthusiasm than it deserved. ‘Look,’ she went on, determined to overcome Edna’s initial discomfort. ‘Let me buy you a cup of tea. You did save my son’s answer to the Luftwaffe.’

Edna hesitated, eyes shyly downcast. ‘Well, I didn’t really do anything.’

‘But we could talk about Geoffrey’s Christmas present for this year. I dare say your fiancé – Colin did you say? – must have plans to continue with his talent.’

Edna smiled. ‘I don’t know, but it is a possibility.’

Charlotte, pleased with herself for making such a useful suggestion, added, ‘I do hope you don’t mind me saying, but you should do that more often.’

Edna attempted to blink away her confusion. Her cheeks reddened.

‘Smiling,’ Charlotte explained. ‘The war’s over. You can do a lot more smiling from now on.’

She meant it. In that small moment when Edna had smiled, her brown eyes sparkled and her nut-brown hair
seemed
streaked with the richer tones of French brandy. Edna had problems, Charlotte thought, and made a mental note to offer her help if required. Offering help to other people came naturally. Taking advice herself was something she rarely had to do.

They walked into the station and got their platform tickets together, Charlotte bubbling with excitement, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed, and Edna, apprehensive, her hands shoved deeply into the oversized patch pockets of her plaid, three-quarter-length coat. The children chattered and squabbled at their sides and the two women exchanged looks of understanding that held the seeds of friendship.

‘I wish I could be as calm as you about all this,’ said Charlotte. ‘I mean, a woman of my age feeling like a silly sixteen-year-old …’

Her voice trailed off. Crackling and buzzing came from overhead, a sure sign that something was about to be announced over the loudspeaker system.

‘The train’s late,’ said Edna before the station announcer had the chance to say anything.

Sure enough they had a thirty-minute wait before the train was expected. Frozen points according to the information crackling from the overhead speakers.

‘I can believe it,’ said Charlotte wrapping her fur a little closer around herself. Then, seeing Edna’s envious look, she wished she’d worn something less ostentatious.

‘Would you like that cup of tea?’ Edna asked, taking up Charlotte’s earlier suggestion.

Charlotte was just about to say that she would pay
before
realising that could hurt Edna’s pride. ‘I could certainly do with one,’ she said with a smile.

The buffet was crowded but they managed to squeeze into a set of rickety wooden chairs that surrounded a table by the window. Smears of whitewash and the remains of sticky tape on the panes testified to the fact that it hadn’t been that long since a blackout was in force and shattered glass from exploding bombs was a real danger. But at least they were in the warm. Despite it being a fine, dry day and the sky a summer blue, the air was raw with the crispness of December.

Cream distemper was flaking from the walls and brown painted doors were scuffed and scratched from thousands of service boots and mountains of kit bags. Despite the drab neglect, someone had made an effort to be seasonal. Faded paper chains straggled across the ceiling, their tattiness relieved here and there by a single sliver of tinsel. Obviously the decorations were of pre-war vintage but the very fact they were there at all heralded the hope that things were returning to normal.

Tea was served in big, ugly cups that had chips around the rim. The liquid itself was weak but palatable, although the woman in charge of the sugar allotted only one spoonful per person.

The children stayed outside, squashed against the barriers, sniffing the soot-laden air, and watching the giant, black engines steaming in and out of the station.

Charlotte took a sip of tea then looked out of the greasy window.

‘Peace,’ she said plaintively. ‘Is it possible that we’ve
got
so used to war that we won’t be able to handle peace?’

‘My mother said it’s a new beginning,’ said Edna, her gaze following Charlotte’s to the smoky world outside the buffet room. ‘She said the war made us do things we wouldn’t have ever dreamed of doing before. It made the world unreal.’ She blushed, wishing she hadn’t said it. Her guilt showed too easily.

Charlotte turned to look at her. ‘Do you believe that it’s a new beginning?’

Edna looked nervously down into her cup. ‘I don’t know. It might be for us, but I don’t know how the men will view it. They must have got used to living dangerously, giving orders and taking orders and all that.’

Charlotte felt for her. She shook her head. ‘But how wonderful not to take orders, not to have to duck flying bullets and explosions and goodness knows what else.’

‘It’s the most thrilling time so I’ve heard, that moment when you think you are about to die,’ said Edna.

‘I’ve heard that too,’ said Charlotte recalling the words of Doctor Julian Sands, a psychiatrist at the hospital. On one or two occasions she had turned to him for advice when dealing with some of the more difficult relationships resulting from the war. ‘Some get such a thrill from being that close to death that they can’t help courting it, daring it to try them again. The adrenalin flows. It becomes like a drug. They have to have it. They have to risk their lives, but they also risk the lives of others in the process. Some view them as heroes. Others as maniacs.’

*

‘Hello again,’ said the ticket inspector as Polly showed him her platform ticket. ‘Definitely on this train, is he?’

‘That’s what it said in his letter,’ she lied, her smile broad enough to convince anyone that she was telling the truth. ‘I don’t suppose the train is on time?’

‘Oh ye of little faith!’ said the beaming inspector, who’d been called back in from retirement to fill this post back in nineteen forty-one but was likely to be put out to pasture again now that a brace of more able-bodied men were coming home.
And thank God for that!

‘Trust to the Lord and the railways,’ said the ticket inspector.

‘Blasphemy!’ snapped the woman standing immediately behind Polly’s right shoulder.

Polly exchanged a quick smile with the inspector before moving to the platform where she would wind her way through the crowds waiting at the barrier until the train came. Once it had come, she would walk up and down looking for the familiar uniform that represented a dream she was desperate to fulfil.

Gavin had not been her first Canadian airman. There had been Pierre before him. His colleagues had called him Snowshoe because he was from some small place in the Rockies and knew how to trap and fish in the Canadian wilderness. He had been a tailgunner on a bomber that had been saddled, like a lot of others, with the job of bombing the enemy without the benefit of fighter protection. He’d told her he would marry her when he got back from his last mission.

Even now, after falling in love with Gavin, she could
still
remember how dry her mouth had been that day as she waited for Pierre to return. She had wanted to burst with happiness because he was so big and strong and was going to take her to a new place that was bigger than Europe and untouched by war. With mounting tension she had watched as his plane banked over the airfield, last of a force of twenty-one, not all of which had come back. But his plane had. With mounting excitement she had watched it land, then suddenly spotted the holes in its wings, bits of metal hanging like ripped skin from its main body.

As the plane swerved its tail round to face her, she saw the place where the tailgunner’s turret should be. Instead of the usual bubble of glass there was nothing except a gaping hole. It was as though someone had drawn a tooth and made a mess of it. Her heartbeat had seemed to slow to a monosyllabic dirge. Snowshoe was gone and it hurt like hell. So she partied and threw herself into being the bubbliest blonde, the one with the loudest laugh, the most raucous singing voice. Gather ye rosebuds … But in her case it was men she had gathered and she didn’t care who knew it. She didn’t care what anyone thought of her because life was for living and young men were dying and who knew if she mightn’t die too. So what was the point of being a little Miss Goody Two Shoes and waiting for the bomb to drop on her? Besides, she still had her dream to achieve.

She thought she’d found her dream when she met Al Schumacher. He was coarsely built with hands like shovels and pink cheeks.

‘I farm with my folks,’ he’d told her. ‘In Kansas.’

‘Is that in Canada?’ she’d asked him.

‘No way!’ He’d sounded insulted. ‘It’s in the good ole US of A!’

Good enough, she’d thought, and they’d got on really well and got really close and, eventually, he’d asked her to marry him and she’d said yes. He’d even given her a brass ring as temporary confirmation that she was engaged to him. As a warm glow spread over her, he had slid it onto the third finger of her right hand. That night under cover of the blackout, she had felt the hairs of his chest against hers, his hands exploring her body as he mumbled sweet words in her ear. He’d also told her how it would be in Kansas and how his mother would be pleased to see he’d married a girl from the old country. ‘Well, almost the old country,’ he’d added. ‘It’s Europe, ain’t it? What’s in a name?’

She hadn’t bothered to enquire further because his bulk was slamming the breath out of her and he was breathing heavily in her ear. Even if she got pregnant it wouldn’t matter because Al was going to marry her and she was going to live in Kansas.

But Al got shot down. One of his friends swore he saw his parachute open. Another wasn’t so sure.

Her dream stayed with her, but it was six months before she got serious again. That was when she’d met Gavin.

Her legs were getting cold so she rubbed one against the other in an effort to keep her circulation going. She glanced at the clock then looked towards the end of the
platform
, willing the train to arrive and for Gavin to be on it.

Suddenly a shout went up. ‘The train’s coming! The train’s coming!’

An engine whistle screamed and a cloud of smoke appeared just beyond the link that crossed over the bridge which, in turn, crossed the river.

Under pressure from the pushing crowd, the barriers were hastily removed. People surged like a wind-driven tide towards the edge of the platform, expectant, excited, and willing to risk falling onto the rails rather than lose their place at the front of the milling throng.

‘Keep back! Keep back!’

The shouts of the railway guards and inspectors fell on deaf ears. They were like Canute before the tide, only this sea of people was far more determined than the North Sea could ever be. The winds of war had at last blown themselves out and people were tired, glad it was over, and hopeful for the future.

Piles of khaki, navy and airforce-blue uniforms, interspersed with the grey pinstripe of demobilisation suits, hung from carriage windows and doors, jostled by more men behind them jammed into the packed carriages.

As the train slowed, the men’s eyes searched the crowds of turbans, feathered hats, and hair curled especially for the occasion with the aid of heated irons and water reinforced with a precious spoonful of sugar.

Eager hands like tentacles sought the smooth metal of handles, doors swung open, and men piled out onto the
platforms
to outstretched arms welcoming them home. The noise was thunderous, far too powerful to be drowned out by the crackling loudspeaker that attempted to announce the train’s arrival.

Polly, her eyes searching the windows as the men burst out from gaping doors, started to walk briskly along the edge of the platform, uncaring that she pushed embracing couples aside, her tears blinding her to how they might be feeling, how much they might have been missing each other.

‘Gavin! Do you know Gavin?’ she said, grabbing what she recognised as a shoulder adorned with the insignia of the Royal Canadian Airforce. The surprised-looking Canadian shook his head briefly before being engulfed by a pair of feminine arms clothed in the sleeves of a leopard-skin jacket.

Polly pushed on determinedly, oblivious to bumps from shoving arms, angry glares and shouts of protest.

She tried to gain more height by jumping in an effort to look over the heads of the crowd just in case she had missed him. People were like a sea around her, pushing, shoving. Shouts of recognition eddied around her from those on the platform, from those on the train.

There were other shouts too.

‘Stop pushing!’ she heard someone shout.

‘The handle’s stuck!’

‘Watch it!’ shouted someone else.

The shouts were ignored. Although those in front told those behind not to push, the urge to get off the train and as far away from war as possible was too strong.

The door sprang open across her path. She screamed as the bottom part hit her solidly in the stomach sending her flying against the side of the carriage. One leg slid away from her and plugged the gap between the carriage and the platform. She felt her shoe slide off her foot.