Wartime Brides (7 page)

‘Can I get you a drink, honey?’

The black GI who had asked the question was broad shouldered and bull necked. He had little hair and deep eyebrows and narrow lips set in a sombre straight line. Surprisingly, it was Mavis he seemed to be interested in. The attraction of opposites, thought Polly, who accepted half a shandy from him. Mavis, being Mavis, angled for a gin and orange.

‘So why ain’t you gone home?’ asked Polly.

‘Cleaning up to do in Europe,’ he replied. ‘Most of us belong to the Field Hygiene Unit.’ He saw Polly’s puzzled expression and explained. ‘Dead bodies. We go along and clear up after the fighting’s moved on or after the death camps have been cleared. This is our last party before going home. Hallelujah!’ he finally exclaimed, raising his drink as high as he dared. His head was already buckled up to the ceiling.

She didn’t press the point. Just the thought of the things she’d seen on Pathé News was enough to turn her stomach.

The tobacco smoke that hung like a pall between people’s heads and the ceiling suddenly whirled as a current of fresh air swept in through the opening door. Like a lot of others, Polly looked to see who had come in and instantly felt a tightening in her stomach. The grey pinstripe suits, the Woodbines held at the corner of thin, grim mouths. She recognised the men from the bus and sensed immediately there was going to be trouble.

With unconcealed arrogance, they pushed their way through the crowd of American uniforms, disdainfully slapping shoulders, glaring their intentions rather than asking if they could be allowed to get to the bar.

Polly nudged Mavis. ‘Looks like trouble.’

Mavis eyed the blokes from the bus. To Polly’s disgust she smiled, patted her hair, and made it obvious to a weak-chinned individual with pale blue eyes that she had appreciated his earlier attention – definitely more so than that of the man she was with.

‘I think I was here first,’ said the pale-eyed young man, the shoulder pads of his demob suit moving independently of his flesh due to the fact that it was at least two sizes too big.

Polly swallowed nervously, put her drink down on the counter, and grasped Mavis’s arm.

‘Time to go, Mav.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ simpered Mavis, her gaze firmly fixed on the scrawny specimen who squeezed himself
purposefully
between her and the GI who had bought their drinks.

Strong brown fingers and a broad palm folded over the other man’s shoulders and for a moment Polly imagined she was seeing bones being crushed. Yet she couldn’t hear anything breaking. Then she almost laughed when she realised why. The shoulder pads again. But her amusement was stifled by the fear of imminent violence.

She nudged a knee into Mavis’s shin. ‘Let’s go.’ There was no response.

‘I think I was here first, buddy,’ said the GI, his twang typical of the American voices she’d heard since a few months after Pearl Harbor.

‘You’re wrong,’ said the guy with the big suit, his back to the American.

‘No way, man,’ said the black man in a thoughtful and meaningful way. ‘I can prove I was first here ’cause I bought that drink there.’ He indicated the gin and orange sitting in front of Mavis.

The man in the demob suit reached nonchalantly for the drink. ‘Well, it’s gone, ain’t it?’ With that he flung the contents of the glass into the GI’s face. Droplets flecked the black man’s forehead and trickled down his cheeks. His mouth straightened into a grim line. A breathless hush fell over the packed bar as all eyes turned to the trouble spot.

Polly could almost smell the blood lust, young men aching to prove who was Cock of the Walk.

‘Cool it!’ someone said. Another brown hand stayed the arm of the man with the liquid running down over his face.

It won’t last, thought Polly. She’d seen it before all too often, one man supposedly backing down, then turning back, lashing out with a fist or a broken bottle, and all hell letting loose.

She grabbed Mavis’s arm. ‘Come on! Let’s split.’ Her exclamation, borrowed from the friendly invaders, had no impact whatsoever on moony-faced Mavis.

‘No! I wanna stay,’ and, to Polly’s disgust, like an oversized eel Mavis wriggled out of her grasp, her eyes shining with expectation.

‘You bitch,’ Polly said under her breath. ‘Opening them wide for the bloke that gets bashed the most are you! And I don’t mean yer bloody eyes!’

For a moment Mavis looked hurt, but it didn’t last long. She was positively beaming because two men looked about to fight over her. Well, Polly was having none of that. All right, she had her own dreams, perhaps even mercenary intentions, because she wanted to live in North America or at least get a bloke who could give her something better than she had. And loose morals were something she’d acquired herself during the war. But she didn’t hold with setting one man against another and she certainly had no intention of being the centre of a brawl.

‘Well, I’m off,’ she snapped indignantly. She paused to give Mavis a chance to change her mind, but her friend’s attention was elsewhere.

Polly slid away from the bar. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, pushing her way through the crowd who were slowly pressing forward, sensing that there was more to come.

‘Calm it down, lads, or I call the MPs!’ shouted the landlord from behind the safe confines of the mahogany counter.

There was no doubt in Polly’s mind that things were not going to calm down. One war was over but another war was brewing, only this time it was between individuals, one black and one white.

Although she loved uniforms, she hated fighting. Small as she was, she pushed the door with one hefty swing of her right arm and sent it crashing back against the wall outside.

‘Hey!’

The door rebounded and to her embarrassment, she realised someone was standing immediately outside it and she’d hit him.

‘Oh, sorry, chum,’ she apologised, and was going to rush on when she thought of her own accident at the station and the Samaritan who helped her earlier that day. She turned to see a tall figure with dark eyes and coffee-coloured skin.

‘Are you all right? Have I hurt you? I didn’t mean to. Really I didn’t, it was just that there’s a fight about to start in there and I hate blokes fighting. I just can’t …’

She narrowed her eyes against tears of anguish that threatened and pushed her shoulder-length hair into a confused mass on top of her head. The man stayed oddly silent. His hand covered the lower part of his face.

‘You’ve squashed my nose,’ he said.

Frowning, she craned her head forward in order to see better.

She immediately felt contrite. ‘Oh no,’ she said, her own hand covering her mouth in embarrassment.

Above the dark hand a pair of velvet eyes looked down at her. ‘I don’t think my nose will ever be the same again. Look,’ he said as he took his hand away. ‘See? Have you ever seen such a flat, fat nose?’

For a moment the sound of his voice took her by surprise. His accent was subdued, his tonal inflections incredibly refined, especially for a black GI. She’d only heard white officers from well-heeled backgrounds talking like he did. Most of the blacks talked like the slaves in
Gone With The Wind
, or at least, that was the way it sounded to her.

She eyed his nose and although it wasn’t small, she didn’t think it really looked that bad. Still, how did she know what it usually looked like?

‘Look yer, I’m truly sorry, really I am! I ain’t got no money to get it put right, but I do know a doctor,’ she said, suddenly remembering David Hennessey-White and the piece of paper he’d given her on which he had scribbled the address and telephone number of his consulting rooms. She unzipped the brass clasp on her handbag and rummaged for the piece of paper the doctor had given her. ‘If you could go there, or if you could ring.’ She glanced up at him sheepishly. ‘That’s if you’ve got a telephone of course. Though you would, wouldn’t you, back there on the base I s’pose.’

He glanced at the pub door, from behind which shouts of violence could be heard. ‘Well, perhaps it wasn’t entirely your fault. After all it was a pretty dumb place to
stand
and smoke, wasn’t it? But,’ he said stepping forward and cupping her elbow in his hand, ‘let me take you away from all this. Besides,’ he said, glancing at the door again, ‘I’ve fought enough battles to last a lifetime.’

Normally Polly would have protested. Prejudice was not a word that she easily recognised, but she’d always thought herself a bit too good to go ‘mucking about’ with a Negro, even one in uniform. But most of the others had gone home and there wasn’t much choice.

She let him take her arm and guide her towards the Tramway Centre, where the winds of war had left piles of rubble and twisted metal in its wake.

He told her his name was Aaron. She said, ‘That’s nice.’

They ended up in a pub called the Llandoger Trow near the Old Vic in King Street, a place nearly as old as the Cat and Wheel where they’d been earlier, but larger and packed with a variety of service personnel and civilians. Perhaps because it was next to the waterfront and had catered for sailors of many nations in its time, all manner and colour of people were noisily drinking, smoking and talking while someone in the background belted out ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ on an upright piano.

Aaron found a cast-iron table and two stick-fine chairs near the piano and left Polly there while he fetched the drinks. Claustrophobia had never been a problem in Polly’s life, but all the same she found herself wishing that he would hurry back and cause a break in the crowds so she could at least see the bar. The only place it did break was around the bumbling piano player, who she watched
with
mounting fascination. Sometimes he played with only one hand, his other lifting a pint pot to his mouth, the tune shaking as much as his fingers.

By the time Aaron got back, the pianist’s singing voice had deteriorated to a garbled hotch-potch of made-up verse and broken-up words. Polly began to giggle.

‘That guy ought to be hanged for crimes against music,’ said Aaron and shook his head despairingly.

There was a sudden lull in musical rendition – if it could be called that. Polly took the opportunity to talk.

‘Where are you from?’ she asked.

‘Not from round these here parts, missy,’ he said shaking his head, his accent a comic parody of most of the Hollywood blacks she’d ever heard.

Her cheeks dimpled. She was enjoying herself. ‘I know you’re from America,’ she said, ‘but where? You’re not from Alberta are you?’

He looked stunned. ‘That’s in Canada! I’m from the United States of America, ma’am!’ and he stood up and saluted her.

A few around raised their glasses and laughed before their attention went back to the pianist. Two patrons, tired of his drunken renditions, were trying to remove him and asking for someone else to play. The pianist was holding onto the iron-framed instrument with as much tenacity as a drowning man clinging to a piece of driftwood.

Aaron shook his head and they exchanged an understanding smile. ‘I’m from Boston actually. I’m a graduate and when I get back, my father insists I recommence my law studies. He’s determined I’m going to be a lawyer.’

‘Blimey!’ said Polly and took a swig of her gin and orange to quell her surge of excitement. A lawyer. Well, hadn’t she hit the jackpot? And her a mere counter hand in Woolworths before Carol had come along. She’d never expected him to be that. Snowshoe had lived in the back of beyond and didn’t seem to have a recognisable profession. Gavin had worked in a canning factory, and Al Schumacher had been a farmer’s son. ‘Fancy being able to do something like that.’

He looked at her almost angrily then looked away as if regretting it. ‘Being able to do it is one thing. Wanting to do it is another.’

She frowned. What was he getting at? Didn’t he realise how lucky he was to get that sort of an education? ‘So you don’t want to be a lawyer?’

He smiled and looked at her sidelong, his fingers tapping impatiently but tunefully on the marble-topped table. His gaze went back to the piano where a woman with the figure of a pre-war cottage loaf was trying to tap out a few notes and singing in a high-pitched voice that fell off more keys than it hit.

‘I want to be an entertainer,’ he said getting to his feet, the shadow of his tall, well-built frame falling over her like a velvet curtain.

The crowd nearest the piano had obviously had enough of having their ears seriously abused. ‘Get off, missus!’

By the time Aaron’s shadow fell over her, she’d given up the fight.

‘God ’elp you!’ she shouted before sliding off the stool. ‘This load of shit don’t appreciate good music!’

The crowd roared. Aaron smiled at her good-naturedly. ‘Sure, damaged ear drums are a sign of the times, ma’am. Must be the sirens that did it.’

Another roar of laughter went up from those nearest the piano.

Fascinated, Polly watched as Aaron sat down on the stool, unbuttoned his jacket and rolled back his cuffs. He seemed so confident, so sure of himself. He was not her kind, and yet she found herself being drawn to him, intrigued by his elegant self-possession and exotic difference.

A low murmur ran through those nearest the piano. Hostile eyes waited to see if this singer, too, needed to be shown the door. Polly said a silent prayer for him. But she needn’t have worried. As his fingers met the keys the low murmur fell stone dead.

He sang ‘As Time Goes By’.

Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman: everyone in that bar was remembering them, reliving their fear and their love. Every single person was swaying and humming or softly singing the words. They had an empathy with all those people stuck in a bar in
Casablanca
because they’d been through a war too and, by hell, they hadn’t been acting. But they were also moved by the way Aaron was caressing the keys, making the music and singing the words they knew so well.

At the end the crowd clapped and cheered. Encores were shouted for, drinks were bought and forced upon them both, although Polly noticed that Aaron drank sparingly.

‘ ’Ere! You got something against them drinks, Yank?’ asked one pink-faced, grey-haired old chap, a checked cap slapped flatly on his head.