We'll Meet Again (20 page)

She opened a gate in a wall and found herself in another garden, where neat rows of Brussel sprouts and winter cabbage stood in otherwise bare earth. On the far side was a greenhouse and a shed. She walked towards them. She could see someone in the greenhouse and supposed it was a gardener. He came out as she approached.

‘Ronnie Barlow,’ she said. ‘I thought it was you I saw in the lane. What are you doing in the Earl’s garden?’

‘I work here on Saturdays and in the school holidays.’

‘Work? Ronnie Barlow working? Don’t make me laugh.’

‘I do too and you’ve no call to mock. You’re no better’n me, even if you do hob-nob with the gentry. You even talk like them now.’

‘I’m not hob-nobbing, Lady Prudence is my friend.’

‘Does she know where you come from?’

‘Course she does, but I bet the Earl doesn’t know the truth about you.’

‘What truth would you be meaning, Sheila Phipps?’

Sheila Phipps was a slum child just like himself and she knew the kind of life he had led before the war, with a father notorious for being in and out of prison and a mother who had the reputation of being ‘easy’ whenever her husband was banged up. He had learnt that very early in his young life, just as he had learnt that anything not closely guarded was fair game. He had been up before the magistrates a couple of times himself but had been let off with a caution on account of his age and the fact that he had had no one to guide him.

He had guidance now in the shape of Mr and Mrs Potts, Auntie Jean he called her, and Tom Green and Miss Green, who was Tom’s daughter. They had shown him another, better way. It didn’t mean he was averse to making a quick profit, but that was altogether different from taking things that didn’t belong to him. He hadn’t done that for ages. But mud sticks and if everyone in the village heard about his dad, they would all turn against him. He might even be sent back to his mother.

‘Your pa is a jailbird and you’re none too honest yourself,’ she said. ‘Like father, like son. I heard about you stealing things from his lordship’s garden. Is that what you’re doing now?’

‘No, it ain’t. And I ain’t like Pa. That’s a lie. If you say one word about Pa, I’ll …’

‘You’ll what?’

He floundered, searching his memory for something to hold against her. ‘I’ll tell about you and Johnnie kissing. I saw you. I was watching through the window. That’s what tarts do.’

About to ask him what he knew about tarts, she desisted, remembering his mother’s reputation. ‘There’s nothing secret about that,’ she said, laughing. ‘Everyone was doing it and you should have been in bed.’

‘You won’t say anything, will you?’ His cockiness left him suddenly and he was pleading. ‘I ain’t done nothin’ bad, I swear. I like it here. I don’ want to be sent home again.’

‘I won’t say anything. Just so long as you behave, you can keep your secret.’

She left him and made her way back to the house. Later she would see Johnnie again. Oh, she knew what they said about Yanks and the girls who went out with them, but that didn’t apply to Johnnie. Anyway, he was half English.

‘Johnnie, how lovely to see you.’ Martha Fletcher dragged him into the little cottage and hugged him to her ample bosom. There were tears in her eyes. ‘Come on in. Make yourself at home. It’s been so long and we have such a lot to talk about.’

He disentangled himself from her embrace and followed her down a narrow hall and through a door into a sitting room. It was so tiny and low-ceilinged it made him feel like an awkward giant. There was a good fire in the grate with a rocking chair beside it from which a little man with white hair rose to greet him.

‘He’s here, Percy,’ she said. ‘He’s here at last.’

‘So I see.’ He held out his hand for Johnnie to shake. ‘Welcome, my boy, welcome. Come and sit down. Martha will have some tea ready in the shake of a lamb’s tail. Did you have a good journey? The trains are terrible, I know …’

‘I didn’t come by rail, I drove up,’ Johnnie said. ‘I wanted to take my time and see the countryside. My major let me have a jeep. I parked it outside. Is it OK there?’

‘I should move it round the back if I were you or the kids will
be clambering all over it. There’s a farm gate. I’ll show you. Let me find my boots and a coat. It’s a bit nippy out there.’ He looked Johnnie up and down. ‘You look well wrapped up. Don’t s’pose you’re worried about clothing coupons.’

‘No.’

The jeep was soon parked in a field behind the house where Grandfather Fletcher kept a couple of pigs and a few hens. ‘Keeps us in eggs and bacon,’ he said. ‘Like eggs and bacon, do you?’

‘Sure do.’

Once back in the house, they divested themselves of their outer garments and settled in front of the fire. Martha brought in a tea tray and a plate of cakes. ‘Made fresh this morning,’ she said, offering the plate to Johnnie.

He took one. ‘I don’t want to deprive you of your rations, Grandmother,’ he said. ‘I’ve brought some things in my bag for you.’

‘Bless you,’ she said.

He fetched his bag from the hall where he had dropped it and took out tins of corned beef, peaches and condensed milk, a packet of butter, a jar of jam and another of maple syrup, a box of chocolates and two oranges, all of which he put on the table.

‘My goodness, manna from heaven,’ she said. ‘We haven’t seen anything like this since the start of the war. Thank you, thank you, but you didn’t have to do it, you know. We would have welcomed you without anything. Our grandson from America.’

The old man laughed. ‘She’ll talk about her grandson from America ’til the cows come home to anyone who’ll listen.’

‘You’ve grown into a fine young man,’ she said. ‘So handsome too. No wonder Freda is so proud of you. You must tell us all about yourself. Freda sent us photos of you growing up and the house and your pony, but her letters have become more and more
infrequent since the war started. I am sure she writes, I expect the letters get lost.’

‘I don’t get to hear very often either,’ he said.

‘She’s all right, isn’t she?’ the old lady asked. ‘What with your father dying and you growing up so fast and going into the air force …’

‘She is managing just fine,’ he said. ‘She has lots of friends, they visit with her and she visits with them.’

‘At least she doesn’t have to worry about the Blitz. We’re in the country, but we get air raid warnings and hear the bombers flying over. Now and again a stray bomb drops nearby, but we’ve been lucky, not like London and Liverpool and places like that. I wouldn’t like to live there.’

‘Are you in bombers?’ Percy asked.

‘Sure am.’

‘Then you’re giving them what they deserve.’

‘Yes.’

‘After tea, we’ll take a stroll to the Nag’s Head, if you like,’ he said. ‘With a bit o’ luck, they’ll have some beer.’

Johnnie had been disgusted by English beer when he first arrived, but as there wasn’t anything else to be had he was acquiring a taste for it. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Anything you say.’

‘How long can you stay?’ his grandmother asked, refilling his tea cup. That was another thing he was learning to like, a good English brew.

‘Two more days, if it’s no trouble to you. I promised I’d meet my crew in London later in the week. They’ve gone to see the sights.’ There had been an outcry when he told them he wasn’t going to London with them and was proposing to travel round the country and go to a village called Clowne which they thought was a huge joke. When they realised he was serious, they had made
him promise to join them for the last few of days of their leave. He was going to meet up with Martin and Vernon at the Grosvenor, whose ballroom had been turned into a US officers’ mess. After they had been round the sights, he was going to lose them and meet with Sheila.

‘Of course it’s no trouble,’ she said. ‘Glad to have you. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.’

‘Lot of bomb damage in London,’ his grandfather said, putting a spill to the fire to light his pipe. ‘Everything sandbagged up and the art treasures taken away for safety.’ He sighed. ‘Still, I suppose there are still places to see. The theatres and music halls are still open, I believe. I haven’t been since I retired.’

Johnnie didn’t know how he was going to broach the subject of his birth mother and realised he would have to be patient and let the conversation take its course. He was quizzed about his life in America and how different it was from life in England and the words they used which had different meanings and caused confusion or hilarity. They wanted to know about his schooling and what he intended to do after the war.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I could go back to being a locomotive engineer like Pops, but I might do something different.’

‘You’re not married, I know,’ his grandmother said. ‘Your mother would have told us if you were, but have you got a girlfriend?’

‘Several,’ he said, laughing. ‘Though I have met an English girl I kinda like. I’m going to meet her in London after I’ve seen the boys and she’s going to show me round her place.’ The mission on New Year’s Day had been the last one for a week. The weather had turned nasty and half the bombers hadn’t found the target and there had been collisions and crashes due to poor visibility. Flying had been stopped for the rest of the week. He had used the time to
good effect, going for walks and cycle rides with Sheila. Sometimes Lady Prudence and Major Drake made up a foursome, when it was followed by a meal at Longfordham Hall. He was beginning to feel quite at home there. The week had come to an end all too soon, but he had been writing to Sheila at a Foreign Office address since then. He had no idea where she actually lived. He gathered the place and what she did was secret. It didn’t bother him.

‘Would you stay in England? You know if …’

‘Don’t think I would. I know I was born here, but I’m American through and through.’

‘We hoped, when your father died, your mother might come back here to live,’ she said, a little wistfully.

‘She’s like me, American as pumpkin pie.’

‘That’s enough, Martha,’ her husband said. ‘Freda won’t come back and you know it.’

‘Why?’ Johnnie asked. Was this the moment to ask the questions that plagued him?

‘Leave it, boy. Martha, how’s that meal coming along?’

She rose and left the room. The old man watched her go and turned to Johnnie. ‘You know you were adopted?’ He kept his voice low.

‘Yes, Mom and Pops told me when I was a kid, but they didn’t say anything more except my real parents didn’t want me.’

‘And you are wondering why?’

Yes. It sounds disloyal …’

‘It is that.’

‘I don’t mean to be. I couldn’t have had better parents. I loved them both and I would never do anything to hurt Mom. It’s why I wouldn’t push her, but I’m kinda restive about it. Why didn’t my real mother want me?’

‘Sometimes you have to do wrong to do right,’ the old man
said. ‘There’s nothing to be gained by raking up the past.’

‘Now you have fired me up. Who did wrong? Was it you?’

‘No, but we condoned what was done. For your sake, boy, only for your sake. Let sleeping dogs lie. I can hear Martha calling us to go for our tea.’ He stood up. ‘Not another word, d’you hear?’

‘I hear.’

He followed the old man into the next room, as tiny as the first, where a table was laid for three and Martha was putting steaming dishes onto it. ‘Roast chicken,’ she said. ‘And all the trimmings. We saved the bird until you came.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘It must have thought its luck was in when it escaped at Christmas time.’

They talked of many things as they ate, but did not broach the subject that was eating away at him. ‘Do wrong to do right’? What had the old man meant by that? Had his adoption been illegal? Had he simply been handed over? Had he been stolen? What would the consequences of that be in English law? His grandfather had titillated his curiosity and then forbidden him to mention it again. But he couldn’t let it rest. If his grandparents wouldn’t tell him, where else could he go?

He waited until they were in the Nag’s Head with glasses of warm beer in front of them. The British didn’t seem to go in for refrigerators. ‘Grandpa,’ he said. ‘I know you said not to mention it again, but I’ve just got to know. Who was my mother? I mean the woman who gave birth to me.’

The old man puffed on his pipe while Johnnie waited for an answer. ‘I wish I’d never said anything now. Better to be ignorant. In any case I don’t know the whole story. Your father kept it to himself.’

‘You mean the man I call Pops or the one who made me?’

‘Same thing.’

‘I don’t understand. Are you saying Pops is not only my adopted father, he is my real father?’

‘That’s about the size of it.’

He was shocked into silence for several seconds. This was leading up to be a real riddle. He smiled suddenly. ‘When I was a kid, people often used to say I looked like him and we used to laugh about it.’

‘You are like him.’

‘But Mom’s not my real mother?’

‘Course she’s real. She’s had you since you were three weeks old and you couldn’t have asked for better.’

‘I know that, it’s not in dispute. But what about before I was three weeks old?’

‘You’ll have to ask someone else about that.’ He paused. ‘Not Martha.’

‘OK, who?’

‘Mayhap your other grandmother.’

‘Other grandmother?’ This was news to him. ‘Who is she and where can I find her?’

‘You sure you want to know? You might be sorry.’

‘OK, so I’ll be sorry. You can’t send me back to the war not knowing. You never know …’ He stopped, letting the remainder of the sentence hang in the air.

‘I’ll have to think about it. Ask me again before you leave. Now, are you going to get the next round in, or not?’

Johnnie knew he would get no further, not then. He rose and took their glasses back to the bar to have them refilled.

She closed the book and put it away in her box, carefully locking it. She couldn’t bear the thought of her aunt seeing it again. Ever since they had come back from Longfordham, her mockery had become worse. It would be awful if she found out about Johnnie. She put on a thicker cardigan as she went downstairs to join her aunt.

It had been cold on the destroyer as it ploughed through the broken ice of the Arctic, but that cold had been nothing compared to what Chris was feeling on shore. Lief and Gunnar, both strong, weather-beaten men, had provided him with warm clothes and several blankets and hidden him in a hut on the mountain. Every few days they brought food and drink. The language was a great barrier, he could not ask them what they intended to do with him and would not have understood their answer if he could. There was a village down by the shoreline, which, in the short summer months, was free of snow, but most of the time it was covered in a blanket of white. How many people down there knew of his existence, he did not know, but he had seen Germans patrolling on shore and their motor boats in the fjord. He understood that was why his saviours dare not have him in their homes.