A Future Arrived (44 page)

“Now, now, lad … be respectful of age and rank. Had visitors from the back-room boys. Chaps from Intelligence—perish the word. Bit of nonsense about installing some sort of recording device in the control center to capture the Huns' conversation over their R.T.s. Pawky lot, I must say. Pale-faced sods. One of them female, a corking WAAF, all blond hair and limpid blue eyes. Asked about you.”

“Damn! I missed her.”

“Still here, old boy. Over in ops.”

He was out of the mess and running toward the group operations building, a squat concrete structure surrounded by a wall of sandbags. Valerie was there, standing with three officers he had never seen before. Squadron Leader Powell was talking to them, directing most of his remarks to her in his most charming London-barrister style.

“Oh, hello, Ramsay,” he said. “I understand you know the lovely sergeant.”

“Yes, sir. Old school chums.” He grinned like a fool at her and she smiled back.

“Ramsay is the first man in our bunch to get a confirmed kill. Had a bit of luck off Margate last month. Splashed a Heinkel.”

“Oh, I say,” one of the Intelligence officers remarked in a high, girlish voice. “Jolly good for you.”

The Intelligence officers had to return to Bushey Heath and Derek walked with Valerie to the car.

“You didn't tell me you'd shot down a plane.”

“I have better things to talk about on the phone. When are we going to get together again?”

“I have Sunday off.”

“Which Sunday?”

“Tomorrow's Sunday.”

He stopped walking and impulsively took her hand. “But that's wonderful. So do I. Thank God my section had today's duty. What would you like to do?”

“Something simple and restful. A day in the country.”

The officers were at the car, one of them looking back. “Whenever you're ready, Sergeant.”

“I'll think of some place,” he said as she hurried away.

V
ALERIE WAS ONE OF
six WAAFs billeted in a lovely old house near the edge of the common. It was owned by an elderly widow who took a motherly view of “her girls” and worried more about the possibility of their being seduced by swinish soldiers than she did about the war with Hitler. She was standing by the drawing-room windows and gave Derek a long, hard look as he came up the drive on his motorbike. He had spoken to her many times over the telephone when calling Valerie—she always answered—and he gave her a cheery wave. She did not wave back. Not so three girls leaning out of an upper window, wearing bathrobes, one of them with her hair in curlers.

“Show our Val a good time!”

He grinned up at them. “Do my best, girls.”

Valerie came out of the house wearing a plaid skirt and a pale green sweater, her lovely hair covered with a silk bandanna. She carried a small wicker basket.

“What's that?” he asked.

“Sandwiches, cheese, apples from the orchard, ginger beer, and a bottle of Guinness. Gift from Mrs. Lamb.”

He waved again to the elderly woman and this time she waved back—a barely perceptible raising of the hand.

“Odd sort of woman.”

“Rigid and old fashioned … with a warm heart.” She got gingerly into the sidecar. “I trust you'll keep to a modest speed. I'm not used to this.”

“Hey,” he said, kicking at the starter. “That doesn't sound like the Valerie I remember. You would have done handstands in that bucket at seventy miles an hour!”

“If you take a close look, Derek, you'll see that I've grown up a bit. I no longer fall out of trees.”

“That's good. I thought we might climb one.”

“Where are we going, by the way?”

He kicked the engine into stuttering life. “Back to school.”

A large moving van pulled out of the drive of Burgate House as they approached. Another one, nearly filled, was parked in front of the school, the ramp down and two burly men carrying in desks and chairs. Marian and three boys, ranging in age from ten to fifteen, stood beside her watching the proceedings. They all hurried up to the motorbike as it came to a stop.

“Valerie!” Marian cried, holding out her arms. “Little Valerie! I couldn't believe it when Derek phoned and said he was bringing you down.” She hugged her tightly as Valerie climbed out of the sidecar. “But not
little
Val any longer!”

“I've grown a bit, Marian. But you … you remain the same. Lovely as I remember you.”

“Oh, dear, you are kind. I look a mess.”

“But what's going on? Not closing the school, I hope.”

“Moving it, dear. This is the final load. The War Office is taking it over for the duration for some secret reason of its own. We're moving into a sprawling old house now in Dorset. Lulworth Manor. A view of the sea. Quite pleasant.”

The smallest of the boys stood awkwardly on one foot and stared shyly at Derek.

“Hello, Bertie,” Derek said. “Cat got your tongue?”

“No, sir,” Bertie said. “May I touch your wings?”

“How polite you are! You used to just reach out and grab.”

“Oh, he's changed,” his cousin said. “Haven't you, Bertie?”

“One of our major success stories,” Marian laughed. “And you're another, Derek.”

Marian got into her car with the boys after the second van had rumbled off down the drive. “Enjoy yourselves. The place is yours for the day. Just leave the front door keys under the mat for the army. And do
please
drop me a line from time to time, Val. Lulworth Manor … Lulworth, Dorset.”

“I will.”

They stood together and watched the car drive away, then Derek removed the wicker basket and a canvas bag from the bike.

“Let me get out of uniform and into some old clothes. Where shall we picnic. The orchard or Leith Wood?”

“Wood … a good, long walk.”

She enjoyed her job, she said as they walked across the fields toward the high meadows and the woods. The only thing that she did not like about it was where she did it—deep underground in a warren of concrete rooms. “I burrow like a mole and you soar like an eagle.”

“There are times when I'd gladly exchange places.”

“What's it really like, Derek?”

“Oh, as the saying goes … days of pure boredom interspersed with moments of sheer terror.”

“When did you shoot down that bomber?”

“The day I met you in the pub.”

“Why didn't you say anything?”

“I'm not sure. Not very proud of it, I expect. Killing five or six chaps. Nazis, out to kill me … I know all that. Still …”

“You don't have to explain.” She held on to his hand the rest of the way.

“Remember this glade?” he asked as they sat on the grass and opened the basket.

She looked around, nodding. “Marian's party for the school … the spot where I fell out of the tree.”

“Care to try again?”

“No, thank you very much.” She lay back in the grass and stared at the trees soaring toward the blue sky. “So peaceful here. Impossible to think there's a war going on.”

“Hear anything of your husband?”

“Nothing. Half the French army is in blind retreat I understand. Total collapse. What one would expect from an army that could give Raymond a captaincy. Poor France.”

They walked back to the school in the slanting rays of the afternoon sun—sunburnt, bramble scratched, and content. The house was cool and dim. Quite a few things had been left behind and they found a kettle, cups, a slightly cracked teapot, and a packet of tea in the kitchen. The gas and electricity were still on and Valerie made tea.

“We must explore,” Valerie said. “I do hope they didn't take Lenin's carpet.”

“Of course they must have taken it. What would the soviet do without it?”

“The soviet!” She hugged her teacup. “God, does that send me back. Their trusted, ever-faithful messenger. I'd love to see that room again before we go.”

“Come on, then. Finish your tea.”

It was at the top of the house. Unchanged. The nursery wallpaper still on the walls. Lenin's carpet was gone, but a chair and an old horsehair couch with no back remained.

“So many memories,” she said wistfully, touching the wallpaper. “I wonder where they are now? Jameson and Agnes Heath-Jones. And remember Gowers?”

“He's a solicitor. I ran into him one day in London and we had a drink.” The fading sun streaming through the windows touched her hair, golden yellow, luminous as a corona. “You're a beautiful woman, Valerie.”

She looked at him with her sad little smile. “Odd hearing you call me that. Odder still to think of being a woman at all in this place. Just the Pest and Fat Chap waiting for the soviet to come up the stairs from tea.”

He touched the softness of her cheek, fingers lingering, trailing the delicate jaw. “I can't think of you that way.”

“Nor I you … now.”

Her body against him, hands clenching his back. Her lips were parted, pressing against his own with an eager intensity. He felt drunk, light-headed and reeling as he moved with her to the couch.

Blue and pink. The nursery at the top of the stairs. Rabbits and squirrels in stately dance across the papered walls. Children at their games. How exquisite she was with the sun touching her body. Ivory and spun gold. The firm, coral-tipped breasts. The sun set in burnt orange across the windows and she moved languidly on top of him, resting her head in the hollow of his shoulder. He stroked the orange velvet of her back and looked at the sunglowed sky that was so beautiful and so deadly and he thought—God—God … please hold this moment forever … never let it pass.

T
HE FIVE POILUS
and the tall Senegalese corporal had been crouching in the culvert all afternoon, and only the Senegalese was willing to join Albert in leaving it at dusk.

“The planes will be back,” one of the French infantrymen said.

“It's getting dark,” Albert told him.

“The Boche are like cats.”

There was no point in arguing with them. Their nerves had been shattered by the Stukas and he couldn't blame them. They were safe from the bombing inside the concrete tunnel and they were ready to surrender anyway. All of them, except the Senegalese, had thrown away their weapons. The ebony-black corporal slung his rifle over his shoulder and followed Albert out of the culvert and up the steep embankment to the road. It stretched away in the dark orange glow of the sunset like a road leading to hell. Shattered and burning trucks were littered around the craters along with the bodies of men and bomb-slaughtered horses. The eastern horizon glowed dull red from the flames of a burning village.

The corporal squatted on the road and turned his map to the flickering light of a blazing truck. His steel helmet was too small for his head and sat on top of it like a pot.

“Rheims. What is left of my regiment should be there. Yes. Rheims, I think.” He spoke good French with a musical lilt.

“Give me the directions for Arras,” Albert said, adjusting the pack a major of Chasseurs had given him to hold his gear and portable typewriter.

“That way,” he said, pointing a long finger to the west. “But I would not try for it, man. Damn Boche get you quick.”

“I don't think so. They won't move their tanks at night.”

“What is good at Arras?”

“The English should be there.”

The corporal stood up, drew a revolver from the pocket of his greatcoat, and offered it to Albert butt first. “Kill Boche.”

He shook his head. “Thank you, but no. I mustn't carry a gun.”

The man looked mystified and returned the weapon to his pocket. “May your God go with you then, English man.”

He missed the Senegalese as he struck out on his own, missed the company of any man who had a gun and seemed eager to use it. He pitied the German who ran into the huge corporal in the dark. He took the right fork of the road, walking carefully around the interlocking bomb craters that the Stukas had created early that afternoon when they had first plummeted on the retreating French column. The craters stank of high explosives and death. There had been two trucks filled with men on this spot when the bombs had slapped into it like bullets into a bull's-eye.

The narrow country road met the highway running south from Valenciennes and he could hear the movement along it long before he reached the junction. It was a sound that he had heard often during the past few days and hoped never to hear again. The sound of thousands of people fleeing from a battle that was quite impossible to flee from. They came in limousines and rattling Citroëns, in lumbering horse-drawn farm carts … on foot pushing wheelbarrows or baby carriages piled high with their belongings. He had even seen one man staggering along with a grandfather clock strapped to his bent back. This stream was no different from the others, except poorer. No limousines. No cars of any sort. Just weary people pushing carts through the darkness. He threaded his way through them and continued west on a silent, empty road. Shortly after midnight he reached a village that had been hastily abandoned and thoroughly looted, the cobbled street littered with bits of clothing, bed sheets, and broken crockery. He drank some water from the village pump, the handle making an unearthly squeal in the darkness. As he hurried on, a shape emerged from the shadows of a house at the end of the street.