Gunner Girls and Fighter Boys (21 page)

The post office was near the bike store, and on impulse she borrowed a bike, setting off on the road out of town, heading for the old hill fort, a huge circular earthworks they’d passed on their last route march. It had loomed above them, vast concentric rings of dykes and ditches, impressing her with its ancient, immovable strength. She’d looked up at the high green ramparts of the ancient defensive fort, built to keep long-dead raiders at bay, and she’d felt a connection. She knew what it was like to be part of that endeavour. The gun batteries she was becoming familiar with were no different. Whatever gun site she ended up at would only be a modern-day version of these ancient defences. Artillery, gunpowder and shells replaced stones and spears, but at heart it would be a hill fort, high and forbidding, declaring:
Thus far and no further
.

She didn’t know what had drawn her there now. But as she approached its lower slopes, she leaped off the bike, letting it fall to the ground. She began climbing, trudging up the steep slopes, one after another, up and up again, ever higher, till at the top, it seemed that all of Shropshire and half of Wales was spread out before her. Spinning, with one foot on the ground, the other propelling her round, a step she’d learned in an old English dance, she surveyed all the hills and valleys, calling silently on the spirit of the place to give her strength; imagining all the ancient defenders, rank upon rank of them on the old earthwork, each one ultimately alone, in the face of their enemy.

She stayed up on the green banks till the distant hills turned purple in the dusk, and the chill of evening got into her bones. She knew that for now, she had to concentrate on becoming the best defender she could be. Romance and love, surely that was for a time of peace? On her ride back to camp, she realized that she would not look for Bill. She had already lost one dearly loved boy to the war, and she feared that if she found Bill only to lose him too, she’d never be able to bear it. Better to leave what they had as a sweet memory of her earlier, softer self. For now, she felt one with the warrior bones buried beneath that hill fort and it would be her entire focus till the war was, one day, over.

*

‘Em! Can you believe it? We’re going home!’

Before their final training at the Anglesey firing camp began they’d been granted a few precious days’ leave. Excitement bubbled up so that May had to grab Emmy’s arm as they were jolted by the rocking of the lorry on its way to Oswestry train station.

The only contact she’d had with home since leaving had been the regular letters from her father and the parcels from her mother. Each of the parcels had made her cry – carefully saved rations of chocolate and clothes’ coupons, a crocheted cream shawl that her mother had made in the long hours spent sheltering at London Bridge Underground Station. Since losing Jack, Mrs Lloyd’s nerves had shredded, and she no longer slept in Southwark Park Road, preferring to line up half the day for a sleeping place in the deep tunnels beneath the station. Her father slept at home, but most of his nights were spent on ARP duties anyway. If May had been there, perhaps her mother might have been stronger, but May had to believe she was where she was meant to be.

‘Do you think it will look different?’ Emmy asked.

‘Well, the bombing hasn’t stopped while we’ve been away, love, so yes, I think it will.’

‘Are you going to look up Bill Gilbie?’

May hadn’t told her friend about the returned letter, out of embarrassment more than anything else. But now she did.

‘Oh, May, you never know, you might bump into him on leave.’ Either Emmy had become much more tactful or her own face had betrayed enough disappointment to deter her usual teasing. The lorry stopped outside Oswestry Station and Emmy picked up her kitbag.

‘I might,’ May said, reaching for her own, ‘but perhaps it’s just as well. We’ve got work to do, haven’t we, and anything else, well, it might just get in the way.’

‘But we’ve got to live. I think we should have a bloody good time on leave.’ Jumping down from the back of the lorry, Emmy grinned and held out a hand to May. ‘And if we meet any fellers, well, we should enjoy life while we can!’

May couldn’t argue with that. She followed Emmy and they leaped on the train with seconds to spare.

They spent half the journey planning outings for their leave, which Emmy was determined to make the most of. But long delays and an unscheduled overnight stop had taken the edge off their excitement and left them both bone-tired. When their train eventually passed along the viaduct through Bermondsey, May was able to judge just how much her home had changed. The viaduct itself had been shored up where bombs had found their targets. Battered streets, bombed into a different geography, were unrecognizable. Sometimes all that remained were small mountains of rubble or canyons of bomb craters, with a few truncated houses, shored up by timber frames. It was a sight that tightened her throat with dammed-up tears. It had never been beautiful, not unless you counted the river, but it had been home, and she had loved every sooty brick and stone of it. She had been proud of every attempt to make it look better: women like her mother whitened their steps and cleaned their windows with vinegar and newspaper, or men like her father repaired rotten window frames and dug over dusty backyards to grow a few flowers. And the council, too, had played its pioneering part, planting trees and flowers, replacing slums with new flats, public baths and health centres. All that effort and civic pride – torn down, undone, blasted by the twisted will of a raging madman across the Channel.

The destruction appeared demonic and yet upon its surface she saw ordinary life persisting. There were already long queues of women gathered in the early morning light, waiting patiently to buy oranges or fish, whatever foodstuffs or material had suddenly made a reappearance in the shops. Then, as they neared the station, from the high viaduct she could see clear to the docks where a large vessel was being unloaded by cranes, and she glimpsed the river, visible through gaps made by destroyed warehouses. As the train shunted to a halt and they were held on the viaduct, waiting for a troop train to pull out of the station, she looked down from their position high above the street at crowds of suited office workers, picking their way over ruins, following the well-worn route across London Bridge to the City. She realized that beneath the fallen stones was an invisible magnetic pathway, drawing them into their daily routine, in spite of the surrounding devastation, and May had learned in her army training how strong a force that could be. Routine kept her steady at the predictor, as gunfire erupted around her, routine kept her mind from her mother’s distress, routine kept her marching when she’d rather be weeping, and routine got her up in the morning with reveille when she’d rather stay with her head under the covers because she’d cried half the night mourning her brother.

Finally the signal changed and they were allowed to pull into the station. The machine-gun rat-a-tat of countless carriage doors being flung open, banging back against the carriages, announced their arrival like a hundred-gun salute. Tommies shouldering kitbags, RAF boys and sailors leaped down first, eager to get into London and start their leave in earnest. May and Emmy stepped down into the mêlée and were swept along the platform. After they’d passed through the gate, Emmy offered her a cigarette and lit a match, cupping it with her hand. May dipped her head, and as she did so her eye was caught by the figure of a woman at the next platform. She was wrapped in the arms of a soldier who had dropped his kitbag to the floor. It was a normal sight, these days: couples, oblivious to their surroundings, not caring who witnessed what might be their last goodbye. The couple’s kiss seemed endless to May, as if they were gathering all that they were and passing it to each other for safe keeping. She had time to straighten up, inhaling and exhaling a long thread of smoke, before Emmy noticed her stare. Her eyes followed May’s.

‘Jesus,’ she whispered, ‘is that your sister?’

Late Spring 1941

‘Come on, Em,’ May said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Picking up her kitbag, she hurried for the stairs leading down into Tooley Street. Neither of them spoke until they reached the bus stop opposite.

‘Blimey, May, are you going to say anything?’

‘To Peggy?’

‘No, to George!’

‘I don’t know. I can’t believe she’s done this to George. He idolizes her.’

‘Might be best to leave it. What he don’t know can’t hurt him, can it?’

‘He’d do anything for her, though. It
was
Peggy, wasn’t it? I didn’t just imagine it?’

‘Gawd, you’re like a tit in a trance! Come on!’

Emmy pulled her on to the back board of the bus, which had arrived without May even noticing. She followed her friend blindly along the crowded lower deck till they found two seats at the front. Slumping down, kitbag perched on her lap, she replayed the scene on the station – Peggy’s head tilting as the young soldier kissed her, his hand pressing into the small of her back. She had seen her sister’s closed eyes, her rapt expression. It didn’t look like the Peggy she knew. She’d always seemed so unsentimental, sometimes almost cold. For May it had been like witnessing some passionate stranger; perhaps the best course of action would be to pretend Peggy was just that, a stranger, and to say nothing at all.

Finally, she said to Emmy, ‘It’d finish Mum off if she found out. She’d never forgive Peggy for this. You know how Mum loves George.’

‘Well,
she
might love him, but it don’t look like Peggy does.’

Emmy’s blunt statement was too much for her. ‘She does, though!’ May protested. And then she remembered scenes, conversations with Peggy, that told a different tale. Perhaps her sister had been less happy to play the role of cosseted princess than everyone had assumed. May remembered her sister’s joy when she’d came to tell her she was going back to work, and how proud she’d been of her WVS uniform.

‘I wish I’d never seen them.’

‘Well, act as if you didn’t then,’ Emmy said, with her usual practical refusal to be brought low by anything. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘it’s none of your business, is it? Best keep your nose out, love, even if it is your sister.’

‘Perhaps.’ May rubbed knuckles into her tired eyes. Their train should have arrived late the previous evening, but instead they’d had to spend the night in a siding near Reading and May hadn’t slept.

‘My stop next. Listen, don’t let it spoil your leave,’ Emmy said. ‘We’re still going dancing next week, ain’t we?’

‘Of course!’ May said, more brightly than she felt. But what would be the point in moping at home? Emmy got off at Grange Road, waving to May as the bus moved off. She leaned her head against the window, giving into the swaying motion, her eyelids drooping as they passed the familiar shops in the Blue. Grants the toyshop, with its front boarded up, no kids peering in through the windows today. She smiled to herself. Then the Home and Colonial, where she’d sheltered on her first time caught out in an air raid. It seemed so long ago. Then the Blue Anchor pub and finally, where the railway viaduct crossed the road, the patched-up John Bull Arch, the very name on her lips, as she whispered it, bringing back all the heaviness of loss. She closed her eyes tight against the memory. Tiredness and the rocking of the bus must have caused her to doze off, for she narrowly avoided missing her stop.

When the clippie called out, ‘Southwark Park!’ she stumbled off the bus, banging her kitbag against standing passengers, her legs weak, her strength all but drained. She hadn’t felt so tired in all those solid nights and days of training. Trudging towards her house, she tried to push Peggy to the back of her mind, hoping to regain the sense of excitement she’d felt when she’d started her journey. She was nearly home, she told herself, nearly home!

*

Her father opened the door.

‘What sort of bird am I?’ she asked, falling into his outstretched arms, letting him pull her into a tight embrace.

‘It’s my little homing pigeon!’ he said, with a catch in his voice, squeezing her till she laughed. ‘You’d better let me go, Dad, I can’t breathe!’

May peered down the passage. ‘Where’s Mum?’ She looked searchingly at her father.

‘She’ll be down later, love. She don’t get much kip of a night. Here, let me carry that.’

He took the kitbag from her and she didn’t bother protesting, even though last week she’d had a try at lifting some shells, for emergency drill, and she was sure they must have weighed five times her kitbag.

‘Look at you!’ her father said, once she was seated in the kitchen with a cup of tea in front of her. ‘You look…’ he searched for the word, ‘older.’

‘Oh thanks, Dad!’ Tact had never been his strong point.

‘No, I don’t mean older, I mean, well… grown up.’ But although he was smiling, his eyes looked sad.

May bent down to retrieve a tin from her kitbag. ‘Here. Cakes to go with the tea,’ she said, smiling.

‘Cakes?’ Her father examined the tin.

‘Pontefract cakes, but they’re really liquorice.’

‘For me?’

‘Yes, for you – but you can share them with Mum if you’re feeling generous!’

They were both chewing on the liquorice when her mother came in.

‘You’re home! Why didn’t no one get me up?’

May spun round and a small cry of alarm burst from her at the sight of her much-changed mother. She jumped up, hoping that Mrs Lloyd had taken her cry for one of surprise. As she enfolded the woman in her arms, she tried to hide her shock at her mother’s appearance. She had faded, wasting away in just a couple of months, so that she seemed half the size May remembered. As May hugged her, she felt her shoulder blades, bony wings protruding through her mother’s wrap-around pinny. The pinafore, a tight corset-like covering, normally announced that Carrie Lloyd was ready for all manner of work: cooking; cleaning; washing or ironing; caring for whoever needed it. It was just as much a uniform as May’s own khaki, and proclaimed, like Joe Capp’s sign, that she was carrying on business as usual. But today the floral-print pinny hung upon her bones like a sail in a windless ocean; her mother, it was clear, was still becalmed on a sea of grief.