‘Thank God it’s Sunday,’ Jess said fervently, as Max joined them for a hasty breakfast. ‘At least we can all get a good day’s sleep – and if last night was anything to go by, we’d better make the most of it.’
Chapter Eight
Pete arrived in England on a sunny, blowy day in March. As the plane in which he was a passenger flew steadily onward, he looked down at the country about which he had heard so much and marvelled at the greenness of it; the gentle hills and valleys, the shining blue rivers and lakes. He had spent the intervening months since his South African experience in Texas and had grown accustomed to flying over vast areas of desert and great plains where wheat was grown in enormous quantities. In Texas he had been training other men to fly, but at last his request for active service had been granted and he was on his way to an airfield in Norfolk, whence he would fly sorties over enemy country, bombing their military installations, airfields and armaments factories, and trying to keep the Channel clear of enemy shipping. His first task when he landed would be to choose his crew, who would then fly together, possibly for the rest of their active service, so it behoved him to choose carefully. And then, when he was able, he meant to gratify his mother – and his Aunt Anne – by visiting the vicarage in the west country, where his grandparents and his Aunt Helen and Uncle Samuel lived. He had three cousins, two boys and a girl, but he did not expect to meet them since Paul and Matthew were in the Navy and little Nancy, named for his own mother but always known as Nan, was a land girl in Cornwall which, for all he knew, might be a hundred miles away.
The aircraft they were in was a lumbering old transport. He had fretted at its slow progress and the number of refuelling stops it needed when they had first set out, but now he was glad of it because it gave him more time to gaze down at England and to wonder about his new posting. His work in Texas had allowed him almost no free time and besides, the airfield had been many miles from the nearest town, so they had met scarcely any Texan civilians. It had been different in South Africa and he hoped it would be different in England. His mother always maintained that English people were very friendly, though she had hinted at a certain reserve. He smiled at the thought because his Aunt Anne, with her soft fair hair and rose-petal complexion, had always seemed to him typically English. She blushed upon meeting strangers or folks she did not know well, stammered when she talked on the wireless, and had never lost her English accent, though her children had picked up the Australian way of talking, probably from the stockmen and other children on the big cattle station near Cairns which his Uncle Clive managed.
The man sitting next to Pete was Sammy Wells and Pete was already determined to bag Sammy for his crew, if he possibly could. Sammy had ginger hair, pale green eyes and a lot of freckles. He had a loud voice and was a great practical joker, but he was also a very good wireless operator, and he and Pete had been together in South Africa and had always got on well. Now, Sammy jerked his elbow. ‘Where’s that, mate? I mean that great town we’re passing over. It looks a bonza place.’
Pete peered over his shoulder. ‘I dunno,’ he said doubtfully. ‘It isn’t London, that’s for sure – not big enough – and the only other big town I’ve heard much about is Liverpool.’ He peered again. ‘No, I don’t reckon it’s Liverpool because I know that’s a port, and in her last letter my mam said they’d been heavily bombed.’
‘Well, that place hasn’t been bombed,’ Sammy said decisively. ‘I’ve seen photographs in the paper of bomb damage and I reckon you wouldn’t be able to miss it.’ He glanced curiously at Pete. ‘How come you know about Liverpool, anyway? I thought your folks came from Devon.’
‘They do,’ Pete admitted. ‘But I think I told you that Ma nursed all through the First World War. Well, she had a great friend, Jess Williams, who worked with her and when the war ended they got jobs in a big hospital in Liverpool. Ma hated it; the regimentation, the way senior staff looked down on girls who had only had war experience. So she quit after a few months, came over to Australia, met my pa and married him. But she and Nurse Williams kept up a correspondence over the years – kept their friendship green you could say. Nurse Williams married and had a kid, but her husband died and she never remarried. I promised my ma I’d visit her while I’m in England, see how she’s getting along,’ he finished.
‘Well, you’d better choose a nice cloudy night to go visiting Liverpool, since you say it’s a port and the bloody Luftwaffe know that ports are the lifeblood of a country at war,’ Sammy told him. ‘I guess we’ll be bombing German ports just as soon as we’re on active service.’
Pete nodded, pushing his cap to the back of his thick white-blond hair and thinking that he would have to get a haircut as soon as he landed. He wondered if there would be a barber on the station, or whether he would have to make his way to the nearest town or village. But it didn’t really matter; on the cattle station, the blacksmith had cut everyone’s hair whenever his father felt it was necessary and his mother was a pretty good hand with the shears as well, which probably meant that if he had to he could chip away at his own fair locks. He was grinning at the thought when he became aware that the plane was losing height and he and Sammy, amongst others, got to their feet and crowded close to the windows. They could see trees, mostly still bare-branched, which seemed strange to Pete, used to the perennial foliage of the bush, and large areas of grass, criss-crossed by concrete runways. In the shade of the trees there were buildings, though he could not see what they were made of or how big they were from this angle. The plane banked sharply and he saw what must be a village, probably no more than four or five miles from the airfield. Then the aircraft righted itself and came smoothly into land, only bumping a little as the tyres met the runway and slowed to a stop. Pete picked up his rucksack and bedroll and the holdall in which he kept those of his possessions which would not fit into the rucksack. Then he and Sammy joined the queue waiting to get out on to the grass. They were the only Australians on this particular flight, probably the only passengers who had never touched down on English soil before, but the excitement after the long and wearying journey seemed to have affected everyone. There was a buzz of conversation; men laughed and joked, anticipating the meal they would presently be enjoying, for they had taken off early that morning and had been given only bottles of water and small packets of sandwiches to sustain them on the flight. Everyone crowded to the exit, jumping on to the ground and heading for the buildings which they could see in the distance. Before they had gone far, however, a large and elderly-looking bus, camouflaged in green and brown, drew up beside them and the driver, an exceedingly pretty little WAAF, with a peaked cap perched at a rakish angle on her cropped brown curls, invited them all to get aboard. ‘The Winco says he wants a word and then I’m to take you straight to the cookhouse,’ she said cheerfully. ‘It’s bangers and mash followed by treacle pud . . . you lucky people.’
Everyone laughed, even Sammy and Pete, since Tommy Trinder’s catchphrase must be known, Pete thought, to the whole of the English speaking world. ‘But what’s “bangers and mash”?’ he hissed in Sammy’s ear.
‘Dunno, but it ain’t steak and chips, worse luck,’ Sammy was beginning, when another voice cut in.
‘It’s sausages and mashed spuds, of course,’ the man behind them said, giving them a lurking grin. ‘Where was you brung up, you higgerant savages?’
‘As if you didn’t know, Hedgy,’ Pete said. Flight Lieutenant Bland had been given his nickname because of his hair, which grew in spikes all over his head, like a hedgehog’s bristles; no matter how much Brylcreem he smeared on it, it never lay flat for long. ‘And I’ll thank you not to call me a higgerant savage; my ma is a Britisher and old Sammy here is Winston Churchill’s nephew.’
Hedgy grinned unrepentantly. ‘You’re a lyin’ old sod, Blondie, but then you colonials are all the same,’ he said. ‘You’ll be asking what treacle pud is next.’ They were crowding into the bus as he spoke and he lowered his voice, glancing towards the front of the vehicle. ‘Nice welcome, eh? I’ve always fancied them neat little WAAFs and that one’s pretty as a picture. Wonder what they call her?’
‘No doubt you’ll find out soon enough,’ Pete said, as the bus lurched to a stop in front of a red brick building and the men began to pile out and to file in through the green-painted doorway. He just hoped that the Winco would not keep them too long; sausages and mash, followed by treacle pudding, suddenly sounded extremely attractive. And there would be tea; he had not tasted tea whilst in Texas and found himself looking forward to a large mug of what he understood to be the national drink.
As they were ushered into a large room full of benches, Hedgy shook his shoulder. ‘When you choose your crew, don’t forget your old pal,’ he said urgently. ‘I know I shouldn’t blow my own trumpet but if you have me for a navigator I’ll guarantee to get you out and home again, no trouble. And Solly Parr is a bloody good gunner. How about it?’
‘I’ll do my best,’ Pete promised. He liked Hedgy, who was a Londoner, and knew that little Solly Parr was a Londoner, too. But picking crews would come later; no point in jumping the gun at this stage. The three of them squeezed on to a bench and presently a tall, fair-haired man with a toothbrush moustache came and stood behind the desk and began to speak.
Life on an English air force station was about to begin.
Pete soon settled into his new life, both on the station and in the cockpit of his Wellington bomber. The Wimpeys (as the men called them) were steady, reliable aircraft and Pete’s crew soon proved to be both efficient and friendly. They even hung about together when they weren’t flying, which was always a good sign.
Pete intended to visit his relatives at the first possible opportunity. His chance came when Katie, as they called their kite, was hit by flak as they circled their target. They had limped home, and when the ground crew examined her they found damage severe enough to make replacement parts necessary.
Accordingly, the crew were told that they might go on leave for five days, and Pete instantly decided to go down to Devon to see his family and to take Sammy with him. The rest of the men were all British and had relatives or friends of their own to visit during their leave, but Sammy had no one, coming as he did from the city of Melbourne on the opposite side of the world.
The two men set off on a sunny morning at the end of April, travelling by train through the brilliant and beautiful countryside. They were both awed by the scenery through which they passed, and they had plenty of time to observe it, for the train travelled slowly. They were equally delighted when they arrived at their destination. The vicarage was a rambling old building, built of rosy red brick, set amidst beautiful rolling hills and surrounded by a wonderful garden, part of which was walled so that the fruit and vegetables which flourished there were sheltered from any but the strongest wind.
The vicar and his wife welcomed their grandson and his friend warmly. They were both in their seventies, white-haired and, at first glance, apparently frail, but Pete soon discovered that the latter was an illusion. For a start, they had eight evacuees billeted upon them, ranging in age from three to thirteen, as well as one feckless young mother who was supposed to help with the children but spent most of her time mooning about the village on the look-out for young men. Mrs Kerris, however, dealt with all matters concerning the evacuees. She cooked and mended for her temporary family, scolded them when they did wrong, handed out treats when any were available, and took them on long rambling walks through the countryside, naming every wild flower, every crop in the field and every creature they observed. She told Pete she was determined that these young cockneys, from the heart of London, should go home with a very real knowledge and love of country ways. She accompanied her charges to school every morning and met them in the afternoons so that there should be no truancy amongst them, and Pete thought that she treated the children as she must once have treated her three daughters, with love, humour and firmness.
His grandfather, slightly the older of the two at seventy-five, was equally busy. In addition to his work as vicar of the parish, he organised the older evacuees – there were three of them – to help him in the garden, where he grew all the vegetables needed for his large household, as well as a considerable surplus which he sold to a firm of wholesalers, using the money to fund a Christmas party for the children, and a pleasure trip by coach to the seaside in the summer.
The work in the garden was hard but the old man took it in his stride. ‘I’ve been fond of gardening ever since my father gave me a little plot of land to cultivate when I was no more than eight,’ he said, in his soft Devonshire burr, one bright morning at the beginning of Pete’s leave. ‘Ever since then, I’ve worked on the land every day of my life, so I reckon what may seem hard to a younger man who is new to cultivation comes easy to me.’ He smiled up at his grandson, his faded blue eyes twinkling. ‘As soon as my girls were five or six, I marked out a little plot of land for each of them, gave them a few seeds, and left them to it. Very soon, they were a real help to me. Your Uncle Samuel was never a keen gardener, but your Aunt Helen used to grow wonderful flowers in her little patch. Now, of course, she grows vegetables, and very fine ones too. Well, you ate her early potatoes for dinner last night; delicious, weren’t they?’
Pete agreed that the potatoes had been delicious and told his grandfather that his own mother, and subsequently her whole family, had profited from the old man’s early teaching. ‘When Ma came to the Walleroo there was nothing in the way of green stuff, no fruit trees or cultivated land near the homestead,’ he said. ‘But Ma could see how fertile the land near the river was when the floods went down. My father had grown maize for cattle feed but it hadn’t occurred to him to grow his own vegetables; probably he simply didn’t have the time. By the time I was three or four, Ma hadn’t just made a large vegetable garden, but she had planted a flourishing orchard. I remember her saying how she and her sisters had helped their mother to make jam and to bottle fruit and vegetables, so of course she sent away for jars with sealed caps, and within a year or two we had all the fruit and vegetables we could desire.’