Our Yanks (24 page)

‘Poor guy.'

‘My brother, Roger, used to help him, before he got called up in the army.'

‘I didn't know you had a brother. Where's he?'

‘He was in Africa. We're not sure where he is now. Somewhere in the Mediterranean. He's the apple of Dad's eye. He's going to take over the bakery business one day, like with you and your dad. Dad's got it all planned. He took over from his dad and his dad took over from
his
dad, and his dad's dad took over from
his
dad. He's lucky Roger doesn't mind the idea.'

‘How about you? What's he got planned for you, then?'

She shrugged. ‘Dunno really. I think he'd like me to go on working in the bakehouse so's I'm under his eye, and then marry somebody posh and settle down.'

‘Posh? What's that mean?'

‘Well-to-do. You know . . .'

‘Swanky, I guess. Is that what you want?'

‘I don't want to go on working in the bakehouse for ever.'

‘No reason why you should.'

‘I don't want to settle down either,' she said. ‘Not yet. I'd like to do something else first. Work in a dress shop in Peterborough, maybe. With nice things. Pretty things. Not always bread and cakes.'

He said slowly, ‘Think you'd ever like to come to America? When the war's over.'

‘Maybe. Not over yet, though, is it? Not by a long chalk. Want another cake?'

He shook his head. ‘Cigarette?'

‘Yes, please.'

He lit it for her. She'd got used to handling cigarettes now; she could do all the Bette Davis bits, blowing the smoke up in the air and flicking the ash away.

‘What's an assistant crew chief, Chester? You've never told me exactly.'

‘Well, each aircraft has a three-man crew to look after it. Service and maintain it. Make sure everything's working properly and get it ready for the pilot before he takes off. There's a crew chief, then his assistant – that's me – and an armourer – that's Hal. We've got our names painted on the aircraft, up in front just below the cockpit. Kind of gives me a kick to think of my name going into combat even if the rest of me's stuck back at the base, down on the ground.'

‘Who's the pilot?'

‘Lieutenant Mochetti. He's got his name painted on, too. He's a real nice guy and a heck of a good pilot. Three kills. Real tough. We take care of his aircraft for all his tour. Unless he goes missing.'

‘If he's killed, you mean?'

‘Not necessarily. Sometimes they're shot down but they're OK and get taken prisoner-of-war. We've had a lot in the Group get killed, though.'

She shivered. ‘Don't they get scared?'

‘Guess they must be. Sometimes there'll be a pilot who'll make some excuse and turn back – he'll say the engine's rough or something like that – but mostly they go. Lieutenant Mochetti, our guy, always flys the mission. He never turns back.'

‘He must be brave.'

‘Sure is. So are most of the pilots. They're a great bunch.'

‘So are the RAF.'

‘Sure they are. We know that. And they've been fighting and dying a lot longer.'

She took another puff and blew the smoke away. ‘Remember when you first came into the bakehouse, Chester? And you bought all those rock buns? It was ever so funny really.'

‘I'd never seen a girl like you, Sally. You knocked me out.'

She giggled. ‘Did I?'

‘Sure did.' He looked at her from where he was sitting, leaning against the willow, cigarette dangling between his fingers. ‘Never felt about a girl the way I feel about you.'

‘Go on . . . There must be lots of pretty girls in Paradise.'

‘None like you.'

‘I don't believe you. I bet you Yanks say that to all the girls. Bet you've got a girl back home.'

‘You know darned well I haven't.'

She pursed her lips in an O to blow some more smoke upwards. ‘How do I know?'

‘Thought I'd shown you.'

‘Oh,
that
 . . . that doesn't mean anything.'

‘Does to me.'

She shrugged. ‘Does it?'

He stubbed out his cigarette and came over and took hers away from her. ‘Guess I'll have to show you some more.' He took hold of her by the shoulders. She could see he was quite upset. After a bit, he said, ‘Believe me now?'

She shook her head, teasing him again. ‘Not really.'

He pushed her down onto the grass and kissed her some more; lifted his head and looked at her with his deep blue eyes. ‘How about now?'

‘That all?'

‘Jesus, Sally . . .'

Next thing, she was flat on her back and he was kissing her all over her face and neck, and soon he started undoing all the buttons down the front of her blouse, one by one. She could hear him breathing ever so fast and feel the grass tickling her, and his hands touching her all over. Then his mouth, too, warm on her bare skin. She didn't try to stop him. She felt as though she was melting away inside. She wasn't going to lose her nerve like Doris. She wanted Chester to do it. She wanted to know what it was like. She thought: I do like him. I like him a lot. He's gorgeous. And then she thought: just wait till I tell Doris.

In Miss Cutteridge's opinion, the month of May was the loveliest of the year. Trees loaded with blossom, spring flowers in the gardens, the hedgerows a foaming mass of hawthorn and elderflower, the banks and verges dotted with primroses, celandine, cowslips, lady's smock, jack-in-the-pulpit, cow parsley. Bluebells carpeting the woods, the mallards hatching their young by the brook, birds singing, the evenings drawing out: a joy to the eye, the ear, the nose and the heart after the long, grey winter.

It was also the month when she turned her attention to the garden. Before the war she had employed a man on one day a week to do the heavy work and to cut the lawn, but he had been called up long ago, back in 1940. Since then she had struggled along on her own and every year the garden had become more and more like a jungle. She could manage cutting the grass with the lawnmower, and the rose-pruning and most of the weeding but the shrubs had got away from her, growing so tall and so wild that she could no longer reach to keep them in any order, and wild brambles had grown from the other side of the garden wall, smothering everything in their path. And then there was the vegetable plot. The weekly gardener had always looked after the plot: dug, raked, planted and hoed, leaving Miss Cutteridge with only the pleasure of picking the fresh vegetables. At first she had tried to cope on her own, though her arthritis made the work painful and difficult, but the results had been so disappointing – everything had either failed to grow or been eaten by pests – that she had finally given up and left the plot to grow over. But this spring she had decided that she ought to give it another try. Dig for Victory. Grow More Food. Is Your Garden on War Service? There were advertisements and posters everywhere exhorting people to grow their own vegetables, talks on the wireless, articles in magazines and newspapers, leaflets distributed. They'd even had a colour film shown at the village hall entitled
A Garden Goes to War
which she had unfortunately missed owing to a heavy cold. It was her patriotic duty, not to mention how much it would help her limited budget.

She fetched the fork and rake from the toolshed and made a start on clearing the patch. After an hour her back and her hands were aching and she had only managed to clear and dig a very small area. She wiped her forehead and leaned on the fork handle, head bowed, afraid that the task was going to be beyond her strength, and yet unwilling to give up.

‘Hey there, ma'am. You OK?'

Startled, she turned her head to see Corporal Bilsky standing on the path. Miss Cutteridge straightened up quickly. ‘I'm quite all right, thank you.' She went pink with embarrassment. He had caught her at a great disadvantage: all dishevelled and perspiring, wearing her oldest skirt and the jumper with the hole in the elbow and with a ladder in her lisle stocking.

‘Couldn't get no answer at the door, so I came round the side gate,' he said. ‘Hope you don't mind.' He stared at the plot. ‘Gee, that looks like a lot of hard work. Here, let me give you a hand.'

He took off his uniform jacket, rolled up his shirtsleeves and removed the fork from her grasp. ‘Want me to do the whole patch?'

She hesitated for a moment, but the temptation to take advantage of the offer was overwhelming. ‘If it's really not too much trouble.'

He grinned. ‘No trouble at all. You goin' to grow things here?'

‘Vegetables, I hope.'

He lifted the fork. ‘Well, you go indoors an' take a bit of a rest, ma'am. A lady like you shouldn't be doin' this sort of work.'

Miss Cutteridge retreated and watched discreetly from the kitchen window. He was digging away deep and fast and making it look so easy, but then he was a strong young man and she was a feeble old woman. She went upstairs to comb her hair and change her jumper and her laddered stocking and then came down again and sank into her armchair, feeling quite worn out. She wondered how much she should pay him – another awkwardness. The Americans were paid very well, she'd heard – overpaid, some people said – and she had no idea what to offer. If she asked him he might say a sum that she simply couldn't afford. She sat wondering and worrying about it. After a while, when she had recovered her strength, she went to look out of the kitchen window again and averted her gaze hurriedly when she saw that the corporal had taken off his tie, shirt and vest and was working bare-chested. Her former gardener had never taken off so much as his hat, except to raise it to her, but then Americans were so much less formal and, of course, he must be feeling quite warm from all the digging. He was probably thirsty, too. She searched anxiously in cupboards and found a bottle of Robinson's barley water with just enough left in the bottom to make one glassful. It was out of the question to take it out to him, given his state of undress, but she mixed it up ready in the glass and went and sat down again and picked up her knitting to keep herself calm and usefully occupied while she waited.

Another hour and a half passed before there was a knock on the back door and she hurried to open it. To her relief his shirt and tie were back on again, both neatly tucked in. He carried his uniform tunic over his arm.

‘All done, ma'am. I've dug it over and raked it real good, an' I put all the weeds ‘n' stuff on that trash heap at the end of the garden.'

He looked dreadfully hot. ‘Thank you so much, Corporal. I'm very grateful to you. Will you have a glass of barley water?'

‘Long as it's not in a teacup . . . thank you, ma'am. I'm real thirsty.'

She watched as he gulped the barley water down in one go. The poor boy must have been absolutely parched. ‘I'm so sorry, there isn't any more.'

‘Plain water'll do nicely,' he said. He filled the glass from the kitchen tap and drank it down.

She steeled herself. ‘I was wondering how much I owed you for all your hard work, Corporal. I'm not quite sure what would be acceptable—'

He interrupted her, shaking his head. ‘Not a cent, ma'am. I don't want nothin'.'

‘Oh but I couldn't possibly allow that . . .'

He smiled. ‘Reckon you'll just have to, ma'am, seein' as I'm not takin' nothin' from you.'

She really ought to point out his double negatives but that would be very impolite, especially in the circumstances. ‘It's very good of you, Corporal. But I really think I owe you something.'

‘You already paid me with the afternoon tea, ma'am, and invitin' me here in the first place. So that's an end to it. What vegetables're you thinkin' of plantin'?'

‘Potatoes, I think. Some broad beans. Runner beans and carrots and cabbage. Perhaps some beetroot. It rather depends on what seeds I can find.'

‘Sounds good,' he said. ‘Don't know nothin' 'bout growin' those things but I'll be glad to help in any way I can. Seems a good idea to grow your own, everythin' bein' in such short supply over here. I've noticed most folks have a patch in their yard. Lot of folks have a pig, too. How about you keepin' a pig?'

‘There's nowhere to keep it.'

‘There's that tin hut near the dump.'

‘The Anderson, you mean?'

‘That what you call it? Well, that'd do just right.'

‘But it's an air-raid shelter.' The gardener had erected it for her in the early days of the war. So far she hadn't used it once.

‘Reckon you're not goin' to need it no more, ma'am. Those German bombers ain't goin' to come over this way, not with all us guys around. If you could get a piglet from some place, I could bring you stuff from the kitchens up at the base to feed it up – peelin's and scraps and such. One of my pals is a cook, see. Wouldn't cost you nothin' and when the pig's growed enough you'd have some nice pork to eat. You can salt the rest so's it keeps.'

‘I don't think I could cope with a pig, Corporal. I've never kept any animals. Not even hens. Only the one cat.'

‘Just an idea, ma'am.' He delved in the pocket of his tunic. ‘I brought some photos to show you.' He fanned them like a hand of cards and held them out to her, pointing with his forefinger. ‘There's my dad right there in the middle, with my two brothers. That's Jack standing next to Dad on this side. He was all-state third base in '38. Got picked up by the Brooklyn Dodgers and played for one of their minor league teams.'

‘Really? How interesting.' She had no idea what he was talking about.

‘Yes, siree. Could've made the big time if he hadn't got drafted. And that's Frank on the other side. He was All-America – left guard from Henryetta High.'

‘Goodness me.'

‘Yeah. No kiddin'. And this next photo here's of me and Jack on the front porch – that's our house in Henryetta. Frank took that one. This one's us all on the Fourth in '42 – my Aunt Sara took that. Last time we were all together: Dad, Jack, Frank and me.'