Our Yanks (29 page)

Did she sound sorry about that, or was it just him hearing things? ‘Hard to say. Haven't finished my tour yet. Maybe a month or so more to go. But we don't count chickens; not in our game.'

‘Will you be given leave then?'

‘Yeah. A good long one. Guess I'll go back home to New York. Spend some time there with my family. See what comes next.'

They followed the brook for another half-mile before they turned back. The daylight was going and by the time they reached the house it was that purple English dusk. He said goodnight on the doorstep like a good boy, got in the jeep and drove away. He'd passed up a hell of a chance out there alone with her. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was right. Time would sure as hell tell.

‘It's called a weaner.' Miss Cutteridge peered anxiously at the small pig snuffling round inside the Anderson shelter. She had barricaded it in with some old chicken wire tied up with garden twine. Corporal Bilsky crouched down to see better. ‘Looks a real fine one to me. Where did you get him, ma'am?'

‘From one of the local farmers. Our butcher suggested it.' She'd bought him from old Mr Quince with his smallholding, rather than someone like Mr Hobbs who would have been far too busy and important to sell one piglet. She had never much cared for the Hobbs and had been quite delighted to hear that dear Agnes had broken off her engagement to Clive. An arrogant sort of boy in her private opinion. Rather a bully. Like father, like son: it so often happened.

The piglet had come to take a look at them now, its flat pink snout pressed against the wire. She said delicately, not quite knowing how to put it, ‘The farmer said he's been seen to.' Castrated was the actual word that Mr Quince had used, quite baldly, but she didn't feel able to say it to the corporal.

‘Yeah, you couldn't keep a boar, ma'am. He'd be a heck of a handful when he got bigger. This one'll stay nice and docile. It's the ladies often give the trouble; they can be real mean sometimes. I remember some of the sows Dad kept when we had our farm. How old's this little guy?'

‘Eight weeks. I've been feeding him on vegetable peelings and scraps.' She saved everything she could in a pail and boiled it up in her jam-making pan and then mixed it with a few handfuls of barley meal from the sack Mr Quince had sold her with the piglet. He'd also sold her some bales of straw to use for bedding. ‘He seems to be doing all right.'

‘Like I told you, ma'am, I'll bring you stuff from our kitchens. You won't have no problem fattenin' him up.'

‘The farmer said he'd be ready at six months.' That was the part she preferred not to think about but Mr Ford, the butcher, had promised to deal with it all for her.

Corporal Bilsky was scratching his head. ‘Seems to me that wire's not goin' to hold him, ma'am. Not once he gets bigger. I could get fencin' wire from the base and some wood posts an' fix somethin' a whole lot stronger. We could make a bit of a run for him, so's he could get outside and root about. He'll like that. He won't want to foul his beddin', see. Pigs are clean animals, though most people don't know that. He'll have a corner out in the run, see, an' I'll clean it out for you an' put it all on a heap, an' keep it turned till it's well rotted, then we can use it on the vegetables. How're they doin', by the way?'

She showed him the rows of potatoes, cabbages, carrots, broad beans and beetroot plants and the runner beans climbing the poles he'd put up for her. ‘As soon as they're ready you must come and help me eat them,' she told him. ‘I'm going to open your tin of ham then.'

‘Gee, that's for you.'

‘Oh, I couldn't possibly eat it all.'

He'd brought her another tin of something called Sloppy Joe Sauce. Ground beef he'd called it. From the picture on the label, it looked like some kind of mince that you apparently put inside a bun. She had put it to one side of the store cupboard.

‘Had a letter from my brother, Frank, the other day,' he told her as they went back into the cottage. ‘The one that's with the heavies over here.'

Heavies, she knew, were the big bombers: Flying Fortresses and Liberators. She'd seen and heard them in the distance and occasionally one would pass low over the village. It was easy to tell that they were American because of the big white star. ‘How is he?'

‘Doin' OK, far as I could tell. They censor the mail so he can't say much. I reckon he won't have too much longer before he's finished his tour. Then they'll send him home. Boy, is he lucky. I figure they won't be sendin' me back till the war's over. Got a feelin' they might send us Signal guys over to France, though. Must be plenty needs doin' there.'

His words worried her. Here in England he was quite safe; in France it would be another story. According to the newspaper reports, the fighting was very fierce indeed over there. Thousands of men had died in the Normandy landings – ten thousand Americans, she'd read somewhere, let alone the rest. And since then the Allies had been battling away for weeks to gain ground in Northern France. ‘Have you heard from your other brother? The one in the Pacific?'

He shook his head. ‘No, ma'am. Not in a real long while. I guess the mail's not too good from the sort of places Jack'd be fightin' in.'

‘She said encouragingly, ‘The newspapers say that the American marines have been making great progress against the Japanese.' She didn't mention the price in lives that had also been reported.

‘Yeah, that's what I heard, too.'

She'd cooked him some fairy cakes with a glacé cherry on top of each one, and he sat at the small table in the kitchen eating them in two bites and drinking tea out of a china mug. ‘Real good, these are, ma'am. Thank you.'

‘You mustn't bring me any more tins,' she told him firmly. ‘It's very kind of you, but I really don't need them. I manage quite well.'

‘If that's the way you want it, ma'am.'

‘Yes, it is, Corporal.'

‘Joe's the name, ma'am, if you felt easy with that.'

Putting on his cap at the door, he said, ‘I'll bring the pig food though. And I'll come by and fix that run, soon as I can.'

Miss Cutteridge went to look at the piglet again. He had gone back inside the shelter and was lying dolefully in a corner with his snout on his trotters. Missing his mother and his brothers and sisters, she thought, conscience-stricken. Oh dear, oh dear.

Instead of the maid in the white apron, it was Erika herself who opened the front door to him. He said, without preamble, ‘I'm playing truant again. Will you come out for another drive?'

‘Another guided tour?'

‘Let's just go anywhere. If you don't mind.'

She got in the car straight off. No questions asked, no going off to get dolled up. No hat, no coat, no gloves, not even a purse. What a woman! Carl drove out of the village and took the first turning he came to. It turned out to be one of those one-track, winding lanes that wandered all over the countryside in no particular direction to fetch up God knew where. There were no signposts, quixotically removed to confuse the enemy, but even with them the result would have been the same. They would have pointed to lost-in-time places that only figured on big-scale maps. Places with names like Little Buggins, Nether Wallop, Big Snoring.

She didn't talk; just sat quietly beside him as though she'd judged his mood right on. He drove uphill and down dale, following other lanes at random between cornfields dotted with bright red poppies like drops of blood. Finally, they came to a high point overlooking a valley. He stopped the car on the grass verge, switched off the engine and wound down the window. ‘Cigarette?' She took one and he lit it for her and then his own. ‘Thanks for coming out. You're the one person I wanted for company.'

‘Anything in particular wrong, Carl? Or is it just the war?'

‘I guess it's just the war. We've lost some good kids lately. Twenty-six pilots killed in action in just the last couple of months.'

‘I'm so sorry. That's dreadful for you.'

‘They were all great guys. After a while it gets so you start to feel responsible, even when you know you're not. And it's not only
our
kids. When you're doing our escort job you see what happens to the bomber boys if we foul up and some Luftwaffe shark gets to them. Or maybe it's enemy flak that you can't do a damn thing about and you're in a ringside seat, watching. Either way, it's not pretty.' He drew on the cigarette. ‘After the war, when they get around to building some kind of memorial to all those guys, it's sure going to have a hell of a lot of names on it. Same with the RAF. I guess we just have to hope it's going to be worth it.'

‘It has to be, Carl. There's no alternative, except to give up.' No cosy platitudes trotted out for his benefit, but he knew she understood what he was talking about.

‘Yeah . . . and we sure can't do that.' He smoked some more in silence. ‘How do you figure we're doing with the villagers these days?'

‘They give you ten out of ten.'

‘We got a zero last week from some farmer guy. One of the Mustangs lost a full belly-tank bang in the middle of one of his fields, taking off. It bust wide open and ruined the crop. He was one real angry farmer, I can tell you. Name of Hobbs. Do you know him?'

‘Everybody knows everybody in King's Thorpe. He's a big wheel round here.'

‘Well, we had to pay big compensation.'

‘He'd make sure of it. He's that sort of man. Some people are probably doing very well out of the war.'

‘Same thing back in the US too, I guess. War's a great money-spinner for the lucky ones, while the other guys pay up with their lives.' He drew on the cigarette again and flicked the ash out of the window. ‘I've got three days' leave coming up in a while. Not sure when yet. There's a hell of a lot on right now. When it comes round, I thought maybe I'd go down to London. I'd like you to come with me, Erika, if you would. What do you say?'

‘I say yes.'

No shocked protest. No maidenly blushes. Just a plain and simple yes. No wonder he felt as he did about her.

‘I don't know where we'd stay. Some hotel . . .'

‘I still have the flat in Kensington. We could stay there, if you like.'

He nodded. ‘That would be great. If it's OK with you.'

‘It is.'

He looked at his wristwatch and started up the engine. ‘Think you can navigate us back to King's Thorpe?'

‘We'll have to steer by the sun.'

He smiled. ‘Well, I guess I can manage that.'

Chester leant his bike against the bakehouse wall. As he opened the door the sheep's bell jangled and Sally looked up from serving a customer. She went on picking out buns from one of the trays and then a loaf of bread from the stack on the other table, putting them all in the woman's basket. He waited while she took the money and gave the change and then he held the door open for the woman, who thanked him with a smile. Sally wasn't smiling but he thought she looked prettier than ever.

‘Didn't you get my letter, Chester?'

‘Sure,' he said. ‘Tom delivered it.'

‘I told you I didn't want to see you any more.'

‘Yeah, I know.'

‘I meant what I said.'

‘Well, I've been thinking about that for a good long while. In the end, I figured I'd come down here, just the same. Didn't make a lot of sense to me. What's gone so wrong, Sally? We got along just fine.'

‘Did we?'

‘You know we did.' He looked hard at her, searching her face. ‘So what's suddenly changed things?'

She wouldn't meet his eyes; turned her back on him and started moving the bread around even though it didn't need it. ‘I decided I didn't want to see you any more, that's all.'

‘Is it because I wanted us to get married? Because I won't bother you with that again, if that's what the trouble is.'

‘No, it's not that.'

‘Something else I've done? Or maybe said?'

‘Nothing. I just don't want to go out with you again.'

He said slowly, ‘Well, I guess that's that, then.'

She turned round and he could see she was real upset: it looked like there were some tears in her eyes. ‘I'm sorry, Chester. Very sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. But I can't help it.'

‘That's OK. It happens.' He made himself smile at her. ‘Don't worry about it. Any objection to me still coming in sometimes to buy your rock cakes? Wouldn't want to have to do without those as well.'

‘Please don't. I'd much sooner you didn't.'

‘Guess I'd better take some now, then. My last chance.'

‘How many would you like?'

‘I'll have a dozen. Share 'em around.'

‘Have you got a bag?'

‘Shucks, I forgot.'

‘I'll go and find one.'

While she was gone her father put his head round the door for a moment and gave him a black look. The guy sure hadn't gotten any friendlier. When Sally came back, he said, ‘Just as well I never said anything to your dad.'

‘You never would, would you Chester? Swear you won't.'

‘No need now, is there?' He paid for the rock cakes and pocketed the change. He tried to think of an excuse to linger, just to be able to see her for longer and talk some more, but the sheep's bell went and another customer came in. He biked slowly back with the paper bag of rock buns resting on the handlebars. At the base he gave them all away to the other guys; he sure didn't feel like eating.

‘Gin,' Ben fanned out his hand. ‘Tough luck, Ed. That makes three pounds you owe me.'

‘Bloodsucker.' Ed tossed down his cards and passed the notes over.

‘Your mind wasn't on the game, pal. You still thinking about that schoolteacher? That's mighty bad. I told you, you don't want to think about anything but surviving this tour and winning at cards. Ain't that right, Jessie?' He leant to pat the Scottie dog lying beside him. ‘Just as well we're nearly through.'