Our Yanks (33 page)

He didn't know the answer to that. All he knew was that Sally didn't smile nearly so much and she didn't always give free cakes with the bread, like she used to. He hadn't seen Chester around the village for a long while.

Wally turned round from his bench. ‘Hey, Mitch, how about we take the kids over to eat with us? Reckon anybody'd mind?'

‘Wouldn't think so. Everybody knows Tom. Like to come and get some lunch, guys?'

‘Yes, please,' Alfie said quickly.

They queued up at the airmen's Mess and held out tin plates for great dollops of fried chicken, sweetcorn and mashed potatoes and, after that, vanilla ice cream. Alfie had three helpings of the ice cream.

‘You'll be sick.'

‘No, I won't. I could go on eating it for ever.'

Afterwards, they walked back across the fields, Tom lugging the blackberry basket that was heavy with tins of meat and fruit, chocolate bars and candy. Alfie sighed. ‘I wish I was a Yank. They have lovely food.'

‘That's all you ever think about. Food.'

‘No, it isn't. I think about other things too.'

‘Such as?'

‘Lots of things.'

‘Name one.'

‘I will in a minute when I've thought.'

He couldn't, of course.

Sam Barnet pulled the hessian sacks off the dough trough. Underneath the dough had risen up into a yeasty mountain. He punched both fists hard down through its crust so that it collapsed like a pricked balloon and then he started to knead. The sweat formed on his brow and his back began to ache but he forced himself on, working away steadily, his arms deep in the dough. Work was pain but it was also a blessing: it helped him not to think about Roger. He could concentrate on the mixture forming and re-forming rather than on his only son fighting his way across France with the Allies. He kneaded on, pounding his fists into the troughful of dough, turning and pummelling, turning and pummelling until it was ready. The sweat was rolling down his face and he wiped it away with his handkerchief and brushed the flecks of dough from his bare arms before he lined up the baking tins on the table.

When the dough had risen up again he cut great slabs off with his knife, as much as he could lift at a time, and heaved it up onto the table to weigh it out on the scales and mould it into the tins. Bloomers and coburgs were shaped in his hands and cottage loaves fashioned from two dough balls, smallest on top. He set them all on trays to prove in the warm space under the oven before he slid the tin loaves into the hot oven on the peel. The bloomers were slashed across their tops and he punched the cottage loaves in the centre with his fist, nicking them round the edges with his knife. In they went as well, together with the coburgs, balanced in a line on the long wooden slip to be tipped off neatly sideways onto the brick floor.

He heaved the oven door shut, wiped his forehead again and sank down on a stool. His left eye felt sore in one corner – probably another ulcer starting like he'd had before – and he could hear himself wheezing. The flour always got to him. What he needed was a bit of a rest; for him and Freda to take a holiday somewhere. Skegness or Cleethorpes or somewhere like that. Breathe some good clean sea air. If Roger was home they might have managed it, but as things were it was hopeless. He sat there wearily until it was time to get up and turn the tins halfway through. Towards the end he got up again to check to see how close they were to being ready. He put on his sacking mitts and hauled one of the tins out on the peel, tipping it upside down quickly to see the bread underneath.

The loaves were all cooked and he was stacking them on end to cool when Mrs Trimwell arrived to start on the cakes. Sally was late again and when she did turn up, after nearly half an hour, there was no good morning and no smile. He didn't know what was the matter with her. She'd been a cheerful, hard worker once and very good at the cakes, now she couldn't seem to care less and the customers were complaining. He watched her put on her white overall and start the sponge mix in the bowl. She looked pale to him. Quite peaky. Perhaps she needed a holiday too?

He wiped the tins out with a cloth and stacked them away before he went off to get a cup of tea. Freda was in the kitchen, making a pot, and he sat down at the table and waited while it brewed.

‘What's up with Sally? She's been out of sorts for weeks. She got the sulks about something?'

Freda poured the tea: it was good and strong, the way he liked it. None of that ‘none for the pot' nonsense. ‘You haven't noticed, Sam?'

‘Noticed what?' He sipped the tea and felt better. ‘All I've noticed is she's not doing her work properly. Late down every morning, making a mess of the cakes . . . it's not like her at all.'

Freda sat down opposite him. ‘You may as well know, since you'll find out soon enough. She's expecting.'

His cup stopped halfway. ‘What did you say?'

‘She's going to have a baby.'

The shock hit him like a blow in the chest. He felt his heart leap violently, the breath knocked out of him, and for a moment he couldn't speak and felt quite faint. The feeling subsided but his heart was still pounding. ‘It's not true. It can't be. She
can't
be.'

‘She can and she is,' Freda said calmly. ‘Nearly six months gone. I don't know how you haven't seen, to tell the truth, though she's been clever with hiding it and she's not big.'

He stared at her. ‘You've known about this – all along?'

‘Not for a while, I didn't, but I've got eyes in my head. I asked her straight out in the end.'

‘And you didn't tell me? You kept it a secret from me?'

He was bitterly enraged, as well as badly shocked. ‘It's one of those bloody Yanks, isn't it? I'll kill whoever's done this to us. The disgrace'll finish us. We'll never be able to hold up our heads, it'll ruin us—'

‘It won't do anything of the kind, Sam. It won't be the first child in the village born the wrong side of the blanket, not by a long chalk. I could name half a dozen or more. Ellen Turner's little Ned, for instance. That was never her husband's: it was a Pole from the army camp down the road, but it's never made a difference. Nice-looking boy, he is.'

He said furiously, ‘She happens to be married. Sally'll have to marry the man, whoever he is. That's for a start.'

‘She doesn't want to. She's told me that.'

‘Doesn't
want
to? I don't give a damn what she wants. She'll bloody well marry him. I'm not having a bastard in this house, under my roof.'

‘Don't swear, Sam. And do try to keep calm. You'll go and have a heart attack or something at this rate.'

He clenched his fists and took a deep, slow breath. ‘Six months, you say? That means she was fifteen when this happened. Under age. That's
rape
. I'll have him in prison.'

‘You were going to kill him a moment ago.'

‘It's that Yank's been hanging around the bakehouse all these months. I've seen him. I'll know him. I'll make sure he's court-martialled.'

‘Make up your mind, Sam. No point in doing that if you want her to marry him, unless you'd like a jailbird for a son-in-law. And do you really want to put Sally through giving evidence in court – lawyers saying things about her, him denying it and all that. What will that do to your precious family name, let alone Sally's? Besides, we don't know it was that one you're talking about at all. She won't say who it was.'

‘She must know. And by God, she's going to tell us.' He stood up and blundered towards the door leading into the bakehouse, shouting his daughter's name.

She came into the kitchen and stood by the door. He saw at once what he should have seen long before – the telltale swelling under the white overall – and he wondered how he could have missed it and how many other people had noticed it. He said harshly, ‘Your mother's told me about your condition. I want to know who the father is.'

She lifted her chin. ‘I'm not telling you, Dad. So that's that.'

‘That's that?' His voice crescendoed to a roar. ‘That isn't that, my girl. You tell me this minute or I'll, I'll . . .'

‘What'll you do, Dad? Turn me out of the house? Don't worry, I'm going anyway. I'm going now. Soon as I've packed. I've found a place to have the baby and soon as it's born I'm going to give it away. I don't want it any more than you do.' She rushed from the room and he heard her running up the stairs and her bedroom door slam. In the silence, he said lamely, ‘Well, she can't stay here, Freda, can she?'

‘Of course she can, Sam. And she's going to. She's our daughter and we'll look after our own. Stand by her, the way we should.'

‘She'll have to marry him.'

‘We'll see about that. We can't force her to. And if she really wants the baby adopted, then maybe that's best all round. We'll have to see how she feels when the time comes.' Freda stood up. ‘You stay here and drink your tea. I'll go up and have a talk with her.'

He collapsed onto the chair and sat with his head in his hands. All his plans and hopes lay in ruins. The Barnets would be a laughing stock in the village. He could hear the whispers, see the pointing fingers. The gossips would have a field day – if they weren't having it already. Nothing like it had happened to the family before. They'd been God-fearing, church-going, hardworking, respectable, decent people, their reputation handed unblemished from father to son over more than a hundred years. All wrecked now. And all because of some lecherous bloody Yank.

The tea was cold and he left it. He dragged himself up and went through into the bakehouse. Sally's sponge mix was still in the bowl and he carried on doggedly with it, ignoring Mrs Trimwell's curious glances. The customers would be at the door before long and they'd want their cakes as usual. Barnets had never let them down and he didn't intend to start now.

‘I'll only be away for three days, Alex. Do you mind?'

He looked up from his book. ‘Granny will make me go to bed early.'

‘I'll ask her not to.'

‘She'll make me eat spinach.'

‘No, she won't. I'll tell Mrs Woods not to cook it. What would you like best?'

‘Sausages and baked beans and chips.'

‘All right. What about pudding?'

‘I like spotted dick, with lots of custard. And that coconut pudding she makes.'

‘I'll ask, but just this once.'

‘Why do you have to go to London, Mummy?'

‘There are some things that I need from the flat.'

‘Can't I come too? I like London.'

‘Not in term-time. You mustn't miss school.'

He pulled a face.

‘I'll bring you back something,' she said, knowing she was indulging him from sheer guilt. ‘Something nice.' Three days, she thought. That's all. Three days with another woman's husband. Guilt. Betrayal. Lying to her son. Lying to Miriam, who wasn't nearly so easy to placate.

‘
London
, Erika? What on earth for?'

‘I want to get some things from the flat and to make sure everything's all right.'

‘There's a porter, isn't there? He would have let you know if it wasn't.'

‘I'd still like to see for myself. And, as I said, there are some things I'd like to get.'

‘What things?' Miriam looked suspicious and probably was.

‘Books, clothes, photographs.' It was no business of hers, for God's sake. I don't have to explain a thing to her.

‘What about the risk?'

‘What risk?'

‘Flying bombs. And now those V2
s
. It's utter madness to go anywhere near the place.'

‘People are going about their ordinary daily lives in London. They don't let the Germans dictate to them and I don't intend to either.'

‘Well, you might at least consider your responsibility to Alexander, if nothing else.'

Her Achilles heel, and Miriam invariably aimed at it in the end. ‘I always consider it.'

‘No you don't, or you wouldn't be going. If anything happened to you, he'd be orphaned.'

‘Nothing will happen to me. I shall be back in three days.'

Her mother-in-law was right, though. For the first time she was putting herself before Alexander: her own selfish desires before his welfare. For the first time something else was too strong, too longed-for, too overwhelming to resist. She was ashamed of it, but she couldn't help it.

She packed a small suitcase; a lot of her London clothes, including evening dresses, were still hanging in the wardrobe at the flat. ‘We'll go out on the town,' he'd said. ‘Dine and dance.' It was a very long time since she'd done anything of the kind.

She took King's Thorpe's only taxi to the railway station, fending off friendly enquiries from Mr Stoke, the Daimler's owner – a dear old man who liked to know exactly where everyone was going and why. He shared Miriam's view that her trip to London was nothing short of madness. ‘Wouldn't go near the place if it was me, your ladyship. You'll be dodging the bombs all the time.'

The booking hall was a mob of American air force men going on leave, dressed up in their best, shaved and shined and hell-bent on getting to London. There were no army Yanks. Since D-Day they had become rare birds. Carl had bought the tickets and they found seats in a first-class carriage with five other American officers and a middle-aged British major. As bad luck would have it, she had met him before in connection with the WVS. He leaned across eagerly. ‘Lady Beauchamp, Major Winthrop. I don't suppose you'll remember me.'

‘Of course I do, Major.'

He looked pleased. ‘You're going to London?'

‘Just a brief visit.'

‘Pleasure, I hope.'

‘I have some business there.'