Polly's Angel (33 page)

Tad, up on his Yorkshire bomber station, was as aware as Grace of the loss of life – and the loss of aircraft – which was the sad result of even the most successful bombing raid, but although he knew the crews and the pilots a good deal better than she did, his main preoccupation, at this stage, was with the planes which he serviced. He had been a conscientious motor mechanic when he worked at Barnes's garage in Dublin, but now he was obsessional about the engines which he worked on. Men's lives depended on him and he was sharply aware that nothing, absolutely nothing, was more important than sending the fellers off in a machine they could depend on. He could do nothing if they were caught in the flak or gunned down by enemy aircraft, but he could make sure that their engines, their machines, were as perfect as he and his mates could make them.

Once away from his job, however, Tad had other tasks, amongst which was letter-writing. Never too keen on such an occupation, he now found himself with a number of letters to write each week – except that it was usually each month – and in order to ease matters he had taken to writing one letter, sometimes to Angela, sometimes to Polly or his family, and then copying it, with minor alterations, to his other correspondents.

‘One of these days you'll be in a rare ole mess, cheatin' on folk the way you do,' his pal Smiffy told him one afternoon when he came into the billet and saw Tad, with four sheets of paper spread out on the table before him, the laborious script already completed upon the first page, whilst he copied it first on to one sheet and then on to the others.

Tad, looking up from his work, grinned. ‘This is nothing, old feller. Last month I paid young O'Mara a packet of Woodbines to do the copying for me,' he said. ‘Me writing's so bad that he just scribbled 'em down anyhow, and not one squeak from me family or friends did I get to say why was I writin' so fine all of a sudden! I'd do it again,' he added, ‘except O'Mara's gone into town and no one else needed fags that badly.'

Smiffy heaved an exaggerated sigh and sat down at the table, pulling the completed letter towards him. ‘What've you said this time?' he asked accusingly. ‘Not a great deal, by the looks of this. Dammit, Tad, you've only covered one side of the page, and I've seen the letters that you get back from your girlfriends, they write you sheets and sheets.'

‘They've got nothin' better to do, so they haven't,' Tad said righteously. ‘Oh, I know they both work, but it's not like our work, Smiffy. No one's life hangs on whether Angie sells some woman a silk dress or Poll makes mistakes when she's typing out an insurance policy. You an' me, now, we can't afford to make a mistake or one of our squadron could pay wit' his life. And put me letter down,' he added. ‘Didn't no one ever tell you 'twas rude to read letters not addressed to yourself?'

‘You don't write letters, you write round-robins,' Smiffy said absently. He screwed up his eyes, held the letter at arm's length, and read slowly, ‘“Dear blank, many thanks for your last. Glad you are well, as I am. We're well fed up here, but I miss blank. Last week I went into Lincoln to see a flick, and I wished you could have been with me. Only you couldn't, so I went with one of the lads. After, we had tea and a bit of sawdusty old cake at a little teashop down by the river. It was a sunny day and the sins . . .” No, swans . . . God, Tad, your writing is appalling, to say nothing of your spelling! “The swans were begging for bread and hissing at us if we didn't throw them any . . .”'

He threw the letter back on the table as Tad made a lunge for it. ‘How you manage to keep one girlfriend, let alone two, I can't imagine! If they only knew what you did with your letters – but I reckon they must suspect something of the sort. And why the blanks, anyway?'

Tad heaved a sigh. ‘Because you can't say exactly the same t'ing to your mammy and your girlfriends,' he said patiently. ‘So I leave blanks and fill in the little odds and ends separately. Polly's real keen on animals, so at the end of her letter I'm goin' to put in a bit about Sergeant Smiler, but Angie wouldn't be interested, so at the end of her letter I'll tell her a bit about the fillum I saw last week. And me mammy likes to know I'm being fed right, so I'll tell her what we had for supper last night. See? It's simple if you use your brain.'

‘You'll be caught out one day and get what you deserve,' Smiffy announced, having strolled round the table to look at the other pages, almost identical, which Tad had spread out round him. ‘One of 'em's in England, isn't she? Why don't you go and see her, instead of all this letter-writing? You're bound to get a decent bit of leave one of these days.'

‘Oh, you mean Polly,' Tad said, reaching for the nearest letter. ‘She's more like a sister to me than a girlfriend, so she is. We was brought up together, like, when we was just a pair o' kids livin' in the Dublin slums. Now Angie – she's a real girlfriend, the sort you've got, Smiffy. She's pretty as a picture, smart as paint . . .'

‘And waiting for you, I suppose, with no thought of any other feller,' Smiffy interposed, grinning. ‘Yet you send her the same letters as all the others. Oh, what a peculiar bloke you are, Donoghue!'

But Tad, putting the first letter into its envelope, merely grunted. He could see nothing peculiar about his method of letter-writing and Smiffy, he well knew, did not have a great many younger brothers and sisters who liked a line occasionally, to say nothing of friends back in Ireland. Sometimes, his conscience gave a twinge when he posted off two very nearly identical letters to Angie and Polly, but they would never know and anyway, he reminded himself reasonably, a feller only had one life. He was merely simplifying a task which, had he tried to write individual letters to each one, would have kept him busy from dawn to dusk on any day that he happened not to be working.

Still. The thought of visiting Polly when he had sufficient leave had occurred to him several times, though in a way he felt guilty about even thinking about it. She was his dearest pal, they had shared so much when they were kids, but he had a feeling that she had never fully understood about Angie, that she thought him shallow and in some way fickle for having found himself a girlfriend other than herself. But this was clearly not the case, could not be the case, since she, on her side, had told him that she was seeing a feller by the name of Sunny, wrote to him, went around with him . . . Oh well, Poll would simply have to understand about Angie. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, Tad thought to himself, but Polly was a darling, he would really love to see her again.

He would, he decided, go to Liverpool the next time he got enough leave and spend a few days getting to know Poll all over again.

Sunny was soon engrossed in life aboard ship once more, though this time he was not aboard the sloop
Poppy
with the men he had sailed with for many months. It had not been possible, it seemed, to finish the repairs to the sloop in the time at their disposal so he had been drafted to the
Felix,
a destroyer. Rather to his dismay Dempsey was not with him but he knew from past experience that he made friends easily so had few worries on that score.

When first he came on board he was met by the ship's coxswain who took his draft documents and called a seaman to take Sunny forward to the starboard fo'c'sle where he would mess. He was told that eighteen men including himself would eat, sleep, stow their gear and live in an area about sixteen feet by twelve, but he was used to the cramped conditions aboard the
Poppy
and thought that this was fair enough. Life in a destroyer was clearly going to be a matter of cramming the maximum number of men into a tiny space as in all warships. On that first day, therefore, he found somewhere to sling his hammock and then followed the seaman back out on deck, and thence to the flag deck below and on either side of the bridge, where he would work when on watch.

‘We've been told we're on convoy escort duty,' the leading signaller told Sunny later that same day. ‘I hear the slops is full of tropical kit so's I reckon it'll be the arctic but we'll go where we're sent, as usual, and discover our destination when we arrive. That's the navy for you.'

Sunny knew that he would miss his pals aboard the
Poppy
, particularly Dempsey, but a destroyer, he considered, was a ship worth boasting about, and the chances of promotion were possibly even better than they had been aboard the
Poppy,
since he had passed his recent exam with flying colours. And although he had believed himself friendless aboard the
Felix,
he realised when he went below for his first night's sleep that he was not the only scouser aboard.

They were a mixed bunch, he could see that at a glance, and was slinging his hammock and shaking out his blankets when something about the able seaman nearest him caught his attention. The man was putting up his own hammock, frowning in concentration, and when he became aware of Sunny watching him he turned and grinned.

‘Hello – you're part of the new draft, aren't you? First time aboard a destroyer?'

‘That's right,' Sunny said. ‘I was on the sloop
Poppy
before, but she was badly knocked about so they've re-drafted a good few of us, I think. None to the
Felix
except me, though, worse luck. Wharrabout you?'

‘I was on the corvette
Campion
before I joined,' the other said. ‘They're grand ships, but a bit on the cramped side. Not that I've sailed with a destroyer before, mind, this'll be my first voyage with the
Felix
. But I can tell from your accent that you're a scouser, like me, though Liverpool's my adopted home rather than my birthplace. I'm from Dublin.' The older man glanced at Sunny's arm, but he had stripped to his white top in the heat of the fo'c'sle. ‘Do you have a trade? I was made up to able seaman aboard the
Campion
.'

‘I'm a signaller. I've just passed me latest exams okay, so mebbe I'll be made up to leading signaller soon,' Sunny said with more than a little false modesty. ‘One thing you can say about the war, promotion comes quicker than in the peace. But I reckon you're norra a regular, like me?'

‘No, I'm a Hostilities Only man,' the other said, grinning. He held out a square, capable-looking hand. ‘O'Brady. And you're . . .?'

Sunny stared, too surprised to hold out his own hand. He stared very hard at the older man and it occurred to him, for the first time, that he had seen him somewhere before – or someone very like him. ‘O'Brady?' he repeated. ‘I've gorra pal in Liverpool . . . now I come to think . . . you've gorra look of Peader . . . an' I reckon you're a bit like Ivan, an' all. Is – is your first name Martin? Only I've just spent me leave with the O'Bradys, they've gorra house in Titchfield Street, and—'

‘You wouldn't be Sunny, would you?' the other man said, his grin widening. ‘Dear God, if you are this is the strangest coincidence! Yes, I'm Martin, and I'd bet my bottom dollar that you're Sunny, who caused poor old Polly such grief when she was a little 'un.'

The two men shook hands, Sunny grinning now with more than a shade of embarrassment. ‘Put it there, Martin,' he said. ‘Me mam's always telled me
be sure your sins will find you out,
and by and large she's been right. But I'm a welcome visitor in your mam's house now, honest to God I am, me an' your Polly's still good friends.'

‘Yes, Mammy did say you and Poll exchanged letters,' Martin admitted. ‘I seem to remember Polly saying that you'd joined up back in '38. I wish I'd done the same,' he added rather bitterly. ‘If I had done so, I'd have stood a better chance of promotion myself.'

‘But you're an accountant, aren't you?' Sunny asked. He began once more to shake out his blankets and Martin, two feet away from him, followed suit. ‘I seem to remember you were in an accounts department somewhere. And you're a married feller – you wouldn't have wanted to be at sea before the war, would you?'

‘I dunno,' Martin said. He finished making his bunk and sat down on the Rexine cushion which lay across his locker and began to pull off his soft-soled shoes. ‘My wife's gone back to live wit' her parents for the duration, which means that when I do get back for a forty-eight, I have to muck in wit' her parents. They're nice enough folk,' he added hastily. ‘But it's not the same as having your own place.'

‘I reckon sailors shouldn't marry too young,' Sunny said, sitting on his own locker. ‘When you're fancy-free you can tek your pick, just about.' He was stripped down to underpants and vest and flicked himself into his bunk. ‘What's it like being a gunner, anyhow?'

‘We're just like everyone else – unless they pipe action stations we do any job that needs doing, just about. What was it like in your sloop?'

‘The same, only signallers spend most of their time on watch on the flag deck,' Sunny said. ‘Rushing backwards and forwards, reading signals, hauling pennants up the halyards. We aren't as important as the yeoman signaller, of course – he's our chiefie – but no one can afford to make mistakes, especially if they want to get on in the Navy. Still, we clean and scrub and sweep, good training for a housewife, that's wharr I always say.'

‘Except that these days,' Martin observed, ‘housewives seem to spend most of their time having fun, going to dances, entertaining the troops you might say.'

Sunny, rightly interpreting this embittered remark to apply to Martin's wife, was silent, having nothing to say, but after a short pause, Martin continued. ‘Oh, I shouldn't moan, Monica does write . . . but her letters are so short and mostly she talks about dances, helping in the NAAFI, that sort o' thing. I suppose she doesn't know much about the Navy, so she thinks we're livin' it up in exotic foreign ports, or at least that's how she makes it sound. She actually asked me, in one of her letters, if I ever got a chance to buy pretty materials, because she'd like to make herself a new dance dress!'