Rising Summer (4 page)

That was typical of how life was organized for you in the Army.

BHQ wasn’t as comfortable as site. There were guard duties, fire picquet duties and other things that mucked you about. However, it was better than Burma, where the jungles and the Japs made life a bit sickening.

Sergeant Johnson, in charge of the orderly room, clumped in. ‘That you under your haircut, Hardy?’ he said. I failed to answer. I was busy. I had a pile of pay books on my desk, his included. I also had railway leave warrants to fill in. ‘Listen, grab the Austin utility and flog off to the station. There’s an American sergeant and
two
privates to pick up off the next train. Don’t keep ’em waiting, we don’t want Eisenhower sending a written complaint. Get going.’

He’d have gone himself normally so that he could find time to call on the village newsagent’s married daughter, whose merchant navy husband had last been seen on a raft in the Atlantic. I knew why he was sending me on this occasion. It was nearly time for midday dinner.

‘Pardon me,’ I said, ‘but I’m busy. It’s pay parade this afternoon. In addition I don’t want to be last in our dinner queue. I know you don’t want to be last in the sergeants’ mess queue and I feel the same way.’

‘Shove off,’ said Sergeant Johnson.

‘It’s a mistake, anyway,’ I said, ‘we’ve already got two American officers and a top sergeant here. There’s been a duplicated cock-up.’

‘Sounds possible,’ murmured ATS Corporal Deirdre Allsop.

Battery Headquarters, a mile outside Sheldham, consisted of a requisitioned mansion and a collection of Nissen huts, the latter plonked down in what had once been a large and handsome garden. The mansion held administration offices, officers’ quarters, officers’ mess, sergeants’ mess and RT room. There was a vehicle park and a workshop across the road. We had three Americans seconded to us. They were keen and active. They buzzed around the gun sites, picking up information that was as useless to them as it was to us, even if it was supposed to relate to the defence of the American Air Force bases in East Anglia.

‘Don’t muck about,’ said Sergeant Johnson, ‘just flog off while we’re still friends.’

‘Can’t we draw straws?’ I asked, but Bombardier Wilkins, Gunner Frisby, Corporal Deirdre Allsop and Corporal Deborah Watts all kept their heads down. No-one minded if I missed my dinner as long as they all got theirs. ‘What happened to comradeship?’ I asked as I came to my feet.

‘Good question,’ said Frisby, whom I’d known since training camp days and who was supposed to be my mate.

Some mate, I thought. I belted over to transport, signed for the Austin utility, burst from the vehicle park in second and banged down the road to the village in lunatic top. If I could get to the station and back in twenty-five minutes, I might just make the last of the fried meat loaf. Cookhouse staff never saved anything for latecomers. Any overs were fed to Major Moffat’s great slavering Dalmatian. Major Moffat was our OC.

Halfway to the village I caught sight of a figure swinging along the grass verge. Hearing the engine, she turned. She stepped into the road and waved with her school satchel. She plainly wanted a lift. I couldn’t run her over, I wasn’t as bitter as that, so I stopped. I recognized her. It was Minnie Beavers, daughter of Jim Beavers, a good old cockney spiv who’d brought his wife and daughter out of Camberwell when the war began in 1939. He said he’d excavated them in case of bombs. He meant evacuated. His wife’s aunt lived just outside the village, she’d married a Suffolk man. Jim had taken to country life like a duck to water and in just
over
three years had acquired a wide range of options on how to survive the war without actually having anything to do with it. He was a friend of mine. His missus supplied me with eggs.

His daughter Minnie was fifteen, pert and pretty and a holy terror. She was wearing a round straw hat, a dark blue gymslip and black school stockings of lisle. She had fair hair and blue eyes. She also had a bosom that was hardly believable.

Pulling the passenger door open, she gave a yelp of joy. ‘Oh, you Tim!’ she cried.

‘OK, me Tim, you heap little laughing devil. Get in, laughing devil.’

She hitched her gymslip, unnecessarily, and leapt in. She plumped into the seat beside me. I shut my eyes and prayed. You had to pray when you were an old twenty-two and an under-age schoolgirl sat next to you showing the saucy tops of her black school stockings in a military vehicle prohibited to civilians.

‘That’s it, get me shot at dawn,’ I said. ‘If you don’t adjust your dress you can either buzz off or get chucked off.’

‘Crikey, what a fuss and when no-one’s lookin’ too,’ said Minnie. But she put her gymslip back into place and I resumed my rapid journey. The hedgerows, green with April growth, rushed by.

‘Why aren’t you in school?’ I asked sternly.

‘Half-day,’ said Minnie. ‘Tim, ain’t you ever goin’ to kiss an’ cuddle with me?’

‘Never. Never, d’you hear? I’ll fight it all the way. I’ll fight it on the beaches, I’ll fight it in the streets and
I’ll
fight it in your parlour. It’ll probably kill me, but what’s the alternative? I suppose you know blokes get hanged for doing things to schoolgirls.’

‘Oh, you soppy date, course they don’t,’ she said. ‘Be rapture, it would, you an’ me.’ That was a little bit of Suffolk. Like her parents, she’d picked some up. ‘I could eat you, I could.’ She’d been like this almost from the day I met her, ten months ago. Daft as a turnip.

‘I’ll chuck you off for sure if you don’t behave,’ I said.

‘But I’m pretty,’ she protested. She was too. ‘Why don’t we ’ave kisses an’ cuddles, Tim?’

‘Because I like your mum and dad, because you’re too young and because it’s illegal.’

Minnie laughed. The sound was like honey gurgling out of a warm stone jar. She was incredible for fifteen: she was five-feet-seven and her legs were terrifying, long and slender they were, and her bosom didn’t bear thinking about. Her complexion was a rich country peach and she was urgent to be sixteen, the age of consent. She’d hook an American GI then with no trouble at all. She’d have probably hooked one already if it hadn’t been for her dad’s gimlet eye. Minnie might possibly be the only village virgin left in the UK. The GIs were laying waste to the lambs. The thought depressed me. I had old-fashioned ideas about brides going virginal to the altar. Aunt May had let it be known that she had the same ideas.

Belting into the village, I pulled up outside the Beavers’ cottage.

‘Ta, Tim,’ said Minnie.

‘All right, push off, infant, I’m in a hurry.’

‘Kiss first?’ she suggested.

‘With all these people about?’ There were two women in the high street, about the only street of any consequence in Sheldham and two women were as good as a crowd in a village like this. ‘Just buzz off, there’s a good girl.’

Minnie made a face, but got out. Impudently, she waved to the crowd, then blew me a compromising kiss. Little she-devil Minnie Beavers was.

‘Oi! Tim!’ It was her dad. He put his green-hatted head through the open window. He’d acquired the hat with the cottage when he moved into it late in 1939. The hat had originally been brown. It was now green and mossy and probably as old as he was. In 1918, at the age of eighteen, he’d been conscripted to serve in Flanders. He took a blighty one in the leg and by the time he’d recovered the First World War was all over. He was thankful, of course, that he was too old for this one. ‘Watcher, Tim lad, missus says eggs is on. Fancy ’em?’

‘Missus is a love,’ I said, ‘I’ll pick ’em up on my way back from the station. Have ’em ready for me, I’m in a hurry.’

‘Ain’t costin’ yer, Tim,’ said Jim, whose brown face, pointed nose and bright beady eyes gave him the look of an inquisitive fox. ‘Missus says yer a good ’un. Ah – er – any porridge goin’ spare?’

Grateful for the offer of eggs I said, ‘In the back, but don’t take all day and return the can when you hand over the eggs.’

He whisked round to the back of the van, found the spare can of petrol and as I belted away again I glimpsed him with his jacket hiding the can. Minnie was with him. When I got to the station it was empty and hollow. I knocked on the wood of the ticket office. The wood opened and old Shuttlebury, with his moustache and his peaked cap, showed his face.

‘Where’s the gorblimey train, gaffer?’ I asked.

‘Which train?’

‘The twelve-thirty-five.’

‘Late,’ he said.

‘Ruddy marvellous. Now I’ll miss the afters as well.’

‘Ain’t my doin’,’ said the station gaffer.

‘Well, how late’s late?’

‘Fifteen minutes, I reckon.’

‘I’ll wait,’ I said. I had to.

‘Seat on the platform,’ he said.

‘How kind.’

‘Penny,’ he said.

‘What for?’

‘Platform ticket.’

‘You saucy old darling,’ I said. There was a shocked rattle to the wood as he closed it. I kicked moodily around. Our regiment of three batteries had been stuck in East Anglia for two years and everything had been relatively quiet for a whole year. But it all meant there was no promotion. On the other hand, the quickest way to wartime promotion was over the dead bodies of your comrades.

I was certain to miss dinner. It was served at twelve-thirty and the train didn’t arrive until one, when Mrs
Amelia
Jessup got off. She was a chubby Sheldham woman. Gaffer Shuttlebury appeared, peaked cap straight and collected her ticket. She treated him to a dig in the ribs. She treated me to a smile.

‘Are you the lot, Amelia?’ I asked.

‘Good lot too,’ she said and walked out laughing.

Where were the Yanks?

‘Hi, soldier.’

There they were. And they were all females. One, a sergeant, briskly unfolded a railway warrant. She pushed it under the gaffer’s nose. The gaffer nuzzled it. The two other Wacs were privates, a blonde and a brunette in smart olive-green. The blonde, fair hair rolled, offered a friendly wink. The brunette, taking the war more seriously, looked in suspicion at me.

‘You our wheels?’ asked the blonde, shoulder bag rakishly slung.

‘Come in,’ I said. It was the best I could manage under the strain of having missed my eats.

‘Come in where, buster?’ asked the blonde.

‘What a surprise,’ I said, ‘I thought you were going to be three more hairy cowboys.’

She laughed. ‘Get you,’ she said.

The brunette retreated a step.

‘I’m Tim Hardy,’ I said.

‘Maureen Cassidy,’ said the blonde, ‘and this is Cecily. Cecily Peterson.’

‘My pleasure,’ I said. I was resigned now. ‘Good trip?’

‘Lousy,’ said Cassidy. ‘I guess you’ll grab our bags?’ On the platform were three bulging Wac valises.

‘Pardon?’ I said.

Their sergeant came up. ‘Hi, there,’ she said cheerfully, ‘where’s it all happening?’

She was dark, her hair raven where it showed beneath her cap. She had blue eyes, thick black lashes, a wide American mouth and brilliant American teeth. That Wac sergeants could look like this was news to me.

‘I’m Tim Hardy,’ I said, ‘I’m your transport.’

‘I’m Kit Masters. We’re honoured. Let’s go, shall we?’

‘Who’s moving our packs?’ asked Private Peterson grimly.

I gave a hand. When they saw the Austin they looked as if they were facing up to the unbelievable.

‘What is it?’ asked Sergeant Masters.

‘Your transport,’ I said and chucked in the valises. My empty stomach was churning in search of what wasn’t there.

‘Does it go?’ asked Cassidy.

‘Never fails. OK, mount up, comrades and we’ll mosey along to the old Suffolk homestead.’

‘Come again?’ said Cassidy.

‘Just trying to make you feel at home. Climb aboard.’

‘Where?’ asked Private Peterson.

‘Sergeant up front, privates in the back.’

Cassidy, already a friend, said, ‘You’re kidding, Tim old boy, it’s a mousetrap.’

‘Well, try it for size,’ I said, ‘and if you find any cheese, save some for me.’ I parted the rear canvas. ‘Hop in.’

‘OK, I’ll play,’ said Cassidy. She hitched her skirt and swung a leg up. It looked good enough to eat and probably would have been if she’d spent eighty days in
a
lifeboat and had drawn the wrong straw. I helped her aboard as decently as I could. Private Peterson was a different kettle of fish. Having watched her sister soldier’s leg show with visible disgust, she was dead against being helped.

‘Get lost,’ she said and unwisely tried to hurl herself aboard at a reckless speed. She made a terrible mess of it. In the little van her legs suffered seconds of exposure before she was able to right herself. I closed the canvas on her yell of mortification. Poor girl. Insecurity, that’s what it was. There was a lot of it about among some girls, mostly due to the way roving GIs addressed the problem of being far from home.

Sergeant Masters sat next to me as I tanked my way back to the village. I asked her what she thought of life in the American Army. She said it was a temporary condition that couldn’t be helped and she was trying to learn to love it.

‘I don’t know if you’ll learn to love Suffolk,’ I said, ‘it’s pretty rural.’

‘I’m looking forward to it,’ she said, taking a keen interest in what she could see of it right now. She’d just been railroaded from Chelmsford she said, in a funny old toy train. She had a very self-confident air. I had a gloomy feeling she was faultlessly efficient. I wasn’t too keen on that kind of woman. I didn’t mind Aunt May’s motherly efficiency, it had been a blessing to me, but I had fixed ideas about women and top of the list was the conviction they were designed by nature to be kind, loving and a bit incompetent, except in a kitchen. Sergeant Masters said she hadn’t been long in the UK
but
liked what she’d seen of it so far. Entering the village, she saw a medley of thatched roofs and said they were really cute, part of old England.

‘They harbour livestock,’ I said, ‘but they’re pretty, I suppose.’

‘Pretty?’

‘All right, cute,’ I said and pulled up outside Jim’s cottage. He was at his gate, the petrol can wrapped in sacking under his arm and a cardboard box in his hand. Up to my window he came and handed in the cardboard box.