The Crew (10 page)

‘Well, you did make rather a disturbance, sir, but don't worry about it. And no damage was done. It was nice of you to come by.'

That was that, then, Stew thought in relief, and headed for the door. Now they could go and have a grog. But Piers was still carrying on, asking something about the waitress . . . wanting to say sorry to her as well, for Christ's sake. The girl told him she was in the dining-room, laying tables.

‘Shan't be a moment, Stew,' Piers said and, before he could stop him doing anything so bloody stupid and unnecessary, he'd gone shooting off down the hall.

He hesitated, not sure whether to stand his ground or wait outside in the car. The girl's smile had switched off like a light bulb when she glanced again in his direction and she turned her back deliberately and started rearranging some papers behind the desk. That pissed him off. There was no call for her to be so unfriendly when she'd been so nice to Piers.

He stepped forward. ‘Stew Brenner's the name.'

He might not have uttered anything because she went on ignoring him completely. Her face was averted so he could only see the back of her head and the tight sausage of hair above a prim white collar.

He said, peeved, ‘What's the matter? Do you want
me
to apologize, too, or something?'

No response. Not a flaming glimmer. He must have been ruder to her than he'd thought – maybe even said something obscene, though he usually tried to
watch his language with sheilas, even when he'd had a skinful. ‘All right . . . I'm sorry. For whatever it was. I can't remember what I did or said . . . I'd had too much to drink, see.
I'm sorry. OK?
'

At last she turned round, slowly, to look at him. ‘Gentlemen usually remove their caps in the hotel.' She went off into the office behind the desk and banged the glass door shut behind her. He could see her sit down at a typewriter and hear the staccato clatter of the keys. Stew swore furiously under his breath. Some women were never bloody satisfied.

There was only one waitress in the dining-room – a girl laying a table at the far end. Piers stood by the swing doors for a moment, watching her setting out knives and forks and spoons. She was too absorbed in her task to notice him, and he watched her breathe on a knife blade and rub it carefully on the corner of her apron. He gave a small cough and she started and dropped the knife onto the carpet.

‘Excuse me . . .' He hesitated, not knowing for the life of him what he was going to say, but determined that he owed her some kind of apology.

‘Did you want something, sir?' She was staring at him apprehensively. ‘Dinner isn't served until seven o'clock.'

‘I know . . . I mean, I didn't come for dinner.' He made his way between the tables towards her. ‘Actually, I came to apologize. To say how frightfully sorry I am to have behaved so badly the other evening. I'm afraid I'd had rather a lot to drink and I can't remember much about it . . . but . . . but I gather I . . . well, somebody told me I behaved specially badly – to
you.
At least, I think it must have been you.' He swallowed. ‘I wanted to apologize.'

She had gone pink in the face while he was speaking – the colour starting in two small spots on each cheek and spreading like stains. She looked down at the bundle of cutlery clutched in her hands. ‘That's all right, sir. It wasn't anything really . . . just a bit of skylarking. You gentlemen were just enjoying yourselves. Having a bit of fun.'

‘It was my birthday, you see.'

She lifted her head and smiled at him, the sweetest smile he thought he'd ever been. ‘I know it was, sir. You were twenty-one.'

He smiled back. ‘Well, I suppose it's a bit of a milestone. Cause for celebration, and all that.' He wondered how old
she
was. Not more than seventeen at the most. She looked like a little waif in the starched white apron and cap and the black dress – all at least two sizes too big for her; and her eyes under the fringe of hair were the colour of, of . . . of speedwells, he thought suddenly. Those beautiful little bright blue flowers you saw dotting the grass on a summer's day.

He bent down to pick up the knife that lay between them and handed it to her. ‘I say, what's your name?'

‘Peggy, sir.'

‘That's an awfully nice name.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

Yes, the colour of speedwells, that was it. And her hair was as fair as flax. He wished he could remember her sitting on his lap. ‘Well, I suppose I'd better leave you to get on . . . with the tables, and so on.'

‘Yes, I must sir. I have to get everything done before the gong.'

‘The gong?' Gongs were medals to him now.

‘For dinner, sir. In the hall. It's my job to ring it, you see. And Mrs Mountjoy gets very cross if I'm late.'

He'd no idea who Mrs Mountjoy was. ‘Yes, of course. Well, anyway, I'm jolly glad I saw you. Jolly glad.'

‘Thank you, sir.' She gave him a little bob curtsey, like the maids used to at home.

He backed away awkwardly and bumped into a chair behind him, almost knocked the blessed thing over. ‘Perhaps I'll see you again . . . I mean, I expect I'll be in for dinner again some time soon.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘I promise to behave better.'

She smiled at him again. God, what a sweet smile!

‘Well, I'll be off then . . .'

He glanced back through the glass panel as he shut the dining-room door. She was busy polishing the knife blade on her apron.

There was an overgrown vegetable patch behind the cottage. Dorothy had noticed the rhubarb first, the long sticks half hidden by nettles, and then she'd discovered a row of gooseberry bushes. There was an apple tree and a plum tree, too, so she'd be able to use the fruit to make puddings for Charlie later on. And if she cleared and dug over the patch, she could try growing a few vegetables. She'd never grown them before. When he was alive, Edward had done the garden and he hadn't liked her to touch anything. He only grew flowers – mostly dahlias that she hadn't cared for very much. She didn't like their gaudy colours or their big, flashy flowers, some of them big as saucers, but his dahlias had been Edward's pride and joy. After he'd died she'd given the tubers away to a neighbour and, instead, she'd planted roses – pale pink and creamy yellow and pure white ones. Edward would have thought them wishy-washy.

She'd been wishy-washy, too, the way she'd always deferred to him so meekly, but then that's what he'd insisted on from the first. It was up to the husband to make the decisions, he'd told her at the very start of their marriage. He knew best, with his greater experience of life, and she could trust him to look after her. It was like being the captain of a ship and he'd steer them away from any rocks. Well, what else could she have done but agree? It was his house, his money, and he was old enough to be her father.

She'd been just sixteen when she'd met Edward and he'd been close to forty and recently widowed. She'd already left school and got a job in a florist's in Bromley. She had a knack for doing nice wreaths and they'd given her the job of doing the one Edward had ordered for his wife's funeral. He'd come in afterwards to pay the bill and had complimented her on her work. Then he'd come in again to order a bouquet for his mother's birthday and asked specially for her to do it. When he'd asked her out later he'd behaved like a perfect gentleman and he'd seemed so polished and so worldly-wise that she had been flattered and overwhelmed by his attention. And when, in the course of time, he'd asked her to marry him, her parents had urged her to accept. She'd be settled for life with a good, steady man who had a nice safe job in a bank, they'd said. The age difference didn't matter – in fact, it was a positive advantage in their eyes. Even so, he'd had to ask her three times before she'd accepted him. He had spoken of the deep affection he had for her and of his great esteem and he had spoken so earnestly and so kindly that she had truly believed herself to care for him in return. It was only after they had been married for a few months that she had realized that
though she might honour and obey him, as she had promised in the church, she would never be able to love him. But by then, Charlie had been on the way and she had been given someone else to love.

Absorbed in her digging and her thoughts, Dorothy didn't hear the knocking on the cottage front door, and when the old man from the farm appeared round the side path, he gave her quite a fright.

He touched his cap to her. ‘Afternoon, Mrs Banks. 'Nother fine day we're havin'.'

He usually started off with the weather, and she always agreed politely with whatever he said. Somehow she felt that it was
his
weather up here in Lincolnshire and therefore his right to deliver the verdict on it.

‘Doin' a spot of diggin', then?'

She leaned on the fork, her back aching. ‘I thought I'd try to grow some vegetables if I can clear all these weeds.'

‘You'll be stayin' a while longer, then?'

‘Yes, several months.' It was always her answer.

He nodded. ‘What sort of vegetables were you thinkin' of?'

‘I'm not sure. Potatoes, carrots, beans . . . whatever I can find seeds for.'

He nodded again. ‘Might have some of those spare. I'll take a look and come by with them.'

He'd already given her all the flower seeds for nothing.

‘Only if I pay you for them.'

But he shook his head firmly. ‘An apple or two off the tree'll do nicely later on. Bramleys, they are. Good cookers. Could you do with a bicycle?'

She said, surprised, ‘A bicycle?'

He nodded. ‘That's right. My wife's old one.
Thought to myself you might make some use of it . . . so's you could get around easier. It's a fair walk to the village, and I hear you're workin' up at the army camp. I'll lend it to you while you're here, if you like. Better'n Shanks's pony.'

‘Well, thank you. It would be very handy. But won't your wife be needing it?'

He chuckled. ‘Not where she is, God rest her. Gone to her grave ten years past. And I fancy she'd like you to have the use of it. How's your boy doing, then?' He nodded towards the aerodrome. ‘On the Lancasters, isn't he?'

‘Oh . . . he's fine, thank you.' How on earth had they found out? She hadn't said a word to anybody. Or about working at the army camp.

‘Gunner, I hear.'

‘Yes. Rear gunner.'

‘Mrs Dane said he's a nice-looking lad.'

‘Mrs Dane?'

‘Runs the post office stores. He called in for sweets, or some such. Talked about you.'

So it was Charlie himself who had told them – which meant he really didn't mind if people knew.

‘Worries about you, he does, all on your own here. But then I expect you worry about him.'

‘I do a bit,' she said.

‘More 'n a bit, I'd reckon.'

He touched his cap and told her he'd be by the next day and she went back to her digging. She did some more thinking as she worked. The bike and the vegetable seeds were the old man's way of trying to help and of showing his sympathy. But she didn't think that anyone could really understand what it was like. Unless you had a son, or a husband, or a brother –
someone you loved more than life itself – in terrible danger, day after day, you couldn't possibly know. There must be thousands of women all over England, and in other countries, too, who were going through just the same thing. It was a sort of comfort to think that she wasn't alone.

She worked on until the sun was going down. The patch was cleared of weeds but the earth still needed a good raking to make it fine enough for planting; her back was too stiff and sore to do any more that day.

She was putting the fork away in the shed when she heard an engine starting up over on the drome. Then another. And then two more in turn: the four engines of a Lancaster bomber. She knew the sound well enough. Her heart started its wild thumping and she waited by the shed door, listening. After a moment she could hear more engines starting and soon the sound swelled to a thunderous chorus. She thought she could feel the earth shaking beneath her feet – unless it was the trembling of her own limbs.

They'd been hanging around at dispersal for over an hour. He'd gone through the first check list – Jock crouched at his flight engineer's panel – then started the engines and run them up: starboard inner and outer, then port inner and outer. Then he'd gone through the second list. All OK. He'd signed the Form 700, accepting D-Dog as airworthy and he'd done an intercom check all round. ‘Pilot to crew, can you hear me? Stew? Piers? Harry? Bert? Charlie?' ‘OK, skipper,' from them all in turn. Bert and Charlie had rotated their turrets, whipping their guns up and down, while Harry and Piers checked over their stuff and Stew had
fiddled around with the bomb sight down in the nose. They were all set to roll, when take-off was delayed for an hour.

It was hardly worth it, but they climbed out again and Van took yet another walk round the aircraft – no glycol leaks, tyres OK, Pitot-head cover off or he'd find himself with no airspeed on take-off. Count the engines, a Canadian instructor had once warned him, only half-joking. Make sure some jerk hasn't taken one away while you weren't looking.

The others were lying about on the grass and he joined them and stretched out flat on his back. He lit a cigarette and stared up at the pale evening sky, watching the pink seeping across from the west. Bert was telling one of his stories – this time about a chorus girl and a bishop – and then Stew told one he'd just heard round the station. After the laughter had fizzled out they started laying bets on the op being scrubbed, like the last three had been. Three times in a row they'd gone through the air testing and the briefing and the dressing-up – the whole, jittery sweat of it. They'd done the checks and the waiting around, and when they'd finally been taxiing out, ready to take off, the bastards had gone and scrubbed it. Part of you felt so bloody relieved you wanted to cheer, the other part thought what a stupid waste of effort and that it could have been another one chalked up.