The Crew (6 page)

‘Yeah . . . not your birds, though, sport. That sheila of yours has lost a sight too many feathers.'

‘Blimey, look who's talkin' . . .'

No ops tonight and they were all in good moods. Stew had got a food parcel from home and was sharing it around: cans of condensed milk and meat and cheese, and bars of chocolate. ‘Long as it's not kangaroo, mate,' Bert had told him, inspecting a tin. They'd all been writing letters, or reading, or chatting, or arguing, and Charlie thought he'd be able to get away out of the hut without any of them really noticing. No such luck. They'd all stopped whatever they were doing now and were watching him as he went to get his cap out of his locker. He felt himself going red in the face.

‘I reckon it
is
a girl,' said Bert, ‘'e's blushin'. Red as a beetroot, ‘'e is. Who is she, Charlie? Hope it's not Two-Ton-Tessie. She'll flatten you like a bloomin' pancake.'

They all laughed loudly at that. The WAAF driver
was three times his size and weighed about fifteen stone.

‘Come on, spill the beans, Charlie, boy,' Stew flicked over the pages of one of his magazines full of naked women. ‘What's her name?'

‘Bet it
is
Tessie an' all.' Bert was chortling away. ‘Cor, fancy our Charlie takin' 'er on.'

‘Leave him alone, lads,' Harry said. ‘Give him a bit of peace.'

But he knew it was going to be hopeless to hide it from them. They were going to find out sooner or later and it might as well be sooner. He couldn't help it if they pulled his leg and thought him a mummy's boy. Better to tell them straight out. ‘It's not a girl,' he said. ‘It's my mother. She's rented a cottage just near. I'm going to see her.'

There was silence in the hut and the four of them stared at him. Pins dropping could have been heard easy as anything. Let them laugh, he thought. I don't care.

‘You taking the mickey?' Stew looked incredulous.

He shook his head.

Jock said quietly, ‘She must care a lot about you. I reckon you're a lucky lad.'

‘Can't see my old woman doing that,' Bert agreed.

‘Good on you, kid,' Stew added, though more doubtfully. ‘Off you go.'

He fumbled in the locker for his cap and as he did so Sam fell out of his hiding place onto the floor. Harry, who was the nearest, picked up the teddy bear. There was another silence. ‘Yours, Charlie?'

‘Mum brought him with her,' he said desperately. ‘She thought he'd bring good luck.'

Harry held the bear aloft, showing him round the
hut. ‘What do you say, lads? Let's make him our mascot. Take him along with us.'

There was unanimous agreement. Nobody seemed to care about the one ear and one eye.

‘That's settled, then. Got a name, 'as he?'

‘Sam.'

‘Well, Sam's one of us now,' Harry announced. ‘And I reckon he'll see us through.'

The mustard had gone all lumpy. No matter how hard she stirred it, the lumps wouldn't go away. Old Mr Cedric, the head waiter, wouldn't notice because he was half-blind, not to mention him fancying a drop, but Miss Hargreaves would if she did one of her snap inspections, and the guests might complain, especially Mrs Mountjoy. She thought wildly of throwing the whole lot away, but you couldn't do that with everything so scarce. Maybe if she went on stirring and stirring it would get better.

Miss Frost came into the dining-room. ‘Is everything all right, Peggy? Do you want a hand with anything?'

She liked Miss Frost. She was always helping out, and you could trust her not to sneak to Miss Hargreaves. It must be awful having a crooked foot like that, with people staring at you all the time.

‘It's the mustard, miss. It's gone lumpy.'

‘Let me see. Oh, dear . . . I think we'll have to try getting rid of them with a whisk.'

Miss Frost fetched a whisk and another bowl and, working with a little of the mustard mixture at a time, smoothed out the lumps like magic.

‘There you are. Next time, the way to do it is only to add a very little water at first and mix it well in before you add any more. Then you won't get lumps.'

‘Thank you, miss.'

Peggy spooned the mustard carefully into the little pots and set them on the dining-room tables, together with the salt and pepper cruets. She arranged them in neat groups beside the vases of flowers in the centre of each table. Then she laid out the cutlery, cleaning off any spot marks with the corner of her apron.

When she'd first started a week ago she hadn't really known how to do anything much and she didn't think Miss Hargreaves would have given her the job if it hadn't been so hard to get help these days, with the war on. She had stared at her across her desk as though she didn't like what she saw one bit.

‘How old are you?'

‘Sixteen, madam.'

‘Have you had any experience of waitressing?'

‘No, madam. But I'm sure I could learn quick.'

Miss Hargreaves had frowned. ‘You're very young for the post. My residents are accustomed to a high standard of service, and so are our non-resident diners. We have high-ranking officers coming here in the evenings.'

‘I think I could manage, madam.'

‘Hmm.'

In the end, she'd got the job and Mum had been pleased. Although it meant she wouldn't be home to help so much, there'd be a bit more money coming in.

She finished laying the cutlery and put out the table napkins in front of each place. Miss Frost had shown her how to fold them so they stood up like little wigwams. There was a strong smell of frying onions coming from the kitchens, to go with the liver on the lunch menu, and a lot of clattering and banging of
pots and pans, too, which meant the chef was in another bad mood. She went round the tables again, checking to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything. She checked Mrs Mountjoy's table three times. Mrs Mountjoy insisted on everything being just so and she made a big song and dance if it wasn't.

The bombers were busy today. They'd been roaring around overhead while she'd been doing the laying – practising, she supposed. One was going over so low that it was making everything rattle – knives and forks and spoons and glasses jingling and tinkling on the tables. She ran to the window and looked out in time to see it flying past, a great black thing with huge wings and a long tail, like a fish with a fin sticking up each side. She could see guns poking out of the glass bit at the end.

There'd probably be some Air Force officers in again tonight and that made her nervous to think of. They were nice enough gentlemen, but they kept teasing her so she got in a fluster and made mistakes. She gave a last look at the tables and then hurried into the hall to the big brass gong standing in its corner by the stairs. It was her job to ring it for meals and she liked making it boom loudly. Before she could hit the first note, Mrs Mountjoy came stomping out of the Residents' Lounge, looking at her wristwatch.

‘Five minutes late, girl. Can't you tell the time? Well, what's it for luncheon today, then? Not fish again, I hope.'

The cottage garden was a terrible mess: weeds and long, rank grass and overgrown shrubs. Dorothy could hardly see what plants there were for it all. Still, it would be nice to get it a bit tidy, for Charlie's sake –
more like home – and she could watch the bombers coming and going while she was out there working. She found an old fork and spade in a shed near the outside privy, and made a start on the small patch at the front. After a while she began to uncover the remains of what must once have been a pretty little garden with lupins and poppies and hollyhocks. She cleared away the tangled growth from around the plants, making a big pile of weeds on the brick pathway. From time to time she stopped to watch a bomber taking off or landing over on the aerodrome, wondering if it was Charlie's plane and if it was him up there, sitting in the tail turret with the guns, testing everything like he'd told her they had to do.

The old labourer from the farm up the road went by the gate. He'd stopped to pass the time of day with her before when she was beating the carpets outside, and he did so again, lifting his cap.

‘'Afternoon, Mrs Banks. Warm today.' He squinted up at the sun overhead. ‘Wouldn't be surprised if we don't have a nice summer.'

She didn't know his name, but he knew hers. She was a stranger to the area, so they were all curious about her, of course, but she hadn't said anything about Charlie.

‘Doin' some gardenin', then?' he went on. ‘Bit of a job that for a young lady like you.'

People always took her for younger than she was. She wondered what he'd say if he knew she had a son serving in the RAF. ‘I thought I'd try to tidy it up.'

‘More weeds than flowers, I'd say. I could let you have some seeds, if you like. Fill in the gaps.'

‘Could you really? I'd pay for them, of course.'

‘They're spare,' he said. ‘No payment needed. Plannin' on stayin' a while, then?'

‘Six months or so, I expect.'

‘Well, safer than down south – long as the Jerries don't take it into their heads to pay the aerodrome a visit. Too close for comfort, that'd be.'

He went on speaking, but the roar of a bomber taking off at that moment drowned his words. She put up her hand to shield her eyes and watched it climb into the sky.

‘. . . always feared one'll fall on the farm,' the old man was saying, as the sound died away. ‘I've seen 'em crash comin' back, all shot-up. An' t'other week one blew up takin' off with the bombs. You could see the blaze for miles . . . Weren't nothin' left but little bits. An' there's lots go off an' don't ever come back. More an' more, so they say, with all the guns those Jerries've got. Down they come over there, poor lads, an' that's the finish of 'em, 'less they're lucky.'

‘Excuse me,' she said. ‘I'm a bit thirsty. I think I'll get a drink of water.' She fled inside the cottage and stood leaning against the wall, waiting for him to go away and for the sickness inside her to pass, the trembling to stop. After a few moments she went to get some water from the kitchen tap and gulped it down. When she felt better she went back outside.

The old man had gone and another bomber was taking off. She remembered something else that Charlie had told her – that they always tested the planes on the day of an operation to make sure they were working all right. It meant they must be going tonight. Charlie might not be going with them, of course. It might not be his crew's turn, in which case there was nothing to worry about. He might even
manage to get over this evening, just for a while. Or he might not. She might never see him again.
Lots go off an' don't ever come back.
That's what the old man had said.
More an' more of them.

Stop it, she told herself sternly. Stop it this minute, Dorothy. You promised Charlie you wouldn't worry. You've got to stop thinking like this or you'll be nothing but a nuisance to him. He'll be all right. He's got a good crew, hasn't he? That's what he said. And he's got Sam now, and Sam'll bring him luck.

The waiting around always made them nervy. After the air test there was nothing much to do but hang about the station until briefing in the evening. No leaving base, no phone calls, no outside world.

Van wrote a letter home full of the usual lies.
Everything fine . . . great food . . . easy trips . . . home soon
 . . . He doubted if they'd believe it but he could hardly give them the true facts:
everything stinks . . . filthy food . . . suicidal missions . . . unlikely ever to come home again . . .

He'd thought several times of writing some kind of ‘last farewell letter' to leave in his drawer in case he didn't come back, but had torn up the attempts. He wasn't sure what he could say that might make things easier for them and so he'd shirked the whole thing. He wondered if any of the others had written letters. Not Piers, he thought. Not quite the done thing. In the photographs that Piers had shown him of his parents, they had looked typically reserved English to their upper-class backbones: the mother in evening dress and jewels, the father in some kind of fancy army dress uniform with a row of medals. Not a glimmer of a smile on either face. If Piers got the chop, the
upper lips would stay stiff without any embarrassing emotional outpourings from their son. He couldn't imagine Stew writing one either:
what the hell d'you take me for skip?
Or Jock, who never spoke of his family at all. Or Harry, whose wife had flown the coop. Or Bert, who'd never been seen writing any kind of letter to anyone. The only one who might have done was the kid, Charlie, to his mother; maybe with one of his poems.

He wandered out later to watch some guys playing cricket out on the Flight Line. Somebody had once tried to explain the rules to him, but he was none the wiser. Football was his game, but American football, not the kind they played over here. Watching the slow progress of the cricket match, he felt an outsider witnessing some unfathomable native ritual, beyond him to appreciate. It wasn't the first time he'd felt like that.

He biked over to the ops block for the briefing. The crews were already filing in through the double doors, and as he propped the bike against the wall, Stew came freewheeling up to park his with a crash.

‘Got a nasty feeling about this one, skip.'

‘Yeah . . . so've I.'

The rest of the crew were already sitting in what had now become their place. The curtain covered the map on the wall, concealing the target, and there was the usual guessing game taking place: Hamburg? Cologne? Rostock? Kiel? Beside him, Stew, cigarette parked in the corner of his mouth, started doodling in his notebook with his pencil, crude female outlines all down the margin.

They smoked and they waited. The Nissen hut buzzed with chat, and tobacco smoke thickened
overhead like a London fog. The atmosphere was getting more tense by the minute. Towards the front, Van caught sight of the WAAF intelligence officer he'd noticed at de-briefing: not a hair out of place, not a sign of feeling. She was talking to the senior IO and he could guess how her voice would sound – a female version of Piers.