The Forget-Me-Not Summer (44 page)

Miranda had spent the day ferrying personnel between airfields, and knew that Avril had been doing the same, so at eight o'clock, when she was free at last, she went straight to the cookhouse, hoping that someone would realise that the MT drivers on duty would not have been fed.

The large room with its many tables and chairs and its long wooden counter was almost empty, but to Miranda's relief those who were in there all seemed to be eating and there was a smell of hot food in the air.
She went over to the counter and a weary little Waaf clad in blue wrapover apron, white cap and leather clogs greeted her with a tired grin. ‘Evenin', Lovage; what can I do you for? Cheese on toast, beans on toast, scrambled eggs on toast? Or a mixture of all three?'

Miranda settled for cheese on toast and was turning away with her plate of food when the girl behind the counter spoke again. ‘Your mate come in ten minutes ago; she's over there in that corner. She were one of the lucky ones; got in before Corp used the last of the fried spuds. Help yourself to HP Sauce; it's by the bucket of tea.'

Miranda collected a mug, dipped out her tea and went across to where Avril was sitting. She had one of the tables to herself and Miranda was surprised to see that she had, spread out upon it, five or six sheets of cheap airmail paper. She scowled as Miranda's shadow fell across her table, then looked up and smiled as she recognised her friend.

‘Wotcher!' she said cheerfully. She pushed one of the chairs towards Miranda. ‘Do sit down, only don't drip that tea all over my letters.'

‘Letters?' Miranda said. ‘Don't you mean letter? Is it going to be an awfully long one? Or are you expecting to make a lot of mistakes?' She sat down as she spoke and eyed the other girl curiously.

‘Neither,' Avril said positively. She waved a newly sharpened pencil under her friend's nose. ‘I do this every week or so, and it's a real bind, but I know my duty. I quite like getting letters myself, though by the time they've gone through the censor they often look more like those lacy paper things people used to stand cakes on . . . can't remember what they're called . . .'

‘Doilies,' Miranda supplied. She took a big bite out of her toasted cheese, then leaned forward so that if she did dribble brown sauce it would fall on her plate rather than on her uniform. ‘Who are you writing to anyway?' She half expected Avril to tell her to mind her own business, but though her friend tapped the side of her nose in the well-known gesture she replied readily enough, whilst producing from her gas mask case several crumpled and really rather dirty pages which she smoothed out, ticked off and laid out, parade ground fashion, each one on a separate sheet of the airmail paper.

‘I don't mind tellin' you, because you won't know any of them,' Avril said. She pointed. ‘That's to Danny, that's to Simon, that's to Frank and that's to Freddy, and then there's one for P— Paul.' She looked challengingly across the table at her friend. ‘Satisfied?'

‘Yes, I suppose so. Are they all service personnel? Or are you still in touch with any of your old pals from the factory? Come to that, are you still in touch with people from the children's home? I know I ought to drop Aunt Vi and Beth a line from time to time – well, I do – but I warned Beth last time I wrote that if she didn't reply I wouldn't write again.'

‘Has she? Replied, I mean,' Avril asked. She wrote
Dear Danny, Lovely to get your letter
, then looked questioningly up at her friend.

‘Not yet, but Steve had a letter from his mam – they're back in Jamaica Close – and she says Aunt Vi and Beth are okay though Aunt Vi disapproves of Beth's feller and they're always having rows.' She leaned forward to stare as Avril began to write on the next sheet of paper.
‘Whatever are you doing, queen? Don't you finish one letter before you start the next?'

‘Course not; that'd be a waste of time,' Avril said impatiently. She pulled the next sheet towards her and proceeded to write. She had large, rather childish handwriting, and Miranda read it upside down from across the table with ease.
Dear Simon, Lovely to get your letter
. . .

Even as Miranda watched, Avril pulled forward the third sheet.
Dear Frank, Lovely to get your letter
. . . ‘Aircraftwoman Donovan, what on
earth
do you think you're doing? Surely you aren't going to write exactly the same letter to all those fellers? Next thing you'll have half a dozen pencils all working together so you only have to write the once; the pencils will do the rest.' She was joking, but Avril answered her quite seriously.

‘I know what you mean, and I've tried it, but it simply won't work. This method is better, because I can write quite a lot when I don't have to think about what I'm saying. If I wrote to each bloke separately I'd never have a spare moment, so this is the obvious answer.' As she spoke she was finishing off the line of papers,
Dear Frank
being followed by
Dear Freddy
and
Dear Paul
.

Miranda watched, fascinated, as her friend rapidly scrawled identical messages on the first four sheets of paper. ‘What's wrong with Paul?' she asked, indicating the last sheet, still blank apart from the salutation. ‘Is he special? In fact, is Paul the reason why you won't settle down with one chap, you greedy girl, you?'

‘Special? Not particularly,' Avril said, but Miranda saw a flush climb up her friend's neck into her cheeks. ‘But they're a long way off and all my letters to them go by
sea, so as you must realise, nosy, they don't get all of them by a long chalk. Last time I wrote to Paul he wrote back to say only half my letter had arrived; some idiot in the censorship office had seen fit to tear it in two, or at any rate only half arrived on Paul's notice board. After that it seems only fair to write in a bit more detail, otherwise he's behind the rest of the blokes, if you see what I mean.' She glared across the table. ‘Have you any objection? It was you who told me letters were important to fellers a long way from home, if you remember . . .'

‘Oh, I don't blame you,' Miranda said quickly. ‘It just seems a bit cold-blooded, that's all. I dare say you've given all of them the impression that they're the only bloke in your life, and that after the war . . .'

Avril snorted. ‘I can't help what they believe, that's up to them,' she said firmly. ‘And if you're going to keep talking I'll get in a muddle and repeat the same sentence twice in one letter, and that would be awful, wouldn't it? I mean, one of them might guess that he's not my only correspondent. And don't you go dribbling brown sauce over my last two sheets of airmail paper, or you can jolly well buy me another pad from the NAAFI.'

‘Sorry,' Miranda said hastily, cramming the last piece of toasted cheese into her mouth, and speaking rather thickly through it. ‘As I said, it just seems a bit cold-blooded. What happens if Tom, Dick or Harry suddenly stops replying to your form letters?'

This time a real flush turned Avril's pale skin to scarlet. She glared at Miranda and Miranda saw that her friend's lip was trembling. ‘You mean when one of them is killed, don't you?' she said, her voice breaking. ‘Someone in his flight will go through his mail and let me know. And
now you can bloody well gerrout of here and leave me to finish me letters in peace.'

Miranda jumped to her feet and went round the table to give Avril a hug. ‘I'm really sorry, queen,' she said gently. ‘It was very wrong of me to pry and even more wrong to assume that your letter writing was some sort of game. I can see now that you're making a load of fellers happy and harming no one. Will you forgive me?'

Avril gulped and wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands, causing a couple of large teardrops to splash onto one of her letters, but she turned and gave her friend a rueful grin. ‘The thing is, Miranda, I've only got one life. The letters are full of what I've been doing – except I never mention other chaps, of course – so the letters are bound to be nearly identical, even if I went to the trouble of writing on separate days. This way, I'm keeping four or five guys happy without making promises I don't intend to keep.'

‘Well, bully for you,' Miranda said. ‘I'm dog tired; I've been driving all day. I'll just get myself a slice of spotted dick and then I'm for bed. How long will it take you to finish your – er – letters?' Some imp of mischief made her add: ‘How do you sign off? Not SWALK?'

To her relief, Avril laughed. ‘Course not. I just say
Thanks again for your letter, can't wait for the next, Avril
. Does that suit your majesty's sense of what's right and wrong? It had better, because I don't intend to change my way of life just to suit you.'

‘All right, you've made your point.' Miranda carried her plate across to the counter, swished her irons briefly in the barrel of lukewarm water, dried them on a rag of dishcloth and pushed them into her gas mask case. Then
she waved to Avril, busily writing once more, and set off for their hut. Dead tired as she was she still forced herself to go along to the ablutions and have as good a shower as she could in cold water before getting between the blankets. She had been there only what felt like a few minutes when she was awoken by Avril crashing into her own bed. Miranda sat up on her elbow and gazed in the dimness across to where Avril was already snuggling down. ‘Finished your letters?' she asked sleepily. ‘There was no hot water but I managed to get a shower, though it was cold. How about you?'

‘I done 'em, the letters I mean, but I've not been to the 'blutions; too late, too tired,' Avril droned, her voice already sleep-drugged. ‘I'll wash in the mornin'. G'night.'

‘G'night,' Miranda echoed, and almost immediately fell fast asleep.

Avril lay watching the light gradually strengthen through the small window, and thinking that she had had a narrow escape in the cookhouse the previous evening, when Miranda had come so jauntily across the room to join her at her table. How easily she might have been writing to Pete Huxtable first instead of last, and for some reason, a reason which she could not explain even to herself, she had no wish for either Miranda or anyone else to know that she was writing to Pete. He had had a very varied war so far and oddly, though they had not been particularly close when she had lived in the flat, as time went on she had grown to appreciate him and to prefer him to all her other suitors. Whilst she had been what she now thought of as a kitchen slave, she and Pete had been exchanging letters – fairly short uniformative
ones – and when he had suggested a meeting she had jumped at it. She was missing Miranda, her job at the factory and the girls she had known there, and meeting Pete had been a bit like plunging back into her past. They had agreed to meet in Lincoln, since Pete was familiar with the city, being at the time at RAF Waddington, so he had telephoned her with instructions to meet him at the Saracen's Head, a pub on the high street. ‘But I'll never find it. Lincoln's a huge city, and I've never been off the station,' Avril had wailed. ‘Is there some sort of landmark which will tell me I'm goin' in the right direction?'

Pete had laughed. ‘It's on the high street, right next door to what they call the Stonebow, which is a sort of arch under which all the traffic has to pass,' he had told her. ‘Honest to God, Avril, every soul in Lincoln knows the Saracen's Head. Be there at seven o'clock and we'll snatch a meal and catch up with each other's news.' He had chuckled. ‘I gather you aren't too keen on working in a cookhouse. You can tell me why not over a meal at the Cornhill Hotel.'

Avril had agreed to this and had been astonished by the flood of pleasure which broke over her like a wave at the sight of Pete Huxtable's plain but well-remembered face. They were both in uniform, but had held hands discreetly below the table at the hotel. When Pete had told her that other members of his ground crew spent their forty-eights with their girlfriends at the hotel, she had looked at him suspiciously, thinking he was about to suggest that they should do likewise, but the matter-of-fact way he spoke and his usual friendliness soon assured her that he was not going to try anything on.
He was doing an important job, servicing the engines of great bombers, and proud of his ability, but he was still the rather shy young man she had known from their Liverpool days.

They had remained friends throughout their time in Lincolnshire, always trying to time their trips to the city to coincide, and thinking about it now Avril realised that her desperation to be free of Corporal Greesby and the cookhouse had really only come to a head when Pete was posted to Malaya. She knew he would have a long and dangerous sea voyage and at their last meeting she had been prepared, if he demanded it, for them to spend their forty-eight as guests at the Cornhill Hotel. Pete, however, had merely said that he could only bear his posting if she would both promise to write and also look kindly upon him when the war was over and he was free to ask her to wed him.

At the time this had caused Avril considerable hilarity, for, as she told him, she did not intend to marry anyone, not even someone as nice as he. ‘I'm goin' to have a career. Oh, I might marry when I'm really old, say thirty-five, but until then I'm goin' to earn lots of money and have lots of fun,' she told him airily. ‘So don't you try and tie me down, Pete Huxtable.'

Pete had agreed meekly that he would do no such thing and said he applauded her decision to have a career. ‘Though I can't think that cooking for forty and peeling potatoes far into the night is going to help your future much,' he had said, keeping his voice serious though his eyes had twinkled. ‘In fact the only thing it will prepare you for is marriage – if you intend to have a great many children, that is.'

With thoughts of the children's home in mind, for the food provided there had been very similar to that which was slopped on to plates daily by the cookhouse staff, she had shuddered and assured him that she would apply for a posting as soon as she had suffered Corporal Greesby and the cookhouse for the obligatory six months, but then Pete had been posted and her whole attitude had changed. Losing her pal Miranda, and then Pete, and doing work she hated under a man she disliked, had caused her to watch the bulletin board closely, and when the request for girls to apply to become balloon operatives appeared on the board she was first in the queue. She had told no one that Pete meant more to her than any of her other correspondents, so now, chuckling to herself over her narrow escape from Miranda's curiosity, she fell abruptly asleep and was only woken when the tannoy began to shout. She had been late to bed, thanks to writing all her letters, but nevertheless grabbed her clothes, towel and soap and tore out of the hut, covering the short distance between her bed and the ablutions at greyhound speed. She bolted into the hut, which possessed three curtained-off showers, half a dozen curtained-off lavatories and a great many wash basins. For Avril, who for two years had known nothing but the primitive arrangements which balloon sites offered, the mere thought of a shower either hot or cold was always welcome, and since two were already occupied she went happily into the third, hanging her pyjamas on the hook and plunging under the water. Soon, clean and fully dressed apart from shoes and cap, she returned to their hut and there was Miranda, ready for the off. The two girls grinned at one another and set off for the cookhouse,
for their day's work would begin at eight. Miranda would be driving yet more airmen to some unspecified destination and Avril was on ambulance duty, which she hoped sincerely would prove to be a sinecure that day. The British airmen only flew at night – unlike the Americans who, she knew, did daylight raids – so though the ambulance was always manned and ready, its chief work came after dark. That meant she would be free until noon and on call from six or seven o'clock, which should give her plenty of time to write to Pete, for she had not liked to do so the previous evening with Miranda's too knowing eyes upon her.