The Gunner Girl (11 page)

‘Jack – Sergeant Taylor!' It was Junior Commander Montagu, curls sagging from the damp, cheeks flushed. She didn't even acknowledge Joan, who wondered whether or not she
should stand and salute or something – officers never came in the NAAFI. ‘It's the – er – protocols. I need you in my office at once,' said Commander Montagu.
Was it Joan's imagination, or was Commander Montagu's voice wavering, just slightly?

‘Yes ma'am,' said Sergeant Taylor, crumpling his Mars-bar wrapper into the ashtray and stuffing the chocolate into his mouth. Commander Montagu flounced out and Sergeant Taylor
sauntered after her.

‘You want to watch 'im,' said Ethel, when the door banged shut. ‘It's 'is wife I feel sorry for.' She sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘I'm still
not getting anywhere with this blooming crossword. You want another brew?'

‘Please,' said Joan, stubbing out the Woodbine and taking her mug up to the counter. As she reached it, the door banged open again. It was Corporal Jones. They saw each other at the
same moment. She noticed him blush.

‘Do you want a brew?' Joan said, smiling at him. Why make this more awkward than it needed to be? He nodded and she asked Ethel for another. He joined her at the counter. His eyes
looked even larger and glassier than ever, this morning. She could see the little red veins snaking over the white. ‘And a couple of aspirin please, Ethel,' he added. He rubbed his
head.

‘Look, I'm really sorry about . . .' she began.

‘Don't be, I . . .'

‘What did you get?' she said.

‘Confined to barracks. You?'

‘Well, I'm here, aren't I?'

‘Bad luck – your weekend leave pass, and all.' He looked genuinely sorry. How could she tell him that she got exactly what she wanted?

‘Oh, and a Mars bar as well, please, Ethel,' he said.

‘I'll get these,' she said quickly, before he could pay. It was the least she could do. ‘Is the bike all right?'

‘One of the tyres has a flat and a spoke is broken. But it's nothing I can't fix.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘It wasn't your fault.'

They both looked at Ethel, instead of at each other, as she came back with the teas and the aspirin and the chocolate. Joan thought she ought to ask him to join her at the table, but she
didn't say anything. The enamel mugs were too hot to put to their lips, so they stood at the counter with their fingers curled round. She looked at his big hands, fingernails splayed, like
shovels. Ethel was glaring at the paper again. There was a pause as they breathed in the steam for the tea, each waiting for the other to say something.

Finally, he said, ‘I really like you,' at exactly the same time as she blurted, ‘I don't think it's a good idea if we see each other again.' Then there was an
awkward moment when they both stopped, and stared back down at their teas, each knowing what the other was going to say, and not wanting them to say it. Then, he sighed and picked up his mug.

‘You okay if I take this with me, Ethel?' he said. ‘I've got things to do.'

‘You'd better bring that mug back or I'll be having your guts for garters,' said Ethel, chewing the end of her pencil and gazing into the middle distance.

He picked up his mug. ‘Well, I suppose I'd better be off.'

‘Yes. And I'm sorry about last night.'

‘No, don't be. I – I had a good time,' he said, and then he began to walk towards the door. He stopped, halfway, and turned, reaching into the back pocket of his
trousers, some of the tea spilling as he did so.

‘I almost forgot. This came for you.' He held out a blue envelope. She went over to take it from him. Something must have changed in her expression as she got closer and saw the
handwriting.

‘From your pen pal?' he said. She nodded, taking the letter from him and turning it over in her hands.
RAF West Malling
, said the return address, in scrunched-up hedgehog
writing. ‘He's a lucky man,' said Corporal Jones, turning away.

‘Thank you,' she said, gratitude and guilt thickening her words. She realised she'd never even asked his first name. ‘Thank you, Jonesey.' The door banged shut
behind him.

‘He's a nice lad, but a bit daft,' said Ethel. ‘Now, how about this one: location of cardio-vascular muscle, four letters. I can't make head nor tail of
it.'

‘Home,' said Joan, carefully folding up the blue envelope and putting it in her breast pocket. ‘Home is where the heart is.'

The scene was laid out like some kind of Nativity tableau: Ma and Pa as Mary and Joseph, and the vicar like the angel Gabriel blessing the Immaculate Conception that was Baby.
Bea's brothers and sisters were a gaggle of wise men and shepherds, shuffling about in the front pew and not knowing quite how to behave. And what was she in all this, Bea thought: the
donkey?

John kicked David. May told them to stop it. Rita was scratching her head just above her ear and Bea thought distractedly about nits. The twins were tickling each other at the end of the pew. Vi
patted some imaginary crumbs off the front of her new coat – new to her; it was Bea's old coat, but Bea no longer needed it, not now she had her huge army greatcoat. Up at the front,
Baby squirmed, and the vicar's voice droned on like a wasp in a jam jar. The air was icy.

The church had escaped a direct hit in the Blitz, but a bomb had landed in the churchyard a few months previously, shattering the stained glass on one side of the building. The spaces where
there should have been scenes in God's glorious Technicolor were all boarded up. The church was split in half, one side still dancing coloured motes of sunshine and the other a deep shadowy
blankness. And in the middle was the font, with Baby.

Beside her, Rita was pinching John. Bea slapped her leg and hissed at her to give it a rest. Then Baby began to wail, as the vicar drenched icy water all down her little red face. Unperturbed,
the vicar continued to intone. Bea thought that he must be used to carrying on through the sound of other people's suffering. Baby was sobbing as if her little heart would break. Bea felt an
answering tug, and ache in her breasts, and had to sit on her hands to stop herself from reaching out for her little girl.

‘Sounds like she needs changing,' said May importantly. Bea told her to shut up. She was thinking about the first time she heard Baby cry . . .

It had been the 21 June, the longest day of the year. The worst of the Blitz was over and for a whole month they'd hardly had to go down to the shelter at all. That night
it hadn't got dark until way past nine, and she'd sat out on the front step with Ma, putting off the moment when she had to squeeze back into the little room with Violet, May and
Rita.

She and Ma sat together having a cuppa and watching the street turn gradually from amber to grey as all traces of colour drained from the bricks of the terraced houses. Ma got up, wheezing
slightly, and said they should go inside. Bea said she wasn't tired. It was true. The baby she was carrying seemed to be controlling everything, keeping her wakeful at night, but filling her
with crushing tiredness in the middle of the day.

Her ma shrugged and went inside. Bea stayed on the step a bit longer. The stone was still warm from the heat of the summer day. Far away to the west the sky held the last traces of pinky
blue.

Bea pushed her hair out of her eyes. The stars were beginning to come out. She didn't know their names, but she recognised some of the patterns they made. There was one really bright one,
low, just to the side of the tall black silhouette of the factory chimney. She wondered if Jock could see the stars from where he was. Maybe he was on duty, or night patrol somewhere. Maybe he was
leant up against a sandbag with his rifle, looking at exactly the same star. Why hadn't he written? She couldn't believe he didn't care, not after all the things he'd said.
She pulled her eyes away from the star and began to scrabble up; it was an effort to stand with the lump of child inside her.

She'd done what Ma had said and kept it hidden. It'd been easy at first; she hadn't shown for months. Ma's best friend, Mrs Morley, the postmistress, was the only one who
knew. She was the one who'd given Bea the dresses, shapeless floral things, years old, and the greying brassiere, with straps that cut into her flesh. Bea wondered what they'd do when
the baby came? They couldn't hide it for ever, could they?

She could hear Ma pulling down the blackout blinds inside. As she straightened up there was a tiny clench, far, far down inside her belly. She went inside and closed the front door behind
her.

‘Ma?'

‘Yes, girl.'

‘What does it feel like when the baby starts to come?'

Ma looked at her and then immediately went to get water for the big copper, the one she used for boiling linens. Then she began getting kindling and coals together to light the oven.

‘Ma?'

‘Sit down and have a cigarette, girl.'

‘It's your last one.'

‘It will help you relax.'

There was no pain at first just a deep-down strange squeezing, that came and went like a breath. Bea sat down and had just lit the last fag when the sirens started.

‘Oh, sweet Mary mother of Jesus!' Ma spat out and disappeared upstairs to wake the others. They all came tumbling down: May and Vi in their curlers, the younger ones half-dressed,
owl-eyed and grubby. Ma told Vi to take them all down the shelter. May said what about her and Bea, but Ma said they'd be down as soon as. ‘And John, don't you be going near Mr
Lavery!' she shouted after them as they traipsed out into the night.

In the silence after the siren, Bea quietly finished her smoke. She got up to put the butt with the others in the tin on the windowsill – there were enough ends to roll a fresh one with
the leftover tobacco in the morning. Then she began to rinse the cracked saucer under the tap, wiping away the clogged bits of grainy ash with her fingertip.

‘How's you, girl?' said Ma, coming to stand next to her at the sink and taking the saucer from her hands.

‘Fine,' Bea shrugged, as another clench tugged inside. She felt like that time it snowed and all the children from the street took trays and sleds up to the top of Bluebell Hill. She
remembered reaching the top, breathless, and looking down the long white slope as it fell away beneath her. The old tea tray wobbled and slipped underneath her torso as she began to lie down. Some
of the big boys were already off, hurtling downwards, black scribbles getting smaller and smaller, their shouts just tinny wails in the distance. At any moment, someone would give her a shove and
she'd be off down the plummeting whiteness and everything would become an uncontrollable blur of rushing cold. But she didn't tell Ma that.

Her ma told her to sit down. So she scraped the chair out from under the kitchen table and sat. She watched her ma: the faded cotton of her weekday dress eddied around her as she flitted about
the kitchen, putting the pots away, wiping the windowsill. Bea's stomach clenched again. She thought of rubber bands, pulling tight.

The clock tower chimed ten times and the pain came again. This time she breathed out and shut her eyes. When she opened her eyes the next time, Ma was turning up the lamps. The clench came again
and the next time her eyes opened Ma was taking out the half loaf from the bread crock.

Bea watched Ma take out the toasting fork and go to the grate. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but Ma looked small as she knelt by the embers, a knotted figure in the flickering light.
Until now, Ma had always felt so big: she filled their little house so that no corner of it was free from her authority – or her temper. But seeing her away at the stove, hunched up like
that, she looked quite tiny. And Bea felt almost alone. The kettle began to whistle.

‘I'll do the tea then,' said Bea, beginning to push herself up.

‘You stay sitting,' said Ma. ‘Let it whistle a while.' And then she sang a little ditty that had been going round: ‘Whistle while you work, Hitler is a twerp; he is
barmy, like his army, whistle while you work!'

The pain came again, deeper in. Bea shut her eyes and she was back at the top of Bluebell Hill, staring down the bleak white drop, scared to push off, scared of the treacherous rocks and tree
stumps hidden underneath the sleek whiteness.

The whistling stopped and there was a metallic clatter as her ma took the kettle off the hob and Bea opened her eyes to see Ma coming towards her with the toast on a plate. She was smiling with
just one side of her mouth. Even her happiness was rationed, partially withheld. From outside came the faraway hum of planes.

Ma put the toast down in front of her with a knife and the dripping bowl. ‘Take plenty. It might be a long night,' she said.

Bea dug the knife deep into the white lard. Right at the bottom was the brown meat jelly, leftovers from the Christmas roast and the payday fry-ups. She could hear Ma behind her, at the sink,
sluicing out the warm water from the pot. She could hear the clink of metal against china as Ma added tea leaves and the whoosh as the pot was filled with hot water. Bea's stomach clenched.
Harder this time. She shut her eyes and was back at the top of Bluebell Hill, looking downwards, teetering on the edge.

When she opened her eyes again the knuckles on her right hand were white, clutching the knife in the dripping bowl. She pulled out the rich, meaty jelly and spread it thick on the hot toast.
When she bit in, some of the meat juice dripped down her chin and she caught it with her finger and scooped it back into her mouth. The clench came again and she stopped chewing, resisting the urge
to choke out the mouthful as the pain twisted deeper. When the feeling subsided, she breathed out quickly through her nose and swallowed, feeling the plug of food move down her throat. The
aeroplane sounds were getting louder.