The Gunner Girl (22 page)

She re-read it three times, and then let it lie on her lap. The sun sliced yellow through the grey clouds. She heard the sound of a cat mewing. There was a choking inhalation as the first sob
came, and then the others tumbled out, a torrent of tears of relief and regret, hot and fast, her breath heaving: Jock. I did write. I wrote and wrote and thought you never wrote back. What
happened? Why didn't you get my letters? Why didn't I get yours? But you're alive. Thank God, you're alive.

At last, the tears subsided. She was wrung out and empty. She wiped her nose on her sleeve and smoothed out the letter. One letter going missing was an accident. But all of them? All of them to
him from her? And all of them from her to him? She thought back. She used to write and give her letter to Mrs Morley, the postmistress, who came in to have her tea leaves read on a regular basis.
Ma knew Mrs Morley well, on account of the leaves, and she never charged her for the readings. Bea thought of them together at the table, talking in hushed voices over the teacups. They were thick
as thieves, Ma and the postmistress.

Bea remembered her own eighteenth birthday, back in November. She remembered how Ma had surprised her with a birthday card from Pa that she'd kept hidden. Until her chest got bad, Ma had
always been up first in the morning, collecting the post. It was Ma who hid things and kept secrets. It was Ma.

The realisation was as swift and painful as bleach on a cut: giving Baby up, joining the ATS, thinking something had happened to Jock. It was all Ma's doing, wasn't it? Bea looked up
and saw the ginger tom tiptoe towards her over the bricks. She groped with the inchoate mass of emotions rising up. But what she was starting to feel wasn't anger or grief at her
mother's betrayal. As the cat came closer, she tickled him under the chin and he began to purr. The sensation she had was hard and high in her chest: defiance.

‘Enough,' said Bea aloud, but the cat just carried on purring, stretching out in the sudden sunshine.

‘Where've you been all this time?' said Vi. The clock tower was striking ten as Bea closed the front door behind her.

‘Well, I had to see Joan get on the bus safely, didn't I?' said Bea, pushing past her sister and going over to the stove. She put the kettle on and took one of the glass baby
bottles out from under the sink, along with a rubber teat.

‘It's already been done,' said Vi. ‘Rita took it up ages ago, while you were seeing Joan off. How's your head, by the way?'

‘Fine,' said Bea, measuring the white powder from the tin with the special spoon. May came in the back door with a skipping rope and Vi shooed her back out again. The twins were
fighting under the kitchen table.

‘You look rough as a dog, though,' said Vi, starting to pull out her curling papers. ‘Anyway, I'm off in a bit. I'm on early shift today. See the twins don't
go down the docks again, won't you?' Bea nodded, waiting for the water to heat on the stove. ‘I told you, Rita's already done that,' said Vi, scrunching up the curling
papers and tossing them inside the empty biscuit tin on the shelf under the mirror, where the plaster was all cracked.

‘Well, I'm doing another one,' said Bea. ‘For when I take her out.'

‘Looks like rain; I wouldn't bother,' said Vi.

‘I can take her to a café if it starts.'

John came through, carrying a vast piece of twisted metal, and Vi told him to take his bits of bomb back outside, where they belonged. She rolled her eyes at Bea, teasing her curls into place.
‘Ma won't like you taking Baby Val out,' she said.

Ma can go to hell, Bea thought. Aloud she said: ‘How is she this morning?'

‘Not up yet. It's bad today.'

‘Baby Val up there with her?'

‘Mmm-hmm . . .' Vi nodded, mouth full of Kirby grips. Bea poured the warm water into the bottle, fixed on the teat and gave it a shake. Then she tested the temperature on her wrist.
‘Ma doesn't bother with that, now, she's almost weaned,' said Vi, reaching for her coat, Bea's old coat, pale and threadbare at the cuffs. ‘The others have all
had tea and May went out to the baker's to get some bread, so don't listen if they come in asking for breakfast, they've had it. I'll be back at three but can you see if you
can get through any of the washing before the rain starts? I don't reckon Ma will be down today; have you heard her chest?' She was pulling on her coat. ‘Are you all right, Bea?
You're awful quiet today.'

‘Probably just a hangover,' replied Bea.

Vi came over and gave her a squeeze. ‘It's lovely having my big sister home,' she said. ‘We all miss you when you're not here.'

‘Even Baby Val?'

‘Especially Baby Val,' said Vi, squeezing her tighter. Jock's letter, tucked inside her shirt, was flattened against her flesh as Vi hugged her.

‘Vi?' said Bea, as they pulled apart.

‘What?' There was so much to say. Jock was alive. Ma had hid his letters. Jock was going to come back and marry her. Baby could be hers again. They would all be together. Vi was
buttoning up her coat. ‘What is it, Bea?' Vi reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a tiny tin of Vaseline and dabbed it on her lips.

‘Nothing,' said Bea. ‘You'd better get a move on or you'll be late for work.'

Vi smiled and was gone and Bea was alone downstairs. She could hear the others outside: May's feet tapping out a game of hopscotch and the twins calling to their friends across the
alleyway. Rita must be upstairs. She should go up and ask for her help with the washing. Ma would be up there, too, in bed with Baby Val.

The narrow staircase went steeply up into the darkness. There was nothing on the walls and the bricks were damp, the mortar soft, like the wet sand on the strand. Bea trailed one hand against
the brickwork as she went up. In the other, she had Baby's bottle. The door to the big room was ajar. Even from the landing, Bea could hear Ma's breathing, like water draining from
pebbles. Bea knocked once and pushed the door open. Baby Val was lying asleep in the covers next to Ma, her plump cheeks flushed and her eyelids fluttering in a dream. Ma's hair was loose:
stringy ginger streaked with grey. Bea thought of the ginger tom and the broken bricks under the clouded sky. Ma looked tight and tired, the bed too big for her bony form.

‘All right, girl?' she said. Her voice was low and hoarse. Then, noticing the bottle of milk. ‘She's had it. I've put her down already.'

‘I thought I'd take her out,' said Bea.

‘It looks like rain,'

‘We can go to a café if it does.'

‘You got money to burn?' Bea took a step further into the room, closer to the pile of sheets, blankets and coats layered on the bed. Sunlight filtered weakly through the small
window. There was the sound of a van droning along the street below. ‘She should stay here at home with me,' said Ma.

Bea took another step in. There were dark circles under Ma's eyes and her skin looked clammy. ‘A bit of fresh air won't do her any harm,' said Bea, approaching the
bed.

‘She'll catch her death if it rains.'

‘It'll be good for her to get out for a bit.'

‘She should stop here, keep warm.' With one more step, Bea was at the bedside. ‘Now just you listen to me, girl,' said Ma. Bea bent down towards the still-sleeping baby.
‘You're not taking that child anywhere, d'you hear me?' Bea held the bottle in one hand but, with the other, she swept up the sleeping baby in one quick movement, up into
her arms. Bea's arms were strong from shifting equipment at the battery, and her movements swift from training. Baby Val barely stirred as she lifted her up and with three quick steps was out
of the door before Ma could even begin to push herself out of bed. ‘Don't you dare, don't you bloody dare, girl!' Ma tried to shout, but her voice came out as a croak, and
Bea was already at the bottom of the stairs.

Rita poked her head out from the other room. ‘What's all the palaver?'

‘Nothing,' said Bea. ‘I'm just taking Baby Val out, that's all.' She grabbed the crocheted blanket from where it still lay, under the armchair, and had
reached the front door before Ma even made it to the landing. She looked up as she left, saw Ma's stooping form, leaning on the door jam, glowering down the dark stairwell at them. Then she
turned away and slammed the front door shut behind her.

Catch me if you can, she thought, shoving the bottle down in between her and the baby, holding little Val in the gap between her chin and the gas mask, clutching her tight, keeping her little
warm head still and safe, close against her chest. ‘You're coming with me, girl,' Bea said. Her footsteps were loud on the cracked paving slabs and the sunlight stabbed through
the dark clouds as she ran.

‘That's where your pa is,' Bea said. Baby was awake now, and Bea had her on one hip, the coloured blanket slung round both of them like a shawl. She pointed
out past the hulking shapes of ships and down the estuary, where the water was a flat gunmetal grey. Seagulls swooped and cried, squabbling over scraps on the quayside. The air smelled of brine and
diesel, and there was the sound of engines and of men shouting throatily from deck to shore. ‘My pa – your granddad – he used to work here, before the war, and this is where your
pa sailed from when he went away,' said Bea.

Baby said ‘Da,' and swung out a little fist towards the ships and the sea. The sky was dark, clouds purplish, bruised. Bea shifted Baby to the other hip. They should probably get
inside before it rained.

When she'd banged the front door shut and started running, she hadn't really thought about where to go. All she'd thought of was getting baby out of there, taking what was hers
and leaving. But her footsteps carried her down the hill, down to the docks – forbidden by Ma because of the type of people that could be found there: drunks, tarts and worse. But Bea always
felt drawn to the sea, to the places where solid met liquid and everything was possibility and hope. She took one last look towards the blurred horizon before turning away. Jock's letter
crackled as she moved, hidden in the space between her shirt and her breast. Baby patted the place where it lay, and gurgled to herself, liking the funny sound and feel of crumpled paper under
cloth.

The big Woolworth's was warm and dry. The crocheted blanket was damp, but they'd kept dry together underneath. Bea bought airmail paper and a pen and ink. She had
just enough money left for a cup of tea and a little something for Baby. There was an old highchair in the café, with a faded picture of a baby donkey painted on it. Baby liked sitting up,
on her own, watching everyone. She fed herself the pieces of ginger parkin that Bea broke up for her, and she guzzled down the bottle of milk.

Bea spread out the airmail paper on the table and dipped her new pen in the ink. She bit her lip, chewed the end of the pen and began to write. The paper was tissue-thin and the ink bled. She
wrote as people came and went with sandwiches and tea and biscuits, and the ancient waitress wiped a dirty rag over the tabletops and complained loudly about her bunions. She wrote as the rain
battered the windows like a thousand tiny fists and men scurried past in long coats with newspapers over their heads. She wrote as the man on the till smoked a cigarette out back while a queue
built up at the counter. She wrote while the sun broke through and a rainbow appeared above the department store on the corner. By the time she finished, the faraway clock tower was chiming four
and Baby's head rested on the front of the highchair tray, surrounded by crumbs and an empty bottle.

Bea posted the letter in the box outside the main post office in the High Street and paused, watching the scurrying figures all around, hugging her sleepy little girl in close. What to do
now?

She was about to knock on Bea's front door when she heard the shriek. Then there was a pause before the voices started: ‘It's no more than you deserve, going
off with her like that.'

‘Did you think I'd run away with her?' – it was Bea's voice, muffled through the wood.

‘Why would I think that?'

‘I don't know; why would you think that?'

‘Doncher talk to me like that, girl.'

‘Like what?'

‘Like you know fine well what. Unless you want another one?' – Bea's mum's voice, threatening.

Joan knocked, then, loudly, calling out, ‘Hello, is anyone home?' As if she'd only just got to the door, as if she hadn't heard a thing. The door began to open and
Vi's head poked out.

‘Well, if it isn't Little Miss Gin-and-Lime,' she said, ushering Joan inside.

Joan closed the door behind her. They were all in there, crowded into the front room. Bea and her mum were facing each other at the foot of the stairs, Bea holding Baby Val. The other children
shadowed the walls and corners of the room, peeping out from dripping sheets slung over the empty playpen or from behind the lone armchair. Nobody spoke until the baby began to cry and Bea's
mum snatched her from Bea's arms, and began to climb up the steep stairs into the darkness, coughing. Bea watched her. From upstairs came the bang of a door closing, and the downstairs
breathed back into life. Marbles spilled out across the bare floorboards, windows steamed with condensation, wet washing dripped from chair backs and children squabbled and chattered. Joan saw Vi
raise her eyebrows at Bea, but Bea just looked away. Joan stood awkwardly until there was the sound of the kettle whistling on the hob, and Vi asked if she wanted a cuppa and Joan said yes please.
At last, Bea turned to look at her.

‘Hungry?' she said.

‘Yes,' said Joan.

‘You can help me make tea for this lot, then,' said Bea. ‘Vi's got to get back for her shift.'

‘Slice it thin,' said Bea. Joan looked down at the bread: just over half a loaf for the lot of them. She sliced so thin that the centre of each slice was
translucent, crumbling. The hard slab of lard would never spread on that, she thought. Bea was pouring water into a large saucepan. One of her little sisters, the one who looked about twelve, was
looking out of the window.