The Gunner Girl (3 page)

People stumbled and jostled against each other in their rush to get home, blind as moles, coming out of the Underground into the windy night. She pushed and dodged against the swarm until she
reached the steps. Down she went: one-two-three; down-down-down; passing the posters telling her to dig for victory and make-do and mend . At the bottom, the light was a fuzzy yellow and the air
smelled of diesel fumes, stale cigarette smoke and exhaustion.

She looked up the long platform. There were bundles of clothing, blankets and cardboard boxes, where people were already settling in for the night. She heard a baby crying and a clink of bottles
and the murmuring echo of scores of voices. Groups of people clotted the walls, rustling and muttering like birds. She couldn't see any space for herself, so she walked on, towards the end of
the platform, where the train tunnel formed a shocked black scream in the grimy walls. At the far end was a little space next to the wall, beside a couple with a Jack Russell dog. They were sitting
on empty packing cases. The dog yapped as she approached. She asked if it was okay to sit next to them. The woman shrugged, the tip of her headscarf wobbling. The man looked up at her. One eye was
milky, unseeing in his stubbled face. The dog continued to yap and he kicked it.

She sat with her back against the wall. The platform was hard against her haunches, her legs chilled where they came into contact with the cold concrete. She raised her knees, pushing her skirt
down over as far as she could, then she hugged her arms around them, tight. The man and the woman began to argue about money. She accused him of spending it all in the bookies. He said she ate too
much and was a nag. The quarrel volleyed on between them.

She tried not to listen, and focused her attention further away. Her head was still aching, a dull pain, and she swallowed down the sick feeling as it rose in waves. All along the platform other
people were talking, playing cards, feeding babies, cleaning teeth.

They were interrupted only twice more with the howl and rush of trains and the scuff-shove as passengers hurried past. Then the lights dimmed and the arguing couple spread out a blanket and lay
down underneath a torn patchwork quilt. The large clock above the exit gleamed like a full moon. Slowly, its hands inched round. She hugged herself tighter, clenching and unclenching her jaw,
waiting for sleep. Later, she heard the man heave himself towards the woman in the gloom. Their argument forgotten, they panted and groaned for an endless five minutes until the man grunted and
lugged his body off hers. Then he began to snore.

She could still make out the clock face and concentrated on it, willing the hands towards midnight, so that today would finally be over. She went to sleep at last, with her hands in her pockets,
clutching Joan's precious papers safe in her fist.

At breakfast, Edith's mother looked up languidly from
The Times
. ‘
Bon anniversaire,
darling,' she said. ‘No butter, and Cook's
talking about joining the Land Army,' she continued, taking a small bite from a triangle of toast and marmalade.

‘Gosh,' said Edie, not knowing what else to say. Today, she really was eighteen. She'd had all the presents and celebrations yesterday. Her parents had decided to hold her
birthday party a day early. It was more convenient for them. Pop had ‘some important work in town' today, and would be staying over at his club. ‘It's just a matter of
expediency, doing the whole thing the day before. You don't mind, do you?' Mummy had said, rhetorically, while writing invitations. And today, when she really turned eighteen, it all
felt like a bit of a damp squib.

Now Mummy put down the paper and got up, leaving behind a scent of Pears soap and Dior. There was an ivory-handled spoon in the marmalade dish. Edie pulled it out and quickly licked it; it
tasted vile. She poured herself a cup of tepid tea from the pot. Through the French windows she saw her mother take out a cigarette, shoulders hunched, one hand cupping the silver lighter. The
trees shivered, their bare branches like old men's fingers against the grey sky. The tea tasted like dirty laundry.

Edie got up and walked across to the French windows, following her mother outside. The wind sliced through her day dress and made her eyes water.

‘Mummy may I?' she held out a hand for a cigarette, just as she had held out a hand for the red and green after-dinner sweets as a child. Her mother's cheeks sucked in as she
inhaled. Edie noticed streaks of grey in her hair and the lines tracing her eyes and lips, like spiders' webs. Her mother exhaled, the wind ripping the smoke away.

‘May I have a cigarette, please?' Edie said in her most polite voice.

‘Certainly not.'

‘I'm eighteen now.'

‘Yes, so you are. Did you enjoy the party? Wasn't it good of the Cowies to make it? Lord knows how they got the petrol.'

‘Thank you for the party, and for the pearl for my necklace and the dress,' said Edie, hand still outstretched.

‘It all went off rather well in the end, don't you think?' said her mother, inhaling again. Specks of ash disintegrated in the wind. Edie dropped her hand. She'd thought
things would be different, turning eighteen, even though she wouldn't be presented at court, of course. But she'd hoped she might be treated as a bit more grown up, at least. She
watched her mother and smelled the smoke that was torn from her in the breeze.

Her mother took a final drag and flicked the cigarette butt into a flowerbed. She's forgotten we don't have a gardener to clear away her debris any more, thought Edie. She sighed.
Her mother shot her a look, and then disappeared back inside. Edie followed her in, closing the door behind them.

Mummy was already in the hallway, brushing dust off her tweed skirt and getting her coat from the hook.

‘I've promised to meet Mrs Carson to discuss what the WVS ought to plan for over Christmas,' she said, picking up her handbag. ‘Do come along, darling.'

‘No, thank you,' said Edie.

‘But I worry about you. What are you going to do all day on your own? Will you go and visit Marjorie? Shall I call her mother?'

‘I'm quite tired after last night, actually,' said Edie. ‘Would you, send Mrs Carson my best wishes?'

‘Yes, of course. And you'll be fine on your own?' She was already halfway out of the door.

‘Don't worry, Mummy, I'll be fine. I'm eighteen, remember!'

The front door slammed shut. Edie wandered around the house, trailing a finger along dusty windowsills, remembering last night. What could one expect from an eighteenth birthday in wartime,
after all?

There had been a small fruit cake, and she was allowed the tiniest glass of champagne. They danced to the gramophone, except that the music hadn't been anything modern, like Glenn Miller.
Marjorie had a Glenn Miller record at her house: the ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo'. They used to play it when Edie went over, trying to dance like they did in the films, until they fell over
each other, laughing, on the Parquet floor. Marjorie's brother Kenneth had brought the record when he came home on leave. Edie had known Kenneth for ever – well, since she had known
Marjorie – and she'd been almost as proud as Marjorie when he joined up and got accepted as an officer in the Intelligence Corps. And the Kenneth she had always associated with conkers
and chemistry sets suddenly became something else, and she had half hoped . . . but now Kenneth was MIA – missing in action – shot down in a plane over France, apparently. When
she'd asked why he was in a plane over France – it wasn't as if he were RAF or anything – nobody knew. And Marjorie had stopped asking her over to listen to Glenn Miller.
She hadn't even come to the party. Her mother had called at the last minute to say she had a head cold. So Edie had celebrated with some of the other girls from Queen's College, and
they'd danced with each other for the lack of boys – except for cross-eyed Teddy Cowie, who was only fifteen and didn't count. All the boys had gone now. They hit eighteen and
–
pouff
! – evaporated.

Edie paused by the hallway mirror and blew on the glass. The cloud of breath condensed on contact, obliterating most of her face, leaving behind just her high eyebrows and a whispering of
freckles on her forehead. She pulled away, drawing a heart in the condensation and writing a ‘K' in the middle of it. Then, she hastily rubbed it out, wiping her damp fingers on her
dress. Buck up, she told herself, sniffing and knowing that she had no right to weep. The grandfather clock ticked on, its painted sunshine face rising genially upwards, as if nothing mattered.
Today is my birthday, she thought. I am eighteen, now. I'm not a child. And I'm bored as hell.

She went back into the dining room and looked at the paper. It was the usual mixture of gloom and false hope. She sat down and began to leaf through. The pages were dry as dead skin and the ink
came off on her fingertips. There on page five was Churchill's youngest daughter, Mary. She had just finished her training with the Auxiliary Territorial Service. There was a picture of her
at a depot in London. She was smiling in the photo, her face soft and pale as dough above the darkness of her uniform.

Mary Churchill had been in the year above her at finishing school. It was Pop who had suggested sending her to Queen's College in London after taking her school-leaving certificate. Of
course, going to Paris was out of the question these days. Queen's College was in Harley Street, very near Pop's office. They travelled in together every day, along with Marjorie,
who'd also enrolled. As well as French and English literature at Queen's, there were piano lessons and modern dance classes and the dreaded domestic science. Marjorie had had driving
lessons, too, but Mummy had drawn the line at that. So while Marjorie crunched gears and learnt about three-point turns, Edie had extra French. She'd had a French nanny as a child, and her
maternal grandmother was French, too. Even Madame Cavelle admitted her accent was spot on, although she never really could get to grips with Molière.

A few times before the summer holidays, they had managed to meet up with Marjorie's brother Kenneth, who was on pre-deployment leave. They went for tea at the Ritz, walks in Hyde Park and
to the cinema. Once, during
That Hamilton Woman
, when Marjorie had to go to the loo, Kenneth sat next to her. He put his hand on Edie's knee and then she felt his hot breath on her
neck, under her hair. On the screen, Laurence Olivier was kissing Vivien Leigh as if he couldn't stop. Edie slowly turned her face and felt Kenneth's lips move up, over her cheek. They
were so warm and soft and they were just about to connect with her lips when they heard the scuffle and jostle of Marjorie's return. Kenneth quickly pulled away and Edie was left breathless
in the darkness.

‘Golly, have I missed the best bit?' whispered Marjorie, and Edie thought, no, it's me who's just missed the best bit. After that, whenever she looked at Kenneth, his
eyes flashed, and there was an unspoken understanding between them that when he came back . . . but then he didn't come back. And she could hardly confide in Marjorie; it would have felt like
a betrayal.

Edie went to her mother's sewing basket and took out the little silver scissors that were shaped like a heron. Snip, went the scissors. Snip, snip. And Mary Churchill's faced wavered
and slid out from the newspaper. Edie took the rectangle of newsprint and laid it out on the table. The article talked about the recruiting office where Mary joined the ATS, and her work helping
out alongside the men in an anti-aircraft unit. It all sounded thrilling. There was a hole in the newspaper now. But with both her parents out, there was nobody to notice, or to care. She checked
her watch. The minute hand crawled around like an insect trapped under glass. It would be hours until Mummy got back. Edie picked up the sliver of paper and took it upstairs to her room.

The pink dress lay discarded on the floor, a dying rose, with last night's silk stockings like worms on the scalloped petals. She stepped over it and opened the doors to the wardrobe. On
the top shelf was her new handbag, a present from Grandmaman Redette. The bag was boxy, patent leather: glamorous and serviceable. She snapped it open. It was lined with apricot satin, with a
little zipped pocket on one side. Edie put the newspaper cutting in the pocket and zipped it back up.

Over by the bed, her piggy bank sat on the bedside table, next to the lamp, and her copy of
Gone with the Wind.
She unstoppered the cork in the pig's stomach and emptied the
contents onto the eiderdown. She counted it, put the whole lot into her old brown purse and put the purse inside the handbag. There was more than enough for the train fare, and plenty to spare. She
picked up her pocket copy of the Bible, with the green leather cover, the one she'd been given after her confirmation. She never went anywhere without it. She clicked the bag shut, and
smiled.

She picked up the handbag and tumbled downstairs to get her coat, fumbling with the bone buttons in the green serge, then grabbed her hat off the peg. Her parents never let her go out on her
own. Pop said that once she turned twenty-one, she could do whatever she wanted but, until then, she had to respect Mummy's wishes. They want to keep me locked up in childhood like a caged
bird, she thought; they don't want my life to change one bit, even though the whole world is changing around me.

‘But I'm eighteen, now, and that's got to mean something,' she said aloud, as she pushed open the front door. The beech trees nodded as she passed, and her shoes crunched
on the gravel driveway.

Edie turned right out of Victoria Station. In the newspaper article it said that Mary Churchill had joined up at the Grosvenor Gardens recruitment office. I'm only going
to look, Edie thought. I just want to see where she joined up, and after that I might go and have a look at some of the anti-aircraft guns in Hyde Park. Just to see, that's all. And then
I'll go straight home, so I'll be back before Mummy.