The Gunner Girl (33 page)

‘I'm sure you wouldn't want Joan to get put on a charge because of your being here so late,' said Edie. He laughed, at that: a short snort, with no mirth in it
whatsoever. There were footfalls in the distance, as the bugler went out onto the parade ground. Joan began to walk away, tugging at Edie to follow.

‘It was nice to meet you, Fred,' Edie said as they left. Fred didn't answer, didn't move but, as they were a few feet away, he called after them.

‘You owe me, Vanessa,' his reedy voice ribbonned up the cinder path towards them. ‘I'll be back to collect my dues, sometime soon.'

Edie looked back. He was watching them. He watched them all the way back to their hut. But Joan didn't turn. She strode forwards like it was a route march. At the hut doorway, she ushered
Joan in first, slamming the door shut behind them. From outside, the bugler began to sound the Last Post. Why had that strange man called her Vanessa? And what was that about collecting dues?

Inside, the girls asked Joan how it went. She laughed and said it was just a wind up. She said it was just some loony, nothing to do with her. And Sheila Carter said that the chap had said he
was Joan Tucker's fiancé. Why would he say that? Joan said maybe he just saw my photo in the paper the other day. But as she said it, she gave Edie a quick look, and Edie knew she was
to say nothing.

After she'd brushed her teeth and got into her striped pyjamas, Edie knelt down to pray. The floorboards were hard under her knees, and the air a suffocating fug. She pressed her sweaty
palms together, feeling burdened down with secrets: Pop's, Bea's, and now Joan had something to hide, too – and on top of it all her own, dark secret, the one she was just
beginning to remember. Give up your troubles to Jesus, that was the advice. But her thoughts were an inchoate mess, and she couldn't even begin to find the words.

‘God help us all,' she muttered under her breath, unclasping her hands and crawling into bed.

‘Oh, where has your father got to?' said Lady Lightwater, smoothing out the wrinkles in the tartan travel rug. ‘Be a dear and help me with the hamper, will
you, Edith?'

Bea and Joan helped Edie unpack the wicker basket and lay out the porcelain plates and yellow checked napkins. There were crystal tumblers, too, and miniature salt-and-pepper shakers. There was
more in that picnic basket than they had in their kitchen back home, Bea thought.

‘Those hens Mrs Carson gave me have finally started to lay, so we've got egg-and-cress rolls, and scones with jam and cream, and when I was cleaning out the larder the other day I
found this, among other things – heaven knows what Cook actually did all day, the larder was downright filthy although I do miss her seed cake,' said Edie's ma, pulling out a
dusty bottle that read
E
LDERFLOWER
C
HAMPAGNE
1938
on its peeling label. ‘Spare sugar to make fizzy pop – those were the
days,' she sighed. ‘Now where is Neville, he promised to be here at twelve thirty sharp.'

Bea sat next to Edie on one of the velvet cushions. The sky was huge, endless. The leaves of the oak tree above them were dusty splodges of green against the blue. A little boy squeaked along
the path on his trike, followed by a hard-faced nanny in a black uniform. Bea wondered who he was, why he hadn't been evacuated, why the nanny hadn't been conscripted. Sometimes it
seemed as if there were different rules for the rich, who never seemed to mind farming out their children while they were off arranging flowers or whatever they did. Bea thought she might've
liked to have been a nanny, if things had been different. She'd looked after all her brothers and sisters all right. Ma used to rely on her, especially with the twins. Funny how she'd
been able to look after all of them except her own. Baby Val was the one Ma kept to herself. Bea hadn't seen her since April, months ago. Jock still hadn't written back.

Shop girls were sunning their bare legs on the seats near the pond, and on the bandstand a four-piece struck up ‘We'll Meet Again'.

‘If I hear that song one more time I think I'll vomit,' said Joan under her breath.

There were no clouds. The world was all chopped up: a slice of blue sky; a slice of yellow sunshine; a slice of green grass. Joan was pushing the cuticles back from her nails. Lady Lightwater
arranged the rolls in a basket lined with one of the napkins. Edie looked into the middle distance, eyelids fluttering. Nobody spoke. Bea thought that they must look like a picture she'd seen
on a posh biscuit tin once: ladies taking in the sun on a perfect summer's day. Except they weren't in crinolines and parasols, they had scratchy khaki uniforms and gas masks instead.
She shifted on her cushion. It was so hot and airless that she was sweating horribly. She thought about where Jock was – probably even hotter, out there in the desert.

Lady Lightwater got out her cigarette case. She offered them to Bea and Joan who each took one, thanking her politely. Finally she offered the open case to Edie. Edie looked at the cigarette
case, and looked up at her mother, and shook her head. Her mother shrugged and put the case back in her handbag. The sun beat down through the oak leaves. Bea could feel beads of sweat forming on
her upper lip. Some lads were playing cricket over near the battery. A woman was pushing a bicycle towards Kensington Gardens. Down by the bandstand, a couple had begun to dance. The sun was white
and relentless. There wasn't a breath of air. Bea lit her cigarette. As she exhaled, the smoke looked like mist lying on the little domed roof of the bandstand.

‘Lovely spread,' Bea said, looking at the food, breaking the silence.

‘Yes, well, I thought Edith deserved a treat, after the royal visit and the raid and all that hullaballoo. I saw you in the paper, dear,' Lady Lightwater said, nodding to Joan, who
smiled glassily and tapped out her cigarette ash on a tree root. ‘I hear you all had a bit of a time of it, you poor things,' she continued. Bea stiffened. She looked at Edie, who was
looking away, biting her lip. Joan slowly opened her mouth, her full lips looking as if she were just about to take a bite from a peach. Bea held her breath.

‘Well, yes, Lady Lightwater – Maud – we hadn't had a raid for such a long time that I have to admit it was rather a shock,' Joan said. Bea exhaled, feeling the
breath catch in her throat. Let Joan talk.

‘And were you all on duty that night?' said Lady Lightwater, pulling a stray piece of tobacco off her lips where it clung to her lipstick. Edie, Bea and Joan looked at each other, as
Lady Lightwater flicked the tobacco away onto the grass. None of them had really spoken about that night. If they didn't talk about it, they could almost forget about what had happened
outside the 400 Club. Almost.

‘Hmm?' said Lady Lightwater, as if Joan had answered and she simply hadn't heard. The three girls looked at each other, eyes wide. ‘Cat got your tongue, Edith?' she
said, flicking ash on the parched grass beyond the rug. At that moment, there was a ‘Hulloooo' from the distance, and Bea looked up to see Edie's father striding towards them from
the direction of Bayswater. He was carrying his jacket and his turn-ups swung as he walked. Bea had only seen him once before, when he'd come to pick up Edie and Joan back in April.
She'd forgotten how tall he was.

‘Ah, what a sight for sore eyes!' he said as he approached. Bea thought he looked like one of those kestrels you sometimes saw up on Bluebell Hill: beaky nose, arched brows.

‘So glad you could make it, Neville,' said Lady Lightwater, checking her gold watch.

Edie, Joan and Bea stood up. Lord Lightwater said, ‘Jeanie, I remember you,' and Joan didn't bother to correct him, and he kissed her on the cheek. Bea introduced herself as
Beatrice Smith, and flushed when he kissed her on the cheek, too. It didn't seem right, kissing someone you'd only just met. The only other man who'd kissed her was Jock. Sir
Neville briefly grazed his wife's face with his own before turning his attention to Edie.

‘And how's my Half Pint, then?' he said, stepping forward, arms outstretched towards her. She held out her right hand. ‘Oh, don't be silly, Half Pint, I'm not
going to shake hands with my own daughter,' he guffawed, and enveloped her in a bony embrace. She struggled free. He raised an eyebrow and took out his pipe from his pocket.

‘Sit down, everyone,' said Lady Lightwater. ‘We've been waiting long enough.' She handed the elderflower champagne to Edie's pa. ‘Do the honours,
darling.'

‘Well, this is nice,' said Lady Lightwater, as they sat, chewing silently on egg-and-cress rolls. ‘Isn't it nice, Neville?' He nodded. He was
looking across to where the shop girls were hoiking up their skirts and dabbling their toes in the pond. ‘I was saying to the girls that I thought they deserved a treat, after the royal
visit, and that frightful raid,' Edie's mother continued, dabbing at the side of her mouth with a napkin and leaving red lipstick marks on the cloth.

‘Frightful,' said Sir Neville, through a mouthful of egg-and-cress.

‘Well, thank God you didn't catch it, Neville. It must have been so close to the town house. Margot said the end of the Mews was totally obliterated. I know you had to work late but
you must have been home by the time it started? I do wish you didn't have to work so many weekends at the moment. Were you at the town house, darling? You can't still have been at the
office at that time?'

He took a large swig of elderflower champagne and scratched his nose with his forefinger. ‘No, no, I wasn't at work,' he said, wolfing down the rest of his roll.

‘You were at the town house?'

He shook his head, chewing on the roll. He's using it as an excuse not to answer, thought Bea, noticing how he avoided his wife's questioning gaze as she continued her
interrogation.

‘You can't have been still dining at that hour – or were you? Which restaurant do you prefer, these days? Margot says the Savoy's gone a bit downhill recently?'

Edie's mother's questions seemed innocent enough. She could just have been making small talk. But Bea noticed the way she leant forward, how sharp her eyes looked, how small her
mouth, and how Sir Neville seemed suddenly extremely hungry, reaching for another roll before he'd even finished off his first. Bea caught Joan's eye. There were no flies on her –
what she'd said to the gate guard that night was dead right. Edie's father needed an alibi just as much as they did.

‘So, were you at the Savoy, Neville?'

‘Well, the fact is, old girl—' he began.

‘He was with us,' Joan interrupted. Everyone stopped eating and turned to look at Joan. ‘Don't you remember, girls,' said Joan, lassoing Edie and Bea with her gaze.
‘We'd been out to celebrate the royal visit and then we went on to see your father at his club, didn't we, Edie?'

Bea chewed rapidly on her food, trying not to make eye contact with anyone. Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies, her ma always said. But she saw Edie look at Joan.

‘Oh, come on Edie, you can't have forgotten already?' said Joan. ‘Remember, we bumped into that friend of your parents' on the way there. What was her name again?
M-something, wasn't it?' Bea looked up, couldn't help it. She had to know. What would Edie say? Edie looked blankly back at Joan.

‘Oh, I wish I could remember,' Joan continued. ‘ We saw her just coming out of the club as we got there. Very pretty, dark hair in a bob. May? No, that wasn't it,'
said Joan, staring deep into Edie's eyes. ‘What was it, Edie, you must be able to remember? That woman? Bea, can you remember her name?'

Bea swallowed a dry lump of bread. ‘Meredith?' she said, understanding at last where Joan was going with this.

‘Meredith?' said Lady Lightwater sharply.

Sir Neville cleared his throat and scratched the side of his nose again. ‘Ah, yes,' he said. ‘So you did. What a splendid surprise it was to be invaded by a battalion of the
gentle sex at that hour. We managed to find a nice tot of Russian vodka to steady our nerves after the raid, as I recall.' He was looking at Joan.

‘Oh, yes, that's right!' said Joan, throwing back her head and laughing. ‘And Edie had rather too much. We had to practically carry her back into camp, didn't we,
Bea?' She looked over at Bea, who nodded and reached for the last roll. ‘I tell you what, we were so late back, we were lucky not to be put on a charge, but with everything else going
on that night, the guard hardly even noticed!' She laughed again, and Edie's father joined in, loudly. Lady Lightwater looked from one to the other and brushed some crumbs from her
lap.

‘You didn't mention, when I phoned,' she said. ‘Neither did you, Edith Elizabeth.'

‘Oh, for heaven's sakes, old girl, there's a war on. I hardly need bother you with the minutiae of my social life, you're far to busy with all your WVS stuff to need to
know my entire diary details, eh? And I expect Half Pint was up to her ears in army nonsense. Too busy bulling her boots to remember what day it is, I'll warrant!'

Lady Lightwater smoothed an eyebrow with a forefinger. ‘Well,' she said at last, ‘would anyone like to make a start on the scones?'

‘It was good of your ma to treat us,' said Bea, as they wandered back towards the battery. Edie didn't answer.

Bea squinted against the glare. The air smelled like baked pastry. She licked her parched lips. She slid an arm through Edie's and Joan joined the other side, so that they walked three
abreast along the straight path back to the battery. They were soon in step: left-right, left-right
(Face front, Gunner Smith, stop anticipating).
The rhythm carried her along. Her scalp
felt itchy with sweat. Nobody mentioned the lie. Left-right, left-right, they carried on along the dusty path towards Speakers' Corner.