The Gunner Girl (41 page)

‘Well, I'm sorry, but I really can't let you wake him then, unless . . .' she turned her attention back to the woman's face. There was a different look on it now.
The frown had gone. There was something else there. What was it? Panic? Concern?

‘What did you say his name was, your friend?'

‘Robin. Flight Sergeant Robin Nelson.'

The woman suddenly loosened her grip, and her face relaxed. ‘Rob Nelson – he's fine. I saw him at breakfast. Thank God.' The woman let go of her arm. ‘So
don't worry.'

‘I've got to talk to him,' she said.

‘I can't let you. We can't afford to have the men tired out before they even begin, not now, not with everything that's going on, don't you see?' The
woman's lips moved slowly, enunciating every syllable.

‘And who put you in charge?' she said. ‘I haven't come all this way to be given the brush off just by some . . .' she scanned the woman's uniform to look for
a badge of rank – she was probably only an aircraftwoman – but her eyes caught sight of the wings. She stopped speaking, catching herself in time. The woman was an officer.

‘If they're tired, they're more likely to make mistakes. And they can't afford to make mistakes,' the woman said. She wasn't frowning now. She just looked
sad, exhausted.

She looked up at the windows – he was up there somewhere, her Rob. Was he still hers? Could he be hers again? But the flight officer was right. She couldn't wake him up, just to tell
him. Not if he was flying again tonight. She sighed. ‘Then could I leave a note for him, ma'am?'

‘Of course. And I promise I'll see he gets it just as soon as he gets up. Do you need paper?'

The flight officer took her across to the headquarters building. As they opened the office door, a black Labrador bounded out, and licked her hand. She ruffled his ears, and asked his name.

‘Vertigo. I know, silly name. Not my choice,' came the reply. ‘He belonged to – to someone else, but he's not here now, so, well, you know how it is. But he's
a good boy, aren't you, Verti?' She stroked the top of his head, and there was a look on her face – it reminded her of the way Bea had looked that time, when Joan had seen her
stroke Baby Val. ‘Right, paper, pen, envelopes. I'm just off for a meeting, so I'll leave you in peace. Just leave the note on my desk and I'll see he gets it before flight
checks,' said the woman.

She thanked the flight officer, who left with the dog trotting at her heels. Then she sat down and picked up the pen:
Dear Rob, You must hate me, and I can't blame you, but
there's something you need to know. There's a reason why I couldn't say yes. The problem is, I'm not who you think . . .

It wasn't as hard to write as she'd thought; she kept it brief. She told the truth about how she stole Joan's call-up papers, about how she was really Vanessa, just seventeen,
not even old enough to join up yet. She even told him about Fred, her sister's fiancé, and what he'd tried to do, and what she'd done to him, in the Mount Royal Hotel. The
words came easily, little hard, bright chunks of sentences, like those wooden blocks that toddlers play with. It was just like a two-year-old building a tower: this happened, and this happened, and
this happened, block upon block upon block. It was easy enough, now she could remember everything. But then, when it came to sign off, she got stuck:
So, now you know everything but I
don't know how to finish this letter. Do I sign it Vanessa or Joan? I don't know. I don't know how it's supposed to end . . .
and the tower of blocks came tumbling
down.

That was all she could do. No love, no kisses, no name. She folded up the stiff paper and found an envelope, licked and sealed it. On the front, she wrote
Fight Sergeant Robin Nelson –
urgent.
She got up, placed the letter on the desk and prepared to leave the tiny windowless office. She noticed a mirror compact, left behind, next to the blotter.
Darling
, was
engraved on the front. She thought of the sad look the officer gave when she stroked the dog. She clicked the mirror open and looked at her own face; her features crowded into the small silver
circle. There were mauve smudges under her eyes, and her lips were dry and pale. She put the mirror down, opened her gas-mask case and took out her lipstick. Then she applied it, carefully
colouring in the moist, red bow. There, that was better. She snapped the mirror shut, and put it back in the same place as the letter, between the blotter and the telephone. She put the lipstick
away and checked her watch. There didn't seem anything more to be done. She turned to leave. As she reached the door, she stepped back, quickly, inhaling as if there was something she'd
forgotten to say. She reached for the sealed envelope and planted a kiss on the reverse. It looked like poppy petals.

‘Get what you came for, Bombardier?' said the sarky ginger gate guard as she left. She could see the green country bus pulling up at the stop outside the camp
gates. If she hurried up, she'd catch it, and be back in time to meet the others. She paused and fixed the gate guard with a look. George, that was who he reminded her of – George the
grocer's boy.

‘Oh, why don't you just sod off, you void coupon,' she said, and stuck two fingers up at him as she walked past.

‘You can't do that, I'll get you put on a charge. I know who you are,' he screeched after her, unable to leave his post.

‘I don't think you do,' she called back to him. ‘I don't even know myself !' and she started to laugh. She saw the bus and ran for it, laughing long and hard,
gasping for breath. If she hadn't laughed, she would have cried, and she wouldn't have been able to stop.

Bea could hear Ma's rasping breath from the halfway up the stairs. The front door banged shut below her. Edie and Joan were taking the others out for chips, just to give
her and Ma a couple of minutes. Bea had given Vi the advance on her next month's wages. The doctor was on his way. And they couldn't miss the train back to London or they'd all be
AWOL. There wasn't much time.

The air in the stairwell was still and solid, she felt as if she were pushing through it, swimming up to the surface. At the top step she paused and took a breath, noticing the crumbling bricks
on the unpainted wall. There was red dust all over the floorboards. Vi didn't have time to clean, what with her job and all. But Rita and May could help – she'd have to say
something to them after. The house was in a right state. No wonder Ma could barely breathe, what with the dust and the cobwebs and –

‘Bea.' She heard her voice as a whispered exhalation. There was a bubbling in-breath, and there it was again. ‘Bea.'

Ma was waiting for her. She was propped up against the bedstead. How small she looked: shrunken. Bea remembered the time when the twins brought back that dead frog they'd found in the
alley. It had dried out in the sun, and its skin was all shrivelled up, clinging to its tiny bones. She thought about that dead frog as she looked at Ma, sitting up under the thin sheet.

The little window was slightly ajar, but still a bluebottle thudded and buzzed ineffectually against the pane, unable to escape. Ma's hair was plastered wetly against her head, the ends
snaking out over her damp nightdress. She patted the bed and muttered something. Bea couldn't hear, but she understood she was to sit down. The room smelled. What was it? Not just dirt,
although that too – the sheets needed a boil wash – something else, sort of sweet and mucky at the same time. Ma's face was waxy pale, covered in a sheen of sweat, but she was
shivering. The bedsprings creaked as Bea sat down.

‘Doctor's on his way,' she said.

Ma's eyes were large and dark. She gulped in breaths, wincing with the effort. The fly bumped again and again against the glass. Bea took Jock's letter out of her top pocket and
tossed it down on the bedcovers in front of Ma.

‘I got a letter from Jock,' Bea said. She looked at Ma, and saw a flicker pass over her face, like a cat's paw ripple on the estuary on a calm day.

‘You know I don't read good, girl,' Ma said, the words sawing from her dry throat. Her lips were dry and cracked, but her skin looked damp. There were beads of sweat on her
forehead.

‘I know. But you recognise his handwriting, don't you?' said Bea, feeling anger rising in her chest. ‘Don't you, Ma?' But Ma turned her head away, looked
towards the window, the fly and the drizzled afternoon. Sounds from the street carried up: footfalls, laughter, a honking horn in the distance. ‘I'll tell you what he says,' said
Bea. ‘He says he's coming back for me.' Ma did not turn back. ‘He's wounded, and they're sending him home to get better and as soon as he's back
we're getting married,' Bea continued. Ma's breath was loud, scraping up her throat and into the empty air. The tendrils of dirty hair were quivering against the withered skin of
her neck. ‘And we're coming to get Baby back,' said Bea. But Ma kept her head turned. ‘Did you hear me? Jock's going to marry me and I'm leaving the army and
I'm taking Baby back where she belongs.'

‘Over my dead body,' came the barely audible reply.

‘Yes, over your dead body,' spat Bea. Ma's head swivelled back and the two women looked at each other.

Ma swallowed and exhaled. ‘I did it for you, girl,' she said.

‘For me? Lying about Jock, making me join the army, taking my baby away – how is that for me?'

‘I knew he was going to get hurt. I saw it in the leaves. I thought he wasn't coming back,' Ma's face was crumpled with the effort of speech. Exhausted, she let her head
fall back; it clunked against the metal bedstead.

‘The leaves lied, Ma,' said Bea. ‘The leaves lied. Jock's coming back, and we're going to be together as a family and there's nothing you can do to stop
us.' She swept the letter up. It was damp and all the ink had bled. She put it back in her pocket. ‘We're getting married and we're getting our baby back and I'm going
to work as a housekeeper for Lady Lightwater, and Jock is going to be her caretaker and Baby will grow up in a nice big house in the country with flowers and trees and ponies and clean, healthy
air.'

‘I was trying to protect you,' her mother whispered.

‘From what? From happiness? You think I don't deserve to live happily ever after?'

‘But the leaves said – I was doing right by you, girl.'

‘You took away my baby.'

‘I gave you a chance, a chance for a future, girl,'

‘I don't want your bloody future, I want my baby. I just want my baby back.'

‘I was looking out for you.'

‘I don't want you to look out for me. I want you to leave me alone.'

Ma shook her head. ‘I know how it ends, girl.'

‘No, you don't. Because there's nothing in them leaves. I'm in control now; I decide what's going to happen. And there's a future for me and Jock and Baby as
a proper family, without you, without all this.' She gestured round the shabby little room, with its bare floorboards and unpainted walls. The bluebottle finally found the gap, buzzed free
and all that was left was the sound of Ma's uneven, painful breaths: in-out, in-out.

There was a knock at the front door. ‘That'll be the doctor,' said Bea. She got up and smoothed down the bedcovers where she'd been sitting. There was a dirty cup on the
empty packing case next to the bed. Ma saw her looking at it and reached for it. The knock came again. ‘Coming!' Bea yelled down. Ma passed her the empty cup. There were tea leaves
swirled round inside like mud spatters. Their fingertips touched as the cup passed between them. Then Bea turned away.

‘Mind your step on the way,' Ma said as she left. And Bea, running downstairs to open the door for the doctor, running down as she had done hundreds of times before, thought it was
an odd thing to say – Ma had never told her to mind her step before.

They'd all come to give Bea a send-off, except Vi, who'd waited behind with the doctor to sort out the details of getting their mother taken into hospital. The
doctor said there was a chance she'd pull through, given the proper care. Bea said Baby would be fine to go back home with the others: Rita and May could hold her hand – it was only
round the corner and she was a good walker, now. And there was enough money to pay for a babysitter, too, just for a few weeks, until everything was arranged with Jock and the wedding.

Yes, thought Edie, watching Bea hugging her goodbyes to her flock of siblings, it was all working out rather well, really. She could just about hear the train in the distance, a far away
chug-chug. Soon they'd all be on their way back to the battery, all three of them together. Of course, technically, she was still off sick with appendicitis, but the other two had to be back,
and this would be the last train to London today.

Joan hadn't talked much about Rob. She'd said she hadn't been able to see him, and her face had that closed, hard look. She said she'd left him a letter, though, which
was something. Edie hadn't given up on Joan's story having a happy ending too, in time.

The clouds had lifted and it was a clear evening, the sun lengthening their shadows, like ribbons across the platform. The blackberries were ripening on the bushes in the sidings. And she
thought, suddenly, of blackberry picking with Marjorie and Kenneth, at the end of the school holidays. Kenneth was talking about joining up joining the Intelligence Corps, like his father, and
she'd jokingly said something like ‘Intelligence, with your grades? Are you sure?' and he'd pelted her with blackberries – purple blobs all over her poplin blouse,
Mummy had been furious, and Cook had made blackberry and apple crumble. And later, Kenneth had joined the Int Corps and then . . . but that was so long ago now.