“Come on, honey. I don’t bite,” Montalvo said. “Not dames, anyways.”
Mena shook Montalvo’s hand and quickly withdrew again. “Mena,” she offered.
Montalvo whistled, slow and long. “I like that. Say, that’s almost as cute as you.”
He sounded the same as Danny and the rest of the GIs, Mena thought, but there was something different about him: his skin was tanned, like the rest, but it had a waxy appearance like an olive, which by contrast made his teeth look whiter. His nose was small and his eyes were wide-set, and his hair showed oily black beneath his cap, which rested at an impossible slant on his head.
“So what brings you to Camp Stoughton?” he said.
“I’m looking for someone.”
“Hey, ain’t we all, sweetheart!” It was Spiller again.
Montalvo, the bigger of the two, reached an arm around Spiller’s neck and pulled him into his chest. “He sure is a joker!” he said as he began to rap his knuckles on the man’s head. When Spiller protested, Montalvo shoved him away again, watching after him as he moved down the line to annoy someone else.
“What’s the lucky fella’s name?” Montalvo said. “Maybe I can find him.”
“Danny,” Mena said. “Danny Danielson.”
Montalvo looked like he was thinking about it. “Rings a bell,” he said. “I couldn’t say for sure.”
“He’s tall,” Mena said. “About your height. He’s got blonde hair and -” She was about to tell him about Danny’s blue eyes, but she thought better of it.
“Blonde?” Montalvo said.
“Almost white.”
Montalvo nodded. He smiled. “Yeah, sure. I think I know who you mean. There’s a Blondie in H-company.”
Mena reached into her raincoat pocket and produced a note in a sealed envelope. She read Danny’s name on the front and smiled, chewing her lower lip, wondering if Danny would think it too forward of her until she began to feel light-headed. The envelope quivered as she handed it over. “Give him this will you?”
Montalvo took the note and turned it in his hands. “What if it ain’t the right guy?”
Mena was thinking about it when she became aware that the woman next to her was leaning over the fence, kissing one of the GIs. It looked like the kind of kiss Mena had seen at the pictures, only these two really meant it. She thought it was enough to put Mary and Edward to shame. When the woman withdrew, her lipstick was smeared on both their faces and the GI was beaming as he handed something across the fence. It was a tan-coloured ball that unravelled as the woman took it and Mena saw that it was a pair of stockings. The woman kissed him again and the GI backed away.
“Hey, Victor!” several voices called out at once in slow, patronising tones. “Lover boy!”
Montalvo looked around. Spiller was there with several other men, presumably from his unit. They waved and pulled cutesy faces, and Mena saw that all the GIs were moving away from the fence now and she noticed that the smiles on the girls’ faces were fading.
“Gotta go,” Montalvo said. “Tell you what. Meet me back here, same time tomorrow.” He backed away, still smiling. “I’ll let you know if I found your man.”
My Man,
Mena thought.
My Blondie.
She liked the sound of that.
The next evening, Mena was out fire-watching with Joan Cartwright. It wasn’t something they did in any official capacity; they received no pay and their services were additional to Oadby’s regular fire-watch rota. Several of the local girls had volunteered their services a few years ago, when the air raids had been at their peak. Margaret Lasseter had been against any kind of duty that kept her daughter out after dark. But Mena had worked on Pop, who in turn had worked on her mother until it was agreed that until she was old enough to join the Land Army, she could fire-watch two nights a week as long as she had a friend with her and was home by midnight.
There was a building on the Leicester Road, next to the painters-and-decorators, which had a flat roof. The owner always left a ladder out so they could climb up and sit against one of the chimneystacks, looking out over the shops and houses for evidence of incendiary bombs. The regular fire-watchers who patrolled the streets in shifts throughout the night would always check on them as they passed, and whenever there was an air-raid they had to come straight down and get to one of the shelters, which wasn’t so often lately.
It was a cool night. The clouds had moved out of Oadby by mid-afternoon and the stars and half-moon above the blacked-out streets were typically bright in the sky. Both girls wore coats and scarves with their inseparable gas masks in a box that hung around their shoulders. Their torches had cardboard over the lens with a hole cut in it to reduce the beam whenever they needed to use them and they each had a flask of hot soup to keep them going. For the most part they just sat in the moonlight, listening to the world below them: the muted revelry from a nearby pub and the clack of heels on the streets. That’s when they could hear anything at all over the sound of their own gossip.
“Mary knows,” Mena said, once she’d told Joan all about her visit to Shady Lane.
“You’re kidding me,” Joan said. “How?”
“I went back there today. I wanted to make sure Danny got my note. One of Mary’s friends must have recognised me and told.”
“Thank God she didn’t tell your mother!”
“I know.”
Joan had been Mena’s best friend since either could remember. She had shimmering chestnut hair that fell past her shoulders in long waves, big brown eyes that were wide-set, and she always wore make-up these days, even at home. She produced a crumpled packet of American Chesterfield cigarettes, lit one up and drew on it, leaving her lipstick on the paper as she handed it to Mena between long scissor-like fingers.
“And?” she said, her eyes growing with expectation as she spoke. “Did he get the note?”
Mena coughed and nodded. “He wants to meet me,” she said. “Next time he can get out of camp.” She coughed again and handed back the cigarette.
“And when’s that?” Joan said, smiling and fidgeting.
“Next Friday night. At St Peter’s!”
Both girls began to giggle.
“Great choice,” Joan said. “Your mother won’t go anywhere near that place.”
“I know,” Mena said. “She’d sooner cross the street than risk bumping into an Anglican.”
Joan took a thoughtful pull on the cigarette. “What about your sister? How much does she know? D’you reckon she’ll tell?”
“I told her everything,” Mena said. “She wasn’t happy about it, but I’m sure she won’t say a word. She knows I’ll be in for it if she does.” She shrugged like she didn’t care. “Mary worries too much,” she added. “I’m nearly seventeen, aren’t I? Feels more like I’m still ten.” She took the cigarette from Joan and puffed heavily on it as if to prove the point. Then she rolled her head back with Joan’s and blew smoke at the moon.
“You’ll have to pretend you’re fire-watching,” Joan said a moment later. “It’s the only way you’ll be allowed out.”
“It’s not my night for it,” Mena said. “Can’t you call for me with some story? Like we’re expecting a raid and they need all the volunteers they can get.”
Joan gave a derisive laugh. “You wouldn’t be allowed out at all if your mother thought there would actually be an air-raid.” She sighed. “I can’t anyway. I’m supposed to be looking after my pain-in-the-backside brother. Mummy and Daddy are going to a dance - some posh fundraiser in town I’d rather be going to myself.”
Mena unscrewed the cap on her soup flask. “Never mind, I’ll come up with something,” she said. “Mary will be away again by then. I’ll have to lie to Mother, of course.”
Joan snorted, puffing smoke through her nose. “That’s nothing fresh!”
Chapter Eight
B
y the time Mena’s Friday night date with Danny Danielson came around, she had her mother believing that she’d swapped a fire-watch shift with one of her friends because her ‘friend’ had no one else to sit with her. She’d even stayed home when she was supposed to meet Joan on their usual night to make the story seem genuine, and it had worked a treat. She had until midnight.
It had been raining most of the day, but it was thankfully dry now. It was after nine p.m. and almost dark when Mena set out on her bicycle for the church. Double summertime hours, which had been in place between April and September since the war began, meant that it stayed light an hour longer than usual. Dusk was the time to go fire-watching and although she would have liked to go sooner, it had apparently suited Danny and she didn’t want to do anything to arouse her mother’s suspicion. To further maintain the lie, she had her gas mask, torch and flask with her in her bicycle basket, and as the evenings were still chilly, she wore her coat and scarf, which was just as well given what she was wearing beneath it.
Mena allowed her excitement to permeate only when her back was to the house. She kicked hard at the pedals and began to grin, in part because she knew how well she’d fooled her mother, but mostly because she was about to embark on her first proper date. Her skin began to prickle. She felt so alive and as bold as she’d felt when she wrote her note to Danny, asking to see him again. She pictured his face: his angular features and those piercing blue eyes that had tried to avoid hers out of shyness, she thought, on that day she first saw him. Surely he would forgive her forwardness. There
was
a war on.
Mena slowed as she came to the edge of the village. She felt her skin flush beneath her coat and she knew it wouldn’t do to arrive at St Peter’s glowing like a scullery maid; not this time. The streets were busier than she would have liked. At first she felt the need to look away from every face that glanced towards her, but her lie had been so perfect. It didn’t matter if anyone saw her because she had her mother’s permission to be there. After a while she found herself smiling and nodding at people she knew, although there were a good many nowadays that she did not. Every other person she saw wore a military uniform of one kind or another and it was apparent to her that Danny’s pass was no special case tonight.
She was almost there. She could see the church spire above the rooftops ahead, stabbing into the clouds that were only just visible now in the rapidly darkening sky. She stopped short of the road that led to the church and pulled her bicycle into a side street where there was a terrace of houses with blacked-out windows. She propped her bicycle against a drainpipe and removed her coat and scarf. Beneath it she wore her favourite dress: the same blue polka-dot dress she had worn on Christmas day.
Mena checked her reflection in one of the windows. She straightened her hair and realised she’d have to be quick or she’d lose the light. She unscrewed her soup flask, which contained no soup tonight. She tipped it up and her lipstick fell into her hand, followed by an eyeliner pencil that she quickly began to use. When she’d finished, she stood back and pouted at her reflection, thinking her effort not bad at all under the circumstances. Not quite Veronica Lake, but it would do.
She draped her coat over one arm and continued the rest of the way on foot, wondering as she walked where Danny would take her on their first date.
Does he know anywhere?
she thought. It would never do to turn up at the same dance in Leicester that Joan’s parents were going to. Wherever they went they would have to take the bus out of Oadby; it was one thing to be seen in her coat and scarf pretending to be out fire-watching, but it was another matter altogether to be seen out socialising after dark with a Yank.
The church was in front of her suddenly, like she’d lost track of time and had no recollection of how she’d arrived there since leaving her bicycle behind. She stood at the roadside opposite and stared past the high wall and the headstones, past the neatly trimmed evergreens and the trees beyond, towards the imposing body of the church then up and along the length of its spire. The
tring
of a bell forced her eyes away and she saw two GIs wobble down the street on a single bicycle that looked ready to collapse beneath them. Turning back to the church she began to wonder if Danny had been delayed. Or worse still, whether he was coming at all.
She crossed the road, sure that she had not arrived early. If anything she thought herself a few minutes late. When she reached the steps that led up to the church path, she looked back. The streets were quieter now that night had all but fallen on Oadby. The gas lamps would soon be lit, she thought, although since their windows had been painted blue, their effectiveness was limited. She ran up the steps to get a better look, but of the few people she could see, no one seemed to be heading for the church.
Disappointment began to smother her. She drew a slow breath and started walking aimlessly back down the steps, thinking she could wait a while, but knowing in her heart that Danny was not coming. In the stillness that accompanied the night she began to hear other people enjoying their lives: their distant laughter and the plink of a merry piano. Then she heard something else that caused her to spin around.
“Hello,” she called.
Her heart began to race. She stared through the half-light towards the church and saw a faint red glow, hovering in the shadow of the church doorway. A moment later she saw a puff of white smoke rise out of the arch and dissipate on the breeze. She supposed the sound she’d heard was the snap of a cigarette lighter as it closed.
“Danny?” she called, smiling again. “Is that you?” She returned to the top of the steps and heard him call her name. She was beginning to like that American accent. “I thought you weren’t coming,” she said. She took a few quick steps along the path towards him. “But I’m glad you did,” she added as the glowing tip of his cigarette came out from the doorway to meet her. She could just about make out his uniform now in the low light. She thought she caught the hint of a smile from that perfect mouth.
“We can go out this way,” he said, taking the path that led around the side of the church.