Bluebirds Read online

  Anne had felt rather sick. ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was posted away in the end and I lost touch. Of course they were doing everything to keep him alive and I suppose they did what they could for his face. His hands were in a terrible mess, too. He kept on having operations but they didn’t seem to do much good that I could see. I should think he was invalided out eventually.’

  Jimmy had stared out of the bus window for a while in silence. Then he had said suddenly: ‘Lucky my parents don’t know I’m flying, they’d worry themselves sick.’

  ‘What do you mean – don’t know you’re flying?’

  ‘I’ve never told them. They didn’t want me to join the RAF in the first place, in case I did any flying. I’ve never let them know. They think I’m doing some sort of ground job.’

  ‘Won’t they find out in the end?’

  ‘I hope not. When I go home on leave I take the wings off my uniform. It sounds pretty stupid, I know, but it’s just better that way. I’m an only child, you see. No brothers or sisters, so they count on me a lot.’

  She knew so little about him. He so rarely talked of himself.

  ‘Where do you come from, Jimmy? You’ve never said.’

  ‘Croydon. I’ve lived there all my life – same house, same street, the local school. Very dull, I’m afraid. To tell you the truth I was rather glad to get away. I feel a bit guilty about that sometimes because I know how much they miss me – specially my mother.’

  ‘I expect you’re the apple of her eye.’

  He had blushed a little. ‘I don’t know about that. But it gets a bit much when she fusses . . .’

  Anne pictured the Shaw home in Croydon. It would be one of a row of similar houses in a quiet suburban street – pin neat inside and out and very clean. There would be net curtains at the windows, antimacassars on the armchairs, polished linoleum and very prominently displayed, framed photographs of Jimmy – the only child. Mrs Shaw would be thin and nervous, Mr Shaw a silent, withdrawn figure, perhaps with a pipe.

  On the day when his squadron had left for France, Jimmy had come to say goodbye. He had managed to get a message to her in the scullery and she had sneaked out to the back of the Officers’ Mess to meet him.

  ‘I wanted to see you, Anne, to say goodbye . . . and to ask if you’d do something for me.’

  ‘Of course I will. What is it?’

  He had taken an envelope out of his pocket and held it out to her, looking embarrassed. ‘It’s for my mother. I’ve written her a letter – just in case anything happens to me. They’d find out then, of course, about me flying and I wanted to try and explain things to her . . . so she’d understand.’

  She had said firmly: ‘Nothing’s going to happen to you, Jimmy.’

  ‘No, I know, but just the same . . . If it does, would you take this to her and give it to her yourself? The address is on there. I wouldn’t want it to come through the post for her.’

  She had been wearing her work apron and her hands were still wet from the sink. She had wiped them dry and taken the envelope from him, feeling a slight bump beneath her fingers.

  ‘I promise I’ll do that . . . but I won’t need to. You’ll be back safely.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ He had put his hands in his pockets and shuffled his feet a little, kicking at a dead leaf. ‘I put my wings in there, for her. The ones off my best blue. Well, she’d know all about my flying by then and I wanted her to have them. It might help.’

  That had explained the bump. She had put the envelope carefully away in her skirt pocket. ‘I’ll have to get back now, Jimmy. If the foul Fowler finds out I’m missing on duty it’ll be yet another charge and they’ll clap me in irons next time.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble.’ He had looked at her earnestly. ‘I wanted to thank you, too, for coming out with me those times and being so . . . so, decent. I think you’re a wonderful girl . . . one of the best I’ve ever met.’

  ‘Golly! No-one’s ever said that to me before. Aren’t you talking about someone else?’

  She had laughed, making a joke of it, but he had remained very serious.

  ‘No, I’m talking about you, Anne. And I meant every word of it. Take care of yourself, won’t you? And thanks . . . for everything.’

  He had taken his hands from his pockets and held her by the shoulders for a brief moment, kissing her quickly on one cheek. Then he had walked away.

  She had called after him, ‘Goodbye, Jimmy. Good luck!’

  But he had not looked back.

  Now, travelling into town on the bus by herself on a day off, Anne thought about Jimmy. She sat looking out of the window at the frozen white patches that lay over the fields and at the dirty ridge of snow thrown up along the side of the road. A wintry, watery sun had struggled through the clouds but in the distance the sky looked heavy with more snow. That morning she had received a letter from Jimmy, somewhere in France, and he had said that the weather was bad there too. It was cold, he had said, much colder even than in England, but the squadron had taken over some kind of château and it was very comfortable there with plenty of wood to burn in the fireplaces and good food and wine. There hadn’t been much flying and he’d made no mention of any encounter with the enemy. The letter sounded cheerful and she had been relieved. He had seemed so solemn, so resigned to the worst when he had left, that she had been worried for him. She had put his envelope away in her locker – at the back where it was out of her sight and therefore out of her mind. She liked Jimmy. He was very sweet and she had enjoyed their outings to the cinema and the pub. There had never been any hanky-panky, as Pearl called it, and when he had kissed her goodbye like that it had been the first and only time that he had touched her. Other men, she had discovered, were sometimes so pleased with themselves that they couldn’t understand rejection. Some even got angry and some, like Johnnie Somerville, apparently refused to believe it. He had sent several notes to her, inviting her out to dinner, but she had ignored them all – to Pearl’s incredulous despair.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, turning down a bloke like that? Looks like a bloody film star and stinking rich! You want your head examined.’

  ‘I don’t like him.’

  ‘You don’t have to. Just think of the smashing grub you’d get.’

  ‘You go then.’

  ‘I’d go like a shot if he asked me. Next time you see him, just put a good word in for me – OK? Tell him your old friend Pearl’s not such a bloody fool.’

  The bus deposited her near the main shopping street and she went to buy some grey lisle stockings at Marks and Spencer and some face powder and soap at Boots. Then she went into a corner sweetshop and bought a bar of chocolate and a quarter of a pound of toffees. At the tobacconist’s next door she bought some cigarettes. After that she wandered aimlessly around the town, looking in shop windows and enjoying being free and being on her own for a change. Some goods, she noticed, seemed to be in short supply. The display windows were not so full and there were patient little queues to be seen. Outside the butcher’s a woman was complaining loudly that the butcher kept back the best meat under the counter for certain customers. Further on, two women were grumbling to each other about the sugar rationing. She had not realized before that there were shortages in civilian life, or even thought about it. Mess food might be pretty grim sometimes, but there was plenty of it.

  She found a telephone kiosk in a sidestreet and asked the Trunks operator for her home number. When she heard her mother’s voice answering she pressed button A.

  ‘It’s me, Anne.’

  The line was rather bad and when any traffic went past she had difficulty hearing what her mother was saying. They had two evacuees from London, apparently – a brother and sister who were settling down quite well. There’d been a burst pipe that had damaged one of the ceilings and the boiler had broken down but they’d managed to get it mended quickly.

  She didn’t care much about any of t
hat. ‘Kit?’ she asked. ‘Have you heard from him? Is he all right?’

  ‘He phoned us two days ago. He –’

  A lorry grinding slowly by in the narrow street drowned the rest.

  ‘What did you say? I couldn’t hear that.’

  ‘He’s been sent to France. I was going to write today to tell you. The regiment were about to leave. I think it all happened very suddenly.’

  She watched the back of the lorry disappearing up the street, seeing it and yet not seeing it, as the words sunk in. Her mother was still talking brightly.

  ‘. . . asked me to give you his love. He says he’ll write as soon as he gets a chance.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know, darling. He couldn’t tell me where they were going. Just somewhere in France, like they always say. We haven’t heard any more news.’

  She could hear the break in her mother’s voice then – the strain audible beneath the cheerfulness.

  ‘He’ll be all right, Mummy.’

  ‘Of course he will.’

  ‘You mustn’t worry about him.’

  It was amazing how confident and calm she sounded to her own ears.

  ‘I’ll try not to.’

  They talked of other things – the weather, the blackout, the rationing, Barley, who hated the snow and had refused to leave his warm basket by the Aga, the snowdrops coming up in the garden . . . anything but of Kit being in France. Anne fed more coins into the slot and kept on talking.

  After they had said goodbye as though nothing were wrong at all, Anne stepped out of the kiosk onto the pavement. It had started to snow a little – stinging flurries of tiny flakes that made her blink. She stood, unmoving, for a moment.

  Kit in France. Kit in France.

  It was too cold to stand there for long and so she began to walk, not caring much where she was going. All she could think about was Kit. So long as he had been in England, he had seemed safe. But now he was over there, and close to the enemy and to their guns and their aircraft and their bombs, and to their tanks. She had seen newspaper photographs of those tanks – brutal steel goliaths, crushing everything in their path.

  She came to a café and went inside out of the cold. There were red-and-white tablecloths, some tired-looking potted palms and elderly women having their tea. She sat down at a table in the corner and ordered tea and toast from a sullen waitress. One or two of the other customers interrupted their gossiping over the cups to glance at her curiously. She ignored them, still deep in her thoughts of Kit. If he were killed she did not know how she could bear it. It was the most terrible thing she could think of that could happen – so terrible that she could not properly imagine it. The world did not exist for her without Kit. He had always been there. They had started life together from two specks. They had formed together inside their mother, been born together, Kit just first, been babies in the same pram together, then in the same playpen, and then toddlers together. Kit had learned to walk first but she had followed quickly by holding onto him. As they grew up they had played together in the nursery at Beechgrove – marching and manoeuvring Kit’s lead soldiers across the floor in endless battle formations. She had been station master, guard and porter to his railway trains, petrol pump attendant and garage hand to his toy cars. They had played countless games of Snakes and Ladders and Ludo, of Snap and Beggar My Neighbour and Pelmanism, of draughts and jacks and pick-up-sticks and marbles . . . And, as they had become teenagers and Kit had begun to spend hours making his model aircraft, she had spent hours watching him, her elbows propped on the big nursery table, chin on her hands, passing him pins and knife and glue.

  The waitress brought the tea and toast and set it disdainfully before her as though she resented having to do so. Perhaps it was something to do with the WAAF beret and raincoat and the stupid cow looked down on girls in the forces? Anne took no notice. She poured the tea and spread jam on the toast, though she did not feel in the least like eating it.

  Even the separation during the school terms had made little difference to them. In the holidays they had still been together, Kit growing a little grander and more lordly in his Eton tails as he progressed so successfully up the school. ‘Wotcha, twin!’ he’d say casually when they met again at the end of what had seemed to her three interminable months of incarceration at their respective schools. Nothing had really changed. For a short while she had been slightly taller than him – when they had been thirteen – but then he had come home after a long summer term and when they had stood back to back to compare heights he had overtaken her. Now he was more than six inches taller. Taller, wiser and better.

  She spun the tea out for as long as she could but the waitress hovered pointedly.

  ‘Will you be wanting anything else, then?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  She paid and left. Outside it was already getting dark and after the warmth of the café it felt bitterly cold. It seemed to have stopped snowing but the wind was just as piercing. There was little point in hanging round the town much longer and so she went to the bus stop and joined the queue there. The woman in front of her fumed impatiently.

  ‘They never keep to the timetable these days. I don’t know what everything’s coming to. I’ve been waiting over half an hour. They just don’t care.’

  They waited and waited but there was no sign of the bus. Anne turned up the collar of her raincoat, stamped her feet and moved around, trying to keep warm. The woman grumbled on.

  ‘Disgraceful, I call it. Just because there’s a war on they make that the excuse for everything. The Germans aren’t stopping that bus, are they? It’s nothing to do with them.’

  Anne was too cold to bother to answer her. Cars went by and she envied their occupants. Her feet were feeling numb and she stamped around some more on the pavement and tucked her chin as far as it would go down into her raincoat collar. A green two-seater car, long and low, drew to a halt at the kerb. The passenger door was pushed open and a voice came from the interior.

  ‘Hop in. I’ll give you a lift.’

  She had recognized both the car and the voice drawling at her. If it had been a warm, sunny day, or even a moderately cold one, she would certainly have refused, but by now she was too miserably frozen to care, and there was still no sign of the bus. She got in.

  Johnnie Somerville reached across and pulled the door shut. Inside the car it was blissfully warm and smelled expensively of leather. The seat was wonderfully soft and the thick wool carpeting heaven to her numb feet. They slid smoothly away from the bus stop and its woebegone queue and Anne looked back to see the woman staring after them, her mouth open in affront, her bulging string shopping bag clutched before her.

  ‘I thought for a moment you were going to be ass enough to refuse.’

  He was wearing an RAF greatcoat, the collar turned up and his cap pulled down. The car seemed full of his bulk.

  ‘I was cold.’

  ‘Or you would have gone on waiting for the bus?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘That would have been a bit stupid. Just because you heard me saying something rude about the WAAF. Are you going to hold that against me for ever? I can’t even remember exactly what it was, and you shouldn’t have been listening anyway.’

  ‘I couldn’t help it. You didn’t bother to lower your voice.’

  ‘Well, I apologize. I’m sorry for whatever I said. Now will you have dinner with me?’

  ‘I don’t want to – thanks very much. And I can’t see why on earth it should worry you in the least. Ask someone else.’

  ‘I’m not used to refusals.’

  At least he was honest about it – she had to give him that. Warm air was blowing down blessedly onto her legs and she wriggled her cold toes inside her shoes. She rubbed her hands together to thaw them.

  ‘This is a Lagonda, isn’t it?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘My brother’s mad on cars. He has models and magazines all over the place.’
/>   ‘Is he in the RAF too?’

  ‘No, the army. He’s just been sent to France.’ She kept her voice determinedly matter-of-fact.

  Johnnie turned his head towards her, not deceived. ‘He’ll be OK.’

  ‘That’s what I told my mother on the phone. I don’t think she believed it. I wish I believed it myself.’

  ‘There’s no point in worrying about something that may never happen.’

  She thought of the dead young pilot, trapped in his cockpit. ‘You sound very cool and calm. Don’t you ever worry about what may happen to you?’

  ‘No. I don’t even think about it.’

  But she wondered if he ever thought about fire and feared it with the rest of them, like Jimmy had said. Feared what it might do to those golden good looks . . .

  They had left the town behind and were out in the country. It was dark now and the snow patches on the fields showed up ghostly white. Little lights glowed on the dashboard in front of her. He was driving faster than she cared for, but the Lagonda seemed to devour the miles effortlessly.

  He spoke out of the darkness. ‘I hear you work in the kitchens. What a waste!’

  ‘Somebody has to peel the spuds for you lot. Or would you sooner it was left on?’

  ‘I’m serious . . . couldn’t you get out of there? Do something else?’

  ‘Well, I could apply to re-muster and go off and sew huge patches onto barrage balloons – that’s something they want us to do for them now. I suppose they’ve worked out that it’s women’s work. Unfortunately, I can’t even sew on a button. Actually, I can’t even cook.’

  He laughed. ‘It makes even less sense then – your being in the kitchens.’

  ‘Well, I’ve learned to make custard. You’ve probably eaten it. Mine’s the one with all the lumps in.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I rather like lumpy custard. It reminds me of my nursery days.’

  ‘I bet you didn’t have to eat it all up, though.’

  ‘Certainly I did. I had a very strict nanny. A clean plate is a healthy plate, she used to say. I never quite understood why.’