Our Yanks Read online

  Miss Skinner said sharply, ‘For all those men? Be practical.’

  ‘Well, not perhaps all of them.’

  ‘Out of the question. However, I imagine we could issue an invitation to the officer in command and suggest that a token number might like to attend. Extend the hand of friendship. That seems perfectly reasonable.’

  Brigadier Mapperton banged the trestle table with the flat of his palm. ‘Hand of friendship be blowed! We’ve got nothing to be friendly about. They sat around while we had our backs to the wall and didn’t lift a finger to help us.’

  Mr Wells frowned. ‘They’ve lent us some ships and so forth?’

  ‘Obsolete stuff they’ll make us pay through our noses for.’

  ‘Still, they’re our allies now. We could surely run to a modest welcome party for them. It seems only right and proper.’

  Lady Beauchamp said quietly, ‘I rather agree, Mr Wells. We ought to do something. If it’s any help, we could invite them to the Manor. The drawing room will hold at least fifty people, or more.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be necessary to trouble you, Lady Beauchamp.’ The rector smiled at her gratefully. ‘This room would do perfectly well, I’m sure. Or the village hall.’

  ‘If we had it in the hall I could play the piano for them, if you like,’ Miss Hooper offered. ‘And it’d be easier for the catering there, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Well, that’s certainly a thought . . .’

  Miss Cutteridge looked up from her notes. ‘We could manage sandwiches and teas quite easily, Rector. There are plenty of cups. What would we put in the sandwiches, though? I wonder if they would mind paste? The salmon flavour is very nice, or perhaps the sardine and tomato.’

  ‘I don’t think they’d mind very much, Miss Cutteridge. I’m sure they’d understand about our rationing.’

  Brigadier Mapperton snorted. ‘They won’t know the meaning of the word. Steaks and fresh eggs – that’s what they’d expect. Fat of the land, they live on. Give them paste sandwiches and they’d laugh in your face. Give them nothing, I say. Give ’em a taste of what it’s like to go without.’

  Sam Barnet nodded. ‘I’m rather to your way of thinking, Brigadier, but for a different reason. I don’t think we should encourage these Americans to come into the village. We’ve our women to consider. Most of the men are away and there’s not many of us left here to protect them. What about our young girls? My Sally’s just turned fifteen.’

  Bill Rate said, ‘I dare say their officers’ll keep good control of things. They’ll not want trouble with us.’

  ‘All very well for you to talk, Bill, you’ve no daughters, only sons.’

  ‘And all three of them are away fighting for their country, Sam. Like this lot of Yanks will be doing. I’d like to think the locals’d treat my boys right, wherever they are.’

  The baker said levelly, ‘You’ve got work up there at the ’drome, haven’t you? It’s in your interest to be friendly.’

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with it and I’ll thank you to withdraw that insinuation.’

  ‘I’m sure Mr Barnet didn’t mean anything offensive . . .’

  ‘Oh, yes, he did, Rector. My trade’s building and there’s no shame in taking on honest work where you can find it. When those Yanks come marching in let’s see you refusing to sell your fancy cakes to them, Sam. Make a mint, you will. So will others in the village. We’ve got seven pubs, all told, and I’ll wager every one’ll be full every night.’

  The brigadier hit the table top again. ‘Drunks littering the streets! No respectable woman daring to show her face out of doors. Is that what you want, Rector?’

  At that moment, Thora Dakin, who had been frowning to herself, lifted her head. ‘We’ve forgotten about the sugar, Rector.’

  ‘Sugar, Mrs Dakin?’

  ‘For the teas. What would we do about it for the Americans? I expect they like lots of sugar.’

  This provoked another outburst from the brigadier and more argument in its wake. Enthusiasm was lukewarm but it was eventually apparent that Brigadier Mapperton and Sam Barnet were the only ones flatly in opposition.

  ‘I suggest we vote on it, Rector,’ Miss Skinner said at last.

  ‘I was about to propose that. Will all in favour of a welcome party raise their hands, please.’

  The result was nine in favour to two against. ‘Well, if there’s no other business . . .’ He brought the meeting to a swift close, standing and bowing his head. ‘We thank Thee, God, for the freedom we enjoy in this land. We pray that we may do all that lies within our power, whatever it may be, to help and support all who are engaged in the fight to liberate those who suffer under the tyranny of our enemies. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.’

  He stood by the open door as they left. Brigadier Mapperton muttered crossly at him. ‘Damned stupid idea of yours, Rector. I’m surprised at you. Mark my words, it’ll lead to no good.’

  Miss Skinner was the last. She lingered for a moment. ‘Mr Barnet had a valid point, you know. The young girls in the village will need protecting, whether we welcome these Americans or not. I still have great reservations, I must say. We will need to be on our guard. I’ve never met an American but from their films they appear to inhabit an entirely different world from us. Very glamorous. Very attractive to innocent eyes.’

  ‘I appreciate that,’ he told her gravely.

  ‘Have you thought about Agnes?’

  ‘Agnes? She’s engaged to be married.’

  ‘I somehow doubt that the Americans would let that stand in their way, especially with her fiancé safely absent. I should be on your guard, too, if I were you.’

  ‘Surely, Miss Skinner, if we show them respect and trust then it is more likely to be reciprocated.’

  She gave him a grim smile. ‘You have a much greater faith in human nature than I, Rector, but I suppose that’s only right in your calling. We know next to nothing about these people but they scarcely have a reputation for self-restraint, so far as I’m aware.’

  ‘Fortunately for us, perhaps. Wars aren’t won by restraint, are they?’ He looked past her shoulder towards the unkempt croquet lawn where the trees were casting their shadows across the long grass. It was a beautiful English evening at the tail-end of a warm summer, with all the haziness of a dream. Early in his ministry he had spent several years in Africa, where the relentless glare of the sun had thrown everything into harsh relief. He much preferred the soft light of England where one thing melted into another, giving the whole a mysterious and magical quality. All was peaceful and serene. They’d been lucky so far in King’s Thorpe. The war had passed them by. No bombs had dropped anywhere near. No guns had been fired within earshot. There had been little evidence that a world war was in desperate progress, except for the distant drone of heavy bombers going to and fro and only occasionally overflying the village. A Polish tank regiment was camped in woods five miles away and Canadian soldiers were stationed in a requisitioned stately home beyond the next village, but the Poles and the Canadians preferred to spend their free time and money in the towns. As for the King’s Thorpe aerodrome, for the first year of the war it had been nothing more than a satellite landing strip for a much larger RAF station further north. A squadron had finally arrived in 1941 and had flown Spitfires on patrols out to sea but after a few months they had been moved away. A new squadron had taken its place briefly and then, in turn, had been posted elsewhere. There had been no dogfights overhead, no crashes – or none that the village had witnessed. He had visited the aerodrome once, at the invitation of the RAF chaplain, and had found it a bleak, muddy, uncomfortable place, the men living and working in huts of brick and concrete and corrugated iron. A lot of work was being done there now and in a great hurry but he wondered what the Americans would make of it.

  ‘They will be far from their homes and their own country and some of them will be coming here to die. I don’t think we should forget that, Miss Skinner.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes . . . yo
u’re right. We must keep that in mind. Well, goodnight, Rector.’ He watched the schoolmistress striding away from him, a bulky figure in the green tweeds she wore whatever the season, her pork-pie felt hat skewered firmly to her head. He closed and locked the door and stood still for a moment, thinking. Unlike the Dakins he had never heard God’s voice with any certainty. His own prayers never received such clear answers but he thought that guidance did appear in other ways – through thoughts coming into his mind that gave him the power to see things more clearly. And he saw clearly that he was right about the Americans. When strangers were willing to come miles across an ocean and lay down their lives in the struggle against evil, then they should be welcomed, even if it was only with a cup of tea and a paste sandwich.

  An inner doorway connected the parish room to the back hall of the rectory. He was about to go into his study when Agnes came down the stairs.

  ‘How did the meeting go, Father?’

  He looked up at his only child, the light of his life. By some blessed quirk of nature, she had taken after his own dear mother in looks. Exactly the same eyes and hair and the same smile. The kind of true and real beauty that would last a lifetime. ‘Not so badly. We managed to agree on most things.’

  ‘Supper’s ready.’

  ‘Thank you, my dear.’ He followed Agnes down the stone-flagged passageway and into the kitchen where they now took all their meals. It was far more convenient and warmer than the chilly wastes of the dining room. Once upon a time, before the war, there had been a cook and a kitchen maid, as well as a housemaid, but the cook had gone to work in a munitions factory and the maids had both joined the ATS. Mrs Halliwell now obliged on two mornings a week and did some cooking for the larder when she and her bunions felt up to it. Otherwise it was Agnes who coped. He sat down at one end of the massive pine table that had been there since the days of a far larger Victorian household when the rector had had eight children. He hoped that the supper, whatever it was, had been cooked by his daughter and not Mrs Halliwell, who had a heavy hand as well as bunions. It had. ‘It’s oxtail,’ she told him. ‘They had some at the butcher’s today.’ She set the plate of stew in front of him.

  She was an excellent cook, creating appetizing dishes out of the most unpromising wartime ingredients – tails and tongues and trotters and all kinds of offal and animal parts that nobody would have dreamed of eating before – but he was almost too tired to eat. More and more to be done in the parish, he thought, and less and less energy to carry out all his duties now that he was getting on in years. Since Sylvia had left him, bored out of her mind, as she had put it, with the life of a country parson’s wife, he had found it a constant struggle. Various village ladies had nobly stepped into the breach and, as Agnes had grown up, she had shouldered an increasing share of the burden that her mother had laid down. In addition to teaching in the school kindergarten and at Sunday school and running the Brownies, she fulfilled any number of other parish duties for him.

  His daughter sat down to eat opposite him and he observed her covertly, thinking of Miss Skinner’s words of warning. Agnes was engaged to be married to Clive Hobbs but, as Miss Skinner had cautioned, her fiancé was away serving in the army and likely to remain so for the rest of the war. Just to himself, he admitted that he was rather relieved about that. It put off the day when he must come to terms with marrying Agnes to a young man he did not care for. He had been dismayed when Clive had presented himself at the rectory, not so much to ask for Agnes’s hand as to announce that he was taking it. He could see, though, how it had come about. Agnes and Clive had known each other since they were small children and as she had grown into a beautiful young woman, Clive had pursued her relentlessly and with all the assurance of his privileged situation. The Hobbs family with their acres and their property and their fingers in many pies were important people in King’s Thorpe. Still, the rector had demurred and prevaricated. Agnes was only eighteen. She had met so few young men in her sheltered life. Was she truly in love? Had she any idea what that should feel like? Did she feel anything close to the passion he had felt, and still felt, for her mother? He had worried about these things in private, but, in the end, there had been no real reason to withhold his consent – other than the irrational dislike of his future son-in-law, which he kept to himself. People told him how fortunate his daughter was. In his view, it was Clive who was the fortunate one.

  He had wondered sometimes since if Agnes was marrying to escape the wearing routine of rectory life, just as Sylvia had been desperate to escape, but when he had asked she had denied it vehemently and pointed out that she would still be living in the village and still intended to go on helping him. Her answer had made him wonder guiltily if that, instead, was part of the reason. She knew how much he depended on her in every way and marrying Clive meant she would stay in King’s Thorpe. There was no denying that he was selfishly thankful for it. He doubted, though, whether, once married, she would find it easy to carry out many parish duties. Clive Hobbs struck him as the kind of man who would demand a wife’s full attention. There had already been arguments, he knew, over her teaching at the kindergarten. Agnes had announced her intention of continuing; Clive wanted her to stop. The outcome remained to be seen.

  ‘You’re not eating, Father. Is anything the matter?’

  ‘No, nothing, my dear.’ He picked up his knife and fork. ‘I’m just a bit tired.’

  ‘Mrs Gibbons sent a message. She says Mr Gibbons has taken a turn for the worse and she’d like you to go and see him as soon as you can.’

  Matthew Gibbons had been bedridden for several years, wavering uncertainly between this world and the next. There had been many false alarms about his final departure, but the rector always hurried to his bedside.

  ‘And Mr Law rang about the magazine. I said you’d ring him back. Is the stew all right?’

  ‘Delicious.’ He ate some more to please her. ‘We’re going to give a welcome party at the village hall for the American airmen when they arrive. It was agreed at the meeting. Nothing elaborate, of course. Just tea and sandwiches. Your help will be appreciated, my dear, if you can manage to spare the time.’

  ‘When are they coming?’

  ‘During the next week or so, apparently. The proposal is to invite the commanding officer and a limited number of others. Impossible to ask them all, with the best will in the world. But I feel we should do our utmost to welcome them and show that we care.’

  ‘They haven’t cared very much about us up to now, have they?’

  He was rather taken aback; he had expected her full support, as always. ‘You can understand their reluctance to become involved in another European war.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can understand – not very easily, anyway. We didn’t want to get involved in one again either, but we did because we wouldn’t stand by and let the Nazis tyrannize other countries. The Americans have only thought of themselves all along, haven’t they? Tom thinks they’re despicable.’

  ‘Does he, indeed?’

  ‘They wanted to keep their precious neutrality at all costs, didn’t they? They refused to help us and they’re only fighting now because the Japanese attacked them – not for our sake.’

  He said ruefully, ‘Brigadier Mapperton would certainly agree, my dear.’

  ‘Well, it’s true, isn’t it?’

  ‘Up to a point. But there must be many Americans who would have liked to join in much sooner. Indeed, some of them did. American pilots fought in the Battle of Britain, you know.’

  ‘It doesn’t excuse the rest of them.’ She smiled at him. ‘But don’t worry, Father, I’ll help with the teas.’

  He smiled back, thinking how very dear she was to him, and it suddenly crossed his mind – no more than a faint stirring in his consciousness, like a soft little summer breeze passing through leaves on a tree – that he half-hoped that Miss Skinner’s fears might be justified.

  Sam Barnet found his wife in the sitting room, engrossed in her knitting; somethin
g for the Forces, to judge by the look of it. He’d had his evening meal earlier, before the PCC meeting, and now he fancied a cup of tea and a piece of cake and a quiet sit-down before he turned in early. He’d be up well before four, in time to stoke the oven furnace and heave an eight-stone sack of flour down the ladder from the store above the bakehouse for mixing up in the trough. There were no fat bakers. It was backbreaking, sweat-of-the-brow work and he did it all himself, now that Roger was away, except for a school-age lad who came to chop the sticks and bring the coal in. He’d noticed lately that he was getting more and more aches and pains – in his back and his hands, and sometimes trouble with his chest and eyes from the flour dust. The cakes were women’s work and he left those to a hired woman, Mrs Trimwell, and Sally to do once he’d finished the bread and the oven was cooler. They couldn’t make the very fancy cakes any more because of the shortages, but they’d plenty of eggs from two hundred chickens to make good, plain ones. Freda was busy counting stitches, muttering away under her breath, so he went and put the kettle on the hob himself. While he waited for it to boil he put the cups and saucers and the milk in its matching jug out on a tray with a clean white cloth underneath. He liked things done nicely in the house and sometimes wished that Freda was a bit more particular in that department. The kitchen was in a real muddle with the dirty dishes from the meal still piled in the sink. He took the Coronation cake tin off the larder shelf and cut two slices of Madeira – a thin one for Freda and a larger one for himself. It was still good and moist, he noted with his baker’s eye. It’d be one of Sally’s, more than likely: she was very good at the cakes. When the kettle had come to the boil he made the tea in the teapot and fitted the wool cosy over it, with a bit of a struggle. Another of Freda’s knitting attempts with the hole for the spout not in quite the right place.

  When he carried the tray back into the sitting room Freda was shaking her head over the knitting lying in a khaki heap on her lap.