Our Yanks (11 page)

She was going pink in the face again. ‘The alphabet. Numbers. Counting. Painting and drawing. Reciting and singing.'

‘Anything else?'

She hesitated. ‘Well, we have a Nature Table.'

‘What's that?'

‘We collect things on walks – leaves, fir cones, flowers, nuts, feathers, snailshells . . . whatever we can find. They're put on a special table and labelled. The children learn something about nature. They have a rabbit, too, and some guinea pigs that they look after themselves.'

The British were in a class of their own, he thought. Their country had been engaged in total war for four years, bombed to bits, struggling all alone for survival, but these little kids were still busily collecting stuff for their Nature Table.

A telephone started ringing somewhere and the rector headed for the door. ‘Excuse me. I must answer that. Agnes, will you take care of Lieutenant Mochetti?'

She didn't look too thrilled about that and he reckoned it was time to leave and said so. He followed her back down the dark passageway to the hall and collected his cap and jacket. She was holding the front door open for him; outside it was still raining cats and dogs. He shrugged on his A2 and zipped it up. ‘Say, we're having a dance Saturday at the Officers' Club. We've a pretty good band and we'll lay on the transport. How about you coming?'

‘I'm afraid I couldn't.'

‘That's a shame.' He twirled his cap round on one finger. ‘How about the next one after that? It's going to be a regular thing.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘You don't like dancing?'

‘Sometimes, yes.'

‘Then why not come along?'

‘I'd just prefer not to, thank you.'

‘Come on, give it a try?'

‘No, thank you.'

‘You that sure?'

‘
Quite
sure.'

She'd got him figured for just another skirt-chasing Yank. No point going on. There were plenty more fish in the sea. He put his cap on. ‘OK. Maybe I'll see you around. Thanks for the lunch.' He made a dash through the rain for the jeep, fired up the engine and worked the windshield wipers. As he drove off he could see in the side-view mirror that she'd already shut the door.

Tom always sat at the very end of the choir stalls nearest the altar. That way, he could read a comic without anyone in the congregation seeing. He didn't mind the singing part but the rest of the service was boring. He'd only joined the choir because Mum had said he needn't go to Sunday school any more if he did, and Sunday school had been even more boring – babyish games and feeble stories, making silly things out of raffia, pretending to be ‘little birds that sing' and soppy stuff like that. He'd got into real hot water once when he'd cut off one of Jessie Hardwick's plaits with the raffia-work scissors. Being in the choir was a lot better than Sunday school, even though he hated having to wear the girly clothes and Mum always made a big fuss about starching and ironing his surplice and getting it whiter than anyone else's. They got paid a halfpenny for each service, too, but he thought it was stingy that they didn't get paid so much as a brass farthing for rehearsals.

The church was full. Squinting sideways from his vantage point he could see them all sitting there, always in the same seats and all dressed up in their Sunday best and wearing holy looks on their faces, never mind what they were like the rest of the week. Farmer Dixon, the mean old skinflint, never put more than threepence on the collection plate so he wasn't sorry about the rabbits. Or about the eggs. They were coming to the end of the ‘Benedicite' which went on and on about ye Sun and Moon, ye Stars of Heaven, ye Showers and Dew, ye Fire and Heat, ye Whales, ye Fowls of the Air, ye Beasts and Cattle . . . and ye everything else whoever wrote it had been able to think of. A lot of the congregation had given up even pretending to sing. Tom swallowed a yawn before they started on the
Glory be to the Father
bit and then they all sat down for the Second Lesson. Brigadier Mapperton was marching across to the lectern, footsteps ringing out on the flagstones. ‘The Second Lesson is taken from the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, Chapter Five, beginning at the first verse.' There was a sound like a dog growling as the brigadier cleared his throat. ‘“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God . . .”'

Tom had already stopped listening. He was thinking about where he'd try next for some eggs for the Yanks. Maybe from one of Mr Barnet's coops behind the bakehouse? With all the chickens they'd got, he'd never notice a few missing. Better not to go back to Farmer Dixon's again. He'd climbed out of the bedroom window one night, so Mum wouldn't know about it, and slid down the washhouse roof below. There'd been a full moon which had made it easy as anything to nip across the fields, though he'd sooner have had it darker so he couldn't be seen. Some bombers had gone by in the distance, droning along. RAF bombers coming back from a raid on Germany, most probably; the Yanks didn't go at night. He'd skirted the farmyard until he came to the henhouses parked in the apple orchard – three of them side by side. The funny thing was there'd been a fox there, too, watching and waiting. He'd seen its eyes shine at him before it turned and trotted off, trailing its brush. He'd waited, too, just like the fox. All quiet. Farmer Dixon and his wife must have been snoring away in their beds. He'd shinned over the orchard gate, made his way without a sound to the back of the nearest henhouse and lifted the lid of the nesting boxes, feeling in the straw for the warm, newlaid eggs. There'd been seven stowed safely away in his pockets when he'd disturbed a hen sitting in one of the boxes and she'd made a real to-do. The farmyard dog had heard it and started barking and growling and leaping about at the end of its chain. By the time Tom had vaulted back over the gate Farmer Dixon had come bursting out of the house with his shotgun, firing it in all directions.

He'd raced back over the fields as fast as he could, afraid that the dog would be set on him, and he hadn't felt safe until he'd scrambled back up onto the roof from the water butt and got in through the bedroom window. One of the eggs had got smashed but the rest were all right. He'd taken them up to the 'drome the next day, together with six loaves from the baker's. Sally had slipped him a dozen rock cakes for free when he'd told her who the loaves were for. ‘Don't tell my dad,' she'd warned him. ‘He hates the Yanks.' He'd gone straight into the radio shack and they'd paid him a penny each egg and given him a whole lot more toast and peanut butter. He'd kept one penny for himself and put the rest in Mum's Oxo tin on the kitchen shelf. When she asked where he'd got it he'd told her the Yanks had paid him for running errands for them. Well, in a way it was true.

‘“. . . in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Here endeth the Second Lesson.'

The brigadier stumped back to his place. Tom heard Miss Hooper kick the side of the organ to give the signal to the verger and then the wheeze of the hand pump starting up. The service dragged on with the Jubilate. He liked the next hymn and sang it his best.

They'd all woken up now but they'd soon be dozing off again in the sermon. During the final verse Tom watched the rector climbing the stairs slowly to the pulpit, as if he was going to his execution. There was a lot of shuffling and coughing as everybody sat down. ‘May the words of my lips and the thoughts of our hearts be now, and always, acceptable in Thy sight, Oh Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Dear friends, once again we are approaching the celebration of the nativity of our Lord – a time when all Christians try to pay special heed to the doctrine of goodwill towards all men taught to us by Christ himself . . .'

Dick, Robbie and Seth in the choir stall opposite had their heads bent over something – probably teasing the beetle Dick kept in a matchbox. Tom groped under his surplice for the copy of
Boy's Own
that he'd pinched from the shop when nobody was looking. He slid it carefully downwards so he could see part of the front page. There was a colour drawing of a Spitfire shooting down a German seaplane in flames. ‘The Secret of Nordstrand', it said (
beginning inside
). He turned the corner of the page to where the story began. The sermon only reached him in bits. Something about being nice to the Yanks. About how everybody in the village ought to ask them into their homes over Christmas as they were so far away from their own homes. There was a lot of fidgeting and muttering and Brigadier Mapperton was making that growling noise in his throat again. He knew Mum would ask the Yanks, only they wouldn't have any food to spare. Tom opened the page a bit more and went on with the story which was about a German secret weapon being built in a cave on a deserted island in the North Sea, off the coast of Denmark. It was a sort of rocket, powerful enough to destroy the whole of London at once and the Germans were going to launch it within a week. An RAF Spitfire pilot, flying alone over the island, had just happened to spot a Jerry seaplane taking off from near the beach . . .

Something stung his cheek. Seth was firing dried peas from a peashooter at him but the rest of them missed and he stuck his tongue out. The rector had got to the end of his sermon at last and everybody was struggling to their feet for the final hymn. Tom shoved the comic back under his surplice and opened his hymn book. The organ had got going again and they were just about to start when he heard the fighter coming. He knew by the sound that it was one of the Yanks' Lightnings. It went roaring low over the church spire, drowning out the first bars of ‘All my hope on God is founded'. The stained glass in one of the transept windows shattered into pieces and fell inwards onto the floor.

The mobile canteen – converted from an old Skegness charabanc, with the seats taken out and a hatchway cut into one side – chugged up the hill towards the American air base. There had been a light snowfall the day before and a hard frost during the previous night. By mid-afternoon the temperature was still well below freezing. ‘I should watch out for ice patches, if I were you, Lady Beauchamp.' Mrs Vernon-Miller, an impressive figure in her WVS overcoat, beret and badges, was riding behind the driver's seat, standing like Queen Boadicea in her chariot and gripping the back with one hand. ‘These country roads can be treacherous. Are you sure you wouldn't like me to take over?'

As usual, there had been a polite but prolonged argument between them over who should drive. Mrs Vernon-Miller had, apparently, driven ambulances through thick and thin during the First World War but had never quite mastered the art of changing gear. Whenever she took the wheel, the charabanc leaped along like a kangaroo, the china mugs dancing a wild fandango in the back. This time Erika had moved firmly into the seat and refused to budge. She negotiated the slippery hill successfully and once they'd reached the top it was straight and flat to the aerodrome.

‘Roman road,' Mrs Vernon-Miller bellowed above the engine's faulty rumble. ‘Did you know that, Lady Beauchamp?'

She hadn't. It was one of the many things she didn't know about King's Thorpe. What an irony to think that Roman soldiers had once marched where American airmen now drove. A jeep, approaching fast, shot past them with a whisker to spare. The Yank at the wheel grinned and waved and Mrs Vernon-Miller shook her fist after him. ‘Some of those young men have no consideration. I've written twice to their commanding officer about the way they drive around here but it doesn't seem to make the slightest difference. No proper discipline, if you ask me. And their flying is just as reckless. It was an absolute disgrace about the church window.'

The row over the transept window – an incident on a par with the three-day electricity power failure – was still smouldering on. The beautiful fifteenth-century stained glass had been judged beyond repair and the Americans' apology and offer to pay for new glass to replace the irreplaceable had by no means smoothed the ruffled feathers in the village. Since there were no materials available for the job and nobody qualified to do it, the window had been boarded up for the duration. Brigadier Mapperton had been specially vociferous and there were plenty of others who agreed with him, including Erika's mother-in-law who was convinced that the pilot had flown low over the church with the express purpose of shattering windows. The fact that the window in question was known to have been in drastic need of leadwork repairs cut no ice and the rector's plea in his sermon for Christmas goodwill towards the Americans had fallen on stone deaf ears. Without consulting Miriam, Erika had sat down and written a letter to the group commander with an invitation to the Manor. Richard, she knew, would have done precisely that.

They were approaching the first entrance to the base and she slowed down to turn in and then stop. The sentry raised the striped pole and waved them through with a sort of casual salute. Mrs Vernon-Miller snorted. ‘No idea how to salute properly. Not the faintest. If my husband were alive to see how slack they are he'd have a heart attack.'

They drove past a group of Nissen huts and out onto the concrete perimeter track. Their route would take them all the way round the edge of the aerodrome, stopping at each dispersal point and then at the main congregation of the station buildings and, finally, out by the main gate. The first lot of fighter hardstands were empty and the ground crews emerged from tents and the makeshift shacks that they'd built out of wooden packing cases. Mrs Vernon-Miller peered out. ‘It looks just like a native shanty town. The RAF would never allow it.'