The September Girls (39 page)

‘’Course I am. It’d be pretty peculiar if I weren’t. That’s a daft question to ask, Fielding,’ Cara said as an afterthought.

‘I wish you were having a white wedding.’ Fielding sighed. ‘If I were a proper bridesmaid, I’d wear a purple crinoline and a big lacy hat with a bunch of pink roses on the brim and carry a matching bouquet.’

Cara laughed. ‘I don’t fancy having a purple bridesmaid and you’d look gruesome dressed like that. It’s the sort of thing you’d wear in a pantomime.’

‘I think I might have done once, perhaps it’s where I got the idea from.’

‘If you weren’t so pissed, you might want to dress a bit less colourfully.’

‘You’re probably right.’ She lapsed into silence, but not for long. ‘What sort of dress would you wear, Caffrey, if you were a proper bride?’

‘I’m going to be a proper bride and you’re going to be a proper bridesmaid. It’s just that we’ll be in uniform, that’s all.’ Oh, but she would have loved to be married in white: a plain, classical style, no frills, no ribbons, no bows, and a waist-length veil secured by a circle of lilies of the valley. She visualized her mother in the front row of the church, full of airs and graces and all done up in powder blue or salmon pink and a gigantic hat with layers of net. Dad would give his only daughter away - it was a coincidence, but Mam had written to say he’d bought a new suit, dark grey, from Burtons the tailors. It sounded perfect for a wedding.

Suddenly, thinking of her father, Cara wanted to cry. Unlike Mam, he never lost his temper, had hysterics, criticized, or so much as raised his voice. He was just
there
, for Mam, for her, for everybody. ‘I’ve got the most wonderful dad in the whole world, Fielding,’ she said, choking on the words.

‘I’m sure you have, Caffrey.’

‘I wish he could be there tomorrow to give me away.’

‘Anyone’d be better than Culpepper: King Kong, for instance, or Doctor Crippen.’

‘Fielding! Can’t you ever be serious?’ Cara hid a grin. ‘I’m terribly upset because my father can’t be there and all you can do is joke.’

‘I think I might be incapable of being serious.’ Fielding rolled herself into a ball on the seat, just like a kitten. ‘I’m going to have a little nap.’

‘Fine company you are,’ Cara snorted, but Fielding had the enviable ability to fall asleep the very second she closed her eyes and had already started to snore.

Cara hummed ‘Here Comes the Bride’ as she drove along the deserted road. The night was warm, but bearable, the setting sun a giant orange ball in the faintly darkening sky. There were no smells, all the flowers had withered in the heat. The fields she drove through lay fallow and nothing would grow again until autumn when she would no longer be in Malta, but Liverpool, by which time her baby would have started to show. She caught her breath. It was all so new, so unexpected. To think that in a few weeks, Malta would have just become a memory, like everything that had happened in her life. People often brought back souvenirs from places they had been, and she would have a husband and a child to remind her.

She was just coming up to Barracca Gardens when two men on bikes came into view, pedalling like maniacs. She nudged Fielding, sounded the horn and braked. ‘I can spy those blokes you were on about.’

Kit arrived first. He stuck his head through the window and kissed her. ‘Hello, darling. This time tomorrow . . .’ He left the rest unsaid, just looked at her, and the love in his eyes made her want to weep.

‘I know.’ This time tomorrow they would be in Gozo putting everything right that had gone wrong before. ‘I can’t wait,’ she breathed.

‘Neither can I.’

She could have sat there for ever just looking into his eyes, but remembered Lieutenant Banks, waiting to be collected from headquarters. ‘I have to go,’ she said, ‘but I’ve got something very important to tell you later.’

‘Tell me now,’ he demanded.

‘No, later.’ She laughed. ‘Shall we meet in the mess? We can have a drink with the girls.’ She would almost certainly pass him on the way back and get there first.

He kissed her again. ‘OK.’

She started up the car. Mac was already on his way, wobbling all over the road, with Fielding, in fits of giggles, seated on the handlebars. She waved. ‘Bye, Caffrey.’

The siren sounded to indicate an imminent air raid when she stopped outside headquarters and she felt a trickle of fear. She’d never been in Valletta during a raid. Plenty of bombs had fallen in other parts of the island, but their main target was the docks.

Lieutenant Banks was waiting, tapping his thigh impatiently with his stick. He looked pointedly at his watch when she stopped. ‘You’re late, Caffrey,’ he snapped when he climbed in the back.

‘I drove as fast as I could,’ Cara replied stiffly, adding a reluctant, ‘sir’. The lieutenant was young, arrogant and always made her feel as if she’d just crawled from under a stone. Fielding could do a perfect imitation of his posh accent with its strangulated vowels and clipped consonants.

The Italian planes were already visible approaching Malta, the silver fuselages reflecting the setting sun, turning them into dazzlingly exotic insects, deadly insects, Cara thought with a shudder, bearers of death and destruction.

‘Haven’t they ever heard of camouflage?’ the lieutenant sneered.

Cara drove out of Valletta as quickly as she could, accompanied by the dull thud of exploding bombs. Through the rear-view mirror, she could see the sky gradually filling with black smoke. Please God, don’t let me be killed before tomorrow, she prayed. It seemed terribly important that she stay alive until she had married Kit. To her horror, a bomb fell somewhere over to her right and she could feel the ground shake. Lieutenant Banks didn’t speak and she wondered if he were frightened, too. Smoke and flames blotted out the sun. She pressed her foot on the accelerator and the speedometer shot up to seventy. She’d never driven so fast before, but had to slow down when she saw the two bikes about fifty yards in front. Mac must have worn himself out because Fielding was now sitting on the pannier of Kit’s bike. Cara sounded the horn when she overtook them and the men rang their rather rusty bells in reply.

Lieutenant Banks tut-tutted irritably. ‘Irresponsible idiots!’

Cara accelerated again. She had driven about half a mile when the ground shook again. She looked left, right and straight ahead, but could see no sign of where the bomb had fallen. It must have been behind. She looked in the mirror, but all it reflected was black smoke.

‘Caffrey!’ snapped Lieutenant Banks.

‘What?’

‘Why have you stopped?’

She hadn’t realized that she’d stopped, only that she was staring into the mirror, waiting for the bikes to appear.

‘
Caffrey
!’

Now she was out of the car, walking back the way she’d come,
running
back, looking for the bikes.

Where were they? They hadn’t been all
that
far behind. Why didn’t they come, riding through the smoke, Kit, Mac and Fielding, laughing over their narrow escape?

She was nearing the crater where the bomb had fallen when she came to a contorted heap of metal. It was Mac’s bike, one of the wheels spinning, making a slight whirring sound. There was no sign of Kit’s, but she could see Kit himself, his tall body spread-eagled on the ground, perfectly still. He looked unhurt, but when she got closer, all prepared to smile and kiss him better, she saw he no longer had a face to kiss.

Mac’s body was as tangled and twisted as his bike and Fielding lay on her side, as if she’d just closed her eyes and gone peacefully asleep. One of her arms was about six feet away.

Something snapped inside and Cara fell to her knees and began to scream, and continued to scream and scream until someone dragged her roughly to her feet.

‘Come on, Caffrey,’ Lieutenant Banks said curtly. ‘You’re not doing any good here. Let’s get back to Marzipan Hall and call an ambulance.’

The car had been reversed until it almost reached the crater. Cara was pushed into the passenger seat, her feet nudging the tin hat she’d forgotten to wear, and the lieutenant drove like the wind, while bombs continued to fall and the sky was slowly disappearing behind a veil of smoke.

‘Did you know any of those people?’ he asked at one point.

‘I knew them all,’ Cara replied in a deadpan voice.

 

The Army was being very understanding. She was being sent back to Liverpool for a week’s compassionate leave and it was up to her whether she came back to Malta or preferred to be transferred elsewhere.

‘But you don’t
have
to go,’ Sybil told her. ‘If you want, you can stay in Malta.’

‘I can’t,’ Cara said. ‘I’m expecting a baby.’ It was almost two days since the bomb had dropped on the road and, so far as she knew, Sybil was the first person she had spoken to. She reckoned no one knew what to do with her, that’s why she was being sent home. A doctor had been and told her to buck up, she’d soon get over it. He’d given her tablets to help her sleep, but she wasn’t ill, didn’t need to go in hospital, yet wasn’t fit to go back on duty. People kept coming into the room, sitting on Fielding’s empty bed and saying how sorry they were. But Cara just lay staring at the ceiling and not saying a word. Now it seemed that someone high up must have decided they wanted shot of her and the best thing was to send her home to recover, although Cara knew that she would never recover from the sight that had met her on the road to Valletta; it would stay with her until her dying day. She wished now she’d told Kit about the baby, so he would have known he was about to become a father before he died.

‘That changes everything,’ Sybil said practically. She didn’t look particularly surprised. ‘You’ll be discharged from the Army, although it’ll take a couple of weeks for the discharge papers to come through.’

‘But I don’t know where to go,’ Cara said piteously, ‘Mam will kill me - discharged for getting pregnant! You know what she’s like. She thinks the Caffreys are superior to everyone else and she’ll be dead ashamed on top of everything else. She wouldn’t want me at home for all the neighbours to see, even if there was the room.’

‘My father would be the same.’ Sybil chewed her lip. ‘Is there no one else you can stay with?’

‘I can’t think of a soul.’ Cara wept.

‘You know what I’d do if I were in your position? I’d go and see Nancy Gates. She seems to have answers for everything.’

‘But she’s bound to tell Mam; they’re friends.’

‘No, she won’t.’ Sybil shook her head emphatically. ‘Not if you tell her in confidence.’

Cara was inclined to believe this was true, but it didn’t solve all her problems. ‘Mam will wonder why I’m not writing to her any more.’

‘Still write, but send the letters to me and I’ll post them on to your mother and send hers to you. I won’t mention a word about this to my mother either.’

‘You’re being awfully kind, Sybil.’

‘I’m your superior officer and it’s my job to look after you,’ Sybil said a touch prissily. ‘Under the circumstances, I couldn’t very well be
un
kind.’ She got to her feet and smoothed her hands over the creases in her skirt. ‘Unless you want to hang on for the funerals, I’ll arrange transport home as soon as possible; it’d probably be best if you went by plane in your condition, rather than ship. Wear uniform, but leave everything else behind apart from your personal possessions. Have you got a bag of your own?’ Cara nodded; she still had her old suitcase. Sybil opened the door. ‘It’s no use wishing you a pleasant journey, not with the way you must be feeling, but I hope it goes without a hitch. By the way, if you see my father, give him my regards.’

‘I’d like to go as soon as possible, please.’ She had no wish to hang on for the funerals. Kit was dead and nothing else mattered. Later, when she packed, she threw away the little china lady Mam had given her. It hadn’t brought her a shred of luck and she never wanted to see it again.

 

As Sybil had hoped, the journey went smoothly but Cara felt sick the entire way, not just because she was pregnant, but because of the way things had turned out. She’d been expecting change, had been looking forward to finding somewhere to live, having the baby, waiting for Kit to come home. She had imagined sending him the baby’s photograph, describing its day-to-day progress. ‘He can sit up, walk, say “Mummy” but I’m teaching him to say “Daddy” too.’ She had a feeling that the baby was a boy. But now she didn’t even have a photo of Kit and she was worried she would forget what he looked like, because all she could remember was Kit without a face.

She flew on a naval cargo plane, the only woman in a handful of passengers. The few seats were hard and uncomfortable, the engines grated noisily and there was a lot of turbulence. With each mile, her spirits, already low, sank even lower, until she felt as if she were at the bottom of a deep, black pit from where there was no escape and where she was destined to spend the rest of her days. There wasn’t a single thing to look forward to, not even the baby. She’d wanted it before, but then Kit, the father, had been alive. Now she would give birth to a child who would be stigmatized all its life because it was a bastard. How would she support it? What sort of job could she get with a baby to look after?

It was late afternoon when the plane landed at an airfield in Suffolk where it was only fractionally less hot than it had been in Malta. Was she expected? Cara wondered, as she followed the few passengers to a single-storey building where she was glad to see refreshments were being served. She couldn’t be completely dead inside as she was dying for a cup of tea.

She was seated in a comfortable easy chair, drinking the tea, having refused the sandwiches and cakes pressed on her by a middle-aged woman in a flowered overall who was in charge of the food stall, when a young airman approached.

‘Private Caffrey?’

‘That’s me.’