Down Daisy Street (50 page)
So it was strange that the further the train got from Norwich, the more thoroughly uncomfortable and unsettled she felt. She found herself getting out of her seat and looking desperately up and down the platform every time the train stopped at a station. Other travellers came and went but the Waaf with the paperback and the two airmen stayed, though no one addressed her or so much as glanced in her direction.
As soon as she had settled herself in the train, Kathy had put her crutches and her kit bag up on the overhead rack. This meant a good deal of disruption if she wanted to extract the packet of sandwiches with which the cookhouse had provided her. Kathy turned her attention to the bustling station outside her window as they drew to a halt. There was a fat old woman pushing a trolley up and down the platform and shouting her wares. Of course she could get out and pursue her but she would feel safer with her crutches. Yet getting them down would be such a business because now they were underneath all the possessions of other travellers who had joined the train after herself.
Sighing, Kathy decided to resign herself to her lot and pressed her nose wistfully to the window, watching others queuing at the trolley. She wondered whether she might lean out of the window and persuade someone to fetch her some tea but at that moment the train began to move and she realised she was too late. She sank back in her seat and then leaned forward, a hand flying to her throat. There was someone walking along the platform, heading for the trolley. His cap was on the back of his head and he wore an aggressively new uniform, yet the very way he wore it – as well as the wing on his chest – proclaimed that this was no lad joining up for the first time, but a seasoned campaigner.
Kathy jumped to her feet with a shriek which rivalled the whistle with which the train had announced its departure. She jerked the window down, snatched at the door handle and fell out on to the platform. She heard cries and shouts, saw an official bearing down upon her, his face red with anger, heard the slam as someone pushed the door she had opened vigorously closed. Then she was running, running, dodging passengers, swerving round the tea trolley, and hurling herself into Alec’s welcoming arms.
Chapter SeventeenFor a long moment, Kathy thought of nothing but Alec. Her arms were up round his neck and her cheeks were wet with tears; it was several moments before she realised that the tears were his as well as hers. Then she tried to stand back, stammering that she had glimpsed him from the train window and had wanted so desperately to be with him that she had simply run to him.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Alec was saying huskily. He put his arm round her and led her into the station buffet, sat her down at a table and then wiped the palms of his hands across her wet cheeks. ‘I’ve been dreaming of this moment for months and months and then you’re in my arms and the pair of us are crying like the great boobies we are. But, sweetheart, what were you doing on that train? Oh, there’s so much I don’t know! I’ve been in London seeing the Top Brass at Adastral House but my leave starts today. Oh, Kathy, Kathy, I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to be with you again.’
He had sat down opposite her and Kathy leaned across the table and touched his cheek gently. It was seamed by a ragged scar which ran from the corner of his eye to his jawbone. ‘Oh, darling Alec, you
were
hurt! What happened?’
were
hurt! What happened?’
‘We’ve got an awful lot to tell one another,’ Alec said contentedly, getting to his feet. ‘But if we’re going to occupy this table, I’d better buy a couple of mugs of tea and some buns – I only got off the train to get a cup of tea! Did you know I was coming home today?’
Kathy nodded. ‘Yes, I knew, but I was on my way to Adastral House as well.’ Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, dear God! I’ve got a medical board later this morning and of course I’ve missed my train and you’ve missed yours . . . oh, oh, oh, and my crutches and kit bag are still on the luggage rack! Oh, Alec, what a fool I’ve made of myself, and I dare say I’ll be in the most awful trouble when I don’t turn up on time.’
‘Crutches?’ Alec looked flabbergasted. ‘What on earth do you want with crutches? Why, you fell out of the train and tore along the platform like an Olympic runner. I’ve never seen anyone move so fast!’
Kathy giggled but stood up and gave him a push towards the counter. ‘It’s too long a story to tell in a couple of sentences,’ she said. ‘Go and get the tea and buns and then I’ll tell you everything. Oh, Alec, it’s so good to be with you again!
The explanations could have taken several hours, but once Kathy had explained about her accident Alec decided to take matters into his own hands. He said that they would both catch the next train to London together and explain that Kathy had got out of the first train in order to buy a cup of tea and it had left without her. ‘Of course, the real story is a lot more romantic,’ he said, grinning down at her. ‘But this version will be easier for the air force to swallow. I’m afraid your crutches may never be seen again, nor your kit bag, but that’s a loss we shall have to face. And honestly, sweetheart, if you can run like that, I don’t really think the crutches are a great loss. Do your legs still give you very much pain?’
Kathy leaned her head against his shoulder and squeezed his hand. ‘Hardly any,’ she said truthfully. ‘In fact, Alec, I think it’s been fear of falling and making a fool of myself which caused me to cling to the crutches, rather than a real need. But when I saw you through the train window, my one thought was to reach you before you disappeared. Now I’ve explained what happened to me, you can tell me all about France after your plane was shot down, and getting back to dear old Blighty in one piece.’
Alec remembered the horrors of those first few days in France, before he had been found and hidden by the Vitré family. His ’chute had opened and he had been blown over the top of a wood or forest for what he thought was some way before the gust had dropped him. He had crashed through the branches of a tree, one of which had ripped his cheek open. He had done his best to keep the wound clean but it had festered and by the time Louis Vitré had found him he had been in a sorry state. The man had been wonderful, burying Alec’s parachute and helping him to reach the farm which he and his wife and his old father were endeavouring to run between them, since the Vitré boys had escaped to England when France fell and were now, their parents assumed, fighting with the Free French under de Gaulle.
But it was not necessary to go into much detail, Alec decided, and dwelled more on the kindness of his hosts than on the horrors of those first few days or the rigours of his trek through occupied France, for the moment news of the Allied landings had come to his ears he had set off for the Channel ports. It would not have been fair to let the Vitré family risk more than they had done already, for the German army would take revenge, if they could, on anyone who had harboured their enemy.
For his own part, he was intrigued by Kathy’s friendship with his parents and by the coincidence of her being posted to Coltishall, so near his own home. And when she suddenly began to apologise for the things she had said to him on his last evening in England, he silenced her with kisses, assuring her truthfully he had known all along that it had been surprise and disappointment which had caused her fury and not lack of love for him.
By the time the train reached Liverpool Street, all the necessary explanations had been made and the two of them were looking as smart and serene as was possible in the circumstances. Alec insisted on getting a taxi to take them to their destination, but there he had to leave Kathy. ‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours to pick you up, so don’t you dare leave without me,’ he instructed her. ‘But I’m going to send a telegram to my ma and pa explaining that I’ve been held up and won’t be home until tomorrow. I won’t tell them that you’ll be coming home with me,’ he added, smiling down at her, ‘because that can be a pleasant surprise. I take it that you’d planned to go back to Norfolk after your medical?’
‘Well, I thought I’d give you a couple of days to settle in at home first,’ Kathy said. ‘And it’s about time I went back to Daisy Street for a bit, too. Would – would you come with me, Alec? Only I can’t bear the thought of being apart from you.’
Alec groaned softly. ‘I want to give you a great big hug, but right here with the Top Brass coming and going all the time I dare not even squeeze your hand,’ he said remorsefully. ‘OK, we’ll go home to Honeywell Farm tomorrow morning and tell my parents we’re going to be married just as soon as we can arrange it. Then we’ll go back to Daisy Street and tell your mam and young Billy. How does that suit you?’
‘Oh, Alec, it sounds wonderful,’ Kathy said. ‘But suppose they post me miles away from you? If I pass the medical board they could remuster me . . . come to that if I fail it they could do the same! And you . . . you could go anywhere, too.’
‘Yes, I know, but that’s war for you. And we might find ourselves on the same station, even. I’m going to be training chaps to navigate Wimpeys for a bit, anyway. They’ve already said they won’t put me back on active service for some time. And, sweetie, if you fail your medical board . . . well, they might decide you should leave the WAAF and then you could come and live near where I was stationed.’
‘If we got married and I began to make a baby, then they would kick me out,’ Kathy said longingly. How strange it was, to actually long to leave the WAAF, where she had been so happy! But that was love, she told herself; the true love sort which turns your whole world upside down.
Alec grinned down at her and squeezed her hand, then began to lead her along the pavement, away from Adastral House and the Top Brass which inhabited it. ‘Well, if making a baby is the only way to stay together, I think we might manage that,’ he said thoughtfully. They rounded a corner and he pulled her to a halt once more. ‘What really worries me is what will happen when the war’s over – which won’t be long now – and we both go back to Civvy Street. Darling Kathy, I couldn’t ever live in a city, you know. I’m a countryman, and once I get out of the RAF all I’ll want to do is farm. But you . . . well, you can’t deny you’re a city girl. Have you ever considered actually spending all your time in Horsey? No cinemas, only one pub and that a good walk away, no theatres, teashops, clubs, dance halls. No pals living cheek by jowl with you, like in Daisy Street – no real neighbours, come to that. And though I love my home, I’m bound to admit that there’s one helluva lot of plough and pasture, a great deal of hard and mucky work and very few diversions. Of course, there’s the sea just over the marram bank, and the mere . . . but it int the sort of life many city girls would want.’
Kathy thought of the farm. Of the salt marshes which stretched between the good pasture lands and the sea, the remoteness of the house, the way it seemed to squat amidst the farm buildings, pulling its tiles down low as a farm labourer pulls down his cap in bad weather. She thought of the hustle and bustle of Stanley Road, the warmth of Daisy Street, where there was always someone on hand to mind a child, give a hand, share a trouble or a laugh.
But then she thought of other things, things which mattered, though Alec had not mentioned them. The wild beauty of the coastline where the great white-topped breakers came roaring on to the pale, shell-studded sand, the quiet of the ancient church surrounded by the gently leaning gravestones, the mighty oaks and elms which separated it from the country lanes in heavy, luxuriant leaf. The lanes themselves with their rich hedgerows and flowering verges. The new orchard at Honeywell, which had been replanted in ’39, whose trees were taller than herself now and fruiting well. The hens which came bustling to the back door whenever Betty beat their food bucket with the big wooden spoon, and the pigs, standing on end in the sty in order to see who was bringing what in their direction.
And there was beauty there too, despite the flatness of the land and the practicality of the farm and its buildings. She saw, in her mind’s eye, a group of winter-bare trees, starkly black against a lemon-coloured sky. The early mists of autumn lying across the water meadows so that the cattle seemed to be wading through milk. The mere in high summer, reflecting the blue of the sky so that it was hard to see where one began and the other ended.
‘Well, my woman?’ Alec’s voice was suddenly worried. ‘Being a tenant farmer’s no picnic, but it’s – well, it’s what I was born to be. Only you . . . it’s different for you. You wanted a proper career, a university education, all sorts of things I can’t offer you. So – so I’m not sure if I’m being fair to ask you to marry me right now . . . or at any time, perhaps,’ he finished gloomily. ‘Only – oh, Kathy, I want you so!’
Kathy smiled up at him. ‘Are you trying to put me off? Because if so, you’re going the wrong way about it. Alec, I’ve been happier helping your parents at Honeywell than I ever thought I would be again. I think the country’s beautiful, I don’t even mind the mud! Of
course
I’ll miss Daisy Street and all my pals, and of
course
I’ll have a lot to learn, but don’t you see? A proper career and a university education don’t mean a thing to me. It’s you who matters. I’d live in – in a pigsty if that was the only way we could be together.’
course
I’ll miss Daisy Street and all my pals, and of
course
I’ll have a lot to learn, but don’t you see? A proper career and a university education don’t mean a thing to me. It’s you who matters. I’d live in – in a pigsty if that was the only way we could be together.’
Alec’s face cleared and he smiled at last, gently pulling her to him. ‘I think we can do better than a pigsty; how about a stable?’ he said. ‘Now let’s get away from here, because if I don’t kiss you soon I’ll burst!’
‘Ditto,’ Kathy said dreamily. ‘Lead on, MacDuff!’
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