I'll Be Seeing You (19 page)

She was surprised. ‘Sketching? You don't look the artistic type.'

‘Appearances can fool you. It's nothing fancy. Pencil, mostly.'

He took a small book out of the patch pocket of his leather jacket and showed it to her, flipping over the pages. Sketches of life at Halfpenny Green. Watchers on the control tower balcony, a mechanic working on an engine, a Jeep overloaded with a ten-man crew, a tangled pile of bikes outside the briefing room . . . she could see, even from the rapid glance that he allowed, that they were very well done.

She said, ‘Where did you learn to draw so well?'

‘Hell, they're just doodles. We had a good teacher in high school, though, and I learned a lot from him. I guess some of it comes naturally. My mother's a pretty good artist. Watercolours, mainly. It's in the family.'

‘What else about you?'

He gave her a sideways smile. ‘What do you want to know?'

‘Well, you could start the way Americans usually start.'

‘What way's that?'

‘Telling me where you come from. I know it's California but what city or town?'

‘Pasadena. Right by Los Angeles.'

‘Is that anywhere near Hollywood?'

‘Sure. Hollywood's a part of Los Angeles and Pasadena's only a few miles east of LA.'

‘Is it a nice place?'

‘Yeah. I think so. It's kind of old – by our standards, not yours. Big old houses, nice neighbourhoods, lots of trees . . . it's a good place to live. My father's company's based in LA, though.'

‘What sort of company?'

‘Magazine publishing. A bunch of different kinds of glossies – architecture, interiors, fashion . . . And a whole lot of smaller ones on hobbies – fishing and horseback-riding and collecting things, that sort of stuff. My grandfather started the company, then Dad took it over. I'm expected to do the same.'

‘Are you the only son?'

‘Yep. I've got a kid sister but she's not interested. She wants to be a big film star. See, that's what comes of living anywhere near Hollywood. It can rub off on you, if you're not careful.'

‘Do you have photos of them?' They usually did and it was polite to ask.

‘Oh, sure . . . Yanks always carry them – you know that. I've seen you being nice and kind about it. I'll bore you with them some other time.'

Private planes, big old houses, a dynastic family . . . it spelled wealth, position, power. She knew that some of the Americans did a lot of line-shooting and lie-telling about their backgrounds to impress the girls, but she had no doubt that what he'd told her was perfectly true, and it wasn't her sort of world at all.

‘I really ought to be getting back, Ham.'

‘Sure.' He stood up. ‘I'll walk you right to your door.'

They took the pathway up through the woods and stopped to listen to the distant drone of the RAF setting off on a night op.

‘Beats me how they do it,' he said. ‘No escort, pea-shooter guns, pitch black. It must take a hell of a good navigator to find the target and make it back to base.'

She told him about hearing the nightingale singing with the bombers. ‘But that was in May. I haven't heard him since.'

‘Maybe he's flown off to Berkeley Square.'

She smiled. ‘Maybe he has.'

As promised, he took her right to the farmhouse door. By then it was too dark to see much of him – just the dark shape of him, the outline of the high-brimmed American cap, the faint gleam of its big brass badge.

She said, ‘I hope they won't send you on ops again for a while.'

‘Sure they will – soon as we get a replacement gunner. The way I look at it is the sooner we finish the missions, the sooner we go home.'

She knew very well – and he would know very well – the frightening odds against that ever happening. ‘I won't be around for a bit,' she told him. ‘I've got two days' leave.'

‘Going home?'

‘No. I'm spending it here at the farm. I've offered to give the Laytons a hand with their harvest.'

‘If we get a break from flying, I'd be glad to help as well,' he said. ‘And I'll bet you some of the other guys would, too. Want me to ask around?'

‘Would you? They'll need all the help they can get.'

‘Sure thing. Goodnight, Daisy.'

He moved deliberately closer and took hold of her shoulders. She let him kiss her and it was very obvious that he'd kissed lots of girls, lots of times. Of course he had. She pulled away before it went on too long, or got too serious. ‘Goodnight, Ham.'

As she opened the farmhouse door, his soft American voice came out of the darkness. ‘Seems you're getting to like us a whole lot better now.'

Mrs Layton lent her some working togs, bibbed dungarees and a blouse, and gave her a red and white spotted scarf to tie round her hair. The dungarees were far too big but she tied them at the waist with string and rolled up the legs.

They assembled out in the fields – old farmworkers, land girls, friends, neighbours, villagers. It was already warm, the sun shining down on them from an almost cloudless sky – the sort of fair-weather day that would be ideal for a mission. They cleared the first field of the sheaves left lying behind the binder, heaving them across the stubble into groups and stooking them upright against each other. It was hot and dusty work; the sheaves were heavy and the sharp stubble scratched her ankles painfully. Whenever a bomber took off from the airfield Daisy stopped, shielding her eyes against the sun, to watch each one climbing upwards – just test flights, nothing more. No mission, so far.

While they were working on the next field – a ten-acre – the Yanks arrived. Thirty or more of them swarming across the field like the cavalry charging to the rescue. She gave a sigh of relief. No mission, then. Ham came straight to where she was standing and lifted the wheatsheaf out of her arms.

‘OK. Let's go.'

And go they did. The ten-acre was done in record time and they moved on to the next field – the Yanks fooling around, the land girls giggling, all of them laughing, the sun beating down. At noon, Mrs Layton, with the children helping, carried out jugs of lemon squash and bottles of ginger beer, and cheese and beetroot sandwiches. She'd brought her box camera as well and clicked away with it.

When they stopped to eat, Daisy flopped down in the shade of the hedge. Ham stretched out beside her, propping himself up on one arm – the one that steered the Fort for hours on end, the one that could wrestle with Joe Louis.

‘You know, you look pretty wonderful in your WAAF uniform, but what you're wearing right now is a knockout.'

‘It's borrowed finery.'

‘Well, don't give it back.'

‘Actually, Mrs Layton gave the scarf to me. It's a present.'

‘Keep it for ever.'

She said, ‘Thanks for coming to help, Ham – all of you.'

‘Forget it. The guys wanted to. Gets us off base and keeps us busy. Besides, it meant I could see you, Daisy. All selfish motives, you see.'

She looked away from him across the field, eating her sandwich. She had wanted to see him, too – very much – but she was remembering the way he had kissed her. The lots of girls and the lots of kisses. The Yanks had it all so easy. English girls were there for the picking and the plucking. They swooned into their arms, fell at their feet, never said no. She didn't want to be like that. Only she knew that she was falling in love with him and, soon, she wouldn't be able to help herself.

‘I know what you're thinking,' he said.

‘Oh? What?'

‘You're thinking to yourself – here's another Yank aiming to score, like all the others you've been fending off since we got here, and you're thinking that this particular Yank's probably even worse. Am I right?'

‘Something like that.'

‘Yeah . . . well, that's too bad. I guess I just have to hope you'll learn to trust me, in time. Only I don't know how much time there is left.'

‘That's not fair, Ham. Trying to make me feel bad.'

He smiled. ‘Fair means or foul, Daisy – whichever it takes.'

They worked on until the light faded and all the wheat was stooked, to be carted later for threshing. Mrs Layton had set out food on trestle tables in the barn – rabbit pies and some lethal home-made potato wine. One of the old men brought out a fiddle and sawed away, other villagers started to caper around, the Yanks watched and clapped in time and stomped their feet, and pretty soon they were all capering too.

Outside the barn, the sky was black velvet studded with diamonds. Daisy walked with Ham across the lawn by the house, the fiddling and the clapping and the stomping fading into the distance.

He stopped under a tree and took her in his arms. It went on much too long and got much too serious, but instead of pulling away, she stayed.

By November the weather was a joke. Day after day of overcast skies, rain, fog, not a peep of sun: grey, damp, cold, miserable, the whole base sinking slowly under a sea of mud. But still they flew, and in conditions when even the birds stayed home and watched them take off with their wings clapped over their eyes. He and Deerfield, the crew chief, who was from Arizona, exchanged bitter comments.

‘Sure makes me appreciate home, Lieutenant.'

‘Yeah . . . I've forgotten what the sun looks like. One thing about the Limey weather, though, Joe – if you don't like it, just wait fiveminutes and it'll change.'

A couple of times, to Hamilton's intense frustration, the target was so obscured that they had to abort and dump their bombs in the ocean. All that prodigious effort – getting ready, taking off, forming up, flying there, flying back – for no score. Twelve missions done, thirteen to go, and with the bad weather, that could be a heck of a long time to be living under a death sentence. He still stuck to his golden rule: forget about tomorrow; there is no tomorrow. Or next week, let alone next year. To hell with them! Today was all that counted. Today. And Daisy.

He sometimes went over to the farmhouse in the evening. There was always a crowd of other guys there, playing cards and board games, listening to the wireless and to records, wandering around . . . almost no chance of getting her to himself, and he had a feeling that she was deliberately keeping it that way – as though she was afraid of getting in too deep. He could understand that. From where he was standing, potential dead meat any day – he'd nothing to lose, but for her it was different. Get too serious, too involved and it would be tough on her if anything happened to him, whereas he wouldn't be feeling a thing.

Next time he went over, she was in the kitchen, mixing something in a bowl. For once, there was nobody else there.

‘Pastry for an apple pie,' she told him when he asked what it was. ‘Isn't that a big American favourite?'

‘Sure.' He watched her kneading and rolling the pastry and then peeling and slicing the apples. At home, they had a cook and he rarely went into the kitchen. ‘Where did you learn to do all that?'

‘From my mother.' She went on working at the pie, laying the pastry deftly over the apples, slicing round the edges, cutting slits in the top and making pretty leaves out of leftover bits for decoration.

‘Your mother must be a great cook.'

She gave him a quick smile over her shoulder on her way to the oven. ‘She is. So are all my sisters.'

‘What a family! I hope I meet them some day.

And I sure hope you meet mine. How about coming to California when the war's over?'

‘It's an awfully long way away.'

‘If you marry me you could make it a one-way ticket.'

She was busy with the oven door, her back turned. ‘Is that an official proposal, or an idea that's just come into your mind?'

‘No. It's an idea that's been there ever since I first saw you.' He dropped the flippant tone. ‘I mean it, Daisy. I'm serious.' He knew it was unfair to her and that he was breaking the rule, but what the hell? If she felt about him the way he felt about her – and he was pretty damn sure she did – then she'd be willing to take the risk, wouldn't she?

She turned towards him, unsmiling. ‘I expect you
do
mean it now, Ham – when everything's upside down for you and you're so far from home. But how will you feel when the war's over and everything gets back to normal and you go back to your own country and your own people? Your own sort of girl?'

He said, ‘
You're
my sort of girl, Daisy. Can't you tell? And I thought I was your sort of guy.' She looked away without answering him. ‘But maybe I've got that wrong?'

She said low so he could scarcely hear it, ‘No, you didn't get it wrong.'

‘Then what's the problem? Is it because you're afraid I'll get the chop? You can't face that happening?'

‘No, it's not that. It's not that at all.'

He moved closer to her. ‘So what is it?'

‘I've just tried to tell you—'

But then some guy came barging into the kitchen and then more guys after him. They all clustered round her, planning on staying. He left them to it.

‘Beautiful morning, Chief.'

‘Sure is, Lieutenant, sir. Makes me glad I'm not goin' home just yet.'

The rain was coming down as though somebody up there was emptying great buckets of water and the wind was blowing it all sideways across the airfield. Nonetheless, take-off conditions were deemed favourable and visibility over the target – Bremen and the submarine installations – was said to be fair. So off they were going into the wild, grey yonder on their thirteenth mission and crossing fingers the number wasn't a bad omen. He and Gene went through the usual checks, started up engines in order – number two, number one, number three, number four – and moved out onto the peri track.
Miss Laid
was even more tricky to handle on take-off than usual and he thought for a while that she was going to refuse at the first fence. But up they went, scraping tree tops and clambering slowly through wet cotton wool – one of a long line of Forts all aiming to meet up and form up in a death-defying, suicidal exercise of precision flying in visibility that had the sweat breaking out on his forehead and the muscles in his arms going rigid. On the last mission, when the conditions had been about the same, four Forts had collided and turned into bits of wing and fuselage and tails and men and parachutes littering the sky.