Our Yanks (10 page)

‘He'll be ever so sorry he missed seeing you. I do hope he's not a nuisance. He loves the aeroplanes, you see.'

He grinned. ‘Yeah . . . me too.' He drove back along the high street. The old guy was still standing under his porch, smoking his pipe, and he gave him the finger as he went by. Further along the street he passed the entrance to the rectory. He'd called in there a couple of times but there'd been nobody home. Once, he'd gone round to the schoolhouse and tried looking in through the windows. They were all too high-silled to see in except for the kindergarten round the back. He'd taken a peek in there and seen Agnes Dawe with a bunch of little kids sitting in front of her, drawing things in chalk on a blackboard. Looked like she was teaching them to count. One of the kids had spied him and started pointing, then they'd all turned round. Agnes hadn't seemed too pleased, so he'd gone away. Now, on an impulse, he stopped the jeep, reversed back up and turned into the rectory driveway between the two stone gateposts. The gates themselves were missing, for some reason, but he could see the iron supports where they'd hung. He'd admired the house last time; it was a fine old place, built of the same stone as the rest of them with a slate roof, tall chimneys and steps going up to a white front door. Like all the doors in the village it needed a repaint. Paint was hard to get, he guessed, like most everything else. Gas, booze, eggs, meat, coal, paper, sugar, you name it . . . these guys had been doing without for years and doing it with their ration books so it was jolly English fair play all round. He parked the jeep and his gum and and walked up the steps. When he tapped with the brass knocker the rector himself opened it. Ed smiled politely, as with Mrs Hazlet; he figured you couldn't smile too much with the natives, unless they were like that old guy up the street. ‘Lieutenant Mochetti, sir. I wondered if your daughter was home?'

‘I'm so sorry, Lieutenant.' The guy pronounced it the English way, even though there was no such thing as an ‘f' in the word. ‘She's still at the school, teaching.'

‘Well, thanks all the same.' He turned to go but the rector stopped him.

‘But she'll be back soon for lunch. Come in and wait – if you'd like to.'

Inside it was cold as an icebox – no central heating here either, or if there was it wasn't on. There was electricity, though – real old-fashioned fittings – and a lot of dark, heavy furniture. Stuck in time, Ben would have said, but it all went with the place. He took off his cap and his leather A2 jacket – reluctantly – and followed the rector into a panelled room that was only slightly warmer than the hall. About three pieces of coal were smoking away in a small grate.

‘My study,' the guy told him and removed a pile of books from one of the two leather chairs beside the fireplace, balancing them on top of another pile on the floor. ‘I'm afraid it's always a bit untidy. Do sit down, Lieutenant. Would you care for a sherry? I think there's a small amount left.'

For all he knew sherry was on the ration too. It would certainly be hard to get. ‘No, thank you, sir.' He wasn't certain what else to call him other than ‘sir'. Father wasn't right; maybe reverend, or plain mister? ‘Is it OK if I smoke?'

‘Yes, of course. I'm sorry I don't have any cigarettes to offer you. I don't smoke myself and nor does Agnes.'

He lit one of his own and sat down. The chair reminded him of the ones in the Mess; he could feel a loose spring sticking into him. The rector sat on the opposite side of the fireplace and smiled at him. Nice guy, Ed thought.

‘We're all of us in the village extremely grateful to you young Americans for coming over to lend us a hand. Very grateful indeed.'

He said frankly, ‘It doesn't always look quite that way to us, sir. A lot of people figure we came over too late again and that we haven't done much since we got here.'

‘Oh dear. Perhaps some of the older inhabitants . . .'

‘Yeah, sure.' He was sorry he'd said anything; the guy was looking upset. ‘The kids are real friendly, though. But maybe that's just the candy and gum.' He refrained from adding that most of the girls were pretty friendly too.

‘I don't believe it's that, Lieutenant. Perhaps you don't quite understand. In many cases, fathers and older brothers have been away for months, even years. You're providing what many of our children – especially the boys – are missing. Men to look up to.'

He said slowly, ‘I guess I've never thought of it like that.'

‘Believe me, it's true.'

‘Well, maybe the others'll think better of us when we start combat missions. When we start losing a lot of men, like our bomber squadrons.'

‘I've heard about their losses . . . terrible. Truly
terrible
, Lieutenant. Six hundred on one raid alone last month, I believe.'

‘Same number back in August when they got started on the big ones and a couple more missions in October lost thirty ships each. I guess you could say we're not doing too well so far.'

‘To go in broad daylight seems a great risk.'

‘That's what your RAF says. Only we think it's harder to do what they do – go at night. Maybe we'll be proved wrong in the end.'

‘Perhaps you're both right – for different reasons. And with our weather I don't suppose there's much difference sometimes. In that bad fog we had recently I could hear some of your bombers going round and round, trying to find their airfields when they came back.'

‘Yeah, that's a big problem when you've learned to fly somewhere like Texas.'

The rector leaned forward and prodded at the coals with a poker. A small flame flickered up and then died. ‘I'm afraid the village has very little to offer you in the way of entertainment.'

‘You've got seven pubs, sir.'

He smiled. ‘There used to be even more, believe it or not. There are the Saturday night dances in the village hall, of course. Have you been to one?'

Mochetti had heard about them from some of the other guys. A three-piece band with that same old girl playing the piano, some old-timer squeezing the guts out of an accordion and another banging away on the drums. No liquor and more of those paste sandwiches. ‘Not yet, sir.'

‘They're really most enjoyable. Almost the whole village goes. It's a family occasion.'

‘That so?'

‘There's a modest entrance fee of one shilling – just to cover the costs and the refreshments, you know. You might enjoy it.' The clock on the mantelpiece started chiming. ‘Agnes will be home any moment now.' The rector cleared his throat. ‘She's engaged to be married, I expect you know that?'

‘Yes, sir.' If he was being warned off it was being done real nicely.

‘Clive, her fiancé, comes from one of our old farming families. He's away in the army – still in England at the moment, thank goodness. Training for the day when we invade the Continent, I imagine. Like your people. Though that day still seems a little far off at the moment. We'll just have to hope that you Americans will be able to speed things up, now that you're here. Ah, I think that's my daughter now . . . you'll stay to lunch, of course, Lieutenant?'

As she came into the room, he got to his feet. He noticed that she coloured up as soon as she saw him there.

‘Lieutenant Mochetti was passing by, Agnes. I've asked him to stay to luncheon.'

‘It's only bubble and squeak.'

‘I'm sure he won't mind, will you?'

‘Sounds find to me.' What the hell was bubble and squeak? And where was the wife? She hadn't been mentioned and he couldn't remember her at the Welcome Party either.

‘That's settled then. While we're waiting, I insist that you have that sherry, Lieutenant.'

It was sweet and syrupy – like medicine – and he drank it down in two gulps – like medicine. The rector was asking something about the Group's function. No harm answering in general. ‘We're here to escort the heavy bombers, sir. To see off any enemy fighters who try to bounce them. That's our job. Little friends, they call us.' He'd passed over the grim fact that if the target was beyond a certain distance the P-38s couldn't go all the way there and back with the bombers. No fighter could – not yet.

‘You make it sound almost simple, Lieutenant.'

He smiled. ‘Ask me the same question in a couple of months' time, sir, and maybe I'll give you a different answer.'

After a while the daughter came back to tell them that lunch was ready. He followed them down a dark passageway into a kitchen that was another museum piece. Some kind of big cooking range – though not as ancient as Mrs Hazlet's – heavy pots and pans hanging from hooks, blue and white dishes ranged along shelves, a large wooden table in the centre, scoured pale from scrubbings. They sat up one end of the table and the girl served out something from a frying pan and put it in front of him.

‘It's cabbage, onions and potatoes,' the rector told him. ‘My daughter grows them all here in the garden.'

He tried a forkful cautiously. He hated cabbage, even more than he hated Brussels sprouts; wouldn't ever touch it if he could help it. It wasn't bad, though. In fact, when he ate some more, he reckoned it was pretty good.

The girl sat in silence but her father seemed determined to be friendly. ‘How long have you been in England, Lieutenant?'

‘Since August, sir. We came over on one of the big liners from New York – close on twenty thousand on board. It was a real shock to us guys when we got to Liverpool, I can tell you. First time we'd seen what the Luftwaffe had done to your cities.'

‘And where do you come from in the United States?' The guy was trying real hard to be nice – a lot harder than his daughter.

‘New York City. I was born in Manhattan.'

‘We've heard of Manhattan, of course, but I'm afraid we're rather ignorant about American cities. What part of New York is that exactly?'

‘Well, Manhattan's where all the famous landmarks are: the Empire State, the Rockefeller Center, Central Park . . . It's kind of an island. See, you've got the Hudson river on one side and the East on the other. To get to other parts of the city you have to cross one of the bridges.' He drew with his finger on the wooden table. ‘The Bronx is up there, Queens is over there, Brooklyn's down there and Staten Island's over this side. That's the layout.'

‘And you were brought up in Manhattan?'

‘Yes, sir. My grandparents emigrated from Naples in the last century. My parents run an Italian restaurant on 53rd street.'

‘How interesting. Do they do the cooking themselves?'

‘They sure did when they first started. Now, they've got help. They're wonderful cooks, both of them – all the great Italian dishes. I guess they wouldn't know how to do this one.' He'd meant it as a compliment to the bubble and squeak but the minute he'd said it he realized it could be taken two ways and, from the look on her face, the girl had taken it the wrong one.

‘Agnes makes some Italian dishes, I believe, don't you, my dear?'

He watched her colouring up again. ‘Not really, Father. Only things with macaroni.'

He said easily, ‘Well, I'd sure like to try one of them sometime. I haven't eaten macaroni in ages.'

She didn't answer that and the father tried some more. ‘Do you speak Italian, Lieutenant?'

‘Sure. We speak it all the time at home. But I consider myself an American, sir. One hundred per cent.' He paused. ‘That's why I'm here.'

‘It seems a very long way from New York to King's Thorpe. You must find it very different.'

‘It sure is.' He couldn't come up with a bigger contrast.

‘Forgive me for asking so many questions, but what made you become a fighter pilot?'

‘Well, I saw a movie years ago when I was a kid – all about a barnstormer – you know, someone who goes round doing stunt flying to entertain crowds. I made up my mind then that I'd learn to fly like that one day, if I ever got the chance. So, right after Pearl Harbor I quit college and enlisted as a cadet with the Army Air Corps. Trained in Georgia and Texas and here I am.'

‘I rather think you've left out some of the story.'

He'd left out plenty: the whole way he felt about flying. That being in an airplane was the place he really belonged to in the world. That it was as natural to him as being on the ground was to others. That whereas most guys were real nervous when they first soloed, he'd felt like he'd come home. ‘I put it in a nutshell for you, sir.'

‘And what do you think of our country, now that you're here?'

The Limeys always wanted to know that. He answered truthfully. ‘It's straight out of a storybook. I've never seen such beautiful green countryside. Or such great old houses. Or such beautiful old churches.'

‘Surely there are a great many of those in Italy?'

‘I've never been to Italy, sir. This is my first trip to Europe. First time outside the US. And I sure didn't reckon on my first visit ending up this way.'

When they had finished the bubble and squeak the daughter cleared away the dishes. ‘There's baked apple and custard for pudding, if you'd like some.' She said it as though she knew damned well he wouldn't.

‘Sounds good to me.'

It
was
good. She'd put some sort of dried fruits in the middle and sweetened them with honey. He skipped the custard, though. His turn to ask some questions, he decided. That way she'd have to talk to him.

‘How long've you been teaching at the school, Miss Dawe?'

‘Two years.'

He reckoned she must be about twenty. ‘You teach the little kids, that's right?' He knew very well that she did and she knew that he knew that she did. She'd seen him looking in through the window. ‘What do you teach them?'