Starshine (11 page)

Typically, Bertie was not jealous. ‘Goin’ home, are yer? Goin’ home with two stripes
and
a medal. Och, all of the girls in the whole of Birmingham will be after yer. None of them will be able to resist yer. Particularly one.’ He gave a sad smile. ‘Now, Jimmy, you be sure to give her my love and tell her that I think about her all the time, even if I’m not much good at the writing game. Now will you do that for me, lad?’

‘Course I will, Bertie. I’ll give her a kiss for you as well.’

‘Ah no, son. I think that would be takin’ things too far. Leave the kissin’ to me when I get back there – if I ever do, that is.’

‘Oh, you’ll get leave all right. Now, just keep out of Flanagan’s way while I’m away. Don’t catch his eye or anything like that. And, if he really goes too far, then have a word with the lieutenant. But leave that to the last resort.’

‘Oh, I will, I will, Jimmy. Now you go and have a good leave and leave this piddling little war to me.’

Polly Johnson had been driving her crane daily for six months when she received Jim’s letter telling her that he was coming home on leave. She had grown to love her crane as much as … no, not as much as, but, she conceded,
almost
as much as the two men fighting out there on the Salient. She wrote separate letters to each of them twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, giving them virtually a diary of her life in the munitions factory, high above the assembly shop. They did not – they
could not
, of course – reply to her with that regularity but she did not mind. What was important was that they should know that she remained theirs and that they were always in her mind and heart.

She tried to describe to them the thrill she got every morning when she docked her ticket in the clocking-in machine, exchanged cheery greetings with the fellows and girls on the shop floor and the other crane drivers and then, with a wiggle of her bottom that she could not
suppress, climbed the thirty-five rungs on her ladder and entered her tiny domain. It was completely enclosed in glass and she could hardly move inside it, for the cabin was small and cluttered with levers. But she had a thrilling view over that vast shed, where the shells, ranging from eight inches to twelve in circumference – the latter reaching up to her waist at floor level – stood vertically, like grossly fat stalks in a cornfield, stretching, it seemed, almost as far as the eye could see. The girls on the amatol line, the ‘canaries’, now wore surgical masks but, underneath them, their cheeks and teeth were still coloured. Polly was glad that she was up near the roof, where the shells appeared to have a strange, smooth beauty, not down there, where the chemical was a reminder of the role to be played by the things. Her crane was definitely
hers
now. She knew its little idiosyncrasies and had learnt to master them. Now it did exactly what she demanded: sliding along smoothly on its high track, moving its long arm over the stubbly shell field below, graciously bending it down to hook up with the net and then slowly, cautiously swinging its deadly cargo over to the despatch bay. So powerful, so satisfying!

She did not write of the only intrusive element in her life at the factory. George Wagstaffe was her foreman. He was a good-looking man in his early thirties with wavy black hair that he treated with pomade so that it shone. He protested – too often and too loudly – that he wished he was at the front but that his was a reserved occupation and his employers refused to spare him. When Polly had joined, it had been Wagstaffe, of course, who had squeezed into the tiny cabin and showed her the controls, pressing his leg against hers and leaning across her breasts to operate the levers. He was a married man with two children, but he made no secret of his admiration of her. So far, she had resisted all his offers of ‘a quick little drink after work, just to relax’, but she had to admit that she was beginning to find him
attractive in an animalistic kind of way. For all kinds of reasons, then, she was glad that Jim was coming home on leave. His presence would put things into context.

Polly managed to switch her shift so that she could be at New Street Station on the evening that Jim arrived from London. She had retrieved the black straw hat with the roses for the occasion (such a pleasure to do up her hair properly after wearing that scarf for so long!) and wore her best and brightest summer dress, although it was still spring. She had no illusions about the life that her two boys were leading out in Flanders. Their letters were not particularly descriptive but she read the newspapers and she knew about the constant bombardments, the gas and, increasingly now, the mud. For Jim, she wanted to appear fresh and young. And, she had to confess to herself, she was stirred by the prospect of seeing him again.

She was alone to meet him at the station because he had discouraged his mother and father from coming, saying that he was unsure of the train he would catch from Euston and that he would see them at home. Polly was glad about that, for she wanted him all to herself for the meeting. Even so, she was apprehensive when, in a cloud of steam, the locomotive emerged from the long tunnel that led into the station.

About half of the arrivals were servicemen, carrying kitbags on their shoulders, and at first she could not see Jim. Then, he loomed out of the steam, looking about him anxiously, and she ran to him, her long skirt swishing in the dust of the platform, and sprang into his arms. He held her for a moment, then gently pushed her away so that he could look at her.

Inspecting him in response, she realised that he had changed. He seemed thinner and somehow taller than she remembered and she had to stand on tiptoe to kiss him. It was his eyes, however, that
disconcerted her. They were set more deeply in his face, now, and the sockets were dark. It gave his face a superficially melancholy look and, she acknowledged to herself, made him seem more handsome than before. She kissed him again, chastely, and held her hand to his face. He had shaved badly and he coughed as she touched him.

‘Oh, my dear. You look tired.’

The cough came again. ‘Yes. Sorry. It’s been a bit of a bad time recently. We’re all right, though. Just a touch of a cough from the gas, you see.’

She smiled. How typical that he should say ‘we’. ‘How is Bertie?’ she asked.

‘Same as ever. Well, not quite the same. I think he’s getting a bit low, because of the conditions out there. But he’s all right really. He sends his love and hopes to get leave soon. Perhaps in about a couple of months or so, if he doesn’t punch the sergeant major.’

‘Good. Your mum and dad are fine and are waiting for you back home, of course. But …’ she cast down her eyes, ‘I wondered if perhaps you might like to have a cup of tea or something before we go home?’

His brown eyes sparkled for a moment, just as they used to. ‘No,’ he said, and her face fell immediately and then lifted again as he went on: ‘No. I’ve got a better idea. I’ve developed a bit of a taste for wine. The French stuff. There’s a Yates’s Wine Lodge nearby, isn’t there? Let’s go there, shall we?’

She nodded enthusiastically and he shouldered his kitbag and they walked through the throng out of the station. He did not seek her hand but eventually she took his arm and he didn’t seem to mind.

Outside they stopped in front of a large poster. ‘Good God,’ he said. ‘What’s this?’

The headline shouted ‘RED CROSS OR IRON CROSS?’ Underneath,
the poster depicted a wounded British soldier lying with a supplicatory hand stretched out to a German nurse who tantalisingly poured water onto the ground in front of him. In the background two fat German officers watched and laughed. The copy ran: ‘Wounded and a prisoner, our soldier cries for water. The German “sister” pours it on the ground before his eyes. There is no woman in Britain who would do it. There is no woman in Britain who will forget it!’

Jim took in the contents slowly and then said softly, ‘That’s rubbish.’

‘What?’

He turned to her. ‘I’ve not been captured, of course, but I know blokes whose brothers were wounded and taken. They’ve written home to say how well they were looked after. We look after their wounded, too. This stuff is rubbish.’ He went on, suddenly animated. ‘You know, Pol, the Germans are good soldiers, very brave, but really just like us. They’re miserable and scared to death, just like us.’ Then he frowned. ‘Except those bastards … ah, sorry. The blokes who invented the gas and sent it over to us. They were a disgrace. A disgrace …’ His voice tailed away. ‘Sorry.’

Polly slowly nodded and pressed his arm tightly against her. ‘Don’t say sorry. You’ve got nothing to say sorry about. Come on. Let us have that glass of wine. And I will pay with my filthy earnings from the war. Come on, love. Don’t worry.’

They found a corner and were served glasses of a red wine that Jim had never heard of. ‘We get it cheaper over there,’ he said sheepishly. ‘Sorry.’

‘Stop saying sorry. It doesn’t matter. I can afford it now.’ He had not sought her hand but left his lying on the table. She reached across and enfolded it in both of hers. ‘Tell me about Bertie.’

He grinned. ‘I think he’s getting a bit fed up with the war and, like
me, he got a whiff of the gas, but he’s all right really. Very popular with the blokes.’ He looked away shyly for a moment. ‘I said he’d sent his love. Well, he didn’t.’ Polly’s eyebrows rose. ‘No, he didn’t. Instead he asked me to tell you that he loves you more than ever. He gets a bit emotional, you know.’ He returned his gaze to her.

Polly thought that his brown eyes were the most beautiful she had ever seen in a man. She looked away and then up at him through her eyelashes. ‘You never get like that, do you? You never say things like that.’

Jim blushed. ‘Well, no. I’m, er, not quite … I get sort of, you know …’ He fixed his eyes fiercely on a port wine advertisement on the wall behind her head. ‘I get sort of embarrassed with that sort of stuff. Not like Bertie.’ Then he gripped her hand. ‘But I love your letters. Thank you for sending them.’

They sipped their wine in silence and Polly wondered anew about what on earth she could do with these two men. Looking at Jim now, the long, haggard face, the fine eyes set in those dark pits, she felt a stirring within her, an arousal that was new, in its way. She had always loved him, as she loved Bertie, but this was different, more carnal, and it was her turn to feel embarrassment.

She leant over and touched the ribbon on his chest. ‘Jim, you did so well to win your medal. We were all so proud of you – the whole street. Even Mr Jones, whose apples you used to pinch, said that you were always a fine lad, really.’

Jim grinned. ‘Good old Jonesey. I really didn’t do much to get the gong. Nothing out of the ordinary, really. No more than Bertie. But he’s so small they didn’t notice him. Come on. Let’s have another. My shout this time.’

In all, they drank four glasses of wine each and Polly felt distinctly cheerful and very, very affectionate as they walked arm in arm to
catch their tram in Corporation Street. She snuggled up to him on the hard wooden bench.

‘How long have you got, Jim?’ she asked.

‘Fourteen days, but I’ve lost a day and half of that already, in the travelling.’

She made a sudden decision. ‘Look. Now don’t be shocked, but I have an idea.’ She giggled at the audacity of it. ‘I’m working long twelve-hour shifts at the moment, so we can’t see much of each other.’

Jim’s face fell.

‘No. That’s all right. You must spend time with your dear old mum and dad anyway – and I expect you want to call in at the jewellery works, eh?’

He nodded glumly.

‘But, look.’ Her voice dropped. ‘I’ve got some holiday owed to me. If they will let me off for three days or so in your second week – and I’ll create a hell of a row if they don’t – why don’t we go away together? Somewhere not far. Say Malvern or the Welsh hills. I’ve never been. What do you say, Corporal?’

Consternation sent his eyebrows shooting up. ‘What? Just the two of us? Away?’

She dug him in the ribs. ‘Absolutely right. Sort of … er … get to know each other, sort of thing. What do you say?’

‘But what will your mum and dad say – and what will mine?’

She sighed. ‘Well, now, Jim. You’re supposed to be a brave man. You’ve got a medal to prove it. I should think you could handle that, couldn’t you?’

‘You mean, just the two of us together?’

‘Golly, Jim. You’re quick. Yes. Just the two of us. Away. Together.’

A slow smile began to spread across his features. ‘Pol, you’re a card and no mistake.’ He spoke slowly now. ‘That … would … be … lovely.’

She snuggled up even more closely. ‘Now, we’ll have to plan it properly. We will say to our folks that it’s just a break for you, away from the front. Nothing improper about it. Separate rooms and all that. I’ll find somewhere nice for us to stay. I think Malvern would be good. It sounds nice and respectable and it would be lovely to walk on the hills there. Always wanted to go.’

Polly detected a sudden tension within him.

‘Ah yes, of course,’ he said. ‘Separate bedrooms. Yes, of course.’

She sighed again. ‘Jim, my love,’ she said softly. ‘We would
say
that but we wouldn’t bloody well do it. We would have one bedroom, see?’ And she looked up at him through her eyelashes again.

Slowly his face relaxed. ‘Yes, of course. Of course. I always knew that’s what you meant. Yes, right. Of course.’

The plan did not go through without some opposition. Wagstaffe immediately said that it would be impossible for her to have time off so soon. So she went to see Mr Miller, who smiled. ‘We can manage without you for three days, love,’ he said. ‘Go and see your chap.’

Her mother and father were undoubtedly shocked at the proposition. But she played the card that Jim, blasted for nine months by shot and shell, needed recuperation in the green countryside and that she was going to look after him. There would be nothing improper. He was, after all, Jim. If it had been another man, a
new
man, of course she would not have been able to get away with it. But Jim was her childhood friend. Her
friend
. A hero. He needed – he
deserved
– her help. So she was allowed to go.

Exactly a week after first proposing the trip, they booked into a little boarding house, high on the Malvern hills, with a view from the bedroom to the west that seemed to take in all of Wales. Without mentioning the matter to Jim, Polly had bought a cheap ‘gold’ wedding ring from Woolworths and, with a red face, Jim booked them in as
Mr and Mrs Hickman. If their widowed landlady had doubts – they were, after all, ridiculously young – the medal ribbon on Hickman’s uniform quelled them.

In the bedroom, with its large, brass bedstead and giant, old-fashioned wardrobe, they awkwardly unpacked their respective cases and Jim hung away his uniform. Then, suddenly, he swung round and took her in his arms and kissed her.

‘About time,’ said Polly.

He hung his head. ‘Yes, well, you know … I always …’ His voice died away. Then he looked up at her. ‘Polly, have you ever … you know …?’