The Gunner Girl (2 page)

Vanessa tried not to listen to the wireless, if possible. The war had been going on for so long that the best thing was to try to have a good time and forget about it, in her opinion. Having a
good time and forgetting about it often got her into trouble, but she didn't care.

It was nearly dark, the winter evening creeping in like a cat, and her legs were freezing in the breeze. If she had stockings, it wouldn't be so bad. But who had stockings any more? All
anybody had was a line of black pencil up the back of their legs, which fooled nobody. To have stockings, you had to be really rich, or the sort of woman who wore red lipstick: fast. And she
wasn't fast, no matter what anyone said – it was only the once, and she hadn't even wanted him to.

The airman faltered. ‘Then . . . we should get you to the first-aid post,' he began.

‘No,' she said.

The ground was still shifting, unsettled. She put out a hand – wasn't there a lamppost here? The airman caught her arm under the elbow as she stumbled. People were pouring out of
houses, some making weary haste to Anderson shelters, others coming towards them. Mr Goodwin tumbled out from next-door. The wall that joined his house to theirs was half-missing, ripped, obscene.
His bed was visible through the blown-out gap, and cream wallpaper flapped like loose skin.

Her house was gone. The sky came all the way down to the rubble. There were no chimney pots or roof diagonals, just reddening clouds and a jagged silhouette, like a boxer's gaping mouth
after the knockout punch. She could hear the blare of sirens, children crying, the shouts of the ARP wardens, but all muffled, as if she had cotton wool stuffed in her ears. The house itself
– her house, where she'd lived for ever – was a silent hole amid the hubbub. Her stomach churned.

‘You two, don't worry, the ambulance is on its way; they'll get you patched up. Now move aside and let us get on with it,' said the voice of a burly ARP warden, as he
made shooing actions with his arms. But neither of them moved. They both stood, looking at the place where her house ought to have been.

Other men and women were rushing up, more ARP wardens, fire officers, police, crawling like ants towards the debris of her home. She heard the ambulance draw up behind them and watched as Mr
Goodwin was led past them. He was wearing a string vest, no shirt, and his right arm hung limp and twisted. He didn't appear to see her as he passed. She thought, poor Mr Goodwin, he'll
have trouble digging his swedes with a broken arm. And then she thought of Dad and Mr Goodwin at the allotment at the weekend, talking about manure and early frost.

The airman tried to guide her into the waiting ambulance, but she broke free and rushed towards the bombed-out house, her shoes catching and tripping her on the uneven pavement.
NUMBER THIRTY-TWO
said the sign on the skewwhiff gatepost. She stumbled on up the path towards where the front door should have been.

‘Mind yourself, love.' A fire officer was beginning to pull out a charred joist that barred the way through to where the hallway once was. ‘Anyone in there? You're all
right, we're coming for you,' yelled the fire officer into the wreckage. Nobody answered. He turned to her. ‘This is no place for you, young lady.'

‘It's her home.' The voice of the airman came from behind; he'd caught up with her.

‘They're in the kitchen,' she said to the fire officer.

‘How many?' he asked.

‘Three – Mum, Dad and my big sister.' Her voice sounded matter-of-fact, as if she was telling Mrs Evans how many ices she'd sold in the interval.

The fire officer shook his head. ‘You don't want to see this, believe me, love.' Then he talked over her head, to the airman. ‘Take her away and look after her. You both
need a bit of medical attention. We'll do our best.'

‘No,' she said. ‘I'm not going anywhere.'

She could see the fire officer look grimly at the airman. He let out a breath.

‘Let her stay. I'll look after her – and I can help,' said the airman.

More wardens and fire officers joined them, tossing bricks aside and peering into the rubble. Through the choke of plaster dust, she worked alongside them: scrabbling, wrenching, pulling,
swimming through the wreckage of her home. She didn't feel the splinters, the broken glass, the bruised limbs, as she worked on, reaching out to grasp and chuck still-warm wood and broken
bricks. The air smelled strange: hot, acrid, burnt meat. A taste of bile in her mouth, she swallowed it down. Nearby was the airman, breathing heavily, grunting as he helped lift timber and blocks
of masonry.

She began to pull away bits of lath from one side, away from where the men were working. Underneath, she saw fragments of terracotta, and earth, and a clump of pulverised flowers, dirty orange.
There was the faint smell of crushed chrysanthemums as she reached across to pull out a mass of fractured wood. There were blood spatters underneath. Blood, and then flesh, like the slab at the
butcher's: wet and exposed. It was only by the torn scrap of floral cotton that she recognised it as Joan. The rest was a mangled pulp of meaty bones; a sticky mess where Joan's head
should have been: crushed, blasted, lost.

She leant in, gulping back the nausea that was forcing its way up her throat. All that was left intact was an outstretched hand. Debris dug into her bare knees as she knelt forward, touching the
tips of Joan's fingers. They were perfect: oval nails buffed with the special buffer from the new manicure set, fingernails clean. Vanessa thought that Joan always had such lovely clean
nails. And there was the engagement ring: thin gold with little sapphires and pearls. Vanessa held the hand; it wasn't yet cold.

‘You're not alone, Joanie,' she whispered. ‘I'm here, don't worry. It's Vanessa. I'll look after you.' Plaster dust and ash fell like
snow.

On the shattered floorboards next to her, splaying out, lay her sister's ID card, and ATS call-up documents, dusty and blood-spattered. Without thinking, she picked up the grit-encrusted
papers and shoved them in her coat pocket. Then she heard the sound of a woman screaming. She let go of Joan's hand and looked round to see who it could be, and realised the sound was coming
from her own mouth.

The airman rushed over, pulled her up off the floor and into him, shielding her eyes. ‘Don't look. Don't look,' he said.

The scream was replaced by a high-pitched keening, wrenching her chest open: a stabbing, tearing implosion. And then the putrid rush of vomit up her throat, as she stumbled forward, out of his
grasp. He caught her, held her hair off her face as the bile upsurged again and again. When she finally came to a shuddering halt, he wiped her face with a clean handkerchief. She tried to stop the
feral sounds that were coming from her throat; the effort was like swallowing acid.

‘Come on, now,' the airman said, and she let herself be taken away, out of the bombed-out wreckage and onto the road. His arm felt strong and warm and she wanted to just shut her
eyes and dissolve into him, to become part of the musty fabric of his uniform. The ambulance had already taken Mr Goodwin to hospital, so they walked a slow stumble together down Western Way
towards the first-aid post at the town hall.

‘I'm sorry for your loss,' he blurted awkwardly, as they passed the alley that led out to the allotments. She held his arm tight, wobbling and scuffing in the stupid shoes,
gulping down the sick feeling.

For a moment, she was outside herself, looking down on the girl with the cut-up legs and the airman with the bloodied cheek as they moved slowly down the road, past the alley and the old school
playing fields. And it was no longer the alley where she'd been caught being a ‘dirty girl' with George, the grocer's boy. And it was no longer the school where she'd
been forever asked why she couldn't sit quietly and write neatly like her big sister Joan. It was just a street with a young woman and a young man staggering together like drunken lovers. And
then she snapped back inside herself again, with sore feet and wounds that were beginning to sting. At the first-aid post, they were pulled apart, and she was alone.

Years afterwards, she still remembered the smell of disinfectant and the sting as the first-aider scrubbed the grit from her knees with a brush. She remembered watching the black pencil line of
fake stocking seam run like dark tears down her ankles. She remembered watching the blackout curtains being closed, tight against the night. She remembered looking at the burgundy smear of blood on
her good winter coat and worrying if the stain would ever come out. And she remembered the throb in her temple and the dislocation and fatigue that pressed down, suffocating. But she didn't
remember feeling any grief. She didn't remember feeling anything at all, not then.

After being scrubbed, washed and bandaged, she saw the airman again. She was sitting on a hard wooden chair, drinking weak, sugarless tea from a chipped mug.
‘They're sending me to hospital to get stitched,' he said, coming out from behind a screen, ‘and I have to report back to my unit in the morning. But here's my
address.' He handed her a scrap of paper, with scrunched-up writing in pencil. ‘Let me know how you are, won't you?'

She nodded, put the paper in her coat pocket, and got up. ‘I will – and thank you for everything.'

‘It was nothing,' he said, his kind eyes screwing up. ‘It wasn't enough.' He looked like he was going to cry.

‘There wasn't anything that anyone could have done,' she said, to rescue him. He cleared his throat. She wanted to throw her arms around him, hug him and not let go. Instead,
she held out a hand. As they shook, he paused, holding her hand for a moment longer than necessary.

‘I don't even know your name – who are you?' he said.

‘It's Joan,' the lie slid easily from her bruised lips.

‘What are you going to do, Joan?' he said.

She let go of his hand and thrust it back into her coat pocket, fingering the precious documents. There was an angry thudding in her head, and the sick-dizzy feeling tugging at her insides.

‘Oh, you don't need to worry about me. I'll be fine,' she replied.

‘You'll write, when you're settled, let me know how you're getting on, won't you, Joan?'

‘Of course.' She smiled, even though it hurt. ‘Just as soon as I can.' She waved him goodbye as he left and tried to keep smiling until the door closed behind him. The
young girl volunteer was picking up the metal bowl of disinfectant next to her chair. She looked familiar: tidy brown hair and spots on her chin.

‘He's a good-looking boy,' the girl remarked. ‘Is he your fiancé?'

‘No,' she replied. ‘I only met him today.'

After the airman had left she sat down again, drained what was left of her tea and tried to think, but everything was disjointed. Her head ached. She felt so tired. She reached
into her pocket and pulled out the papers. First, she saw the airman's details, in his jaggedy hedgehog writing. Her eyes could barely focus, but she saw that his name was Robin Nelson and he
was a flight sergeant. A flight sergeant: that was a good rank, wasn't it? Joan's fiancé was an Able Seaman. But that was the merchant navy; she wasn't sure how they
compared. She folded the paper and put it away.

Then she turned her attention to the other documents: Joan's ID card, call-up papers and travel warrant. She brushed the grit off them and turned them over on her lap. There was a small,
grainy photo of Joan inside the ID card. She looked at it carefully. In a photo like that, you couldn't really tell that Joan's hair was strawberry-blonde. In the photo, it was merely a
shade of grey; just like her own mousey hair was in photographs. She checked through the papers again, just as Joan must have been doing when the bomb hit. She was supposed to report to the
training camp tomorrow afternoon. The girl volunteer came back to take her mug.

‘You're free to go, now,' she said. ‘But you're welcome to stay if you've got nowhere else . . .' the girl trailed off, embarrassed concern in her
eyes.

‘I'm fine,' said Vanessa, stuffing the documents into her pocket and getting up. She winced with the effort, walking as quickly as possible to the door.

‘But don't you think you should just . . .' the volunteer girl's voice was lost as the door slammed behind her and she went out into the winter darkness.

At first, there was just the blackness and the sound of the wind, and she felt her way along the shop fronts like a blind person, bumping and tripping. Her limbs were heavy with the ache of
fresh bruising and raw with the sting of disinfectant. Her head felt leaden. And still the godawful shoes chafed against the tender flesh of her feet. As her eyes became accustomed to the
blacked-out night, she noticed a discarded chip paper floating down the street like a ghost and the barrage balloons jiggling like bosoms in the sky. If she kept on walking she'd end up at
the police station.

She felt her way along, tripping as she hit the kerb by Howell's Bakery. She was almost at the police station. There it was, a paler wedge of darkness: dark blue against grey with police
painted in bold, definite script. Then she hesitated. As she paused she saw the door underneath the sign open. An orange slice of light appeared and two figures emerged. The door quickly closed
behind them. The wind had died down slightly and she could hear their voices, although she couldn't make out who they were. She heard ‘Alf Tucker' and ‘tragic' and she
knew they were talking about the bomb on her house. She strained to listen. ‘All of them killed?' came the question, but she couldn't hear the answer. Then she heard the sound of
car doors slamming and the cough-roar as the engine revved up. She ducked into the bakery doorway, avoiding the luminous fronds of blinkered headlights as the police car sped off.

The police station couldn't have been more than fifty yards away, just fifty paces. But instead of carrying on, Vanessa crossed the street and doubled back on herself. There was a shortcut
behind the Red Lion that would bring her out at the tube station.