The White Guns (1989) (36 page)

Ginger sat with his back to the vibrating side and tried to think. He saw Craven watching him, the faintest hint of a smirk on his face. Ginger said, 'Just
one word
from you, Bill, an' that will be your soddin' lot!'

Rae was thinking about Lowes. 'Didn't know he had it in him. Always thought that with him it might be the other way round.'

Ginger held out his hand as Rae pulled out his tin of duty-frees. 'Give us a fag, Jack.'

He said it only to cover his excitement. Without knowing it Rae had hit the bloody nail right on the napper.

Everything was not lost after all.

I pronounce that they be Man and Wife together.

Marriott considered the words yet again as with the other guests he made his way into the little church hall for the reception. The day had started with clouds and a hint of rain but by mid-morning the sun had broken through, and now the sky was clear and blue.

The church by the duckpond had been almost full, for although the numbers of guests were limited, most of the locals had known Penny since she had been a small child. Marriott had wondered if they had seen and felt the difference too as she had walked up the aisle on her father's arm. All in white, her cheeky smile absent for the moment, like the uniform everyone had got used to on her leaves from the fighter-station. And with those words she had seemed to change once more while she had faced her man –
My Jack
as she always called him, revealing a happiness she had rarely shown, and a new maturity which Marriott had found both moving and disturbing.

He had taken Jack out for a last stag drink the previous night at the old Harrow. He was a friendly man whom Marriott had liked instantly despite his own inexplicable protective feelings about the man who was to marry his young sister. For one thing, he was not at all what Marriott had been expecting. He was older, maybe in his thirties, with the wartime rank of squadron-leader, one of Penny's 'wingless wonders', the senior Met officer on the base.

After talking to him over pints of mild-and-bitter he began to understand what she saw in him; what she needed after her own war at the fighter-station, in the front line as much as anyone. A comfortable, intelligent man who would take good care of her. Their love for one another had been quite obvious there at the altar.

And she was here now, with her bouquet of tea roses and a ready smile for the arriving guests, while her Jack stood beside her beaming and shaking every hand.

As one of the airmen in the church had been heard to say, 'Jack looks like the cat who's swallowed the cream!'

Most of the visitors in air-force blue had been fairly senior, or of Jack's own rank. What of the others now that they were no longer needed? Sitting in the deck-chairs, thinking and dreaming, staring at the sky, waiting for the shrill order to
Scramble!

And there must have been many, many more who Penny might have remembered on this day. The lighthearted affairs she had touched upon, youngsters like herself who had flown one sortie too many and had ended up ditched in the Channel or in the burned-out carcass of a Spitfire.

Marriott knew that feeling and could share it without effort.

Most of the airmen were Canadians like Jack; they would soon be gone. Marriott remembered his sense of astonishment at the way his home, his roads, where he had cycled as a boy, had all changed even since that last, brief leave. No barrage balloons any more, floating above the Hawker aircraft factory at Kingston, no anti-aircraft batteries, their muzzles pointing into the far skies over London. The air-raid shelters, too, were just long humps of grass in the fields and on the village green. It had been a wet spring, and the grass had done its best to cover the dismal shelters even if it could not wipe out their memories. Crouching against damp or dripping concrete, feeling the ground shake, wondering if the house would still be there at first light. ..

But there was something even more disturbing. The wild rejoicing, the crazy dancing in the streets after VE-Day, had been replaced by apathy. As if these same civilians, who had faced the blitz and everything the enemy could hurl at them, had used up all their energy, were no longer interested in the next step forward. There were still shortages of everything, rationing and austerity, as if peace was still a mirage, that it could not be taken for granted.

He saw his mother with some of her friends. A few were in their wartime Women's Voluntary Services uniforms, others had dug out flowered hats for the occasion, doing their best for Penny.

Marriott saw
the man from the ministry,
or the creepy lodger Chris, as Penny referred to him, watching from a corner, a faintly superior smile playing on his lips.

Marriott looked at his mother again and tried to guess her feelings. He hoped he was mistaken, but he had thought her to be more excited about the lodger's own engagement announcement than her daughter's wedding.

Chris had joined them at the pub, pointedly ordering a glass of tonic water, and had immediately launched into his involvement with the girl he would marry, 'once we have both completed our studies for advancement'.

Jack had grinned. 'What are you studying exactly?'

Chris had given a deep sigh. 'Too complicated to go into just now, I'm afraid.'

He had told them that he had met this girl at a Fabian Society Summer School in Devon.

Commodore Paget-Orme's voice had intruded into the conversation.
Civilian life under a bunch of Reds.
..

But it had not lasted long, and when he had left the Harrow Jack had remarked, 'What a jerk.'

Marriott had tugged out his wallet to pay for another round and a card with a rose pressed flat inside it had dropped to the floor.

Jack, big though he was, scooped it up and handed it over. Then he had said quietly, 'So there
is
a girl? I'm bloody glad.'

Marriott had tried to cover it. 'You're even beginning to talk like a Limey!' But it had not worked.

He slipped his arm around Penny's waist and kissed her. 'You were great. Just marvellous. An old married woman now, not my kid sister any more!'

He held her hand and studied her. Her Jack would not have had time to tell her about the rose. But he would, no matter what he had promised. They were not the sort to keep secrets from each other.

He asked, 'How did Mum take it about you-know-what?'

She looked up at her tall husband. 'Jack may never get another chance like it, Vere. They've offered him a good job in Toronto – Met consultant for the airlines. They're all getting back on the job again – it's just too good to miss. Of course Mum took it badly. But there it is. We've got our lives, we've found each other. I'm on extended leave, which means that I'm out of the WAAF for good.' She waved her bouquet around the room. 'Special licence, a honeymoon in some crabby cottage his lordship's got lined up in Dorset, and off we go!'

More guests were arriving now and Marriott said, 'We'll talk later.' He held her very tightly so that when he stood back he saw the pain in her eyes. His leave was over in five days. The last time he would see her for –

She said quietly, 'Steady the Buffs, Vere! Jack's getting a super job – I'll not have to scrub floors for the pennies after all. No more passion-killers either – the first thing I'll buy is some really daring underwear!' They laughed but her eyes were anxious as she watched him. 'Don't
worry.
We'll meet.'

Marriott drifted to a table and picked up a glass of wine. His father joined him and murmured, 'Went off well, I thought. So glad you could come over beforehand. It was a big help all round.'

Marriott saw his mother watching them from across the room.
I'll bet,
he thought.

His father was talking to one of his friends from the disbanded Home Guard. It was good to see the Old Man so cheerful. Life had not been all that easy for him. He heard some of the RCAF guests making jokes and thought of all the many hundreds of Canadian soldiers who had been camped around here. Who had become a part of the place and the people. When the local population had awakened on the morning of the Normandy invasion they had all disappeared.
Vanished.
Their accents, their funny games in the pubs, their adopted families, it had all stopped right there. His mother probably saw Jack like that. As if Penny was deserting, or that he was stealing her from their own home.

There were no naval uniforms here. How good it would have been if Beri-Beri had been able to make it. He would be up and about by now. He felt a sudden urge to see him. It was as if he did not belong here any more. Like the air-raid shelters, his old life was overgrown. Lost.

He had thought about it a lot since his return home. Of the way he was treated by the crew of the tug
Herkules
and her skipper, the 'ancient mariner' who would now share a joke and a pipe of tobacco on their runs into the Baltic. It was ridiculous, but equally so to try and explain it. The youth, Willi Tripz, who was always around looking for odd jobs and his companionship, the people who worked at the docks; they had come to mean more than just names and faces. They no longer seemed to resent his authority; perhaps he had proved that he could take as much care of them as he had of his own command in 801.

He had thought about that too. How the tight community of a small warship had been broken up and scattered. No longer of one company, but individuals again, the good and the bad, the keen and the lazy, without the drive or danger to hold them together.

Was that what was happening here in England? The war was over, but where was the peace?

His father was introducing him to another of his friends. 'This is my boy, Ted. How does he look, d'you think?'

The man called Ted shook his hand warmly. 'Like a hero. We're all proud of you, Vere. I'll bet you'll be really glad to get home for good!'

Marriott smiled. 'Yes, of course.' Whatever he might think, he would have not said otherwise. He knew this man had lost both of his sons, one at sea, the other flying over France.

He saw the women preparing the buffet and glasses, dominated by a huge wedding-cake.

The cake, like a lot of the food, had caused another rift. With the rationing and shortages, it would have been impossible to lay on such a spread. Jack and some of his Canadian friends had had it sent to the reception in good time.

His mother had snapped, 'We've put up with the rationing! We don't need charity!'

Marriott wondered how his father had got round that one. He heard Jack give a loud laugh and imagined them when it was all over, at the
crabby little cottage
in Dorset. In bed together.

He thought too of the
Herkules
tying up in Flensburg, the last, strangely solemn handshake he shared with Kapitän Krieger when he had given him a tin of pusser's pipe tobacco.

He had been expecting to see the girl named Ursula. Had bought her a present in Flensburg. Had thought of little else even when the tow had snapped and they had faced a bad night fighting the sea until they had secured it again.

At the wardroom there had been a little parcel waiting for him, the rose pressed inside. He had read her note several times until he knew the round handwriting like his own. Meikle had gone to Minden for a court martial, some stupid subbie who had been caught flogging stores, and had taken her with him. Was that his way of hinting how he felt, and that he really knew what Marriott was doing? Had he made sure she would be away when Marriott had returned in the
Herkules
and then gone straight on leave?

He took out his wallet again and opened it carefully.

She had ended with,
Take care of yourself. Auf wiedersehen.
Until we meet again.

Someone confronted him with a tray of white wine.

He took a glass and saw Penny staring at him through the laughter and the babble of voices. For her it should have been champagne.

Then as his father called out a toast to the Happy Couple, Penny looked up at her tall husband and smiled.

Marriott swallowed his wine and gave a rueful grin. They could see nobody but each other.

He saw Chris, the creepy lodger, bending to whisper something in their mother's ear, his father's brief frown of annoyance.

The speeches followed next, and the telegrams; all were fairly predictable, and those from Jack's old squadron pretty close to the bone.