The Restless Sea, page 23
‘She ran off and joined up with us – the Wrens. We all kept schtum about her age. She’s flourishing. You should really get in touch with her.’
‘I’m not sure she’d want to hear from me.’
‘Of course she would. You’re her friend. Her good friend …’
‘Does she ever mention me?’
‘We all do when we reminisce about those halcyon days at Loch Ewe.’ She smiles as she says it, and he can almost hear the oystercatchers’ piping call and see the sunset bright on the hills.
‘What happened to us?’ he says. ‘I never meant to fall out with her … I acted like an idiot. I was just so worried …’
‘I know that. She does too. Life has moved on for all of us since then.’
‘Is she still seeing …’ He realises he doesn’t know the boy’s name.
‘Jack? Yes.’
Charlie leans back in his seat. ‘I’m glad she’s happy.’
‘Actually, she’s terribly worried at the moment: he’s due on the latest Russian run.’
Charlie grimaces. He has heard reports of life on those icy convoys – far worse even than Norway. ‘I still can’t quite believe we’re doing them,’ he says. ‘I mean, Russia of all places …’
‘Strange, isn’t it … But needs must. And they’ve been more successful than predicted so far.’
‘Stalin’s an ungrateful bugger, though. Moans when they don’t get through – as if it’s their fault rather than the bloody Jerries’,’ says William, returning with the drinks and placing them on the table.
‘This must be something like the tenth one we’ve done?’
‘More like the seventeenth,’ says William.
‘I remember talking about it with Mole …’
Gladys reaches out and touches his arm. ‘You must still miss him like mad.’
‘This is the last place we visited together.’
‘I’m so sorry. If I’d realised, I would have arranged to meet somewhere else.’
‘Don’t be sorry. It’s good to remember them.’
‘I met him here a couple of times,’ says William. ‘Quite a character.’
Charlie nods, enjoying the memories as they reminisce.
It is very late, although the bar shows no sign of emptying. The night has worked its magic and the three of them are red-cheeked and merry. Gladys and William are all over each other, and talking about leaving, but Charlie is just getting into the swing of it. He is trying to persuade them to stay when he spots a dark-haired young girl who he recognises arrive, and start to make her way with her friends across the room. The group draws lots of admiring glances, but the girl notices Charlie almost immediately, and smiles when he waves at her.
She approaches their table, hanging back a little when she sees he is with Gladys and William.
‘Betsy, isn’t it?’ says Charlie, standing up and welcoming her. She nods, but doesn’t come any closer. ‘It’s good to see you again.’
William coughs. ‘We’ll be off now, then,’ he says. Gladys rises and starts to straighten her jacket.
‘I’ll catch you up,’ says Charlie.
‘Or not,’ says William, eyebrows raised.
Charlie ignores the comment, bending to kiss Gladys goodbye. ‘You take care, Charlie,’ she says.
‘Nice to meet you, Betsy,’ says William, and Gladys nods briefly at her as she passes.
When they have gone, Charlie motions to the seat next to him. ‘Sit down,’ he says. ‘Let me get you a drink?’
Betsy grins and starts to unbutton her coat.
Betsy and Charlie talk. Or Charlie talks mostly, while Betsy listens. Remembering Mole has also made him remember his friend’s request that he try to be more open-minded. He will start here. He will find out what drives a young girl like this to do what she does. Besides, he is enjoying the attention, and she laughs and smiles in all the right places until he feels as though they have become friends. The group of girls she arrived with grows rowdier, and there are plenty of young men vying with each other for the last dance, and it is good to feel part of it, part of the raucousness, the testosterone, the life.
As the bar staff shoo the last of the revellers outside, Charlie finds himself accompanying Betsy and her friends to a dingy house on Old Compton Street. Their footsteps echo on the pavement, the men’s sure and steady, the women’s neater, faster. They giggle as they trip and bump into each other in the darkness. His companions wink and grin at Charlie as they climb the stairs, but as soon as Betsy closes the door to her small room, Charlie says, ‘I hope I haven’t given you the wrong impression, but I don’t want to do anything.’
Betsy gives a short, disbelieving laugh. ‘Why are you here then?’
‘I don’t know. I wanted to make sure you got back all right. I was having fun.’
‘We can have more fun, if you want.’ She levers off her shoes, rubbing her feet as she sits on the bed next to him.
‘I just want to talk.’ He is struck once again by how young she is. She starts to slip her dress from her arms, exposing her bony shoulders. She leans towards him, placing a provocative hand on his chest, but he pushes her gently away. ‘I mean it,’ he says.
‘I’m clean,’ she says, frowning slightly.
‘It’s not that.’
‘What then? If you don’t want it, you’d best get out. I could be earning …’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you … If it’s the money, I’ll pay anyway.’
She raises an eyebrow, and he digs into his jacket for the cash, handing it over and watching her stuff it into a box inside the chest of drawers.
‘Come on,’ he says, holding up the blanket from her bed and placing it around her shoulders as she sits next to him. She huddles into it, like the survivor of a shipwreck. The two of them shuffle backwards until they are both sitting against the wall, leaning their heads against it.
‘What do you want to talk about then, pilot?’ she asks.
‘Tell me what your life was like before the war?’ says Charlie.
He immediately senses the change in atmosphere as she clams up, her lips becoming a thin line as if to stop the words falling out.
‘All right,’ he says. ‘Not what your life was like, but what did you like to do? I liked walking. And playing tennis.’
‘I wouldn’t know what end to hold a tennis bat.’
‘Racquet …’
‘Whatever.’
‘There must have been something …’
She looks upwards, as if she might find the answer printed on the cracked ceiling. Then she says, ‘Mudlarking. That’s what I liked. Still do it nowadays, given half the chance.’
Charlie raises an eyebrow and looks blank.
‘Down by the river,’ she says. ‘Looking for things. All them bits of other people’s lives washed along on the tide. Never knowing what you’ll find.’
‘Your fortune?’
‘I’m not that naïve.’
‘I can see that.’
‘So what did you do before all this?’ She points to his uniform.
‘School, then training.’
‘You was training before the war?’
‘I always wanted to fly. It’s all I’m good at.’
‘Like this is all I’m good at.’ She smiles then, properly this time, the harshness dropping from her face and her mouth softening.
They chat for a while longer, Charlie surprised by how easy it is. There is less of the nuance and unspoken meaning that he is used to when talking to women of his own class. He doesn’t have to watch what he says. With a twinge of guilt, he wonders whether this is how it is for Olivia and Jack.
Outside, there are doors slamming and people calling. Charlie stretches. His legs are stiffening up, but he is enjoying being able to speak so freely. ‘What about once the war’s over?’ he says. ‘What do you think you’ll do then?’
‘I’ll meet Prince Charming and live happily ever after …’ The bitterness has returned to her voice.
‘You might …’
‘I won’t. Love don’t exist. Not for girls like me.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘You said yourself, you don’t want me.’
‘You’re too young. It’s not right.’
‘I’m not too young.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Old enough. Eighteen.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
‘I can be however old you want me to be.’
‘Don’t do that.’
‘Do what?’
‘It’s like a barrier comes up …’
‘Why are you here anyway?’
‘I told you. I wanted to talk.’
‘Have you ever slept with a woman?’
Now it is his turn to put up a barrier. ‘I asked first. How old are you really?’ he says.
‘I told you. Eighteen. I was ill when I was a baby.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Let me cheer you up.’
He laughs, fending her hand away. ‘You never stop?’
She sighs and leans back again. ‘You really don’t want to?’
‘No.’
‘I’m tired.’
‘Sleep, then. I’ll look out for you.’
‘I don’t need looking out for.’
‘I know that, but I’d like to.’
Charlie stays for a while longer, his head tipped back against the wall, staring up at nothingness, listening to Betsy’s breathing grow deeper. She is lying down, curled into the blanket, her head on the pillow. Outside he can still hear the music from bars along the street. He stretches across to peer behind the blackout blind, sees that dawn is breaking. Trying not to disturb her, he edges off the bed and moves to the door.
‘I hope you’ll come back,’ says Betsy sleepily from the bed.
‘I’ll come back,’ says Charlie. ‘I’m a bloody good pilot.’
‘I don’t mean just back from wherever you go. I mean back to see me.’
‘I will.’ He means it. Even in the cold light of day, with his mouth tacky from last night’s alcohol and the blood sluggish in his veins, it feels good to be wanted.
CHAPTER 15
Olivia
Olivia had no intention of catching the train that Aunt Nancy had booked. Instead she heads for a Wren training establishment near Glasgow, where Gladys has put in a good word for her. The interview and medical are a cinch to pass, and Olivia is soon immersed in her training, suffering the blisters from her squeaky new shoes and the red welt where the rigid collar digs into her neck. The trainees’ huts are in the grounds of a tumbledown castle that houses the naval officers who are also based there, training to navigate landing craft. Not only are the future Wrens kept busy learning to march and drive, but they also have to look after the men in the crumbling castle, lugging buckets of coal up and down the uneven stairs, cleaning the narrow windows, and scrubbing the stone floors, as well as laying out the officers’ pyjamas and even polishing their shoes. Some of the other women suffer terrible homesickness, and some leave because such physical work is too much for them, but Olivia takes it all in her stride: the last few years have prepared her for hard graft, and anything is better than capitulating and heading back home.
It seems fitting to Olivia that she, a Navy captain’s daughter, should end up in the Navy, but it isn’t the only reason that she joined. Despite what she tells Gladys and Maggie and anyone else who asks, she does hope it might somehow bring her closer to Jack, perhaps because some Wrens do plot shipping movements, but also simply from being associated with the sea. In the rare spare moments that she has, she thinks of Jack, of where his ship will take him, and whether he will be safe, and how much she longs to hear from him. She begins to worry that Gladys won’t forward his letters, chewing her nails down to the quick, but Gladys is true to her word, and a letter finally appears. Olivia reads and rereads it, a slice of happiness in her chapped hands. Of course there is nothing to tell her where he has been. The censors have seen to that. But it does say that he misses her and that he looks forward to seeing her whenever they can both manage to get leave. She tells him about her training, gives him her new address, feels closer to him because of her new connection with the ships.
Whenever there is a lull in duties, she scans the newspapers, searching for news of merchant ships that have gone down, hoping she will not see the Aurora listed in the columns. She reads with horror about the disastrous Channel Dash and the loss of the squadron of Fairey Swordfish, but remembers with relief that Charlie is still not allowed to fly. She wonders whether she should write to him, but decides it might give the wrong impression – and besides, she is still angry with him.
She has, however, kept in touch with her mother, mainly to keep her on-side, but also because she feels a twinge of guilt, although not enough to toe the line. Olivia fills the pages of her letters with details of daily life, avoiding the subject that neither of them wants to discuss, and her mother responds in similar closed fashion, writing about the slow trickle of staff away to do their bit, and the steady arrival of people employed in the businesses of war. The grooms and the houseboys joined up long ago. The butler is part of the Home Guard. Nanny has left for the NAAFI. In their place, the brown tents of the military are scattered across the lawns, and, in the lodge at the bottom of the drive, there are land girls who have turned the meadows where once Olivia picnicked among the cowslips and the harebells into deeply ploughed furrows ready for crops. Only Pike, the cook, has remained to help run the kitchens and laundry.
Olivia clips the fasteners shut on her suitcase and looks around the poky hut for one last time. Outside, the rain falls in sheets and the next bunch of trainees march past. Her training is at an end and she is to be posted to RNAS Yeovilton for her apprenticeship. She has some leave to take before then, and at last it seems there is an opportunity to meet up with Jack again. Not only has he managed to get a week’s leave too, but he is able to rejoin his ship when it refuels afterwards – of all places – in ‘our place on the lakes’ for its next convoy. She had to read that line again. Loch Ewe. It must be fate.
Olivia has already written to Aunt Nancy, telling her that she wants to apologise for her behaviour in person and to spend some last happy hours at Taigh Mor before heading south. She knows her aunt does not harbour a grudge, and is secretly pleased that her niece has finally knuckled down and done something useful. She also knows that she must speak to her mother, both as an olive branch and a covering of her tracks.
She heads to the room that houses the switchboard operators and persuades one of the girls to allow her to make the call. She can imagine the solid telephone ringing on the desk in her father’s study, the sound echoing through to the neighbouring rooms.
Eventually Mother answers, the relief evident in the tone of her voice as they start a stilted conversation, Olivia letting her know of her plans, and Mother allowing her nervous chat to run away with her. ‘It’s probably for the best,’ she says. ‘You wouldn’t recognise it at home. We’ve had to roll up the carpets in the hall, but now the floorboards are all scuffed and scraped. There are far too many men quartered in the house. The officers are using the music room as a mess, and the ballroom is stacked with ammunition boxes. And I tell you, there are marks on the panelling in the library that look suspiciously like bullet holes. The lake looks like a mud pit, and the banks are ruined; they whizz all over the place in their tanks. And I’ve had to ban them from the rose garden. Someone blew the head off my cherub! Still, it’s better than being a hospital … Or a prisoner-of-war camp …’ She peters out. Olivia can hear the men shouting drills and parade in the background.
‘So tell me how you’re getting on?’ says her mother. ‘It’s been so lovely having your letters. Did they ever find out how old you are?’
‘No. It was only a matter of weeks anyway …’ The line fizzles and crackles in the silence between them. ‘But thank you for not causing a fuss …’
Her mother sighs. She sounds deflated. ‘That’s fine. Although I do wish you’d waited until all this … silliness had passed.’
‘What silliness? I wanted to do something useful. Isn’t that what you’ve all been on at me about? Didn’t you say I needed to grow up?’
‘That would include getting over this inappropriate infatuation.’
Olivia grits her teeth. She knew her mother would not be able to help herself. ‘He’s not some fever I can get rid of,’ she says. ‘I’m in love.’
‘You cannot be in love with someone so unsuitable.’
‘Perhaps if you met him …’
‘I am absolutely not going to meet him. By all accounts, he’s thoroughly dangerous.’
‘That is rubbish …’
‘And what about Nancy’s godson? She had such high hopes for the two of you …’
‘I don’t want to go over this again.’
‘Why are you so determined to ruin your life?’
‘I’m not ruining it. I’m living it.’
‘It seems to me that you’re not yourself at the moment.’
She can hear the frustration in her mother’s voice, but she is sick of being compliant. Of being expected to be compliant. ‘How would you even know what “myself” was? You haven’t seen me for almost three years.’
‘That’s unfair. Everyone in the country has had to make sacrifices. Besides, you seemed so happy …’
‘I was …’
Her mother is silent for a while. ‘I wish your father were here,’ she says.
‘Plus ça change. He never is.’
‘That’s what life is like for someone married to a man in the Navy.’
The remark is pointed. ‘Perhaps I have to find that out for myself.’
The train she joins from Glasgow to Inverness is very different to that first train she took from London three years ago. There are hardly any women and no children in the carriages: it is mainly men sleeping propped against their neighbours’ shoulders in the corridors, oblivious to the bumps and shudders of the train, as well as crammed in the compartments, three or four to a berth, some even in the luggage racks. The carriages are blacked out, and the only light is from a faint blue bulb. The men who are awake play cards, squinting to see. The air is fuggy with smoke; everyone is smoking these days. The train stops often because of bomb damage to the line or to let another train pass. Olivia keeps herself to herself. The men are too tired to take much notice of another woman in uniform.
