6
SAM
‘Goddamn.’ Jimmy Maplin collapsed onto the bunk next to mine with a deep groan. The sergeant – who the guys had nicknamed Hardass – had worked us until we were falling over. You’d think what had happened with that dog was our fault.
Someone switched the wireless on. ‘Hey, turn it over!’ everyone yelled as opera blared through the loudspeaker. There was a rush for the set, which was mounted on the wall at one end of the hut I and twenty other guys called home. Stanley Novak, a lean forty-something with a sardonic smile who’d previously worked as a journalist at the Washington Post, got there first. There was a blast of static and the opera changed to the Andrews Sisters.
I rolled my shoulders, trying to work out the knots in them, and returned to the letter I was writing to Ma, chewing on the end of my pencil and frowning. I’d never been quite as good at words as I was with pictures.
Dear Ma,
I hope you and Meggie are all right and that Mr Addison is giving you my letters and checks…
Sometimes, I still couldn’t believe I was here. Everything seemed to have happened so fast. I’d run back to meet Jimmy on the street corner as fast as I could, the cash from the Addisons’ till burning a guilty hole in my back pocket, and gone to get our forms signed by a seedy-looking guy at the edge of town. Then I’d returned to the farm to pack the few possessions I had – a change of clothes, and my notebook. Kirk was in town, doing the rounds of the bars as usual, but I’d chickened out of saying goodbye to Ma and Meggie and left them a note instead, slipping out before dawn the following morning to return to the recruiting office. I knew if they found out what I was doing, they’d try and change my mind.
Boot camp had been a hellhole of a place built out on the swamps with the worst accommodation reserved for the black troops, who weren’t permitted to mix with us at all. ‘You ain’t individuals anymore, boys,’ the sergeant had drawled as we shuffled into line for our first drill. ‘You’re a unit. A team. Don’t you forget that.’ We’d practised the same basic skills over and over, day and night, with a hundred guys like Hardass screaming at us the whole time. Even the smallest screw-up meant getting punished, sometimes your whole unit. And with Freddie Gardner around, screw-ups had happened all the time. I hadn’t seen him since the recruiting office, but on my first day at camp, as Jimmy and I lined up on the parade ground, I’d spotted him in the next line. He’d seen me at the same time, and scowled. ‘So they let you in, huh?’ he’d said later, when we were queuing up in the mess hall. ‘How’d you manage that, then, kid? What are you, like, twelve?’
Jimmy had kept me going, reminding me constantly why I was there. ‘What’ll your ma and your sister do if you give up now?’ he’d say. And gradually, it became – well, not easier, but I got used to it.
Right from the start, I’d laid my wages aside, only spending what I had to and sending the rest back home. I couldn’t send anything to the farm in case Kirk got his hands on it, so I posted checks to Mr Addison to pass on to Ma. I’d paid back what I’d taken from the till, too, writing a long letter to explain and ask for his help. Mr Addison had sent a curt reply, making it clear how much trouble I’d caused for him and his family – which I deserved, I guess – and I hadn’t heard anything since. But he’d said he’d pass the rest of the money on.
After boot camp we’d left for England, sailing on a converted cruise ship. We’d been tossed around on the Atlantic like sardines in a bucket, and what the locals must’ve thought when thousands of us disembarked at Liverpool, grey-faced and stinking of vomit, I have no idea; I’d felt so sick I was past caring. The weather was cool and rainy, just like we’d been told it would be, and as we passed through the city I’d stared at the bombed-out buildings. I knew the Germans had been hitting England hard, but damn. How could anyone survive this?
Once we’d got to Devon, though, and I’d had a couple of nights’ sleep and some food, I’d felt more like myself again. Despite the tape criss-crossed over the windows and the stern notices in the shops reminding people about rationing, Bartonford was a swell little place. Even the cabbages growing in the park had a certain charm. Thanks to his pa, Freddie had wangled a post with the military police, so he was in separate quarters from me and Jimmy, and as for the beach, I’d never seen anything like it – even on a stormy day, it was beautiful. It made me wonder what possessed my parents to leave England in the first place, and why Ma decided to stay in America after Pa died, never mind marry Kirk. The only reason I could come up with was, like me coming here, she’d felt she had no choice.
I hope you are not worrying about me, I wrote now. I am fine and the army is still treating me well. The people where we are posted are real friendly and seem glad to have us here…
My thoughts drifted again, this time to the girl I’d met last night, then seen on the beach this afternoon, Ruby Mottram. Was she one of the locals? She must be; she’d said she worked for the Bartonford Herald. Stanley Novak had been reading a copy at breakfast this morning.
I hoped Sergeant Hardass hadn’t meant it when he said he was going to march down there and get the girl into trouble. What had happened was an accident – anyone with half a brain could see that. But Sergeant Hardass wasn’t the forgiving type; he probably thought Ruby let the dog jump up at him on purpose to make him look a fool, and he was likely on his way down there already. No, scratch that – by now, he’d’ve gone and come back.
Another idea suddenly popped into my head. What if I went down there and explained what had really happened? Me and Jimmy were due a rest day tomorrow and we were planning to walk into town anyway. We could ask around, find out where the newspaper office was. Maybe I’d even get to see Ruby again.
I put my letter away and turned to Jimmy. ‘Hey. Wanna help me out with something?’
*
‘The Bartonford Herald?’ the woman in the brown cardigan said. ‘Just down there.’
‘Finally,’ I muttered. Jimmy and I had been in town an hour, and everyone we’d spoken to had been friendly, apologetic, and maddeningly tight-lipped. Even a kid – who couldn’t have been more than nine, with grazed knees poking out of his short pants – said, ‘I’m not allowed to tell you because Mummy says there’s a war on and anyone I don’t know might be a spy.’ Then he’d had the cheek to grin at us and say, ‘Got any gum, chum?’
Finally, when we stopped to ask the woman, I’d drawn myself up, squared my shoulders, produced my papers from my inside pocket and, in a heavy drawl, added, ‘It’s important army business, ma’am. The colonel himself sent us and if we don’t get there by noon we’re gonna be in a whole world of trouble.’ I’d been praying she wouldn’t ask who the colonel was – I’d seen him around the camp, from a distance, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember the guy’s name.
We walked down to the newspaper office, a narrow, white-painted building with a green front door, its windows taped up just like everywhere else. There was nothing to indicate what the building was for, but there was a slightly cleaner square on the wall near the door where it looked as if a brass plate had been taken down – in case of invasion, maybe. As I rang the bell, an army jeep roared past, scattering pedestrians who glared at me and Jimmy as if it was all our fault. I squared my shoulders again, trying to look important and hoping no one had been watching out of the windows just now.
The door was answered by a young woman. My heart lifted for a second, then dropped again. It wasn’t Ruby; she was older, more sophisticated-looking, wearing a neat olive green skirt and jacket.
‘Yes?’ she said in a cut-glass accent, utterly unlike anyone else’s round here.
‘Hi.’ I brandished my papers again, just in case. ‘Can you please take me to see your, er, the guy in charge?’ The correct word – editor – came to me a few seconds too late.
The woman raised her carefully plucked eyebrows. ‘Mr Howlett? He’s not in.’
‘Oh, er, in that case, is, er, Ruby here?’
‘Ruby? What do you want with her?’
‘I, er, have something for her.’ From my pocket, I took out the leather dog leash I’d managed to find in a dusty corner of the ironmonger’s on our way here. It had cost me, as the Brits liked to say, an arm and a leg.
The woman frowned. Jimmy was grinning. I felt my face heating up.
‘You’d better come in.’ The woman ushered us into a narrow hall with a wooden hat stand, peeling walls and a black-and-white tiled floor, and a rickety-looking flight of stairs going up the right-hand side. ‘But stay down here. I could do without Dobbsy asking awkward questions, and so could Ruby.’
Before I could ask who ‘Dobbsy’ was or why she’d be asking awkward questions, the woman had gone, hurrying up the stairs. She came back down a few minutes later, followed by Ruby.
My stomach did a sort of somersault. She was even prettier than I remembered, her wavy, reddish hair held back from her face in two tortoiseshell combs. When she saw me, her eyes widened and she went bright pink.
‘Hi,’ I said.
‘Aren’t you going to introduce me?’ the woman who’d let us in asked Ruby drily, and I remembered that Ruby – who was still staring at me – didn’t even know my name.
‘I’m Sam,’ I said quickly. ‘And this is Jimmy. We’re both in the 116th Infantry Regiment. From Virginia. We’re at the camp above the beach.’ I coughed. Where else would you be, idiot? ‘Um, I hope you didn’t get in any trouble for what happened yesterday.’
The woman looked from me to Ruby and back again. Ruby still hadn’t spoken a word.
I held out the leash. ‘I, er, bought this for you. I thought it might help stop your dog, you know, escaping again.’
Ruby all but snatched the leash from me. ‘Er, thank you. I – I’d better get back to work,’ she stammered. She turned and ran back up the stairs. I stared after her. What had I said?
‘Well,’ the woman said, her eyebrows arching higher than ever. ‘I can’t wait to find out what all that was about.’
Just then, the front door opened and a portly man with great bushy side-whiskers and little wire-framed glasses balanced crookedly across the bridge of his nose bustled in. ‘Ah, Vera,’ he boomed. ‘Glad you’re here – got a job for you.’ Then he noticed me and Jimmy. ‘Good day, gentlemen. Can I help you?’
‘We were just leaving, sir,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’ Leaving Vera to explain, we got out of there as fast as we could.
‘I guess your girl wasn’t too happy to see you, huh?’ Jimmy chuckled as we walked back up the sloping street in the bright autumn sunshine and I resisted the urge to glance behind me.
‘She’s not my girl.’ I said, feeling unaccountably flat. But why should Ruby have been happy to have seen me? I’d probably imagined that look that passed between us yesterday. No doubt she was embarrassed about what had happened and upset because she’d gotten in trouble for it.
Then it hit me. ‘Damn. I bet that guy with the whiskers was the editor – the one Hardass was going to report Ruby to. I forgot to tell him that the dog getting loose wasn’t her fault.’
‘Aw, but you gave her the leash.’ Jimmy was laughing properly now. ‘At least her dog won’t be knocking Hardass over again.’
I punched him lightly on the arm. Should I go back? No, I’d made enough of a fool of myself for one day. ‘Let’s go back to the camp and get some coffee,’ I growled.