THE FUTURE HOMEMAKERS OF AMERICA
Laurie Graham

Copyright

This novel is a work of fiction, and all names, characters, events, places and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, names, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This edition published by Harper Perennial 2006

Previously published in paperback by Fourth Estate in 2002

First published in Great Britain in 2001

Copyright © Laurie Graham 2001

Laurie Graham asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover illustration © Rachel Ross

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007234073

Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007393091

Version: 2017-03-30

Praise

From the reviews of The Future Homemakers of America:

‘A warm, life-affirming novel that offers its readers pure pleasure’

The Times

‘Graham has a sure-fire comic touch and a wayward invention…Occasionally compared to Alan Bennett, Graham exhibits precisely the same blend of toughness and sentiment’

Guardian

‘Superlative…the writing sparkles from first to last…the detail is delicious…A rich, many-layered portrait of Middle America in the second half of the last century. Where others have heaped scorn on the American Dream, or peddled dewy-eyed optimism, Graham simply tells it like it was – and tells it brilliantly’

Sunday Telegraph

‘Crackles with energy and snappy dialogue…Graham has always been good at catching and compressing how people speak, but here she has pulled off an absolute triumph; the voice of her sassy narrator, the redoubtable Peggy, never falters as she unfolds 40 years of friendship’

Daily Mail

‘An absorbing, funny, lively and sometimes moving story’

Sunday Times

‘A warm, witty and wise novel about female friendship…A feel-good book that can’t help but make you smile’

Hello!

‘A tenacity of voice and a deftly judged lightness of touch have always been Laurie Graham’s strengths as a novelist…a fast-moving and often funny saga’

ALI SMITH, TLS

Dedication

For my own hardy perennialsBridget, Liz, Rachel, Trish and Vivvy

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

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Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

1

We were down at the commissary, just for something to do, me and Lois, pushing Sandie in her stroller. Breath puffing out like smoke every time we laughed and just hanging there in the air. The cold hadn’t killed the scent of the beet harvest, though. All my born days, I never knowed such a sickly smell.

‘I swear,’ she said, loud as you please, ‘this place is colder than a gravedigger’s ass.’ Lois always did have a mouth on her.

‘Uh-oh,’ she said, ‘here comes the Pie-Crust Queen.’

And sure enough, there was Betty running after us, flagging us to wait till she could catch her breath and tell us the big story.

‘Peggy!’ she said, gasping and wheezing and hanging on to my arm. ‘Have you heard the terrible news?’

When your husband flies F-84s, sitting up there on 3,000 gallons of jet fuel, cruising – now there’s a word – cruising at 510mph, hoping to get his tail waxed by some Russki so he can be Jock-of-the-Week back at the base, there’s only one kind of Terrible News, but we both knew, me and Lois, that it wasn’t that.

That kinda news comes quiet, on flannel feet. The base chaplain brings it to your door, and the CO’s wife follows through with a few brisk words about courage and dignity. After that, you better hope you got some friends. Some squadron wives to take turns answering your phone and feeding your kids and keeping you from falling into a thousand pieces.

When Terrible News comes to married quarters, there’s no pulling down of blinds. Military don’t hold with closing the drapes. Word gets round, but you’d never know, looking in from outside, that anything was happening, because heck, if air force wives went around yelling ‘Have you heard?’ the whole thing could run out of control. Next thing you know, every girl on the base’d be out there screaming, ‘His poor wife! His poor orphaned children! It’s so tragic. It’s unbearable. But I’m okay. I’m okay. It’s not me. Not this time!’ And that would never do.

Still, I guess we both missed a beat. Terrible news?

‘His Majesty King George of England,’ she said, ‘died in his sleep at Sandring Ham Palace.’

Betty always had a thing about royalty, clipping photos, pasting them in her albums, specially anything about that Princess Margaret, or the royal babies.

‘Princess Margaret had tea with General and Mrs Eisenhower,’ she told us one time. ‘She was fifteen minutes late, but it wasn’t her fault. They had angel-food cake and dainty little sandwiches, but the princess probably didn’t do cake, watching her lovely figure an’ all. She wore a yellow shirt and the cutest black dirndl skirt.’

‘Well, I’ll be dirndled.’ Lois was always taking the rise out of Betty, but she took it in good part. When you’re in a hole you gotta stick together and USAF Drampton was a hole, no two ways.

I knew Betty from way back, at Topperwein High, Class of ’42. I was captain of the softball team and she was president of Future Homemakers, stuffing toy bears for needy children and selling lunch-boxes for Healthful Living Week. We really didn’t run with the same crowd. But then she married Ed Gillis and I married Vern Dewey which made us both 96th Bomber Wing wives. By the time we were posted from Travis, Texas, to some frozen salt-marsh, East Anglia, next stop Siberia, we were blood-sisters, near enough. Never would have thought I’d be so glad of Betty’s everlasting cheerfulness. That’s homesickness for you.

‘He was found by a servant,’ she said. ‘That’d be a footman or a pageboy, taking him his coffee. Imagine. He’d put down the tray, all beautiful silver and jewels, and say, “Good morning, sire” and baboom, the king’s dead.’

Gayle Jackson was parked, waiting for us.

‘Y’all wanna come back to my place?’ she said. ‘Get a coffee or something?’ Time hung heavy for Gayle, poor kid, stuck out in a rental waiting for her darling Okey to come home.

Lois said, ‘Sure. You won’t mind if I bring along something, give it a little lift?’ She had a liquor bag hanging from the back of Sandie’s stroller.

Gayle’s face lit up. I guess there always was that weakness in her.

Betty said, ‘Honey, did you hear? About the king?’

‘He’s dead,’ Lo chipped in. ‘Ba-boom.’

‘Course,’ Betty said, ‘it had to be a servant found him, not the queen. They’d have separate bedrooms. Kings and queens always do.’

‘Jeez,’ Gayle said. ‘How come?’

‘Why, because they have such palatial homes, of course!’ We relied on Betty for that kind of inside information. ‘They have separate closets, separate everything.’

Sounded fine to me.

‘And poor Princess Elizabeth is thousands of miles away in Africa, having the news broke to her by her courtiers. She’s just going to have to pack her bags and fly right back here and get coronated.’

She leaned down to rub Sandie’s frozen little cheeks. ‘Hi, sweetie pie. Have I been ignoring you today? My, you’re so cold. Lois, is this child warm enough?’

Sandie gave Betty a big smile. ‘Told,’ she said. ‘Digger’s ass.’

So we all headed down to Gayle’s place, and Audrey came in from next door, for coffee and a little something from Lois’s bottle, just to warm us through and wish the old king God speed. Even Betty came along and that didn’t happen too often, on account of Ed keeping her on a short tether. Betty was allowed to go any place she liked, as long as it was the PX, the chapel or the school gate.

‘I’m just fine,’ she always said. ‘If Ed Gillis is happy, Betty Gillis is happy. Anyways, I don’t have time for gallivanting. My babies keep me busy. Caring for my home and my babies.’ Her babies were Deana and Sherry, but she included Ed too, for some reason we could never fathom, so that made three whining brats, leaving their skivvies for her to pick up and generally giving her the runaround.

Gayle and Audrey were off-base, on account of they didn’t have kids. The rest of us were in quarters. They weren’t much more than cabins, with flat asphalt roofs, but at least we had each other. At least inside that perimeter fence we were one Nation, under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.

Audrey didn’t seem to mind being outside. She was of a pioneering disposition. They could have put her in a mule wagon and she’d have made the best of things.

‘When in Rome,’ she always said.

Well, when in Rome, maybe, but not when you’ve been posted to the asshole of the universe.

Lois said, ‘Aud, you’re wasted here. Can’t they send you some place you’d have to live in a pup tent? I may just have a word to the CO’s wife. See if they got any mutinies need putting down. Any prairie fires need extinguishing.’

The rentals were just outside Drampton, in a place called Smeeth. It wasn’t a town. Just a couple of places growing sugar beet and a pumping station, supposed to keep the river moving along. It was called The Drain and it ran higher’n the roadway, which didn’t seem natural to me. I hoped and prayed that pumping station never broke down. Been me quartered there, I’d never have dared turn my back on it. I wouldn’t have slept nights for fear of waking up drowned.

Where they were, looked like one house but it was two, back to back, holding each other up but only just. Every house out there had that look about it, sagging in the middle, crouched down, like the sky was too much for it. They had a whole lot of sky in Norfolk, England.

Audrey and Lance were in one side of this broke-back house, Gayle and Okey were in the other, and oh how Gayle longed for a baby. A baby, and quarters, with steam heating and a Frigidaire.

‘Next year,’ Okey said, ‘next year.’

They seemed like a pair of skinny kids, playing house. Her with her ponytail and her bobbysocks. Him with his crewcut.

Gayle put on the coffee and Audrey fetched a kitchen stool from her place, Gayle and Okey not having much in the way of seating.

‘Right, this king?’ Lois said.

‘The king.’ Betty put her straight.

‘Whatever. They’ll have a fancy funeral for him, right? With a big parade and everything. And it’ll be in London, huh? Because he’s the king.’

‘Well, I guess.’

‘And where exactly is London?’

Audrey said it was in the south-east. Fact was, though, none of us had seen the sun since the day we landed, so that didn’t help much. Get to the base gate, we still wouldn’t know whether to turn left or right.

‘Anyone else thinking what I’m thinking?’ Lois was looking excited, jiggling Sandie up and down on her knee. ‘We go, girls. We go. Find London, see the parade, then have some fun. See a new movie, or a show. Find ourselves some top-hole toffs, what-ho, treat a girl to dinner, dontcher know.’

Betty said much as she’d love to go and pay her respects, Ed’d never allow it. For starters, who’d look after Sherry and Deana? ‘And Crystal,’ she said to me, ‘who’d mind her?’ She was looking to me to stop her building up any silly hopes. When it came to playing the mommy card, showing how you just had to rein yourself in once you had kids, Betty always turned to me for back-up because you sure as hell couldn’t rely on Lois.

Gayle said, ‘I will.’ Her love of children extended even as far as Deana Gillis. Deana was in third grade. Sherry, Betty’s youngest, was in first grade, same as my Crystal. Well, they should have been, except nobody ever heard of grade school in England. In elementary school there they just had names like Miss Boyle’s Class, Mrs Warley’s Class, Miss Jex’s Class. Crystal’s reading and writing seemed to be coming along okay. Still, every night I prayed we weren’t ruining our child’s education. Wrecking her future just so’s her daddy could save their English asses from the Red Menace.

‘And what about little Sandie?’ Betty now felt she had a watertight case. I could tell because she wasn’t furrowing her brow quite so deep. ‘You can’t drag a tiny tot thousands of miles,’ she said. ‘Not even knowing where you’re going to. Do you realise, they don’t even have enough food out there? I’m sorry, Lois, but it’d be just too crazy for words.’

Audrey said, ‘Well, I guess that’s the kinda attitude opened up the West.’

She never had a lot of patience with Betty. Besides, even I knew nothing’s thousands of miles away in England. You keep going, it won’t be long before you run outta country.

Then Gayle piped up. She said, ‘I’ll look after all of them. I don’t mind not going. I never even heard of this king.’

Betty said, ‘No. It’s a wild and irresponsible idea.’

‘Hey…’ Lois was pepping up her coffee from the bottle. Those little red patches were breaking out over her cheekbones. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘I could care less. You’re the royalty freak. I can go to London any damn time I please.’ And everything went quiet, ’cept for Sandie, crying with the hot-aches, thawed her little fingers out too fast against the wood-stove.

Gayle said, ‘Okey’s Mom mailed me the new McCall’s pattern book. Anyone want a look at it? There’s a real easy pattern for a bolero.’ And she ran upstairs to get it. I whispered to Audrey, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’

‘Mm-mm,’ she said, ‘and the dressmakers.’

I took Sandie on my lap, tried to rub her hands better, and Betty squared away the bottle of Jim Beam behind a cushion; hoping Lois might forget it, I daresay.

2

We were just finishing up dinner, Crystal wriggling in her chair, wanting to get down and play, Vern waving his fork around, last piece of fried potato getting cold while he told me about some new Pratt & Whitney turbojet that could take you to over 1,000mph, when the phone rang. It was Betty.

‘Now, listen,’ she said. ‘Here’s the latest. They’re taking the king to London on Monday, along the railroad, travelling real slow, so folks can pay their respects. And here’s the best bit: it’ll be going right by here, no more’n a few miles away, and Ed says I can go, just as long as I’m home in time for the girls. So, could you drive down, tell Gayle and Audrey, and I’ll call up Lois? I thought I’d throw a coffee tomorrow, so we can plan what we’re gonna wear?’

I said, ‘Betty, that’s easy. Unless there’s a sudden change in the climate I’ll be wearin Vern’s duck field-jacket and his five-buckle snow boots. Heck, I might just see if we still got an Alaska-issue comforter. Get myself sewed up inside it.’

‘Peggy Dewey!’ she said. ‘Shame on you! The queen’s gonna be looking right out of that train, and Princess Margaret. We have to do this thing right. I think just a touch of mourning. A little black hat, maybe, or a pair of gloves. Jeepers, we’re gonna be seen by royalty.’

Vern thought I was crazy. He was all wrapped round me, after lights out, trying to keep me warm and get what he figured he was owed seeing he was gonna be three nights away, standing the duty.

‘What you wanna do that for?’ he said. ‘Standin’ out there, ketchin yer death. Be a bunch a breeds there, too. You seen some of them locals? Bunch a freaks. Now, you gonna get outta that passion-killer so we can mess around a little?’

Messing around was Vern’s main interest in life, after his baby, with her static thrust of 3,750lb. And Crystal, of course. He loved throwing her up in the air till she screamed. Arm-wrestling with her, pretending to let her win.

‘Did you know kings and queens bunk down in separate quarters?’ I got to thinking about that again, after we’d messed around.

‘Jeez, Peg,’ he said, ‘I was just dozing off.’ He made himself cosy again, hogging all the covers. ‘Who cares?’ he said. ‘Bunch a throwbacks, sitting round in robes.’

First time I saw Vern he was dancing with a girl, couldn’t have been more than four feet ten. She was looking him in the belly-button and he was giving me the eye over her head. He did look cute in his Blues. Still, I should have known better. My sister Connie married the army and that was a five-minute wonder.

Soon as Vern knew I had fallen with Crystal he done the decent thing and my folks were happy to see the back of me, twenty-two and still no sign of any Hollywood screen-test. We were married in August, in the chapel on the base, his folks come down from Costigan, first and last time they ever left Maine, and we had an arch of sabres and shrimp hors-d’oeuvre and the whole nine yards. November he got orders to Ladd Field, Alaska.

Crystal come along in a big hurry, waters busted in the mall at Topperwein and my mom grinding her teeth every time I got a pain, telling me how this was only the start of my troubles. Nine pounds eleven ounces, she weighed, and she was the living image of her daddy, only he didn’t get to see her till she was nearly four months old.

We landed at Elmendorf and while I was waiting for the transport up to Ladd, looking for a place to warm the baby’s bottle, a girl come up to me, little newborn scrap in her arms and another one at foot, and she says to me, ‘Why, Peggy Shea! It is you. I’m not usually wrong about a face, but you’re carrying a few extra pounds these days.’

Last time I remembered seeing Betty Glick was when Future Homemakers catered a Mother-Daughter Spaghetti Supper for the Class of ’42, and she was in charge, in her sweetheart apron, giving her orders, little piggy eyes and a real homely face.

She already knew Ladd. They’d been on the base nearly a year and she’d just been back to Texas for the birth of little Sherry. So we were a marriage made in heaven, me not knowing what in the world I was going to and Betty never happier than when she was showing somebody the ropes.

Four years of marriage and motherhood had left its stamp on her. She’d lost her puppy fat and got herself a permanent too. She seemed real grown up, compared to the way I felt, but then, I think Betty was born grown up. And she was so proud of her Ed. I never thought he was all that. Everything about him was kinda hard and square, even his head. Lois reckoned he was made outta sheet metal.

‘I swear,’ she used to say, ‘Ed Gillis was not born of woman. I think they just punched in a few rivets and rolled him off the line at Boeing.’

Me and Vern were okay, when he was around – which wasn’t much. They were putting in long hours, training on the Superfortress, and then when he did get a 96 he liked to go off fishing. Now I think back on it, we didn’t hardly know each other.

‘Love ya,’ he used to say, when he was drifting off to sleep. ‘Whoever y’are.’

So I started hanging out with Betty Gillis, née Glick, picking things outta the Sears catalogue and clipping recipes for tuna bake and generally raising hell. Summer nights up there, when it never gets dark, if Vern and Ed were standing the duty, I’d go round to her quarters, tuck Crystal in with Deana and Sherry, and we’d sit out front, drink iced tea and wonder what became of all those other big shots from Topperwein High.

Audrey I met later on, when we rotated through Kirtland. She rang my doorbell, told me there was a coffee klatsch at the Officers’ Wives’ Club and signed me up for the Blood Drive. Wouldn’t take no for an answer on either score.

You could go to some of those wives’ clubs not knowing another soul and come away in the same condition, none of the in-crowd being inclined to get off their backsides and welcome a newcomer. But I’ll say this for Audrey: she had an open and friendly way about her. She’d stride across any room in her white bucks and make herself known to lonesome strangers.

She was married to Lance Rudman and they made a handsome pair. They were the kind of people knew where they’d come from and where they were going. Lois called them the Class Presidents.

Lo came on the scene while we were stationed at Kirtland too. She was married to Herb Moon. He was kinda dopey-looking, seemed slow on the uptake, except when he climbed into the cockpit of a B-50. Up there, so I heard, he was one cool customer.

‘Life’s a bitch,’ she said, when she found out we’d done a tour in Alaska. ‘Herb woulda loved that. All that rugged scenery and weather and stuff. ’Stead of all those cans of Dinty Moore I been feeding him, he coulda bagged himself a whole caribou. But no. He just had to go an’ draw Hickam Field, Hawaii. Heaven on earth, girls. You ain’t had a rope of Hilo violets hung round your neck, you ain’t lived. Papaya juice. Pineapples. Mangoes. I tell you something. Herb may not be no dreamboat, but that man took me to paradise, no mistake.’

‘Well, she’ll have to trim her cloth a bit different now.’ That’s what Betty said when Lois fell pregnant with Sandie. But she was wrong. Took more’n a little baby to slow down Lois Moon. They took her straight from the Aztec King Bowling Alley to the General Landers J. Hooverman Mother & Baby Unit and not a minute to spare. I heard language that night I couldn’t even begin to spell.

Course, didn’t matter what Lois said or did, Herb thought the sun rose and set by her, and seems like nothing since has made him change his mind. They were a pair a love-birds, in a manner a speaking, even though they didn’t always fly in formation.

Gayle and Okey were the real pigeon pair, known each other since the day they were born, near enough.

First time I saw Gayle she was hanging around in the laundry room at Drampton, didn’t know how to work the driers and too scared to ask. I thought she was somebody’s brat, till we got talking. I took her under my wing a little, after that, specially when Okey was away on assignment. There are lonely times when you’re married to the military. You gotta hope you can click with a few girls on your post, hang out with them. You gotta get through the days as best you can, waiting around for friend husband to come home from the pad.

Audrey used to pass her some of her story books, but Gayle was no reader, nor much of a homemaker neither, though Betty did try giving her a few lessons. I reckon Gayle lived on potato chips and Dr Pepper, and when Okey was home, they just lived on love. Planned on having a houseful of kids and living happy ever after. On an LT’s pay, best of luck was what I thought, but I never said it.

3

Gayle didn’t come with us that day. She said she’d sooner stay behind in Lois’s nice warm quarters and mind Sandie than wave off some old king, and that suited Lois just fine. ‘I’d go and watch for a freight train to go by,’ she said. ‘Anything to get off this God-forsaken base.’

I wasn’t so sure, myself. It was a raw morning, misty too, and there was some creature out in that fen making a unearthly noise. Vern reckoned the whole place belonged under the ocean. He used to say, ‘They took this place from the water, and one of these days that water’s gonna come and take it right back.’

He left me to answer the tricky questions from Crystal, such as would it come higher’n our house and how could fishes breathe?

Me and Betty took our girls to school, and I don’t know who was more excited, Deana and Sherry ’cause they got a extra Milky Bar in their lunch-pail, guilt candy from mommy, or Betty because she was getting out from under.

Then we picked up Lois and Audrey and there were sharp words, on account of Lois wearing a red windbreaker and Betty suggesting she could have showed more respect. I drove and Betty sat up front with me, and she never stopped yammering.

‘The Duke of Windsor,’ she said, ‘he’s come sailing in from New York. He’s got some nerve, I must say, running off with that home-wrecker, leaving everybody in the lurch. Ask me, he as good as killed his poor brother, and the queen, of course, the old queen, she’s not been seen. She’s at … hold on, here, let me get this right …’ She’d brought her newspaper clippings with her. ‘Marlborough House, that’s where she’s at. Must be heartbroken…’

Audrey, being no slouch, had been following all of this, but she said, ‘Whoa, Betty, just back up, would you? You just lost me. I thought the old queen was gonna be on this train we’re heading to see?’

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I see where you’re getting confused. Okay. At this time, they have three queens. There’s Queen Mary. She’s the one at Marlborough Castle. Then they have Queen Elizabeth, who was married to the king, just passed away. She’s the one we’ll be seeing.’

I said, ‘What about Queen Mary? Didn’t she get a king?’

‘Of course she did. He was King … something, I’ll remember it in a minute. Then, there’s the new Queen Elizabeth…’

Lois said, ‘Are we seeing her?’

‘No, no. She’s gonna be meeting the train when it gets to London. See, she’ll have had to stay there, attend to affairs of state an’ all. We’re gonna see, okay, the old Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. And they are…?’ She gave us time, see if we could come up with the right answers. We couldn’t. ‘…the mother and the sister of the new queen!’

Betty should have taught grade school. She was a natural.

I said, ‘Can you hear that? Like something…booming out there?’

Lois lowered her window. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s the Thing. Herb warned me about it. It hides out in these swamps, and when it smells prime American steak, it starts hollering.’

Audrey said, ‘Okay, so we’ve got the new queen and she’s waiting it out in London…’

‘Yeah, right,’ Lois said. ‘She’s smart enough not to come trailing up here. She’s sitting at home, trying on all her jewels, got the royal furnace turned up high as it’ll go.’

‘…so who’s gonna be the new king?’

Lois said, ‘Now, even I know the answer to that. His name’s Prince Philip, and he’s a doll.’

I said, ‘Lo, close up your window. I don’t like that noise.’

‘Sure,’ she said, ‘You worried that the Thing’s getting closer?’

‘It’s a bird.’ Audrey leaned forward to tell me. ‘I read about it. It’s just a big lonely old bird.’

Betty was handing round pictures. ‘Now, this is the Duke of Cornwall. He’ll be the next king, after his daddy. And this is little Princess Anne. Aren’t they cute? I just love these darling coats they wear. Gee, I hope Sherry and Deana are gonna be okay today. Deana looked a little sad when we dropped them off. And Lois…’ She turned right round in her seat, so Lois’d understand that what she was about to say wasn’t to be taken lightly. ‘…do you think little Sandie is in safe hands with Gayle? I mean, I’m not one to sling mud but she does suffer with the nerves and sometimes, well, I’ll speak plainly here, she takes comfort in alcoholic drink.’

I took a look at Lois in my rear-view mirror.

‘Betty,’ she said, ‘you’re right. You don’t sling mud. You just kinda creep up behind a person and smear it. Matter of fact, I think Sandie’ll be just fine with her Auntie Gayle. Way I look at things, anybody married to an airman needs a little something to get them through the day. Huh? Bottle a booze, photo album of Princess Margaret, the sound of Frank Sinatra’s sweet voice, it don’t have to look like a crutch to be one.’ And she dropped the pictures of the little Duke of Cornwall right back into Betty’s lap.

‘Why, Lois!’ Audrey said. ‘That’s almost profound!’

She was sitting forward, peering through the windshield with me, and I was driving like a real old lady, what with the mist and the ice and the fact that over there another vehicle was liable to come at you on the wrong side of the road. One minute they weren’t there, next minute they were, about ten or twelve of them, grey as the day itself, stamping their feet, hugging themselves in their poor thin coats, standing right there by the railroad crossing.

Audrey whistled through her teeth. ‘Well, look at that,’ she said, and they all turned together, like a herd of deer, sniffing for trouble. Like they’d never seen a DeSoto station-wagon in their lives before.

Betty said, ‘Okay, girls. Now remember. We are ambassadors for the United States of America, and this is a grieving nation.’

4

Nobody spoke.

Betty said, ‘Good morning, everyone! Y’all waiting to see the royal train go by?’

Still nobody spoke. I felt her pressing closer to me.

‘Peggy,’ she whispered, ‘let’s hand round some gum or something, show them we’re friendly.’

Audrey roared. ‘Jeez, Betty,’ she said, ‘anybody’d think we were in Sioux territory.’

There were people there wearing black armbands, and a woman carrying a Union flag, no stockings on, just zip-front boots, and her hair rolled up in a scarf, and her legs all wind-burned behind her knees. She kept looking our way.

I smiled and nodded and next time I looked she’d moved a bit nearer.

Audrey and Lois smiled and nodded, and she moved nearer still.

It was Lois made the breakthrough. ‘Hi,’ she said, ‘I’m Lois Moon. You care for a stick of Juicy Fruit?’

Close up she was younger than she’d seemed. Thirty, maybe not even that. She just wasn’t making the best of herself. Matter of fact, sometimes she still don’t. Over the years, I have learned the average Englishwoman has scant interest in good grooming. She’s more likely to buy herself a new garden tool than get her nails done. But I’m running ahead of myself. That morning, back in ‘52, she was plain shabby. And she couldn’t take her eyes off Lois in her red jacket. She came and stood right next to her.

Betty found her voice again. She said, ‘Do you happen to know the estimated time of arrival?’

She took a while to answer. Or maybe just took a while to understand the question. ‘That won’t be long now,’ she said. ‘That’s only got to come from Wolverton.’

Betty said, ‘The funeral train? But I understood it was coming from Sandring Ham?’

She looked at Betty for the longest time. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘They’re bringing him from the house up to Wolverton, put him aboard the train and that’s a fair old step, along that lane. That must be three mile. Jim?’ She called across to a man in an armband. Looked like he didn’t have a tooth in his head. ‘Jim?’ she said. ‘That must be three mile from Sandringham to the siding?’

He didn’t answer. Just blew his nose and turned his back on us. Didn’t like her fraternising.

Lois whispered to me, ‘How come we’re getting the evil eye? I thought we were on the same side as these guys?’

Me too. In fact, my understanding was we were owed a little gratitude.

Betty said, ‘Well, we’re very sorry for your sad loss.’ She said it loud, kinda addressing the assembled throng. ‘Your royal family is the envy of the world. And the folks back home are just gonna die when they hear about us being here, so close to it all.’

Audrey said, ‘Well, I don’t know that die was the happiest choice of words.’

Lois said, ‘You guys see them around much? The King and Queen? They drive around in their carriage, waving and be-knighting people and stuff?’

I heard somebody say, ‘Bloody Yanks.’

Then things started to happen. First there was a humming in the rails, and then the ground started to rumble and people were pushing forward, craning and looking left. We could feel that something big was heading our way, bearing down on us, but we couldn’t see it. And then, out of the mist it came, real slow and heavy, a Standard Pacific engine and nine cars, dressed overall in black silk. Someone called out ‘God save the King!’ and every man there held his cap in his hand and bowed his head.

‘And the Queen,’ Lois’s new friend shouted. ‘Don’t forget her!’

I didn’t bow my head. I didn’t intend no disrespect, but we had driven there to see a princess at the very least. I looked long and hard as it passed us, but what with the steam and the mist, I couldn’t even pick out which car the casket was in. Audrey nudged me to look at Betty. She was standing to attention, eyes closed, with a kinda ecstatic look on her face. Then the train slid away, back into the mist, and the ground stopped rumbling and the rails stopped humming and Lois said, ‘Well, I didn’t see a darned thing.’

To her dying day Betty claimed she’d had the best view ever. The Queen, all veiled in black, and the princess, very pale and strained, in a little velour hat and a mink collared coat, who had actually given her a sad wave of thanks.

‘You didn’t see them?’ she said, when Lois started bellyaching and any time after that when the subject was raised. ‘Why heaven’s sakes, girl, what were you doing?’

Our friend turned and gave us a grin. I guess, even with lend-lease food, all that malnutrition must have just ruined their teeth. ‘May Gotobed’s seen them,’ she said. ‘She’s stood as close to them as I am to you. She’s been a backstairs maid, donkey’s years, since the old king was alive.’

Betty said, ‘Oh boy! A backstairs maid! You hear that, Peggy? Go on! Tell us more!’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘May was on her way up with hot water when they found him. She seen him Tuesday night. He was outside having a smoke. Wednesday, she was carrying water up for a lady of the bedchamber and word come, Dr Ansell been sent for. Nothing he could do, of course. King was long gone. And the Duke of Gloucester, he come over directly in his motor car. That’s a cheery shade,’ she said, stroking Lois’s sleeve.

People were leaving. Just walking away into the mist.

Betty said, ‘I just love hearing about all this. I am the biggest fan of your royal family. I have so many pictures, especially of your Princess Margaret. She just looks such a sweet girl. Do you know any stories about her?’

The old guy called Jim was still there, hanging back, watching us. ‘Time you were getting off home, Kath Pharaoh. Careless talk costs lives.’

‘War ended, 1945, Jim,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you heard?’

We offered her a ride, but she came over shy. Looked flustered and said there was no need, she didn’t have far to go. Audrey called to the guy. ‘How about you?’ she said. ‘We have room for a small one.’

‘Save yer juice,’ he said, and both of them disappeared, him in one direction and Kath Pharaoh in the other. And there we stood in the freezing mist, the four of us, feeling about as welcome as a pack of prairie dogs.

Betty gave me one of her pretty-please looks. ‘Oh, Peggy, let’s go catch up to her, can we? Get her number, at least? I’d love to talk with her some more.’

It was all one to me because I needed to drive on and find a safe turning place, highways in England not being proper highways at all.

Lois said, ‘Heaven’s sakes, Betty. She’s gone. Let’s find a bar. Get ourselves a little inner warmth?’

But we soon found her, stepping out at a real brisk pace. It was her flag we saw first, sticking out of the top of her shopping bag. Betty wound her window down. ‘Hi again! We seem to be going your way. Are you sure we can’t give you a ride home?’

She had a dewdrop hanging from the end of her nose. ‘Go on, then,’ she said, and she tried to open Lois’s door, just tugging on it.

Betty leaped out. ‘No, no, you ride in front,’ she said, ‘then you can tell Peggy which way to go. Lois, move over.’

She got in. I looked at her, waiting for her to tell me which way to go, but she just sat there, so I just kept driving.

‘Well now, we should all introduce ourselves.’ Betty was bubbling. She was so happy we’d adopted somebody who knew a servant who’d breathed the same air as a real king. ‘I’m Betty. This here is Lois, and Audrey. We’re from the United States. Our husbands are stationed at the air base.’

Kath nodded. She was tongue-tied.

I said, ‘And I’m Peggy. Guess I’m just the driver around here.’

She smiled. ‘Do you take Blackdyke Drove,’ she said, ‘you’d best go steady. That’s all frez.’

I didn’t know what in tarnation she was talking about, but I soon found out.

‘My name’s Kath,’ she said, ‘Kath Pharaoh. Ah. Now you’ve gone and driv past the turn. That’s easy done, when you’re moving along so fast.’

Blackdyke Drove was just a track, when we found it again. The ground fell away from it, either side, and disappeared into the mist, and the mud had a frosting of ice that crackled under the wheels. I never got out of second gear, but Kath held on to the dash anyway and once or twice her hand came across towards the steering column, like she wanted to guide me.

‘What make of car would this be, then?’ she asked me. She’d been peering down into the foot-well. ‘So, that’s the go-faster pedal and that’s the go-slower pedal,’ she said. ‘I reckon as I could soon git the hang of that. But how does the juice make the wheels go round? That’s a mystery to me. And what’s this?’ She hit the horn. ‘Oh, beg your pardon,’ she said, laughing, and gave me another good look at her poor English teeth. ‘That’s enough to waken the dead,’ she said. ‘That’s enough to waken him indoors. STOP!’

I felt the tail slide a little and I heard Audrey’s head crack against her window.

‘See? You nearly went past,’ she said, real accusing. And there it was. Another sway-back house, hunkered down low, just like Gayle and Audrey’s billet out at Smeeth.

I said, ‘This your place, Kath?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Your friend all right, in the back?’

Audrey said it was no more than a tap and her head was just fine, but Lois thought a little drink would be a good idea. Lois often did.

‘You could have delayed shock, Aud,’ she said. ‘Is there a bar, some place near? One of those thatched taverns?’

‘There’s the Flying Dutchman,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to go in there, though. That’s for men. I could make you a nice cuppa tea.’

Betty loved that idea. ‘Then we can keep Audrey under observation,’ she said. ‘Check she doesn’t have a concussion. And I would just adore to visit with a real English family.’

Lois said a Norfolk fen was the last place on earth she’d want to be with any kinda medical condition. She said she’d want to be right back where Uncle Sam’d take good care of her, but Betty was out of the car already, and Audrey wasn’t far behind.

‘Come on!’ she said. ‘It’ll be interesting. See how other people live. And, by the way, I do not have a concussion.’

Kath seemed kinda proud to be taking us home, like it was Sand-ringham Palace itself. Course, in those days she didn’t know what lovely homes American people had, and ignorance is bliss.

I’ve often thought, if that king hadn’t died when he did, I don’t suppose we’d ever have met Kath or gone driving up that frozen track. We’d just have stayed home and baked cookies, and then a whole lot of things would have turned out different.

5

‘John Pharaoh,’ she shouted, ‘we’ve got company. Come out here and see this fancy motor.’

We filed in, and Aud had to duck her head. Those ceilings were so low she nearly ended up with a concussion after all. It was dark inside. We pushed through a narrow passageway, old coats hanging on pegs.

‘Come on in,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to take us as you find us.’

I could see a wood-range, and a bed, with somebody on it, but my eyes were still getting accustomed to the gloom.

‘I seen the train,’ she said. ‘We give him a good send-off. Jim Jex was down there, said did you want a pup off of his fowling dog, I said no thank you, and these ladies kindly brought me home. They’re from Drampton, with the Yankee Air Force, and you should see the big fancy car they got, windows that go up and down and all sorts. Dear God, that smells like a old hoiley in here. John? You awake?’

First impression was, they only had one room. Later on, when I knew them better, I saw the place where he kept his eel traps. Another little room that could have been fixed up, for a bedroom or something, instead of them carrying on the way they did, sleeping in the kitchen.

That’s where he was, the first time we saw him, just getting up off the bed. Kath gave him the Juicy Fruit gum. She’d had it in her hand all the time, since Lois gave it to her.

‘Straighten that counterpane,’ she said, ‘we’ve got company.’

John Pharaoh was a good-looking devil. He wasn’t tall like Lois’s Herb or brawny, like Ed Gillis. He was soft-looking for a man, but there was something about him. Black curly hair. And a real winning smile. I guess it was the dimples. One of his eyes wasn’t quite right, though, and sometimes it gave him a crafty look, but it had a kinda awful fascination about it, drew you to keep looking at it. Then you felt sorry for staring at a person’s affliction.

He slid off the bed and he waved his fingers, like we were invited to sit down, only I couldn’t see where, there being just the one easy chair and that was occupied by a old yellow dog, size of a hog.

Kath was running around, still in her coat and her boots. She brought cups from a rack by the sink and extras from a cupboard, with saucers that didn’t match.

‘You’ll like these,’ she said to Betty. ‘Coronation saucers. King George the Fifth. A course, the cups have all gone west. Pull up a seat.’

There were three wooden chairs around the table, and my God, that room was cold. Either you stood close enough to the range to get scorched, or you froze. Betty gave me a brave little smile, this whole excursion being her idea after all. She was trying to show her appreciation, being a great believer in the importance of politeness, but there was one thing she did care more about than manners, and that was standards of hygiene, and I doubt those cups had ever seen hot water.

Kath made tea in big brown pot and pulled a woolly cover over it, so just the spout and the handle were free. There was no sugar, and the only milk she offered was Carnation, straight from the can.

I declined. Never did take to tea.

Kath said, ‘I can do you a Bovril?’ but I didn’t care for the sound of that neither. It made me realise Audrey was right. Travel gives you the opportunity to understand foreign ways of life. It can make a wiser person of you. And when I seen how those poor English lived, it made me want get down on my knees and give thanks for being born in God’s own country.

Kath brought out photos, from a drawer. They were faded and creased, but Betty loved them. Picture-postcards of some old king and queen, done up in their fancy orbs and sceptres.

Betty said, ‘Now, correct me if I’m wrong, Kath, but isn’t this Queen Mary?’

‘That’s right,’ Kath said. ‘She was Mary of Teck. And she was fixed up to marry one of the princes, but he dropped dead, so they passed her along to his next brother.’

I said, ‘That’s terrible. I wouldn’t have stood for that.’

Kath said, ‘Me neither. That’s like handing on a dead man’s trousers, still got a bit of wear left in them.’

‘Well,’ Betty said, ‘I guess you can’t let a princess go to waste.’

Lois was scratching the old dog behind its ears and slurping up that disgusting brew. ‘What I don’t understand,’ she said, ‘is why that king had to go outside for a smoke. No wonder he caught his death. What kind of milquetoast was he, didn’t just light up any place he chose? All he had to do was pass a edict or something.’

John Pharaoh seemed disposed to find everything Lois said highly amusing. There were some snapshots of poor folk, too. They all seemed to be kin to Kath’s friend May Gotobed, or some kinda relations to the Pharaohs themselves, only it was too complicated for me to follow. There was one of them standing with genuine princes, posing in front of a mountain of ducks they just helped shoot, but you had to be in the know to tell which ones were which. When they’re not wearing their crowns those princes just look like any ordinary Joe.

Audrey had asked for the bathroom and Kath had taken her, to show her the way, but Aud came back alone, beckoning me from the doorway to come and see something.

Kath was in the car, making believe she was driving. She was sitting at the wheel, window down, arm leaning out, making revving noises like she was barrelling down Route 66, next stop the Rio Grande. She laughed when she saw us watching her.

‘I shall soon have the hang of this,’ she said. ‘You could go anywhere you pleased in a motor like this. You could go to Ely.’

‘You should see where I just went,’ Audrey whispered to me on our way back into the house. ‘It’s a seat over a bucket. And get this. There’s two of them, side by side. His ’n’ hers.’

Kath kept bringing things out to show us. Her best tablecloth, and a badge she got for fen-skating in 1936, and a magazine with pictures of Ava Gardner, and then more tea, though God knows none of us wanted any. She seemed so proud to have us as her guests.

‘You must be getting peckish,’ she said, when she’d run out of treasures to show us. ‘I could find you a bit of something. Slice of bread and butter? We’ve got a tin of pineapple, sent from Canada, only he’s gone and lost the opener. John? Do you look again for that tin-opener these ladies can have a bite to eat.’

But John Pharaoh was more interested in Lois’s legs.

Lo was always ready to eat, but I caught her eye, managed to stop her before she took their last crust. I don’t believe she ever heard of war rations.

‘No, Kath,’ Betty said. ‘We really have to be making tracks. I’d just have loved to talk with you some more, but we have our girls to pick up from school. But you know, you should come and visit with us some time. I have so many picture albums I’d love to show you. Princess Margaret is my favourite, and I’m just longing for her to find a beau.’

6

Of course, it was my fault. Headlights left on, engine won’t turn over, who else you gonna blame but the driver?

‘Dead as King George,’ Lois said and John Pharaoh laughed. He stood looking under the hood, but I don’t think he’d have known a spark plug from a poke in the eye.

Audrey said warming it up might help, so Kath brought the teapot out and stood it on the battery, but I still couldn’t get a murmur out of it.

Betty said, ‘We have to get the battery inside, connect it up or something. You know what I mean. I’ve seen Ed do it.’

Ed was always tinkering with their car. First time I noticed she had sump oil the same place as her bruises was the day I realised how things stood between Betty and Ed.

Anyway, all that talk about connecting up batteries, there was a basic fact of life on Blackdyke Drove Betty was overlooking.

Even after Audrey told her, she didn’t really get it. ‘Heck,’ she said, ‘everyone has electricity. Well, we’ll just have to call the base. They’ll send out a ground-pounder, tow us in.’

Audrey shook her head. ‘There’s no telephone, Betty,’ she said. ‘We’ll just have to set fire to Lo’s windbreaker. Send smoke signals.’

She said, ‘Whaddaya mean? This is plum crazy. There has to be a telephone. Supposing they were to get a peritonitis or something?’ Her voice was real tight. She wanted to smack somebody, preferably me, I could tell, but Betty never smacked anybody in her life, more’s the pity.

‘Well, Peggy Dewey,’ she said, ‘you got us into this fix so I hope you’re gonna get us right out of it. I have my girls to pick up at fifteen-twenty and I don’t intend on letting them down.’

John Pharaoh said he’d go, fetch help. He had to walk back along the drove, cross the water by the sluice gates, take the highway into Brakey and find someone willing to drive out and rescue us. He set off, real willing and cheerful, and we all went back inside for a long, long wait.

Lois whispered, ‘Aud, where’d you say the john was?’

Audrey said, ‘It’s round the back. There’s no lock on the door, and no flush, so just follow your nose. And you probably won’t want to make contact with the seat. There’s wildlife out there, got heat-seeking equipment.’

Audrey was looking round at the room. There was a postcard thumbtacked to the wall, some place called Cromer, and a broken clock, with no minute-hand.

‘Jeez, Peg,’ she said, ‘did you ever see anything like this?’

‘I did,’ Lois said. ‘Herb’s folks’ place. I married beneath my station. Now I’m gonna have to take a leak, wildlife or no. Where’s Kath?’

She was outside again, standing by the station wagon, just looking at it, so downcast.

‘Is it my fault?’ she said. ‘Did I brek it?’

7

Kath lit the oil lamps and put more fuel on the range.

‘There,’ she said, ‘now we’re snug.’ But I reckon that yellow dog had the only warm seat in the house.

Audrey said, ‘How long have you lived here, Kath?’

‘Born here,’ she said. ‘Born in that bed.’

Lo bounced upright when she heard that. ‘Wow!’ she said. ‘You ever think of moving away?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve told John Pharaoh. We ever come up on the football pools, I should like to move up to Brakey. Be nearer the bus stop.’

Betty was having a little blub about Deana and Sherry, like she was never gonna see them again. I wished she’d stop. I didn’t like letting Crystal down neither, and I’m sure Lois was worried about Sandie too, she just never showed it, making herself at home on John and Kath’s bed.

‘Don’t you fret about your young ’uns,’ Kath said. ‘They’ll be right as ninepence. They’ll be larrikin about somewhere.’

Which, of course, was the last thing Betty wanted to hear. Whatever larrikin was, it sounded dangerous.

‘What time is it?’ she kept asking.

‘Big hand’s still on the five,’ Audrey kept answering.

‘Kath?’ Lo said. ‘You go outside to that bathroom in the middle of the night?’

‘No,’ Kath said. ‘I hold on till morning.’

We heard the toot of a horn. John Pharaoh had come back, riding in a General Post Office van, looking real proud of himself. A guy called Dennis Jex was driving, and two others, both Jexes too, had come along to give their advice or eyeball four American chicks, or maybe just to get a ride. One way or another, they seemed happy to be there. They all looked under the hood, but Dennis was the one really knew what he was doing. He jump-started us, while Audrey held the flashlight, and then he offered to escort us back to where the road was metalled, save us running off the track and disappearing into the swamp.

He said he was glad to help. He said there was no doubt in his mind, if it wasn’t for America he’d be living under the jackboot.

‘When push come to shove, you Yanks done the right thing,’ he said. ‘Even if you did take your time about it.’

Betty was in the car already, anxious for us to be on our way.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘I’ll pull round. I’ll take it nice and steady and you can follow my tail lights. And when I put my winker to go left, do you go right you’ll be set fair for the base. That’s straight on, about seven mile. You can’t go wrong.’

John Pharaoh was pacing up and down, eyes shining, like he’d had a real exciting time. Kath looked kinda sad to see us go.

I said, ‘Would you like to come out for a drive some time?’

‘Oh, I would,’ she said, ‘I’d like that very much.’

So I promised we’d do that, just as soon as the ice thawed. Then Dennis Jex moved off, and I nosed along right behind him, and Kath and John faded away into the mist.

Audrey said, ‘That was the right thing to do, Peggy. We should always try to build cordial relations with the locals.’ Audrey had the kinda enthusiasm for good works that could take a girl far at the OWC. If Lance was aiming to be a brass hat, he couldn’t have picked a better wife.

I said, ‘I didn’t do it to be right, Aud. I did it because I wanted to.’

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘Doing the right thing accidentally is better than doing the wrong thing. Now, I have an idea.’

Betty said, ‘Audrey, would you please allow Peggy to concentrate on driving? Charity begins at home, remember?’

Audrey ignored her. ‘My idea is,’ she said, ‘we could take them things. You know, we have so much and they just have nothing. They have a can of fruit there and they don’t even have an opener. And did anybody notice an icebox?’

I said, ‘I believe they’re living in it, Aud.’

She said, ‘Well, I think a food parcel is called for. Little things that I’m sure would be appreciated. And not just food. I mean, did you see the state of her pot holder? Whaddya say, girls?’

But Lois was in a world of her own, humming a little tune. And Betty wasn’t in the mood for talking.

Ed was on the doorstep when we pulled up. Didn’t matter Sherry and Deana had been just fine, getting milkshakes with Gayle and playing hospitals and helping Crystal and Sandie to eat all of Lois’s cookies. Ed Gillis had just got a mean old mood on him, I could tell. That little dint, side of his jaw, was popping in and out.

‘Time you call this?’ he said, and Betty hurried right on in, clutching her pictures of the Duke of Cornwall. She didn’t even say ‘Goodbye’.

8

‘Okay, girls. Here’s what I got so far.’ Audrey was getting ready to air-drop supplies for Kath and John.

‘Cheez Whizz, Sugar Pops, Campbell’s Soup, two cans of franks, can opener, Oreos, nylons, Chesterfield’s …’

I said, ‘I don’t think they use smokes. All that time we were pacing the floor there, I never seen any sign of cigarettes.’

‘Well maybe they’d like the chance to start,’ she said. ‘Jeez, Peg, I’m just trying to help. Then I got cornflakes and Pepsodent, and I thought we could throw in a fifth of Dewar’s.’

Gayle said, ‘How about cupcakes? Can they get Hostess cupcakes?’

She was real keen for us to take her out there, introduce her to Kath and John, ’cause all she’d heard from us since we got back was about them sleeping in their kitchen and having a open-air privy. Course, Gayle was from Carolina, almost into Tennessee, so she could just have been feeling homesick.

Betty was grounded. The way she told it, it was her own wish to spend more time making their quarters into a real home. She showed me some damnfool thing she’d done with a folding table, General Issue, and a mile of pink cretonne, sent her by her cousin.

‘See,’ she said, ‘I just made it up like a skirt, cover those ugly old legs, then I thumbtacked it down, with this real pretty wrapping paper to cover the top. Now if I can get my hands on a nice piece of bevelled glass, I’ll have the darlingest dressing table on the base.’

I said, ‘You okay, Betty? Ed’s not giving you a hard time?’

‘I’m just fine,’ she said. ‘Now, you give my best regards to Kath and John, and I’d like you to take them a little something from me.’ She handed me that bar of Ivory soap like it was a piece of the True Cross.

We drove out one morning, after I dropped Crystal. Betty said she’d have loved to mind Sandie, only Deana and Sherry had caught some terrible skin condition, highly contagious, got it in the school yard, rubbing up close to urchins probably never seen a bath tub in their lives, so they were home, painted with violet-coloured lotion, grizzling and tormenting each other. So Sandie came with us, sitting in the back with her mom and Gayle, begging for more when Lois rolled down the window, pretending she could hear the Thing out there, coming to get us.

9

John Pharaoh was home alone. ‘Not here,’ he said, pacing up and down. ‘She’s working at the singling, but do you drive over Brakey way, you’ll see her. She’s at the Mayday Shed. Hello, tuppence. You want to see what I got?’

Sandie ran off with him and Lois followed her. Gayle helped Audrey carry the food parcels inside, and I just leaned against the trunk of the car and watched some little bird that was hovering and singing about a mile over my head.

‘Skylark,’ Audrey said, when she came outta the house.

Gayle said, ‘Ain’t this place something! I mean, my folks don’t have much, but they got a TV at least. They got a car. These guys gotta be real poor.’

Aud said, ‘And they sleep in their kitchen, I hope you noticed.’

Gayle said ‘Oh, folk do that in Boomer. When we were all home there was eleven of us. Girls head to tail in the kitchen bed ’cause girls gotta be up first. Where’d he say she was today?’

She was at Mayday. It was one of the beet farms. That’s what she did. Little jobs here and there, whatever was going, according to the season.

I wouldn’t have minded some kind of work myself, ’stead of sitting indoors reading my stars in the same old magazines over and over, but when you marry the military you become a Dependent Wife, and DWs weren’t allowed to work. Your job was to stand by your bunk, wait for him to come home from Beer Call and tell you another thousand different ways he’d put his hide on the line up in the big blue yonder. How things have changed.

I found out later, from Kath, that singling beets wasn’t no exciting career. You just stood in a shed with a bunch of women, all Jexes or Gotobeds, splitting up the clusters of sugar-beet seeds, chopping them up and getting paid nickels and dimes.

‘That’s not hard,’ she said, ‘that’s just boring. Then August, I go tater riddling. That’s hard and boring.’

I asked her one time, ‘How come you’re out working and John stays home?’

‘He works when he can,’ she said. ‘But he’s not a strong man. He’s got bad nerves. He’s under Dr Brameld, but he can’t do nothing for them though by the seem of it. He catches eels, though, and sells them. When the eels are running, he does well at them. And that’s an early start, up at four, emptying the traps. Then he has to get them down to Brandon, in time for the pick-up. He makes traps. Cuts the willow. Strips it. They come from all over to buy his traps. A man come all the way from Welney looking for John to make him a willow grig.’

It seemed like John Pharaoh was a regular little eager beaver. I kinda wished I’d never asked.

Anyways, that was where he’d disappeared to with Lois and Sandie that morning, showing them around his eel-trap empire, making little Sandie squeal with his tray of lugworms. We found them while we were showing Gayle the privy, giving her the full guided tour, like it was the Alamo. Sandie peeping out from behind Lois, daring herself to go and take a close-up look at the worms, and John holding up a basket, shape of a pickle, but six foot high.

You ever sin one big as this?’ he said, giving Lois a knowing smile, and she roared.

‘See,’ she said, when we were driving home, via Brakey, looking for something that might be a beet shed, ‘see, they catch different kinds, depending on the time of year. And sometimes they use nets and traps, and sometimes they use … like a spear, and just catch them one at a time, and sometimes, on a good night, they might catch twenty pounds of them, just in one of those baskets, and the big traps are called grigs but the little ones are called hoileys, and … what else … ?’

‘Tune in same time next week,’ Audrey said, ‘for the Wonderful World of Eel Fishing presented by Lois Moon.’

‘I understand this right?’ Vern said. ‘You drove out there, guzzling gas, took half the commissary and a bottle of good liquor too, and she wasn’t even home?’

I said, ‘Yeah. Must have put fifteen mile on the clock. Jeez, you’re starting to sound like Ed Gillis. He’s got radar-tracking on Betty.’

‘Know what’s good for you, you’ll stay outta Ed and Betty’s business,’ he said. ‘Know what’s good for you, you’ll quit running round, fraternising with a bunch of breeds. Hell, Peg, why can’t you stay home and make a pie once in a while?’

‘Hell is a bad word,’ Crystal said. ‘Also, jeez. Miss Boyle says.’

‘Vern,’ I told him, ‘I can make pie and go visiting.’

I’ll say this about Vern. Sometimes pie was all it took.

‘Honey,’ he said to Crystal, ‘you tell Miss Boyle welcome to the free world, thanks to folks like your daddy, and you can say any goddamn words you please.’

‘You don’t tell Miss Boyle no such thing,’ I said to her when I was tucking her in, ‘and you know what? Mommy’s gonna get you a princess dressing table, all pink and pretty.’

I was thinking I’d get Miss Homemaker of America to give me a hand. Betty always seemed to have a hundred ideas how to turn a prefab cabin into what she called ‘a gracious and lovely home’. I figured, if I kept Vern sweet, smartened up the quarters, made the occasional pie, I’d be able get off base once in a while without getting the third degree. Get away from the whine of the jets and the rattling of the windows. Now I’d got the hang of driving on the wrong side of the road, and handling that funny money of theirs, I was starting to enjoy going out there.

Crystal said, ‘Mommy? Do I have to have a princess dressing table? Can I get roller skates instead?’

10

I fell and busted my collar bone, coming outta the PX where the kids had been skidding around, polishing the ice. They strapped me up, till the bone knit, which good as put me in the slammer for a while. Couldn’t drive, couldn’t hardly pull up my own shorts. Couldn’t stop Betty Gillis running in and out performing acts of neighbourly kindness. Vern ate all the soup she brung in. That man was a walking Disposall. I just lived on codeine and Pepsi and prayed next time he got orders it’d be for Ramey, Puerto Rico.

‘You rest up now,’ Betty said. ‘I’ll take care of things. You’re in the best place. You seen what kinda weather we got today?’

They called it a Fen Blow. Looked like a sandstorm to me. A sandstorm on the far side of the moon.

‘Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse,’ Lois said. ‘Here, open nice and wide and I’ll steady the gun in your mouth. Hell, no. Let me go first. You can make your own arrangements. I got Herb at home and you’ll never guess what he’s doing.’

Herb loved chopping wood.

Thirty-six hours they didn’t fly a single sortie, because of the Blow, and Vern was like a bear with a boil on his backside, driving out to the facility every five minutes, looking for a patch of clear sky.

I said, ‘Why can’t you quit prowling around and do something? Play checkers with Crystal or write your mom. Do you know Lance Rudman writes his folks every week?’

‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘Well that figures. Pushing a pencil’s about what Rudman’s cut out for.’

Vern didn’t have much time for Lance. Okey Jackson was the one Vern rated, even though he looked so wet behind the ears, and there were jocks in the squadron had seen real action in Korea. Whatever it was they got up to up there, and I really didn’t care to know, Okey was the one kept showing them he had the moxie.

Soon as I got the strapping off, I shampooed my hair and pin-curled it. I was just going to the closet to get the dryer hood when I heard the siren. Then the crash trucks started up.

First time I ever heard that, back at Kirtland, I ran right outside, looking down the flight-line for smoke and then when I seen it I wished I hadn’t, because I didn’t know what the hell to do with myself. By the time we got to Drampton, England, I guess I’d learned there was no point. Wait long enough I knew I’d either be getting a visit from the chaplain, standing on my doorstep like the Grim Reaper hisself, giving me my wake-up call, or I’d be hearing from Betty Gillis on the jungle drums.

It took her thirteen minutes.

‘Breathe again,’ she said. ‘It’s 366 Squadron. You wanna come up here for coffee?’

So we all rendezvoused at Betty’s. She was minding Sandie again, didn’t seem to know where Lois was.

I said, ‘One of these days that kid’s gonna start calling you Mommy.’

‘Be fine by me,’ she said, ‘she’s such a little cutie. Way I see it, Peggy, some folks just aren’t cut out to be mothers, and if I can lend a helping hand, why, I’m doing Sandie a favour too. You heard the way Lois yells at her sometimes? Tell you the truth, I’d love another little one of my own, only Ed’s acting stubborn about it.’

Betty had been putting out feelers, trying to find out the news from 366. See if there were casualties. Pretty soon her telephone started ringing. One of their Invaders had come in on a tight turn and an engine flamed out. The crew had had to eject, and they were all safe home bar one, a sergeant called Benedetto, left one of his legs behind in the wreckage.

We kinda knew his wife. You see girls around, get to recognise their faces. But the Benedettos were quartered on Soapsuds Row, down by the hangars, and besides, we were First Lieuts. We didn’t socialise with the enlisted.

Gayle said, ‘Is he gonna die?’

Betty said, ‘Honey, they can do wonders these days. They’ll give him a new leg and a disability pension and everything.’

Audrey said, ‘That’s right. Air force takes care of its own. Now let’s do something to perk ourselves up. How about a Scarf Exchange? And I have a tangerine lipstick somebody might like.’

Gayle said, ‘He still could die.’

Betty said, ‘We’ll have no more of that kinda talk, thank you, young lady. Now, I have a tray of brownies here needs arranging nice and pretty. Care to make yourself useful?’

Gayle dumped the brownies on the plate.

I whispered to her, ‘You wanna come out driving, after? Get off the base for five minutes? Celebrate me getting back the use of my shift arm?’

She nodded. Little Sandie was looking at her, so solemn. Even she knew something had happened.

Betty’s Best-Ever Brownies

2 sticks sweet butter

4 eggs

4 ounces powdered chocolate

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup sifted flour

1 teaspoon McCormick’s vanilla extract

Heat the oven to 350°C. Grease and flour a large baking tray.

Melt butter over a low flame, stir in chocolate and set aside to cool.

Beat eggs and sugar until pale and creamy. Fold in the chocolate mixture and blend carefully. Gently add the flour, pour into pan and bake until just set (20–30 minutes).

Leave in pan until cool. Cut into squares for serving.

11

Instead of heading up to Brakey we went over by The Warren, the only little bit of woodland in the neighbourhood, spruce mainly, and came through it on a narrow track, trees pressing in both sides, but I liked it a lot better than having that big Norfolk sky watching every move I made. There was a nice earthy smell in there, too, like spring might be on the move.

Gayle was still quiet, so I just talked to myself.

I said, ‘This is like the fairy forest in one of Crystal’s bedtime stories. You see any handsome woodcutters? No, well, I guess Herb Moon’s still winging his way home with the rest of the boys.’

‘How come nobody ever talks about it?’ she said. ‘Peggy? About crashes and stuff? Like this morning, Benedetto nearly didn’t make it, and we just go to coffee at Betty’s and sit round, asking her why her brownies taste so good? Can you explain this to me, ’cause I just don’t get it? I mean, when you hear there’s a plane down, when you hear those trucks going off, don’t none of you ever get the shakes, waiting for the holy Joe to come creeping up the path, tell you you’re widow of the week? Hell, Peggy, don’t none of you get scared?’

I pulled over.

I said, ‘Well, course we do, hon, but we’re not just any old wives. We’re air force. We gotta stay calm and steady for our boys. You know that.’

She said, ‘But why can’t we talk about it?’

I said, ‘Because the boys never do, and if we did, it’d be like jinxing them. Every day they just go out there and do what they gotta do, and you know what? They’re the best. Benedetto blew it, is all. Whaddya expect from 366 Squadron?’

I could bullshit for the Lone Star State.

‘Peg!’ she said. ‘I’m not so dumb I’d say anything to Okey. But that don’t mean us girls can’t talk about it. Picking through Audrey’s goddamned scarves and Benedetto’s leg’s still out there in whatever’s left of his plane, sitting there like a piece a baloney.’

She had the shakes.

‘Happens to 366, it can happen to 96th, it can happen to the air force Chief of Staff hisself. What about when the flaps jam?’ she said. ‘What about when the throttle lever seizes? Stuff happens. Ejector seat don’t eject. Hell, sometimes these things just…they just…break. Don’t make no difference then if it’s a combat ace up there or a blind chimpanzee. I’m scared, Peggy. I’m scared it’s gonna happen to my Okey. Then what will I do?’

I just let her cry some, held her in my arms. I caught a whiff of booze on her. She must have downed it as soon as she heard the crash siren.

I said, ‘Honey, you gotta get a grip. You carry on this way, you’re gonna make yourself ill. Then what’s Okey gonna do? Airman without his sweetheart ain’t worth a light.’

‘Yeah,’ she said. She was fixing up her face. ‘I know.’

We carried on, looping up behind Pepper Clump and the sugar factory and then starting to drop down towards Drampton, so we could pick up Crystal. And who should we pass, trudging along in her zip-front boots, but the woman herself.

I said, ‘There’s Kath Pharaoh.’

She ran when she saw me stop for her. She didn’t take any coaxing to climb in and get a ride home that time.

‘Well, fancy seeing you,’ she said.

I said, ‘This is Gayle. Now you’ve met the whole gang.’

‘How do you do, very pleased to meet you,’ she said. ‘You got home all right, then? In all that fog? I’ve been wondering about you.’

I said, ‘But we all came by a few weeks ago. We came visiting but you weren’t home. John said you were working.’

‘Did he?’ she said.

I said, ‘Didn’t you get the stuff we brought? In a box?’

Kath took her eyes off the road for a minute. ‘Biscuits?’ she said. ‘And strong drink? Was that you?’

I said, ‘It was from all of us. Betty. And Lois. The red-head? And Audrey. You remember? The tall one? We wanted you to have a few things.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s no use expecting a man to get a story straight. John Pharaoh said that was the copper-knob brought it. He never mentioned the rest of you. Was that you brought woollens? And good trousers, hardly worn?’

Seemed like Lois had turned into some kinda angel of mercy. Seemed like she’d decided to fly solo.

‘Well, I thank you very much,’ she said. ‘They were grand biscuits. And them funny sausages in a tin. Champion. Fancy him getting his story wrong. You had a airyplane in trouble this morning, then? We heard the siren a-wailing.’

I tried to signal to her not to pursue that line of conversation, but she was intent on watching me drive.

‘That’s a dangerous thing, flying,’ she said. ‘That’s a mystery to me how a big heavy thing like that stays up in the sky. How they don’t come a-tumbling down every time, I shall never know.’

I was quite expecting Gayle to start up again, but she managed a smile instead. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s a mystery to me too.’

There was no sign of John when we dropped Kath off.

I said, ‘I’ll come and fetch you out some time, like I promised? You could come and visit with Betty and see her royal scrapbooks? She’d love that. Drives her nuts, she tells us about all the dukes and princesses and none of us can ever remember who they are.’

‘Well…I could do,’ she said. She didn’t exactly bite my hand off.

I said, ‘Or we could go for a drive some place? Maybe you could take a turn behind the wheel? See how it feels?’

Then you should have seen her smile. It would have lit up the Cotton Bowl.

Gayle said, ‘Are you crazy? She puts a dent in your fender, Vern’s gonna throw a hissy fit.’ I hadn’t really thought about that.

I called in on Audrey, when I dropped Gayle. Told her about the little misunderstanding.

I said, ‘Far as Kath knew, it was just Lois had took the groceries. And she must have been back since, took clothes for them too. Playing the lady bountiful, and never even said a word to us. I’m gonna see her, right now, find out what her game is.’

Aud said, ‘Well, of course, that’s Lois. She has no concept of teamwork. Nor of when enough is enough. I just hope she’s not going round offending people. You know, Peggy, the Pharaohs may be paupers, but I’m sure they have their pride.’

Sandie was drinking red jello from a cup.

‘Don’t know what the hell I did wrong,’ Lois said. ‘Two days in the Frigidaire and it still ain’t set.’

I said, ‘You’ve been visiting John Pharaoh, I hear.’

She looked at me. There was just a flicker. At the time, I couldn’t have said what it was.

I said, ‘You have to tread careful, you know? Audrey was just saying, how you gotta be careful with charity. Give people too much and you might offend them. Or they could just get that they expect more and more.’

‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I can see the dangers of giving away a couple of Herb’s wore-out shirts. Create unrest and discontent among the natives. Next thing you know, you’ve got an international incident on your hands. There’s probably something in Post Regulations about it. Probably something about putting a fist in Audrey Rudman’s know-it-all face, too, but I may just go for it anyhow. You know how I do love to live life on the edge.’

One thing about Lois. She never bottled things up.

12

We found a back road with tarmac for Kath’s first lesson.

I said, ‘Now. Hold the gas pedal right there and listen to the engine. Bring your shift pedal up real slow, and keep listening, till you hear the sound changing, then just hold it there. You feel how it’s ready to move? Y’understand what I mean? Okay, let’s roll. Gently now. Just give the gas pedal a gentle squeeze.’

I gave her an hour and she was away.

Kath Pharaoh was a natural-born driver. I’d taught a few. My big sister, Connie, didn’t know her right from her left; and a girl on the base at Carswell, a New York City girl, never used anything but the subway, suddenly found herself with the whole of Texas outside her door. But I never seen anybody take to it like Kath. I just hoped she wouldn’t ask me to teach John too. There was something about that smile of his gave me the creeps. Sometimes when I went to pick her up he’d be round the side, skinning a rabbit or fixing up his traps. He’d smile and smile, like he was real excited to see visitors, specially if Gayle had come along for the ride. She was a pretty little thing and he’d keep sneaking a look at her.

All through the spring of ‘52 I saw Kath twice a week at least and she’d drive me around. She was so thrilled, specially when any of those Jexes and Gotobeds’d seen her. She’d give them some regal kinda wave, and then she’d turn and give me her new Pepsodent grin. One time, when it came on to rain, we stopped and picked up a woman trudging along with heavy bags.

‘Look at poor old Annie gitting drenched,’ Kath said. ‘Can we give her a ride?’

It was a proud moment for her, leaning out of her window, shouting, ‘Jump in the back, Annie, and I’ll drop you near your door.’

She climbed in and perched there, steaming, like a wet dog.

Kath said, ‘You all right there, Annie? Soon have you home. Once you can drive a motor, you wonder how you ever went on without it.’

Not that our passenger had asked. She didn’t say a word, and when Kath stopped, outside one of those crouched-down houses, she just got out and went. Never a goodbye or a thank-you.

I said, ‘Who’d you say she was?’

‘Annie,’ she said. ‘She was Annie Jex, then she married Harold Howgego. Their boy Colin was took prisoner in the last lot; Japs got him. You should have seen him when they sent him home. I’ve seen more flesh on a sparrow. Now, he married a girl from Lynn, and her mother was a Jex, only not the same lot, of course. Annie was one of the Waplode Jexes, and her mother was a Pargeter.’

She killed me, reeling them off. I said, ‘I think you just invent these names.’

‘Why?’ she said. ‘Don’t your lot have Howgegos? I didn’t think there was anything you didn’t have.’

‘Howgegos!’ I said ‘What kind of name is that, anyway? I think you lie in bed at night and dream them up.’

She laughed. ‘No I don’t,’ she said. ‘But I have thought up what name I’d have if I was to be a film star. I’d be Loretta. Loretta Jayne-with-a-Y Pharaoh.’

Kath always put me in a good mood. Didn’t matter how much it blew or rained or if I couldn’t make it, after I’d promised we’d go driving, I never heard a word of discontent from her. It was like having a puppy-dog around, always wagging its tail. She was just as happy to come out to play or curl up in her basket and wait.

I said, ‘Okay, Loretta Jayne, are you gonna turn this car round nice and neat? Can you do it in three?’

‘Piece of cake.’

I said, ‘You think you’ll ever get your own wheels?’

‘When we come up on the Treble Chance,’ she said. ‘First thing I’d do is get the electric light brought in. If we had the electric light, I could see to do a bit of sewing. Then I’d buy a motor and a new wringer. And I’d pay you back, for all your juice I’ve been using up. I’d come to America and take you out for a slap-up tea.’

13

None of us had been seeing much of Lois, apart from Betty, who had near enough adopted little Sandie.

‘Lois is a restless soul,’ Betty said to us one time. ‘She’s one of those girls derives no pleasure from a shelf of home-made preserves or a stack of nice ironed sheets, so she may as well go out and commune with nature…’

Audrey spluttered her coffee all over us. ‘Commune with nature? That’s a ten-dollar word for anything Lois might get up to.’

Betty turned pink.

‘I don’t care what she does,’ she said. ‘Point I’m making is, she’s a girl who can’t be cooped up inside four walls. You know what she’s like when she gets a mood on her. If I can babysit I’m probably sparing the poor child getting the rough side of her tongue. Heck, Sandie toddles around after me, got her own little duster and pan, just like Deana used to do. She’s no trouble at all.’

I walked with Audrey to the PX.

I said, ‘You have any idea what Lois is up to? Driving off the base all the time.’ She sure seemed to have got over her fear of getting scalped out there.

‘Don’t ask,’ she said. ‘Don’t tempt me. The germ of gossip may be likened unto a cancer. Gospel according to the CO’s wife, Chapter One, Verse One. All I’ll say is, I never would have taken Lois Moon for such a outdoors kind of girl. Kath ever say anything to you?’

I said, ‘Such as?’

‘’Bout Lois up there visiting all the time?’

Far as I could make out, it was just speculation. I was with the CO’s wife all the way on the dangers of idle talk. Made no sense to me, what a girl like Lois’d be doing with a eel-trapper always looked like he’d got a dirty secret, the way he smiled, always fiddling with his fingers and pacing around. I wasn’t convinced John Pharaoh was playing with a full deck of cards. Still, I was afraid for Kath. She was such a trusting soul. And I was missing Lois, too. We never hung out any more. Never had any laughs. When friend husband is gone for days on end, you need somebody, help you take up the slack.

Audrey was at the Wives’ Club all hours. She loved bridge afternoons and setting up rosters for Red Cross Clothes Closet, and all that stuff. She was always on Gayle’s case to get involved. Said if she wanted Okey to get ahead she had to be seen playing her part too. But Gayle hated the Club. The one time she tried it she was taken to one side and told officers wives don’t chew gum. She never went back.

There couldn’t have been two girls less suited to be neighbours than Audrey and Gayle. And when Benedetto died of his injuries, they had a real ruckus. Gayle said it was plain cruel, the way his widow got three weeks’ notice to clear the post.

Audrey said, ‘Oh, Gayle, grow up why don’t you? You know how many E-5s are waiting to get on base? You can’t have the DW of a deceased sitting around, occupying quarters. Hell, she’s not even military any more.’

For a whole week they managed not to speak to each other, even though their houses were joined together. Then just when I hoped the Easter Bunny might deliver a little love and forgiveness, Carol Benedetto hanged herself. They found her in her quarters. The place was all scrubbed out and shipshape ready for the final inspection. Just scuff marks on the wall where her feet had scrabbled, at the end. When Gayle heard, she went on a bender. I found her down in her broke-back cottage, still in her robe, and I’d say she’d been drinking all morning.

‘I want to go home,’ she said. ‘I wanna go home, see my kid brothers. Get a little house in Boomer. I want Okey. Can you get Okey for me?’

But Okey was at the pad, and when a man’s standing the alert, he can’t be reached, don’t matter if the sky fell in. I put her to bed and as soon as she was asleep I went round to ask Lois to sit with her, while I put Vern’s shirts through the washer. Course, Lois wasn’t home. Good old Herb was there, feeding Sandie on grilled cheese.

‘Hey, c’mon in,’ he said. ‘See what I’m making for her birthday.’

He was carving a long piece of wood. ‘See?’ he said. ‘It’s a African geeraffe. She always loved them dopey-looking creatures. What’you think?’

I guess when he stood it up it did have a kinda animal shape to it.

I said, ‘She’ll be thrilled, Herb. You happen to know what time she’ll be home?’

‘Couldn’t say,’ he said. ‘She likes to drive around some when I’m here to watch Sandie. Get out and about, looking for wishing-wells and newborn lambs and stuff.’

Sandie’d finished her sandwich and was starting on the wood chippings so I left Herb to clean up.

‘Peggy,’ he called after me. ‘Don’t forget now. The geeraffe is a secret.’

14

Audrey and Betty were just coming out from the OWC. They’d been helping set up an Easter candy trail for the kids.

‘Time for a truce, Aud,’ I said. ‘This Benedetto business has hit Gayle real hard. I’m afraid she’s cracking up.’

Betty said, ‘I have a good nourishing soup at home. I’ll go fetch some. That girl needs a mother.’

Audrey said, ‘Yeah, and I’ll come straight down, see Gayle. Maybe I was a little hard on her. You didn’t tell anybody else?’

I said, ‘Tell anybody else what?’

She lowered her voice. ‘Why, that she’s drinking, of course. What we have here is a damage-limitation situation. Wife starts to run off the rails, there goes a man’s career and Okey’s good troop.’

Seemed to me the main thing was to make sure Gayle didn’t come to any harm.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘while we’re on the subject of problem wives, Lois is out on the loose again. Herb’s home playing Mr Mom.’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking about that too.’

Gayle was still on the bed, where I’d left her. Audrey climbed in beside her, gave her a hug.

‘Baby,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry I yelled at you. Can we make up? Be friends as well as neighbours?’

Gayle didn’t look too good. Far as she was concerned I think the room was still spinning.

‘Now listen,’ Audrey said. ‘I understand how you’re feeling. I mean, it’s a real tragedy about Carol Benedetto, but you know, maybe she would have done it wherever she was. Or maybe they should have sent her home sooner than three weeks. You ever think of that? Maybe the military has got it right, forcing people to pick theirselves up and get on with the rest of their lives. Hm? And as for us, we’re wives of the 96th. Whatever turns up we got to do our bit, keep the military machine humming ’cause those Soviets sure aren’t gonna give us any compassionate leave.’

Gayle just lay there listening.

‘Now, you take my advice,’ Aud said, ‘you’ll close your eyes and play possum, ’cause Betty just pulled upside with a thermos of that ham-bone soup of hers.’

That raised a groggy smile.

We left Betty coaxing spoonfuls of broth into her.

I said, ‘She’ll be okay.’

Audrey said, ‘She better be. Now. You wanna try and do something about the Lois situation?’

We went in her car.

She said, ‘I couldn’t give a damn about Lois, you understand? But if Kath Pharaoh finds out, she could make waves. It could get back to the CO, and we don’t want that kind of trouble in the squadron.’

I said, ‘It’s Herb I feel sorry for.’

‘Him too,’ she said. ‘You think you’d be able to keep Kath under control, if it came to it?’

I said, ‘Me?’

‘Well, she’s your friend,’ she said. ‘You think you could keep her quiet?’

I said, ‘Somebody set their cap at your Lance, would you keep quiet?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And so would you. We have our careers to think of.’

First I knew I had a career.

She said, ‘You think she meets him at his house? I don’t think so. What if Kath came home?’

Just beyond the railroad crossing there was an old piece of hardstand, used to have a gas pump on it. She parked there.

‘Let’s walk a little,’ she said.

So we walked where a path was worn, along a ridge, up above the fields. The sun was shining. There was a warm breeze just riffling through the grass and not a sound except for birds singing.

‘There’s a lapwing,’ she said. ‘Hear him? Pee-wit, pee-wit.’

I said, ‘Do we have a plan?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘let’s see if we can see her car.’

‘And then what?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’d just like her to know we’ve had her in our sights. Give her a jolt. Then maybe she’ll come to her senses. Quit running around. I don’t see what else we can do, short of getting her seen to by a veterinarian.’

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘and how do we happen to be walking out here ourselves? We sure as hell can’t say we’re on our way someplace.’

‘We’re getting a breath of spring air, Peggy,’ she said. ‘We’re communing with nature. Oh look. Stop. Don’t move. See what I see? In the field? Way over, nearly in the middle?’

They were up on their hind legs, ears pricked, slugging it out like prize-fighters.

I said, ‘Jeez, I never seen conies that size before. I didn’t think they had anything in this place bigger’n we’ve got back home.’

‘They’re not conies,’ she said. ‘They’re jack hares, and they’re boxing. That’s what they do in the spring. It’s a sign the sap is well and truly rising.’

At the end of the ridge we could see across to Blackdyke Drove. No sign of anybody at Kath’s. I knew for a fact she was beet-hoeing.

Aud said, ‘Let’s go as far as the willows over there. They run right down to the water. She could be there. Getting a lesson on eels.’

We carried on along the track. Every step I took, I wished more and more I’d minded my own business. I was feeling like a guilty party myself, sneaking around, trying to catch a person doing wrong. I never noticed the tyre marks. I think Audrey did though. I seem to remember she suddenly picked up the pace.

We were right past the old tractor shed before I saw the trunk of Lo’s old Chevy poking out. Then there was John Pharaoh, staring right at us outta the rear windowshield, but not really seeing us, his being otherwise engaged. Me and Audrey were rooted to the spot. Then he must have said something ’cause the door opened and Lois scrambled out with her nylons round her ankles. Her hair was all mussed up too. She was trying to push it out of her eyes.

I turned and ran. But Audrey stood her ground. Then I heard Lois start up. ‘What the hell is your game?’ she yelled.

‘What’s our game?’ Audrey shouted back. ‘Well, that’s pretty rich!’

‘Can’t keep your long nose outta anything, can you, Rudman? Tell you what, you are a sick woman. And you…’ That was me. ‘…I never took you for a snoop. I thought you were my friend.’

I kept running. Audrey walked back in her own good time.

We had to clean the earth off our sneakers before we could get back into the car. I didn’t feel too good.

I said, ‘Jeez, Aud, now I wish we never had gone.’

‘Me too,’ she said. ‘It’s made me feel horny as hell, and Lance is standing the duty the next three nights. Still, mission accomplished. We marked her card. Saved the honour of the squadron.’

15

‘Fuck the squadron,’ Lois said. Using a word like that in front of her child. I had gone round to see her. Try to explain things, mend a few fences, but she wasn’t ready yet.

Saturday I picked Kath up and we drove to Downham. They had a cute little market there, sold eggs and stuff, laid out on tables under canvas canopies. Potatoes covered in dirt and all kinds of rabbit-food greenery. I wouldn’t have touched any of it for fear of disease, but it was fun to go look.

Kath said, ‘You’re quiet, Peg. You all right?’

I said, ‘I’m okay. Things on my mind.’

‘Have you?’ she said.

She was buying something called roe. It comes from a fish. There were seabirds sitting in a line along a roof. ‘Look at that,’ she said. ‘Must be bad weather coming in. You sure you don’t want any roe? That’s smashing on a bit of buttered toast.’

We walked on.

I said, ‘Friend of mine has been playing around. You know what I mean? Married woman. And I don’t want to see her go ruin her life.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I don’t see what you can do. I think I’ll get a bit of celery while I’m here.’

I said, ‘Her husband ever finds out, or the other wife, I don’t like to think. If I had that done to me, Vern ever played away, I’d kill him.’

‘But that’s different with men,’ she said. ‘That’s in their nature. They can’t hardly stop theirselves, what I’ve seen of it. That’s like trying to keep a tomcat from straying.’

I said, ‘Like hell it’s different. A man stands up and makes his vows, he oughta keep to them.’

My heart was pounding.

She said, ‘I agree. But how do you get them to do it? That’s the question. You can’t be watching them every minute.’

I was lost for words.

‘I tell you what,’ she said. ‘I always say to John Pharaoh, “Be good, and if you can’t be good, be careful. You bring trouble to my door, I shall get you spayded. Then you’ll be sorry.” Oh, there’s May Gotobed. Can we give her a ride home?’

I reported to Audrey, soon as I could.

I said, ‘I am in shock. I’m sure Kath don’t know what’s been going on, but then, I’m not sure how much she’d care, if she found out. She has some highly unusual ideas about husbands, I must say.’

‘Mm,’ Audrey said. ‘So we keep Lois under surveillance. And when she’s had time to cool down, I think I’ll make a gesture of reconciliation. I think I’ll invite her to join the Reading Circle I’m starting up. First book we’re gonna read is The Good Earth.

I said, ‘Yeah. I’m sure Lois wouldn’t miss that for the world.’

16

A letter come from Mom Dewey. Crystal’d had her picture took at school, looked real cute, so of course I’d sent one to his folks and one to mine.

‘Dear Vern’, she wrote,

I put Crystal on the ledge in the front kitchen, pride of place, and everybody that has seen her has remarked what a angelic face she has, spitting image of yourself aged five. We have had our troubles, your father brought in some grade ewes and some wethers, Romneys and Blue Faces, five got loose, got pasture bloat so bad they were goners, another one swallowed a French letter, excuse my language, and I’d sure like to know how one of them things got on Bolster Graze. If there’s a way to die young, you can depend on a sheep to find it. Good money thrown after bad. I had my way we’d sell up, open a yarn store in Skowhegan. Norton Beebe, you’ll remember Norton, pumped gas down in Palmyra, had a sister with a withered leg, he got killed out in Korea, he was in the infantry, National Guard, darned if I understand what this war is all about. I just give thanks that you’re not out there, risking your neck. Best regards to your wife. Your loving mother, Clementine Dewey.

Vern screwed it into a ball and sent it spinning across the room.

‘You read that?’ he said. ‘Not risking your neck? She ever hear about the Soviet Union? She ever hear a nucular capability? What’s she think? I’m sitting here on my finger, flying a desk?’

I said, ‘I dunno, Vern. How’s she supposed to know what you’re doing? I sure as hell don’t.’

‘Norton Beebe,’ he said. ‘Guess he’s some kinda hero now. Tell you, the trouble with Maine, folks there don’t see the big picture. They’re so busy thinking ’bout some yellowskin shot Norton, they don’t even know there’s a big Russian grizzly after their asses. I guess you gotta look at the world from 42,000 feet to understand.’

He was doing his sit-ups.

‘You seen anything of Lois?’

I wondered where he might be coming from with a question like that. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I think I did. Why d’you ask?’

‘She say anything ’bout her birthday?’

‘No.’

‘Only, Herb’s fixing a surprise for her and he’s worried she might have gotten wind of it.’

‘She never said.’

‘He brung it down to Beer Call tonight,’ he said, ‘show us what he’d done so far. He’s carving her a roebuck. Amazing what that man can do with a knife. He’s got a real knack.’

I said, ‘You sure it’s a roebuck?’

‘Yup,’ he said.

I said, ‘You sure it’s not a giraffe?’

‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Legs were too short.’

17

I kept a low profile, stayed outta Lois’s path for a day or two, but in the end she come to my door.

‘Guess we better clear the air? she said.

She came in and I made coffee. It was hard, though, trying to talk normal with her, after what I had seen.

‘Peg,’ she said, ‘I know it didn’t look good …’

I said, ‘I didn’t want to get involved, Lo.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Well, I figured it would have been Audrey’s idea, snooping around, checking up on me. Thing is, you know, sometimes things happen that shouldn’t … but it was the only time. I swear.’

I said, ‘I don’t wanna talk about it.’

‘Me neither,’ she said. ‘So that’s that.’

‘Yup,’ I said.

She said, ‘You do believe me?’

‘Of course,’ I said. I lied.

‘So we’re friends again. Clean slate?’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Clean slate.’

‘Great!’ she said. ‘So you coming to Betty’s tomorrow night? We’re gonna have a pyjama party for my birthday. Booze, records, everything. Crystal can sleep over.’

Vern and Ed and Herb were starting three weeks of night missions. Okey was on assignment, Norway or some place we weren’t meant to know about.

I said, ‘How about Audrey?’

‘Yeah. She’s up for it,’ she said. ‘We declared a ceasefire. She’s bringing potato chips.’

18

I said to Audrey, ‘Betty’s twittering around making party favours and popping corn and I feel like I’m going to a party in a minefield.’

‘Panic over,’ she said. ‘I think we’ve put a stop to that little adventure. And no casualties!’

I took along beer and a card, but I didn’t wear my pyjamas. I kinda forgot, but it could just have been my way of holding out on Lois. I still had a certain something on my mind, until I seen some genuine sign of her shaping up.

I said to Crystal, ‘You gonna play nicely with Sherry and Deana?’

‘Only if I don’t have to be the baby or the patience,’ she said. Mommies and Hospitals were about the only games the Gillis girls knew. And sure enough, when we got there they were hauling Sandie around like a sack of grain, telling her she had to get a Band-Aid on her head.

Crystal sat in the corner, going through Betty’s albums. She never minded entertaining herself. I could hear her making up names for all the people in the photos. ‘Princess Nancy and Princess Jennifer and Princess Crystal Margaret Dewey, and they live in a palace and they are allowed a dog of their very own.’

By the time the kids crashed it was ten o’clock and I was the only one left sober.

‘I’d like to toast a drink,’ Betty said, up-ending a Schlitz all over the rug. ‘To our birthday girl, Lois. And to my Ed, ’cause Friday it’ll be our ninth anniversary.’

‘Nine years!’ Lois said. ‘D’you get a emerald or something for that?’

‘Gosh, no. Nine is … Audrey, help me out here, is nine years cardboard or tin?’

‘Well, whatever you get, you’ve earned it.’ Lois was on the floor, sharing cushions and a bowl of potato chips with Gayle. ‘Nine years with Ed Gillis. You deserve a Purple Heart. Where’d you find that man, anyway?’

‘In Warsaw, Indiana,’ Betty said. ‘I was visiting with Glick cousins and Ed was the boy next door. It was love at first sight. How ’bout you, girls? Audrey? How about you and Lance. Was it love at first sight?’

Underneath that rosebud nightdress Betty had a heart of pure mush.

‘Kind of,’ Audrey said. ‘I liked his freckles first. I took my time deciding about the rest of him.’

Betty said, ‘And what brought you together?’

‘Naked ambition,’ Lois said. ‘Audrey’s the only one of us gonna make Mrs Full-Bird Colonel, and you heard it here first.’

Audrey smiled. Seemed like the peace was gonna hold.

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I suppose it was Route 94 brought us together, ’cause I was in Chicago, and Lance was in Great Lakes, Illinois. I wouldn’t mind a buck for every time I drove that highway.’

Lois had it about right, though, Lance being Lance T. Rudman II, son of the late Commodore Lance T. Rudman, US Navy, Annapolis Academy, white gloves and all and Audrey having such a cut-glass style about her.

Anyway, I told them about me and Vern, and Gayle told us how she couldn’t ever remember a time when she didn’t know Okey. They used to swing on the same old truck tire and go to the same Baptist church. In 1946, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, told her he’d be back for her and everybody said, ‘Hell’ll freeze over before any Jackson boy keeps his word.’ First thing he did after he made the Officer Candidate School was write her ‘You coming, then?’

‘A real romantic proposal, huh?’ Lois poured herself another shot. ‘Well, my turn now. I was a Roller Derby queen, with the Corona Park Demonettes, and I was just gri-i-i-nding my skates one time when this Bluesuiter come up to me, says, “You don’t mind my saying, miss, you got the prettiest hair I ever seen.” That was Herbert P. Moon, come up to the big city from McGuire on a weekend pass. I don’t know where he learned his manners, but he was a gentleman. He kept writing me, after he went back, and I never was much of a penpal. Next thing I knew, he got orders to Hawaii, wanted to know would I make him a happy man? That was a tough call. Never thought I’d end up marrying a woodchuck, though … ’ She squealed. ‘Speaking of woodchucks, I haven’t showed you what I got for my birthday. I’ve been waiting till Sandie’s little ears had stopped flapping for the night.’

She crawled across the floor, behind Betty’s couch, looking for her bag, sent the popcorn flying. ‘Hold on there, girls,’ she said. She had her hand inside the bag. ‘Now … ’ she said. ‘I want you to bear in mind, this is a hand-crafted item. It was lovingly fashioned by my dear husband, using his own fair hands, and I think I can say, without fear of contradiction, you’ll never have seen the like of it before. Girls, are you bored with those dreary gifts of Parisian scent? Do you dread unwrapping yet another pair of silky drawers trimmed with Chantilly lace and having to fake delight? Then why not drop a hint to the man in your life? You too could be the proud owner of a Herb Moon original … ’ she brung it out with a flourish, ‘carved … dachshund-type animal!’

I daresay that’s the way it goes if you’re a wood-carver. You hit a knot in the wood, you just got to go where it takes you and make the best of things. I guess there’s a lesson there for all of us. I could still see a hint of giraffe about that dachshund’s head, though.

We laughed till we thought we’d die. Woke Sherry up with all that screaming, holding our aching guts and begging for mercy.

‘Mommy,’ she said, standing there with her little eyes all scrunched up. ‘Mommy? Did Daddy shout at you again?’

19

Vern was busy mixing up a mess of his Real Mean Barbecue Sauce.

Vern Dewey’s Real Mean Barbecue Sauce

Mix 1 cup oil, 2 yellow onions (minced), 2 bell peppers (minced) and 2 red chillis (minced) with 2 cans of tomato pulp, 3 big spoons of sugar, 3 spoons of vinegar, a good pinch of salt and a dash of liquid hickory-smoke. The longer you leave the ribs in this, the better they’ll be.

!WARNING!

You better scrub your fingers real good afterwards. You get chilli juice on your privates you’ll be sorry.

He said, ‘I suppose you gotta drive out there, running a limousine service for the breeds?’ He was mad at me for inviting Kath and John Pharaoh for the Fourth of July. ‘Don’t you know your history, Peg?’ he said. ‘It’s a day of mourning for them. Day they lost the greatest nation on earth.’

I’d just invited them for ribs and hamburger, was all.

I said, ‘How about a little Christian kindness and hospitality? You seen the meat rations they been getting out there?’

I had. I’d seen things on sale, I swear, bodily parts never intended to see the light of day, never mind the inside of a skillet. Brains. And tripe.

‘That’s not so bad,’ Kath used to say, ‘if you can get an onion or two to put with it, cook it nice and slow – that’s quite tasty.’ How the years can change a person.

We were using the Gillises’ front yard, so Ed was in charge of ops. Audrey brought potato salad, Betty made brownies and Johnny Applesauce cake, Gayle and Lo were in charge of some evil brew they swore was Bloody Mary, and I made fried chicken. Vern and Okey were meant to be assisting Ed; Lance too, when he turned up. Recipe for war if ever I heard one, four jocks gathered around one barbecue pit.

Wasn’t long, though, till Okey and Vern lost interest in the secret of the perfect hamburger. Vern fetched a ball and they went across the road to Deek Kurlich’s quarters, shoot a few hoops with him and his boy. Crystal followed, of course, getting under their feet, determined to be one of the gang.

Herb was away on assignment. Just as well. First thing I seen when I pulled up outside Kath’s house was John Pharaoh wearing one of Herb’s old shirts. Lime green Ban-Lon, with a blue stripe. I’d have recognised it anywhere. He was carrying a raggedy old pillowcase, with something inside it. Gave me that sly smile and I blushed scarlet thinking of what he was at, the last time I seen him.

‘I got a surprise for you,’ he said. ‘For your party.’

I really didn’t want any more surprises from him. And if I had known what it was, I’d never have allowed him in my car with it.

When Kath walked out the door, I hardly knew her. She’d had her hair curled up all night, touch of tangerine lipstick given her by Audrey, and a polka-dot ballerina skirt, Lois’s one and only try at dressmaking, far as I knew. I’d wondered what had become of it. God knows she made us all suffer while she was working on it. Said the dots made her eyes hurt. Gave us earache, more to the point. Still, it had finally gone to a good home. Kath looked so pretty in it.

By the time we got back to the base, Ed was cooking up a storm. It smelled so good. Deana run across and told Vern our company had arrived and food was near enough ready.

I said, ‘Vern, this here’s John. Why don’t you get him a cold beer?’

‘Right,’ he said. Then, real quiet, to me, ‘Why? He lost the use a his legs?’

Okey heard it. He said, ‘I’ll get it, Vern. You ready for another?’

So Okey passed John a beer and then he hung around the pit watching the Maple Short Ribs turn mahogany-brown. He didn’t seem bothered Vern had turned his back on him. He just stood there, sucking on his beer and holding his pillowcase.

Kath said, ‘You go steady with that ale, John Pharaoh.’

I seen Ed sneering.

‘Easy to see who’s wearing the pants there,’ he said. Priceless remark from a man that was wearing PT shorts and a plastic apron, but Vern sniggered anyway.

I was so mad at him. He knew better than behaving like that, even if Ed didn’t, but that’s jocks for you. Put more than two of them together and you have a bunch of show-off kids.

John had been studying the barbecue. He said, ‘You ever cook a barley eel on a griddle like that?’

‘No, my friend,’ Ed said, ‘I don’t believe I did.’

It was Okey looked inside the pillowcase. ‘Christamighty, Vern,’ he said, ‘you should see the size a this sucker.’

Then John brought it outta the bag. It must have been four feet long, still had its head on, but no skin. Betty screamed. I think I did too. I heard Vern whistle. Get him on to fishing and all that talk about breeds and knuckle-grazers was soon forgot.

‘Jeez!’ he said. ‘You catch that hereabouts?’

John said, ‘Yes. That’s a green barley. They just started running.’ He looked so proud. ‘He’s a big un, this one,’ he said. ‘When I seen him in the grig this morning, I thought to save him, bring him along. I know how you Colonials like your grub. Kath’ll tell you how to cook him.’

Kath Pharaoh’s Way with Eels

The young ones are the best, before they’ve turned yellow. Put them in a pillowcase with a handful of salt and swish that around in a tub of water till the sliminess is gone. Fry them in bacon fat. They’re soon done. If you can’t get elvers, then get an old boy, eight or nine years old. After you’ve skinned him, cut him into two-inch pieces and bake him on a grid. That needs a good hot flame. Nice with piccalilli.

Vern and Okey were inspecting the beast.

‘Stun it with a mallet?’

‘Had to,’ he said. ‘Generally I pierce them through the spine with a skewer. Couldn’t hold this old boy, though. I had to give him a clout with my hammer.’

‘Skin come off easy?’

‘Not too bad. Do you put a slip-loop round him, hang him from a good strong hook, then cut round him, just aback of his head – Stanley knife does it nice and clean – then grab holt of the skin here, use a pair of pliers and just give that a good old pull, that comes off, like peeling off a glove. He might still jerk around a bit, but you just pay no heed. Do you cut his head off, he’ll soon calm down.’

I heard something behind me. Turned just in time to see Lois, running to the bathroom. Ed fetched a good knife and they carved that evil-looking creature into steaks and made space for them on the hot grid.

Lance made a big entrance. He’d been at the Officers’ Club helping to set up the fireworks. He strode in, said a few kind words to everybody, shook John and Kath by the hand like he was some visiting dignitary, asked them had they come far and all that. Then he called us to order and we all looked to the flag.

Little Gayle stood on a kitchen chair in her gingham pedal-pushers and sang us the Star Spangl’d Banner, fine voice she had. I had to wipe a tear, I felt so far from home. Wherever that might be. I didn’t miss my mom nor my sister, and me and Vern had moved around so much I didn’t really belong anyplace any more. Maybe it was the fumes from the Kurlichs’ charcoal briquettes made my eyes water. Maybe it was the eel.

Vern said, ‘There goes 366 Squadron, generating more smoke than heat, as usual.’ Just a little light enmity between aircrews. We were playing them at softball after eats and we had plans to whup their hides.

Kath was acting shy, with the guys around, I guess, till she saw Okey start giving the girls pony-rides on his back. Then she joined in, down on her hands and knees with little Sandie clinging round her neck, shouting giddyup.

She didn’t eat much, pecking at her food. John was eating enough for the two of them, though. He kept going back for more – chicken, cake, hamburger, ice cream, eel. He just piled it high, pacing up and down, with that funny little smile of his. He never went near Lois, though, never even looked her way. I know because I was keeping my eye on her. And all she had was crackers and booze, crackers and more booze.

I said, ‘Lois, what’s your problem?’ after she told me she didn’t feel up to playing softball. ‘That leaves us a man short.’

‘Come inside a minute,’ she said.

We went into Betty’s kitchen.

‘You keep a secret?’ she said. ‘I’m expecting. Only don’t you say a word t’anybody else.’

She didn’t look good. Kinda blotchy. I hugged her.

I said, ‘In that case, I forgive you. First three months with Crystal, I couldn’t even keep water down. Herb pleased?’

‘That’s what I mean, Peg,’ she said. ‘Me and Herb haven’t had time to sit down and talk about it. You know? So keep it to yourself.’

Dorothy Kurlich was waving us it was time to go down to the diamond.

‘Take my advice, Lo,’ I said, ‘you’ve got a migraine. Go home, lie down, get your face outta here, before the interrogation starts. Leave Sandie. She’ll be fine.’

20

Betty said, ‘Migraine, my eye. That girl’s in the family way. But don’t you worry, I won’t tell a soul. Well, I hope that means the game’s off. I never wanted to play anyhow. Swinging at a silly ball.’

Lance was our captain. He had to be. He was the tallest and the blondest and he had ‘Leader’ written all over him. He said how about recruiting John, take Lois’s place, but Kath heard that. She said, ‘No. He won’t manage that. He can’t hit a ball. If you’re short, though, I’ll have a go.’

Ed muttered something to Vern about too many women. Something about why didn’t we just let them run for president and be done with it. But Lance put Kath in to bat 9, and he asked Betty to help her along till she got the hang of the game. Which was like asking Mr Magoo to lead the blind.

366’s line-up was Ax Bergstrom, captain, and his wife, Ruby; Dorothy and Deek Kurlich; Pat and Yvette Franklin; Ginger Bass and Lorene; and Tom Hannegan. His wife was home to Nebraska, dropping their firstborn any day.

First inning, Okey homered in to centre field, Lance popped up to third and then Ed put us up 2–0 with a home run to left, Betty squealing, ‘Oh Ed, oh Ed!’ Then Vern popped up to Ruby Bergstrom at short and then I done the very same thing myself.

Me and Vern Dewey had a long-running disagreement regarding the ability of the female of the species to hurl a ball and, this being the military, the fact that I pitched for Topperwein High, 1939 to 1941, helped them on their way to a team-low ERA of 3.09 in the Guadalupe County Senior Girls’ League, counted for nothing with our captain. I guess he felt he’d done enough for womankind that day. So it was friend husband who stepped up to the mound, pitched so wild he gave away three walks, then Deek Kurlich hit a home run. Nice work, Vern.

Hannegan fouled out to first base and Ruby B and Dorothy both grounded out.

Lance walked alongside me as we changed sides. I said, ‘Is that a change of pitcher I hear clanking through the cog-wheels of your mind?’

‘I guess,’ he said. ‘I hate to cause strife between husband and wife, though.’

‘Woman’s game.’ That was the unkindest cut Vern could come up with when he heard I was taking his place.

Ax Bergstrom pitched to Gayle and she singled down the left field-line. Audrey walked, Betty struck out, never got the bat off her shoulder and then there stood Kath, with her sleeves rolled up and that polka-dot skirt tucked up in her drawers. Next thing Bergstrom knew, the ball was well on its way to Norwich. Trouble was, Kath didn’t know she was meant to drop the bat and Captain James Maggs, who was umpiring, was the type of unbending bastard does everything by the book. Still, Kath had showed us what she was made of.

‘Well, just look at that,’ Okey said. ‘We gone and adopted ourselves a left-handed power-hitter.’ He was so excited he lined out to short.

Lorene Bass faced my first pitch. I had her and First Lieutenants Franklin and Bass struck out, all three.

Third inning, Lance and Ed singled, then Vern hit to second and by the time he moved his ass, Deek Kurlich had stepped on to the bag and whipped the ball across to first. I was so mad at him, I lost my head and popped up to third.

I pitched well after that, kept 366’s finest pretty much pinned down.

Fourth inning we got there, slow but steady, put us 6–4 up. Then fifth inning if Vern didn’t go and make the same foolish error again. I walked, but then Gayle grounded out to first base.

I said to Lance, ‘Please tell me you’re not allowing Mr Double-Play Dewey near a bat again.’

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘whatever happened to wifely devotion?’

‘He gets that in buckets,’ I said. ‘Now, why don’t you use the brain God gave you and let little Deana pinch hit for Vern? She can’t do worse.’

He said he’d think it over.

Sixth inning the question didn’t arise, but Kath homered to right field and Lorene Bass never even saw it go.

I gave up two runs when I should have held them scoreless, but Ruby Bergstrom had a good eye – and Yvette Franklin too, when she put her mind to it. I’d have had the both of them on my team if I’d had to name USAF Drampton’s Best.

Final inning Lance said to Vern, ‘Why don’t you rest up that shoulder? Young Deana here’s itching to take a swing.’

‘All the same to me,’ Vern said. And it was, too. He just wanted to get back to the beer and talk lugworms some more with John Pharaoh.

We were ahead 7–6. They put Hannegan in to pitch, instead of Ax Bergstrom, ask me that just smelled of desperation. First pitch, Lance popped up to short. Ed singled to left. Deana walked. Only eight years old and that linthead Hannegan couldn’t get the better of her. I got a walk too. Then Gayle stroked a double to the left. She could have walked into second. Audrey hit a slow grounder but beat it out to first. Bases loaded. Betty, of course, struck out, called strikes being something of a speciality with her, same as her chicken pot-pie. Kath was up and darned if she didn’t hit a rope to right, scoring two more. 11–6.

I held them scoreless. It wasn’t hard. Once they’d seen what I could do to Pat Franklin, they kinda lost the will to fight.

‘You enjoy that?’ I said to Kath, when we were headed back for more eats. I knew she’d enjoyed it.

‘That was all right,’ she said. ‘That’s like rounders, only with daft rules. Can we stop for the fireworks, if that’s not too much trouble?’

21

I was in Kath’s kitchen, giving her a home-permanent. We had the door open, on account of the fumes, even though it was raining out there fit to drown a duck, and I could hear John Pharaoh the other side a the wall, moving his traps about, getting up to whatever it was he did in there.

I said, ‘We could have done this at my place, shone a bit more light on the subject. Way I’m groping around in this gloom, you’re gonna end up with some kinda hairstyle. You know I never mind fetching you over.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Now, don’t take this the wrong way, but that gives me the creeps, the place you live. Barbed wire. Men with guns looking in your motor every time you drive in. That puts me on edge.’

I said, ‘I didn’t know that. I thought you liked coming to the base? You like the electric light.’

She did, too. Every time she came she flicked it on, make sure it was still working.

I said, ‘You like the commissary.’

She loved the commissary. Seeing all those products stacked high. Stuff she had never heard of. Miracle Whip. Niblet corn. My-T-Fine Chocolate Pudding. We always bought something for her to take home and try.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I do like some of it. I like seeing you, and little Crystal, and your pals. But it’s all the rules and regulations I don’t like. You haven’t hardly got a mind to call your own. Can’t go down near the airyplanes. Can’t get yourself a little job, put a bit of jingle in your pocket. You can’t even pin a nice picture on your wall for fear you’ll get in trouble with the bosses. I couldn’t be doing with that, Peg. I mean to say, I know we haven’t got the electric in yet, but at least I can please myself. I can go anywhere I choose.’

I said, ‘And where would you go? If you could choose anywhere?’

Her eyes shot across to that old postcard she had pinned up. ‘Cromer?’ she said.

I said, ‘Not London, then?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s a terrible place. Hundreds of streets. I’d get lost in a minute. I’ve been to Norwich, though. That’s another big place. We went for a Sunday School outing. Superintendant got a charabanc up. We had a crate of fizzy lemonade on the back seat, started exploding. Must have been all the jolting.’

I said, ‘You got any photos? I’ve never seen any pictures of you when you were a kid.’

‘We did have,’ she said, ‘but they’re long gone. When Mam was poorly, near the end, she got some funny ideas. One day she emptied the drawer. Photos, certificates, she firebacked the lot, thought they harboured disease. And you can’t replace them. She couldn’t help it. She didn’t know what she was doing.’

I said, ‘You got on well with your mom?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I do miss her.’

John appeared in the doorway. He laughed when he saw Kath’s head sprouting curlers.

‘Never mind laughing,’ she said. ‘When Peg’s done this I shan’t have to bother putting it up in pipecleaners every night. You going now?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I just paunched a few rabbits.’ Foo, was how he said it. ‘I thought I’d take ‘em down to Brakey. See what I can get for them.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘But don’t bring strawberries. I’m sick of them.’ She had brought some to the base one day. Real live strawberries with their leaves on and a smell of fruit and everything.

John started to go.

‘And do you see Jim Jex, don’t end up leaning on a bar with him…’ she said.

He left.

‘…come home reeking of ale,’ she shouted after him. ‘Talking a load of twaddle.’ She looked up at me. ‘It’s for his own good,’ she said. ‘He’s easy led. You still got your mam alive, Peggy?’

I did, for what it was worth. Thing about Mom was, she was always more interested where the next man was coming from than how her kids were doing. Whoever my daddy was, I didn’t remember him. Just a long line of new daddies breezing through, making Mom laugh behind closed doors, then yelling some and disappearing in a cloud of dust. Some of them were okay. Most of them didn’t stay long enough for me to find out. One took his belt to me and my sister Connie bit him on the leg. Only act of sisterly solidarity she ever showed me. Mom liked Connie better because she would usually oblige the latest daddy with a winning smile. Also, she had pretty blue eyes.

I said, ‘Yeah, my mom’s in San Antonio, Texas. But you marry a aviator you’re always on the move. Makes life easier if you’re not all the time looking back over your shoulder, hankering for family.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I can see that. You’ve got a nice bunch of pals, though.’

There was something I had to tell her, made me feel nervous.

I said, ‘Yeah. And did you hear, Lois is having a baby?’

‘Is she?’ she said, and her face lit up. Then I knew, whatever she was thinking, it wasn’t the terrible thought I’d been having from the moment Lois told me she was pregnant.

‘Oh, how lovely!’ she said. ‘What a lovely bit of news. I shall have to knit her something. I’ll do something in blue. They’ll be hoping for a boy this time, I expect. Or lemon. Either sort can wear lemon. When’ll that be, then?’

‘Christmas,’ I said. ‘Now, shall we plan a trip? You really want to go to Cromer?’

‘Oh, yes please,’ she said. ‘That’s a proper seaside there.’

Kath had never been to the beach.

‘All that water,’ she said. ‘Do you think you can see to the other side?’

I said, ‘Well, I never was at Cromer, but I believe it’s some kinda ocean there, so I guess not.’

She said, ‘I know the water comes in and goes out again ’cause that’s called the tide and Harold Jex was at Cromer, sent us a picturepostcard, and he seen this tide business with his own eyes. But the thing that mystifies me is, how does it know when to come in and go out? What if it forgot to go and just kept coming?’

I said, ‘Kath, that’s two questions more’n I have answers for. Now, let’s have a glass of soda while your curls are cooking.’

22

Lois went from never being home to never being any place else. I went round to see her all the time. Her quarters were messy, unless Herb had been home and had a field day, and she just grouched around, watching The Roy Rodgers Show and feeding Sandie on cookies.

I said, ‘You still feeling rough?’

‘I could sleep round the clock,’ she said. ‘Was I like this with Sandie?’

I said, ‘I don’t recall. But I think your temper was a little sweeter.’

She said, ‘You and Vern gonna have any more?’

I said, ‘Nope.’

She said ‘You seem very sure.’

I said, ‘I am. I have my Dutch cap. House catches fire, after Crystal it’ll be the first thing I grab.’

‘I can’t stand those things,’ she said. ‘By the time you’ve remembered where you left it. Then it has life of its own. Springs outta your fingers, goes flying across the bathroom and it always lands in that skronk behind the WC. I’d sooner take my chances.’

I said, ‘Well, there y’are then. And now you have one of those little chances on the way.’ I said, ‘You could always clean up the skronk behind the john. You could always wear your Dutch cap every night.’

‘Hm,’ she said. ‘How come you’re so damned smart?’ She just sat there, stains down her sweatshirt.

I said, ‘You just tired?’

‘Sick and,’ she said.

‘Nothing else wrong?’ I said.

She looked at me. ‘No,’ she said, ‘nothing else. Why? Ain’t that enough?’

I couldn’t read her.

I said, ‘Kath’s knitting for you. You have a preference for lemon or blue?’

‘Couldn’t care less,’ she said. ‘How about grey?’

I still couldn’t read her.

‘Well, you’re good fun,’ I said. ‘You wanna come on a trip, next week? To the beach? The girls are all coming. Two cars.’

‘I dunno,’ she said. ‘What beach? Does it have surf and everything?’

I said, ‘All I know is, it’s called Cromer and it probably beats staying home.’

She said she’d think about it.

I said, ‘You do that. If you’d rather sit here, sniffing jet fuel, we’ll understand.’

By the time I walked through my door, she was on the phone.

‘I’ll come,’ she said. ‘On one condition. Can Sandie ride in a different car than me? I can’t stand her climbing all over my belly.’

I said, ‘Fair enough. Course, you might be trading for Deana or Sherry.’

‘No problem,’ she said. ‘One look from me and those Gillis girls turn to stone. Is there a funfair at Cromer?’

23

So the deal was, I’d take Betty and Kath and Lois, and Audrey’d bring Gayle and all the kids.

Gayle said, ‘I’m getting in practice for next year, Peggy. Soon as this tour’s done, me and Okey are gonna have a little baby.’

Of course, the minute it seemed like we were all set, Betty started changing everything around.

‘I’ll have to take my own car,’ she said. ‘Ed don’t like the girls riding with other drivers.’

Then she was worried about Cromer. ‘We don’t know a thing about the place,’ she said to me. ‘What if we break down and they don’t even have telephones out there?’

Tuesday was dry and bright. We said we’d try for Wednesday, and Tuesday night there was such a sunset, that great big sky was all pink and orange and then it turned green and mauve. Crystal had her lunch-pail packed and ready. Snickers, potato chips, and her rabbit-fur mittens sent by Mom Dewey.

I said, ‘Precious, you’re gonna lose them and then you’ll be sad. Why don’t you just leave them safe at home?’

Her lip started to tremble.

Vern pitched in. ‘Don’t you start snivelling,’ he said to her. Fastest way to get the tears flowing, of course. Amazing how a man can know so much about aerodynamics and so little about psychology, but I guess the brain only has space for so much.

Then he turned on me. ‘You only don’t like her treasuring her mitts on account they come from the Deweys. What she ever get from your side of the family? What did your mom ever send her?’

Crystal was now going full throttle. Then Betty phoned. ‘Ed wants to know what time we’ll be home,’ she said.

Me and Vern picked up where we’d left off. He was right about Crystal’s Gramma Shea, but I wasn’t gonna give him the satisfaction.

I said, ‘I could care less who sent what. It’s high summer, high as it gets in this two-bit island you brung us to, and I ain’t having my day in the sunshine ruined when she loses her fur mittens. Which I guarantee she will do.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘you’re having a real hard time of it here, Peg, I can see. Hanging out with the girls, uh-oh, Pepsi Hour again – my, how the time does fly! Driving around, taking in the sights. Running a beauty parlour for breeds.’

I just had to laugh in his silly face when he called Kath’s kitchen a beauty parlour. He raised his hand to me. I said, ‘Don’t even think about it,’ and the phone rang again.

She said, ‘Ed wants to know…’

I said, ‘Betty, what is wrong with your husband? Does he wanna come along with us, ride shotgun?’

‘Well!’ she said. ‘There’s no call to take that attitude. Ed just wants to know…’

I said, ‘He think you’re going on this trip to meet men? Put him on. I’ll tell him he’s right.’

By the time I was through with her, Vern had got a smile back on Crystal’s face, pulling one of his tickle-fight stunts, and he was on his way out the door, going eel-netting with John Pharaoh.

Goddarned mitts. Probably full of bugs and all sorts. But that’s Maine folk for you.

24

We had such a day. Never got to Cromer ’cause Ed had decided that would have took us too deep into Indian country. He said Betty was allowed to go to Hunstanton, so that’s where we went. I had lost the will to argue. Same stretch of water, far as I could make out. Audrey was navigating.

I asked Kath if she minded about Cromer. She said she didn’t, and she sure didn’t look like a disappointed woman. Got her head tied up in a scarf Lois gave her, to cover where the permanent had gone a little wild, and she was wearing a pair a peep-toe sandals, bought with her beet-hoeing money.

We got buckets and spades soon as we arrived, and Crystal ran on to the sands, started right in digging. She said she was building an air base for Sandie.

It was a wide, wide shore. Kath asked a man selling newspapers where was the water and he said the tide was out, gave her a withering look. So we spread our blankets up against the sea wall and waited.

Crystal was getting unwanted help from Sandie, trampling across the nice runways she had made.

I said, ‘I thought you said it was for her?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘She’s too young for an air base. She’ll just wreck it.’

So Gayle tried to distract Sandie and get the Gillis girls playing in the sand too, helping her to build Fort Jackson, but they were too busy torturing their dollies and calling them bad names. Deana banged Sherry’s doll against the wall in a blind fury. Then she bit its face and threw it back at Sherry.

Betty was a little way off from us, laying out the picnic, all nice and dainty. ‘Play gentle, now,’ she kept calling.

Kath was watching them. She said to me, ‘I suppose they play so nasty ’cause of what they’ve seen at home. They’ll have seen her getting a few weltings.’

In some respects, Kath was ahead of her time.

We had cold chicken and meatloaf sandwiches. Welch’s Grape Juice to help it down and Lois and Gayle never travelled far without some hard liquor. There was some kinda puppet show just along the sands, and Audrey and Kath and Gayle took the girls along there, give us five minutes’ peace. We could hear Crystal and Sandie squealing at the puppets from where we sat. Betty was tidying away the picnic. Lois was stretched out alongside of me.

I said, ‘How’re you doing there, red-haired momma? You glad you come along?’

‘Yeah,’ she said. She still sounded kinda weary. ‘Sooner I drop this brat, the sooner I’ll be my sweet old self.’

I said, ‘I can’t hardly wait.’ I looked her in the eye. I said, ‘Herb happy? About the baby?’

‘Herb’s always happy,’ she said, making herself a pillow out of sweaters.

I said, ‘Then you’re a lucky woman.’

She missed a beat. Then she propped herself up on her elbow. ‘Meaning?’ she said.

I hadn’t realised till then how a thought, once you have thought it, can never be laid to rest. It may lay low, but any time it can pop right up again, put certain words in your mouth. ‘Meaning nothing,’ I said, but I was blushing at what I had remembered, and she saw.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Anyway, four weeks and I’m outta here.’ She was going back to Astoria, Queens, staying with her cousin Irene till her time come. ‘Back to the world, Peg!’ she said. ‘Root-beer floats, yellow cabs, the Coney Island Steeple Chase…’

I said, ‘You are going on a ride in your condition?’

‘Well…no,’ she said.

I said, ‘And I thought Irene had roaches?’

‘Okay, roaches,’ she said. ‘But what about egg creams? I bid vanilla egg creams against roaches.’

I said, ‘I guess there’s no point mentioning crime, vermin and high humidity?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘’Cause I’ll just come right back at you with hot corned beef and Radio City Music Hall.’

I said, ‘It must be real hard to drag yourself away from us.’

She was quiet. I could see the gang coming back from the puppet show.

Kath and Gayle were showing off, seeing who could walk on their hands the longest time. That was something I never could get the hang of.

‘Well, I’m gonna miss you, Lo,’ I said, after a time.

She turned away from me, but she grabbed my hand and took it with her. ‘Gonna miss you too,’ she said. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said Lois Moon had a tear in her eye.

Somebody sighted the sea about two in the afternoon. It was just a strip of silver, far across the sands, but we set off to get a closer look at it. Betty stayed behind with her knitting and Lois was asleep. Kath carried Sandie on her shoulders.

‘Lois’ll have her work cut out,’ she said, ‘after that little baby comes along. I could give her a hand. When I’m not at the singling, I could push that little baby out in its pram, sit this one on the top. Give her five minutes.’

I said, ‘She won’t be here, Kath. She’s going back Stateside to have her baby. Then the boys’ll get orders, some time in the fall, and we’ll be gone too.’ I heard my words fall, ruining her plans.

‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘that’s right. I remember that, now.’

Audrey was first to the water’s edge.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘I was looking for the rocky shore that beats back the envious siege of watery Neptune? Is that anywhere hereabouts?’ Miss Scholastic Quiz Kid.

That North Sea Ocean or whatever it was called was just creeping across the sand like it could hardly be bothered.

‘Is that it, then?’ Kath said. ‘That’s nothing much, is it? The way Harold Jex spoke, I thought that’d be something worth seeing.’

The lagoon at Matagorda was the only thing I had to measure it by, but Audrey said it was a real apology for a shoreline. Still, I liked the smell of it. I liked the cool wet sand under my feet. Crystal was fascinated with some little squiggly lines she found. Audrey said they were worm-casts. Then Gayle showed Sherry how to walk on her hands, so Crystal had to have a go at that too. Kath held her legs in the air, till she found her balance, then she was off, her and Sherry giggling at what we looked like upside down.

Kath said to Deana, ‘You want a try?’

Deana said, ‘No. We’re not allowed. And if Sherry gets sick, then there’ll be trouble.’

There was a band playing on the promenade and a little carousel we all rode on, and a stand selling crab claws. We just had so much fun. Looking back, years later, I realised that day was the last time ever we were together, all six of us.

Lois had been improved by her nap. One side of her nose was sunburned, but she was smiling again, walking arm in arm with me and Kath. ‘Find me some cotton candy,’ she said, ‘and I’ll make believe I’m at Coney Island.’ She started singing ‘On the Good Ship Lollipop’, and some old bubba sitting on a bench took exception to it.

The English don’t care for high levels of noise. One of the first things I learned about them was, they never speak out loud and clear, and they don’t like it if others do neither.

‘Why don’t you stop your caterwauling and git back where you belong?’ he said.

‘Any day now,’ Lois shouted back to him. ‘Soon as our brave boys have blown those Russkies outta your back yard. And I wonder how long it’ll be till you need us the next time?’

‘Ruddy Yanks,’ he shouted. He was waving his stick at her. ‘Clear off where you come from!’

‘Our pleasure, y’old tight-ass.’ Lois loved a fight. ‘Think we like being in this mouseshit country of yours?’

Betty was trying to get the kids into the cars, Deana and Sherry playing up because they didn’t want to ride with her, Crystal snivelling because Sandie had gotten taffy on her rabbit mitts.

Lois had to have the last word, of course. ‘And another thing,’ she shouted. ‘You call that an ocean?’

I offered to drive in front, knowing what a old lady Betty could be when she got behind a wheel, dithering at every turn she come to, but she insisted she wanted to lead the way. And when I seen her taking that right turn when she should have kept straight ahead, I did my best to stop her. Flashed my beams, got Audrey to lean out and wave her arms around, but she wouldn’t be stopped and, even when she knew she’d gone wrong, she still kept going, thought she could cut across country and make good instead of turning back, till we ended up in a barnyard.

She blamed me, of course. Said I’d flustered her, signalling an’ all. She also blamed Lois for upsetting everybody with that ugly scene and Audrey for looking smug, like she never took a wrong turn in her life.

‘Hey,’ Lois said. ‘How about Gayle? You ain’t blamed her for anything yet. And Kath here. This some kinda discrimination? And you ain’t even mentioned General MacArthur.’

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