‘Britain may look a little shop-worn and grimy
to you. The British people are anxious to have you
know that you are not seeing their country at its best’
—‘Over There’ – Instructions for
American servicemen in Britain
Spencer 1943
They called the birds ‘she’, and the P–51 was the Betty Grable of them all. Spencer named his ‘Crazy Horse’ and engineer Mo di Angeli, the nose artist, did him proud. Though not without putting up a fight.
‘You don’t want a girl?’ he asked incredulously, spreading out his portfolio on the bed. ‘I do girls like angels, ‘s how I got my name, you understand. Looka this . . . and this . . . huh? Make you wanna fire bullets with your prick, yeah? Howbout a cowgirl, kinda get the two ideas together?’
The girls were certainly sensational, with gravity-defying bosoms and buttocks, nipples that could poke your eye out, occasionally but not always holding in place an exiguous wisp of gauze, cascades of luxuriant hair and satiny legs of improbable length, generally ending in peep-toe shoes with seven-inch heels. It was a joke on the base that Mo had no problem clambering over the planes to do his work because he had an extra leg. Decades later when Hannah dragged Spencer along to see the movie Who Killed Roger Rabbit? (he hadn’t cared for it, too much slick brutality), the film’s only redeeming feature had been Jessica Rabbit, with her hourglass figure and Veronica Lake hair, who would have looked right at home on the fuselage of a P–51.
Mo had done his best, he was nothing if not a salesman. ‘These are American girls, right? You won’t see these around Church Norton, I’m tellin’ ya. No, sir, these are all-American broads.’
They weren’t, of course, they were girls from no country that ever existed outside a man’s imagination, though there was something in their cheery come-hither smiles that reminded Spencer of Trudel. A little. Or Trudel as she had been, before she went away. Very briefly he’d thought along the lines of something like ‘Apple Pie’, a big down-home sort of girl . . . But all that had been such a long time ago and they’d both of them changed.
No, he knew what he wanted and once Mo stopped trying to change his mind he did just about the greatest picture in the Group: a bucking wild horse, arched at the very apex of its wicked, whiplash jump. A horse, fantastic as the girls were fantastic, a horse that had never thundered over any real plain, anywhere in the world. This was a mustang of the mind, with muscles like a weight-lifter, a coat of molten metal, a mane and tail that flew from its body like fire, crimson nostrils and mad cobalt blue eyes, in each of which was reflected, tiny and perfect in every detail, a naked girl.
‘Okay, okay,’ protested Mo, ‘perks of the job. Indulge me. Who’s gonna know it’s there but you and me?’
Soon there were two crosses under the crazy horse, like kisses on the end of a letter. Two crosses for two kills, not that Spencer really knew what it was to kill. With some of the pilots their swagger was as phoney as a three-dollar bill, but his was for real. For the whole of that summer he was in heaven. Or paradise, maybe, because he was young and still waiting for something, though what he didn’t know.
That plane got a hold on his senses that kept him on a permanent high. As an old man, when he couldn’t remember why he’d come into the room or where he’d left his glasses, there were certain things he could always remember, that were imprinted on his senses.
The smell of the store in Moose Draw . . . his mother’s delicate English scent . . . the sound of the bronco exploding in its stall . . . the feel of being inside Trudel for the first time . . . And flying the Mustang.
He had never ridden a wild horse, but he guessed this was what it must feel like. Alone in the cockpit of the P–51 you were astride the thundering Merlin engine like a cowboy. The plane was the most manoeuvrable at altitude of any in the skies over Europe but its power made every flight an act of faith. A faith which in his case had never been tested. There was that hot stink of farmland and fuel, the smell of the earth and of the sky. The moment when after a ragged, thumping start all the cylinders fired and you and the ship shuddered with the distinctive snarl of the Merlin and the propeller went from whirling blades to a grey circular blur like a kid’s fairground windmill. And then the bumpy, lurching taxi-ing out from the hardstands, around the perimeter road and on to the runway, zig-zagging to compensate for the obscured view. This was when it began to feel good. You could see people watching, not airforce personnel but locals lined up on the airfield road to see the show ...
And then that moment that defied belief, the biggest act of faith of all, when the speed reached a point of no return, like sex, and the plane lifted off the ground to where speed meant something different again, and the Cadillac of the air was cruising, in its element. The landmarks that had streamed, shuddering, past as the plane accelerated on the ground now floated serenely below: the twin churches, the lattice of narrow streets, the posies of woodland, the small fields and child-size barns. On a combat mission the whole sky seemed full of planes, a flock of aircraft hanging over the English countryside like migrating birds.
Spencer and Frank Steyner and a hothead nineteen-year-old, Si Santucci from Albuquerque, were in the same flight. Their wingman was a guy named Eammon ‘Amen’ Ford. Mo was their crew chief. They were about as mixed a bag as you could imagine. In the no-man’s-land of waiting – and there was a lot of it – they fell unfailingly into type. Spencer would have a book in his hand but couldn’t concentrate enough to see the print; Frank also had one, but read it, turning pages with metronomic regularity; Si was antsy and fired up, wanting to talk, or go outside and play ball, something he occasionally prevailed upon Spencer to do – but it wasn’t much of a deal. Si was a star sportsman and they were poorly matched. He had some crazy ideas, too, shouted one to Spencer one day as he shied the ball at him.
‘You know, you could catch a ball with one of these birds!’
Spencer grunted as the ball smacked into his cupped palms. ‘Sure, how?’
‘Under the belly! In the exhaust – bet you could!’
‘Thinking of trying it?’
‘Will do one day. Will you be pitcher?’
‘Thanks, but no thanks.’
Eammon Ford was religious, the only one who didn’t chain smoke. He was more overtly godly even than the chaplain, who liked to be seen as one of the boys. Eammon was older than most of them too, mid-thirtyish and quiet, with a wife and daughter at home and another child on the way. He didn’t ram the Lord down anyone’s throat, though, and even if he wasn’t someone you could tear up the town with they respected him. Before each mission he wrote in a little book. He had very small handwriting, all the letters distinct and separate like hieroglyphs.
Si had the biggest pin-up collection on the base. He was eaten up with curiosity about Eammon and his little book, so it was only a matter of time before he got right in there and asked.
‘Say, Amen, you feel closer to God up there?’
‘No.’
‘C’mon, up there above the clouds . . .“Closer my God to thee”?’
‘That’s not where God is,’ said Eammon patiently. Spencer felt for him, he was being put on the spot and there was no mistaking the fact that other guys’ ears were pricking up. It may have looked like they were playing chess or reading the funnies or writing letters home, but they knew when a bit of entertainment was being laid on.
‘God’s in your heart,’ Eamonn added, perhaps hoping that’d see to it. But Si was aware of his audience now.
‘Not in mine he ain’t.’ There was a murmur of laughter.
‘You don’t think so, but he’s there.’
‘You telling me I gotta have faith?’
Eammon lowered his voice still further. ‘I’m not saying you gotta do anything – say, shall we drop this?’
‘Sure.’ Eammon continued to write, and Si to watch. ‘May I ask you something?’
Eammon looked up. ‘What do you write in there?’
‘Oh it’s private.’
‘Hell, no, I don’t want to read it. I mean, what kind of thing? Is that a diary or what?’
‘It’s not a diary.’
‘Okay.’ Si nodded sagely. His mischievousness was bordering on cruelty, but this waiting before missions was so strange and separate a time that normal rules didn’t apply.
‘You writing a book?’
There was a split-second pause and Eammon coloured slightly before replying: ‘I’m writing for my own satisfaction.’
Si turned to the room. ‘Say, hear that? We got a real-life writer in our midst!’
In a way, the moment had passed, because Si had exacted the information. There were a few mumbles, some more polite than others, and that was that. Frank was the only one who hadn’t looked up once. But of course the seed was sown – everyone now knew that Eammon Ford was writing a book, and he could never do so again without people wondering what went into it.
That was another act of faith. In the air you had to trust the other pilots – especially in your flight and especially the wingman – because they had to trust you. When you were in a steep dive with the altimeter needles spinning crazily and the flak popping all around, you wanted men around you who were halfway sane. Which was why Si’s little exhibition hadn’t endeared him to anyone much, even if they did laugh.
* * * * *
So that was the waiting. And then there was the war.
And then again there was England – what Frank called ‘familiarisation with our culture and history’, and Mo called ‘getting friendly with the natives’, and Si called ‘chasing tail’. Every man on the base was issued with a pushbike to help in these leisure enterprises. As a matter of fact, Frank was genuinely more interested in old churches and picture galleries than in other kinds of fun. From time to time he’d come along to a dance in the mess and stand looking on with a slightly mocking smile, quite relaxed but not joining in.
Mo was the one with the systematic ladies’-man approach, the chin like a chemist’s shop, the sweet talk and the little parcels of nylons and candy, and it did seem to work. For a man with all the svelte looks of a pug dog and the elegant conversation of a Damon Runyon sidekick, he had astonishing success with the opposite sex. They queued for him at the main gate, he had to work hard at being scrupulously fair, and the most astonishing thing of all was that in spite of the competition which he made no attempt to hide they all thought he was the sweetest thing. They brought him eggs, and tomatoes, and little fairings they’d made, and invitations – more than he could handle. Spencer had to ask him how in hell’s name he did it.
‘Tough one, huh? Its like they can’t all be after my godlike body, so what can it be?’
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘Sure you didn’t. Listen, Spence, I like women. I tell ’em all the time that I do, show an interest, know what I mean? Put them first is di Angeli’s rule of ladykillin’.’ He put his hand over his heart as if pledging the Oath of Allegiance. ‘Ladies first, every time.’
It was a philosophy of such blinding simplicity there had to be a hitch. ‘But, Mo, how do you keep them all happy, how come they’re not jealous?’
‘Of me?’ Mo held his arms out to the side, wiggled the area where had he been two stone lighter his hips would have been. ‘Joking apart, they trust me. Trouble with you good-looking guys is the broads feel insecure. Me they feel they gotta be kind to. And like I say, I tell ’em they’re beautiful, give ’em presents, make ’em feel like princesses . . .’ He leaned forward. ‘And another thing.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I don’t push my luck, know what I mean?’ He raised his eyebrows so high each one was crowned with a series of semicircular furrows. ‘Don’t make like the sack’s the one thing on my mind.’
‘Really?’ Coming from the man with the infamous ‘third leg’, the man who’d sent literally hundreds of improbably curvy cuties to flash their charms in the skies over Europe, Spencer found this pretty hard to take, and Mo read his expression.
‘Okay, I confess, it is the one thing on my mind. Like you, like everyone – surprise, surprise – I admit it. But you let them see that, you scare ’em off. Soft and nice, every time, Spence, remember that.’
Spencer bore this advice in mind, and though he didn’t stack up the same number of conquests as Mo, he had a terrific time in the local pubs, at the officers’ club dances and village hall hops, in the bars and restaurants of Cambridge and (when he could afford it) the fleshpots of London where he got lucky a few times – most notably with a girl from the Windmill Theatre and (on a separate occasion) with an older woman who turned out to be married to a civil servant in the War Office. Both of these conquests were memorable, the first because she had the body of a goddess and got plenty of practice, and the second because she was smart, with a lively imagination, and had been getting no practice at all. What’s more, London and war being what they were, it was easy to look either or both of them up when he happened to be in town, no strings, no problem.
Around the base at Church Norton it was mainly good clean fun. There was no shortage of girls and contrary to first impressions the natives were far from hostile. The men, though civil, were understandably wary, but the women and children thought the Yanks were just great. They worked at it, of course. The regulation issue booklet was full of well-meant tips some of which were sound, most of which they ignored, all of which were designed to keep their hosts happy (in the case of the girls not so happy that it would all end in tears) and them out of the clap clinic.
The kid Spencer had met on his first morning was called David Ransom, Dave to his friends, Davey to the Americans – it made the kids proud to have a nickname from the Yanks and they were happy to oblige. He was up at the airfield every second he could be, cycling up in break during schooltime and spending most of the day hanging around there at weekends, watching and listening, running errands with his ‘I’ll go, mister!’ It was like having a big friendly dog who worshipped you, who’d do anything you asked, who you knew would go to hell and back for you – heady stuff for a young man like Spencer who’d never experienced the charms of hero-worship before.
Davey was always on at Spencer to come and have tea at his house with his mother and auntie. They lived way down Church Norton’s main drag, the last in a terraced row called Craft Cottages. Spencer was doubtful because he didn’t know whether the oft-repeated invitation had any endorsement from Davey’s mother – if not, she might not be too pleased with some flashy stranger that her son talked about non-stop turning up expecting hospitality. Cautiously, he asked Davey about his dad.
‘He’s a POW in Germany.’
‘Poor guy. And that must be hard on your mother.’
‘She’s all right. She says chin up, chest out, shoulders back.’
From this and other remarks concerning Mrs Ransom’s bulldog spirit Spencer formed a slightly intimidating picture of her and her sister, Davey’s aunt, which more or less convinced him that it would be unwise to accept any invitations except those that came, as it were, from HQ.
And then one Sunday afternoon in early July when a group of them were cycling unsteadily back from a pub crawl he heard his name being yelled, and looked over his shoulder to see Davey about a hundred yards behind, standing up on his pedals. The others joshed him about it. Davey was a funny kid, nice enough and willing, but intense.
‘You got company, Spence!’
‘Set a good example now!’ ‘I’d catch you up.’ ‘I doubt it!’ Spencer pushed his bike on to the verge and sat down next to it as Davey toiled up the slope. It was hot. He lay back. Not hot like at home, but you felt the heat more here because it was less usual. The grass was uncut, warm and fragrant and full of spindly wild flowers and buzzing, hovering, creeping life. The sky was a sweet, soft blue, not a plane to be seen, but somewhere up there a lark was twittering its heart out. His eyelids drooped. This was it, he thought: peace. What they were fighting for.
The unoiled squeak of the bike and sterterous breathing announced Davey before he flopped down next to him.
‘Hi, Spence!’
Spencer rolled his head, shielding his eyes from the sun. ‘Hallo, yourself.’
‘I got something for you. Here.’ He thrust an envelope at Spencer. ‘It’s from my mum.’
‘Okay, so what do we have here . . .’ Spencer propped himself on his elbow and opened the envelope, aware of being watched, that an effect was expected. It was a note from Mrs Ransom, written on mauve notepaper with a picture of a violet at the top, and all properly headed with the address and date.
Dear Lt McColl,
David has been asking for some time if you could come round, but I have not wanted to bother you with it, knowing that you have many more important matters on your mind. But it would mean a lot to him, I know, so this is to ask if you would come and have tea at the above address next Sunday at four o’clock? There is no need to reply formally, just let David know.
Yours sincerely,
Janet Ransom
Something about the rather stiff tone of the note persuaded him that he’d been right not to put himself forward. Although Mrs Ransom was polite enough to make it sound like an imposition on his precious time, this was obviously an invitation extended under pressure.
‘That’s real kind of your mom,’ he said. ‘Will you tell her yes, and I’ll look forward to it.’
‘Yup.’ Davey was nearly speechless with delight, his face red and shiny from the pedalling uphill and his hair sticking up in spikes.
‘So will I meet everyone?’ asked Spencer. ‘The whole family?’
‘Yes. My mum and my auntie and my little sister.’
‘Great. I’ll bring along a few things as a present, naturally, but tell your mom if there’s anything she specially wants that I can help out with . . .’
‘No, there won’t be nothing.’
Even without the triple negative Davey’s tone was emphatic enough to suggest that his mother was wary of Yanks bearing gifts and that even kids like him had caught wind of an implied tradeoff that was in some incomprehensible way unacceptable.
Spencer told himself that whatever the war had in store for him during this week he was going to need every resource at his disposal to get through next Sunday’s engagement unscathed.
The weather remained perfect and they flew four sorties over the next six days. The whole of northern Europe was spread out like a map under clear skies. The ‘Little Friends’ had a field day and Spencer added a ground kill to his score when they strafed an airfield near Bremen.
Blue Flight seemed to be untouchable, especially Si Santucci who was out to get his name in the record books. He didn’t only love the flying, he loved the killing. It wasn’t something he chose not to think about: he revelled in it, got off on it, took terrible risks in order to see the faces of the guys he shot down. He was a hotshot, but a liability too, mainly to himself. You could tell that if he hadn’t been doing this he’d have been causing trouble somewhere. He’d already proved that it was possible to catch the damn’ ball in the plane’s underbelly exhaust, in a display of flying so arrogantly dangerous that men had been throwing themselves to the ground, and if the grass had been any longer he’d have blown the heads off the daisies. A roasting from the general was water off a duck’s back to Santucci. Spencer reckoned that if there was one thing war was good for, apart from the P–5is, it was that it got the crazy men off the street to where they could do a bit of good.
Frank had got himself some kind of plug-ugly dog called Ajax, with muscles like a prizefighter, jaws like a crocodile, slitty eyes and all the fearsome belligerence of Shirley Temple. And, as Mo choicely put it, ‘massive meat and potatoes’. Frank had heard in the pub that the dog’s owner had died and it had nowhere to go. One look at the hideously cute Ajax had been enough for him. It was, as Si put it, love at first flight. As they all stood round outside the canteen staring at the new arrival, his pink tongue lolling sidways from a face-splitting canine grin, Mo gave Spencer a nudge.
‘Spence, see? Its a mutt after my own heart, ‘s got it figured. He don’t have a pretty face, but he sure fixes to please. Parts like that, he should worry . . . Next thing you know he’ll be flying the fuckin’ plane!’
Spencer conceded that such a thing would certainly scare the shit out of the Nazis. But it was good to see how Frank and Ajax got along. They seemed made for one another, a sublime attraction of opposites. The sight of Frank’s skinny, tight-assed figure and the dog’s broad, waddling one going about together became a symbol of normality around the base. And when Frank was just laying around reading, up against the side of the hut in the sun, or at night on his bunk, Ajax would snuggle up close with his chunky butt to one side like a mermaid, and his cock peeping out, and lay his great shark’s head on Frank’s shoulder with such a look of blissful devotion it damn near brought tears to your eyes.
At the end of that week Spencer had a letter from Trudel, a neatly typed one but with the ‘Love, Trudel’ written in ink to make it personal.
I’ve been accepted for nursing training in Laramie, starting this September, and I feel I’ve had plenty of practice over the past year or so. Poor Dad died in May and I know Ma doesn’t want me to go but I can’t spend all my life in Moose Draw, you understand that. I’m going to see if I can find some nice body who’d like to live in the house with her, keep her company and help out. I think a lot about you, and hope you’ll be able to write soon.
Your mom came in the other day and told me she’s hoping you’re going to be able to get to see where her folks lived, perhaps take a picture. She misses you. Spencer, like we all do, and when we pray for ‘our boys’ it’s you I’m thinking of. I know you can’t be safe, but you can be careful . . .
Spencer did feel guilty about his mother, and about his lack of letters to her and to Trudel. He wrote to both of them, rather hurriedly, on Saturday before the band concert, and assured Caroline that next time he had a thirty-six-hour he’d try and get down to the Oxford area to look up the ancestral place. He meant to do it, had done so ever since he got over here, but when he had time off there always seemed to be other attractions of a more immediate nature that commanded his attention.
Sunday went from hot to sultry. Jenny, the English WVS girl who came with the chuck wagon – tea, rolls and doughnuts – said she had a terrible headache which meant there was going to be thunder, and several wags suggested that the headache had more to do with rough weather last night at the dance hall. She replied a touch frostily that it was nothing to do with that, and could someone please get that brute of a dog away from the van or she wouldn’t be responsible, which provoked a bit more good-natured jeering.
Whatever the truth of Jenny’s forecast it was stifling when Spencer cycled into the village, and he was obliged to get off the bike up the road from the Ransoms’ address in Craft Cottages to mop his brow and cool off for a bit under a tree by the recreation ground. He’d thought carefully about what to bring with him that would look neither high-handed nor like a bribe, and settled for a tin of cookies and another of ham – good plain offerings for the family. It bothered him that by comparison with the wretched Mr Ransom, on short commons in some distant stalag, the Americans at the base must look like a bunch of spoiled high-school kids, but there wasn’t much he could do about that except be scrupulously polite and not show off.
The door of the cottage was open and the moment he propped his bike against the garden wall Davey came out with that pink-faced, pop-eyed, tongue-tied look he got when he was excited.
‘Hi, there.’
‘Hi, champ.’
‘Come in.’
The cottage was tiny, and the door led right into the parlour where the rest of them were waiting for him. In the confined space a round table had been laid for tea with a yellow cloth and flowery china. In the middle of the table was a blue jug with a bunch of simple little flowers like butterflies, pink, mauve and white, that gave off the sweetest scent imaginable. The room felt cool, but the single small window made it rather dark, and the table didn’t leave a heck of a lot of room for manoeuvre. Spencer edged his way in, his feet seemed to have gone up several sizes. The way the family stood grouped together in a kind of reception committee in front of the fireplace made his heart sink. But if the formality of this arrangement accorded with his worst expectations, it was the only thing that did.
‘Lieutenant McColl, how do you do? I’m David’s mother.’
‘Nice to meet you, ma’am.’
He shook her hand, which was warm and dry and bone-less-seeming, and looked into her sad face. She was slim and dark, the same height as him and about ten years older, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Like an Indian woman with a European skin. In the crook of her arm, perched on her hip, was a black-haired little girl in a checked dress, with a bright tin slide in the shape of a ladybird in her hair.
‘This is Ellen.’
‘How you doing, Ellen?’
‘And this is my sister Rosemary.’
‘How do you do, ma’am?’
She laughed. ‘How do you do, Lootenant?’
And this was the aunt? The battleaxe in a hairnet? Rosemary was an auburn-haired and more voluptuous version of her big sister, with a broad smile, a small waist and a voice that could melt butter. There was a resemblance between them, but it was a fleeting, indefinable thing; he couldn’t have described it to anyone. And she might – at a pinch – have been sixteen years old.
He handed over his offerings which were received with exactly the right degree of gratitude, as the contribution of a polite guest and no more, and then Janet took them with her into the kitchen at the back of the cottage, leaving him sitting on the couch with Rosemary, and David amusing his baby sister on the floor. The three of them looked a lot more relaxed than he felt. He stretched his arm along the back of the couch, tapping his fingers to show that it was a casual rather than a suggestive gesture; he tweaked his trouser leg and rested his ankle on his knee, felt stupid and took it off again. For a moment it was so quiet you could hear a trapped butterfly bumbling about on the windowsill.
‘So,’ he said. ‘It’s good to meet Davey’s family at last.’
‘We’ve been looking forward to meeting you, too,’ said Rosemary, giving him a sunny, open look. She wore a pink and white dress with a Peter Pan collar and short sleeves, and flat, brown, childish sandals. There was a peachy amber down on her arms and legs. ‘He talks about you all the time.’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Davey.
‘I reckon the base would fall apart without him,’ said Spencer, coming to the rescue. ‘He makes himself so dam’ useful he should be on the payroll.’
‘I hope he doesn’t make a nuisance of himself,’ Rosemary said, with mock primness. ‘Janet thinks he spends too much time up there.’
Spencer held up his hands. ‘I’m staying out of this one. If there’s other things he should be doing—’
‘Like school,’ said Rosemary.
‘I don’t—’
‘You do!’
‘Give over!’ Davey lunged at Rosemary’s knees in a kind of soccer tackle, and she wriggled and kicked. They were more like a couple of puppies than aunt and nephew. Ellen continued to play with her farm as though nothing was happening, but Spencer, who wasn’t used to this sort of family horseplay, watched a shade nervously. Far from feeling like a showoff who must restrain himself for form’s sake, he was more like a fish out of water.
Janet came back in with a tray and put it on the table. ‘Whatever’s going on?’
Davey sat up. Rosemary said, with a sly glance at Spencer: ‘He was trying to kill me, wasn’t he?’
‘Looked that way to me.’
‘Well,’ Janet held out her hand to Ellen, ‘tea’s ready so he can put it off till after that.’ She took the baby to wash her hands and the rest of them sat down. Before taking his place with (appropriately) his back to the wall, Spencer couldn’t help noticing that he’d be sitting beneath a framed photograph of the Ransoms on their wedding day. Not a white wedding, Janet wore a hat like a fedora with a feather, but there was a little bridesmaid standing alongside whom he realised must be Rosemary.
Now that he was closer he could see that the sweetly scented flowers in the jug were even more like butterflies because there were fine, winding tendrils sprouting off their stalks and leaves like antennae.
‘Tell me, what are those called?’
Janet came back into the room. ‘Sweet peas.’
‘They’re pretty. And they smell wonderful.’ As he said this he caught Rosemary looking at him askance, and decided not to mention the flowers again.
The tea was good, and substantial. Sandwiches, cake . . . Janet had put some of his cookies on a plate, but more out of politeness than because they were needed to swell the feast. Conversation took a more predictable turn, with Janet asking him about America, his parents and where he came from, and Rosemary about flying, and film stars. The baby ate the middle of her sandwiches and put the crusts in a circle beneath the rim of her plate from where Janet retrieved them, suggesting gently that she try to eat them if she wanted to get curly hair. Davey ate concentratedly, watching and listening as though he were at a show.
After the baby got down to play. Spencer felt sufficiently confident to ask: ‘Does either of you ladies ever come up to the base – to the dances or the shows?’
‘No,’ said Janet, ‘we never have.’
‘Yes, we did once, we went to see that play the RAF did when they were up there,’ said Rosemary. She pronounced it ‘raff’. ‘It was terrible. The characters all talked about themselves all the time and the scenery fell to pieces.’
‘It did?’ Spencer couldn’t help feeling a touch gratified by this British disaster. ‘What happened?’
‘The door came off,’ explained Janet. ‘But they covered up for it very well.’
‘No, they didn’t, they got the giggles and forgot their lines.’
Janet pointed out that it was a comedy after all, and Rosemary repeated, in Spencer’s direction: ‘It was terrible.’
‘Did you see it, Davey?’ asked Spencer.
He shook his head, and shifted his cake to the side of his mouth. ‘Too grown-up.’
‘Not grown-up enough it you ask me,’ said Rosemary.
‘We had a band concert up there last night,’ said Spencer, edging the conversation sideways to avoid the family quicksand. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but it was pretty good. Some of our guys can really play, they were pros before the war. No singer, but you can’t have everything. When we have another one, maybe you’d like to come up, as my guests.’ He indicated the table. ‘It’s the least I can do after your hospitality.’
‘That’s very kind of you, you never know,’ said Janet. Meaning get lost, he suspected. But all of a sudden Davey piped up for the first time uninvited.
‘Auntie Rosie sings.’
Spencer thought he saw a reproving look flash across the cake crumbs from Janet’s end of the table, but it was directed at Davey, not him, and this wasn’t the sort of information you could ignore.
‘You do? What kind of thing do you sing?’
Rosemary made a face. ‘Hymns, worse luck.’
‘She’s in the church choir,’ said Janet with a certain firmness. ‘Our father had a nice voice but it was only Rosie who inherited it.’
‘You have ambitions in that direction?’ he asked her.
‘I haven’t thought about it.’
‘She has,’ said Davey, ‘you should see her room, she’s got pictures of singers and bandleaders all over the walls.’
Rosemary looked daggers at him. ‘David,’ said Janet, ‘will you take the plates out?’
‘You should come and sing with our band,’ suggested Spencer.
‘Do you think I could?’
‘No, Rosie, of course not,’ said Janet with one of those laughs which disguised a warning. ‘You’re not old enough.’
‘I was only joking,’ he said. ‘Any way you want to look at it you’d be too good for them.’
The girl gave him a wary look, for the first time not sure of her ground, unaware that Spencer was even less sure of his.
When he left, the women came out to see him off, Janet holding Ellen on her hip as before. They stood there looking, as sisters often did, discernibly alike, but completely different and distinct. One dark, sophisticated, reserved; the other red-gold, daring, testing her wings. Both separately and together more fascinating than any women he’d ever met. Janet had picked some of the sweet peas. She didn’t actually proffer them but said diffidently, ‘I don’t know whether flowers are silly, but it you like them . . .’
‘I’d love them, thank you.’
He took the posy, and then Rosemary stepped forward and whipped one out, and stuck it in his buttonhole. Her face was inches from his as she fiddled with it.
‘You’re a marked man now, Lootenant.’
In spite of a sky the colour of a black eye that threatened to justify Jenny’s headache, Davey cycled back up to the base with him.
‘That was nice,’ said Spencer. ‘I really enjoyed meeting your family.’
‘Swell, aren’t they?’ said Davey
Spencer smiled. ‘They’re real swell. You must all miss your dad.’ He felt somehow obliged to mention the wretched, absent Mr Ransom, cut off from the houseful of female beauty which was rightfully his. So he was surprised when Davey answered matterof-factly: ‘I don’t.’
Spencer matched his tone. ‘It’s been a long time. I guess you kind of get used to it.’
‘It’s nicer without him,’ said Davey. ‘I’d rather have you.’
There seemed nothing to do except laugh, but it was a hollow sound. ‘I’m flattered!’
‘Will you come again?’
‘If I’m invited, of course.’
They pedalled on for a bit, Davey’s wheels creaking round twice for each turn of Spencer’s, like a stately dance beat.
‘You know, she can sing. Auntie Rosie.’
‘I bet she can.’
‘She sounds like someone off the wireless. She’s really loud. Mum and I have to tell her to put a sock in it.’
This made Spencer laugh. ‘Well, that’s important. No point singing and not being heard.’ Quickly, before he had time to change his mind, he asked: ‘How old is she?’
‘Fifteen.’
Well. ‘It must be kinda fun – having an auntie that’s so young?’
‘It’s all right.’
The rain began to fall suddenly, a few slow, slapping drops and then a torrent.
‘Go on,’ said Spencer. Git!’
* * * * *
As he dragged on dry clothes in the hut, Frank said without looking at him: ‘So how was afternoon tea with the good ladies?’
‘Oh . . .’ he mumbled through the sweater he was pulling over his head ‘. . . not bad.’
‘Okay, okay,’ said Frank. ‘Keep them to yourself see if I care.’
And that was pretty much what he did.
The next Sunday Spencer went to morning service in the village church. He snuck in and stood at the back, but in truth that made him no less conspicuous because there weren’t that many people at the service and they were all in a block in the middle. Not at the front, of course, he was getting to appreciate that that wasn’t the English way.
There weren’t many in the choir, either. Four flitty-eyed little boys of about Davey’s age, three elderly men, and four women, including Rosemary. They wore blue gowns which must all have been made in roughly the same size, so that the kids were swamped in theirs, the tallest man looked like he was visiting a barber’s, and the largest of the ladies like a well-wrapped parcel. He thought Rosemary was like an angel in hers – a fallen angel maybe, there was something so delightfully, irredeemably carnal in her grown-up little girl’s face and figure.
They sang a hymn as they walked in, not one he was familiar with, but then he hadn’t gone to church in years outside the occasional obligatory Air Force event. He didn’t really bother singing, his attention was elsewhere anyway, but she was concentrating, her eyes on her hymnbook or straight ahead, and didn’t seem to notice him. He couldn’t distinguish her voice from the others as they reached the junction of the aisles and turned away from him towards the altar, and the choir stalls.
The service was long and dull, the priest had a voice like a sheep, and there was a lot of mumbled archaic language that passed Spencer right by. Besides which he had difficulty following the proceedings – the kneeling and standing and intoning, and the arbitrary leaving out of some things, the interminable length of others. He joined in with the Lord’s Prayer, but stood silently through the Creed, having just enough respect for the Almighty not to lie outright. They sang – or the choir did, the congregation stumbled along in their wake – a couple of things in the middle that had no tune, but simply went on and on. The organist was a little bent old lady who started off each piece slowly, and got slower, so the longer it was the slower they got. All in all it wasn’t an uplifting experience. He found himself thinking that if this was God’s house and He’d been at home to begin with, He’d probably long since gone out till it was over.
But then they were told to sit down while the choir sang the anthem. The choir rose, turning very slightly towards the body of the church. The anthem was old-sounding and quite pretty, and halfway through Rosemary sang a few lines on her own. He was spellbound. Freed from the constraints of unison she released a voice of such rich, earthy power that it filled the church. For the first time there was something happening that was worthy of God, but oh, boy, thought Spencer, awestruck, did it ever speak to man! There was a throaty, gutsy edge to her voice that was the opposite of spiritual. He knew now exactly what Davey had meant when he’d said his aunt’s voice was loud. It was a big voice but under control, you could tell she probably had the same again in reserve. And when she brought it down soft – the words were something about peace – it made the hairs rise on the back of his neck.
Then her little solo was over, and the others joined in again until the end of the anthem, when the padre said ‘Let us pray’. He came down and stood in the aisle for this part, droning on and on about the king, and war and forgiveness, and Spencer had to shuffle along a bit in order to see Rosemary. She was on the end of a row and to begin with she looked prettily devout, with her hands clasped and her eyes closed. But after a couple of minutes or so she rested her chin in her hand, and her eyes and her attention wandered. At one moment her dreamy look slipped right over him like gauze, but if she spotted him she gave no sign of it.
They sang ‘O, God, Our Help in Ages Past’ – he knew that one, but was embarrassed to be caught with no cash on him when the plate came round – and then the padre delivered a sermon which seemed to be part propaganda, part religion, about hating the sin and not the sinner, but it was so full of long, reflective pauses and holy-joe cadences that Spencer lost concentration and just gazed at Rosemary.
During the last hymn the choir processed back down the aisle, and this time there was no doubt she’d seen him. He saw it in her eyes, and the tightening of the corners of her mouth – the smile she’d have given him if she’d been able. And he caught, too, the sexy swell of her incredible voice among the other voices, like an underground river.
After the blessing he didn’t wait, though. He was out of the church door and on his way before the padre even came back out to shake hands. As a spiritual experience the service had left Spencer unmoved. As a carnal one it had been an epiphany.
That same afternoon he went to tea again, and this time after the table was cleared they sat round and played a kids’ card game called Old Maid. Ellen sat on her mother’s knee and selected a card from Spencer’s hand when it was her turn. It was tranquil, he felt as if he’d always been there. He remembered with pride Davey’s observation that he’d rather have him than his own father. The cottage door was left open to the sunny street and he took this as a mark of acceptance, that they wanted him there and didn’t mind who knew it.
Over the cards, he said to Rosemary: ‘I heard you sing in church this morning.’
‘From the base?’ asked Davey cheekily. ‘Told you she was loud.’
Janet told him not to be rude. Spencer ignored him. ‘I was in church.’
‘I know, I saw you.’
‘That is an incredible voice you have there.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You should do something with it.’ He feared he sounded pompous, and added: ‘Not that my opinion’s worth a hill of beans.’ He turned to Janet. ‘What do you think?’
‘It would be wonderful if she could.’
Rosie put down another pair of cards. ‘But I start at the stocking factory in two weeks, so unless I get my big break before then I’ll never see my name in lights.’
When the card game was finished, he asked if there were any jobs he could do around the place, to make himself useful, repay their hospitality. To get asked back was what he hoped.
‘I don’t know,’ said Janet, ‘but I’m sure I can think of some.’
‘He could fix the pushchair,’ suggested Rosie.
‘I sure could,’ he agreed eagerly. ‘I grew up doing that kind of thing. Tractors, bicycles . . . I’m a whizz with an oily rag.’
Janet smiled. ‘And yet you’re a pilot not an engineer.’
‘I kept quiet about it. I guess we all want to do something more exciting than what we’re cut out for.’
‘Telling me,’ said Rosie with feeling.
The cottage had a tiny strip of garden between the front wall and the pavement; and it was planted with vegetables so close together that they looked like rows of knitting. Because they were on the end of the terrace there was a similarly small patch at the side, and this was where they grew the sweet peas in a wayward, fragrant wigwam. At the back was a small fenced yard with some balding, scrubby grass, a lean-to containing bikes and a few tools, a scattering of Ellen’s toys and the dilapidated grey stroller.
It looked worse than it was, the seat had come adrift and one of the side shafts was buckled so the screw had sheared off. Davey kept him company while Ellen made a bed for her shock-haired doll and Janet watched through the kitchen window. Rosie stayed in the front room with the wireless on. Spencer was as happy as he’d been in years.
He couldn’t do much about the shaft, because they didn’t have any screws in the house, but he said he’d be back to do it next week. Janet said, ‘I hope so.’ He was sure she meant that she hoped he’d come back, not just that he’d fix the stroller.
Along with the adrenalin and the exhilaration, there was beauty – the sights they believed then that no one else was ever going to see in quite the same way . . . Moments – fractions of a second, no more – when you could see the curvature of the earth, and the cloud formations sitting on it like distant hills, all shot through with light. And other times when it was as if all of them, friend and foe, ally and enemy, were part of some great aerial ballet, criss-crossing each other like swallows, executing feints and passes and hurtling leaps, of which death was not the point and sole product, but a mere accessory, another move in the dance.
And since Spencer had met the two women, the dance had changed. Its focus was altered, it moved to the rhythm of a different drum. Another element had entered his life. He remembered a story his mother used to tell him. It was called ‘The Snow Queen’, and in it the boy got a splinter of ice in his heart that made him see the world differently. Only in Spencer’s case it was no splinter of ice but the warm, sweet scent of a country flower.
He was bewitched.
On the Tuesday following the church service they flew a daylight-combat mission escorting the bombers over a munitions site just south of Bremen. After a week of showers, wind and mud, that morning broke with a pristine brilliance which was peculiarly English – the kind of glistening perfection that you only got when the summer weather was, for protracted periods, shitty.
There was no waiting. Briefing, equipment room, jeep to the hardstands . . . it was like setting off for a church picnic. The gradual homing in on Crazy Horse was like seeing a glamorous woman’s make-up secrets under a harsh light – the plane was still a thing of beauty, but up close you could make out the black fuel streaks, the scabs of new paint and the metallic abrasions of the old, the cross-hatching of fine scratches on the Plexiglass hood, the stigmata of shared experience which only made Spencer love her more . . . That sensitive, touchy exchange with the crew chief handing over his beautiful baby like a father giving away his daughter to another man. He had done all this, created this perfect thing, knew every inch and working of her, had struggled with her difficulties and cured her complaints and sat up all night with her when times were hard for precious little reward. And now along comes this cocky young fellow out of left field who can make her do anything he wants, and gets the best out of her every time. Like father and bridegroom, they both loved the same thing: but unlike them, there pre-existed between engineer and pilot a solid bond of mutual respect.
They customarily gave the bombers a two-hour start, and in these perfect conditions allowed rather more, so that they could really give the P–5is their heads and pelt away over south-east England and the Channel to catch up with their Big Friends just before the Dutch coast. Once they were with the forts they had to rein in and perform a steady zig-zag weaving motion, similar to that en route to the runway before takeoff, to enable them to keep their own pace down to a level where they could maintain contact. It was like Rosie, he thought, with her voice: the sweet, hot power of the Mustang was so great that half the time you couldn’t unleash it. It was hover, weave, watch, hold steady. And then every so often there was the opportunity to let her do what she was capable of and the sky was a different place. When they first joined the bombers their massive, droning bodies and brown-painted wings made them seem like great furry moths blundering along, while all around the ritzy little fighters hummed like hover-flies, ready to zoom in and sting at the first sign of trouble.
Today Spencer was a liability. He sort of knew it, but the knowledge made no difference because he felt so great he must be invincible, and that was the trouble. Oftentimes he’d cursed Si Santucci for arrogantly peeling off in Fast ’n’ Loose on his own little seekand-destroy missions instead of sticking with the task of looking out for the bombers; but if Santucci’s problem was too much focus, then today Spencer’s was not enough.
Swinging back and forth through the thin, blue sunshine, it was like that stage of a night out, after maybe two or three drinks, when you just knew you were the funniest, smartest, sexiest goddam’ guy in town – while in fact you were tipping over into being an amiable drunk. Every dial, switch, knob and wire in the narrow cockpit of Crazy Horse was as familiar to him as his own features in the shaving mirror each morning. He knew what to do. His head was crammed with more information than he’d ever have thought it possible to retain before the war; and was constantly, automatically, reshuffling the data according to circumstances, bringing the right stuff to the top, highlighting the options, zooming in on the best one, listening out for Frank Steyner, maintaining a cat’s-whisker awareness of the movements of the rest of Blue Flight and their charges. Sometimes he could scarcely believe that, oh, wow! it was him. Spencer McColl from Moose Draw, Wyoming, who was up here in charge of all this highly charged metal and machinery.
But it was, and Spencer was still only young. And this day he could have thrown the whole thing away, and his life and the lives of others, because of a grass widow and her kid sister in a shabby cottage in England.
Today the only hint of cloud in the universe was a whisper of circus, floating like a snowy feather on the blue distance. The bombers and their escort described a fabulous, complex castle of steel, air and sound, drifting massively far above the French coast. You could just make out the movement of the surf like a throbbing silver vein between the sea and the sand.
And then in the distance they could see the first white arcs of anti-aircraft fire, neatly stitched with flak. And as they got closer they were in amongst the puffs of exploding shells, blooming like big black flowers and releasing their deadly sharp seeds, then withering, leaving dark tendrils in the air like blood in water. A brilliant sliver hit on one of the bombers, and a second. Then stuttering broken hues of tracer fire. A jabber of voices in his ears, sharp with tension.
The MEs, when they came, were choice targets, bulky and slow by comparison with the P–5is, but huge as they closed, like great black buds bearing down on the Mustangs. One passed so close to Spencer that he could see the two men in its cockpit. He went into a half-roll to dive on the row of three beneath him, and as he did so the one he’d just passed caught a row of bullets from Santucci on his wing, and he saw the many-paned canopy of the ME frost over, the bullet holes stark as black spiders in the web of white cracks.
And all the time the bombers were advancing on their target, rumbling stoically, trustingly, towards the Hades of the box barrage, the pilot of each one now no more than a chauffeur as the bombardier took charge. Another act of faith. The firestorm had to be gone through, and Crazy Horse and the other Little Friends were left to skirmish with the MEs like kids playing in the backyard as the adults got serious.
That day it was like play to Spencer. He hit nothing, didn’t get hit. It was like he was invisible, or the bird was made of some pliable substance, not metal. On the homeward journey the MEs snapped at their heels and caught one of the forts, the leader in the Purple Heart position, fair and square. Smelling blood, they peppered it with fire, then took off. Once wounded, the big plane stood no chance. It sank with the slow, tragic inevitability of a bull in the corrida, listing, breaking up, rolling over with a massive, heartbreaking dignity. The crew baled out, first plummeting, then floating beneath their chutes like pods from a laburnum tree into the green-grey Channel. When the bomber hit the sea the water seemed to give under its weight, rise and fold around it, and then throw it back up for an instant, like a child bouncing on a feather bed before finally swallowing it up.
All the way back it was fine. England dreamed, snug in the afternoon sun. Mission accomplished, no losses to the fighter group. Church Norton basked in the heat, barely stirred as the P–5is came back, howling their triumph. Ajax just managed to raise his head from where he lay, slit-eyed and panting, sides palpitating, in the short grass near the hardstands. Mo was full of grudging admiration.
‘Congratulations, not a mark on her. What is it with you, you trying to lose me my job?’
It was only the next day, over breakfast, that Spencer thought of the bomber’s pilot plastered to his seat by centrifugal force, devoted to duty, dead as a doornail.
* * * * *
But for Spencer that summer was about life. He visited the cottage whenever he could, lived for those visits. The tiny interior filled his head; it was, to him, bigger and more vividly real than anything else – the base, his friends, his own home, the war itself – and he dreamed about Rosie.
He could not remember ever wanting anything so much as he wanted to have her. Her unsettling combination of youth and knowingness, of naive simplicity and cute sophistication, was a mixture that had gone straight to his head, and his loins. He had had little or no experience of the sweet toxicity of girls in their teens, having gone straight from fearful ignorance to the older and all-embracing Trudel. He seemed to be on a carousel, being carried round and round and up and down, the view changing every second. The smallness of the cottage meant he was always close to her. Janet had a way of closing the air around herself, she could come into the tiny front room and leave the space undisturbed. When Rosie was there she filled it, so completely that Spencer could scarcely breathe. One moment she was fooling around on the floor with her nephew, whooping and laughing and not caring if her underpants showed; the next she was lying on the couch like a surly young lioness, her arm resting on the upturned curve of her hip, fingers tapping to music, her red hair shielding her face as she read a movie magazine with get-lost concentration.
Sometimes she lay on a rug in the back yard with her skirt tucked up, sunbathing, and he had to stop himself from staring at her pale, rounded thighs and the freckles that were scattered like a treasure-trail down between the buttons of her cotton blouse. Ten minutes later and she’d be lying on her stomach with the dirty soles of her feet waving in the air, making elephant noises for Ellen with a blade of couch grass between her thumbs.
She was dangerously flirtatious, with her ‘lootenant’, and her sardonic pretence that he and Janet were engaged in some sort of conspiracy against her. If she asked him anything at all about his job she did so with a slightly challenging air that told him he showed off at his peril. It was no surprise that she had no boyfriend, he thought she must have terrified boys of her own age half to death, and yet the idea that some sweaty old supervisor or manager at the stocking factory might get his hands on her filled Spencer with horror. She was already so savvy, so sensual, so playful and witty and animal – it set him jangling just to touch her hand (the most he had ever touched), and the thought of a kiss, let alone anything more, set his senses reeling.
But of course it was out of the question. Her youth, his friendship with Davey, his privileged position in the household, placed her completely out of reach. And then her own status was unclear. Because of the age difference between the sisters, Janet treated her sometimes as an equal, sometimes not, though she was never anything less than moderate. As he went about the business of mending latches and shelves, and fixing up the back yard, and putting a door on the lean-to and cleaning the bikes, he found himself in awe of Janet. She was a little like his mother, holding the household together but never seeming to break sweat. He told her of the resemblance – in more elegant terms – one evening when Davey and Ellen were in bed and Rosie at choir practice. She claimed to be flattered.
‘You mother was English? Whereabouts is she from?’
‘Near Oxford. She wants me to go visit, see if the house is still there.’
‘You must go, it would mean such a lot to her. And it’s part of your past, after all. You’d be sad if—’ she seemed about to say one thing and then to change her mind ‘—it would be such a pity if you missed the chance.’
He knew exactly what she’d been about to say, and was glad that she hadn’t.
And then there was the long shadow of Mr Ransom – or Sergeant Edward Ransom of the REME as Spencer now knew he was – to fall across his friendship with the family, and like a black admonishing finger over his passion for Rosie. Until one day in early September something happened to change everything.
Autumn was on its way. The Americans at Church Norton, already crabby at the prospect of another Christmas away from home, were being pushed beyond endurance, and as well as losses in the air there had been two fatal accidents, on both occasions pilots crashing before takeoff. A big old yew tree whose gloomy black branches had hung over the churchyard for centuries was felled by the second of these, its enormous bulk flattening gravestones and leaving the stubby church tower looking bare and vulnerable.
Blue Flight lost Eammon Ford, and the mystery of his little black book was revealed. It might have stayed secret had not Si been first on the scene from Blue Flight when Ford’s locker was opened, and offered to send on his personal effects. He knew better than to broadcast the book’s contents, but Spencer found him reading it that night in the hut, turning the pages as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
‘Should you be doing that?’
‘Guy’s dead, Spence, what does he care?’
Frank looked up and said gently: ‘That’s not the point. He didn’t want anyone to see. Just send the stuff back where it belongs.’
Si raised an eyebrow, gave the two of them a sidelong grin. ‘You wanna know what’s in here?’
Frank shook his head, but Si took Spencer’s silence as a ‘yes’ and read out loud from the first page.
‘ “A book of prayers for my children, Molly and—” He’s left a space there. First one goes, “Dear Lord, teach me to see you in everything, even the things I do not like. Let me always try to see the other person’s point of view. Teach me to hate wrongdoing, but not wrongdoers. Show me how to forgive others, and myself. Let me never be smug . . .” Can you believe this guy – hey, what are you doing?’
Frank had come over and taken the book out of his hands. ‘Enough. It’s private.’ His voice was kind of sad and regretful, as though he himself were a father talking to a child who’d let him down. He closed the book and held it up, like an official in court. ‘Will you send this stuff home, or shall I?’
‘Take it easy, Frank, I’ll do it – I’ll do it!’
Spencer thought that judging from the little he’d heard, Eammon Ford was nearer the mark than the padre at Church Norton. Two weeks later a letter arrived for Eammon informing him of the birth of his son, Amos John, weighing in at seven and a half pounds and the dead spit of his father.
It was raining when a few days after that Spencer cycled over to Craft Cottages. The airfield road was slippery with mud, and there were blackberries on the hedge. It was evening, and with the cloud cover and the nights drawing in it was dark by the time he got there. Janet answered the door with her finger to her lips.
‘The children are asleep.’
‘Is Rosie in?’
‘No, she’s at the pictures and staying with her friend afterwards.’
She wore a dark blue dress, buttoned up to the neck, not a smart dress but oddly formal-looking as if she were going out somewhere. He’d brought a bottle of bourbon with him, but something about the dress made him shy. And Rosie’s absence on this dark evening left a gap he didn’t know how to fill.
‘I brought this along.’
‘Thank you, that’s kind.’ She took the bottle. ‘Would you like one?’
‘Only if you would.’
‘Oh, I’m going to.’
He sat down on the wooden armchair opposite the couch, but when she came back with the drinks she didn’t sit, but took a couple of mouthfuls of hers before saying: ‘We got some news today.’
‘Yeah? Not bad, I hope?’
‘My husband’s dead.’
Shocked, Spencer put down his glass and stood up. ‘Lord, Janet, I’m so sorry. What happened?’
She still held her glass in front of her, in both hands. ‘He caught a cold and got bronchitis. It turned into pneumonia. He always got chesty with colds, and I suppose the conditions . . . He wasn’t so young, either. Poor Eddie.’
Her voice was low and sad, but steady. He was glad that she didn’t seem about to cry.
‘Would you like me to go?’
‘No. It’s nice to have you here, Spencer.’
‘Do the children know? And Rosie?’
‘Yes.’ And Rosie, he thought, had gone to the movies. Janet’s glass was empty. ‘Would you like another of those?’
She smiled briefly. ‘Thanks. It’s in the kitchen.’
He went through and poured her a generous shot. When he returned she was standing there, head bowed in concentration, unbuttoning the front of her dress delicately with her long, pale fingers.
Spencer caught his breath. He couldn’t move, was spellbound. When the buttons were all undone she looked up at him. Her face was set and still but her eyes pleaded.
‘Spencer . . .?’ She held out her hand to him, her right to his left as she did with Ellen. Slowly he put down the glass, stepped forward, and laid his hand in hers. She drew him towards her and slipped his hand between the open buttons of her dress, looking down as she did so in a way that turned his stomach to water. He felt cool, slippery material, warm skin, the hard tip of her breast.
‘Please . . .’ she breathed. Her eyes closed as her lips parted and softened. ‘Oh, please . . .’