The Colours of Love (8 page)

It hadn’t helped that Farmer Holden had been adamant about not letting the Italian prisoners-of-war on the mowing machine, saying that he didn’t trust them. As Priscilla had said, what on earth did he expect the men to do, for goodness’ sake! Gallop away into the sunset on the horrible thing? All the girls had agreed that handing the Italians the fearsome scythes with their lethal blades was far more of a danger, but the farmer hadn’t seen it that way, and so the mowing machine had had to be endured.

Then there had been the laborious process of turning the hay by hand during the field-drying part of the work, after which (when Farmer Holden was happy it was sufficiently dry) they had piled it up into haycocks, which were then loaded onto carts and taken off to be made into hayricks. The business of getting the hay into the cart, and from the cart up onto the stack, by means of pitchforks was a strenuous one, and required a certain amount of brawn as well as skill. Esther and the other girls had fallen into bed without washing or getting undressed, night after night, too exhausted even to say goodnight to each other.

And her baby had survived all that, Esther thought now with a thread of wonder. It was meant to be, Dr Boyce was right.
Thank you, God, I didn’t lose it
, she prayed silently.
Thank you for sparing me such heartache
.

‘So, what are you going to do?’ Priscilla asked again as they climbed on their bicycles. ‘You could leave straight away, you know, in your condition.’

‘I don’t want to leave.’ Esther was sure about that. She had no wish whatsoever to go home and be under her father’s roof; and her in-laws were even worse. ‘Do you think Farmer Holden would let me stay? I’m sure there are things I could do to help. There’s the dairy work, for example. I could help Mrs Holden with that, and other things. It’s only really heavy work that might be a problem. But having said that, I managed the hay-making and then the harvest too.’ The corn harvest hadn’t exactly been a walk in the park, either. Before she had become a Land Girl she’d always thought the fields of golden corn one of the quintessential English sights, but in the last couple of years she had learned that although England had one of the best climates for growing crops, it had one of the worse for harvesting them. The deep-blue sunlit skies could be notoriously fickle.

‘The hay-making and harvest were different – you didn’t know about the baby then.’

Priscilla was right, Esther thought, as they began to pedal away from the village. She wouldn’t dare risk her own and Monty’s baby by undertaking anything like that now.

‘Have a word with Mrs Holden first, before you tell him,’ Priscilla said, after a minute or two. ‘You know how she loves having us around, with them never having had children, and she’s a motherly sort. She’ll like being able to fuss over you a bit – you mark my words. Get her on your side and you’ll be home and dry, old bean.’

‘Do you think so?’ She would have to leave sooner or later, she knew that, but she didn’t want to go until she absolutely had to. The five of them – herself, Priscilla, Beryl, Vera and Lydia – had formed a bond that was precious, all the more so now that she knew her time with them was short.

Coming to a halt at the top of the hill that led down to the village, Esther gazed across the fields rolling away in the distance, most of which were newly ploughed. It was September already, she thought; the summer was all but over, even though the last few days had been unseasonably hot. The winter was in front of them, and in the spring her child would be born – her baby. She would be a mother, and Monty would be a father, and they were bringing a child into a world of terrible turmoil. And all because of a walk on their wedding day, which had ended in them making love under a blue sky with the scent of roses in the air.

It seemed to Monty that he’d hardly put on his pyjamas and lain down before the harsh shrill of the telephone had rung throughout the hut that night. Discipline had overcome the longing to turn over and bury his head under his pillow, and he’d been sitting up in bed when the orderly who’d answered the telephone had come running in, shouting for them to scramble.

There had been much cursing and swearing as everyone had climbed into their flying kit, half-asleep, fatigue clogging their exhausted brains, but then they’d poured out into the airfield and had run towards their planes, going through on autopilot the ritual of getting strapped in and starting the engine. As night turned to dawn, one by one they roared into the clouds. And now here they were, searching out the enemy, as they had countless times before.

It was a hell of a way to start a day, Monty thought wryly. But then, as the plane emerged from cloud at 10,000 feet and he found that the night had departed and a new day had arrived in light washed blue at the higher altitude, the thrill of flying took over.

This was what he had been born for, he thought, not for the first time. From a small boy he’d had an avid interest in aeroplanes, much to the disappointment of his father, who had made no bones about the fact that he had expected his only son to follow in his footsteps and join the army, as his father and his father’s father before him had done. But it had been the Royal Air Force that had excited Monty, which had led to many acrimonious and tense conversations with his parents as he had got older. Public school followed by university had not dimmed his determination to fly, and when he had discovered at university that free RAF training was available to anyone who could pass the rigorous medical examination for admission to the university air squadron, he had somehow persuaded his father to sign the parental-authority papers that would enable him to fly.

He had taken to flying like a duck to water, and with his parents finally having admitted defeat about the army idea, he had literally found his wings. Because the university air squadrons were intended to do two things – encourage undergraduates to take up the Royal Air Force as a career, and create a reserve of partially trained officer pilots, who could quickly be brought to operational standards in the event of war – once Hitler had marched on Poland, Monty had received his call-up papers. Then it had been off to the newly opened Aircrew Receiving Centre at Hastings, the Sussex seaside holiday resort, where he had joined several hundred other human products of Oxford, Cambridge and London universities, all resplendent in new officers’ uniforms bought with Air Ministry allowances.

Monty smiled to himself. The Air Ministry had requisitioned all the suitable hotels and apartment blocks to lodge their charges in, and to knock their wet-behind-the-ears flock into shape for the dispersed flying schools they were to attend, but it had been no holiday. The NCO physical-training and drill instructors assigned to each squad had seen to that. They hadn’t bothered to hide their contempt for the new commissioned breed, but really – looking back – Monty couldn’t blame them. Most of the greenhorns, like him, had left the protective shelter of wealth and a privileged upbringing for the first time and barely knew their left feet from their elbows. But they’d learned fast. They’d had to.

He smiled again, somewhat grimly this time, as he thought back to the sarcasm, insults and sheer physical torture of the parade ground that they’d endured, each diatribe by one of the instructors ending with the regulation acknowledgement of the King’s commission.

‘When I say march, I mean Air Force march, not some fancy university shuffle . . . SIR!’

‘Right turn,
right
– don’t you know your damned left from your right, for crying out loud . . . ? SIR!’

‘Put some backbone into those press-ups, you’re not taking tea with Lord and Lady Muck now . . . SIR!’

But they’d survived; postings to flying schools had been announced, and with twenty-five other airmen Monty had made the train journey to RAF Cranwell on an overcast, grey day, arriving at Sleaford station on a coal-black evening that the blackout did little to alleviate. And, in the Christmas break, he had met Esther. Sweet, passionate, wonderful Esther.

Suddenly the reason for the scramble to the skies became clear, as a twin-engined Junkers 88 dived out of the cloud layer above. Now there was nothing on his mind but chasing his quarry, along with his comrades ahead and to one side of him. They tore after the enemy plane, which, realizing its mistake, was diving towards the haven of cloud layer some distance below. Machine guns rattled, there was smoke, and then the German plane was spiralling out of control, and their squadron leader, Salty Fiennes, called over the R/T, confirming the hit and ordering them to return to base.

‘Roger, Blue one,’ Monty drawled. ‘Wish they could all be as straightforward as that one.’

‘You’ll be wanting jam on your toast next, Blue three.’

Monty grinned. Salty was the sort of man you would want with you in a tight spot. He was a brilliant fighter pilot with a wicked sense of humour and a reassuring air of maturity about him, probably due to his shock of prematurely grey hair, which had earned him his nickname.

Where the second German plane materialized from, he was never sure. It came out of the blue like a predatory bird, and Salty’s aircraft was suddenly engulfed in smoke and orange flames.

At the same time as the controller’s voice came sharply to his ears, asking what was going on, Monty realized that the Junkers 88 had made a mistake. In its eagerness to attack Salty, it had dived too close and become a target itself.

Monty didn’t hesitate, keeping the firing button pressed until comparative silence, and the hiss of escaping air, told him that his ammunition was expended, but that was all right. The German plane had become a burning funeral pyre, and it went some way towards satisfying the anger and shock he felt at the suddenness of Salty’s end. He didn’t know why he felt such fury; he’d seen so many of his friends and colleagues die, after all, but somehow this was different. Maybe it had just been one too many, he didn’t know; but he had wanted the enemy pilot dead, wanted him to burn in hell, and the force of his feeling was still causing his hands to tremble. If he could have killed the man with his bare hands, he would have done so and taken joy over it.

Sick to his stomach, he forced himself to concentrate on flying the plane, but inside he was asking, ‘What am I turning into? Dear God, what’s happening to me?’

Some time later, physically tired and mentally drained, Monty arrived back at the fighter squadron at Horsham St Faith airport, near Norwich, where he had been posted from flying school. He taxied back to the dispersal pen, still shocked at the pleasure that had coursed through him when he had destroyed the enemy pilot, and knowing that something had changed in him that day. He had shot down and disabled other planes in his time, but none of those fights had been personal. Then he had been doing his duty for King and country against a faceless foe that, if it was not stopped, would take over England’s green and pleasant land and commit the same atrocities that were happening elsewhere. It had been simple and clear-cut. But today . . . today he felt like a murderer.

Once back in his hut, he sat on the bed and looked at Salty’s empty bunk. The others had gone for breakfast, but he hadn’t felt like eating.

He would give the world for Esther to be here right now. Just to be able to talk to her, to hold her, to confess what he was feeling inside. She wouldn’t judge him, he knew that. If he told her that he had enjoyed killing another human being, that he had felt such a surge of fierce, primitive joy when he had turned a plane into a fireball – knowing that death was coming in burning agony for those inside – she wouldn’t understand, but she wouldn’t condemn him, either. Not his Esther.

With his elbows on his knees, he put his head in his hands and pressed his little fingers against his eyeballs. Had he sold his soul to the Devil? Was that it? But then, whatever it took, Hitler and his Nazis had to be stopped, even if it meant legalized murder. Look at the slaughter of those poor blighters in the Warsaw ghetto just days ago. German SS troops had mounted a major operation to ‘clear’ its Jewish ghetto, the newspapers had reported, killing more than 50,000 men, women and children with grenades and flame-throwers; and the ones who’d survived had either been executed or penned like animals and sent to the concentration camps. It was unbelievable that such barbarity was happening in a civilized world; but it was, and it would continue to be so, unless Hitler and Himmler and the rest of the madmen were killed. And if, in so doing, he and others like him became brutalized to some extent, maybe that was the price that had to be paid?

He raised his head, staring at Salty’s bunk. He didn’t know what was right and what was wrong any more.

When the door to the hut opened, it wasn’t one of the friends he’d flown with that morning, but the station medical officer who stood there. Like most of his breed, the SMO kept a professional mask in place most of the time and rarely let his feelings show, but he had been a good friend of Salty’s since before the war. Quietly he said, ‘They told me you were in here. Come and get something to eat, man.’

‘Not hungry.’

‘Nevertheless, come and get something down you. That’s an order.’

Monty stared at him. ‘Do you ever wonder if this war is a sick nightmare from which you’ll wake up?’

The SMO said nothing for a moment, then slowly walked to Salty’s bunk and sat down, reaching out and touching the photograph of Salty’s wife and child. Softly he said, ‘She’s a good woman, and a good wife. Salty thought the world of her. And Amelia, their kid, looks just like Maria. She’s half-Italian, Maria. Did you know that?’

Monty shook his head.

‘No, well, Salty didn’t broadcast the fact, what with the war and all. Maria was born in England, and she’s as English as you and I, but her parents’ little restaurant’s been daubed with paint and some of the local brats posted dog-dung through their letterbox. Maria’s father – he’s a Birmingham man – went mental when he caught one of ’em at it. He fought in the First World War, and to have dog-mess in his hall simply because he fell in love with an Italian woman umpteen years ago was beyond the pale. So he pushed the kid’s nose in it. That’s all; didn’t clip him round the ear or knock him about, just sent him away with a dirty face. And the kid’s father torched their place the next night, with them in it.’ The SMO looked at him. ‘So if you’re asking about nightmares, I think plenty of us have them. The world’s gone mad, that’s for sure, and it’s sending good people crazy with it. Neighbour turning against neighbour, and doing things they’d never have dreamed of before. But I know one thing, and so do you, and so did Salty. The only way to stamp out the madness is to win this war. Whatever it takes.’