Mother’s Boy, page 26
The vicar came out to announce the first hymn.
‘And we welcome amongst us the choir from the 581st Ordnance Ammunition Company, who have kindly come to boost our numbers. Please stay to make them welcome afterwards as they’re a long way from home.’
St Thomas’s choir had never been especially good, even when Miss Bracewell had been training it. The sound was unblended – you could easily pick out the voices of the singers who thought most highly of themselves – and it had suffered with the onset of war as all but the most wavery male singers had gone off to fight.
The American choir was a revelation, producing so rich a tone and with such relished harmonies that the rest of the congregation all but stopped singing the hymn to turn on the spot to enjoy them. When the children were summoned for Sunday school as usual, Terry and Jerry weren’t the only ones to dawdle in the aisle and look back, loath to miss another note. And they did miss a treat, because the second hymn was ‘Be Thou my Vision’. The anthem, when it came, was a rather uncertain stab at a ladies’ voice setting of Psalm 23, its confidence undermined perhaps by the presence of a better, rival choir at the back of the church. When the children had filed back in after the sermon, they enjoyed a good view of the black soldiers and their uniforms as they were the last in the queue for Communion, and there was much smiling and whispering. One of them, a handsome, older soldier with silver at his temples, surreptitiously passed the boys a handful of toffees, which Laura only just stopped them opening noisily there and then.
‘He’s a captain,’ Jerry said at full volume. He prided himself on having learned army stripes and badges, just as his brother could read the silhouettes of distant aircraft on the rare occasions they saw any.
Laura saw the older soldier have a discreet word with the vicar at the altar rail. In place of the final hymn the vicar then invited the soldiers back to the front to sing for everyone. There was spontaneous applause, and some angry shushing, then they sang two spirituals: ‘Go Down, Moses’ and ‘Nobody Knows’.
Laura knew little about music and wished Charles were there to hear it, but she could tell there were more than simply bass and tenor voices singing. There were high tenors and extra low basses and, here and there, a line that sounded almost like a woman. It was wonderful. Even Terry and Jerry, who fidgeted for England, sat still. Applause broke out again as the soldiers walked back down the aisle to their pews.
There was a little gathering in the sunny churchyard afterwards, while children raced around letting off the energy suppressed for two hours of good behaviour. Laura tended to use the excuse of getting on with lunch to break away after thanking the vicar and exchanging a few quick words with any friends or relations who were there. But today she was invited, with the boys, to Em’s for lunch, so had no excuses. There was a cluster of people around the black soldiers, thanking them for the singing, presumably or, in the case of the children, charming Hershey bars out of them.
She jumped when a deep voice behind her said, ‘Please don’t be offended, ma’am, but are they your grandsons?’
It was the older soldier who had given the boys toffees in church. She explained that they were no relation but evacuees, far from home like him.
‘That was a proper treat, by the way,’ she added. ‘The singing.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. If I’m honest it was partly an excuse to get the boys out of camp for a couple of hours. We were locked in one camp after another during training back home and while preparing to ship out. Turns out it’s not much better here.’
‘Oh, but I’ve seen some of you in town.’
‘The lucky few,’ he sighed. He was a good head taller than her and his voice had the kind of rumble to it that made her need to lean on something. ‘Your padre just suggested the parish throw a little dance for us, which is kind. When we do get passes, the only pubs they’re letting us into are the King’s Arms and the Ring o’ Bells, and they’re a bit quieter than what the boys are used to.’
‘Not much room for dancing either,’ she said, although she only knew those places from the outside.
‘Shall I see you there?’
He began to walk towards his men, and she found she was walking with him.
‘I’ve never been a dancer,’ Laura said, ‘but I dare say I’ll be manning the tea urn.’
‘Not even a very careful waltz?’
His eyes were on her, playfully searching her face. They were the colour of khaki buttons.
‘I don’t even know your name,’ she said.
‘Sorry, ma’am. I’m Captain Amos Barnes. I hope I didn’t offend you.’
‘Not at all, Captain. Welcome to Launceston, and I’ll see you at the dance.’
Laura watched in the little crowd as he marshalled the soldiers into tidy lines of three, then marched them smartly out along Riverside and on to the road back up to Pennygillam, with him at the rear. She had to call sharply to the twins to stop them joining the little gang of children cheekily attempting to march behind him.
Because nobody knew for sure how long the soldiers would be there for, not even the soldiers themselves, no time was lost in organising a dance. The church hall was far too small. The Snowdrops, as the twins told Laura the military police were called, felt that an event out of town would be less likely to attract undesirable attention from the white GIs. So a farmer just beyond the Pennygillam camp lent the use of a barn that was still empty at that early stage of the summer. Passes were negotiated and a dance band was booked – the second, sprightlier of the two Charles had played with. The barn was swept, fairy lights hung where they wouldn’t break blackout rules and straw bales set around the edges as seating. There were buckets of sand for all the inevitable cigarette butts. An army tent was put up along one side for the bar, which Laura volunteered for, once Mrs Netley impressed on her there might not be much call for cups of tea.
It had been a beautiful day – what Laura always thought of as wedding weather – and she found herself becoming quite as keyed up that afternoon as if she’d been a young thing coming to the dance to be whirled around by soldiers. By the time she had finished setting up the bar and ensuring the beer and cider barrels had been allowed enough time to settle, there was already quite a crowd including, happily, lots of young women who never darkened the door of a church and quite a handful of British soldiers. When the black GIs arrived, strolling up in a friendly gaggle rather than marching as they had to church, a pair of Snowdrops was following them slowly in a Jeep, almost like a sheepdog herding. Laura thought it was a shame as it made it look as though they could not be trusted, but then the vicar gravely pointed out that the military police were there to ensure there was no trouble from white GIs.
The soldiers were greeted with cheering and the all-girl band struck up ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ before segueing into some Glenn Miller. In no time, Laura’s bar was overwhelmed. The beer, cider and ginger beer, all locally brewed, had been sold to her at cost and all profits were going to the Red Cross. She was glad she had not dressed up but wore a simple summer dress, as the heat from the press of eager bodies and the humidity from the grass underfoot built up in the tent as rapidly as the noise levels. There were three of them behind the bar – with Laura, the vicar and one of the church wardens, who had actually run a pub once, but was flustered because he claimed not to understand what the GIs were asking for. There were only three drinks on sale but inevitably the glasses started to run out. Laura had in place a very rudimentary system of washing up behind them, with a tin bucket of soapy water and a baby bath of rinsing water, but both men seemed to think it beneath them to use it.
And then there he was behind the bar with them, face aglow from the heat, smelling of himself and soap.
‘Evening, ma’am,’ he said, and he took off his jacket.
‘There is a queue, you know,’ the church warden told him.
‘I think Captain Barnes is here to help,’ Laura said.
‘I am,’ he told her. ‘Wash, serve or empties?’
‘Empties!’ they all told him, so he headed off around the tent and barn and returned with a stack of glasses, which he washed and rinsed for them.
There was another great surge when the band took a badly needed break for beer and sandwiches in the farmhouse, and all four of them served on until even the ginger beer bottles had run out and Amos Barnes was obliged to point out to complaining soldiers that it was a table on a tent at a farm, not a bar at a well-stocked pub in town.
While the vicar and his warden took the stuffed cash boxes indoors to count the takings, Laura and Amos washed and stacked whatever glasses they could find before she produced the ginger beer bottles she had slyly hidden under a flap of tent canvas. They sat on a couple of straw bales to drink and enjoy the dancing. She was glad the Snowdrops had done their work and the evening had passed without ugliness. The dancing was like nothing she had seen before. Girls were shrieking and laughing as GIs whirled them around and showed off fancy footwork, even in army boots. Cornishmen never danced if they could simply drink. Charlie hadn’t taken her dancing once, even when he still had the strength.
‘They’ll be spoiling them for local lads,’ she told him.
‘What?’ He put a hand to his ear.
She repeated herself, leaning in close to be heard above the hubbub and he rested a hand on her shoulder as she spoke.
‘How about you?’ he asked. ‘Can you be spoiled?’
‘Oh, I’m long past spoiling,’ she said. ‘Old woman like me. Anyway, I’ve had my fun. My Charlie died soon after the last war.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She shrugged and looked away at the dancers. Even after all these years it was hard to be matter of fact about it, perhaps because she so rarely met new people and had to tell them.
‘How about you? Is there a Mrs Barnes?’ He was fifty or so, she assumed, around her age. There must be a woman waiting for him back in Chicago.
‘Shall we . . .?’ He gestured away from the noise and they headed out into the relative peace outside where men were smoking in contented huddles, canoodling with girls or making friends with the steers who had wandered up to peer over a nearby fence.
‘There was,’ he told her. ‘She took off with our two girls ten years ago for another man. They’re out in California. Or they were. Not great letter writers.’ He pulled a mock regretful face, so she knew he was hurting still.
‘I can’t imagine,’ she said. ‘What are you in civilian life?’
‘I always wanted to be an engineer but, well, our local black college specialises in teacher training and that’s what I became. Teaching very basic science to very reluctant kids. Still, at least they’re getting science lessons; black schools in the South are so underfunded they barely have books.’
‘But that’s awful.’
‘No. What’s awful is that it’s legal and normal. So normal even black parents shrug and accept it as the way life is. It’s good for the men to have come here and seen how shocked you Limeys are by it. There’ve been riots at home since the war started, not that anyone’s reporting them.’
‘About the black schools?’
‘About a lot of things. Injustice. How the Army treats us like dirt, regardless of civilian qualifications. I’m serving under white officers who didn’t finish high school. Still,’ he raised his eyebrows, ‘at least I’m finally learning some engineering, even if it’s building ugly ammo dumps and not beautiful bridges.’
He stepped away from her and held out a hand.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘They’re playing a home-you-go waltz,’ he said, ‘and you promised me.’
‘I did no such thing. No, no, no!’ she laughed, but he meant business and took her hand to draw her back inside the barn and into the slowly turning crowd.
Laura had momentarily forgotten how much taller than her he was. She worried at first about looking stupid, but as Amos held her close, her face had nowhere to go but to sink against the warm, khaki wall of his chest. She worried she might tread on his feet, or he on hers, but the barn floor was too crowded now for anyone to be doing more than hug and shuffle and that was all right with her. She just breathed in the scent of him and thought fondly of Aggie and how they’d laughed about the coy way library romances said things like, she felt his urgent need. It was only when she felt him press a discreet kiss on the top of her head that she realised he’d had his face in her hair and must have been breathing her in as she had him. She barely had time to register this than the music ended, and everyone broke apart to applaud and whoop the band.
‘Thanks for all your help tonight, Amos,’ she said.
‘Least I could do, ma’am.’
Now that they no longer had the excuse of waltzing to touch her, his hands had let go of her and were hanging by his side. Having felt them warm and dry on her skin she had to make an effort not to look down at them, but to meet his gaze.
‘You do know that in this country only the Queen gets called ma’am?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. It’s one of the reasons your lot are so popular here.’
She said this as they watched amorous, sometimes tearful scenes playing out in the balmy shadows now stealing around the barn.
‘I must get these boys back before curfew,’ Amos said, ‘but I wonder . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Might I buy you dinner one evening? Since dancing isn’t really either of our thing. I’d like to carry on talking.’
‘Yes,’ Laura said, although no one had bought her dinner in her life and she wasn’t even sure where in Launceston one could do such a thing. ‘That would be lovely.’
‘I’ll see if I can get a pass for Tuesday, shall I? When it’s a less popular night for men in the other camps. Call for you at six thirty?’
‘Yes.’
He turned to go, blew a shrill whistle for attention and called, ‘Company? Fall in!’
All around them temporary couples were parting, some stupid girls giggled and saluted Amos. Ignoring them, he turned back to Laura, remembering something.
‘I didn’t ask,’ he began.
‘Tredydan Road,’ she told him. ‘Number twenty-three. Just before the forge. It’s the turning before Riverside, where you came to the church.’
She had a lift back with the church warden in his delivery van, in return for helping return the crates of glasses to their cupboard in the church hall. He was a bit giddy from how much money had been raised and regretting some of it couldn’t be diverted from the Red Cross to the church’s repairs fund.
‘Nothing to stop you organising another dance for the church,’ she told him. ‘People just want beer and cider and somewhere to dance; I don’t think they care where the profits are going.’
She retreated into thinking about her dance with Amos. It was a paltry, fleeting thing by most women’s standards, quite possibly pathetic, given that she was a widow in her fifties and he a soldier who had just been showing an old woman a kindness, but, for the week that followed, the dance stayed with her, its every small detail polished to brightness.
The week’s routine unfolded its usual rituals for Laura of queuing for food, laundry, ironing, cooking for the boys and doing her best to keep them out of trouble, but the thought of the hasty half-arrangement she had made with Amos began to prey on her mind. What she should wear was easy enough, as she only had two good summer dresses, so could wear the one he hadn’t seen. But the question of where they should go gnawed at her. She never ate out, ever, unless picnics counted. She had a pretty strong idea of what the options were in Launceston – there wasn’t a great range as it wasn’t an eating-out sort of place, not like Teignmouth had been – but she knew the Americans’ colour bar had complicated everything. Men liked to organise things, or expected to, but she didn’t see how Amos could very well organise anything if he was locked in the camp until the evening they were due to meet.
Finally, calling in to collect a bale of laundry from her friend, she blurted it out to Aggie. With only very primitive rivals, Aggie’s boarding house was doing extremely well out of all the soldiers, whose business, now the American dollar was in town, eclipsed the busiest of market days. She now had her two oldest daughters working with her and had been seen wearing a fur coat to midnight mass the previous Christmas. Laura collected laundry from her three days a week now, and had noticed the bed linen no longer had repairs. She had deep respect for how hard Aggie worked and was grateful that laundering for her meant she no longer needed to get on her knees to clean for anybody.
Aggie chose to misunderstand, of course, being a tease.
‘I am not walking out with him,’ Laura insisted. ‘He just very kindly asked me out for supper and . . . Aggie, where on earth do we go?’
Aggie laughed.
‘The White Hart,’ she said. ‘The food’s good, even with rationing, and Matty Clemo’s a regular here since his wife spent all that time in St Lawrence’s. I’ll put in a word and have him reserve one of the private dining rooms for you. You don’t want to share your evening with a load of shouty soldiers or have half the town gawping through the window. Is he . . .?’ She broke off to grin. ‘Tell me, girl, is he very black?’
Laura pictured Amos against the flapping canvas of the army tent. ‘Hush now. He’s very . . . courteous. I told you, Aggie, he’s just being polite to an old widow woman.’
