Shelter Read online

  She might be able to get hold of him through the base, but what for? It was his glamour that had pulled her to him, the sense of danger and difference. He might want to play Daddy, and she doesn’t want a version of her pa, down the club every night, stopping off to belt the kids. And – her pacing slows right down – she doesn’t want to be Mammy, knee-deep in bottles and burdens. She doesn’t want a baby.

  She can’t do this.

  She can barely take care of herself; all that keeps her going are her dreams of leaving Coventry and getting down to London, finding a proper glamorous job like working as a cigarette girl in the picture houses and going to fancy dances every weekend and trying to put aside a couple of bob for her big escape down to London, whenever that might happen. She can’t give up on that; she’ll have nothing left. There had been a woman three doors down from them at Hillview Road when Connie was just a kid, still in school. She’d fallen pregnant and not a bloke in sight, and the whispers had started before she’d even got the babba home from the hospital, curtains twitching every time she came out with the pram and this in a street where half the men were in the pub by lunchtime on payday, and not out of it until Sunday dinner, neither. She’d kept her curtains closed day and night, poor cow, and before the baby was even walking properly she’d scarpered, fled to her mam’s by all accounts. ‘Good riddance,’ Mrs Cole had hissed, as if the woman had brought her sin upon them all. Connie can’t become that woman, not when she doesn’t even have Mam there to take her in.

  There are places, she thinks, people who know how to take care of this kind of thing. A couple of the girls at the factory had fallen, been to see a woman who’d sorted them out. Must be places in the countryside, too, if you know how to ask.

  That night, after tea, she screws her courage to the sticking-post and asks the farmer’s wife. But Mrs Prissy doesn’t give her an answer, just clatters the saucepan into the sink louder than a Lancaster bomber going over. Connie gets the message. The next day neither the farmer nor his wife will look at her and there’s no snap waiting for her to take out to the fields. Connie’s toes curl and she swallows down the shame as she wraps her own tiny portion of bread and cheese and makes her way out to the yard, same as usual.

  ‘Mucking out duty for you today.’ The farmer won’t come within ten paces of her. Anyone would think it was his baby she was trying to get rid of.

  Connie bites her lips together so tight it looks like she’s rouged them, and nearly doubles over from the effort of keeping it together, but the shed is as clean as a new napkin by the time she finishes.

  The day after that the billeting officer arrives and tells her that her services are no longer required. Connie blinks hard and runs upstairs to ram everything into the kitbag they’d given her at training.

  The billeting officer looks at her not unkindly; she obviously hasn’t been told why Connie’s being kicked out.

  ‘They’re looking for girls for the Women’s Timber Corps, you know. Nice strong lass like you might take to it all right.’

  It would matter less if she’s sick on a tree, and the posting is down the other end of the country, where they won’t have her pegged as the girl who ruined the milk and her reputation all in one. Who knows what the work will involve, but if she can milk cows and shift slurry with this great bosom of hers half on fire and rubbing up against the straps on her dungarees, she can manage a bit of wood. And if she can hack it to keep this to herself for a bit longer, there’s bound to be a cottage out in the forest where she can put the baby, some kindly country woman who won’t notice one more kid.

  Connie can’t bring up this baby, she really, honestly can’t. It seems like she’s going to have to have it, but if that’s the case she needs to find somewhere for it to be brought up right so that she can leave as soon as it’s born. War is a time of opportunities as well as despair, that’s what the wireless keeps saying. She’d be a useless mother and it isn’t where her life is going. She’s got bigger plans than that. She’s off to London, has been saving up for this. Once she’s got the hang of being a cigarette girl she’ll move on to some properly elegant job, maybe in one of their clubs, or maybe even overseas if she catches the right eye …

  MOVING ACROSS TO THE WTC had been child’s play; nobody gave a monkey’s, really, since she’d already been part of the Women’s Land Army. The recruiter had looked her up and down, checked her hands to make sure she really had been working and wasn’t some soft-palmed do-gooder, given her the new uniform and signed her across. Things had settled down since she’d been here in the forest. She could make a fair fist of this. Her hands understood the timber jobs better than her Land Girl duties and her guts stayed put. When Connie woke up these days, it was with achy limbs and the sleep of the dead rather than with a desperate retch for the pail under the bed.

  Every now and again, something fingernailed up a sliver of memory; and every single time, the chucking up returned, even though she had to be several months gone by now. No Mam and Dad. No littluns. No 27 Hillview Road. When this war was over she’d try and make sense of it. But that could be years away and they might all be dead by then. All she could do for now was manage this bitter loneliness as best she could, bury it all where it couldn’t hurt her. And to do that she’d stay the hell away from the city until the baby’s out, then hightail it back there and get on with her life.

  Fourteen

  SEPPE CAME AND STOOD next to Connie, careful not to get too close.

  Was she married? Had he missed that? She certainly didn’t act like any wife he’d met before, but things might be different in England. She hadn’t mentioned a child, not once.

  ‘Not there! How am I going to show you from the side? Get behind me. In close, so that you can feel what’s going on.’ He held himself upright.

  ‘Come on! I’m not going to bite you.’ She slotted herself in front of him with barely a breath between them. He made himself as small as he could, but he could smell her, a sharp, tart scent underneath the traces of leaf and bark. To be standing, unsupervised, nestled into a woman in her condition – what if one of the guardsmen wandered past, or one of Frank’s men?

  ‘For God’s sake, relax a bit.’ Connie shuffled back and bumped into him as she resumed the half-crouch. To his horror he felt himself stir. He tried to inch away.

  ‘Keep still, will you? And pay attention.’ Connie grabbed his axe and pushed it forward. Apprehension at what she might do with it next swiftly resolved his ardour.

  ‘Get your hands on here too; we’ll swing it together.’

  He mimicked Connie’s stance, her scuffed boots tucked in alongside his, the sharp points of her elbows needling the crook of his arm. It had been months since he had been so close to another person, and he’d forgotten the comfort that could come from simple physical contact.

  ‘Ready? Three, two, one –’ The axe swung up, up, up above his head and came plummeting down. Seppe was barely conscious of the motion, his whole body focused on staying clear of Connie’s. Her fair hair was escaping from under the beret and it tickled his nose, shivered away the forest smells and sounds until it was the only thing in his world. Her hair smelt different from the smells he was used to at Campo 61, different again from the whiff of her body. Clean. It smelled clean, the merest trace of sweat discernible. He’d missed such closeness, the sensation of someone else so visceral and real standing in such close proximity. He missed trusting someone enough that they allowed this almost careless nearness. He missed Alessa more with every passing day.

  ‘Not bad, but we need to get it going higher and faster.’ Again and again they swung the axe, each downward motion torture for Seppe as he contorted away from her. At last they stopped, the axe thumping to the ground beside them.

  ‘Phew! You know what? You might yet crack this.’ Connie swept the escaped strands of hair away from her face, grinned at Seppe. ‘You got a fag?’

  ‘Fag?’

  ‘You know, a ciggie. Woodbines – God, or Players if we’re
lucky I’ve seen you smoking so you must have some.’ Connie mimed holding a cigarette to her mouth, taking a puff.

  ‘Ah, sigaretta. Yes, but only …’ Seppe pulled out the carton, held it out to his side so he didn’t have to be confronted with her expression. Fredo was keeping up his campaign to make Seppe suffer in every possible tiny way, and had yet again snapped the tubes like so many beheaded flowers.

  Connie stared at the cigarettes, then back at Seppe as if he’d temporarily lost his mind. ‘What the hell happened here? A pretty daft thing to do to nicotine.’ She scrabbled around, one hand in the box, until she found a stub which was slightly longer than the others. ‘Still, waste not, want not, eh? Got a light there, have you?’

  ‘No, but I –’

  ‘No light? How were you going to smoke them?’

  He hadn’t given that much consideration, had been focusing only on getting out and away from the camp. Connie dug into her pockets for a match. ‘That’s better.’

  She yawned and stretched and he glimpsed the bulge of her overalls before she curved back round. He had to acknowledge her condition – it was rude otherwise. But why hadn’t she alluded to it? Or Frank?

  He opted for a safer question.

  ‘Your husband, is he at war?’

  ‘What husband? If that’s a pick-up line it’s a pretty shoddy one.’

  ‘No!’ He whispered it. ‘Scusi.’ If only he could fold up and disappear behind the trees. ‘I thought only … with the baby …’

  ‘What baby?’ She faced him, eyes blazing, arms crossed against her chest, daring him. ‘I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.’

  He held her gaze. ‘My sister – she was also – I think I see –’

  ‘You want to watch that, thinking you’re seeing things. They’ll cart you off to the loony bin sooner than you can say “Mussolini”.’ She fixed him firmly with her gaze. ‘No husband. No baby. Do you get me?’

  Seppe nodded. What else was there to do? The curve of her stomach was unmistakable. But he knew about silence, about keeping quiet.

  ‘I understand.’

  She studied him, nodded. ‘Now, are we going to get this tree down or shall we stand about all day creating fairy tales?’

  She hefted the axe high and swept the blade into the side of the trunk, barely clearing the ground. The metal whistled through the bright air and changed tone as it greeted the wood. Connie’s chopping possessed the speed and surety of all her actions, but it must be wearing her out. He leaned forward.

  ‘Let me do this.’

  ‘What?’ Connie paused to swipe sweat from her forehead.

  ‘This – this is big work. You will be tired.’

  She rounded on him, a trapped animal, and he stepped back, fought the urge to bring his hands up to his face. ‘Didn’t I make myself clear? Keep your trap shut and your axe swinging.’

  Connie helped herself to another cigarette from Seppe’s packet and stood off to one side, the lit end flaring against the grey-brown of the shadowed trees.

  After a couple of deep, satisfying drags, she ground out her cigarette and spat on the butt.

  ‘Come on then. If you’re so clever, show me you’ve been paying attention.’

  He swung the axe up until his arms were at shoulder length, aching to feel the axe in motion. He hung on for grim death, like they’d practised. The head arced, the flat steel glinting. Then – ‘whumpf’! – the axe bit, scattering needles of hardwood, tiny darts. He let them stick him.

  ‘That’s it.’ The tree rocked above their heads, the timber moaning and creaking and Connie smiled in satisfaction.

  ‘But the tree, it’s not coming down.’

  ‘No, of course not. We need to cross-cut now.’ Connie darted off, came back with the two-handled saw he’d seen before. ‘Come on then. Don’t want to leave that trunk dancing about, do we?’

  The cross-cutting should surely have been easier than the axe, but he couldn’t make it work, not remotely. The only reason the saw moved at all was because of Connie on the far side of the tree evening out his futile attempts at any kind of regular rhythm. Seppe’s hands were raw from the axe and he winced every time it was his turn to draw the saw through the resisting wood. The oak was determined not to be vanquished; with every tug he could feel the opposite force from the grain. Stop being so sentimental.

  ‘Quick – skedaddle! It’s going!’ Connie scrambled to her feet and ran to the edge of the copse. From above came a sound like the rushing of water. Twig pummelled twig, tendril fought tendril, branch pushed against branch. It rushed on down, waiting for nobody, the whispering of branches at the top only matched by the creaking at the trunk as the weight forced its way free.

  ‘Tim-BER!’ Connie turned to Seppe and clapped him on the cheeks. ‘You did it!’

  Seppe, finding no words, thrust his hands deeper into his overalls. The mighty oak barrelled its way downward, two saplings folding in its wake. All this because I took an axe to it. Tears prickled his nose, his eyes, and he pressed hard on the comfort of the whittling knife in his pocket. Ridiculous, to mind a tree coming down, but so much had shattered over these past months: Alessa, his home life, the endless and futile battles in Africa. He had seen men topple with less grace than the tree, night after night, thudding dully beside him on the desert floor. To inflict damage to this tree in the middle of the most peaceful place he’d ever known: it united all the grief and rage of what had gone before.

  As the tree hit the ground with a shattering thud, a cloud of dust and twigs swirled up like a spell. Connie wrinkled her nose and peered through the chaos at Seppe. His cap was between his hands as he stood silently looking at the felled oak.

  ‘What’re you doing? It’s not a funeral, it’s our job. Get that hat back on before you catch your death and I have to start planning your funeral next.’ She slumped down on a moss-coated tree trunk and stared beyond the trunk. ‘Well, you can handle an axe now, so that’s something. But Frank’d suss you in a heartbeat if he saw how cack-handed you are with that saw.’

  ‘Sorry. I am wrong; I shouldn’t have –’

  ‘Too true. You shouldn’t have, should you?’ She yawned, lounging beside the tree, and looked at him with her head tilted to one side. ‘How easy is it for you to get out of that camp of yours?’

  ‘It is easy enough.’ Was this a lie? The guards seemed to care less than he’d imagined they might. Regardless of its truth, he would do whatever this woman required of him.

  ‘We’ll meet in the mornings before shift starts – can you do that without any grief? Get out here when it’s quiet and start practising? If we get a few extra trees down while we’re at it, that only helps Frank’s quota. Can’t see him kicking off about that.’

  ‘I will do this.’ There was no other answer.

  ‘Good. And we need to get it sorted out sharpish. If Frank saw you in this state, even once, that’d be the end of it.’

  The end of it. But this needed to be the beginning. He nodded. ‘I understand.’ Connie would keep his secret, and he would pretend not to know hers.

  ‘Hopeful sign’ as Sunday School Treats Return

  Application was made for a half-holiday at Drybrook and Steam Mills schools for a united schools’ treat on Thursday, July 13, and this was gladly granted as ‘a hopeful sign’ (as the Chairman said).

  Dean Forest Mercury, Friday 9th June, 1944

  OUR BIGGEST ARMY EVER

  At last they will go in and finish the job.

  Dean Forest Mercury, Friday 9th June,1944

  Summer, 1944

  Fifteen

  June

  CONNIE STRETCHED OVER FOR the alarm clock – no point trying to roll in bed any more, not with the size of the bump these days. Five o’clock! But she wasn’t tired, not really. Outside it would already be bright sunshine, the whole forest busy, and she wanted to be a part of that. A city woke up all grimy, the sun’s rays just casting unwanted light on what was broken or gone. Out here, now they’d hit su
mmer, the days sprang awake and everything looked so hopeful.

  This was the fourth day in a row she’d been woken up by the little blighter inside her kicking fit to burst. It wasn’t the only thing that might burst, either – if she didn’t get out to the lav soon she’d be in all sorts of trouble.

  The floorboards were cold on her toes even though the rest of her was an oven.

  Best to leave the blackout where it was for the moment, no point risking waking Amos with its clatter. Connie padded downstairs and along the corridor. It’d be smarter to go straight out the back to the lav than round the front and, knowing her luck, bump into the milkman on his rounds as she trotted around in her scanties. This nightie was so worn that it didn’t leave much to the imagination and it wouldn’t take a baker to figure out the bun in this oven. Connie giggled despite herself and Bess, asleep beside the memory of a fire that hadn’t needed to be lit for weeks now, stirred and nosed against Connie’s legs. Even bending down to stroke Bess needed thinking about these days, with this great bulk setting her off balance.

  The grass was wet beneath her bare feet, sparkling with what must be dew, and she giggled again at it all squishy between her toes. She couldn’t remember ever having seen dew in Coventry. There wasn’t anywhere for dew to land in the city, especially not once Jerry got going and everywhere was permanently clouded in dust and grit.

  Here the dew spangled her way like a miniature red carpet, the grass tickling, buttercups shiny golden coins between her toes. Bess meandered out too and, next door, Joyce’s chickens got wind of the dog and started squawking like a bunch of newsboys.

  Connie made it to the lav and pulled up her nightie, relaxing as the pressure came off her belly. Everyone knew babies kept you awake at all hours, but she’d never realised she’d be woken up by it even before it was due out. Maybe her time was nearer than she thought. But even if she’d got her dates wrong – and she might have, if she was honest – surely she hadn’t got them wrong by this much?