Читать книгу Bird's Eye View - Elinor Florence - Страница 13

I opened my eyes to darkness that was blacker than the inside of a black cat, as Dad would say. My bed was tilted to one side. An unpleasant odour of diesel fuel mixed with perfume hung in the air. And what was that thundering sound? A thud, thud, thud like muffled drumbeats from a distant pow-wow.

Then my mind cleared. It was the sound of marching feet. Troops were boarding the ship in Halifax Harbour and I was far below, lying on the upper bunk of a triple-decker bunk bed, crammed with eight other girls into a cabin built for four.

A drowsy voice spoke. “Anybody know what time it is?”

A match flared and a second voice said: “Seven hundred hours. Better get dressed.”

“How long does it take to load fifteen thousand men, anyway? They’ve been at it all night.”

A third voice, shriller than the others: “Fifteen thousand? The notice on the wall says there are only enough lifeboats for three thousand.”

“Well, for once being a woman might do some good, eh?” another voice chimed in. “At least we get first crack at the lifeboats when the torpedo hits!” Suddenly I felt an urgent desire to get upstairs on deck.

We took turns washing in the cubbyhole called a head. Shivering with excitement, I pulled on my Harris Tweed trousers and rooted around in my suitcase until I found the crimson cable-knit cardigan that Mother had knitted as a goodbye gift.

As I buckled on my life preserver, a knock sounded on the steel doorframe. The door itself had been replaced with an army blanket to prevent us being trapped if the ship went down. It was Mrs. Simpson and a burly naval officer who would accompany us everywhere.

“Girls, the men are under orders not to speak to you, or even look at you,” Mrs. Simpson said. “Please behave yourselves, and don’t go anywhere without an escort.”

We ascended to the dining room on slanted stairs. The rhythm of marching feet finally came to a halt as the last man boarded and the ship levelled off.

When we finished our scrambled eggs, we went out on deck, accompanied by our officer, and stood at the rail watching the docks below. Bands were playing, hundreds of brightly dressed women and children were waving and calling, their voices carried away by the salty breeze that burned my cheeks. I had seen dozens of farewell scenes in the last two years, but this time it was different. Finally, I was the one going to war.

The throb of the engines grew louder and vibrated through our feet, the horn sent forth an ear-splitting blast, and the sullen grey water below us heaved as the tugboats pushed the ship away from shore. The crowd waved and wept. One mother picked up her baby’s arm and flapped it back and forth.

I wondered when I would see my beloved country again. My heartstrings felt stretched to the breaking point, as if they were attached to dry land. The hot tears overflowed and trickled down my icy cheeks. Gradually the watery gap widened, the cries grew fainter, and the faces became indistinct. I stayed at the rail, straining my eyes until the shore shrank into a distant black line.

Then a mighty roar sounded overhead as three Sunderlands appeared to port bearing the RCAF insignia. The troops let out a yell, almost trampling each other in their hurry to get to the portside rail, and the women weren’t far behind.

These were the strangest airplanes I had ever seen. Their heavy bellies made them look like pregnant cows with wings. Despite their odd shape, they flew as gracefully as eagles, circling low across the white-capped waves as they searched for the dreaded German wolf packs.

All morning I remained on deck, watching them wheeling and swooping, until my face was numb with cold and my hair was a tangled mass. But eventually they circled the ship one last time and waggled their wings farewell and good luck before turning back to shore.

We had now entered the Atlantic’s black pit, too far for aircraft to reach from either side of the ocean. If the ship went down here, there would be little chance of survival. We were very much alone on the vast sea.

Suddenly there was a tremendous lurch and the deck tilted sharply. The girl next to me screamed and grabbed my arm to keep from falling. “Nothing to worry about,” our officer said. “The captain is just taking evasive action.” A few seconds later, with another jerk, the ship swerved in the opposite direction.

The decks fell quiet while everyone clung to the rail and tried to accustom themselves to the zigzagging motion. I had a funny feeling in the soles of my feet as I imagined a German submarine below the ship, aiming a torpedo at our massive hull. It was the first time that I, Rose Marie Jolliffe, was in personal danger from the enemy. It would take some getting used to.

As I gazed down into the churning wake, unrolling behind us like a length of gigantic white rick-rack while the ship staggered drunkenly from side to side, I remembered how much my parents had wanted me to stay at home.

“But why can’t you join the Canadian air force?” Dad asked me again, as we sat around the kitchen table after supper.

“I don’t want to peel potatoes at some air base in another prairie town just like this one. I want to go overseas and work on a real operational station. Canada might never send women to England, and even if it does, it might take years. But I can’t stay here any longer. I just can’t.”

“My dear girl, are you sure this is how you want to spend your hard-earned money?” Mother asked sorrowfully.

“You know I was saving for university, but that will just have to wait until after the war.”

Dad shook his head. “I still don’t understand how you wangled this.”

“It was the most amazing stroke of luck. The British Women’s Volunteer Force stopped at the train station this afternoon on their trip across Canada, and their leader, Mrs. Simpson, said as long as I pay my own way she’ll arrange my passage to England and let me travel with them. Once I arrive, I’m free to enlist in the British air force.”

“You’re positive the air force wants you?” Dad was persistent.

“I’m a British subject, and besides, they can’t afford to be choosy! Dad, they’re taking every woman over sixteen!

“You’re so lucky, Rose.” Jack broke in. “I’ll be over there myself pretty soon.” Dad and Mother turned to him with a sick expression on their faces, and for a moment I suspected they had forgotten all about me.

“I’ll be perfectly safe,” I repeated. “There’s no danger since the Blitz ended. You know we’re going to win the war — it’s only a question of when. If people like me join up, it’ll be over that much sooner!”

Oxford, England

November 19, 1941

Dear Mother and Dad and Jack,

I arrived here yesterday, imagining myself a world traveller already. The trip across Canada was gorgeous until we reached Ontario, and then it was nothing but huge boulders and huge tree trunks. In Quebec City we stopped for an hour while a party of French Canadian soldiers boarded, and it was so funny to hear our boys in uniform speaking a “foreign” language. We finally arrived in Halifax and saw the ocean for the first time. Yes, I stuck my finger in the water and tasted the salt, just like all the other land-lubbers!

Our crossing was uneventful. I spent most of my time on deck, peering into the water for periscopes. One girl even got a reprimand for throwing up over the side, in case the contents of her stomach were spotted by a U-boat!

I can’t tell you where the ship docked, but it was a ghost town: old Georgian houses along the waterfront, windows boarded up, no vehicles on the streets, no people except for a few in uniform. On the beach were the most gigantic rolls of barbed wire, each one big enough to fence our whole farm!

The next day Mrs. Simpson put me on a train for Oxford, and Roger and Pamela met me at the station. They persuaded me to spend a few days getting my bearings, as we sailors say. Pamela looks like Joan Crawford — black eyebrows and red lipstick, and silk scarves fluttering behind her like flags. She even uses an ivory cigarette holder. Dad would say she wears the trousers in the family. And she does wear trousers, all the time.

Roger reminds me of the Duke of Windsor — the first person I’ve ever seen wearing a silk ascot. He makes fun of me because I say bitter instead of bittah. But then he says Canader instead of Canada!

This house is colder than a morning in January, and as damp as a root cellar. Three days ago I washed my socks and hung them up in my bedroom, and this morning I squeezed water out of them. I keep imagining I can see my breath.

Pamela’s first words were: “What did you bring me?” Thank goodness I had chocolates. She’s still complaining about the lack of servants. It’s true she isn’t much of a cook. Last night we had cabbage soup and tinned meat. I tried to keep my fork in my left hand so they wouldn’t think I was a proper barbarian.

After supper — they call their noon meal “luncheon” and their evening meal “dinner” — we ladies “withdrew” to the drawing room so Roger could smoke his pipe. While we were sitting there, the cat, Fanny, jumped onto the windowsill, and five minutes later the air warden banged on the door and yelled at us because a crack of light had flashed out when the cat moved the curtains. (Pamela sewed the blackouts herself, and you should see them, Mother — the hems are so crooked.)

Pamela says a few times the front door opened at night and a strange red-haired man walked in. “Sorry, wrong house!” he’d say, and off he’d go. Then one night, she opened what she thought was her front door and found the red-haired man sitting in front of his own fire! He lives one street over, and it’s easy to get confused. You never saw anything like the blackout here on a cloudy night — you can hold your palm an inch from your nose and see absolutely nothing!

You’re going to think I’m crazy, but the biggest surprise is hearing little kids on the street speak with an English accent. They sound so darned strange, as if they’re putting it on.

I miss you so much. The first thing I saw when we came down the gangplank was a poster that said: “Homesickness is like seasickness — it soon wears off.” It isn’t true. I wasn’t a bit seasick, but oh, I am terribly homesick!

Give Laddy and Pansy a hug from me.

All my love, Rose

I spent hours walking the streets, memorizing details for my letters home. The dreaming spires, the church towers, and the ancient monuments were beautiful, but I was forced to admit that England wasn’t quite what I expected.

Maybe it was the dirt. The stone statues were filthy, their heads and shoulders stained with pigeon droppings. The elaborate brickwork on the buildings was pitted with age and the cobblestoned streets were littered with rubbish.

Or maybe it was the damp. One afternoon I stood on an arched bridge while university students dressed in white punted down the river. It was a lovely scene, but the wind cut through my coat like a blade. Even the sun shone weakly, a pale imitation of the sun back home, more like the prairie moon.

I was disoriented, having lost all sense of proportion. This must be how Alice felt when she ate the toadstool, growing bigger and smaller by turns. The sky had shrunk to a patch of pale blue overhead, its horizons covered with rooftops and trees so enormous that I felt like an ant scurrying through a vegetable garden. The leaves that drifted to the ground were bigger than dinner plates. Yet in spite of the monstrous trees, everything was made of brick.

Other objects were so tiny that I felt like Gulliver in the land of Lilliput. Pamela’s narrow brick house shared walls with the homes on each side, as if the buildings had been squeezed together like an accordion. The front yard, lined with ugly spiked railings, was the size of my old sandbox.

“Where do you keep everything?” I asked in genuine amazement, when Pamela showed me the kitchen, no bigger than a pantry with a small porcelain sink. That was just after I had cracked my forehead on the low beam over the doorway.

And England was strangely primitive, lacking in the amenities I took for granted. Here, in the midst of one of the world’s most civilized cities, there was no telephone. I couldn’t understand it. Even old man Thorpe who lived on the bald prairie ten miles out of Touchwood had a telephone.

Pamela and Roger weren’t quite so appealing at close quarters, either. I had been so eager to meet my English flesh and blood — especially my glamorous cousin and her husband, a real university professor. But Pamela wore a perpetual smear of cigarette ashes down the front of her blouse, and Roger was always putting his arm around me in a way I didn’t quite like.

Three days later, when we had exchanged all the family news and the effort to make conversation was wearing a bit thin, Pamela and Roger exchanged a long look over the dinner table. “Shall we take her to the Green Boar tonight?” Pamela asked, blowing jets of smoke through her nostrils.

“Righto, I’ll fetch my cap and stick.”

Stumbling though the pitch darkness and accompanied by Pamela’s curses, we found the doorway with difficulty and came into the warmth. I was eager to see a real pub, since women weren’t allowed in bars back home. Sometimes when I had walked past the Queen’s Hotel in Touchwood, the doors opened and a smoky, yeasty smell blew out. I always tried to peek inside.

But I guessed that this English pub was quite different. It was delightful in the cozy room, with wooden timbers and stone fireplace where a blaze was crackling. Blackout curtains covered the door and windows.

There was one drawback. To keep the light to a minimum, the bulbs were painted blue. I had never seen anything so ghastly as Roger’s face in the blue light. His large, crooked teeth were stained yellow by pipe smoke, and when he smiled the blue light turned them a sickly green colour. As for Pamela, her thick pancake makeup enhanced the blue valleys under her eyes.

I sat uncomfortably between them on a red leatherette bench. “She has marvellous hair, hasn’t she, Roger?” Pamela said. “Just feel the weight of it.”

He lifted the bottom of my heavy pageboy with his liver-spotted hand. “Yes, indeed.”

“Go and fetch us another round, would you, dear boy?”

“Quite.” Roger sauntered over to the bar.

Pamela leaned forward, dropping cigarette ashes on the table. “Attractive, isn’t he?”

“Who?” I glanced around.

“Roger, of course. He was a fine-looking man when we first married, and he’s still quite dashing, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, he’s very handsome,” I said politely.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to sleep with him, would you?”

I turned to Pamela with a frozen smile, thinking this was some kind of British joke. “Sorry, I don’t understand.”

“Sleep with him — you know, do the dirty deed.” She smirked and waggled her eyebrows.

I was aghast. Surely she didn’t imagine I had designs on her husband. “Believe me, I don’t think of Roger that way.”

“Well, I’m asking you to, you silly gel. He’s taken quite a fancy to you. I like him to have a bit on the side now and then — it keeps him young. There are girls falling all about themselves at the university, but we have an agreement that he won’t touch any of them unless I’ve vetted them first.”

My head swivelled toward Roger, who was leaning against the bar while the bartender drew his pints. He gave me a green leer.

“When you arrived, we agreed at once that you’d be perfect. You know, keep it in the family, what?” She squinted at me through a cloud of smoke.

“Pamela — I’m sorry, but it’s out of the question.” I had to refrain from a shudder of revulsion, although part of me wanted to scream with laughter.

“Oh, well, just a passing thought.” Her voice was cool.

Roger returned to the table, bearing three pints of beer.

“It’s no go, I’m afraid, Rog,” his wife said.

I thought he looked a little relieved. He reached over and patted my hand. “Perhaps another time. No hard feelings.”

The next day I woke early and found my own way to the nearest recruiting office.