Chapter Fifteen #2
They’d come to Bettys often since February.
Whenever they did, she thought of her mum and their teas upstairs, which had hurt, to start, but these days felt more comforting than anything.
It was the same whenever she’d returned to Bramble Lane for evenings out at The Heaton Arms (Robbie had been right, you really couldn’t avoid it); initially, everything about being back there had caused her pain: passing her old home; seeing the brass knocker her mum had used to polish on the door; the milk bottle stand on the step; that crooked stile out to the sheep-filled fields, where, before Iris’s gran’s arthritis had got so bad, she’d used to take Iris for walks.
(Slow down, she’d shouted after Iris, whenever Iris had run off.
You’ll start a stampede.) But day by day, week by week, that pain had eased, until Iris had come to realise how much she liked being back in the old lane.
It had made her mum and gran real to her again: the memories of them no longer something to fear, but cradle close.
And although she had wept, the first time she’d visited their graves with Robbie – she’d sobbed – it had probably been long overdue.
As she’d sunk against Robbie’s chest and let her tears go, she’d felt acceptance flow through her.
She hadn’t even known, until that had happened, just how fiercely she’d still been fighting the truth of her mum and gran’s deaths.
Father Bannister often came out to see her when she was in the graveyard, always bringing her a slice of his housekeeper’s apple cake, baked with preserves from his orchard. To save you the effort of scrumping, he’d say, chuckling at his own joke, no matter how many times he repeated it.
Sometimes, he called by The Heaton Arms in the evenings, and whenever he did, would stand everyone there a round, the Americans included – who, whatever Ambrose’s views on their timing, were unquestionably fighting this war now, flying their raids in broad daylight, creating their own army of ghosts.
Iris had heard stories of fights breaking out between American, British and Canadian airmen over the different levels of dangers they believed themselves to be facing, but she hadn’t seen any of that in Heaton.
Although the odd jibe got exchanged about Brits not being able to target, and Yanks not being able to see in the dark, it was always done in jest, and never escalated.
They all knew what each other did, and no one was interested in trivialising it. They just wanted to survive.
‘Did you resent us for not being here?’ a pilot from New York had asked Robbie, back in March, after Jacob had mentioned Robbie had flown in the Battle of Britain.
‘Quite a few of you were,’ Robbie had replied.
‘Not as many as now.’
‘True.’
‘So?’
‘No, I didn’t resent you. Honestly, I didn’t think about you. I thought about what we were doing, and carrying on doing it.’
‘And now?’
‘Now?’ Robbie had shrugged. ‘You’re here, there’s a war still to fight because of everyone who’s spent the past three years making sure of it, and hopefully together we’ll win it sooner.’
‘Cheers to that,’ the New Yorker had said, raising his pint.
They hadn’t seen him again.
His plane had gone down over Munich the following day, and although chutes had been spotted, Prim’s Clint said there’d been no notification of any of the crew being taken prisoner on the ground. The battered locals didn’t particularly like bomber crew.
It could happen that they disappeared before getting processed.
They’d all been relieved that no one from 96 had fallen over Essen the night before.
Although another V for Verity had been hit by flak, they’d managed to limp back to France before baling out, so stood a chance of being smuggled home by Mabel’s friends in the resistance.
Other than for them, every crew had returned, and Iris and Clare had taken it in turns to instruct them to absolutely pancake, which everyone, besides Ambrose, had enjoyed.
‘Why are they still doing that?’ he’d demanded of Sergeant Browning, appearing from nowhere in the control room.
Fred hadn’t been there; he’d gone to Essen too, and had been aerodroming at fifteen before absolutely pancaking himself.
‘Because it makes everyone happy,’ Sergeant Browning had replied.
‘It makes everyone happy, sir,’ Ambrose had corrected him.
‘It makes everyone happy, sir.’
‘Hello, Queen. Absolutely pancake, over,’ Clare had told Bucks Boys.
And Iris, who’d just told Henry in Mabel’s Fury to do the same, had smiled.
‘This isn’t a game, Winterton,’ Ambrose had barked. ‘It’s war.’
‘Is it really?’ she hadn’t been able to help herself riposting.
But she’d been tired after the long night, and impatient to see Robbie, and so very fed up with all of Ambrose’s endless pettiness.
She’d given up counting the number of times he’d now attempted to ground either herself, or Clare, or both of them, and it wasn’t just them he did it to.
He nitpicked at everyone (except Prim), handing out punishments for everything from badly polished shoes, to sloppy salutes, to untidy billets, to curfews missed by a minute.
‘And here was me thinking I was doing all this for fun.’
For which impertinence, the crime of being smart, Ambrose had once again declared her grounded, until further notice, then he’d grounded Clare and Browning too, for protesting at how unfair he was being.
Robbie, his superior, had taken him aside though, straight after Iris had filled him in at interrogation, and had a word with him about the misguidedness of interfering with the morale of the crews, who probably wouldn’t enjoy learning that their radio operators had been punished for keeping up their spirits by a man who, when all was said and done, tucked himself into bed every night.
‘So now he hates you too,’ said Iris to him, when he’d arrived at the cottage afterwards.
‘I don’t give a damn what he thinks of me,’ Robbie had replied, tossing his cap to the floor, smiling as he’d joined her in the kitchen doorway. ‘It might make life easier if you stop annoying him though.’
‘But he wants to be annoyed,’ Iris had said, leaning back against the door’s frame, raising her face to his.
‘And you love obliging,’ Robbie had replied, running his hands around her waist. ‘I can’t keep going into bat for you … ’
‘I love it when you talk like a cricket captain.’
‘I mean it. I can’t. He’s unimaginative but not stupid. Eventually he’s going to guess that we’re … ’
‘Up to mischief?’ she’d said, unbuttoning his tunic.
‘Exactly.’ He’d kissed her neck. ‘He’ll start watching you too closely.’
She’d closed her eyes. ‘He already watches me closely.’
‘Closer, then,’ he’d said, slipping her skirt from her. ‘He might stop you coming here … ’
‘I’d never let him,’ she’d said.
Which she wouldn’t.
The time, all the elastic, timeless time that the two of them had now stolen together within the cottage’s bewitched walls had become everything to her.
Here, now, in Bettys Bar, she smiled, thinking back over it, their every touch and word and whisper replaying in her mind, making her sweltering skin tingle in anticipation of the next time they’d meet there.
Tightening her hold on Robbie, she glanced up at him as they reached the booth and slipped into the last free space left by the others, and could tell from the look he gave her – the enjoyment in his bright gaze, the promise – that he knew exactly where her mind was.
‘I have no idea if this film’s loaded,’ said Jacob, bringing them back to the moment, frowning down at his birthday gift.
He was sitting on the opposite side of the booth, between Clare and Beth.
Tim was next to Clare, and Henry, Ames, Mabel, and Lewis were on the other side of Beth.
The rest of Lewis’s crew, and Mabel’s Fury’s gunners, Danny and Gus, were already dancing. ‘Should I open it up … ?’
‘No,’ they all chorused.
‘You’ll expose it,’ said Beth, a glutton for difficult men, taking the camera from him. ‘Let me see what’s going on. Oh, these damn glasses.’ She removed them, reaching into her handbag for a cloth.
‘Here,’ said Jacob, producing a kerchief from his tunic pocket and taking the glasses to clean them himself.
‘There.’ Carefully, he set them back on Beth’s face, and if he was as oblivious as he was making out to the intensity with which Beth watched him do it, not to mention the colour flooding her cheeks, then it was high time he got some glasses too.
‘It’s definitely loaded,’ said Beth, returning her attention to the camera, her glasses already fogging up again. ‘Try taking a picture.’
‘Drink?’ said Tim to Iris, proffering one of the table’s jugs.
‘Absolutely,’ she said, reaching for an empty glass, meeting his smile.
She’d spent a lot of time with him too, these past weeks, mostly back at The Heaton Arms, and here in Bettys: drinking, dancing, reminiscing.
‘Do you still have that picture of your dad?’ she’d asked him, as they’d walked home from Heaton one night back in January.
‘I still have it,’ he’d said, patting his chest pocket. ‘I feel like he’s keeping his eye on me when we fly.’ He’d smiled ruefully. ‘Foolish, probably.’
‘Not foolish,’ she’d said, reaching for his hand, just as she’d done when they were small children. ‘Not foolish at all.’
‘I wish we hadn’t lost touch,’ he’d said, looking down at their hands. ‘If I could only go back and teach eleven-year-old me to write a proper letter. Or better yet, get on a train to visit you … ’
‘If we could only teach our eleven-year-old selves all sorts of things,’ she’d said.
And, wistfully, he’d nodded.
Then, as the others had caught them up, he’d let her hand go.
‘Thank you,’ she said to him now, once he’d filled her glass.
‘You’re most welcome,’ he said to her, and poured for Robbie too.
‘Salut,’ said Mabel, raising her own glass.
‘To Jacob,’ said Robbie, raising his.
‘To Jacob,’ everyone chorused.