The Future Homemakers of America

6

Of course, it was my fault. Headlights left on, engine won’t turn over, who else you gonna blame but the driver?

‘Dead as King George,’ Lois said and John Pharaoh laughed. He stood looking under the hood, but I don’t think he’d have known a spark plug from a poke in the eye.

Audrey said warming it up might help, so Kath brought the teapot out and stood it on the battery, but I still couldn’t get a murmur out of it.

Betty said, ‘We have to get the battery inside, connect it up or something. You know what I mean. I’ve seen Ed do it.’

Ed was always tinkering with their car. First time I noticed she had sump oil the same place as her bruises was the day I realised how things stood between Betty and Ed.

Anyway, all that talk about connecting up batteries, there was a basic fact of life on Blackdyke Drove Betty was overlooking.

Even after Audrey told her, she didn’t really get it. ‘Heck,’ she said, ‘everyone has electricity. Well, we’ll just have to call the base. They’ll send out a ground-pounder, tow us in.’

Audrey shook her head. ‘There’s no telephone, Betty,’ she said. ‘We’ll just have to set fire to Lo’s windbreaker. Send smoke signals.’

She said, ‘Whaddaya mean? This is plum crazy. There has to be a telephone. Supposing they were to get a peritonitis or something?’ Her voice was real tight. She wanted to smack somebody, preferably me, I could tell, but Betty never smacked anybody in her life, more’s the pity.

‘Well, Peggy Dewey,’ she said, ‘you got us into this fix so I hope you’re gonna get us right out of it. I have my girls to pick up at fifteen-twenty and I don’t intend on letting them down.’

John Pharaoh said he’d go, fetch help. He had to walk back along the drove, cross the water by the sluice gates, take the highway into Brakey and find someone willing to drive out and rescue us. He set off, real willing and cheerful, and we all went back inside for a long, long wait.

Lois whispered, ‘Aud, where’d you say the john was?’

Audrey said, ‘It’s round the back. There’s no lock on the door, and no flush, so just follow your nose. And you probably won’t want to make contact with the seat. There’s wildlife out there, got heat-seeking equipment.’

Audrey was looking round at the room. There was a postcard thumbtacked to the wall, some place called Cromer, and a broken clock, with no minute-hand.

‘Jeez, Peg,’ she said, ‘did you ever see anything like this?’

‘I did,’ Lois said. ‘Herb’s folks’ place. I married beneath my station. Now I’m gonna have to take a leak, wildlife or no. Where’s Kath?’

She was outside again, standing by the station wagon, just looking at it, so downcast.

‘Is it my fault?’ she said. ‘Did I brek it?’

7

Kath lit the oil lamps and put more fuel on the range.

‘There,’ she said, ‘now we’re snug.’ But I reckon that yellow dog had the only warm seat in the house.

Audrey said, ‘How long have you lived here, Kath?’

‘Born here,’ she said. ‘Born in that bed.’

Lo bounced upright when she heard that. ‘Wow!’ she said. ‘You ever think of moving away?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve told John Pharaoh. We ever come up on the football pools, I should like to move up to Brakey. Be nearer the bus stop.’

Betty was having a little blub about Deana and Sherry, like she was never gonna see them again. I wished she’d stop. I didn’t like letting Crystal down neither, and I’m sure Lois was worried about Sandie too, she just never showed it, making herself at home on John and Kath’s bed.

‘Don’t you fret about your young ’uns,’ Kath said. ‘They’ll be right as ninepence. They’ll be larrikin about somewhere.’

Which, of course, was the last thing Betty wanted to hear. Whatever larrikin was, it sounded dangerous.

‘What time is it?’ she kept asking.

‘Big hand’s still on the five,’ Audrey kept answering.

‘Kath?’ Lo said. ‘You go outside to that bathroom in the middle of the night?’

‘No,’ Kath said. ‘I hold on till morning.’

We heard the toot of a horn. John Pharaoh had come back, riding in a General Post Office van, looking real proud of himself. A guy called Dennis Jex was driving, and two others, both Jexes too, had come along to give their advice or eyeball four American chicks, or maybe just to get a ride. One way or another, they seemed happy to be there. They all looked under the hood, but Dennis was the one really knew what he was doing. He jump-started us, while Audrey held the flashlight, and then he offered to escort us back to where the road was metalled, save us running off the track and disappearing into the swamp.

He said he was glad to help. He said there was no doubt in his mind, if it wasn’t for America he’d be living under the jackboot.

‘When push come to shove, you Yanks done the right thing,’ he said. ‘Even if you did take your time about it.’

Betty was in the car already, anxious for us to be on our way.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘I’ll pull round. I’ll take it nice and steady and you can follow my tail lights. And when I put my winker to go left, do you go right you’ll be set fair for the base. That’s straight on, about seven mile. You can’t go wrong.’

John Pharaoh was pacing up and down, eyes shining, like he’d had a real exciting time. Kath looked kinda sad to see us go.

I said, ‘Would you like to come out for a drive some time?’

‘Oh, I would,’ she said, ‘I’d like that very much.’

So I promised we’d do that, just as soon as the ice thawed. Then Dennis Jex moved off, and I nosed along right behind him, and Kath and John faded away into the mist.

Audrey said, ‘That was the right thing to do, Peggy. We should always try to build cordial relations with the locals.’ Audrey had the kinda enthusiasm for good works that could take a girl far at the OWC. If Lance was aiming to be a brass hat, he couldn’t have picked a better wife.

I said, ‘I didn’t do it to be right, Aud. I did it because I wanted to.’

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘Doing the right thing accidentally is better than doing the wrong thing. Now, I have an idea.’

Betty said, ‘Audrey, would you please allow Peggy to concentrate on driving? Charity begins at home, remember?’

Audrey ignored her. ‘My idea is,’ she said, ‘we could take them things. You know, we have so much and they just have nothing. They have a can of fruit there and they don’t even have an opener. And did anybody notice an icebox?’

I said, ‘I believe they’re living in it, Aud.’

She said, ‘Well, I think a food parcel is called for. Little things that I’m sure would be appreciated. And not just food. I mean, did you see the state of her pot holder? Whaddya say, girls?’

But Lois was in a world of her own, humming a little tune. And Betty wasn’t in the mood for talking.

Ed was on the doorstep when we pulled up. Didn’t matter Sherry and Deana had been just fine, getting milkshakes with Gayle and playing hospitals and helping Crystal and Sandie to eat all of Lois’s cookies. Ed Gillis had just got a mean old mood on him, I could tell. That little dint, side of his jaw, was popping in and out.

‘Time you call this?’ he said, and Betty hurried right on in, clutching her pictures of the Duke of Cornwall. She didn’t even say ‘Goodbye’.

8

‘Okay, girls. Here’s what I got so far.’ Audrey was getting ready to air-drop supplies for Kath and John.

‘Cheez Whizz, Sugar Pops, Campbell’s Soup, two cans of franks, can opener, Oreos, nylons, Chesterfield’s …’

I said, ‘I don’t think they use smokes. All that time we were pacing the floor there, I never seen any sign of cigarettes.’

‘Well maybe they’d like the chance to start,’ she said. ‘Jeez, Peg, I’m just trying to help. Then I got cornflakes and Pepsodent, and I thought we could throw in a fifth of Dewar’s.’

Gayle said, ‘How about cupcakes? Can they get Hostess cupcakes?’

She was real keen for us to take her out there, introduce her to Kath and John, ’cause all she’d heard from us since we got back was about them sleeping in their kitchen and having a open-air privy. Course, Gayle was from Carolina, almost into Tennessee, so she could just have been feeling homesick.

Betty was grounded. The way she told it, it was her own wish to spend more time making their quarters into a real home. She showed me some damnfool thing she’d done with a folding table, General Issue, and a mile of pink cretonne, sent her by her cousin.

‘See,’ she said, ‘I just made it up like a skirt, cover those ugly old legs, then I thumbtacked it down, with this real pretty wrapping paper to cover the top. Now if I can get my hands on a nice piece of bevelled glass, I’ll have the darlingest dressing table on the base.’

I said, ‘You okay, Betty? Ed’s not giving you a hard time?’

‘I’m just fine,’ she said. ‘Now, you give my best regards to Kath and John, and I’d like you to take them a little something from me.’ She handed me that bar of Ivory soap like it was a piece of the True Cross.

We drove out one morning, after I dropped Crystal. Betty said she’d have loved to mind Sandie, only Deana and Sherry had caught some terrible skin condition, highly contagious, got it in the school yard, rubbing up close to urchins probably never seen a bath tub in their lives, so they were home, painted with violet-coloured lotion, grizzling and tormenting each other. So Sandie came with us, sitting in the back with her mom and Gayle, begging for more when Lois rolled down the window, pretending she could hear the Thing out there, coming to get us.

9

John Pharaoh was home alone. ‘Not here,’ he said, pacing up and down. ‘She’s working at the singling, but do you drive over Brakey way, you’ll see her. She’s at the Mayday Shed. Hello, tuppence. You want to see what I got?’

Sandie ran off with him and Lois followed her. Gayle helped Audrey carry the food parcels inside, and I just leaned against the trunk of the car and watched some little bird that was hovering and singing about a mile over my head.

‘Skylark,’ Audrey said, when she came outta the house.

Gayle said, ‘Ain’t this place something! I mean, my folks don’t have much, but they got a TV at least. They got a car. These guys gotta be real poor.’

Aud said, ‘And they sleep in their kitchen, I hope you noticed.’

Gayle said ‘Oh, folk do that in Boomer. When we were all home there was eleven of us. Girls head to tail in the kitchen bed ’cause girls gotta be up first. Where’d he say she was today?’

She was at Mayday. It was one of the beet farms. That’s what she did. Little jobs here and there, whatever was going, according to the season.

I wouldn’t have minded some kind of work myself, ’stead of sitting indoors reading my stars in the same old magazines over and over, but when you marry the military you become a Dependent Wife, and DWs weren’t allowed to work. Your job was to stand by your bunk, wait for him to come home from Beer Call and tell you another thousand different ways he’d put his hide on the line up in the big blue yonder. How things have changed.

I found out later, from Kath, that singling beets wasn’t no exciting career. You just stood in a shed with a bunch of women, all Jexes or Gotobeds, splitting up the clusters of sugar-beet seeds, chopping them up and getting paid nickels and dimes.

‘That’s not hard,’ she said, ‘that’s just boring. Then August, I go tater riddling. That’s hard and boring.’

I asked her one time, ‘How come you’re out working and John stays home?’

‘He works when he can,’ she said. ‘But he’s not a strong man. He’s got bad nerves. He’s under Dr Brameld, but he can’t do nothing for them though by the seem of it. He catches eels, though, and sells them. When the eels are running, he does well at them. And that’s an early start, up at four, emptying the traps. Then he has to get them down to Brandon, in time for the pick-up. He makes traps. Cuts the willow. Strips it. They come from all over to buy his traps. A man come all the way from Welney looking for John to make him a willow grig.’

It seemed like John Pharaoh was a regular little eager beaver. I kinda wished I’d never asked.

Anyways, that was where he’d disappeared to with Lois and Sandie that morning, showing them around his eel-trap empire, making little Sandie squeal with his tray of lugworms. We found them while we were showing Gayle the privy, giving her the full guided tour, like it was the Alamo. Sandie peeping out from behind Lois, daring herself to go and take a close-up look at the worms, and John holding up a basket, shape of a pickle, but six foot high.

You ever sin one big as this?’ he said, giving Lois a knowing smile, and she roared.

‘See,’ she said, when we were driving home, via Brakey, looking for something that might be a beet shed, ‘see, they catch different kinds, depending on the time of year. And sometimes they use nets and traps, and sometimes they use … like a spear, and just catch them one at a time, and sometimes, on a good night, they might catch twenty pounds of them, just in one of those baskets, and the big traps are called grigs but the little ones are called hoileys, and … what else … ?’

‘Tune in same time next week,’ Audrey said, ‘for the Wonderful World of Eel Fishing presented by Lois Moon.’

‘I understand this right?’ Vern said. ‘You drove out there, guzzling gas, took half the commissary and a bottle of good liquor too, and she wasn’t even home?’

I said, ‘Yeah. Must have put fifteen mile on the clock. Jeez, you’re starting to sound like Ed Gillis. He’s got radar-tracking on Betty.’

‘Know what’s good for you, you’ll stay outta Ed and Betty’s business,’ he said. ‘Know what’s good for you, you’ll quit running round, fraternising with a bunch of breeds. Hell, Peg, why can’t you stay home and make a pie once in a while?’

‘Hell is a bad word,’ Crystal said. ‘Also, jeez. Miss Boyle says.’

‘Vern,’ I told him, ‘I can make pie and go visiting.’

I’ll say this about Vern. Sometimes pie was all it took.

‘Honey,’ he said to Crystal, ‘you tell Miss Boyle welcome to the free world, thanks to folks like your daddy, and you can say any goddamn words you please.’

‘You don’t tell Miss Boyle no such thing,’ I said to her when I was tucking her in, ‘and you know what? Mommy’s gonna get you a princess dressing table, all pink and pretty.’

I was thinking I’d get Miss Homemaker of America to give me a hand. Betty always seemed to have a hundred ideas how to turn a prefab cabin into what she called ‘a gracious and lovely home’. I figured, if I kept Vern sweet, smartened up the quarters, made the occasional pie, I’d be able get off base once in a while without getting the third degree. Get away from the whine of the jets and the rattling of the windows. Now I’d got the hang of driving on the wrong side of the road, and handling that funny money of theirs, I was starting to enjoy going out there.

Crystal said, ‘Mommy? Do I have to have a princess dressing table? Can I get roller skates instead?’

10

I fell and busted my collar bone, coming outta the PX where the kids had been skidding around, polishing the ice. They strapped me up, till the bone knit, which good as put me in the slammer for a while. Couldn’t drive, couldn’t hardly pull up my own shorts. Couldn’t stop Betty Gillis running in and out performing acts of neighbourly kindness. Vern ate all the soup she brung in. That man was a walking Disposall. I just lived on codeine and Pepsi and prayed next time he got orders it’d be for Ramey, Puerto Rico.

‘You rest up now,’ Betty said. ‘I’ll take care of things. You’re in the best place. You seen what kinda weather we got today?’

They called it a Fen Blow. Looked like a sandstorm to me. A sandstorm on the far side of the moon.

‘Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse,’ Lois said. ‘Here, open nice and wide and I’ll steady the gun in your mouth. Hell, no. Let me go first. You can make your own arrangements. I got Herb at home and you’ll never guess what he’s doing.’

Herb loved chopping wood.

Thirty-six hours they didn’t fly a single sortie, because of the Blow, and Vern was like a bear with a boil on his backside, driving out to the facility every five minutes, looking for a patch of clear sky.

I said, ‘Why can’t you quit prowling around and do something? Play checkers with Crystal or write your mom. Do you know Lance Rudman writes his folks every week?’

‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘Well that figures. Pushing a pencil’s about what Rudman’s cut out for.’

Vern didn’t have much time for Lance. Okey Jackson was the one Vern rated, even though he looked so wet behind the ears, and there were jocks in the squadron had seen real action in Korea. Whatever it was they got up to up there, and I really didn’t care to know, Okey was the one kept showing them he had the moxie.

Soon as I got the strapping off, I shampooed my hair and pin-curled it. I was just going to the closet to get the dryer hood when I heard the siren. Then the crash trucks started up.

First time I ever heard that, back at Kirtland, I ran right outside, looking down the flight-line for smoke and then when I seen it I wished I hadn’t, because I didn’t know what the hell to do with myself. By the time we got to Drampton, England, I guess I’d learned there was no point. Wait long enough I knew I’d either be getting a visit from the chaplain, standing on my doorstep like the Grim Reaper hisself, giving me my wake-up call, or I’d be hearing from Betty Gillis on the jungle drums.

It took her thirteen minutes.

‘Breathe again,’ she said. ‘It’s 366 Squadron. You wanna come up here for coffee?’

So we all rendezvoused at Betty’s. She was minding Sandie again, didn’t seem to know where Lois was.

I said, ‘One of these days that kid’s gonna start calling you Mommy.’

‘Be fine by me,’ she said, ‘she’s such a little cutie. Way I see it, Peggy, some folks just aren’t cut out to be mothers, and if I can lend a helping hand, why, I’m doing Sandie a favour too. You heard the way Lois yells at her sometimes? Tell you the truth, I’d love another little one of my own, only Ed’s acting stubborn about it.’

Betty had been putting out feelers, trying to find out the news from 366. See if there were casualties. Pretty soon her telephone started ringing. One of their Invaders had come in on a tight turn and an engine flamed out. The crew had had to eject, and they were all safe home bar one, a sergeant called Benedetto, left one of his legs behind in the wreckage.

We kinda knew his wife. You see girls around, get to recognise their faces. But the Benedettos were quartered on Soapsuds Row, down by the hangars, and besides, we were First Lieuts. We didn’t socialise with the enlisted.

Gayle said, ‘Is he gonna die?’

Betty said, ‘Honey, they can do wonders these days. They’ll give him a new leg and a disability pension and everything.’

Audrey said, ‘That’s right. Air force takes care of its own. Now let’s do something to perk ourselves up. How about a Scarf Exchange? And I have a tangerine lipstick somebody might like.’

Gayle said, ‘He still could die.’

Betty said, ‘We’ll have no more of that kinda talk, thank you, young lady. Now, I have a tray of brownies here needs arranging nice and pretty. Care to make yourself useful?’

Gayle dumped the brownies on the plate.

I whispered to her, ‘You wanna come out driving, after? Get off the base for five minutes? Celebrate me getting back the use of my shift arm?’

She nodded. Little Sandie was looking at her, so solemn. Even she knew something had happened.

Betty’s Best-Ever Brownies

2 sticks sweet butter

4 eggs

4 ounces powdered chocolate

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup sifted flour

1 teaspoon McCormick’s vanilla extract

Heat the oven to 350°C. Grease and flour a large baking tray.

Melt butter over a low flame, stir in chocolate and set aside to cool.

Beat eggs and sugar until pale and creamy. Fold in the chocolate mixture and blend carefully. Gently add the flour, pour into pan and bake until just set (20–30 minutes).

Leave in pan until cool. Cut into squares for serving.

11

Instead of heading up to Brakey we went over by The Warren, the only little bit of woodland in the neighbourhood, spruce mainly, and came through it on a narrow track, trees pressing in both sides, but I liked it a lot better than having that big Norfolk sky watching every move I made. There was a nice earthy smell in there, too, like spring might be on the move.

Gayle was still quiet, so I just talked to myself.

I said, ‘This is like the fairy forest in one of Crystal’s bedtime stories. You see any handsome woodcutters? No, well, I guess Herb Moon’s still winging his way home with the rest of the boys.’

‘How come nobody ever talks about it?’ she said. ‘Peggy? About crashes and stuff? Like this morning, Benedetto nearly didn’t make it, and we just go to coffee at Betty’s and sit round, asking her why her brownies taste so good? Can you explain this to me, ’cause I just don’t get it? I mean, when you hear there’s a plane down, when you hear those trucks going off, don’t none of you ever get the shakes, waiting for the holy Joe to come creeping up the path, tell you you’re widow of the week? Hell, Peggy, don’t none of you get scared?’

I pulled over.

I said, ‘Well, course we do, hon, but we’re not just any old wives. We’re air force. We gotta stay calm and steady for our boys. You know that.’

She said, ‘But why can’t we talk about it?’

I said, ‘Because the boys never do, and if we did, it’d be like jinxing them. Every day they just go out there and do what they gotta do, and you know what? They’re the best. Benedetto blew it, is all. Whaddya expect from 366 Squadron?’

I could bullshit for the Lone Star State.