We'll Meet Again. Patricia Burns

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СКАЧАТЬ you’ll get time off, surely?’ Gwen said. ‘He won’t have you working in the evenings. We can go to the pictures together.’

      ‘Yes—’ Annie tried to be optimistic. ‘He can’t keep me in all the time, can he? We’ll go to the pictures Friday nights.’

      ‘Cary Grant …’ Gwen sighed. ‘Humphrey Bogart …’

      ‘Clark Gable …’ Annie responded.

      ‘Who would you like to be, if you was a film star?’ Gwen asked.

      ‘Judy Garland.’

      How wonderful to be Dorothy and meet the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion … how wonderful to escape from your farm and land in Oz. But of course you had to live in Kansas for that to happen to you. Whirlwinds didn’t tear across Essex.

      ‘Judy Garland? Oh, no. I want to be glamorous. I want to be Vivien Leigh.’

      And meet Rhett Butler.

      ‘Oh, yes …’ Annie sighed.

      Both happy now in their fantasy world, the girls marched arm in arm along the dusty summer streets of Wittlesham-on-Sea. The neat terraces of guest houses leading to the sea front still had ‘Vacancies’ notices hopefully displayed in their front windows, but many of the gardens had their roses and geraniums replaced by lettuces and peas as people answered the call to dig for victory.

      When they reached the sea front, they stopped automatically and looked towards the pier.

      ‘Quiet, isn’t it?’ Gwen said. ‘My mum says it’s hardly worth keeping open.’

      Gwen’s mum ran The Singing Kettle, a tearoom fifty yards from the pier entrance. The previous summer, the last summer of peace, it had been a little gold-mine, and Gwen had been kept as busy as Annie, running from kitchen to table with trays of teas and cakes and sandwiches, and back again with piles of dirty crockery. This year the visitors were few and far between. People were reluctant to go on holiday when invasion forces were threatening just across the Channel.

      ‘Blooming Hitler,’ Gwen grumbled as they surveyed the sprinkling of holiday-makers and the barbed wire entanglements running the length of the beach. ‘Gone and ruined everything, he has. That’s what my mum says.’

      ‘Yes,’ Annie agreed. ‘We’ve had to plough up the fields by the road because of him.’

      Digging for Victory had meant that her father had had to change some of his farming practices. He hadn’t liked that at all, and she and her mother had been the ones to bear the brunt of it.

      The girls turned away from the pier and strolled along together towards the southern end of the promenade. Even fewer businesses were open here, and the locked doors and boarded-up windows gave the prom a forlorn air.

      ‘D’you really want to go and work at Sutton’s Bakelite?’ Annie asked.

      Gwen shrugged. ‘It’s good money, and it’s all year round,’ she pointed out.

      Year-round jobs were at a premium in Wittlesham, where seasonal work was the norm.

      ‘Yes, but Sutton’s—Beryl’s dad,’ Annie persisted.

      ‘I know—’ Gwen said.

      Both of them thought of Beryl Sutton, their sworn enemy.

      ‘—but it is war work. I’ll be making parts for aeroplanes and stuff. Wirelesses, that sort of thing,’ Gwen said.

      ‘I s’pose so. But Toffee-nose Beryl—’

      ‘Swanky knickers—’

      ‘Posh pants—’

      They giggled happily, dragging up every insult they’d ever thrown at Beryl. But it still didn’t help with the deep jealousy Annie harboured, swilling like poison in her gut. Beryl had been allowed to go to the grammar school, when Annie had always beaten her in every school test they ever did. On top of that, they shared a birthday. Somehow, that made it much worse.

      ‘She won’t be there,’ Gwen pointed out.

      No, Annie thought. She’ll be at school, for another two years. Lucky cow.

      ‘And her dad’s all right.’

      ‘Yes.’

      That was another thing. Beryl’s dad was all right. He was nice. He was big and cheerful and adored Beryl. But then Gwen’s dad adored her, too. He called her his little princess and slipped her money for treats with a wink and a ‘Don’t tell your mother.’ Annie sighed. It wasn’t fair.

      The closed up souvenir shops and cafés dwindled into bungalows as the cliff ran down towards the marsh at the edge of the town. As the sea wall joined the end of the prom, there was a no man’s land of nettle-infested building plots and little wooden holiday chalets on legs that was not quite town but not country either. The roads here were just tracks and there was a temporary feel about the place. On the very last plot, a field under the sea wall that took a corner out of Annie’s father’s land, was a holiday chalet called Silver Sands. It belonged to the Suttons, who let it out to summer visitors.

      ‘Looks like they’re opening it up,’ Annie said.

      She was right. The windows and doors were open and the net curtains were blowing in the breeze. Rugs hung over the veranda rails. From inside came the sound of someone banging around with a broom.

      ‘Trust the Suttons to get lets when no one else can,’ said Gwen. ‘There’s a lot of people in this town don’t know what they’re going to do if this war goes on much longer. My aunty May’s desperate. She’s only had two families so far this summer, and lots of her regulars have cancelled. And my uncle Percy, he can’t work, not with his chest. And, like she says, rates’ve still got to be paid, and the gas and electric and everything, and the rooms kept nice, whether there’s visitors or not. She was talking to my mum about it the other day. Went on about it for hours, she did.’

      ‘Yes,’ Annie said.

      Her eyes were on Silver Sands. It was a trim little place, painted green and cream with sunray-effect woodwork on the veranda rails. Around it was about half an acre of wild ground with roughly cut grass, a few tough flowering plants and a swing. Positioned as it was, right next to Marsh Edge Farm, it had always held a special place in her imagination. When she was little, she liked to picture herself creeping in and living there, safely out of the way of her father, her own small palace where she could order everything the way she wanted.

      ‘I wish it was mine,’ she said, without really meaning to let it out.

      ‘It’s only a holiday chalet like all the rest,’ Gwen said. ‘I dunno why you make such a fuss about it. You wasn’t half mad when the Suttons bought it! I thought you was going to burst a blood vessel!’

      ‘Well, why should they have it? Them, of all people? That Beryl …’

      Annie’s voice trailed off. There, on the track leading to the chalet, was Beryl. It was as if she had been summoned like a bad genie by Annie’s speaking her name. Annie took in her grammar school uniform, the green СКАЧАТЬ