Page 8 (1/2)
‘Reading what?’
‘German Obviously They spoke it – well, an odd variant – in the village where I went to school in Switzerland And I liked it’
Maddie laughed ‘You izard this afternoon Really brilliant’
‘I couldn’t have done it without you telling ht there when I needed you, not a word or call out of place You made all the decisions All I had to do was pay attention, and that’s what I do all day on the Y sets anyway – just listen and listen I never have to do anything And all I had to do this afternoon was read froave me’
‘You had to translate!’
‘We did it together,’ said her friend
--
People are complicated There is so much more to everybody than you realise You see someone in school every day, or at work, in the canteen, and you share a cigarette or a coffee with theht’s air raid But you don’t talk soyou ever said to your mother, or how you pretended to be David Balfour, the hero of Kidnapped, for the whole of the year when you were 13, or what you i with the pilot who looks like Leslie Howard if you were alone in his bunk after a dance
No one slept the night of that air raid, or the next day We had prettyWe weren’t equipped for it, we didn’t have the tools or thecrew, but without a runway RAF Maidsend was defenceless And Britain too, in the bigger picture We repaired the runway
Everyonethe captured German – I think he was rather apprehensive about his fate as a prisoner of war and was just as happy to spend the day stripped to the waist shovelling piles of earth with twenty other pilots than to behim inland I remember we all had to bow our heads in a moment of silence for his dead companions before we set to work I don’t knohat happened to him after that
In the canteen, Queenie was asleep with her head on the table She must have done up her hair first, before she ca on the runway, but she’d fallen asleep before she’d even taken the spoon out of her tea Maddie sat down across from her with two fresh cups of tea and one iced bun I don’t knohere the icing caar just in case there was a direct hit on the airfield and everybody needed cheering up Maddie was quite relieved to see the unflappable wireless operator with her guard down She pushed the Cup That Cheers close to Queenie’s face so that the warmth woke her
They propped their heads on their elbows, facing each other
‘Are you scared of anything?’ Maddie asked
‘Lots of things!’
‘Name one’
‘I can name ten’
‘Go on then’
Queenie looked at her hands ‘Breakingthe runway of rubble and twisted metal, her manicure was in need of repair
‘I’ht then Dark’
‘I don’t believe you’
‘It’s true,’ said Queenie ‘Now your turn’
‘Cold,’ Maddie answered
Queenie sipped her tea ‘Falling asleep while I’hed ‘And boht’ It was Maddie’s turn to be defensive She shook tangled dark curls off her collar; her hair was barely short enough to count as regulation and too short to put up ‘Boranddad’
Queenie nodded in agree on est of ’ee He’s a pilot’
‘Not having a useful skill,’ said Maddie ‘I don’t want to have to ht away just so I don’t have to work down Ladderal Mill’
‘You are joking!’
‘When the war’s over, I still won’t have a skill Bet there won’t be this desperate need for radio operators when the war ends’
‘You think that’ll happen soon?’
‘The longer the war goes on,’ Maddie said, carefully cutting her iced bun in half with a tin butter knife, ‘the older I’ll get’
Queenie let out a giddy, tickled laugh ‘Getting old!’ she cried ‘I’ old’