The Chalky Sea Read online

  The Chalky Sea

  Clare Flynn

  Cranbrook Press

  The Chalky Sea. Copyright © 2017 by Clare Flynn

  Cranbrook Press, London

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For Jenn, Jane, Joan, Hilary, Bub, Pip and Wendy and our enduring friendship forged in Eastbourne.

  Contents

  The Chalky Sea

  I. 1940

  1. Parting

  2. The Discovery

  3. The First Bombing

  4. Drowning his Sorrows

  5. Staying Put

  6. Joining Up

  7. The First Kill

  8. Training Camp

  9. Raining Bombs

  10. Letter from Home

  II. 1941

  11. A New Job

  12. The New Recruit

  13. Bombed Out

  14. The Stag

  15. The New Housekeeper

  16. The Tea Party

  17. An Unexpected Guest

  18. Sunday Roast with the Underwoods

  19. Jitterbugging

  20. London Town

  21. Lost Children

  22. The Brawl

  III. 1942

  23. Transfer to Eastbourne

  24. Lodgers

  25. Out of a Job

  26. The Beach at Holywell

  27. Pauline’s Night Out

  28. Two whiskies

  29. The Cake Queue

  30. The Telegram

  31. A Letter from Aldershot

  32. Sharing a Confidence

  33. Dieppe

  34. Together

  35. The Mine

  IV. 1943

  36. Back in Aldershot

  37. Shopping for Shoes

  38. Into battle

  V. 1945

  39. Aftermath

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Clare Flynn

  The Chalky Sea

  Clare Flynn

  Cranbrook Press

  Part I

  1940

  I never 'worry' about action, but only about inaction.

  Winston Churchill, 1940

  Parting

  July 1940, Eastbourne

  The sea was pearl grey and sparkled like the scales on a fish. Gwen stood at the window staring at it, as she often did. A few miles away in France, armies of German soldiers were probably staring back across the Channel wondering what lay ahead of them. Since the terrible events of Dunkirk the previous month, Gwen had been oscillating between fear and hopelessness. The German invasion was coming and defeat was an inevitability. Belgium, Holland and France had fallen, crushed under the onward thrust of German panzers, so what chance did Britain have?

  She sensed Roger as he came up behind her. He placed his hands on her hips, then she felt the touch of his lips on the back of her neck. She stiffened and took a half step forward.

  ‘Time to go, old thing,’ he said.

  Gwen turned to face him, her mouth forming an artificial smile to reflect her husband’s real one. ‘All set.’ She dangled the car keys in front of him.

  Roger reached for her hands, gripping them tightly as she resisted. ‘Look, darling, I want you to promise you’ll go across to Somerset to stay with Mother. I don’t want you staying here. Things are going to get nasty.’

  Meeting his eyes she smiled. ‘I’ve told you. The moment the house is empty they’ll requisition it. I don’t want a lot of airmen in hobnail boots scratching the surface off my parquet floors. Half the road has already been taken over by the RAF.’

  Roger moved his hands up to her shoulders. ‘Once the war gets going properly – which will be any time now – we’ll have more than scratched floors to worry about. Hitler won’t bother to requisition the place. He’ll just rain bombs down on it.’

  ‘On Eastbourne? Don’t be silly, Roger. He’s not going to bother with a little seaside town. He’ll want to flatten big cities, docks, factories. I can’t imagine him sitting down with the Luftwaffe and targeting the pier and the Winter Garden.’

  Roger let his hands fall. ‘I wish you were right.’

  ‘Of course I’m right. Don’t you worry.’

  ‘Gwennie, you know as well as I do that the invasion will happen here or near here. You can’t possibly stay. The whole south coast is pitted with tank traps and covered in barbed wire.’

  ‘Well that will keep the Germans out,’ she said brightly. ‘I promise you, at the first sign of an invasion, I’ll drop everything and leave. Meanwhile I’ve things to do. There’s the WVS. I can’t let them down. So many have already left the town. Someone has to keep the flag flying. I want to move things into the cellar and the attic, out of harm’s way in case they do requisition the house. As soon as I’ve done that I can go to Somerset.’ She spoke the words and hoped he wouldn’t know she was lying.

  Roger sighed but said nothing more.

  They passed the ten-minute drive to the station in silence, each conscious that this morning marked an indefinite period apart. It might be months, years even. He might never return but neither wanted to acknowledge the fact. After his escape from Dunkirk Gwen thought they may have used up all their good fortune.

  The station concourse was crowded. There were young men setting off to join their regiments for the first time, women and children belatedly evacuating the coast where plans were advanced to counter the German invasion. Not so long ago the traffic had been in the other direction, when the town had opened its doors to give a rather grudging welcome to thousands of evacuees from London. They had all returned home or gone elsewhere as Eastbourne transformed into a frontline town, ready to stand hard against the German invasion that was expected imminently. Now the station, which used to be adorned with colourful hanging baskets, was lined with sandbags. Propaganda posters were plastered over walls that once advertised the attractions of pleasure boats and the programme of entertainment at the Royal Hippodrome and the Devonshire Park Theatre.

  A month ago the first sign of German aggression had been witnessed by the town when a merchant ship, laden with food supplies, was bombed off Beachy Head. Gwen had watched the burning vessel from the balcony of her bedroom. It seemed unreal. Like watching a newsreel at the cinema. The war was no longer something happening on the other side of the Channel or flickering in black and white across the big screen.

  A small group of uniformed officers were waiting apart from the crowd at the far end of the platform. Roger nodded at them then turned to say goodbye to his wife. He bent his face to kiss her, but she turned her head slightly so his lips met the hard edge of her jawbone rather than her mouth. She gave him another tight smile and said, ‘Buck up, darling. Don’t let’s get all soppy. The war will be over before too long, then things will get back to normal.’

  Roger glanced towards the colleagues who were watching curiously. He swallowed and ran his hand through his hair. ‘Look, Gwen, I’m not supposed to say this, but you need to understand. This war isn’t going to end quickly and it’s going to get very ugly. I can’t even tell you where I’m going – I don’t know yet myself, or when I’m going to see you again if I make it out the other end. I might be sent somewhere where I can’t get word to you, but, Gwen, wherever I am, I will try and get in touch. If you don’t hear, it won’t be because I didn’t try. I love you and I’ll miss you every second I’m away.’ He pulled her towards him, crushing her against his chest.

  Gwen breathed in the familiar smell of him, felt the rough scratch of his
uniform jacket against her cheek. She felt small and fragile when he held her, trapped, captive, like a caged bird. She stood rigid, willing him to release her and for the moments to pass until she could leave him to his colleagues and take herself outside the noisy station and away from him. Away from the possibility that he might see her mask slipping. That he might notice that her lip was trembling, that she was fighting back tears.

  At last Roger drew back. He held her shoulders and looked down into her eyes. ‘Gwennie, old thing. I love you so much but I know I’ve been a disappointment to you as a husband. I’m sorry.’

  Panic rose in her when she saw his eyes were damp. She reached up and planted a quick kiss, square on his mouth. ‘You are a silly sentimental thing. You know I hate that kind of talk. And it’s not true anyway.’ She tried to make herself say the words he wanted to hear, but they wouldn’t come. Instead, she said, ‘I’ll miss you too, but the time will pass quickly. Now it looks like those chaps over there are waiting for you to join them, so I’ll head off.’ She gave him another tight, hard-lipped smile and turned and half ran out of the station.

  There was a Local Defence Volunteer standing guard over her motorcar when she emerged onto Terminus Road. ‘You can’t park a vehicle here, Madam, it’s an exclusion zone.’ He swaggered up to her, shifting his weight so that the rifle casually slung over his shoulder would be evident.

  Gwen threw her handbag and gas mask carelessly onto the passenger seat, settled herself into the driver’s, and fired up the engine. The LDV man stepped in front of the car, blocking her path. She engaged the reverse gear, then realised her retreat was blocked by a heap of sandbags. The man banged loudly on the roof of the motorcar.

  ‘What do you want?’ she said. ‘I’m moving the damned car.’ As she looked him in the face for the first time she thought he looked familiar.

  He drew himself up to his full height then bent down and leaned through the open window. ‘I’m only trying to keep everybody safe, Madam. I was about to tell you that you can park across the road there.’

  She remembered where she’d seen him before. He was a pump attendant at the petrol station. Always ready with a cheery greeting and an offer to wash her windscreen when she stopped by. Ashamed, Gwen gushed excessive apologies then put her foot down. Damn the bloody war. After a few hundred yards she realised she was crying. She pulled over and dabbed at her face with a handkerchief. For God’s sake, Gwen, pull yourself together, woman.

  Jerking her handbag open, she took out her compact and powdered her nose. After applying lipstick, she inspected herself in the mirror. No evidence of the tears. She snapped the compact shut, put her hands back on the steering wheel and took a few deep breaths.

  Roger’s departure had hit her harder than expected. She would be rattling around that big house on her own, no one to eat with, no one to share a sherry. And no one to share her bed. Not that Roger was unreasonable in that respect. When children had not resulted after several years of marriage, Gwen was grateful that he had not brought the subject up. It was as if he had sensed that it was a topic she wanted to avoid. Too painful to be confronted. Once it was tacitly agreed there wasn’t going to be a baby, Roger didn’t expect her to let him make love to her so much. Maybe once a month, unless he’d had a few drinks – that always made him amorous. Otherwise he left her alone, to her relief. No, she couldn’t complain. She was grateful. Roger was a decent man. Yet that morning he’d said he thought he’d been a disappointment to her.

  Gwen couldn’t imagine what he meant by that. Lack of children aside, their marriage was probably no different from the other couples in their circle. They rarely argued. They muddled along fine. She certainly wasn’t disappointed in him. Leaning back in the seat she sighed. Disappointed in life though. In marriage as an institution. In her lot.

  Endless dull days when nothing happened. Her world contained by the house. Her purpose to plan meals, brief the cook, oversee the housekeeping. Her recreation the odd round of golf, tennis in summer, the weekly bridge game. She had never got round to telling Roger she didn’t even like playing bridge. What was the point? At least it occupied an evening every week.

  She envied Roger. He’d had his legal work with the Foreign Office to occupy his days. He’d travelled a lot with the work, often abroad, and, since the advent of war, he’d been involved in something top secret that meant he spent most of his time in London and closeted away in meetings at destinations to which she was not privy. If she had been frustrated with her lack of purpose before the war, now she felt more so. Roger wanted her to run away and wall herself up in a cottage in Somerset with his mother. There was nothing wrong with Maud. Gwen liked her, but she didn’t want to spend the duration of the war with her, filling her days with knitting squares for refugees and growing vegetables.

  The town was deserted. On a whim she parked the car and decided to walk the mile and a half up the steep incline back to her home in the district of Meads. She needed to work off her nervous energy. After a few minutes she removed her jacket. The day was already getting hot despite the still early hour. She wiped her brow. You’re out of condition, woman, she told herself. That’s what comes of a life of idleness.

  The following Sunday soon after eleven, Gwen was sitting on the terrace drinking tea. In front of her the sea was the colour of pale peppermint and milky with chalk washed from the cliffs.

  She sipped the weak tea and grimaced. It was like dishwater. She would never get used to rationing. She would never get used to the war. At first she had thought, guiltily, that it might at last bring some meaning into her life, give her something to think about, something to distract her from the emptiness inside. She’d joined the WVS and supervised the dispersal of evacuees around the town, mended soldiers’ socks for the war effort, and made endless pots of tea. But it was window-dressing. Inside she believed the war was already lost and the disaster that was Dunkirk had reinforced that. Gwen wasn’t going to let herself be afraid. She had a plan. As soon as the invasion began she was going to down the contents of a bottle of codeine she’d set aside for the purpose and fall into a grateful sleep. Death was not to be feared. She had no idea what life under a Nazi occupation would hold and no wish to find out. If she were honest, she was using the invasion as an excuse.

  In the distance, the faint sound of anti-aircraft fire grew louder. The low buzzing thrum of planes – ours or theirs? Was the invasion starting now? As the questions were forming in her head they were interrupted by the boom-boom-boom of a series of rapid explosions.

  She spilled her tea on her dress as she jumped to her feet. Behind her the windows were rattling in their frames. The house faced south so she couldn’t see the town, but already a plume of smoke was moving out over the sea. The war had come to Eastbourne. There had been no warning.

  The Discovery

  July 1940, Ontario, Canada

  The sun was sliding low in the sky, a rosy glow spreading over the distant horizon behind acres of ripe wheat. Jim Armstrong rubbed the back of his neck where the sun had caught it. He’d forgotten his hat again. He reached down and grabbed a handful of ears of wheat, rubbing them together in his hand then blowing off the chaff to leave the plump grains. It was ready. The combine would be arriving tomorrow and it would take them a week to harvest the crop if they put their backs into it.

  Jim loved this part of the day. Work over. Supper soon to be on the table. A chance to slake his thirst with a cool beer after a long, hot day, and now a leisurely stroll back to the house with the dog by his side, alone with his thoughts. Over the past months since war was declared, the news reports and the recruitment posters all over town had made him ashamed to be still here on the farm. So many of the men he’d grown up with and gone to school with had left for Europe as soon as Prime Minister Mackenzie King announced that Canada was at war.

  Europe was thousands of miles away and their war wasn’t his, but he couldn’t help feeling he ought to be playing his part. After all, Canada was part of the B
ritish Empire. His father had been involved in the last war and had a boxful of medals to prove it. There was a legacy to live up to. The old man had done his bit and now it should be the turn of Jim and his brother Walt to do theirs. But every time he’d tried to talk to his father, Donald Armstrong changed the subject. He hated any mention of his time in the trenches and always brushed off attempts by his sons to draw him on his wartime experiences. As for Jim’s mother, whenever he or Walt broached the idea of joining up, she burst into tears.

  Jim’s dog, Swee’Pea, was sleeping under a tree at the far edge of the field. The dog was getting old and these days seemed to sleep more than he was awake. Jim had rescued him years ago as a puppy, when he found him floating in a sack in the creek, abandoned, presumably the runt of the litter. He’d christened him after Popeye’s foundling baby in the cartoons. Swee’Pea wouldn’t be much longer for this world. Jim couldn’t imagine life without him.