In A Dry Season

the struggling writer; the public figure with the splinter of ice in her heart. Would that be the last? Which was the real one? She didn’t know. She didn’t even know if there was a real one.

Though the worry and fear gnawed away at her since the TV broadcast, Vivian tried to live a normal life: wandering up to Hampstead in the morning; reading the newspaper; sitting down in her study for the day, whether she wrote anything worth keeping or not; talking to her agent and publisher; answering correspondence. All the while waiting for that knock on the door, wondering what she would say, how she could convince them she knew nothing; or thinking that perhaps she should just tell them what she knew and let the chips fall where they would. Would it really make a difference, after all this time?

Yes, she decided; it would.

When it came, though, the shock came in a form she hadn’t in the least expected.

That Tuesday night, the phone rang just as she was dropping off. When she picked up the receiver, all she heard was silence, or as much silence as you ever get on a telephone line.

“Who is it?” she asked, gripping the receiver more tightly. “Please speak up.”

More silence.

She was just about to hang up when she heard what she thought was a sharp intake of breath. Then a voice she didn’t recognize whispered, “Gwen? Gwen Shackleton?”

“My name’s Vivian Elmsley. There must be some mistake.”

“There’s no mistake. I know who you are. Do you know who I am?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You will. Soon.”

Then the caller hung up.

TEN

Christmas 1943. It was a gloomy, chill and moonless night when the 448th held their first dance at Rowan Woods. Gloria, Cynthia, Alice and I walked there together along the narrow lane through the woods, our breaths misting in the air. We wore court shoes and carried our dance shoes because they were far too precious and flimsy to walk in. Luckily, the ground wasn’t too muddy, because none of us would have been caught dead wearing wellies to a dance, even if we had to walk through Rowan Woods in a storm.

“How many of them do you think there are?” Cynthia asked.

“I don’t know,” said Gloria. “It’s a big aerodrome, though. Probably hundreds. Thousands, even.”

Alice did a little dance. “Ooh, just think of it, all those Yanks with money to throw away. They get paid much more than our boys, you know. Ellen Bairstow told me. She went out with a GI when she was working at that factory near Liverpool, and she’d never seen so much money.”

“Don’t you try to tell yourself they won’t want something in return, Alice Poole,” said Gloria. “And don’t you forget your poor Eric away fighting for his country.”

We were all a bit quiet after that. I don’t know about the others, but I couldn’t help thinking of Matthew. A fox or a badger suddenly flashed across the path and scared us, but the adrenaline at least broke the silence. We were still excited, and we giggled like silly schoolgirls the rest of the way.

Most villagers had already seen the newcomers around, and I had even served some of them in the shop, where they had looked puzzled at our meager offerings and confused by the unfamiliar brand names. Some people disapproved of their arrival – especially Betty Goodall – thinking it would lower moral standards, but most of us quickly accepted them as part of the general scenery. I even helped the local WVS set up a Welcome Club for them in Harkside. Thus far, in my limited experience, Americans had always been friendly and polite, though I can’t say I really warmed to the way they called me “ma’am.” It made me feel so old.

They were certainly far more casual and confident in their manner than our lads, and they had much smarter uniforms. They even wore shoes rather than the great clodhopping boots the Ministry saw fit to issue to our poor armed forces. Of course, our view of Americans was still almost entirely formed by the glamour of Hollywood films, magazines and popular songs. To some, they were all cowboys and gangsters; to others, the men were handsome heroes and the women beautiful and rather vulgar molls.

That evening as we trudged through the forest, we had little real idea of what to expect. We had all fussed about what to wear for days, and we had taken special care with our appearance – even me, who was generally not overly concerned about such superficial matters. Under the overcoats we wore to keep out the chill, we all had on our best dresses. Gloria, of course, looked gorgeous in her black velvet V-neck dress with the puff sleeves and wide, padded shoulders. She had added a red felt rose at the neckline on the left side. I was a little more serviceable in the Utility dress I had bought in London.

One big problem was that we had all run out of fashion stockings and either we didn’t have enough coupons to get new ones or we couldn’t find any in the shops. When Gloria dropped by to meet me after I closed up shop, the first thing she told me to do was stand on a chair.

“Why?” I asked.

“Go on. You’ll see.”

I could have said no, but I was curious, so I stood. The next thing I knew, Gloria was lifting up my skirt and applying some sort of cold greasy stuff to my legs.

I squirmed. “What is that?”

“Shut up and keep still. It’s Miner’s Liquid Make-Up Foundation. Cost me two and sevenpence halfpenny, it did.”

I kept still. When the stuff she had slathered on my legs finally dried, Gloria had me stand on the chair again and she carefully drew a seam all the way down the backs of my legs with a special sort of pencil. It tickled and again she had to tell me to keep still.

“There.” She bit down on the corner of her lip and stepped back to admire her handiwork. I stood on the stool feeling like an idiot, holding my skirt up around my thighs. “That’ll do,” she pronounced at last. “Me next.”

As I “did” her, rubbing the foundation on her soft, pale skin, she started to laugh. “Marvelous stuff, this,” she said. “I was at my wit’s end the summer before last, before Matthew… well, anyway, I was so desperate I tried a mixture of gravy powder and water.”

“What happened?”

“Bloody flies! Chased me all the way from here to Harkside, and the damn things even buzzed around my legs inside the hall. I felt like a piece of meat in a butcher’s window.” She paused. “Ooh, Gwen, do you remember what that looked like? All those lovely cuts of meat in the butcher’s window?”

“Don’t, I said. “You’ll only make us miserable.”

We met the others by the fairy bridge. Cynthia Garmen was going for the Dorothy Lamour look. She had a black pageboy hairdo and wore a lot of makeup. She even had mascara on her eyes, which looked really strange, as women tended not to use a lot of eye makeup back then. It wasn’t good-quality mascara. When she got hot from dancing later in the evening, it started to melt, and she looked as if she had been crying. She said she had bought it on the black market in Leeds, so she could hardly go back and complain.

Alice was in her Marlene Dietrich period: plucked eyebrows penciled in a high arch, wavy blond hair parted in the center, hanging down to her shoulders. She was wearing a Princess-style burgundy dress with long, tight sleeves and buttons all down the front. It came in at the waist to show how thin she was: almost as thin as Marlene Dietrich.

The dance was held in the mess. We could hear the music before we even got there. It was the song I remembered hearing in Piccadilly Circus a few months ago: “Take the ‘A’ Train.” We stood outside the door touching up our hair, checking our appearance one last time in our compact mirrors. Then we took off our coats – not wanting to walk in wearing bulky winter overcoats – stuffed our court shoes in the pockets and put on our dance shoes. Ready at last, we made our grand entrance.

The music didn’t stop, though I swear it faltered for a moment the way records do sometimes when they become warped. It was a sextet, playing on a makeshift stage at the far end from the bar, and they all wore American air force uniforms. I suppose the odds are that when you gather so many disparate people together,