THE DAWN PATROL

CHAPTER EIGHT (PART 2)

We walked through the city lost in the darkness. The only light we had came from a full moon and a clear sky, and I marvelled at the amount of stars visible from the ground. I was used to the night sky from ten thousand feet and more. The moments I found myself at Dunsfold grounded with inactivity were spent getting drunk, so seeing the stars after sharing a bottle of scotch between the three of us and still being relatively sober, I found myself waxing nostalgic.

“You’d almost think you were at home looking up at the stars on a night like this. And they’re the same stars. Freddy and Jen are probably looking up at them thinking about us over here, waiting for us to come back.”

“Not me,” Jack said. “I’m never going back.”

“Why not? Don’t you want to see Mom? Or Freddy? What about Jenny?”

“Send me a picture of them when you get back.”

“What about Winnie?”

“What about her?”

“Which one’s Winnie?” Ray asked.

“My sister. Our sister,” I corrected myself. “She’s here in London working as a nurse somewhere.”

“Oh right, I forgot, you have a sister.”

“Two of them. But Jenny’s not here. She’s only seventeen.”

“Seventeen? And what’s wrong with that? Old enough to bleed, old enough to breed I say.”

“Not with my baby sister,” I said.

“What about this other one? What’s her name?”

“Winnie,” Jack said.

“How old is she? Is she older than you?” he asked me. I nodded. “Older than you, Jack?”

“She’s in between us. She’s twenty-four. She was always Daddy’s special girl.” There was a note of resentment in his voice.

“Do you think she likes younger men?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask her yourself? We’re on our way to meet her right now.”

“You found Winnie?” I said.

“Was there ever any doubt I would?”

I shook my head, smiling to myself in the darkness as we walked through the empty streets, feeling as if we’d found ourselves mysteriously thrown into the middle of a ghost town. I looked at Jack for a moment under the soft moonlight, never having guessed that perhaps Jack might have resented Winnie as they were growing up because she got all of Dad’s affection, and all Jack ever got was Dad’s cane.

*

“And what do you boys do for excitement out there in the Surrey countryside?” Agatha, a nurse Winnie brought along with her, asked me as she spilled her drink across my lap. “Oops, look at me. Did I do that?” she smiled as she put her drink down on the table and began wiping my lap with a handkerchief she pulled out of her coat pocket.

“That’s okay,” I said, feeling uncomfortable and trying to stop her hands from rubbing my thighs.

“It’s alright,” she smiled. “I’m a nurse. I’ve washed more men down there than you could ever imagine.”

I looked at Jack thinking he might help me, but he laughed at my distress, whispering something in Cecelia’s ear. She laughed, and I thought I saw a look of pity in her eyes, but it dissolved as quickly as it appeared.

“Aggie,” Winnie said, coming to my rescue. “He’s really not interested in you. He’s here to see me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said to her, and she sat back with pursed lips as she picked up her drink. She was an attractive woman, buxom, with ‘good child bearing hips’ as our mother would’ve said. She appeared to have too much rouge, and too much lipstick, and her eyebrows were just that much too thin, giving her face the appearance of a painted doll. She was nice-looking, but not pretty; beautiful, but not striking.

“I’m not busy,” Ray said with a grin, and patted the seat beside him. She giggled and squeezed herself out from behind the table and slipped in beside Ray on the other side.

“Friends for life,” Winnie said looking at them, and I thought I detected a note of resentment in her voice. I looked at Ray thinking she might see something in him I hadn’t noticed, and asked myself if Ray could be considered a handsome man. I looked at Winnie again and noticed how she let her gaze linger a moment longer than she might have, and decided there must be something making her hold her gaze that long. I looked at Ray again.

“Is it everything you expected it to be?” I asked her, turning back to look at her.

“I don’t know. The work’s hard—endless. It’s a thankless task—no that’s not the right word—well, it is the right word, just not the right sentiment.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“We get a lot of wounded soldiers, but mostly civilians. Children. We still get bombers coming over once in a while, and they drop their payloads— is that the right word? Payload? Their bombs. It’s horrible really, when you see the kind of damage they can do.”

“I try not thinking about it in those terms,” I said in a compliant voice.

“Bobby flies bombers,” Jack said, leaning forward as he told her and then winking at me.

“You do? I thought you were a fighter pilot for some reason.”

“It’s the romantic idealism of it,” Jack grinned.

“Like being a spy,” Cecelia laughed.

“I never said I was a spy.”

“Oh please, Jack,” Winnie laughed. “Try being honest for once in your life.”

“Once?”

“Has he never been honest?” Cecelia asked.

“Not if he could help it!” Winnie cried out.

“I tried being honest once,” Jack said with a serious undertone. “But Dad beat it out of me with his cane. That’s what being honest got you around our house.”

“Your father beat you with a cane? Like a headmaster?” Agatha said from across the table.

“Worse.” I replied.

“‘Spare the rod—’” Winnie smiled.

“‘And spoil the child’,” Jack laughed. “No fear of that with him.”

“I do miss home though,” Winnie said after a moment.

“What’s to miss?” Jack asked.

“You don’t miss Canada?” Cecelia asked him. “Not even a little bit?”

“Missing Canada and missing home are two completely different things,” Jack explained. “I traveled across the country on top of a railcar, inside it if I could—especially if it was raining. It’s easier sleeping in a moving car, that way you don’t have to worry about someone trying to rob you blind as you sleep. But I love Canada. It’s a vast country. You can travel for days on end and still not reach the other end of it.”

“Nothing’s that big,” Agatha said with a note of disbelief.

“It would take you five days by rail to travel from the west coast of Canada to the east coast—and then you’d have to take a ferry if you wanted to reach the last province. How many countries do you think you’d pass through in Europe if you did that? You’d be on the other side of the continent; you’d be in Asia by then.”

“Are you going back after the war?” Agatha asked.

“That depends.”

“On what?” It was Cecelia asking this time.

“Surviving it.”

“What was the name of that place you said you came from?” Agatha asked Winnie.

“Surrey!” I laughed.

“And is there a place called Dunsfold in your Surrey?” Ray asked.

“No, but there is a Guildford Station; and Richmond, like Richmond Hill—and don’t forget New Westminster. Or Vancouver,” Jack laughed.

“Vancouver was named after a city in England?” Ray said in a puzzled tone.

“No, you prairie gopher,” Jack laughed. “Vancouver is the British explorer they named the city after.”

*

By the time Ray and I left London for Dunsfold Airstrip, the sun was coming up over the horizon, lighting a pale blue sky where small cirrus clouds appeared blushing along the tree line running before the light like frightened rabbits. We drove along the road without a care, the small roadster we’d borrowed purring softly, the windows open and the cold morning air keeping us awake.

“So now you’ve met my sister,” I said to Ray, lighting a cigarette and handing it to him.

He nodded as I lighted my own.

“She liked you.”

He looked at me.

“You don’t believe me?”

“She never spoke to me.”

“That’s because her friend was all over you. But she noticed you.”

“I hope so.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s the woman I’m going to marry.”

“You see her in one of your dreams?” I asked.

“Long before I ever saw you, or Jack,” he grinned back at me. “Small world, ain’t it?”