When the Lights Go On Again. Annie Groves
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own lines and them panzers,’ Andy told Luke breathlessly, both of them dropping flat to the ground as they heard a fresh burst of exploding tank shells.
It was two days since they’d come ashore at Salerno, followed by intense fighting with the Germans as they’d tried to push them back from their entrenched position. But now, with the panzers having moved down from the hills beyond Salerno to surround the bay, it was looking dangerously as though they were the ones who were going to be pushed back into the sea, not the Germans forced to give way so that the Allies could advance.
The naval guns to which Andy was referring, as the men dug in, belonged to the battle cruiser Warspite and three destroyers out in the bay, all of which were pounding the panzer-infested hills, whilst the panzers returned fire into the Allies’ lines.
‘Hellfire, that was close,’ Andy protested, cramming his helmet down onto his head and wriggling deeper into his foxhole as a shell exploded within yards of their position, sending up a spray of earth and stone to mingle with the blood of the men it had hit, whilst the field guns of the 146th Field Regiment of the Royal Artillery, positioned behind the infantry, tried their best to give the Germans a pounding. The smell of war was everywhere: blood, smoke, cordite, unwashed male flesh and khaki.
‘You know what I think of at times like this, what keeps me going?’ Andy confided to Luke.
Luke shook his head. He knew what, or rather who, he thought of. Katie. He thought of his mum and dad and his family, of course, but first and foremost he thought of Katie and how badly he had treated her. If he didn’t fight to live he would never get the chance to apologise to her. And he wanted to do that. He wanted to set the record straight and square things with her. There was no going back to what they had once shared, but he owed her that apology. It and Katie were on his conscience.
But what if he didn’t survive? What if he never did get the chance to tell her? Did he really want her to go through the rest of her life thinking badly of him, telling the chap she eventually married how badly he, Luke, had treated her?
‘What I think of is me mum’s Sunday roast dinners,’ he could hear Andy telling him wistfully. ‘Aye, and there’s no way I’m ever going to let any ruddy German stop me from tasting one of them again.’
Luke nodded. It was his duty, after all, as corporal to listen to his men and to put heart into them when they needed it, but his most private thoughts were still on Katie.
Katie. How was she going to know everything he wanted to tell her if he never made it home? Another burst of shells exploded around them.
He’d write to her, Luke decided. He’d write to her just as soon as he got the chance – if he got that chance.
‘Good weekend at home?’
‘Yes thanks, June,’ Lou fibbed.
‘I love being in ATA and I always think that I don’t miss my family until I get some leave and I go home,’ June told her. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it, how we sort of have two separate lives – the one we have here and the one we have with our families? My ma would go spare if she knew a quarter of the things we get up to. I don’t even smoke at home, never mind tell her about the near misses I’ve had flying.’
Lou smiled. In truth she was glad to be back at the base. Because she didn’t want to have to think about Sasha and how much her twin had changed? Lou’s forehead crinkled into a worried frown. She had tried to talk to Sash, hadn’t she, and more than once, but her twin had rejected every attempt Lou had made to bridge the gap between them.
In desperation, before she had left, when they’d been alone in their shared bedroom, Lou had grabbed hold of her sister to stop her leaving and had told her firmly, ‘Look, I know that something’s wrong. We’re twins, remember. Twins, Sash. All I want is for you to be happy.’
‘I am happy,’ Sasha had insisted angrily. ‘Just because I don’t want to learn to fly aeroplanes and go round showing off my uniform and have everyone thinking I’m wonderful, that doesn’t mean that I’m not happy.’
‘Oh, Sash, don’t be like that, please,’ Lou had begged. ‘I wasn’t trying to suggest that what you are doing is any less worthwhile than what I’m doing. When I said you aren’t happy, I meant you, here, inside yourself.’ Lou had touched the spot over her twin’s heart to emphasise what she meant, but once again Sasha had chosen to misunderstand her.
‘Do you really think I don’t know what you really mean?’ she’d demanded. ‘You think that just because you’ve met up with Kieran Mallory again that I’m jealous, don’t you? Well, I’m not. I couldn’t care less about him.’
‘Neither could I,’ Lou had tried to reassure her twin. ‘And I wasn’t talking about Kieran Mallory anyway.’ She’d paused, not sure how much to say, but then deciding that she had to say something. ‘Sash, both nights whilst I’ve been home you’ve fallen asleep with your torch on…’
‘So what if I have? Can’t a person read in bed if she wants to without someone else making a fuss about it?’
Sasha had pulled away from her then, hurrying out of the bedroom before Lou could stop her.
Something was wrong with Sasha. Lou knew that instinctively, even if she couldn’t come up with a logical explanation of why she felt the way she did. On the face of it Sasha should be happy. She was engaged to Bobby, who loved her and who she said she loved in return. She was doing her bit for the war, working at the telephone exchange, and at the same time living at home with their parents just as she had wanted to do.
Was it because of Kieran Mallory that Sasha had been so upset and angry, refusing to make up the distance that now existed between them? Did her twin secretly have feelings for him, even though she insisted that she didn’t?
He had come between them once already and Lou did not want him to come between them again. If Sasha didn’t want to confide in her then perhaps she ought simply to respect her twin’s decision.
‘How was London?’ she asked June now, reluctantly putting her concern about Sasha to one side.
‘Crazy. For a start, it’s full of Americans. You can’t walk down any of the main streets without getting blocked in by Americans passing one another and having to salute. Mind you, I have to admit that they know how to have fun. There was a dance on at our hotel on Saturday night, and before we knew it the place was swarming with GIs. They certainly know how to treat a girl,’ June giggled. ‘We met up with them on Sunday. They picked us up in these Jeeps and then roared round London in them. We ended up at this club – the 400 Club. Members only, supposedly, but after they’d waved some five-pound notes under the doorman’s nose he let us in. There was a terrific band playing. The place was full. I saw one of the upper-crust ATA girls there, Diana Barnato, with a crowd that included several RAF high-ups. You should have been with us, though, Lou.’
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