Rising Summer by Mary Jane Staples

dog will eat him if it smells blood. Shall we go?’
    ‘Can we wait a few more moments? Cecily asked last night if she could come.’
    Cecily arrived at that point. She too was in her best uniform.
    ‘Morning, Cecily,’ I said.
    ‘Oh, hi,’ she said in a fairly friendly way, but for one of her odd reasons failed to look me in the eye. ‘Look, d’you mind if I don’t come?’ she said to Kit. ‘Only the guys here are on church parade and I can go along with them. It’s Protestant, so I guess that’s OK.’
    ‘It’s OK with me,’ said Kit.
    ‘Well, Claud’s going,’ said Cecily, ‘and he said there’ll be room in the pew for me.’ Good old Frisby. He was doing a good job on Cecily and Cecily was looking as if the prickles were being taken out of her shirt.
    ‘Enjoy the hymns, Cecily,’ I said.
    ‘Oh, I’ll make out, I guess,’ she said.
    Kit and I climbed aboard the Austin and off we went. It was a rustic drive to Sudbury, the narrow roads winding around farms and doddling through hamlets. The rain began, showery at first, then depressingly sheeting. It wasn’t like blithe May at all. The hedges looked like glistening watersheds and in the distance the heavy sky dropped thick curtains of grey wet mist over Suffolk. The countryside turned into sodden blankets of greens and mustards. The hamlets, clustering around their churches, sprouted brooding belfries and glowering spires.
    ‘Mournful,’ I said.
    ‘The rain? Oh, that’s nothing,’ said Kit, ‘and it’s not as if we’re on our way to a picnic or a clambake. Besides, the weather can’t alter the fact that everything’s very peaceful and that the war’s not happening here. Are we grateful, old boy?’
    ‘Over the moon.’
    ‘Good.’ She seemed happy to talk. She had a companionable American warmth this morning. ‘What side of the road are you driving on?’
    ‘The middle,’ I said. ‘The road’s full of bends and there’s not much of a camber. If I landed you in a ditch, I’d have to write a long report and fill in a form.’
    ‘If you land me in any ditch, Hardy, I’ll write my own report,’ she said. ‘What’s that?’ She pointed.
    ‘A cow?’ I suggested, keeping my eyes on the road.
    ‘If that’s a cow I’m George Washington.’
    I took a look. We were passing a concrete drive leading to a tarry-roofed Nissen-hut complex in what had once been a Suffolk meadow. Not a soul was in sight but within a large concrete and sandbag emplacement three Bofors ack-acks were snouting under their tarpaulin covers.
    ‘That’s one of our battery’s gun sites,’ I said, driving on. ‘We’d better not call or the gunners will want you to stay for dinner and keep you till Christmas. Even in our army, troops get a treat at Christmas. Like a bird or two.’
    ‘Like a Christmas goose?’ asked Kit.
    ‘Turkey’s favourite. But they’d make do with an American girl sergeant.’
    ‘Now I get you,’ said Kit, ‘a bird is a broad is a girl, right?’
    ‘Right,’ I said, motoring on through the rain.
    ‘Your battery’s been in action?’
    ‘Since the Blitz. It’s quieter now.’
    ‘Have you brought any planes down?’ she asked.
    ‘Two,’ I said, ‘both ours.’
    ‘You shot down your own planes?’ Kit turned astonished eyes on me. ‘You shot down Spitfires?’
    ‘Might have been Hurricanes. We were too ashamed to go and look.’
    ‘Listen, you comic, isn’t there any chance of having a serious conversation with you?’ she asked. ‘How long have you been an enlisted soldier?’
    ‘Two and a half years.’ We splashed past a farm entrance, which threw liquid mud at us.
    ‘Good grief,’ said Kit, ‘in all that time you haven’t won promotion?’
    ‘Major Moffat has. As for the rest of us, nobody’s died or fallen in action. We’re up to establishment. One major, one adjutant, one messing officer and so on, site commanders and so on, the allowed number of NCOs and so on and no battle casualties. I’ve been at