"Ian R. Macleod - The Chop Girl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Macleod Ian R)

Ian R. MacLeod
THE CHOP GIRL

Me, I was the chop girl-not that I suppose that anyone knows what that means now. So much blood and water under
the bridge, I heard the lassies in the post office debating how many world wars there had been last week when I
climbed up the hill to collect my pension, and who exactly it was that had won them.
Volunteered for service, I did, because I thought it would get me away from the stink of the frying pans at home in
our Manchester tea room's back kitchen. And then the Air Force of all things, and me thinking, lucky, lucky, lucky,
because of the glamour and the lads, the lovely lads, the best lads of all, who spoke with BBC voices as I imagined them,
and had played rugger and footie for their posh schools and for their posh southern counties. And a lot of it was true,
even if I ended up typing in the annex to the cookhouse, ordering mustard and HP Sauce on account of my, quote,
considerable experience in the catering industry.
So there I was-just eighteen and WAAF and lucky, lucky, lucky. And I still didn't know what a chop girl was, which had
nothing to do with lamb or bacon or the huge blocks of lard I ordered for the chip pans. They were big and empty places,
those bomber airfields, and they had the wild and open and windy names of the Fens that surrounded them. Wisbeach
and Finneston and Witchford. And there were drinks and there were dances and the money was never short because
there was never any point in not spending it. Because you never knew, did you? You never knew. One day your bunk's
still warm and the next someone else is complaining about not changing the sheets and the smell of you on it. Those big
machines like ugly insects lumbering out in the dying hour to face the salt wind off the marshes and the lights and blue
smoke of the paraffin lanterns drifting across the runways. Struggling up into the deepening sky in a mighty roaring, and the
rest of us standing earthbound and watching. Word slipping out that tonight it would be Hamburg or Dortmund or
Essen-some half-remembered place from a faded schoolroom map glowing out under no moon and through heavy
cloud, the heavier the better, as the bombers droned over, and death fell from them in those long steel canisters onto
people who were much like us when you got down to it, but for the chances of history. Then back, back, a looser run in
twos and threes and searching for the seaflash of the coast after so many miles of darkness. Black specks at dawn on the
big horizon that could have been clouds or crows or just your eyes' plain weariness. Noise and smoke and flame. Engines
misfiring. An unsettled quiet would be lying over everything by the time the sun was properly up and the skylarks were
singing. The tinny taste of fatigue. Then word on the wires of MG 3138, which had limped in at Brightlingsea. And of CZ
709, which had ploughed up a field down at Theddlethorpe. Word, too, of LK 452, which was last seen as a flaming cross
over Brussels, and of Flight Sergeant Shanklin, who, hoisted bloody from his gun turret by the medics, had faded on the
way to hospital. Word of the dead. Word of the lost. Word of the living.
Death was hanging all around you, behind the beer and the laughs and the bowls and the endless games of cards and
darts and cricket. Knowing as they set out on a big mission that some planes would probably never get back. Knowing for
sure that half the crews wouldn't make it through their twenty-mission tour. So, of course, we were all madly
superstitious. It just happened-you didn't need anyone to make it up for you. Who bought the first round. Who climbed
into the plane last. Not shaving or shaving only half your face. Kissing the ground, kissing the air, singing, not singing, pissing
against the undercarriage, spitting. I saw a Flight Officer have a blue fit because the girl in the canteen gave him only two
sausages on his lunchtime plate. That night, on a big raid over Dortmund, his Lancaster vanished in heavy flak, and I
remember the sleepless nights because it was me who'd forgotten to requisition from the wholesale butcher. But
everything was sharp and bright then. The feel of your feet in your shoes and your tongue in your mouth and your eyes in
their sockets. That, and the sick-and-petrol smell of the bombers. So everything mattered. Every incident was marked
and solid in the only time that counted, which was the time that lay between now and the next mission. So it was odd
socks and counting sausages, spitting and not spitting, old hats and new hats worn backward and forward. It was pissing on
the undercarriage, and whistling. And it was the girls you'd kissed.
Me, I was the chop girl, and word of it tangled and whispered around me like the sour morning news of a botched
raid. I don't know how it began, because I'd been with enough lads at dances, and then outside afterward fumbling and
giggling in the darkness. And sometimes, and because you loved them all and felt sorry for them, you'd let them go
nearly all the way before pulling back with the starlight shivering between us. Going nearly all the way was a skill you had
to learn then, like who wore what kind of brass buttons and marching in line. And I was lucky. I sang lucky, lucky, lucky to
myself in the morning as I brushed my teeth, and I laughingly told the lads so in the evening NAAFI when they always