Free Small Wars by Sadie Jones Page A

grass. She took the first strawberry. It was warm from being in the passenger seat with the sun coming through the windscreen. ‘You can’t get these until the summer in England,’ she said.
    ‘’Tis-it?’ asked Lottie, and then Meg:
    ‘’Tis-it?’
    Deirdre Innes’s front door banged behind them as she came out with her little boy, and they all turned. She had on her sunglasses and a bright green dress with a white belt. Deirdre was irritable even in pleasure, and her light mouse hair always fought to fall out of the curl she tried to keep in it. ‘Picnic?’ she said, dropping her keys into her big straw basket and trying to take her little boy’s hand. He was called Roger, and would soon be three.
    ‘Here.’ Clara held a strawberry out to her.
    ‘How marvellous.’
    Roger, who wore pale blue cotton rompers and had fat legs, stared at Lottie and Meg, who stared back. Deirdre threw the strawberry stalk away from her. ‘We’re going down to Dodge. Coming?’
    Dodge City was the nickname for the row of shops on the base. It had a wooden walkway along it and the buildings had been hastily thrown up, giving it the appearance of a frontier town in the Wild West – hence its nickname. There was a hairdresser and a small general store. Greek-run and friendly.
    Deirdre and Clara walked to Dodge and the children went so slowly it took a long time. They chatted and finished the strawberries, looking up occasionally at the dark blue horizon of the sea.
    ‘Cyprus – the Sunshine Posting,’ said Deirdre, with bitterness, and Clara didn’t draw her out, preferring to relish her own happiness as precious.
    At Dodge, she waited outside the shop for Deirdre, leaning against the wooden post of the walkway with the sun on her face and Lieutenant Davis came out of the barber’s, rubbing the back of his newly shaved neck. He noticed her and looked oddly surprised. ‘Hello,’ he said.
    ‘Good morning. Nice haircut?’
    ‘Well, I won’t need another for a while at least,’ he said, smiling.
    ‘I’m just waiting for Deirdre Innes.’
    ‘No shopping to do?’
    ‘Not today.’
    Davis looked at the girls, who were hunched low and close to one another nearby, examining some ants and squashing them occasionally with their short fingers.
    ‘Savages,’ he said.
    ‘Shocking, isn’t it? First instinct – destruction.’
    He looked at her. ‘Are you on Marlborough?’ he asked.
    She had thought he was going to say something quite different, she didn’t know what.
    ‘Lionheart,’ she said. ‘We were in town before, which was horrid, so I’m glad we’re up here now.’
    ‘Yes, much better off. Did you feel in any danger?’
    ‘Everyone was very friendly, actually. The Greeks seem so hospitable. Hal says it’s a shame a perfectly amicable situation can be spoilt by a few troublemakers.’
    ‘Does he? I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,’ he said.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Well, how would we like it if a lot of Greeks moved into the Houses of Parliament and told us what to do?’
    ‘It’s not the same thing at all. And they didn’t complain about it when we were defending them from the Germans, did they?’
    Lottie got up and went over to Clara, leaning on her, pressing her dusty hands against her skirt and twisting her neck to smile up at Davis with self-adoring charm.
    ‘Hello – you’re a sweet little thing,’ said Davis.
    ‘This is Lottie. That’s Meg.’
    Meg was absorbed in the ants still and didn’t hear.
    ‘Twins?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I was a twin, but my sister died when we were two.’
    ‘Oh.’
    Clara was at a loss for a moment. Her girls were nearly two; it didn’t bear thinking about. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
    ‘Well. You know.’
    This remark seemed to finish the topic and Clara searched for another. She wished Deirdre would come out. Lottie wriggled and kept smiling up at Davis, then went over and smiled at him even more, hoping to be picked up, and Clara felt embarrassed,