Birmingham Rose (18 page)

After they had filed into the reception hut they were each given a printed postcard to fill in saying they had arrived safely and where they were. Rose addressed hers to Grace.

A brisk officer with an Eton crop introduced herself to them as Lieutenant Waters. ‘I’d like to welcome you to the Auxiliary Territorial Service. I know everything must seem very new and strange to you now, and I’m sure you’re all rather tired and cold. But you will get used to us and our ways here and, before long, our ways will of course become your ways.’

She went on to say that they were part of Platoon 4, and that later that day they would be issued with ATS uniform, of which, she assured them, they would become very proud after a few weeks. Rose listened rather blankly, sitting on a hard wooden bench beside the girl with nits, who kept fiddling with her head.

Then a plump woman in uniform came in and announced herself their corporal.

‘Right!’ she shouted at them. ‘Outside in threes!’

Carrying their cases, they slouched and stumbled out of the hut into the cold and stood in rough lines, three abreast.

‘Let’s see you begin on some marching,’ the corporal yelled. ‘When I say march you lead with your left foot. Ready? Right – march! Left, right, left, right, left . . . left . . . left . . .’

And the line of women, tall and short, plump and skinny, in as great a variety of clothes, tried to discipline their tired legs and march, heavy cases swaying in hands, to their huts. Rose heard Gloria give a snort of laughter at the sight.

Hut J, into which Rose was ordered, housed twelve women in beds with black iron frames, six down each side. Along the middle of the floor ran a very shiny strip of brown lino, and in the centre of the hut stood a stove, its rather rusty pipe angling up and out through the roof. It was not lit at the moment and the hut, with its drab greenish walls, felt cold and cheerless.

Rose sat down, slipped her shoes off and rubbed her slim, icy feet. She closed her eyes for a moment, wishing she could lie down on the bed and sleep straight away. She opened them again at the sound of a voice next to her.

‘Gawd! This is the first time I’ve ever had a whole bed to meself.’

A skinny girl with a pale, rather rat-like face, her lank greasy hair held back by a couple of kirby grips, was unpacking her things on the next bed. ‘How about you?’ she asked Rose.

‘Me too,’ Rose said wearily. She was tired and didn’t feel like talking. The girl had an accent rather like Gloria’s. Her name was Tilly and she came from Canning Town. Rose realized she meant London as well. Between all her actions Tilly kept biting furiously at her rough nails.

Rose got up slowly from the bed and started to open her case. As she glanced down the long room she saw that Gloria was up the far end, and she recognized the mousy girl who’d been hovering round the posh group at the station.

Standing by the bed on the other side of her was a girl with wavy brown hair and round, healthy-looking cheeks. For a second Rose was startled by how much she reminded her of Diana.

The girl smiled at her. ‘You look done in,’ she said. ‘Come a long way?’

‘From Birmingham,’ Rose replied. ‘It’s felt like a hell of a long day.’

‘Yes, I’m lucky. My people only live over near Oxford, so it hasn’t been too much of a chore for me. My name’s Muriel, by the way.’

Rose warmed to Muriel. She was well spoken, but without a trace of the stand-offishness she’d sensed in some of the others.

‘We’ll be able to help each other out, won’t we?’ Muriel said. ‘Did you know that these funny mattress things are called biscuits? Odd, isn’t it?’

Rose saw that the mattress on the iron frame was made up of three thin sections: – the ‘biscuits’. They also had two sheets each and four blankets.

Suddenly there was a to-do at the other end of the hut. The mouse was in tears.

‘What’s up with her?’ Tilly asked, with more curiosity than concern. ‘Can’t see there’s much to have a crying match about. S’like a boarding house here I reckon!’

The mouse, whose name turned out to be Gwen, had promised to write to her mother the instant she set foot in the camp and had just realized she had lost her writing paper.

‘Oh for heaven’s sake, wrap up,’ Gloria said to her. ‘Someone’ll give you a bit of paper. And you’ve already sent her one of them cards, so what’re you fussing about?’

‘But the card didn’t
say
anything,’ Gwen sniffed. ‘And Mummy worries so. She’s a widow, you see.’

Rose thought for a moment of Sid, and of Grace left to look after them all. She thanked her stars Sid had the BSA job to keep him occupied. And Grace had told her that in a few weeks when she had reached eighteen she was going to volunteer at a first aid post. ‘That way I can stay home with Dad and George and still do something useful,’ she’d said stoically.

Now Rose wished overwhelmingly that her sister was there with her. It would be so good to see a familiar face.

Muriel found Gwen a sheet of paper and an envelope, but the moment she sat down to write they were all ordered out again. The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent rushing from one thing to the next: getting fitted into their stiff khaki uniforms and peaked caps, pulling at skirts and tunics to make them fit over hips and busts, and collecting a huge mound of kit: steel helmet, greatcoat, groundsheet, respirator . . . And clothes and more clothes, the shirts and slacks and gloves and everything you could think of except, for some reason, handkerchiefs. There were shrieks of laughter at the sight of the heavy underwear and thick khaki stockings.

‘Cor – look at them passion killers!’ Gloria cackled, waving a pair of stockings round her head.

Then there was bed making and a quick meal of poached egg on toast in the Naafi canteen and, finally, bed.

Rose lay under the sheet and heavy army blankets. A couple of girls were crying. It was very dark in the hut, but Rose guessed from the direction of the sound that one was Gwen. She wondered if she ought to get out and try to comfort her, but she couldn’t think of anything to say and wasn’t sure Gwen would want her.

The hot cup of tea she’d drunk earlier had begun to ease her headache, but she could still feel her heart thumping too fast. Unable to sleep in this strange new place, she thought over the peculiar day she’d had and back to one event in particular.

That morning when she had left Catherine Street, she told Grace she’d rather say her goodbyes at number five. ‘I’d sooner think of you here when I’m gone,’ she said. ‘And you’ve got enough on your plate without traipsing into town with me.’

Grace had fussed around her like their mother would have done, and Rose couldn’t help thinking how much her sister looked like Dora now that her face had become thinner. The two of them packed up Rose’s few things in a small, decrepit suitcase.

‘I’ll miss you like anything,’ Grace said shyly, with tears in her eyes.

‘D’you think I’m deserting you?’ Rose asked. She had felt many pangs of guilt at going off and leaving Grace at home.

‘We’ll be all right,’ Grace said. ‘I’ve got used to you being over at Jean’s, and if you was here with Dad the pair of you’d do nothing but fall out anyhow. It’s best this way – specially with Alfie being stuck out there and everything.’ Grace still persisted in her fantasy that Rose was pining dreadfully for Alfie.

Sid had said a gruff goodbye to Rose before he left in the morning. ‘I don’t s’pose they let you lasses get anywhere near the action like the blokes. Just make sure you don’t give ’em lip and you’ll be all right.’

George just said, ‘Tara,’ as if Rose was off down the shops for the morning.

‘You’ll let me know how Billy and Susan are, won’t you?’ Rose begged Grace. ‘And Harry of course,’ she added quickly. ‘It’s going to be the worst thing, not having any kids around.’

The sisters embraced. The strong grip of their arms round each other said everything. Neither was the sort to make a fuss. Rose walked away from Court 11, past the bomb rubble at the end of Catherine Street.

Sitting on the bus into town, she began to feel this was actually real. She was really going to leave Birmingham for the first time. Her stomach churned with nerves and excitement. It was a bright, blustery morning and she stared hard out of the window as if trying to remember every stone of her city: the dark factories, Smithfield, St Martin’s, and all the other less obvious places that were so much part of her. She couldn’t imagine anywhere different. Leaving it all was terrifying now she was actually facing it. But this was what she had always wanted, wasn’t it? To see something of what was outside? The war had at least given her that chance. She sat hugging the small, battered weekend case on her knees, the one familiar object in a world that was shifting all around her.

New Street Station was seething with people, many of them service personnel in their blue or khaki uniforms. Rose wondered if there were others going to the same place as her. Trains were constantly moving in and out with a great clamour of engines and whistles blowing. The air was full of sharp smells of soot and cinders and acrid whorls of smoke from cigarettes.

Rose picked her way along the crowded platform, saying ‘excuse me’ and ‘sorry’ until she was somewhere near the middle. According to the long fingers of the clock there were still twenty minutes until her train to Oxford was due to leave. She wondered whether to go back and try to get a quick cup of tea.

A train slid slowly into the station from Rose’s right. She stood on tiptoe to watch. It was a grand sight as it hissed finally to a halt, steam clouding up to the steel beams of the roof. The doors opened and people clambered out on to the already packed platform. Rose, like everyone else, shuffled back to give them room.

She was standing like that, deciding against the tea, when she heard the voice: a strong, well-spoken woman’s voice but containing a waver of uncertainty.

‘It is, surely – is it? Rose? Rose Lucas?’

Rose turned and found herself face to face with a smartly turned out WAAF officer, her fair, wavy hair fastened back stylishly under the grey-blue cap. Her vivacious face wore an apprehensive smile. In the five years since she had seen her, Diana had matured into a beautiful, poised young woman.

‘It is you, isn’t it?’ Diana exclaimed.

The two of them eased further back into the crowd to let the other passengers past and someone behind said, ‘Here – watch who you’re pushing, will you?’

Diana made a helpless gesture as if unsure where to begin the conversation. ‘Well. Where are you off to?’

‘The army. ATS,’ Rose managed to gasp out. Her heart was beating breathtakingly fast. She was amazed how Diana could begin chatting as if they’d only seen each other the week before. But then that was her upbringing – politeness, social graces.

‘Good for you,’ Diana said. ‘I’m a WAAF – well, as you can see . . .’ And she giggled, looking down at her uniform. For the first time Rose realized that Diana was as nervous as herself. ‘I’m just off home on leave. Mummy and Daddy will be thrilled I’ve seen you!’

Rose found herself unable to speak. Lying remembering it now, she thought of all the things she should have said. She should have asked after Catherine and Ronald, said how pleased she was,
something
at least. But she had felt so scruffy and ignorant and overpoweringly awkward, and those feelings were made worse by the memory of how much the two of them had shared and of the way she had cut Diana off so abruptly.

Diana quietened suddenly and looked serious. ‘Listen. I’m going to have to be off shortly – train to catch. But Rose, I . . .’ She struggled for the right words. ‘What happened to you? We were all so worried about you and it made me so unhappy. I couldn’t understand why you didn’t answer my letters.’

Seeing the tears in her old friend’s eyes Rose realized that she was, beneath all the jolliness of her class and of service life, still the same, kind girl she had known.

‘I couldn’t . . .’ Rose’s face felt hot and red and she knew that if she tried to explain here she would be unable to stop crying. ‘I wanted to tell you,’ she stumbled on. ‘But you’d have hated me if you’d known . . .’

The sight of Diana’s blue eyes so full of concern made Rose feel even more emotional. ‘Look. You’ll miss your train. Give me your address. I’ll write. There’s no time now and I’d just make a fool of myself. But I’d like to tell you . . .’

Diana handed her a slip of paper with her WAAF address on it. They reached out and awkwardly gripped each other’s hands. And then she was gone, vanished among the other drably clad bodies. Rose was left feeling weak-kneed and suspecting it had all been a daydream.

She tossed and fidgeted on the hard bed. What am I going to say to her when I write? she wondered. More than ever, Diana had seemed to come from a different world. But the only thing to do was to tell her everything, truthfully. She owed Diana that. To finish things off. But as she drifted off to sleep, she couldn’t help wondering whether this might also be the beginning of something new in a friendship that had never truly died.

‘Oh, these confounded blisters!’ Muriel groaned, gingerly trying to squeeze her feet into her slippers.

They were all in Hut J because it was domestic night. Each Wednesday of the three weeks in camp they were expected to scrub the hut and catch up on any cleaning or mending chores. Some of the girls were crowded round the stove, which was lit only in the evenings.

Squatting in front of the glowing coals with her legs apart in a silky confection of a nightie was Gloria. She was holding out a large pair of scissors on which was stabbed a slice of bread she was toasting. Rose, Tilly and a couple of others were sitting round in stiff blue and white striped army pyjamas. Muriel was wearing her own floral cotton nightie, and Gwen sat swamped by a pair of pale pink winceyette pyjamas. Both she and Tilly were dabbing at their feet with blobs of cotton wool.

‘Our feet’ll be in ribbons by the end of this,’ Gwen moaned.

All of them had sore feet but they also had pink, healthier-looking cheeks than when they’d arrived, after the new experience of half an hour’s vigorous PT every morning. They tucked into the toast with increased appetites from all the fresh air.