Gracie's Sin (2 page)

Since then they’d only managed to spend two entire nights together, though Gordon had somehow managed to wangle enough free passes for it to seem more. He’d even got quite nifty at sneaking off the base without a pass at all, and there’d been no further need to smuggle him into her digs, now they were legally married. He could walk in quite openly. Lou felt as if the last two weeks had been one long honeymoon.

She lifted her hand, twisting it about so she could admire the shining gold band on the third finger of her left hand. The name still sounded strange, oh, but didn’t she just love being Mrs Lou Mason instead of boring Louise Brown. What would Mam say if she could see her now?

Someone jabbed an elbow into her shoulder and she came out of her day dream with a jerk. Doors were being flung open; weary passengers stretched aching limbs, rubbed grit from their sleepy eyes as they clambered stiffly down from the carriages. The honeymoon was over and real life was about to begin.

‘This is it, love. Keep your chin up. Think of it as an adventure, and I won’t be far away.’

It had been the day after the wedding that she’d seen the poster asking for women to join the Timber Corps, a section of the Women’s Land Army, offering work on estates in Cornwall. It seemed the perfect solution for it meant she could stay near to Gordon. Lou had signed up without a second’s thought.

Plymouth now seemed like a million miles away, and, air raid attacks being what they were on that city, little consolation. Besides, as Gordon pointed out, he could get his sailing orders at any moment and be right in the thick of it. She kept her mind deliberately vague and unfocused on this point because it made her go all sick inside at the thought. Lou wished suddenly that she was back home with her Mam and three sisters, though they spent the whole time worrying and waiting for news of their various husbands and boy friends as well as Ronnie, their brother, who was in the army somewhere in Singapore. But here, without Gordon, she’d be all alone.

Lou tried to smile but it turned a bit wobbly. Even her legs felt like jelly as she stepped down onto the platform. Gordon handed down her kitbag then pulled the carriage door closed with the leather strap and leaned out through the open window.

He looked so handsome standing there in his sailor uniform, the neatly pressed collar flapping gently in the breeze, his round, tanned face, beaming at her with a stoic brightness and his love for her shining out of his dark brown eyes.

‘It’s all the wrong way round, isn’t it? I should be seeing you off.’

‘We’re seeing each other off, each to do our bit. Equal partners, eh love?’

‘I love you,’ she said.

His face went oddly still and serious, then, reaching down, he grasped her by the arms and half lifted her off her feet so he could kiss her. That was the wonderful thing about Gordon. He never seemed to notice that she was five foot seven and what might be politely termed, voluptuous. He called her a pleasing armful and handled her as if she were light as a feather. He kissed her deep and long, as though they hadn’t kissed anywhere near enough these last weeks, and left her as breathless and limp as a fourteen year old schoolgirl, rather than a practical young woman of twenty-three.

When he put her down again, Lou’s cheeks were all flushed and her hat had fallen off and was rolling between the feet of a group of soldiers and airmen who were milling around, some, like Gordon, holding adoring sweethearts close. Others hoisted laughing children into their arms before marching off for an eagerly awaited leave, grinning from ear to ear. She felt a shaft of envy for their good fortune. If only she could turn back the clock. How could she even get through one day without seeing him?

Snatching up the hat, Lou rammed it back onto her head, quite ruining her carefully arranged chestnut bangs, and ran back to grasp Gordon’s hand, as if she meant never to let him go.

An aged porter hurried forward to collect a dowager’s smart brown leather suitcase, sensing the opportunity for a tip; squabbling children were being admonished by harassed mothers; the sound of quiet weeping as family members clutched each other in relief or fear as the train breathed noisily beside them like an impatient animal eager to be off. Then came shouts from the station master, the banging of doors and blowing of whistles, and finally the clunk and rhythmic turn of wheels, the contented hiss of steam as the train began to inch forward, eager to continue on its journey. Still holding Gordon’s hand, Lou walked along with it.

‘Don’t fret, love. I’ll nip over to see you as soon as I can. This isn’t forever. Not by a long chalk.’

‘I’ll write when I find out what free time I’m to have.’

Their hold finally broken, they stared helplessly back at each other, nothing left to say yet so much unspoken in their eyes. Gordon leaned out of the carriage window, waving till the last possible moment, till the train had rounded the bend and he’d been swallowed up by a swathe of greenery and belch of steam. Lou felt as if he were being sucked away, out of her life for ever, which was nonsense. Hadn’t he just said he’d see her again soon? Eyes smarting, she went back for her luggage.

Within moments the melee of people had vanished, the porter and station master had returned to their respective hideaways for a welcome cup of tea and only two people were now left standing forlornly on the deserted platform. Lou, and one other. A girl, of about the same age as herself.

They gazed upon each other in open curiosity.

The pair couldn’t have been more different. One tall and statuesque, the other petite with long straight blond hair. Where Lou’s gaze was frank and open, lit by the warm friendliness of a wide smile, this girl had an oval childish face, pale skinned with huge grey eyes giving every appearance of terror, as if she couldn’t imagine how she came to be here on this deserted platform in the middle of nowhere, but would really like to turn tail and run after the departing train, were there any hope of catching it.

But in one respect at least, they were entirely alike. They both wore the same smart brown overcoat, woollen stockings and highly polished brown shoes, identical brimmed hats and, most telling of all, the same shiny new badge of crossed brass axes which marked them as comrades. Lou thrust out a hand.

‘Louise Mason, Lou for short. I take it you’re heading for the same place as me? Timber Corps training camp?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. Gracie Freeman.’ Hands were shaken, grins exchanged and with an air of awkward embarrassment at being pitched together, two strangers into an unknown situation, they busied themselves collecting bags, various brown paper parcels and gas masks. Lou swung her kit bag up onto her shoulder with ease, as she had seen Gordon do many times with his. The smaller girl made no attempt to follow suit but seemed happy to drag the long kit bag by its neck cord.

‘Dratted thing took up more space than me on the train,’ she said with a wry smile.

‘Aye, it would, seeing as how it’s nearly as tall as you are. You could do with a dog collar and lead, then happen it’d come by itself if you whistled.’

The voice, Gracie decided, was North Country, rather than her own Hereford with its distinctive Welsh border twang, but it was warm and somehow reassuring. She visibly relaxed, beginning to feel better already. Laughing, they walked together off the platform into the station yard, which seemed to be equally deserted. The only sound in the still September sunshine coming from some unidentified bird high in the trees that lined the track.

‘By heck, is that a song thrush? You don’t get many of them to the pound in Rochdale.’

‘A blackbird actually. Is that where you come from? Lancashire.’

Lou beamed proudly. ‘For my sins, as they say. What about you? Come far?’

Sin
! Gracie’s attention was caught by the word, one she had come to hate. There was rarely a Sunday morning in chapel when she hadn’t heard it on the lips of some lay preacher or other, her own father in particular. It had always seemed to the young Gracie, that if anything at all might bring happiness or pleasure in life, it must be a sin. How fiercely she had resisted all those stern rules; the limericks she’d hidden in the pages of her New Testament when supposedly learning scriptures; the scarlet and azure ribbons she’d kept in her handkerchief box to brighten up the sober colours of her homely skirts and blouses; the secret dance lessons with her more frolicsome mother. She felt a pang of guilt. Mum would miss her badly, though she was not entirely blameless in Gracie’s decision to leave.

The memory of her mother standing at the door, delivering warnings of doom at ‘this ridiculous notion to be a
Lumber Jack
’
.
Disappointment had been bitter in her tone, showing not the slightest sign of amusement at Gracie’s correction that they were called Lumber
Jills
, not jacks; an attitude coloured by her lost dreams of the solidly respectable career in teaching which she’d so carefully mapped out for her only daughter.

Her father’s reaction had been to gaze mournfully at her with an air of wounded reproach, guaranteed to fill Gracie with guilt, saying how he’d hoped she’d join him in the business, how he’d worked hard all his life to ensure that his precious daughter would have a good business to inherit and here she was throwing his generosity back in his face. He’d sent her to her room to ‘examine her conscience’, as if she were still a naughty child needing to be punished for missing Sunday School. She’d stayed there for a week on a diet of bread and water but it had made not the slightest difference. Her mind was made up.

 
Though it hurt Gracie deeply that her parents were more concerned with their own, opposing, ambitions for their only daughter than her wishes on the matter, she’d held fast to her resolve. ‘I mean to go. I need to lead my own life.’

‘But how will I manage without you?’ Her mother had mourned. ‘You know what he’s like.’ Nodding darkly in the direction of the shop.

Howell Freeman claimed to be Welsh, though he was born in Chester, and hated the English, including his own wife who hailed from Liverpool. Brenda Freeman, on the other hand, maintained that she’d spent her formative years in the best part of Cheshire and had married beneath her. The animosity between the two had been the blight of Gracie’s young life as each called upon her constantly to take their side, and to act as referee in their frequent arguments. She had never fully understood the cause of their failure to make a success of their marriage. There was perhaps too much of the ascetic in her father, while her mother pined for more money in her purse, pretty jew-jaws and a measure of independence she claimed never to have enjoyed, going straight from the strictures of a sheltered upbringing by her own father to that of a husband. But whatever the reason, Gracie was heartily cheesed off with being the sticking plaster which held the pair together.

It was seeing the poster of the girl in the smart uniform which had finally made her recognise that it was time to break free; that her parents and their conflicting ambitions were no longer her responsibility. Such decisions are easily made of course. Carrying them out quite another matter. Yet Gracie had held to her resolve; had no intention of looking back, of apologising for her decision, nor showing one iota of regret.

Now she considered this stranger, whom she liked instinctively, laughing as she vociferously complained about the vicious grip of the new hat as she rubbed the sweat from her brow, making her chestnut brown hair tumble down all anyhow about her flushed face. It was no doubt against the rules to remove the offending article while in uniform but Gracie sensed in this new acquaintance a healthy disregard for authority. Gracie’s own hat felt stuck fast to her head, as if she would never have the courage to take it off without permission. Yet this would be an inaccurate assessment of her own personality, for wasn’t she a rebel too, at heart, despite what she herself recognised as a too thin, insipid, prim and proper veneer.

‘I feel I’ve been travelling for days. God knows how I’ve managed to get here at all, the number of changes I’ve had to make. I’m worn out before I even begin.’

Lou didn’t like to say that she was worn out too, because it was for an entirely different reason.

‘So what now?’ Both girls looked about them at the empty countryside, the gentle roll of green hills and what appeared to be acre upon acre of thick woodland. ‘If this is Bodmin I don’t reckon much to the town, do you? They don’t even have a Woolworth's. I suppose we have got off at the right place?’

‘I think the town is some distance off. Perhaps we could ask the station master, just to check.’

Barely lifting his nose from his pint mug of tea he bluntly told them that they could catch a train to Bodmin Central if they’d a mind to go into town, otherwise they could walk to the camp, assuming they knew where it was. Having delivered this unhelpful information, he buried his nose once more in the mug and slurped loud and long on the thick brown liquid that comprised his afternoon tipple.

The two girls returned to the empty yard. Here they settled themselves to wait with what patience they could muster, on a low stone wall. The wait was long and dull and boring. One hour passed by, then another. Halfway through the third a large grey cloud blotted out the sun and a thin rain started, cloaking the woods in a pale mist. They huddled together for warmth.

‘D’you reckon we should set out to look for this camp?’ Lou enquired.

‘And risk getting lost?’

‘You’re right. Better to stay put.’