Gunner Girls and Fighter Boys (17 page)

‘Time to shut up shop, Peggy.’

‘Goo’night, Peggy.’ The soldier smiled again and she noticed perfectly arched eyebrows framing those bright eyes, the corners of which crinkled beneath the dust coating his face. The long smooth jaw, was shadowed by stubble and weariness. ‘My name’s Harry. Will you be coming this way tomorrow?’

Peggy nodded.

‘I’ll be here too, clearing the site.’

‘Peggy! Get that counter up. I want to get home to my bed!’ Bab’s roared from the front.

Harry pulled a face. ‘Sergeant Major’s calling. Here, let me help.’

He lifted the counter for Peggy, who, before she locked it into position, put her hand through the gap and waved.

‘See you tomorrow, Harry!’

She felt her hand being taken, and the fingertips kissed by an invisible Harry. Without warning, Peggy felt a dangerous sweetness flood her and she was glad of the van’s dark interior to hide the flush she knew was rising to her face. Within a heartbeat she had given a name to her feeling and realized that it was neither safe nor comfortable, let alone resistible. She pulled in her hand, locked up the counter and slipped into the cab.

‘Drive, Babs,’ she said. ‘Drive.’

*

Peggy saw Harry every night for a week, but she learned only the briefest details of his life. Originally from Camberwell, he’d moved to Bermondsey before the war and been called up in 1939. All the way through the canteen round she found herself thinking of nothing else but the stop down by Butler’s Wharf. She anticipated, almost painfully, the brief sensation of his fingers brushing hers as she handed him the cup of tea. She knew it was deliberate, and for the few moments that their hands touched, Harry held her gaze with those bright eyes. The effect of these small encounters was so powerful she was ashamed of herself. She’d walked out with a few boys before marrying George, but had never felt this demanding draw to a man. She felt almost as virginal as her poor sister May, whom she’d teased for her inexperience. If first love was foreign territory to May, then this passion Peggy felt was like an undiscovered continent. And she had no one to help her navigate this foreign, forbidden land.

On the fifth night Harry told her his squad would be moving on to another bombed area the next night. They were being placed wherever they were needed, while waiting for a regular posting, which could be anywhere, he said, even overseas. He wondered if she would meet him for a drink somewhere, before they left. And if it hadn’t been for an encounter with Ronnie Riley earlier that day, she was pretty sure, in spite of her attraction to Harry, she would have said ‘no’.

But that afternoon Ronnie had been waiting for her when she’d arrived home from work. As she was walking towards the block entrance, she heard a loud whistle and then a gravelly voice called down to her from the landing. ‘Oi, does your old man know you’re out?’

She looked up sharply to her flat on the first floor, annoyed to see Ronnie looking down at her, leaning his beefy arms on the landing railing. She dashed up the stairs, planning to get rid of him. She wasn’t going to waste her precious hour before going out on the canteen making small talk with one of George’s cronies.

‘Hello, love, sorry I ain’t been before,’ he said, as she put the key in the door and walked into the passage. She turned towards him, holding the door open, but not asking him in.

‘That’s all right, Ronnie, but I’m in a bit of a rush. Got to have my tea and get ready for WVS duty.’

‘George said you was keeping yourself busy. Lonely, he reckons you are.’ He grinned, squeezing his camel-coated bulk past her into the passage.

‘Anyway, he asked me to make sure you was all right. I’ll just stop for a quick cuppa.’

She sighed. It was no good being nasty to Ronnie. He was only the messenger.

She offered him some of the cold meat and pickle which was all she had time for and he tucked in, finishing the last of her bread as well.

‘Anyway, love, he don’t want you going short. Asked me to give you this.’ Ronnie took a large bite out of the bread and pushed a roll of notes across the kitchen table.

‘No! I can’t take that, Ronnie.’

‘Go on! Take it.’ His mouth was full of bread. ‘Now don’t offend me.’

She felt cornered and as she’d often done since marrying George, she took the money, and tried not to imagine how it had been come by.

‘George’ll make sure you get it back…’ she said weakly.

Ronnie waved his hand. ‘Don’t worry about it. He’s me mate. I promised I’d keep an eye on you, and I will.’

He sat back, giving her an appraising look. ‘You’re a good-looking woman, even in that clobber.’

She hadn’t yet changed out of the red siren suit which she found more practical when climbing ladders in the powder room, and she was still wearing the dark blue polka-dot scarf, which she tied turban-style to protect her hair from the powder.

‘I expect you’ve got a few fellers sniffing around?’

Peggy bristled, realizing that her material needs were not all that he was checking up on. George had sent him to be her jailer. She got up abruptly.

‘I’m doing ten-hour days at Atkinson’s and out most nights on the van. Do you think I’ve got time to look at fellers?’ she said frostily and Ronnie put up his hand, aware that he’d gone too far.

‘Sorry, Peg, didn’t mean nothing by it. It’s just George. He’s a bit windy stuck in there with you out here on yer own. But I told him not to worry. You’re a different class, Peg. Not like these old brasses drop their knickers for anyone in uniform. Enough said.’

He shrugged on the camel overcoat that he’d draped over the kitchen chair. She waited till he’d gone before she stuffed the roll of money into a drawer, wishing it was as easy to wipe away the notion that, even from prison, George had her tethered. She changed quickly into her WVS uniform and didn’t feel she could breathe properly until she and Babs had loaded up the van and were on their way.

So, fuelled by anger at George’s mistrust and defiance at Ronnie Riley’s surveillance, she agreed to meet Harry for a drink the next evening after work. But she was determined not to let her anger and rebelliousness take her anywhere she would regret going. It would just be a drink, a goodbye drink – passion would be a fire she viewed from a distance. She had no intention of getting burned.

Spring 1941

It had taken them two and a half days to get to Pontefract and the town did not greet them with a smiling face. During all the long delays at stations and interminable stops at halts, they’d gleaned what information they could about the town they were heading for. May had heard of Pontefract cakes, the liquorice lozenges the town was famous for, and Pat, who seemed familiar with the place, declared that Pontefract meant ‘broken bridge’, which May thought was ominous. It certainly felt as if every bridge between here and her old life was tumbling down. The further north she went, the more she realized how little she knew of her own country, the one they were all meant to be fighting for. It was an alien landscape. The too wide, unbroken skies made May feel dizzy, used as she was to Bermondsey’s crowded skyline. When the train, with an almost disapproving snort of steam, finally chugged into Pontefract, May was astonished at how different the place looked from any other she’d ever been. It sat bleakly in the folded brown and grey countryside. Built of unfamiliar, soot-blackened stone, the place felt hard and cold compared to the warmth of London’s brick.

‘Thank God we’re not stopping long,’ she remarked to Ruby as they stepped off the train into a mizzling rain, which immediately soaked into her woollen coat. She saw a sergeant approaching them. Bee had had the presence of mind to telephone the barracks from the hospital, so at least they were expected. The sergeant’s face was fixed, but May could see from his eyes that he wanted to laugh. They must look an absolute state.

‘Ah, the reinforcements have arrived! Come on,
ladies
,’ he said with exaggerated politeness, ‘your chariot awaits!’ And he beckoned them onward.

They were a raggle-taggle band of already wounded soldiers that clambered up on to the back of the covered army lorry. May with her bandaged hand, Ruby with an impressive head bandage and Bee with her immaculate gabardine ripped all the way up the back. The only apparently unscathed one of May’s travelling companions was loud Pat. As they were jolted along slick, grey streets to the barracks, May held on tight, trying to keep her bruised ribs away from the side board. She hadn’t known what to expect, but the fort-like barracks, when it came into view, reminded her of something Jack had played with as a boy, with its square turrets and window slits. She peered through the open end of the lorry at a parade ground which seemed to go on forever. The hoarse commands of a drill sergeant were confusing a group of uniformed women, as they attempted a quick march across the square.

‘They don’t look in step, do they?’ Ruby whispered.

‘Ee-eyes right!’ came the barked command, and the girls generally turned their heads in the correct direction.

‘It’s probably harder than it looks,’ May said, thinking of her own attempts to learn country dancing at the Labour Institute.

‘They’re useless,’ came a grating voice. ‘My father’s in the army and he’d have them out here all day till they got it right.’ May ignored Pat’s damning comment, but a few others in the lorry sniggered.

Half a dozen other lorry loads of freshly arrived recruits were congregating outside the main building. They were told to form a line and were quick-marched to a long, low canteen hut, where after a ten minute stop for sandwiches and tea, served from a huge urn, they were ordered to follow the sergeant to the stores. The smell struck May as soon as she entered: wool and leather and polish. In another life she might have protested at having to parade past a male corporal, who eyed them up and without even asking their sizes, pushed skirts, tunics and shirts across the counter. May felt sure the skirts she’d been given must be two sizes too big; she was damn sure her hips weren’t that wide. But she sensed it would be pointless to argue: it might be the ATS, but it was still a man’s army. She noticed that even the shirts and tunics fastened left over right. Shoes were the only thing they were allowed to try on and thankfully her brown tie-ups, though unflattering, did seem to fit. Poor Ruby was having no luck, as her stocky frame extended to unusually wide feet.

‘Take these for now.’ The corporal slid a pair across the stores bench. ‘We’ll put in for an extra wide later on! VIP treatment for Private Cobb!’ he said, licking a pencil and making a note on his order pad.

They passed on to the next storesman who, to May’s deep embarrassment, handed her two pairs of salmon-pink brassieres and the largest pair of knickers she’d ever seen. These must be the famous khaki passion killers, but nothing could have prepared her for the sheer hideousness of the garments, which would certainly reach to her knees. They came with another pair of white woollen under-bloomers. May thought it was just as well she’d have all that room in the skirt after all, what with the double knickers they seemed expected to wear.

The kit for keeping themselves smart was impressive and obviously an army priority, for there was not only a brush for their hair, but one for their teeth, another for shoes, and another one for buttons. With uniform and kit balanced on their arms, they were marched at the double to rows of Nissen huts by the parade ground and then peeled off in eights to each hut.

She was glad to be allocated the same hut as Ruby and Bee, but not so keen on Pat’s joining them. Still, any familiar face was better than a camp full of strangers. The others in their hut included a large, freckle-faced woman called Jean who spoke with a strong Scottish accent. When the door closed behind them, the curving interior of the hut felt a welcome refuge from the shouting of the drill sergeant, the tramp of boots on tarmac, the high-pitched chatter of a thousand women and the continual roar of army lorries coming and going. At least, May thought, there would be peace for tonight. She pushed a flat hand on the mattress. It was hard as a plank of wood and ludicrously designed in three separate sections.

‘How are you meant to get a night’s sleep on this?’ She held up the three pieces for Ruby’s inspection.

‘They’re called biscuits!’ Pat said knowledgeably. ‘The trick is to wrap them up tight in the sheet like this, so they don’t move.’

Pat’s voice reminded May of one of her old schoolteachers, and it would certainly have carried to the back of any classroom.

‘Thanks,’ May said: the girl might be a busybody, but it did seem like the only way to keep the bed together.

‘Army brat,’ Pat explained, and May wondered how proud her army dad would have been of her behavior at the train crash. They’d talked little about Eileen on the rest of their journey, but it seemed doubtful she’d be joining them now. Her leg had been shattered and she’d lost so much blood, the nurse had said it was touch and go during the night.

‘Rube, look at the size of this skirt, will you?’ she said, turning to the girl, who was already trying on her new uniform.

‘It’s too big, sweetheart. Your’n would fit me better than the one they give me. Look.’

They decided to swap skirts and then spent the rest of the evening making alterations to the rest of their uniforms, putting tucks into baggy shirts, and moving tunic buttons. The one thing May really couldn’t bear was the soft peaked cap.

‘This looks like one of me mum’s meat puddings!’ she said, perching it on her head and making Ruby laugh with the accuracy of her description. It took May half an hour of pulling, pushing and folding till the cap sat at a jaunty angle and she was pleased with it. The cap badge had to be polished till it gleamed and then all the buttons buffed with polish and a small stick till they shone. May stayed up till the last minute before lights out, making sure every smear was eradicated and every crease ironed to a knife-like edge. She was a naturally smart and tidy person – the girls at Garner’s had teased her for coming into the leather factory every day looking like Ginger Rogers, with her golden hair carefully rolled under at the back. But there was something other than pride in her appearance behind her efforts. She dreaded the coming of lights-out and the long night ahead.