Soldier Girl (14 page)

‘I bet she would,’ Molly said, thinking of Jenny Button. She didn’t know what else to say but she did feel sympathetic and Honor could see that.

‘We’re very different I suppose, you and I,’ Honor observed.

‘Well – yeah.’ Molly laughed. ‘I’ll say.

‘But I think you’re nice. Nicer than you show you are.’ One of Honor’s naked, odd statements, but it almost brought Molly to tears.

‘Well – ta.’

Honor was looking closely at her. ‘And you’re
so
pretty.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ Molly said, blushing now. She turned her mug round and round on the stained table.

‘No – you really are. But I realize I don’t know anything about you. You’re from Birmingham? I’ve never been there.’

‘Don’t s’pose you’d ’ave call to really.’

‘What about your family?’

Molly gave a harsh laugh, grinding her cigarette stub into the saucer. ‘What about them?’

‘Well – what’re they like? Are you close to your mother?

This was such an absurd notion that Molly burst out laughing. Her head felt better suddenly, as if pressure in it had been released. ‘No! I can’t say I am!’

‘Why? What’s she like?’

God, Honor was an innocent. How could she even begin?

‘You don’t want to know, you really don’t.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Clearly she didn’t.

‘Look – I’ve got to go.’ Molly got up. ‘I’m really sorry to hear about your . . . nanny, passing away though,’ she added gruffly.

‘Thank you,’ Honor said sweetly. ‘See you later, Molly.’

But Molly didn’t see Honor later. She felt a desperate need to get as well-oiled as possible, and after a long, drunken evening, most of which she could barely remember, she was checking in at the guardhouse, while singing, ‘I’m gonna hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line!’ at the top of her voice.

‘Shush, Molly, for God’s sake!’ the others had said who were with her. Who the hell they were she couldn’t remember after either.

But what she could remember was being put on a charge for drunk and disorderly behaviour. The next morning, she also recalled with a groan that the Gorgon had walked into the guardroom at the fatal moment she was being given a dressing down. Molly had looked up with a swimming head to find Phoebe Morrison’s dark-browed, fearsome face glaring at her from under the brim of her ATS hat.

‘Fox,’ she ordered, in a tone which admitted no argument. ‘I want to talk to you. No good now – I can see you’re not in a fit state. Report to me tomorrow – two o’clock sharp. Got it?’

‘Yes, Corp,’ Molly slurred back at her.

‘Corporal, if you don’t mind! You will have half your pay docked. Now get to bed!’

‘Aye aye, captain – I mean, yes, Corporal!’ Molly said, lurching off outside.

‘What’s the matter with you, Fox?’

Molly was back in the guardhouse, where Corporal Morrison was standing behind the table on which papers were neatly arranged. Despite having got so completely drunk last night, today Molly didn’t feel as bad as she had the day before. Her head felt strangely clear, as if it had been washed clean.

‘What d’yer mean?’

She expected Phoebe Morrison to echo ‘What do you mean,
Corporal?’
But she didn’t.

‘I mean—’ The woman leaned forward, resting the palms of her hands on the table. Her face, turned upwards to look at Molly, without its frown of command, looked softer, more vulnerable: certainly no Gorgon. She paused for a few seconds, weighing up carefully what to say, her dark eyes fixed on Molly’s so that Molly was forced to look down.

‘I mean . . .’ she began again, pushing herself upright. She picked up a pen and toyed with it round her lips as if she wished it was a cigarette. ‘You may not have had the most refined start in life or the best of education like some of these girls here. But I suspect, Private Fox, that you are no fool. So why do you persist in behaving like one?’

Molly was truly taken aback by this. She’d come expecting a rollicking, perhaps further punishment. She had not expected an attempt to find out anything about her. It felt alarming, but she was flattered by not being thought a fool for once in her life.

‘I dunno, Corporal.’ She lowered her gaze again.

‘You were very drunk last night.’

‘Yes . . .’

‘Does that happen often?’

‘You mean . . . ?’

‘I mean at home as well – not just here.’

‘Now and again.’

‘You could get yourself into a lot of trouble in that condition, you know that, don’t you? It doesn’t just make you rowdy, it makes you vulnerable.’

‘Yes. Corporal.’

There was a silence, which went on so long that Molly looked up, and found Phoebe Morrison watching her carefully. She had lowered the pen and was turning it round between her fingers.

‘Any problems at home?’

‘No more than usual.’

‘I see.’ Corporal Morrison took a couple of paces to her left, then turned and came back the other way.

‘You have one final week of basic training, Fox. Then you’ll all be assigned a trade or position somewhere. What do you see yourself doing?’

‘I want to do summat good!’ Molly said, eagerly. ‘You know – guns or driving or summat. That’s what I joined up for.’

‘I see.’ She turned on the ball of her foot again, moving back and forth. ‘And do you think, in the light of your conduct, that such ambitions are realistic?’

Foolishly, Molly said, ‘I dunno.’

‘Well’ – Phoebe Morrison became brisk and dismissive – ‘you’ve got a week to try and redeem yourself. You’d better try and behave, hadn’t you? Your pay will be docked, as you were told last night. Just try not to get yourself into any more trouble. Dismiss.’

Phoebe Morrison watched Molly depart from the guardroom, the frown troubling her face again. Fumbling in her pocket, she brought out the cigarette she had been longing for and lit up, sucking in the smoke with eager relief.

Something about her meeting with this magnificent-looking girl troubled her. She was a proper honeypot, there was no doubt, with that figure and hair – no wonder the chaps were all buzzing round her! She was a splendidly big, barely educated, rough working-class girl. So what? So were plenty of the others. But as Molly passed through her training, one minute fawningly eager to please – and, it had to be said, showing signs of being quite capable – and the next, outrageously flouting not just army regulations but the basic laws of decent behaviour, she had got under Phoebe Morrison’s skin. Fox was irritating – somehow all the more so when she was keen to please, so hungry for praise! – a delighted child’s smile spreading across her face at a word of approval. She was awkward and maddening and gauche. Why did she bring out this protective feeling, of tenderness almost, of somehow wanting to save her, even when she was almost driving one mad?

‘For heaven’s sake, don’t waste your energy,’ Corporal Morrison told herself. ‘They’ll all be scattered to the four winds by this time next week anyway.’

Molly put Em’s letter away, happy to receive it. It had been a surprise somehow, and all the more that Em seemed to be missing her. In the past it had always been Molly who did all the running for Em’s friendship.

She began on her final week’s basic training fired with determination. The way Corporal Morrison had spoken to her – the fact that she had bothered to speak at all – had given her a completely different sense of herself. The Gorgon had seen something in her, that was how it felt. Those words of faint praise,
I suspect, Private Fox, that you are no fool,
had made her want to do anything to gain the woman’s approval. She clung to them as a lamp in the darkness, giving her hope. Perhaps she could really make a go of the army if she tried! Could even be good at something? She’d heard people talk about the army as ‘making a man of him’ – why could the army not make something of her? She knew she’d got off to a terrible start with almost everyone. Lena and Cath were all right, though Cath had withdrawn into herself and didn’t seem as bright and friendly as when they first arrived. Honor just accepted everyone as they were. But as for the rest of them in Hut J, Molly knew they didn’t think much of her – that was putting it mildly. She was the rough one, the loud one who couldn’t be trusted and most of them steered clear of her. Why had she carried on like that? She felt really foolish now, and regretted it bitterly. But she told herself that soon they’d all be split up anyway and she could make a fresh start when they began training to do something interesting.

The final week passed quickly. Molly tried her very hardest, on the parade ground and in all the other training and lectures. They had to learn about military law, about documents and crime and punishment. And all about cooking, or, as the army called it, ‘messing’. How to get the best results from the quartermaster’s stores, how to avoid wasting fat. This last lecture was especially revolting.

‘Glad I shan’t be cooking,’ Molly heard one of the girls say as they came out. ‘Best not to know too much about what goes into what we’re eating!’ They were walking a little behind her, but she still heard the girl go on in a low voice, ‘That blasted Fox girl seems to have quietened down a bit at last.’

‘That’s the army for you,’ the other said. ‘Knocks the stuffing out of everyone eventually.’

‘I gather the Gorgon had words with her.’

‘Ah – well that would knock the stuffing out of anyone!’

Molly didn’t feel she’d had the stuffing knocked out of her; instead, she was full of a burning desire to please Corporal Morrison and to do better. She put all her effort into doing her best that week. She passed every inspection with flying colours, her buttons gleaming, earning herself a nod of approval and a ‘Not bad, Fox’ from Corporal Morrison one morning which lit up her day. She tore round the park during the morning PT, and drilled as if her life depended on it, pulling her shoulders back and jumping to attention. None of the classes had been too difficult and she was looking forward now to the end of the week, to finding out to which trade she had been assigned, and to beginning again somewhere else. And God knows, she was going to be different! There’d be no more going out getting kalied, no more clowning her way through drill. She would show them she could be miles better than she had been so far.

She was even one of the first into Hut J that night, intending to get ready for bed, where she would write a letter to Em before Win instructed them to put out the lights. It was a cold, windy night, unpleasant to be out in, and as she stoked up the stove to keep the place halfway warm, several of the others drifted in, including Honor, who smiled dreamily at her. Molly was just about to settle down to write when Cath came in, walking fast between the beds. Something about the way she was walking caught Molly’s attention. Cath looked as if she was holding herself in in case she exploded. Her face was grim and tense.

‘All right, Cath?’ Molly asked.

‘Umm.’ She kept her head down, not meeting Molly’s eyes, and wouldn’t say any more. She got herself ready for bed, climbed in and pulled the bedclothes up high so that only her rusty hair was visible. No one else seemed to have noticed. Then Lena came in and started talking to Molly. She pointed at Cath and mouthed, ‘She all right?’

Molly shrugged and whispered, ‘Not sure. She wouldn’t say anything.’

It was only once the lights were out and Molly was half asleep that she became aware of Cath crying. Some of the others were already breathing steadily. At first she wasn’t sure, the sniffs and sobs were so quiet. But after a time she climbed out into the cold and sat on Cath’s bed.