The Penny Bangle (23 page)

Mussolini was out of office, after all. The new Italian government had welcomed the Americans and British. So why, when the Italians had declared an armistice, were the German armies still in occupation, still holding all the cards?

It was because they’d turned the country into one huge battle zone, with lines of fortresses that stretched from coast to coast, and from these impregnable positions they could fire at leisure at the invading Allies, cutting their soldiers down like standing corn. They were so well dug in and well provisioned that Robert feared it was going to take forever to drive them out of Italy.

‘All right, Sergeant Gregory,’ he said, standing up and stretching. ‘Get the chaps back on their feet again.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the sergeant, and he managed a weary grin. ‘Onwards and upwards – eh, sir? Up the bloody hill to Bedfordshire, and round the bloody bend?’

‘Onwards and upwards, sergeant,’ nodded Robert. In spite of aching feet and constant, gnawing hunger, he managed to grin back.

They’d taken a short rest among some boulders, where Robert had hoped the German snipers who infested these bleak, barren hillsides wouldn’t spot them and machine-gun them, peppering them with bullets and splinters of sharp rock. Now the platoon went slogging on along the mountain road towards their next objective.

This was a village that the Germans might still occupy and, if they did, Robert knew they wouldn’t give it up without a fight. Or, if the platoon was lucky, the Germans might have gone already, leaving nothing but ruined houses, booby traps and mines.

In my next life, thought Robert, I’ll be in the Royal Artillery, not here at the sharp end, in the bloody Infantry. I’ll be miles and miles behind the lines, chatting to my mates and polishing my howitzer, firing off a few two-hundred-pounders now and then, and making daisy chains.

He tipped his helmet back a little, wiped his brow with the back of his hand, and felt the rain go streaming down his gas cape. Why did it rain so much in Italy? It must be weeks since they had seen the sun, since they’d felt any warmth upon their backs, and all the time it rained and rained and rained.

In spite of being carried under mackintoshes, rifles rusted, then they wouldn’t fire. Men came down with coughs and colds and dysentery, and in the bitter cold of the mountains, their hands and feet swelled up with bright red, purple-blistered chilblains. Some of them could hardly walk, could hardly grip a gun.

Always being hungry didn’t help, and they were exhausted, too, for it was well nigh impossible to sleep – it was too cold, too wet, and far too dangerous to drop your guard.

‘GHQ won’t tolerate any looting,’ Robert’s CO had told his junior officers before their whole battalion had set out on this mission.

So what are my men supposed to eat, thought Robert. Their supply lines were so stretched that rations often failed to arrive. Lorries on the narrow mountain roads got mortared or machine-gunned by the Germans on the ridges, were sent spiralling in flames into the deep ravines below.

So, whenever they came across an abandoned farm or homestead, the hungry Allied soldiers helped themselves to any chickens, goats, stored grain or crops the Germans hadn’t pinched or burned already.

‘I know the men need food, but we must try to keep the borrowing down,’ said Robert to his sergeant. ‘We can afford to pay.’

‘But this Italian money’s worthless, sir.’ The sergeant shrugged. ‘The peasants up here in the mountains, they don’t want our money. It’s no use to them. They need bread and meat, the same as we do. Sir, these people hate us.’

‘We’re liberating them!’

‘Jerries, Yanks or English, they think we’re all the same.’ The sergeant shrugged again. ‘We’re all in the business of smashing up their country, blowing up their houses, and ruining their lives.’

The sergeant stared all round the desolation. ‘Our chaps don’t like the Italians either, sir. They reckon all the men are cowards, and all the girls are whores. When we were in Naples, you’ll remember, fathers and mothers were selling daughters for a plate of pasta. The lads know Italians pinch our rations, then flog them back to us.’

They reached the village and found it was deserted. They camped in a farmer’s cellar for the night. The family had been killed, or run away, so there was little left to scrounge or borrow. They found a sack of chestnut flour from which they made some pancakes.

Robert left some Italian money in the ruined kitchen. Looking around, he shook his head. His own home back in England was certainly very basic, he admitted that, but he hadn’t realised that ordinary European people could still live in mediaeval squalor, in houses made of stones all thrown together, with animals in the lower rooms, and people breathing in their stink above.

The next day, they trudged on through the mountains, towards their next objective, another German-occupied or possibly deserted hill top village.

In the past few days, their own battalion had been in several fire fights, taking lots of casualties. Robert’s platoon had helped to drive a couple of hundred occupying Germans a little further north. But when they finally occupied a village, almost every house in it would be a burnt-out ruin, thoroughly mined or booby-trapped by the retreating Germans, with donkeys and sometimes oxen lying dead and rotting, some of them half-eaten, perhaps by wolves or bears.

Corporal Kelly swore he’d seen a bear, and some of the more adventurous chaps were keen to bag a bear.

‘We’ll soon have his coat off, sir,’ twenty-year-old Private Blain – a lively, skinny boy from Beaminster – said to Robert, grinning.

‘Then we’ll turn him into caps and gloves,’ continued Private Thornton, Private Blain’s best friend and fellow wide-boy. ‘We’ll flog ’em to the other blokes – or even to Italians.’

‘Or send ’em home to girlfriends back in Blighty,’ put in Private Blain. ‘My girl in Dorchester, she’d like a bearskin hat.’

Robert had a sudden vision of Cassie in a bearskin hat and nothing else, and smiled to himself.

They hadn’t had any post for ages, not that he’d expected any, but he wished he knew she was all right, that she was back in England, not still on a troopship tossing in the Bay of Biscay.

‘Some Italian back in Naples said bear meat’s good to eat.’ Private Thornton licked his dry, chapped lips, and Robert heard his stomach growl with hunger.

‘You two watch your step,’ he said. ‘We’re here to fight the Germans. So I don’t want to write and tell your mothers you got eaten by some Italian bear.’

Then he scratched a sore bit on his neck, wondering if he was getting scurvy, if that was why he itched.

Cassie was back in England, had been there for a month or more, and she was hating it. After Alexandria, she found life in Aldershot so tedious and boring that it made her itch.

But it had been wonderful to see the faces of the other drivers, especially the faces of the nobs, when she had announced that she was going to marry the famous Daisy Denham’s younger brother.

Although she didn’t actually have a ring – there hadn’t been any time to go and buy one, she had added, and the girls accepted that – she had her silver bracelet, and it was much admired.

‘Ooh, I say, that’s classy,’ said a girl from Manchester, whose father was a jeweller. ‘It’s solid, Cass, not plate. Just feel the weight of it! By heck, it must have cost your bloke a packet.’

‘Yes, it
looks
expensive,’ sneered Lavinia, one of the toff drivers with whom Cassie had crossed words and swords before, and who had not – unfortunately – been posted somewhere else while Cassie had been in Egypt. ‘Well,
quite
expensive, anyway,’ she continued. ‘It’s not the sort of thing most men would feel they had to buy for somebody like you.’

Cassie didn’t rise to that. She didn’t retort that nobody bought bracelets for Lavinia, who was just an ugly, jealous cow.

She wore the silver bracelet all the time, pushed high up her forearm and covered by her shirt sleeve. She kept the penny bangle in her army-issue sewing kit, hidden from the other girls, who wouldn’t understand why it was precious, for now it was all tarnished, and it looked like what it was, a cheap and tawdry thing.

But Cassie and her fiancé very soon became old news. In the army, the novelty of engagements wore off quickly, for almost every girl in barracks had a husband, boyfriend or fiancé. Motor maintenance, driving jobs and drill filled Cassie’s days.

Frances Ashford seemed to be having much more fun in Chester. She was going around with someone very nice, she wrote, but there were complications. So, when they met again, Cassie mustn’t be shocked or disapproving.

Cassie wouldn’t have dreamed of being shocked or disapproving, not after what she’d done in Alexandria herself. Some days, the guilt and worry were almost overwhelming, and she found she was longing to see Frances, if only to confess, to share the burden, for Frances to say she’d done nothing wrong, that if you were in love it was all right.

But she couldn’t imagine what nicely-brought-up Frances Ashford might be up to now.

Perhaps, thought Cassie, she had met a Yank? One of those black soldiers who everybody said had lovely manners, and treated every woman like a lady?

Perhaps she’d dyed her hair? Since the Americans had come, almost all the girls in Cassie’s unit had gone blonde – every night, the hut stank of peroxide, and there was a thriving trade in it on the black market nowadays.

She couldn’t imagine Frances Ashford blonde.

She wondered if she should put in for a move. If she worked in Birmingham or Chester, she could get to Smethwick to see her granny, and see Frances, too, and find out what she shouldn’t be shocked about.

She needed to tell Lily that she was engaged. But she meant to do it face to face, not to spring it on her granny in a letter.

She rehearsed the conversation in her mind.

‘Yes, he’s single, Granny,’ she would say. ‘Yes, I’m absolutely sure he’s single. I’ve met all his family, his parents and his brother and his sister, and I know he hasn’t got a wife.

‘Yes, Granny, he’s a nice, clean-living boy, and he’s good-looking, too. He’s dark and six feet tall, he’s really handsome, everybody says so, all the girls turn round to stare at him. He’s generous and sensible, as well. You’ll love him, Granny – I just know you will.

‘Well, no – he hasn’t got a trade. No, he’s not a Catholic. But I don’t suppose he’ll mind the children being Catholic.’

What more could Lily want?

A lot of things.

A local man, for starters, someone like a butcher or a baker or a plumber, someone with a shop, a yard, a workbench of his own, a horse and cart.

A Catholic from a decent family, a man whose mother Lily knew to be a good, God-fearing woman, a mother who had raised her children well.

Somebody who went to church on Sundays and at Christmas at the very least, and who would see his own sons did so, too.

Robert didn’t fit the bill at all, thought Cassie sadly, and he probably never would.

Cassie had regular driving jobs in London, ferrying top brass around the city. Sometimes, she was in town for several days, and that was quite exciting, seeing so many different people of all nationalities, going to the cinema to see the latest films, or even taking in a show. Occasionally, Daisy sent her tickets, which made Cassie popular with other ATS.

When Daisy heard that Cassie and her brother were engaged, she wrote to Cassie, inviting her to come and stay at the apartment in Park Lane.

‘We must have a drink or two to celebrate,’ wrote Daisy. ‘If you can get a bit of leave, my sweet, we’ll go out on the town.’

Cassie didn’t really want to go out on the town, if that meant getting drunk. These days, she was off the booze completely. She was determined to be worthy of Robert and to deserve his love, so she was on the wagon. In fact, she had as good as signed the pledge. But it would be lovely to see Daisy, and she could always stick to lemonade. She wrote to say she’d try to get up soon.

Daisy replied at once, to say if Cassie managed to time her visit right, she’d get a nice surprise.

Then Cassie got another letter from Frances, and she couldn’t quite believe her eyes. It’s being in the army, she reflected, it changes everybody, no wonder Lady Ashford didn’t want to let her join. Well – prim and proper Frances Ashford, who’d have thought it?

‘Mummy and Daddy are going to be so cross,’
continued Frances, when she had confessed she was in love, and felt so happy she was walking on cloud nine, or even ninety-nine.