As Time Goes By Page 4

  She had never imagined when she had first met him that Ronnie would turn out to be a betting man. He had seemed far too respectable and decent. She had thought they were the kind of young couple who could keep their heads held up high, and she had even felt sorry for the poor of the city who lived down by the docks, living constantly with the shame of having to borrow against tomorrow to pay for today, opening her purse freely to slip a few pennies to the children she saw begging.

  Now the pride she had originally felt in Ronnie and their marriage had given way to fear – and that fear had more than one face. Initially her fear had been because she had discovered that Ronnie wasn’t the sensible worldly-wise husband and provider she had believed him to be; the rock she and their children could depend on. But then later had come the fear of the shame she would suffer if their debt became public knowledge, and most of all, fear of how they were going to repay the money and what would happen if they fell behind with their repayments.

  When Ronnie had broken down and admitted to her that not only had he foolishly borrowed from a moneylender once but that he had also gone back to him and borrowed again, Sally had struggled to understand how the strong capable Ronnie she loved and depended on so much could have turned into this man who was weak and vulnerable and afraid, and who was admitting to her that he didn’t know what to do.

  One of the things Sally had loved so much about Ronnie was his dependability. As a child she had grown up in a chaotic family environment with her father often out of work, but well paid when he was in work, and so life had seemed filled with the giddy highs of her mother’s excitement when they had money and the frightening lows of her despair when they didn’t. Sally had yearned for a life in which those highs and lows were exchanged for the calm of a decent steady man with a nice steady job, and part of the reason she had fallen in love with Ronnie was because he had seemed to embody those virtues. To discover that he had done something that even her own parents had steadfastly refused to do, and gone to a moneylender, had left her feeling as though her whole world had been turned upside down. Only the very poorest of the poor, or the feckless and weak, went to moneylenders, and certainly not people who lived on Chestnut Close.

  Sally had known real shame along with her shock and her fear. But she was a young woman with a lot of common sense and courage, and so she had gone to see the moneylender from whom Ronnie had borrowed the money, and they had come to an arrangement whereby she would call on him weekly with their payments instead of him sending round a ‘tallyman’ to collect it from the house. That way at least she had hoped to keep up a front of respectability.

  It had made her feel physically sick to see written down the amount they now owed, so very much more than she had thought. She had told Mr Wade proudly that she wanted to increase their repayments so that they could reduce the money owing faster, swallowing back her longing to beg him not to lend Ronnie any more. She could not go behind her husband’s back in such a way, and humiliate him.

  She admitted now, as she hurried back to the door and handed over the money to the waiting man, that maybe she should have gone back to see Mr Wade and asked him to let her reduce the payments once she realised what a struggle she was going to have meeting the increased amount she had volunteered to pay, but she was desperate to get the loan cleared as quickly as she could, and she had her pride just like everyone else.

  It seemed to take for ever for the man to count slowly through the amount she had handed him before he finally gave a grunt of satisfaction and stashed it in his pocket.

  He was about to turn away when Sally reminded him firmly, ‘Mr Wade always writes the amount down and signs it.’

  ‘Mebbe he did, but that’s not the way the new owners do business.’

  He had gone before Sally could object, melting into the darkness, leaving her feeling relieved that none of her neighbours had seen him but at the same time highly anxious. This wasn’t like worrying about rationing or being bombed; it wasn’t an anxiety she could share with anyone else and find comfort in the fact that they were in things together.

  It was far later than Sam had planned when the bus finally set her down at the stop closest to her billet. The earlier sea mist had now become a steady downpour, the rain trickling down inside the upturned collar of her greatcoat. Quickly she hurried towards the entrance to the school, dismayed to find that the door now seemed to be locked. Now what was she to do? To her relief, before she had to decide the door was suddenly opened from the inside, allowing her to step inside and quickly close the door behind her to observe the blackout rules about not allowing any light to escape into the night darkness and so potentially provide a target for German bombers.

  In the dim light from the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling she could see that the chair behind the desk was now occupied by a very stern-looking warrant officer.

  ‘Private Grey reporting for duty, ma’am,’ Sam offered hurriedly, suddenly very conscious of the rubble and brick dust on her greatcoat.

  ‘Strange,’ the warrant office marvelled nastily. She was well into her thirties, Sam guessed, with an unusually broad, somehow flattened face and slightly bulbous protruding eyes, ‘only we seem to have someone of that name here already, at least according to her kitbag. Got a double, have we, Private?’

  ‘I … no … that is … There wasn’t anyone here to report to when I arrived, ma’am,’ Sam told her desperately, ‘and so I thought I’d just get some fresh air and familiarise myself with the city …’

  One thin grey eyebrow rose as the warrant officer looked Sam up and down. ‘Acquainting yourself with the city, was it? It looks to me more like you’ve been acquainting yourself with something very different indeed, Private.’ She pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘Let me explain something to you, Private. Here in this billet and this unit we do not waltz in and dump our kitbags and then waltz out again like we was out of uniform.’

  Sam had come across a wide variety of authority figures since she had joined the ATS but never one like this. Instinctively she knew that the woman confronting her now was someone who relished the power her authority gave her. She wouldn’t hesitate to bully and terrorise those under her, Sam guessed, and she also deduced that the warrant officer had already made up her mind that Sam was someone she didn’t very much like.

  Well, that was fine, Sam decided, determinedly ignoring the sickly little feeling in her stomach that said she was upset by the hostility she could sense. She could feel herself starting to shake a bit inside and she was longing for the calming effect of a cigarette.

  ‘Sorry, ma’am,’ she apologised dutifully, fixing her gaze on a point to the left of the warrant officer’s shoulder rather than risk engaging in eye contact with her. ‘It won’t happen again.’

  Sam could almost sense the warrant officer’s disappointment that she wasn’t going to give her the opportunity to tear another strip off her. Sam was surprised herself. It wasn’t like her to allow herself to be intimated, or to pass up an opportunity to have a bit of fun by coming up with some far-fetched explanation for what she had done.

  ‘No it won’t,’ the warrant officer agreed meaningfully, ‘because—’

  The sudden opening of a door behind the desk and the appearance of a tall, slim, grey-haired woman wearing a captain’s uniform had the warrant officer along with Sam springing to attention and saluting.

  Whatever the warrant officer had been about to say remained unsaid as the captain looked at Sam with surprisingly kind hazel eyes and said calmly, ‘Ah, our wanderer has returned has she, Warrant Officer?’ The hazel gaze skimmed Sam from head to foot and then paused thoughtfully on her face.

  ‘Took a wrong turning in the blackout, ma’am, and fell over some sandbags,’ Sam offered by way of explanation of her appearance.

  The captain nodded, then told Sam calmly, ‘Warrant Officer Sands will no doubt have informed you of the routine here. First thing after breakfast, transport arrives to take you all to your designated areas of wo
rk. You have been assigned to Deysbrook Barracks.’

  No supper! And she was very hungry, Sam realised, but of course she didn’t say anything.

  She stood stiffly at attention until the captain said briskly, ‘Dismissed.’

  At least she had escaped whatever punishment the warrant officer had no doubt been planning for her, Sam acknowledged, recovering some of her normal insouciance as she made her way to the dormitory where she had left her kitbag.

  Not wanting to disturb the other girls, she tried to be as quiet as possible but the discovery that the shape she could feel on the bed closest to the door wasn’t her kitbag but the sleeping body of another girl caused both her and the girl in the bed to yelp in protest, and within seconds torches were being switched on all over the dormitory as the noise woke the other girls.

  ‘Sorry, sorry …’ Sam apologised ruefully, ‘only I left my kitbag here …’

  ‘The Toad moved it,’ a girl in a bed halfway down the room informed her sleepily.

  ‘She means Warrant Officer Sands,’ another girl explained unnecessarily, since Sam had quick-wittedly recognised how appropriate the warrant officer’s nickname was. ‘Lord,’ the girl continued, ‘when she found your kitbag there without any sign of you, she swelled up so much with fury we thought she was going to burst.’

  ‘Pity she didn’t,’ someone else announced fervently. ‘Gave me jankers for a whole week, she did, just because I hadn’t got me cap on straight. Me poor hands were red raw with all that scrubbing and potato peeling in freezing cold water. You want to watch out for her: if she takes a dislike to you you’ll know all about it and no mistake.’

  ‘Go on with you, May. Give her a chance to get herself settled in before you start scaring her half to death about old Toad face,’ the girl whose bed was next to Sam’s spoke up firmly, before warning Sam, ‘I don’t want to tell you what to do, but if I was you I’d get myself into bed before Toadie comes up here checking up on you. She’s got a real mean streak to her and there’s nothing she likes better than an excuse to come down heavy on one of us. I’m Corporal Hazel Gibson, by the way.’

  ‘Sam Grey,’ Sam reciprocated. ‘And thanks for the warning, Hazel, I mean, Corp.’ She stifled a sudden yawn. It had been a long day, and she was more than ready for her bed.

  ‘Mind you, at least Toadie’s a real live human being, not like that ghost wot’s supposed to go walking all over the place at night,’ the girl the corporal had addressed as May announced with ghoulish relish.

  ‘A ghost?’ a nervously quavering little voice from the bed closest to the door protested shakily.

  ‘Yes. Comes looking for the girl wot got him killed on account of her taking up with someone else and her new lover murdering him,’ May told them. ‘At least that’s what I’ve bin told.’

  ‘Go on with you, May. You don’t half talk a load of rubbish,’ the corporal squashed the almost palpable air of nervous tension creeping through the room, leaving Sam free to follow the corporal’s advice and make haste to get herself into the only spare bed.

  Her new dorm mates seemed a decent crowd, she reflected, especially Hazel Gibson, unlike the warrant officer, and that bossy Bomb Disposal chap. She certainly didn’t want to run into him again.

  FOUR

  ‘I’m sorry that the warrant officer gave me your bed.’

  Sam smiled at the other new girl to join the group, as they emerged from the showers at the same time. She didn’t look old enough to have joined up, Sam thought, with her huge hazel eyes and her patent shyness. Sam hadn’t missed the nearly bald teddy bear hastily stuffed out of sight before she had got out of bed.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Sam assured her with a smile.

  The other girl looked relieved. ‘I’m Mouse,’ she introduced herself. ‘At least that’s what everyone calls me although I was christened Marianne. I didn’t think that they’d be sending me to work in a barracks, I really didn’t. I mean, I only joined up because I had to. I didn’t want to at all really. It was my aunt’s idea … She said that with me being on my own … I thought I’d be staying close to home, and doing a bit of office work.’

  Sam could see that she was close to tears. Mouse’s naïvety, combined with her air of helplessness made Sam wonder how on earth she had managed to survive the ATS long enough to get through the training weeks. The Government must indeed be desperate for young women to fill the mundane jobs left empty by the men who had been sent on active service.

  ‘Well, that’s where you went wrong,’ she told her wryly. ‘You should have told them you wanted to drive trucks and be posted as far away from home as possible and then you’d have probably ended up being a stenographer.’

  ‘Drive trucks?’ Mouse shuddered. ‘Oh, no … I couldn’t possibly do anything like that.’

  She was as green as grass and apparently completely devoid of a sense of humour, Sam reflected pityingly. The kind of girl who should have been allowed to stay at home with her mother.

  ‘Come on, you two, buck up,’ Hazel, who Sam thought would be much more her cup of tea with her jolly no-nonsense manner, called out, warning, as she fastened her own uniform blouse and tucked it into her shirt, ‘You’re not dressed yet and if you don’t get a move on you’ll miss breakfast.’

  Miss breakfast. Sam’s stomach gave a worried growl. She was just about to hurry over to her own bed, when she realised that somehow or other Mouse had already managed to get into the disgusting pink foundation garments that were part of their official uniform whilst in the shower and that she was now trying to keep the towel wrapped protectively around herself as she continued to get dressed.

  Shaking her head over such time-consuming and unnecessary primness, Sam reached her bed and grabbed her own clothes.

  ‘You’ll never get away with wearing that,’ Hazel warned her when she saw the non-uniform white brassiere Sam was fastening. ‘Not if Toadie sees it. She likes the thought of us being trussed up in our passionkillers, doesn’t she, girls?’

  The chorus of assents that greeted Hazel’s comment made Sam laugh. With her slim almost boyish figure, the last thing she needed was the one-size-fits-all proportions of the regulation underwear and corsetry supplied to the ATS. In addition to two uniforms, and four pairs of lisle stockings, everyone was also issued with three pairs of khaki lock-knit knickers, two pairs of blue and white striped pyjamas, eight starched collars and two studs, and the bane of Sam’s life, three pink brassieres and two pink boned corsets. The corsets Sam was determined never to wear, but the bras had to be worn for the sake of decency, if nothing else, and she had been very grateful when her mother had managed to find a local tailoress who had enough experience of the corset industry to be able to alter the firmly structured cone-shaped cups designed to control to military standard any potentially overexuberant female breasts, to something more appropriate for Sam’s much less voluptuous shape. She still felt trussed up and uncomfortable, though. They chafed her skin as well as her desire for freedom, and she would wear her own non-regulation underclothes as long as she could get away with it.

  ‘It was such a pity that my corsets got lost in the laundry at my last posting,’ she grinned, her eyes dancing with devilment as she told them mock innocently, ‘I was ever so upset about it, but what can you do? They’d just disappeared.’

  ‘Come on,’ the sturdily built girl keeping watch by the door hissed down the dorm. ‘Toadie’s on her way up.’

  All around her Sam could see girls moving like lightning, fastening ties, doing up blouses, reaching for shoes and jackets, and at the same time straightening up their beds, the girls who were already dressed quickly leaving their own made-up beds to deal with those of the girls who weren’t, so that by the time the warrant officer had reached the doorway, every young woman in the room was fully dressed, and every bed was neatly made.

  Sam could have sworn that her glance lingered longer on her than it did on anyone else as they filed past her and headed for the stairs, but she refused t
o give in to the temptation to look directly at her in order to check.

  ‘Thanks for making up my bed,’ she told the pretty fair-haired girl whose bed was next to her own, as she caught up with her on the stairs, five minutes later when they had been dismissed.

  ‘We all help one another out in this unit,’ came the smiling response. ‘I dare say you’ll be repaying the favour.’

  ‘Yeah, by keeping a window open so that you can get back in when you haven’t got a late-night pass, Lynsey,’ Hazel commented, overhearing their conversation. ‘Lynsey here has a raft of men queuing up to take her out and she believes in doing her bit for our boys, don’t you, Lynsey?’ she teased.

  Sam held her breath, half expecting the blonde girl to take offence, but instead she laughed and winked at Sam. ‘I certainly do.’

  ‘You want to get her to show you her collection of engagement rings, Sam,’ Hazel grinned. ‘How many was it at the last count, Lynsey?’

  ‘Eight. It would have been nine, but Pat, that Canadian I was seeing, changed his mind and said that he thought we should just be unofficially engaged. Huh, as if I hadn’t worked out what his game was. You could see as plain as anything the white mark on his finger where he’d taken off his wedding ring. The cheek of it, thinking that I wouldn’t guess what he was up to.’ She gave a disapproving sniff. ‘If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a married man pretending that he isn’t. You’ll get a lot of that here in Liverpool, Sam,’ she warned. ‘There’s troop ships arriving every week filled with men who haven’t seen a girl in months. Have you got a steady?’