The Saturday Girls

by Elizabeth Woodcraft

  We turned a bend in the road and there ahead of us was a wire fence that seemed to stretch for miles. There was no gate to be seen. And there was nothing inside the fence except very short grass.

  ‘Cut like a GI’s hair,’ said Sandra, ‘like Elvis when he went into the army.’ We’d seen GI Blues. ‘That’s what Cooky does.’

  ‘What, cuts hair?’

  ‘Grass. He cuts grass. He told you, that night.’

  ‘Really? He obviously doesn’t cut it here,’ I said. The grass on our side of the fence was long and filled with cow parsley and occasional buttercups. ‘Or perhaps he likes wild flowers.’

  ‘If he was cutting it today he could give us a lift on his mower. Where do we go in?’

  ‘Let’s follow the fence,’ I said. ‘There must be an entrance somewhere.’

  ‘And what are you going to do when we get inside?’

  ‘Ask people if they know him.’

  ‘Good plan, all five thousand of them. That’ll take . . . how long? What time does the last bus go?’ she said.

  ‘They run every day.’

  ‘As long as we’re home for Christmas.’ We both snorted with laughter. Sandra was stepping carefully round the flowers. ‘How come you were so petrified of going into Wormwood Scrubs when we had an actual invitation, and now you’re quite happy to stroll into an air base when we’re probably breaking about a hundred laws just looking at it?’

  I looked up at the sky. ‘I suppose this is something I want to do, I’m not just being dragged along like a big gooseberry. I’m pleased you’ve come.’

  She pushed my arm and said, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ But I knew she was pleased I’d said it. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘an air base isn’t exactly like a prison. People go in and out all the time.’

  ‘Except your CND friends.’

  ‘Yes, but I’ve got you with me.’

  We walked beside the fence for five minutes. Under my breath I repeated, ‘Bob Stanferd, Bob Stanferd, Bob Stanferd.’ I didn’t want to forget it.

  ‘From Texas.’ Sandra wiped some mud off her shoe. ‘Is that a gate?’

  I didn’t want it to be a gate. Now I didn’t want to go in. ‘Are you sure Mrs Weston doesn’t know anything else? She must do. We should have asked her.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Sandra. ‘We should have gone into the shop and said, “Hello, Mrs Weston, a packet of custard creams please, and as much information as you’ve got on the American.” I told you – she’s just guessing.’

  We were approaching two high wire gates. Ahead of us a smooth roadway led up to a small cabin. I wanted it all to disappear like a mirage.

  ‘Hadn’t you better take your badge off?’ Sandra said.

  I slid my CND badge into my pocket. ‘We don’t need to do this,’ I said.

  ‘I thought you were all of a doo-da because it’s not fair that Mansell’s got a dad he doesn’t know.’

  ‘But now I know where he comes from, so I can go back to the library to find out all the rest.’ I stopped.

  ‘It won’t be that easy,’ Sandra said. ‘And we’re here now.’ She looked at me. ‘Are we going in or not?’

  We walked along the smooth roadway. There were two men in the cabin. One of them came out. ‘OK, gals?’ He spoke with an American accent.

  My heart began pounding. Sandra said, ‘We’re looking for someone. She’s looking for someone.’ She rolled her eyes so he thought I was in love with an airman, and he laughed.

  ‘I’d like to help you, honey, I mean ma’am. But you can’t go in. We’ve had a deal of trouble recently.’

  ‘But we really do need to find him,’ she said. ‘And we’re no trouble. I’ve always wanted to go to America. All those lovely accents and your big cars. Oh, go on,’ she pleaded, touching his arm.

  ‘OK.’ He grinned and went back into the cabin and lifted a telephone receiver. He murmured something into the phone, then he dialled and redialled numbers. The other airman laughed. Then our airman came out and told us we were being taken to see an officer.

  *

  We were in front of a bored man whose uniform looked as if he’d put it on in the dark, the shoulder seams in the wrong place and one button undone. Sandra said we were there for the Open Day, and we’d obviously got the date wrong. I turned to her gratefully. Of course, that was the thing to say.

  He seemed tired. ‘I heard you were looking for someone.’

  ‘She is.’

  ‘You were looking for an American airman?’

  ‘Not really.’

  He gazed at me.

  ‘Well, yes, in a way. For a friend.’

  ‘Do you have a name?’

  ‘Sylvie.’

  The officer sighed. ‘His name.’

  ‘What is it?’ My mind was empty. I wanted not to be there. ‘It starts with T.’

  Sandra turned to the officer. ‘Stanferd. His name’s Bob Stanferd.’ She looked at me. ‘Starts with T!’

  The officer frowned. ‘Is anybody here pregnant?’

  ‘No!’ we said in unison.

  He shook his head. ‘That’s something. So you’re looking for a couple of nice American boys.’

  ‘Well, just one really, but two would do,’ said Sandra. ‘That’s why we wanted to come to the Open Day.’ She smiled.

  He picked up a phone and said some names, none of them Stanferd or anything like it. ‘To my office, now.’ He looked at us for a moment then straightened some papers on his desk. ‘OK, ladies, you will be escorted from the base. You may find your escorts friendly and they may tell you when the next dance is.’

  I wanted to say, look, if we really wanted to nab an American we would have dressed up a bit more, not come in like this, covered in mud and brambles, so you needn’t sneer, but we were leaving, which was what I wanted more.

  As we walked through the base with our guards, other airmen whistled and called to us. ‘Hey gals, can I call you up sometime?’ ‘Are you English birds?’ ‘Are you from Liverpool?’ Some joined us. It was almost a gang, and we were in the middle. Sandra was enjoying this part, laughing and making wisecracks. ‘Go on, say somethin’ else,’ one with black hair said. Sandra said, ‘I will if you will.’

  ‘These chicks crack me up,’ he said. ‘Go on, talk to me.’

  ‘What’s it worth?’ Sandra said.

  They all roared. ‘Lucky, lucky Droberg,’ someone said.

  As we were walking back to the bus stop, Sandra said, ‘Well, I found out something that you might be interested in.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘One of those men came from Texas.’

  ‘Really?’ I was sure my heart had stopped. ‘Was it him?’

  ‘No, stupid. I asked him if he knew a Bob Stanferd who had a friend called Gary from Wisconsin and he said yes.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, vaguely, and I said . . .’ She looked to make sure I was hanging on her every word, ‘I said could he give him a message?’

  ‘What? A message? What do you mean?’ A message. That was . . . that was awful. It was dawning on me that this might not have been a sensible thing to do. What effect would this have on Sylvie? And what would Bob think? What would he do?

  ‘Well, he scratched his head and said he hoped it was a short message because he couldn’t guarantee he’d remember, and then he said he’d do it. And so then I said, I just said, someone in Chelmsford needed to speak to him.’

  My mind was whirling. Was it all right to say Chelmsford? Was it too much? ‘Are you sure that’s all you said? Did you give him her address?’

  ‘I’m not stupid.’

  ‘But did you give him her name?’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked at me. ‘Your face!’

  ‘You didn’t.’

  ‘Why? Why shouldn’t I? At least that gives him some idea of who’s looking for him, and if he wants to be found. Otherwise, what was the point of doing all this? You don’t have to say thank you.’ She looked hurt.

  ‘I don’t know if I
am grateful.’

  ‘You’re still thinking about that boring old general, or whoever he was.’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘You’ve been planning this for ages. You thought it was a good idea right up to the moment we clapped eyes on that entry sentry, so it probably still is.’

  Was it?

  She read my face. ‘It was a good idea. So you can say thank you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t thank me, buy me something. Preferably a new pair of stockings. Oh, we’ve got to stop, I’ve got something in my shoe.’ She leaned on my shoulder and slid her shoe from her foot and shook out some grit. ‘Where’s the bus stop?’ she said. ‘When’s the next bus?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Going back this way, everything looked different. Trees and fields stretched ahead of us. ‘Is this even the right road?’ I still felt anxious; my stomach was churning.

  ‘We should have chalked marks on the trees.’ Sandra looked at her watch. ‘We are going to be so late.’

  ‘There’s a bus stop!’

  A 311 sailed past. ‘And there goes the next bus. My mum’s going to kill me.’

  But it wasn’t missing the bus that got her into trouble.

  *

  When I got home everyone had had their tea and the table had been cleared. ‘I was at Sandra’s,’ I mumbled when I walked into the living room.

  Mum didn’t seem to care. She was preparing for her Sunday School class, putting all the pieces of cardboard she saved from Shredded Wheat packets into a bag with some blunt scissors, crayons and glue. ‘I’m hungry,’ I said. ‘Still hungry, I mean.’ I turned to go to the kitchen.

  ‘Before you do that,’ Mum said. I stopped. What? What? ‘I was talking to Mrs Weston in the shop this afternoon.’ What had they talked about? What did Mrs Weston know? But Mum was calm. ‘It’s Mrs Weston’s bingo night tonight. Would you like to go and sit with Sylvie and Mansell? Apparently it went very well last time,’ she said, putting a rubber band round a pile of pieces of card.

  I looked at the ceiling. What would I say to Sylvie when she asked me what I’d been up to? ‘You don’t even agree with bingo!’ I said to Mum. She considered it gambling.

  ‘Alternatively,’ Mum went on, ‘you can cut out pictures of animals from Woman’s Own, for the class.’

  We hadn’t found him. We’d only met some people who might know him. And Sandra had only said Sylvie’s name to one of them. It wasn’t too bad. We hadn’t found him. And I hated cutting out.

  I said yes, I’d go and sit with her. Perhaps doing a good deed would make up for what we might have started this afternoon.

  *

  Sylvie said I could give Mansell his bath. She dragged out an old tin bath from under the stairs. We had a tin bath at home, that once upon a time we had bathed in, when we were very small, but now we kept it in the shed and Dad used it to aerate the water in the goldfish bowl. ‘You can fill it with water from the tap,’ Sylvie said. ‘Don’t worry if you spill it.’

  She was really happy this evening, and she looked nice. She was wearing the dress I’d helped her make. The zip didn’t fit very well, I noticed, but only because I was looking closely. The dress was white with large red flowers, and the gathered waist made her look curvaceous and mysterious, like Gina Lollobrigida. She was humming as she went upstairs to get some clean pyjamas for Mansell.

  I half-filled the bath and staggered with it across to the table. Sylvie ran down the stairs and put a faded yellow sleeping suit over a chair. She handed me a new bar of Johnson’s baby soap. I unwrapped the white waxy soap, while she sat down and lit a cigarette. I rolled up my sleeves and lowered Mansell into the bath. Straightaway he smacked his hands into the water, laughing.

  ‘I’ve been to Wethersfield,’ I said, to assuage my guilt, to see how she’d react.

  ‘Oh, have you?’ she said. She inhaled deeply on the cigarette. ‘Did you like it?’

  ‘It was all right. It’s very big.’

  ‘Did you see the shop? They have such wonderful things in there! What were you doing up there?’

  ‘We were escorted off the base.’

  ‘Linda, what a girl you are! Whatever for?’ She looked round for an ashtray, then tapped ash into the palm of her hand. As I searched for an answer that would be truthful but not revealing, she said, ‘I was once escorted out of a nightclub, but I don’t suppose it’s the same. I had had rather too much absinthe, I think. You probably didn’t have that excuse. The thing about absinthe is that it makes you very maudlin.’ She tipped the ash into the cigarette packet. ‘Not real absinthe, of course. It was pastis. But it all tastes of aniseed. Mmm.’

  ‘Aniseed?’ Sometimes her tastes made me lose all sympathy with her. Who would willingly drink aniseed?

  Absently she handed me a towel. ‘Juliette Greco,’ she said. ‘Yves Montand, Edith Piaf, Larry Fabbrona. They were all there. All dressed in black. They were celebrating something or other. Juliette Greco and Piaf did a duet. There was a lot of laughing. When I started crying they said I was spoiling the fiesta. And out I went.’ She smiled and shook her head.

  When Mansell was dried and powdered and swaddled in clean pyjamas, I laid him in the pram in the hall. Sylvie put on the television. It was the Billy Cotton Band Show. We watched in silence. Just before Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s programme started, Mrs Weston came in. She was breezy and chatty. She’d won £25. She went into the kitchen and filled the kettle.

  I stood up and put on my coat.

  Sylvie followed me to the front door. As I opened the door she said, ‘So what were you doing at the base?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. It was a sort of protest.’

  CHAPTER 20

  Result

  I WAS IN THE MIDDLE of the exams. I’d had Bible Knowledge in the morning and Maths in the afternoon. Now Dad had brought Mr Robinson home for tea. Mr Robinson was a union man from London and he was going to speak at Dad’s branch meeting. He deserved a good tea, Mum said, and I had to go down the road for three cod and chips. But this was like another exam. If there are five people for tea, how many chips do you need? Mr Robinson would have one whole piece of cod and a portion of chips, Dad would have a piece of fish with the end cut off, I would have Dad’s cut-off piece but most of his chips, and Mum and Judith would share one fish and chips between them.

  I arrived at the chip shop just as a green-and-white Corsair pulled up. Cooky was giving Sandra a lift home from work. She hadn’t told me he gave her lifts home. I wondered if it was a regular thing – both the lifts and her not telling me. Oh Sandra, I thought. Is this it? Is this where we start separating?

  Sandra stuck her head out of the passenger window. ‘Oy,’ she said. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going to the chip shop.’

  Cooky leaned across her and put his head out of the window. ‘Get us some lemonade,’ he said.

  ‘She’s not going to the off-licence,’ Sandra said.

  ‘Get us some chips then,’ Cooky said.

  ‘She doesn’t want to get you some chips,’ Sandra said. ‘She’s getting something for their tea.’

  ‘I only asked,’ he said.

  ‘Well, don’t,’ she said.

  They sounded like a married couple on telly, and with their heads in the window, they looked like it too, moaning at each other but loving it. And I thought Sandra would surely be better off with Cooky instead of Danny, despite Cooky’s curly hair and tattoos.

  ‘Wait, I’ll come with you,’ Sandra called. Their heads disappeared back into the car. I turned away. I didn’t want to see, in case she was kissing him goodbye. The car door slammed and Sandra wiggled her fingers at Cooky. The Corsair made a laborious turn in the road and Cooky drove away. Sandra and I went into the chip shop and I placed my order.

  ‘It’ll be a few minutes,’ the woman said. She poured a crate of chopped potatoes into the fat with a wet, sizzling roar.

  ‘So what’s going on with you and Cooky?’

  �
�Nothing. You don’t come out in the evenings, with all your exams and everything. What am I supposed to do?’

  ‘Shouldn’t you give Danny back his ring?’

  A little smile trembled on her lips. ‘What’s the point? I don’t know where he is. He doesn’t know we’re engaged. Anyway, I don’t want to give it back.’ She drummed her fingers on the counter. ‘That’s the trouble. I really want to get engaged to him.’ She held out her left hand.

  ‘But why? You and Cooky seem to get on better than you and Danny ever do.’

  She looked at me sadly. ‘If you must know, Cooky gets on my nerves, him and his car. And he’s always talking about his job. Grass! I mean – grass. As if he’s the only person who’s ever pushed a lawnmower.’ She made a face at me. ‘All right! I know – he is generous, and the car is handy. But he’s not very funny. He doesn’t make me laugh, not like Danny.’

  We were silent. I looked at the large jar of greenish liquid on the counter, half-full of hard-boiled eggs. Was she running Cooky down a bit too much?

  ‘Three cod, was it?’ The woman lifted golden pieces of fish out of the fat. Sandra and I leaned over the counter and watched as she slid them onto greaseproof paper and shovelled chips beside them and then wrapped them in pages of the Daily Mirror. I passed over the money and took the large warm parcel.

  *

  We had finished our final exam of the year. It was French. ‘What did you put for “haussé ses épaules”?’ I said to Cray as we filed out of the gym where we’d sat for the last hour and a half. ‘I put “braced his knees”.’

  ‘Well,’ said Cray, ‘ “épaule” is shoulder. I got that.’

  ‘Braced his shoulders?’

  ‘I put “straightened”.’

  We looked it up. ‘Haussé’ meant shrugged. Shrugged his shoulders. Why didn’t I know that? Cray had got it half right, and she wasn’t meant to be as good at French as I was.

  We had the rest of the day off. I walked home repeating ‘braced his knees’! It didn’t even mean anything.

  At home I went upstairs to get changed. I ripped off my tie – ma cravate, my shirt – ma chemise, my skirt – ma jupe. I knew all those words, they just hadn’t come up in the exam. Why did this always happen? The other exams had been fairly bad – in the English exam I’d answered the question about Pygmalion by saying that Henry Higgins was too posh to be any good for Eliza and she should have refused to play his game from the start. It wasn’t an approach we’d studied in class. I was bound to be marked down. In History I’d forgotten the year for the Diet of Worms. I’d messed up one whole equation, if not all of them, in Maths. And, possibly my mum’s fault, I’d mixed up the bones in the inner ear in Biology.