by Shirley Mann
‘Well, we’d better go and find her there, then,’ Marion said.
Alice took a sharp breath in and turned to say something cutting to Marion, but Lily dug her in the ribs.
‘Leave it. Let’s see what they say and whether they’ll let us. It’s been more than twenty-four hours; she’ll be in a terrible state.’
The door opened and the commanding officer strode in, trailed by the welfare officer and the sergeant. The CO was a tall, thin man with a moustache. He was rarely seen and all pretence of listening to Morse was abandoned as everyone jumped to their feet to salute.
Those at the back craned their necks forward to hear.
‘So, ACW Mullins, you think you know where Hodgkins is?’ the CO said.
‘Yes, Sir. I think she might be in the Italian Gardens. She explained how she wished she’d taken her mum there.’
‘Very well, you can take two hours to see if you can find her. Take this WAAF here, Hill, is it?’ He looked away from Marion and turned to the sergeant for confirmation. ‘Here are your passes. The other two can go back to their desks.’
Alice was dumbfounded. She could not move, she was in such a fury.
‘Yes?’ the tall, commanding CO peered down at her.
‘Nothing, Sir, it’s just that ACW Hill doesn’t know Amy like I do.’
The CO shrugged with complete disdain at her outburst, gave her a stern warning look and walked out of the room. Sergeant Horrocks sat back down at her desk, glaring at the rest of the girls in the room, who had suddenly become absorbed in their wireless sets.
Alice grabbed hold of Lily’s arm and hissed, ‘You find her and keep Marion out of the way. I couldn’t bear it if she found her. You know how she would lord it over us and never let us forget.’
The welfare officer beckoned Marion and Lily into the corridor, leaving Viv and Alice with no choice but to go back to their seats.
‘Now, listen you girls. We’re letting you go because what ACW Hill said makes sense. We know Hodgkins is hiding somewhere and the sight of police wouldn’t encourage her to show herself. So, we’re prepared to give you time to look for her, but you must report back at the first sign of her. Do not, and I repeat do not, try to deal with any medical emergency yourselves. One of you stays with her and the other comes straight back here. Do you hear me?’
‘Yes, Ma’am,’ both girls nodded.
‘And take a blanket and some water with you.’
As they set off Lily’s mind raced, trying to remember where she had gone with Amy on their last weekend off. It had been a cold, sunny Sunday afternoon and they had wandered among the flowerbeds, full of winter foliage and an odd promise of spring with early snowdrops. Amy had commented that the flowers had not realised there was a war going on and it was strange that they were coming up as if nothing had happened. Lily hurried along the front towards the gardens with Marion just behind her. Her heart was thumping. It had been such a cold night and without food or drink, Amy could be in a really bad way.
Marion, for once, did not speak, for which Lily was grateful. She pulled up her collar against the biting wind and prayed silently.
When they got to the entrance to the gardens, Lily stood for a moment, deciding which way to go.
‘Let’s try the shelters.’
The first two were empty apart from some pigeons pecking at the ground. As they approached the third one, tucked out of sight, they spotted a huddled figure, almost hidden in the corner. Lily, the sense of relief threatening to engulf her, signalled to Marion to stay where she was and crept up to the still figure.
‘Amy,’ she said gently. ‘Amy, wake up. It’s me, Lily.’
There was no movement and Lily felt her heart lurch in panic.
‘Amy,’ she said, more urgently, putting out her hand to touch the girl’s arm. ‘Amy, please wake up’.
There was a slight murmur from Amy and Lily let out a long breath.
‘Go back to Olympia and get help!’ she shouted to Marion. ‘NOW!,’ she shouted again, realising that Marion was rooted to the spot.
Lily watched Marion finally run off back down the path and sat down next to Amy. She carefully wrapped the blanket around her friend, cuddling her to get her warm.
‘You’ve given us all such a fright,’ she said quietly, not knowing whether Amy could hear her or not. ‘This war is bad enough without you going off and putting yourself at risk. We’ve been so worried about you.’
There was no response, so Lily kept on talking, tenderly stroking Amy’s arms.
‘You know, we get strength to deal with all this from somewhere and you’ve been amazing. But running off doesn’t help anyone. Think of your brother, how would he manage if anything happened to you? And your dad? They all need you, now more than ever. You need to be strong, Amy. Your mum would want you to be strong. We’re going to get through this war together and we’re here to help you. Even Marion!’
There was a flicker of movement from Amy and Lily ploughed on. ‘Yes, Marion. It was her who managed to get us a pass to come and find you. She’s a force to be reckoned with, that’s for sure. I’m sure even the CO was cowed by her.’
I’ve got to keep talking, thought Lily, otherwise she might drift out of consciousness again.
She went on, ‘We came to look for you last night, nearly got nabbed by the MPs. I don’t think Alice has ever run so fast. And we got back to find Mrs P in full battle dress on the stairs. We really thought we were in for it, but she was really quite sweet actually when she found out where we’d been.’
I’m rabbiting on now Lily thought, I hope they come soon. I don’t know whether to give her any water or not. Oh, I don’t know what to do. Hurry up, Marion.
‘Do you know, I’ve got a nice cousin, Paul, who’d like you. He’s in the RAF. Training to fly Lancasters. You’d like him too. He’s a bit of all right. Nice blond quiff and lovely blue eyes. I’ll save him for you. Wait till we get to our next posting, it’ll be all dances and glam pilots. You’ll come out of your shell then, won’t you?’
The little body had slumped again, and Lily looked anxiously at the path. It was horribly empty.
Lily was getting desperate. She started to nervously hum ‘You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,’ rocking Amy backwards and forwards.
‘You’ve got to be kidding, Mullins,’ she muttered after two verses. ‘You’ll finish her off. Oh come on, pleaaaaase,’ she begged the heavens.
It seemed an age, but finally the welfare officer, two medics with a stretcher and Marion came running towards them.
The medics immediately took charge, put Amy on a stretcher and wrapped her tightly in blankets. The welfare officer just nodded in approval at Lily before turning to join the rescue party, which was half running down the path towards the ambulance.
Marion turned to Lily and said: ‘Now let’s allow the experts to do their job and we can get back to a cup of tea.’
But Lily was shaking and her teeth were chattering. Her feet didn’t seem able to move.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, pull yourself together,’ Marion snapped. ‘We’ve got one hospital case; we don’t need another. My feet are freezing, my hair is messy enough to scare the Luftwaffe and I want to get back in the warm.’
That made Lily move. Her anger permeated the shock that had engulfed her and she haltingly began to walk back towards Olympia.
All the way back, Marion kept up a tirade about how she had had to run all the way back while Lily just sat in the shelter. She saw herself as the heroine of the hour and was obviously rehearsing her story for the mess that night. Lily, absorbed in the trauma of the morning, was too relieved that Amy had been found, and was still alive, to bother arguing.
*
‘It’s a cider for you,’ Alice said that night, pushing through the throng at the bar in the Carleton. ‘Sometimes, nothing but alcohol will do the trick.’
For once, Lily had been quiet all day. She still felt cold and shivered from time to time.
She g
rasped the glass gratefully, sipping at the amber-coloured cider. She felt its power reaching down into her stomach and she sighed deeply.
Alice elbowed her way through the crowd of locals and servicemen and women, steering her friend towards a small table in the corner.
‘Now, you can tell me all about it. I’ve heard Marion’s version of how she saved the day, but I want the story from you.
‘Alice, it was horrible. I felt so helpless,’ Lily blurted. ‘I thought she was dead. I didn’t know what to do.’
‘You did exactly the right thing. Kept her warm, kept talking to her. What else could you have done?’
‘I don’t know, first aid, something . . . anything.’
The feeling of complete uselessness had overwhelmed Lily all day. She had gone over and over the scene, trying to work out how she could have helped more, but no matter how hard she tried, there was no answer.
‘I want to do something with my life,’ she said finally. ‘I want to know how to deal with disasters, I want to do something apart from making people laugh.’
‘OK,’ said her friend slowly. ‘And I want to be Prime Minister. So, let’s start on the “improve Lily and Alice campaign” and by the end of this war, we’ll rule the world. In the meantime, we’ll have another cider, which will hit the spot and mean we’ll at least think we already do!’
Chapter 12
Amy’s health improved slowly in the hospital. Her dehydration and hypothermia were rapidly treated and physically she picked up within a few days, but her mental state was still fragile, and it was decided she should be sent to a psychiatric hospital near her home in Coventry for a while. Alice, Lily, Viv and Marion all went to visit her in the Infirmary, taking valuable chocolate they had cajoled out of a surprisingly compliant Mrs P. They were shocked at Amy’s pale, thin face and despite perching on her bed and regaling her with tales of unfathomable Morse tests, Sergeant Horrocks’s dreadful new haircut and Fran’s attempt at flirtation with a tall, attractive warrant officer, her responses were sparse and disinterested.
‘We’ll just have to hope she improves when she gets home,’ Alice said despondently as they left the hospital.’
Marion pulled her coat around her. ‘I’ve done all I can; it’s up to Amy now.’
Alice frowned at her. She hated to admit it, but Marion was probably right, albeit in a callous way. They had exams the next week and the pressure had been mounting on them to improve their Morse speeds. Amy was in the hands of the experts now.
A few days later, the girls were taken into a large room above Burton the Tailors and given headsets to wear. They were all nervous and there had been several torches under the bedclothes the night before as they each crammed for the test. Lily listened carefully to the dah dits and transcribed them with a furrowed brow.
‘How do you think you did?’ Alice asked her afterwards as they left the room. ‘I couldn’t hear for that bloody band.’
‘What band?’ Lily replied.
‘The brass band in the background. Didn’t you hear it?’
‘No,’ Lily replied, then thought a moment. ‘Oh, yes, now you mention it, I heard it at the beginning, but then it disappeared.’
‘No, it didn’t. It went on all the way through. I found myself humming along to “When You Wish Upon a Star” instead of listening to the Morse. It was a nightmare.’
‘Well, I didn’t hear it once the Morse started,’ said Lily.
Later in the afternoon, she went to get her marks for the test. She clutched them to her breast as she skipped along the corridor.
‘At last, I’ve done something right’ she said out loud.
‘Well, that will be a first,’ she heard from behind her. Sergeant Horrocks had come out of a door on her left.
‘Did well in the test, did you, Aircraftwoman Mullins? There’s more to being a WAAF than hearing a bit of Morse.’
‘Yes, Sarge,’ Lily replied, trying to keep the triumphant tone out of her voice.
‘We’ll see tomorrow when you have to take your set to pieces and put it back together again.’
‘Yes, Sergeant.’
Lily’s shoulders drooped. She knew the sergeant was right. She was technically hopeless and all the cramming in the world with a torch under the bedclothes was not going to help her.
Alice was an expert at the buttons and whistles as the girls called them. She could wire plugs, fix kettles and change fuses as easily as the others could light up a cigarette. Alice was sympathetic to Lily, but pragmatic.
‘You probably won’t ever be posted to the desert and have to mend your set, so I wouldn’t worry. I only just scraped through the Morse and you did really well in that.’
‘Yes, but I have to pass the test or else I’ll be shipped out of here back to munitions.’
‘Nah. You have to stay to keep Sergeant Horrible in line.’
‘What is it about that woman?’ Lily wondered out loud. ‘What have I ever done to her? Why does she hate me?’
‘I don’t know,’ Alice said, suddenly recalling the scene with the lamp-post outside Olympia, but then shook her head.
Maybe that person I saw was Horrocks. But surely, it couldn’t have been that. It was only a bit of fun, she reasoned, deciding to keep her suspicions to herself.
‘Anyway,’ she said out loud, ‘she’s a bitter, twisted woman, so you’d better watch out for her.’
The following day was like a bad dream for Lily. Her mind went blank when she was faced with a broken set. She twiddled with a few wires, tried to push them back into the set and then hopefully tried pressing the Morse key. Nothing. She was nearly in tears with the frustration and looked around at all the other bent heads, calmly getting on with the task at hand.
The male officer who was overseeing the test came over to her. ‘Having trouble?’ he said gently.
‘Yes, I can’t seem to make it work.’
‘Well, it won’t unless you switch it on,’ he bent down and whispered. She was a good pupil and obviously suffering from exam nerves.
Lily smiled gratefully at him and flicked the switch, but felt her face going bright crimson. A reassuring clicking noise came from the Morse key and she breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Lily gave herself a talking to. How am I ever going to be a pilot if I can’t even get a small radio set to work? I’d probably forget to turn the engines on and then wonder why the plane wasn’t moving. This terror of technology is getting beyond a joke. I have to deal with it.
She sat in gloom in the mess later that evening. Alice tackled the problem head on.
‘We’re actually the perfect WAAF between us,’ Alice reasoned, ‘I have the technical skills and you have the practical ones.’
‘Oh, that’s just great, we’ll tell the air force we have to go everywhere together so we can do one job between us,’ Lily replied despondently.
‘Well, yes, we could do that or . . .’
‘Or what?’
‘You can help me to be better at Morse and I’ll help you to become more technical.’
‘Sounds simple, but you have no idea how thick I am,’ Lily replied.
‘Don’t be silly, you’ve got a brain, you just need to key into the bit that will help you understand it all.’
‘Have to be a bloody big key!’
‘But first, we get an evening pass for tomorrow from that lovely Officer Hales and we go out. Alcohol will help,’ Alice added, pushing Lily towards the warrant officer’s room.
‘Enter,’ Sergeant Horrocks’s terse tones called from behind the door.
Alice groaned. ‘What’s she doing in there?’
‘Waiting to turn us down for an evening pass,’ Lily replied resignedly.
Sergeant Horrocks was seated behind the desk, almost masked by the huge pile of paperwork in front of her.
‘We were looking for the warrant officer, Sergeant,’ Lily ventured.
‘Stand up straight and straighten your tie. Uniform infraction. On a charge, ACW Mull
ins.’
Lily slumped, mentally counting up this week’s offences, which now came to three.
‘Stand up straight or there’ll be another charge,’ Sergeant Horrocks barked at her. ‘Warrant Officer Hales has been called away, what was it you wanted?’
Alice glanced at Lily. This was going to be harder than they thought.
‘We wanted to ask for a pass for tomorrow night, Sarge.’
Sergeant Horrocks looked up from one to the other, resting her stern gaze on Lily.
‘I somehow think ACW Mullins is going to be otherwise occupied once she’s been up before the Duty Office in the morning. I suspect it will be extra cleaning duty in the kitchens, they’ve got a busy night tomorrow,’ she added gleefully.
Lily closed the door behind them and sighed deeply. ‘What is it with that woman?’
‘I don’t know, but it’s ruining our social life,’ Alice put her arm around her friend’s shoulders.
‘Bloody marvellous, everyone else is drinking and dancing their way through this war and I’ll be doing jankers in the kitchen at the mercy of a five-foot tyrant who hates me.’
*
The following night, the girls flopped on their beds back at Mrs Porter’s. Lily had just half an hour spare before she had to report to the kitchens. Alice decided desperate measures were called for and went downstairs to negotiate with Marion to buy some gin from her at twice its cost. Marion had just lost a shilling at cards with one of the other girls and was not feeling generous but after some hard bargaining by Alice, gave in and went to her locker in the hall to unearth a bottle. Alice took it triumphantly into the bedroom, balancing two enamel cups as she closed the door.
‘You’ll have to imagine the lemon and ice . . . oh and the cut-glass goblets, but at least it will have you set up for kitchen duty.’
‘I can’t,’ Lily smiled ruefully. ‘You know the penalty for drinking on duty.’
‘OK, but I’ll save some for when you finish and then the memory of bits of congealed bacon fat from behind the sink will fade.’
‘Thanks a lot, I hadn’t thought about that,’ Lily grimaced, looking longingly at the tin mug. She glanced at her watch.