by Shirley Mann
A new batch of WAAFs had arrived at Upper Heyford and watching them march towards the huts, Marion was looking out of the window when she spotted a small, pert sergeant at the front of them, arms swinging, feet determinedly pointing forwards and two hair grips holding her hair in place under her cap.
Sergeant Horrocks! Marion smiled slyly. Her day was complete.
*
Lily was on duty that afternoon, but new pilots had been stood down because of bad weather and only the more experienced trainees were flying. She was making peppermint creams to pass the time when she glanced down at the pathway next to the runway. Surely not . . .? She peered in horror. It couldn’t be.
She groaned. Hilda, who was helping to form little round shapes with the peppermint mixture, while keeping her ears out for crackling sounds from her machine, turned towards her.
‘What’s up?’
‘I can’t believe it. This is a huge war, there are Bomber Command posts all over the country and the two people who can make my life a misery end up here, in Upper Heyford.’
‘Who are you talking about?’
‘Marion for one. She’s enough to send anyone to wave a white flag at the Germans, but now there’s Sergeant Horrocks. She was at Blackpool with us and for some reason absolutely hated me. I never found out what I had done to deserve it, but she loathed me and she made sure I suffered for it.’
Hilda passed her over an oval shape.
‘Here, have this, it sounds like you need a sugar rush.’
Lily chomped despondently at the peppermint cream and then reached for two more. It was going to be a long shift.
Sergeant Horrocks took the parade the next morning and her mouth curled into a sneer as she recognised the tall, blonde WAAF at the back of the line.
‘Well, if it isn’t Lily Mulllins. How lovely to see you. I felt sure our paths would cross again.’
Lily carried on looking straight ahead and over Sergeant Horrocks’s shoulder into the distance. She was determined not to give the sergeant any opportunity to catch her out.
Horrocks moved to within an inch of Lily’s face and then peered down to inspect her buttons.
‘Hmm. I see your housekeeping hasn’t improved much. My office tonight at 1700 hours.’
Lily felt her shoulders droop. She knew her buttons were clean and shiny but she also knew that no matter how much she abided by the endless list of rules and regulations, her behaviour would never be enough to satisfy Sergeant Horrocks.
At 1700 hours, Lily knocked on the sergeant’s door. A sharp ‘Enter’ came from the other side.
Lily marched into the room, holding herself as straight as she could. If this woman wanted a war, Lily was ready for her.
For a moment, Sergeant Horrocks said nothing. She just walked round Lily, inspecting her from head to toe.
‘I believe you want to join the ATA,’ she said finally.
Lily took a sharp breath. How did Sergeant Horrocks know about her dream? She must have gone through the mail. She said nothing, deciding that discretion was the greater part of valour.
‘What makes you think a frivolous girl like you could ever amount to anything?’
The tone was vitriolic and the sergeant practically spat the words out.
‘You’re nothing but a low-born girl from the back streets of Manchester. On a charge.’
Lily was taken aback. Even she hadn’t suspected that an officer could be so unfair.
‘May I ask on what charge, Sergeant?’
‘The insolence! The charge is that your hair is touching your collar.’
Lily felt up with her right hand and discovered one stray strand of hair that had unfurled onto her collar.
She knew there was no chance of defending herself.
‘Yes, Sergeant,’ she said.
‘Dismissed,’ the sergeant said, looking down at her paperwork. Lily turned on her heels and walked out of the door.
‘Kit will be disappointed,’ Hilda said, when Lily told her she would be scrubbing pans the following night instead of going for a drink.
‘Oh, he’ll live, and anyway, Marion will be there to take up his full attention.’
Scrubbing six large saucepans with a very dilapidated Brillo pad, Lily sadly pondered how she was going to deal with her time at Upper Heyford. It had all started so promisingly and now, with Marion and the arrival of Sergeant Horrocks, her life was being thrown into turmoil and all her recent good record was in jeopardy. She decided she was going to have to be ingenious if she was going to survive unscathed. She scrubbed the pans with more enthusiasm than the slightly burned bottoms warranted and envisaged Horrocks’s and Marion’s faces in them as she smeared the dirty Brillo pad across the base. When she saw the pans gleaming at the end of her endeavours, she nodded with satisfaction. All traces of her foes completely eradicated. Very satisfactory. Now for real life.
Chapter 34
Lily walked slowly back to the hut, thinking. She was still trying to work out what she had done to alienate the two women. She thought back to Blackpool. Marion was easy, she knew that Lily was far from impressed by her high and mighty ways, and Lily had never been backward in taking the mickey out of the London girl’s pretentions. She suspected her version of a sense of humour was lost on Marion, who liked to lead the pack and be looked up to and admired. Alice had escaped Marion’s venom because any sort of subtlety was wasted on her down-to-earth nature, but Lily had been an easier target. She had been popular with everyone because she made them laugh and sometimes that laughter had, she had to admit, been at Marion’s expense. So that was Marion’s reason for disliking her so much. Sergeant Horrocks was another matter.
She thought back to the night she had seen her outside the Medical Centre. She then tried to think further back to when she first met her. From that moment, when Sergeant Horrocks had taken the roll call and stopped to look at each WAAF to register the face against the name, her eyes had narrowed as if she recognised Lily. She went on to stumble over the other names and at the end of the list, turned slowly on her heel and started to walk away, staggering as she went.
‘Surely I can’t have done anything to upset her.’ Lily said out loud as she rounded the corner near her hut. She was no further on and in any case, she was exhausted, her hands were rubbed raw and she had an early shift the next morning. Sergeant Horrocks’s hate campaign was going to have to wait, she was going to bed.
At that moment, at the other side of the camp, Sergeant Horrocks was going through all the admin and mail that had come in for the WAAFs. She saw an announcement that Aircraftwoman second class Lily Mullins was to be promoted to Leading Aircraftwoman and she seethed with fury. Then she saw a typed letter thanking ACW Lily Mullins from the Air Transport Auxiliary for her application and enclosing a form for her to fill in. The sergeant was entitled to check all mail for any infringement of secrecy but she was not entitled to pick up a box of matches, put her tin waste paper bin on the desk and set light to the letter from the ATA, gleefully consigning the charred remains to the bottom of the bin.
*
The next night was domestic night, when all the WAAFs had to clean their huts. The evening was one when a WAAF officer would inspect kit laid out on the bed, when shoes were to be polished and when the floor area around each bed was to be cleaned until it shone. Anyone who failed the inspection would have their name and bed number posted on the mess wall with a note in capital letters saying ‘DIRTY’. It was a public shaming they all studiously avoided. There was always a great deal of moaning and groaning about domestic night but it was also a good chance for a gossip and a giggle.
‘Just what my poor hands need,’ Lily told Hilda, looking down at her already chapped hands.
‘Here, try some Vaseline. I’ve got a new tub of it,’ Hilda replied. Hilda’s background of helping out on the touchline at Tranmere Rovers had led her to a life of inventive cures for everything from acne to warts.
But the Vaseline meant that Lily kept dropping
things and, eventually, the girls forbade her from touching anything breakable and gave her the sanitary towels to clean the floor with. This was a tradition that had started at the beginning of the war when the girls realised the free towels were eminently suitable for a long list of uses including cleaning shoes, padding out shoulders and buffing up buttons and floors, as well as face masks.
Trixie was from Newcastle and her accent was almost impenetrable, but while she polished, she sang some of the old fishing ditties from her childhood and the girls all started to sway and clean in time. Hilda glanced at Lily and grinned.
‘There are moments when I just love this war,’ she said. ‘At home, it’s always so quiet you can hear the clocks ticking. Mum and Dad are quite old and Dad likes his newspaper while Mum knits. I was so bored at home, this war has given me the chance to live with a group of girls and, do you know what, Lily, I love it.’
Lily looked around and nodded in agreement. She had almost forgotten what it was like to live at home and she knew it was going to be hard to go back there permanently when the war was over, but due for some leave, she realised she was going have a chance to practise very soon. It had been weeks since she had sent off her inquiry about the ATA and she had heard nothing, despite checking the post room three times a day. Her bitter disappointment was somewhat alleviated by the fact that she had been promoted to LACW, which meant she was a Leading Aircraftwoman. She had proudly sewn the badge of a propeller onto her sleeve, rubbing it so much that it looked a bit old and worn and as if she had been a LACW for years. She could not wait to show her parents.
A full week’s pass was on offer and Lily began to be excited. It had been a long time since she had been back to Manchester and she knew that her mother had been saving coupons in readiness for a feast. Her dad had written that he had swapped his day off work so he could spend it with her.
*
The train was packed with servicemen and women all over the carriage. Some showed signs of injury and Lily was pulled up sharply when she saw a young soldier with bandages over his eyes being helped along the carriage by a nurse. She suddenly felt a need to write to Danny.
When they stopped at Crewe, which strangely always smelt of fish, they all piled into the cafeteria but had to scrabble round to find their mugs. There ensued good natured bartering as one serviceman, with a suspicious number of mugs available, managed to bag a variety of food items, clothing and cigarettes in exchange for his prized tea containers. Lily finally found her mug, which she had left at the bottom of her kit bag this time, but the rest of the queue was amused when five hair rollers fell out as she delved into the muddle that was her usual style of packing. They rolled across the platform, disappearing under legs and bags, leaving her no option but to set off in hot pursuit, unceremoniously upturning sleeping soldiers to find them. She had to deal with a good deal of ribaldry before she found all five and by the time she got back on the train, they were like a group of friends who had known each other for years. Lily was finally one of them. The chatter did not cease until the train pulled in to Oxford Road.
Lily craned her head out of the window and waved furiously as she spotted her mum and dad looking anxiously along the train. Her mum broke into a run when she finally spotted her daughter, clutching her platform ticket like a trophy.
‘Oh Mum, it’s so good to see you, it’s been ages.’ She hugged them both, jumping up and down on the spot.
‘I know, I know,’ said Ginny, dabbing her eyes. ‘You look so grown up and look at those tapes on your uniform, a proper qualified WAAF. Oh, you’re so smart, Lily.’
They linked arms, talking non-stop while her dad carried her bag, and headed off to catch the bus home.
Lily was shocked by the state of Manchester when she saw that there were even more bombed out buildings. Everywhere there was rubble where houses used to be. Familiar sights were obliterated and for a sickening moment, Lily thought of her beloved family being bombarded from the skies.
‘Have you been sleeping any better, Mum? Manchester looks a mess.’ she said, fearfully, squeezing her mum’s arm. ‘She looked sideways at her. Ginny was definitely thinner and a little more lined but she was reassuringly still her mum.
‘I don’t want to talk about the war, I’ve had enough of it,’ she replied with that determined pursing of the lips that Lily knew so well. A sweet, gentle woman, but when Ginny Mullins’s family was threatened by anyone or anything, she became a formidable force.
Lily wondered whether Hitler realised what he had taken on.
It took less than five minutes for Lily to check out the house: her bedroom, the garden and the Anderson Shelter which she patted to give it renewed strength. She raced around at breakneck speed, dropping her jacket at the front door, leaving her mum to pick it up. Finally, she plonked down in the morning room armchair with a sigh of relief.
‘I’ll get us a cup of tea, and I’ve baked some of that cake you like,’ Ginny said.
Lily closed her eyes and then sprang them open again to check everything was still there. Yes, the range was lit, the damask tablecloth still had the burn on it from the candles that Don knocked over three Christmases ago and the wireless was in pride of place in the corner of the room. Her letters were stacked behind the photograph of her at school and as she looked closely at it, its glass reflection showed her older, hopefully wiser, face superimposed on the naïve young girl.
For a second, Lily allowed herself to think about sitting in the morning room with no war going on outside, being able to wear civvies and to be planning a night out with Hannah and Ros in Manchester. She heaved a huge sigh. It all seemed like another world. She realised how tired she was, fell back in the chair and closed her eyes once more.
It was going dark when she opened them again and the cup of tea next to her on the table had gone cold. Her mum was sitting in the armchair opposite doing some darning and her dad was poking the fire to try to make the most of the meagre bits of coal they were trying to make last through the evening. Lily knew they had gone without a fire all week so that the coal would last for their daughter coming home, and she smiled sleepily at them both and then glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was five o’clock. Don had gone to a friend’s house after school but was due in any minute and they would all sit down for tea together before her dad left for work. It was all so normal.
Five minutes later, the back door flew open and her brother raced in, chucking down his satchel and flinging himself at Lily, taking the wind out of her.
‘You’ve grown!’ she said, laughing as she caught her breath.
‘Yep, nearly as big as Dad now,’ he said, drawing himself up to his full height, and sizing himself up next to his father. His dad grinned down at his son, who was almost up to his shoulder.
‘I’ll make a good RAF pilot, won’t I?’
A little bit of sibling rivalry from years gone by prompted a tiny twang of envy. Lily knew Don’s marks at school would probably allow him to apply at pilot level. She had spent nights dreaming of flying Spitfires, Wellingtons and Hurricanes, wearing that wonderful uniform emblazoned with gold wings but without a reply from the ATA, she had almost come to terms with the fact that girls like her just did not get the chance to rise to such dizzy heights. A pang of regret hit her as she thought of her school years when she had been more interested in having fun than getting good grades. She groaned, remembering the wonderful chorus of ‘It Had To Be You’ on the back row in science that got her detention while others got top marks. This war was opening up new opportunities for women – and she so wanted to be part of the revolution.
Still, she had managed to rise in the ranks of the RAF and she fingered the tapes to remind herself.
It took very little time for Lily to relax back into being at home with her mum fussing about her. She murmured in ecstasy at the homemade creations Ginny somehow magically conjured up from limited rations and luxuriated in having some warm water to wash in.
Lily was particularly
excited that her two schoolfriends, Hannah and Ros, had been able to co-ordinate some time off and were coming over to see her before she went back. It was strange to see them again. They immediately fell into the old chatter and laughter around the morning room table, but Lily knew they had all changed.
Mrs Mullins was revelling in serving them tea and freshly made oaty biscuits and imagining the last four years hadn’t happened. The diminutive Ros was working in the munitions factory close to home so she could help her widowed mother with her two younger brothers. She had been making Lily and Hannah laugh with stories of the antics the girls got up to relieve the boredom of packing bullets but while she tried to make her life seem exciting with the importance of the war efforts at the factory, she could not compete with her two friends. Ros looked enviously at their uniforms and felt out of place in the skirt and blouse she had changed into specially for the reunion. Her work overalls were so drab.
Hannah stood up, unfurling her tall back. She wore the green jumper and brown corduroy trousers of the Land Army. She claimed she had been lured by the glamorous posters into wanting a rural life, but as she described the hardships of life in the depths of Norfolk, without running water or any form of heating, her two friends soon realised why she grabbed every chance to come back to the city. Her life seemed one long round of planting potatoes and leeks followed by digging up last season’s, but she did seem stronger and certainly had a healthy glow to her cheeks.