by Maureen Lee
They went to the Kardomah in Bold Street. ‘I asked the woman behind the desk at the Labour Exchange if we could be sent to the same place to do our training,’ Doria said. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Gosh, no. I think it would be marvellous if we stayed together.’
‘She said it wasn’t up to her, but as we were joining the army at exactly the same time, it was likely that we would.’ She rubbed her hands together excitedly. ‘I’m really looking forward to it. It’s been a horrible year.’
‘I wouldn’t call it horrible ending up with a baby like Theobald,’ Phyllis said primly.
‘That’s because you’re so much nicer than me, much kinder, less selfish. But the day will come,’ Doria said happily, ‘when I shall be an absolutely perfect mother.’
‘What about being a perfect wife as well?’
‘A perfect wife, too.’ Doria still had a few secrets her new friend had yet to learn about. ‘Oh, and please don’t mention to anyone about me joining up, will you? Eileen wants it to be kept a secret until it actually happens. She’s worried that people might try and talk her out of it. And don’t you speak to her either. She’ll be annoyed I’ve told you.’
Phyllis promised she wouldn’t breathe a word to a soul.
It was terribly sad. Sad that Winifred was obliged to move back to Beverley a few days before her daughter’s birthday in August; sad for Lena Newton, who would only have Phyllis staying with her for a few days when she’d hoped she would be there for weeks. It was sad for everyone except Phyllis herself, who had received her call-up papers and was really looking forward to a new life in the army. She had to present herself at Colchester barracks in Essex in ten days’ time before being directed to the place where she would be trained.
Doria had also received her call-up papers with the same instructions, but Phyllis was the only one who knew.
Nick Stephens had been living in a single-storey bed-and-breakfast establishment on the lonely Norfolk coast for close to six weeks. It was called Windward Ho and was run by a retired white-bearded naval man called Clarence Baines and his daughter, Mary, who was a potter. Her skilfully made vases, ornamental plates and statues were on sale in a shop-cum-studio at the rear of the premises. Customers could choose what to buy while watching Mary at work. She was a hefty, shapely woman with short curly hair that Nick had once witnessed her cutting herself without a mirror. He presumed she just wanted it short and didn’t care what it looked like. Her face might have been regarded as beautiful if it hadn’t been for the skin that had been roughened by too much sun, wind and rain over the years. She never wore make-up, and Nick doubted if she ever had. The contents of her wardrobe consisted of half a dozen home-made dirndl skirts, some hand-knitted jumpers and a man’s pea jacket for when the days were chilly.
On sunny days, tables and chairs were set out on the shingle beach outside the shop, where tea, coffee, sandwiches and scones were on sale.
In the darkness of the night and when the sun rose and there was no one about, the tide could be heard coming in or going out, racing through the stones, making a subtle rattling noise that Nick found soothing, though he could imagine there was a time, only recently, when the noise would have driven him mad, because it never stopped; never.
In all the weeks he had been there, not another soul had taken advantage of the bed-and-breakfast side of the business. He had been the only guest, though plenty of holidaymakers visited the shop to buy Mary’s attractive ornaments or partake of the refreshments.
‘When will you be thinking of moving on, Nick?’ Clarence enquired while they were having their evening meal one day late in August.
‘I wasn’t thinking of moving on.’ Nick felt a moment of panic. Was the establishment closing for business now that the holiday season was nearing its end? He couldn’t ever imagine wanting to leave this peaceful place.
Clarence hastened to reassure him. ‘I was just expecting you to be off somewhere on your travels one day.’ He had a faint Yorkshire accent, but had never talked about his past. Neither had Nick.
‘One day, maybe; but not yet. I’m perfectly happy here.’ Not ecstatically happy as he had once been with Eileen and Nicky, but quietly happy; relaxed.
‘Well, me and Mary are perfectly happy having you.’ Clarence held up a bottle of whisky, inviting Nick to have a sup, as he called it.
‘No thanks.’ In London, he had almost become a drunkard as his troubles piled on top of him. Now, looking back, the troubles didn’t seem all that onerous. He worried, slightly, about his wife and son, but there were plenty of friends and relatives to care for them should they be needed. As for Doria, the Christmas he had spent with her in Wimbledon had shown that her parents were actually pleased that she was expecting his baby. He wondered if she’d had a boy or a girl, but didn’t dwell on it for long.
Mary now spoke in her low, husky voice. She had made the meal, an extremely tasty fish pie with boiled potatoes and carrots. Although a plain cook, she was very good at it. ‘Would you like another helping, Nick, or just a pudding?’
‘Just a pudding, please. If I had second helpings every day, I’d be as big as a house in no time.’
At that, a hint of a smile came to her weather-beaten face. As far as Nick was concerned, she didn’t possess an ounce of sex appeal. Indeed, he considered her rather mannish. ‘Just a pudding, then.’ She ladled jelly and custard into a bowl and handed it to him. Clarence accepted a second helping of fish pie. He was a small, slight individual who gave the impression of being half starved despite eating like a horse.
The meal over, Mary cleared the table, taking the dishes into the kitchen to wash. Clarence lit two oil lamps, placing one on a small table beside Nick and the other beside himself. He produced a book and began to read, and Nick did the same – a library book borrowed from Cromer library called The Antiquary, by Sir Walter Scott; it was his intention to read all twelve of the author’s Waverley novels. Mary didn’t return, and the two men hardly exchanged a word until almost ten o’clock, when Nick put a marker in the book, closed it, and announced that he was ready for bed.
‘Good night, lad,’ Clarence said. ‘See you in the morning. Oh, and don’t forget to take that lamp with you in case you want to read upstairs.’
‘I will,’ Nick replied. They had the same exchange every single night. ‘Good night, Clarence. And say good night to Mary when she comes back.’
Eileen woke to the sound of a baby crying. Unsurprisingly, it was coming from the next room, where Doria and Theo slept. She lay for quite a while wondering why Doria hadn’t picked her son up to comfort him. It wasn’t like her to sleep in.
Nicky had woken up too. ‘Theo’s upset, Mum. Can I go and talk to him?’
‘All right, luv. We’ll both go.’
She got out of bed and took Nicky’s hand, and together they knocked on the door of the adjoining bedroom. Theo stopped crying for a second or so, then began again, even louder, when nothing happened. Eileen opened the door and they went in to find Doria’s bed empty.
‘She must be in the bathroom,’ she muttered. In Nicky’s old cot, Theo’s little arms and legs were waving furiously and his face was red with anger. He ceased crying the minute Eileen picked him up and he buried his head in her neck.
‘You little treasure,’ she whispered.
‘Was I a little treasure once, Mum?’
‘Yes, and you’re a bigger treasure now,’ Eileen told her son. ‘Let’s try and find Doria.’ She knocked on the bathroom door, but there was no answer and when she opened the door, the room was empty.
She was about to close the door, but paused. The bathroom looked unnaturally tidy and her heart lurched when she realised that all Doria’s bits and pieces had gone off the windowsill, her jars and bottles of this and that, and her towel was no longer hanging on the hook behind the door.
She hurried back into the bedroom to find that most of Doria’s clothes had gone too, as well as her suitcase. All that was left were the ma
ternity clothes, which had been left in a heap in the bottom of the wardrobe.
Doria must have crept away in the middle of the night, leaving her baby with Eileen. When Eileen went downstairs, she found a note on the dining room table confirming her suspicious.
Dear Eileen, I hope you don’t mind, but I have joined the army with Phyllis. We should be halfway to London on the train by the time you read this. I promise I shall return for Theobald the very minute the war is over.
With love and thanks for all you have done for me.
Doria. xxx
‘And all I am about to do,’ Eileen added in a whisper.
‘What a flaming cheek!’ Sheila gasped when Eileen showed her the letter about two hours later. ‘Would you have said no if she’d asked?’ she enquired.
‘Of course I would!’ Eileen said indignantly. ‘I’m not a bloody nursemaid. I wondered why she kept getting up early – she claimed she was waiting for a letter. A couple came, but she didn’t say who they were from.’
‘He’s a lovely baby, though,’ Sheila said. She reached out and chucked Theo under his little round chin.
‘He is,’ Eileen agreed. ‘It’s just that he’s not mine. I’m already half in love with him. How will I feel when madam turns up in a year’s time wanting him back?’
‘There is that,’ her sister agreed. ‘Can I hold him a minute?’
‘You can have him for more than a minute,’ Eileen said. She transferred the baby to her sister’s knee and immediately missed the weight, the feel and the smell of him. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Give us him back. I feel I want to move somewhere like Australia so we won’t be around when Doria comes to collect him.’
‘It’s an awful thing to happen,’ Sheila said soberly. ‘Messing about like that with your own kid’s life. I suppose Phyllis must have known what Doria was up to. They became bosom friends within the first five minutes and they’ve joined up together.’
‘I can’t imagine Phyllis having anything to do with it, Sheil. She’s far too nice and sensible.’ Eileen kissed Theo’s red cheek – he was still pretty cross about what had happened that morning. ‘Me dad’ll have a fit when he finds out. He never liked Doria.’
‘Only because she spoke posh,’ Sheila said. ‘He can’t stand people who speak posh.’
‘He liked Nick.’
‘Nick spoke well, not posh. There’s a difference. You know, Eil, Brenda needs to know about this. She doesn’t like missing anything. I’ll ask one of the kids to knock and tell her you’re here.’ She went to the front door. The house was unnaturally quiet at the moment. The Reilly children were enjoying the last days of the school summer holiday, and every single one of them, including Mollie, the baby, who was eighteen months old, were playing in the street, Nicky with them.
Sheila returned, and in no time at all, Brenda had joined them wearing a thimble. ‘I’ve been doing a bit of embroidery,’ she informed them.
For the second time that day, Eileen described the events of the morning, this time to Brenda, who was duly shocked and amazed. ‘Oh well, there’s none so strange as folk,’ she said when Eileen had finished.
‘It’s “queer”,’ Sheila corrected her. ‘ “There’s none so queer as folk”, not “strange”.’
Brenda squinted. ‘Are you sure, Sheila?’
‘Sure I’m sure.’
‘You’re both wrong,’ Eileen said, exasperated with the pair. ‘It’s “there’s nowt so queer as folk”, not “none”. Anyroad, does it matter?’
‘It doesn’t matter in the least,’ Brenda said, and Sheila agreed.
Chapter 17
Phyllis and Doria spent only three days in Colchester, along with four other girls of roughly the same age – three entirely wasted days where all they did was fill in forms and read pages of rules and regulations, which eventually had to be signed. They all had a successful medical and were issued with uniforms, including everything from peaked caps and massive overcoats to thick woollen stockings and hideous knee-length bloomers. The other girls came from all over the country: Glasgow, Birmingham, a little village somewhere in Cornwall and another village in Wales.
‘I don’t think I can walk in flat shoes.’ Doria clumped across the dormitory, her footsteps extra loud on the wooden floor.
As Phyllis had never worn anything but sensible flat shoes, she wasn’t bothered.
On the fourth day, they were told they were being sent to an Army Training Centre in Islington, London. All six recruits were delighted, having expected to be sent somewhere in the depths of the countryside.
Furthermore, they weren’t travelling to London on the train, but in a lorry with a canvas cover and benches on each side. This, they considered when they climbed aboard wearing their uniforms for the first time, was to be their first real taste of army life. In fact, the journey was hideously uncomfortable: the benches were hard and the lorry’s wheels had solid tyres, so every single bump in the road could be felt.
‘I’m glad that’s flamin’ over,’ said Hazel, the girl from Glasgow, when they alighted. ‘Me bum’s lost all sense of feeling.’
Even so, they had arrived in London feeling like proper soldiers, and that night they slept like logs.
Their first drill the following morning wearing khaki tops and shorts was little short of hopeless. The instructor, a tall man with the build of a heavyweight boxer and a moustache that made him look as if he was wearing a bow tie on his upper lip, became exceedingly cross. Doria was the first to giggle, and after that no one could stop. With every mistake they made, they only giggled more.
They returned in high spirits to the women’s quarters, changed their clothes, ate lunch, and in the afternoon attended a lecture on map-reading, to which they listened attentively.
Doria, who was familiar with the centre of London, took them to a cinema in Leicester Square, where they saw The Fleet’s In with William Holden, with whom they fell madly in love, and Dorothy Lamour, whose perfect figure they envied.
When they emerged, it had grown dark and they could hear people singing, not a wartime song for a change, but ‘Somewhere Over the Rambow’. They found that a big crowd had collected in a place that Doria said was called Piccadilly Circus.
‘It’s where tourists gather in peacetime,’ she told them. ‘There’s usually a statue of Eros on the top of the steps, but he’s been put in a safe place in case he was struck by a bomb.’
They sat on the steps around the absent statue and joined in the singing, then caught a bus to a Lyons Corner House, where they had supper.
They were six healthy young women who were having the time of their lives, attracting smiles from members of the female population and admiring whistles from the men. Phyllis, however, found the unlit city streets spooky, much more so than in Bootle, where it was never this crowded. There was something distinctly nerve-racking about rubbing shoulders with so many complete strangers whose faces couldn’t be seen. You’ll get used to it, she told herself.
‘Well, if this is the army,’ Doria said on the bus back to Islington, ‘I wouldn’t mind being a female soldier for the rest of my life.’
The dormitory had enough beds for ten girls, but only the six who’d arrived the day before from Colchester were living there at present.
Phyllis was finding it hard to sleep after such an exciting day, but she also, much to her surprise, found herself shedding quite a few tears. She was badly missing her mother and, even more surprisingly, her ne’er-do-well father, and was thinking how nice it would be to be living in Beverley, where it wasn’t even faintly exciting, with Mum and Dad asleep in the next bedroom. She could have gone to college and taken the new Higher Education Certificate in preparation for university.
She was doing her best to keep the tears as unobtrusive as possible when she realised that the girl in the next bed – Doria was asleep on her other side – was crying quite noisily. It was the girl from Birmingham; Effie, her name was.
Phyllis slid out of bed and knelt on the floor
beside her. ‘What’s the matter?’ she whispered, as if she didn’t know.
‘I feel so miserable,’ Effie whispered back. ‘I really wish I hadn’t joined up.’
It wasn’t in Phyllis’s nature to say ‘So do I’ and share the girl’s misery. Instead she said stoutly, ‘Don’t worry. You’ll soon get used to it. We all will.’
‘I can’t imagine ever liking it,’ Effie sniffed.
‘You will, I promise.’ Phyllis squeezed her shoulder and hoped she was right. ‘Another month and you’ll be enjoying every minute. Shall we have a bet on it?’
The girl had stopped crying. ‘A bet! If you like.’
‘A shilling!’ Phyllis chuckled. ‘I bet you a shilling that four weeks today, life in the army won’t exactly feel like a bed of roses, but you’ll be laughing yourself to sleep at night, rather than crying.’
‘Oh, all right then.’ Effie brought her hand out from under the bedclothes and they shook on it.
Phyllis had only been back in bed a couple of minutes when she heard a noise as if a motorbike was on the dormitory roof, making the building reverberate. She raised her head, expecting the other girls to be awake, but none had moved, not even Effie, who must have fallen asleep instantly.
It was one of those pilotless V-1 planes! She’d read about them in the paper and heard about them on the BBC news. Immediately after D-Day, just when everyone had thought the war was practically over, the evil, murderous V-1 had started to fall all over London. They’d been nicknamed ‘doodlebugs’ and had already killed hundreds of people.
She pulled the bedclothes over her head, as if a sheet and a few layers of blankets would protect her if the plane decided to drop on the barracks and explode, but after a while the noise faded and there was a subdued explosion some distance away. The doodlebug had found another target for its victims that night.
The following Sunday, Doria’s brother Peter caught the first train out of Euston to Liverpool Lime Street, arriving at Eileen’s cottage not long after eleven – Eileen had written and told him that his sister had joined up, leaving her baby behind. Once her family and friends in Bootle had been to Mass, they too would turn up, bringing contributions towards dinner. Jack Doyle was already there, having arrived on his bike at dawn. He was picking the fruit that was ripe enough, and would sweep up the autumn leaves later. It was a damp, sunless day, and he and a warmly wrapped Nicky, who was helping, appeared now and then like ghosts out of the shroud of fog that covered most of the garden.