Civvy Street

by Fiona Field

  Chapter 7

  Maddy was unloading the children out of the car and was about to invite Susie in for a cuppa when she saw Camilla Rayner bearing down on her, a file tucked under her arm, an air of purpose about her and an inane smile on her face.

  Susie leaned in and gave Maddy a quick peck on the cheek. ‘Thanks for the support. I think I’ll make myself scarce before I need to be nice to That Woman.’

  Maddy grinned. ‘I don’t think that option is open to me.’

  As Susie high-tailed it over the road to her own quarter, Maddy turned to Camilla. ‘Hello, Camilla,’ she called. ‘Coming to see me?’ Camilla, thought Maddy, might be a royal pain in the arse but at least she didn’t insist on everyone calling her Mrs Rayner. The previous incumbent would only unbend as far as allowing a few favourites to call her ‘Mrs N’ but the rest weren’t invited to address her as anything other than Mrs Notley. And while that had been faintly irritating and sometimes almost amusing, it came nowhere close to the amount of annoyance Camilla Rayner could generate in Maddy before she even opened her mouth.

  ‘Coo-ee, Maddy,’ she trilled. ‘Yes, so glad I’ve caught you. I need to have a word if you can possibly spare me a little tick or two.’

  Maddy hitched Rose up on her hip and led the way to the front door, herding Nathan with her free hand.

  ‘Actually, if the kiddies—’

  Kiddies? thought Maddy, her teeth starting to itch. Jeez...

  ‘—can stand it, I’d like you to come with me to view the community centre.’

  ‘Now?’

  Camilla smiled her saccharine smile. ‘Please.’

  ‘OK. I’m sure the children will be fine for a minute or two.’

  ‘Oh that’s so wonderful,’ chirruped Camilla. ‘Only I know how bored little people can get and we don’t want that happening, do we?’

  Maddy had to grit her teeth to stop herself from responding inappropriately. As she trailed down the road with Nathan and Rose she began to wish she’d grabbed the pushchair but it wasn’t far and Nathan was, at the moment, behaving.

  They reached the old brigadier’s residence – a throwback to the days when the army was much bigger and had far more senior officers who, in turn, needed housing that was concomitant with their status.

  ‘It’s a shame this lovely house isn’t still being used as a quarter,’ said Camilla.

  Maddy reckoned that if it had been, Camilla would have done her level best to get it allocated to herself. Nothing if not pushy was that woman. Beneath that sweetness-and-light exterior beat a heart of absolute steel.

  ‘Of course,’ she continued, ‘we’ve all reaped the benefit of the cuts in one way or another.’

  ‘Really? I don’t think Susie would agree.’ Oops. That remark earned her a stony stare. Lucky not to be shoved on the naughty step too.

  ‘The cuts,’ continued Camilla with a note of frost in her voice, ‘are the reason we’re lucky to have such smashing quarters here.’

  Maddy managed to keep her mouth shut this time. OK, her quarter wasn’t completely rank, but ‘smashing’ wasn’t the adjective that sprang to mind. ‘Adequate’ might cover it, at a push.

  ‘Yes, we all got bumped up a level here. The reality is your quarter is a major’s quarter and you shouldn’t be entitled to a fourth bedroom.’

  ‘Just as well Seb’s getting promoted then, isn’t it? We wouldn’t want to have perks we’re not entitled to, would we?’ Oh, God, and now she was even starting to sound a bit like Camilla. Shoot me now, thought Maddy.

  ‘Indeed.’

  Camilla opened the box file and took out a key. The front door needed a lick of paint and dead leaves had blown into the porch.

  ‘Here we are,’ sang Camilla as she pushed open the door.

  The quarter was almost bare though it still boasted, noted Maddy, a superior grade of carpets and curtains. One of the privileges of rank, obviously. There were still some pieces of issue furniture in the building including a telephone table in the hall. Camilla put her file down on it.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘while the army has agreed in principle that we should have this house for use by the 1 Herts families, we have yet to work out exactly how we are going to keep everyone happy. And we don’t want anyone being left out, now, do we?’

  Maddy shook her head. Oh no, that would be a disaster. She put Rose down so she could crawl about on the carpet while Nathan had stomped into the kitchen and was amusing himself by opening and closing cupboard doors. It was pretty irritating but not as irritating as Camilla Rayner.

  ‘Who wants to be accommodated?’ asked Maddy.

  ‘The thrift shop, Mothers and Toddlers, the book club, Bitch and Stitch – although I wish they’d call themselves something more appropriate. Really!’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘The gardening club, but they’ll just need a greenhouse, if we can raise the funds, and the choir.’

  ‘The only group that needs a permanent space is the thrift shop. And anyway, why do they want to move from where they are now? I’d have thought that room behind the housing commandant’s office was perfect.’

  ‘He’s intimated he’d like it back. With the drawdown from Germany and more families moving into the garrison, he’s getting more staff. He needs the space.’

  ‘Fair enough. But even so, they’ll only need the one room, everyone else can take turns using the other rooms. We’d just book them in to the available space on a rota system, surely. None of those groups meets more than once a week, do they?’

  ‘The choir meets two nights a week to rehearse, but no, you’re right about the others.’ Maddy wandered into what had once been a dining room. ‘There’s acres of room here,’ she said, her voice echoing slightly in the empty room. ‘Plenty of room for the thrift shop. All we need is to get a lock put on the door.’

  She strolled into the drawing room. ‘If we built cupboards in round the edge of this room, each group could have their own storage space for any kit specific to them.’ She went into the kitchen, where she scooped up Nathan – the incessant banging of cupboard doors had got too much, even for her high-tolerance threshold – and looked about her. The kitchen was big, twice as big as hers, and it had a huge utility room opening out from it. ‘We could make this into a little café and meeting place.’

  Camilla looked unconvinced. ‘And who would run it? And what about food hygiene?’

  ‘I bet there’s an enterprising wife who would jump at the chance – especially if she was allowed to turn a profit. Anyway, it’s just an idea.’

  Beyond the kitchen was a snug or den. It was a reasonable size and had the downstairs loo leading off it. It also boasted a door into an old conservatory. Maddy unlocked it and went through. An idea began to form in her head. She turned back to Camilla. ‘What’s upstairs?’

  ‘The master suite with its own dressing room and bathroom, five other bedrooms and a second bathroom.’

  ‘Six bedrooms, blimey.’

  ‘It was a brigadier’s house,’ said Camilla.

  Maddy thrust Nathan at her. ‘Can I just have a quick look, if you don’t mind...’ She glanced at Rose who was, as always, being angelic. ‘If you could just keep an eye on these two.’

  Maddy didn’t wait for an answer as she bounded up the stairs. It certainly was pretty palatial. She had an idea about a use for that ‘master suite’ and she wanted a quick look to suss out the possibilities. She threw open the doors on the upstairs landing one after the other before she found the right room. Wow! A big bay window flooded it with light and the room was huge, far bigger than the poky bedroom she had in her quarter. She crossed the empty floor to one of the two doors on the far wall and investigated what was behind it – the en suite. Dated and tatty but big enough for what she had in mind. The other room, the dressing room, was more of a cubbyhole with a built-in wardrobe but still a useful space. Delighted with her find, Maddy skipped downstairs to relieve Camilla of a struggling and uncooperative Nathan who was hell-bent
on following his mother upstairs.

  ‘OK,’ said Maddy, ‘I’ve got some ideas. We’d be better off discussing them back at mine, if you’d like to come back for a cuppa.’

  Camilla nodded. ‘Oh, that’s such a charming offer.’

  Maddy held her tongue – again. ‘Charming offer’? It was only going to be a mug of tea, when all was said and done.

  They trailed back to Maddy’s with Nathan, now bored and tired, wanting to be carried, even though he could see his mum was holding his sister. Camilla, Maddy noticed, didn’t offer to take either Nathan or Rose. They finally reached Maddy’s front door and she was able to herd the group in. Nathan, once home, made a remarkable recovery, his tiredness forgotten, and ran off to find his toys while Maddy dropped a protesting Rose in her playpen before hurdling the stairgate across the kitchen door to go and put the kettle on.

  ‘A sensible mother,’ said Camilla. ‘I do so approve. It’s so easy for accidents to happen and we wouldn’t want that to happen to your kiddies.’

  Maddy gritted her teeth. ‘Actually, I got the tip about stairgates from Caro Edwards. She’s posted back in here – her husband is going to be Seb’s 2IC.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve come across her. Of course Jack hasn’t done that many tours with the battalion. The army always thought he was so gifted as a staff officer he spent a lot of time at the MoD and other HQs.’

  More likely, thought Maddy, they knew how unpopular the pair of you were and did their level best to keep you away from the battalions to spare the other officers the awfulness of serving with you. But she smiled at Camilla as if she concurred with the analysis. She bustled about in the kitchen and made the tea, found a packet of biscuits which she decanted onto a plate and then led Camilla into her sitting room.

  ‘Sorry about the mess,’ she said, although she wasn’t, as Camilla picked her way disdainfully across the toy-strewn floor.

  ‘Tell me about your ideas,’ said Camilla, sipping out of her mug, pinkie half-cocked as if she didn’t know whether she should or not.

  Maddy put her mug down on the desk beside her. ‘So, I think we ought to use that room off the kitchen, and the conservatory, as a crèche.’

  ‘Crèche? Why would we need a crèche when we’ve already got the Mothers and Toddlers?’

  ‘But this is so the mums can leave their kids. Get a few hours to do their own thing: have a good rootle around the thrift shop; get their hair done; go shopping. And while I’m on the subject of hair, at our last barracks the garrison had its own hairdresser and it was so useful. We could turn the master suite upstairs into one. Get a backwash unit put in the en suite bathroom, use the bedroom as a salon and the dressing room as a store cupboard. We could even plumb a washing machine in the dressing room, joining up to the pipework in the bathroom and so the hairdresser could wash and dry the towels there too.’

  Camilla looked indifferent. ‘I suppose.’

  Don’t knock yourself out.

  ‘These ideas are all very well,’ Camilla continued, sounding utterly unenthusiastic, ‘like your one for a café, but who is going to run them? I, for one, don’t have the time or the inclination to take on any more little jobs for the battalion. There are quite enough calls on my time as things stand.’ She gave Maddy a stern look but Maddy refused to be intimidated.

  Bossy old bat, she thought, before she said, ‘Camilla, there are wives brimming with talents here. Their only problem is getting paid jobs. Caro is a trained nursery nurse, or nanny or something... anyway, she got all the qualifications. I know a wife who is a hairdresser and I am sure there’s loads of other wives with catering experience and they’d all love to do something that was on their doorstep, and which might earn them a bob or two. Honestly, Camilla, I am sure we could do this.’

  Camilla looked sceptical. ‘And what about the finances?’

  ‘People pay for the services they use and we pay the workers out of that. Any profit can go to the upkeep of the community centre or to service charities.’

  ‘And if the enterprises don’t make enough money?’

  ‘Then we have a rethink.’

  Camilla sniffed. ‘I can see you are very enthusiastic but I have my doubts.’

  ‘Let me see if I can find people qualified to run these ventures and see what they think. How about that?’

  ‘It can’t do any harm, I suppose.’

  Damned with faint praise... ‘Leave it with me,’ said Maddy firmly. Besides, it wasn’t just her ideas she wanted to get off the ground; if she could pull this off she’d be giving a leg up to two mates: Jenna and Caro. The only worry was that Camilla might have heard about Jenna’s other enterprise at the previous posting and so veto Jenna having anything to do with this plan. However, there was no reason why Jenna’s illicit hairdressing salon would have come to Camilla’s notice so that wasn’t likely to be a problem. No, the real problem was Jenna’s affair with Dan Armstrong when her husband Lee had been out fighting in Afghanistan. It hadn’t made her the most popular wife on the patch, that was for sure. But it had been over two years previously, Lee was now happily married to another woman and a lot of water had flowed under the bridge. And Jenna was a bloody good hairdresser. Maddy rather hoped that the combination of the wives’ desire to have a decent haircut, and the passage of time, would mean that Jenna wouldn’t get blackballed if she opened a salon. Only one way to find out.

  Chapter 8

  ‘How did it go?’ said Susie, when Mike got back from his interview.

  Mike looked exhausted. ‘I don’t know. No idea. I did everything that recruiting firm told me to do: I told the company how much I loved the idea of working for them, I was geared up to talk about their products, their ethos, even their bloody history, but the spotty youth interviewing me wanted to know if I sucked sweets or crunched them!’ Mike looked despairingly at Susie. ‘I mean... what the fuck was that about?’

  Susie shook her head. This didn’t sound hopeful. Could she pile on the misery more by telling him just how dire the house was she’d been to visit? Or how hideous the neighbourhood? She decided not to mention it just yet.

  ‘I applied for McManners’ job today.’

  ‘You did what?’ He sounded horrified. It was almost as if she’d announced she’d gone on the game.

  ‘Mike, don’t start. It’s a job and, God knows, I need to get one just as much as you do.’

  ‘I know but—’

  ‘No buts, Mike.’

  ‘I don’t know why I’m worried, anyway. I doubt if they’ll give it to you.’

  ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Mike looked contrite. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. What I meant was they’ll choose some ex-senior NCO. Stands to reason, doesn’t it. It’s what they always do.’

  Susie nodded, non-committally. ‘Maybe,’ she murmured.

  *

  ‘Seb?’ said Maddy as the pair relaxed in front of the box after supper.

  ‘Hmm?’ said Seb.

  ‘Can I ask a favour?’

  Seb took his eyes off the TV and looked at his wife. ‘It depends what it is.’

  ‘You know the CO’s been badgering you about updating the mess?’

  ‘Yes?’ said Seb cautiously.

  ‘Well, supposing you broke the mould.’

  ‘What mould?’

  ‘The mould of appointing a senior NCO to run the place.’

  There was silence for a few seconds. ‘Why?’

  Maddy took a deep breath. ‘I want you to give the job to Susie.’

  ‘Susie? Susie?!’

  Maddy rolled her eyes. She had a bet with herself that Seb would react like this. ‘Yes, Susie,’ she said, trying to stay calm. She started to count points off on her fingers. ‘One, she needs a job; two, she understands everything about 1 Herts and their traditions; three, she has done catering; four, she understands basic accounting; five, she’s the most honest person I know; six, I’m asking you nicely.’

  ‘And seven,
she’s completely wrong for the job.’

  ‘No, she’s not... for all those reasons I’ve just given you.’

  ‘Why? Why on earth do you want me to do this?’

  ‘Because she’s Mike’s wife. Because you’ve got his job and I think you owe him one. Because he hasn’t yet got a job and Susie is getting desperate... because... because...’

  ‘“Because” bollocks. It’s not an officer’s wife’s job.’

  ‘But she won’t be, will she? Think about it. And Seb, I’ve never asked for anything before. I’ve put up with you being away rowing, I’ve put up with the moves, with my career going tits-up, with everything, but I am asking for this. This one thing. Please, Seb. Please?’

  ‘It’s not in my gift.’

  Maddy gave Seb a hard stare. ‘Really? I’d say it’s very much in your gift. You’re the PMC. You’ll be in charge of the interview panel and you know as well as I do that if you say that you think she is the woman for the job to the rest of the guys they’ll all tug their forelocks and agree with you. Won’t they?’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  Maddy just narrowed her eyes.

  Seb shuffled. ‘I’ll see.’

  Maddy kept staring at him.

  ‘If she doesn’t measure up though, I will have to sack her.’

  ‘Just as long as you give her a chance to prove herself, that’s all I’m asking.’

  Seb sighed heavily.

  ‘Thank you, darling. Now, to change the subject...’

  Seb looked at his wife, wary of what else he might have to agree to. ‘Yes?’

  ‘About Rollo’s visit.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, you’re pretty much OC B Company and—’

  Seb put up his hand. ‘Not so fast. I’m not yet.’

  ‘Details, details... Anyway, you are the PMC and I thought we ought to have a bit of a party in Rollo’s honour. Let’s face it, he’s a bit of a celeb – how many others on the patch can boast having an Olympic gold medallist to stay? – and he’s pretty good fun so I think we ought to have some of our mates along to meet him.’