by Iris Gower
‘The woman cut her hair out of spite, told Meryl she had nits!’ Hari relented and joined in Kate’s laughter. ‘You’re right though, Meryl would find trouble in the ruins of Pompeii.’
‘Where’s Pompeii?’ Kate asked. Hari just shook her head as the bus jerked to a stop.
‘At last. Come on we’ll have to run for the train if we’re to catch it.’ Hari pulled at Kate’s arm. ‘I don’t want to be late, I’ve got a lot of work to catch up on.’
‘Aye,’ Kate said mournfully, ‘and I got a few buckets of powder to carry over those rickety boards to put in the shells. Even my bloody knickers are turning yellow with that powder.’
Hari peered at her friend. ‘Your face looks all right.’
‘Only because I plaster it with petroleum jelly before I start. The other girls laugh at me but I know what I’m doing, my face is as pale as the day I was born. Do you know the girls from Bridgend call us Swansea lot “Yellow Daffodils”. Well, I call them lot “Yellow Pee the Bed Dandelions!”’
Hari paused. ‘Joking aside, what do you think of that letter, should I go and fetch Meryl home?’
Kate looked thoughtful. ‘Wouldn’t that spoil your bit of night life?’
‘What night life? I spend most of the time studying signals and things.’
‘That’s your fault you swot.’
‘I know. Anyway, I am worried about Meryl.’
‘Forget Meryl, she can look after herself.’
They parted at the gate and Hari was happy to step inside the warmth of the signals room. As soon as she sat down Colonel Edwards came to her desk and leaned over her. ‘I have some special work for you, clear your desk.’
An hour later Hari was in a small side room with a bank of radio receivers before her, intimidating her. The Colonel looked down at her, an old man but upright still with a strong military bearing.
‘I’ve been watching you these past months and I’m impressed with your sharp intelligence and I’ve decided I need help with the signals.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I think you are capable of learning quickly how to use these.’ He waved his hands at the machines, radios and Morse code transmitters.
Hari was fearful; she wished she had his confidence. The Colonel went on talking.
‘I’ve had very encouraging news this morning—the Germans are being cornered at Stalingrad. If the Russians force the enemy to retreat it will be a turning point for the whole war, but there will be months of fighting ahead yet before anything as good as that happens to us.’ He turned at the door and smiled. ‘Now get on with your work, miss, and for all our sakes reward my faith or I will be the first one in the firing line.’
Seven
The ‘authorities’ were back and were insisting I must go to live with the Dixons again. I cried until I was nearly sick and at last Aunt Jessie took charge, fixing the tigress of the woman official with cold eyes.
‘Mrs Preston, the child will be staying with me.’ She gathered me towards her. Can’t you see she’s hysterical?’
The woman blustered. ‘Well! I’m the one who must decide where Meryl Jones goes.’
‘You’d best decide she goes here with me then, hadn’t you?’—Aunt Jessie’s big frame seemed to fill the room—‘or I might be having a strong word with Jimmy, you know, Jimmy Clark, head of the services department, your boss I believe.’
The next minute the ‘authorities’ were gone leaving a gust of wind as the door banged shut after them.
I still clung to Aunt Jessie, my arms wrapped around her big, reassuring body, my head against her broad bosoms. I liked the sound of the word ‘bosoms’, it was more descriptive than ‘chest’, which sounded like a flat wooden box not a bit cosy and comforting as Aunt Jessie’s bosoms were.
At last I calmed down and began to hiccough; my melodramatics weren’t all put on—I’d been truly afraid I’d be taken to a ‘home’ and everyone knew that ‘homes’ treated you cruelly and wouldn’t give you more if you asked for it.
‘There, sit down, love, I’ll make us all a cup of tea.’ Michael, who’d been silent throughout the shenanigans, ruffled my hair. Usually, I hated that but when Michael did it, he was so, well whatever he was, I didn’t mind him ruffling my hair one bit.
Aunt Jessie sank into her chair and there was a sound like air coming out of a cushion but it was air coming out of Aunt Jessie’s lungs.
‘That was a right battle royal and if that old hatchet-faced biddy thought she was going to get the best of me she had another think coming.’
Aunt Jessie’s face was red. I was sorry for upsetting her and I cuddled her and kissed her cheek. ‘Thanks for sticking up for me,’ I said humbly.
Michael brought a tray with a brown pot on it and some cups and I thought I could see some rich tea biscuits on a plate and brightened up.
I stared at Michael: no one would take him for a German. Well, he was half Welsh or English or something but he had lived in Germany for a time when he was young and he spoke the language very well. Secretly, he’d begun to teach me to speak German. We both knew Aunt Jessie wouldn’t approve so we didn’t tell her.
He was too young yet to go to war and, anyway, which army would he join? It was a strange thought and it gave me a bit of a pain in the middle of my tummy.
I ate most of the biscuits and Aunt Jessie wagged a finger at me. ‘I’ve got soup on for our tea, mind,’ she said sternly. ‘I don’t want you wasting good nourishment by filling yourself up with rubbish.’
She didn’t know what an appetite I had—my sister Hari called me a gannet and that’s a bird that eats everything in sight. When I thought of Hari I felt like crying again. I wanted to go home, to look out of the window and see lights, dimmed by the blackout curtains, but there behind the windows. I hated the endless darkness that was the countryside but then that’s why we were never bombed here, the Germans couldn’t see us. I’d stopped calling them ‘the Hun’ in respect for Michael.
I looked at him now, he was falling asleep, his long legs spread out before him, his toes reaching for the warmth of the fire. His hair was over his eyes and his mouth was open. He looked very handsome.
Aunt Jessie was dozing as well, her big hands idle for once in her lap. I felt the warmth and the comfort of the room, the coals falling in the grate and suddenly I was peaceful. If I couldn’t be home, here with Aunt Jessie and Michael was the best place to be in all the world.
I woke to the sound of voices and realized the awful Mrs Preston and her meek male assistant were back yet again. I pretended to be asleep and through the slit of my eyes I saw a policeman in uniform. He took off his hat and rubbed his hair into a mess as Aunt Jessie began arguing with the woman whose face was still kind but whose voice was that of a harpy, one of those ugly creatures, half woman, half bird, from a book I’d been given to read at school about the ancient Greeks. And then Mrs Forsythe made us read the Aeneid and I liked that, what I could understand of it. I know this Aeneas went off with Queen Dido but he went away and left her in the end. Did men always do that?
‘This is your introduction to the great Virgil, girls,’ Mrs Forsythe, our teacher, had told us. ‘We should read more of the classics—’ her tone was reverent—‘but perhaps this book is one of the best. Remember it well.’ I remembered ‘the classics’ now all right as the bird woman stared into my face.
I was grabbed then and pulled to my feet and the kind-faced lady, for once, had a scowl on her face. ‘Your mask has slipped,’ I said. She looked like she’d slap my face but too many people were watching.
‘Mrs Dixon has agreed to take you back,’ she said frostily. I was hustled out of the door and jammed into a black car and then we were bumping away down the lane and I looked back and saw Aunt Jessie with her hands over her face and Michael with his arm around her shoulder and it was as if I’d lost my only true friends in the whole world.
When I arrived at the Dixons’ house I was thrust unceremoniously from the car. And then I was inside with the Dixons, the front door
locked and bolted. I was given bread and milk for supper and we ate in silence. Then Mrs Dixon nodded to Georgie and went outside.
George pushed me into the cold scullery and shut the door. ‘I’ll call your mother,’ I said fiercely, knowing what was coming.
‘Don’t bother, she’s out feeding the chickens.’
‘What? Arsenic? Or the acid from her tongue?’
He punched me suddenly and I fell back on the floor knocking my head against the wall. I was shocked more than hurt.
‘You big bully!’ I kicked out and caught him on the ankle. He immediately kicked me back and caught my knee cap. It hurt. Bad. I scrambled to my knees and bit his arm, his fist came down on the top of my head, again and again. I looked up at him and his fist smashed my nose, breaking it. In any case, I heard a crack and then it started to bleed. I sat back on the floor and wondered what to do. I rubbed my face all over his mother’s clean washed sheets folded nicely in a basket—that would at least give her a good day’s washing to do. I had no doubt she’d put George up to this, he hadn’t the brains or the guts to do it all by himself.
‘What’s the story?’ I said sliding against the wall to support myself.
‘Huh?’ He never was very quick.
‘How you going to explain all these cuts and bruises when I go to school?
His eyes glazed as he thought about it and for a moment it looked like my beating was over. Then he brightened. ‘We’ll tell people you fell, when you ran away.’ He started laying into me then, punching me wherever he could find a soft spot. And then he hit me on the head and I saw the earth and the skies explode around me in a load of coloured stars. I wished I could ‘blackout’, a word I’d heard a lot since the war started but I just lay there pressing my lips together to stop myself from crying.
He was breathless and fell back against the door gasping, sweat running down his face, his thick legs apart as though to support him to start another attack on me.
I saw it then, under the mangle, the iron bar kept for defence in case the Germans might come. I stealthily reached out and got it and with a mighty effort lunged forward, brought up the bar with as much force as I could muster right between his open legs.
He went down, screeching like a pig with its belly being opened. I pushed him aside and flung open the door and then I was out into the night gasping in the cold air.
In the distance I could see the tiny glimmer of a lamp down by the chicken coup, a sign that Mrs Dixon was still keeping out of the way. If she’d been in the town she’d have had the Home Guard yelling at her to put the light out; she didn’t even think that to German bombers a detour over the fields of Wales was nothing but a few minutes’ flight where they could unload bombs before heading home. I wished they would come and drop all they had on Mrs Dixon and her darling George.
I looked round and tried to get my bearings. Once I found the gate and was out on to the road I could be on my way. Not to Aunt Jessie, not this time, it was the first place they would look for me. I thought of Michael and willed him to come and find me again but he was probably in bed thinking me safe if unhappy at Mrs Dixon’s house.
Hunger bit a hole in my stomach, I’d no proper food for a few hours now and I was a girl who liked my food. To my friend Sally Bevan it was a mystery and a source of irritation that however much I ate, I stayed small and slim. Poor Sally was plump but nicely so with nicely shaped bosoms, not huge cushions like Aunt Jessie’s but round and soft and sticking through her blouse to taunt the boys. I noticed they all looked at Sally’s bosoms, even John Adams.
My legs were tired and my knee ached where George had kicked me. I sat down and picked at a glossy leaf of some plant or other and in the dark scratched John’s initials on it by memory and put it in my shoe. The idea was that if it turned black by morning, he loved you.
My sensible mind told me that stick any plant in a sweaty school shoe and it would go black but I put that out of my mind. I tried to think of John but instead saw Michael’s face. Hastily, I took the leaf out of my shoe and threw it away. John Adams was in the past after all. Michael was here and now.
Eight
Kate dressed carefully. The skirt of her dress was soft grey wool, made from a blanket; her blouse was an old one but was mock velvet and clung flatteringly to her slim figure. She regretted it looked shiny in parts as it was much washed but at least the colour suited her.
She was meeting Eddie again tonight and her heart fluttered, a tiny colourful butterfly caught in gossamer threads inside her. She felt happy in spite of the threat of air raids, in spite of the constant play of searchlights overhead on the lookout for enemy planes. Her foot brushed against a sandbag and a shower of sand scattered over her lovely red shoes. She brushed it aside impatiently. A stone dug into the hole in her shoe but she ignored it; nothing was going to spoil her happiness. Tonight she would be with Eddie and soon, she was sure, he would propose.
She loved him, ‘loved the bones of him’ as her mammy would say. Eddie wasn’t handsome, he had a sweet mouth underneath a golden moustache, his eyes were blue and they looked at her with love and respect. Very important that, respect.
For a moment she felt uneasy, wishing she hadn’t given herself to any other man. But then they were in need, frightened, wanting the warmth and comfort of a woman’s arms. Any woman’s arms. She was uneasy again.
Eddie was waiting for her outside the Empire and he smiled and moved towards her the instant he saw her. He took her hands and leaned down to kiss her cheek. She felt a flare of happiness and cuddled his arm close to her side.
‘Easy there!’ he said, ‘you’ll give a boy unworthy thoughts.’
She wished sometimes he would have ‘unworthy thoughts’. She should be happy—but now, she was used to a man, the scent, the touch, the thrusting passion that swamped every sensible thought.
He’d managed to get her some chocolate and he gave it to her in the perfumed intimacy of the theatre, his fingers gently squeezing hers. She took his hand and kissed it. ‘I love you, Eddie Carter,’ she whispered in the soft darkness.
Behind her there was a shuffling sound and she glanced over her shoulder and froze as she met the mocking gaze of Stephen, her first pilot. He winked slowly, suggestively—and abruptly she turned away.
The audience fell silent as the curtain swished open and then the stage was filled with light and music and dancing girls in gaudy dresses, but under the lights they looked ethereal, beautiful.
The thought of Stephen plagued her all evening. She thought of him as he’d been that long ago cold night, soft, clinging and needy in her arms and yet now he looked at her so differently as though… as though she was nothing more than a good-time girl.
She was glad to join the crowds singing the national anthem and then they were in the carpeted aisle, making for the door.
‘Wait up there.’ It was Stephen. ‘I’m going to a party back stage, want to come, you chaps?’
Kate was about to decline but Eddie was smiling politely. ‘Very kind, old man, love to wouldn’t we, Kate?’ He drew her hand through his arm in a proprietary way and Stephen looked amused.
‘I might be in the skies over German territory later on, you never know, tonight could be a matter of life or death so I’ve got to make the most of it haven’t I, Kate?’
He had changed so much. Stephen was hard, the baby softness of his jaw gone, a cynical light in his eyes. ‘The dancing girls here are always so, so amenable, know what I mean?’
Eddie didn’t. He stuck out his hand. ‘Edward Carter.’
Stephen looked surprised. ‘No names, no pack drill, eh, old chap?’
Eddie dropped his hand. ‘No, I suppose not.’
The room in the back of the theatre was hot with smoke and ripe with heavy perfume. To Kate’s disappointment, the dresses of the dancers, so lovely on stage, were no more than bits of straggly net revealing a great deal of flesh. Drinks were handed round, mock champagne but with a real kick to it.
Step
hen had wandered away and was leaning over a girl with dyed blonde hair and Kate grimaced. The girl should work in the munitions, she’d have yellow hair courtesy of the Ministry of Defence.
The girl looked Kate’s way and she was laughing. ‘Looks like butter wouldn’t melt.’ The words drifted to where Kate stood. She felt the colour suffuse her cheeks and shame crawled over her like the legs of a centipede.
‘Let’s go,’ she said to Eddie, ‘I don’t want to be here.’
‘OK.’ Eddie smiled. ‘I’ll just pop to the WC and then we’ll be away, this isn’t really our kind of thing is it?’
While Eddie was away from her, Kate fumed with impatience. The girl Stephen had been talking to looked her over and strolled to where she stood. ‘So you know Stephen, do you?’
‘Well…’ Kate spread her hands not knowing what to say. To her horror she saw Stephen and Eddie return to the room together. Stephen had his arm around Eddie’s shoulder and Eddie was looking pale and stunned.
He came to her side without looking at her.
‘Hello,’ the blonde said, smiling her lipstick smile at him. ‘I’m Marybell.’ It was a name as false as the quality of her dress. The dancer held out her hand to Eddie in a languid, affected pose and after a moment he took it but didn’t look up.
‘So you’re keeping company with little Irish Kate.’ She looked down from her great height at Kate. ‘Little Joan of Arc, saving everyone except herself.’
‘We’d better go.’ Eddie nodded curtly and turned towards the door and, with a baleful look at Stephen, Kate hurried to catch up with him.
He strode away in the darkness and she struggled to keep up with him. ‘Wait Eddie, tell me what’s wrong!’
‘What’s wrong?’ He spun round to face her and all she could see were the dark edges of his jaw and the tautness of cheeks. ‘I’ve just heard you’re the best blanket the forces have got, lay down for anyone.’