Soldier Girl

by Annie Murray

  ‘Go on, bab. Mind ’ow yer go.’

  Em tore along to the end of Kenilworth Street. She felt sick with nerves and the strains of the night. With a jolt she saw that the street had been hit – rubble, confusion – and for a few seconds she could not take in the scene. Then she breathed more easily. Not number eighteen! Oh thank God, thank God!

  Then she took in the rest of the scene. There were people at work, an ambulance.

  ‘What’s happened?’ She tore up to the wreckage, trying to make sense of it. Everything seemed out of place. She stopped, appalled. A dreadful, sick feeling rose in her at the sight. It was the Buttons’ house that had been hit, and the one next to it. She knew the warden, a Mr Birch, from down the street, and she hurried over to him. ‘Are they in there? Are they all right?’

  Mr Birch was a small, sad-faced man in his sixties. He was shaking his head. ‘They was in bed,’ he said. ‘They’ve got him out all right.’

  ‘What, Mr Button – he’s alive?’

  ‘He’s in the ambulance – nowt much wrong with ’im – but her . . .’ He shook his head.

  ‘Mrs Button?’ Em was trembling. Kind, jolly Mrs Button. She thought of Molly, that she’d have to tell her.

  ‘Main beam came down, right onto ’er. You all right wench?’

  Em brought her shaking hands up to her face to block out the sight of it.

  By the time the All Clear went, it felt like the longest night Em could ever remember. Throughout that day, the reality of the night’s wounds became increasingly clear: bombs all over the inner wards of the city; damage to St Martin’s Church in the Bull Ring, which made Mr Radcliff gnash his teeth with fury; and the Midland Arcade in town had gone up in flames, as had several pubs and – a local disaster – the nuts and bolts factory, L.H. Newton’s. There was talk of a river of blazing tar flowing down towards New Street Station, of devastation everywhere, of gas and water mains smashed and people having to be fed in halls and schools.

  At last, going home, numb in the cold morning, Em saw a figure coming towards her out of the dawn gloom.

  ‘Em?’

  Norm?’ She found she was running along Kenilworth Street, jumping over bricks and hoses, glass crunching under her feet. She hadn’t known how overwrought she was, tears streaming down her face, her chest bursting with emotion. All she wanted was his arms around her. They hugged each other as close as they could, arms pressing into each other’s backs.

  ‘You’re all right,’ he said into her hair. ‘God, I’ve been so worried about yer. It’s been that terrible . . .’

  ‘I thought it was never going to end.’ She was still trembling, clinging to him. Norm looked round at the street, taking in what had happened. ‘Mrs Button?’ More tears came, all the fear and destruction of the night seeming to overwhelm her. ‘Oh Norm – I’ve been so stupid about everything.’ Life seemed so fragile, so absolutely precious.

  He gave a fond laugh. ‘What’re you talking about?’

  ‘About getting married and everything.’ She looked up at him with wet eyes. ‘Of course I want to marry you. I love you, Norm – you mean the world to me. Let’s do it as soon as we can.’

  On the Cliffs

  Seventeen

  June 1941

  Molly had caught the train soon after two o’clock. In the scramble to get aboard at Reading Station she had managed, with some determined use of her elbows, to get a seat by the window. She faced herself firmly towards it, lit a cigarette, then another, and watched their progress westward, while the weather alternated between brilliant sunshine, banking clouds and fast-falling rain. As they drew out of Bath, a rainbow straddled the sky as if trying to promise her that things were not as bad as she feared.

  She could not bear the thought of talking to anyone today. Earlier, a civilian woman had tried asking her questions – ‘Oh I do think you’re all so brave – do tell us all about it!’ – only to be silenced by Molly’s monosyllabic replies. The conversations had washed over her from behind, the personal gossip, the usual moans about food and shortages and worries about elderly parents, and about the German attack on Russia. Hitler’s troops had invaded just days ago and were advancing east.

  Molly’s mood was dark and disorientated. All day she had been unable to shake off the memory of her morning dream, which hung like a pall over her thoughts. It had contained an atmosphere of threat so powerful and repellent that she knew it had been about her grandfather. He had been waiting there at the edges of it, in the shadows where she couldn’t see him, as he always had been waiting, in the dark of the attic in Kenilworth Street, or in any of their temporary lodgings.

  ‘He’s gone for good, the filthy old bastard,’ she told herself bitterly, yet remembering the odd twist of her emotions when William Rathbone had died, away in hospital, gangrenous and stinking. She had wept when she heard. Why the hell had she done that? Mom had been crying, Mom who had been his victim too until she had handed him down a generation. She had sat by the grate with her apron over her face, howling with grief over him. And Molly cried because Mom was crying, because even though the old man had not an ounce of kindness or goodness in him that she had ever seen, he was familiar, had always been there, and now he was gone.

  Back then she had not known the very worst of it, as she did now. Today, after the dream, all the things she had tried to forget, far away from home in the army, had come flooding in like foul water backing up from a blocked drain. That was my father . . . She had an acid taste in the back of her throat which even the cigarettes could not dispel. Was it really true? She still half doubted. Would Mom have invented something so vile just for the spite of it? She didn’t think even Iris was capable of making up something like that. Everything about it had carried the horrible ring of truth.

  Where her fair colouring came from was a mystery, but in every other way, she and Iris and the old man were all so alike – tall, big-boned, big-featured. A shudder passed through her. Was that her birthright – just the two of them, both so cruel, with so little in the way of redeeming features? Was that all she was? How could there be anything in her that was good or worth loving, when the only blood relations she knew were those two – and Bert? Her brother Tom had been all right, but he made himself scarce years ago. A dark self-loathing enveloped her, and the approaching dusk only made her mood deepen. Scrabbling in the packet, she drew out her last cigarette.

  They pulled into another station and passengers got off and on. ‘KILL THE BLACK MARKET WITH YOUR RATION STAMPS’, read a black-and-white poster. This also made her think of Bert, his dodgy dealings. She could never remember a time when he had been sweet natured or kind either. The acrid taste in her mouth increased at the thought of her brother. She knew he’d fooled his way into failing his army medical somehow, convinced them he had poor health. He was like a stoat or a weasel, sharp-toothed, mean, and bent on nothing but his own survival.

  As darkness fell she felt more and more as if she was hanging in limbo. A camp on the South Wales coast was her next destination. There had been changes already: leaving Northampton and having to say goodbye to Lena and the others, the ache that Cath was already gone and that she had no idea where. She left there disappointed with herself, but resigned. What more could she expect? She was no good – not compared with all those others. The likes of Win and Ruth weren’t going to be cooks, were they? Or any sort of general duties staff. They would get the plum jobs while the likes of her did the drudgery of general duties, and what else could she expect? She should never have fooled herself into hoping for more.

  She had spent a fortnight on the catering course, with lectures about supplies and cooking, learning the tricks of providing food for the huge numbers lining up before them. She experienced the joys of being up at five on a freezing February morning, trying to light a bloody-minded range with damp coal. She was not motivated and passed sulkily through the course, coming out graded as a B1 cook. From there she had been sent to cook at a training camp in the Berkshire countryside
, and it was there, eventually, that she received Em’s letter about Jenny Button. The letter had done the rounds before it arrived there, as Em had sent it to the training camp at Northampton.

  Molly had the letter in her pocket now, but she didn’t need to get it out to read it – she already knew it by heart.

  18 Kenilworth Street

  April 11th, 1941

  Dear Molly,

  I’m sorry to say I’m writing to tell you very sad news. You may have heard that we had a very bad raid here in Birmingham on Wednesday night. I was on duty and it was one of the worst nights I’ve ever known. Your Mom and Dad are OK but I’m very sorry to tell you that a bomb came down on the house next to Mr and Mrs Button and their house collapsed as well. It’s a terrible sight. Mr Button is all right, despite it, but I’m very sorry to say that Mrs Button was seriously injured and has passed away. I know how much she meant to you Molly as she was such a kind lady. We don’t know yet what will happen to Mr Button as he has no family. He was taken to a rest centre and some of the neighbours are looking after him for now but I’m afraid he may have to go into the workhouse. There’ll be a funeral for Mrs B next week but I don’t know if they’ll let you out for it.

  My other news is that Norm has decided to join up. He’s going into the RAF. I’m proud of him though its taken me time to come to terms with it. I’ll miss him and between you and me, I wish he hadn’t decided to do it. We are hoping to have a wedding when he comes home on leave.

  I hope you’re all right Molly and I’m sorry to have to send such bad news. Write and let me know how you’re getting on. We’re all all right, keeping going.

  With love, Em xx

  By the time she received the letter she knew the funeral would have been long over, and as Jenny Button was not family she might not have got leave to go to it anyway. After she heard, Molly felt numb for days. She couldn’t seem to face up to it. Jenny Button had been a mom to her like no one else. It was impossible at first to take in that she was no longer there.

  Gradually, grief built up in her. One night she had been out drinking with a lad from the camp. They’d walked a couple of miles to the nearest village pub and as they wove their way back between the dark trees of one of the country lanes, Molly grew more and more silent, unable to keep up the larky, joking front she usually put on.

  ‘What’s up?’ the lad kept saying, nudging her. ‘Come on, Molly – this ent like you. Have I said something that’s given you the hump?

  ‘Tell yer what,’ Molly said, stopping suddenly on the road. There was a thin moon but otherwise a deep, country darkness. ‘You go on – I’m just going in there a minute.’ She nodded towards the woods beside the road. Normally she would have been terrified, but tonight she was too drunk and too upset to care about anything but getting away from him.

  ‘Oh – like that is it?’ he said easily, thinking she wanted to relieve herself. ‘Well you go – I’ll wait for you along here.’

  ‘No,’ she insisted. ‘You go on ahead. I’ll catch you up.’

  ‘Don’t talk soft, I can’t just leave you in the dark,’ he protested, but she was already moving away into the woods, desperate to be shot of him and to allow her distressed feelings to have free rein.

  The trees closed round her and she could see barely anything at all, just smell the earth and a hint of something sweet on the fresh air. She walked slowly, feeling her way into each step, arms outstretched. Tips of branches scratched her face. Something large fluttered away above her head, giving a shriek in the distance. She stumbled over a hard object in her path and just saved herself from falling. After a time she heard the lad shouting from the road and realized she had not gone very far though it seemed she was already in another world. He shouted a few more times, sounding angry now, and she kept moving away from him.

  ‘Go away,’ she whispered. ‘Go away and leave me alone.’ She realized vaguely that she couldn’t think what his name was. Pat? Eric? Or was that the last one? A giggle escaped her. It occurred to her that she might just as well relieve herself while she was here, so she squatted down, hand on the mossy trunk of a tree.

  Afterwards, she waited a long time and it went quiet so she took it that he had given up. She found a place among the trees where she could just see the little arc of moon, and turning her face up towards it, she felt the waiting tears begin to fall, her chest heaving. She imagined Jenny and Stanley in their little house with the bombs dropping from the flaring sky and Stanley lying there with Jenny silent beside him until they were rescued. And Wally the little dog – what had happened to him? She imagined him killed in the house as well. Her mouth opened and she screamed and yelled up to the moon, cried out with all her force until no more would come and then sank down on to the moist ground, sobbing and rocking herself.

  Why? Why did it have to be Jenny? She was kind and nice. Why didn’t you let it be someone else? She wished with all her heart that the bomb had fallen on Iris and Joe instead, and she didn’t feel wicked for wishing it.

  Only when she had had a good cry did she start to feel afraid, to know that she was in a wood in the pitch dark, alone at night. Some other creature gave a screech in the trees above her head. Picking herself up with a groan she stumbled back, confusedly, towards the road, half hoping that he, whatsisname, would still be there as now the night felt cold and sinister. She hit the road after not too long a time but it was deserted. No doubt he was another one who thought she was mad.

  ‘Never mind,’ she muttered, walking exhaustedly towards the camp. ‘He was nothing much any’ow.’

  What was it that other one had said, so bitterly, that sweet northern lad from the Arborfield Camp? ‘You may be a looker, Molly, but you don’t want a real man beside yer, to feel owt for, do yer? You just want to be seen on a man’s arm – but you’re hard as nails inside, that you are.’

  This thought made more tears come just when she thought they were all finished. She had never cried that much in her life before.

  Now, in her low state, she was dreading arriving at yet another new place with a sea of strange faces around her. There’d be no Phoebe Morrison to give her brusque encouragement. She was on her own. And she felt peculiar, as if she were behind a screen, so that she was cut off from everything around her. It was a strange, frightening feeling.

  As dusk came on they all blacked out the train and sat on in the dim blue light. Molly pulled her coat over her and closed her eyes, wanting to shut out everything on this journey into the unknown. She felt terribly small and alone and full of grief.

  Eighteen

  She emerged from her hut the next morning to find herself in the wide open space of the camp where the grey, square buildings, the parade ground and gun park were all swept by a blustery wind. There was a sense of movement everywhere, squads of artillery people hurrying here and there, ATS and others saluting officers as everyone went about their business along neat, well-laid-out paths.

  There was energetic weather that morning, with fast-moving clouds blocking the bright sunlight, which only managed to burst through intermittently. On and off all day came the sound of guns firing from the cliffs. Molly was busy finding her way about and being introduced into her job in the cookhouse, finding out all the things you can do to disguise tinned herrings, helping with the mass of spud-bashing and other menial tasks involved in feeding very large numbers of people every day. She found herself glad to be in her cap and apron, busy with the kitchen tasks which were now becoming familiar, if not particularly welcome.

  One of the other cooks was a friendly, fresh-faced girl called Mavis, originally from a village near Swindon, and Molly was relieved to know that they would probably get along well enough. The others were all right as well, and Molly was learning to try and keep her mouth shut and approach things more quietly instead of throwing herself straight into trouble. Mavis was engaged to a soldier called Alfie, about whom she could talk endlessly, but at least she didn’t ask Molly too many questions. They were working in t
he mess frequented by many of the newly recruited gunners of the Royal Artillery, who came to the camp for training periods of about three months.

  She found all the newness tiring, but it was not long until, out of the mass of new faces, one suddenly emerged that was familiar. Molly was ladling out a potato-thickened soup at lunchtime, when someone caught her attention in the queue coming towards her. There were those high cheekbones, the wide eyes and pale straw hair tucked under an ATS cap. Was it . . . ? Yes, surely that was Honor! Her heart started to beat faster. She was more pleased than she would ever have imagined to see Honor, but would Honor even recognize her, or want to know her in return? She was so posh, and the other ATS women she was standing beside looked equally refined. Molly broke out in a sweat, feeling her own roughness, how hard and cracked her fingers were from the long winter of work, how she could never be like them. She kept her eyes cast down on the mess tins she was filling with pale green soup, feeling prickly and defiant, as if she had been rejected already.

  Then she heard a voice, high and well-spoken: ‘I say – Molly? It is Molly, isn’t it?’

  Blushing, she looked up as Honor came closer.

  ‘I thought it was you – how lovely to see you!’ Honor cried.

  ‘Hello,’ Molly said gruffly, but a smile broke across her face. She remembered Honor’s sweet strangeness, her precious blindness to class difference, so odd in someone called Honor Carruthers, as if she had never been let out in the world to know quite how it all worked and the prejudices you were supposed to have.

  ‘Gosh – so you’re cooking,’ Honor said, with apparent admiration.

  ‘Yes. ’Fraid so. Gets us out of church parade, at least! What’re you doing here?’ Molly asked as they presented their mess tins. These tins were filled in groups of four. Honor and her companion were taking food to two other ATS. ‘They ain’t let you loose on the guns, have they?’ Then she cursed herself for saying ‘ain’t’, but Honor didn’t seem to notice, and gave a laugh of genuine mirth.