Soldier Girl

by Annie Murray

  When Bert turned on the light, Molly looked round in amazement. Everything in the room was new to her – a settee and two chairs, all in a matching brown, a wooden dresser by the wall with plates arranged on it, a rug on the floor, bright blue and gold vases on the mantel either side of a clock in a curving wooden case, and all sorts of other knick-knacks. There were even two pictures on the walls – sentimental portraits of little children, girls with long golden hair tucked into bonnets.

  ‘ ’Ere – get yerself tucked round that.’ Bert handed her the bottle he’d brought with him from upstairs and went to the dresser cupboard, reaching in for glasses – glasses! He handed her one, then flung himself down in one of the chairs, lying back like a king surveying his empire. He lit a cigarette – the first of many that evening – and passed one to Molly as well. Molly, sitting opposite him on the strange brown chair, didn’t exactly relish the thought of time spent with her brother, but the offer of free whiskey was too big a lure. And she was curious about it all. Bert was looking so flaming pleased with himself. She took a big slurp of the liquor, feeling it burn warm down inside her, beginning to soften the edges of the pain which lay so heavily, like a rock inside her. She was still trying to come to terms with what she had seen upstairs, with the new state of the house. It was no surprise to her that Bert was a criminal, but she was startled by the scale of it.

  ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ she asked. ‘Where did all that stuff come from?’

  ‘It ain’t a game.’ Bert sat forward, tensely resting his arms on his thighs. ‘D’you think I got all this stuff just from some stupid game?’ He sounded really affronted.

  ‘How did you get it all here?’

  ‘Ah well – that’s down to Wal. Wal Spence. We call ’im “The Mole”. His old man’s an undertaker, over Kings Heath way. Now he ain’t gunna notice if his wheels do a few night trips, is ’e?’

  ‘You mean – in a hearse?’

  Bert nodded gleefully, his shrewish face creasing with amusement. ‘Plenty of room in a hearse.’

  ‘But what about the petrol?’

  ‘You saw – I’ve got all the coupons you could want. We’ve got a fella prints ’em up for us. Once you got your wheels – I mean there’s a gang of us – Wal and me, and there’s Horrid Harry, Soapy Joe – oh, and Fred.’

  For a moment Molly felt as if she was in conversation with a twelve-year-old, the brother she remembered shinning over the rooftops of the yard to get away from trouble; his little gang of bullies and pilferers, always up to something, always mean and sadistic at the same time and Bert always the meanest of the lot. She felt herself recoil from him, an urge to get up and slam out of the house. But the generous amounts of whiskey she was gulping down were making her feel warm and muzzy. In fact she hadn’t felt so at ease in a long time. She picked up the bottle and hugged it to her.

  ‘That’s it, sis, you have a good go at it,’ Bert said indulgently. ‘Plenty more where that came from.’

  She realized he was enjoying lavishing the drink on her, playing the big man. She sat back drinking steadily while, proudly and ramblingly, Bert outlined the underhand plots and heists that were bringing his and Iris’s standard of living up no end, not to mention being a draw for the girls who now seemed to swarm round him. Hilda was apparently the latest in a queue. Molly listened to a list of lootings at the railway yards and wharfs, of robberies from warehouses – one where they had crowbarred a whole section of wall away to get at the stocks of sugar now occupying the upstairs room, and one consisting of consignments of butter and meat – the last of which had proved a nightmare to get rid of, crawling with maggots when they finally despatched it into the cut.

  ‘The stuff we managed to sell must’ve given a few of them buggers a tummy ache!’ Bert chortled, then took another swig, straight from the bottle now. The whiskey fumes mixed with the strong stench of the perfume were beginning to make Molly feel quite peculiar. She couldn’t seem to care whether what Bert was doing was criminal. She took big mouthfuls of whiskey.

  ‘And all that in Wal’s old man’s hearse!’ Bert slapped his leg with mirth. ‘’E’s no idea of the trips it goes on of a night! We’ve shifted tea, lipstick, razor blades – and once we get that lot up there finished . . . What shall we call it d’you reckon, Moll? You’re a girl. I reckon Parisian Mist, summat classy like that?’

  ‘I thought it wash called Shent of Love?’ Molly slurred.

  ‘Nah – that’s just what I call it. D’yer like that? Shall us call it that?’

  Molly shook her head and the room swam. ‘No – call it Parishian Misht . . .’

  Bert leaned forward, deadly earnest suddenly. ‘D’you know ’ow much we’ll get next week, shifting that lot? Do yer?’

  Molly shook her head more cautiously this time.

  ‘Six hundred quid – when we’ve shifted ’em all. Six hundred. Now – don’t tell me you wouldn’t like a slice of that, eh, sis? Stuff the army! Why don’t you stick around? I could do with a lady, a looker like you to help shift it. You could be very useful to me and the boys. I’d cut you in.’

  Molly stared at him, glazed. She’d drunk an awful lot, fast.

  ‘What’re you talking about?’ she mumbled. ‘D’you think I wanna be in your silly little gang?’

  Bert’s face darkened. ‘Silly? Silly eh, Moll? D’you even know what six hundred quid would look like, altogether in one place? Do yer? That’s gunna be mine and some of it could be yours if you’re not gunna be a stupid cow about it.’

  For some reason the phrase ‘stupid cow’ made her giggle. ‘Cows,’ she said, and giggled again.

  ‘D’yer want to come in with me or not?’ His voice was sharp now. ‘This is a serious business proposition, Moll – no messing around.’

  ‘No!’ She was giggling uncontrollably now. ‘You and Mom and your silly little bottles – business ploposal . . .’ She was losing the ability to talk properly now as well.

  Bert stared at her, eyes narrowed, a half-burned cigarette jutting from the side of his mouth. Suddenly he said, ‘Right then,’ and got up and disappeared out the back.

  Molly, with no sense of what was going on, or of time passing, closed her eyes. She was not sure afterwards whether she had drifted off to sleep, but she woke with a jolt to find something hard and cold jutting into the right side of her neck, under her jaw. There was a click. She could hear Bert breathing loudly. Her confused senses couldn’t work out what was going on at first, but instinct made her sit still.

  ‘Silly, is it?’ His breath puffed at her ear as he spoke. ‘Silly little business, eh? Keeps our mom all right though, doesn’t it? The fat old cow’s got more than she’s ever had in her life before. And I done that for ’er – ’er son, see. Not Tom, or you – me. ’Er favourite – that’s what I am. The only one that’s stood by ’er.’

  Bert reached round and to her horror Molly felt him fondle her breast, pinching painfully at the nipple, but she didn’t dare move. Was that – that thing in her neck – was it a gun? Could it be . . . ?

  ‘No one pushes Bert Fox around – no one.’ He jabbed her harder in the neck. ‘You breathe a word about this to anyone and you’ll get this right ’ere. Right in the ’ead. If you don’t want in, yer can clear off back to old tight-arsed Emmy-Wemmy. ’Cause if you breathe a word, one of us’ll get yer, army or no army. Wherever you are. So yer can keep yer gob shut, right?’

  Molly’s head had cleared, at least enough to make sense of this. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  ‘Louder!’

  ‘YES!’

  ‘Well go on – bugger off out of ’ere – and don’t bother coming back.’

  He let her get to the door, then came at her, ramming the gun into her cheek again, his face stretched and vicious.

  ‘Not a word – right?’

  And she was out in the dark street, reeling, as if from a nightmare. The air felt remarkably fresh, free from the heady, cloying smell of the perfume. She struggled to walk along the street
. She was shaking all over.

  Thirty-One

  They came for her the next morning. Cynthia answered a hammering on the door to find two redcaps on the step. Molly, feeling very rough, her head pounding, had to hurry into her uniform, to be escorted back on the train to Wales. Cynthia persuaded them all to drink a cup of tea to give Molly time to pack her things. One of the redcaps was local and seemed sulky; the other, talkative one, had a London accent and thick, hairy hands.

  ‘You’ve been a naughty girl then,’ the hairy one said when they set out from Kenilworth Street.

  ‘Who told you where to find me?’ she asked, struggling along with her bag, which neither of them offered to carry. Her stomach, her head and everything else felt horrible.

  ‘We asked around – found your brother,’ said the Brummie one, contemptuously. ‘Proper wide boy that one, ain’t ’e?’

  For a moment she considered telling them about Bert, getting them to set the Birmingham police force on him. But she didn’t trust these blokes either, even if they were military police. And what happened last night now felt so strange and unreal that she wondered if she’d dreamt it. Had Bert really pressed a gun to her neck? She knew, really, that he had. The thought of the cold steel made her shudder. But had he meant it – even threatening his own sister? Would he really stoop to anything? Although she knew he was vile, it was hard to take that in. Best keep quiet and bide my time, she thought. With any luck he and his little gang would all get caught anyway and banged up for as long as possible, without it being laid at her door.

  Sitting on the rumbling train between the two redcaps, Molly rested her head and closed her eyes to make them think she was asleep as she tried to still her pounding head. But she couldn’t stop her mind flashing between competing images, each worse than the last. The previous evening came back to her in nightmarish flashes – the sight of her mother sitting in the squalid, dimly lit room, dolled up her in her gaudy black-market flounces as if for a ball, Bert’s gleeful expression telling her about all his dodgy dealings, the hard-faced girl who’d been there, the cold snout of the gun – ‘you’ll get this right ’ere, right in the ’ead’ – and all the time, the reeking perfume . . . Drunk as she’d been, she knew it was not a dream. Bert had always been heading for this. And after all that, she never did pick up her clothes. Well, she thought grimly, I’m not going to need them now anyway. How could she have thought you could just walk away from the army? It had reached out and grabbed her again. And even though she was in trouble, she found she was pleased to have been caught. At least it got her far away from her so-called family again.

  But the memories wouldn’t leave her alone, the past flooding in. All the horrible things their grandfather – father – had done to her, and most likely to Bert as well. And to Iris in her turn. But she felt no pity for her mother. When, in all her life, had Iris ever been soft and kind or protective? When had she ever smiled on Molly with love or given her anything that she needed? Molly thought of her childhood, cold, always itching with eczema and impetigo and nits, and the worst thing, the terrible burning pains down below, the accidents. She had grown up surrounded by the aura of urine, unable to control herself when the infections – as she now understood they were – reached their worst. Always sore, in pain, humiliated. No wonder, she thought, bitterly. When had anything ever been clean? Iris had never been any sort of housewife – she was too devoted to her first love, the bottle, after which children, cleaning, everything else came second, third and fourth, if anywhere at all. The army, with its rough and ready free-from-infection inspections every Friday, had treated her with more care than her mom ever had.

  Pushing these thoughts away, she found they were replaced by worse ones. Grief over Tony crashed in waves over her, until she wanted to cry out with the pain of it and had to contain herself. She had never felt more wretched. If only she could have another drink! Wrenching her eyes open, keeping them screwed up against the light, she peered cautiously around her. To her relief the redcaps had both fallen asleep. The Brummie one was snoring lightly, mouth agape. Moving very carefully so as not to wake them, she fished in her bag for a cigarette, lit up and sat staring out through the grubby window. She let the green fields pass before her eyes, trying to force her mind to go blank.

  Once she was back at the camp, the repercussions of her absence turned out to be quite minor. There were compassionate grounds for her absence – they all knew by now about Tony’s death – and she suspected that Phoebe Morrison had also put in a word for her. Molly was put on a charge, confined to barracks for a week and her pay docked. No more was said. She soon returned to the early-morning toiling in the cookhouse.

  Ruth and her group of Kinnys had long moved on to a posting along the coast, and now Honor had gone as well. There was a whole new set of unfamiliar faces, though Mavis was still with her in the kitchen. Molly had no spirit for getting to know anyone, though. Even when her hangover had cleared, her dark, grieving mood remained. It was a torment being back in the camp, every familiar path and stone, the scent of bracken on the cliffs, and the sight of the shifting sea reminding her of Tony and all that they had had. For a few days she lived in a dream, walking with him in her head, thinking only of him and all the times they’d shared, his face smiling at her as they sat side by side out in the salty breeze, and grieving at how all her future had been stolen from her.

  Then, in the depths of her grief, she even began to doubt how things had really been with him. She’d loved Tony, of that she was certain, but more uneasy memories began to filter through. She could see now that all had not been well. She thought of their lovemaking, the way she froze and drifted off when he touched her and couldn’t relax and give herself to him. She knew he had noticed, had stopped more than once and said, ‘Is everything all right?’ She had assured him it was and he must have put it down to nerves. But she knew it was something else, that through all the molestation she had suffered from Old Man Rathbone, she had cut off, mind and body, and now she could do nothing else. The thought made her feel dirty and despairing. If Tony had lived, would she have spoiled it in the end? Wasn’t it that there was something rotten in her that would always turn everything bad? Look at the family she came from, after all! They were all vile and disgusting, and they were the flesh from which she had sprung. How could she ever have fitted into the family where Dymphna ruled the roost and she was expected to fill the role of devout Catholic wife? Dymphna had been so kind to her, of course, but she sensed that the kindness would have lasted only as long as she did things Dymphna’s way. She had been in love with the idea of becoming a new person – different, far away from her family – a wife and mother. But would she have been able to keep it up? Wouldn’t the old ways have come back to haunt her somehow? She had moments when she was almost glad Tony had died, so that he and his family would not find out about her and what she was really like. She could preserve their love intact, as it was.

  The days passed agonizingly. Being back at the camp, with all the feelings it stirred up of loss and self-disgust, made it unbearable. Sensing her misery, Mavis tried to be kind and draw her out of herself.

  ‘There’s a group of us going into the village later,’ she said to Molly, the second day she was back. ‘Why don’t you come along, pet – take your mind off things?’

  Molly attempted a smile, but her face felt like a piece of rusty machinery that had forgotten how to move. ‘Ta, Mavis, that’s nice of yer – but I think I’ll stay here. I’m not much company these days.’

  ‘Well, it’s not surprising,’ Mavis said kindly. ‘You’ve had a terrible sad time of it. I just thought it might lift you out of yourself.’

  ‘I just can’t,’ Molly said, her eyes filling. ‘But thanks anyway. You have a nice evening, all of yer.’

  Instead, she went out to the cliffs and sat in the wind, cooling now, at the waning end of summer, watching the eternal movements of the sea and talking to Tony, crying for him. It was the one thing that could soothe the
ache in her for a while.

  ‘There’s nothing here for me without you,’ she said to the buffeting air. ‘I hate it here now. Oh God, Tony, why did it have to happen? Why can’t you just be here again? Be somewhere in the world, anywhere?’

  By the time she left the cliffs that evening, she knew she had to get out of there. They could discharge her, move her, anything, as long as she could walk somewhere other than these paths, and breathe air that did not speak of him with every breath.

  ‘Fox, what exactly is going on?’

  A few days later, she found herself summoned to stand once more in front of Phoebe Morrison’s desk. It was hard to read the sergeant’s tone. It was not angry or commanding, just calm and measured, as if she was biding her time.

  ‘What d’you mean, Sergeant?’

  ‘I’m getting consistent complaints about the food. And when I say complaints, the batteries messing in your hut are almost on the point of mutiny. They say the food – if it can be called that – that you’re serving them is’ – she paused to look down at her notebook, apparently having recorded their expressions of indignation – ‘ “disgusting, inedible, fit only for the pigs”. And so on. The other cooks have assured me that the sudden catastrophic dive in standards is nothing to do with them. Fox, on your watch . . .’ Phoebe Morrison leaned forward to emphasize her words, ‘. . . there was mustard in the rice pudding! What is the explanation for this?’

  Molly looked down at her feet, but not before noticing what she was sure was a flicker of suppressed amusement in the woman’s eyes. ‘It must have been an accident. I’m sorry, Sergeant.’

  ‘Well, I hope you are. Happily, I’m not the one who has to endure your cooking, but the others are extremely browned off. Understandably.’ She paused, tapping a pencil on the desk and thinking, before saying slowly, ‘Look, Fox, I know you’ve had a thin time of it recently. Look at me when I’m speaking to you, please. That’s better. I haven’t just called you here to reprimand you, though obviously this can’t go on. There’s something else I want to suggest.’