by Mary Gibson
The practices took place between lectures and route marches, but the girls were so keen to impress their royal visitor that they even agreed to use off-duty time to learn the dances. They met in the recreation hut. First May organized her girls into pairs, letting them sort out who would be the man. She’d found a violinist and pianist amongst them and handed the sheet music out. They started with ‘My Lord Byron’s Maggot’, a dance that May didn’t know but couldn’t help being pleased about, as it seemed to be named after her wayward grandfather. The ‘men’ and ‘women’ spent most of the time clapping hands with the wrong partner and casting off at the wrong end, which May feared was due to her inexpert calling. At the end of the evening she doubted they’d ever be able to distinguish between a cast-off and a cast-down, but still, their laughter at their own incompetence was infectious. May suddenly realized she had begun to enjoy leading the little troupe, her usual shyness banished by the challenge of getting six huts of girls in step and synchronized in only seven days.
As she called the final beat, and the dancers began to leave the floor, the pianist, a girl more used to pub playing than the military strains of ‘Lillibullero’, broke into the ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy’, the violinist joined in and May felt herself grabbed from behind. It was Ruby.
‘Come on, May, let’s show ’em how it’s done. Better’n that Maggot!’
She whirled May off into a jitterbug. Ruby was light on her feet and seemed to know all the steps. She spun May like a yoyo and soon other couples joined in. Before long the floorboards of the old wooden hut were bouncing and the loose windows rattling in their frames.
They twirled and hopped wildly to the music, the more athletic of them even swinging their partners over their shoulders. May was swept away too, by the sudden sense of freedom. After weeks of having every footstep controlled, every arm movement criticized on the parade ground, their limbs had mutinied, demanding to be set free. She never heard the drill sergeant come in, not until his parade-ground roar succeeded in silencing the piano and violin. At that very instant, May was being swung through Ruby’s outstretched legs but at the sergeant’s bark, Ruby let go. May slewed across the floor, coming to an ungainly halt at his feet.
‘What a shower! On your feet, Ginger. If this is country dancing, then my name’s fuckin’ Fred Astaire!’
May leaped up, pulling down the khaki skirt, which had ridden up to reveal rather too much of the unattractive lisle stockings.
‘Sorry, sir,’ May said, to stifled giggles from the other girls. He stared at her, eyes almost invisible beneath the cap, ram rod straight and unsmiling.
‘You lot, get back to your huts. You,’ he inclined his head, ‘stay put.’
He watched the last of the girls as they left and when the door clicked closed turned back to May.
‘You’re an utter disgrace, Lloyd. If you’re put in charge, you’re meant to set an example, not act like an old scrubber from Bermondsey!’
May flinched.
‘Oh,’ he said, curling his lip. ‘But that’s just what you are, eh, Lloyd?’
She could only guess that he’d had some bad experiences with some of her fellow Bermondsey girls, but it didn’t seem fair she was being made to pay.
‘Sorry, sir, I thought it would be good for morale!’
‘Don’t be fuckin’ clever with me, Lloyd. And while we’re on the subject, I hear you’ve been excluding soldiers from your little display, so how good is that for morale?’
‘No, sir, no one’s been excluded.’
‘Don’t argue with me, Lloyd. Private Sands has told me she’s been left out and if you’re calling her a liar, then don’t. I know her father, good pal of mine. You will include her, understand?’ He prodded May in the chest.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said, sticking her chin out. Perhaps her five weeks in this place really had toughened her up after all, for she felt only defiance.
So Pat had put the boot in. But it was a mystery to May. What had she done to the girl, except witness her fear?
May had spent her life as the peacemaker in her family. If Peggy and Jack were arguing over who sat nearest the fire on cold winter mornings, it would be May who gave up her own place to avoid an argument. Now, faced with such obvious animosity from Pat, it was hard for her not to hold out the olive branch. Before lights out, when the girls in her hut gathered round the stove, enjoying the dying embers of their meagre coal supply and drinking mugs of cocoa, May went over to Pat’s bunk.
‘The sergeant just told me you felt left out of the country dancing. I thought you didn’t want to join in.’ Pat said nothing, but May persisted. ‘Sorry if I got the wrong end of the stick. I can do with all the volunteers I can get.’
Pat lay back on the bunk with her arms behind her head. ‘Too late. I’ve missed the practices.’
‘Well, the sergeant’s ordered me to get you involved. I’ll go through the dances, but we’ve got odd numbers now, so… I’ll have to be your partner.’
Pat gave an exaggerated groan. ‘Perfect,’ she said and rolled over.
May felt dismissed and went back to join the cocoa drinkers.
‘Very diplomatic,’ whispered Bee, and Mac said, ‘I’d have told her to take a long skip and hop off a short plank!’
Ruby handed her a cocoa, and May found herself feeling perversely sorry for Pat; with her prickly back turned to the group, obviously not asleep, she must be hearing the whispers. May decided to change the subject.
‘Did I tell you that my old grandad has got a country dance named after him?’ And then she recounted the story of how Lord Byron had earned himself an extra six months in jail.
‘That’s priceless!’ Bee said, blowing on her cocoa. ‘Fancy risking an extra six months! Spirited old chap.’
‘Tell that to my nan! She says being married to aristocracy’s not all it’s cracked up to be!’
Ruby took the tin mugs out to wash them in the ablutions block, and before lights-out sounded, May got out her precious store of writing paper.
Well, Bill, who’d have thought I’d join the army only to end up organizing a country-dance display for a princess! I wonder if the RAF recruits have to do anything as soppy? I doubt it! Wherever you are, Bill, I hope you’ve settled in to forces life and have made some friends. Tomorrow we get assessed for our trades and I can hardly believe myself, because after all the training and lectures, do you know what I’d really like to be? A gunner girl!
She didn’t know when she’d decided that ack-ack guns were where she’d feel most useful. She suspected the notion had been born during that chance encounter with the ATS girl in Southwark Park who’d mentioned the rumours of mixed batteries. The girl had been right: they’d been told that some of them might be joining the artillery brigades, training to use the tracking instruments. She was sure her family hoped she’d end up cooking dinners for officers or organizing stores. The idea of homebody May anywhere near a big gun, even if she’d never technically be firing one, would horrify them. But if she could stop a few bombs from reaching Bermondsey, then to her mind, she really would be fulfilling the vow she’d made to do her bit.
And so, next day when the lectures were all done and her final assessment had arrived, May sat outside the captain’s office, waiting to go before the panel. She’d been told by more experienced girls to express no preference – if you indicated that you’d like to be a clerk, they’d make you a cook. But May knew she’d done well on the instruments used on ack-ack gun batteries; surely they wouldn’t ignore that. With night vision sharper than a cat’s she had an advantage in using the spotter and the height finder, but she was best at operating the predictor, the machine which calculated just when the guns should fire so as to hit their target. She’d surprised herself with a talent for maths too. Although she’d done well enough at arithmetic to pass the scholarship exam, it had never been her favourite subject at school. All she knew was that no shopkeeper ever shortchanged her. As a child, when her mother would send her to Joe C
app’s for groceries, she’d know as soon as the coppers touched her palm whether the change he’d given was correct. Joe had told her mother once, ‘You couldn’t get away with being short a brass farden, not with that gel of yours. She’s cute she is, very cute.’ And now the years of mental arithmetic seemed to be paying off.
The only thing she had failed at in practice was projecting her voice, so that the men firing the guns could hear her commands. Time and time again the training sergeant had hollered at her, ‘Speak up, Lloyd, you’re not in fuckin’ church now, you’re on a gun battery! When you shout out the fuse, he’d better bloody hear you or Gerry’s already up the Thames and bombed the effin’ ’Ouses of Parliament before you can say Hail Mary full o’ grace!’
‘So, Private Lloyd, what trade would you like to follow?’
May took a deep breath and replied as convincingly as she could. ‘PT instructor, ma’am.’
The captain flicked through her assessment results.
‘Hmm, I see you’re helping PTI Thomas with the country-dancing display, a good report from her – but hang on, there’s a note from your drill sergeant, seems there’s a question mark over your ability to impose discipline on a large squad.
‘No.’ The captain shut the file. ‘Request denied. Looking at your test results, Lloyd, I think you’d be better off in a heavy artillery mixed battery.’
May suppressed a smile. Pat had done her a favour in complaining to the drill sergeant. She was going to be a gunner girl!
*
It was like swinging a sack of flour around. Pat really was a lumpen dancer and what’s more, May was convinced she was taking every opportunity to tread on her toes. She’d picked up the dance steps well enough, but there was no life or exuberance in her movements. At least May, being the man, had some control over her, and chivvied her along, kept her moving at a reasonable tempo, but it was exhausting, like stripping the willow with the brakes on.
Two hundred of them, in thin gymslips, were making a slow circuit of the vast parade ground. After each dance the groups moved counter-clockwise, so that eventually all of them had an opportunity to perform directly in front of the princess. May was doing double duty as dancer and caller, and when their group came to face the podium she glanced up. All the brass had arrayed round the small, uniformed figure of the princess. May began calling ‘My Lord Byron’s Maggot’, but after the first beat Pat decided to trip. Unfortunately, it was at a point in the dance when May wasn’t holding on to her hand, and May watched in horror as the trip turned into a stumble, which turned into a careen in the direction of the podium. May kept on dancing as Pat landed head first beneath the Union Jack skirting the dais. May waited for the girl to emerge again, but whether from injury or embarrassment it seemed she’d decided it was best to stay hidden under the dais and May finished the dance solo.
The princess in true royal style kept a straight face throughout, and applauded duly at the end of the display. The top brass disappeared, the girls trooped off the parade ground and only then did May allow herself a quick look back. Pat’s head was poking out from under the red, white and blue drapes. The girl’s cheeks were burning and there was murder in her eyes.
The minute they were back in their hut their laughter exploded.
‘That’s the fastest I’ve seen her move all BT! I thought she was gonna take off!’ Ruby said. Bee doubled over and there were tears streaming from Mac’s eyes.
‘I bet you a pound to a penny she makes it my fault, though,’ said May.
‘Oh, don’t be daft, Ginger, if it hadn’t been for you she’d never have made it through the first dance!’ said Bee.
‘Well, you didn’t see her face. Thank God after today I’ll never have to see her again.’
‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that, darlin’.’ Ruby looked like a plump caterpillar as she sloughed off the tight green gymslip. ‘I heard she’s coming to Oswestry with us. She’s going on the ack-acks too.’
‘Oh, no! I thought she wanted clerical?’
‘Well, she might have been stupid enough to ask for it,’ Bee said, ‘but you know what the ATS motto is?’
‘Ask and you shall not receive!’ came the answering chorus.
May had been overjoyed when Bee, Ruby and Mac had all been given the same posting to the heavy artillery training camp. It hadn’t occurred to her that Pat would be coming too. But once again she felt an unwarranted sympathy for the girl.
‘She’s not suited, though,’ was all she said, remembering Pat’s white-faced fear at the train crash. May didn’t doubt that Pat would be dreading standing only yards from exploding guns, with Heinkels dropping bombs over her head.
Still, she wasn’t going to let the news spoil her mood. She’d finished her basic training and tomorrow they’d be travelling westward into the Welsh border country. Wales sounded even more like a foreign country than Yorkshire, but the sooner they got to Oswestry, the sooner she’d be on the guns, and now that she knew what her future held, she was eager to meet it.
That night May and her friends got a lift into Pontefract and swapped country dancing for the foxtrot at the Assembly Rooms. Some of the Yorks and Lancs had formed a dance band and were playing ‘What Will I Tell My Heart?’ as the girls entered the brightly lit, barrel-vaulted space. May was surprised by the impressive ballroom, with its wide stage and galleries. Couples were already circling the floor, and though she was quite happy to partner up with Ruby, May soon found herself whisked away by a corporal from the barracks. He was a friendly chap, and a good dancer, but she felt her old shyness returning and spent the dance looking over his shoulder, desperately trying to think of something to say and all the while wondering what it would be like to be guided round the dance floor in the arms of Bill Gilbie. When the music changed to a slow foxtrot to the tune of ‘I’ll String Along With You’, the memory of Bill’s childhood story came flooding back and a sense of loneliness washed over her so strongly that she excused herself from the next dance and sought out Bee and Mac, who were standing unpartnered on the sidelines.
‘Why did you leave your corporal stranded?’ asked Mac. ‘He’s a good dancer, and a bonny-looking chap, and you have to take your chances these days, hen.’
May smiled weakly. She had no answer for Mac. She couldn’t tell her she already had a chap, because she didn’t. She’d had such a short friendship with Bill that at any other time the slender connection might have just melted away, but magnified by the glare of searchlights and the thunder of guns, it had begun to feel as if Bill had carved out a place in her heart which fitted no one else.
*
The train journey to Oswestry wasn’t as slow as the one to Pontefract, but it was much duller. They seemed to change at every station, zigzagging their way westward, spending hours staring out of the window at unknown landscapes, being served tea and sandwiches at strange-sounding halts, by women speaking in incomprehensible Liverpool accents.
When they arrived it was raining. At least Granny Byron had read one thing right in her tea leaves – wherever she went it rained. The camp was spread out over a huge area, covered by double rows of long, low wooden barrack huts that faced each other in ‘streets’, with separate ablution blocks. May was relieved to be billeted with her friends, and the fact that Pat was amongst them was almost a comfort. Somehow it felt as though she had formed a new family in Pontefract, including the difficult, annoying sister, and now, thrown into another completely alien world, anything that was familiar was welcome.
Before they could sleep, they unpacked kitbags, tidied lockers and ‘barracked’ their beds ready for inspection. The huts were much bigger than at Pontefract. May counted at least sixteen bunks, but the friends made sure their bunks were all next to each other. She spent her first half an hour teasing her pudding-shaped cap back into the jaunty style she preferred, ignoring all the jokes at her expense.
‘Well, just because it’s the army, don’t mean we have to look like frumps! Come here, Bee, and I’ll do your ba
ck curlers.’
May had been dubbed ‘Ginger’ ever since the drill sergeant’s dressing down at country-dance practice, and it had stuck, even though she’d been forced to get her shoulder-length, Ginger Rogers victory roll cut to regulation length. She still made sure she put in her dinkie curlers every night. Ruby couldn’t be bothered, and kept her hair straight, but Bee always joined May in the nightly rolling routine, each doing the other’s back curlers before lights out.
‘Do you think we’ll get any leave while we’re here?’ May asked, as she curled a lock of hair round the flat metal prong and clipped it tight.
‘Ouch!’ Bee jumped. ‘That’s my head not a pincushion!’
‘Sorry, Bee!’ May loosened off the curler.
‘I heard we won’t get any till we’ve finished here, might even have to wait till the end of firing camp.’
‘Oh no, that’s another month away!’
‘Why? It’s not as if you’ve got a sweetheart to go back to, unless there’s something you’re not telling us!’
‘No, no… suppose I’m just still a bit homesick.’
May knew she’d never really lost that pain. It had only been masked by activity and novelty, and that was why she liked to keep busy. She was the one who invariably stayed up the latest, ironing shirts and polishing buttons, and when she was finished with her own kit, she started on the barrack room, which meant that their hut had always been praised for its neatness. Bee called her ‘the maid’.
‘Well, darling, if you think this is bad, try being sent away to boarding school at seven, then you could talk about home sickness.’
‘I don’t know how your mum could’ve done that, Bee,’ May said, giving Bee’s shoulder a sympathetic squeeze. ‘But at least it means you’re used to it now. I’d never even slept in a bed on my own before!’
‘Oh, stop moaning, will ya!’ someone shouted from the other end of the hut. ‘At least you ain’t got that Garner’s stink up your nose all day!’
May whirled round, pulling on the curler caught in Bee’s hair and eliciting another yelp from her. She knew that voice.