The Rainbow Years

by Bradshaw, Rita

  The bus came to a stop, bringing Amy back to the present. A sea of huts with the odd brick building standing out in the snowy vista beyond the camp’s gates was in front of them. The corrugated metal covering of the Nissen huts appeared less than inviting in the freezing conditions.

  This thought obviously occurred to the girl at her side because in a small voice she said, ‘It looks pretty awful, doesn’t it?’

  Amy smiled. ‘It might not be as bad as it looks. I’m Amy Shawe, by the way.’ She’d reverted to her maiden name after arriving in the south and had used it when joining up. She hadn’t mentioned her marriage simply because she did not think of herself as a married woman. Her old life was dead and gone; the years before she had moved to London were not something she allowed herself to think about.

  ‘I’m Gertrude Russ but everyone calls me Gertie.’The girl smiled timidly. She was pretty but to Amy’s eyes appeared very young; Amy doubted whether she should be here at all. The enlisting age was eighteen but it wasn’t unusual for girls to slip in underage as birth certificates weren’t required. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Likewise.’ As girls began to pile out of the bus hauling hefty suitcases or bags, Amy added, ‘We’d better fall in or fall out or whatever they call it.’

  Gertie nodded. She looked to Amy as though she was about to cry, and the girl who had been sitting behind them must have thought this too because she said, ‘Don’t let ’em see you’re scared, lass, or they’ll eat you alive.’ She thumped Gertie bracingly on the shoulder as she spoke. ‘We’ll all stick together and you’ll be all right. The name’s Nell, by the way. I was supposed to come with me pal but she chickened out at the last minute, silly devil. I said to her, they’re going to bring National Service in for women sooner or later so you might as well volunteer now and choose where you want to be, and you can’t beat Air Force blue.’ She grinned at them and Amy, warmed by the northern accent, grinned back and introduced herself and Gertie.

  Outside the bus they all stood shivering in the icy air while a service policeman who had been manning the gates checked their papers. Nell, who appeared to be a fount of knowledge, whispered, ‘This is one of the war-built camps, you know, so don’t expect much. The permanent stations have brick living quarters with central heating and all sorts, but we’ll be lucky if we get a tin hut to sleep in with a hole in the ground for the privy.’

  Gertie looked so horror-stricken, Amy said, ‘There are some brick-built buildings. Perhaps we’ll be in one of those.’

  Nell shook her head. ‘They’ll be the education block and gymnasium and parachute store, likely as not.’ She put a finger to the side of her nose. ‘Me sister joined up a few months ago and she come here. Coo, the stories she told. There was no water laid on when she was here, perhaps there still isn’t, and there was a mile or so of unmade road separating the huts from the messes an’ such. She said they used to sink up to their knees in the mud and half the girls ended up in hospital with pneumonia, and the other half pretended they’d got it ’cos they wanted to go home.’

  ‘I’m sure your sister exaggerated a bit.’ Amy caught Nell’s eye and nodded at Gertie, whose face was now as white as the snow banked either side of the road. ‘And look, this road’s a proper road. I’m sure they’ve made improvements since your sister was here.’

  ‘Aye, you could be right. She said they were still building parts when she came.’ Nell didn’t sound convinced. Then she added, a twinkle in her eye, ‘Mind, Beryl did say there were compensations. One airwoman to every five airmen was one of ’em.’

  ‘Right, girls, follow me.’

  The corporal, who wasn’t nearly as tall as she had appeared whilst standing in front of them all on the bus, now strode off down the road, arms swinging, and as everyone hastily gathered up their things and hurried after her, there was no time for further conversation.

  The next hours were a blur of activity during which Gertie stuck to Amy’s side like glue. After dumping all their bags in the education block, they filed into a room for a lecture about rules and regulations and correct procedures. Amy gathered from the other girls’ glassy stares that they had taken in as little as she had. After this they were herded here and there, signing this bit of paper and then that, and received their uniform from the clothes store, for which they had to queue for what seemed like days. Straight after this they were led to the cookhouse armed with their newly acquired irons (knife, fork and spoon), where they enjoyed a filling meal of bangers and mash followed by jam roly poly and custard. Then it was back to the education block where the same little corporal was waiting to lead them on the trek to their sleeping quarters.

  They all struggled out into the freezing cold, dark night, weighed down with their bags had clutching their bundle of uniform and bits and pieces, utterly confused and demoralised. It was snowing again, the flakes whirling and cutting through the icy air like little stinging blades, and as half of the girls had arrived in high-heeled fashion shoes, there was plenty of slipping and sliding before they reached the first of the Nissen huts which were to be their sleeping quarters. Amy was just glad that since Nell’s sister’s time someone had laid decent roads round the camp.

  The corporal stopped outside the first hut and read out several names. As the girls concerned stumbled into the hut, everyone else looked longingly after them before hurrying after the corporal who was on the move again. Five girls peeled off at the next hut and then six more at the one beyond that. Gertie was now looking extremely anxious although Amy couldn’t see her face very well.The snow gave a little illumination and the corporal was carrying a torch which she clicked on only to read from the list of names in her hand. ‘I hope we’re together,’ Gertie whispered. ‘Do you think she’d let me change with someone if we aren’t?’

  Amy didn’t have time to reply to this before they had stopped again and the corporal read out, ‘Gertrude Russ, Amy Shawe, Rebecca Stamp, Anne Stewart and Nell Taylor.’ It was only then Amy realised they were being billeted in alphabetical order of their surnames. She had been too cold and weary to take it in before.

  They filed past the corporal who immediately strode off, the remaining girls following her like chicks after a hen. Amy opened the door and they all stepped inside, lugging their cases after them.

  A row of narrow beds, each with a locker beside it, stood either side of a black, pot-bellied stove. Some of the beds, the ones nearest the central stove, Amy noticed wrily, were already occupied. The remaining ones had a neat pile of pillows, blankets, sheets and mattresses on them. The temperature inside the hut wasn’t much different to the outside in spite of the cast-iron stove with its long flue.

  ‘Hello there.’ One of the girls who was muffled up to the eyebrows in a thick coat, scarf and woolly hat was sitting cross-legged on her bed eating an apple. ‘You must be the last few. We all got here this morning. Rum place this, isn’t it?’

  Amy nodded. Well, it was.

  ‘Grab a bed.’ The girl waved her hand apologetically. ‘I’m afraid the only ones left are near the door.’

  ‘Aye, so we see.’ Nell dumped her things on one of the beds and then zipped open the huge cloth bag she’d brought with her. ‘Anyone fancy a wee bevvy before we turn in?’ she asked cheerfully, holding up a full bottle of whisky.

  ‘What a good idea!’ Another girl with a broad London accent jumped off her bed and made her way over to them. ‘Let’s have a party. I can’t think of anything better on our first night than a housewarming. I’ve got a box of chocolates I’ve been saving for my first night away from home in case I needed cheering up.Any of you others got any goodies?’

  By the time everyone had contributed to the feast there was a decent pile of food and some bottles on the metal table next to the stove. Winnie had been positively paranoid that Amy was going to waste away in the WAAF, and the enormous rich fruit cake she’d insisted on pressing on Amy - which had practically doubled the weight of her case all by itself - was greeted with awed oohs and aa
hs by everyone present.

  ‘Blimey, lass!’ Nell’s mouth was visibly watering. ‘That’s a bit different to the eggless fruit cakes me mam’s been serving up at home. Your mam must have used up her rations for the month with that beauty, and look at the fruit in it.There’s more than a month’s worth of points there an’ all.’

  Amy continued cutting chunky slices of cake so she didn’t have to look at Nell as she said, ‘A friend of mine made it, we’ve been running a café together for some years, her café. She’s a very good cook.’

  ‘You’re telling me. Likely to send you the odd food parcel, is she?’ Nell added hopefully.

  ‘Probably,’ said Amy, laughing.

  ‘Then you’re me friend for life, lass. I’ve had oatmeal buns an’ carrot cookies coming out of me ears at our house. Not that me mam don’t try, bless her, but she’s took all this palaver the Ministry of Food keeps churning out about experimenting with what’s available too much to heart. We’ve had potato fingers and potato floddies and potato carrot pancakes for weeks, and her marrow surprise was a surprise all right. Guess what it was stuffed with?’

  ‘Potato?’ someone called out as everyone rocked with laughter.

  ‘Aye, it was an’ all. It was the last straw for me da. He said if she didn’t give him something with a bit of meat in it he’d give her a surprise, and it wouldn’t be wrapped with a pink ribbon neither.’

  Even Gertie had lost her terrified expression and was doubled up with laughter now, and the evening got merrier as the whisky and a couple of bottles of homemade blackberry wine vanished, along with most of the food. By the time Amy burrowed under the covers in her service striped pyjamas, her greatcoat and a couple of jumpers laid out on top of the thin blankets for extra warmth, she felt things weren’t too bad. Nell had told them all her sister had admitted to sobbing her heart out at lights out on her first night but there was none of that in their hut, mainly thanks to Nell, Amy thought drowsily. The plump, pretty, northern girl was very much like Winnie in personality; a card, as Pamela, the girl from the East End of London, had labelled Nell. But a very nice card. And one anyone would be glad to have in their pack.

  The next morning brought hurdles that made Amy very grateful for the settling in and camaraderie of the night before. There was the undressing and washing in front of girls who had been strangers twenty-four hours ago - and the baths were housed in a delapidated shack with thin walls and a roof which allowed the icy wind free rein - and also the dreaded medical inspection. This was called the FFI or Free From Infection test, and poor Gertie turned green when she learned it was a regular part of WAAF life.

  Jabs, chest X-rays, doctor’s examinations and - the most humiliating of all - checks for head lice and venereal diseases reduced some of the girls to tears. Even Nell lost her sparkle as they passed the morning in various states of undress while being shunted from pillar to post. It didn’t help that although the airmen and airwomen were treated in two different surgery rooms with their own waiting areas, every so often some lost airmen would wander into their vicinity, causing a few of the more shy girls to squeal in protest. ‘They ought to count themselves lucky,’ Nell muttered darkly to Amy. ‘My sister says on most stations men and women are treated in the same surgery. Nothing’s left to the imagination, according to Beryl.’

  It took Pamela to bring a smile to frozen faces. The thin blonde girl strode out of the doctor’s office into the waiting area clad in her thick service vest and winter knickers which resembled a product of a hundred years ago, and glanced round at the sombre faces. She grinned. ‘They’re ready in there for the next poor cow,’ she said loudly, ‘but I’m sure you’ll all be pleased to hear that this particular member of the herd is as clean and healthy as ever the Air Force could wish for. Fur’s sleek and shiny, hooves nicely trimmed, teeth perfect.’The nurse who had followed her out looked askance and everybody tittered.

  Amy was the next to go into the doctor’s room and she was a bundle of nerves. The moment came as she had known it would.The doctor glanced from her stomach to her face in surprise. ‘This scar,’ he said quietly. ‘How did you come by it?’

  She had rehearsed what she would say and now the words came easily enough. ‘I was involved in an accident some years ago when I was eighteen,’ she said steadily. ‘As a result of the damage done, I had to have a hysterectomy.’

  ‘I’m sorry. That was most unfortunate.’

  Most unfortunate. The worst thing that could happen to a young woman dismissed as most unfortunate. But then what else could he say? And she preferred the brisk matter-offactness to pity anyway.The enforced intimacy with her fellow WAAFs had made her conscious of the silvery white scar over the last twenty-four hours in a way she hadn’t been for years and she knew she was feeling a little raw. She had seen one or two of the girls glance her way in the bath hut and had felt like covering herself up then. But sooner or later people would notice.They didn’t have to know what she had just told the doctor, though, merely that she’d had some kind of an operation.

  ‘Yes, it was unfortunate but it’s in the past,’ she said, realising the doctor was expecting a reply. ‘And with what’s happening in the world now it doesn’t seem so important any more.’ That wasn’t quite true but she didn’t want to discuss it any further.

  The doctor didn’t pursue the matter, finishing the examination in silence apart from the odd instruction to the nurse who was helping him. Amy found she was trembling inside when she re-entered the waiting area. Although she had prepared herself for the question she’d known would arise during the examination she had never spoken about it before and it had upset her more than she’d expected.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Gertie was sitting with Nell and a couple of the other girls. ‘You look a bit pale.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Amy forced a lightness she didn’t feel as she added, ‘Frozen, but fine.’

  The others nodded and there were mutterings about catching their death of cold, but Gertie kept her eyes on Amy for a while before turning away.

  After the examinations were over, they filed into the cookhouse for a somewhat colourless meal of steamed fish roll followed by vanilla and semolina mould. Nell remarked that she couldn’t tell which was which, even after she’d tasted them. Then they were marched outside and into a large hangar for their first drill, several of the girls nearly falling over themselves on the way to get a good look at a bunch of airmen who were strolling back from one of the distant runways.

  ‘Eyes straight ahead.’ The sergeant who was leading them didn’t even bother to turn round, adding weight to the story that he had eyes in the back of his head. ‘You’ll be seeing them in the mess tonight no doubt.’

  ‘Any you fancy?’ Nell whispered in an aside to Amy and Pamela as several of the men gave mock salutes, grinning. Gertie turned beetroot red.

  ‘All of them.’ Pamela gave a little wriggle of appreciation. ‘Those uniforms are just so romantic, aren’t they? I mean, let’s face it. The Army and Navy can’t compare with our boys.’

  Amy let the other two talk on, falling back a little so she was walking with Gertie. The last thing she wanted was to get involved with a man again, and if ever she found herself longing for a pair of strong arms to hold her tight, she only had to touch the narrow line on her stomach for sanity to be restored. Anyway, who would want her now for anything more than a brief fling? And she couldn’t envisage fooling around like lots of women her age did. Her marriage and the death of her child had seen to that. All the tears and anger and depression from that time had changed her irrevocably. If the war hadn’t come along she would have continued to help Winnie build up the business and probably have accepted the partnership Winnie had kept trying to press on her. They’d had plans to expand and buy the building next door, but the war had put everything on hold.

  The drill wasn’t exactly a success. Everyone kept sailing off in different directions for one thing, causing the sergeant such frustration he threatened them with a ten-
mile route march the next day if they didn’t try harder.

  ‘He’s a bully,’ Amy whispered to Gertie who had tears streaming down her face after being singled out twice in a row. ‘If he stopped roaring and barking so much we’d understand him better.’

  ‘Don’t cry,’ Nell added on Gertie’s other side. ‘Don’t give him the satisfaction of seeing he’s got to you.’

  Amy exchanged a glance with Nell over Gertie’s head. The last twenty-four hours had only confirmed her belief that Gertie was younger than she had let on.

  Eventually they were allowed to slink back indoors, utterly frozen and starving hungry in spite of the stodgy food at lunchtime. There they learned that the sergeant - out of the goodness of his heart, as Pamela remarked bitterly - had arranged for them to receive buckets and brushes with which to clean the ablution blocks until dinner time.