The Penny Bangle

by Margaret James

  But whichever saint was now on duty, and responsible for sailors being tossed around in storms while in the Bay of Biscay, took no notice. The whole convoy, troopships, corvettes and destroyers alike, was tossed about like toys in a child’s bath.

  ‘So you’ve never been to sea before?’ enquired a red-haired, grey-eyed Scottish girl, who’d also volunteered to go abroad, and for some reason wasn’t being sick.

  ‘No,’ said Cassie, hating her for looking so flipping pink and healthy. The girl was lounging against the rail and cheerfully eating something from a dish. It smelled like bacon and tomatoes, and Cassie felt the bile come pumping up into her throat again. Then she was sick again and yet again. ‘I wish I’d never come,’ she groaned, as she clung to her medals and cursed her wretched fate.

  She prayed and prayed for calm, for the storm to die down just a bit. But the storm got worse.

  Soon, they were being stalked by German U-boats, and rocked by exploding mines that damaged several of the vessels. But the convoy battled on, each ship a heaving cesspool of injured, sick, and sometimes even dying.

  When at last they’d passed the Straits, and got into the Med, the sea was calmer. But there were many other hazards now. Italian bombers strafed the convoy, and by the time the troopship in which Cassie was a passenger was lying off Algiers, its many decks looked like a battlefield, with wounded soldiers lying in groaning rows on makeshift stretchers, and lots of others being ill below.

  Some ATS girls had been slightly wounded, too. A few of them had been more sick than Cassie. Then one got hit by shrapnel and was badly hurt, so she would be going straight back home to England.

  Cassie realised she was in a battle zone, that perhaps all this would not be an exciting new adventure, after all.

  Maybe she had signed her death certificate, instead.

  But then the wind came out of Africa, a fresh, clean breeze that blew away the acrid taint of sickness. As she leaned upon the rail and watched the coast come nearer, keeping her eyes trained on a line of purple hills that closed the far horizon, Cassie felt much better.

  This foreign wind smelled sweet, she thought, and sniffed it gratefully. It smelled of Robert’s letters, dry and crisp and scented with lemons, mint and thyme.

  Closer to the land, it didn’t smell so lovely. In fact, it stank of fish and sewage. But now the ships were safer, lying under the protection of the British guns.

  When they docked at Algiers to let some soldiers disembark, little brown-skinned boys came swimming out and clambered up the sides of the huge vessel, shouting to the passengers, grinning and demanding to be given cigarettes or baksheesh.

  The soldiers didn’t give them anything. Instead, they hit them, knocked them down into the sea, but the boys came back, swarming up the sides like ants, and Cassie was dismayed to see the soldiers smash the children’s fingers with their rifle butts. She hadn’t realised ordinary men could be so cruel.

  Cassie and nine other ATS girls were going on to Alexandria. The periscopes of U-boats dogged their progress. When Italian bomber planes went screeching overhead, she clutched her holy medals, and she prayed.

  She had told Frances she didn’t know if she believed in God. But now she recognised the truth of the old saying from the previous conflict – there were no atheists in trenches.

  Or on troopships in the Med.

  She thought of Robert constantly. She wondered where he was, and if he was in action, if he was in danger, if he had been wounded. She didn’t allow herself to wonder if he might be killed.

  ‘Blessed Mother, please keep him safe,’ she prayed.

  She hoped her prayers might be answered, especially since nowadays she wasn’t asking for anything for herself.

  Thanks to the corvettes which kept the German submarines at bay, the convoy got to Alexandria more or less unscathed.

  Cassie and the other drivers, smartly turned out in their tropical kit and lugging heavy kitbags, were quickly disembarked, loaded on to an army truck, and taken to their quarters.

  ‘We’re going to see the Sphinx,’ said one girl, happy to be off the ship at last.

  Cassie wasn’t bothered about the Sphinx. She was looking forward to eating something tasty, and not seeing it come up again.

  ‘Look at all the bugs!’ exclaimed the red-haired Scottish girl, as she stared in horror at the squalid bedrooms in the white-washed villa which had been commandeered for their quarters.

  ‘Look at these beds!’ added another girl. ‘They’re absolutely crawling!’

  ‘We’ll need to burn these mattresses,’ said Cassie, eyeing the iron bedsteads with distaste, and wondering how many thousand bugs could be in all the nooks and crevices. ‘We could have a bonfire in the courtyard. We’ll stuff the cracks in all the bedsteads with cotton wool we’ve soaked in paraffin, and then set fire to it.’

  ‘How do you know what to do?’ enquired the Scottish girl, suspiciously.

  ‘I – I just know,’ said Cassie.

  She wasn’t going to tell them she’d seen even bigger bugs in Birmingham, or that where she came from the paraffin-and-cotton wool routine had been a regular event.

  ‘Settling in then, ladies?’ asked a harsh, deep voice.

  Cassie turned to see the owner of the voice was almost six feet tall. She had close-cropped grey hair, and wore a well-pressed skirt and jacket made of khaki drill, with major’s crowns upon the epaulettes.

  A dark-haired female sergeant accompanied the major, and now she brought the new girls to attention.

  ‘I’m Major Sheringham,’ the officer continued, as Cassie and the others stood as stiff as ramrods, staring straight ahead. ‘I’m your new commanding officer. Welcome to Alexandria.

  ‘Now, let’s get one thing understood. Do right by me, girls, and I’ll do right by you. You’ll find I’m firm, but fair.’

  She smiled down at Cassie. ‘Corporal, you don’t look big enough to drive a three-ton truck. But right now I need a girl to run my special errands, and I think you’d be ideal for me.’

  Chapter Ten

  The major told her sergeant to carry on, then left.

  ‘Looks like she means to have you, Corporal Taylor,’ said the sergeant, grinning. She told the new girls she’d been with the unit from the start, and so she knew the major very well.

  ‘Our Annie Sheringham,’ she added, ‘she’s always had a fancy for skinny little blondes. You mark my words, my girl. She’ll be in your knickers before you know what’s hit you.’

  Cassie shuddered. Since she’d joined the army, she had realised some girls liked other girls. Good luck to them, she’d thought, it takes all sorts.

  But she herself had never had the come-on from a woman, let alone an officer, and that would be one order she would definitely have to disobey.

  Then she would be court-martialled.

  Then she’d be on the next ship back to Blighty.

  Well, she told herself, that would please my granny, anyway.

  The new girls had three days to settle down, to get their land legs back, to look round Alexandria, and to get used to the heat.

  Anxious to avoid the major, Cassie joined in all the expeditions to the souks, she went to see the harbour, she walked along the promenades, she visited the catacombs, the churches and the mosques, and she went to see the Roman ruins.

  But her delight in this new, fascinating foreign place was tainted by the dread of getting a sudden summons from the major to come and run a special errand – whatever that might mean.

  ‘Sergeant Payne was kidding you, you gormless Brummie clot,’ said Jane MacFarlane, the red-haired, grey-eyed Scottish girl who had been so healthy on the boat. ‘God, don’t you know anything?’

  Jane knew flipping everything, thought Cassie. She had settled down in Alexandria straight away. She had lived in Egypt as a child, she had informed the rest of them, when Daddy was in the diplomatic service. She’d noticed Cassie pussy-footing around and looking nervous, and finally she’d managed to get
her to admit what she was worrying about.

  ‘The major’s got a girlfriend,’ Jane continued, laughing. ‘A horse-faced, black-haired woman from the shires. I saw her yesterday. She was in Annie’s office. Cass, she’s got a bosom like a bolster, and she looks like she could play at Twickenham. So, if Annie fancies toff brunettes with thighs like rugby centre-forwards, she’s hardly going tae take a shine to undernourished little blondes like you.’

  Cassie was relieved, but – undernourished little blonde, the nerve of it!

  She ached to smack the snooty Miss MacFarlane – or pull rank and put her on a charge for insolence. She couldn’t wait for training to begin.

  She’d show the lot of them.

  Rolling down her mosquito net that evening, she noticed Jane MacFarlane whispering to another girl, and heard them both start giggling.

  She thought, just let them wait.

  She lay down on her stomach and began to write a letter to Robert, telling him all about the voyage from England, and saying she was very glad to be on land again.

  She’d already written once, a short and dashed-off note to say she’d got there in one piece, but now she wrote and wrote, pages and pages, pouring out her heart to him.

  Robert wondered when the post would come, and if there’d be a letter from Cassie soon. Steve had written to tell him she’d applied for service overseas, and Robert found he didn’t like the thought of that at all.

  ‘She seemed very keen to get away,’ Stephen had said. ‘I think she’s either planning to track you down, or to sort out Rommel all by her little self.’

  Robert didn’t appreciate his brother’s flippancy. Cassie on a troopship was a horrifying thought. The Mediterranean was so bloody dangerous for shipping. If the Italian air force didn’t get you, the chances were the German navy would. Also, why was Steve so well-informed? Why hadn’t Cassie written to him herself?

  Letters go astray, he told himself – you know they do.

  But Stephen had liked Cassie from the start, from the first day she’d arrived in Melbury, and Cassie obviously liked Stephen, too. Stephen was in England, where Cassie was – presumably – at least for the time being?

  He wished he could get that stupid dream out of his head.

  When he finally got a letter saying she was in Alexandria, it was very short and to the point, merely telling him she’d arrived there safely, where she would be living, and adding she would be writing soon to tell him all about it.

  He waited for more letters anxiously, and they arrived – from Frances, Stephen and his mother. But Cassie didn’t write to him again.

  At six o’clock the following morning, the new girls were paraded for the major, then kitted out in short-sleeved khaki overalls, which did less than nothing for their figures.

  Then they were piled into an army truck and driven into the desert, a chilly, bleak and barren emptiness that made them shudder, and wonder why they’d volunteered for service overseas.

  ‘You’ll all be trained to drive a breakdown lorry,’ their instructor told them, as she looked her shivering, nervous charges up and down. ‘Vehicles have lots of accidents, they get blown up, or else they just conk out, and it’ll be your job to go and find them, then bring them home again.

  ‘You’ll be delivering them, too – moving jeeps and lorries and other kinds of transport all around the Middle East. So, first of all, you’ll need to get your bearings. You’ll need to get used to living in the desert. I’ll teach you some survival skills today.’

  People lived in the desert? As she gazed across the almost featureless wastes of grey-brown sand, Cassie thought she’d never find her way around this howling wilderness.

  The maps the girls were given all looked useless. They seemed to bear no relation to the landscape, which was made up of rocks and scrub and endless drifts of sand. This sand got whipped up by the wind to end up in your eyes, your ears, your clothes, your food, your hair. But somehow, everyone survived that first, long, tiring day.

  ‘God, it’s getting bloody cold,’ said one girl, as they put their tents up for their first night in the desert. ‘I thought it was always hot in Egypt.’

  ‘So did I,’ another girl said, shaking out her groundsheet – they’d been told to do this all the time, in case of scorpions and other things that bit. ‘In all the pictures in my Bible, it looks boiling, with everyone in long white robes or little pleated skirts.’

  ‘They got it wrong,’ said Cassie, and she shivered. She glanced at Jane MacFarlane, who was getting in a tangle with her guy ropes. ‘But I dare say Miss Know-It-All MacFarlane could enlighten us? Jane, why is it so hot here in the daytime, and why is it so flipping cold at night?’

  But Jane did not enlighten them. ‘I didnae think that we’d be doing stuff like this,’ she muttered, as she shook the sand out of her hair. Although she hadn’t been sick on the boat, reflected Cassie, now she was looking very sick indeed.

  ‘I volunteered for motor maintenance duties,’ she continued, anxiously. ‘I’ve no sense of direction. I cannae find my way to my own bed on a dark night. How am I going tae find my way round here?’

  Cassie knew real panic when she saw it. ‘They said in Alex that we always drive in convoys,’ she told Jane. ‘So you just make sure you’re not the last one in the convoy – that’s all you have to do. If you follow me, and I get lost, at least we’ll both be lost together.’

  ‘MacFarlane, Corporal Taylor?’ Sergeant Payne glowered angrily at Cassie. ‘Taylor, you should be putting up your tent, not gossiping. You’re an NCO. God alone knows why, but you could try to set a good example to the other girls.’

  It took a while to get her bearings, but Cassie soon began to memorise the features of the rough terrain. She noticed little differences in similar piles of rocks. She could find the roads, even when obscured by wind-blown sand. She found that she could reproduce the landscape on a map inside her head.

  On night patrols, she couldn’t help but notice all the different constellations. She’d heard of wise men following stars, of course, but hadn’t supposed that it was really possible to steer yourself by pinpricks in the sky.

  You couldn’t see stars in Smethwick, anyway. There was too much smoke from all the factories and other industries. But, out here in desert, the night sky was crystal clear, and studded with little clusters of friendly, glowing lights. She knew they would always lead her home.

  She passed the various tests of skill with ease. She mastered driving all the different vehicles used in deserts. She learned how to deal with all the usual things which could cause breakdowns, and how to hitch a conked-out vehicle to her breakdown lorry, then drive it back to base.

  She was soon leading convoys, taking jeeps to Cairo, and bringing lorries from Port Said.

  ‘I’ve never met a girl like you,’ one of the male sergeants at a transport depot told her, grinning. ‘You women, you don’t usually have a good sense of direction. But you seem to find your way around.’

  ‘I’m a freak,’ said Cassie, grinning back.

  ‘You’d need to be, to want to come out here, then drive all round the bloody Western Desert, when you could be tucked up in your bed in dear old Blighty.’

  But Cassie liked the desert. She grew to like the major, too. The CO stuck up for her girls and, even though she worked them hard, she saw to it they got their rest, as well.

  Major Sheringham always noticed when a girl was sick, depressed, upset or merely lonely, and got her sent back home, transferred or, if it was necessary, discharged.

  She was kind to Cassie, but in a motherly sort of way. Soon it became important to Cassie she should please the major. So, far from dreading being in the major’s company, Cassie enjoyed her running errand days, when she could wear a clean, smart uniform, not those awful khaki dungarees, and when she could drive the major and her own superiors all round Alexandria in a big black Humber staff car.

  When the troopships and supply ships came, bringing letters and presents from Britai
n, everyone in the unit got excited. But Cassie’s post was mostly rather dull. It was made up of yet more holy medals and more prayer cards from her granny, reminders to stay pure from Father Riley, gossipy little notes from Frances, and the occasional letter from Stephen Denham.

  The sight of Stephen’s writing made her feel uneasy, although she didn’t know why. She was fond of him, she wished him well, but – oh, she didn’t understand it, she didn’t know what to make of Stephen.

  She hadn’t heard from Rob for several weeks. But she tried not to worry. She told herself that things were going well along the coast. The Germans were hanging on and hanging on, but soon they’d be defeated – everybody said so.

  Field Marshal Rommel, whom the soldiers called the Desert Fox, was on the run.

  If Robert had been hurt or worse, somebody back in England would have surely written to let her know? Meanwhile, she kept the faith and wrote a letter almost every day, telling him what she was doing and saying she hoped they would be able to meet in Alexandria some time soon.

  Then, at the beginning of June, when she was almost ready to despair, she finally heard from him.

  ‘I have some leave,’ wrote Robert on a Forces postcard. ‘So I’m hoping to get a lift to Alex and to see you on the seventeenth.’

  ‘I never thought you’d make it,’ Cassie told him, gazing up at Robert in delight.

  Jane MacFarlane had opened the front door to him, and she’d called to Cassie with a giggle in her voice that there was some man here who was asking for a Corporal Taylor. Cassie had assumed it was the major’s runner with instructions for the following day. But it was not the runner – it was him.

  Robert was standing in the hallway of the white-washed villa, his tall shadow blocking out the sun, but she still couldn’t believe he might be real. She was afraid that if she touched him, he would vanish in a puff of smoke.

  On the day he’d told her he hoped to be in Alex, she’d been driving Major Sheringham all around the town. After she’d put the car to bed, she’d hurried back to the villa, had a bath and washed her hair, then got another girl to trim and set it.