A Summer Promise (23 page)

Gran heaved the extra blanket Eileen O’Halloran had given her up over her shoulders, then opened one eye to peer at her alarm clock. The light coming through the window was what she would have called ‘snowlight’, for it had been a shocking winter and though it was mid-February there had been no sign of a thaw, the snow simply continuing to fall and build into mighty drifts through which Declan O’Halloran made his way weekly to fetch their rations from Mrs Foulks at the shop. They had chosen to register with her even before the bad weather started, and now they were glad they had done so. It saved them the long trek into town, and if anything was available off ration, Gran was sure that the postmistress made certain that they got their share. But now, as she lay in her cosy nest, Gran considered what her next move should be. The previous autumn Eileen had encouraged her to get up and cook their breakfast porridge, make a large pot of tea and do any other small tasks of which she was capable.

‘’Tis good for you. ’Tis what the good Dr Carlton calls “keeping mobile”,’ the Irish woman had said instructively. ‘Them blessed ’vacuees will give a hand if forced to do so, but ’tis easier all round if we keep the cooking in our own hands. Kids can’t cook, and what wi’ rationing and shortages us can’t afford to let the kids experiment, not when it means ruining good grub.’

Gran had heartily agreed with this sentiment, for she was a good and inventive cook herself, but she was not so sure about getting breakfast. She hated early rising and thought wistfully that, had Maddy still been at home to prepare it, she herself could have remained in her warm bed until hunger drove her down the stairs and into the kitchen. Declan always lit the stove as soon as he was up, and Eileen would have been on hand to help her dress.

But Maddy, impudent granddaughter that she was, had taken herself off, first into that aeroplane factory and now into the ATS. Gran tutted and punched her pillow. Self, self, self, that was the young of today; if Maddy wanted to help with the war effort why couldn’t she have come back home and worked at Larkspur? True, they did have a couple of land girls, but they lived in one of the farm cottages which had once belonged to the Hall. Gran scarcely ever saw them, and when she did, though they were polite enough, they took little interest in an old lady whose sole contribution to the war effort seemed to be ordering the evacuees to collect eggs, take food to the pigs in the sties or, when the weather was clement, attack the weeds which grew up between the rows of vegetables in the kitchen garden.

Gran sighed deeply, and was still considering whether she might put a toe out of bed and shout for Eileen when her bedroom door shot open – without so much as a knock, she thought sourly – and Herbert’s comical face appeared in the aperture. ‘Are you goin’ to gerrup, Miz Hebditch?’ he enquired. ‘Only the porridge is ready and Miz O’Halloran wants us to take the sledge into the village for to get our rations. School’s still closed, so Sid, Monty and meself said we’d go, and we want a note and your pension book, ’cos you’ve not drawn it, your pension I mean, since the snow got bad.’

Gran sighed and sat up. She had begun to say that the postmistress would sign for the pension when she remembered that her teeth were still reposing in the glass by her bed and drew the sheet up across her mouth. ‘All right, all right, I hear you,’ she said rather thickly. ‘And now just you bugger off and send Eileen up here, ’cos I can’t dress in the kitchen if you kids are still in there.’

‘Why not? I suppose you think the sight of your glorious body would strike us blind,’ Herbert said, giggling. ‘Want any help to get down them stairs?’

Gran drew herself up haughtily and the sheet fell down, revealing her toothless gums. Herbert, a thoughtful boy, bent down and lifted the sheet into its position just above her button nose. ‘You forgot your yashmak,’ he said kindly. ‘Oh, and I forgot to tell you there’s a letter for you from Maddy. I ’spect it’s to give you her new address. That Marigold has joined up as well, and her mam told Miz Foulks that she was in a training camp somewhere in the north.’ He chuckled hoarsely. ‘Bet it’s even colder up there than it is down here! Now, are you going to get up, or should I tell Miz O’Halloran you’ll be down later?’

Gran wriggled her toes and thought about it, but her hot water bottle was as near cold as made no difference, and though Eileen was always careful to accede to any requests she might make, her disapproval could take the form of a refusal to give Gran a second helping of porridge, or a decision to withhold from the old woman the scrambled goose eggs which the O’Hallorans might be about to enjoy. She was still considering the miseries of dressing in her ice-cold bedroom instead of in the warm kitchen when Herbert decided to take a hand. He seized the blankets in one grimy hand and ignored Gran’s horrified squawk. ‘Are you going to get up or not?’ he enquired baldly. ‘Me and the lads mean to get to the village and back by elevenses time so you’d best make up your mind pronto.’

Gran narrowed her eyes at him; she longed to say something cutting, something that would teach him not to try his luck too far, but she was hampered by her lack of teeth. Only Maddy and that teacher of hers – what was her name? Miss Budgie, was it? – had ever seen her with her gnashers not in place and she did not intend the impudent Herbert to join their number. So she retained her grip on the sheet and ordered him to leave the room at once. ‘Bugger off, you cheeky varmint,’ she said thickly. ‘Tell Mrs O’Halloran I shall start to dress immediate, but could do with a hand.’

Herbert giggled. ‘And a full set of choppers,’ he said cheekily. ‘I ’spect Mrs O’Halloran will be up as soon as I tell her you’re gettin’ dressed.’

‘Shut the door behind you when you go,’ Gran ordered haughtily, but what with the sheet across her mouth and the absence of teeth it didn’t sound nearly as impressive as it was meant to, and neither did Herbert obey her command. Gran sighed and swung her feet in their fluffy pink bedsocks on to the floor. The cold bit like a knife and she seized her dressing gown and bundled herself into it, then went to pour water from the jug into the ewer, only to find it solid ice. Oh, bugger, she thought irritably. She trundled out of the room and stood at the head of the stairs. ‘Eileen, I need you,’ she called peremptorily. ‘Come at once,
hif
you please.’

There was an appreciable pause before Eileen answered her, and Gran thought the other woman’s tone was one of suppressed impatience. ‘It’s all right, Mrs Hebditch, you can come down now,’ she called. ‘The lads have took your pension book and me list of grub what we need and gone, so you can dress down here in the warm, same as you do when they’re off to school.’

Gran gave a grunt of satisfaction, picked up her clothes and descended the stairs with all her usual caution; she had hurried once, long ago, and could still remember the pain of her wrenched knee. She did not intend to let that happen again. She reached the kitchen and glanced approvingly at the fire roaring in the stove and the big pan of porridge bubbling gently on the hob.

Eileen greeted her politely but added cheerfully: ‘Bad weather for bombers; bad weather for fighters come to that an’ all, Mrs Hebditch. In fact, you might call it bad weather for war.’

Gran grunted. She knew they had been lucky because they lived deep in the country, which was why they had been blessed – or cursed – with evacuees. No government in their senses would send children to safety without first checking out the area, and though over two years had elapsed since Mr Chamberlain’s announcement, life at Larkspur had gone on much as usual. To be sure they had suffered from rationing and shortages – Gran had made that horrible object, a Woolton pie, on more than one occasion – but they had not suffered from the constant bombing raids which had become a way of life to Londoners. Along with a great many other country folk, they had a secret pig, unknown to the Ministry, which provided them with bacon and salt pork for most of the year, and though they had to hand over a proportion of the food they grew Declan always made sure that the majority of such food was hidden away when the inspectors called.

Eileen, standing at the range, raised her brows at Gran. ‘Are you goin’ to have porridge first, or get dressed? The kids won’t be back for an hour or two, so you can choose.’

Gran considered. Eileen was not much of a cook, her pastry was hard and her loaves were uninspired, but anyone, Gran told herself, could make porridge. She crossed the room slowly and sat down in her favourite chair. ‘Breakfast,’ she said briefly. ‘I need my grub to keep me going.’

For one awful moment Eileen was tempted to rap on the table with her serving spoon and say ‘Whatever happened to “please”?’ But then she remembered that this was Gran’s house and she herself was, after all, simply a paid – underpaid – employee.

‘Porridge it is,’ she said therefore, biting back the unwise words. ‘And we might run to a boiled egg afterwards, provided the kids don’t come back early and demand their share. Can you eat a boiled egg?’ She saw how the old woman’s eyes gleamed at the prospect and grinned to herself. The way to Gran’s heart was certainly through her stomach, but the older woman did not give her the satisfaction of showing enthusiasm.

‘Hens must be laying well for you to offer me a breakfast egg,’ she said, and there was suspicion in her tone. ‘Still an’ all if you’re offering, it’d make a change from burnt toast.’

For the first fortnight at the Durham camp, Maddy and Marigold told each other that the factory had been a piece of cake compared to this. They worked, and worked hard, from the moment reveille sounded until they fell into their beds at night. That first NAAFI dance looked like being their last, for neither of them had the energy to do anything but sleep once the day’s activities were over.

At the end of the second week, however, whilst they ate the never-ending stew provided by the cookhouse, they discussed what they had learned and how useful or otherwise their training had been so far with a couple of other girls from their intake. Every day started with drill, regardless of weather conditions, and would do so for their entire time in the ATS, even though the drill was becoming so familiar that they could have performed it in their sleep. Then there was learning the Morse code, and naturally they could see the point of that, though they wished the sergeant in charge wouldn’t talk to them as though they were idiots.

‘By the time you leave here you will read the Morse code as easily as you read a letter from your mum and dad,’ he had told them. ‘It’s the same with aircraft recognition; you’ll know not just our planes but the German ones too, because there’s talk of some of you going to the ack-ack batteries.’ He had laughed. ‘Personally I doubt that – girls on perishin’ guns indeed! But if it did happen you’d simply have to know friend from foe, ’cos we’re in enough trouble without some stupid girl shouting “On target” when a Spitfire strays across the beam.’

‘I hated drill at first, but now I don’t mind it so much,’ Maddy confessed. ‘If only we didn’t have to drill in all weathers . . . and we’d be a lot healthier if they could let us have brekker first . . .’

The girl sitting next to Marigold, Jane Shepherd, laughed bitterly. ‘If only the high-ups were forced to drill in a snowstorm, you mean,’ she said. ‘Some things you can see a reason for, but others . . . well, you begin to wonder if most of the officers and NCOs have a grudge against women, the way they treat us. And I’d like to know why we have so many injections . . . my arm nearly fell off last time. I was at the end of the line and the needle was as blunt as anything . . .’

‘My feller joined the army in ’39, and he moaned about what he called “bull”, but that was just because he didn’t like having to polish his buttons and keep his uniform tidy,’ a tall girl with roughly cropped black hair – she had cut it herself with blunt nail scissors – said ruefully. ‘Sometimes I think you’re right and the officers and NCOs do have a grudge against women – all women – because they seem to
enjoy
treating us like dirt, even when we’re doing something right.’

‘But everyone says the first month – the training month – is always the worst,’ the small girl who had the bed next to Maddy’s put in rather shyly. ‘My sister Mavis joined up the day after war was declared and she’s had a pretty rough ride, or did have, rather. But she had a lucky break, at least I suppose you could call it that; she does, at any rate. She had to drive a major to an important meeting because his regular driver was taken ill with a funny tummy, and halfway to the meeting the car broke down. The major started effing and blinding, saying there would be hell to pay if he didn’t reach the camp in time to attend the meeting, and was all for thumbing a lift, but it was a minor road and deserted, so Mave hopped out of the car, lifted the bonnet, cleaned the spark plugs, hopped back into the car again, pulled the starter and the engine fired. The major was so impressed that he made her his permanent driver, and now not even the other officers dare to get on the wrong side of her. So you see, you can be lucky.’

‘But we shouldn’t have to rely on luck,’ the dark-haired girl said thoughtfully. ‘Have you heard the one about the executive who needed a secretary, so he went to the personnel officer and asked for a recommendation? The personnel officer sent him three girls, one who had a shorthand speed of one hundred and forty words per minute, one who spoke four languages so fluently that she sounded like a native and one who had a degree in English language and was, in fact, a professor. The executive interviewed all three and then sent for the personnel officer. “Well, which one would suit you best?” the personnel officer asked the executive, “the young lady with four languages, the one with excellent typing skills or the one with the degree in English language?” And the executive said: “I’ll have the blonde in the pink jumper.”’

Everyone laughed, though with some reluctance. ‘Yes, we get the point,’ Maddy said. She indicated the girl whose sister drove the officer with a jerk of her thumb. ‘I don’t deny that Pasfield’s sister got the job because she was an efficient motor mechanic as well as a good driver, but it might easily have gone the other way. The major might have blamed her for the car’s bad performance – it happens all too often, as we know – and then where would she be? Back in the motor pool and you can bet your bottom dollar that she would have been picked on by every man in the unit.’