As Time Goes By (14 page)

‘If you’re saying that I’m not a fit mother …’

The silence that followed her challenge made Sally’s face burn.

‘By your own admission you work long factory shifts, in addition to which you go out at night. That hardly leaves you with much time to spend with your sons.’

‘I’m not having them evacuated,’ Sally told him fiercely. ‘And no one is going to make me.’ Her heart was thumping unsteadily, driven by a mixture of anger, fear and guilt.

‘Then maybe you should consider altering your own life to make sure that your children are properly cared for.’

‘They are properly cared for.’

‘And that you, their mother, are there when they need her,’ he continued, ignoring her. ‘You work in a factory when you don’t need to, and then—’

‘Who are you to say what I do and don’t need to do?’ Sally was beside herself with emotion. ‘Obviously you have a wonderful perfect wife, who doesn’t need to work and who would never leave your sons to go out anywhere, especially not a dance hall, but I’m not her and my life isn’t hers, so why don’t you go home to her right now, and tell her what a dreadful mother I am, and leave me to bring up my sons as I think? What… let go of me.’ Sally demanded furiously when he suddenly took hold of her, gripping her upper arms so tightly that it hurt as he shook her, and told her savagely, ‘Can’t you see how you are endangering them, you stupid woman?’ He released her abruptly, turning his back on her.

‘Women like you should not be allowed to have children,’ he told her bitingly, heading for the door.

‘Just because I’m not like your wife that doesn’t mean that I’m not a good mother, and I’m not having you or anyone else saying any different. My boys are hungry, and I dare say your wife will have your own dinner waiting for you, unless of course you’ve gone and made her evacuate herself and your kiddies to the country …’

‘My wife and my sons are dead.’

Sally stared at him. A heavy silence filled the room, broken only by the hiss of the rain coming down the chimney onto the burning coal.

‘I must go,’ Dr Ross told her. ‘If you do remember the source of that fish paste, please let me know.’

‘I asked you if you would tell us what you know now about Private Hatton and if she had communicated to you anything that denoted that she might not be of sound mind. I appreciate that naturally what has happened has been a shock for you, Private Grey, but I would – indeed, I must – ask you to consider very carefully how much loyalty to a friend has guided your words.’

The captain was speaking quietly and very sternly.

Sam had no idea how long ago it was now since she had finally managed to open the warrant officer’s office door and had found Mouse. Half an hour … an hour … She had lost all sense of time, her thoughts weighed down by leaden misery.

‘Everything I’ve said is the truth,’ she answered the captain bleakly. ‘The warrant officer picked on Mouse horribly. She made Mouse feel that she couldn’t take it any more.’

‘She told you that?’

‘Not in so many words,’ Sam had to admit, ‘but we could all see the state she was in, and we all knew why.’

Sam knew that it was almost unheard of for a lowly private to speak out as she was doing, but she had to do so for Mouse’s sake. Only she knew how much she blamed herself for not having guessed what Mouse was planning to do, and somehow been able to stop it. Had she been there when Lynsey had lost her temper with Mouse and told her to go and ask Toadie for her bear back, she knew she would have made sure that Mouse did no such thing, but Lynsey, of course, had no idea about the bear’s fate.

‘You are making what amounts to a very serious accusation against a senior officer, Private, and I would ask you again to look very carefully into your own heart – and memory. When our emotions are disturbed we can all make assumptions and judgements that are not as correct as we like to think. We understand that when young women first join up and wear a uniform it can take some time for them to adapt to Forces life and its rules and regulations. The attitude of those in charge can seem harsher than one is used to in civilian life, but it is there for a purpose and that purpose is to train you all into a cohesive unit fit to work for the defence of this country. Inexperienced privates such as yourself cannot know and see as others can the very sound reasoning behind certain methods of discipline. You have told us about Private Hatton’s distress at the removal of a teddy bear she brought here with her. Maybe to you this seems an unnecessary and even a harsh act, but I would say to you that it is a vitally important
part of what you all must learn, and that is immediate obedience to orders. I would suggest to you therefore that what you witnessed in the warrant officer was simply a normal part of that learning process.’

Sam could hear the censure in the captain’s voice but she had to stand up for her friend and defend her. ‘I understand what you are saying, ma’am—’

‘Good, then we will consider the matter closed.’

‘But I do know what I saw. And I did see what Warrant Officer Sands had done to Mouse’s bear. We could
all
see that Mouse wasn’t strong enough to cope,’ Sam rushed on, trying not to feel cowed by the captain’s obvious displeasure. If
she
didn’t stick up for poor Mouse then who would? How could she square her conscience if she didn’t at least try to defend her? ‘Mouse never wanted to join the ATS, you see. She’d been forced into it by her aunt. She told me that her bear had been given to her by her mother and that she treasured it because of that. She was terrified of the warrant officer and yet she was so desperate to get the bear back that she went to her to ask for it.’ Sam could feel the tears threatening to clog the back of her throat.

The captain was looking at her very grimly. ‘I see. We’ll start again, shall we? Now, Private Grey, knowing that Private Hatton was suffering from personal worries, you felt that it was your duty to seek out Warrant Officer Sands and alert her to Private Hatton’s disturbed state of mind.’

Sam was too shocked to conceal her feelings. ‘No! I would never have betrayed poor Mouse to—’

As though Sam hadn’t spoken the captain continued, ‘I seem to be having difficulty making myself clear to you, Private. Obviously there will have to be a full report on the whole matter, which will naturally include a statement from you. Once written and filed, such a statement can never be unwritten, Private Grey, and remains to dog us and sometimes to damn us for the rest of our lives. I should warn you that contained in the verbal and informal statement you have just given me there are accusations which, if formalised, will do a great deal of damage to yourself as well as to others. People who let the side down and tell tales on others are not well thought of in the Forces. Now, I fully accept that you have had a bad shock. Therefore I shall consider that this talk between us has not taken place, other than for the purpose of my informing you that I shall speak to you again tomorrow when you have had the chance to think clearly about where your loyalties should lie.’

The captain wanted her to change her story, Sam realised.

‘Someone will escort you to the sickbay where you are to spend the night.’

‘The sickbay? But—’

‘Until this matter has been examined in more detail I would ask you not to discuss it with anyone else. Dismissed.’

Automatically Sam stood up and saluted her,
but she couldn’t stop herself from asking one anguished question. ‘What will happen … to … I mean … she doesn’t have anyone of her own, and—’

‘Thank you for your co-operation, Private. That is all.’

The captain plainly wasn’t going to answer her.

No sooner was she outside the captain’s office and in the corridor than the medical officer’s corporal arrived to tell her that she was taking her straight to the small sickbay, where she would be spending the night.

‘MO’s orders,’ she informed Sam.

‘Here you are, take this.’ The corporal handed Sam a cup of cocoa. ‘We’ve sent down to your dormitory for your night things.’

‘My friend Mouse, the girl—’ Sam began, but the corporal shook her head.

‘Sorry, but we’re under strict orders not to discuss it. I’ll leave you to drink your cocoa.’

The small sickbay felt lonely after the bustle of the dormitory, and tonight the last thing Sam felt like doing was sleeping here alone. Poor Mouse. Had she been planning to take her own life when she had gone to see Toadie, or had it been a sudden decision made in the darkness of her anguish about her bear? If only she, Sam, had been here to stop her from going to see the warrant officer. But she hadn’t been, and because of that Mouse was dead. What would happen now? Suicide was against the law.

The door suddenly opened.

‘Hazel!’ Sam exclaimed in relief.

‘I’ve brought you your things,’ the corporal told her.

‘I’m so glad to see you,’ Sam said emotionally. ‘I wanted to come back to the dorm, but they won’t let me. And, Hazel, the captain asked me to tell her what I knew about Mouse but when I did … She hasn’t said so in as many words but I know she doesn’t want me to mention Toadie in the formal statement I’ve got to make, but it was because of Toadie …’

Hazel sat down on one of the spare beds next to her and said quietly, ‘Look, Sam, I know how you must feel about Mouse and how fond of her you were but, in all honesty, if I were you I would think very seriously about what the captain has said.’

‘You mean you agree with her? How can you when you know what poor Mouse went through?’

‘Sam, I shouldn’t really be telling you this, but every now and again a girl joins up who shouldn’t have done and sometimes she’s silly enough to talk about being so miserable that she can’t bear things any more. Perhaps she’s used to having a lot more attention paid to her at home than she will get in uniform. More often than not that kind of girl goes out and buys a large bottle of aspirin, which she makes sure the other girls see. Sometimes she takes enough aspirin from that bottle to make herself unwell; sometimes she just talks about “ending it all”. For the rest of us, those of us who
have joined up to do our duty and not to make a fuss about ourselves, the outcome is always the same: her silly behaviour has tarnished our reputation.’

Sam had never heard Hazel speak so critically or unsympathetically, and it shocked her. ‘But Mouse wasn’t like that – you know that, Hazel,’ she protested.

Hazel shook her head. ‘This is the ATS, Sam, not a nursery. It’s up to all of us to find a way of fitting in here, and those who can’t or don’t cause a lot of problems for themselves and everyone else. You may not have realised it, but Mouse wasn’t exactly popular with the other girls.’

‘You mean she wasn’t popular with Lynsey,’ Sam burst out.

Ignoring her outburst Hazel continued coolly, ‘Anyone who draws officer attention to herself the way that Mouse did is seen as a problem by the other members of her unit, because that attention is turned on them as well. Several of the girls have told me privately that they couldn’t understand why she had brought a nursery toy into the ATS with her in the first place, and I’m afraid that whilst everyone is shocked by what’s happened, the general feeling is that whilst Toadie may have picked on Mouse, she made things far worse for herself than they need have been. Now we’re all in danger of being tainted by the shocking thing she’s done, of being thought of as not up to the mark, and are a potential cause of damage to the service because of that. It will take
a long time for our dorm to live this incident down, I can tell you.

‘I’m going on leave tomorrow morning, but when I come back I intend to make sure that the rest of us put our backs into reversing the damage Mouse has done to us all. Not that there will be any public reference to it. The powers that be can’t afford to have it get into the newspapers that a serving member of the ATS was so lacking in backbone that she took her own life. The people of this country need to believe in the strength of the Government and those who represent it, which in a small way we in the ATS do. We all have our loyalty to our friends, of course, but our first and greater loyalty is to the ATS and to this country, and any girl who forgets that fact is not fit to serve in uniform, in my opinion.’

Sam was still too much in shock to say anything.

‘Personally,’ Hazel continued, ‘I think it’s a great shame that the MO didn’t dismiss her as unfit for service right from the start, but I’ve been given to understand that when the matter was raised with her she pleaded not to be sent home and to be given a second chance.’

Finally Sam managed to struggle through her shock to defend her friend. ‘You know how Toadie bullied poor Mouse.’

‘What I know is that a member of my dormitory has done something that is unforgivable, and I would suggest
you
now need to think a bit more about others and a lot less about one silly weak young woman,’ Hazel told her. ‘By taking her own
life, Mouse could undermine the morale of other girls here. That can’t be allowed to happen. The services aren’t about individuals and their needs, Sam, they’re about the whole service working together to save our country.’

Sam looked blindly at the wall. She had thought of Hazel as a chum, but the way she was talking made Sam feel like an outsider and very alone.

‘I did try to warn you about not getting too involved with Mouse. Of course your loyalty to a friend is understandable but, like I’ve just said, that kind of loyalty must never come before your loyalty to the ATS and to our country,’ Hazel warned her sternly. ‘Surely you can see the harm it would do, not just to those of us billeted here, but to the whole of the ATS if one of its number were to start making accusations that the actions of an officer led to a girl taking her own life. I’m not just speaking to you as a corporal, Sam. I like you; you’re made of the right stuff.’

‘You want me to lie to protect Toadie.’

Hazel shook her head. ‘Have you thought of what will happen to you if other statements are taken, which they will be, and they do not tally with your own? I’ve already heard girls saying that they suspected that Mouse was unbalanced and inclined to be hysterical. I’ve even heard talk of some girls having heard her say openly that she intended to take her own life. I heard her say myself that she no longer wanted to go on living.’