As Time Goes By (19 page)

‘Keep on insulting my lads and it won’t just be your heart that’s bleeding,’ the sergeant warned him grimly. ‘And you can take that as a promise. Worth ten of the likes of you, they are, every one of them. There’s no one I’d sooner have in a tight spot with me.’

‘All right, keep yer hair on.’ The ARP man backed off.

‘Tell you what,’ the sergeant said softly, stubbing out the cigarette he had just lit. ‘How about you change places with them and let them do your
job for a week whilst you do theirs? We’ve only had three Noncombatant lads blown to bits so far this month, oh, and a couple who’ve lost a leg apiece. Had to work on round the lad who lost his leg the other day.’

The major was coming back. Worried that the sergeant might get into trouble, Sam stepped up to the major, saluting smartly as she did so.

‘Permission to speak, sir?’

‘Yes, what is it, Grey?’

‘Permission to ask Corporal Willett to check the oil tomorrow, sir?’

‘What? Oh yes, of course …’

The car’s oil didn’t really need changing but it was all Sam could think of on the spur of the moment to enable her to stand in between the major and the sergeant and thus give the latter a chance to send the ARP man on his way before he tried to complain to the major.

She had driven halfway back to the barracks before it occurred to her to ask herself just why she had felt it necessary to protect someone whom she disliked so heartily.

She might not care for the sergeant but there was no denying how much his men thought of him. And now she could see why. It shocked her to discover her own reluctant admiration for the stance he had taken over the ARP man’s comments. But that didn’t mean that she had changed her mind over anything else about him!

The room set aside as a sitting room for the girls had probably been both comfortable and warm when the house had been used as a home, but having been stripped of its furnishings once to become a schoolroom and then a second time when it was requisitioned, its shabby motley collection of second-hand chairs, none of which seemed to have been designed for comfort, and its thin threadbare rugs now gave it the air of an institution. Whatever colour its walls had once been, someone’s unskilled attempts to distemper them had turned them a streaky green that clashed horridly with the puce velvet armchairs either side of the fireplace. Their springs were damaged and one had to know how and where to sit on them if one didn’t want to risk feeling very uncomfortable. Half a dozen straight-backed wooden chairs with leather seats were scattered round the rest of the room, most of them empty as the off-duty girls tended to choose to sit on cushions on the floor instead.

Some wag had found from somewhere a particularly bad painting of Highland cattle grazing on a wet-looking Scottish hillside, which was hung above the marble fireplace. A very large fireplace, which currently contained a very small fire. The beasts were curiously badly proportioned, causing the girls to speculate on whether it was the artist’s sight that had been at fault or his skill.

Outside, the wind drove rain against the windows and rattled the wooden frames. The fire had a tendency to smoke when the wind was in the wrong direction, as it was today.

‘Oh, no,’ May wailed as someone opened the door from the passage, causing a sudden gust of smoke to billow from the fire just as she had carefully placed a piece of bread on a toasting fork over it. May was doing the toasting, then Hazel scraped margarine over the toasted bread.

‘Told you it was going to smoke and to wait a minute,’ Hazel laughed.

‘That was the last piece of bread as well,’ May mourned.

‘Grey, you’ve got a visitor,’ the uniformed girl standing in the doorway informed Sam briskly. ‘He’s at the front desk.’

‘He?’ May queried, looking questioningly at Sam, her toast forgotten. ‘Well, you’re a dark horse, aren’t you? You’ve never let on that you had a chap.’

‘I haven’t,’ Sam assured her, refusing to get up off the worn leather chair on which she had been sitting darning her stockings ready for the girls’ visit to the Grafton later on. It had been such a
wet day that they had decided not to go out for a meal prior to going to the Grafton but to make do instead in their billet and celebrate Hazel’s birthday with tea and toast.

The mention of a male visitor, even one not for her, had Lynsey, who had been plucking her eyebrows on the other side of the room, dropping her tweezers into her bag, and reaching for her lipstick instead. After applying fresh colour to her mouth, she retracted the lipstick and put the top back on before returning it to her bag along with her compact.

‘It’s Sam who’s got a visitor, Lynsey,’ May pointed out, but Lynsey was oblivious to the warning in her voice, because she put her bag down to smooth her hands through her hair, before getting up to check her skirt. Whilst Lynsey was getting ready to make an impression, Sam continued to darn her stockings, convinced that Elsie must have made a mistake, since she could not think of any male who was likely to come looking for her here.

‘What’s he look like then, Elsie?’ May demanded. ‘’Cos if he’s good-looking …’

‘Oh, he’s that all right,’ the girl who had made the announcement grinned, filching the last piece of toast. ‘Says he’s your brother, and that his name’s Russell. He’s wearing a fly boy uniform,’ she informed Sam with another grin.

‘Russ!’ Sam was up on her feet, her darning forgotten as she headed for the door.

But when she tried to close it behind her, May
hung on to it, demanding, ‘Bring him down here, Sam. We could do with a handsome chap to cheer us all up a bit.’

Sam could hear her brother’s laughter even before she reached the entrance hall and she wasn’t totally surprised to find him bantering teasingly with the girl on duty, her laughter and flushed cheeks showing how much she was enjoying it.

‘Russ, what on earth are you doing here?’ Sam demanded after they had exchanged hugs.

‘Unexpected leave, and since one of the chaps was driving up this way to see his family I thought I’d hitch a lift with him and see how you are going on.’

He was speaking lightly enough, but Sam guessed the truth from the way he was scrutinising her.

Moving out of earshot of the girl on duty she protested, ‘Mum wrote to you and told you about Mouse, didn’t she?’ She
knew
she shouldn’t have given in to her emotions and written to her mother, pouring her heart out about her sadness over Mouse’s death, Sally admitted. Of course she hadn’t told her mother everything – how could she after the statement she had given, especially knowing that it wasn’t always only overseas mail that was censored to make sure there wasn’t any material in it that could affect the security of the country. ‘I suppose she asked you to come and see me as well,’ she continued accusingly, without giving him any chance to say anything.

‘That’s right,’ Russell agreed. ‘And I told my CO that I had to have leave so that I could come up here and comfort my kid sister. Come on, Sammy, yes, Ma did write and tell me about your friend – poor kid – but you don’t really think I’d come rushing up here to hold your hand, do you? You’re a big girl now, this war is tough on all of us, and as a matter of fact if anyone needs their hand holding it’s me, not you. Lost three of our chaps and their planes on a night mission the other week. Pretty bloody show all round and those of us who got back only did so by the skins of our teeth. Had our own undercarriage shot half away.’

He was speaking lightly and self-mockingly, but Sam could see the pain behind his smile now.

‘Oh, Russ.’

‘Hey, Grey, I hope you aren’t keeping that good-looking fly boy all to yourself,’ a girl from one of the other dormitories joked as she walked past.

‘Come on,’ Sam urged her brother, ‘we’re celebrating our corporal’s birthday with tea and toast, and the girls will never forgive me if I don’t take you down and introduce you to them.’

Tucking her arm through his, Sam led the way to the sitting room. Her brother was a handsome young man with a twinkle in his eyes and a personable, easy-going nature, and so she wasn’t surprised when the other girls clustered round him, wanting to be introduced, but what did surprise her was to see him half an hour later deep in conversation with Hazel, the two of them so engrossed in their
shared conversation that they seemed to have forgotten about the rest of them.

‘Well, Hazel’s certainly taken to your brother,’ May commented. ‘Has he got a steady girl?’

‘Not so far as I know,’ Sam answered.

‘Might be a good idea then to ask him to come along with us this evening. He’s certainly cheered Hazel up.’

May was right, Sam acknowledged, but before she could say anything Hazel beckoned her over and told her slightly pink-cheeked, ‘Russell was saying that he’s going to be at a bit of a loose end this evening, so I’ve invited him to join us at the Grafton.’

‘Great minds think alike,’ Sam quipped. ‘I was just about to ask you if you minded if he came along.’

‘Have you warned him that he’ll be expected to ask us all for a dance?’ May asked, coming over to join them just in time to catch the end of their conversation.

‘Why do you think I urged Sam to join the ATS, if it wasn’t so that I could have the prettiest dance partners?’ Russell joked back.

‘So you’re enjoying driving for this major then, I take it?’ Russell asked Sam as she walked down to the bus stop with him a couple of hours later so that he could go back to his billet to get changed for the evening. ‘Ma will be pleased to hear that.’

They exchanged understanding looks. As children they had had a pact about not telling their
parents about the things they got up to that might worry them and that pact still existed even if neither of them referred to it any more.

‘I am enjoying it,’ Sam confirmed. There was no need to tell her brother about Sergeant Everton and the volatile atmosphere they seemed to create whenever they were together.

Head down against the rain, Sam tucked her arm through her brother’s as he held the umbrella May had loaned them. The wind and rain weren’t conducive to either a leisurely walk or a great deal of conversation.

‘The other girls seem good sorts,’ Russell commented as they neared the bus stop.

‘They are, especially Hazel,’ Sam agreed. There was no need to say anything about Lynsey. Sam had been surprised and then relieved when her brother hadn’t paid any attention to Lynsey, despite her attempts to engage him in conversation. Once Russell had been talking with Hazel, Lynsey had flounced out of the room, announcing that she was going out.

‘She’s been a brick, especially considering she’s had her own problems to cope with.’

‘Oh? What kind of problems?’

So she hadn’t been mistaken in thinking that her brother had been rather taken with Hazel, Sam reflected as she saw how keen he was to know more about her.

‘A chap who treated her badly and who wasn’t good enough for her,’ she answered as they reached the bus stop and stood there together under the
umbrella. ‘We were all glad when she decided to end it with him, but it’s left her feeling a bit blue.’

Luckily they were the only ones at the bus stop so they were able to talk openly, without being overheard.

‘So there’s no one at the moment then?’ Russell pressed her.

His attempt to sound casual was nowhere near good enough to deceive a sister.

‘That’s right,’ Sam agreed, taking pity on him as she added, ‘I think it would cheer her up no end if you were to ask her to dance with you tonight, Russ.’

‘If I can get a look in. A dashed pretty girl like her is bound to have chaps queuing up to dance with her once it gets round that she’s not attached.’

Sam had never heard her brother sound or look so enthusiastic about any girl, and there had been plenty of pretty girls chasing him even before he had joined the RAF, so she found herself doing the kind of thing she had always laughed at her mother for doing, and getting involved in the kind of female mental arithmetic that involved adding two and two together to get five, adding a good pinch of sisterly intuition and then wondering if there might be a possibility that Hazel and Russ could really take to one another and become ‘an item’. If so, she certainly wouldn’t be complaining.

‘Come on, Lynsey, the rest of us are ready, and if we don’t get this next bus we’re going to end up
not even getting into the Grafton, never mind getting good seats.’

‘Well, it’s not my fault that it came on to rain so heavily it soaked right through my coat and shoes, is it?’

‘You should have known it was daft going out in those flimsy things,’ May retorted. ‘Especially when we could all see how hard it was raining. You’d have done better staying in with us instead of going chasing after that sergeant, just ’cos you’d heard he sometimes goes in that Joe Lyons near Lime Street Station. Even if he had been there, there’d have been that many of them nippy waitresses wanting to serve him you wouldn’t have got a look in anyway.’

‘That wasn’t why I went out, and don’t you go saying it was. I’m getting sick of you keeping on saying I’m chasing after Johnny when it’s not true. Huh, if anyone’s doing any chasing it’s you lot, making all that song and dance like you’d never seen a man before when Sam’s brother was here earlier. I dunno why everyone makes such a fuss about the RAF.’

‘So you saw your sergeant then, did you?’

‘No I didn’t! Aren’t you listening to me? I just told you that wasn’t why I went out. I’d heard they’d got face powder on sale in one of the shops, and I thought I’d try and get some.’

‘Did you?’

‘No, they’d sold out by the time I got there.’

‘Aren’t you ready yet, Lynsey?’ Hazel demanded.

‘I’ve just told her that she’s going to make us
late. Well, don’t you look a treat Hazel?’ May said admiringly, causing everyone else in the dormitory to look at their corporal. ‘You’ll put the rest of us to shame.’

Hazel did look lovely, Sam agreed. She was wearing a taffeta frock in a rich emerald-green that complemented her colouring, its boned, strapless bodice showing off Hazel’s pretty shoulders and
décolletage
. She had styled her hair to curl softly onto her shoulders and darkened her eyelashes to show off their length, and she was wearing the pretty flower-shaped costume jewellery brooch the girls had clubbed together to buy her for her birthday.

‘You don’t think I’ve overdone it, do you?’ she asked anxiously.

Immediately the girls gave a chorus of reassuring denials, Sam adding, ‘It is your birthday, after all.’

Sam was wearing the dress she had borrowed from Hazel the last time they had gone to the Grafton. She was also wearing Mouse’s belt, Mouse having insisted that she keep it. She had almost not done so, but then she had reasoned that Mouse would have wanted her to wear it and that by doing so she was in one way keeping Mouse with them, and fresh in her own memory. And that surely was the very best way of honouring her friend.

‘You know, I reckon that Lynsey is going to come a cropper with that sergeant. I’ve never seen her like this before. Mind you, it will do her good, I reckon,’ May told Sam half an hour later when
they all finally got off the bus to queue up outside the Grafton, wrapped in their heavy ATS coats and clustering together under umbrellas. ‘Here’s your brother,’ she added, giving Sam a nudge. ‘Bet you sixpence he stops to have a word with Hazel.’

Sam laughed and shook her head, and sure enough the moment Russell saw Hazel he went over to her.

‘I hope you’ve warned him that she’s bin through a bad time and that the last thing she wants is another chap who’s going to mess her around,’ May told Sam sternly.

‘Yes, I have.’

‘Not that he looks that sort.’

‘He isn’t,’ Sam confirmed.