As Time Goes By (21 page)

It was funny how it took only one thing to change, for others not really related to it to change as well, Sam reflected tiredly but happily as she made her way past the stores – until recently the cause and the scene of so much anger for her, and so much misery for poor Mouse. It seemed almost impossible to imagine now that such a very short time ago she had been on the point of requesting a transfer, so convinced had she been that she did not fit in and that she could not make a decent contribution to the war here in this posting. It was true that she would never be able to forget – or to forgive – the cruelty that had led to Mouse taking her own life, nor to regret that she had not been able to do something to prevent that tragedy and waste, but her alienation from the other girls, and the bleakness and despair she had felt had all miraculously been dissolved by her involvement in her new duties. Whoever it was who had put her forward for those duties – and she had a pretty shrewd idea she knew who that was now, the
corporal having semi let the cat out of the bag by telling her that he had heard that ‘someone’ who had seen her at work and had felt she would be perfect for the job, had urged the major to give her a chance – had done her the best kind of favour.

There wasn’t a morning now when she didn’t wake up looking forward to the day ahead, and the challenges she knew it would bring. She and the Bentley had acknowledged a grudging respect for one another, and she was beginning to be able to interpret the meaning of at least some of the major’s absorbed silences as he studied various bomb sites, and to understand how proud he was of the men under his command for their record not just of bomb disposal but also for their calmness and discipline under pressure.

She had just drawn level with the entrance to the stores when she saw a familiar figure emerging from them. Sergeant Brookes. Her heart leaped with gratitude. Here surely was the ideal opportunity to thank him for recommending her for her new duties.

Hurrying across to him, she called out, ‘Sergeant Brookes.’

‘Sam,’ he responded warmly. ‘How are you doing? How’s it working out driving for the major?’

‘I love it,’ Sam assured him. ‘I can’t think of anything I’d want to do more. Oh, I’m so glad I’ve seen you. I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done, recommending me when the position became vacant, and everything.’

‘Me recommend you?’ He shook his head, and
gave her a rueful look. ‘I’m not the one you should be thanking. It was Johnny’s idea. All I did was agree with him that I thought the work involved would appeal to you.’

A handful of seconds ticked by and then a few more whilst Sam grappled with her shock.

‘You mean it wasn’t you who recommended me, it was Sergeant Everton?’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ the sergeant confirmed cheerfully.

‘Sergeant Everton?’ Sam repeated unsteadily. ‘But …’ But that’s not possible, she had been about to say, but of course she couldn’t. ‘But why would he do that?’ she asked instead.

‘Why don’t you ask him?’ Sergeant Brookes suggested. ‘Here he is now.’

Sam turned round, dismayed to see the sergeant making his way towards them. Before she could do or say anything to stop him, Sergeant Brookes was hailing him.

‘I was saying to Sam here, Johnny, that you’re the one she needs to thank for recommending her for her new posting, not me.’

Despite the dour look the sergeant was giving her, Sam knew that it must be true. Sergeant Brookes was hardly likely to lie, which meant … which meant that she owed Sergeant Everton a huge debt of gratitude. Sergeant Everton, who always seemed to manage to be there when she was saying or doing the wrong thing, and who always managed to let her know it with that look that he gave her. He must really be enjoying this.
How it made her pride sting even to think of being in any kind of debt to him. She would have to grit her teeth and thank him, of course – it was unthinkable that she didn’t – but she felt the same revulsion at the thought of having to do so that children felt towards the daily spoonful of cod liver oil the Government was so insistent they should have. Oh, why, why had this had to happen to her? She wanted to crawl away somewhere and stay there until the war was over.

‘I was hoping I’d see you,’ Sergeant Brookes was telling her
bête noire
. ‘You probably won’t have heard the news yet, but Sally Walker had a telegram on Friday. From the War Office. It’s her Ronnie – he’s dead.’

‘Ronnie Walker’s dead?’

Sam could tell from both men’s expressions that the man they were discussing must have been a good friend.

‘I knew the Japs had got him, of course – poor sod. What happened, Frank, does Sally know?’

‘No, she doesn’t. And it would be a good thing in my opinion if she never learns. She’s in a bad enough way as it is, Johnny. She couldn’t take it in at first, not even with the telegram there in front of her. She kept on saying that the War Office must have made a mistake. Told us over and over again, she did, how he shouldn’t be dead because he was a POW. I tried to tell her that being a POW couldn’t guarantee Ronnie’s safety – not when it was the Japs that had got him, but without actually telling her too much, if you know what
I mean. No sense in making it even worse for her than it already is. She was in that much of a state that Ma promised her that I’d see what I could find out so I came back down to the barracks on Friday night and managed to have a few words with the CO. He made a few enquiries and it seems that Ronnie was took sick. The Japs’ commanding officers don’t keep sick prisoners, according what the Red Cross have managed to find out. If the men can’t go on parade for work in the morning then their officers order them to go round the beds and … slice them straight down from the breast bone, apparently, and leave them with their guts hanging out. I haven’t told Sally any of that, mind; she’s got more than enough to bear. Just told her that it was true that he was dead.’

Sam’s stomach heaved, but she didn’t make a sound. She suspected that both the men had virtually forgotten that she was there and she didn’t want to intrude on their private and very intimate anguish for a close friend by reminding them of her presence.

‘I’d heard summat of the sort,’ Sergeant Everton agreed curtly, ‘but never thought. Ronnie …’ He shook his head. ‘I can see him now, that Sunday when you and me were first called up. Came to church, he did, with Sally; he was in his uniform. Put us wise to a few things and gave us the nod and a wink about how to go on … Sally’s taken it bad, you said?’

‘Yes, like I said, she wasn’t for having it at first, Ma was worried sick about her. She even got the
new doctor to go round and take a look at her. She’s a good ’un, though, is Sally. Got a lot of pluck and she’s got those lads of hers to keep her going. I wanted to have a word with you, though, and let you know.’

‘Yes. Thanks for that, Frank.’

Sergeant Brookes nodded his head and then suddenly seemed to realise that Sam was still there. Forcing himself to inject a more hearty note into his voice, he told the other man, ‘Like I was just saying, Sam here was just trying to thank me for getting her transferred, but I told her that she’d got the wrong man and that it was you she should be thanking.’

‘Yes … yes. Thanks very much,’ Sam agreed overbrightly, looking at a point well past Sergeant Everton’s khaki-clad and extremely broad shoulders.

‘I’d better go, otherwise I’m going to be late for me tea,’ Sergeant Brookes told them both.

He was walking away before Sam could say or do anything, leaving her standing there feeling chagrined and angrily embarrassed, resentfully aware of what she owed to the man standing watching her and how much she wished she did not. But those were the wrong emotions for a young woman in uniform serving her country, and so she forced herself to put them aside and to say quietly, ‘I’m sorry … about … about your friend.’

How stilted and awkward the words sounded but she still felt honour-bound to offer them. Who could not feel for those who lost loved ones and
friends in such appalling circumstances? Who couldn’t help but think that at any time they themselves could be the ones mourning a much-loved and lost life. The offering of sympathy, and the acknowledgement of a loss was a duty that now fell on them all, and it was one that everyone who had anything about them automatically respected. The fact that she and the sergeant didn’t get on certainly did not in any way excuse her from doing so.

‘He was a good soldier,’ he told her bleakly. ‘A professional soldier. He’d enlisted before any of the rest of us,’ he added tersely by way of explanation. ‘If he had to die then it should have been in the heat of battle, and not …’ He cursed under his breath, and Sam could see the effort it cost him to drag air into his lungs as his chest rose and fell under the pressure. ‘Ruddy war. Where’s the sense in any of it, when a good man like Ronnie gets bayoneted like a piece of meat …?’

He turned round, striding off into the gathering dusk, leaving Sam to do what she could to calm her heaving stomach before she went to join the other girls waiting for their transport back to their billet.

‘What’s up wi’ you, Sally? When we was on the night shift together last year you was always singing like a lark. Fair cheered us all up, it did. Better than anything on the wireless and that’s a fact.’

Sally couldn’t answer Peg, even though she knew it must seem odd that she wasn’t happier. After
all, she had just been given a job that paid her more, and allowed her to work a day shift and have the boys in Littlewoods’ nursery.

It had only been yesterday that she had been told out of the blue almost that she could start work on a new production line, working a day shift, if she wished, and that Littlewoods was providing extra nursery places for those women who agreed to be trained up for the new work, which was, so Sally had been told, making life jackets. Of course, she’d have been a fool to turn the offer down, so she had accepted it.

When she had arrived at work this morning she and the others had all had to stand and watch whilst they were given a demonstration of the full process and then they had been divided into three groups. The first group had the job of stencilling out the pattern of the jackets on the fabric. The second group had to cut out the jackets, whilst the third group had the responsibility of stuffing the jackets with kapok, which first had to be weighed accurately to ensure that exactly the right amount, no more and no less, went into each jacket before they were finished off. This work was paid on a piece rate, which meant that the faster a girl worked the more she got paid, although money would be deducted from her earnings for post-war credits, to be reimbursed after the war ended. Sally had congratulated herself at first when she had been picked for this final team, even though she had been warned that the Board of Trade would be sending an inspector to the factory to check every jacket.

Now, as she bent her head over her work, Sally saw the woman working next to the girl who had spoken to her give her a fierce nudge and mutter, ‘Stow it, Peg, she’s just lost her hubby. Haven’t you heard?’

Sally could see how shocked Peg was and felt sorry for her. She was still sleeping downstairs at home, still unable to face the room and the bed that belonged to her role as a wife now that she was a widow.

‘Eeh, Sally, I’m sorry … I hadn’t heard,’ Peg began, but Sally shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about it. Not to anyone.

After several minutes of struggling with weighing her kapok, Peg sighed and grimaced and then announced, ‘Bloody hell, I’m never going to earn owt doing this. I’d be better off seeing if I can get teken on in munitions.’

‘What would you want to do that for?’ Irene, the girl next to her and opposite Sally across the bench on which they were all working, demanded. ‘Ruddy dangerous, munitions is, and no mistake. I’ve heard tales about what’s happened to some of the girls wot work there that’d make your hair curl.’

‘They pay a sight better than they do here, piece work or no piece work.’

‘Aye, danger money, it’s called, and with good reason. Anyway, what do you want getting more money for?’ Irene continued. ‘You’ve got your hubby on ARP duties and working down the docks, and that lass of yours is working now as well, isn’t
she? You must have more money coming in that they’ve got at Buckingham Palace.’

‘Give over.’

‘Come off it, Peg, I know what them men down the docks get paid. Aye, and how much they make on the side from what they get to sell off,’ Irene said, refusing to be put off.

‘Aye, well, if you must know, that’s the trouble,’ Peg replied miserably. ‘Never had a bone of good sense in his body, my Barry hasn’t, and the daft fool has gone and got hisself involved with a real bad lot. Only told me about it this last weekend. Well, he had to really, on account of him coming home with a cracked head and a couple of black eyes. Told me he’d walked into a lamppost in the blackout after coming out of the pub. As if I’d believe that. Knows its way home in a peasouper, that whippet of his does, and it has never once let him walk into a lamppost. So I told him straight that I wanted the truth out of him and no messing. Thought at first he’d bin up to his old tricks; allus had an eye for the wrong kind of woman, my hubby has. Sniffs ’em out like that dog of his does a rabbit, but no, he swore blind that it wasn’t some tart’s husband who’d given him what for, for mekin’ up to his wife.’

‘So what was it then?’ Irene asked.

Peg shook her head glumly. ‘Gone and got hisself into real trouble, he has this time. Shaking, he was, like a kiddie when he told me, and him weighing over sixteen stone. Mind you, he’s more worried about his ruddy dog than he is about himself.
Seems that him and some of the others have had this bit o’ business going supplying a bit of stuff as and when. Like he said, you ’ave to be careful. The bosses turn a blind eye to a few cans but there’d be hell to pay if there was a lot being taken. Anyway, like I was saying, they’d got this bit of a business going, and then this lot they were handing the stuff over to started acting all high and mighty, if you please, saying what they wanted and what they don’t. My Barry told them straight that he wasn’t being told what to do and for what they were paying him he might as well give the stuff away. Told them he didn’t want no more to do with it and thought that was the end to it. Only now they’ve come at him and told him that unless he gets them what they want, he can expect more of what they sent him home with the other night, and he can forget having the dog to bring him home,’ cos he won’t be seeing it no more.’ Peg was in tears by the time she had reached the end of her sorry story.