Cousins at War (6 page)

Neil grinned. ‘I’d forgotten you were in the ANZACs, but I won’t be looking for a wife for a long time. I’m too young.’

‘Don’t you believe it,’ Hetty laughed. ‘Martin and I were both only eighteen when he came to Aberdeen – and we fell in love as soon as we saw each other.’

Finding it difficult to believe that this middle-aged man and woman had once been young and in love, Neil muttered, ‘I suppose I’ll find the girl for me some day.’

Olive felt as though a knife had twisted in her heart. The girl for Neil was sitting less than three feet away from him, if he only knew it. ‘Will you write to me?’ she asked.

For a second, his brows came down, but he answered with a light laugh. ‘I might drop you a few lines if I get time.’

He was so offhand that she could have shaken him. ‘Well, I intend writing to you, anyway, once I know your address.’

The slight frown was there again but, luckily, her father said, ‘You’ll be glad of letters, Neil. I know I was.’

Olive hoped that her cousin would kiss her goodbye at the door, but he just shook her hand, as he did to her parents, so she turned and went inside with tears in her eyes.

Taking out his wallet, Martin fumbled in it for a moment, then said, ‘Take this for luck. You’ll likely be glad of an extra bob or two.’

‘There’s no need for . . .’ Neil began, but his uncle forced a note into his hand. ‘Thanks very much. I suppose I will be glad of it.’

With a wave, he walked down the path, waiting until he was out of sight of the house before he opened his hand, and was delighted to find that his uncle had given him a fiver, not a pound as he
had thought. Good old Martin!

Hetty closed the front door and turned on her husband, her voice acidic. ‘You weren’t really serious about joining up, were you? They wouldn’t want you at your age, and
besides, what about me?’

‘If you’re going to quarrel, I’m going to bed.’ Olive ran upstairs. It hadn’t bothered Neil that he wouldn’t see her for a long time. Why couldn’t he
realise that she loved him? Would he miss her when he was away? Did absence really make the heart grow fonder? She could only live in hope that it would, and she did have the photo of him that her
father had taken in the summer. She looked across at the wooden-framed snapshot – a head and shoulders close-up. The lack of colour didn’t matter; she knew that his wavy hair was the
colour of milk chocolate, that his eyes – crinkled against the sun – were blue though they looked dark enough to be brown. His determined chin was square, his face more round. He was so
good-looking, so manly, that the girls would flock round him like bees round a honeypot, but none of them would get him – he belonged to Olive Potter.

Walking to the tramstop, Neil let out a gusty breath, quite relieved that Olive hadn’t tried to get him by himself. She usually tried to get all his attention, and he’d been a bit
worried that she might monopolise him for the whole evening once she knew that he was going away so soon. She had always rubbed him up the wrong way and he couldn’t help feeling so
antagonistic towards her, though it wasn’t very charitable. She could be classed as pretty, he supposed, with her long fair hair and sky-blue eyes, but he didn’t like bossy girls. He
wasn’t really ready for girls of any kind yet, but when he was, he would want to be the one to make the running, and he didn’t fancy making it with that boa constrictor. Once he was out
of her smothering reach, he would feel free.

Gracie looked up when her son came in. ‘So that’s all your goodbyes said now, is it?’

‘Yes. Martin gave me a fiver for good luck and Raymond said he’s going to join the army when he’s old enough.’

‘Oh!’ Gracie exclaimed. ‘I hope the war’s over before he’s old enough to fight – he’s only fifteen.’ She hesitated for a moment, then said,
‘Did everything go off all right?’

‘Yes. Martin said he’d thought of offering his services, but I don’t think Hetty was very pleased.’

It was Olive’s reaction that Gracie was interested in, but she didn’t ask. Hetty would tell her the next time they saw each other. ‘Your father went to bed about ten minutes
ago, and Patsy and Queenie went about nine. They want to be up in time to see you off at the station.’

Neil pulled a face. ‘I don’t want any of you coming to see me off, Mum, I’d feel a proper twerp if my mother and my young sister and my cousin were . . .’

‘But . . .’ Gracie stopped. Her son would be in uniform soon – a soldier. ‘All right, if that’s how you want it. Now, off to bed with you.’

Breakfast was early the following morning, but no one ate much – Neil was too keyed up, his parents, sister and cousin too sad – but Gracie still had to issue a mother’s
caution. ‘Look after yourself, remember, and don’t leave your clothes all over the place like you do here. There won’t be anybody there to pick them up after you.’

‘I know that. I’m not helpless, for God’s sake.’

Patsy, recognising that her brother’s sharpness was due to emotion, not bad temper, tried to help him out. ‘Aren’t you getting excited, Neil? I know I’d be, if it was
me.’

Her tactics worked – the antagonism vanished. ‘A wee bit, but I’m looking forward to it. It’s like starting out on an adventure. I don’t know what’s in front
of me, and . . .’ The boy’s defences broke. ‘Oh, Mum,’ he gulped, ‘you don’t need to worry about me. I’m old enough to look after myself.’ He drew
his hand hastily across his eyes. ‘I’ll have to go now, but I’ll write as soon as I can.’

Disengaging himself from Gracie’s hug, he shook hands with his father. ‘Cheerio, Dad.’

‘Cheerio, son.’ Joe’s voice was gruff, and his grasp had a desperate firmness in it.

‘Cheerio, Neil.’ Wanting to hug him too, Patsy held back. Further demonstrations of affection would embarrass him.

‘Cheerio, little sister.’ He ruffled her hair, aimed a mock punch at Queenie, lifted his suitcase and went out.

The family gathering in King Street on New Year’s Day 1941 was rather too large for comfort. When everyone sat down for the meal, the kitchen-cum-sitting room was crowded
with so many chairs round the extended table that it was virtually impossible for anyone to move freely.

‘I wish we were still at the Gallowgate,’ Gracie sighed, squeezing into her seat after dishing up the thick broth. ‘I miss having a dining room.’

Joe held out the plate of bread to Hetty. ‘I’ve told her a dozen times, the place was going to rack and ruin, that’s why it was condemned, but she’ll not
listen.’

‘You don’t understand, Joe,’ his wife said, sadly. ‘All my memories are in that rambling old house – my childhood, with my brothers and sisters, Neil and Patsy as
babies . . .’

He patted her hand. ‘You can’t keep hankering after what you’ll never have again, lass, and wherever you are, you’ll always have your memories.’

To cheer his sister-in-law, Martin asked, ‘Have you heard from Neil lately?’

She brightened considerably. ‘We’d a letter last week. He says his feet are hardening up now. The boots nearly killed him at first.’

Martin chuckled. ‘I know all about army boots. They’re not the kindest of footwear.’

‘Football boots aren’t so bad,’ Raymond observed, leading the men to their favourite topic. Patsy and Queenie were whispering and giggling together but Olive felt apart from
them all. She had been anxious to hear about Neil – what he was doing, not about his feet – and nothing else interested her.

As soon as they were finished one course, the next one was set down and the meal ended with tea and cakes. Laying his cup down, Joe stretched his arms lazily, narrowly missing Martin’s eye
with his elbow. ‘I could do with a kip, I’m that full up.’

‘Joe, we’ve got guests,’ Gracie reprimanded him.

Martin smiled. ‘I feel the same, but how about walking it off? The ladies can join us, if they like?’

Hetty jumped to her feet, but Gracie looked doubtful. ‘Go on, Mum,’ Patsy smiled. ‘Don’t worry about the clearing up, we’ll do it. I’ll wash the dishes and
Queenie and Olive can dry.’ She knew quite well that Olive wouldn’t help – she never had before.

The adults could not have reached the foot of the stairs when the argument began. ‘If nobody else wants it,’ Raymond said, politely, ‘I’ll have that last bit of black
bun.’

‘I’m oldest, so I should have it.’ Olive’s hand shot out an instant before her brother’s.

He drew back, muttering, ‘You always have to get your own way, haven’t you?’

Patsy acted as mediator. ‘You’ve had more than your share already, Olive. I’m sure Neil wouldn’t let you off with that if he was here.’

Olive’s eyes flashed. ‘Neil would never say anything nasty to me.’

Her haughty tone riled her normally even-tempered cousin. ‘Yes, he would. He doesn’t like you any more than I do.’

‘He does like me! You and Queenie are both jealous of me, I know that. You can have the rotten old black bun, Raymond. I don’t want it now.’

Beaming, Raymond picked it up and took a bite before she could change her mind. ‘Neil doesn’t like you,’ he declared, his mouth still full. ‘I’ve told you that as
well.’

Assuming a dignity she did not feel, his sister said, ‘The trouble with you lot is you’re too young to understand about things like that. Some boys are too shy to show how they feel
about a girl, but I can tell Neil likes me by the way he looks at me when nobody’s watching, like the hero in a film before he plucks up courage to tell the heroine he loves her.’

Raymond and Patsy burst out laughing, and a crimson-faced Olive was more annoyed still when she noticed that while she’d been arguing, Queenie had taken the last, small triangle of
shortbread from the cake stand. ‘You greedy little pig!’ she shouted. ‘I wanted that.’

Undismayed, Queenie popped it into her mouth whole, and Patsy, ashamed at what she had said before, smiled at Olive. ‘Mum baked a whole lot of shortbread, so there’s more in a tin,
if you want?’

‘No, thank you.’ Olive bit off each word separately, as if she were spitting it out. ‘You’ll laugh on the other side of your face, Patsy Ferris, when I’m your
sister-in-law.’

This made Raymond and Queenie splutter with mirth, but it wiped the gentle smile off Patsy’s face. If Olive had set her mind on marrying Neil, nothing and nobody could stop her . . . not
even Neil himself.

When Neil came home on his first leave, his family listened with interest as he regaled them with tales of his infantry training, going into great detail about the rifle drill
and the marching. ‘They were strong on discipline and tidiness, as well,’ he laughed. ‘A button not fastened properly was like a red rag to a bull to the sergeant, and everything
had to be perfect when he came round on kit inspections.’

‘It hasn’t done you any harm,’ Gracie said. ‘It was time you learned to look after your things properly. You were an untidy monkey before.’

‘Well, you should see me now. I can box my blankets with the best of them.’

‘Box your blankets?’

‘We’ve to fold them up every morning, and set them at the foot of our beds,’ he explained. ‘It’s what they call boxing them, and if they’re not done properly,
we’ve to open them out and do them all over again. Alf Melville – that’s a lad from Elgin that I’ve palled up with – well, he fell foul of the sarge the first day, and
he’s been in hot water ever since. I got a bawling out sometimes as well so thank God we won’t have to put up with him any more. Four of us are going to a technical college in London
when we go back. We were the only Ordnance Corps lot, so Alf and me’ll still be together.’

As he chatted on, Gracie took stock of him. She had been prepared to see a change in him, but she hadn’t expected the broadening out, the maturity. In six weeks, he’d become a man,
and her heart ached for the boy who was gone for ever. When Neil’s stories came to an end, she said, ‘You’ll have to go to Rubislaw Den tomorrow. I told Hetty you were coming home
today.’

‘Must I? I never answered any of Olive’s letters and I bet she goes to town on me.’

‘Oh, Neil, you should have written to her.’

‘What could I have said? “Wish you were here?”’

‘Don’t get cheeky, my lad. You’re not too old for me to give you a scud on the lug.’

Both Patsy and Queenie giggled at this, and Neil held up his hands in submission. ‘OK, then. You can phone Hetty and tell her I’ll see them tomorrow.’

When Hetty answered her door the following afternoon, she exclaimed at the sight of the khaki figure. ‘Aren’t you the handsome one?’

‘It’s just the uniform,’ Neil said, delighted but trying to appear modest. ‘The minute you put it on, you’re different. It makes you . . . I can’t explain it,
but it makes . . .’

‘Makes you feel like a man?’

‘I suppose so. You’re proud to be in the British Army, to be fighting fit, to know you’re needed. It’s better to think you’ve done it off your own bat, though they
order you about the same as if you’d been conscripted, but you don’t resent it . . . there has to be discipline, or nobody would care.’ He stopped, embarrassed at having been so
frank.

His aunt smiled encouragingly. ‘You like the army?’

‘I wouldn’t say like, exactly. There’s times when you hate the bloody sergeant, and the corporal, and all the officers. Sometimes you even hate the man in the next bed for
sleeping when you’re lying wide awake with throbbing feet, but when the square-bashing’s finished, you’ve a satisfaction in you. You made it. You didn’t break down.
You’re as good as any of them. D’you see what I mean?’

‘Yes, I can understand. What about making friends?’

‘Just one, really. Alf’s from Elgin and we’re the only two Scotsmen in our platoon. That’s why we got pally, but he’s a good mate and we’ve had some great
laughs.’

Neil enjoyed his aunt’s attention, and Raymond’s, when he came in, but Olive’s entrance spoiled it. He never knew what she might say. At first, it wasn’t too bad, even if
she went on at him as if he’d to account to her for every minute he’d been away and he felt like telling her that what he did was none of her business, but then came the moment he had
been dreading.