Darkest Before Dawn (35 page)

Seraphina pushed the envelopes into her pocket and grinned at her friend. ‘As if anyone would ever say no to a letter,' she remarked. ‘I'm on my way to the cookhouse, so I'll read them while I have my brekker; are you coming?'

‘Naturally,' the other girl said laconically. She was small and dark with a round, rosy face and very striking pale grey eyes. She and Seraphina had been at training camp together, had been moved to Norfolk at the same time, and had bagged two beds next to each other in one of the long Nissen huts in which the WAAFs were quartered. ACW Betts was married to a lanky aircraftman stationed up in Scotland, and since she and Seraphina were the only married girls in their hut, this was another bond between them. They also worked together in the offices, though both hoped to do something more interesting than clerical work once their first six months in the WAAF was up. Seraphina wanted to work as a driver whereas Betty thought that R/T operating would be more interesting. ‘Any fool can drive a lorry or a truck,' she had said, rather contemptuously. ‘Think of the brash young idiots in delivery vans who careered round the streets before the war!'

‘Some of my best friends were van drivers,' Seraphina had said loftily. ‘Anyway, I like the outdoor life, and you must admit, it 'ud be fun to drive a squadron leader or an air commodore to important meetings.'

‘And you a teacher!' Betty had marvelled. ‘It's your duty, Aircraftwoman, to use your brains for the good of the air force, so don't you go letting me down and saying you want to train as a driver when you could do a much more important job standing on your head.'

‘Oh? I didn't know you had to talk on the R/T standing on your head,' Seraphina had said innocently, and then had to flee the hut when Betty, hairbrush in hand, had endeavoured, she had said, to knock some sense into her pal.

The disagreement had still not been resolved, though privately Seraphina had accepted her friend's argument and meant to apply for a better job than driving, but right now the two girls walked briskly towards the cookhouse, their feet crunching on the frozen snow, whilst the letters rustled comfortably in the pocket of Seraphina's battledress.

There was a queue in the cookhouse, but it was moving quite fast. Seraphina checked that her irons were in her pocket – one carried one's eating utensils everywhere – then took a battered tray from the pile on the counter. A fat man, with a greasy apron hung low on his hips, sloshed porridge into a dish, slammed it on Seraphina's tray and banged two rounds of toast beside it. Seraphina thought, regretfully, that the toast would be cold and leathery and the porridge lumpy, unlike the lovely smooth porridge and hot toast which her mother had made every day for her family. She put a splash of milk into her mug and then filled it with tea from the urn: a very different brew from the cup of strong, sweet tea she would have had at home. At the end of the counter, another cookhouse worker smeared a tiny amount of margarine on to her plate. Then Seraphina turned away, found a table and sat down. Betty joined her. ‘What's up with you, Fee?' she asked in an aggrieved voice. ‘Didn't you notice the feller with the porridge was handing out a couple o' bits of streaky?'

‘Bacon? Oh lor, I was so busy thinking about my letters that I never noticed,' Seraphina said wistfully, but she knew better than to return to the queue. The man in the greasy apron would remember that she had been round once but would ‘forget' that he had not given her any bacon; no doubt he had already earmarked her share either for himself or for a friend. Oh well, it just went to show that you had to be on the alert all the time or someone would make sure you missed out.

Seraphina propped her letters against her mug of tea and began to spoon porridge. Actually, it wasn't too bad and it was good to have something hot and filling, for the weather was icy and had been so for weeks.

‘Here, Fee, you can have my second rasher of bacon. Go on, fold it in that bit of toast and gobble it down,' Betty said generously. ‘Your pa's a grocer, isn't he? Next time your parents send you a parcel we can go shares.'

‘My mother works in a grocer's shop; my father died before the war,' Seraphina reminded her friend. ‘And he was a barge master on the canal, not a perishin' grocer. I sometimes wonder if you listen to a word I say!'

‘Sorry, sorry. I do remember, of course I do,' Betty said apologetically. ‘It's just that my mind runs on food, rather. But your mum's a widow and the chap she works for is a widower, so naturally I thought they'd mebbe make a go of it.'

‘Oh did you?' Seraphina said frostily. ‘Well you can forget that, because Ma's got more sense than to marry an old skinflint, even if he is a grocer. Thanks for the bacon, though. Next time it turns up in the cookhouse, I'll pay you back, honest I will. But now just shut up and eat your leathery toast while I read my letters.'

It was the work of a moment to read Toby's letter since the censor had been busy. Seraphina was sure that most of the censors grew bored with reading other people's mail and so removed more than was necessary. What was more, Toby's letters were usually brief. She knew he was in India and had enjoyed his descriptions of the bazaars, the strange, twisted little streets of the nearest town, and the countryside, but having described his surroundings once he could scarcely do so every time he wrote. Still, it was grand to hear from him. Seraphina pushed the letter into her pocket and picked up the one from her mother. Martha had penned three closely written sheets and her letters were always fascinating since they spoke of people Seraphina knew well. She chuckled to herself as she read of Evie's latest exploits. Her sister and various pals had got up very early one morning in order to make an enormous snowball by rolling it along the centre of the quiet snow-covered roads. They had reached Northumberland Terrace and were thinking of turning home when they had lost control of it as they crossed the end of Havelock Street. The snowball had charged down the steep hill, gathering momentum as it went, and, naturally, increasing in size every moment. Fortunately, Netherfield Road was not as busy as it would become later in the day, but even so, the huge snowball had burst against the side of a tram, causing that vehicle to shudder and at least one angry passenger, and the conductor, to alight and come seeking vengeance. However, the steepness of Havelock Street had defeated their pursuers and Evie and her pals, giggling wildly, had made good their escape.

But you know your sister and her horrid little friends,
Martha had written,
they disappeared like frost in June, but I believe it taught them a lesson. Evie actually said that had the snowball hit a horse and cart, or someone on a bicycle, it could have caused a dreadful accident, or even a death. So you see, it made her realise how easily she could have been in real trouble. In future, I believe she'll think before she acts and not after.

Seraphina, still giggling, handed the letter to her friend. ‘That's my sister Evie all over,' she said. ‘Oh, I do miss her – and my mother, of course – but we're due a week's leave in a couple of months, so I'll go home then.'

Her companion looked at her rather oddly. ‘What about Roger?' she said bluntly. ‘Why not go up to Lincoln?'

‘Oh! Well, I suppose it depends if he's free,' Seraphina said, rather vaguely. ‘If he's got leave, we might both go home.' She glanced at the clock above the long counter. ‘Hurry up with that tea, Betty, or we'll be late for work and that would never do.'

Angela loved the ATS, even though she had never imagined that she would do so. The camp at which she was stationed was on the outskirts of Dartmoor and today, despite the cold and the snow which covered the ground, they were on map-reading exercise. Warmly wrapped up in every item of clothing she possessed, she led her small group up on to the wildness of the moors, carefully following the planned route and constantly referring to the large scale map of the area with which each group had been supplied.

She had read her mother's letter before she set out and had thoroughly enjoyed the tale of Evie and the gigantic snowball and of her sister's constant search for ‘something off the ration'. Now, regarding the snowy landscape around her and seeing the glint of a stream to her left, Angela remembered an earlier letter from Martha which had described how Evie had gone off for a weekend on the canal when the
Mary Jane
had docked in the city and had returned on Sunday night with what her mother described as
a guilty grin, a dozen very large potatoes, and two sticks of sprouts
. It was odd, Angela thought, how one's way of life changed one's outlook. Reading that letter, she had felt rather shocked. What had been fair enough on the canal seemed remarkably like theft when one no longer spent one's life travelling through fields of tempting produce.

Still, since Ma had accepted the vegetables and wrote about their acquisition without a qualm, Angela supposed that it was she who had changed. She wondered if Seraphina, who would have received a letter very similar to her own, would feel that Evie had stolen them, then dismissed the matter from her mind.

I'll tell Albert about Evie and the snowball, if he's in the mess this evening, she decided. He's such a nice fellow; I know it will make him laugh. Albert Reid was the chaplain attached to Angela's camp. He had wanted to join the RAF but his sight was poor – he wore small, steel-rimmed spectacles – so the air force had turned him down, and though he had subsequently applied for both the navy and the army they too had rejected him; poor eyesight had ruled out the navy, and flat feet had caused him to be spurned by the army as well. However, when he had applied for a chaplaincy with the army he had been accepted, and he was energetic in protecting his new flock.

Angela, who was rather shy and very diffident with members of the opposite sex, enjoyed Albert's undemanding company and discovered that he had hidden depths. Although a bachelor in his early thirties, he loved children and had organised the local evacuees not only into Sunday school classes, but also into more amusing activities. The rector of the small local church was in his seventies and appreciated Albert's help to such an extent that he let him use the hall attached to his church for various functions. Angela had speedily become involved, and had found herself much more at ease with Albert than with any of the other young men in the camp. In fact, she had twice attended the cinema in his company and had enjoyed both expeditions.

But right now she should be concentrating on leading her group to their destination and not thinking, wistfully, of the warmth of the mess, and Albert, tall and rangy, giving her his shy, delightful grin as soon as she appeared in the doorway.

At this point, Angela's thoughts broke off in confusion; whatever was the matter with her? Albert was just a friend, nothing more, yet when she thought of him a warm glow suffused her – she, who had never taken any man seriously, never, she realised now, been in love.

Her thoughts might have continued in this vein, but at that moment Private Wilkins tugged at her elbow. ‘I reckon we're almost home and dry, Todd,' the other girl said excitedly. ‘See that buildin' over there, with the thatched roof? I reckon that's what we're bein' led to . . . there's blue smoke in a sorta smudge an' all, and the sergeant said there'd be a hot meal waitin' when we arrived. Cor, I'm bloody freezin' an' bloody starvin' as well; let's hurry!'

Toby sat in the mess tent, occasionally taking a bite out of the slice of flat and rather tasteless bread before him and brushing sweat – and flies – from his forehead as he did so. Spread out before him was his latest letter from home. It was from Evie; her ill-spelt, lively missives arrived pretty frequently and gave him a good deal of pleasure. She kept him up to date with all the news, though he had realised quite early on that she never reported bad tidings if she could help it. She had written of the Christmas raids on Liverpool but had contrived to pick out the lighter side of happenings which must, he guessed, have been terrifying. She had said that old Mrs Wilmslow had died but it had been Seraphina's letter that had enlarged on the old woman's death; Evie had not admitted that she had died as a result of the raid. Thinking it over, Toby decided it was affection for him which kept Evie's letters light and was glad of it, for not only could he do nothing to help but the letters took such ages to reach him that even sympathy, so long after the event, seemed almost superfluous.

Now, sweltering in the Indian heat, he read her description of the biggest snowball in the world and its dramatic descent down Havelock Street into Netherfield Road with amusement and more than a touch of envy. He could see the scene in his mind's eye, clear as clear: Evie warmly wrapped up, but with her woolly gloves soaked and her fingers frozen from pushing the snowball along, the wind whipping her nose and cheeks to scarlet, whisking her long, straight hair out from under the shelter of her little cap. She would be laughing, bossing the other kids, enjoying every moment . . . until the snowball made its bid for freedom and crashed into the tram. He sighed and got to his feet, feeling the sweat begin to trickle down his back. It was no use repining and he guessed that a good many people back home would envy him the heat which he was cursing. He could be a good deal worse off, he knew that, because he had not been involved in any sort of fighting since Dunkirk. His regiment was here to train new Indian recruits in the ways of the British army and then to be trained themselves in the art of jungle warfare, for it was commonly supposed that the Japanese would try to take India, believing that the Indian people would welcome them as a means of freeing themselves from the yoke of the British Empire.

Toby thrust the letter into the pocket of his khaki drill shorts. Better get a move on or his troops would wander off, for raw recruits knew nothing of discipline and had to be treated very like ignorant young children, until they began to realise what was expected of them. Toby went out of the tent and the sun hit him like a blow on the head, instantly banishing all thoughts of Liverpool and snow. It was impossible to believe that such conditions existed at that very moment, even three thousand miles away.