Monday Girl (24 page)

Just after her seventeenth birthday, Renee quietly told her grandparents about a sick-berth attendant in the Royal Navy. ‘He’s very nice, Granny, and he danced every dance with me. He didn’t come home with me, because he’d to meet a special bus to take him back to Kingseat Hospital, but he’s asked me to go to the pictures with him. He’s nearly six feet, and broad, as well. His eyes are greyish-green and his hair’s light brown, nearly auburn really, and lovely and wavy.’

‘A pin-up boy?’ Maggie teased.

‘What do you know about pin-up boys?’ the girl asked in surprise. ‘But no, he’s not just a pin-up boy, he’s got something about him . . . I don’t know, but he’s really nice.’

Anne was washing up their afternoon teacups, and her back was towards them, so the old lady leaned across and whispered, ‘Mr Right, maybe?’

Renee shrugged. ‘I only met him last night, Granny, so I can’t tell yet, but he could be.’

‘Be sure, mind.’ Maggie sat back in her chair again, then asked in a normal voice, ‘What’s his name, this sick-berth fellow?’

‘John Smith.’

The old lady laughed. ‘Weel, he didna try to impress ye wi’ gi’ein’ himsel’ a fancy name, at ony rate.’

‘No, and that’s one of the reasons I like him so much. He acts naturally, not like some of them I’ve been out with, trying to make me think they come from rich families and all that kind of rubbish.’

‘I’ll likely be hearin’ mair aboot this John Smith, then?’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’

They smiled to each other, conspiratorially, as Anne came over to the fireside. ‘That’s everything tidied up, Mother,’ she said. ‘It’s time we were going home, Renee, to get the girls’ tea ready.’

‘Thanks, Annie.’ Maggie looked up into her daughter’s face. ‘You’ll be back next week?’

‘Yes, Mother. Father’ll be in soon, won’t he?’

‘Aye, he usually comes back aboot half past four.’

‘Give him my love, and we’ll see you next Saturday.’

‘Cheerio, Granny,’ Renee said as she walked to the door.

‘I’ll keep you informed.’

John Smith had asked her to go out with him the following Monday, but Renee kept Monday nights for writing letters, mending, and so on, so they had made it Tuesday instead.

He took her to the Capitol cinema, and held her hand all through the two films, then treated her to an ice cream in a soda fountain in Rose Street.

‘I’m getting a lift at quarter to eleven, at the Queen,’ he said, as they came out.

‘I’ll walk down Union Street with you, and I’ll get my bus outside Falconer’s, that’s just round the corner from the Queen.’

The Queen – a statue of Queen Victoria, which stood at the corner of St Nicholas Street and Union Street – was a popular meeting place, and was a straight walk down Union Street from where they were. As they walked, arms round each other’s waists, John told her that he belonged to Bristol.

‘My dad’s in the shipyard, a riveter, and my mum cleans offices.’ He glanced at her to see how she reacted to the information about his humble background.

She smiled at him. ‘My mum takes in boarders. We’ve got four land girls just now. What did you work at before you were in the navy?’

‘I was an apprentice mechanic before I was called up.’

‘Didn’t they let you finish your time?’

‘I didn’t particularly want to. What do you do?’

‘I work in an office, clerkess/typist. I’ll show you when we go past it.’

‘Will I see you again, Renee?’

‘If you like.’

He drew her into a shop doorway. ‘May I kiss you?’ She was astonished, but nodded. He was the first boy who had ever asked her permission, and it felt good to be treated in so mannerly a fashion. His kiss made her feel even more drawn to him, but he led her on to the pavement again and kept walking. Renee wished that he had at least repeated the kiss, but it was the first time they had been out together, after all, although that had never inhibited any of the other boys.

‘How old are you, Renee?’ he asked, suddenly. ‘You look too young to be going out with boys at all.’

‘I’m seventeen.’ Plus a few days, she thought, but she felt older than that, much older, and she’d had plenty of experience, good and bad, with boys.

‘It seems terrible that I’m not seeing you home,’ John remarked. ‘But it’s this business of getting back to Kingseat. They lay on a small bus for us, and if we miss it we’ve had it, unless we walk.’

‘It’s too far to walk.’ Renee was horrified at the idea, because Kingseat Hospital was about eight miles from Aberdeen. ‘You didn’t have to walk back last Friday, did you?’ She looked at him anxiously.

‘Oh, no.’ He smiled to reassure her. ‘The bus leaves at one a.m. on Friday nights to allow us to go to a dance if we want.’

‘That’s all right, then.’

They reached St Nicholas Street with five minutes to spare, so John snatched a few kisses before he boarded the Royal Navy bus. ‘Friday, outside the Palais, at half past seven?’ he asked.

‘OK.’ Renee crossed Union Street to wait for her own bus, but thought about John Smith all the way home.

She loved his wavy hair, his craggy face, his eyes – oh, his eyes! She’d be able to tell Granny on Saturday that she did think he was her Mr Right. Disconcertingly, the image of a sandy-haired boy with a cow’s lick at the front came to her mind; a boy with laughing eyes which could turn serious and tender; a boy who wouldn’t admit that he loved her.

She shook her head to be rid of the picture. Blast Jack Thomson! No, she didn’t mean that. Forget about him, that was more like it. Think about John Smith again. Look forward to Friday. She decided that she would ask him to come to tea some day, on his day off. He would probably be glad of somewhere to spend his free time away from the hospital. Next morning, Renee asked her mother if it was all right if she invited him.

‘Are you getting serious about this one?’ Anne eyed her keenly.

‘I might be – it depends,’ the girl said, cagily. She found it difficult to confide in her mother – not like Granny.

‘Ask him any time you like, but be sensible. You haven’t known him very long, have you?’ Anne tried not to lecture.

‘I’m going to know him better. We’re going to the Palais on Friday.’

When she went to work, Renee told Sheila Daun about John Smith. ‘He doesn’t put on any airs, he even told me that he was only an apprentice mechanic before he went into the navy and became a sick-berth attendant.’

Sheila burst out laughing, and Renee, rather piqued, snapped, ‘What’s so funny about that?’

‘From mechanic to sick-berth attendant?’ Sheila giggled.

‘From patching engines to patching people? Don’t you think it’s funny?’

‘Not really.’ But Renee smiled. ‘You’ll meet him on Friday, if you’re going to the Palais.’

‘That’s right, of course, though I did catch a glimpse of him last week. He seemed a decent sort of chap.’

John was very attentive to Renee on Friday night, while they were dancing and while they were sitting chatting to Sheila and the RAF corporal who had attached himself to her, and his eyes made her heart turn over every time he looked at her. When he was holding her closely during the last dance, Renee issued her invitation. ‘Mum says she’d be pleased if you came to tea, any time you’ve a day off.’ She could feel the stiffening of his back, and her heart sank. ‘Whenever you like,’ she added, desperately.

He remained silent for a long time, then his hold on her slackened and he said carefully, ‘Thank you, but no. I make it a rule never to meet the mothers, or fathers, of any of the girls I pick up.’

Renee gasped, and her eyes filled with tears as she jerked away from him and ran to the cloakroom. Once inside, she gave way to them and sobbed bitterly for a few minutes. Then she splashed her face with cold water and put on her coat. She opened the door slowly, but John Smith wasn’t waiting for her as she’d feared, so she walked quickly to the exit. When she started her long walk home, she found that she was trembling. She’d known she would have to make the trek on her own, but had never dreamt that she would be in such a state. What a fool she’d been. John Smith was certainly honest. More than honest – he was absolutely brutal. She was just another of the girls he had picked up.

Her grief changed to anger suddenly. He was only a big, conceited lump after all, a practised ladies’ man. She strode purposefully along Union Terrace, glancing at the statue of Robert Burns as she passed it. Another ladies’ man. Love ’em and leave ’em. Her fury abated as quickly as it had started, and she gave a sad laugh. She was too vulnerable, that was the trouble. A few kisses and romantic looks, and she was hooked. John Smith had never said anything, or done anything, to her that could be construed as words or actions of love. He had asked if he could kiss her, and had done so several times, but that was all. She had been too eager, too intense, too hasty. If she’d only waited, it would have been . . . No, it was just as well that she’d found out about him before things went any further.

She turned the corner, and thought of her first nasty experience with a man. That had been a slippery-sided mountain which had beaten her, but this was only a mole-hill. Everything to do with John Smith had been in her imagination, and she had embarrassed him out of his usual gentlemanly behaviour by asking him to her home after such a short acquaintance. Her mood lightened as she carried on walking. She’d acted like a child, not a seventeen-year-old, and she deserved the slap-down she’d received. If John came to the Palais next Friday, she would apologise to him, but one thing was certain. He couldn’t have been her Mr Right.

Her route took her between the Victoria and Westburn Parks, and with no street lighting during wartime, she felt slightly uneasy after she passed the last of the houses. To cover her fears, she began to whistle, and stepped out even more quickly than before. She arrived home at last, breathless and windblown, but in a far happier frame of mind than when she left the dancehall.

Maggie McIntosh looked expectantly at her granddaughter as soon as the girl went into the house the following afternoon. ‘How’s yer romance wi’ the famous John Smith goin’?’

Renee made a face. ‘It’s gone. The romance that never was.’

Anne seemed surprised. ‘He won’t be coming to tea any time?’

‘He certainly won’t. I scared the living daylights out of him by asking.’ She joined in the older women’s laughter, and the visit went on in the usual pattern.

Renee never saw John Smith again, either. ‘I blew it,’ she said to Sheila Daun, when she told her the whole story.

‘I wondered where you’d disappeared to when the dance finished on Friday,’ the other girl said. ‘It’s a pity, though. He seemed to be quite a decent sort.’

‘He was, I think. It was me that was silly. If I’d left things to develop naturally, he might have come to care for me. Maybe not. Anyway, I’m not broken-hearted, and I’ve learned another lesson.’

‘Good. Just remember it.’

After she finished tidying up at teatime, one stormy night in November, Anne Gordon picked up the newspaper. The first thing she always turned to was the ‘Births, Marriages and Deaths’ page, or as Peter McIntosh called it, ‘Hatches, Matches and Despatches’, and sometimes even ‘Yells, Bells and Knells’. She sat for a few minutes, then looked up in great excitement.

‘Babs has had her baby, it’s in the Births tonight. A boy. I’ll have to get a congratulations card for her.’

Renee was delighted. ‘That’s great. Mike’ll be a father at last. I bet he’ll be pleased it’s over, but what a shame he couldn’t have been here. And God knows how old his son’ll be before he gets home.’

‘It’s sad, isn’t it?’ Anne’s eyes misted. ‘But it’s happening all over the country – all over the world, I suppose.’

It was over a month later when they received Mike’s letter. He told them the baby’s name was Michael, and that he had been seven pounds two ounces at birth. ‘Babs says he’s a perfect darling, and he’s going to be spoiled rotten between his grandmother and his Auntie Moira. I wish I could see him, but there you are. That’s war.’

‘Poor Mike,’ Anne remarked. ‘Having to keep on fighting out there in the desert and his son growing up without a father.’

‘He has a father,’ Renee corrected her.

‘Yes, I meant not knowing his father, wise guy.’

They fell silent. The news about the war in North Africa had not been good. Every day, the wireless told of fierce battles, and of the Allies having to retreat. Each knew what the other was thinking – would Mike ever come home to see his son?

 
Chapter Sixteen

Just before Christmas 1940, Jack Thomson paid the Gordons another quick call. This time there was no greeting kiss for Renee, merely a firm handshake, and she felt rather hurt. He was gradually drifting away from her and there was nothing she could do about it – or perhaps his love for her had also been in her imagination. She tried to act naturally when he was there, and found that they could talk and tease each other much more easily without the invisible barrier she had created before. Kitty Miller was on leave at the time, and had gone home to Yorkshire, and the other three land girls were more subdued without her effervescent presence.

The evening meal passed in companionable joking, even little Nora telling a few funny stories. In the couple of hours which Jack spent talking to Renee and her mother afterwards, he kept them amused with anecdotes about his army and social lives, and asked the girl to tell him about the servicemen she’d met. He left to catch the nine o’clock Peterhead bus, and again, Renee only received a handclasp at the door. The end of a phantom love-affair, she thought, and put it down to another lesson learnt not to count her chickens. She gave herself up to having a good time, but never allowed herself to become emotionally involved with any of the boys.

She exchanged confidences with Sheila – which boy had kissed them, which had tried to get fresh, which had said he was already married – and revelled in the moral danger they were courting. They had both become adept at fending off unwelcome advances, and the attempts, and the tactics they used to foil them, made hilarious telling.

To brighten up their spells of fire-watching duty in the office building, the girls sometimes asked the boys they had met the previous evening to come and sit with them, making it quite clear that, although there were two camp beds provided in the room, there was to be no hanky-panky, and the servicemen generally stuck to the rule. Renee kept up her correspondence with Jack and Tim, and told them about most of her escapades, making them as humorous as she could, and Jack retaliated by telling her about the girls who made it clear they were available to him, and those who rebuffed him. She felt a strong pang of jealousy at the first such letter, but gradually came to enjoy reading them. After all, there was no reason why Jack shouldn’t be doing the same as she was herself.