More Than You Know (3 page)

They were woken at five thirty by NCOs banging their pace sticks on their bed ends and fire buckets and shouting at them.

“Come on, you ’orrible lot. Hands off cocks and on socks. Up, up, up.”

Breakfast was more bread and jam. And then out onto the parade ground. Their sergeant, a bullet-headed sadist, roared insults at them for what seemed like hours while they discovered the apparent impossibility of keeping in step. Charles had no trouble with that; he’d been in the Combined Cadet Force at Eton.

They were also introduced to bulling: the army’s word for cleaning. Kit had to be polished and polished and polished again. “I want those buttons shining like a shilling up a sheep’s arse,” a sergeant shouted. They shouted nonstop; it added to the confusion.

And then at the end of the day, the syringes. Injections against yellow fever, typhoid, tetanus. The needles were alarmingly large; the MO kept a couple hanging casually from his white coat and didn’t sterilise them between each use. A couple of the lads fainted. Even Matt Shaw was quite pale afterwards and very quiet.

“Fucking hurt,” he said, managing a grin.

That night there was more muffled weeping.

On the Monday night, Matt missed supper—unlike him, since he normally ate everything without complaint—and when Charles went to find him he was lying on his bed, clearly unwell.

“Got an ’eadache,” he said. “Bloody everything aches.”

Charles put a hand on his forehead; it was very hot.

“You’ve got a temperature,” he said. “I’ll come to the infirmary with you.”

“What, and get ribbed for skiving? Not bloody likely. I’ll be all right.”

Next day he passed out on the parade ground and was sent to the infirmary anyway.

“You’re reacting to the yellow fever shot,” said the MO. “Temperature of one hundred and four. Should have told us earlier. We don’t want heroics here. Bloody stupid.”

Matt was too wretched to argue.

Charles went to visit him two days later; he found him sitting up, looking much more cheerful.

“Back to the ’oliday camp day after tomorrow. Can’t wait.”

“Wish I was lying down,” said Charles. “I’ve got some hideous blisters. So’s Walton. And he was put on jankers today, poor sod. That didn’t help.”

Being put on jankers meant having to run round the parade ground in full battle dress, complete with tin hat and bayonet, urged on none too gently by an NCO in running gear.

“Poor bugger.”

Walton had become a friend of theirs, had sat in the NAAFI with them the second night and talked of his life as a Barnardo’s Boy. Like Charles, he was finding the army experience bearable, used as he was
to institutional life, and he appeared unmoved by the constant criticism hurled at him.

Much of the first leave, the thirty-six hours so desperately looked forward to, was spent by the men in their beds. They came home literally exhausted, not only by the physical trauma of their new lives, but from struggling to cope with the ceaseless criticism and confusion, from the loss of any kind of privacy, from the fear of failure and the threat of punishment.

All Charles wanted, after a decent dinner, was to lie down on his own comfortable bed in his own quiet room at Summercourt and stay there until it was time to return.

Matt Shaw had no intention of spending any time in his bed. Since it would be in a room shared with two younger brothers and the family dog, there would be little point.

He got off the train at Clapham Junction and walked along the Northcote Road, savouring the freedom to move slowly, to smile and chat with various stallholders in the market who recognized him.

The Shaws lived in a small terraced house in a street just south of the Northcote Road; as Matt opened the gate, his two young brothers shot into his arms. He was touched.

“You miss me, then?”

“Not ’arf. No one to talk to,” said twelve-year-old Derek.

“An’ I ’ad to walk Scruff on me own,” said nine-year-old Alan.

“Shockin’. Oh, now here’s Mum. How’s my best girl then, eh?”

His mother smiled at him, gave him a hug.

“Hallo, Matt. You all right? You look a bit thin, love. And, my word, what they done to your hair? It looks shocking.”

“Mum, it’ll grow. Worse things happen than that, I can tell you. You look good, Mum. Like
your
hair.”

“You noticed! More than your dad did. It was Scarlett’s idea, getting it cut.”

“Very nice. Where is she?”

“Away, love. She’s in Rome.”

Sandra’s pride in Scarlett and her new career as an air hostess was almost unbearable.

“She enjoying it still?”

“Loving it. Imagine if you get sent abroad, Matt; that’d be half the
family over there. What a thought. Come and sit down, love. Want something to eat? How about a bacon sandwich?”

“Oh, Mum, now you’re talking. Army food’s disgusting.”

She was great, his mum. She wasn’t like the other mothers round their way; she didn’t look halfway to old age already. At forty, Sandra Shaw was still pretty—very pretty. She was dark, very slim, with large brown eyes. She’d had a hard life; she’d had to do cleaning work to close the gap between what Peter Shaw brought home from his building job and what their large family needed, but had always claimed cheerfully that as it got her out of the house and away from her own cleaning, she didn’t really mind. Sandra was nothing if not upbeat.

Although she’d never had any money for clothes, she managed to look as if she did. She was clever at sewing and made herself blouses and dresses from fabric she got at the market, and studied the fashion pages of
Woman
and
Woman’s Own
carefully every week.

Today she was wearing a pair of narrow black trousers and a black sweater, as made famous and fashionable by Audrey Hepburn. She did her eye makeup like Audrey’s as well, with thick black eyeliner and heavy eyebrows, and had now had her hair cut urchin-style, like Leslie Caron in
Gigi
. She was very much influenced by the cinema: Scarlett had been named after Scarlett O’Hara. Sandra had read
Gone with the Wind
while she was pregnant and been deeply affected by it, and only some very firm words from Peter Shaw had prevented her from calling their firstborn son Rhett.

Matt was extremely grateful to his father.

Scarlett arrived home just after six, engulfing Matt in hugs and kisses.

“Oh, it’s so lovely to see you. Mum’s been so worried about you, thought you wouldn’t survive.”

“I’m fine,” said Matt, “course I am. And it’s great to see you too, Scarlett.”

They were very close. There were only seventeen months between them and they had grown up practically as twins. Scarlett had the same thick, dark hair as Matt, the same large dark eyes, set off by absurdly long eyelashes, the same die-straight nose, the same neat, sharply carved jaw. She exuded vitality, as Matt did, and had inherited her mother’s eye
for clothes. She had always attracted attention wherever she went, and still more so now, with the sophistication of her new career.

Matt was inordinately proud of her and her career; it was a big leap for a girl from Clapham, from a secondary modern. Being an air hostess was about as good a career as a girl could hope for. As good as being a private secretary, only with more prestige, and the uniform, the foreign travel, the dashing pilots.

But she had thrown herself into her application, done a Linguaphone course in French, having heard that a second language was a big advantage, and she had a talent for making people believe in whatever she was saying, which had stood her in good stead at her initial interview.

Matt had said he thought you had to be posh to be an air hostess, but Scarlett laughed.

“Matt! I can be posh. If I try. You know I can.”

This was perfectly true; she had a sharp eye and a distinct talent for the social climb.

“So—what we going to do tonight?” she said now. “I thought we might go to the Lyceum, if you feel up to it.”

“Course I do.”

They had a good time at the Lyceum; Scarlett invited her friend Josie along, as well as Malcolm, her on-off boyfriend, hauled in when she needed him, dropped again when she didn’t.

Josie liked Matt; in fact, she fancied him rotten, and she was fun. He danced the evening away through a haze, not only with Josie, but with several other girls as well.

At one stage he felt sick and dizzy and had to go outside; Josie followed him, sat down on the steps with him, and put her arm round him.

“Poor old soldier,” she said, “I know what it’s like there, that basic training; me brother did it last year. You must be all in.”

“Nah,” said Matt firmly, “I’m fine. Thanks.”

“That’s OK.”

She turned to him, pulled his face to hers, and pushed her tongue into his mouth; it was a bit of a surprise, but very pleasant. They staggered up the street a bit, found an alley where he kissed her back very thoroughly and pushed his hand up her sweater onto her breast. Josie seemed to like that. God, he’d forgotten what they felt like, breasts. Hadn’t had the energy to think about them even, the last few weeks.
After a while, he moved to her bottom and felt her grinding her hips into his; he pushed his hand gingerly up her skirt, feeling his way towards her panties. But this was forbidden territory. She pushed his hand down again.

“No, Matt,” she said, suddenly sober.

He didn’t care and returned to her breasts. He knew the rules. He’d done pretty well, he thought, really. Later, going home on the tube, she sat with her head on his shoulder.

“It’s been really nice,” she said sleepily. “I like a soldier boy.”

Matt grinned at her.

“Same again next leave?”

“Yeah. What do you think?”

When they got back to the camp, they felt like old-timers.

“You heard about poor old Happy?” said Charles when he saw him. “He’s being sent off to Fattening Camp.”

Happy was their nickname for the undersized Walton, partly as reference to his size (“You could play one of them dwarfs,” Nobby Tucker, a Geordie they had befriended, had said one morning), partly his sunny nature.

“What!”

“Yeah. They say he needs building up. Might get deferred. Poor sod.”

Being deferred was the ultimate nightmare; it meant getting returned to a new unit. Which meant losing your mates and a dreadful sense of going back to square one.

Fattening Camp was on Salisbury Plain, near Aldershot; men who were particularly thin and unfit were sent literally to be fattened up.

“But ’e’s as strong as a bloody ox,” said Matt.

“I know. Try telling them that, though.”

“Poor old bugger.”

Men were being hauled out now to do their USB (unit selection board). It was the first screening for POM (potential officer material); anyone who had been to public school and a few wild cards who showed the necessary leadership qualities got picked, and those who passed
would be sent off to do the War Office selection board, known affectionately as Wosby, at Andover.

Charles was summoned, together with the one other public schoolboy in the hut; so were Matt and a couple of others. Matt went off to, as he put it, “blind them with my fucking potential.” He was pretty confident; if anyone had the gift of the gab, he reckoned he did.