The Penny Bangle (11 page)

Cassie grinned encouragingly. ‘The officers have noticed you’re a nob. Soon, you’ll be getting your first stripe. Then you’ll be off to train to be an officer yourself, and you’ll be able to put the likes of Jackson in the glass-house. You can get her cleaning the latrine block with a toothbrush, or scrubbing lumps of coal.’

‘But they all tease me when I kneel down at night to say my prayers,’ said Frances sadly.

‘Just glare back at the bitches, that’s what I would do,’ said Cassie firmly. ‘Then say your prayers as normal.’

‘It’s all right for you.’

But with Cassie to buck her up and to assure her she was doing fine, Frances managed to cheer up a bit. When Doreen Jackson started mocking her again, Frances said that Doreen should go and boil her head – or dunk it in some paraffin, at least – and all the others laughed.

‘I wonder where we’re going to be posted?’ Cassie asked, on the day that they were due to finish their basic training.

‘Anywhere, the sergeant says.’ Frances looked at Cassie anxiously. ‘Cassie, I do hope we’ll be together.’

‘We’ve both asked for battery or drivers’ courses,’ Cassie reminded Frances. ‘So with a little bit of luck we might be.’

They went to get their post.

‘Some holy medals from my granny,’ said Cassie, shaking the envelope to make it clink. ‘A letter from Father Riley to remind me to stay pure – ’

‘Who’s the third one from?’

‘I dunno,’ said Cassie, going red but grinning – she couldn’t help herself. When she heard from
him
, it made her day.

‘What does he say?’ asked Frances.

‘The usual stuff – he’s bored, he’s tired of drilling, marching, training new recruits, and he can’t wait to go back overseas. But before he does – ’

‘He what?’

‘He wants to see me.’

‘Does he?’ Frances beamed. ‘I told you so!’

‘You didn’t.’

‘Yes, I did,’ said Frances. ‘So, when are you going to meet, and where?’

‘He’s hoping he can get some leave quite soon, and asks if I could go to London.’

‘So write back and tell him yes, you could!’

Chapter Six

‘He needn’t think I’ll jump through hoops for
him
,’ said Cassie, as she and Frances got their breakfast porridge from the cookhouse counter, three days later.

‘Quite right, Cass – why should you?’ Frances said.

But Cassie didn’t miss her grin. ‘If he
does
get leave,’ she added crossly, ‘how would I get to London, anyway?’

‘I don’t suppose you could hitch a lift, or catch a train, or something?’ Frances shrugged. ‘It’s not as if you’re dying to see him, is it?’

‘No,’ lied Cassie, but she knew she was blushing as she carried off her tray.

‘What’s all this, then?’ asked a girl from Swansea, reaching for the salt and looking curiously at Cassie. ‘Why are you all red?’

‘Cassie’s got a date, but she’s pretending she doesn’t want to go,’ said Frances, starting on her porridge.

‘Who’s the bloke?’

‘He’s a lieutenant in the Royal Dorsets.’

‘She’s going with an officer? Ooh, my word, there’s posh!’ The girl pushed up the end of her snub nose, and all the others sniggered.

‘After
he’s
had his hands inside your drawers, you won’t be speaking to the likes of us,’ put in her friend.

‘You two had your postings yet?’ enquired another girl.

‘We’re both off to driving school,’ said Cassie, relieved to change the subject.

‘In Luton,’ added Frances. ‘It’s a three day course. They’re desperate for ATS to drive the army’s lorries.’

‘They reckon you can learn to drive a lorry in three days?’

‘It can’t be very difficult,’ said Cassie. ‘You just go backwards, forwards – ’

‘Then you drive into a ditch!’

On an airstrip outside Luton, twenty ATS girls from various army barracks all around the country stood on the tarmac in the morning mist, eyeing four Bedford trucks parked side by side, a hundred yards away.

‘Any of you lovely ladies ever driven before?’ enquired the grim-faced sergeant instructor, scowling at them all in obvious scorn.

‘Yes, I have, Sergeant Brent,’ said Frances promptly. ‘I’ve driven Daddy’s Morris since I was seventeen. I can drive an Austin van, as well.’

‘Oh, I say, can you really, Lady Muck?’ The sergeant grinned, and Frances blushed bright red. ‘Maybe you’ll end up teaching me a few things I don’t know.’

‘Sarcastic bugger, take no notice,’ whispered Cassie.

‘Who asked your opinion, Fairy Fay?’ Sergeant Brent glared angrily at Cassie. ‘You speak with my permission, understood? Otherwise, you button it. I dunno why they’ve sent you here, I’m sure. You’re far too short to see out of a lorry. You’ll look like bloody Chad in that cartoon, tryin’ to see over that brick wall.’

‘We can sit her on a cushion, sarge,’ the corporal standing beside the sergeant said, and he winked at Cassie conspiratorially.

‘Jesus, give me strength,’ the sergeant muttered. ‘All right, girls, this way. Quick march, at the double, pick your feet up. Shoe leather costs money, so don’t wear it out by scrapin’ it along the road. Whoever taught you shower to march, was they a cripple, too?’

Cassie pulled a face behind his back.

‘This thing here’s a truck,’ said Sergeant Brent, slapping a Bedford lorry on the bonnet. ‘Inside, you got the steerin’ wheel, an’ gears an’ brakes an’ stuff. Outside, you got the engine. You have to make ’em all co-operate.’

Cassie listened carefully, determined not to fuck it up as the sergeant confidently predicted they all would. She was put in Corporal Benson’s group and, when it was her turn behind the wheel, she found to her relief that she could reach the pedals – just.

As Corporal Benson climbed into the cab, she tapped the pedals lightly with her shoe, getting the feel for where they were – accelerator, brake, she thought, accelerator, brake, and don’t get them mixed up.

‘Now, if you’re sitting comfortably, just put her into first,’ the corporal said, and lit a casual cigarette. ‘Clutch right down, your other foot on the gas, then ease the gear stick to your left. Just push it, love – don’t shove.’

Cassie put her foot down on the clutch, engaged the gears, released the hand brake and prayed to the God she didn’t know if she believed in: make the bastard move.

The bastard did.

‘The fairy’s done all right today, and Lady Muck’s not bad, but the rest of you are bleeding hopeless,’ said the sergeant, at the end of a long twelve-hour session that had left some girls in tears. The Bedford trucks had had their paint scraped off, their gears ground down to iron filings, and the rubber burned off all their tyres.

‘Grayson, Taylor, Lucas, Ashford, Penfold – you’ll report for duty again tomorrow morning, six o’clock, an’ no one’s to be late. We’ve got a war to win. The rest of you are useless, so I’m getting shot of you before you cause a fatal accident. Or bugger one of the army’s precious lorries, which would be ten times worse.’

‘We did it!’ As Cassie and Frances fell out with the others, and walked towards the hut where they’d be sleeping while they did the course, they grinned at one another.

‘But we’ve got to strip an engine down tomorrow morning,’ said Frances doubtfully.

‘So, how hard can it be?’ Cassie shrugged and smiled encouragingly. ‘I know all there is to know about engines, anyway. I used to help to make them. Well, I made them for tanks. I don’t suppose a lorry’s very different.’

It wasn’t, and Cassie got on very well. By the end of the intensive three-day course, Sergeant Brent had laryngitis and Corporal Benson said he was putting in for a transfer to the Catering Corps, but all the girls had passed. Now they’d be sent off to another army camp, to train to be army drivers, couriers, chauffeurs, driving anything from motorbikes to three ton army trucks.

‘Well, are you going?’ Frances asked, when Robert wrote again and said he’d finally got some leave from Camberley.

So could Cassie get away and spend a couple of days in London? She could stay with his sister, Daisy Denham, and her husband Ewan Fraser, in Park Lane.

‘You mean she’s going to stay with Daisy Denham?’ asked Jess Penfold, when Frances told the others all about it – that Cassie was going to London to see Daisy’s little brother, and would meet his actress sister, and her famous film star husband, too.

‘You mean
the
Daisy Denham?’ demanded Alice Lucas. ‘The one who’s in those London shows?’

‘Yes, I suppose,’ said Cassie carelessly.

‘You lucky cow!’ cried Linda Grayson.

‘Cass, get me her autograph?’ asked Alice.

‘All right,’ said Cassie, yawning.

But inside, she was scared.

This was all too much.

She was really dying to see Robert. She’d stopped bothering to deny it. But she had never been to London, and she’d never met anybody famous. As for actresses – weren’t they really bitchy, didn’t they lie in bed until mid-day, didn’t they get divorced every five minutes?

‘Cassie Taylor, the CO wants to see you, now.’ A corporal tapped her on the shoulder, shaking her out of her worried daydream. ‘Leave your porridge.’

Cassie was marched across the parade ground, trying to work out what she’d done wrong – had Corporal Benson grassed on her for cheek? Or had her overalls been dirty? Or had she let her hair grow so it brushed her jacket collar? Or were her badges less than shining bright?

‘Good morning, Private Taylor.’ As Cassie stood to attention on the lino, quaking in her shoes, the army captain looked up from his desk.

He smiled at Cassie kindly. ‘Stand at ease,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Corporal Howard, you needn’t stay. Well, Private Taylor, I’ve heard great things of you, and you’re in line for your first stripe.’

‘Congratulations, you deserve it,’ Frances said, and grinned.

‘Jolly well done, Cassie.’ Alice patted Cassie on the shoulder.

‘You were the best of all of us,’ said Jess.

‘So you’ll soon be off, then?’ Linda asked.

‘Yes, it looks like it,’ said Cassie, wondering where she’d put her sewing kit. She was sure she’d left it on the night-stand. Some thieving so-and-so must have borrowed it.

‘Where will you be going?’ Alice asked.

‘Aldershot,’ said Cassie.

‘That’s not too far from Camberley or London,’ Frances told Cassie, beaming. ‘So even if you find you can’t get any leave, Robert will be able to get himself to Aldershot to see you.’

‘Do you think he might?’

‘He’ll be there,’ said Frances. ‘I would put money on it.’

Later on that day, when she and Cassie were by themselves, Frances coughed and cleared her throat, like people often did when they had something difficult to say.

‘Listen, Cassie,’ she said impressively, ‘you will be nice to Robert, won’t you? I mean, you won’t be smart with him? Or laugh at him? He’ll be going away, remember, and he might get killed. He likes you very much – ’

‘Well, Fran – there’s nice and nice,’ said Cassie. ‘I’m not going to be so nice to Robert that I end up like my mother. It would kill my granny.’

Cassie arrived in Aldershot on a damp June evening.

The train was very late. Mid-way through the journey, the engine had packed up, so it had had to be towed off, and it had been ages before a new one came. The passengers had been stuck in a siding for three hours or more. They were desperate for a cup of tea, but had to make do with smoking, playing cards, and looking at each other.

Now, glancing at the station clock, Cassie saw she’d been expected at the local barracks hours ago.

The other passengers were civilians, and they were all going into town. It didn’t look as if she’d get a chance to cadge a lift. So she asked a porter for directions, was told about a short cut that would take a mile off her walk, and then she set off on her own.