Time Shall Reap (36 page)

‘Oh.’ Pat came from Glasgow and was a quiet, reserved girl who took no interest in the opposite sex. ‘That shouldn’t have surprised you.’

‘I’ve never let it get as far as that before,’ Laura said, rather forlornly. ‘He was good fun in the hall, and I thought I’d be able to handle him, but I couldn’t.’

‘If you play with fire, you must expect to be burned.’

She sounded so motherly that Laura smiled briefly. ‘I’d to kick him before I could get away from him.’

Pat swung her dangling feet for a moment. ‘Your leave starts the same day as mine, doesn’t it? Are you going home to Aberdeen?’

Laura, who never spoke about her family, knew that Pat had placed her by her accent. ‘I’m never going home again.’

Gathering that she didn’t want to be questioned about it, Pat didn’t press her. ‘Where will you be going?’

‘God knows,’ Laura said, morosely. ‘I’ve nothing planned, but no doubt I’ll think of somewhere.’

Pat raised her blonde eyebrows. ‘You can come to Glasgow with me, if you like. My Mum won’t mind, but I’d better write her first to let her know you’re coming.’

Laura’s last leave, apart from two nights in hotels in Aberdeen and Edinburgh, had been spent crying her eyes out in a YWCA hostel, and Pat’s offer was very tempting. ‘Are you sure it’ll be OK?’

‘I’ll write tomorrow.’ The other girl moved back to her own bed and picked up her book, ending the conversation.

She was a pretty girl, Laura thought, as she studied her. She had very blonde hair, almost silvery, but her lashes were dark, her skin creamy, and she always wore dark lipstick. She kept herself to herself and didn’t even go dancing, so she must have a serious boyfriend somewhere. They were about the same age, and it would be good to have a close friend. They could steer clear of boys altogether, because there were always those who wouldn’t take no for an answer – like Tony. It wasn’t fair, she’d begun to like him before he did what he did. John had never tried to ... no, she mustn’t think about John.

Pat’s mother was a small, cheery person, widowed for more than ten years, who ran a boarding house for commercial travellers. She welcomed Laura warmly, then looked at her apologetically. ‘You’ll have to share Pat’s room, if that’s all right? There are two single beds.’

‘They’re all single beds in this house,’ Pat smiled.

While they were dressing on the first morning, Pat said, ‘I give Mum a hand with the beds and things while I’m here, but there’s no need for you to hang around all fore-noon.’

‘No, I’ll help you, and your mum can do something else.’

Mrs Haggarty, delighted with this arrangement, cleaned each room as the girls made the beds, keeping Laura giggling with her pawky Glaswegian humour, for she was a complete extrovert, not like her daughter. Pat showed Laura round Glasgow in the afternoons, and in the evenings they went to the cinema or just sat in the lounge with the boarders, playing cards with them or listening to their fund of somewhat risqué jokes. Their ten days passed in a flash.

‘Haste ye back,’ Mrs Haggarty said, as they were leaving.

‘How much do I owe you,’ Laura asked, hastily. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to keep me for nothing.’

The woman roared with laughter. ‘How much do I owe you, would be more like it. You’ve worked like a slave since you came, so I’ll call it quits, and remember, even if you’re not on leave at the same time as Pat again, you’ll be welcome any time.’

As they walked away, Pat said, ‘She really meant that.’

Very grateful to them for not having tried out to find out why she didn’t go home, Laura realized that there had been no mention, either, of Pat having a steady boyfriend.

Their next leaves not coinciding, Laura went to Glasgow by herself. Mrs Haggarty, thankful for her help in the mornings, insisted that she took a break in the afternoons, so the girl sometimes wandered round the larger stores in Sauchiehall Street and Buchanan Street; sometimes she went to the Broomielaw to watch the ships on the Clyde; once to Kelvingrove Park, where she spent a very pleasant hour in the Art Gallery. But she was happiest just pottering about with Mrs Haggarty, who treated her like a daughter and made her promise to regard Glasgow as her home.

Jenny Porter, another WAAF, joined her at Inverness on the last lap of her return journey. ‘Thank goodness I’ve met you, Fullerton. I hate travelling on my own, don’t you?’

‘I don’t really mind. Have you been on leave, too?’

Jenny beamed. ‘Yes, and I’d a super time. I went out every night with a boy I met, and he’s going to write to me, so it might be the start of something big. How was yours?’

Laura shrugged. ‘Nothing so exciting, but I enjoyed it.’

‘I heard you were going to Glasgow?’

‘Yes. I went with Pat Haggarty last time, and her mother invited me back.’

After a quick, sideways glance, Jenny murmured, ‘We were all amazed at you going away with Haggarty, you know.’

‘Oh? Why was that?’ Laura was mystified.

Looking uncomfortable, Jenny said, ‘You know.’

‘No, I don’t. Why shouldn’t I go home with Pat?’

‘She’s not like the rest of us. She’s ... er ...’

With a sinking stomach, it dawned on Laura what was being implied. ‘Are you saying she’s ... one of those?’

‘We thought you knew, and with you not bothering with any boys either, we wondered if you ...’ Jenny’s voice tailed off at the other girl’s expression. ‘We didn’t really think you were.’

‘I’m bloody not!’ Laura was indignant. ‘And Pat never did anything to make me think she was either.’

‘Oh, well, you probably had a lucky escape.’ Jenny took a paper bag out of her respirator. ‘My Mum saves up her sweet coupons until I go home,’ she explained, and offered the bag to Laura, who took one absentmindedly.

They chewed the caramels in silence. It could only happen to her, Laura thought, dismally. Why could her life not be straightforward like other girls’? She understood now about Pat, but it gave her no satisfaction. What a fool she’d been, but such a thing had never entered her head.

Trying to atone for the shock she had sprung, Jenny chattered about her boyfriend for the remainder of the journey, but Laura was not listening. What could she say when she was alone with Pat, knowing what she did about her? She could hardly come straight out and say, ‘Are you a lesbian?’ It was a word she had only read, never heard actually spoken, and this was going to be another drama-fraught situation.

Her problem was solved when Pat approached her next day as they left the Mess. ‘I believe you travelled part of the way back last night with Jenny Porter? Did she tell you what they all say about me?’

‘Yes, Pat, she did.’

‘I’m glad you know.’

Laura could detect something odd about the other girl’s manner. ‘It’s not true, though, is it?’

‘No, it’s not.’

‘Why don’t you set the daft bitches straight, then?’

‘I don’t care what they say. It doesn’t hurt now.’

Laura felt sorry for her, but suspected that there was more to it than Pat was saying. ‘There’s something else behind it, isn’t there? The real reason you don’t go out with any boys?’

The silence was so long that Laura wished she hadn’t tried to find out, but at last Pat said, ‘There is a reason, but I can’t speak about it.’

‘That’s all right. There’s something I can’t tell anybody, either, so now we understand, we won’t ask each other any awkward questions.’ Laura paused, then said, ‘Are we going to the pictures tonight?’

Pat gripped her hand gratefully. ‘OK, Laura.’

They carried on as they had done before Jenny Porter’s cruel insinuation, but Laura was annoyed when the other girls avoided her too. It was a few weeks before she became accustomed to it, but eventually she could laugh when she saw them change direction when she and Pat went anywhere near them.

1943

When the last two passengers left their carriage at Newcastle, John Watson wasted no time in kissing his wife. Agnes smiled at him uncertainly, her green eyes, set in long dark fringes, making him want to kiss her over and over again. ‘I’m really scared, darling,’ she murmured.

‘There’s no need. Mum and Dad are going to love you, so stop worrying and look forward to our honeymoon. We’d only forty-eight hours when we got married, so it didn’t count.’

A twinkle appeared in the twin green pools. ‘It counted for me.’

Blushing boyishly, he grinned. ‘You know what I meant. All that matters is I love you, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Agnes settled back into the padded seat and looked out of the window.

John’s mind returned to the day they had met. He had been going home on leave, with no interest in life, but as soon as she had hovered in the doorway of his carriage, his spirits had soared and his heart, dead for over a year, had played a loud tattoo against his ribs. He had squeezed up to make room for her and when she sat down, they had begun to talk.

‘I work in a munitions factory in Dagenham,’ she had told him, ‘but I’m going to see my Aunt Dolly. Her husband’s stationed at Dyce Aerodrome, and my dad said it would be safer up there. I didn’t want to leave Mum and him, not with the bombing, but they persuaded me to go – just for a week, though I nearly changed my mind when I saw how full the train was.’

He glanced at her now, but she was still gazing pensively out at the countryside. ‘Penny for ‘em, darling,’ he joked.

‘I was remembering the last time we made this journey.’

‘Two minds with but a single thought. We were old friends by the time we got off the train.’

She giggled delightedly. ‘Before we reached Edinburgh, you’d made me promise to meet you in Aberdeen.’

‘I didn’t want to lose contact with you, for I’ve loved you since I saw you in the corridor looking lost.’

‘Me, too. Are you glad now I made you marry me?’

‘You know I am, but I still think we should have waited. For your sake, I mean – in case anything happens to me.’

The light went out of her eyes. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to you, darling, so don’t be so pessimistic.’

Before he could kiss her again, a passing soldier peered into their compartment and shouted behind him, ‘There’s some empty seats here.’ Immediately, another three Seaforth Highlanders appeared and bundled in beside Agnes and John.

‘We’ve been standing since York,’ one of them remarked as they sat down. ‘How long have these seats been free?’

‘Just since Newcastle. Sorry, I didn’t realize anybody was still standing.’ John was even more sorry that he would no longer be alone with his wife, but it couldn’t be helped.

‘That’s OK, mate. Are we intruding on young love?’

‘You are,’ laughed John, ‘but we’re married.’

The soldier pulled out a battered packet of cigarettes and held it towards John. ‘Fag?’

‘No thanks.’

Good-natured ribbing between the four soldiers – on the way to Aberdeen to change trains for Forres – gave Agnes and John no further chance to talk privately, and when the train pulled into the Joint Station, they said goodbye to their travelling companions and made their way out.

‘Just as well they didn’t know we’ve only been married for a couple of months and this is our honeymoon. They’d have made a meal of that.’ He tucked her arm through his and looked at her solicitously. ‘Not long now, darling.’

Helen and Jimmy were also anxious about this meeting. As she had said when John had written that he was bringing his wife to see them, ‘We’ve been blessed with one wonderful daughter-in-law, we can’t expect Providence to provide us with another one as good as Margaret.’ Their worries were forgotten as soon as John ushered in the tall, raven-haired girl, her green eyes friendly and her pleasant face breaking into an attractive smile, and Helen put up a silent prayer of thanks that he had got over Laura Fullerton.

While Jimmy was questioning Agnes about the London bombing, Helen took the opportunity to have a quiet word with John. ‘Have you told her about ...?’

‘Yes, Mum, I have. She knows everything, so don’t worry.’

‘Thank goodness for that.’ Helen’s cup of happiness would have been full if it hadn’t been that she still did not know what had become of Laura and Elspeth. She sup-posed that the girl had fallen in love with somebody else by now, like John, but her mother ...

Over the past two years, Laura had stoically endured her self-imposed withdrawal from social contact with the opposite sex, but eventually the lure of the dance hall proved too strong to ignore. She longed for the music, the lights, the atmosphere the excitement of being held in a man’s arms – any man’s arms. Towards the middle of December, she raised the subject with her friend. ‘Did you never go to any dances at all?’

Pat Haggarty smiled sadly. ‘At one time, I went dancing every week. It was at a dance that I met ...’ Biting her lip, she broke off, her eyes revealing a deep sorrow.

Guessing that it must have been someone very special, Laura wondered what had gone wrong, but if Pat had enjoyed dancing before, it was time she gave it another try. ‘Would it upset you to go to the do tonight? We’d go together and come back together, and you don’t have to dance with anybody if you don’t want to.’

‘In that case, there’s not much point in me going,’ Pat said, drily, then saw how disappointed Laura was. ‘You really want to go, don’t you? Why don’t you go by yourself?’

‘I’m not going unless you come, too.’

‘Well, you’ve been very understanding with me so far ... OK, I’ll go with you – just this once.’

Laura’s face lit up. ‘Wizard! But remember, if you feel you can’t take it, say the word and we’ll leave right away.’

After tea, they applied their make-up, swapping lipsticks for a change, and Laura, whose short curls needed little attention, waited until Pat pinned up her side hair and brushed the back into a pageboy roll. When they were ready, each gave the other an approving ‘thumbs-up’.

Laura’s excitement reached fever pitch when she entered the hall and picked up the familiar smell – a conglomeration of cheap perfume, perspiration and Slipperene. They sat down at the side, but after a quickstep and a Lambeth Walk with no one asking them to dance, Laura pulled Pat reluctantly to her feet. She soon mastered the art of leading, and noticed that several boys looked at them but turned away, red-faced, after their partners whispered to them. Pat and she were going to be ostracized, she realized, and held her head high to show that she didn’t care, but when she glanced at her friend, she saw from her set mouth that she, too, had tumbled to what was going on, and that she did care.