Judy sat staring out of the railway carriage window. Of course there was a war on, but could any train that was trying at all really dawdle the way this one was doing? Could there really be stations as small as the ones they were stopping at? The country was looking lovely, field after field of oats, rye and barley almost ready to cut. There was meadow-sweet waist high in the ditches, and dog-rose and honeysuckle springing out of the hedges. But Judy was tired; no one loved the country more than she did, but now she could think of nothing but the end of her journey. It was an end, too, from the look of things. When the journey had started the carriage had been jammed full of passengers, but one by one they had got out and left only herself and the studious young man. Judy took out her powder-case and had a look at her face and hair. Her nose was a little shiny, she decided, and her lips could stand a bit more lipstick, but her hair was all right. It was the sort that stayed where it was put; it was parted in the middle and with a slight wave on the top rippled nicely to her shoulders, where it fell in well-ordered curls. There were lots of things about herself that Judy would have changed, but not her hair. She was lucky over her hair and she knew it. Natural curls and waves as well as being red gold was a pretty decent helping for any girl’s plate.
The train stopped at yet another little halt, and this time, perhaps because the driver was tired, it stopped so suddenly that Judy was almost thrown on the floor and her lipstick was actually thrown out of her hand. It went under the seat.
Judy, in a flash of thought, weighed the situation. The lipstick being round would have rolled as far under the seat as was possible. Its top was not on it so that an assortment of dust, half sandwiches, match-ends and bits of paper that live under railway carriages would by now have stuck to it. To retrieve it would mean hunting on the dirty carriage floor and, almost for a certainty, starting a ladder in her stockings. It was sickening to lose a lipstick which, because it was a present from an American, had been better than most, but it would be far worse to ladder a stocking. Maddening though it was, the lipstick would have to stay where it had rolled.
“Which side did it go?”
The studious young man who had seemed to Judy to take an interest in nothing but his heavy-looking book was half-way to the floor. Judy noticed how thin he was and how long-built to go grubbing under a railway seat.
“Don’t bother. The top was off, things will have stuck to it.”
He was kneeling on the floor. He raised his head. He was nice-looking in a sensitive, highly strung way, he had eyes as blue as Judy’s own and a charming shy smile.
“But aren’t they a bit hard to get? And it would clean, wouldn’t it?”
Judy did not want to appear a helpless female. She was quite willing to believe it was a good role at the right time, but the right time was hardly the fourth year of a world war.
“It will, but I weighed it against my stockings. There’s almost certainly grit on the floor and I simply can’t face laddering them.”
The young man accepted the stocking situation as a major issue, his face showed that he saw that a ladder could not be risked.
“Which side?” Judy told him. There was a pause while he searched. Then, in triumph, he passed the lipstick to her. “It is pretty dirty. Still, it’s greasy, it would rub off on my paper.”
Judy, having got back her lipstick, felt a sudden extra affection for it. She had seen men handle them before and knew that they thought it did no harm to break the paint away from the holder.
“I’ll do it. As a matter of fact I think I’ll have to do you too. Look at your knees! And there’s a fluff of cotton wool or something on the back of your collar.”
Obviously, after an introduction like that, the young man could not disappear back into his book. He closed it to show he had no intention of doing so. He gave Judy one of his shy, engaging smiles.
“Which is your station?”
“Pinlock.”
He looked at her with interest.
“Are you coming to work there?”
Judy remembered all she had read and heard about careless talk. She answered him carefully.
“Yes. Not there exactly, but in the neighbourhood.”
“It looks as if we were going to work under the same roof as it were.”
Judy’s eyes widened.
“Are we? Have you been directed here too?”
He laughed.
“The cat’s out of the bag. There’s no one to hear so we may as well speak the truth. You are going to work in Bigfields. I already work there.”
Judy got up and sat down opposite him.
“No! What’s it like? If it’s simply foul you can tell me. I can take it. I’ve worked as a V.A.D. under what, before the war, was the matron of a workhouse and you can take anything after that.”
He was a man who thought before he spoke.
“I don’t know much about the women, but they look happy and all that. Of course the work is rather monotonous, but I suppose that’s the same in all factories.”
“And there’s something about making munitions that gives you a kick, isn’t there? I mean, everything else, nursing and all that, is useful, but you don’t have the feeling that you are actually making the stuff that’ll finish the war.”
He took out his case and offered Judy a cigarette. He took one himself.
“I should have thought you couldn’t be doing anything more useful than nursing.”
She nodded, looking rather shame-faced.
“Too true. But, you see, I started while I was still at school, helping in the holidays and all that. Then, when I left school, I worked there altogether, and when I registered, the exchange said I could go on doing that unless they sent for me. Well, the hospital was for evacuated children, and by degrees there weren’t many of them left, so they closed our hospital and sent our children to another one.”
“So you were ordered to make shells.”
Judy scowled at her cigarette.
“No, I wasn’t. As a matter of fact they wanted me to go into another hospital and be properly trained, but I wouldn’t. It sounds pretty shabby when nurses are needed, but I’m not a Florence Nightingale girl. I have tried to be, but the truth is I just hate nursing.”
His eyes twinkled.
“So you’re going to make shells! Have you got a billet?”
Judy opened her bag and produced a piece of paper.
“Mrs. Former,” she read. “Old House, Longbottom Lane, Pinlock.”
“Mrs. Former,” he murmured thoughtfully. “Mrs. Former. I know the house, it’s not far from the works.”
“You said the bit about it not being far from the works in a different voice. What’s wrong with Mrs. Former?”
“Nothing. It’s just I can’t place her. Somewhere at the back of my mind I know somebody has talked to me about her.”
“And not said anything very nice.”
He laughed.
“Your hearing is too acute. I can’t remember what I heard about her. I just know somebody spoke about her to me.”
Judy turned the piece of paper over.
“There’s somebody else in the house. Clara Roal. Does that bring anything back to you?”
His face lit up.
“I hate not remembering names.”
“Well, who said what?”
“It was nothing. There’s a forewoman, a Mrs. White. She was billeted there. She happened to tell me that the old man in the house had died and she was going into a new billet.”
Judy flicked the ash off her cigarette on to the floor.
“She said a lot more than that.”
He sighed.
“If you must have it she said that she was glad to get out. That the house gave her the creeps. She’s a townswoman and the place is lonely.”
“We still haven’t got to Clara Roal.”
“What a girl you are for sticking to your point. Well, if you must know, Mrs. White disliked Mrs. Roal, but don’t let it affect you. Mrs. White is a woman who likes everything in a house or a factory run her way, and I shouldn’t think there’s anybody she’s been billeted on she hasn’t had a few words with.”
Having got her answer, Judy relaxed.
“I shan’t care what Mrs. White thought. I never go by other people’s opinions, and I certainly shan’t mind the house being lonely. I’ve always lived in the country. As we’ve got so far do you mind me asking your name? Mine’s Judy Rest.”
“Nicholas Alexander Gordon Parsons.”
“Gosh! You must have been the only son and they thought they’d christen you all the family favourites.”
“No. I had two brothers. They both had several names. Dennis had five.”
Judy’s face was shocked.
“Had?”
“Dennis got his at Dunkirk and Lionel was brought down over Germany.”
“Then . . .”
He stopped her.
“No. It was a crash, nobody had a chance to bail out.”
“How awful! Your poor mother!”
“She’s alone now. My father died some years ago. But she’s busy, you know. Absolute prop and stay of the local W.V.S.”
“What a mercy she’s got you.”
His face was half turned from Judy, but she could see his jaw muscles contract.
“Yes. I was the child who was too delicate to live. And now look at the damn thing. The sole survivor.” She looked at his too fine skin and his long nervous hands, and the way his clothes hung on him.
“Are you all right now?”
“Ticking over nicely.” He was opening his note-case. He took out a card and scribbled on it. “I work a bit away from the main factory, I’m doing some experimental stuff, but I’m getatable at the works on that number, and on this at the pub where I’m living. Park the card away somewhere and if you want anything, you know, don’t like your job, or a bit fed up and lonely, or anything like wanting another billet, give me a ring.” The train jerked to a stop. “This metropolis is Pinlock.”
A local car had been hired to take Judy to her billet. Feeling rather lonely, she took out and turned over Nicholas’ card. “The Honourable Nicholas Parsons,” she read. She put the card carefully in her note-case. Her face was calm as she put it away, but her brain was turning over the order of Nicholas’ words. If you want anything, and then he spoke of her job, being fed up or lonely, and last, as if it were an afterthought, her billet. She put the case away in her bag. “What is the matter with my billet? I’d swear he’s heard something. Oh, well, Judy my girl, you’ll soon find out!”