Added to Harry’s misery over the loss of Julie and George was the frustration of not yet being assigned to an operational squadron. He was itching to get into action, but all that happened was that he was sent to Cosford where there was a radio training school. As one of the best wireless operators to be turned out in his group he found himself as an instructor, passing on his knowledge to others. It wasn’t what he joined up for, though if Julie had still been alive she would have been pleased to know he wasn’t in the front line. He felt a bit of a fraud because it was the population of London and other cities who were truly in the firing line and they were suffering unbelievable hardship. He was glad his parents had moved. Three-quarters of the workforce at Chalfont’s were women now and, according to his father, doing a great job.
Sometimes, when he had leave, he went to stay with them. Letchworth was a purpose-built garden city and an oasis of calm. The air-raid siren went off now and again, but the bombers were on their way to or from somewhere else and left them alone. He would spend his leave wandering about the countryside and often found himself thinking, Julie would like to see this, or I must tell Julie about that. And then he would remember and be thrown into gloom. He visited Millie, who was renting a house near his parents, but the sight of Dorothy running about and talking in her own baby language reduced him to tears. He found the companionship of his fellow airmen easier to cope with than the cloying sympathy of his family and often he did not leave the station when on leave.
He would go to the pictures and for a little while lose himself in the story on the screen, or watch a football match, but more often than not he would join a crowd of his fellows going to the nearest pub, where they drank too much and the jollity was forced.
Once, when he had a whole week’s leave just before Christmas, he took a train to London and went to Highgate Cemetery to stand over Julie’s grave and contemplate what might have been if there had been no war. There was a stone cross at its head with the names of Julie and George engraved on it, which he had ordered before he returned from leave. The grave was kept tidy and there were flowers in a vase beneath the cross. He was wondering who had put them there when he saw Miss Paterson coming along the path towards him carrying a holly wreath. She seemed thinner and frailer than when he had last seen her and her hair was almost white, reminding him that time never stood still however much you might wish it could.
‘Sergeant Walker,’ she said. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m well, thank you. I had a day or two’s leave and thought I’d come down. Have you been looking after the grave?’
‘Yes, you don’t mind, do you?’
‘No, I’m grateful.’
She bent and took away the spent flowers and replaced them with the wreath, picking up the fallen petals and putting all the rubbish in a bag she carried. ‘I’ll leave you, shall I?’
‘No, don’t go. Tell me about Julie. Did you see her often?’
‘Not all that often, but strangely enough she came to see me that day. The siren went while she was with me. She would not take shelter and insisted on going home because she had left George with a friend. It was a hot day and he had been having fun sitting in a bath of cool water and she didn’t want to drag him out. She didn’t intend to be gone long. In a way I’m glad she got back to be with him in the end, though I don’t suppose it’s any consolation to you.’
‘Yes and no. What happened to her friend?’
‘I suppose she went home when Julie returned. Foolish of her to risk being out in a raid, but as it happened it probably saved her life.’
‘Was she all right? Julie, I mean. Was she well?’
‘Yes, but she missed you. She talked a lot about what you would do when you came home. And of course, she doted on George. She would risk anything for him.’
‘I know.’ He bent and propped the gnome against the wreath.
‘I didn’t know whether to leave that there,’ she said.
‘Yes, Julie loved it. She said he was happy and that was how she was. Whenever she looked at him, she would smile. I hope he’s keeping her smiling now.’
‘I am sure he is, but Harry, you must not grieve too long, you know. You have your whole life ahead of you and you mustn’t waste it. Save the good memories and make a new life for yourself.’
‘Amen to that.’
They parted at the cemetery gate and he went back to Harrogate feeling cleansed. The visit had eased his pain a little and brought some sort of finality to Julie’s death, something he had been finding it hard to come to terms with. He stiffened his back and decided, come hell or high water, he would get himself into an operational squadron and do something about winning this war. Let someone else teach the others how to operate wireless sets.
It was March 1941 before Julie was discharged from the convalescent home she had been sent to after being several weeks in hospital. Now she was fit and well in body if not in mind, but her past remained as elusive as ever. She had accepted her new name, together with a new identity card and ration book, a little money which came out of a government fund for people who had been bombed out, and clothing and toiletries provided by the WVS. She was now, to all intents and purposes, Eve Seaton, aged twenty-two, so they guessed, birthdate and birthplace unknown, next of kin none.
The first thing she did, even before finding lodgings, was to go to Southwark and wander round the streets to see if anything jogged her memory. The bomb damage was extensive and all she could see were ruined buildings: houses, shops and factories. Even the sight of the railway bridge, now repaired, did nothing to stir anything in her mind but a feeling of terror. Some of the factories were still functioning and she watched the workforce making their way inside. No one gave any sign of recognising her. A few shops, their windows boarded up, were open for business and one grocer even had a notice stuck to the door: ‘Assistant wanted’.
She went inside. ‘I believe you need an assistant,’ she said to the elderly man who came from behind a blackout curtain at the back of the shop to serve her.
‘Yes. My wife’s ill upstairs and I need to look after her. I want someone to take over down here. Have you done this kind of work before?’
‘No, but I’ll do anything.’
‘Can you add up?’
Julie was fairly sure she could. ‘Yes.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Eve Seaton.’
‘Mine’s Doug Green. You don’t come from round here.’
‘How do you know?’
‘The way you talk. More West End than East End.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Yes. Can you start tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then be here by eight o’clock. I like to catch the factory workers before they clock on. They buy snacks and cigarettes usually.’
Julie thanked him and left to find lodgings. Very little had escaped the bombing, but there were still buildings standing, some hardly touched, and she wandered about the rest of the day trying to drag her memory back, but the harder she tried the more it eluded her. Mr Green had said she sounded more West End than East End, so perhaps she didn’t come from about here at all. Giving up, she found a room in a lodging house and sat down to contemplate a future which was as unknown to her as her past.
Working for Mr Green was hard work and the hours long, and by the time she had finished and returned to her lodgings each night, all she wanted to do was eat her evening meal and fall into bed. She was lonely and the only human contact she had was with her landlady and Mr Green and his regular customers, none of whom gave any sign of recognising her. But with a shifting population – people being bombed out and moving away, men away in the forces, children evacuated and new people coming in to work in the factories – it was hardly surprising. She was lonely, so lonely that she wondered if she had been used to having a lot of people around her. A big family perhaps? But if that were so, why had no one come looking for her? Was she in the wrong area altogether?
When the siren went, she refused to go into a shelter; not for anything would she venture into one of those again. Her landlady gave up trying to persuade her and left her in her room. She would switch off the light and pull back the curtains so that she could lie in bed and see the sky and its criss-cross of searchlights. She would lie there sleepless and listen to the planes coming in, the noise of the guns and the heavy crump of explosions, with her heart beating uncomfortably fast. It only slowed down when the all-clear sounded.
After one particularly bad raid in early May, she thought the whole city must be on fire. From her window she could see the flames reaching skywards in whichever direction she looked. She could hear the drone of aircraft, wave after wave of them, and occasionally one was caught in a searchlight beam, and then the guns opened fire, but she never saw one brought down. She went to work the following morning to find the grocer’s shop was no more than a pile of rubble.
‘What happened to Mr and Mrs Green?’ she asked an ARP warden who was surrounding the ruin with a barrier and a notice: ‘Danger. Keep Out.’
‘No, I work for Mr Green. Or I did.’
‘They are safe. They were in the shelter down the road and were taken to the school. They’ll be looked after there.’
She thanked him and went to find them. They were sitting on mattresses on the floor of the school hall, shaken but otherwise resigned. She talked to them for a few moments and learnt they would be rehoused and given whatever was necessary to make a new start somewhere away from the bombing. There was nothing she could do for them and she returned to her lodgings. ‘Now what?’ she asked herself, sitting on her bed and surveying the dingy room, made worse because plaster had fallen off the ceiling during the raid, and there was a huge crack in the window.
Her landlady knocked on her door. ‘Miss Seaton, I heard you come back,’ she said when Julie answered it. ‘I wanted to tell you I’ve had enough of this and I’m moving out. I’m off to stay with my sister in the country and shutting up the house.’
‘You want me to move?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
Julie gathered up her few belongings and left. She was homeless and jobless again. Trying to live in the community in the hope it would jog her memory had failed, so she might as well do something entirely different. Since the beginning of April unmarried women between twenty and thirty had been required to register at their nearest employment exchange in order to be directed to war work, but Julie had still been convalescing at the time and was deemed unfit, but nearly two months working for Mr Green and being on her feet all day had strengthened her muscles and she decided to give it a try.
Allowed to choose between the Women’s Royal Naval Service, Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the Land Army or essential factory work, she decided on the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force – why, she did not know, unless it was the blue uniform which she thought looked more feminine than the khaki of the ATS or the navy of the WRNS. She filled in some forms and then returned to find new lodgings and wait for her call-up.
A week later she was ordered to report to Adastral House on the corner of Kingsway. Here she was directed to a room where she found a crowd of other young women, all waiting to join up. Some were noisy and excited, some, like Julie, quiet and wondering what they had let themselves in for. An RAF sergeant called them to order and herded them like a flock of sheep out to a lorry and told them to climb in the back. Julie, being so small, struggled to get up, but someone put a hand under her bottom and heaved her up where she lay in a heap on the floor. She scrambled up and found a seat on one of the benches. They were taken to Euston Station and boarded a train, bound, so they were told, for Bridgnorth in Shropshire.
‘I’m Florrie, Florrie Kilby.’ The girl sitting next to Julie held out her right hand. About Julie’s age, she was taller and broader, with the tanned complexion of someone who was accustomed to spending a lot of time out of doors. She had hazel eyes and an infectious smile.
Julie shook the hand. ‘I’m Eve Seaton.’
‘Where are you from?’
This was what she had been dreading, but she had been rehearsing in her mind a past that they would accept and one she could remember; it would never do to slip up and contradict herself later. ‘Southwark,’ she said, only because that was where she had been rescued from the bombed shelter, and, in a way, where she had been reborn.
‘Gosh, that took a pounding in the Blitz, didn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were you bombed?’
‘Yes.’ She couldn’t just keep saying yes and so she added, ‘We were bombed out. I was injured and had a long stay in hospital.’
‘Poor you. Are you well now?’
‘Yes, I think so. I hope so because I don’t want to be rejected on account of being unfit.’
‘No, but I expect it might please your folks.’
‘All gone. I was the only one who survived.’
‘Oh, how awful. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked you.’
‘You weren’t to know. I just don’t like talking about it.’ Why she didn’t tell her new friend the truth she did not know. Perhaps because she knew everyone would be curious and bombard her with questions she could not answer. Perhaps it was a feeling that there might be something murky in her past she didn’t want anyone to know and she was better off not remembering. Why else would she have shut it all out as if she were ashamed of it? She must make the most of her new life, embrace it, learn to live without a memory further back than 7th September 1940. That, she had decided, would be her birthday.
‘Then I won’t. We’ll talk about something else.’
Florrie was as good as her word and took it upon herself to make introductions to the rest of the girls in the carriage.
Sylvia Burrows, who was sitting on the other side of Julie, was a Londoner – a little plump, brown-haired, rosy-cheeked. She was engaged to a fighter pilot. ‘Thank God he came through the worst of the bombing, but I still worry about him,’ she said. ‘He’s stationed at Duxford and I want to wangle a posting there if I can.’
Connie Braithwaite, sitting opposite, was older and had been twice married: once divorced, once widowed. She came from Yorkshire and had joined up because she thought it might be an adventure and she might meet a new man in her life. ‘Some hope,’ she said. ‘If that Sergeant What’s-his-name is anything to go by, I’ll stay single.’
‘Sergeant Parrish, you mean,’ Florrie said, referring to the sergeant who had taken their details at Adastral House and shepherded them onto the lorry. ‘It can’t be easy for him, looking after a lot of women. We don’t come in standard packs.’
‘No, thank goodness. Where do you come from?’
‘Harston in Wiltshire. It’s near Andover.’
‘What about you, Eve?’ Connie asked, turning to Julie. ‘Where do you hail from?’
‘Southwark.’
‘Eve was bombed out,’ Florrie said. ‘She was the only one of her family to survive.’
‘My God! How awful!’ This from Sylvia. ‘We get raids in Edgware but nothing like the East End.’
‘Eve spent months in hospital,’ Florrie put in. ‘Then she joined up straight away. I’m going to be her family from now on.’
‘We’ll all be your family,’ Sylvia said, putting her arm round Julie’s shoulder and giving her a hug. ‘You’re not alone.’
Julie was near to tears. Kindness seemed to hit her like that, which made her wonder if she had not been used to kindness in the past. Everything set her wondering, every new sight, every new voice, every new situation.
‘May I join you?’ They looked up to see a dark-haired girl hovering in the doorway.
‘Of course,’ Julie said, hitching along to make room for her. ‘We’re just getting to know each other. I’m Eve. This is Florrie, Connie and Sylvia.’
‘I’m Meg, short for Megan.’
‘We can tell where you come from,’ Florrie said. ‘You’ve got Welsh written all over you.’
Megan looked down at herself and laughed. ‘Does it say Llangollen?’
‘Is that where you live? It’s a beautiful part of the country,’ Connie said. ‘I was there on my first honeymoon. Nothing to do but walk and climb hills, but we didn’t care. Pity it didn’t last.’ She didn’t sound particularly unhappy about it.
To Julie’s relief the conversation became general, much of it speculation about what lay ahead of them, and she did not feel she had to contribute, except for a comment here and there, and the rest of the journey passed pleasantly.
They arrived at Bridgnorth Station in the dark and were met by another lorry which took them to the camp, a few minutes drive up a very steep hill. ‘I’m starving,’ Florrie said. ‘I wonder what we’ll have for supper?’
Supper had to wait until they had been taken to their hut, which held beds for thirty-two recruits and a tiny private room for their corporal, who was there to greet them. There was a stove in the middle of the room, whose metal chimney disappeared through the roof, and a table with a few upright chairs round it.
‘Find yourself beds,’ Corporal Wiggin told them as they milled around. ‘Then I’ll show you the ablution block and toilets.’
The scramble for beds next to friends was noisy but good-natured as everyone claimed a bed and put what little luggage they had in the lockers beside them. The beds were iron-framed and the mattresses each consisted of three square biscuits which, laid on end, covered the steel springs. Now they were piled on top of each other at the head of each bed, topped with two blankets and a pillow. Sheets there were none. After visiting the severely basic washroom and toilet huts, they were herded to the canteen where they were given cutlery and a tin mug and lined up for sausages and mash, stewed apples and custard and a mug of strong tea. After that, tired and bemused, they stumbled in the dark back to their billet to make up their beds and fall into them.
Julie sat on the end of her bed and watched the others undressing. Some were so shy they scrambled into their nightclothes under the blankets, some knelt to say their prayers before getting into bed. Others were brazen and stripped off flimsy underwear before donning pyjamas. Their accents ranged from the London of Sylvia Burrows to the aristocratic accent of Joan Parson-Ford, the Welsh of Megan Jones to the Yorkshire of Connie Braithwaite, and everything in between. It was obvious that the population of the hut came from many backgrounds and levels of society. It would be interesting to see how they all got on. Strangely, she didn’t feel uncomfortable in the crowd, nor did the spartan conditions worry her, so had she known communal living before? At school perhaps?
‘Hi, Eve, what are you sitting there dreaming about?’ Florrie called out from the next bed. ‘Get undressed, for goodness’ sake. It’ll be time to get up again before you know it.’
Julie turned and smiled at her friend. ‘Just thinking.’
‘Well, don’t. Brooding on the past won’t help you know. We’ve just got to get on with it.’
‘I know.’ No good saying she wasn’t dwelling on the past, that she had no past to dwell on; no one would understand how it felt not even to know the name she was born with. She undressed, put on the winceyette pyjamas given to her by the WVS and climbed into bed. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she murmured, already half asleep.
They were woken at six next morning by Corporal Wiggin’s strident voice telling them to ‘Rise and shine’. Reluctantly they stirred and ambled over to the wash house in dressing gowns, then returned to dress, after which they were taught how to make their beds, with biscuits stacked and blankets precisely folded on top, followed by the tick pillow. It was obvious that no one was to be allowed to lounge on their beds during the day. That done, and the spaces around the bed swept to the corporal’s satisfaction, they went for their breakfast.
It was daylight now and they could see that the camp was a collection of wooden huts and a parade ground. Their corporal pointed out the admin office, the cook house, the sickbay and the stores. The rest were accommodation huts for new recruits and the permanent staff. Aeroplanes there were none; there wasn’t even a runway. Breakfast was substantial and they did it justice before being taken for a medical. Julie held her breath as the medical officer paid particular attention to how well her leg and arm had healed, but he expressed himself satisfied and she rejoined the others.
The next stop was another hut. ‘Right, you lot.’ The voice was loud and belonged to a WAAF sergeant who was standing beside a long table piled high with clothing. Behind each pile stood a WAAF. ‘Get in line and collect your kit.’
They shuffled into line and passed along the table and were handed items from each pile. Because they were all different shapes and sizes, this took some time, but they eventually ended up at the other end of the table with a mountain of clothes: skirts, shirts, tunics, a cap with a badge, an overcoat, black lace-up shoes and lisle stockings, and four pairs of enormous bloomers, two in blue and two in white, big enough to cover them from bust to knees.
‘We aren’t meant to wear these, are we?’ Florrie asked the sergeant, holding them up for everyone to see.
‘Yes; now move along, you’re keeping everyone waiting.’ This was said with only the faintest glimmer of a smile.
‘No wonder they’re called “passion killers”,’ came from Connie, raising a nervous laugh.
They continued along the line. Overalls, two pairs of striped pyjamas, shoes, laces, spare buttons, a button stick and a sewing repair kit joined the growing pile, together with a haversack and kitbag to put it all in. At the end of the line they were handed a sheet of strong brown paper and some string. ‘Pack your civilian clothes up ready to be sent home,’ the sergeant told them. ‘You won’t be needing them again for the duration.’
‘I haven’t got a home address,’ Julie said to Florrie as they walked back to the barracks laden like donkeys. ‘I went straight from hospital into digs.’
‘You can send your stuff to my home if you like. Mum and Dad won’t mind.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Course. We’ll stick together, shall we?’
They took everything over to their billet where they changed into uniform and stowed everything else away in their lockers. They had been told their hair must not touch their collars and that involved pins and combs for those with longer hair. Julie’s had been cut while she was in hospital in a kind of boyish cut that suited her pixie face and she had no trouble conforming. Florrie’s was a rich brown, thick and long, and the only way she could get it off her collar was to plait it and wind the plaits round her head. Megan rolled her dark tresses round a thin silk scarf and secured it with pins, a style adopted by others with long hair. Now they began to look and feel more like members of the armed services. ‘You look nice in your uniform,’ Florrie told Julie.
‘Thank you, so do you.’
Their civilian clothes parcelled up and left to be collected, they were taken to the Astra Cinema where the occupants of several other huts joined them to learn the hierarchy of the service and the various ranks, and the rules and regulations, which seemed unending, together with a frightening film about venereal diseases and another about the birth of a baby. It set Julie wondering about the baby she was supposed to have had and had forgotten. How could you forget something like that?
After that they had lunch and then assembled on the parade ground, there to be greeted by an RAF sergeant who proceeded to tell them in no uncertain terms what was expected of them as new recruits and what was in store for them, which on the first day and many subsequent days meant assembling on the parade ground and learning to march. Up and down they went, back and forth, falling in, falling out, wheeling and turning. There was no quarter given on account of their sex and it was no good complaining their feet hurt in their new shoes; they were quickly silenced.
Released from that at the end of the day they went to the canteen for their evening meal which was substantial but uninspiring. By that time the thirty-two had formed into smaller groups. Julie and Florrie were joined by Sylvia, Connie and Megan.
‘There are walks and hills, hereabouts,’ Julie said. ‘When we get time off I intend to explore.’
‘If we get time off,’ Sylvia put in.
‘What work did you do before you joined up?’ Connie asked her.
‘I was a shop assistant at John Lewis in Oxford Street.’
‘And I worked in a hotel looking after tourists,’ Megan said.
‘What about you?’ Connie asked Julie.
She couldn’t say anything that needed qualifications or special training because she would undoubtedly be caught out. ‘I was in service.’
Connie laughed. ‘Out of the frying pan into the fire, then. I was a typist before I married. Haven’t done much since – a job here, another there.’
‘You’ll find this a bit of a shock, then,’ Florrie said. ‘I’m used to hard work. My father has a farm and I was always expected to do my share.’
‘Surely farming’s a reserved occupation?’
‘Yes, but I wanted to spread my wings, learn something new. I’ve been told there are opportunities galore in the services.’
‘What, to learn square-bashing?’
‘I heard you can choose to do what you like within reason,’ Julie ventured. ‘You can be almost anything: cook, telephonist, typist, clerk, driver, wireless operator, medical orderly, plotter, parachute packer …’
‘I’m going to ask to be a driver,’ Florrie said.
‘Can you drive?’ Julie asked.
‘I can drive a tractor and I drove my brother’s Austin Seven before I pranged it. He was furious, but then the war came and petrol was rationed so he couldn’t use it anyway. Can you drive?’
This was another of those questions to which she did not know the answer. ‘No,’ she said, to be on the safe side. ‘We never had a car.’
‘If you want to do it, the WAAF will teach you, providing there’s room on a course.’
‘I’m not really fussy what I do.’
‘Don’t be like that, you’ll get the worst job going if you say that, cleaning out latrines, washing dishes. You’re too intelligent for that.’
‘How do you know I’m intelligent?’
‘I can tell by the way you speak, the things you say and how you hold yourself, head up and eyes shining. I bet you went to a good school.’
Having no idea whether this was true or not, Julie laughed. ‘Thank you for that. I’ll see what they offer me.’
‘When the time comes, say you want to be a driver and we’ll stay together.’
‘What’s so special about being a driver?’ Sylvia said.
‘You get to move about a bit and meet all sorts, better than being stuck in one place all the time. You might get to drive a wing commander or a group captain, preferably an unmarried one.’
‘I’ll have some of that,’ Connie said, making them laugh.
They laughed a lot; everything was found to be funny, incidents that would previously hardly raise a smile had them giggling uncontrollably. Their NCOs and officers all seemed to have character traits that caused hilarity. Laughing at them counteracted the severity of their commands and the rules and regulations one or other of them was always breaking. Joan Parson-Ford was always in trouble. She had led a privileged life with servants to do her bidding and she did not like being ordered about or criticised, nor did she take to communal living, making Julie wonder why she had joined up in the first place. It did not surprise them when, one Saturday, she packed her bags and disappeared. ‘What d’you know,’ Connie said, joining everyone in the barracks after lunch. ‘Lady Muck’s been posted for officer training.’
‘Then I hope I don’t come up against her,’ Florrie said. ‘There’s transport going into Bridgnorth this afternoon. Anyone coming?’
It was their first Saturday afternoon off and they had been debating how to spend it. Exploring Bridgnorth seemed a good idea and Julie, Connie, Sylvia and Meg elected to go with her.
Bridgnorth, divided by the River Severn, had a High Town and a Low Town, which had once been a thriving port. On either bank the houses, shops and pubs climbed upwards. The girls climbed the narrow cartway, which had once been the route that donkeys and mules took bringing goods up from the river, a walk which, in spite of their being fit, made them breathless. It was only after they had made the ascent they realised there was a funicular railway which took passengers up and down the steep hill. ‘We’ll know another time,’ Julie said, as they set off along the Castle Walk to the ruins of a castle, one wall of which was so far out of perpendicular it looked in danger of falling over. According to Megan, who knew the town, it had suffered at the hands of Cromwell’s troops who had tried and failed to bring it down. Here they leant over the railings to admire the extensive view. Below them the river wound its placid way, and on the far side the hills climbed again. ‘I never realised England was so beautiful,’ Julie murmured, eyes shining as she looked about her at the rolling green countryside.
‘Didn’t you ever go away on holiday?’ Sylvia asked.
‘No, we couldn’t afford holidays. A day at the sea sometimes.’ A day at the sea; that rang a bell in her head, but though she worried away at the thought, she could not place where or when she had been to the coast. It was connected with a child, she thought, but she couldn’t be sure.
‘You must have seen pictures,’ Connie said.
She pulled herself together. ‘Yes, but it’s not the same, is it?’
‘When we get leave, you can come home with me,’ Florrie said. ‘It’s beautiful where I live too.’
‘Won’t your parents mind?’
‘No, course not. We’ve got a telephone – Dad had it installed just before the war. I can always ring them and warn them we’re on our way.’
They turned and went into the town where, after wandering about looking at the shops and buying a pot of tea in a café, they decided to go to the Majestic and see Gone with the Wind, a very long film about the American Civil War, starring Clark Gable and a new English actress called Vivien Leigh. It was so late when they emerged, they missed the transport back to camp and had to walk, which they did, linking arms and singing ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ as they went. They just managed to get in by 11.59, which was the latest they were allowed out.
Julie, who was still a little reticent on account of having to invent answers to questions about herself, slowly learnt to relax and became one of the crowd, perhaps not as noisy as the others, but ready to take part in anything that was going. Her niggling over her unknown past slowly began to fade as she built up a new life. They got to know some of the men in the camp, but none made any lasting friendships when the future was so uncertain and anyone could be posted at a moment’s notice.
Training continued until, one day in July, they were issued with passes and travel warrants and told they could have a week’s leave, after which they would be posted for more training in whatever job they had been allocated. Florrie and Julie headed for Wiltshire and Hillside Farm.
The warm welcome Julie received made up for the dismally long journey by several different trains, all going at the pace of a snail. ‘Come along in, make yourself at home,’ Mrs Kilby told Julie. ‘I’m Maggie, by the way.’ She was a big woman, wearing an apron over a dark skirt and a flowered blouse, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, a wisp of flour on her nose and lustrous brown hair pulled untidily into a bun on top of her head. ‘You don’t mind sharing a room with Florrie, do you? Only I’ve got two little evacuee girls in the spare room.’
‘Mum, we’ve been sharing a room with twenty-eight others for six weeks now,’ Florrie said. ‘Come on, Julie, I’ll show you where to go.’ She conducted her upstairs and into a spacious bedroom.
‘It’s quite a big house,’ Julie said, standing to look out of the window at the front lawn and a paddock where a couple of horses grazed.
‘Mum and Dad inherited it from my grandfather along with the farm. I’ll show you round later. Let’s get out of uniform into civvies and then go down for supper. I can smell something good.’
They were soon seated round a big kitchen table enjoying roast pork and apple sauce and plenty of fresh vegetables; rationing seemed not to bother them. There was Mr Kilby, whom she was told to address as Walter, Maggie, Florrie’s brother Alec, Julie and two little girls, Liz and Alice, who had been evacuated from Plymouth. Both were very shy. Stretched on the hearthrug before the kitchen range was a black Labrador, twitching in his sleep, and on a cushion on a rocking chair by the hearth a ginger cat snoozed. It was so cosy and welcoming, Julie had to blink back tears.
Alec was a younger version of his father, in that he was well built and tanned from spending most of his time out of doors, but his hair was fair and he had Florrie’s hazel eyes and winning smile. ‘Fancy coming to the Three Bells for a quick one after dinner?’ he asked his sister.
‘I don’t mind, it’s up to Eve.’
‘I’ll go along with whatever you decide,’ she said.
They walked there, with Julie in between them. Florrie and Alec kept up a lively conversation and all Julie had to do was listen. She liked Florrie’s family. They all seemed so cheerful and concerned for each others’ welfare and happiness. That, she decided enviously, was what family life was all about; she had a strange feeling, listening to their banter, that she had not had a family like that. Maybe she had been an only child. On this warm starlit night, with her arm through those of her companions, she was really content for the first time since she had woken up in hospital.
The week went by in a blur of eating, sleeping, going into Andover to shop – where Julie used some of her pay and clothing coupons to enlarge her tiny wardrobe with a cotton dress, a skirt, a couple of blouses and some stockings – exploring the countryside on foot, watching Alec milking the cows, and learning to ride a small docile pony, which took all her courage. Whatever had been in her past, it did not include farm animals, she decided. No one questioned her too closely on her past, perhaps because they had been warned by Florrie that being reminded of the loss of her family would upset her. Instead they brought her into the family circle, just as they had the two little evacuees, cracking jokes and suggesting things to do. Alec was particularly good with the evacuees and they adored him, scrambling onto his back and being taken for piggyback rides, telling him to ‘Gee up’ and giggling when he collapsed in a heap on the floor. Julie thought he would make a wonderful father, though she had seen no sign of a girlfriend.
‘I’m so grateful to you,’ Julie told Maggie when the week came to an end and they were preparing to leave. ‘I’ve had a lovely time.’
‘Good. Now, you come again. Even if Florrie can’t come, you come. Think of this as home.’
At which Julie burst into tears and was enveloped in brawny arms. ‘There, I didn’t mean to make you cry. Don’t be sad.’
‘I’m not sad,’ she sniffed. ‘I’m happy.’
Maggie laughed and held her at arm’s length. ‘It’s a funny way to show happiness. But there, I understand. I think you’re so brave, after what you’ve been through. Now smile. Here comes Florrie. Alec will take you to the station.’
Alec bundled their kitbags into the boot of the family Ford, held the door for Julie to sit beside him and Florrie climbed in the back.
‘Have you enjoyed your leave?’ he asked Julie as he swung out of the farm gate and along the lane to the main road.
‘Oh, yes, very much.’
‘You’ll come again, I hope.’
‘Course she will,’ Florrie put in from behind them. ‘You haven’t seen the last of her.’
‘Good,’ he said.
‘There,’ Florrie said, tapping Julie on the shoulder. ‘You’ve got yourself a new brother.’
‘Brother be damned,’ he muttered.
They had no sooner arrived back in Bridgnorth than they were on the move again. The others were scattered but Florrie and Julie managed to stay together and were posted to Morecambe to learn to be drivers. Here, they were billeted in a boarding house taken over for the purpose and spent most of their time up to their elbows in oil and grease, learning basic mechanics. There were lectures on theory, rules and regulations and the Highway Code, all before they ever found themselves behind the wheel, but when they did, it was not long before they graduated from cars to all manner of vehicles, from trucks and lorries to tea wagons and ambulances. Florrie took to it like a duck to water and was soon driving heavy lorries with ease. Julie struggled. She was too small to reach the pedals comfortably and in the end it was decided between her and her instructors that driving wasn’t for her. She found herself working in the stores, which was safe and boring.
‘I think I’ll apply for a posting,’ she told Florrie one day when they had some time off together and were walking along Morecambe sands with their shoes and stockings in their hands.
‘Why? Aren’t you happy here?’
‘Yes and no. I don’t feel as though I’m contributing much towards the war effort. I need something to get my teeth into.’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘I don’t know, that’s half the trouble.’ Another reason was the proximity of the seashore, which niggled away at her memory until she thought it would drive her mad. She had walked along sand like this before and it had been significant, or why did it awaken a feeling of things past, of matters left undone, of children? At least, one child. She could not grasp more than that, not even to decide on the sex of the child. But perhaps the child had been her? Was it her own childhood that was slowly coming back to her? In one way she welcomed it and in another dreaded it. Just when she thought it was coming back, it slipped away again. ‘Something to keep me busy.’
‘But you are busy.’
‘Not my head. My head wanders.’
‘You are a little silly. Tell you what. Hang fire until I’m given my posting and see if you can come to the same place. I don’t want to lose you.’
‘You won’t lose me. We’ll keep in touch.’
‘Of course we will. You’re going home to the farm on your next leave, you promised Mum, but that’s not the point. You’re such a dreamer, you need me to keep your feet on the ground. How you ever got by before you met me, I don’t know.’
Julie laughed. ‘I’m not that helpless.’
‘I didn’t mean you were helpless – far from it – simply that you often seem to have your head in the clouds.’
It was the perfect opportunity and she nearly told her then, nearly said, ‘You might have your head in the clouds if you couldn’t remember your own name or where you come from,’ but still she hesitated. Supposing whatever it was she could not remember was so dreadful that no one would want to know her and she lost Florrie’s friendship? She dare not risk it.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait until you know where you’re going and see if there’s a vacancy there too. Will that satisfy you?’
‘Yes. Come on, we’d better turn back. Have you brought anything to dry your feet?’
‘No, I didn’t think.’ More echoes, more nudges of her memory. Was it coming back, bit by bit?
‘Good job I did.’
They left the sand and sat on a bench to dry their feet with the small towel Florrie had with her and replace stockings and shoes, before returning to their billet and their daily routine which left Julie no time to brood about the past. It was hard enough dealing with the present. The war was not going well. Apart from the air raids which went on almost without let-up, food was short owing to heavy losses at sea, and rationing was extended. The Allied armies, fighting in North Africa, were having a hard time of it and the German army had overrun Poland, captured Kiev in Ukraine and were driving towards Moscow. Julie’s problems were insignificant by comparison.