AVRIL HAD WAVED Miranda off, gone to the NAAFI for a cup of tea and a natter, and then repaired to their hut. She undressed slowly and climbed into bed, expecting to sleep at once for she had had a tiring day, but in fact she lay wakeful, suddenly aware that she was missing the younger girl. Avril wondered how she and Steve were getting on, and cast off her blankets, for it was a hot night. She hoped they were making the most of their leave and turned and twisted, trying to find a cool spot, but finally decided to stop courting sleep and instead think back over her time at RAF Scratby.
Miranda had made it easy for her, she thought now. There had been a great many girls to meet as well as a good few young men, for, one way or another, Miranda knew practically all the personnel on the airfield and introduced Avril to each one. Everyone was friendly, the men intrigued by the combination of her Liverpool accent and Nordic good looks and the girls fascinated to learn that she had spent the last few years on a balloon site and eager for details.
But now Avril let her mind go right back to the time when she had joined the air force to get away from the streets where she and Gary had once been happy . . . she had joined in fact to forget the pain which losing him had caused her. Before she had met Gary she had never known what it was to love someone, for though she supposed she must have loved her parents she could scarcely remember them. Along with most of the children in the home, she had hated the place, the staff and a good few of the other occupants. When she had met Miranda she had been living in a hostel, working as hard as she could at her job and scarcely believing that she could ever escape from the treadmill of trying to earn enough money to be independent. Then Gary had entered her life.
Before then, Avril had had several boyfriends but had never taken them seriously. They had families – mums and dads, brothers and sisters – and whenever she was taken to a young man’s home she felt panicked, like someone thrown into deep water before learning to swim. She floundered, unable to find the right attitude, always aware that she was different.
Knowing Miranda had helped, because Miranda, too, had no cosy home background. She had talked of her loving mother, but Avril secretly thought a good deal of what her friend said was wishful thinking. If Miranda’s mother had truly loved her, why had she gone away and not come back? So, gradually, almost imperceptibly, Avril began to relax. And when she met Gary, and discovered that he, too, had been brought up in a children’s home, she had begun to talk of her past, and to her delight had found Gary understood.
Very soon she realised she was deeply in love with him, so that the shock of his death had been almost unbearable. Running away, determined to make a career for herself in the air force, she had accepted the position of kitchen worker on an airfield in Lincolnshire, lowly and disgusting though this was to her way of thinking, because she was determined to do well, to be the best C and B the air force had ever known.
She had reckoned without Corporal Greesby, of course. She had no idea whence his dislike had sprung, but she soon discovered that it was in his power to make or break her and that the best way to escape his malevolence was to keep her head down and do as she was told. ‘Never explain, never complain’ was an old army saying, but apparently it also applied to the air force, and Avril and one or two other girls for whom Corporal Greesby had developed a dislike soon learned to follow its advice. So when the notice had appeared on the bulletin board in the Mess, asking for women volunteers who were strong, fit and healthy to take over from the men on balloon sites, Avril had been the first to put her name forward, and had been immediately accepted. She had been given a rail pass to Cardington, where she would be trained, along with several other girls from her hut, to fly the great unwieldy barrage balloons.
If the Royal Air Force wondered why so many girls from Corporal Greesby’s kitchen applied for the balloon corps they didn’t ask, and Avril suspected they didn’t care, though she got a good deal of pleasure from a small revenge which she personally carried out upon the corporal, spiking his usual enormous helping of chocolate pudding with a bar of Ex-lax chocolate crumbled over the top. Grinning evilly, she told one of the other girls that the corporal would be spending the next few hours glued to the bog, and shouldered her kitbag with the feeling that honour had been satisfied.
Number One balloon training unit at Cardington was like a breath of fresh air after the horrors of Corporal Greesby’s kitchen. The course lasted ten weeks, during which Avril learned skills of which she had never previously heard. The sergeant who taught them to splice rope and wire, inflate the balloons with hydrogen and drive the winches which operated the winding gear was a sensible man in his forties, who had been a teacher in civvy street and knew exactly how to deal with his recruits. By the end of the course they appreciated not only his skills but also his kindness, and in Avril’s eyes he had rescued the reputation of the air force.
After their initial training the girls spent a week at an old aerodrome actually working with a balloon. They were divided into teams of twelve Waafs and a flight sergeant, and, to their relief, when they got their posting at the end of the course they stayed with their team, though the flight sergeant would be allocated when they actually reached their balloon site.
From that moment on Avril was in her element. The work was hard, heavy and frequently dangerous, but she loved it. Most of the sites were on the outskirts of big cities or built-up areas which needed extra protection from the Luftwaffe raids. At first it was difficult to see what extra protection the balloons offered, but the girls had a talk from a flying officer who assured them that the blimps were best avoided, both by the enemy and by their own aircraft. ‘The Luftwaffe fly high when they come in for a bombing raid, and do their best to keep well clear of the balloons,’ he assured them. ‘No doubt you’ve been taught that a plane which flies too near a balloon can be caught up in the cable, which moves with a sawing motion and can cut through wings, tail, even fuselage. So never think your work isn’t important, because it has saved countless lives.’
By the time the order came that Waafs were to leave the balloon sites Avril viewed the prospect of re-mustering with dismay. Only when she learned that, because she had volunteered for balloons, she might choose her new trade did she begin to see that this, in fact, might not be a bad thing. Balloons were all very well, but they weren’t exactly a career move; if she re-mustered as, for instance, an MT driver, then they would teach her, not only to drive, but also to repair and maintain all the many and various vehicles used by the air force, and this would still be a useful skill even when the war was over. So off she went to Wheaton, and because she was bright and hard-working she emerged at the end of the training period a fully fledged MT driver.
Naturally enough she watched the bulletin board anxiously, hoping to get a posting soon, and was almost unbelieving when she learned that she was to go to RAF Scratby, the very airfield, had she been given the choice, which she would have chosen.
And now here she was actually lying on her hard little bed feeling a fresh breeze blowing in through the window with a touch of salt on its breath, for the airfield was only a couple of miles from the sea. I wonder whether the beach is mined, Avril found herself thinking sleepily. I know most of the beaches are, particularly along the south and east coasts, but I’ve read in the newspapers that they have to leave an area clear of mines so that lifeboats can be launched. Oh well, I expect we’d get court martialled if we tried to so much as paddle, and there are lots of other things to do when you’re on a proper RAF station. She snuggled her face into the pillow, remembering the meal they had been served that evening in the Scratby cookhouse, some sort of stew with not very much meat but an awful lot of carrots, and a syrup pudding. Tiddles Tidsworth, watching her, had laughed and asked if the food was up to balloon standards.
Avril had laughed too. On a balloon site one took turns at everything: guard duty, driving the winch, cooking the meals. When it was your turn to cook you were given the ingredients and told to go ahead; there were no such things as menus, or suggestions even. Some girls could cook naturally, others couldn’t. Avril remembered Sandra, who didn’t understand about boiling potatoes until they were soft, and Janette whose meals were so delicious that at first they had suspected she was buying extra grub from a restaurant somewhere. Avril had assured Tiddles that it was a treat to have food cooked for you and left it at that. No point in putting anyone’s back up by saying that the stew could have benefited from some flour to thicken it or even a bit more meat. Smiling at the recollection, she fell asleep at last.
Miranda had spent the day ferrying personnel between airfields, and knew that Avril had been doing the same, so at eight o’clock, when she was free at last, she went straight to the cookhouse, hoping that someone would realise that the MT drivers on duty would not have been fed.
The large room with its many tables and chairs and its long wooden counter was almost empty, but to Miranda’s relief those who were in there all seemed to be eating and there was a smell of hot food in the air. She went over to the counter and a weary little Waaf clad in blue wrapover apron, white cap and leather clogs greeted her with a tired grin. ‘Evenin’, Lovage; what can I do you for? Cheese on toast, beans on toast, scrambled eggs on toast? Or a mixture of all three?’
Miranda settled for cheese on toast and was turning away with her plate of food when the girl behind the counter spoke again. ‘Your mate come in ten minutes ago; she’s over there in that corner. She were one of the lucky ones; got in before Corp used the last of the fried spuds. Help yourself to HP Sauce; it’s by the bucket of tea.’
Miranda collected a mug, dipped out her tea and went across to where Avril was sitting. She had one of the tables to herself and Miranda was surprised to see that she had, spread out upon it, five or six sheets of cheap airmail paper. She scowled as Miranda’s shadow fell across her table, then looked up and smiled as she recognised her friend.
‘Wotcher!’ she said cheerfully. She pushed one of the chairs towards Miranda. ‘Do sit down, only don’t drip that tea all over my letters.’
‘Letters?’ Miranda said. ‘Don’t you mean letter? Is it going to be an awfully long one? Or are you expecting to make a lot of mistakes?’ She sat down as she spoke and eyed the other girl curiously.
‘Neither,’ Avril said positively. She waved a newly sharpened pencil under her friend’s nose. ‘I do this every week or so, and it’s a real bind, but I know my duty. I quite like getting letters myself, though by the time they’ve gone through the censor they often look more like those lacy paper things people used to stand cakes on . . . can’t remember what they’re called . . .’
‘Doilies,’ Miranda supplied. She took a big bite out of her toasted cheese, then leaned forward so that if she did dribble brown sauce it would fall on her plate rather than on her uniform. ‘Who are you writing to anyway?’ She half expected Avril to tell her to mind her own business, but though her friend tapped the side of her nose in the well-known gesture she replied readily enough, whilst producing from her gas mask case several crumpled and really rather dirty pages which she smoothed out, ticked off and laid out, parade ground fashion, each one on a separate sheet of the airmail paper.
‘I don’t mind tellin’ you, because you won’t know any of them,’ Avril said. She pointed. ‘That’s to Danny, that’s to Simon, that’s to Frank and that’s to Freddy, and then there’s one for P— Paul.’ She looked challengingly across the table at her friend. ‘Satisfied?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. Are they all service personnel? Or are you still in touch with any of your old pals from the factory? Come to that, are you still in touch with people from the children’s home? I know I ought to drop Aunt Vi and Beth a line from time to time – well, I do – but I warned Beth last time I wrote that if she didn’t reply I wouldn’t write again.’
‘Has she? Replied, I mean,’ Avril asked. She wrote Dear Danny, Lovely to get your letter, then looked questioningly up at her friend.
‘Not yet, but Steve had a letter from his mam – they’re back in Jamaica Close – and she says Aunt Vi and Beth are okay though Aunt Vi disapproves of Beth’s feller and they’re always having rows.’ She leaned forward to stare as Avril began to write on the next sheet of paper. ‘Whatever are you doing, queen? Don’t you finish one letter before you start the next?’
‘Course not; that’d be a waste of time,’ Avril said impatiently. She pulled the next sheet towards her and proceeded to write. She had large, rather childish handwriting, and Miranda read it upside down from across the table with ease. Dear Simon, Lovely to get your letter . . .
Even as Miranda watched, Avril pulled forward the third sheet. Dear Frank, Lovely to get your letter . . . ‘Aircraftwoman Donovan, what on earth do you think you’re doing? Surely you aren’t going to write exactly the same letter to all those fellers? Next thing you’ll have half a dozen pencils all working together so you only have to write the once; the pencils will do the rest.’ She was joking, but Avril answered her quite seriously.
‘I know what you mean, and I’ve tried it, but it simply won’t work. This method is better, because I can write quite a lot when I don’t have to think about what I’m saying. If I wrote to each bloke separately I’d never have a spare moment, so this is the obvious answer.’ As she spoke she was finishing off the line of papers, Dear Frank being followed by Dear Freddy and Dear Paul.
Miranda watched, fascinated, as her friend rapidly scrawled identical messages on the first four sheets of paper. ‘What’s wrong with Paul?’ she asked, indicating the last sheet, still blank apart from the salutation. ‘Is he special? In fact, is Paul the reason why you won’t settle down with one chap, you greedy girl, you?’
‘Special? Not particularly,’ Avril said, but Miranda saw a flush climb up her friend’s neck into her cheeks. ‘But they’re a long way off and all my letters to them go by sea, so as you must realise, nosy, they don’t get all of them by a long chalk. Last time I wrote to Paul he wrote back to say only half my letter had arrived; some idiot in the censorship office had seen fit to tear it in two, or at any rate only half arrived on Paul’s notice board. After that it seems only fair to write in a bit more detail, otherwise he’s behind the rest of the blokes, if you see what I mean.’ She glared across the table. ‘Have you any objection? It was you who told me letters were important to fellers a long way from home, if you remember . . .’
‘Oh, I don’t blame you,’ Miranda said quickly. ‘It just seems a bit cold-blooded, that’s all. I dare say you’ve given all of them the impression that they’re the only bloke in your life, and that after the war . . .’
Avril snorted. ‘I can’t help what they believe, that’s up to them,’ she said firmly. ‘And if you’re going to keep talking I’ll get in a muddle and repeat the same sentence twice in one letter, and that would be awful, wouldn’t it? I mean, one of them might guess that he’s not my only correspondent. And don’t you go dribbling brown sauce over my last two sheets of airmail paper, or you can jolly well buy me another pad from the NAAFI.’
‘Sorry,’ Miranda said hastily, cramming the last piece of toasted cheese into her mouth, and speaking rather thickly through it. ‘As I said, it just seems a bit cold-blooded. What happens if Tom, Dick or Harry suddenly stops replying to your form letters?’
This time a real flush turned Avril’s pale skin to scarlet. She glared at Miranda and Miranda saw that her friend’s lip was trembling. ‘You mean when one of them is killed, don’t you?’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘Someone in his flight will go through his mail and let me know. And now you can bloody well gerrout of here and leave me to finish me letters in peace.’
Miranda jumped to her feet and went round the table to give Avril a hug. ‘I’m really sorry, queen,’ she said gently. ‘It was very wrong of me to pry and even more wrong to assume that your letter writing was some sort of game. I can see now that you’re making a load of fellers happy and harming no one. Will you forgive me?’
Avril gulped and wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands, causing a couple of large teardrops to splash onto one of her letters, but she turned and gave her friend a rueful grin. ‘The thing is, Miranda, I’ve only got one life. The letters are full of what I’ve been doing – except I never mention other chaps, of course – so the letters are bound to be nearly identical, even if I went to the trouble of writing on separate days. This way, I’m keeping four or five guys happy without making promises I don’t intend to keep.’
‘Well, bully for you,’ Miranda said. ‘I’m dog tired; I’ve been driving all day. I’ll just get myself a slice of spotted dick and then I’m for bed. How long will it take you to finish your – er – letters?’ Some imp of mischief made her add: ‘How do you sign off? Not SWALK?’
To her relief, Avril laughed. ‘Course not. I just say Thanks again for your letter, can’t wait for the next, Avril. Does that suit your majesty’s sense of what’s right and wrong? It had better, because I don’t intend to change my way of life just to suit you.’
‘All right, you’ve made your point.’ Miranda carried her plate across to the counter, swished her irons briefly in the barrel of lukewarm water, dried them on a rag of dishcloth and pushed them into her gas mask case. Then she waved to Avril, busily writing once more, and set off for their hut. Dead tired as she was she still forced herself to go along to the ablutions and have as good a shower as she could in cold water before getting between the blankets. She had been there only what felt like a few minutes when she was awoken by Avril crashing into her own bed. Miranda sat up on her elbow and gazed in the dimness across to where Avril was already snuggling down. ‘Finished your letters?’ she asked sleepily. ‘There was no hot water but I managed to get a shower, though it was cold. How about you?’
‘I done ’em, the letters I mean, but I’ve not been to the ’blutions; too late, too tired,’ Avril droned, her voice already sleep-drugged. ‘I’ll wash in the mornin’. G’night.’
‘G’night,’ Miranda echoed, and almost immediately fell fast asleep.
Avril lay watching the light gradually strengthen through the small window, and thinking that she had had a narrow escape in the cookhouse the previous evening, when Miranda had come so jauntily across the room to join her at her table. How easily she might have been writing to Pete Huxtable first instead of last, and for some reason, a reason which she could not explain even to herself, she had no wish for either Miranda or anyone else to know that she was writing to Pete. He had had a very varied war so far and oddly, though they had not been particularly close when she had lived in the flat, as time went on she had grown to appreciate him and to prefer him to all her other suitors. Whilst she had been what she now thought of as a kitchen slave, she and Pete had been exchanging letters – fairly short uniformative ones – and when he had suggested a meeting she had jumped at it. She was missing Miranda, her job at the factory and the girls she had known there, and meeting Pete had been a bit like plunging back into her past. They had agreed to meet in Lincoln, since Pete was familiar with the city, being at the time at RAF Waddington, so he had telephoned her with instructions to meet him at the Saracen’s Head, a pub on the high street. ‘But I’ll never find it. Lincoln’s a huge city, and I’ve never been off the station,’ Avril had wailed. ‘Is there some sort of landmark which will tell me I’m goin’ in the right direction?’
Pete had laughed. ‘It’s on the high street, right next door to what they call the Stonebow, which is a sort of arch under which all the traffic has to pass,’ he had told her. ‘Honest to God, Avril, every soul in Lincoln knows the Saracen’s Head. Be there at seven o’clock and we’ll snatch a meal and catch up with each other’s news.’ He had chuckled. ‘I gather you aren’t too keen on working in a cookhouse. You can tell me why not over a meal at the Cornhill Hotel.’
Avril had agreed to this and had been astonished by the flood of pleasure which broke over her like a wave at the sight of Pete Huxtable’s plain but well-remembered face. They were both in uniform, but had held hands discreetly below the table at the hotel. When Pete had told her that other members of his ground crew spent their forty-eights with their girlfriends at the hotel, she had looked at him suspiciously, thinking he was about to suggest that they should do likewise, but the matter-of-fact way he spoke and his usual friendliness soon assured her that he was not going to try anything on. He was doing an important job, servicing the engines of great bombers, and proud of his ability, but he was still the rather shy young man she had known from their Liverpool days.
They had remained friends throughout their time in Lincolnshire, always trying to time their trips to the city to coincide, and thinking about it now Avril realised that her desperation to be free of Corporal Greesby and the cookhouse had really only come to a head when Pete was posted to Malaya. She knew he would have a long and dangerous sea voyage and at their last meeting she had been prepared, if he demanded it, for them to spend their forty-eight as guests at the Cornhill Hotel. Pete, however, had merely said that he could only bear his posting if she would both promise to write and also look kindly upon him when the war was over and he was free to ask her to wed him.
At the time this had caused Avril considerable hilarity, for, as she told him, she did not intend to marry anyone, not even someone as nice as he. ‘I’m goin’ to have a career. Oh, I might marry when I’m really old, say thirty-five, but until then I’m goin’ to earn lots of money and have lots of fun,’ she told him airily. ‘So don’t you try and tie me down, Pete Huxtable.’
Pete had agreed meekly that he would do no such thing and said he applauded her decision to have a career. ‘Though I can’t think that cooking for forty and peeling potatoes far into the night is going to help your future much,’ he had said, keeping his voice serious though his eyes had twinkled. ‘In fact the only thing it will prepare you for is marriage – if you intend to have a great many children, that is.’
With thoughts of the children’s home in mind, for the food provided there had been very similar to that which was slopped on to plates daily by the cookhouse staff, she had shuddered and assured him that she would apply for a posting as soon as she had suffered Corporal Greesby and the cookhouse for the obligatory six months, but then Pete had been posted and her whole attitude had changed. Losing her pal Miranda, and then Pete, and doing work she hated under a man she disliked, had caused her to watch the bulletin board closely, and when the request for girls to apply to become balloon operatives appeared on the board she was first in the queue. She had told no one that Pete meant more to her than any of her other correspondents, so now, chuckling to herself over her narrow escape from Miranda’s curiosity, she fell abruptly asleep and was only woken when the tannoy began to shout. She had been late to bed, thanks to writing all her letters, but nevertheless grabbed her clothes, towel and soap and tore out of the hut, covering the short distance between her bed and the ablutions at greyhound speed. She bolted into the hut, which possessed three curtained-off showers, half a dozen curtained-off lavatories and a great many wash basins. For Avril, who for two years had known nothing but the primitive arrangements which balloon sites offered, the mere thought of a shower either hot or cold was always welcome, and since two were already occupied she went happily into the third, hanging her pyjamas on the hook and plunging under the water. Soon, clean and fully dressed apart from shoes and cap, she returned to their hut and there was Miranda, ready for the off. The two girls grinned at one another and set off for the cookhouse, for their day’s work would begin at eight. Miranda would be driving yet more airmen to some unspecified destination and Avril was on ambulance duty, which she hoped sincerely would prove to be a sinecure that day. The British airmen only flew at night – unlike the Americans who, she knew, did daylight raids – so though the ambulance was always manned and ready, its chief work came after dark. That meant she would be free until noon and on call from six or seven o’clock, which should give her plenty of time to write to Pete, for she had not liked to do so the previous evening with Miranda’s too knowing eyes upon her.
In fact, however, she had no opportunity to write letters, for she was called to the small bay to service the engine of a car which the driver was having trouble starting, and by the time she finished she was ready for a meal, so she searched out Miranda and the two joined the cookhouse queue together. They reached the counter and had just had corned beef hash, cabbage and gravy slapped on to their plates when Miranda turned to her friend. ‘I forgot to ask if you ever write to Pete Huxtable?’ she said airily. ‘Steve says he’s out in Malaya now; but I guess you know that, don’t you?’
Despite her best efforts, Avril’s mouth hung open for quite ten seconds before she pulled herself together. ‘What makes you think that?’ she asked belligerently. A sudden thought struck her. ‘You looked at the letters on the board and saw the one I got from him! Miranda Lovage, you are a thoroughly sneaky person! And why shouldn’t I write to Pete, anyway? He were real nice to me after Gary and Timmy died. Besides, what are you trying to make of it? I’ve gorra grosh of fellers what I write to and I dare say there’s chaps here what’ll want me to go to the flicks or to a dance with them. What’s wrong wi’ that?’
Miranda laughed. ‘Nothing, you fool,’ she said, ‘so why be so secretive? Why not admit you write to Pete and actually rather like him? As you’d be the first to point out, liking someone is no sin.’ As she spoke they had managed to find an unoccupied table and put their plates on it, so now they pulled up two chairs and sat down.
Avril shrugged. ‘I dunno; I guess I just wanted to keep it to myself. That Pete and I are going to go steady when he comes home, I mean,’ she said sulkily. ‘I always swore I wouldn’t get involved because it was just a pathway to pain, and so it is. I worry about Pete all the time, but I tell myself he means no more to me than the other fellers. You see, while I pretend he’s not important . . . oh, I don’t know, I can’t explain. It’s got something to do with the fact that I knew him before either of us had joined the RAF. I’m afraid I can’t explain better than that, because I don’t understand it myself. Only on my last balloon site we had this lovely flight sergeant. Gosh, she was beautiful, and tremendously efficient too. She’d been in the WAAF from the very beginning and a couple of months after she joined she got married to a tail gunner. He was killed six weeks after their wedding; she was devastated, but went on with the job. Her dead husband’s best pal began to take her about. He was a fighter pilot trying to defend the troops when the Dunkirk evacuation began. He ditched and was presumed dead. After that she kept herself to herself for a couple of years, but then she had an affair with the boy next door who was a bomb aimer. He was killed over Cologne. Fellers started looking at her funny, and no one would take her out, though she was so beautiful! They thought she were a jinx, you see. Nothing’s ever happened to none of my fellers, and I reckon that was because I didn’t really love any of ’em. Only – only Pete is a bit different, so I won’t risk him. He’s no beauty – plain as a boot, in fact – but he means a lot to me. So he’s stayin’ under hatches until the war’s over, understand?’
‘Oh, poor Avril,’ Miranda said softly. ‘But I do understand, in a way. You thought you lost everything when Gary died and you’re afraid of losing everything again. And I think I can imagine how that feels – even though my Steve is in England and I know he doesn’t mean to worry me, some of the things he says keep me awake at nights. So don’t think I don’t sympathise, because I do.’ She pushed her empty plate to one side as she spoke and stood up, fastened the buttons on her tunic and slapped her cap on her head. ‘Are you coming to the NAAFI? And just think – there’s one good thing about having your feller abroad: you don’t have to join the queue for the telephone, which seems to get longer with every passing day!’