nine

The regimental band played ‘Waltzing Matilda’, the ‘Royal Artillery Inspection march’ and a selection of popular melodies. Officers and NCOs marched up and down the platform clutching boards studying lists, calling orders, checking the occupants of carriages, items being loaded.

We – me, a sweet-faced girl from Ireland whose name was Breda and a Scottish girl called Katy, girls who were from my unit but whom I’d only met since boarding the train – hung out of the window watching the activity. Exhilarated by the music, the prospect of a new posting. New places, new faces. Gradually the platform cleared. A guard walking along it checking the compartment doors. The massive engine belched steam. The guard blew his whistle. And the train began its journey south, taking me to some of the happiest years of my life.

Breda was from rural Ireland. Apart from her eyes, which were big and grey with a beautiful gentle expression, I thought her nondescript, totally unlike Katy, who was vivacious, quick-tongued and wore the smartest uniform I had ever seen. Her collar stiffly starched, knife-like creases in her skirt and her cap at a rakish angle round which her hair curled in wisps. Her teeth were brilliant, like an American’s, in her wide, white smile.

From time to time as we went south soldiers opened the carriage door asking for lights, making small talk. With smart answers and crushing wit Katy sent the unacceptable ones packing.

We ate our rations. Bully beef and spam sandwiches, sausage rolls in a leaden pastry and minute bars of chocolate. We smoked and talked.

The hours sped by.

The lights were on again all over the world. London was lit up. We transferred to a coach that would take us to Waterloo Station. I saw Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Thrilled to be seeing sights only seen before in books and films. Feeling as if I knew them from all the times my father had talked about London. All the times he had promised he would one day take me there. And for a brief moment I wished he was alive so that I could write and tell him I had seen them.

From Waterloo we went to a station called Brookwood in Surrey. And from there to an army camp on the borders of Surrey and Hampshire. It was long past midnight when we arrived so that it was difficult to get an impression of the camp. But the air was soft, smelled wonderful; the small wind, a breeze so unlike the knifing winds that blew in Catterick.

The billets were Spider huts, wooden structures with a central body where store rooms, ablutions and the central heating were located. Three supposed spider’s legs protruded on each side of the body in each of which was our sleeping quarters. There was a gorgeous smell of wood. And as we were into October, the month in which the heating was switched on, the atmosphere was welcoming.

Breda, Katy and I chose beds next to one another, dumped our kit and, as ordered on arrival, assembled outside. From where, by torchlight, an NCO led us down a steep incline to the cookhouse where a passable meal was laid on. Then back up the hill, our eyes now more accustomed to the darkness, noticing the shrubs, bracken and trees growing along the incline. It smelled damp and woody, of rotting leaves and fungi, a smell I loved.

We unbarracked our beds, made them up, put on our striped pyjamas and carrying our sponge bags went in groups to the ablutions. Stopping on the way back to read the following day’s Orders. Whoops of joy. No parades until after dinner. The morning was ours to unpack and familiarize ourselves with the layout of the camp.

We discovered that the majority of the camp buildings, including our billets, were on a plateau. One side sloped to the cookhouse and beyond that to a swimming pool, tennis court and recreational hut for other ranks.

At one edge of the plateau were Married Quarters, behind them another incline led down to the Regimental Offices, gun park and the barrack square. Beyond the square’s perimeter stood the garrison cinema, or Gaff. From the cinema there was a narrow sandy path fronting a scanty pine plantation where the Roman Catholic church was. Surrounded as it was by conifers and built of white clapboard with a green trim, it brought to mind a Canadian or New England setting rather than a Southern English one. And not far from the church there was the main road running through the village.

Me and Breda blessed ourselves as we passed the church and Katy said, ‘Remind me to tell you something about a Catholic church.’

‘Tell us now,’ I asked.

‘I will sometime,’ replied Katy as we crossed the road.

‘Now I want to have a look at what all this is like.’

What all this was like was a long row of shops. Some with rooms over them, some single storey and makeshift in appearance. The majority were cafés. More cafés than there were public houses in a Dublin street. On their windows daubed in pipe clay and on blackboards outside were the menus. Sausage and chips. Pie and chips. Whale steak and chips. Pastie and chips. Chips and beans. Cakes, tea, coffee, lemonade and ginger beer.

There was also a post office. A shop selling kitschy souvenirs. Small velvet heart-shaped cushions, satin squares and circles all embroidered in red, royal, emerald, purple and cerise with regimental badges or fond messages to Mum or sweethearts. The messages and shapes were similar to those displayed in the next door shop which specialized in tattooing. The tattooist stood in her doorway smoking. A painfully thin woman with garlands of flowers and entwined serpents on the almost fleshless arms. She smiled and said, ‘Hello’. I’d never seen a woman with tattoos before. One of the makeshift shops sold caps and corp badges, sergeants, bombardiers and lance bombardiers’ stripes in sets of three, two and single ones for the lower rank. Amongst these were displayed lanyards, blocks of blanco and bottles of Indian ink with which to whiten stripes. The post office sold newspapers and cigarettes. It was obvious that the shops catered only for military personnel.

We walked up and down the row of shops looking for variations in the menus, peering in to see which café had juke boxes, pinball machines. All had, but no variety in the menus.

There was one café more salubrious in appearance than the others. It was detached and its large window was draped the full length in greyish net curtains. There was no menu displayed until closer inspection revealed a hand-written menu tucked inside the curtain resting on the window ledge.

‘That’s the posh one,’ said Katy. ‘For the officer cadets. It looks a right dump. No machines, no music. And no other ranks. Not barred mind you, but discouraged.

‘We won’t be missing much,’ said Breda. ‘Sure the menu’s still the same. Chips and chips.’

It was an unwritten law that Officer Cadets did not fraternize with other ranks, male or female.

Having decided which was our favourite café we went in for coffee. Neither better nor worse than what we were accustomed to in the NAFFI. Perry Como was singing on the juke box, ‘Till the End of Time’. My first hearing of the song. I fell in love with it. And in future months it was to be my solace when a love affair went wrong. When I would sit in the cafe lingering over a cup of coffee too long so that the owner, a woman, gave me dirty looks, which I brazened out. For if I bought more coffee I could play the record again. And I had to keep hearing Perry’s promise of eternal love while willing whoever I was in love with to come through the door and my heart sang along with Perry, ‘Till the stars forget to shine I’ll go on loving you.’ He often never came through the door. But just as often another tall, handsome soldier did, our eyes met and again for a little time I fell in love.

But all that was still in the future. Today we were exploring, acquainting ourselves with the girls who shared our barrack room. With dry-witted Connie from Manchester, a conscript who couldn’t wait for her demobilization, who was a Labour supporter and believed that finally the time of the working class had come. Marge from London, who joked about buying boil plasters to enhance the size of her breasts. In my mind’s eye can still see her when she got out of bed. Standing with her legs crossed, squirming as she tightened her pelvic floor so as not to wet herself. She was the first person I knew who owned a Biro. Something none of us had seen before. A magic pen. Jean, a small plump Scot’s girl whose face I have never forgotten. She was a clerk in the Admin. Office. She had a pleasant manner but kept very much to herself. Unlike the rest of us she seldom went to the NAFFI canteen in the evenings and I never knew her to have a date.

* * *

After exploring the village and before our midday meal, I investigated the other descents from the plateau. To reach one of them I passed the gymnasium where in the future I would go to regimental dances and in bad weather have physical training.

Behind the gymnasium was a cricket field and white-painted pavilion. I ran across the pitch and the field beyond it. It seemed to go on and on forever. And when I reached the edge, saw a narrow sandy track, its sides lined with peeling-barked silver birch. And at the bottom another scrubby field stretching into the distance. Not worth exploring I decided, and retraced my steps.

The final descent was close to the billet and very steep. Falling down into a place of trees. Trees so closely packed their trunks weren’t visible. Only their tops bedecked with multicoloured autumn leaves as if they were a gigantic bouquet packed into an enormous container. The sun shone on them, the breeze stirred them. I had never seen anything like them. They were beautiful, magnificent. I wanted to go down the steep slope, walk amongst them. Walk through them. Feel and hear the leaves crunch beneath my feet. But I guessed it was almost dinner-time. My exploration must wait for another time. But explore it I would.

* * *

Katy worked in the Admin. Office and Breda moved from clerical duties to work with me as a telephonist. Here as in Catterick Camp the telephone exchange was part of the guardroom and the guardroom a replica of the one in Yorkshire. Although I didn’t remember prison cells there. Here there were several along a narrow corridor and several soldiers confined for short spells for less than heinous offences.

They polished and bumpered the floors, renewed the buckets of coke, whitewashed the border boulders, brassoed the cannon and at various times during the days were marched to other parts of the camp on fatigues.

One of my great loves I met while he was a prisoner. A tall, blonde, bronzed Scot who had fought in the Western desert and Monte Casino.

When he had served his sentence we dated. His name was Steve. He used to sing to me, ‘My love is like a red, red rose, that’s newly sprung in June.’ I can still see him. His lovely fair hair, his blue eyes and his slender broad-shouldered body, his battle-dress bedecked with campaign medals. My rebel soldier who kicked against the discipline of the peace-time army. And I hear him singing, ‘And I will come again my love though it were ten thousand miles’.

* * *

The camp, its surroundings, the girls, the village street, the priest, Sunday Mass, everything enchanted me. I had never known such happiness. One Sunday after mass a man approached myself and Breda. He was good-looking, oldish, Irish and charming. He invited us to go and meet his wife who had just moved into married quarters. We went and I tasted Nescafé for the first time. There was a small beautiful child of three. I fell in love with her, her father and gorgeous mother, Betty with the shining cap of golden hair, fat and beautiful, who had been a beautician and hairdresser in a prestigious Newcastle department store. She cut and styled my hair. Suddenly it was beautiful. A nut brown short page boy which kept its shape. For the first time ever I was complimented on it. Men in the canteen would touch the shining cap and say, ‘You’ve got smashing hair, Pad.’

* * *

Only Bubbles answered letters properly. Replying to what you’d written. She was engaged to her Yank and preparing to become a GI bride. Undergoing medical tests and investigations into her background. She hadn’t heard from Deirdre so couldn’t give me her new address. Edith and Marj’s letters were short. They told of smashing times with blokes and little else. Though Edith did give an explanation as to what a technical virgin was. Or rather how not to be one. ‘It’s a prick teaser. Getting a bloke too worked up and then calling it quits. You could get yourself raped or murdered.’ I was as wise as before. Her letters and Marj’s were signed across the back of the envelopes T.T.F.N.— Ta, ta for now. Deirdre’s would have been embellished with S.A.G.—Saint Anthony guide. Soldiers’ love letters were frequently sealed with S.W.A.L.K.—Sealed with a loving kiss!

* * *

One day I related Deirdre’s story to Breda and Katy. Afterwards Breda coaxed Katy to tell us about the Catholic Church she had mentioned on the first day we arrived in camp.

‘Oh, that, it was nothing really.’

‘Tell us anyway,’ Breda insisted.

‘I was living with my grannie at the time and she sometimes ran out of money for the electric.’ She laughed. ‘Ran out of it in the pub. So most nights we had to have candles. Little ones that lasted no time. Anyway I had this mate, Georgie, a Catholic, and sometimes I’d go into his kirk with him. And one day I saw these great big candles on the altar. Enormous they were and I decided to nick one for my grannie. Georgie was petrified. They were blessed, he said. He’d go to Hell, to a reformatory. I didn’t care where he went. All I could think of was my grannie’s face when she saw the candle and how I’d be able to read by it.’ She stubbed out her cigarette and lit a new one. ‘I made him help me. He was greetin’ all the time. We had a hell of a job lowering it and then getting it out of the holder.’

‘George said, “We’ll be charged, the polis will arrest us. You canna carry that through the street.” But we did, carried and dragged it. It was bigger than us. Anyway we got it home.’

‘Was your grannie delighted?’ asked Breda.

‘Like hell she was. She skelped me and Georgie. Wouldn’t answer the door in case it was the police.’ The beautiful altar candles. I could picture them. Smell them. See altar boys snuffing them out. See Katy going on to the altar forbidden to women. Understand Georgie’s fears. And at the same time was laughing at the thought of Katy dragging the blessed candle through the streets of Edinburgh.

‘What did your grannie do with it?’ I asked. ‘I expect she threw it out.’

‘Wrapped it in an old quilt, pushed it under the bed and waited.’

‘For what?’ I asked.

‘Till she was sure the police wouldn’t find out who nicked it. Afterwards she fixed it in an umbrella stand. It was great. I could read all night and she said it brought us luck.’

‘What about Georgie?’

‘He didn’t play with me again. Poor wee Georgie. He was one of the unlucky ones who dropped at Arnhem.’

When Katy finished the story she came back again to Deirdre’s dilemma asking me, ‘Did you ever ask anyone about Lupinbeds?’

‘A few people on the Isle of Man,’ I replied shrugging, ‘But no luck.’

‘You could try the post corporal.’

‘Katy, you know I can’t stand him.’

‘Who can? He’s a creep. But think of all the directories, maps and charts he has.’

‘He’s bound to have heard of it,’ Breda said and reluctantly I agreed to try Charley.

And so the next day I went to see him. Thinking as I walked to the post room about Edna’s letter and ‘prick teasers’. I was familiar with the word. You got pricks from thorns, pins, needles and occasionally since I had joined up my conscience pricked me. That it wasn’t any of those Edna referred to I had no doubts. I had deduced that it was something to do with sex. That mysterious, tantalising subject. Maybe it was another name for what in Ireland was called a mickey, a flute, a tool, sometimes a pump. If a tool and a mickey were the same thing, then Army Tool Softener was also to do with sex. But why a softener I wondered as I neared Charley’s lair.

I was almost there when I remembered the day in work I found what I thought was a banana balloon in a jacket left in for alterations. How the woman working with me had knocked it out of my hand. Kicked it away, ordered me to get a brush and dustpan. Sweep it up and then scrub my hands. If mickeys, flutes and tools were men’s things I maybe they covered them with long balloons. But why? Maybe if they had bad kidneys to stop them wetting their trousers. Though this seemed odd I thought, remembering seeing baby boys being changed and little boys peeing. Their things were tiny. Like little fat worms. Still I suppose they’d grow as they did. But not that much. What I’d found in the judge’s pocket was several inches long with plenty of stretch in it. I was almost at Charley’s and put the subject out of my mind. I needed a clear head to deal with sneering, jeering Charley.