seventeen

At last I had fulfilled the promise made to myself in basic training. Hot on the heels of signing on for an extra two years the second course came through. I passed with flying colours. Was promoted to the rank of corporal, had a pay increase of twenty-five shillings a week and was issued with the kit I had hankered after for so long.

As promised Sylvia bought and stitched on the two stripes and the crossed swords, the insignia of the Physical Training Corps. With Indian ink I whitened them to the brilliance of fresh snow.

I spread the news. Letters to Steve, Bubbles in Santa Barbara, Edith and Marj, care of their home address, for we had lost touch. And to my mother I wrote that no longer would she need to feel ridiculed in the post office. I was making her allowance up to ten shillings a week.

In my euphoria I forgot that recently I’d been disappointed with Steve’s letters. For no longer did he write page after page of his feelings for me. The letters were shorter and said more about his long hours of study than his longing for me. His small handwriting once so legible had become almost impossible to read. Sometimes I gave up trying. Sometimes without looking at his photograph I found it hard to recall his face.

Katy said we should go to the pub and celebrate. We sat on my bed deciding who to invite. Me regretting Connie was already demobilised. Positive that this was one party she would have come to. She liked to see women getting on. I’d ask Ginger, some of his regimental police and George. George was my friend. My platonic friend. I had a shorter explanation—the only bloke who never tried to make me.

‘What about Janetta, will you ask her?’ Katy asked.

‘She’ll probably have something on with her bloke.’

‘Haven’t you noticed she hasn’t been about much lately?’ Katy replied.

I hadn’t. I’d been too wrapped up in my good fortune to notice. I asked Janetta and she said she’d come. And I invited Johnny.

Even though it was my party the men insisted on buying the drinks and crisps. Ginger winked approvingly when he saw me with Johnny which made me feel guilty. Here I was out with someone I was obviously interested in and poor Steve poring over biology notes or, worse still, a bit of late night dissecting. Two glasses of cider soon banished any remorse I was feeling as I lost myself in Johnny’s lambent, wondrous brown eyes.

We laughed, smoked, drank and sang. George was good-naturedly ragged by the other men. Asked to tell about the cock up he’d made of his WOSB. Deliberately, according to him. He said the army was a barbaric institution. Barbaric and moronic. ‘Shouldn’t it have been evident to them that I wasn’t officer material! Can you imagine me strutting round with a swagger stick giving orders. I refused to participate in the infantile puzzles and initiative tests.’

‘Good on you George,’ someone said. And George puffed with

pride. Poor George who always used long words. A fella, they’d say in Ireland who’d swallowed the dictionary. Even with my scant knowledge of the military mind I couldn’t understand why he had been selected to try for a commission. He was the scruffiest soldier I had ever seen. His uniform appeared as if he had slept in it. He wore his beret at an angle no one else did. His boots and webbing never saw blanco or polish. I suppose he was chosen because he had a degree.

He was low-sized and hairy. Shaggy eyebrows, a face that always seemed in need of a shave and when on rare occasions he undid the collar of his tunic dark hair was visible. He and I had got into talk one morning in the NAFFI. We talked about Dublin. He about visiting the house where Bernard Shaw had been born. And me exclaiming, ‘That’s only round the corner from where I live. I used to pass it every day. My brother’s school was right beside it.’ That at the time was the extent of my knowledge of Shaw. It was enough for George. We were friends. Shaw was his hero. In no time I knew the titles of his plays, that he lived in Ayot Saint Lawrence. I was an expert at pretending to listen. I did the same when George tried explaining philosophy. I remember something about a table you can see which in reality you could not. I sucked grass, the sweet juicy stems or smoked and George kept talking. I think he liked me. He wrote several times after he finished in the army. Once with a relation I went to tea in his bedsit. A small miserable room. Dingy curtains and wallpaper. A thin mattressed bed. A hissing gas fire and ring on which he made pilchards and toast. For pudding we had a Swiss roll of leathery sponge, imitation cream which tasted like ointment and ersatz chocolate. George served the meal with panache. On the floor stacked in piles were volumes of Shaw.

Ginger had laid on a fifteen hundredweight to take us back to camp after the pub closed. It wasn’t far to walk and this Johnny and I chose to do. Arms around each other’s waists, stopping now and then to kiss.

‘I’m in love,’ I told Katy when I was getting ready for bed.

‘Again.’ she said.

‘I can’t help it. He’s so gorgeous.’

‘So is Steve.’

‘That’s the trouble. I love them both. But it’ll sort itself out. Johnny is being posted to the Middle East after Christmas. Then it won’t be long until I meet Steve in April. Once I’m engaged I’ll never look at another bloke.’

‘Janetta’s pregnant,’ Katy said, lowering her voice.

‘Oh God, that’s terrible. But still she’s engaged so I suppose they’ll get married.’

‘They won’t. He’s ditched her. Says he has another girl at home.’

‘There’s something wrong there. Didn’t he take Janetta home to meet his parents?’

‘She pretended. They went away for a dirty weekend. He’s applied for a posting.’

‘Poor Janetta, what’ll happen to her?’

‘She can’t go home. Her family is religious. Which means they go to church and worry about their neighbours.’

‘What about the army, what’ll they do?’

‘She could apply for a discharge under Paragraph Eleven, King’s Regulations, and try fending for herself and the kid.’

‘Will she?’

‘I don’t know. She’s still in a daze. I could castrate bastards like that. All he had to do was wear a French letter. Selfish sod.’

‘She’s the only girl I’ve known since I joined up who got pregnant.’

‘There’s probably a lot we don’t hear of.’

‘What d’ye mean?’

‘Some who got married and left might have been up the pole. Some might have had abortions. Gone home for a weekend and a handy woman done a job with a crochet hook or knitting needle.’

‘You’re not serious. Killing a baby! That’s a terrible thing. That’s a sin.’

‘I’d be more worried about bleeding to death or getting septic all through me than sin.’

Janetta went into a home run by the army six weeks before the baby was born having decided on having the child adopted, coming back into the forces with a posting to another area. The father denied the baby was his and got sent overseas.

There were few maternity clothes for civilians. Those available grotesque. The waists of skirts enlarged by string or elastic threaded between buttonhole and fastening to the button. As the belly grew bigger it hitched up the skirts in front. Over this women wore artist’s smocks and loose coats. Janetta had to wear uniform. Each month she was issued with larger tunics, skirts and greatcoats. Tunics too big in the shoulders, skirts near her ankles. She never went to the NAFFI, ashamed of the stares.

Katy, Sylvia, Breda and me brought her meagre breakfast from the mess. But unless she chose to starve she had to brave the cookhouse at dinner and teatime. I can still see this lovely gentle girl walking into a mess filled with young soldiers whose eyes, even if only for seconds, were drawn to her belly straining against the greatcoat.

* * *

I set out for Brighton with such hopes and expectations I wore the horrible uniform. Thinking that as my family were English they’d be proud to see me in it. And in any case wanted to show off my rank.

Waiting at Victoria Station I imagined my reception. How thrilled my aunt would be meeting me for the first time. And how wonderful it would be to meet my grandfather. How he must be looking forward to seeing his dead son’s daughter.

At Victoria Station I reread my mother’s letter. She was pleased I was going to visit her in-laws. She urged me to write as soon as possible with all the news of what they were like. The way they welcomed me. And not to forget to let my grandfather know that he had a grandson named after him.

I put the letter away and watched the crowds. The majority uniformed coming or going on leave, to new postings. And thought how years ago my father and his sister who was nursing in Guys would have sat here. Maybe on the same seat. I wished it was this sister I was going to meet. She had written to my mother and father from America where she now lives, and when I grew up he sent money, and comics to me, the first tea bags I’d ever seen and parcels of clothes. She wrote about Paris, how she had lived there as a girl with a sister of her mother’s. She encouraged me to learn French and hoped that when the war was over we would meet.

As I sat listening to stations to Brighton being called over the tannoy system, East Croydon, Merstham, Three Bridges, Hayward’s Heath, Burgess Hill, I was remembering my father’s descriptions of his beloved mother. How small she was. Her long auburn hair. Hair, he said, so long she could sit on it. Her generosity and gaiety. The enormous trays of ‘gur cake’, she baked to share with children in the street. How she laughed until she cried at shadow pictures on the bedroom walls, thrown there by my father’s fingers conjuring images of jumping rabbits, wriggling snakes and the snapping jaws of crocodiles.

Fanny my high-spirited grandmother who ran away with a Lancer. Whose father never forgave her. Who never allowed her to come home again. Who when introduced to her father-in-law and he asked, ‘How are the pigs in Ireland?’ replied, ‘Ask my sweet Irish arse.’

The aunt I was going to visit looked like her mother. Had the same hair. As the train neared Brighton I wondered if I would recognize her. Would she see a resemblance in me to my father? We’d talk and talk about him. What he was like as a boy. She’d show me the house where they’d lived. Where the night before another sister died as a child her mother had heard ‘the three dead knocks’ on the wall and knew the child wouldn’t live.

And then during the week we’d go to Horsham to see my grandfather. He’d bring my father alive for me with his reminiscences. He’d have photographs of my grandmother when she was young. Maybe a family picture of the aunts and uncles now scattered all over the world. What a wonderful time I would have.

We’d cry and laugh and talk and talk and talk. I’d be showered with love because I was my father’s daughter.

Brighton station. On the platform looking up and down it for a woman with red hair. Slowly I walked along letting other passengers pass me by. Allowing time for me to be spotted until I was the only person on the platform. No one claimed me.

I waited in the station’s entrance. Telling myself my aunt could have been delayed. I waited outside the station still hoping for her arrival. I was cold and hungry. Still I waited. Then took a taxi.

The house was near the race course. A three storey Victorian or Edwardian house. I rang the bell and waited. My spirits had risen again. My heart raced. The cold and hunger forgotten. I was here. In a moment the door would open and I’d be given a hundred thousand welcomes.

The door was opened by a beautiful woman with Titian, wavy hair done up in a bun. I said who I was. No exclamations, no hugs, no kisses.

She invited me in. Showed me were to hang my greatcoat and leave my case and then took me into the sitting room. I was ill at ease. Talked too much. I could see my words hovering above my head like captions in a comic. She asked if I would like some tea. I said, ‘That’ll be grand. Thanks very much. If you’re sure it’ll be no trouble. I don’t mind waiting. The room is lovely. And that’s a lovely fire. It’s very cold out.’

I wondered if she was deaf for she only nodded and half smiled. When she left to make the tea I looked around the room. It was big with a bay window where blue velvet hangings were draped. Brass fender and fire irons, the fire’s flames reflected in the dazzling brass. Chairs and a long sofa, occasional tables, bookcases, an arrangement of leaves in a vase. Photographs.

She came back with a trolley, tea, sandwiches and rock cakes and she talked. Asked about my mother. She spoke in the same way as officers did. That I found disconcerting, but not as disconcerting as what came next. ‘I have a friend,’ she said. ‘Her son is in the forces and several times he has brought pals home for the weekend. And not one of them has ever offered his mother their ration money.’ I immediately offered mine and immediately she took it. I thought of my weekend in Morecambe and Edith’s mother.

I asked questions about my grandmother and she replied, ‘Actually I remember very little about her. I went away to school when I was eleven and she died shortly afterwards.’ And so the time passed awkwardly. Long silences while I wracked my brain for something to say. And she replied to questions almost entirely in monosyllables. I was sweating from the strain and the heat of the fire. I asked was it alright if I took off my tunic. ‘Do,’ she said.

Her husband and daughter came home. They were friendly and welcoming but my aunt never unbent. I began to feel as if I’d come to the wrong house. That I was in a bed and breakfast establishment where the landlady didn’t want her guests.

Despite plentiful. food and a warm comfortable bedroom I was miserable and felt as if I was a stranger, and decided that the next day I’d complain of feeling unwell and go back to camp. I wondered if my aunt would refund my ration money. Or like a landlady deduct part of it for a cancelled booking. Then I began to console myself. I was a stranger in as much as we had never met before. She wasn’t Irish. She had spent a long time in her convent school. She was shy. Tomorrow it might be better. And in a couple of days she was taking me to visit my grandfather in Horsham. It would all be different.

It wasn’t. Her shyness, reserve or coolness remained the same. And when I met my grandfather I knew who she took after. No kisses or embraces from him either. No mention of my grandmother. Little reference to my father. He asked how my mother was. He asked why I wasn’t already married. Most girls of my age were, he said.

He was an elegant old man. Blue-eyed, white-haired, pink-cheeked with a long narrow face, good teeth and an aquiline nose. During the visit he stayed in his chair by the fire one leg draped gracefully over the other. I didn’t care if I never saw him again. I never did. Nor my aunt either.

I was catching a train back to camp at four o’clock. My aunt had an appointment at two o’clock. She made it clear I would leave the house when she did at one-thirty. She put me on a bus for the station where I had a long wait.

Still smarting, puzzled, and saddened by my reception in Brighton and Horsham, I returned to camp. Composing in my mind as I went, the letter I’d write home. Descriptions of my aunt and grandfather. Their lack of interest in me. How with neither of them did I feel welcome; feel I was their flesh and blood. How seldom my father’s name was mentioned. How supposedly religious my aunt was. A daily communicant. With reverently bent head and joined hands walking to the altar to receive. Kneeling longer in her seat, longer than anyone else when she returned. Me glancing sideways at her beautiful thin face with chiselled features like her father’s, wings of her glorious hair visible beneath the brown velvet beret. The picture of devotion, of holiness, goodness. Such a hypocrite. So apparently religious. Her annoyance when a baby cried at the back of the church. Turning her head to stare coldly at the child’s mother. And after Mass visiting the crib in adoration before the infant Jesus. The same woman who had let me pay the measly fair to Southwater where my grandfather lived. Who on New Year’s Eve announced we would go to the skating rink in Brighton. A treat I presumed, a making up to me. Perhaps I had been hasty judging her as miserly. She fed me well. My room was warm and comfortable. She burned good fires. Maybe I was hasty in offering my ration money. Too sensitive. Her mention of it may not have been intended as a hint for me to tip it up. And her cold manner could be shyness.

I had never been to an ice rink but assumed that after a few false starts I’d master the technique. I roller skated regularly in Dublin, I could waltz, do the military two step. I was good. I would not find skating on ice difficult. I did. And the ice was hard and cold to fall on but the stinging smart wasn’t as cold or hurtful as my aunt making it clear as we approached the ticket office that I was to buy my own ticket.

I could hear my mother’s comments as she read the letter I was composing. ‘The hungry cow, the mean bitch, and him, to, to treat a child, an orphan that way. They won’t have an hour’s luck. But sure what more could you expect from an oul’ fella who, before your grannie was cold in the clay, sold the family house lock, stock, and barrel. Even your father’s school prizes. Never recognize them again.’

* * *

The barrack room was deserted. Katy’s, Breda’s and several beds barracked as they would have been left when they went on leave. Unusual. They should have returned before me. Not bothering to make mine up, I dumped my kit bag on the bed and went looking for information. Sylvia would know.

There was a girl I’d never seen before in the clothing store.

‘Where’s everyone?’ I asked.

‘Sick, Flu, certificates showering in like confetti. I’ve been posted in to cover. Waiting for my demob … have a fag.’ She offered me her packet of Churchman’s cigarettes. We chatted for a few more minutes. The extra strong cigarette made me cough. I nipped it. ‘I think I’ll wander down to the cookhouse, see if anyone I know is about. Thanks for the fag.’

‘Ta, ra for now,’ she called after me.

On the way down the slope I met Janetta trudging up returning from her daily visit to the cookhouse. Submit to the stares of at least a hundred men or starve. Such a sight she presented. The greatcoat tripping her up, the shoulders drooping, the sleeves inches too long. I took her arm and helped her up the slope. Only across her huge belly did the coat fit. She looked sick, tired, dark rings under her eyes, her skin stained with brown pigment. She was panting.

‘Not long now,’ I said.

‘Not long,’ she agreed. ‘I’m going into the Home in a few weeks.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Aldershot.’

‘We’ll visit you, me, Katy and Breda.’

‘I’d love that … I won’t know anyone in the Home. I finished work last week … but I go down to the exchange every day. Better than sitting in the barrack room on my own. Ginger and the lads are great. I never feel embarrassed with them. Never mention, not even in a joke, my condition … only once Ginge ever made any comment.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Said if he was my father he’d shoot the bleeder responsible.’

‘You’ve missed your dinner.’

‘I’ll go to the village later and have something.’

She lay on her bed to get her breath back. I made up mine, talking as I did. I wanted to ask if she’d heard from the bleeder. How she felt about giving her baby up for adoption. But wasn’t sure if she could bear to talk about such things. Instead I gave her an edited version of my stay in Brighton. Conveying that the place wasn’t all I had expected. She sat up, struggled out of her greatcoat and threw it over her feet. ‘I always thought it was a smashing place. Not a great beach but lots to do. Very popular for “dirty weekends”. A lot of hotels and boarding houses; … not very fussy.’ I wondered if it was to Brighton her bloke took her when she’d told us it was to meet his parents. I noticed she no longer wore her engagement ring.

‘Have you seen Johnny about?’

Janetta said she had not, and by the time I’d finished making my bed, was snoring softly. There were two letters from Steve. Almost impossible to read but with a lot of concentration I deciphered the scribbles … ‘Sometimes I regret doing medicine ; Between lectures, taking notes, and studying … never mind dissecting … there’s little time left. But it’s supposed to improve when you go to the wards.’

Briefly he mentioned missing me and looking forward to our meeting in Crewe and becoming engaged. This set me wondering where we would stay. Would he expect me to sleep with him once I was manacled by a ring. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. A ring guaranteed nothing. Janetta had had a ring. I went looking for Johnny. Stopping at the married quarters of my friends, I suddenly realized how hungry I was. I’d eaten nothing since my breakfast in Brighton. Betty would give me a piece of her delicious lemon meringue pie or some of her crunchy flapjacks and Nescafé. I adored Nescafé.

There was no one in. I felt cold and shivery. The way I often felt at home. A presentiment as if I was going to hear bad news. A feeling I’d never experienced since I came to this camp. I set off for the village. Telling myself it was the cold. A wind had risen and I was hungry. I ran down the slope. The running warmed me and the smell of hot food cheered me a little. The juke box was playing and the pinball machines ringing and clanging and tables with men I knew sitting round them. But of Johnny no sign.

‘Over here, Pad,’ a soldier called, indicating an empty chair. Someone else bought me coffee and an Eccles cake. The men talked. Johnny was on a detail. Wouldn’t be back until after dinner. Rumours were floating round. Unit being suspended. Short Service commissions in Aldershot now. Regulars in Sandhurst, Royal Mechanical and Electrical Engineers taking over here. No one knew for sure. Could be just another bloody rumour. In any case who cared. Their demob was coming up.

Was it a presentiment of a move that was depressing me? Everyone I knew and loved would be scattered and God alone knew where I might finish up. And nowhere could compare with here. This magical place where all I’d known was happiness. My land of joy, of eternal youth, my Tír na nÓg. I left a message with one of Johnny’s mates. I would meet him in the NAFFI at seven o’clock.

* * *

His eyes were like black velvet. His teeth dazzling in his wide smile. I wanted to eat him. I wanted to be in his arms. My head on his breast. I wanted to smell his gorgeous smell.

While we ate our supper I told him about my trip to Sussex. He was appalled. He came from a big close extended family. He couldn’t imaging anyone of his mother’s people treating him as I had been. They were from Liverpool. His father from South Africa. The relations kept in touch and now that the war was over, planned to visit each other. I ranted and raved throughout the meal about my aunt and grandfather. Now and then he reminded me to eat, not to let the chips go cold. And while we drank our coffee he said, ‘You won’t visit them again in a hurry.’

‘Never, ever,’ I replied, looking at his handsome face, wanting to leave the canteen and be in his arms.

‘I think,’ he said, reading my thoughts, ‘there’ll be little shelter from the wind even in the deepest porch tonight. How about the cricket pavilion?’

‘Are you mad, we’d freeze to death on the steps of the pavilion.’

‘Who said anything about the steps. Look at what I’ve got.’ And before my eyes he waved a bunch of keys. ‘I know the groundsman, I swapped my cigarette ration for these.’ He jingled the keys.

‘You mean we can go inside?’

‘Go inside. Make tea. Have a shower. Whatever you fancy except smoke.’

‘Why no smoking?’

‘The pavilion is ancient. There since the last war. Dry as tinder. One spark and whoosh.’

We were careful to make sure no one saw us approach the building. Taking a last look round we mounted the few steps.

‘I brought a torch,’ Johnny whispered, inserting the key in the lock.

Once the door was opened a mixture of smells wafted out. Leather and wood, liniment. Maybe I imagined the smell of crushed grass. I was never interested in cricket but found the ambience at a match delightful.

The snowy clad figures against the green field, the sound of leather on wood and what appeared to me a leisurely, gentle sport.

Shielding the torch with his hand, Johnny checked that the windows were shuttered before taking off our greatcoats and laying them of the floor where we sat on them. We kissed and stroked each other’s faces. Told how much we loved and missed each other. My heart raced with the nearness of him and guilty excitement knowing we were in a forbidden place. We lay down. He undid my tunic and moved his hands over my breasts. I played with his ear lobe, a technique someone told me men liked. His kissing became more passionate. It was a time when somewhere else we would have smoked. He would have extricated himself from my embrace, lit two cigarettes, and placed one between my lips. He moved away from me and asked.

‘What about Steve?’

‘What about him.’

‘Will you get engaged? D’ye love him?’

‘I did when he left. Then I met you. Now I’m not so sure.’

‘And the meeting in Crewe. Will you go?’

‘I’ll have to. He’s coming down from Glasgow in the middle of the night.’

‘He’s a nice bloke. Nice looking too. Fair hair and blue eyes. Same as that kid, Mary, you’re so crazy about.’

‘I suppose he is a bit.’

‘I bet if you had a baby that’s the sort you’d like, fair and blue-eyed.’

‘You have to take what God sends.’

I was uneasy at the way the conversation was going but didn’t know why. Kissing was the way to stop it. Put Steve out of his mind. So I tried a passionate kiss but he put me away from him and spoke again.

‘Maybe you won’t have to decide between us.’

‘What d’ye mean?’

I dreaded his answer. He was going to pack me in. Say we were cheating. Being unfair to Steve. Unfair to him. I must love Steve otherwise why go to Crewe.

‘There’s a chance I may be posted to the Middle East.’

‘Oh God, I’ll die if you are.’

‘No you won’t. You’ll find someone else, or maybe grow up and settle for Steve.’

‘I don’t want someone else. It’s you I love.’

He traced the outline of my lips and said, ‘And I love you. I’ve never loved a girl before. I’ll always love you. I want to marry you but it’s not that simple.’

‘But it is. I’ll write to Steve. Tell him the truth. It’ll be fine. No problem.’

I wanted to marry Johnny. Be married, there and then. Lie in my skin next to him. Let him do all the things my body ached for. Be his wife. Not afraid of pregnancy. Not afraid of losing his respect.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘there’s more to it than Steve. It’s something we’d have to do a lot of talking about; a lot of thinking about.’

‘Talk now. Tell me now.’ I was frightened and impatient.

‘I’m afraid to. It’s not easy.’

‘Afraid.’ I was angry. I stood up. ‘Afraid, what do you mean afraid?’

‘To talk to you about it. I wish we could smoke. And keep your voice down.’

‘You’re married, that’s it, isn’t it. Don’t lie. Katy can find out from the office.’ I was crying. ‘All the time you’ve been a married man.’

‘No. No. I’m not married. It’s something else. I can’t explain it now. But I love you. I always will. Remember that. We’d better make a move.’

He dried my face and helped me on with my greatcoat and we left the hut as cautiously as we had entered.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he bent down to kiss me. I pulled away and said, ‘No, not tomorrow. I don’t want to see you until you tell me.’ And I rushed into the billet.

I avoided going to the NAFFI at times he might be there and didn’t go to the café. I went to my friend in the married quarters and sobbed out my story. She fed me, trimmed my hair and tried to cheer me up. She told me how she had gone out to South Africa to marry Sean, her husband. In cases where the couple intended could prove the seriousness of their intent, the army paid for a passage out. Sean was stationed in Capetown, seconded there instructing South Africans in the use of modern artillery weapons.

‘I hadn’t seen him for a year,’ she said. ‘I was beginning to forget what he looked like.’

I knew the feeling, having sometimes experienced difficulty in recalling Steve’s face.

‘I met a white South African on the boat. He was very attractive. When I old him I was going to Capetown to marry he became concerned. Asked me lots of questions. Where was Sean from? Did I know his people? I told him I did. He was a Kerryman. A soldier. I asked him why he was so concerned. He said that he wondered if I had seen this chap, that he could have been coloured. Thinking of Sean’s blue eyes, such a typically Irish face, I laughed as I described it to him. That’s all right then, he said, but told me if I had seen only a photograph it could be deceptive. That not all Cape coloured were coal black niggers. That there were many variations because of intermarrying and interbreeding over hundreds of years. In some cases only a very discerning eye could spot it.’

She changed the conversation and talked about the weather. How very cold it was. She made tea and spam sandwiches and while we were eating and drinking casually said, ‘Johnny’s very dark-skinned, isn’t he?’

‘Olivey, I sometimes wonder if he’s Jewish.’

‘I wouldn’t think so. A different slant to his features. Lovely looking. And his teeth. The only other place I’ve seen teeth like that was in South Africa.’

‘His father’s from there. He’s hoping to go on a visit now the war’s over.’

Again she changed the conversation, telling me about the little boy she had buried before coming to the camp.

‘Meningitis. Tubercular. He was five years old. The image of Sean. He died in Tidworth Hospital. He was in a ward with American soldiers. They used to have bananas flown in for him. He was a long time dying. Now they have a drug, a miracle drug that might have saved him. Streptomycin. I read about it the other day … Don’t cry hinny. He’s in Heaven.’

She was a convert with a strong faith.

‘Does Mary look like him?’

‘A bit. The same blonde hair and blue eyes.’

‘Johnny said last night that if I had a baby I’d want one that looked like Mary. He loves her but I think he’s a bit jealous. He says I’m crazy about her. I am. All the same I thought it was a queer thing for him to say.’

We toasted ourselves before the fire. Mary was having her afternoon nap and Sean in work, so we talked for ages. She told me about the Depression. The terrible poverty in Newcastle where she came from, and where her father had a butcher’s shop. Some of his customers were miners’ wives who’d come in for four pennorth of bones and how he’d always include some scraps of meat. How her mother threatened he’s bankrupt himself. How her uncle who was the bailiff for the local Duke brought meat from her father’s shop to the Estate. Sides of beef, whole lambs, and veal carcasses.

‘Sometimes he’d take me for the ride. The cook made a great fuss of me. She had a thing about my uncle but he was happily married. Such a huge kitchen it was and full of food. Earthenware bowls full of eggs, baskets of freshly picked mushrooms. Cakes and loaves of bread cooling. One of the maids would take me into the dairy where I could help myself to cream. As much as I could eat. Thick, thick cream. Basins and basins of it. So much of everything. All the meat my uncle had brought, and in the cold room hares, rabbits, all sort of game hanging … Have a cup of Nescafé?

I never refused anything she offered me. She brought in the tray with the coffee, laid it on the table and threw a shovelful of coal on the fire. Then she settled herself, her beautiful voluptuous body, in an armchair, lit a cigarette and said, ‘I was just wondering if maybe Johnny is coloured. If that’s what he’s afraid of telling you.’

‘But he’s not black. He’s not a nigger. I’ve seen niggers on the pictures. He doesn’t look like them.’

‘They don’t all look the same. Each tribe looks different. Some are very beautiful. I wasn’t thinking about of full-blown black man. He could have a lick of the tarbrush.’

‘What’s that?’

‘One of his parents, grandparents, even further back, could have been a native. It was asking about blonde, blue-eyed babies that made me think. Though I did occasionally wonder when you brought him here. He reminded me of men I’d seen in Capetown.’

‘But that’s no reason to be afraid. I wouldn’t care if he was.’

‘You might have a black baby.’

‘How could that happen. He’s not black’

‘It can. You’ve heard people say a child is the image of his grannie or grandfather … they can be the same colour as well.’

‘I still wouldn’t care.’

‘He might for your sake. Coloured people don’t have an easy time of it. And there’s your mother. What would she say?’

‘I suppose if he turned Catholic she wouldn’t mind. In any case we would stay in England. No one at home would have to know. But I don’t believe it. He isn’t coloured.’

Mary woke, liverish as she always was after her sleep, ignoring me. Wanting only her mother. As I got up to leave, Betty said, ‘Think about what I told you. And if you make it up in the heat of the moment don’t get carried away.’

She was forever drumming this advice into Katy, me, and Breda, adding in her lovely Geordie accent that an unwanted baby was too high a price to pay.

I kept away from the NAFFI and the café, but hoped when going about the camp or to and from the exchange, I’d bump into Johnny. Today, me and the telephonist on duty chatted in between her called. We wondered when the girls away sick would be back. She moaned about the longer shifts she was now working. Then laughed, ‘Four hours instead of two and I’m complaining. It’ll be a hell of a lot different in Civvy Street, I bet, there’s not many two hourly shift jobs out there.’

I told her how I’d fallen out with Johnny. How I’d stormed off and regretted it. But that even so, I wouldn’t be the first one to give in.

‘I think he’s smashing looking. Are you serious about him?’

‘I don’t know. The trouble with me is I don’t know what I want. One minute I want to be married and the next just go on enjoying myself. Falling in love with someone new. That’s the best part. Fancying a bloke. Wanting him to ask you out but once he does it’s never the same. The thrill goes out of it. Well, with some blokes it does.’

‘Would you marry Johnny?’

‘When he gets me all worked up I want to be married. D’ye really think he’s smashing-looking?’

‘Gorgeous, very Italian-looking.’

‘Now that you come to mention it, he is. I never thought of that. I suppose because his name’s not Italian.’

‘Could be on his mother’s side. Are you missing the PT lessons?’

‘A bit. Not much else to do. I expect they’ll be back soon, then I’ll be moaning about having too much work.’

Walking back to the billet I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to me that Johnny was an Italian. I told myself it was because before Betty put ideas into my head I didn’t care what he was.

* * *

Except for Janetta’s soft snoring the barrack room was quiet, lonely. I decided to go for my tea. Ask an orderly to make a few sandwiches for Janetta. I’d be gland when she was gone. In the Home she’d be saved the trudge to the cookhouse: the embarrassment of appearing in the greatcoat before the soldiers.

When I came back it was bedlam. A group of girls newly posted in. A couple of them by Janetta’s bed. Another one setting up a portable radio, tuning it in. Radio Luxembourg blaring out songs I wasn’t familiar with. Cocky, confident girls already at home. Kids, eighteen, seventeen. Calling me Corp. I wanted to reprimand them. Say, ‘When you speak to me, my rank is Corporal.’ Only I didn’t have the nerve and couldn’t be that pompous. But their music and shrieks of laughter were giving me a headache. Five minutes in the place and already they were taking over. Our place. Then I caught myself on. I was jealous of their high spirits. Of their possessions. I was getting old, cranky. Resenting newcomers. It wasn’t my place. But as an NCO it was my place to make them welcome, show them the ropes. I calmed down. Spoke to them. told them where to go for their tea.

One who had been talking to Janetta said, ‘Poor cow, he’s a sod. We’ll give the cookhouse a miss. Janetta told us there’s a caff, we’ll try that and bring her back chips. Keep the radio on if you want. This is how you turn it off or down,’ she demonstrated. They were OK I decided and listened to the music and songs. ‘Ballin the Jack’, I liked that. So did Janetta, who made me laugh as she attempted to dance to it.