eighteen

Kath, Breda and Sylvia came back from sick leave. I told them about falling out with Johnny. About Betty’s suggestion that he might be coloured and that if I married him I could have a coloured baby.

Katy and Sylvia thought it was possible. Breda who, like me, had seldom seen a coloured man except on the pictures, dismissed the idea.

‘He doesn’t look a bit like one. Remember the one in ‘Gone with the Wind’?’

But Katy and Sylvia, coming from more cosmopolitan cities, said coloured people came in all shapes and sizes. Katy didn’t think it mattered if he was. What counted was whether I loved him or not. She didn’t think I did.

‘No more than you love Steve. With you it’s the idea of being in love. If Johnny left tomorrow you’d lose no sleep over him. Remember how quickly you recovered after Steve went?’

I turned on her and shrewishly said, ‘You’re in no position to talk. You flit from one bloke to another like a bee gathering honey.’

‘True,’ she said, ‘But I don’t kid myself I’ve fallen for them.’

‘Maybe it’s just that you never fall in love.’

‘I did once,’ she said, and I remembered her story of the Canadian sweetheart who hadn’t returned from the Dieppe raid. Sylvia, not to be left out of the conversation, brought it around to her engagement to Hutch, reminding us that he had been coloured. And how because of it she had broken it off.

‘We know,’ snapped Katy, ‘you’ve told it all before. Mammy and Daddy wouldn’t have approved. Though according to another version of your story, they’d already been dead for years.’

Breda the peacemaker intervened, ‘Come on you lot, you’re all being very ratty tonight.’

We were and realized it. Blamed it on the after-effects of the flu, long train journeys and hunger.

‘We’ll all go to the NAFFI,’ said Sylvia. ‘Have a scoff. My treat.’

Johnny might be there. I was longing to see him. To make it up. Forget about South Africans and black babies. I wouldn’t nag for an explanation of his fear. that would come in time. Tonight I wanted his presence. His arms. His kisses.

‘Eh, it’s parky,’ Sylvia said as we went outside. We turned up the collars of our greatcoats and walked briskly to the canteen, commenting on the sudden change in the weather.

The NAFFI was hot, steamy and smoky and as always reeking of unpleasant fat. I had a good look round but Johnny was not there.

A girl who worked in Katy’s office came in and joined us. She was crying and asking, ‘Have you heard the news yet? Oh my God I can’t believe it. You know Dora my mate? Well she’s dead …’

‘But I saw her only …’ Sylvia began to say.

‘Before she went on leave. I know, we all did, I travelled as far as London with her. She was from up north. I left her going to King’s Cross.’

‘How do you know? Who told you?’ asked Katy.

‘Word came through this afternoon. It’ll be on Orders tomorrow. Meningitis. Three days sick, that’s all.’

We found it hard to believe. She was our age. Strong and healthy. Very smart. Slim. Fuzzy, short, fair hair. She swung an accent and was a snob. Not very popular. Now everyone remembered only her good points. We shed tears. I was still crying while I was undressing for bed. Katy said I was too soft-hearted and Breda advised a few prayers for her soul. They’d have given other advice could they have seen into my mind and the thoughts going through it. I was crying for myself. Crying with terror that Death could strike so suddenly. That I hadn’t left it behind in Ireland …

I woke next morning feeling desperately sick. I had a blinding headache, a stiff neck, my hand on my forehead registered a temperature and the light streaming in through the curtainless windows hurt my eyes. Meningitis. I recognised the symptoms. I shouted for Breda, clutched her arm and implored her to get the doctor, the medical orderly.

‘I’m so sick. I think I’m dying. Get someone quick. Tell them I’m too ill to go on sick parade.’

She went for Sylvia and Katy came to my aid. Held my head and a glass of water to my lips.

‘You look OK to me. Drink this. Maybe you’re getting the flu.’

Flu-like symptoms was often how meningitis began. I moaned. Sylvia arrived and was very sympathetic.

‘You stay in bed, chuck. I’ll nip over to the Medical Inspection Room. If there’s no one there yet I’ll tell Miss Long. She used to be a nurse before joining up. And I’ll fetch you a cup of tea.’

Breda brought a cold flannel for my forehead. It wasn’t properly wrung out and drips ran down my face. Katy left me a packet of fags and matches. Poor Janetta, waddling round like a duck, was very solicitous and assured the other she would look after me until help arrived.

Which it did in the person of Miss Long. Dying as I supposed myself to be, her brisk movements, wiry silver hair curling round her cap and alert, brown eyes again reminded me of a fox terrier.

‘You’re too ill to report sick,’ she said coming to my bed, ‘so I’m told,’ laying a freezing cold hand on my forehead. ‘So what ails you?’

She shook down the thermometer.

‘My head has a terrible pain. My neck is stiff and the light hurts my eyes,’ I replied in a faint voice.

She took my temperature and felt my pulse.

‘Your temperature is normal. Sit up and open your pyjama jacket.’

She scrutinized my chest, belly and back. And announced in her brisk no-nonsense voice. ‘You’re hysterical or malingering.’

‘I am not ma’am. I’ve got meningitis.’ I began to cry.

‘You’ve no such thing. Private Pearson contracted her disease miles from here. You’ve a head cold, a crick in your neck and your eyes are affected by the glare of the sun shining on the snow. It snowed heavily during the night. Get up, shower and dress. Call into my office. I’ll give you a chit for late breakfast. A walk in the fresh air will clear your head.’

She left the room.

Janetta said I looked better and offered to come with me to the cookhouse. Poor, kind Janetta willing to risk the slope. ‘No,’ I thanked her. Said I’d pick up the chit but not use it. ‘I’ll have a char and wad in the NAFFI.’ I’d be there in time for break. See the girls and hopefully Johnny.

The day was glorious. Sunshine and a brilliant blue sky. The landscape transformed. Bare branches layered with snow, thick as frosting on a Christmas cake. Icicles hanging from the eaves of buildings reflecting prisms of colour. The snow criss-crossed with imprints of birds’ feet. Fluffed-out robins displaying their breasts.

I was invigorated. Breathed in lung-fulls of the crisp, cold air. And momentarily forgot meningitis, Dora and my loss of Tír na nÓg. My cheeks glowed. And I felt glad to be alive as I crunched my way to the canteen.

Johnny wasn’t there. Choosing to forget that it was I who had sent him packing I decided he was deliberately avoiding me. And that I never wanted to see him again, though every time the door opened I looked to see if it was him.

The girls were there. We sat drinking tea and talking. Breda suggested we should have a Mass said for Dora and send the card to her parents. Sylvia wasn’t in favour. ‘Don’t forget she wasn’t a Catholic. It might offend,’ adding, ‘We could send a sympathy letter.’ We agreed that was a good idea. Sylvia volunteered to write it. In a couple of days we forgot our good intentions and the letter was never written.

It was Wednesday, our afternoon off for recreation, and as all sports fixtures were cancelled because of the weather we were free to spend it as we chose. We would make a giant snowman. Soldiers we knew agreed to help. Sylvia, who was pally with a cook, borrowed a huge tray to use as a toboggan. So after dinner we gathered on the cricket field and played with the delight and exuberance of children on the first day of snow. With his khaki cap the snowman had a military air. He sported a twig pipe, pebbles we’d scrambled for where the snow lay thin under bushes as his buttons. To complete his soldierly bearing someone found a stick to tuck under his arm as if it was a swagger cane.

A snowball fight was organized—girls versus men. We screamed and giggled as the men chased and caught us. Pretended indignation as they rubbed snow into our faces and down our necks. Titilated and excited as their fingers lingered. Our fingers and toes ached with cold. We stamped our feet and blew on our fingers. Made a gigantic snowball and sent it hurling down a steep slope. Took turns tobogganing down less steep ones. Screaming and laughing with delight, and hoping a thaw wouldn’t set in for a few days.

I was desperate for contact with Johnny and hoped and prayed that on the way down to tea after playing in the snow, my wish would be granted. It was. He was riding in the back of a truck. God, he was so beautiful. Katy was wrong. I really and truly loved him. I adored him. But at the same time felt resentful. He was being secretive. Why couldn’t he confide in me? He had to be married. He had strung me along. And in the instant it took me to reach this conclusion I ignored his wave and a whistle. The truck drove on.

The next morning there was an ominous silence in the atmosphere. The sky was leaden and not a glimpse of the sun. And so began the Winter of 1947. One of the coldest since records began. My spirits sank. I went for a bath and noticed purple bruising on my inner thighs. Fear squeezed my heart. Another symptom of meningitis. I knew it. I knew it. I wasn’t hysterical or a malingerer. I felt faint, shivering and sweating. I’d got the dreadful disease. Then I remembered tobogganing—the tray biting and banging into my thighs—and made a miraculous recovery.

PT lessons were cancelled. Clerks, orderlies and telephonists reported for work as usual. From the window I watched snow falling, floating as effortlessly as feathers earthwards. Each flake unique and exquisitely shaped. Some coming to rest on window panes, melting, their tears trickling down the glass.

One freezing day followed another. Our warm barracks room became chilly as power to the radiators was reduced to economize on fuel. Little by little the heating was diminished. Little by little the hot water cooled. Fuel supplies were unable to get through. Most of the country was affected.

Only the hardiest bathed or showered. The rest made do with topping and tailing. Knickers froze on radiators. Daily changing of underwear became a thing of the past.

And snow still fell and the wind howled. It blew the snow into drifts against the spider’s door. Our world had changed, I thought, forever. Never again would there be sun, never again skies that weren’t leaden.

Our plethora of kit contained every item of clothing except wellington boots or galoshes. So that after walking a short distance feet were soaked. I ventured only as far as Betty’s and the Telephone Exchange or tidied again and again my storeroom. It had once been a men’s urinal. the basins still against the walls. The waterscale or urine stains embedded in the porcelain, the stink lingering after all the years. Fully dressed, capped and gloved I made lists of skipping ropes, bean bags, quoits, netballs, until numb fingers stopped me from writing.

In Betty’s I warmed in front of the Primus, for which she still had plenty of paraffin, and drank Nescafé. In the Exchange I drank Sergeant Major’s tea—lukewarm, having cooled in the few minutes it took to bring it from the cookhouse. The coke-burning stove was kept going on anything that would burn. A meagre ration of coke supplemented with twists of paper, magazines, tatty books, scrapings from the dinner plates. I’d put my shoes on top of the stove where they dried like biltong. Crippling my feet when I had to put them on again.

* * *

Johnny seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth. Steve’s letters took longer to arrive. I felt forlorn and unloved. I stopped going to the café. Not to avoid Johnny but to escape trudging through the snow, slipping and sliding on the icy road and the biting wind that found its way through all my layers of clothing. And so I didn’t fall in love with anyone for the time being.

* * *

Eventually the radiators’ minute output of heat was turned off. Our beds, the only place where there had been a degree of comfort, no longer had that to offer. Without the central heating they became damp and the sheets and pillowcases had an icy chill to them. We stripped them off and spread them on top of the blankets. Removed only caps, shoes, tunics and skirts and used the clothing, greatcoats, civilian clothes, extra towels, anything that would spread on the bed, to trap whatever heat our bodies generated in shivering fits. Betty filled hot water bottles for us. We carried them back to the barrack room tucked inside our greatcoats. But the time we arrived they were lukewarm. And every day consoled ourselves and each other that this weather couldn’t last much longer. It did. We soldiered on with chilblains, chapped hands and lips. But there was worse to come. Field kitchens when the fuel supply ran out. A way of cooking used on active service, exercises, or training, anywhere without a normal cookhouse. Shallow trenches were dug into the ground into which burners resembling enormous blow lamps were placed. Metal plates lined the trenches and supported huge containers filled with food which was then cooked by the fierce heat from the burners. The field kitchen was set up outside the cookhouse. And in the Arctic conditions were queued for our meals. The main meal was always stew. Stew of some indescribable meat which floated in a fatty, greasy liquid to which root vegetables were later added. Shivering and miserable, we carried plates of the revolting food into the cookhouse to eat. Our previous meals, often described as pig swill, were now recalled as gourmet dishes. I seem to remember vast quantities of beetroot being served. Tinned, vinegary beetroot. Perhaps it contained a vitamin missing from the food but more probably to add a flavour. We were ravenous and ate whatever was served, mopping our plates with chunks of bread.

Janetta was finally excused from going to the cookhouse. The revolting messes were delivered to the barrack room and she was forbidden from going outside. She did one day, fell and went into labour. Despite the gritting of the roads, the journey to the hospital was slow, getting her there only in the nick of time to deliver her baby girl. Aldershot was miles away, buses not running, and no lifts to be had … We never saw Janetta again.

Breda, ever the optimist, was sure that once she was settled somewhere, she would contact us. Katy being realistic, said she wouldn’t. ‘She’ll want to put this place out of her mind. Make a fresh start.’ Katy was right. We never heard from her.

It seemed as if forever we were condemned to live in misery. Lousy food, freezing beds, chapped hands and lips. Chilblains that throbbed and itched. No love. No letters. And then we woke one morning and the sun was shining. We weren’t condemned to live forever beneath a leaden sky. We laughed, sang, danced and asked the new girls to turn up the radio. We were reborn. The thaw set in. Snow fell from roofs with a great swooshing sound. Birds that has survived rooted in the ground. And being on high ground we were spared the misery of flooding.

I rejoiced with everyone else, but knew a change had taken place in me which had started in Brighton. Being rejected by those I had presumed would show me affection. Then Dora dying. Betty’s talk about coloured people. My quarrel with Johnny. Janetta’s misfortune. So many unpleasant happenings in a short time. Never again would I be so completely carefree. Never again believe that this camp was a place of permanent happiness. I had grown up.

The fuel supply was restored, radiators switched on, the water ran hot and the field kitchen was dismantled. Physical training was reinstated. After a very short time it was difficult to remember that so recently we had shivered and experienced such discomfort.