Where the Heart Is

SIX

‘I can’t believe we’ve been here over a month already,’ Lou announced as they all lined up outside their hut, ready for morning inspection, blinking in the late March bright morning light.

‘A month? It feels more like a year,’ Betty groaned, shivering in the cold wind that seemed to whistle round the base. ‘It’s all right for you, Lou,’ she complained. ‘You’re so good at what we’re supposed to be doing, but I just can’t seem to get the hang of it.’

‘Watch out, Corp’s on her way,’ Ellen, always the cautious one, warned them. They all stiffened into a dutiful silence as their corporal started to walk down the line of uniformed young women in her charge, checking the cap angles, hair length, shoe and button shines.

She was finding that she had a natural aptitude for what they were being taught, Lou admitted as she stood to attention. Perhaps it came from the fact that her father was, as they said, ‘good with his hands’ and worked for Liverpool’s Salvage Corp, although her father had never in Lou’s memory suggested that his daughters understand what a plane or a vice or a file was, never mind try to use one. The very thought was enough to make Lou grin.

‘Something funny, is there, Campion?’

Oh Lord. She’d been so lost in her thoughts that hadn’t realised that the corp had reached her.

Somehow managing not to make any retort but instead to stand to attention and look straight ahead, Lou cursed herself inwardly. Their corp – Corporal Carter, to give her her full name – was a real tartar, and had seemed to take a dislike to her after she had made the mistake, during her first week, of mentioning that her brother was also a corporal in the army. She’d only been making conversation but obviously the corporal had thought she was trying to be clever or, even worse, to curry favour, and since then she’d been coming down hard on her, finding fault as often as she could, or so it seemed to Lou.

If it wasn’t the shine on her shoes that wasn’t bright enough, then it was the curl in her hair, or – on one occasion – the length of her eyelashes, which the corporal had accused her of darkening with either mascara or shoe blacking, both of which were banned whilst the women were on duty.

The last thing Lou wanted now, with Easter only ten days away, was to provoke the corporal into putting her on a charge, as she had threatened to do the last time she had given her a telling-off. The pettiness of the rules and the discipline irked her at times, Lou admitted, but on the other hand she was enjoying what she was learning, even if she still felt disappointed about the fact that she was never going to get to learn to fly.

All the recruits were looking forward to their promised long weekend off over Easter, and Lou had already written to her family telling them that she would be coming home. She’d even got Sasha to promise that the two of them would go out together to the Grafton Dance Hall on Easter Saturday – just the two of them.

Lou had missed Sasha, but she still felt a bit on edge at the thought of being reunited with her twin.

She’d have so much to tell her family and, of course, so much that she couldn’t tell them. Halton was a busy base with, if the grapevine was to be relied on, any number of top brass being flown in and then out of it almost daily.

‘They’ve got some American military top bass coming down today, so I’ve heard,’ Betty whispered excitedly to Lou a bit later whilst they were queuing for their breakfast. ‘Bomber Harris is going to be here as well.’

A fully fledged leading aircraftwoman in the queue ahead of them had obviously overheard and turned round to give them each a reproving look. ‘It’s Air Marshal Harris to you, and we don’t make a fuss about Yanks here. This is an RAF base, remember?’

Lou and Betty exchanged rueful grimaces, whilst Ruby, cheeky as always, pulled a face behind the other Waaf’s back.

‘I’m surprised she didn’t start reminding us that walls have ears,’ Betty grumbled, when they were sitting down with their breakfasts. ‘Anyway, everyone knows that the American military are here and that they’re going to be flying those enormous bombers of theirs out of all those airfields that are being built for them. I’ve got a cousin who’s based in London. She’s been out with one of them already – one of the Yanks, I mean. She says they really know how to treat a girl.’

‘A lot of people think it’s fearfully bad form to step out with one of them when our own boys are overseas fighting,’ was all Lou felt able to say, remembering how anti the Americans her own brother, Luke, had been when they had first arrived in Liverpool the previous year.

‘I’m really looking forward to Easter. It seems ages since I saw my family – or wore civvies,’ Betty complained. She heaved a heavy sigh. ‘I can’t wait to go to a dance wearing a dress and decent shoes. My ankles were black and blue the other Sunday, from being kicked accidentally by chaps in uniform, after we’d all been to that dance in the mess.’

‘Well, at least the RAF boys get to wear a pretty decent uniform,’ Ellen reminded them, coming to sit down with them just in time to catch what had been said. ‘Not like the poor army boys.’

The table was full now and whilst the other girls embarked on an intense discussion about the merits and demerits of various service uniforms, Lou let her thoughts slip to their Easter weekend break.

Easter was quite late this year, which meant that her dad would already have been busy in his allotment, and although there wouldn’t be any chocolate eggs because of rationing, Lou suspected that there would be wonderfully fresh eggs from the hens the allotment keepers had clubbed together to keep. Her mother was a wonderful cook. Naafi food had been an eye-opener for Lou, but she had made herself get used to it; she didn’t want the others thinking she was a softie, after all.

It would be heaven to sleep in her own bed again in the room she shared with Sasha. Her sister Grace had written to tell her that although she would be on duty at the hospital in Whitchurch, where she was now working, for most of the Easter holiday, she had got Easter Monday off, when she and Seb would be coming over to Liverpool to see everyone.

There would be no Luke there, of course. He was fighting in the desert with the British Army, and there would be no Katie either, because she and Luke weren’t engaged any more.

They were all upset about that, but especially her mother, Lou knew. She was never going to let herself get daft about a lad. It only led to problems and misery. She had made enough of a fool of herself over Kieran Mallory to know not to do the same thing ever again. Just look at the way it had changed Sasha. Lou just hoped that her twin would keep to her promise about just the two of them going out together on Easter Saturday, she really did.

‘Auntie Jean!’ Bella exclaimed with genuine delight when she stepped into the kitchen to find her aunt sitting there with her mother.

Although Vi and Jean were identical twins, the way they had lived their lives now showed in their faces so that, in their mid-forties, Jean Campion’s expression was one of warmth and happiness, whilst Vi Firth’s was one of dissatisfaction and irritation. Vi’s hair might be iron neat in the scalloped rigid permanent wave she favoured, her twinset cashmere and her skirt expensive Scottish tweed – like her twinset, dating from before the war – but it was her auntie Jean, with her slightly untidy soft brown curls, and the kindness that shone from her hazel eyes who looked the prettier and happier of the two, Bella thought. Not that her auntie didn’t look every bit as smart as her twin sister, and a good bit slimmer. Unlike Vi, Jean had kept her neat waist, and if her jumper and skirt weren’t the exclusive models worn by Bella’s mother they were still of good quality. The pretty lilac of the jumper her auntie was wearing with her navy serge suit enhanced her colouring. But it was the quality of her auntie’s lovely smile that really showed the difference between them. Her own mother rarely smiled properly, which was why her mouth turned down, giving her a permanently dissatisfied and cross look, whilst her twin’s mouth turned upwards, drawing attention to her smile and the kindness in her eyes.

Her mother might once have enjoyed showing off to her twin and boasting about the way she had moved up in the world but it was Auntie Jean who was truly the happier of the two of them and, bless her, she hadn’t said so much as a single unkind word about how her twin might have brought some of her unhappiness on herself, Bella acknowledged as she hugged her aunt affectionately.

‘I’m really glad now that I delayed having my lunch so that I could pop home this afternoon to remind Mummy that it’s our WVS night tonight,’ Bella told her aunt, ‘otherwise I’d have missed you. It’s so good of you to come all this way, Auntie Jean.’

‘Nonsense. It’s only a matter of coming over on the ferry and then catching the bus,’ Bella’s mother objected immediately.

‘I’ll put on the kettle, shall I, Bella love?’ Jean asked, giving her niece a motherly look. It meant ever such a lot to her to have this new relationship with her niece and to feel that Bella was now within the fold, so to speak, and a real part of her own family. Her own mother would have been that pleased. She’d always felt strongly about family sticking together.

Watching her aunt busy herself, Bella admitted to a small sad stab of loneliness. Living here with her mother wasn’t easy, and she desperately missed her own house and Lena’s company, even though she knew that in coming home she had done the right thing – for Lena as well as for her mother.

‘I had a letter from Grace the other day saying that she and Seb are hoping to come up to Liverpool over Easter,’ Bella told her aunt.

‘That’s one of the reasons why I’m here,’ Jean said. ‘I was wondering if you and Vi would like to come to us for your tea on Easter Monday. It won’t be anything much, what with the war and everything, but Grace and Seb will be there, and Lou’s got leave as well.’

‘Well, I don’t know about that, Jean,’ Vi began before Bella could say anything. ‘I don’t know what Charlie and Daphne’s plans are yet.’

‘We’d love to come, Auntie Jean,’ Bella overrode her mother.

‘But what if Charles and Daphne are here?’ Vi asked.

‘Well, they’d be very welcome too,’ Jean hurried to assure her sister.

‘I thought you said that when you wrote and asked Charlie what they were doing for Easter, he wrote back that Daphne’s parents were having some friends to stay, and that he didn’t even know if he would get leave,’ Bella reminded her mother.

Personally the last thing Bella wanted was for Charlie to come home. There was the matter of Lena and the baby, for one thing, and there was no way she wanted her young friend upset or embarrassed in any way by Charlie’s presence.

After they had drunk their tea, and Bella and Jean had finalised the arrangements for Easter Monday, Bella offered to travel back to the ferry terminal with her aunt.

‘Oh, Bella, that’s kind of you but there’s really no need,’ Jean protested.

‘No need at all,’ Vi agreed. ‘I can’t for the life of me think why Jean would need you to go with her, Bella, especially when she knows that I’m here on my own day in and day out with no one to speak to until you come home from that nursery. I don’t know why you work there, I really don’t. Not when you could have been working for your father, and if you had …’

Her mother was working herself up to one of her angry outbursts, during which she’d blame her for Pauline’s presence in her father’s life, Bella recognised, stepping in quickly to deflect it by saying calmly, ‘It was Charlie Daddy wanted to have working for him, Mummy, not me. Now, why don’t you go and start getting ready for the WVS tonight?’

‘Oh, the WVS. I don’t think I want to go, Bella. Mrs Forbes Brown cut me at church last Sunday.’

‘Don’t be silly, Mummy. She just didn’t see you, that’s all.’

‘Bella, you are such a good daughter to your mother,’ Jean praised her niece later as they walked to the bus stop together, Jean now wearing a neat little navy hat she had trimmed up last year with a scrap of cream petersham ribbon.

Jean thought approvingly that Bella’s businesslike dark green suit and a matching beret had a bit of a look of a uniform about it and certainly suited her niece’s trim figure. A pair of court shoes showed off her dainty ankles, and Jean thought how well that style would suit Grace, who had to wear such ugly shoes for her work.

‘There’s really no need for you to come all the way down to the terminal with me, Bella,’ Jean insisted. ‘I know how busy you must be.’

‘We are,’ Bella agreed with a smile, ‘but not so busy that I’m prepared to give up the opportunity to spend time with you, Auntie Jean.’

As Jean said to Sam later, once she had returned home and the two of them were sharing a cup of tea in the warmth of the kitchen before Sam went out to take advantage of the last of the daylight to work on his allotment, ‘You’d never know our Bella for the same girl. She’s changed so much, and for the better. I feel sorry for her too having to put up with Vi, the way she is, always finding fault. I know that Vi’s my own sister, my twin, and heaven knows I feel sorry for her after what she’s been through with Edwin treating her like he has, but she doesn’t make things easy for herself, Sam, or for those around her.’

‘Well, you know what I think,’ Sam responded. ‘Your Vi and her Edwin were a perfect match for one another, both of them as selfish as bedamned, but I know you, with that soft heart of yours, never able to resist helping others even when they don’t deserve it.’

Jean gave her husband a tender smile. They’d had a good marriage, her and Sam, a happy marriage, but she knew how uncomfortable ‘soppy’ talk made him feel so instead of telling him how much she loved him and how glad she was that she had married him, she asked him anxiously, ‘Do you think those Jersey potatoes of yours will be ready for Easter, Sam? Only there’s nothing quite like your Jerseys with Easter Sunday lamb, and any that’s left over will do nicely cold on Easter Monday.’

As she had known he would, Sam puffed himself up slightly with male pride and assured her, ‘I reckon they will be ready, but I’m not promising,’ he warned her, ‘and I’m not having my Jerseys pulled up before they’re ready, no matter what.’

Which Jean knew from experience meant that she could relax and they could all look forward to the delicious treat of home-grown new potatoes with their Easter Sunday lamb.

‘It will be a funny Easter this year, Sam, what with Grace married and Lou in uniform. We won’t be having our Luke dropping by either.’

As she reached for her handkerchief Sam leaned across the table and took hold of her hand in his.

‘Aye, love, I know.’

‘It’s not as bad as if he’d been in Singapore, but …’

Sam’s hand tightened over hers.

‘What do you think will happen, Sam? I thought that we were winning in Egypt, but now …’ Anxiety thickened Jean’s voice. The news from the desert – or rather, what they were allowed to know was going on – was increasingly worrying. In January Rommel’s tanks had started to push back the British Eighth Army with which Luke was fighting, and which had been doing so well the previous year.

‘They don’t call Rommel the Desert Fox for nothing,’ Sam acknowledged. ‘If you ask me, Churchill should have recalled Ritchie.’ Lieutenant-General Ritchie was in charge of the war in the Western Desert, and there was growing criticism of him, blaming him for the Eighth Army’s current plight.

Jean knew from the sombre tone of Sam’s voice that she had good cause to worry for Luke, but being the woman she was, instead of giving way to her tears, she withdrew her hand from Sam’s and blew her nose very firmly.

Changing the subject she said, ‘Sasha’s told me that Lou has written to her suggesting that they go out dancing together, just the two of them, when she comes home at Easter. As luck would have it young Bobby has got leave over Easter himself, but seemingly he’s told Sasha that he’s going to go home to Newcastle to see his family. He’s ever such a nice lad,’ Jean concluded approvingly.

The other person who was in her thoughts was her younger sister, Francine. Fran wrote regularly, funny, witty letters – she had always had that gift – but although she mentioned Brandon she didn’t say anything that gave Jean any clue as to how the young American’s health was.

At Christmas Fran had promised that she would let Jean ‘know when there is anything you need to know’, and since she had not done so Jean could only hope that Brandon was holding his own.

‘Dr Forbes is admitting a new patient today, Nurse, a German POW suffering from blood poisoning.’

Grace nodded briskly as she listened to what Sister O’Reilly was telling her. She was enjoying working at her new hospital. They dealt with a variety of cases, some military and some civilian. Matron had made her feel very welcome and had told her how pleased she was to have her, and Grace was glad she was able to put her training to good use.

‘In the circumstances I think perhaps he should go in the private room at the end of the ward. To us a patient is a patient, and that is exactly how it should be, but some of our other patients may have other views.’

Grace knew exactly what sister meant. The new admission was one of their enemy, and some of the other men on the ward might either be upset by his presence or antagonistic toward him.

As a nurse, however, Grace couldn’t help but feel sympathy for the German when he was eventually brought in. His lower right leg was swollen to double the size of his left leg, the flesh red and hot to the touch and drawn tight over the swollen limb. A bandage had been wrapped around what Grace guessed must be the site of the wound, but above it she could see quite plainly the telltale red line of infection.

Her heart gave a flurry of beats, the sight taking her back to the time when she had been training and Seb had been admitted to her hospital with a shoulder wound that had threatened to give him blood poisoning. She had been so afraid for him, so determined to do everything she could to help him, cleaning the wound and packing it with hot kaolin paste, making sure that he took his M & B tablets regularly.

The guard who had come in with the POW, an army squaddie, stationed himself outside the small room, telling Grace, ‘You won’t have much trouble with Wilhelm here. He speaks English.’

Summoning a junior nurse, Grace began to remove the dressing from the German’s leg. He was a pleasant-looking man with unexpectedly nice eyes, and if she hadn’t known he was a German she’d probably have thought of him as a decent sort.

The wound, once she’d removed the bandage, might not look much – a single small puncture wound that had healed over – but Grace knew how serious it was. It would have to be opened and drained of the poison inside it, the rotting flesh removed, and that telltale red line brought down because if it wasn’t, well then at best the POW could lose his leg and at worse, his life. His ‘Thank you’ as she made him as comfortable as she could to wait for the doctor surprised her and caught her off guard. A little guardedly she smiled at him. He may be ‘the enemy’ but as a nurse it was her duty to take care of him.

Why doesn’t Wilhelm come any more?’ Tommy asked Emily when they were sitting having their tea.

‘I dare say he’s got better things to do. Now how about you and me starting to read A Tale of Two Cities tonight?’ she suggested, wanting to change the subject.

Not for the world did she want anyone, including Tommy, guessing how upset she was over Wilhelm.

‘We could ask the farmer, and tell him that we want Wilhelm to come back,’ Tommy continued, ignoring her suggestion about the book.

‘We’ll do no such thing.’

‘But I liked him,’ Tommy protested.

‘That’s as maybe, but Mr Churchill’s got better things to do with POWs than send them to places because little boys want him to,’ was all that Emily could come up with to bring an end to the conversation. After all, Mr Churchill’s decisions carried a lot of weight with Tommy, as they did with the whole country, and were not to be questioned.

SEVEN

‘Come on, Lou, don’t let her get away with it,’ Ruby called out mischievously and challengingly, as a sponge filled with water hit Lou on the side of her face.

‘Yes, come on, Lou,’ Betty, who had thrown the sponge, teased her.

‘I’m going to get you for that,’ Lou warned mock threateningly as water ran down her face.

They were in the showers, in their bathing suits, having just been put through their paces in the gym by the PT instructor, and were in high spirits knowing that their Easter weekend break was only a handful of days away, especially Lou, who only the previous day had been praised by their instructor for her riveting skill, an essential component of their training to become aircraft repair mechanics.

Still laughing, Betty threw another water-laden sponge at her, mocking, ‘You’ll have to catch me first,’ as she did a triumphant dance on the tiled floor outside her shower cubicle.

Spluttering and laughing herself, Lou set to work soaking both sponges, along with her own and a fourth she quickly grabbed from Ellen, who was standing just outside the shower adjoining her own, Lou’s back to the room as she worked to gain her revenge, knowing that Betty would be working equally hard to beat her.

The silence that now filled the room as the others obviously waited for her return attack only added to her determination to score a hit so, when she turned round, a dripping sponge in each hand, she was already raising her arm to let fly, only realising when it was far too late that the reason for the silence was the presence of a sergeant between her and her intended victim, watching her, a sergeant whose face and uniform was now soaked in the water from the two sponges. Betty was now standing white-faced behind the dripping sergeant with a mixture of guilt and shock. It might seem a small offence and nothing more than a silly prank, the kind of thing that Lou herself would have shrugged off dismissively in her old pre-WAAF life, but, as she had quickly learned, Forces life was very different from civvy life. Once you were in uniform very strict and rigid rules controlled every aspect of your life, right down to the smallest detail. That breaking the rules was a serious crime had been dinned into them all from the moment they joined, and now Lou felt sick with the same shocked horror she could see so strongly in the faces of her pals. No one was laughing now. What Lou had done, no matter how innocently inspired, and despite the fact that her sponges had been intended for someone else, was tantamount to an assault on an NCO. And for that she could be drummed out of the service in absolute disgrace.

Where the old Lou would have had to fight back laughter at the sight of her unintended victim, her hair and the shoulders of her uniform wet, the new Lou was instead filled with stomach-curdling dread, and a very deep sense of regret.

The sergeant – not one Lou knew – looked so implacably stony-faced that Lou didn’t even dare try to stammer an apology in case it was interpreted as an attempt on her part to cheek her unintended victim. The atmosphere in the showers, so light-hearted and filled with laughter only a few minutes ago, was now thick with apprehension, and no one, Lou knew, felt that more strongly than she.

Easter was only a matter of a few days away. Katie had volunteered to work over the holiday, feeling that she would far rather one of her colleagues enjoyed a well-deserved break than that she herself was off with time on her hands and nothing to do but think about last year when Luke had loved her.

She was on her way for her morning tea break when Gina Vincent, who had been so friendly since Katie’s first day, called out to her to wait.