A Soldier's Girl

by Maggie Ford

  She heard him chuckle as her words resurrected his own thoughts on the day, but in a while, because he felt pleasantly tired after having made love to her, she heard his breathing regulate, slow, each breath caught on a gentle snore that had become so comforting to her ears – a reassurance of his constant protection. After that she heard no more until the jangling of the alarm clock brought her awake to a wet Monday morning and the knowledge that she must get up and get Harry off to work. At last she was a real wife. And it felt good as, with him shaving at the kitchen sink, she made his breakfast.

  Chapter Four

  ‘No sign of any family then?’

  Brenda forced a nonchalant smile as she sat in her front room with her Aunt Grace, the woman having decided to pay her a visit this Thursday afternoon. She had simply come up the staircase, knocked on the kitchen door and announced, ‘Just thought I’d pop round, see how you are.’

  Too many relatives just popped round, even after eight months since her wedding. It was about time they got tired of it, although it did help while away the time between Harry leaving for work in the morning and coming home in the evening.

  As the first flush of being married and looking after a new home wore off she’d started to miss Alfio’s. In her head she heard them chatting among themselves, chatting to their clients. She would recall that lingering, slightly stale fragrance on entering the shop first thing in the morning and the stale tang from the hairdryers switched off from the day before. There was always the lovely sweet scent of soap and perfumed hair lotions and the peculiar taint that came from the process of permanent waving – a mixture of heated hair, the perming solution itself and something electric emanating from the wires suspended from plugs above the customer’s head. The memories seized her at the oddest times with a sort of a pounce, and she would sigh and look around her quiet flat and hurriedly go and make herself yet another cup of tea and have a puff on a cigarette.

  Knitting helped. Keeping the fingers busy, and the mind. She had knitted Harry no end of Fair Isle jumpers these last eight months, the more intricate the pattern the better to keep her from too much thinking. With no babies in the offing as yet, she could have at least gone part-time at Alfio’s. But Harry wouldn’t hear of it when she mentioned the possibility. ‘I ain’t ’avin’ no wife of mine workin’ and that’s that.’

  ‘I take it you two ’ave been tryin’ fer a family,’ her aunt was saying.

  Brenda shrugged, sipping at her tea. ‘We’re not in any hurry. We just want a little bit more savings to give our kid a good start. There’s time.’

  ‘Not as much as you think, love. A family ain’t a family without little ’uns about.’

  Brenda retained her smile. ‘Give us a chance, Aunt. We ain’t even been married a year yet.’

  ‘Only four months off it.’ Her aunt surveyed her with a look of censure. ‘I’d of thought yer’d of gone some way towards it, at least clicked by now. Oughter be thinking about it, yer know.’

  ‘We are thinking about it,’ Brenda countered and took an abrupt sip of her tea, in her agitation spilling a few drops down the bodice of her blue crêpe dress. ‘Oh, BUM!’ Alone, she’d have said something far stronger but Aunt Grace wasn’t one for swearing. She liked to put on airs.

  Leaping up she hurried into the kitchen for a flannel, and returned with the front of her dress darkly damp but no harm done. The incident however did put a stop on her aunt’s interest in babies for the moment.

  But it wasn’t so much the spilled tea that had annoyed her as those small stabs of disappointment each time her periods showed up. She and Harry had begun trying around Christmas but so far nothing had happened.

  Even as the family gathered for Christmas Day at her mother’s, Boxing Day at his, and again on New Year’s Eve with his people, she had noticed eyes straying to her middle in hopes of seeing a tell-tale bulge there.

  Harry had noticed too. ‘S’pose it is time we thought of a family,’ he’d said a day or two after the New Year. ‘S’pose we’ve waited long enough and I can’t see us saving any more than we ’ave. Uvver people manage on less’n what I earn. I s’pose we can.’

  With a small surge of excitement, she’d agreed, although a little irked that others were virtually pushing them into making a decision when it should have been solely their own. But, oh, the joy of dispensing with those ugly, cumbersome rubber sheaths which she’d always hated, to make love with such a feeling of freedom, her tender parts no longer rasped by unforgiving rubber that had to be lubricated first to make entry easy; their amour no longer interrupted when he had to turn his back to her to fiddle about fitting it on.

  Once she’d offered to help him, thinking it might in some strange way rouse them further, but his face had flushed deep red in the shaft of moonlight pouring through the curtains she’d forgotten to draw fully together and he’d snapped at her saying it wasn’t her place to do things like that and to stop being rude.

  Their ardour had seeped out of them both and he’d thrown the thing back in its box and lain back staring at the ceiling. She had tried to coax him but it had been no good. She too had got angry and, with tears running from the corner of her eyes, had turned over away from him.

  Next morning they’d both been silent and sulky – that was until he was almost halfway down the staircase and she remembered how Mum had always told her never to let the sun set on an argument nor let someone leave the house without making up first.

  ‘You never know,’ she’d always impressed on her, ‘if they might ’ave an accident and you never see them again. You’d never forgive yerself.’

  What if he’d had an accident that day? She had called him back and hugged him goodbye, sending him off with a smile on both their faces.

  Of course Aunt Grace was right, a child made a marriage, and there should by now have been some sign of pregnancy. She would be the first to admit disappointment that nothing had so far happened. And another thing, carrying would put an end to those horrible squares of towels a woman had to wear nearly a week out of every month – towelling that had to be soaked in a bucket of salt water, rinsed and boiled, which after only an hour or so of being worn would chafe and often cut the tender inside of the leg as the blood dried along the edge of the folds almost to razor-blade sharpness. The hours of work to get them clean always left behind yellowish stains for all the scrubbing and boiling and bleaching. She had lost count of the times she’d gone out to buy another half-dozen from the haberdashery, all soft and fluffy, but after a few month’s wear, harsh and abrasive. Done with too would be that dull pain she got at the start of every period, and sometimes sharp intermittent stabs too. To think, freedom from that for the next nine months. Why did women have to go through it? It wasn’t really fair. Men never had to.

  Nine month’s freedom from all that in itself made pregnancy attractive. Brenda sighed and poured her aunt another tea, the amber liquid all fresh and clear in her still practically new white china cups with their tiny raised rosebuds around the rims. ‘I hope it happens soon, too,’ she said.

  ‘It ain’t turning out ter be the sort of world ter bring kids into lately,’ her mother observed when Brenda told her what her sister Grace had been asking. ‘The way things is all going ter pot these days – fightin’ ’ere, an’ fightin’ there. Makes yer wonder, don’t it? But yer Aunt Grace ’as got too much lip, pokin’ ’er nose in where it ain’t wanted. I dare say yer’ll ’ave yer kids when nature thinks fit and not before.’

  She was right about the world going to pot, though it had been doing it for four years or more – Japan and China, Germany flexing its muscles as it marched into the Rhineland, Italy invading Abyssinia, Spain locked in a civil war. Even here, Mosley’s blackshirt fascists were parading around East London as if they wanted to own it, trying to raise Cain, skirmishes breaking out between them and Communist supporters, the police having to break them up. Humans were so stupid; they couldn’t be peaceful for one minute.

  Last year there’
d been a headlong rush of idealistic young men off to Spain seeking adventure in supporting either one side or the other. Caught up in the excitement, her own brother Davy had talked of going off to fight Franco’s fascists. He had no Communist leanings, and said that the Spanish government forces were only being financed by them but that anything was better than fascism, and hadn’t that business of Hitler ordering the bombing of those ordinary people of Guernica during April last year proved it?

  It had taken all Mum and Dad’s efforts to argue him out of it. In the end it was only hearing the British government was threatening to put in jail any of its countrymen volunteering to fight in Spain that had made him think again. Bravado was one thing. Being jailed by your own government was another. Mum and Dad had breathed a sigh of relief while Brian had scoffed about soppy idealists and how finding himself a girl would soon cure all that. Brian’s every solution was a girl.

  Had Davy gone, he might have got himself killed in some foreign war that was none of his business. It would have been awful. But now the smell of war had begun to hang over them all. Last month Hitler had annexed Austria, and even though the newsreels showed the people welcoming him with cheering and the Nazi salute, it had an ominous ring to it and everyone was on edge. When the government decreed that English children were to be issued with gas masks, an alarming reminder of the poison gas that had been used in the Great War, the announcement had Brenda’s blood running cold. She had heard tales when she was young of her grandfather’s experiences in France. He was gassed and several years later died from its effects. Gran, left a widow, had never remarried.

  ‘But we still ’ave kids, don’t we?’ Mum was going on. ‘Mind, I ain’t saying you oughtn’t start a family. Things ’ave ter go on and it’d be nice ter be a grandmuvver. But let nature take its course and it’ll ’appen, Bren – when it’s ready. An’ don’t take too much notice of yer Aunt Grace. Yer know what she’s like. Yer sister Vera’s just the same.’

  But Aunt Grace had left a longing in her that was hard to ignore.

  Whitsun Bank Holiday Monday, Hampstead Heath: ’Appy ’Ampstead as the Cockney called the place, the Mecca of the East End Londoner if he wasn’t off on a pleasure steamer to Margate or a train to Southend.

  For ages Brenda had planned for Harry’s twenty-third birthday, falling on Saturday, to be celebrated here on the Bank Holiday Monday with a picnic, their two families present, the sun shining hot and brilliant. She’d been so certain that a wet and miserable April must give way to a decent May. It hadn’t. Wet all the previous week, it was still showery, but in sheer desperation she had stuck it out with her arrangements, gratified that the others were as optimistic about it brightening up, even though they were down on the number she’d hoped for. It seemed other people had the same idea as they arrived surprised to find it almost as busy as on any fine bank holiday except for macs and brollies in abundance.

  Dodging the showers, the traditional Bank Holiday fair doing its best to accommodate all those with the intention to stay a bit drier under the awnings of sideshows, stalls and fairground amusements, she and Harry, plus his and her mum and dad, several aunts, uncles and cousins, one of his sisters, and even Vera with some boy called Oliver, braved the brisk south-east breeze as they devoured sandwiches, cake, pop and flasks of tea.

  Brenda, sitting on his mac close to Harry and pouring tea for them both, couldn’t help a smirk at Vera and her Oliver hurrying off hand in hand towards the fairground. How long would she keep this bloke? Until their first tiff no doubt. Brian and Davy weren’t here of course. Davy had gone off somewhere else with his mates, Brian somewhere else with a girl.

  But it was lovely sharing a day with her family about her, even if it was threatening to rain again. The last time had been at Easter. It had rained all that holiday too. Then there had been a tussle as to which family to spend Easter Sunday with and which to go to on Easter Monday. In a way it felt like a repeat of Christmas, spending Christmas Day with one, Boxing Day with the other, but who took priority, his or hers? She could see how it was always going to be – dispute and decision with one or the other’s nose being put out of joint.

  ‘We’ll alternate each year,’ she’d said judiciously at Christmas. But then had come the priorities. Their first Christmas as newlyweds had upset Harry’s people, who were not pleased at being chosen for second place, as they saw Boxing Day. It had almost come to a nasty dispute between her and Harry, and although she had got her way, Boxing Day had been one of tension.

  ‘Nice of yer to come,’ his mother had said as though she would have rather stretched the cold welcome to include ‘or bother to come at all’.

  Easter had been a complete reversal. Striving to be fair, Brenda had let Harry’s family have first pickings, going to them on Easter Sunday while reserving Bank Holiday Monday for hers. Then it had been her own mum who had behaved a bit off. ‘I didn’t fink yer’d be bovvering, Bren,’ she’d said by way of welcome.

  ‘We did come to you for Christmas Day, Mum,’ Brenda had returned as huffily, the hello kiss they’d given each other cold, a mere stiff peck. ‘We want ter be fair.’

  Her reply had been a small sniff from Mum. The matter was dropped as Dad, his stiff moustache pricking her cheek, gave her a resounding smack of a kiss on the cheek as if she’d not been seen for months instead of the odd days she came calling as well as the occasional Sunday dinner with them, but she had felt the tension in Mum as clearly as she had felt it on the Boxing Day in Harry’s mum.

  ‘Next year,’ she said when they’d got home, ‘we’ll ’ave Easter on our own and go somewhere nice. A boat trip ter Margate an’ blow the lot of ’em.’

  ‘If we’ve got the money,’ Harry had said darkly. ‘Might ’ave a kid by then.’

  ‘Then we’ll take it with us, won’t we?’ she’d snapped, suddenly tetchy, and they’d fallen into sullen silence but for terse exchanges when the need arose, till they had gone to bed still not speaking. If this was how married life was, she had brooded, her back to him, there wasn’t a great deal to recommend it. And to think how starry-eyed she’d been on her wedding day.

  But today everything was different. Her and Harry’s families sat all together as chummy as they had been on her wedding day, sharing each other’s picnic, chatting together on damp grass, on macs and waterproofs, the afternoon air as full of their camaraderie as it was heavy with the smell of fish and chips, soused herrings and shellfish, ice cream and candyfloss and engine oil from the fairground.

  This was the first time of meeting up since the wedding and it did Brenda’s heart good to see them as she sat beside Harry on the raincoat he had spread on top of a waterproof sheet over the well-trodden wet grass.

  The clouds parted and for a moment sunshine flooded the slopes of fields and wooded areas. Amazing, what a bit of sunshine could do. Brenda felt her spirits lift immediately even though this golden light wouldn’t last long. Already clouds were threatening to blot out the sun again and over to the south-east where the wind was coming from looked distinctly black, promising a real downpour before long.

  But while the sunshine lasted it invigorated the whole populace. At other times virtually deserted, Hampstead Heath as on any Bank Holiday seethed with enjoyment and despite this year’s poor showing in the weather department, the air vibrated to the clatter of fairground rides, a cacophony of tinny music, shouts and shrieks of those enjoying being scared out of their wits and the babble of voices split by occasional laughter.

  Then the sun went in. A chill wind came up and suddenly all noise of pleasures seemed to become muffled. Brenda’s spirits faded a little, but only a little. Wait till she gave Harry his other present.

  Such a pity his birthday weekend had turned out to be a damp squib. He didn’t look happy being dragged out in this weather. He looked cold. She was cold too. She shivered and huddled close to him, sipping her tea from the flask’s Bakelite screw-topped cup.

  ‘P’raps after this, we’ll make for ’ome. I
think I’ve had enough.’

  ‘Me too,’ he said, gazing balefully at the fair sitting on its churned-up area of mud that had once been green grass. Its painted stalls and swings, merry-go-rounds and coloured electric lights tried bravely to glow through the now dull light. He glanced at the clouds. ‘It’s gonna pelt in a minute.’

  Indeed, one or two fat drops of rain had begun to plop down on the heads of the merrymakers. People were beginning to stand up, put on their mackintoshes and capes, to open up umbrellas, gather up their belongings, some to run, most of them leaving behind a litter of wrapping paper, empty cans, bottles, orange peel and banana skins to mark where they’d been.

  Harry opened their own brolly up while Brenda quickly put the top on the flask and shaking out the dregs of tea from the cup twisted it back on, shoving the flask in the carrying bag with all the sandwich wrappers. She’d get rid of them once back home, tidily. Why add to all the rubbish left to blow about Hampstead Heath until the garbage men came to collect it up? It made a sordid mess of London’s only bit of countryside.

  She pulled a face as the rain began to come down in earnest, the rest of their family hastily gathering up what was left of their hopeful picnic.

  ‘It was a silly idea of mine,’ she said, but his arm stole round her.

  ‘No it weren’t. It was a nice idea if the bloody weather ’adn’t buggered it all up fer us. An’ I’m really grateful, Bren, honest. And thanks again fer me present. It certainly is different ter the others.’

  Brenda laughed. ‘So it should, me being yer wife.’

  His parents had bought him a cardigan which he was wearing today for its warmth under his suit jacket. His brother Bob had given him a box of six handkerchiefs, as had one of his two married sisters.

  ‘Yer can’t have too many nose wipes,’ he had remarked bravely as Brenda’s mum and dad presented him with yet another small box of them so that he seemed to be laden down with hankies. Thank heavens his other sister had got him a tie, grey and blue striped.