A Soldier's Girl

by Maggie Ford

  There had been air attacks of course, around the country, but no real repeat of the Blitz. Hitler had too much else on his mind these days. His own cities were getting their turn now, from the British and the Americans. And the Ruhr especially, that important industrial area, had last month suffered its first daylight raid by the RAF. The German people were living in terror day and night. Brenda thought momentarily of the women and children, innocent as they themselves had been, then dismissed it – they were all the enemy, after all. But even so . . .

  It was Hitler’s fault, wasn’t it? Him and his Nazis. Now he was being stymied by Russia, foiled by a winter his troops didn’t understand but which Russian people did, and by their determination not to be overrun. And since last month, with the Eighth Army beating back Rommel’s advance and holding the line at El Alamein, the war in North Africa seemed to be finally turning their way.

  But even while they crowed, more stringent rationing was reminding everyone that war was tightening its grip, air raids or no air raids.

  ‘It seems such a wicked shame having to deny Addie a little bit of chocolate,’ Brenda had said to her mum after sweet rationing came into force. ‘Poor kids, they don’t understand things like rationing, do they? She looks so blessed bewildered, I just have to give her mine as well. Though God knows I can always do without sweets,’ she’d added with a laugh.

  But it was good to know how well the North African campaign was going, because Harry might be allowed home again. Feeble-hearted Daphne, sighing over her Bob possibly not being allowed compassionate leave! What of herself with Harry all those thousands of miles away? What if she fell ill, desperately ill, or his daughter did, would they send him home on leave from a battle zone? Not on your nelly. The fighting in North Africa might be turning round, but there was still the possibility of Harry being wounded, or . . .

  Well, she wouldn’t think about that. Maybe it would all be over out there soon and Harry would come home. Perhaps by the end of the year.

  That thought reawakened the worry of how she was going to face him with her new business. What if he displayed disapproval, told her to sell up and be an ordinary housewife again, insisted that he should be the breadwinner for his family? As a warehouse assistant, going back to square one was the only route she could see for him. He’d be a fool to tell her to pack this business in, and surely he’d see that. Even he couldn’t be that daft. But you never could tell. In her letter she had made a point of saying that she’d had so many clients that she had needed to find extra space and when the shop fell empty she had grabbed her chance. But that was no guarantee of his being pleased. He might see it as his authority being ousted in his absence.

  Brenda had begged his mother not to say too much to him until the place proved itself and had kept her sweet by doing her and Daphne’s hair free of charge and even Harry’s sisters’ hair when they came to black their noses. She prayed that they wouldn’t write and tell him too much either, but then they and their brothers had never been that close and she doubted he had ever written to them or even to Bob.

  With that thought Brenda settled down to making it a business to be proud of, if only to prove to her husband that to let it go would be stupid. This was her place and no one was going to take it away from her.

  Place was right though. Her place. It was what she’d ended up calling it after much careful thought. Brenda’s Place. It sounded right for the area, better than some trite play on words. Locals seemed quite happy with its name, though within months customers started to come from slightly further afield than the surrounding turnings. Her reputation had begun to spread.

  Now, she thought exultantly towards the end of summer, let Harry come home here turning his nose up. Though his homecoming seemed as far away as ever. For all that the widely admired Montgomery was finally beginning to gain mastery over Rommel, the North African campaign still looked a long drawn-out one. Brenda found herself not just praying for Harry to come through with no more than the now-healed wound he’d already had, but in a way looking forward with relish to winning the argument she was sure would occur when he found himself confronted with her achievement. She could hardly wait.

  ‘Orright fer me ter go ’ome now, Miss Brenda?’ She insisted on Joan calling her that rather than Mrs Hutton. Customers called her Brenda, because her married name rather detracted from the skills she displayed. But Joan being so young, it wasn’t proper to address her employer by her Christian name.

  Brenda glanced at the wall clock with pink cherubs around it, which had replaced the original plain second-hand one. Ten to six and well dark, it being October. They closed at five thirty, and with the blackout up, Joan had finished all the sweeping up of hair and cleaning of sinks and mirrors.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ After Joan had gone, she would make herself a cup of tea then go up to relieve Mrs Page who came to give eye to Addie. Such a luxury was affordable now, well worth the three and six a week she paid her.

  She was just making her way to the back room when there came a tapping on the glass of the door.

  Brenda tutted and glanced toward the drawn blackout blind on the door. Again came the tapping. Now she called out sharply, ‘Sorry! We’re closed!’

  A familiar voice replied, muffled by the glass and blind. ‘Brenda?’

  Galvanised into action, her heart having begun to pound fit to bruise her ribs, Brenda practically aimed herself across the salon, though with a presence of mind born of habit she remembered to switch off the lights before unlocking the door with fumbling fingers and yanking it open.

  In the perfect darkness she couldn’t make out the figure at all but she knew too well who he was as with a gasp of joy she threw herself into his arms.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The moment of joy lasted but seconds. Following on it came a mixture of sensations she couldn’t define. And questions. Why had he turned up unannounced? What would he have done had she left? Would he have gone upstairs to her flat to find her? And what was she doing here in his arms, all her resolve gone to pot?

  Coming to her senses, she moved back from him. His hold on her had not been strong and it wasn’t hard to move away.

  ‘I’m sorry, John, you’d best come in.’ How could her invitation sound so formal?

  She waited as he stepped inside what had once been his shop. That knowledge in itself added its odd sensation to those crowding her breast. Carefully she closed the door, locked it, and switching a light back on, just one this time, she turned to face him. Then as if formality had been but a weak dam through which joy now burst unable to be contained any longer, his name spilled from her lips. ‘John – oh, John, darling!’

  His arms were already opening out to her and again she let them close around her. No thought existed in her head but her happiness at seeing him, all the well-trained restraints she’d built up on his leaving falling like fence posts before an axe as she lifted her face to his to receive his kiss. That kiss contained almost twelve months of yearning, its hunger pressing down on her lips all but suffocating her.

  She couldn’t remember how they got to the kitchen. The small back room, now reflecting a woman’s touch, gave far more space than when he’d used it. In place of the old wooden table and couple of rickety chairs was a folding table, two chairs with padded seats should any customer need to recover from the overheating effect of the electric perming machine, and a host of feminine touches: little ornaments, a vase of paper flowers, a pretty clock, a small mirror.

  It was on to the chairs standing side by side that she and John sank. One arm still about her, he whispered, ‘I’ve longed so often to see you again, my sweet, to be with you again.’

  What could she say? ‘I’ve longed to be with you too?’

  That was true if she were honest with herself, but common sense was beginning slowly to return. That old relationship mustn’t start up again, not after all those months of pulling herself together enough to put him firmly from her mind. Yet he had been there all the
time in the hidden recesses of her brain. All she could do was stiffen her body a little – not too much to seem cold but enough to convey the message she must express. And beside that, a certain amount of anger against him was making itself felt.

  ‘You never wrote,’ she heard herself accusing him. ‘I never really thought I’d ever see you again, John, when you didn’t write.’ Immediately she hated the frigid tone of those statements.

  If he noticed he made no sign. ‘I’ve thought of no one but you, my love,’ he continued. ‘No matter where I was, you were there in my mind. I wanted to write but I wasn’t sure you’d want me to.’

  ‘Where’ve you been all the time then?’ she cut in, tension giving the question an edge.

  Her chagrin had got through to him at last. His voice lost some of its entreaty and became formal, conversational.

  ‘Atlantic run, mainly. Merchant vessels.’ He might have been talking merely to a friend.

  ‘How was it?’ she asked. Safer to keep to friendly tones. Easier too.

  ‘Scary,’ he replied briefly. ‘U-boats, you know.’

  Yes, she knew; tons of shipping were still being sunk, lives lost, all to get food to the nation. She shivered. ‘But you were all right?’

  ‘I’m here.’ There was a hint of humour there, his arm tightened fractionally across her shoulder. But rather than give in to his hold, Brenda felt her muscles immediately tighten again. He must have felt them too for though his arm remained around her, its grip relaxed a little.

  ‘You’ve not been sunk.’ It sounded so lame that she added, ‘Thank God.’

  ‘No.’ There was a pause, then, ‘Not yet.’

  Her reaction was immediate. There came an image of him lying on a raft in the middle of a featureless ocean burnished by a merciless sun, his lips cracked, his cheeks bearded, his comrades dying around him, of him too, close to death. Following immediately came another image, a body floating face down in that same empty ocean, its only movement a swaying with each oily wave. ‘Oh, John! Don’t say that!’ she cried out.

  Seconds later she was in his arms, being kissed by him, her hands behind his head pulling his face even harder against hers.

  ‘I’m asking if you’d wait for me, Brenda,’ he said, and she felt her relief almost attack her in a wave of guilt for thinking bad things of such a good man as he.

  ‘Would you?’ he pressed. But surely he knew that was impossible.

  Misery swept over her. ‘I can’t do that,’ she answered.

  ‘But you love me. I know you do.’

  Her mind was in a turmoil. ‘There’s Harry . . .’

  She let her voice trail off. Did she still love Harry? No question that she loved John Stebbings, but was it only lust, an immediate need? Was she in such need that she could do this with him moments after seeing him again? Even now her heart was leaping towards this man. In frustration and sorrow she found herself beginning gently to weep.

  ‘John, I can’t.’

  But already she had fallen into his arms again, lying weakly against him while he crooned against her ear, ‘Wait for me, my darling, that’s all I ask. I have to go back this afternoon. I came here only to see how you were. I didn’t know this would happen. Now it has and I know you love me, I can never put you out of my mind. I’m not all that religious but I just hope the Man in Charge will see both of us safely through this war, and when it’s over, you can make up your mind whether you want me or Harry. I don’t want you ever to let yourself be swayed by false loyalty to either of us. It has to be your decision, my darling. I can wait because I know you love me.’

  He was putting her gently from him. ‘I have to go.’

  In panic she reached for him as he got to his feet. ‘No, not yet, John!’

  ‘I have to. I have to meet my ship at Southampton. There’s a train. The moment I am back in England I’ll come straight here to you, darling. Just wait for me. Will you do that, my sweetheart?’

  Would she do that? With Harry thousands of miles away with no likelihood of coming home in the near future, there was little else she could do but wait. She took charge of her wits and stood up.

  ‘I’ll wait,’ she heard herself promise.

  He kissed her and she went with him to the door to have him kiss her yet again. ‘Keep safe, my own precious sweetheart,’ he whispered and there was a catch in his throat.

  ‘You too keep safe,’ she returned, and the same catch was in her own throat.

  She made herself swallow back the tears as she watched him walk away without looking back, as though to see her there would have made him retrace his footsteps. And that he could not do. He was caught up in this war as much as anyone now.

  Huddled in winter coats, scarves drawn tight over their heads, collars up against a bitter February wind, Brenda and Daphne were glad to board the bus home when it finally decided to turn up.

  They were only able to go to the pictures of an evening; Brenda now needed to have her salon open on Saturday afternoons. The bus was cold as they found seats halfway down and flopped gratefully into them, the pair of them still practically punch-drunk from seeing Gone With The Wind for the third time.

  Showing in London since 1942, more than a year later it was still going strong, as Brenda and Daphne themselves could attest.

  They’d taken to going to the pictures together once a week since last autumn. Daphne had suggested it in October on seeing how pale and drawn Brenda was looking, taking it to be because of concern over Harry far away in the thick of the fighting, even though the North African campaign looked to have turned their way.

  The opening of the battle of El Alamein under General Montgomery’s command had been startlingly spectacular on all the cinema newsreels. The desert night was lit up by the bombardment of over a thousand Allied guns, a continuous flashing of gunfire revealing line upon line of steel-helmeted Eighth Army infantry with fixed bayonets amid rapidly moving heavy armour. Even in the cinema it blinded the audience, bringing gasps of awe and pride from them, including the Hutton sisters-in-law.

  It got Brenda out of herself going regularly to the pictures with her. Daphne would leave her baby son with Mrs Hutton, who was more than willing to have him and had practically taken over the rearing of him. The pliable Daphne seemed quite content for it to be so.

  She’d had her baby with not too much trouble, though all through her labour she had bemoaned Bob’s inability to come and see her and his new little son, whom she immediately christened Robert after his daddy.

  Bob had been given leave a few weeks after, so Daphne hadn’t had much to moan about after all.

  ‘Wasn’t it lovely?’ sighed Daphne in retrospective appreciation of Gone With The Wind as the nasal command of the clippie assaulted their ears with ‘Fares please!’

  ‘I could see it all over again,’ Daphne said as she offered their money to an uninterested clippie with scraped back mousy hair. On extracting the appropriate colour tickets from a flat board holding a large selection of colours depending on length of journey, she punched a hole in each with a ping of the ticket machine strapped to her chest, handed them over and passed on down the bus, continuing to call, ‘Fares please,’ all without looking once at the two women.

  Daphne sighed again as she passed Brenda hers. ‘I just love Clark Gable. I can’t take me eyes off ’im.’

  ‘Too sure of ’imself for me,’ observed Brenda, taking her ticket to fiddle with the corners the rest of the journey. ‘I like Leslie Howard the best. He’s so kind and gentle and he gets so done down by that Scarlett O’Hara.’

  In reality Leslie Howard reminded her of John Stebbings except that Howard was fair-haired and blue-eyed where John’s hair was brown and his eyes so dark that in their sockets they looked like velvet.

  Where was he now? The thought prompted a small prick of hurt anger. Not a word had arrived from him since he left, last October. Four months and not one single letter. So much for those promises to write to her.

  At first she had
waited on the post day after day, but the days of waiting for a letter had grown into weeks, then months. She’d given him the benefit of the doubt realising that he wouldn’t be able to contact her when probably he was at sea in the mid-Atlantic most of the time. As time went by she’d grown fearful for him, then angry again, for if anything had happened to him she’d have found out. Then it occurred to her that nobody knew of their relationship, so who would be able to tell her? Fear and foreboding had taken over again.

  But as time went by, though he flitted into her mind from time to time, she was coming to terms with it, as she must, except for an inner pang that he’d have contacted her if he’d been able to. This thought became one from which she turned stoically, trying to convince herself that there was nothing she could do in such a case. But if something had happened, surely she would have heard, would have known.

  By February all that was left in an effort to still that fear was this diminished residue of anger: at him – no different from other men after all; at herself – fool to have believed him; finally resignation – far easier to bear than any of the other emotions because it took nothing out of her. She had to get on with life. There were Harry’s letters to occupy her, to be answered swiftly. Often she wrote without receiving one, desperate to cling to a love that was sure and the hope of it being rekindled when he came home for good.

  Brenda turned her mind to this evening’s exciting newsreel in order to stop herself thinking.

  ‘Things looking good in Tunisia according to the news,’ she said to Daphne, breaking into her sister-in-law’s train of thought about Gone With The Wind and the suave and captivating Rhett Butler. ‘Let’s ’ope it’s the end of the beginning, as Churchill said, though what that’s supposed to mean, I’m not sure.’

  ‘What?’ Daphne came to herself with a start. ‘Oh, yeah, let’s ’ope so. Though it don’t seem much like it at ’ome. Not when we’ve still got blinking air raids.’ They were now being blighted by occasional daylight raids, some of them disastrous. ‘That one last month with that bomb falling on that school in Catford. No barrage balloons up, no air raid warning, nothing. It’s a disgrace. Thirty-eight of  ’em killed, poor little mites, and God knows ’ow many injured, and them only between five and eight.’