Where the Heart Is

by Annie Groves

  ‘Now tomorrow morning, since it’s your firstday, after parade you’ll all present yourselves to the MO for medicals and vaccinations.

  ‘One day a week here we all have to wear our gas masks. Anyone found not doing so will be put on a charge. All right, Sergeant, you can take over now.’

  Obeying the sergeant’s command to fall in, Lou decided tiredly that she was relieved that Sasha wasn’t here to tell her that she’d have been much better off staying at the telephone exchange, because the way she was feeling right now she might just be inclined to agree with her.

  Tucked up cosily in bed with her new husband in the pretty bedroom with its dormer window and cream-painted walls, on which she had carefully stencilled pink roses to match their pink eiderdown, Grace gave a deep sigh.

  The wonderful intimacy of being married still made her colour up a little self-consciously, and she felt excited inside now Seb came into their bedroom from the bathroom, in his blue and white striped pyjamas, freshly shaved, smelling of soap.

  ‘What, not fed up of being married to me already, are you?’ Seb demanded in mock outrage.

  ‘No, of course not. I love being married to you,’ Grace assured him fervently.

  ‘Do you now? Well, I’m very glad to hear that because I certainly love being married to you,’ said Seb, before drawing her into his arms so that he could kiss her.

  Naturally it was several minutes before Grace could speak again, but when she could she told him,‘I was just thinking about Mum, Seb. She’s ever so upset about Luke and Katie. She thought they were perfect for one another–we all did–and now Luke’s gone and broken off their engagement.

  ‘Perhaps it’s for the best.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ Seb had released her now and Grace shivered a little, despite the warmth of the flannelette nightdress she was wearing, the neck tied with pretty pink ribbon. ‘Mum is heartbroken, and Katie will be too. She loves Luke so much. Anyway, I thought you liked Katie.’

  ‘I do,’ Seb assured her, reaching up to pull the cord to switch off the two wall lights either side of the bed.

  ‘Then—’

  ‘I know that Luke is your brother and of course you love him. He’s a fine soldier, and a good brother, but it seemed to me that whilst he loved Katie, he hurt her quite a lot with his lack of trust. You can’t build a good marriage without trust, or at least not in my book. Perhaps without this war Luke and Katie could have married and not had any problems, but war changes things, it sharpens and intensifies so much.’

  Grace sighed again, as she snuggled into Seb’s waiting arms and put her head on his shoulder. They were so lucky. They had one another, and they had this cosy cottage where she was so happy making a home for them both. She knew that Seb was right, but she still couldn’t help feeling sad. They had all liked Katie so very much.

  ‘I’m so lucky to have found you,’ she told her husband, ‘but I do feel guilty about not being in Liverpool to help Mum. She’s got so much to worry about now, and so has Auntie Francine. Mum told me that uncle Brandon is very poorly and going to die soon. They’ve been married such a short time.’

  ‘We’ll go and see your mum the minute we both get leave, if that will help put your mind at rest.’

  ‘Yes, it will.’

  ‘Good. Now it seems to me that it’s an awfully long time since I last kissed my wife.’

  ‘Oh, Seb.’ Grace gave a small giggle and then said nothing at all as her husband’s arms wrapped lovingly around her.

  TWO

  ‘It can’t be morning already,’ Lou heard Betty complain as the public address system announced that it was six o’clock and time for them to get up.

  Inside the cold darkness of the hut, all the young women were waking up, and going through the automatic actions of pulling on clothes and making beds, ignoring slowly numbing fingers as they hurried against the clock.

  In common with accommodation huts at bases all over the country, theirs housed thirty girls with a small separate ‘room’ for their corporal. Two stoves supposedly kept the place warm although only those with beds close to them actually felt their benefit.

  At six thirty on the dot their corporal appeared. The girls stood stiffly at the end of their beds whilst she walked up and down the line, inspecting them.

  Lou quailed a little inwardly when the corporal looked at the buttons on her jacket. Lou had learned whilst square bashing that it was a matter of pride to look as though one belonged and wasn’t ‘new’, and so she had paid a small amount to swap herbuttons for those on the uniform of another girl who was leaving the WAAF on medical grounds. She felt immensely proud of her well-polished buttons but now she wondered if swapping them was going to get her into trouble.

  To her relief, Ruby, who was standing next to her, suddenly gasped and put her hand on her tummy as it rumbled loudly, distracting their corporal’s attention, although Lou didn’t relax properly until the corporal commanded them to ‘Fall out’ and they were all free to go for their breakfast.

  Without anything being said, the five new arrivals kept together, waiting until some of the other girls were ready to leave the hut and then tagging along behind them, Ruby complaining that she was ‘starving’.

  ‘Yes, we all heard,’ Ellen pointed out.

  ‘Ablutions block is over there, just in case no one told you that when you arrived,’ one of the girls ahead turned round to tell them. Sturdily built, with a mop of chestnut hair and bright blue eyes, she nodded in the direction of another brick building. ‘I’m Hawkins–Jessie Hawkins–by the way, and these two here are Lawson and Marsh.’

  Taking her lead, Lou and the others quickly introduced themselves, all using their surnames.

  ‘You’ll find that Halton takes a bit of getting used to if you did your square bashing somewhere small,’ Jessie Hawkins informed them. ‘We’re pretty close to Chequers here, of course, so we get an awful lot of top brass coming in. You’ll find thatthe officers and NCOs are pretty hot on discipline. Do you remember that girl who got court-martialled for jumping into a Lancaster?’ she appealed to the other two.

  They nodded silently.

  ‘For a Waaf to fly is, of course, a court-martialling offence,’ she continued, ‘and whilst we all know there are some places where you can get away with it, you can’t here. One wrong move and you’re out.’

  Lou felt a shiver of apprehension run down her spine at the thought of that happening to her and her having to return home in disgrace to face her parents. When she had broken her news to them after Grace’s wedding her father had been not just angry with her for enlisting without their permission but also scathing in his opinion that she wouldn’t be able to ‘stick it out’ since she had spent her life finding ways to get round the parental rules he and her mother had put in place to protect all their children.

  ‘In fact,’ Jessie continued warningly, ‘there’s a bit of competition between the huts to get good reports, and the best pass-out rate from the courses. Our hut came second last year and this year we’re hoping to be first. I’m just telling you so that you know what’s what and to make sure that there’s no letting the side down.’

  Behind Jessie’s back Betty pulled a face at Lou as they were forced to quick march behind the others to keep up, and whispered, ‘I thought it was the corporals who were supposed to tell us what to do, not one of our own. I reckon she’s going to be on our backs all the time, bossing us and spoilingour fun. Part of the reason I joined up was so that I could have a bit of fun.’

  Although it wasn’t daylight yet, the length of their march toward the mess indicated how big their new base was, the more practical-looking buildings dominated by the big house to the rear of them.

  ‘So what’s that posh-looking place then?’ Ruby asked cheekily, gesturing towards it.

  ‘Top brass and high-ranking RAF officers’ mess,’ Jessie told her promptly. ‘And strictly off limits to you lot.’

  Under cover of Jessie’s answer Betty dug Lou in the
ribs and giggled, ‘If some handsome officer tried it on with Jessie, I reckon the first thing she’d say to him would be, “No, it’s strictly off limits.”’

  Betty was fun, Lou acknowledged, as she struggled to keep her own face straight.

  ‘I suppose the officers still get a plimsoll line painted round their baths?’ was Ellen’s comment, referring to the new practice of painting a line to mark the five-inch depth of water one could have in one’s bath.

  ‘You can forget about baths here,’ Jessie told her. ‘It’s showers for us and if you aren’t quick enough it will be a cold shower.’

  Although Lou hadn’t seen much of the base yet, what she had seen of it seemed to be immaculately spruce and smart, a regular showplace compared with her brother’s old army barracks at Seacombe and the small base in Wilmslow where she had trained. Halton was smarter and prouder of itself, somehow. The Buckinghamshire countryside around them looked far less war weary than Liverpool. There was no doubting the pride of the girls here. Backs were ramrod straight, shoes were highly polished, and the girls themselves all seemed so neat and confident. Would she fit in here, with her renowned untidiness? Lou hoped so.

  The mess was huge, or so it seemed to Lou, and filled with girls either already eating or queuing up for their breakfast, whilst the smell of frying bacon and toast filled the air.

  Soon the five newcomers were tucking in to a very welcome meal.

  ‘At least the grub’s good,’ Ruby announced with relish when she had polished off her own breakfast. She looked at Lou’s plate. ‘Are you going to eat that toast?’ Then, without waiting for Lou’s response, she removed it from Lou’s plate to her own, with a cheeky grin.

  It was left to Betty to say what Lou suspected they were all thinking. ‘I think we’ve all done very well getting posted here. Halton’s got everything anyone could want to have a good time, and that’s what we’re going to do, isn’t it, girls?’ she demanded, lifting her cup in a toast.

  Half an hour later, marching on the parade ground flanked by the RAF regiment, led by its sergeant major with its mascot–a goat with a dangerous-looking set of horns–Lou knew that she dare not look at Betty to see if she was sharing her own desire to break into nervous giggles. There had certainly not been anything like this at Wilmslow. Halton quite obviously took its square bashing very seriously indeed.

  Those Waafs already on courses were marched to their classrooms until only thirty or so girls were left, to be marched over to the medical facility ready for their medicals.

  ‘I don’t know why we have to have another medical and more inoculations,’ Betty grumbled.

  ‘They’re probably testing our pain threshold,’ Lou grinned, quickly standing to attention when a medical orderly appeared and shouted out her name.

  ‘Bye, Mum. I’m off to work now.’

  ‘Well, you take care, Sasha, love,’ Jean Campion told her daughter as they hugged briefly, ‘and no dawdling home tonight, mind, because your dad’s got an ARP meeting and he’ll be wanting his tea on time.’

  Jean shook her head ruefully as the door closed behind Sasha. Automatically wiping the already pristine sink, she tried desperately not to think about the unexpected and unwelcome changes the last few weeks had brought to the family, and the grief and upset they had caused. There was still a war on, after all, and, as Sam had said, life had to go on, no matter how they all felt. It was their duty to put a brave face on things. But to suffer two such blows, and over Christmas as well. Her hand stilled and then trembled.

  It had been bad enough–a shock, even–to learn that Lou had volunteered for the WAAF and not said a word about it to anyone, including her own twin sister, without getting that letter from Luke, saying that he and Katie were no longer engaged.

  Jean looked over to the dresser, where the polite little letter Katie had sent them was sitting, her engagement ring still wrapped up inside it, to be returned to Luke. Jean’s caring eyes had seen how the ink was ever so slightly blurred here and there, as though poor Katie had been crying when she wrote it.

  Jean had done as Katie had asked in her letter, and had parcelled up her things and sent them on to her, obeying Sam’s command that she must not try to interfere in what had happened, but it hadn’t been easy.

  ‘It’s their business and it’s up to them what they do,’ Sam had told her when she had said that there must be something they could do to put things right between the young couple.

  ‘But Katie’s like another daughter to me, Sam,’ Jean had protested. ‘I took to her the minute she came here as our billetee.’

  Sam, though, had remained adamant: Jean was not to interfere. ‘No good will come of forcing them to be together because you want Katie as a daughter-in-law, if that isn’t what they want,’ he had told her, and Jean had had to acknowledge that he was right.

  She did miss Katie, though. The house seemed so empty without her, for all that she had been so gentle and quiet.

  Jean had her address; she could write to her. But Sam wouldn’t approve of her doing that, Jean knew.

  She couldn’t help wishing that Grace, her eldest daughter, was still living in Liverpool, and poppinghome for a quick cup of tea as she had done when she’d been working at Mill Street Hospital. She could have talked things over with Grace in a way that she couldn’t with Sam. But Grace was married, and she and Seb were living in Whitchurch in Shropshire, where Seb had been posted by the RAF.

  The house felt so empty with only the three of them in it now, she and Sam and Sasha.

  Jean wiped her hands on her apron and looked at the clock. It was just gone eight o’clock and she had a WVS meeting to attend at ten, otherwise, she could have gone over to Wallasey on the ferry to see her own twin sister, Vi.

  Although they were twins, Jean and Vi weren’t exactly close. Vi liked to let Jean know how much better she thought she had done than Jean by moving out to Wallasey when her husband, Edwin’s, business had expanded.

  Now, though, things had changed. Just before Christmas Vi’s daughter, Bella, had told Jean that her father had left her mother, and that she was worried about her mother’s health because Vi had started drinking.

  It was hard for Jean to imagine her very proper twin behaving in such a way–a real shock–but beneath her concern at what Bella had had to tell her, Jean felt a very real sympathy and anxiety for her sister, despite the fact that they had grown apart.

  She had tried to imagine how she would have felt if her Sam had come home one day and announced that he was leaving her to go off with some girl half her age–not that Sam would everdo something so terrible, but if he did then Jean knew how hard to bear it would be. She knew that the shame alone would crucify her twin, with her determination not just to keep up appearances but always to go one better than her neighbours.

  For all her Edwin’s money, there was no way that Jean would have wanted to swap places with Vi. Edwin could never measure up to her own reliable, hard-working Sam, who had always been such a good husband and father. And for all that she was so disappointed about Luke and Katie splitting up, at least her son hadn’t gone and got some poor girl pregnant and then abandoned her to marry someone else, like Vi’s Charlie had.

  Then there was Bella. She was doing well now, running that nursery she was in charge of, and Jean freely admitted that she was proud to have her as her niece, but there had been a time when Bella had been a very spoiled and selfish girl indeed.

  Sam had made it plain over the years that the less the Campions had to do with Vi and her family the better, but things were different now, and Jean felt that it was her duty to to try to help her sister.

  Tomorrow morning she’d walk down to the ferry terminal and go over to see her twin, Jean decided.

  She looked at the dresser again. They’d had a letter from Lou this morning telling them that now that her WAAF induction period was over, she’d been selected to go on a training course to be flight mechanic.

  Sam had merely grunted when Jean had rea
d the letter to him, but then Sam was a bit old-fashioned about what was and was not women’swork, and he would much rather that Lou had stayed at home working at the telephone exchange with Sasha. Jean would have preferred to have had both twins at home as well, but what was done was done, and she didn’t want any of her children ever to feel that they weren’t loved or wanted every bit as much as their siblings. Sasha had always been the calmer, more biddable twin, and Lou the impatient rebel. It was hard sometimes to think of the twins as being the age they were. It didn’t seem two minutes since they’d been little girls. Jean sighed to herself, remembering the time Sam had been giving the pretty yellow kitchen walls their biannual fresh coat of distemper, and somehow or other Lou had hold of the paintbrush when Sam had put it down, wanting to ‘help’ with the work. The result had been yellow distemper on everything, including the twins. The memory made Jean smile, but her smile was tinged with sadness. Keeping her children safe had been hard enough when they had been small and under her wing; she had never dreamed how much harder it would be when they were grown. But then, like all who were old enough to remember the First World War, she had not believed that such dreadful times would ever come again.

  How wrong they had all been.

  THREE

  It was strange now to recall how nervous she had been the first morning she had turned up for work at the Postal Censorship Office in Liverpool, Katie thought tiredly as she got off the train at Holborn tube station, hurried along with the flow of passengers along the tunnel and then up into the daylight and cold of the February morning, carrying her suitcase, so that she could go straight from work to the billet that her new employers had found for her. Her parents’ friends had been willing to allow her to stay in their attic room but she had been told that there was a billet going in a house in Cadogan Place, off Sloane Street, which had been requisitioned by the War Office, and that it would make much more sense for her to move in there. Of course she had agreed.