Meet Me Under the Clock

by Annie Murray

  Audrey had finally received her call-up into the WAAF just before the New Year began. Her letters home were full of a new vocabulary of service life. Jane, Sylvia’s best school friend, was now somewhere up north with the ATS. It was all awful and frightening, and not what any of them had planned for their young lives, but it was an adventure as well. As the weeks sped by, Sylvia felt more and more as if life was passing her by. Paul was the only one of the Goulds left at home, and she missed Audrey, even if they did squabble. She wanted to do something new herself. Joining up was unthinkable for her. She didn’t want to leave Ian, and she couldn’t do it to Mom. Pauline had been upset enough when Audrey went; she didn’t like any sort of change. The world was a nasty, dangerous place in her eyes and she wanted them all safe in the nest together.

  Sylvia had butterflies in her stomach as they reached the bus stop. Ian should be the first to know. He’d be so proud of her! His own job at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital was recognized as useful, while all she could feel was useless. But now she’d answered that advertisement she had seen in the paper, at least she could say she was joining other women in doing something.

  She was about to speak when Ian said, ‘We had a lady in today, fell down her cellar steps in the blackout. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a leg more smashed up. If you only saw the X-ray, you’d think she’d just jumped out of a plane.’ He began telling her about various other accidents he’d seen, and then the bus came and there were people sitting so close that Sylvia didn’t feel like being overheard saying what she had to say. Ian was in a chatty mood, so she listened, as she often did. It wasn’t until they had got off the bus in Kings Heath and he was walking her home that she managed to get a word in.

  Once they had turned off the main road she tugged on his arm. ‘Stop a minute, Ian. I’ve got a surprise – some news to tell you.’

  ‘Really, Wizzy?’ He had a teasing way of talking sometimes, which made her feel even more the difference in their ages. Obviously Ian was much cleverer than she was, but sometimes it felt as if he was talking to her as if she were a child. Tonight that irked her more than usual. He put his hands on her shoulders and she could just make out the whites of his eyes in the darkness. ‘Am I going to like the surprise?’

  ‘Of course you are,’ she replied, in an arch way to match his tone. But this didn’t feel right for her momentous announcement. It was all turning into a joke.

  For a second he bounced her dark curls against the palm of his hand. The cuff of his flannel jacket brushed her cheek. ‘Let’s hear it then.’

  ‘Well . . .’ Her heart was thudding. ‘I decided I wanted to do something different. So I’ve got myself a new job.’

  ‘Oh,’ Ian said pleasantly, making as if to start walking again, but she stopped him, gripping his arm. ‘Where are you going off to then? The Prince of Wales? Or the Hippodrome? That’d be a change of scene – oops, sorry. Terrible pun.’

  Feeling rather put out at his joking, she said firmly, ‘No, a bigger change of scene than that. I’ve been taken on by the railway.’

  Ian drew back in surprise. ‘Oh! Gosh. That really is a change of . . . I see!’ He was chuckling. ‘Yes, well, I suppose they must need a lot of extra staff. Good for you! So what will it be? Filling in forms at New Street? Pouring the tea – I imagine the cafeterias must be rather jolly places to work, even though everything is rationed up to the hilt at the moment.’

  ‘No,’ Sylvia said, trying to sound casual. ‘I’m going to be working as a goods porter. For Great Western.’

  She waited for his gasp of surprise and admiration. She wanted him to be proud, to congratulate her on being selfless and brave. What she heard was an even bigger explosion of laughter. He rocked with it.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear – that’s a good one! A porter, you? You are joking, I hope?’

  Sylvia withdrew, hurt and annoyed. ‘No, Ian, I’m not. I’m glad the thought of me trying to do anything for the war effort seems so flaming hilarious. I’m not stupid, you know, whatever you may think!’ She moved off along the road, her body stiff with an anger that increased with every step. Why did everyone always think of her as incapable of doing anything?

  ‘Hey, Wizz! Stop!’ He was beside her, reaching for her hand. ‘Look, I’m sorry. Of course I don’t think you’re stupid – you’re one hell of a girl. I just thought you were joking. I mean, seriously, it’s not very feminine, is it? And that’s what you are, always. To me, you’re just so womanly. You’re not one of those mannish types in trousers and caps, like those girls in the services. I can’t imagine you like that at all – you always look so pretty and nice.’

  ‘Well, I can hardly lump heavy goods around in a frock and heels, can I?’ she snapped.

  ‘No, I suppose not . . . Well, gosh. I can hardly take this in, to tell you the truth. No, it’s marvellous. Well done you.’ He tried to pull her to him, but she resisted.

  ‘I just want to do something.’ She was close to tears suddenly. She wanted to feel understood, and Ian had failed her. ‘Your job’s useful, and you can feel as if it’s important—’

  ‘Well, I’m not so sure,’ he interrupted. ‘All the other chaps are going off.’

  ‘But I feel . . .’ She trailed off. It was hard to put into words what she felt. ‘I feel left out. I just thought you’d understand.’

  ‘I do, Sylvia.’ He sounded serious now, and careful. No nicknames. ‘I really do. It just takes some getting used to, that’s all.’ He put on a wheedling tone. ‘Don’t be cross with me.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she said. Crossly. She felt like a mutinous little girl.

  They were walking on now and had turned into her road. Sometimes, even if it was late, he came in for a cup of tea before walking back to his family home in Cartland Road. Mom and Dad always made him welcome if they were up. But tonight she didn’t want to invite him in. She wanted him to know how fed-up she was with him.

  ‘I think I’ll head straight for bed tonight,’ she said, outside the house. ‘I’m feeling done for.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Ian said, in a stiff, gentlemanly way. ‘And, Wizz, don’t be cross. The railway – my goodness, what a girl! When does all this start then?’

  ‘Next week.’ She felt suddenly very tired and cold, as if something had been spoiled.

  They embraced and kissed, and it was lovely to feel his arms round her, but she couldn’t be completely wholehearted tonight.

  ‘One day we’ll be together, properly,’ Ian whispered, his lips close to her ear. ‘Oh, my darling, you’re lovely.’ She heard him take a sharp breath of desire. ‘God, I only have to come near you for a few seconds. If only we didn’t have to wait . . .’

  ‘Well, you do,’ she said, the one teasing now. Ian’s desire was always a pressure. ‘I’m a respectable girl, remember?’ But she began to relent and snuggled closer to him. They were engaged, were planning to marry in July. At least that was something sure. And while everything else was so uncertain, Sylvia told herself, why waste precious time being angry?

  ‘Not too long now,’ she said. ‘I’ll be Mrs Westley and an old matron.’ She knew this would please him.

  Laughter rippled through his body. ‘Not you – never. See you tomorrow?’

  ‘I expect so.’ She took out her keys. They’d had a set cut in case she came in very late.

  ‘I love you, girl.’ He was backing away.

  Sylvia ran to him and kissed him again. ‘I love you too. Goodnight.’

  Five

  Sylvia did not sleep well. There was no raid, but even with this golden opportunity for sleep, she lay awake for what seemed the whole night, her mind racing.

  She heard the trains moving along the line at the end of the garden and thought of all those people out there, toiling in the night. Her tiff with Ian went round in her mind: You’re just so feminine . . . It was odd how this didn’t feel like a compliment, even though it was meant as one. Why did being feminine seem to mean . . . what did it mean? Feminine: soft and wea
k and not able to do anything very much? Was that what Ian was implying? She knew that if she put that to him, he would argue and say that was not what he meant at all. But that was what it felt like. As if he wanted to keep her locked up, like something decorative, but of no real use.

  Heavens, she thought, I’m getting like Audrey.

  ‘As soon as you get married you’re tied, like a dog to a post,’ Audrey sometimes said, in her scathing way. ‘I’m not having someone bossing me about, telling me what I can and can’t do. I’m not bothering with all that.’ She somehow managed to make Sylvia feel that, in promising to marry Ian, she was giving in to something and was slightly pathetic.

  ‘You don’t want to take any notice of her,’ Mom would say, even though she found Audrey bewildering as well. ‘She’ll settle down in the end.’

  After what felt like an endless night, Sylvia pulled back the corner of the curtains and saw a hint of light in the sky. Cursing the fact that she felt every bit as queasy and exhausted as she would after a night out in the shelter, she dressed in as many layers of clothes as she could find and went downstairs. In the kitchen, she filled the kettle from the groaning tap and set it on the gas.

  The pail for the hens was set ready by the back door. It was so hard to buy eggs that Mom had decided, a couple of months back, that they would keep chickens. Then they’d gone in for rabbits as well. What with them and the enlarged vegetable patch, there was not much left of the garden where she, Audrey, Jack and the Goulds used to play.

  Sylvia picked up the pail and went out to the hen coop. Freezing, smoky air stung her nostrils. She unfastened the hatch in the top and tipped in the cooked-up mess of bran, potato peelings and cabbage leaves.

  ‘Here you are, girls. Grub’s up – come and get it!’

  The five Rhode Island Reds stalked out of the coop: the ‘royal ladies’ – Isabella, Elizabeth, Victoria, Eleanor and Lady Jane – pecked at their mash with little scurrying noises. The missing one of their number out of the half-dozen they had bought from the Bull Ring at the end of November had turned out to be a cockerel, Henry VIII, who had roasted nicely for Christmas dinner.

  Sylvia looked along the garden, hugging her coat round her. To the right, familiar after all these months, was the Anderson shelter with its thick layer of soil on the roof, now draped with strands of dead nasturtiums. Sylvia shuddered, thinking of the cold hours of terror they had spent in there. When did it become so normal, always listening for the sirens and feeling sick with fear?

  Hard up against the shelter, and nearer the house, was the rabbit run. Sylvia went over to the rabbit hutches and let the brown rabbits – the ones she didn’t permit herself to grow fond of because they were also destined to feature as dinner – into the run. Then she went to the one solitary hutch nearest the house.

  ‘Hello, Mr Piggles.’ Squatting, she unfastened the door and reached in for the big, lop-eared bundle of rabbit that sat complacently on her crouching legs, his nose wiffling. She stroked his velvety ears, then stood up, cuddling him, enjoying his furry warmth and his comforting rabbity smells. The light was rising. She could see the railings at the end of the garden more clearly now, and the hens were tinged with russet.

  ‘I’ve really gone and done it now,’ she murmured. ‘I don’t wish I hadn’t or anything, but I haven’t half got collywobbles, Mr P. How am I going to tell Mom? She’ll have a fit.’

  Faintly, she heard a train coming. In the cutting between their garden and the park ran the LMS line to Bristol and the West Country. Even though they had lived here, backing onto the railway all her life, the sound always made her blood thump harder, the familiar whoomp-whoomp of the engine growing louder as it hurried towards New Street. The loco rushed past and she could just see the top of it, black and dramatic. There was a second’s glimpse of the orange glow from the furnace and a thick sleeve of smoke unfurling behind its chimney. Sparks whirled up into the morning gloom, carriages rattled and lurched and then suddenly, with a last rush of sound, it was gone. The noise died as it ran on into Birmingham, leaving them in a sprinkle of cinders and with the smell of smoke in the freezing air. The banks on each side were always charred black. Sylvia loved the trains, although Mom was always cursing that there was no point in hanging out washing, with the state in which it came in again.

  ‘You’re up early. I shan’t have to dig you out for once.’

  Sylvia jumped. With all the racket she hadn’t heard her mother come outside. Pauline was in her dressing gown, with a coat over the top, fleece-lined slippers and her shawl wrapped over her head. With her thick auburn hair – her crowning glory – hidden beneath it, she looked more like an old lady than someone in her forties. The cats had followed her out and were stalking across the grass.

  ‘Couldn’t sleep,’ Sylvia said. It was no good; she was going to have to tell her.

  Her mother came close and stroked the rabbit. ‘Look at him – loving it . . . Have you fed the girls?’ She nodded towards the hens.

  ‘Yes. Mom . . . ?’

  ‘You can help me with some shopping before you go to work. All this endless queuing.’

  Cuddling Mr Piggles even closer, Sylvia said, ‘Mom. I’m finishing there on Friday. I’ve got a new job – different hours.’

  Pauline turned, frowning. ‘What d’you mean?’

  Mom wasn’t going to like this. She was another one who thought there were all sorts of things girls shouldn’t be doing. Or at least, not her girls.

  ‘I’ve got a job with Great Western.’

  Her mother’s grey eyes narrowed. ‘What’re you on about, Sylvia? You’ve got such a nice job at that theatre. And I thought you were engaged? You’re going to marry Ian.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Sylvia laughed. ‘But not this week! I don’t have to stop work because I’m engaged, do I?’

  ‘Does Ian know about this? What on earth does he think?’

  ‘He’s right behind me,’ she fibbed.

  ‘I should’ve thought he’d say you’ve gone mad,’ Pauline said, beginning to turn away, arms folded.

  Sylvia could feel more frustrated anger boiling up in her. Why was it up to Ian what she did? And why did Mom always walk off when you were trying to talk to her?

  ‘Why should Ian mind?’ she said to her mother’s back. ‘Things are changing, Mom. Girls are doing all sorts, now the war’s on. We’re not still living in the Stone Age. And anyway, it’s not as if Ian and I are married yet.’ Why couldn’t everyone be pleased and think she was doing something good?

  ‘He ought to have a say, Sylvia.’ Her mother turned to her again. ‘You can’t just do as you like once you’re married.’

  ‘But I’m not married!’ she almost shouted. ‘He doesn’t own me, Mom.’

  ‘And what d’you mean, working for the Great Western – as a clerk? You know how much trouble you had with writing and sums at school. I don’t mean to be unkind, Sylv, but you’d have to admit, it was hopeless.’

  As if I need reminding, Sylvia thought.

  ‘No, I just . . .’ She hitched up Mr Piggles to her. ‘You know when I went to see Auntie Jean, the other week? When I came back in, through Snow Hill, there was a lady there, in uniform, collecting tickets at the gate. And I just thought: I could do that! I don’t have to stay put, being so useless.’ She tried to pour into the words all her feelings of restlessness and frustration. ‘After all that’s happened, Mom – all the bombing, and the lads all going off, risking their lives.’

  ‘Not Ian, though.’

  ‘No, not Ian – but Raymond and Laurie; and girls like Jane and Audrey.’

  Pauline Whitehouse tutted, pulling the ends of her shawl more tightly round her. ‘Oh, you’re not just trying to keep up with her again? Audrey’s just Audrey – she always has to be difficult. Why can’t you just ignore her and live your own life? You’ve always been more of a home bird. Horses for courses.’

  Their mother had been frightened and appalled when Audrey joined up. Both of them were puzzled by the
force of Pauline’s reaction.

  ‘Anything different and she goes round the bend!’ Audrey had said.

  The girls had spent a long time discussing whether this was to do with their mother’s own upbringing. She had grown up in a poor area – a ‘slum’ she called it – right in the middle of Birmingham. She never wanted to talk about it, and they knew better than to push her to.

  ‘What happened, Mom?’ Audrey had plucked up the courage to ask, before she left. ‘When you were young?’

  ‘Happened? How d’you mean? Nothing happened. No one murdered anyone, if that’s what you mean. It was poor and sordid and unpleasant, and there were people I never want to see again in my life – always poking their noses in. And then I met your father and got out of it.’ She shrugged. ‘I want your lives to be different, that’s all.’ Now she had made a comfortable nest, she didn’t seem to want anyone else to leave it.

  ‘I do think Audrey’s doing something important, Mom,’ Sylvia said now. ‘But it’s not just that, anyway. It’s all of it! Every time there’s a raid: what they’ve done to Coventry, and all the mess in town and the Market Hall . . .’ She was almost in tears. Emotions seemed to rise up and startle her these days. And what about Mr and Mrs James?’ There had been two couples killed that night when their street was bombed, and Mom had been friends with one of them, Mrs James. ‘And we just sit here while everything’s breaking up around us. All I’m doing is that silly job.’ Tears escaped and ran down her cheeks into Mr Piggles’s fur. ‘Anyway, it’s too late now. The GWR have taken me on.’