Meet Me Under the Clock

by Annie Murray

  ‘Hello. Back with us, then?’ She had a soft, girlish voice.

  Audrey tried to laugh, but all she managed was a weak smile. ‘Seems like it,’ she said. ‘Have I been away long?’

  ‘You’ve been under a while, I’d say. But it was the same for everyone – nasty dose of the flu. I’m just a day or so further on than you.’

  Once she had managed to get some breakfast inside her, Audrey started to feel a bit stronger. The other girl hopped out of bed and came over and sat on the side of Audrey’s bed, plump in her nightdress, still holding a cup of tea.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve come to,’ she said. ‘I’ve been getting a bit lonely.’ Audrey was struck by the generous physicality of the young woman, her breasts large and heavy under the thin white cotton. I would’ve wanted to wrap up a bit more, Audrey thought. But the other girl seemed unselfconscious. She told Audrey her name was Dorrie Cooper and that she was a driver.

  ‘Oh,’ Audrey said. ‘That’s where I know you from! You brought us here the first day.’

  Dorrie put her head on one side. She had pink, rather weather-beaten cheeks, a head of loosely curled honey-brown hair and big blue eyes. She had the look of a cherub, and Audrey imagined that Dorrie had probably looked much the same when she was only five years old.

  ‘Yes, I remember,’ Dorrie said.

  ‘What, remember me? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose some faces just stick in your mind. What’s your name?’

  ‘Audrey Whitehouse.’

  ‘Where’re you from – the Midlands?’

  ‘Right first time,’ Audrey said. ‘Brum. Have I got that much of an accent?’

  ‘Just a bit.’ Dorrie grinned, showing a row of big, square teeth. Her smile was very infectious.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘High Wycombe. Daddy owns a funeral parlour.’

  ‘Does he?’ Audrey said. They both laughed, not really knowing why it was funny. ‘That’s not a reserved occ, is it?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know! Daddy’s so ancient they’d never call him up anyway.’

  She asked Audrey about her family and soon they were both chatting away about their homes and their lives before the WAAF, and since.

  ‘The WAAF’s the best thing that ever happened to me,’ Dorrie said. She sat with one leg crossed over the other, twitching her bare leg up and down. ‘I’d have loved to be something like a driver in Civvy Street. I wanted to drive big things like trucks or horseboxes – something with a lot of power. As well as writing, that is: that’s what I really want to do, but you have to earn a crust somehow.’ She laughed and Audrey enjoyed the infectious sound Dorrie made, as well as her energetic approach to life.

  ‘Mummy thought I should do secretarial training, because that’s what girls do.’ Dorrie rolled her eyes. ‘I think they assumed I’d work for Daddy.’ Another roll of the eyes. ‘Can you imagine? Like being buried alive – almost literally! I said I’d rather work on a farm, which Mummy was absolutely horrified about, of course. But I managed to persuade them that horses were a bit more respectable. So I was working on a stud farm. It was a nice job – a lot of mucking out, of course.’

  ‘What about the writing?’ Audrey said.

  ‘Oh, I never really told them about that. Didn’t want them prying. Anyway, when the war came and there was a chance to do something else, I jumped at it. In the meantime I’m always scribbling. I want to work for a newspaper.’ She got up for a moment and went to her bed, holding up the book she had been writing in: blue with a marbled cover. ‘My diary! Very hush-hush – evidently we WAAFs aren’t supposed to keep them. Security and all that. But I’ve always kept one. You have to talk to someone!’ She came and sat down again. ‘But no point in saying anything about that to them. My parents don’t understand literate people. Sorry, I’m babbling. How did you come to join up?’

  ‘A bit like you really.’ Audrey sat back, enjoying the conversation. ‘Where I come from, for people like me, you can work in a factory, or a shop, or an office. So I did shorthand typing – well, shorthand at night school.’ Audrey told her about her boring office job and then about Raymond. Dorrie listened intently.

  ‘I suppose it was the shock, partly. We’d known each other as kids – all our lives really. And suddenly he was gone, just like that. He was on HMS Esk. It brought it all home: this is the only life we’ve got, and I wanted to do something apart from moulder away in an insurance office. I felt very bad about Raymond. He was . . . Well, he was very keen on me, and he told me so before he went. But I wasn’t at all interested in him – not like that. Now I think I should have lied and said something nice to him. And then he was dead . . .’ Her eyes filled with tears suddenly and she wiped them on the corner of the sheet. She was surprised at how easily she could talk to Dorrie. ‘Sorry. I feel very weepy at the moment. Must be the end of the flu.’

  ‘It’s all right, ‘Dorrie said straightforwardly. ‘I know. My brother was killed on the way into Dunkirk. It’s bloody and awful, and what can you do except cry, and try and get back at them – the Hun, I mean?’ She leaned over and patted Audrey’s hand. She had strong, fulsome arms. ‘Look, there’s a wireless they’ll let us listen to, if we want. I didn’t like to ask for it while you were so poorly. But would you like it now? There might be some funnies on.’

  Audrey nodded. ‘Thanks.’ Very happy suddenly, she put her plate aside and snuggled down under the bedclothes. ‘That’d be lovely.’

  For the next couple of days there was no one in the women’s sick quarters except for Audrey and Dorrie and, in that time, a close friendship was born. Both of them had visits from WAAF friends, and Cora and Maggie both met Dorrie. The nurse brought the wireless in on a trolley almost as often as they liked and they listened to everything: the news reports, big-band shows and Lord Haw-Haw’s sinister voice. And above all they laughed: at the radio and at each other. On a couple of occasions they were laughing so much that the nurse came in and told them off.

  ‘You’re supposed to be ill!’ she said, though her own lips were twitching.

  Dorrie, who was by now feeling more energetic than Audrey, spent her time knitting a voluminous red jumper and writing her diary. Any time a nurse or anyone else came in, she hid it under the bedclothes.

  ‘I’ve always had a diary, more or less ever since I could write,’ she said. ‘Life wouldn’t be the same without writing everything down.’ She hugged the book to her chest. ‘I get a new one about twice a year – I’ve got heaps of them locked away at home.’

  ‘What on earth d’you write about?’ Audrey asked. She was still content to lie about, feeling limp, and not do anything much. Even the thought of writing exhausted her. She felt a pang of guilt: she had not sent a letter home for some time. Sylvia had written saying there had been a terrible raid and a friend of hers was living with them because she had been bombed out.

  ‘Just everything. What’s going on, what I feel about it, who says what.’ Dorrie held up the book. ‘All my life goes in here. Even you’ll probably go in here – in fact, I’m certain you will!’

  Audrey squinted at the label on the front. ‘That doesn’t say Dorrie. What’s your name?’

  Dorrie blushed and rolled her eyes again. ‘I’m afraid it’s Dorothea.’

  ‘Blimey,’ Audrey said. ‘I thought Dorrie was short for Doreen – it is, where I come from!’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind being called Doreen,’ Dorrie said seriously. ‘You can call me that, if you want.’

  ‘I’ll stick to Dorrie,’ Audrey said.

  They spent a lot of the day talking, in between meals and the naps that Audrey, especially, needed. And they talked well into the night, lying in the dark with no one else to disturb, sharing many details about their lives. Dorrie seemed fascinated by Birmingham and Audrey’s life there. Her own upbringing in High Wycombe she described as narrow and cheerless.

  ‘I was always the naughty one,’ Dorrie said, chuckling. ‘I had a little schoolmate called Jimmy, and
one summer holiday we got up very early, sneaked right out to the edge of town and rode the farm horses. We got one of them to stand up close to the fence – it was quite a tame old thing and we both managed to get on the same horse together. We plodded around on it for a bit. It was misty and the grass was soaking wet, so when we slid off him we got wet bottoms. And then we sneaked home again before anyone noticed. It was the best!’ She laughed, remembering.

  Audrey felt quite envious. It was hard to imagine living so near to the countryside. She told Dorrie the story of little Laurie Gould setting fire to the cutting bank, to get the fire brigade back.

  ‘You live by the railway – you lucky thing! I love trains. If I’d been a boy, I’d’ve gone to be an engine driver.’

  ‘Just like every other boy in the country,’ Audrey said.

  ‘Yes, but I would’ve done it. They just talk about it.’

  Dorrie said that her father had been appalled at the thought of her joining up. ‘Daddy’s view of women is that you go to school for a little while, so that you can help handle your husband’s correspondence and add up a bit and not look too much of a dumb cluck socially. He thinks women should all be like Dora Spenlow in David Copperfield – have you ever read it? You know, she just wants to hang around him and hold his pencils while he’s writing. She’s absolutely sickening. Daddy hates it when a woman thinks for herself and, if you disagree with him, dear God! You’d think the sky had fallen in. Mummy goes along with it and then secretly does what she thinks is right, which I think is ridiculous and just pandering to him. Anyway, I just can’t fit in with what they think I should be: a little married lady in another little married house. Oh no – thank God for the WAAF! What’s your mother like, Audrey?’

  ‘Mom? Oh, she’s all right,’ Audrey said. Thinking about it, she realized that her parents, while exasperated with her sometimes, had never tried to crush her. ‘Mom’s quite frightened of life, I think. I don’t think things were easy when she was young, and she’s very protective of us. My sister Sylvia’s much more timid and homely, but I’ve always been the tomboy one! But they’re all right. I miss them.’

  ‘No leave lately?’

  ‘None ever yet.’

  ‘What?’ Dorrie’s voice came through the darkness indignantly. ‘Not since you joined up? Well, you must be eligible for some soon. Don’t you want to go home?’

  ‘Yes,’ Audrey said. ‘I do.’ Thinking about it as she lay for hours in bed, she realized just how much she wanted to see everyone.

  Twenty-Three

  ‘Oh!’ Jack enthused when he came home from school to discover that Kitty was to stay with them. ‘Does this mean she’s going to make cake?’

  Kitty, who was at the table peeling potatoes, laughed merrily. ‘Of course I’ll make cake, if you like.’

  Everyone had gravitated towards the kitchen that afternoon. Even Jack was hanging about, sitting sideways in the armchair, his legs flung over one of the arms. Sylvia was amused to see that Jack could hardly take his eyes off Kitty. Now Kitty had had a wash and was dressed in her spare clothes, she was looking very neat and attractive. They all urged her to rest, but she was adamant that she was not sleepy and wanted to be as helpful as possible.

  ‘I managed to salvage my ration book, Mrs Whitehouse,’ she told Pauline. ‘And I’d be happy to shop for you whenever I can, if it helps.’

  ‘That’s nice of you,’ Pauline said. She was at the table chopping onions, tears pouring from her eyes. ‘That’d be a big help. Oh, these onions! It’s a miracle to have them, I know – I queued for three-quarters of an hour to get them, but they don’t half make me stream.’

  ‘Let me do it,’ Kitty offered. ‘I don’t mind.’ Sylvia smiled at her friend’s eagerness to please.

  ‘So, will you make chocolate cake?’ Jack persisted. ‘You did say you would.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Jacko!’ Sylvia said, pretending to lob a potato as him. ‘Poor Kitty has just lost her home and her father, and all you can think about is chocolate cake.’

  ‘I’ll have to go and buy a few clothes,’ Kitty said. ‘I did manage to find the little money that was in the house – Dad kept a bit of spare in the bureau at the front. Better I have it than someone comes in and sees what they can get.’

  ‘Well, it’s yours – your father’s anyway,’ Sylvia said.

  ‘I know,’ Kitty said, ‘but I still felt peculiar taking it.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘He was such a hard man. I wish . . .’ She shook her head, unable to get to the end of the sentence.

  ‘I’m sure we can find you a few things of Sylvia’s and Audrey’s,’ Mrs Whitehouse said. ‘To tide you over anyway.’

  ‘You’re so kind.’ Kitty looked round at them all with tearful eyes. ‘You already feel like a family to me. I never knew people could be so nice.’

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ Pauline said. ‘Everyone’s got to stick together, that we have.’

  As she spoke they heard the front door open.

  ‘Dad!’ Jack cried.

  Usually Ted came in calling, ‘Pauline?’ But today he came into the kitchen and just stood quietly at the doorway.

  ‘Hello, love,’ Pauline said. She wasn’t the sort to rush into her husband’s arms, but Sylvia could see the relief written all over her face.

  ‘You all right, Dad?’ For a moment Sylvia felt like crying as well. The night had been so awful and they were all exhausted.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he said quietly. His dark eyes took in the homely activity in the kitchen and he gave a tired smile.

  ‘I’m just boiling the kettle, love,’ Pauline said. ‘Ted, Kitty was bombed out last night. She’s going to be stopping with us for a bit.’

  ‘Bombed out?’ he said, standing straighter. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well, it was a bomb,’ Jack said.

  ‘Don’t be smart with me, lad,’ his father said.

  Kitty explained what had happened, and Sylvia could see that her father was affected by hearing her story.

  ‘It was a terrible night,’ he said, shaking his head. He looked at Pauline. ‘You heard about the tunnel at Fawley Grove?’ Sylvia’s mother looked at him, shaking her head. ‘Those poor souls, about a dozen of them. They took shelter in that tunnel under the railway – there was a direct hit.’

  ‘Oh, my word,’ Pauline said. They all stood, appalled.

  ‘You stay as long as you need to,’ Ted said to Kitty.

  ‘Go and sit down, love,’ his wife instructed. ‘You look all in. I’ll bring you your tea.’

  When Ian came round later, they all sat in the front room. Nearly all the talk was again of the previous night, of what had happened in different parts of the city. Ian was very sympathetic towards Kitty.

  ‘You poor girl,’ he said. ‘And I’m so sorry to hear you’ve lost your father.’

  Kitty became tearful again. ‘I still can’t quite take it in,’ she said. ‘I know I didn’t always see eye-to-eye with the old man. But no one should have to die like that.’

  Sylvia and Ian did manage a few minutes on their own that evening. Kitty took herself off to bed, saying she was all in, and they decamped to the kitchen again.

  ‘Well, here we are again,’ Sylvia joked. ‘When I think of courting, I’ll always think of the smells of onions and disinfectant.’

  Ian laughed. ‘I don’t care what it smells of – at least we have a chance to see each other,’ he said, pulling Sylvia close and kissing her hungrily. For a time they were wrapped up in each other, kissing and cuddling.

  ‘How long’s she staying for?’ Ian asked.

  ‘Kitty? I don’t know. She doesn’t seem to have any family apart from this old aunt.’

  ‘Well, I suppose she’ll have to go there in the end, won’t she? She can’t just stay with you forever.’

  ‘Why not?’ Sylvia said. ‘Anyway, I couldn’t really not invite her back here, could I? Not when she had nowhere else to go. Don’t you like her?’

  ‘Oh yes, she’s perfectly all
right. I was just thinking of your family. She’s in Audrey’s room – I don’t know what she’ll have to say, if she comes back.’

  ‘Well, she hasn’t as yet,’ Sylvia said, irritated that Audrey should be such a major consideration when she wasn’t even here.

  Sylvia felt very grateful to her mother and father for their kindness to Kitty. And Kitty was full of enthusiasm for the family and tried to be as helpful as she could at every turn. As the days passed, the girls travelled to Hockley together when they had the same shift pattern. Sylvia found she loved having Kitty living with them.

  ‘To tell you the truth, Audrey and I have never been close at all,’ she told Kitty one night, when they were both sitting in Audrey’s room. ‘I suppose we’re too different. I’ve always felt as if I’m in her shadow and,’ she made a comical grimace, ‘she’s ever so bossy!’

  Kitty was propped against the pillows, her knees under the eiderdown. Brandy the cat, which had taken a shine to Kitty, was on the bed, purring loudly as Kitty stroked her. Sylvia sank down onto the bed and started rubbing her hair with a towel.

  ‘I’d love to have had a sister,’ Kitty said wistfully.

  Sylvia straightened up and looked at her. She leaned over and touched Kitty’s hand. ‘Well, you’ve got one now – if you’ll have me.’

  Kitty looked moved. ‘Oh, Sylv, do you really mean it? That’s such a nice thing to say!’

  ‘Course I mean it,’ Sylvia said. Kitty’s new sorrows had made Sylvia feel even more tender towards her.

  ‘I feel so alone.’ Tears ran down Kitty’s face suddenly, though she quickly wiped them away. ‘But it’s so nice to be living here and being allowed to be part of your family for a little bit. Your Ian’s such a nice man as well.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sylvia said. ‘I’m ever so lucky, but . . .’ Her own colour rose as she found the confession slipping out. ‘Well, I love him, of course I do. And I’m so glad we’ll soon be married, even though I’m not sure about living with his family. But . . .’ Blushing heavily now, she said, ‘Ian is very – I mean, he wants to get married so that we can, you know, take things all the way. I don’t want . . . Well, it’s not that I don’t want it, but I think you should be married, and it’s too much of a risk. He gets very . . . Well, I suppose it’s frustrating for him.’