Meet Me Under the Clock

by Annie Murray

  ‘Ian, dear,’ she said, as he stopped in a dark spot along the path to kiss her again. She stopped him for a moment. ‘I – oh dear! This is awful. But I can’t seem to help what I feel for you . . .’

  ‘God, Kitty, I can’t get you out of my mind,’ Ian said fervently. ‘You’re just such a girl, a woman, I mean. Just the touch of you!’ He ran his hands down her sides, over the generous curve of her hips.

  ‘I know,’ Kitty made an anguished sound. ‘But I feel so badly about Sylvia. We can’t go on like this, deceiving her and carrying on behind her back. You’re getting married – it’s only a matter of weeks now! Her dress . . . all the arrangements.’

  Ian groaned and leaned his forehead against Kitty’s. ‘I know. I feel a complete heel. It’s caddish behaviour towards Sylvia, and I know it. But I’ve never met a girl like you before, Kitty, one who’s made me feel so completely . . . Oh!’ He flung his head back, ecstatically. ‘So free, and full of . . .’ He seized her hand and tugged it. ‘Full of joy and silliness. Come on – let’s dance!’ He seemed about to start twirling her round.

  ‘Ian!’ Kitty stopped him. What the hell was he playing at? She was full of the need to pin him down, to know that she would have him – if not now, then sometime soon. ‘Don’t, please. We must talk. This is terrible. We are both deceiving Sylvia, and she’s such a good person,’ she appealed to him, wondering if he could see her wide eyes in the darkness. She needed Ian to see her as a helpless innocent. ‘She’s been such a good friend to me.’ She put on her most imploring tone. ‘Taking me in after all my troubles. I wouldn’t want to hurt her for the world. Whatever we do, we can’t go on deceiving her. We’ll have to tell her the truth.’

  ‘I know,’ Ian said, immediately sobering down. They walked along together. ‘Sylvia will come round. She’s a good sort. I’d only make her unhappy in the long run, if we were to marry and find we weren’t suited. You have to go where your heart leads, don’t you? And my heart . . .’ He swept her into his arms again and kissed the end of her nose. ‘My heart leads very much to you, Kitty Barratt. You are the woman for me.’

  ‘Oh, Ian,’ Kitty said, her heart leaping with triumph and relief. Ian was the sort of man who would look after her: a professional man with a good job. He would devote himself to her. ‘You are so wonderful. And I know you’re definitely the man for me. The moment I saw you, I had that feeling – did you know, the way I did?’

  ‘No, my darling, I didn’t, but I do now. I certainly do.’

  Later in the night something woke Sylvia. She opened her eyes, suddenly wide awake, though she didn’t know why. All seemed quiet, but then . . . Was that a faint movement she could hear? Maybe it was Mom, or someone else, going to use the bathroom.

  She decided to go herself, to settle herself down. She got up, not bothering with slippers. On the landing she almost bashed straight into someone in the dark. Both of them exclaimed, with loud gasps.

  ‘Is that you, Kitty?’ Sylvia hissed. Whoever it was had grasped hold of her arm and smelled strongly of eau de cologne.

  ‘Yes,’ Kitty whispered.

  ‘God you made me jump!’ She could feel that Kitty was fully dressed. ‘What the hell’re you doing?’

  ‘I’ve just – look, come into my room a minute.’

  They crept into Audrey’s room and Kitty switched on the light. For a few moments they squinted at each other. Kitty was holding her shoes in her right hand, with her left clutching the two sides of her cardigan together as if to keep warm. She was all dolled up in something Sylvia had never seen before.

  ‘Oh dear, caught in the act!’ Kitty said. Sylvia could see that she was pink-cheeked and bright-eyed. ‘Naughty, naughty me, sneaking out . . .’ She put her shoes down quietly and turned to Sylvia with a coy expression. ‘Only Bill had another one-day leave and used it specially to come and see me – can you believe it! He’s being posted tomorrow and he doesn’t know where, the poor thing. Oh, Sylvia – it’s so awful, all this uncertainty. You’re so lucky that your feller is reserved.’

  She sank down on the side of the bed and tears welled in her eyes as she looked up at Sylvia, whose emotions were immediately ones of sympathy and sorrow. Poor Kitty – so many sad and difficult things seemed to happen to her. Sylvia sat on the bed beside her, her eyes full of concern. She didn’t even think to ask how Kitty had known that Bill had turned up so suddenly.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Kitty said. ‘You mustn’t stay up losing sleep over me. I’ll be all right in the morning. Only,’ she sounded tearful again, ‘I think I love Bill, and I’m going to miss him so much.’

  Twenty-Nine

  July 1941

  There would never be a day in the following months when Sylvia would not ask herself how she had missed the betrayal going on right under her nose.

  One ordinary July day Sylvia was on an early shift, barrowing loads as usual. A week of good weather had broken up into storms, and the Goods Yard was soaking wet and filthy with churned-up mud. Steam from the locomotives met the clouds as if they were long-lost relatives, and the smell of smuts and mud seemed more intense on the air.

  She worked away, enjoying the sense of power that she had now in her body. Her limbs had grown thicker and stronger and she felt at home in the place. Even Froggy Bainton had had to accept that the women could do their jobs and were not to be mocked.

  Kitty was on a late that day and their paths did not cross. Madge, whom Sylvia was working with, arrived at work with a shiner on her left eye and the ridge of her cheek badly swollen. Apart from muttering darkly about a disagreement with Tone, she scarcely said a word all day, which Sylvia found unnerving, but she was too scared to ask anything. It made for a long, silent shift, though.

  Teatime at home came and went without Kitty. They ate without her, as shifts and transport were all unpredictable.

  ‘They are working late tonight,’ Pauline remarked as eight o’clock came and went. They read and listened to the wireless. Ted rustled the paper and Pauline was unravelling an old grey jumper to knit up into something else. ‘I think I’ll do socks,’ she said to no one in particular.

  It wasn’t until much later that they really started to wonder.

  ‘Mom, she didn’t come in earlier and just fall asleep, did she?’ Sylvia said, as the clock hands were inching towards ten-thirty.

  ‘I never heard her come in,’ her mother said. ‘But I s’pose she might’ve done. It’s a bit late now – don’t wake her, if she’s fast asleep.’

  ‘I’ll just check,’ Sylvia said, getting up with a yawn. She was already undressed for bed and padded upstairs in her slippers.

  She slid open the door of Kitty’s room and listened, not liking to switch on the light. Was that breathing she could hear? The clock was ticking loudly on the chest of drawers. Moving to the bed, she gently ran a hand along it. The mattress was cold and unoccupied.

  Once she had turned on the light, it took her moments to make sense of what she saw. The bed was empty, as she had half-expected. But so was the chair and the chest of drawers, other than the few things Audrey had left. Kitty’s usual chaotic mess of stockings and shoes was not there. The floor was eerily clear. Frowning, Sylvia went to the cupboard and looked inside. There was nothing there except Audrey’s few things.

  Her heart started pounding. This made no sense. Had Kitty been kidnapped, spirited away in some fashion under their noses? Or was it something to do with Joe Whelan and all that trouble?

  ‘Mom!’ She ran downstairs, not caring whether she woke Jack, and burst into the front room. ‘She’s not there. Kitty, she’s gone, and so have all her things.’

  It was not until the next day that they understood the true situation. That night they agonized about telling the police about Kitty’s disappearance, but decided against it.

  ‘The wench has packed her bags and gone,’ Ted pointed out. ‘What’re they supposed to say about that?’

  Pauline’s face was pinched tight with worry. ‘It seems so unl
ike her,’ she said, pulling her dressing gown tightly around her. ‘Why would she leave like that, all of a sudden, without saying goodbye? So peculiar – and she’s usually a good-mannered sort of person. I hope she’s not in trouble.’

  Sylvia remembered the night she had met Kitty creeping in up the stairs. ‘I wonder if it’s to do with that soldier she met – Bill. She seems very keen on him, and she’s been writing to him. Maybe he came back suddenly . . .’

  ‘All the same,’ Pauline said, sounding annoyed now. ‘After staying here so long, rent-free and the lot, you’d think she might’ve thought to say goodbye before she went off. I’d’ve thought the girl had better manners.’

  It did seem very strange for Kitty to leave without a word of thanks or explanation, and none of them could make the least sense of it. Sylvia barely slept. She lay tensed, listening for the sound of Kitty creeping back in. She racked her brains for an explanation and realized, as she did so, that there were a lot of things she didn’t know about Kitty. Far too many things, in fact.

  When Sylvia got home after her shift the next afternoon she had barely got into the house when her mother came out of the back room. Sylvia could see at once that there was something badly wrong. Pauline, who almost never cried, had been crying.

  ‘Mom, what’s the matter?’ Sylvia threw her jacket onto a hook and went to her mother immediately. ‘Is there news? Is it Dad, or Kitty? What’s happened?’

  Jack was at home after school and even he looked very solemn.

  ‘Go and feed the animals, love,’ their mother said to him. ‘While I speak to Sylvia.’

  They went into the back room and Pauline said gently, almost as if she was talking to a vase that might crack in two, ‘Sit down, bab. I’ve got some news to tell you, and . . . Well, to tell you the truth, I can hardly bring myself to say it.’

  Sylvia sat numbly, staring at her. She laid her suddenly clammy hands on the dusty black knees of her work trousers. Her mother sat on the chair beside her.

  ‘God, Mom, what’s happened?’

  ‘Mrs Westley came round here this morning,’ Pauline began. Her eyes searched her daughter’s for any clue that Sylvia might guess what she was about to hear, but she looked utterly bewildered. ‘I’ll just have to come out with it.’ Her mother spoke in a rush now, as if to get it over. ‘When they got up this morning, Ian wasn’t at home. They found a note from him saying that he had gone away and that, by the time he came back, he would be married to someone they had never even heard of . . .’ Pauline hesitated, ‘called Kitty Barratt.’

  Sylvia heard a cry forced out from between her lips, a yelp of pain, though her mind had barely even registered what her mother was telling her. Her chest felt as if there were tight ropes round it.

  ‘Married?’ Her voice sounded high and squeezed. ‘Kitty?’

  Her mother nodded slowly. ‘I’ve been trying to take it in ever since. So has Ian’s mother, for that matter. She seemed furious with me, as if I’d set all this up. “Who is this person he’s run off with?” she said. And I had to tell her who Kitty is – not that I know really. But Ian, I mean . . .’ She stopped, out of words. ‘How did this happen? How could he – a stick-in-the-mud sort like him? I just can’t believe it.’

  Sylvia swallowed. She felt as if her head was full of loudly rushing water that was drowning out her thoughts. All the things she thought she knew and hoped for were jumbled up together, overturning, as if her life was washing over an enormous waterfall. She and Ian were to be married, in just a few days’ time . . .

  ‘Is this true? How can it be true?’ She got up and hurried across the room as if there was something she could do to make it not be true, and reaching the door, realized there wasn’t. She rushed back to her mother and knelt down in front of her, her eyes full of anguish.

  ‘What are you telling me? I’m marrying Ian! We’re getting married . . . He’s my . . . We –’ She broke into distraught weeping and her mother reached forward and wrapped her arms round her daughter’s shoulders.

  ‘My poor babby. Look, come and sit up here . . .’ With tears running down her own cheeks, Pauline took Sylvia’s hand and pulled her sobbing daughter onto her lap as if she was a little child again. ‘My poor, poor girl,’ she said. ‘I can’t take it in, either, but that’s what Mrs Westley said. Of course she’s terribly upset as well, that Ian—’

  ‘But Ian wouldn’t do that!’ Sylvia insisted, sitting upright again. ‘He wouldn’t. He’s a proper person, a decent man. He’s mine. He just wouldn’t.’ She looked at her mother. ‘The note. Did she . . . ?’

  ‘She didn’t show me, no,’ Pauline said. ‘She said that he was full of apologies to everyone that we were all making arrangements, and that we’d feel put out and disappointed, but that he’d decided he’d got to do this and “follow his heart”.’ She quoted these words bitterly. ‘He said he was very sorry to hurt you, and that he feels a coward for not telling you face-to-face . . .’

  ‘He is! He’s a coward. A horrible, low-down—’ Sylvia cried. ‘And her, what about her? She’s run off with him – has she really?’ Even now, with the memory of Kitty’s sweet, winning face before her, she could not believe it. How had this happened? Then she thought of Kitty creeping up the stairs that night. She had said she went to meet that man Bill. But had that all been lies? Surely Kitty had not been with Ian that night? She put her head down, sobbing. It was all too much to take in.

  ‘I can’t imagine what he’s thinking of – or her. It’s beyond me, really it is,’ Pauline said. She looked completely drained.

  ‘Audrey.’ Sylvia spoke through her tears. ‘She said not to trust Kitty, and I thought she was just being silly. That she was jealous or something. How could Audrey see it, and not me? Why am I so blind?’ She got up, stunned, to move from her mother’s lap to another chair where she sank down. She put her head in her hands. ‘I thought they were my two best friends,’ she said.

  Pauline got up, her movements slow, as if she was in pain. ‘I’ll make us some tea,’ she said, with a despairing shake of her head. ‘I’m sorry, bab. I’m sorry to have to tell you, and I’m even more than sorry it’s happened.’

  ‘My best friend,’ Sylvia said slowly, ‘and my fiancé.’ She still sat, grounded by shock, as her mother went out to the kitchen. ‘Kitty and Ian. Ian and Kitty.’ She sat whispering it again and again as the bitter truth of it began to sink in.

  Thirty

  Audrey came striding across the camp at RAF Cardington, chatting with a group of other young women who were training on the balloons with her. All dressed in heavy blue overalls, they had spent most of the day in the old R101 hangar, learning preliminary skills before being let loose on sending up the barrage balloons outside. Today they had spent learning how to splice ropes and disentangle and organize the ropes and wires from which the balloons were suspended and guided into position. Audrey’s hands were covered in cuts from the wires, her shoulders ached from turning the winch and her back from bending and straightening and pulling on ropes, but she would not have exchanged her new job for anything.

  ‘Last one to the NAAFI’s a cissy!’ one of the other girls cried.

  They all started to run, shrieking and clomping along in their heavy boots, in search of tea and bread and butter. Audrey joined in, already fond of this solid, energetic group of women. At least two of them had grown up on farms. It was all so much better than being in the office. Audrey loved being out in the open air and wearing clothes that made moving about easy and made her feel strong and competent. It was summer time, the sun was shining and life felt very good.

  As they neared the NAAFI she heard a low, familiar whistle and looked round. Dorrie, just coming off shift herself, was waiting, her eyes alight with amusement. Audrey left the other WAAFs, who were gambolling towards their well-deserved tea, and went over to her.

  ‘What the hell’s so funny?’ she asked. But she was happy to see Dorrie. The sight of her always did Audrey good.

  ‘I jus
t can’t get used to you in that get-up,’ Dorrie said. ‘You do look fully operational.’

  Audrey wagged a finger at her and put on an earnest voice. ‘“I’ll have you know, each one of those balloons is three times the size of a cricket pitch.” According to our new instructor, Sergeant Reynolds, who takes it all very seriously.’

  Dorrie spluttered with laughter again. ‘Lucky old you. Here, look.’ She drew some envelopes out from under her arm. ‘I collected the post. There are two for you.’

  ‘Two? Oh, ta!’ Audrey took them, staring curiously at the envelopes. She sighed at the sight of the small, precise handwriting on one. ‘Oh dear, Hamish again. And whose is this writing – oh, it’s Mom’s. That’s a turn-up for the books! She must be missing me.’

  She saved Hamish’s envelope for later and ambled towards the NAAFI in the sunshine, opening her mother’s letter.

  ‘I’ll get the tea,’ Dorrie said.

  Audrey found a space to sit among the chattering WAAFs, all downing tea and slices of bread and margarine. But she was soon oblivious of them, lost in the world of her mother’s letter. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got bad news to tell you,’ it said, in Pauline’s looped hand:

  It’s about Sylvia. She’s in a very bad state. That Kitty Barratt and Ian have done the dirty on her and run off together. They’re supposedly getting married! We still can’t really take it in. I don’t know what to say to comfort her. The wedding’s off, of course, but I hope you’ll still come home, Aud. It would do her good to see you.

  Mom wasn’t much of a letter-writer because in normal times she seldom needed to write to anyone. She mentioned that Dad and Jack were going along all right and that Marjorie Gould was bearing up. ‘She misses Laurie, of course. But she thinks he’s safe, being in Canada. I hope she’s right.’ She ended, ‘Take good care of yourself. Come home, won’t you? Love, Mom.’