Cousins at War

by Doris Davidson

‘There aren’t, that’s what was so funny, and the storeman played along with Crookie. He sent Harry to ask the foreman for a long stand and promised to have the screwdriver looked out when he came back.’

  ‘What do they use a long stand for?’

  ‘Och, Mum, you’re as ignorant as Harry. He stood for about half an hour beside the foreman before it dawned on him they were making a fool of him, but he took it in good part. All new apprentices have to put up with things like that.’

  ‘I don’t think it was very nice of the men to do that.’

  ‘It’s just for a laugh, Mum.’

  ‘Taking the rise out of a young boy doesn’t sound much of a laugh to me, and I’m not sure if that’s a decent place for you to be working. I just hope the men don’t teach you any more bad language.’

  ‘Ach, Mum!’

  Neil’s lunch break lasting only three-quarters of an hour, he had to go back to work before Patsy and Joe came in at one, but Gracie recounted the incident to them and was quite put out when Joe roared with laughter. Patsy, like herself, was sorry for Harry, although her father told them it was the usual practice for time-served tradesmen to play pranks on new apprentices.

  ‘I’ll never understand men’s mentality,’ Gracie declared, making Joe laugh even louder.

  Neil was not in a good mood when he came home for lunch at twelve, two days later. Gracie took one look at his lowering brows and said, ‘What’s wrong with you? Were you at the end of the teasing today? Now you’ll know what it feels like.’

  ‘It wasn’t anything like that. It’s Olive. She was waiting for me when I came out, and she was determined to walk home with me, though I told her to get lost.’

  ‘I told you not to be nasty to her, Neil.’

  ‘It didn’t bother her. I wouldn’t let her put her arm in mine though she tried to, but the lads were all laughing at me for walking up the road with a schoolgirl, and I bet I’ll get a right earful when I go back.’

  ‘She’ll not bother you again if you’ve upset her.’

  ‘She’d better not!’ Neil said, darkly. He’d been mortified to see the bottle-green clad figure waiting for him outside the yard. ‘She looked like a top-heavy cucumber with feet,’ he spat out in disgust.

  When Patsy came in, she was so excited about her promotion from office girl to junior typist that Gracie said nothing to Joe about Neil’s upset, but she worried all afternoon in case Olive was getting too fond of him. He wouldn’t find it easy to brush her off, and she might cause trouble.

  At teatime, Neil cuffed his sister lightly on the cheek when he heard her news. ‘Good for you. You’ll soon be in charge of that office.’

  Anxious to know what had transpired after the interlude at lunchtime, Gracie asked him, ‘Did anybody say anything when you went back?’

  His face split into a grin. ‘Nothing I wasn’t expecting. I just laughed when they said I was cradle snatching, and they soon got tired of tormenting me.’

  ‘Aye,’ she agreed. ‘That was the best thing to do.’

  Joe and Patsy were loud in condemnation of Olive when they learned what she had done, but Neil said, ‘I was rattled at the time, but I’ve cooled off now, and I don’t think she’ll come back. It’s the first time she’s seen me in my dungers, and the look on her face was enough to make a cat laugh. Her nose crinkled up like she’d touched a dollop of shit.’

  Joe slapped his thigh in glee. ‘Olive’s easy scunnered if she can’t stand the smell of a wee bit grease. You should be glad she came, if it put her off you.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking myself,’ Neil laughed.

  ‘You haven’t washed your hands yet,’ Gracie reminded him. ‘I’m not wanting oil all over the tablecloth.’ She, too, was glad that Olive had been ‘scunnered’. She had often moaned herself about having to wash Neil’s dungarees and how long they took to dry, but not any more.

  Olive was disgruntled. Neil had made it quite clear that he wasn’t pleased to see her, and it had been a mistake to go, in more ways than one. She shouldn’t have worn her uniform; he had been embarrassed that his workmates – horrible dirty men who had leered into her face – were seeing him with a schoolgirl; and worse, he wasn’t so handsome when his face was all streaked with grease. She had been nauseated by his filthy overalls when she tried to slip her arm through his, and had been relieved when he shook her off. She would have to insist that he changed his job before they were married, because she couldn’t face having a mechanic for a husband. It would be much too degrading.

  The thought of him being her husband cheered her up. If he had a white collar job, it would be sheer heaven to wait for him coming home each night, to let him take her in his arms and kiss her, to have his soft hands running over her body. Absolute bliss! And she was sure it would come to pass, some day. She would just have to figure out another way to get him on his own before she could start working on him.

  Furious at the butcher – meat rationing had been introduced on 11 March – Gracie took it out on her husband. ‘It’s all a trick, if you ask me. One and three-quarters pounds per person per week, he said, but I need something for a dinner and a supper every day. Then he’d the cheek to say we’ll get nothing but mutton or rabbit for a wee while.’

  Neil screwed up his face. ‘Not mutton? Yeugh!’

  ‘Things are getting tight,’ Joe said, cautiously.

  Gracie was not appeased. ‘What right have the Ministry of Food to tell folk what they can and can’t eat? How can wives feed a family on what they’re allowed? It’s like the loaves and fishes all over again. If this war goes on much longer, we’ll all be skeletons.’

  ‘It’s a good way to keep slim,’ Patsy smiled, ‘and there’s always plenty of tatties.’

  Gracie tutted. ‘They used to say tatties were fattening, and now they’re telling us they’re good for you. They just say what they like.’

  After tidying up, Gracie vented her anger on the balaclava she was knitting for the ‘Comforts for the Troops’ campaign, her needles flashing in and out as fast as the needle of her mother’s Jones sewing machine. It was very old, marked ‘By appointment to Her Majesty Queen Alexandra’, but still worked as good as new. She had turned a pair of sheets yesterday, splitting them up the middle where they were worn thin and stitching the side edges together.

  By May, Gracie was even more angry at the Ministry of Food. ‘It said on the wireless that the sugar ration’s to be cut, and the butter’s to be halved.’

  Joe rolled his eyes. ‘You don’t need to tell me. It’s bad enough just now having to explain to folk that money doesn’t matter these days, without the rations being cut down. How will old wives understand they can only get half a pound of sugar and a quarter of butter, when they see I’ve got more in the shop? And it’s not just food. They’ve to contend with other things as well. I was sorry for one poor old soul this afternoon. She must be over eighty, and she’d been caught in that crowd that wrecked Mosely’s meeting at the Castlegate. She was in a real state, she thought the Jerries had come.’

  ‘That Mosely!’ Gracie exclaimed. ‘Him and his blackshirts, they’re just din-raisers.’

  ‘Aye, you’re right there.’ Her husband was pleased that he had taken her mind off the cut in the rations. He had to put up with his customers moaning at him all day, and he wanted peace and quiet to read the evening paper when he came home. He lifted his head and smiled when Patsy walked in, but his peace was shattered when Neil appeared minutes later.

  ‘I want to join up,’ Neil told him, ‘but I’ve to get your permission, Dad.’

  Joe’s eyes darkened. ‘Well, you’re not getting it.’

  Gracie, halting in the act of dishing up the supper, came over to the table with the serving spoon in her hand. ‘Neil, what are you thinking about? You can’t join up. You’ve still to finish your apprenticeship.’

  ‘I could finish it in the army.’

  Joe thumped the table with his fist. ‘You’re not going in the army, and that’s fin
al.’

  ‘I’ll be called up in a year or so, anyway,’ Neil pointed out, indignantly, ‘so what’s the difference?’

  ‘You’ve just said it,’ Joe thundered. ‘A year or two. The war could be over by that time and you wouldn’t need to go.’

  ‘I want to go!’ Neil roared.

  Putting her hand on her brother’s arm, Patsy said softly, ‘Calm down, Neil. You’ll never get anywhere shouting at Dad like that. Why don’t you finish your apprenticeship first, then see how you feel about joining up?’

  He turned to her earnestly. ‘All my pals are in the forces already, the last one signed up today, and I want to do my bit too.’

  ‘I know how you must feel,’ Patsy sympathised, ‘but think of Mum and Dad.’

  ‘It’s them I was thinking of, them and all the other mums and dads. The army needs young men like me.’ He looked at his father again. ‘Once I’m eighteen, I won’t need your permission.’

  The determination on his face made his mother’s heart turn over, and Joe muttered, ‘If you still feel the same way when November comes, I won’t try to talk you out of it, but I’d like you to think it over carefully before that. The wartime army’s not a bed of roses, no matter how exciting you think it’ll be. Ask any old soldier from the last time.’

  Aware that his father was meeting him halfway, Neil said, ‘I’m sorry I flew off the handle at you, and I promise to think it over, but I’m sure I’ll still feel the same in November.’

  When she learned that Neil was intending to join up when he was eighteen, Olive made up her mind to put more pressure on him. She couldn’t let him get away without giving her some guarantee that he’d come back to her. Once he was in the army, he’d be out of her control, and she wouldn’t know what he was getting up to. Surely she could make him fall in love with her in six months? The problem was . . . how?

  Chapter Two

  In June, the newspapers and wireless reported the evacuation of Dunkirk, the last British troops leaving from Cherbourg, as the Press and Journal stated on 1 July. Most of the 51st Scottish Division, however, were left behind to fight a rearguard action and were taken prisoner. This was a bitter blow to Aberdeen, the home of the Gordon Highlanders. It was the first real indication that the war was not running well for Britain. There had been several air raids in the city, of course, but the 612 Squadron from Dyce usually managed to divert the enemy bombers before they reached the coast, and the Aberdonians had had a false sense of security. Now most families had or knew someone who had escaped from, or been lost at, Dunkirk or who was a prisoner in the enemy’s hands and the war was affecting the citizens for the first time.

  Gracie Ferris was deeply thankful that Joe had refused to give his permission for their son to join up when he wanted to. ‘Neil could have been one of the men that were killed on the beaches if you’d let him go,’ she said one night.

  ‘He wouldn’t have finished his infantry training yet,’ her husband told her, ‘and maybe this business’ll have made him think twice about going.’

  On 9 July, the headlines – with the intention, no doubt, of giving hope, but actually giving rise to renewed fears in all minds – screamed MEN OF DUNKIRK RE-EQUIPPED – READY FOR BATTLE OF BRITAIN. Gracie, positive that Neil had seen sense about volunteering, was more upset that the government was speaking about taking all garden railings to make munitions, although there were no railings in her part of King Street. ‘It’s interfering with people’s privacy,’ she said to Joe.

  ‘They wouldn’t be left alive to enjoy any privacy if there was no munitions,’ he reminded her. ‘There’s word of Hitler going to start an invasion.’

  Joe rushed in one lunchtime a few days later brandishing the Press and Journal he had bought that morning. ‘Listen to this, Gracie. It says, IF THIS IS DER TAG, WE’RE READY.’

  ‘Der tag?’ Gracie looked perplexed.

  ‘German for “the day”,’ he explained. ‘It means that we’re ready for the invasion if this is the day, and they say the rumours about 600,000 invaders coming are just moonshine.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that. Now, when are you giving me the extra two pounds of sugar we’re supposed to get for making jam? I could maybe get berries from the Green on Friday.’

  Shaking his head, Joe muttered, ‘Do you not have anything in your head at all except your stomach?’

  On 12 July, a gorgeously warm day, Neil was using a wire brush to clean the plugs of an Albion when he heard a crump-crump sound as if bombs had fallen some distance off. Hardly able to believe that the enemy would attack in the middle of the day, he turned and looked uncertainly at the time-served mechanics who seemed to be as nonplussed as he was. ‘What’s happened to our Spitties?’ one of them asked, of nobody in particular, and another man answered, ‘I bet they’re chasing the Jerries back now.’

  In the next instant, the scream of descending bombs made them fling themselves down on the cement floor just as the explosions came, in quick succession and so close that Neil could feel the workshop floor reverberating under him.

  When the next series of bombs fell, they seemed to be much farther away, so he sat up – his teeth chattering, his body aching from being gripped in to make a smaller target – and gave a low, slightly hysterical giggle at his own stupidity. His legs were shaking as he got up, and he hoped that no one saw him when he leaned against the lorry for a moment. This was no way for a future soldier to behave.

  Patsy crossed King Street, walked down Mealmarket Street, up Littlejohn Street and down Upperkirkgate, going slowly to get the benefit of the sunshine. She heard a few bangs, but as she wasn’t far from a munitions factory, she assumed that something must have gone off accidentally and she carried on up Schoolhill. When she came to the gate to the ‘Trainie Park’ as her father called the Union Terrace Gardens, she thought of going down the steps and walking along the paths to her office, but a glance at her watch told her that she didn’t have time, so she cut through the slip road past the statue of William Wallace as she normally did. She was turning into Union Terrace when an aeroplane, flying very low, appeared from nowhere. One of ours, she thought, and didn’t halt, but a loud, staccato burst of machine-gun fire made her stop in her tracks, the red-hot tracer bullets dancing along the pavement only inches away from her.

  ‘Get doon! It’s a bloody Jerry!’ The man’s yell came from behind her, and a shove in the small of her back knocked her to the ground. When she got her breath back, she saw that a tramcar had pulled up between stops, and that the passengers had all jumped off and were running to shelter in a shop at the other side of the street.

  In a minute or so, the man at her back shouted, ‘Look! The Spitfires are efter him.’ Feeling safer now that the German pilot’s attention was fully occupied in trying to save his own skin, they stood up to watch, and people came running out of shops and offices to see the toy-like planes darting back and forth beside the bomber, forcing it away from the area, an area congested with people in the busy lunch hour.

  A great, triumphant shout arose from massed throats. ‘He’s going down! He’s down! They’ve got him!’

  The whole incident had taken less than five minutes, but it was something that Patsy – and all the other people there – would never forget, and when the quiet voice spoke beside her, she was startled. ‘I hope you werena hurt when I shoved you, but you coulda been killed, you ken.’

  Turning round, she saw him for the first time – a slight, short, oldish man with glasses, in white overalls splattered with all the colours of the rainbow. A painter, she thought, in wry amusement. She’d been saved from death by a painter. ‘I didn’t really take in what was going on, and I’m glad you pushed me down. Thanks very much.’

  He grinned at her. ‘Nae bother, lassie. Now, are you sure you’re OK? Hiv you far to go?’

  ‘Just along there a wee bit, at the other side.’

  ‘So long, then, it’s been nice meetin’ you.’ Tipping his cloth cap, he walked away, whistling.

&n
bsp; She had to smile at his matter-of-factness after the drama they had witnessed, but she dusted down her skirt with her hands before finishing her journey, her wobbling legs soon regaining strength. The other watchers dispersed, too, still talking excitedly – as they would for years to come to those who would listen – about their hair-raising experience.

  When she heard the noise of bombs exploding, fortunately not too close, Hetty Potter’s first concern was for her husband, who worked in the centre of town. Her children had gone on a picnic to Hazlehead Park on the outskirts of town, and would be well away from any enemy activity – or so she believed.

  Raymond was barely inside the house when he burst out, ‘Me and Olive had to dodge among the trees at Hazlehead or else we’d have been machine-gunned.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ Hetty gasped, then looked sceptical. ‘It’s not true. You’re just trying to give me a fright.’

  ‘It is true, Mum,’ Olive said quietly, ‘and when we were coming home on the tram, we heard men telling the conductor that they worked in the nurseries at Pinewood, and they had to jump over a dyke to save themselves.’

  The Pinewood nurseries, where young trees and shrubs were cultivated for selling, were situated just behind the Park, so Hetty realised that her children were telling the truth, and she sat down with a thump, her face chalk-white. ‘You should have come home right away. I thought you were safe, but . . .’ She wrung her hands in agitation.

  ‘Mum, we’re OK,’ Olive assured her, ‘and it was all over in a few minutes.’

  Raymond grinned. ‘It was kind of exciting while it lasted though, and I don’t think he was aiming at us anyway.’

  On tenterhooks until Martin came home, Hetty flew into his arms as soon as he appeared. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he assured her, ‘but a lot of men were killed at Hall Russell’s. The boiler room got a direct hit. I’d an appointment to see one of the directors at four, to explain some of the legal jargon on a contract they have from the War Ministry for some naval boats, and I didn’t know they’d been bombed. When I got there it was absolute pandemonium.’