by Maggie Ford
Susan’s hand moved, caressing, not sensuously but possessively, claiming him as her own, reassuring herself of his nearness. The touch brought him back to reality. In the morning he must leave her, go back to the army that had first claim on him.
He stared up at the ceiling, an intense hatred seething inside him of those who could push him this way and that, a puppet manipulated by the strings pulled by some faceless power that had for this one day allowed the strings to dangle and leave him thinking himself free, only to pluck him up in the midst of his happiness to bend him again to obedience. One small jerk on a thread could tug him from this girl he had made his wife; another thread jerked would send him headlong into battle to fight not for his own life but for a continuance of a way of life. And if he should fall, the strings would be severed and he, like the toy he was, would be cast aside, the war going on without him, the peace when it came not for him to see.
Today he had been shown something so sweet, so wonderful; to have it all snatched away now came like a bitter taste in his mouth.
He sat up abruptly, went over and fumbled in the breast pocket of his battle blouse for a cigarette to calm his thoughts. At least moving about had dulled that sensation of panic he had felt. Susan had gone back to sleep. That was if she had woken at all: her hand on his thigh had likely been a purely instinctive gesture. He sat on the edge of the bed and watched her contented slumber. Susan lived for the day. She bent with the breeze, like a slender sapling and harboured no thoughts she couldn’t understand. He envied her contentment.
Lethargically, he stubbed out the butt of his cigarette in the ashtray on the round cane table by the bed. The small stab of heat scorched his finger and thumb, making him draw in a hiss of breath. Susan stirred, rolled over on to her side and laid a loving hand on his arm.
‘Happy, darling?’
‘Uh-huh.’
His reply was purely automatic. He wasn’t happy. Their marriage, hardly off the ground, could be cut short within hours.
Her hand began to travel, conveying its own message. Arresting its journey with his own, he held it in a firm grip for a moment, then casting away the dismal thoughts, fell back on the bed and turned until he lay over her.
‘You’re a little pig,’ he told her, masking that earlier anger with a deep-throated chuckle. ‘You’re a greedy little pig.’
It made her giggle. She fought him as he took command, but only for a moment or two, and it was really she with her gentle resistance who commanded.
Loving her took away the last of his anger and yet this time he took her as a starving man might devour a morsel of bread lest it be snatched from him. And it was a terrified love that burned in his breast.
Chapter 12
‘You’re going through with it this time then.’
‘I owe it to her.’ Matthew stared blankly at the dartboard at which they were playing in one corner of the little hut where the NAAFI served refreshments to the ranks.
Bob Howlett grunted and launched his three darts at the board in quick succession, adding up his score as the last one embedded itself in the cork surface. ‘Fifty-six. Leaves me double seven.’ Retrieving his darts, he stood back, allowing Matthew to take his turn.
Matthew fixed his sight along the line of flight. ‘How can I let her exist on a corporal’s pay when I could see her more comfortable on an officer’s?’
He sent the first dart on its way as though at an enemy. Twenty. All he needed now was a double six to finish, winning him the game and a free cup of coffee from Bob. But he was keyed up. This morning he’d had an interview with the CO, who promised to put his name forward. He’d hear in a couple of weeks, and depending on the selection board he would be sent off to OCTU for that pip on the shoulder that meant better pay and a lot more allowances for Susan. It meant leaving his best mate behind, but Susan’s well-being took precedence over all else.
Ever since their marriage last month she had been worrying about that bloody trust that had come his way. Yes, he could have dipped into it, and yes, they could be living well, but there was after the war to think of. After the war he’d have to get himself a job, and if tales of the last war were anything to go on, getting a job with thousands piling out of the forces could take months, maybe years. That trust would be needed to stand them in good stead while he hunted. Oggle-eyed at the idea of five thousand pounds, Susan naturally hadn’t been able to see beyond the end of her nose. It was up to him to think ahead for both of them, and a pip on his shoulder, perhaps two in time, would keep her better contented until the war was over.
Bringing his thoughts back to the game, he licked his lips and took aim for the double six, the narrow area between the twin wire rings looking narrow indeed on the right-hand side of the circular board. With a dull thud the dart landed squarely in the single six. Matthew swore while Bob grinned.
‘Double three you want,’ he blared in triumph. If the last dart landed in the single three section, one-double-one was the only place left to go, the most awkward of scores well named as being up in the madhouse. Bob would surely make his double seven first and the buying of the coffee would be down to Matthew instead, though it was the winning that mattered most.
Balancing his weight on the ball of his right foot, he took aim, let fly. The steel point landed neatly between the parallel wires of the double six as though put there by hand.
‘Yes!’ he exploded. Susan, his interview with his CO, his ambitions for a commission for the moment forgotten. ‘A cuppa you owe me, Howlett.’
Gathering up their darts they made their way to the tea bar. Sipping hot camp coffee in a haze of cigarette smoke, Bob asked casually, ‘Did your Susan ask you to put in for an interview then?’
‘No, it was my idea.’ To avoid Bob’s eyes, he gazed around the white painted walls of the NAAFI hut, the corner with the dartboard now taken over by others. At a battered old piano, a group of RAOCs were trying hopelessly to harmonise. I’ll be with you in apple blossom time, I’ll be with you to change your name to mine … Mouths hung open, cigarettes burned away in tin ashtrays. Some day in May, I’ll come and say, happy the bride the sun shines on today …
‘I’ll miss you, y’know, Matt.’
Matthew wrenched his attention back to Bob. ‘No you won’t.’
‘Balls!’
‘Well, I suppose I’ll miss you too, but I don’t think I’ll miss any of the others.’
Bob was contemplating the sticky black sludge at the bottom of the thick, straight-sided cup he held as though expecting to see a gold nugget lying there. ‘Them too, I expect.’
‘Certainly not muck like Farrell.’ The man with his coarse turn of phrase had always made a point of taunting Matthew and Bob as snot-nosed college boys, a jumped-up pair of pricks, fairies, a couple of queers, and had more than once referred to Susan, whom he had never seen, as an easy bit of skirt until Matthew once almost punched him. Bob had leapt in and pacified him with the assurance that Farrell wasn’t worth wasting the skin of his knuckles for.
Bob gave a small, sagacious smile. ‘You’ll meet muck wherever you go, in all walks of life. Muck isn’t reserved entirely for the ranks, old son.’
They fell silent while across the groups of square tables the singing floated. Church bells will chime, you will be mine …
‘Anyway,’ he said as they left the hut, ‘Susan will be pleased if I get a commission.’
Monday morning, six thirty, October rain coming down in buckets marking the tag-end of summer. Matthew trudged from the bus stop to the main gate of the camp. ‘Ye gods – what a morning.’
The collar of his greatcoat wet against his neck, he thought of the cosy flat he’d left behind as he displayed his pass for inspection. Last night he and Susan had snuggled up together, the curtains drawn while rain spattered unseen on the window panes. She would be getting up now, getting ready for work. Every morning until next Sunday when he, hopefully, would be back with her, granted a sleeping-out pass. He supposed he could count him
self lucky. Most could only dream of their wives far away.
She’d been over the moon when he had told her about his name being put forward for a commission. She’d squealed in delight and clasped him to her and they had made ecstatic love. But the weeks had dragged on with nothing more heard. He’d seen his CO, Major Deeks, again, who had said that the wheels of Army protocol turned rather slowly sometimes but he would hear eventually and not to worry. Matthew had nodded and come away, visualising his name lying on some desk at the bottom of a pile of others.
Men were moving about the parade ground. The rain brought up the smell of wet tarmac. Matthew straightened and threw up a salute to a couple of officers as he passed them. They barely glanced at him, swagger sticks in gloved hands half lifted to their caps as they walked on in deep conversation. Elegant, relaxed, the rain seemed hardly to touch them whereas it pelted with malicious glee on other ranks. How long before he would saunter past some poor bloody corporal, hardly noticing him as he returned the stiff salute with a casual lift of a swagger stick? If he was accepted, that was. Depressed by the weather, he couldn’t see it ever happening.
Bob was waiting for him inside the mess hall as Matthew pushed his way in. The place echoed to the bass babble of men’s conversation, the rattle of crockery and scrape of cutlery across plates. His nostrils were assailed by the clogging odour of cooking grease and the sharp tang of burned bacon over which hung the faint reek of the fish from yesterday’s dinner.
Soaked from his own dash to the hall, Bob looked like a very thin Great Dane that had been doused by a bucket of water, his long face drooping. Matthew immediately felt for him. He could only have received some bad news, perhaps from home. Had something evil happened to Bob’s wife, his children, his parents? Matthew hurried up to him.
‘Something wrong?’
Bob’s expression didn’t alter. ‘Can you stand a shock this time of the morning?’
So it wasn’t bad news – not that bad anyway. Matthew grinned with relief for his mate. ‘Fire away.’
‘We’re moving out. The whole unit.’
Matthew gazed up at the pale grey eyes. Dismay had already begun to creep through his stomach. Uprooted after just three short, settled months of marriage. ‘You sure? Where to? When?’
‘No idea. But soon. Bet your boots on it. Peggy let it out last night.’
They had joined the queue being doled out breakfast. Matthew never had breakfast with Susan, needing to be back at camp on time. He looked with distaste at the congealed mounds of dried egg substitute in the trays, the frizzled bits of bacon, the sticky mass of baked beans, the half-burned slices of toast. A couple were being dumped on his plate with a sound like wooden discs, a dollop of dried egg and a portion of beans unceremoniously plopped on top of each blackened slice, a piece of bacon rattling beside them.
Bob surveyed his breakfast with equal distaste. ‘Happy as a bloody sandboy, is our Sergeant Pegg. Said that’s just what college queers like us need – a bit of action.’
‘Action? What action?’
‘It’s only rumour so far,’ Bob soothed. ‘Even though Peggy delighted in telling us it could be overseas. Silly arse! He should know about careless talk. Trouble is, old sweats like him seldom get things wrong. They develop a sixth sense about rumours after twenty-odd years’ service.’
They found a table and put down their mugs of strong tea. Matthew sat staring at the cooling mess on his plate, his appetite gone, his earlier dismay at Bob’s news already turned to premonitory fear. As Bob said, old sweats were seldom wrong about rumours.
Eddie Nutt, Taffy and Farrell joined them with their own food, Farrell’s narrow face buried in his mug as soon as he sat down, his slurps carrying across the table. Matthew regarded him. How the man’s wife put up with him beggared the imagination, unless she was similar. Birds of a feather.
‘Heard our sergeant’s bit of news, have you then?’ Taffy asked, seeing Matthew’s tight expression. ‘Abroad, it looks like.’
‘Fink we’ll get embarkation leave?’ Farrell spat bits of half-chewed bacon in every direction as he spoke.
Bob put down his hard-as-rock toast and sipped his tea. ‘Peggy could still have it wrong, you know. Though he shouldn’t be babbling on about it.’
Taffy grinned. ‘Indeed no. That’s all Adolf is waiting for, isn’t it, to hear what’s going on in B Troop. Turn the tide of the war, that will, knowing B Troop might be going overseas.’
Farrell belched loudly. ‘They oughter give us leave. If they do, I’m gonna do my missus every night till I get back, give ’er somfink ter bleedin’ fink about – anuvver kid. She’s always goin’ on abart bein’ bleedin’ bored.’ He guffawed at his own joke.
Ronnie Clark, who had come to sit with them, leaned his heavy young chin on his fist. ‘If anyone’s bored, I am. A bit of action would be welcome.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Bob said. ‘All right for single chaps like you.’
Matthew pushed his plate away, untouched. ‘I think I’ll go and get into something dry.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Bob, getting up and trailing after him.
The passing days saw rumours gaining momentum. Someone had seen tropical kit being sorted in the QM stores. Two words from a snippet of conversation had been overheard between two officers from their unit – North Africa.
Suddenly it was official: no destination divulged, for obvious reasons, but an issue of tropical kit; half a dozen painful jabs against those nastier diseases prevalent in hot climates that left every victim stiff and aching, and embarkation leave.
Matthew looked in vain for a summons from the selection board. There could be every chance if he were selected of getting out of being sent overseas, at least for the time being, but word from that direction remained stubbornly silent. He’d left things just that bit too late, had been far too bloody complacent, thinking his luck would last forever.
*
Susan stood in the passage, suitcases packed. She had tried to be brave, to keep her voice even and not break down in tears; had tried not to give way to that terrible panic that all but overwhelmed her when he had appeared on the doorstep explaining the reason for being laden down with full kit.
She still felt dazed; had spent much of her time weeping in secret in the bathroom they shared with their landlady, hoping Matthew would not hear her or notice her red and swollen eyes when she emerged; had kept her head averted from him as much as possible in case he did notice. If he did, he said nothing, but cuddled her a lot, assuring her it would be all right.
‘Have you got everything you need?’
Susan nodded dismally as they stood in the passage saying goodbye to Mrs Robertson who also looked unnecessarily upset, probably because she must now look for new tenants, these having been with her for such a short while.
Receiving a peck on the cheek from Mrs Robertson Susan picked up the two suitcases and followed Matthew out to the waiting taxi. The rest of their bits and pieces, ornaments, the clock, the little square wireless set, wedding gifts, would be stored in her parents’ attic. Susan would have liked to go to live there but her mother had looked askance.
‘We got no room here now, love, not with your gran having to stay with us an’ all. Her place was condemned after that bomb fell nearby. Matthew’s people have got lots of room. You can stay with them, love, can’t you?’
She loathed the thought of living for God knows how long with the formidable Mrs Ward. The woman frightened her. But there was nothing for it except to go there. Matthew was so sure she’d be well looked after that she felt compelled to keep her thoughts to herself.
But in the taxi she couldn’t help herself. Clinging to him, she buried her head in his shoulder. ‘What am I going to do, Matthew, when you’re gone? I’ll be left all alone.’
‘No you won’t.’ His voice shook. ‘Mum will look after you as though you were her own daughter. And I’ll come back. I’ll come back.’
He heard the desperation i
n his words. Susan clinging to him made him ever more afraid of what lay ahead. Would he end up fighting in North Africa? The papers were full of Britain’s new offensive against Rommel out there, but British soldiers were still being killed and who could say Rommel wouldn’t turn and push them back again with even more men slaughtered, himself, Matthew Ward, perhaps one of them? Never to see Susan again. She would become a widow when she had scarcely become a wife.
The thought stayed with him throughout the interminable journey to London. Their train stopped and started, which seemed the normal thing these days; the delays got worse still as it hit fog just after Watford.
The thought persisted even as he smiled greeting at his parents, his mother taking Susan up to his old room which would now be hers until his return – if he returned. What would happen to Susan if he didn’t? Where would she go? She’d marry again, in time … God, he had to stop thinking about it, think positive. Of course he’d come back. Yet a premonition that he might not haunted his troubled sleep that night, even though lovemaking helped him wipe it away for the while.
It wasn’t that bad coming home, Jenny told herself firmly as, in scarves and warm coats, she and Mumsy walked down to the shops, her mother hanging on her arm in the jaundiced mist of this October Saturday morning. So long as she didn’t have to do it every time she had a couple of hours off.
Mumsy, on the other hand, would have relished every second of her free time. But Jenny needed some time with her friends, and there was Ronald too, their off-duty hours coinciding so seldom. What chance they did have to go out together they usually spent going somewhere to eat. Hospital canteen food tasted disgusting and there was not much of it.
A forty-eight-hour week and sometimes eight weeks of night duty when all she wanted to do was go home to sleep, exhausted, until it was time to catch a bus back, took away any desire to go rushing off to see Ronald if he too was off duty. Time off came seldom enough and if he wasn’t available it was fun spending it with friends now and again. While she made her way home, which was only a bus ride away, they, getting back after lights out, evaded the porter at the gate by climbing the railings; whispers and stifled giggles erupted as they clambered back into the nurses’ residence through purposely unlocked windows before the night super began her rounds. She missed all that coming home.
