The Waterway Girls

by Milly Adams

  Reggie laughed, and that was the same, and there was something good in the familiarity. Verity said, ‘Speak for yourself, darling. I am in no way disgusting, so there, but I agree, we’ll carry our own filth. We will lead the way, Mr Holmes, while Polly and her Reggie toddle along behind. How’s that?’

  She set off, and Polly’s dad waited alongside Polly and Reggie as they watched her go. Finally her dad called, ‘Best if we go the right way, Lady Verity, which is back past the station.’

  Verity stopped dead, turned on her heel, and walked towards them. ‘Oh, how very unkind, Mr Holmes. You mean I have walked further than I might?’ She collected him up as she passed, saying, ‘Come along, Polly, stop dithering, and you too, Reggie.’

  Polly could hardly breathe for laughing, but Reggie was pulling at her arm. ‘Come along then, we’ve had our orders.’

  As her dad walked by Verity’s side he too was laughing, and it was a good sound. Verity said quite clearly over the rattle and hiss of the train as it continued on its way, ‘Less of the Lady, if you don’t mind, all of you. It does so mean one has to behave, so I’m just Verity. Having people curtsey is such a bore. Now tell me about the allotment.’

  Reggie, staring after Verity as they scuttled along in her wake, asked, ‘Is she real?’

  ‘Some of the time. There’s a broken heart under that lot, but she’s healing.’

  They kept up the frantic pace, which Polly knew meant Verity was trying to build herself up to cope. Reggie held the torch in a trembling hand. She said, ‘What about you, Reggie, how goes it?’

  ‘Oh, fine. Just a bit tedious, the same thing night after night. But it’s a job that needs doing. It’s much the same for you, I expect.’

  She kept her eyes on the trembling slit of light that picked out the lamp posts and dustbins, kerbs and bus stops. ‘No, it’s not like that for us, because we are safe, and you’re not. We’re camels carrying loads that need to be delivered, that’s all.’

  His laugh was harsh. ‘We’re camels too, carrying loads that need to be delivered.’

  They walked in silence now. Slowly Polly realised that she was actually back in her world where a war raged. Somehow, on the cut, they were too busy, too tired, too isolated, to really think of the life going on beyond the wharfs, the factories, the buses driving over the bridges. Their enemies were reluctant paddles refusing to budge, children who gobbed from bridges, the wind, the cold, and Leon, who beat and terrorised a child.

  In this real world, there were searchlights that probed the sky for Reggie’s aeroplane, and ack-ack guns that tried to down him, fighter planes that also tried to down him. And for the pongos there were other soldiers that wanted to smash them or catch them, or if you were a sailor there were submarines that wanted to sink you.

  As they turned into Polly’s road she stopped dead. ‘No, you’re not camels, Reggie. You are brave and exhausted young men trying to protect us. There is no comparison, and I’m proud of you, Reggie Watson. Now go home. Get some rest and leave us to sleep until at least lunchtime tomorrow. Does your leave last that long?’

  ‘I’ll pick you up at six tomorrow, then, after your tea. We’ll go to the Palais which has a special Sunday fundraiser tomorrow night, and take the Lady. She can learn how to slum.’

  ‘Oh, she’s already learning that, never fear, and making a good fist of it.’

  Polly blew him a kiss as he and his torch headed back towards his own street a good half-mile away. ‘Sleep well, Sergeant Watson,’ she called after him, fearing that he probably wouldn’t. She waited until he turned the corner, her heart going out to him, but that was all her heart was doing. It didn’t do the hops and skips she knew it should, as it had just done on the wharf when Saul had said ‘thank you’.

  She hurried to catch up as Verity and her dad pushed open the gate of their detached cul-de-sac house, and headed up the path. Would her mother have the newspaper on the floor? Surely not if there was a visitor?

  Her dad knocked, though she knew he had his own key. Oh dear, it didn’t bode well.

  Verity waited behind him with Polly and whispered, ‘How is your Reggie? He looked a bit wan.’

  ‘I think he is, but he’s walking us to the Palais tomorrow evening, after tea. He’ll pick us up at six.’ Polly waited. A couple of weeks ago, Verity would have mocked the thought of ‘tea’. Tonight she just said, ‘I’ve only got a skirt, not the whole shebang.’

  ‘There’s a war on, idiot. Anything goes in our area. It’s not like your club.’

  Verity was silent for a moment but as the front door started to open she murmured, ‘Indeed it is not, but it’s like the world that Tom talked of, though we never went to a Palais.’ Her voice broke. She laughed, coughed, and murmured shakily, ‘Heavens, I must be tired.’

  Polly’s dad was gesturing them before him. ‘Have you explained about the newspaper, Polly?’ he asked.

  Polly sighed. As Verity started to enter, Polly whispered, ‘Think of Tom, and be kind.’

  Verity looked over her shoulder at her. ‘You have to learn to trust me, Polly. I won’t get it right all the time, but I’m trying.’ Her voice was steady, and totally serious.

  She stepped into the darkness. Polly heard her mum say, ‘If you would just wait a moment please, Lady Verity, until everyone is in, then we can close the door and put the light on. It’s the blackout, but you’ll know about that, of course.’ Polly followed, then her father, and they all stood in a line in the darkness until her mum switched on the light.

  Newspaper had been spread the width of the hall. Her mother wore her best dress, and Polly was starting to say how nice she looked when she was silenced by her mum’s shriek of horror. ‘What? What? Father, did you pass anyone? Reggie hasn’t seen her, please say he hasn’t.’ Her hands were to her face and she was shaking her head. ‘What do you look like, Polly? You haven’t come through London like that? Oh, what will people think? And that smell, oh my goodness. Oh.’ She was waving her hand in front of her face. ‘Father said you would be grubby and needed hot water for baths, but … Oh no, this isn’t right, what are we to do? You can’t go back. It’s not seemly. Oh, and for Lady Verity too. Oh dear …’

  Polly’s dad said, ‘Step out of those wellies, girls, before they fall apart, and I’ll try to do something about them before you go back. Then straight up those stairs, and Polly, show your friend the bedroom, and I’d wait there while she baths, as many times as she wants, and then you nip into the bathroom. Got it? I’ll help your mum with the food. Then it will all be tickety-boo.’

  He had already eased his feet out of his boots, and now carried them through to the kitchen, leading her mum firmly by the arm, so that they were left to drop their kitbags and take their filthy feet out of their boots. The smell was appalling. Verity whispered, ‘There’s not much to choose between my socks and my boots, and I daren’t take my socks off because my feet will be horrendous.’

  Polly was mortified, and muttered, ‘I’m sorry about Mum. This is how her grief shows.’

  Verity was already tiptoeing up the stairs. ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. If I was at home I’d be in the dogs’ room until I was presentable.’ She called over the bannister, ‘You’re looking quite lovely this evening, Mrs Holmes. I adore your frock.’

  She continued up, and started to enter Will’s room. ‘No,’ shouted Polly. ‘Not that room.’

  Verity closed the door. Polly opened her own bedroom door. ‘We’re in here. We can’t use the front bedroom yet.’

  Verity tiptoed into Polly’s bedroom. There was a fire in the grate throwing out warmth and the blackout blind was down. Polly switched on the light. Verity said, ‘It’s huge. Do you find everything is huge, and busy, and war-ish? It’s not like the cut, not at all. We’re separate from all this, aren’t we, but it’s just as damned hard I think, only safer.’

  Polly’s mother called up, ‘I’ve just been up to the bathroom and changed the towels for brown ones, girls, so don’t feel embarrassed. Ev
erything can be washed. I fussed. I shouldn’t have done, but you both look so tired as well as dirty. Tired, and thin, and it upsets me. You’re young and lovely, and your lives are too hard.’

  Polly listened, and realised that there was a slower pace to her mum’s speech, almost a tiredness, rather than the frenetic awful busyness. Was this good, or not? Then she absorbed the actual words, and they touched her and she feared she would weep. It was so long since her mum had been her mum.

  ‘You go first, Verity, as Dad said. I’ll stand here until you’re done. If I sit on anything it will never be the same again, so don’t hang about.’

  Verity squeezed her shoulder and whispered, ‘You are lucky with your family, you know.’

  After an hour and a half of bathing the girls pulled on pyjamas from Polly’s drawer. Her mother had left her own dressing gown on the spare bed for Verity. They pulled on socks and walked downstairs with wet, but clean, hair tied up in brown hand towels. The dining-room fire was red in the grate, the room was warm. Polly and Verity ate large baked potatoes filled with cheese and leeks while at one side of the fireplace her mum listened to the wireless, and her dad wrote up his allotment diary.

  It was as it had been with Will: her parents doing this while she and Will played Snakes and Ladders or tried to do the Daily Mail crossword. Her mum looked up and said, ‘You must go straight to bed when you have finished, and I don’t expect to see you until lunchtime tomorrow, is that quite clear? I can’t have you girls looking so tired, and that’s that.’

  Polly’s dad winked at them. Verity said, laying her knife and fork together on her spotless plate, ‘There, how rude, I haven’t left any for Mr Manners, but with rationing one doesn’t. You know, Mrs Holmes, I feel I wouldn’t have done anyway, because it was so delicious. Were they your leeks, Mr Holmes?’

  Polly listened as Verity talked to her parents, her dining chair turned towards them. She had a silvery tongue, she really had. The warmth was making Polly relax, she felt her eyes closing, the talk grew fainter, then she came to with a jerk. Her mother was behind her, her hands on her shoulders. ‘You have become thin so quickly, little Polly, but then a bit of hard work never hurt anyone. And at least you haven’t anyone wanting to hurt you, and for that I am grateful. Now, up to bed, girls. There is a hot-water bottle in each, though probably only warm now. Remember we don’t want to see you until lunchtime. No point in going shopping or anything like that, but you can’t anyway. It’s Sunday. I will go to church, but you must stay and rest.’

  Verity stood up, smoothing her dressing gown and looking up at Polly. ‘Good heavens, Sunday. Days mean so little on the cut. You see, Mrs H, we only get paid a couple of pounds a trip, and when you’re trundling along on the water, it’s all like a different world, so we only buy food, really. Or the odd pint of beer at the pub when we moor up.’

  Please don’t, Polly urged, but Verity sailed on. ‘We play darts and bet on winning, and we’re good, which brings in a bit more. Perhaps we can spend it at the Palais tomorrow evening, Polly.’

  Her mum was looking from one to the other. Polly cut across Verity as she was about to blurt out even more, and perhaps include Leon, ‘Come on, we must get to sleep.’

  She kissed her mum on the cheek, and her dad who had come to join them. ‘We’ll see you at the allotment, Dad, when we’re up and about. You’ll be taking your sandwiches for lunch?’

  He nodded. They left the room, and hurried up the stairs. Once in the bedroom Verity said, ‘I shouldn’t have said anything about the beer, should I?’

  Polly was throwing her dressing gown on the bed, but kept her socks on. The fireguard was in place. ‘You should not, but at least I cut you off at the pass before there was any mention of cigarettes, or Leon. Now, last one in bed’s a cissy, and as it’s you, you can turn off the light.’

  Verity did, and as she felt her way back in the dark there was a thud. ‘Damn, I stubbed my toe.’

  ‘Serves you right for snitching,’ Polly said, through lips that were almost too tired to move.

  Chapter 23

  14 November – on leave in Woking

  When Polly woke, the room was still dark, but once her eyes adjusted she could see that Verity’s bedclothes were pulled back and her pyjamas on her bed. Had she done a bunk? Had it all been too much?

  Polly felt for her watch on the bedside table. It was almost 12.30. Was that at night, or lunchtime? Drunk with sleep she eased her way to the window and lifted the blind. Midday, and a cold sparkling day it was too. She threw on clothes, and used the blessed and wonderful flush lavatory that should actually be canonised, and headed on down to the kitchen. She feared that Verity was on her way back to London, perhaps to her false friends. Had it been that bad here?

  She opened the kitchen door to be greeted by the smell of baking. Verity was standing next to her mother, her hands covered in flour and marge. Her mum looked up. ‘Hello, Polly. Verity is showing me how to make cheese scones. They’re nice with soup, she says. How clever is that, I would never have thought of it.’ She paused. Taken by surprise Polly said, ‘Dad will like those.’

  She had expected her mother to rattle on, and on, but no, not today. Was it having Verity here, or were things better?

  Her mother said, ‘Polly dear, would you go into the front room. I left one of Reggie’s letters there for you. Since then he’s been sending them to your depot, or some such. I think that’s what his mother said, at WI.’

  Polly did, saying, as she left, that it would be an idea to take some scones to the allotment for their father. Verity called after her, ‘All packed up, ready, and enough for us because we need feeding up, your mum thinks. Then we’ll be out of your mum’s hair for a while. Talking of hair, she said she’ll trim my locks a little this afternoon, ready for the Palais. It’ll be so much better.’

  Polly shook her head; Verity with shorter hair? Would miracles never cease?

  She opened the door into the front room, which was always cold and impersonal except at Christmas, when they were forced to sit and gaze with awe at a chicken and eat balls of stuffing, which she and Will loathed.

  On the table were piles of clothes, Will’s clothes; his sweaters, trousers, socks and shirts. She touched the sweaters, remembering when he had worn each one. Her mum entered. ‘I saw you had taken his white sweater. At first I was cross, and then I thought our boy would like you to use his things. It’s as if, somehow, he’s still here if you do that. You see, I know he’s gone. I do know that, I just couldn’t bear to know it, if you can understand what I mean.’

  She stood by Polly’s side, wringing her hands. ‘I thought when you went, Polly dear, that there you were, keeping safe for us, not for yourself, but for us. And at last I knew I still had you, and that you would return, for us. So, it was time to share his things, but not his room. Not yet. You do see that? I can’t do it all at once. I have to believe in little bits.’

  Polly slipped her arm through her mum’s. ‘Yes, I see that, and I think the same. A little longer, don’t you think? Just for it to be his and his alone for a while more, for us all?’

  As they left the house for the allotment, her mum called, ‘Bring back the photos, would you, Polly. It’s time. Let Dad keep a couple, but bring back the rest.’

  ‘I will, Mum.’ Polly walked ahead, down the path, letting her mum’s words reverberate.

  ‘Photos?’ Verity asked as they walked along in the bright November day.

  ‘Of Will, my twin. He died in North Africa, in a tank, silly idiot, just over six months ago.’

  She could only just say it without the words blocking up her throat.

  ‘Ah,’ said Verity after a while. ‘Thank you for telling me. I think I can imagine how you feel when someone you were actually born with, lived with, is now gone. Only half of you is left, but it’s a strong half, and I think perhaps it’s on the way to becoming whole.’

  Verity slipped her arm into Polly’s and squeezed. Polly squeezed in return. Neither said m
ore.

  They turned into the road to the allotment. The milkman was coming along, bottles clattering in his horse-drawn float. He’d be collecting his money for the week’s milk. Verity stopped, and stroked Betsy. Polly smiled at Alf. ‘All well, Alf?’

  ‘Seems to be, Polly. You enjoying the canal? Any horse-drawn around still?’

  His white coat was pristine, his cap too. His leather money bag hung across his chest. Verity answered, ‘Yes, a few, but not many.’

  Betsy tossed her head and started to pull the float to the next house. Alf laughed. ‘She has her own timetable. Oats when she gets back so she won’t hang about, even for a fuss.’

  They reached the allotment in ten minutes, but Polly pulled Verity back. ‘Are you a twin?’ she asked.

  ‘No, but I always felt Tom was part of me, and when he left I was only half there. That’s love, Polly, brotherly, or romantic. If you feel that for Reggie, then it’s enough. If you don’t, it isn’t. Don’t you settle for less, because you, and he, deserve the full packet. We all do.’

  At the Palais, there were GIs, soldiers, a few sailors and airmen already dancing with women in uniform, and some who weren’t. The band were local, and Polly knew that they worked in a garage and were well past the first flush of youth, but the saxophone player in particular knew his stuff.

  Reggie had brought Alan, another RAF bomber boy, with him to walk them into the town. At the door Polly and Verity insisted on paying for themselves, and all were happy to pay extra for the Spitfire the Palais management was hoping to raise funds to build. At the bar the men bought half-pints of beer for the girls, and a pint for themselves.

  The music was loud, the beat tempting, so they left their beers on a spare table, Polly and Verity draped their coats on the chairs, and they took to the floor. Reggie was a good dancer, but Alan was not. Verity sorted that out, and within half an hour sweat was pouring down Alan’s face and he was throwing Verity over his shoulder as the GIs were doing to their partners.