Birmingham Rose

by Annie Murray

  Having so recently revived the memory in her letter to Diana of how she’d had to find out about sex herself, Rose felt her heart go out to Gwen. ‘Look,’ she said gently. ‘I know it seems a bit funny if you’ve not done it before, but that’s just a way of kissing.’

  ‘Kissing!’ Gwen squeaked. ‘That’s not kissing. It’s . . . it’s – insanitary!’

  Rose looked at Gwen’s distraught face in silence for a moment, trying to work out how to phrase what she knew she had to say next.

  ‘You know that film we saw last week, about the babby being born?’ she said. Gwen nodded, eyes wide. ‘You don’t know how it got in there in the first place, do you?’

  ‘Well, Mummy said they just get sort of planted there . . .’ Gwen trailed off. ‘No, I don’t. She told me I didn’t need to know anything about “that” until I’m married. And she said even then I’d be luckier not to find out. She’s very protective.’

  Rose sighed, and then, as carefully and clearly as she could, so that Gwen could be left in no doubt what she was talking about, she explained. She watched Gwen’s expression change from astonishment to disbelief and horror, and then to a stunned gratitude.

  ‘So when they call us ATS “officers’ groundsheets”, that’s what they . . . ?’

  Rose nodded.

  ‘And that’s what Gloria meant about Paragraph 11,’ she said slowly, her horrified expression returning. ‘That she’d actually . . . ?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Rose reassured her with a wry smile. ‘From what I hear in this place she wouldn’t be the first to try that way out. But I’m sure she was only joking – honest.’

  By the end of the final week of basic training, they had been drilled and barracked and bumpered into something that not only resembled army discipline, but was also becoming second nature. Now it was time to be assigned a trade. They all sat through aptitude tests and interviews designed to help the army allot each of them a suitable job. Rose found most of the tests less formidable than she’d feared.

  During the interview with Lieutenant Waters, the question Rose remembered despite her nerves was when the woman, sitting behind her desk, asked in a crisp voice, ‘You’re from Birmingham, aren’t you, Private Lucas? What was your father’s occupation before the war?’

  ‘Well, he was an engineer—’ Rose began to tell her.

  ‘Ah,’ the officer said, jotting something down. ‘At last, some mechanical potential.’

  Rose didn’t have the heart or opportunity to tell her that Sid hadn’t worked as an engineer since before the last war.

  When she came out of the interview she met Muriel outside.

  ‘So – what was the verdict?’ Muriel asked her.

  A broad smile spread across Rose’s face. ‘Driver. I’m off to start at Camberley next week.’

  She felt not only pleased and excited but flattered too. She, little Rose Lucas, being able to drive Jeeps and trucks about!

  She walked to lunch with Muriel in the moist April wind, across the open area where they did their square bashing, saluting a male officer they passed on the way.

  ‘Gloria’s furious,’ Muriel said. ‘They’ve told her she’s got to be a cook!’

  ‘Gloria?’ Rose exploded into laughter. ‘Oh my God, heaven help the poor sods who have to eat her cooking! What’s yours then?’ she asked Muriel.

  ‘Oh, admin. Predictable, I suppose. I’ve done a certain amount of helping out in my father’s firm. Gwen’s doing something similar – or is it wireless operations? And Tilly’ll be on the telephones I think.’

  So the five of them from Hut J who had been thrown so incongruously together were now to be scattered again.

  At the end of the three weeks they waited with all the others for their transport back to Didcot to begin on their new careers. They looked a very different collection of women from those who had arrived, all setting off to equip themselves with skills that a few weeks ago they would scarcely have dreamed of. Except for Gloria, who was vowing furiously that every meal she cooked would be sabotaged until they let her do something else.

  ‘Burnt sodding porridge – that’s what they’ll get!’ she yelled out of the back of the truck.

  They parted with more emotion than they would ever have thought possible for such a mixed group of strangers within the space of three weeks.

  Sixteen

  November 1943, at sea

  The merchant ship Donata Castle slid slowly away from Southampton in a grey choppy sea and under a heavy winter sky.

  Those who stood at the quayside saw that the decks were lined from bow to stern with the drab khaki colours of army personnel. Among them, for the moment cordoned off in their own separate section, were three hundred women of the British ATS.

  It was a solemn hour for all those on the ship. They knew neither when they would be returning home, nor where the Donata Castle was bound. The land receded behind the stern, becoming less distinct until it shrank to a soft line on the horizon like a land in a dream. Then it was gone.

  As if released, everyone began to move away from the rails of the ship. They had really left England now, so it was time to look forward instead of back. They needed some immediate purpose, and most made their way towards cabins and berths to sort out the rest of their belongings.

  A slim, pale young woman with reddish brown hair and a rather perturbed expression was one of the last to turn away from the rail. As she did so, her eye was caught by another of the khaki-clad figures walking away from her on the gently swaying deck. A short young woman, dark hair curled round her ATS cap, a neat but somehow intensely purposeful walk . . .

  ‘I say – Rose!’

  The young woman turned, brown eyes searching out the voice. Then her serious face was suddenly smiling broadly. ‘Gwen!’

  They gave each other a strong hug, something unthinkable in their early army days.

  ‘I didn’t see you when we came on board,’ Gwen exclaimed.

  ‘I was late.’ Rose was looking Gwen up and down. ‘Well – you’re a sight more pleased with yourself than when I last saw you!’ She laughed. ‘I thought there wasn’t anyone I knew on board here. I am pleased to see you.’

  ‘Oh, me too,’ Gwen assured her. ‘And I can’t get over the sight of you. You look marvellous!’

  It was true. The reliable army food and plentiful amounts of fresh air that Rose had had access to for the past two and a half years had improved her looks no end. She had gained weight, so that her cheeks were no longer gaunt, and her complexion a healthy pink. Her petite figure was now curvaceous instead of skinny, her rounded breasts and hips filling her uniform.

  ‘Fancy you signing up for abroad!’ Rose said, remembering the anxious girl she had first known at the Berkshire training camp. ‘What about your mom? She must’ve had a fit.’

  Gwen’s expression suddenly turned stiff and obstinate. She glared back at Rose with blue eyes that held a new conviction. ‘Mummy is having to fend for herself,’ she said abruptly. For a second she wavered and looked appealingly at Rose. ‘You must think me terribly hardhearted, but it’s taken the war to make me see just how much my mother ruled my life.’ She smiled. ‘Come on. Let’s go and get a cup of tea and have a good old chat. I want to know all about where you’ve been.’

  They climbed down to the makeshift canteen and sat together with mugs of tea next to a porthole where the dark slant of the sea kept appearing as the ship rocked back and forth.

  For a couple of minutes neither of them knew where to begin. It was less painful to look to the future, with all its uncertainties, than to look back on the past couple of years of the war.

  They had been two of the grimmest years anyone could remember. At home there had been the separation and uncertainty over loved ones, the privations of shorter and shorter rations, bitterly cold winters, and of course the bombing, things precious and familiar being destroyed all around. Across the world, what Churchill had in 1940 called ‘the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny�
�� had swept on relentlessly. Those years had brought defeats on the eastern front in Russia, the Japanese advance through Malaya into Singapore, and the failed invasion of the Allied forces at Dieppe as they tried to get a foothold in occupied Europe.

  Then, when things could not have looked bleaker, there was at last one overwhelmingly hopeful piece of news. General Montgomery and the Eighth Army had fought against German commander Rommel’s forces in the deserts of North Africa. And they had triumphed at El Alamein in northern Egypt. There was a sense that the tide had turned. British and American forces had landed first in Sicily, then Italy. The balance of the war had shifted, but many of the memories Rose and Gwen looked back on now were associated with the darkest days of 1941 and 1942.

  ‘Do you really drive those fearful trucks?’ Gwen giggled. ‘Silly question, I know. Girls do it all the time. But it looks so difficult.’

  ‘You just learn it like any of the jobs,’ Rose replied. ‘But it was hard at first, I can tell you. When we got to Camberley, at the start I’d be at it day and night. When I wasn’t driving I was dreaming about it. I’d wake up with the sheets all tied up round my legs with trying to double-declutch in my sleep!’

  At first she had been astonished at the responsibilities that the army seemed willing to entrust to her. She had learned to drive anything: army pick-up trucks, fifteen-hundredweight Bedford wagons, and the huge canvas-covered three-ton trucks. It seemed absolutely normal now that she should.

  ‘So where were your postings?’ Gwen wanted to know.

  ‘Oh, all over – all HAA Batteries. First it was Lancashire, Widnes. I was driving the supplies, messages. At one place I even had to empty the lavs, oh my God! You needed to be patriotic to put up with Lancashire that winter. It were enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey! In the March I went down near Winchester for a few months. And then it was Essex for the rest of the time. Tillingham Marshes, another ack-ack battery, trying to get the planes before they got to London.

  ‘Then they asked me if I wanted my name down for abroad, so I thought, what the heck? I’m not at home anyway and I feel like a cuckoo in the nest when I’m back there. So I might just as well be even further away.’

  ‘My feelings exactly,’ Gwen agreed.

  She told Rose that she had been sent to Sussex originally to do clerical work. But she had found it very tedious and had proved lucky in applying for a change.

  ‘Once I’d managed to break away from home I thought I might as well go the whole hog! So I applied to train in Signals and as they were short at the time they agreed to let me go. I’m Royal Corps of Signals now.’

  ‘By the way,’ Gwen said, after Rose had fetched more of the warming tea. ‘I heard news of a couple of the others we were with. Tilly got pregnant fairly early on and was released after the six months. And Gloria didn’t last long as a cook – surprise, surprise. She served up such unspeakable food that they let her change after a couple of weeks. She’s on a predictor at one of the ack-ack batteries somewhere round London.’

  Rose grinned. ‘Good for her. So she’s getting the buggers after all.’

  When Rose went back to her four-berth cabin, she found to her relief that she was alone. Wearily she sat down on her lower berth, leaning well forward so as not to bang her head on the one above. She rested her elbows on her khaki skirt and rubbed her eyes. The journey to Southampton after a couple of days of leave in Birmingham had been a strain. There had been several delays and she had wondered if she was going to miss embarkation.

  The two days she had spent in Catherine Street had not been easy. She felt so changed, so enlarged by her experiences. The army had become her life for the time being. It was closer, more immediate and exciting, and in many ways easier.

  She had been greeted like a hero by the neighbours, and she’d managed a reasonably cheery visit to Mrs Meredith, who was as delighted as if she was a physical extension of Alfie himself. Even Sid had seemed openly proud of her. Grace cooked the best meals she could manage on the rations, and the great treat for Rose was that they managed to get Edna over for twenty-four hours with Harry and the twins.

  Billy and Susan had grown into robustly healthy-looking six-year-olds who were faring well on fresh eggs, country air and Edna’s kindness. Rose hadn’t seen them for two years, and she knew they could scarcely remember who she was. She couldn’t help crying when they left, especially when Susan, forgetting Rose was her sister, said, ‘Bye bye, Auntie Rose – it were ever so nice to meet you!’

  ‘I wish I wasn’t missing them growing up,’ Rose said wistfully to Grace afterwards. ‘They’ll be so used to Edna when the war’s over that they won’t want to come home!’

  Grace frowned. ‘That’s the best thing really, isn’t it? No good having people swanning in and out of their lives. They want someone who’s always about.’

  Rose swallowed the reproach in silence, hurt but knowing she was right.

  Grace was also growing in confidence. She had trained as a nursing auxiliary and worked several nights a week at the first aid post in the local baths. Rose knew without seeing her working how good she’d be at it. She was outwardly just as kind and warm a person as she’d always been, but Rose knew there was a new distance between them. They could not at present share the kind of closeness achieved by living with each other and sharing the same concerns.

  George was still causing them worry, going off for several days at a time, although he always came back, and Grace told Rose she’d learned to live with it.

  Being back in Catherine Street also brought back sharply Rose’s grief at Dora’s death and the huge gap it had left in her life. She could sense her father’s loneliness even though he seldom spoke. Away in the army the loss felt less real.

  With all the shadows of the pre-war years crouching round the house, and her feeling of being an outsider in her own family, she was glad to leave again, even with the sadness of not knowing when she would be back.

  She sighed, sitting there in the half-light of the cabin. Other reminders of the past were tucked into her kitbag. She drew out two more of the standard cards which she had received from Alfie. He was still in Felsig POW camp, apparently in good health. There were no other details. Rose stared for a long time at the two cards. They seemed to bear no relation at all to the Alfie she had known four years ago in Birmingham. She tried to picture his pale face, his kind expression, which she could only remember rather sketchily. She wondered in what ways the war would have changed him, as it had changed her. And suddenly she wished, for the first time in months, that she could see him. At least then maybe she could make up her mind how she felt about him. She still told people she was engaged. Partly because strictly speaking she was, and also because it was useful to avoid getting involved with all the forces men from whom she was constantly receiving attention and offers. Little of it was welcome. After Mr Lazenby she still found it hard to trust men, or even like most of them.

  She had trusted Alfie. Memories of the good times they had had together filled her mind. It was not easy, after all that had happened since, to remember the passive, dependent state she had fallen into when she was with him. She felt anything but passive and dependent now.

  She put the cards aside and took out the other envelope that she was still carrying with her. Inside there was one letter on thin, wafer-like blue paper, and the beginning of another on a thicker, cream-coloured sheet. Rose lay down on her side, resting on one arm, and read them both again.

  The blue paper letter gave only the central WAAF mailing address and the date: 2 September 1941.

  Dear Rose Lucas,

  I hope you won’t mind my writing to you, but I felt it right that I should, and am sorry not to have done so sooner.

  I’m afraid that what I have to tell you will come as a terrible shock. I am writing as a friend of Diana Harper-Watt. We were fellow WAAFs and mostly recently I have been posted with her. Diana was killed last month when she was travelling up to London from our base. The train
received a direct hit before it pulled into Waterloo and only about half the passengers aboard survived.

  Diana’s mother has requested that as a close friend I look through her things down here to see if there was anything that needed tying up. In the course of doing so I found your letter dated 30 March this year, and also the enclosed letter that Diana had obviously started to write in reply. Knowing that you were also a friend, may I send my condolences for the sorrow we all share at her death? She was a marvellous person. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you.

  With my kindest regards to you and apologies for bearing such ill news,

  Celia Ravenscroft.

  Diana’s own letter consisted of only a few lines.

  My dear Rose,

  Thank you so much for writing to me. I shall truly treasure that letter. My apologies that I’ve taken so long to reply – WAAF life is so hectically busy. I’m sure you know from your own service life. Your letter made me feel so, so sad, I can’t tell you

  It broke off there as if she had been called away. And that was all. It was so tantalizing, this minute taste of her thoughts. If she had finished the letter, at least Rose would have had a fuller picture of her, of the person she had become. The letter and their brief meeting gave her just enough to know that things could heal. ‘My dear Rose’, she read over and over again. ‘My dear Rose’. She had long ago written a brief note of condolence to Ronald and Catherine and had received a brief, though warm letter in reply. She knew her own letter explaining herself would have reached them among Diana’s possessions.