Authors: Maggie Ford
A vast surge of relief poured over Jenny. Far far away from any fighting. Thank God, oh, thank God.
‘That’s good,’ she said evenly. ‘I bet you’re glad.’
Susan nodded. ‘I wish he was here instead. I wanted to tell him my news to his face, not in a letter. It won’t be the same written in a letter. Oh, if only he’d been able to stay here a few weeks longer, I could’ve told him to his face and seen it all light up. I’m going to have a baby.’
‘Oh, I’m so glad for you.’ It was even more of an effort to keep her voice steady. Marriage, now cemented by a forthcoming baby. ‘You must be very thrilled.’
Susan didn’t look thrilled. ‘I would be if it wasn’t for her, his mother. She’s really pleased of course. But she’s started making plans for it already, telling me what I should do and what I shouldn’t do. I really feel like I’m in a prison.’
The same as Matthew had felt; his mother’s over-eagerness to guide and help had only been instrumental in sending him away from her. She felt suddenly sad for Mrs Ward, only able to express love by managing the lives of those around her, succeeding only in driving them away with their misguided conception of her actions. Even Louise, with that time she had secretly applied for the Wrens. She had confided in Jenny. ‘I never told Mummy at that time until I was quite sure I would be accepted,’ she’d said. ‘But honestly, Jenny, she can be quite suffocating at times.’ Exactly as Matthew had felt, and now Susan.
‘I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stand it,’ Susan was saying. She had begun to screw up beneath her winter coat, the damp cold eating into her small frame. ‘She watches me all the time. Everything I eat, everything I do. I was sick first thing yesterday morning. That confirmed it but she carted me off to the doctor to be sure. I hate doctors. I hate the smell of their waiting rooms, and ill people all round the room.’
She seemed bent on unburdening herself to someone. ‘I was sick again this morning and she said I should stay in bed. She kept coming in every half-hour to see how I was. I don’t want to stay in bed. She said I wasn’t to go out, I’d catch cold, but I came out just the same. I know it’ll annoy her. She’ll be all stiff and starched with me when I get back, like I was a kid, or something. I wish Matthew was here. He’d stick up for me.’
She was beginning to shiver. She seemed so small; a waif. ‘Perhaps some evenings when I’m home,’ Jenny offered readily, ‘if you want to come over to us for a chat, you’re welcome. It’ll get you out of that house.’
She felt she had never seen anyone look so grateful. ‘Could I?’
‘Of course.’ Also Susan would keep her abreast of news of Matthew, though Jenny didn’t admit to it even to herself, for all the tiny voice inside did.
The following ten days saw Jenny on nights, taking over from a girl who had gone down sick. Sleeping most of the day, she was unable to honour the invitation to Susan. But she had managed to get Christmas off. Ronald, still waiting for her answer, had asked to take her home to see his parents, but it seemed only right to think of her mother first on this, the one special family holiday of the year. On top of that it was a time when Mumsy would be thinking of Daddy, who had died just one month before the festive season, for all the years were stretching on.
She hadn’t told her mother about Ronald yet. The first thing she’d do would be to start fretting about the impending loss of her daughter, as if Jenny would forsake her entirely. Maybe all mothers felt that way but most wouldn’t make a meal of it. Not that Mumsy meant to drag on her, but Jenny found herself dreading the day when she must tell her.
That she would marry Ronald was in no doubt. He was kind and considerate and steady, and she did love him – not in the silly way she’d felt for Matthew – still did, she was ashamed to realise, constantly telling herself off about this idiotic wishing for something that couldn’t be – but in a comfortable way which common sense told her would last and last.
It did seem a shame to keep fobbing him off so. Perhaps she would tell him her decision when the spring came and the spirits rose with the climbing of the sun. These days she had no deep feeling for love or anything approaching it. The weather stayed too cold for strolling in parks, so they went to the Natural History Museum, had tea in its restaurant, talking of this and that. He held her hand and gazed at the ring she’d begun to wear when with him, capitulating at last. He spoke of marriage, their future together, again broached the subject of her coming home with him to see his parents, if not Christmas Day, then Boxing Day.
‘I know it sounds churlish,’ she told him. ‘But my mother’s all alone. I couldn’t dream of leaving her as soon as Christmas is over. She’s made a Christmas pudding too. Saved up her dried fruit coupons all year for the thing. She’d be left to eat the rest all by herself on Boxing Day. They don’t keep, you know, not like they used to before the war.’
For some reason he thought that funny. His laughter annoyed her for yet some other unaccountable reason.
‘I just couldn’t leave her,’ she stated huffily. The pudding had been just an excuse. It wasn’t funny, at least not all that much. Even less, again for some unknown reason, when she remembered that there would come a time when he would insist on naming the wedding day. Why did her insides crawl with reluctance at that thought? Later as she melted into his arms, she wondered why she had felt so reluctant. This was what she wanted, or what common sense told her she must want. Security, friendship, someone to be with, all of those things. And of course love. She did love Ronald, she told herself severely.
Monday came again, one more week nearer to Christmas. Jenny was working, swotting for her second state examination as she had been doing these past months while Ronald worked and studied towards becoming a GP. She had been nearly two years doing practical work on the wards. A couple of years had to pass yet before she could add SRN after her name, though perhaps in wartime it might come quicker. But would she ever get it, now that she appeared to be Ronald’s fiancée?
She was just going on the ward when a nurse came hurrying towards her. ‘Telephone call for you, love. Better cut short whoever it is or you’ll make yourself late.’
‘Did they say who it is?’ Jenny called as she made her way to the old-fashioned phone fastened to the wall down the passage. Her heart had begun to beat. It could only be bad news. Her mother? She had been all right when she’d left home an hour ago.
‘Didn’t say,’ came back the answer, but Jenny was already there, her ear to the earpiece.
‘Hello? Hello.’
A girl’s frantic voice assailed her ears. ‘Jenny – oh, thank God it’s you. I tried to get you before you left. But you’d already gone. I had to talk to
someone
.’
‘Who is it?’ Jenny interrupted the tirade, not recognising the voice.
‘Susan, across the road. I must speak to you. There’s no one else.’
‘Susan, what’s the matter?’ She felt just a little peeved being made late by Susan’s trivial need to phone her. Nothing at all to do with her mother.
‘Haven’t you heard the news on the wireless?’ The girl’s voice still held a note of panic. ‘Japan’s just declared war on America, and us. They’ve bombed a base belonging to America, called Pearl Harbor, in the Pacific. Matthew’s out there in India. I’m so worried.’
Jenny’s mind flitted over past world atlases of her childhood, the Indian continent marked in pink, Siam and similar countries further east in yellow, then pink again for Malaya, Borneo, Australia. The Pacific, light blue, dwarfed all else. Where Pearl Harbor was she had no idea but it belonged to the USA and was probably somewhere in the Hawaiian islands. Far away from India. Matthew was safe.
‘Susan, if war breaks out there, do you know how far away from it Matthew will be? A good couple of thousand miles at least. If he was still stationed here in England he’d be nearer to a war zone. So there’s nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.’
The voice at the other end had calmed a little. ‘I’ve sent off an airmail letter to him to tell him about the baby. He’ll get it in a day or two. I know he’ll be thrilled. You are sure about him being safe in India?’
‘I couldn’t be surer,’ Jenny said, smiling into the mouthpiece. She was going to be late. ‘I must go, Susan. I’m at work. See you soon.’
She replaced the receiver and hurried off. She wouldn’t be able to listen to the wireless until she came off duty. Perhaps by then there might be a bit more about this new war so far away. But one thing was certain. Matthew, soon to be a father, was indeed safe and it was best not to let her mind keep dwelling on him.
Among other things, some of the garrison were staging a panto for Christmas and requests had gone out for anyone with talent wanting to join the chorus to come forward. All the acting roles had of course long since gone to those who’d been stationed there some time.
‘Go on, Matt,’ Bob urged, hearing about it. ‘You’ve not got a bad voice. How about giving your tonsils an airing?’
Matthew had his pencil poised over a blank air letter. Seventh of December already and he needed to write to Susan again. He was waiting for one from her. It should come any moment but in the meantime …
He looked up, gave a small explosive chuckle of self-derision. ‘One sound from me and I’d be given the about-turn.’
‘Don’t be daft. It’s not half bad, your voice. Now, me, I’d turn lemons sour. Go on, have a go.’
Again Matthew chuckled, but the idea was tempting. He was bored. Life here was one round of ticking over, being given jobs just to kill time and keep men occupied: in the soporific air of old colonial India they painted flagstaffs, whitewashed stones around brigade HQ, cleaned windows, swept paths, spit-and-polished equipment, attended parades and spent the hotter parts of the day in cool schoolrooms, the strong sunlight thwarted by fretted shutters, the still air stirred by squeaking, slowly revolving fans. With time to laze in the shade, seek somewhere to booze away an evening, what at first seemed delightful had quickly palled.
He was about to say he might think about having a crack at it when Ronnie Clark burst into the barrack room like a tornado. Unable to take in quite what he was blabbering about, those absorbed in reading tatty paperbacks, writing letters, darning socks, looked up.
‘Who’s bombed what?’
‘The Japanese. They’ve gone and bombed Pearl Harbor.’
‘Where the bloody ’ell’s Pearl ’Arbor?’
‘It’s an American naval base in Hawaii,’ Matthew supplied, which had Farrell sneering across at him.
‘’Ark at bleedin’ know-all.’ But Matthew ignored him. His heart was already filling with a kind of animal fear, nameless and undefined, having nothing yet to draw on, just an instinct of some threat looming from a totally unexpected direction.
‘Where did you hear this?’ Bob was demanding.
‘Over the radio.’ Ronnie Clark had been on duty all morning in the communications room. ‘A few minutes ago. They’ve bombed Singapore too.’ He looked significantly towards Jeff Downey whose thick lips had dropped open in awe. ‘Bet you’re glad we didn’t go there as you wanted to.’
‘The Yanks’ll come inter the war now, won’t they?’ Eddie Nutt said.
‘Bugger the Yanks!’ someone snapped. ‘What about us? Us fighting bloody Jerries, bloody Ities, and now bloody Nips. It ain’t fair! Just as we’re getting the best of the Jerries in North Africa an’ the battle of the Atlantic’s goin’ our way and everyone’s goin’ on about us openin’ up a second front, now we’re inter another bloody war. Ain’t it just fair!’
It was Sergeant Pegg who put it all into perspective for them. ‘What you lot worrying about them short-arse little monkeys for? Most of ’em wear glasses. Planes tied up with string, like them bloody toys they export to us. I’d sooner fight an ’undred of them than a dozen of Rommel’s lot. The Yanks comin’ in, all we’ll see of them boss-eyed, bow-legged little yeller bleeders’ll be their backsides. The Yanks comin’ in’ll shorten the war in Germany too.’
It all seemed logical and heartening even when days later they were moved on to the transit camp at Deolali; from Deolali station a horrendous three-day train journey across the Indian continent began, to Calcutta, Assam, and on to Rangoon in Burma to join Burmese and Indian brigades there.
Matthew’s letters home had been written in fits and starts. Susan’s had been delayed because those to her were always precious and needed thinking about, dreaming over. Now there was no time for dreaming. What he had written would have to be sent off as it was. He hadn’t heard from her yet, but with all this sudden moving out, hers must still be catching him up. He would get it sooner or later, but it was hell not hearing.
‘Knowing the Army,’ Bob said as they strolled through the paved courts of the ancient Shwe Dagon pagoda on their first off-duty sightseeing trip, the hot spicy smells of India now replaced by the milder flowery ones of Burma, ‘our mail will all come in one batch.’
‘And wait another couple of months for the next lot,’ Matthew agreed. Pensively he gazed up at the scores of lesser pagodas that surrounded the great
stupa
, of the Shwe Dagon, its graceful curves clad in pure beaten gold.
His ears filled by the soft slap of bare feet on warm tiles, the low murmur of devotees at prayer, the droning intonation of Buddhist monks, the twitter of birds and the gentle tinkle of tiny bells, he watched a group of Burmese women at their labour of devotion, sweeping the smooth paving with flat, fan-shaped brooms. In crisp, straight blouses over colourful skirts,
longyis
, that wrapped tightly around their legs, their shining black hair pulled into a bun at the back of the head and secured by a gaudy flower, they looked sleek and clean, a far cry from the ragged denizens of Bombay.
‘I wish my Susan could see all this,’ he murmured.
‘Yes, a regular Cook’s tour, and not costing us a penny,’ said Bob appreciatively. ‘Just look where we’ve been at the expense of the Army. We’ve stopped off at Gib, West Africa, Cape Town, Bombay, Deolali and now Rangoon. Wonder where we’ll end up next?’
‘This is as far east as I ever want to go,’ Matthew said, his mind on their newest enemy. Short, bow-legged, short-sighted they might be, but they still had guns and shells and mortars, and could kill. He didn’t fancy Susan becoming a widow just yet.