Only a Mother Knows (16 page)

‘Don’t mind me!’ the girl on the end said raising her eyes from the book she was reading.

‘Sorry, love, you don’t mind, do you?’ said the new girl, who had leaned over to put her suitcase onto the luggage rack just as the train lurched and ended up on Tilly’s knee.

‘Careful,’ Tilly said, slightly peeved at having her quiet reverie disturbed by a crowd of baying hyenas who had no thought for others. The girl excused herself and sat next to Tilly, wriggling into the small space. The manicured blonde, who reminded Tilly of Dulcie going by the rolling eyes under heavily mascaraed lashes, took her cigarettes from her bag with a disgruntled sigh. However she did offer them around and most of the girls took one, but much to Tilly’s relief the girl sitting next to her said no. However, Tilly soon realised that her hair, freshly washed that morning with the last of her precious shampoo, would soon smell no better than an ashtray.

‘So, where you off to then?’ asked the new arrival.

Tilly was just about to tell her that loose lips sink ships when another girl piped up,

‘We’re all off to the ATS training camp.’

‘Should you be telling me that?’ Tilly asked, surprised at their candour. ‘I could be anyone, you know.’

‘Well, “Anyone”, I’m Janet. Where you off to then?’ the girl sitting next to her asked and Tilly started laughing, thinking Janet was a fast worker and no mistake.

‘I’m Tilly, and I suppose I’m going to the same place as you.’

Suddenly the day took an even brighter turn as the girls all got to know each other. By the time they reached their destination it was as if they had been friends with each other for years. Tilly knew her mother would be pleased she had made some pals so soon. And shortly afterwards the train chugged into the station on a cloud of white smoke and a high-pitched, mournful whistle.

All the girls stood up and after grabbing their suitcases and bags from the overhead luggage rack slowly shuffled out of the carriage with Tilly trailing behind them, wondering what was ahead of her. She soon found out when as if out of nowhere came a strident female voice: ‘Come on now, get a move on, we’ve got no time for slouches!’

‘Bloomin’ heck!’ said Janet as she stepped off the train in front of Tilly. ‘She’s got a gob on ’er that would wake the dead. An’ I thought me mam could shout.’ Everybody laughed, but not for long as a heavy-set female dashed along the platform to the rear of the breathless gaggle of women who had just clambered off the train.

‘I am Drill Sergeant Bison and from now on I will be your replacement mother or your worst nightmare – it’s completely up to you.’

‘Sounds promising,’ said Janet, with her Liverpool accent who sounded so like Sally, and gave Tilly a friendly dig in the arm with her elbow. ‘She looks like a barrel of laughs, I don’t think.’

‘We weren’t told about the likes of her in the recruitment office.’ Tilly felt her spirits sink.

‘The only advice I was given, and that was by me mam, was not to sit down on strange lavatory seats.’

‘Why is that?’ asked Tilly, beginning to think she had had a rather sheltered upbringing. Janet was staring at her open-mouthed, her eyebrows pleated in confusion.

‘You know …?’ Janet said, rolling her eyes in a southerly direction. ‘You know!’

‘I don’t know.’ Tilly was just as confused, especially when she saw Janet shrug her shoulders before trying to put what she meant into words without sounding crude.

‘You know … down there …’ She nodded pointedly to the space below Tilly’s stomach. ‘There … you can catch things off lavvy seats … things like,’ she lowered her voice to a whisper, ‘VD.’

‘I’ve never heard of it,’ Tilly said innocently.

But she was sure that was about to change when Janet said, ‘Oh wait till I tell yer … living near the Mersey docks you find out about things like that at a very early age.’ She gave a knowing raise of her eyebrows as she dipped her chin, all the time keeping her eyes peeled for nosey-pokes who might be listening.

‘Right, move along now,’ called the drill sergeant. ‘Lef-righ, lef-righ! No slacking at the back.’ Without another thought Tilly found herself falling in with the drill sergeant’s instructions to move her feet left then right, then left then right and giggling on a hop, skip and a jump as she did so.

‘This could be fun,’ she whispered to Janet as they fell into step beside each other. But their amusement was short-lived when they saw the huge khaki army truck waiting outside the little country station to take them to the training camp.

‘How are we expected to get into that?’ cried the blonde girl who looked like Dulcie and was called Pru. ‘I’ve got my new stockings on and I don’t want them laddered.’

‘Well, if you did you could climb up it and get into the truck,’ laughed Janet.

‘Until then, you can do the same as everybody else – hitch up your skirt, take the hand that’s offered to you and climb in,’ said the now fierce-looking sergeant. Pru gave a little sniff before disappearing behind the truck to remove her stockings.

‘I ain’t laddering these for no one,’ she said. ‘There are limits to how much a girl is expected to do for king and country.’ Tilly could only marvel at her impudence as the sergeant gave her a look that would curdle milk.

‘Oh we’ve got a comedian in our midst,’ said the menacing drill sergeant. ‘I like comedians, I do.’ But it seemed to have no effect on Pru whatsoever as she slipped out of her sling-back shoes, flung them on the flat-back, and, after hitching her skirt and taking the hands of two male soldiers who were already on the truck, she clambered aboard like she was born to it.

‘I bag the sack to sit on,’ said Pru, giving the drill sergeant a defiant grin. Tilly, wishing she had Pru’s gall, clambered on without a murmur and settled herself down before the rickety vehicle rolled and bounced along the country roads and she had to hang on to the sides for dear life.

They had been travelling a long time when someone started singing ‘We’re Going to Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line’, as dusk was drawing in, mainly, Tilly suspected, to allay the fear of the low-flying bats in the trees that lined the narrow lanes. When they reached the wide gates of the army camp, greeted by two women in army uniform who checked their credentials in minute detail, they all breathed a sigh of relief to be on terra firma again in one piece.

‘I wish they’d hurry up, I’m starving,’ said Janet, who waited at the back with Tilly and didn’t make a fuss. ‘I haven’t eaten a thing since my breakfast this morning. I feel as if I’ve been travelling forever, Liverpool seems like another country and I’m aching all over.’

‘That’s nothing to the way you’ll be feeling tomorrow night, Scouse,’ said the drill sergeant with obvious glee, ‘you’ve got to get through tonight first.’

Janet looked at Tilly and they both grimaced, each wondering what tomorrow would bring. They had missed the evening meal by three hours and after climbing out of the lorry into the blackness of the open countryside, Tilly found herself standing on what felt like a rough cinder road and by the light of the moon could just about make out two lines of single-storey wooden huts, which they were informed would be their billets for the duration of their training.

‘You, you, you and you over there,’ barked the drill sergeant, pointing to Tilly, Janet, Veronica and Pru. ‘Introduce yourselves to number one hut and you will be given further instructions.’

The four girls dragged their suitcases, which by now seemed considerably heavier, and did as they were told. Once inside they saw the thirty iron bunks that lined the walls of the hut. Tilly grimaced at the four thin unmade iron beds.

There was chill in the place and the round black stove in the corner didn’t seem to be throwing out much heat, Tilly noticed as her eyes scanned the long room where girls in various stages of undress were making beds, playing cards or lying on their bunks reading, or writing letters. All of them looked up when Tilly and the other three came inside.

‘Say hello to these four girls,’ said Drill Sergeant Bison, looking menacingly down the rows of beds.

‘Hello to these four girls,’ chorused the inhabitants of the hut, making Tilly smile.

‘Right, I’ll leave you to it. You are now confined to barracks for one week. You will have your vaccinations at o-nine-hundred hours, pick a bunk, settle down and be ready for roll call at o-six-hundred tomorrow morning.’

‘No one said anything about vaccinations,’ said Tilly, her heart sinking; she hated needles.

‘I’m being woken up at six a.m.?’ Pru exclaimed, her eyes widening in disbelief.

‘No,’ the drill sergeant smiled, ‘you are being woken at o-five-hundred. By o-six-hundred I expect you to have made your bed, stand at the end of it in readiness for kit muster and be available for roll call, then if everything is to my satisfaction you will go for breakfast, and by the looks of you slovenly lot it most certainly will not be, and in that case you will forgo breakfast altogether.’ Tilly noted the gleam of anticipated spats to come in the sergeant’s eyes.

‘I’m just in the little room at the back if you should have nightmares, girls. Lights out in ten minutes – good night.’ With that Drill Sergeant Bison left the room and the four girls looked at each other in dismay.

‘I’ll never wake up at five o’clock. That’s the middle of the night,’ Pru said, shoving a pillow into a white cotton case after choosing the bed near the door.

‘You will the second time,’ a voice from the back of the hut piped up. ‘Oh, and I’d advise you to go to the toilet before you get into bed because if you disturb anybody you’ll soon know about it.’

‘Where are the toilets?’ Tilly asked and was disappointed to find they were outside, across the road near the field that contained a rather unfriendly-looking bull.

‘I’m not going by myself,’ Pru said. ‘I’ve never come across anything bigger than a dog in my life and I ain’t arguing with that chap.’

‘Come on,’ said Veronica, the girl who’d been crying on the train but who seemed to have brightened considerably, and due to the fact that she’d hardly spoken since they all met, nobody realised was from Scotland. ‘I’m used to bulls, I’ll take ye.’

‘Oh, well,’ said Tilly, ‘no point in us going in twos, let’s all go together.’

‘I’d take that red scarf off if I were you,’ said a girl further down the hut. Tilly hastily shoved the scarf into her coat pocket in the midst of girlish laughter. She wasn’t so sure she liked her new-found freedom any more and longed to be tucked up in her own bed sharing confidences with Agnes, especially when she saw the thin mattress and realised why all the girls had referred to it as a ‘biscuit’.

Tilly groaned; she had never had to make her own bed before, but then, what could be so hard about it? And she had never been as free as a bird before either. Somehow, she thought, this may just be fun!

‘If my mother could see me now,’ said Tilly, after being shown how to make a bed army style, whilst unfolding the rough grey blankets that had crisp starched sheets sandwiched between them, a pillow on top of the thin rolled mattress completing the little pile, ‘she’d be making this bed for me.’

‘If my mother could see this she’d be down the pawnshop hocking the lot,’ Janet laughed, making all the other girls smile. Tilly liked Janet; there was no side to her, what you saw was what you got from what she could tell. After making her bed and putting the rest of her belongings away she was settling down to write a letter to her mother about the events of the day when suddenly the lights went out. A collective moan echoed around the room and Tilly was left with her thoughts before drifting into an uncomfortable sleep.

In the cold grey light of dawn before the birds had even woken up, Drill Sergeant Bison flung open the barrack-room door, took a deep breath and emitted a thundering sound that seemed hardly feasible coming from a woman. Tilly wanted to tell her to keep the noise down but knew she would never be so bold.

Within moments every girl was out of her bed and jumping to attention on the frozen linoleum as Sergeant Bison marched up and down the narrow room barking orders that Tilly was sure she would never remember as she hopped from one icy foot to the other.

‘Slippers!’ Drill Sergeant Bison turned immediately to Tilly. ‘Keep still!’

Tilly almost fell backwards onto the bed as the words hit her full in the face. Slippers? she thought, silently shocked. Who did she think she was calling slippers?

‘You!’ Bison growled in a most unladylike fashion as if reading Tilly’s mind. After spending a fitful night on a hard thin mattress Tilly realised that the army didn’t look as enticing as it once did. And it was nothing like the glamorous posters.

She couldn’t wait to have some breakfast and write to her mother who, she knew, would be eagerly awaiting an update on how she was faring. However, Tilly was in for a shock when she discovered that they were confined to barracks for a week and prohibited from writing home for the foreseeable future. She then found that breakfast would not be consumed until every inch of the wooden hut they were now to call home was cleaned from top to bottom.

‘What, all of it?’ asked Janet, with a look of disbelief.

‘Every single inch,’ said the corporal, Tannaway, who had come into the hut to relieve Drill Sergeant Bison and looked surprisingly fresh and bright as if she had been up all night getting ready for this inspection. ‘I want the beds made to specific requirements, every surface cleaned until it gleams, the linoleum polished until you can see your face in it, every cupboard, every bedstead, dust-free and spotless in every area.’ She paused. ‘Any questions?’

‘Does this have to be done every week?’ Tilly asked. She wasn’t used to heavy cleaning, preferring to leave it up to her mum who was much better at it than she would ever be.

‘Every day! If that’s not too much trouble of course, Slippers.’ The corporal’s words were laced with a heavy inflection of sarcasm and Tilly knew that she didn’t want to get on the wrong side of this woman who looked as if she could eat you for breakfast and still look for another morsel.

‘I didn’t think she could hear me,’ Tilly said to nobody in particular, flipping her blanket the way she had seen her mother do it, deciding to keep her head down.