Authors: June Gadsby
‘H
EY
, what a picture! Let me get some of that!’
Mary West couldn’t see what the workmen across the street were enjoying. She was unaware that the sight of those shapely hips of hers undulating, bobbing and dipping in time to the sound of Jack Langley’s band playing
An Apple For The Teacher
had set them off whistling and whooping. At first she ignored them, until she realized that she was the cause of the commotion, then she whipped around, her cheeks burning with embarrassment, eyes flashing with indignation.
She was not the kind of girl that went in for making a public spectacle of herself, but dance-music always set her off. It was as if it touched a hidden switch and she just couldn’t keep still. At least she hadn’t sung the words out loud, which she was quite likely to do, for singing was as much a part of her as dancing and she couldn’t wait for December when the whole of Felling would gather in the Palais de Danse for a grand benefit ball and talent contest.
Well, not the whole town, perhaps, but a good many well-meaning and fun-loving people would be there, lending their support to the war effort, even though some believed the war would be over before it really got going. There had been so much scaremongering and propaganda for years, it was no wonder they called it the phoney war.
It was only twenty-one years since the end of the war that was supposed to end all wars. They had said it would never happen again, but on 3 September, 1939, the Prime Minister, Mr Neville Chamberlain, announced that Britain was once more at war with Germany. It was almost a relief. At last, there was something definite to get their teeth into. Action, instead of the endless waiting that wore people out.
Still not convinced that it would ever come about, they had been
encouraged to dig trenches, build shelters, donate scrap metal to the government. And still they waited, wondering if it was all in vain.
However, like the rest of Great Britain, the inhabitants of the small mining town threw themselves into the war effort with commendable vigour.
The place already looked like a war zone with trenches where there had once been green grass and pretty flower-beds. Anderson shelters were springing up everywhere, in front gardens and back yards. And concrete tank-traps were placed in ominous rows all the way down The Bankies to the River Tyne. German tanks were going to have a hard job getting past those if they ever dared invade this far north.
People were already issued with gas-masks, with egg-shaped cocoons for tiny babies. Everybody laughed through their fear and made jokes about how ridiculous they looked wearing the things. There was
propaganda
everywhere: films, leaflets and broadcasts on the wireless. Young men, hungry for adventure, had flocked to join up even before the
government
started issuing conscription orders. The very air they breathed seemed electrified with suppressed anticipation to the point of madness.
‘Hey, pet, ye gannin’ to the dance Saturday?’
More catcalls and whistles. The young workmen were intent on
bothering
Mary.
‘Save a dance for me, sweetheart!’
Mary had been looking forward to the Saturday evening dance with mixed feelings. A part of her loved the idea of dancing to the new music that was coming over from America. The music was exhilarating; it made her whole being come alive. The other part of her wondered if she would actually get to dance at all. She had done very little dancing since meeting Walter. Her fiancé of two years was digging in the heels of his two left feet and claiming that he would rather join up than make a fool of himself on a dance floor. If it was left up to him he would choose a night at the pictures any time, especially if the film showing at the Corona was a swashbuckling adventure or the comic antics of Laurel and Hardy. Mary preferred musicals and love stories that made her snuffle into her hankie.
‘Mary?’
She heard Walter’s voice now, calling her from the pork-butcher-shop doorway, where he was standing regarding her from halfway down the High Street. He was like that, was Walter. You just had to think about him and up he popped. Just look at him, Mary thought fondly. Big, soft and rosy-cheeked. Nervous as a rabbit he was, which he proved on many an occasion, jumping a mile every time anything went pop, bang or click near
him. She hoped, for his sake, that if he was ever called up he would be turned down by the medical board, like Mrs Johnson’s big, brawny son who had flat feet and couldn’t see further than his nose, even with glasses.
Mary smiled and gave Walter a wave. Inside the back room of the pub, the band was starting up again with another practice number. This time it was
Jeepers Creepers.
She hesitated, because it was one of her favourite tunes, but then the smell of stale beer wafting through the open window started to get to her.
She glanced about her, ignoring the continuing whistles from the lads laying bricks across the way, and went to have a word with Walter, even though she was in a bit of a hurry, it being her lunch-time.
‘Were those louts whistling at you?’ he asked, his expression
darkening
into one of jealous anger, though she knew he was too gentle to take anybody to task, even if it meant saving her honour.
‘Oh, they’re just having a bit of fun. Take no notice.
I
don’t,’ she said with a grin as he bent down to peck her on the cheek: ‘Haven’t you any customers, then?’
‘Nah,’ he replied, rubbing the back of his broad neck. ‘Things have gone from bad to worse since this ruddy war started. Meat’s in short supply these days. And there’s talk of things being rationed, too. Let’s hope it gets sorted out soon.’
Walter had been running the family business since his father’s heart attack two years previously. The only competition in the town was the Co-op and both the shops had recently seen queues forming right down the street. Housewives were stockpiling general groceries as if there was no tomorrow. The fact that it was the coldest winter on record for about half a century didn’t deter the housewives of Felling. They wore extra layers of clothing, woollen headscarves and gloves and stamped their booted feet to keep warm as they waited.
‘They say it’ll get worse before it gets better,’ Mary said and winced, thinking that she sounded just like her mother, who was a bit of a Job’s comforter at the best of times.
‘Aye.’ Walter cast about him, a sure sign that he was about to change the subject. ‘Any chance of you helping out on the deliveries tonight, Mary? Kevin’s joined up, the idiot.’
Kevin was Walter’s delivery boy. He wasn’t highly intelligent, but he was a good worker and his absence would be sorely felt. Mary sighed, wondering just how long it was going to be before towns and villages would be emptied of every male who wasn’t too old or too infirm to fight for his country.
‘As long as I get to drive the van.’ She smiled, dimpling and waiting for the usual frown, for Walter didn’t have much confidence in women drivers, even though she had passed her test a few months ago.
‘Sorry, no chance of that. Not with petrol being rationed.’
Mary blew out her cheeks and pulled a face. ‘I suppose I’ll have to use Kevin’s bike, then.’
‘I don’t know what you want to drive for, anyway,’ he told her grumpily and glowered at her beneath lowered brows. ‘I don’t know any other women, except those Beasley females, who drive. Them and the vicar’s wife.’
‘Oh, there are quite a few of us around these days,’ she said. ‘And you watch what you say about Mrs Beasley and her daughter. They were like family to me when I was growing up.’
It was true. Brigadier and Mrs Beasley had ‘adopted’ Mary as a companion to their daughter, Anne, when the girls were only six years old. They had enjoyed a unique education in the capable hands of a private tutor, Miss Frances Croft who, although English, had been born and raised in France, where her father had been something important at the British Embassy in Paris. It was very rare that a girl like Mary, who came from a very different background, could have such an opportunity, though she wasn’t always happy with the arrangement at the time.
Anne had been a strange girl, quiet and moody and often rebellious. Left alone with her studies, she was lazy and uninterested. With Mary at her side, she became competitive and enthusiastic. Mary’s mother had not been too happy about handing her daughter over to this wealthy, influential family, but could not turn her back on the financial
remuneration
, and the fact that her youngest daughter might possibly make
something
of herself at the end of the day.
‘I saw Miss Beasley the other day,’ Walter said, twisting his face and sucking air through his teeth. ‘She came into the shop here and demanded that I keep her a pound of the best steak. I told her, I said, you come and take your chances like everybody else. I don’t go in for
keeping
things under the counter for customers who think they’re privileged. Aye, that’s what I said to her. She didn’t like it.’
Mary laughed. ‘No, I can imagine the look on her face. Poor Anne.’
‘There’s nowt poor about that family, as you well know.’ Walter stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked on the balls of his feet. ‘Now, are you going to help me out th’ night or not?’
‘I suppose so,’ Mary said. ‘Look, Walter, I’d better get on. Mr Harper will have one of his tantrums if I’m late again.’
‘You’re heading in the wrong direction, aren’t you?’
Mary shook her head. ‘I’ve got to pick up a prescription for Gran. She’s got bronchitis again and she can’t seem to shift it.’
‘Does she still sleep in the back yard?’ Walter rolled his eyes. ‘Can’t you persuade her that yon Adolph Hitler isn’t coming to bomb her out of her bed?’
‘You know my gran,’ Mary said with a laugh, picturing her grandmother wrapped in eiderdowns and with a woolly hat pulled over her eyes and ears, down in the reinforced concrete shelter, which was how she had been every night since war had been declared. No wonder she had bronchitis.
Mary glanced from side to side and, pleased that there was no one looking, stepped up to Walter and gave him a quick kiss. ‘I’m off. See you later?’
She hurried away, knowing that Walter’s wistful eyes would follow her all the way up the High Street. But she dared not linger. Time was
ticking
on. Over at Harper’s Drapery Store she could picture the boss
keeping
a mean eye on his watch.
And there lay the biggest problem in Mary’s life. Mr Harper lived up to his reputation of being a slave-driver and a lecherous individual, who went through his female employees like a hot knife through butter. Mary longed for the day when she could say goodbye to brassières, corsets and camisole knickers, though her mother liked her daughter serving fancy underwear to the more genteel ladies of the town. It was better than Woolworth’s, or slaving all day in a factory like so many of her school chums had ended up doing. Still, she was prepared to wait until
something
more stimulating came along.
Dr Gordon’s surgery was packed with coughs, streaming noses and
fretful
children. Mary’s heart sank. If she had to wait more than five minutes she really would be late getting back to her post. Mr Harper would take great pleasure out of hauling her over the coals and he was still smarting from a blow she had orchestrated to his tender regions with the aid of the metal cash register drawer. He had been a little too free with his hands under cover of the counter. With a surreptitious press of the right key, the drawer had shot out and found its mark, bringing tears to the poor man’s eyes and great satisfaction to Mary’s heart, though she went through the motions of being “dreadfully sorry” for her carelessness.
Mary’s thoughts of Mr Harper and the cash register were interrupted by the loud discordant whirring of the practice bell, indicating that Dr Gordon was ready to see the next patient. There was a bit of a scuffle
between two women as they argued over whose turn it was. By the time they had calmed down, a man with a flat cap pulled over his eyes, a white silk muffler about his throat, and a cigarette attached to his bottom lip as if it had been glued there, had taken advantage of the situatin. He muttered something about
ruddy women
as he left the green-painted walls of the waiting-room and entered the brown-painted walls of the passage leading to the consulting-rooms.
Mary glanced anxiously at her watch and decided to leave, but the doorbell gave a sharp jangle and everyone looked up, surprised to see Dr Gordon himself step in from the street. He looked flustered and
red-faced
from hurrying, as he squeezed through the crowded room, pushing his black doctor’s bag before him.
‘Sorry, sorry!’ he said to the mournful eyes and curious glances that followed him. ‘Today’s my day for emergencies.’
‘If I have to wait here any longer,’ said one fat woman whom Mary could smell across the room,
‘I’
ll
be a bliddy emergency.’
She set off cackling with toothless laughter. Some of the other patients joined in. Others looked more embarrassed than amused.
‘Och, Mary,’ Dr Gordon said, getting his eye on her, for she was
standing
directly in his path. ‘What are you doing here? You’re not ill, are you?’
‘No, Dr Gordon. It’s not me …’
‘Well, you soon will be ill if you wait here with all these germs being breathed into the atmosphere. What is it? Your grandmother again?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. She needs a new prescription to get her over the weekend. She’s not worse, but she’s no better.’
‘Aye, it’s this blessed cold spell we’ve been having that does it. I’ll give you something stronger for her. Come on through.’
‘Oh, but….’
Mary’s voice was drowned out by protests about her jumping the queue. Dr Gordon held up his hand and addressed them all with a
soothing
voice and a winning smile.
‘No need to get upset,’ he said. ‘We have two doctors dealing with your needs now. I’ll just write a prescription for this lassie’s poor old grandma and then we’ll go through you all like a dose of salts.’