As Time Goes By (15 page)

‘She did say that, but that didn’t mean … She
was just upset … I can’t believe you’re saying any of this.’

‘It’s for your own good. Like I said, I like you, Sam, and I’d hate to see you take a fall out of misplaced loyalty to a girl who we all know was not really mentally fit to be in uniform.’

Hazel got up from the bed. ‘Sleep on what I’ve said, Sam, and I’m sure that in the morning you’ll see the sense of taking the captain’s advice.’

‘I have to tell the truth.’

Hazel walked towards the door and then stopped and turned round. ‘But are you really sure you know what the truth is? Have you really not understood what I’m trying to tell you? Sam, if you don’t take the captain’s advice, if you persist in sticking to your own story, do you really think it would get any further than the captain’s desk? You can’t buck the system, Sam. You’ll be labelled a troublemaker, and your life will be made a misery, and for what? You can’t bring Mouse back; no one can do that. Once you’re in uniform you have to live by the rules of that uniform, harsh though that may sound. It’s like being in a family, Sam; if one member of that family does something that will bring disgrace on the family, it’s hushed up and kept quiet; it becomes a secret that everyone knows about but no one admits to or talks about – especially to those outside the family. That’s the way it is in the Armed Forces. Sometimes one of the hardest lessons we have to learn is that the reality of life is very different from our ideals.’

She opened the door, and then added quietly,
‘Oh, by the way, you may not have heard yet but the captain has authorised me to tell you that Warrant Officer Sands received an overseas posting yesterday, and will be leaving us at the end of the week.’

Alone in the darkened room Sam desperately wanted to cry but the tears wouldn’t come.

‘Saw the doctor bringing you back from the hospital the other day,’ Ida Jessop, one of Sally’s neighbours, stopped her in the street to comment with obvious relish.

‘Yes,’ Sally agreed. Not for the world was she going to start gossiping about that thunderbolt of a statement Dr Ross had made to her before he had left, and which was still so fresh in her memory even now, two days later. There had been a look in his eyes when he had said those words to her that had broken through her antagonism towards him and her awareness that they inhabited socially different worlds.

‘Doris was saying that it was them sandwiches of Daisy’s that caused your lad to be ill.’

‘The doctor couldn’t say what had caused it,’ Sally answered her diplomatically.

‘Hmm, well, as to that, none of us know the truth of half of what goes on, if you ask me. Look at all that talk there’s bin about this national loaf. None of us know what’s bin put in it.’

‘No, I dare say not,’ Sally agreed.

‘Well, I’d best be on my way. I’d heard that they’ve got biscuits at the grocer’s up in Wavertree. Not that I’m registered there, but seeing as how I’ve got service people billeted on me …’

Sally had gone only a few more yards when she was stopped again, this time by Daisy, who came out of her front gate and crossed the road to come and stand in front of her, crossing her arms as she did so.

‘I want a word with you,’ she told Sally sharply.

‘I can’t stop now, Daisy,’ Sally began. ‘I’m already late—’

‘What’s all this I’ve been hearing about you going round telling everyone that it was my sandwiches wot made that lad of yours sick?’ Daisy demanded, ignoring her plea.

‘Daisy, that isn’t true,’ Sally defended herself.

‘Isn’t it? So how come everyone keeps going on to me about it?’ she asked bitterly. ‘Get my hubby into a real load of trouble, it could, and all over a kiddie being a bit sick.’

‘Tommy was more than just a bit sick, Daisy,’ Sally felt bound to point out. ‘As it happens, Dr Ross did go on at me to say where I had the fish paste from—’

‘What’s it got to do wi’ him? It’s all right for rich folk like him, but the rest of us have to make do and mend as best we can, and if my hubby can help folk out by letting ’em have a few extra tins of stuff now and again, then why shouldn’t he? If you was to ask me I’d say that the only reason
them like ruddy Dr Ross want to know things like that is because they want to keep all the decent stuff for themselves. My hubby says you should see what he’s heard comes through the docks that we never get to see in the shops. So what if some of the boxes fall off the pallets by accident on purpose so that the men can have ’em as spoiled? What harm’s that doing anyone, may I ask?’

Sally could understand Daisy’s feelings but she still felt bound to point out, ‘Dr Ross was telling me that there’d been cases of people dying from eating bad food, and that’s why he wanted to know where the fish paste had come from. I didn’t want to get your hubby into any trouble so I didn’t let on about him getting it.’

‘Well, you may have told him that but you’ve certainly made sure everyone round here knows different. My hubby had a nice little business going selling off them tins that we didn’t want and now he’s got people wot were keen to buy from him turning up their noses and saying they don’t want it in case it makes them bad.’

Sally was beginning to lose her patience. ‘Well, that isn’t my fault, is it?’

‘It’s
your
kiddie that got took bad,’ Daisy pointed out illogically, adding angrily, ‘That’s what happens when you get strangers moving into a street. We was all good friends round here and understood what was what before this war broke out and you come here. My hubby was saying only last night to him what lives three doors down that he feels right sorry for your hubby, stuck in
a prisoner of war camp, whilst his wife goes out of a Saturday night.’

‘I go out to work,’ Sally protested.

‘Oh, aye, of course you do, and what about that chap that comes round here at night? Don’t think that we haven’t seen him. Regular as clockwork, he is. My George reckons you could set your watch by him. But we haven’t gone running round telling everyone that’ll listen all about it,’ Daisy finished, giving an angry toss of her head.

‘You don’t understand,’ Sally protested, white-faced with distress.

‘Don’t make me laugh. Of course we understand. Your husband’s bin taken prisoner fighting for his country whilst you’ve bin messing around wi’ another fella. It’s as plain as the nose on my face. It wouldn’t surprise me if
he
was the one that made your Tommy sick.’ With this parting shot she turned on her heel and marched back to her own house, leaving Sally standing watching her in shocked dismay.

One of the things that had touched her most after she and Ronnie had got married was the warmth with which his friends had welcomed her into their lives. She had felt more at home here in Liverpool than she had ever felt in Manchester, and she had cherished the friendships she had made, and the place in the community that belonged to her and her family. But now, with a few angry words, Daisy had destroyed all of that, making her feel like an outcast.

‘You OK?’

It was the first sympathetic voice Sam had heard since Mouse’s death and that it should belong to Sergeant Brookes made Sam’s eyes blur with tears as she nodded and pretended to be busy checking items on the list she was holding.

‘I heard about your friend.’

Sam dropped the list.

‘She was a decent kid,’ the sergeant said as he bent down to pick it up for her.

‘You’d better not let the ATS hear you saying that.’ Sam gave a bitter laugh. ‘They want everyone to say that she did it because she was unbalanced, but that’s not the truth. She killed herself because of what was being done to her by someone else, making her life a misery, even if I have had to give a statement saying different. I can’t stop thinking about her,’ she admitted. ‘I should have been there. If I had then I’d have been able to talk to her, make her see … and she’d be alive now.’

‘You can’t go thinking like that, or blaming yourself.’

‘Why not?’ The lessons she had learned since Mouse’s death had stripped her of the soft naïvety of idealism and the ability to trust in the system, and it showed in her voice. She was still raw with bitterness and shock.

‘You couldn’t have stopped her. I’ve come across folk like her myself. You learn a lot in the army, meet all sorts you’d not normally meet, and every now and again there’ll be one like her, in the wrong
place at the wrong time, out of step and scared sick, and being turned on by them as should know better. It’s a fact of human nature and you can’t do nothing about it.’

Tears stung Sam’s eyes. At last Mouse was getting the sympathy Sam had expected her to receive from the other girls. Now that she was with someone who wasn’t being critical and who seemed to understand, the emotions Sam had been bottling up came pouring out in a torrent of anguish.

‘I feel I’m being so disloyal to Mouse, but the other girls – I had no idea they felt the way they do. I thought they sympathised with her like I did. But now when I think about it, well,
some
of them were unkind about her. Not as unkind or cruel as …
someone
was to her.’ Sam caught herself up, almost having said the warrant officer’s name. That, she knew, would draw down on her own head the sergeant’s disapproval. Not for nothing was there a military saying: ‘no names, no pack drill,’ which loosely translated that if one never gave one’s own name nor mentioned another’s, then no formal punishment could ever be given to you or to them. ‘Pack drill’ was army slang for a punishing cross-country run carrying one’s full kit in a haversack or, even worse, bricks, if the ‘crime’ was thought to merit such a punishment.

‘Taking it out on you now, are they? Your mates? Lasses can be like that sometimes.’

‘A bit,’ Sam answered cautiously. ‘A couple of
the girls from another dormitory have already sent me to Coventry. Not that that bothers me,’ she assured the sergeant spiritedly. ‘They were
her
spies and hangers-on so they were bound to be on her side, but even the girls in my own dormitory aren’t the same to me any more,’ she admitted. ‘Mouse didn’t fit in and shouldn’t have joined the ATS, and now I’m beginning to think that I don’t fit in either. The other girls are angry with me and … I suppose I shall have to ask for a transfer, but who is going to want me with a black mark against my name?’ She paused and shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be telling you any of this.’

‘Why not? It will do you good to get it off your chest and I’m as good a listener as the next person.’

He was wrong about that, Sam decided. His kindness coming so unexpectedly after the lack of sympathy and even downright hostility towards Mouse and her own defence of her was almost too much for her, and she fought valiantly against a sudden prickle of tears.

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised again, searching frantically in her pocket for her handkerchief, accidentally removing with it one of the small pieces of fur she had retrieved from the floor of the warrant officer’s office. Automatically she bent down to retrieve it, but the sergeant got there first.

‘It’s from Mouse’s bear,’ she told him, her voice wavering, as her eyes filled with tears. And then somehow she was in his arms, being held tight and
cradled comfortingly, in a manner that reminded her very much of the way her father had comforted her as a little girl. ‘I’m sorry … I’m sorry …’ was all she could say through her tears.

‘Cried my own eyes out, I did, after Dunkirk,’ he told her, ‘and I wasn’t the only one, I can tell you. Look, what you need, I reckon, is to be working somewhere where you haven’t got time to go dwelling on what’s happened. Somewhere where there’s a bit more happening.’

‘Sorry to interrupt, Frank, but we’ve got a bomb to dig out before it goes off and blows out half a street with it. How’s Molly, by the way? The baby’s due any day, isn’t it?’

The cold, curt and somehow accusatory words fell on Sam’s ears like physical blows, and she was sure she could hear discomfort as well as surprise in the sergeant’s voice as he exclaimed, ‘Johnny!’ immediately stepping back from her.

Released from the sergeant’s arms, her face on fire with discomfort, and those telling words about the sergeant’s responsibilities ringing in her ears, Sam took to her heels, disappearing as far into the murky depths of the store as she could. Not that she had been doing anything wrong, nor had wanted to do anything wrong. That female admiration she had been beginning to feel for Sergeant Brookes had been nipped in the bud the moment she had learned that he was married. He was a decent man, who she knew instinctively would never look at anyone other than his wife, and she simply would not have
wanted him to look in her direction, knowing that he was married. She just wasn’t that sort.

It was Sergeant Everton’s
attitude
that had made her feel so uncomfortable, not anything she had been doing.

‘Charlie wants a word with you. He’s in the office.’

There was no reason for her to have that uncomfortable feeling of anxiety, Sally reassured herself. That smug triumph she had heard in Patti’s voice was just Patti being Patti.

She found the band leader in the small cluttered room at the end of the backstage corridor that everyone knew as ‘the office’. Short and balding, with his patent black hair, which the girls swore was dyed, smoothed flat to his scalp, he looked like the good-natured family man he was. But there was no sign of his normal smile when she walked into the room, Sally noticed uneasily.

‘Patti said you wanted to see me.’

‘Yes … that’s right.’ He couldn’t look at her and instead was fidgeting with a piece of paper on the desk in front of him.

Sally’s small flutters of anxiety became a fist that squeezed her insides painfully tight.

‘Thing is, Sally, that … well, you’re a nice little
singer, and I’ve been glad to have you doing a bit here and there and filling in for Eileen.’

‘A bit here and there?’ Sally protested. ‘I’ve bin singing for you as regular as any of the other girls these last few weeks, even if you haven’t bin paying me as though I was one of them.’

‘Well, you’ve hit the nail on the head there, Sally. You aren’t one of them, and the truth is that there’ve been complaints from the other girls about you taking advantage. I’ll be sorry to lose you, of course.’

He’d be sorry to lose her! It took several seconds for the meaning of his words to sink in.

‘You mean you don’t want me standing in for Eileen any more? But I thought … only the other week you said how good I was.’

‘Aye, well, things change, and to tell the truth I’ve bin thinking for a while that a trio would work better than a quartet. And with you having them kiddies and working at the factory—’

‘If it’s because I’ve been late a time or two, then I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again,’ Sally pleaded desperately. She couldn’t lose this job; she couldn’t. ‘Please give me another chance.’

Charlie’s face had gone red with discomfort.

‘I’m sorry, lass, but I can’t. You’ll soon find another band to sing with, happen one that will take you on as solo singer. You’ve got the voice for it.’

Sally wasn’t taken in for one minute. If he really thought that then why was he so keen to get rid of her? She remembered that there had been some
gossip about the band leader and Patti being a bit closer than they ought to be with Charlie being a married man, but she had dismissed it as nothing more than gossip, but maybe she had been wrong. She knew that Patti didn’t like her, and the other girls had warned her that she had it in for her. But she had not been expecting this!

‘Here,’ Charlie said awkwardly, reaching into his pocket and removing his wallet ‘Take this.’

Sally’s eyes widened as she saw the twenty pounds he was handing her. Her pride badly wanted her to refuse, but twenty pounds was a lot more than three Saturday nights’ wages, and more than she could afford to turn down.

‘You know what I’d do in your shoes?’ He was smiling now, obviously relieved to have an uncomfortable interview over and done with. ‘I’d ask around some of the other dance halls, and see if there’s anyone looking for a singer. I’ll even put in a good word for you with the manager here, if you want.’

He seemed oblivious to the woodenness of Sally’s quiet, ‘Thank you.’

It was true that there were other bands that played at the Grafton – several of them – but Sally hadn’t heard of any of them wanting new singers. The fact was that every girl with a half-decent voice was looking for work in the hope that it might get her into the BBC or ENSA, the Forces’ entertainment arm, and turn her in to another Vera Lynn or Gracie Fields.

‘Not rehearsing then, Sally?’ Patti called out
maliciously when Sally was forced to walk past the band on her way out.

‘You’re back earlier than I was expecting,’ Doris greeted Sally on her return. ‘Not that I’m not glad. Molly’s dad’s bin round to say that Molly’s bin that restless she reckons the baby might be about to start.’

Sally managed to force a wan smile. Why hadn’t she noticed before how tired Doris was looking? And any day now, by the sound of it, Molly was going to need her help with her new baby. Perhaps instead of looking for another singing job she should be thinking instead about asking the foreman what the best shift to work would be to enable her to get both her boys places at the nursery Littlewoods ran for its workers’ children. The problem was that with so many women wanting places, there just weren’t enough to go round, unless you agreed to work on an unpopular shift. Sally even knew of mothers who worked nights and left their children at home alone asleep in order to do so, and then worried themselves sick all through their shift in case anything happened to them. But her children were far too young for her to be able to do that, even if she had been able to bring herself to.

But after what the doctor had told her, Sally felt she couldn’t go on expecting Doris to look after them. After all, she and her kiddies were nothing to Doris, not like Molly and hers.

‘I’d better take these two home then,’ Sally told her mechanically.

‘Are you all right, Sally, only you don’t sound like your normal self.’

The temptation to tell Doris what had happened was almost too much for her, but she made herself shake her head.

‘Oh, I nearly forgot, did you hear the news on the wireless about them poor kiddies before you went out?’ Doris asked.

‘No. What’s happened?’

‘It was Albert Dearden who told me about it when he came round. Seemingly a Luftwaffe bomber has dropped its bombs on a school this morning, with the kiddies in it. Somewhere down south, Petworth, I think he said it was.’

Sally pressed her hand to her mouth to stifle her shock, whispering in disbelief, ‘Oh, no!’ and hugging her sons to her so tightly that Harry wriggled in protest.

‘Eighty-five boys, there was in it, and they aren’t holding out much hope of getting many of them out alive.’

Sally badly wanted to sit down. It didn’t take very much imagination to realise how those poor mothers must be feeling.

‘According to Molly’s dad they was saying on the wireless that the pilot must have known it was a school, he was flying that low. There’s nowhere that’s safe for children these days unless you send them off into the country somewhere … That reminds me,’ Doris continued, ‘I heard from one
of the nurses the other day that Dr Ross lost his wife and kiddies in a bombing raid. Seems that one of the kiddies was rescued but died later in hospital. Poor man. Seeing as you’ve come back early, I think I’ll pop down and see how Molly is. I wouldn’t want to miss out on delivering this one when I’ve delivered your two and our Lillibet.’

Sally forced another smile. Bad as the news she had received this morning had been, it was nowhere near as bad as what those poor parents in Petworth were having to face. Or what Dr Ross had had to endure. Sally tried to imagine suffering the loss of one of her precious sons and acknowledged that it was impossible to imagine the extent of such grief. Kiddies were so precious, and so vulnerable, especially in a city like Liverpool, with its docks. Who was to say that the Luftwaffe wouldn’t come back and blitz Liverpool again? And German bombs weren’t the only danger to her children. Without the money she earned from singing how would she manage to keep up the payments to Bertha Harris? She had believed that Liverpool and this street were her home; that she had a place here where she belonged and where she was a part of a close-knit and caring community, but she wasn’t, was she? As Daisy had pointed out, she was in reality an outsider.

As soon as she got home she tuned in the wireless, waiting to hear if there was any news about the bombed school. The dreadful fate of the children, along with Doris’s comments about Dr Ross’s wife and children, were weighing even more heavily
on her than the fact that she had lost her job. At least things couldn’t get any worse, she told herself in an effort to pull herself round.

Sam was acutely aware of the silence from the other girls as she walked into the dormitory, though she pretended not to be.

Lynsey, who was busy painting her nails, had turned her back towards her and it was left to May to say overbrightly, ‘We were just talking about going dancing this Saturday—’

‘You mean you were,’ Lynsey interrupted her. ‘Like I just said, I’ve got a date with a certain sergeant.’

‘I thought you said you hadn’t heard from him.’

‘That was yesterday. I found out where he was working and I just happened to be walking past, so naturally when he saw me he made a date.’

‘Are you sure it was
him
that made the date?’ May queried wryly, before turning back to Sam and continuing, ‘Well, anyway, if you want to come with us …’

‘I won’t, if you don’t mind,’ Sam told her quietly. ‘It doesn’t seem right, not with Mouse …’

Out of the corner of her eye Sam could see the looks May and Lynsey were exchanging.

Lynsey told her sharply, ‘Look, you can go round with a face like a wet weekend if you want to, but don’t you go expecting the rest of us to do the same. If you want to know the truth, some of us think we’re well rid of her, getting us into trouble all the time.’

Ignoring her, Sam asked, ‘Does anyone know what’s happened to … to her or what arrangements …?’

Putting down her nail polish, Lynsey stood up and turned towards her. ‘Didn’t you hear what I just said?’ she demanded acidly. ‘We don’t care about what’s happened to her, all we want to do is forget about her and we’re sick and fed up of you going round with a long face trying to make us feel guilty. There’s some of us who feel a whole lot happier and more comfortable now that she’s gone. Got right on my nerves, she did, and like I’ve bin saying, anyone with a halfpennyworth of sense could see that there was summat a bit wrong with her in the head, always going on about that bear.’

‘There was nothing wrong in her head. She was lonely and frightened, that was all, and if people like you hadn’t turned their backs on her and pretended not to notice what Toadie was doing to her, and been a bit more understanding, then she’d probably be alive today,’ Sam defended her late friend passionately.

Lynsey’s face went red and then white. ‘I’ll have you know that the captain herself told me she was pleased that some of us had had the good sense to see what was what. No wonder the two of you palled up. Neither of you fit in and if you was to ask me I’d say it was a pity we’d only got rid of half of what’s bin causing trouble for us all.’

Sam recoiled as though she had been hit.

‘What’s going on in here?’

They all stared at the corporal.

No one had heard her coming in and Sam’s face was as pale with strain as Lynsey’s was red with temper as they both turned towards the door.

‘Oh, you’re back, are you? Thought you wasn’t due back until tomorrow. Well, seein’ as you are, you might have come and told us, instead of sneaking in like that,’ Lynsey announced angrily. ‘Still, now you are here,
you
can tell her what
we
all know.’ Tossing her head in Sam’s direction, Lynsey picked up her nail polish and marched out of the room, leaving a highly charged silence behind her.

‘All right, what’s all this about?’ Hazel demanded. Despite her own distress Sam could see that the corporal looked tired and not very happy, and she wondered if perhaps things had not gone as well between her and her chap as she had hoped.

It was Alice who answered, Hazel grimacing faintly and looking uncomfortable as she explained, ‘May was asking Sam if she wanted to come dancing with us this Saturday, and Lynsey took the huff a bit when Sam said that she didn’t on account of … of what’s happened.’

Hazel’s face tightened. ‘Before I left I told you all of the captain’s instructions that that certain matter was not to be discussed – by anyone.’

Sam could feel the weight of the other girls’ accusations in the silence that followed.

‘I … it was my fault,’ she admitted guiltily. ‘I didn’t realise. I hadn’t been told…’

‘Well, you have now,’ Hazel told her shortly.

‘I’ve never seen a nipper in that much of a hurry to be born. Took
me
by surprise, he did, never mind his mother,’ Doris chuckled. ‘A big ’un, he is, an’ all. I weighed him meself on Molly’s kitchen scales and he was nearly ten pounds.’

‘Have they got a name for him yet?’ Sally asked as she handed Doris the cup of tea she had just poured for her.

‘Well, as to that, Frank was saying that him and Molly had talked it over and said beforehand that if it was a lad they’d call him Edward Francis – that’s Francis for our Frank and Edward for young Eddie that Molly was engaged to and got killed. Teddy, they’re going to call him. You should have seen our Frank’s face when he came in for his tea. Couldn’t believe his ears, he couldn’t, when he heard the baby crying. He was up them stairs two at a time.’

Sally looked away. Ronnie had been granted leave after Tommy had been born, but he hadn’t even seen Harry.

‘At least Molly wasn’t in labour for too long,’ she told Doris.

‘Maybe not, but little Teddy came a bit too fast for my liking,’ Doris informed her, switching from adoring grandmother to trained and experienced nurse and midwife. ‘Molly lost a fair bit of blood and I was getting to the point of thinking she’d have to go in to Mill Road before it stopped. She’s going to be feeling weak for a while, though, and it isn’t going to be easy for her, looking after a new baby and getting her strength back, what with
rationing an’ all, and then she’s got Lillibet to look after as well.’

Sally could see that Doris was now looking a bit uncomfortable, and couldn’t quite meet her eye, and she guessed what was on Doris’s mind, so she took a deep breath and, trying to sound casual, announced, ‘I’ve bin thinking for a while that Molly might need you to give her a hand once she’d had the baby. You’ve been good to me and my boys, Doris, treating them like they was your own, but fair dos, they aren’t. Molly’s two are your own blood and it’s only right and natural that you should want to do everything you can to help, especially with it turning out that poor Molly’s not too good. I’d feel the same meself if I were in your shoes. So what I’ve done is, I’ve decided to pack in me job at the Grafton.’