The Penny Bangle (10 page)

‘We have to report for basic training as soon as you can spare us, Mrs Denham,’ went Frances. ‘We’ve got to do a six week course, then we’ll be posted somewhere.’

‘I suppose I’ll have to write to those two girls in Devon,’ said Mrs Denham, sighing. ‘I hope they haven’t found other jobs just yet.’

But Rose Denham’s grey eyes sparkled brightly, and Cassie could see that she wished she was going with them, to have some adventures of her own.

Robert was sick and tired of Camberley.

Once he’d convinced the army he was fighting fit again, he had expected to be sent back overseas. Instead, they’d sent him to a training camp, given him three dozen new recruits, and ordered him to turn them into soldiers.

So he was spending all his time in drilling, marching, getting a bunch of idiot civilians to listen to orders yelled at them by red-faced sergeant-majors, and to obey these orders without thinking.

It was as bad as training land girls, but none of the recruits was anything like as pretty as a land girl. Or as one particular land girl, anyway.

He hadn’t meant to fall for Cassie. He still didn’t quite know how it had happened. When she had been tossed by Caesar, maybe? When she hadn’t made a fuss? When she’d got up the following morning, obviously aching everywhere, and with a lump as big as a Jaffa orange on her head, but carried on as normal?

Or when he’d found her hoeing in the vegetable garden, humming to herself and looking so contented as she worked? When she’d looked up and smiled at him, the late evening sun reflected in her gorgeous violet-blue eyes?

He’d signed the letter he had sent to Cassie with his love. Maybe, on reflection, that hadn’t been very wise?

Well, it was too late now.

Cassie and Frances had signed all the forms, and so it was too late to back out now. They were in the army, and there for the duration.

The basic training came as a big shock. The girls were up at crack of dawn, to do PT in cotton vests and hideous khaki army bloomers, while squads of male recruits stood gawping, leering or passing ribald comments, until their sergeants yelled at them and threatened to put the buggers on a charge.

Endless uniform and kit inspections, square-bashing and more PT filled up the weary days, and Cassie fell into her bunk each night exhausted, dead to the world until reveille woke the company up the following morning.

But by the third week of their training, Cassie was feeling better and fitter than she ever had in all her life. While working on the farm, she’d started to develop a bit of muscle tone, and these days she was very pleased to see her skinny sparrow legs were shaping up a bit, and that she seemed to have a sight more bosom now she’d learned to stand up straight and tall.

Well, taller, anyway.

Thanks to the army dentist, she could now chew her food effectively. Thanks to the army hairdresser, her fair hair looked much glossier and less straw-like now she had had a decent permanent wave.

When their mid-course leave came up, they arranged to go to Birmingham. ‘Mummy says I’m insane,’ said Frances, as they stood on the station platform waiting for the train. She smoothed down the lapels of her new uniform, and fiddled with her hair, which she’d had cut short and now curled softly round her ears.

‘Mummy’s probably right,’ said Cassie, grinning. ‘You should have stayed at Melbury, milking cows and feeding chickens and being bored out of your mind.’

The train came roaring in. They got a whole compartment to themselves. Mrs Denham had made a cake to take to Cassie’s granny, and Cassie put the box up on the rack.

‘Of course you’re not insane, you’re patriotic.’ As Frances frowned and chewed her lower lip, Cassie jerked the leather strap that held the window closed, and let in some fresh air. They sat back in their seats and looked at one another, and then they burst out laughing.

‘We’ve escaped,’ said Cassie.

‘We’re going to have adventures,’ giggled Frances.

‘The war’s as good as won.’

Cassie took out a pack of Passing Clouds, tossed a cigarette up in the air, and then she caught it neatly in her mouth, a trick she’d learned from Robert. ‘You want to watch it, Adolf.
We’re
in the army now!’

When they arrived in Birmingham at last, it was a novelty for Cassie to see Frances Ashford looking so bewildered. Cassie was used to picking her way through streets of damaged houses, broken pavements and flattened factories. But Frances had never heard a bomb go off, let alone seen what bombs could do, first hand.

‘You see, you country bumpkins had it easy,’ Cassie said to Frances as she took her friend along the roads where she had lived most of her life. In Redland Street, there were some houses missing, and only six or seven were still unscathed.

‘Yes,’ she continued, as Frances stared in horror, ‘you lot watch the newsreels at the flicks, and listen to the wireless, and you all say how dreadful, bleedin’ Jerry, stuff like that. But you don’t smell the burning. You don’t feel the terror when the planes come over, and start dropping bombs on you.’

‘You’re right,’ said Frances, quietly. ‘You people in the cities, you’ve all been so brave.’

‘It’s not like we had much choice,’ said Cassie.

‘I wonder where they’ll post us, Cass?’

‘Oh, right in the thick of it, I shouldn’t wonder.’ Cassie shrugged her shoulders. ‘If we volunteer for ack-ack training, we’ll be going to Portsmouth, Wolverhampton, Coventry – somewhere nice and dangerous like that. Here we are then, home sweet home. You’d better brace yourself.’

‘But what – ’

‘You’ll see.’ Cassie got out her key. But as she put it in the lock, the front door opened, and there was Lily Taylor on the threshold, with tears in her eyes.

‘Hello, Granny.’ Cassie hugged her granny tightly, told her not to cry, and then stood back to look at her with Frances Ashford’s eyes. She saw a bird-boned, grey-haired woman in a snow-white apron, a neat, dark blouse and skirt, and carpet slippers on her arthritic feet. ‘Fran, this is my granny.’

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Taylor.’ Frances smiled. ‘I do hope you’re well?’

‘I’m middling, miss, just middling, that’s all.’ Lily shook Frances Ashford’s proffered hand. ‘It’s nice to meet you, and it’s very good of you to come with my Cassandra. Well, girls, don’t just stand there on the doorstep, like cheese at fourpence ha’penny. Come into the parlour.’

‘Welcome to the holy of holies,’ whispered Cassie softly, pulling a wry face.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Frances frowned.

‘Oh, come on,’ said Cassie, and dragged her friend inside.

It hadn’t changed a bit. In spite of all the bombing, which shook other people’s precious ornaments off their shelves and brought their plaster down, Cassie saw Lily Taylor’s house looked just as it had always looked for nearly twenty years.

A gallery of religious pictures covered all the wall space, and on every surface stood statuettes of saints and martyrs, holy water flasks, small shrines and rosaries. ‘My gran’s a Holy Joe,’ mouthed Cassie, shrugging as Frances stared.

‘What do you think, miss?’ Lily Taylor asked, brushing some invisible specks of dust off two little statues of the Virgin Mary and Saint Bernadette, which she’d been sent from Lourdes.

‘It’s very nice,’ said Frances.

‘Come into the back, miss,’ Lily said, and Cassie rolled her eyes.

The little room behind the parlour was a shrine to Cassie’s mother. There were brown-tinged photographs of Geraldine from when she was a baby until when she was a bride. There were clothes and personal possessions, brushes and combs and dolls and books and trinkets.

There were First Communion cards and brittle, faded nosegays, spill tins she had covered with patterned paper, and papier-mâché egg cups she had made.

Cassie had heard the story so many, many times, and now she braced herself, knowing she’d soon be hearing it once more. How widowed Lily Taylor’s only child, the beautiful and pious Geraldine, was courted by an older gentleman of independent means, who’d walked into the sweet shop where Geraldine was working, and been smitten.

How she’d become engaged to marry him, and how they’d had a quiet but lovely wedding at St Saviour’s Roman Catholic Church, just up the road. Then they’d moved into a house in Bromsgrove, and a few months later Geraldine was expecting their first child.

But just before the baby came, its father had cleared off. It turned out he was married to someone else. He had a wife and family in Halifax, or so the police had told them. He’d been had up for bigamy once already, in 1917. But, added Lily, and this was the worst blow of all, he was not a Catholic.

Geraldine had died a few days later, giving birth. ‘But it was the shame that killed my daughter,’ Lily said to Frances, dabbing at her eyes.

The baby lived, and was baptised Cassandra, the name her mother had chosen for it if she had a daughter. She’d always had her nose in books, said Lily, and she’d probably found the baby’s name in one of those.

Broken-hearted, Lily had found her personal tower of strength in Father Riley. The local priest assured her that her daughter’s soul was in no danger of the everlasting fire.

‘But that dirty Protestant – he’ll burn in hell for all eternity,’ Lily added, fiercely. ‘No offence to you, miss, if you’re one of them yourself – a Protestant, I mean,’ she went on quickly. ‘I’m old enough to know there’s good and bad in everyone. Like that Mrs Lee from down the road, she’s a Presbyterian from Belfast, but a nicer, kinder sort of woman you couldn’t hope to meet.’

‘Granny, shall we have some tea?’ asked Cassie. ‘Look, we’ve brought a cake, with real eggs inside it, and real strawberry jam, and there’s a bit of sugar on the top.’

‘Your granny’s sweet,’ said Frances, as they sat on the tram going back into the city centre where they would catch their train.

‘Sweet but crazy.’ Cassie’s grin was wry. ‘She prays to the Virgin every day to keep her house from harm. She hasn’t bought it yet, so now she reckons there’s a holy brolly over 40 Redland Street, protecting it from twenty-pounders and incendiaries.’

‘I didn’t know you were a Roman Catholic,’ went on Frances. ‘When you were at Melbury, you came to the village church with us, and now you’re in the army, you go to church parade with all the Church of England lot. I didn’t think Roman Catholics went to other people’s churches.’

‘I don’t know if I am a Roman Catholic any more,’ said Cassie, sighing heavily. ‘I don’t know what to make of all that holy water and holy pictures stuff. Quite honestly, I just don’t know if I believe in any God at all. But now you’ve seen my granny and where I came from, you’ll understand why it would never work with Rob and me.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Frances!’ Cassie cried. ‘He’s an officer, I’m a private. He’s a toff and I grew up in squalor in a city slum. He’s Church of England and I’m a Roman Catholic. Well, I am in theory, anyway.’

‘So?’ said Frances. ‘None of that would matter to me, and if I happen to meet a lovely Catholic chap myself – ’

‘Your parents would disown you. I reckon they should be prosecuted, Fran. It’s nothing short of criminal, having a child, and letting her grow up to be as ignorant as you.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I don’t suppose you know what people do to get a baby?’

‘Well, as a matter of fact, I do,’ said Frances huffily. ‘Robert and Stephen told me years ago. Their mother explained it all to them, and they explained to me. Mrs Denham might be very strict, and I agree she looks a bit old-fashioned, but in some ways she’s extremely modern.’

They arrived back at the barracks just before their passes were going to run out. Frances was finding it quite hard, thought Cassie, sharing a wooden barrack hut with thirty other girls, most of them from backgrounds very similar to Cassie’s own. So while Cassie got on well with all the other women, they mocked Frances and her accent, and called her Lady Muck.

‘Don’t take any notice,’ Cassie said, whenever Frances got upset. ‘That Doreen Jackson, who was teasing you for being posh, she came back from leave last week with lice as big as blow-flies. They’ll have her in the fumigation unit when they notice.’

‘But they’ve
all
got it in for me,’ wailed Frances.

‘No, they haven’t, Frances, don’t be such a mardy baby. Just try to go along with them and you’ll be fine, you’ll see.’