The Penny Bangle (12 page)

Shouldering her kitbag, she started slogging down the road between high, flowering hedges, enjoying the sweet scents of summer, but longing for her supper.

It was almost dark. Moths were fluttering softly round her head, bats swooped low to dart at flying insects, and ahead of her she saw a family of rabbits sitting boldly in the road, the young ones playing while their elders nibbled at the verge.

All was peace and beauty. She couldn’t believe she’d once been happy living in a city, breathing dust and smoke, without a single blade of grass in sight.

‘Carry your kitbag, miss?’

Startled, she turned to see a tall, broad figure a yard or two behind her, his cigarette glowing red and threatening in the deepening twilight.

‘It – it’s all right, I can manage,’ stammered Cassie, clutching at her kitbag nervously.

But now, the empty countryside was suddenly a place of fear and dread. At once, the rabbits scattered, disappearing in the undergrowth. Cassie hoped she was getting near the barracks, where somebody might hear her yell if this bloke tried it on.

‘Oh, don’t be so daft. Come on, let’s have it.’

The man reached for her kitbag, and Cassie was about to kick him hard where it would hurt, when the yellow moon lit up his features, and she saw he was grinning.

‘Rob, you stupid bugger!’ She glared at him in fury, angry that he’d made her panic, thrilled to see him, knowing she must be blushing like a pillar box, and ready to take a proper swing at him. ‘How long have you been following me?’

‘Since you left the station. I’d been in the buffet all day long, waiting for your train. But then, when you got off, I’d gone across the road to buy another pack of cigarettes, and so I missed you. A porter said he’d seen an ATS girl, she’d marched off up the road all by herself, so I hoped she’d be you.’

‘How did you know I’d come today?’

‘Frances wrote and told me.’

‘Bloody Frances!’ Cassie cried, vowing that when they met again, she’d settle Frances Ashford’s interfering hash once and for all. ‘Why can’t she keep her nose out of my business?’

‘You know Frances,’ Robert said, smiling and hefting Cassie’s kitbag. ‘What the hell is in here, Cass? A hundred tins of spam?’

‘All my stuff, and spares for a motorbike the sergeant back in training camp asked me to take for him.’

‘They weigh a ton,’ said Robert, frowning. ‘Lazy sod, he should have had them properly requisitioned, then sent them down by train – not asked a little thing like you to carry them for him.’

Robert and Cassie walked along the road. Now, Cassie was very glad there was nobody else about, that there was no sign of the barracks, that the only artificial light was from the glow from Robert’s cigarette, and that there was a moon.

‘How have you been getting on?’ asked Robert. ‘Fran said you were doing really well, that you were the star student on your course, and that you passed out top.’

‘She did all right herself,’ said Cassie, blushing.

‘So now you’ll be based in Aldershot? You’re going to be a driver?’

‘Yes, that’s what it looks like.’

‘Excellent,’ said Robert, and he laughed. ‘As soon as I’m a colonel, I’ll put in a request for Private Taylor to drive me all around. Then we can go on secret expeditions.’

‘It’s Lance Corporal Taylor now, if you don’t mind!’ cried Cassie, mortally affronted. ‘Look – I’ve got a stripe.’

‘My goodness, so you have.’ Robert smiled, and then reached out to trace the single chevron sewn on Cassie’s sleeve. ‘Well done, you’re a clever girl.’

‘I’m going to be a sergeant soon, you wait and see.’

‘I’m sure you will.’ Robert’s palm slid down the rough material of Cassie’s khaki jacket, and then he took her hand. He pulled her round to face him. ‘But I think we’ve been waiting long enough.’

He put her kitbag down on to the road.

He threw his cigarette away, and then he took her in his arms, wrapping her inside his army greatcoat so that she was warm against his chest.

Cassie raised her face to his, and to his delight she let him kiss her on the temples, then the mouth, following his lead at first, letting him demand and set the pace.

But very soon she was demanding on her own account, putting her hand behind his head and kissing him herself, encouraging him to kiss her harder, pulling him closer, closer, closer, until he could feel her body pressing up against him, tantalising him.

‘You smell delicious, Cass,’ he said, as he entwined his fingers in her hair.

‘It’s just Amami setting lotion, everybody uses it.’ Cassie smiled seductively at him. ‘You smell gorgeous, too,’ she said. ‘I love the smell of cigarettes on men.’

‘I smoke too much. It makes me cough and wheeze, but I find I can’t do without a fag.’

‘Well, you don’t need one now,’ said Cassie, kissing him again.’

She was right – he didn’t need anything but Cassie now. But, even though she was exciting him, even though he knew he hadn’t felt like this before, he also knew he had to stop himself before things went too far.

‘We must get you to barracks,’ he said softly, as he let her go, reluctantly but knowing he had no choice.,

He found her cap, which had been knocked off and landed upside-down in a deep ditch. He straightened Cassie’s jacket, brushing his hands across her chest, which made him want to kiss her more, to kiss and kiss forever.

‘I suppose so,’ Cassie said.

She knew her speech was slurred. She must be drunk, she thought, but not with alcohol, with happiness. She couldn’t help the silly little smile that played around her mouth. She didn’t want to lose this lovely, floating feeling.

‘Come on, love, duty calls.’ Robert picked up her kitbag. ‘They’ll be wondering what’s become of you. They’ll know the train’s come in, and soon they’ll be sending out the redcaps, to search in all the bushes.’

‘You’re so flipping organised,’ slurred Cassie, as she smoothed her skirt, and tucked her hair behind her ears.

Then it began to rain, and with the downpour she came back to reality. ‘All right, Rob,’ she said bitterly, ‘I get it. You’ve had your bit of early evening fun, so now I can bugger off to barracks. You’ll go back to London, have a pint or two, go picking up some other bird – ’

‘I’ll go back to London, certainly, but I won’t be picking up some bird, as you so elegantly put it.’ Then Robert took his greatcoat off, and draped it over Cassie’s narrow shoulders. ‘Come on, Cass. You’ll get soaked, and so will I. We need to get you to the barracks, and out of all this rain.’

Robert took her hand and started walking, so Cassie was obliged to go with him.

Chapter Seven

‘Jesus Christ, look what the cat dragged in,’ said the NCO on duty, grimacing as Cassie appeared at the guardroom door, soaking wet and shivering in the twilight. ‘Where’ve you been till this time, eh? We was expecting you at three o’clock this afternoon.’

‘She was delayed.’ Robert loomed out of the murk, dumped Cassie’s kitbag on the guardroom floor, and then stood there dripping on the clean cement. ‘Lance Corporal Taylor is attached to Transport Corps,’ he added, as the startled NCO came briskly to attention. ‘You’ll need someone to take her to her quarters.’

‘Yes, sir,’ rapped the guardroom sergeant, as he saluted Robert, but managed to give the pair of them a dirty look, as well.

A minute later, Cassie was being marched across the square, lugging her heavy kitbag. She glanced over her shoulder, anxious to see if Robert was still there. She couldn’t make him out, so she supposed he must have gone. He’d have a long, wet hike back to the station.

But what on earth had she been doing, smooching in the darkness with him, when she was on duty? If this was what men did to you, she thought, if they made you lose all track of time and totally forget yourself, she didn’t wonder girls got caught, that girls had little accidents. She must make sure he didn’t catch her off her guard again.

‘So you’re an officer’s floozy, eh?’ the corporal muttered, as he marched Cassie to her wooden hut. ‘I know your sort. Officers’ groundsheets, right? The ATS is full of girls like you, too stuck up to go with blokes like us.’

Cassie didn’t comment.

‘You deaf as well as dumb, then?’ The corporal sniffed in scorn. ‘You ain’t goin’ to like it ’ere, milady,’ he continued. ‘The girls in your block, they’re all really rough – a load of thieves and tarts. They’d slit your throat for half a crown.’

Oh, don’t you worry, corporal, I know rough, thought Cassie, although she didn’t think it wise to say.

He hadn’t seen the street where she’d grown up. He hadn’t seen the teenaged tarts who’d slouched and smoked in doorways, seen the gangs of kids who’d wrestle you to the pavement, yank your shoes off, then sell them down the market for a couple of bob.

If it hadn’t been for Lily Taylor, she’d have been a thief or tart herself.

In spite of what the corporal said, Cassie soon made friends and settled down.

‘The girls I mess with are all right,’ she wrote to Frances. ‘There are lots of them from the big cities, and most grew up in little terraced cottages, like me. The drivers are all nobs, though. They drove Daddy’s car before the war, and Daddy’s chauffeur taught most of them to drive.

‘But they’re very interested in Rob, and it’s all round the barracks that he met me at the station, walked me here, and then cleared off into the night.

‘I’ve told them all he’s Daisy Denham’s brother. So he’d better introduce us, and I’d better get her autograph, or else my name here will be mud.’

She didn’t manage to get any leave. But then, she thought, she’d only just been posted, and she couldn’t expect it. All the same, she wished and wished and wished she could see Robert, hug him, kiss him, talk to him, and feel the warmth of him.

But her other self insisted it was best she didn’t, that nothing but hurt could come of it, that men like Robert Denham never meant what they said to girls like Cassie.

She had a few days’ training, driving and stripping down the engines of the big black staff cars in which the senior officers got ferried round the country.

Then she was given her first job, taking a visiting colonel back to London, and bringing a brigadier to Aldershot the following morning, staying in a requisitioned billet overnight.

This could be her chance. She asked if she could spend the night with her mother’s cousin who lived in Hammersmith, a place she’d heard of through the other drivers, and knew was part of London.

She was informed she could, provided she left the car itself in an army garage in Piccadilly, and was there herself at nine o’clock the following morning.

‘So that would be perfect, if you could come to meet me. If you aren’t too busy, or canoodling with other birds,’ she wrote to Robert.

‘All the birds are hiding in the bushes, so I suppose I must make do with you,’ said Robert’s postcard and, instead of being offended, Cassie found she was elated.

‘This is stupid,’ said her other self, as she washed her underwear in Lux flakes stolen from a driver who was off on leave, and as another girl, who had been a hairdresser in Civvy Street, Amami-waved her hair.

As she showered herself with someone else’s Coty L’Aimant talc, and as she practised painting a perfect Cupid’s bow with the hut corporal’s lipstick, she told herself she was a fool.

Shut up, shut up, she told this other self.

On the morning she was going to London, she was up and smartly turned out hours before she had to leave, impressing both the visiting colonel and her own CO.

‘Your first time in London, I believe. I hope you know the way?’ the colonel asked as she saluted and as he stared at her legs.

‘I have directions, sir,’ she said politely.

‘Then let’s hope you can follow them.’

Cassie held the door open and the colonel got into the car. She put on her brand new driving gloves and then they drove away.

To her relief, the whole thing was a doddle. There was hardly any other traffic on the roads, and the colonel dozed most of the way, so she could concentrate on driving. Although the road signs had been taken down, she soon discovered the directions she’d been given were all excellent. She didn’t lose her way.

The London traffic was a challenge, but she found most other vehicles gave way to the Humber, waving her through at junctions, and waiting patiently on the rare occasions that she stalled.