Authors: Mary Jane Staples
‘Hello, Min.’
‘Tim? Oh, you comin’ in?’
‘Yes, why not? Your mum might come up with a pot of tea.’
‘Oh, I’ll make it,’ she said happily.
‘Atta girl, honey, you’re the cream in my coffee.’
‘Oh, yer cuckoo,’ said Min and she laughed.
It was a prize pot of tea and Missus heated up some sausage rolls to have with it. I didn’t ask how she got the ingredients that had enabled her to wrap the sausage meat in flaky pastry. Min poured the tea and Missus handed round the sausage rolls.
Jim said, ‘Yer goin’ up to foreign parts, I ’ear, Tim.’
‘All right, I give in,’ I said, ‘what foreign parts? The North Pole?’
‘Oh, no, course not the North Pole, Tim,’ said Minnie.
‘Exmoor, I ’eard,’ said Jim.
‘Exmoor’s not up to foreign parts,’ I said.
‘Foreign to Suffolk, Tim lovey,’ said Missus.
‘It’s not up, anyway, it’s west,’ I said.
‘Tim goin’ west?’ Minnie looked alarmed. ‘Mum, I don’t like the sound of that, not when the rotten old war’s still on. Oh, can yer read your tea leaves, just in case?’
‘Here, I thought you told me you had sense, Minnie,’ I said.
‘Well, it’s good sense, it is, for Mum to read teacups,’ declared Minnie.
‘Yes, soon as I’ve finished this cup, I’ll do some readin’,’ said Missus. ‘Minnie’s right, Tim, goin’ west has sometimes got unfortunate meanings.’
‘Barmy,’ I said.
‘What’s that you said?’ asked Missus.
‘I was talking to Jim,’ I said. Jim winked.
Missus finished her cup of tea, carefully drained the residue into the slop basin, placed the cup back
in
its saucer and studied the pattern of the tea leaves.
‘Oh, you’re goin’ west all right, Tim,’ she said.
‘Isn’t it my tea leaves you should be reading?’ I asked.
‘No, I’ve got it all in me own cup, lovey. It’s only the west country, Minnie. Well, look at that, you’re goin’ to distinctive yourself, Tim.’
‘Distinguish?’ I suggested.
‘That’s it,’ said Missus. ‘It don’t say how, but it looks like a medal all right.’
‘I’ll win a medal on Exmoor? Missus, those tea leaves of yours are upside-down. Anyway so we’re off to Exmoor. So that’s why leave’s been stopped. Ruddy hell—’
‘Language, Tim,’ said Missus in soft reproof. ‘Jim don’t like language at fam’ly gatherings, not since we come up from Camberwell.’
‘Well, dear oh dear,’ I said. Minnie giggled. ‘All I’m asking is how the ruddy hell do you lot get to know these things?’
‘Don’t get in a temper, love,’ said Missus.
Minnie flashed a laughing look. ‘Would you like the last sausage roll, Tim?’ she asked.
‘I’d like an answer,’ I said.
‘Well, I do a bit of business with yer adjutant,’ said Jim.
‘Captain Barclay?’
‘Just a bit ’ere an’ there,’ said Jim. He lit his pipe and the aroma of fresh tobacco drifted around the parlour. Colourful gladioli blooms stood in a bright vase on a table by the window. ‘Well, yer adjutant’s got a large fam’ly down up to Epsom, yer know.’
‘Down up to Epsom?’ I said. ‘You daft old coot, what’s that mean?’
‘Well, I never did,’ said Missus. ‘That’s not ’ardly nice, Tim.’
‘Down up to Epsom my foot,’ I said.
‘Five kids yer adjutant’s got,’ said Jim, ‘so I get ’im a few things ’ere an’ there, round and about, like. Then there’s yer sergeant-major.’
‘All right, I see it all now,’ I said. ‘So we’re going on manoeuvres up to Exmoor and I’m going to distinguish myself. Do any of you know if I’ll break a leg?’
Minnie yelled with laughter. ‘Dad, ain’t our Tim funny?’ she said.
THE FOLLOWING DAY
we were given twenty-four hours’ notice to prepare ourselves for field exercises. It was going to be a short twenty-four hours considering reveille tomorrow would be at five in the morning.
That night, Frisby sat on his bed writing a long letter of farewell to Cecily. He was convinced we were going straight from field exercises to some fatal battlefield. Italy, no doubt. The Allies had landed there. He said something about leaving his Post Office savings to Cecily so that she could buy some helpful books written by qualified mind doctors.
‘Waste of money, you twit,’ I said. ‘Cecily doesn’t need mind doctors, just an armistice.’
‘Can I help it if I worry about her?’
‘Glad you do. Cecily’s a love.’
I thought of Kit just before I dropped off. I could have had the ultimate experience with her. What a chump. I’d passed it by. On the other hand, Mary was right. People worry about it too much, that was what she felt. There was a lot of living to do outside of something that hardly took up any time at all, she said. Good old Mary.
The weather turned grey and sour over Exmoor. There were moors, certainly, but there were also dark little hills,
knobbly
peaks and boggy lowlands. We were instructed not to muck the place about and spoil it for citizens who liked to ramble over it at weekends. We couldn’t think who’d want to ramble over it at the moment, it looked damp, soggy and uninviting. Chuck in a rainforest said Frisby and it would be easy to imagine it was Burma waiting for a monsoon to happen.
We spent a month there, a month of being toughened. That meant escaping death and broken bones only by certain acts of cowardice. We all went in for some of that. Major Moffat was an exception, of course. He enjoyed it all.
The climax came at the end of the month when he and the battery, in competition with the other two batteries of the regiment, were required to storm a granite peak held by the enemy, the enemy being regimental headquarters personnel under the command of Colonel Carpenter. There was a marshy bog in the way. A number of us had to scout around, looking for a way through. Major Moffat refused the temptation of going up the obvious way, from firm ground. God was kind to me that day. I found a way through and reported back to Major Moffat. He took us up not at dawn but at dusk and we caught the regimental lads eating hot stew.
Major Moffat sent for me afterwards. ‘Gunner Hardy, did you fluke that?’
‘The bog, sir? I suppose you could say so.’ Still, I was fairly pleased with myself, I’d led the way through.
‘Some fluke,’ said Major Moffat. It was a triumph for him. We’d left the other two batteries floundering. And
the
whole thing had been an infantry not an artillery exercise. ‘Are you turning over a new leaf?’
‘Pardon, sir?’
‘Are you doing more soldiering than fiddling?’
‘Well, I’d like to help get the war over with as soon as possible, sir.’
‘Dismiss,’ said Major Moffat.
Frisby came out of it all in a condition of perfect health. He could hardly wait to show himself off to Cecily. I had an idea Cecily would love the new sinewy look of his muscles. I liked Cecily. I felt there’d always been a real young woman inside her, trying to get out. She was out now and she’d got herself a guy. Frisby wasn’t a bad bloke at all. He and Cecily actually added up to a good old-fashioned romance. Ruddy good, I thought.
Some personnel were a bit gaunt when we got back to Suffolk, but most of us were as fit as fiddles. Gunner Dunwoodie no longer looked like a sack of potatoes trying to stand upright and Bombardier Wilkins had lost the best part of his portliness. It had taken a hiding.
Two letters from Aunt May awaited me. She never failed to write regularly. Both letters were full of homely gossip about friends and neighbours. If the chapter on Edie Hawkins was closed – she and her mother having gone to live in Peckham, as ordered by Ron – there were other happenings that made Aunt May declare people’s behaviour in wartime left an awful lot to be desired. She really did have a thing about civilized behaviour. She often said most of our mistakes in life were the result
of
silly, reckless or headstrong behaviour. She would never have believed, she said in one of the letters, that respectable Walworth mums and dads could have such a trying time keeping an eye on young daughters who were going up West every night in the hope of being picked up by American soldiers. And even some housewives were doing it, young housewives whose husbands were overseas. She was sad about that and about silly girls. If only young girls would give themselves time to think, she said, they wouldn’t do the things they are doing.
She mentioned Bill in each letter, in a kind but casual way, which didn’t make sense to me. Obviously she hadn’t given him an answer yet and it didn’t seem as if she was in any hurry either. I hoped it wasn’t because of me. It would be like her to tell herself she couldn’t get married until I was married too. I might have to do a bit of arguing with her. Bill seemed a bit of all right to me, just the kind of husband to care for her, look after her and even spoil her a bit.
I wrote in reply, telling her I’d survived a crippling four weeks and that I was expecting her to make up her mind about Bill before she was ninety. I told her to put herself first for a change and while she was still young and pretty. If you wait till you’re ninety, I said, you’ll be old then and so will Bill. I also said yes, it was shocking about people’s behaviour, that I favoured old-fashioned values myself and what was going on up and down the country was a headache to me.
I also wrote to Kit. I felt I owed her an apology. I felt I really had been a prig. So I wrote saying I was sorry,
that
her past life was her own affair. I said I realized she wasn’t the marrying type and that she probably had more to offer the world than rolling dough and ironing Monday’s washing. I wished her luck with her store after the war and hoped that my apology would make her understand I liked her and respected her preference for being independent.
The following evening, Frisby cycled all the way to Chackford with a chit and a late pass, in the hope of seeing Cecily and letting Cecily see him. I went down to the
Suffolk Punch
with Simpson and Parkes.
Jim was at his gate, waiting for me, I suppose. He’d heard I was on the way. His pipe waved and beckoned. ‘Join you blokes in a few minutes,’ I said. Simpson and Parkes went on and I walked across to Jim.
‘’Eard you was back,’ he said.
‘Turn-up for the book if you hadn’t heard,’ I said. ‘How’s Min?’
‘Fairish,’ he said. ‘She’s out this evenin’.’
‘With a feller? A boyfriend?’
‘Now don’t talk daft, Tim lad. Min ain’t interested in boys. Growed out of boys before she was thirteen. Boys ain’t grown up, she always says. They’re kids, she says.’
‘Don’t tell me she’s found a six-foot Yank with a moustache.’
‘You all right, Tim?’ Jim looked concerned. ‘Ain’t like you to talk like you don’t know the alphabet. Min won’t stand for any Yank gettin’ too near ’er, you know that. She knows too much about ’em. Didn’t she tell yer there’s a fifteen-year-old girl at ’er school been put in
the
fam’ly way by a Yank that’s disappeared like a bleedin’ puff of smoke? That ain’t goin’ to ’appen in Min’s life. I dunno why I ever come to think it ’ad, except there she was, growin’ up fast an’ ready to eat you about risin’ summer night. I remember givin’ yer one or two warnings. Still, I ought to ’ave ’ad more faith in me own flesh an’ blood.’
‘You old haybag,’ I said. ‘One minute you’re offering to let your Missus teach me things I ought to find out for myself and the next you’re congratulating yourself on your daughter’s purity. Anyway, as long as she’s all right—’
‘Fairish, Tim, fairish. She’s round at the Goodwins ’ouse, with ’er friend Jane.’
‘Well, give her my love,’ I said.
‘Now I ain’t goin’ to go that, Tim lad,’ said Jim, wagging his pipe at me. ‘She’ll think you mean it, she’ll take it serious. That sort of thing you got to say to ’er yerself, only I know she ain’t the right age for you, specially seein’ I also know you got certain feelings for that there Wac sergeant that’s more your age, like. Mind, not that I’d tell Minnie that, or she’d be up to Chackford with a chopper.’
‘Give her my regards, then,’ I said. ‘I’m fond of her.’
‘Fond of Missus too, ain’t yer, lad?’ said Jim and he chuckled.
I went on to the pub.
I ACTUALLY RECEIVED
a reply from Kit. She said my apology was a happy surprise and a welcome one, as she hadn’t wanted to be left with only unpleasant memories of me. She was willing to meet me at Mary’s next Sunday afternoon, when we could talk things through.
Talk things through, yes, I’d got to know that American females had a thing about talking things through. I wasn’t sure if that would get me anywhere, but the temptation of seeing Kit again made me reply by return, saying yes to the meeting.
Sergeant-Major Baldwin entered the orderly room. ‘On your feet, Gunner Hardy,’ he barked. ‘Cap on. Right, this way.’
He marched me up to Major Moffat’s office. He presented me to the Major, who had his own cap on. So I came to attention and saluted.
‘Is this him, Sergeant-Major?’ he asked.
‘Gunner Hardy present and correct, sir,’ said the sergeant-major.
‘I see. Very well. Gunner Hardy, from tomorrow you will accept promotion to the rank of lance-bombardier. That’s all. Dismiss.’
The sergeant-major marched me out of the office and
down
the stairs, telling me to draw stripes from the stores and to get them sewn on by tomorrow. Were there any questions?
‘Well, yes, Sergeant-Major. Are you sure there hasn’t been a mistake?’
‘No, I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘but it’s done now. We’ll have to live with it.’
Promotion. What for? Distinguished service in getting the battery through the bog on Exmoor? Ruddy hell, Missus and her tea leaves. If that wasn’t second sight, what was?
Life was suddenly being kind to me. I no longer had to worry about Minnie and Kit was going to meet me again. And wait a tick, hadn’t Missus seen a surprise marriage for me in a previous teacup?
I felt I ought to knock my head against a wall and bring myself down to earth. All that might happen on Sunday was the possibility of Kit psychoanalysing me to find out what my real problems were and then buying me the kind of helpful book that Frisby had had in mind for Cecily. Well, I’d have to take what she dished out.