Where the Heart Is. Annie Groves
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adjoining her own, Lou’s back to the room as she worked to gain her revenge, knowing that Betty would be working equally hard to beat her.
The silence that now filled the room as the others obviously waited for her return attack only added to her determination to score a hit so, when she turned round, a dripping sponge in each hand, she was already raising her arm to let fly, only realising when it was far too late that the reason for the silence was the presence of a sergeant between her and her intended victim, watching her, a sergeant whose face and uniform was now soaked in the water from the two sponges. Betty was now standing white-faced behind the dripping sergeant with a mixture of guilt and shock. It might seem a small offence and nothing more than a silly prank, the kind of thing that Lou herself would have shrugged off dismissively in her old pre-WAAF life, but, as she had quickly learned, Forces life was very different from civvy life. Once you were in uniform very strict and rigid rules controlled every aspect of your life, right down to the smallest detail. That breaking the rules was a serious crime had been dinned into them all from the moment they joined, and now Lou felt sick with the same shocked horror she could see so strongly in the faces of her pals. No one was laughing now. What Lou had done, no matter how innocently inspired, and despite the fact that her sponges had been intended for someone else, was tantamount to an assault on an NCO. And for that she could be drummed out of the service in absolute disgrace.
Where the old Lou would have had to fight back laughter at the sight of her unintended victim, her hair and the shoulders of her uniform wet, the new Lou was instead filled with stomach-curdling dread, and a very deep sense of regret.
The sergeant – not one Lou knew – looked so implacably stony-faced that Lou didn’t even dare try to stammer an apology in case it was interpreted as an attempt on her part to cheek her unintended victim. The atmosphere in the showers, so light-hearted and filled with laughter only a few minutes ago, was now thick with apprehension, and no one, Lou knew, felt that more strongly than she.
Easter was only a matter of a few days away. Katie had volunteered to work over the holiday, feeling that she would far rather one of her colleagues enjoyed a well-deserved break than that she herself was off with time on her hands and nothing to do but think about last year when Luke had loved her.
She was on her way for her morning tea break when Gina Vincent, who had been so friendly since Katie’s first day, called out to her to wait.
‘Look, I know we’re both down to work over Easter, and that we’re getting a long weekend leave to make up for it later in the month. I was thinking of going away then for a bit of a break. I’ve always wanted to visit Bath – I’m a Jane Austen fan – and I wondered if you’d like to come along. No offence taken if you don’t, mind, but it’s always more jolly if you’ve got a pal to share things with.’
‘I’d love to,’ was Katie’s immediate and genuinely delighted response.
It was the way of things now with the war: friendships were often quickly made, people seizing the moment because time was precious; people, especially young women working together, finding that they were making friends with a speed they might never normally have done and with girls from a wide variety of backgrounds. Katie was by nature solitary, enjoying her own company and hesitant about ‘putting herself forward’, but the warmth she had found within the Campion household had shown her how much happiness there was in being close to like-minded others.
She might only have known Gina for a few short weeks but what she did know of her she liked.
Tall, with mid-brown wavy hair and a calm manner, Gina was friendly to everyone, but not the kind of girl anyone would ever describe as ‘bubbly’ – not like Carole, whom Katie had once thought was her best friend.
‘Good show,’ Gina smiled, putting her arm through Katie’s. ‘We’ll have tea at Joe Lyons one evening, shall we, and make plans? I have a pal in the navy – we grew up in the same village. He recommended an hotel in Bath to me that he says is pretty good.’
Katie nodded.
Living and working in London as a single young woman, as the ATS girls were keen on proving, meant that one need never be short of a date. The city was constantly full of men in uniform on leave, determined to enjoy themselves.
Katie had quite got used now to being stopped in the street and asked for a date by some young man eager for female company on his precious time off. One learned to accept that eagerness and not be offended by it, whilst determinedly checking it – or not, if you happened to be the kind of girl who was as keen to enjoy all the fun that came your way, just in case there was no tomorrow. ‘Good-time girls’, some people referred to them disparagingly, but not Katie. She felt she understood what lay behind their sometimes desperate gaiety, and she sympathised with them.
Not that the number of testosterone-fuelled young men visiting the city was without its problems. Already there had been ‘words’ and a distinctly frosty atmosphere in the billet because Gerry had been dating an American serviceman.
The six of them – Sarah, Alison, Hilda, Gerry and Peggy as well as Katie herself – had been in the small dark basement back kitchen at the time, and Peggy Groves, who had been making tea for them all, had been unusually outspoken on the matter, making it plain that she disapproved, and asking pointedly, ‘What about that Royal Navy chap you’ve been writing to, Gerry?’
‘What about him?’ Gerry had responded with a defiant toss of her head.
‘Peggy’s right,’ Hilda had stepped in. ‘He isn’t going to be very happy when he finds out that you’re dating someone else, especially an American.’
‘Who says he’s going to find out?’ Gerry had challenged. ‘A girl has to have some fun, and Minton is fun.’
There the matter rested, for now, but privately Katie agreed with Peggy and Hilda.
As a result of the sponge incident Lou had been put on a charge and had been marched out to the guardroom, which was a small room in the admin building, in which she had been locked for twenty-four hours before being taken in front of the WAAF commander to have her case heard and punishment handed down.
She had been left in no doubt how serious her assault on an officer was, even if it had merely been a prank and its intended victim not the NCO but her pal. Now she wouldn’t be going home for Easter. Lou felt sick with misery and close to tears, but of course she wasn’t going to show that. Not when she was standing in front of a grim-looking commanding officer and about to be marched back to the guardhouse.
Not only was she on a charge but her hut had also had twenty points removed from it because of her behaviour, and she herself was going to have to do ‘jankers’ as punishment for seven days.
Lou had learned enough about being in uniform to know that there would have been no point in her protesting that she had simply been retaliating to another’s deliberate provocation, no matter how strongly she had been tempted to speak the hot words in her own defence. The Forces didn’t care about the whys and wherefores that might prompt an offence, only the offence itself. Not, of course, that Lou would have given Betty away anyway; that was simply not done. No, it was her own fault for not realising what the silence meant and checking before she had thrown those sponges. Her fault. How many times when she and Sasha had been growing up had she been told off for being ‘too impetuous’ and ‘not thinking’ through the consequences of her actions? Then she had shrugged off those criticisms because there had always been Sasha to share the blame with her, the two of them together against everyone else. Now, though, Lou was beginning to see that she had always been the one to institute things, dragging Sasha along with her whether or not her twin shared her desire to be rebellious. Then she had hated and resented rules of any kind, and having to do what other people did because someone else said so, but now that she was in uniform she was beginning to understand that discipline was necessary in order to achieve goals. Even something simple, such as parade ground marching, had a purpose to it. How would it be if they all marched in their own way and to their own tune? What a muddle it would cause. More important, though, than enforced discipline was, Lou recognised, learning the virtue of self-discipline, and of thinking for oneself