Confessions of a Physical Wrac

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‘That’s an unusual question,’ I say.

Derek tightens his grip on my arm and brings me to a standstill. ‘Look,’ he says. ‘I’m not much good at flowery talk but I’d like to break training with you.’

‘You mean –’ I leave the words suspended because I don’t like to say what I think he does mean.

‘I find you very attractive. You don’t play tennis, do you?’

Derek’s arms slide round me and he makes a clumsy dive at my mouth. I take evasive action and am about to tell him to pull himself together when I see the handle of the heavy roller silhouetted suggestively against the sky. That too brings back memories. Geoffrey and I doing – whatever we were doing. I am still not certain. When you are emotionally involved with someone your senses blur the details. Suddenly, I feel angry. Angry and bitter. Why should Geoffrey be the only one? Why should Penny move in on all the men in my life? They deserve to be punished. I will show them that they are not the only ones who can plunder love. Here, near this object which once held so many tender associations for me, I will forever exorcise myself of the memory of perfidious Geoffrey Wilkes. My principles will not be compromised. This is an act of self-protection, not self-gratification.

‘Why don’t you find out?’ I say.

‘But we can’t play now,’ says Derek. ‘It’s too dark.’

‘I wasn’t talking about tennis,’ I say. ‘I was answering your question about my underwear.’

‘Oh I see,’ says Tharge. ‘Got you. Excellent. Look, let’s sit – lie down. I don’t think it’s too damp. Wouldn’t do to get a chill just before the semi-final of the North Eastern London heat of the southern pool of the All England –’

‘Over here,’ I say. ‘Behind the roller.’

‘Oh yes,’ says Tharge. ‘Cosy. Would you like the rest of your – oh damn! I’ve spilled it all. Down my blazer too. Still these wristlets will soon soak it up. They’re terribly useful. You ought to try them. I know a chap who makes them. I could get you something off.’

I am beginning to wonder if Derek Tharge could get anything off, though I suppose it would be refreshing to find that not all men are only interested in shoving their hands up your – ‘Oh!’

‘Sorry. Is my hand cold?’ Derek withdraws it from my skirt and starts to flap it up and down fast as if waving goodbye to a baby carriage. ‘I’ve got a slow pulse rate, you know. Damn good for anything athletic but it does mean that the old blood doesn’t exactly rocket round your body. Would you like to feel my pulse? No, probably not a good idea. My watch hasn’t got a luminous second hand. Still, I suppose if you held it, I could count slowly. I wouldn’t be far out – not over half a minute, anyway. I mean, that I wouldn’t be far out over the space of half a minute, of course. Not that my margin of error would be –’

‘I know what you mean,’ I say, beginning to wonder if fate has been over-generous in her choice of an instrument of liberation and revenge.

‘It’s funny about you not being a tennis player,’ says Derek, leaning back and resting his weight on his elbow. ‘Glancing at you, which of course I did, I would have thought that you would have been. You’ve got that sort of development. Take your – er chest for example.’

‘Yes?’ I say, leaning forward so that he can take it if he wants to – I mean, at this rate I could be here all night and it is getting a little parky. I am all for revenge being swift.

Derek continues to wave his hand in the air and turns away from my breasts as if there is something not quite nice about them. ‘Well, it’s – I mean, they’re sort of, you know, kind of well-developed, aren’t they? Like you’ve been working at your forehand drive and all that.’

‘I haven’t been working at anything,’ I say, trying, much as it goes against the grain, to inject some huskiness into my voice. ‘It’s just the way nature made me. How’s your hand?’

I think Derek has forgotten about his hand because he glances at it like it is a bird that has alighted on a tree trunk and is flapping its wings at him. ‘Oh yes. It’s probably all right now,’ he says. ‘It seems quite warm. Feel.’

I close my eyes and brace myself for the sensation of his furtive fingers creeping under the tightly strung fabric of my stretch panties. Nothing happens. I open my eyes and see a hand dangling in front of my face. ‘Feels fine,’ I say. I release the hand and reclose my eyes. Still, nothing happens. All I can hear is heavy breathing.

‘What’s the matter now?’ I say, trying to sound calm and sympathetic.

‘Did you hear that?’ says a worried Derek. ‘That sounded like a wheeze.’

‘It sounds perfectly normal to me,’ I say. ‘Now why don’t you forget about it and –’

‘I hope I’m not going to get my old trouble back again. Not now. Mother would never forgive me. Not just before the semi-final of the North –’

‘Please!’ I say. ‘Don’t go through that again. Just relax and stop worrying about it.’ I place my hand on the spot where the legs of the man’s trousers meet and start to massage what feels like a bag of over-ripe gooseberries – or I suppose you might say goosed berries. (I know it’s not the place for a joke but I think that if you can laugh at things sometimes, it makes them easier to bear.)

‘Hold on a minute,’ says Derek. ‘It’s jolly nice of you but I wonder if it’s altogether a good idea. My father had a lot of trouble with his heart and if I’m starting this damn chest condition again I’d better not take any risks. Let’s go back to the pav and have a Horlicks. It’s a bit lumpy but Mrs Smart won’t mind opening a new tin if we ask her nicely. I might be able to find the name of that chap who let me have the sweat bands – OOH!’

I think it must be the first time in my life that I have ever taken the initiative with a man but I cannot allow myself to be robbed of my revenge. I slide my hand up the inside of Derek Tharge’s thigh and continue underneath his shorts until I have made contact with his hot cluster.

‘Uum!’ I say. ‘Nice!’

‘They’re Fred Perry’s,’ says Derek, rising two inches off the ground.

‘Really?’ I say. ‘What’s he going to do?’

‘I mean the shorts,’ says my twitching friend. ‘Oh, I say. Gosh! Jimminy Crickets! Wow!’

‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ I say. It always amazes me – whilst at the same time disgusting me, of course – how quickly a man’s thing can change from being all squidgy and rather pathetic to a deadly love cosh. Derek Tharge’s breaks all records as it races into the ascendant. ‘You don’t want to take it back to the clubhouse in that condition, do you?’ I say.

‘Crumbs!’ says my escort. ‘Well, I suppose I can always whip up an egg in a glass of milk when I get home. It’s difficult to know what to do for the best, isn’t it? None of the tennis books tell you what to do in this sort of situation.’

I tune out his voice and quickly peel off my panties. If I wait for Derek Tharge to take the initiative I could be here until the next Englishman wins Wimbledon. ‘Lie back,’ I say. Tharge’s shoulders meet the ground and I loosen his shorts and pull them down to his knees. His pussy pummeller is swaying like a sapling caught in a cross wind and I steady it with my hand and shuffle forward to put the unpleasantness behind me – I mean in front of me but, at the same time, behind me.

‘Christ!’ says Tharge. ‘I’ve just remembered. I haven’t put my racket in its press. I’d better – Eek!’

With a feeling of relief I tuck Tharge’s bird scarer into my honey pot and proceed to take those measures which unwanted experience has indicated will bring the matter to its speediest conclusion. It is strange, but as I jiggle, joggle up and down, the sensation is not altogether unpleasant. It is as if fate is congratulating me on the stand I have taken and giving me a much appreciated foretaste of the pleasure I can expect when I tie the nuptial knot with my one-day Mr Right and proceed to indulge in those intimate aspects of married life so far denied me.

‘Oh gosh!’ says Derek. ‘Giddy up a ding dong! This is far too nice to be doing me any good. Can we stop before I – eeeeeeh!’

Possibly, I am too intent on taking my revenge but I do not hear the footsteps approaching behind me. ‘Rosie, are you –? Good heavens!!’ I turn round fast – possibly too fast if Derek Tharge’s yelp of agony is anything to go by – and find Geoffrey towering behind me. It is not so dark that I cannot see the horror-struck expression on his face – also the strip of sticking plaster running along the bridge of his nose. Have I, I ask myself, fallen victim of a terrible misunderstanding?

CHAPTER THREE (#u20b102ed-1147-53e9-bc51-b2df8c712bbe)

The next morning, I am standing on the steps of the Army Recruiting Office, waiting for it to open. It is not a decision I have come to overnight and the awful misunderstanding of the previous evening is only partly responsible for it. When I find that Penny was merely applying a sticking plaster to Geoffrey’s injured nose and – and not doing what I thought she was doing, then I feel like killing myself. My whole future blighted by sheer bad luck. The cup of romance dashed from my lips. It is all so unfair.

I try to explain things to Geoffrey but he is very unsympathetic. ‘I could understand it if it was anyone else than Derek Tharge,’ he keeps saying. ‘He’s the kind of chap who pees in the shower. He’s always moving his name up the ladder when he thinks no one’s watching and I’m positive he pinched one of my balls. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the chap who left the net up all night on number three court and pulled the uprights out of the ground.’

‘Forget Large – I mean Tharge!’ I implore him. ‘He means nothing to me. He was just an instrument. I was distraught, Geoffrey. I didn’t know which way to turn.’

‘You seemed to be turning in a lot of directions when I found you,’ says Geoffrey unkindly. ‘I was coming to ask you if you wanted a hot pasty, too.’

‘That was very sweet of you,’ I say. ‘Oh Geoffrey. Can’t we pick it up from there? Can’t we take it from the hot pasty and forget that this unfortunate incident ever took place?’

But Geoffrey is not to be placated and we part with him muttering about how I am always blowing hot and cold and he does not know where he is with me. The last I see of Derek Tharge he is inserting some kind of inhalant up his over-large nostrils and enquiring if anyone has any glucose tablets.

I can’t bring myself to reveal to Penny what I thought might be taking place in the tea-room and so I have to brave her fairly foreseeable comments on my actions.

‘I have to hand it to you,’ she says. ‘You don’t let the grass grow under your feet, do you? In fact the grass has a bit of a job growing anywhere within twenty yards when you swing into action. How did this entrant measure up?’

I avoid answering that question and spend a sleepless night wondering what to do for the best. As I said right at the beginning, Reggy’s arrest does mean that I will have to look for another job – this time, preferably, one that pays a salary. I can’t go on living on promises. That, of course, is something that can be said for accepting a job with a government organisation. The money isn’t always good but you do know that you are going to get paid every week.

I don’t want to live at home because, as much as I love Mum and Dad, we do get on each others’ nerves after a while and the same can be said of Natalie, only more so. What I do want is to find some career that offers me protection from men. Now that true marital happiness seems to have been snatched from my grasp by cruel fate, I do not want to find myself drifting back into those kinds of situations which have led to so much unpleasantness in the past. I want to turn my back on men for a bit. A nice, quiet monastic life is what I need. In fact, I have thought about becoming a nun but I don’t think it is quite me. To be brutally honest, I have never really fancied the uniform and I don’t think I possess sufficient religious conviction to stand all the kneeling. The Women’s Royal Army Corps could be just what I am looking for. Regular pay and meals and the companionship of lots of girls of my own sex. Living with them and concentrating on making a go of my new career will protect me from those unsought involvements which have been so damaging in the past.

‘Hello, darling. Hope you haven’t been here long? Hang on to these a minute while I find the blooming key.’ The man with the shoulder-length hair sprouting from his peak cap thrusts a bundle of doormats into my hand and fumbles in the pocket of his khaki uniform with the Sergeant’s stripes on the shoulder. ‘Lovely article they are. Empire made, every one of them. I was lucky to get ’em. There’s a big run on them at the moment. Come about the typing job, have you?’

I step back and take another look at the sign above the window showing the cut-out figures of five laughing soldiers sticking bayonets into a scarecrow. No, I have not made a mistake. The sign says it quite clearly: ‘Army Recruitment Centre.’

‘I wanted to find out about becoming a WRAC,’ I say.

‘Blimey!’ says the man. ‘Well, you came to the right place, didn’t you? Step inside and we’ll see what we can do. All right for pan scourers, are you?’

I am not a little surprised to find that the interior of the room we go into has more in common with the hardware counter of Woolworths than Her Majesty’s Armed Forces. There are piles of dusters, plastic bowls and buckets, nutmeg graters, tea strainers, cheese graters, assorted cutlery and plates.

‘Are you sure I’ve come to the right place?’ I say. ‘This is a recruitment centre?’

‘Latest model Mark I,’ says the Sergeant, brushing his hair behind his shoulders as he opens a cupboard and a pile of pamphlets fall on the floor. ‘You can see why I need an assistant, can’t you? You wouldn’t fancy the job rather than joining up? The money’s better.’

‘Look,’ I say. ‘I don’t understand. All those dusters and things. What have they got to do with the Army?’

‘They keep down the overheads, don’t they?’ says the Sergeant. ‘That’s important these days. It costs a few bob to keep one of these places open, I don’t mind telling you. The government’s very worried about it – especially this lot. Between you and me, they’d close the Armed Forces down tomorrow if there was any work for the poor bleeders to do when they were demobbed. Them and all the blokes who make the bullets and the bromide tablets.’

‘I still don’t quite understand what that’s got to do with the doormats,’ I say.

‘They are nice, aren’t they?’ says the Sergeant. ‘Shall I wrap a couple up for you? They make wonderful gifts.’

‘It seems to me you’re more interested in selling things than recruiting people.’

‘You don’t miss much, do you?’ says the Sergeant. ‘Tell you what I’ll do. You buy three mats and I’ll have “welcome” stencilled on them for nothing. I can’t say fairer than that, can I?’

‘Are you really a Sergeant?’ I say.

‘Course I am! On a part-time basis. I’ve taken on the recruitment as well as all the other stuff I handle. That’s how the government’s cutting down on its defence budget. It makes sense when you think about it. I mean, keeping this office open just so a couple of geezers could wander in because it was raining, would be blooming stupid. The country can’t afford the manpower either. There’s so few people coming forward that all the able-bodied men – and women – are needed up the sharp end. Now, what about those mats? Supposing I threw in a free bottle of carpet shampoo?’

‘No thank you,’ I say. ‘I’d like some details of –’

‘And a sponge. I don’t mind throwing in the sponge. That’s the secret of my success. I’m not proud. When things start going against me I throw in the sponge and do something else.’

‘Please!’ I say. ‘What do I have to do to make you understand that I don’t want to buy any mats. I want to join the WRACs!’

‘All right. All right! You don’t have to shout. You can’t blame a man for trying to make a living.’ The Sergeant tips his hat on to the back of his head and pulls open a drawer. A pair of silk bloomers are revealed which he throws on to the desk. ‘That was a lovely line. I’ve got two pairs left. You wouldn’t be –’

‘No!’ I say.

‘Not even if I – no! Right let’s get down to business. I know the papers are in here somewhere. You can write your own name, can’t you?’

‘Of course I can.’

The Sergeant nods and spreads a piece of paper across the desk. ‘Good. Because that is important. An ability to sign a piece of paper with an accurate representation of your own name can take you a long way in any branch of the forces. Now, I’ve got to ask you a few questions. Have you ever had any anti-social diseases? By that, of course, I mean diseases that you get from being over-social.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I say.

‘That must count as a “no”,’ says the Sergeant. ‘Now, are you married, divorced, a lesbian, or any combination of the three?’

‘I’m none of those things,’ I say.

The Sergeant nods approvingly, writes something on his piece of paper and turns it round so that it is facing me.

‘That’s the clincher,’ he says. ‘You’re the perfect recruit – in fact you’re almost too good to be true. Sign where I’ve put the plus sign. I used to put a cross but it confused the people at records. When recruits signed with a cross they used to think it was a double-barrelled name.’

‘Is this all I have to do?’ I ask.

‘Just about,’ says the Sergeant. ‘There’s the medical but you’ll waltz through that if you’re sufficiently co-ordinated to sign your name.’

‘Hold on a minute,’ I say. ‘You don’t give me the medical, do you?’

‘Good heavens, no,’ says the Sergeant. ‘You have a proper doctor for that. You didn’t think I was going to examine you, did you. Goodness gracious, how very unethical. No, I just measure you for your uniform. Take your dress off, please.’

My sigh of relief expires abruptly. ‘I can’t believe that you’re responsible for fitting out recruits,’ I say.

The Sergeant clicks his tongue in irritation and throws back a curtain. Revealed to my startled eyes are rows of battle dress uniforms, greatcoats, khaki skirts and even festoons of hand grenades, rifles and machine guns. ‘Do you believe me now?’ he says. ‘It’s another brilliant idea from the Ministry of Defence: Army Surplus with a difference.’

‘What’s the difference?’ I say.