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The diamonds in her engagement ring seemed to quiver beneath her tears. Her fingers trembled as she slipped it off and put it in the envelope that had contained Luke’s letter.
From now on, for her, no matter how long she lived, Christmas Day would always be the day she remembered that Luke had destroyed their love and broken her heart.
ONE (#ulink_658dbf7d-052c-55b0-9fd9-b4c38d2bff8c)
Mid-February 1942
Lou Campion eased her regulation WAAF duffel bag off the luggage rack. She had packed everything so carefully, warned by the more experienced girls of what she could expect if she didn’t, but still somehow or other she had ended up with the sharp edge of one shoe catching in the net as she tried to roll the bag clear.
The February afternoon was already fading into dusk, the seemingly endless frost-rimed flat fields the train had carried them through on the long journey from Crewe now wreathed in fog. Lou was tired and hungry and feeling very sorry for herself, already missing the familiarity of Wilmslow where she had done her initial ‘square bashing’ training along with dozens of other new recruits.
They were a jolly crowd, even if she had been teased at first for her naïvety when they had found out that she had joined up with dreams of learning to fly.
‘Have you heard this?’ one of the girls, a chirpy cockney who seemed to know everything, had asked the others. ‘Lou here reckons she’s going to learn to fly. No, love, what the RAF wants you for is to mend the planes, not fly them.’
Lou remembered how she had gone bright red with discomfort when the other girl burst out laughing.
‘You’ve got a lot to learn and no mistake,’ the girl had continued. ‘The only flying you’ll be doing is off the end of the sergeant’s boot on your backside if she gets to hear what you’ve just said. Hates women pilots, the sarge does. Says they shouldn’t be allowed. See, the thing is, it’s only them rich posh types in ATA that get to do that; them as already can fly before they get taken on – savvy? No, love, wot you’ll be doing is filling in forms and fixing broken engines – and that’s if you’re lucky.’
‘Leave off her,’ one of the other girls had called out. ‘The poor kid wasn’t to know. It’s not as bad as she’s making out,’ she had told Lou comfortingly, ‘especially if you get put in a decent set of girls.’
The last thing Lou had expected when she had originally signed on for the WAAF was that she would end up being sent for training as a flight mechanic. However, flight mechanics were a Grade Two trade and, as such, Lou would be paid two shillings a day more than less skilled personnel.
She had felt quite pleased and proud of herself then, but this morning, standing on Crewe station with the other new WAAFs, waiting for the train to take them to Wendover – the nearest train station to RAF Halton, the RAF’s largest training station and the Regimental HQ – she had wondered what exactly she had let herself in for. If Wilmslow in Cheshire had seemed green and rural compared with Liverpool, travelling through the pretty Buckinghamshire countryside had had Lou studying the landscape with wary curiosity. Such clean-looking picturebook little towns, so many fields and trees.
The train had slowed down. Betty Gibson, a bubbly redhead who kept them all entertained during the long cold journey with her stories of how accident-prone she was, had jumped to her feet announcing chirpily, ‘We’re here, everyone.’
There were five girls altogether, all from the north of England, although Lou was the only one from Liverpool. They’d soon introduced themselves and exchanged stories. Lou had discovered that she was the youngest, and a chubby placid girl named Ellen Walters, from Rochdale, the eldest. Of the others, Ruby Symonds, Patricia Black and Betty Gibson, Lou suspected that Betty was the one she had most in common with, and she’d been pleased when she’d learned that, like she, Betty was down to do an eighteen-week flight mechanic course. Lou had enjoyed their company on the long journey but that hadn’t stopped her missing her twin, Sasha.
‘Fancy you being a twin,’ Ruby had commented when they had all introduced themselves, ‘and her not joining with you.’
‘I bet the WAAF wouldn’t have allowed them to train together even if she had,’ Betty had said. ‘Just think, though, the larks we could have had if she had joined and you’d both been here.’
A frown crinkled Lou’s forehead now as she remembered Betty’s comment, and the miserable feeling she hated so much began to fill her, bringing a prickling sensation to her eyes. She did miss Sasha. Being without her twin felt a bit like losing a tooth and having a hole where it should have been, which you just couldn’t help prodding with your tongue no matter how much it hurt – only worse, much much worse.
Not that Sasha would be missing her, of course. Oh, no, Sasha had got her precious boyfriend to keep her company, the boyfriend whose company she had preferred to Lou’s.
The train had stopped now, and all the other girls were grabbing their kitbags.
‘These things weigh a ton,’ Betty complained, ‘and I hate the way no matter how carefully you pack a kitbag you still seem to end up with something sticking into your shoulder.’
‘It’s not surprising they’re so heavy when you think of our uniforms and everything we have to pack into them,’ Lou pointed out.
‘Item, one air-force blue battledress and beret, one dress jacket and skirt with cap for best wear, three blouses, one pair black lace-up shoes, two pairs grey lisle stockings and three pairs of grey knickers, two pairs of blue and white striped Bovril pyjamas,’ they all began to chant together, before dissolving in a shared fit of giggles.
‘At least it’s not as bad as the ATS uniform,’ Patricia said.
‘Come on,’ Ellen warned them. ‘If we don’t get off we’ll end up at the next station, then we’ll miss our transport and then we shall really be in trouble.’
Still laughing the girls picked up their kitbags and hurried off the train, Betty going first and Lou bringing up the rear, scrambling down onto the platform just as a military lorry pulled up on the other side of the fence separating Wendover station from the road.
‘Are you from Halton?’ Betty called out cheerfully to the uniformed driver, who had climbed out of the lorry.
‘That’s right. Climb on board, girls,’ the driver invited.
‘I’ve heard that Halton is quite some place.’ Ellen remarked once they’d all clambered into the back of their transport. ‘It’s even got its own cinema. And a big posh house that used to belong to the Rothschild family that the officers get to use as their mess.’
‘A cinema? Who needs films when there’s a camp full of handsome RAF men to keep us entertained?’ Betty laughed.
‘I thought there were rules about not fraternising with the men,’ Ruby said.
‘Well, yes,’ Betty agreed, ‘but just think of the fun we can have breaking them. I don’t know about the rest of you, but fun is definitely what I want to have. What do you say, Lou?’
‘I agree,’ Lou replied, more out of bravado than anything else, because the very last thing she wanted to do was to get involved with any man – in or out of uniform. She had learned her lesson where the opposite sex was concerned with Kieran Mallory and, although she hated admitting it, deep down inside that lesson still hurt.
It was because of him that she and Sasha had lost the closeness they had once shared and which Lou had taken for granted would always be there. He had driven the initial wedge between them by pretending he was sweet on Lou when he was with her and sweet on Sasha when he was with Sasha.
Lou had thought the rift had been mended when they had both sworn off boys, but then Sasha had got involved with the Bomb Disposal sapper who had helped to rescue her when she had been trapped in an unexploded bomb shaft.
She mustn’t think about Sasha and all the things that had made her feel so miserable, Lou warned herself. She was a Waaf now, and her own person, even if sometimes being her own person felt so very lonely.
As the lorry lumbered towards their destination Lou smothered a yawn. It had been a long day, so long in fact that she was actually looking forward to going to bed, even though that meant sleeping in a hard military bed with its three-part-biscuit mattress and itchy blankets, in a hut filled with thirty girls. It was amazing what you could get used to.
‘I hope they give us something to eat before we bed down,’ Betty said.
‘We’ll be lucky if they do,’
Ellen replied. ‘It’s gone nine o’clock now. I reckon it will be a quick admission, and then we’ll be marching into our billets. And to think I could have trained as a postal clerk.’
‘Looks like we’re here, girls,’ Lou told them as she saw the start of the camp’s perimeter fence from the open back of the transport, the wire shining in the moonlight.
The lorry slowed down by the guardhouse and the barrier was raised to allow them through. Another five minutes and they were clambering out in front of a brick building, easing cramped cold limbs and shouldering their kitbags.
‘Watch out,’ Betty warned as the door opened, and a sergeant and another NCO stepped out, the latter holding a clipboard.
One by one she called out their names and numbers, then told them, ‘You’re in Hut Number Thirty. Sergeant James here will escort you to the mess for your supper, but you’ll have to look sharp. It’s lights out at ten p.m. I don’t know what you’ve been taught or told wherever it is you’ve come from, but here at Halton we pride ourselves on doing things by the book.
‘You’ll be woken up at six by the PA system. No one gets to go for breakfast until the corporal in charge of their hut has done a proper inspection of beds and uniforms. After breakfast, everyone musters for a proper parade. There’s no slouching around and turning up at classes individually here. We’ve got a reputation to maintain and it’s the job of us NCOs to make sure that it is maintained. You have been warned.
‘Now tomorrow morning, since it’s your first day, after parade you’ll all present yourselves to the MO for medicals and vaccinations.
‘One day a week here we all have to wear our gas masks. Anyone found not doing so will be put on a charge. All right, Sergeant, you can take over now.’
Obeying the sergeant’s command to fall in, Lou decided tiredly that she was relieved that Sasha wasn’t here to tell her that she’d have been much better off staying at the telephone exchange, because the way she was feeling right now she might just be inclined to agree with her.
Tucked up cosily in bed with her new husband in the pretty bedroom with its dormer window and cream-painted walls, on which she had carefully stencilled pink roses to match their pink eiderdown, Grace gave a deep sigh.
The wonderful intimacy of being married still made her colour up a little self-consciously, and she felt excited inside now Seb came into their bedroom from the bathroom, in his blue and white striped pyjamas, freshly shaved, smelling of soap.
‘What, not fed up of being married to me already, are you?’ Seb demanded in mock outrage.
‘No, of course not. I love being married to you,’ Grace assured him fervently.
‘Do you now? Well, I’m very glad to hear that because I certainly love being married to you,’ said Seb, before drawing her into his arms so that he could kiss her.
Naturally it was several minutes before Grace could speak again, but when she could she told him, ‘I was just thinking about Mum, Seb. She’s ever so upset about Luke and Katie. She thought they were perfect for one another – we all did – and now Luke’s gone and broken off their engagement.
‘Perhaps it’s for the best.’
‘How can you say that?’ Seb had released her now and Grace shivered a little, despite the warmth of the flannelette nightdress she was wearing, the neck tied with pretty pink ribbon. ‘Mum is heartbroken, and Katie will be too. She loves Luke so much. Anyway, I thought you liked Katie.’
‘I do,’ Seb assured her, reaching up to pull the cord to switch off the two wall lights either side of the bed.
‘Then—’
‘I know that Luke is your brother and of course you love him. He’s a fine soldier, and a good brother, but it seemed to me that whilst he loved Katie, he hurt her quite a lot with his lack of trust. You can’t build a good marriage without trust, or at least not in my book. Perhaps without this war Luke and Katie could have married and not had any problems, but war changes things, it sharpens and intensifies so much.’
Grace sighed again, as she snuggled into Seb’s waiting arms and put her head on his shoulder. They were so lucky. They had one another, and they had this cosy cottage where she was so happy making a home for them both. She knew that Seb was right, but she still couldn’t help feeling sad. They had all liked Katie so very much.
‘I’m so lucky to have found you,’ she told her husband, ‘but I do feel guilty about not being in Liverpool to help Mum. She’s got so much to worry about now, and so has Auntie Francine. Mum told me that uncle Brandon is very poorly and going to die soon. They’ve been married such a short time.’
‘We’ll go and see your mum the minute we both get leave, if that will help put your mind at rest.’
‘Yes, it will.’
‘Good. Now it seems to me that it’s an awfully long time since I last kissed my wife.’
‘Oh, Seb.’ Grace gave a small giggle and then said nothing at all as her husband’s arms wrapped lovingly around her.
TWO (#ulink_c07ab9ef-c0aa-53d2-a004-3cdfdb4e8f9b)
‘It can’t be morning already,’ Lou heard Betty complain as the public address system announced that it was six o’clock and time for them to get up.
Inside the cold darkness of the hut, all the young women were waking up, and going through the automatic actions of pulling on clothes and making beds, ignoring slowly numbing fingers as they hurried against the clock.
In common with accommodation huts at bases all over the country, theirs housed thirty girls with a small separate ‘room’ for their corporal. Two stoves supposedly kept the place warm although only those with beds close to them actually felt their benefit.
At six thirty on the dot their corporal appeared. The girls stood stiffly at the end of their beds whilst she walked up and down the line, inspecting them.
Lou quailed a little inwardly when the corporal looked at the buttons on her jacket. Lou had learned whilst square bashing that it was a matter of pride to look as though one belonged and wasn’t ‘new’, and so she had paid a small amount to swap her buttons for those on the uniform of another girl who was leaving the WAAF on medical grounds. She felt immensely proud of her well-polished buttons but now she wondered if swapping them was going to get her into trouble.
To her relief, Ruby, who was standing next to her, suddenly gasped and put her hand on her tummy as it rumbled loudly, distracting their corporal’s attention, although Lou didn’t relax properly until the corporal commanded them to ‘Fall out’ and they were all free to go for their breakfast.
Without anything being said, the five new arrivals kept together, waiting until some of the other girls were ready to leave the hut and then tagging along behind them, Ruby complaining that she was ‘starving’.
‘Yes, we all heard,’ Ellen pointed out.
‘Ablutions block is over there, just in case no one told you that when you arrived,’ one of the girls ahead turned round to tell them. Sturdily built, with a mop of chestnut hair and bright blue eyes, she nodded in the direction of another brick building. ‘I’m Hawkins – Jessie Hawkins – by the way, and these two here are Lawson and Marsh.’
Taking her lead, Lou and the others quickly introduced themselves, all using their surnames.
‘You’ll find that Halton takes a bit of getting used to if you did your square bashing somewhere small,’ Jessie Hawkins informed them. ‘We’re pretty close to Chequers here, of course, so we get an awful lot of top brass coming in. You’ll find that the officers and NCOs are pretty hot on discipline. Do you remember that girl who got court-martialled for jumping into a Lancaster?’ she appealed to the other two.
They nodded silently.
‘For a Waaf to fly is, of course, a court-martialling offence,’ she continued, ‘and whilst we all know there are some places where you can get away with it, you can’t here. One wrong move and you’re out.’
Lou felt a shiver of apprehension run down her spine at the thought of that happening to her and her having to return home in disgrace to face her parents. When she had broken her news to them after Grace’s wedding her father had been not just angry with her for enlisting without their permission but also scathing in his opinion that she wouldn’t be able to ‘stick it out’ since she had spent her life finding ways to get round the parental rules he and her mother had put in place to protect all their children.
‘In fact,’ Jessie continued warningly, ‘there’s a bit of competition between the huts to get good reports, and the best pass-out rate from the courses. Our hut came second last year and this year we’re hoping to be first. I’m just telling you so that you know what’s what and to make sure that there’s no letting the side down.’
Behind Jessie’s back Betty pulled a face at Lou as they were forced to quick march behind the others to keep up, and whispered, ‘I thought it was the corporals who were supposed to tell us what to do, not one of our own. I reckon she’s going to be on our backs all the time, bossing us and spoiling our fun. Part of the reason I joined up was so that I could have a bit of fun.’
Although it wasn’t daylight yet, the length of their march toward the mess indicated how big their new base was, the more practical-looking buildings dominated by the big house to the rear of them.
‘So what’s that posh-looking place then?’ Ruby asked cheekily, gesturing towards it.
‘Top brass and high-ranking RAF officers’ mess,’ Jessie told her promptly. ‘And strictly off limits to you lot.’
Under cover of Jessie’s answer Betty dug Lou in the ribs and giggled, ‘If some handsome officer tried it on with Jessie, I reckon the first thing she’d say to him would be, “No, it’s strictly off limits.”’
Betty was fun, Lou acknowledged, as she struggled to keep her own face straight.
‘I suppose the officers still get a plimsoll line painted round their baths?’ was Ellen’s comment, referring to the new practice of painting a line to mark the five-inch depth of water one could have in one’s bath.
‘You can forget about baths here,’ Jessie told her. ‘It’s showers for us and if you aren’t quick enough it will be a cold shower.’
Although Lou hadn’t seen much of the base yet, what she had seen of it seemed to be immaculately spruce and smart, a regular showplace compared with her brother’s old army barracks at Seacombe and the small base in Wilmslow where she had trained. Halton was smarter and prouder of itself, somehow. The Buckinghamshire countryside around them looked far less war weary than Liverpool. There was no doubting the pride of the girls here. Backs were ramrod straight, shoes were highly polished, and the girls themselves all seemed so neat and confident. Would she fit in here, with her renowned untidiness? Lou hoped so.
The mess was huge, or so it seemed to Lou, and filled with girls either already eating or queuing up for their breakfast, whilst the smell of frying bacon and toast filled the air.
Soon the five newcomers were tucking in to a very welcome meal.
‘At least the grub’s good,’ Ruby announced with relish when she had polished off her own breakfast. She looked at Lou’s plate. ‘Are you going to eat that toast?’ Then, without waiting for Lou’s response, she removed it from Lou’s plate to her own, with a cheeky grin.
It was left to Betty to say what Lou suspected they were all thinking. ‘I think we’ve all done very well getting posted here. Halton’s got everything anyone could want to have a good time, and that’s what we’re going to do, isn’t it, girls?’ she demanded, lifting her cup in a toast.
Half an hour later, marching on the parade ground flanked by the RAF regiment, led by its sergeant major with its mascot – a goat with a dangerous-looking set of horns – Lou knew that she dare not look at Betty to see if she was sharing her own desire to break into nervous giggles. There had certainly not been anything like this at Wilmslow. Halton quite obviously took its square bashing very seriously indeed.
Those Waafs already on courses were marched to their classrooms until only thirty or so girls were left, to be marched over to the medical facility ready for their medicals.
‘I don’t know why we have to have another medical and more inoculations,’ Betty grumbled.
‘They’re probably testing our pain threshold,’ Lou grinned, quickly standing to attention when a medical orderly appeared and shouted out her name.
‘Bye, Mum. I’m off to work now.’
‘Well, you take care, Sasha, love,’ Jean Campion told her daughter as they hugged briefly, ‘and no dawdling home tonight, mind, because your dad’s got an ARP meeting and he’ll be wanting his tea on time.’
