‘I’ll be interviewing people for the rest of the day,’ said Captain Andrews.
He tapped the pile of buff folders on the desk in front of him. It was a large
pile.
‘I see, sir.’
‘I doubt you do, Private Brady. Nevertheless…’ He sighed out his
frustration.
Maddie tried not to let her feelings register on her face. But really, the
captain’s ego was large; his people skills small. And she wasn’t stupid, had
a certain amount of intelligence. She could understand all kinds of things,
provided they were explained to her. But then, he was an officer. He didn’t
need to explain himself.
Maybe that sigh of his said something. Could it be that Captain
Andrews had been handed the mucky end of a dirty stick and told to get on
with it? Sort it out? You never knew. It was the army, but even in war, when
everyone should be pulling together, people passed the buck.
‘So…’ she said. ‘What are my orders, sir?’
‘Your orders? Ah. Well, I won’t be needing a driver for today, or even
tomorrow, as I expect I shall be stuck here behind this damn desk all day
tomorrow as well…’ He eyed the files in front of him malevolently.
She didn’t envy him. The office was tiny, and claustrophobic. And the
pile of work looked huge. ‘Yes, sir,’ she replied, her voice neutral. Not her
place to comment.
‘So, Private – why don’t you clean the car, or check the radiator, look at
the sump… whatever you normally do when you’re not driving?’
‘Will do, sir,’ she said, and threw the man in front of her a regulation
salute – he still had his uniform cap on, after all.
‘And when you’ve finished that, take a couple of days off, Private.
Drive somewhere. See a bit of the countryside. I envisage driving back to
town the day after tomorrow. Until then, you may be on your own devices.
Consider it a forty-eight-hour pass.’
‘If you’re sure you won’t need me, sir.’ She couldn’t believe her luck.
‘Absolutely certain. I can think of no contribution you could possibly
make to the work I’m about to undertake here. So, off you go – before I
change my mind.’
‘Do you have written orders for me, sir?’
‘Do you need written orders? Aren’t you supposed to be at my disposal
until we return to Whitehall?’
‘Those were my orders, sir.’
‘Well, then, off you go. And be back here at oh-seven hundred hours the
day after tomorrow.’
‘Look at the sump?’ asked Corporal Williams. ‘That’s what he said?’
‘Those are my orders,’ said Maddie, as she lifted the bonnet of the
Humber.
‘I wouldn’t even know where to find the sump in one of these things.’
‘Not sure if the captain would either.’ Maddie smiled. ‘But we looked
under the bonnets of all kinds of cars and lorries at Camberley. A three
tonner holds no mystery for me,’ she said, and laughed. ‘They taught us
how to strip an engine – put a stopwatch on you. We had weeks of studying
scale models and memorising all the parts, before they let us loose on the
real thing.’
‘Doesn’t sound so bad,’ said Corporal Williams with a grin.
‘I loved it,’ said Maddie. ‘It’s good to learn new things.’ She thumped
the bonnet down with a satisfying clunk and inspected the rest of the car.
Mud from the narrow Cornish lanes had stuck to it, and the bodywork
wasn’t as spotless as she liked to see it. The captain was right: it could do
with a wash before she went on a sightseeing trip, explored a little. After
all, those were her orders, and in the army, you always followed orders.
She smiled and watched as Corporal Williams marched smartly away to
the sentry box by the gate. He was on barrier duty today, it seemed. A
boring but important job that Maddie figured the Welshman would tackle
with stoic resignation. He looked back over his shoulder and threw her a
friendly wink. She laughed, and thought about her friends back at the billet
and how her bunkmate Molly Peters would let out that long, low whistle of
hers when there was a hint of romance in the air. Or lust.
Molly, a big buxom blonde with a generous heart, was very hot on the
idea of lust. She was a confident, happy young woman, glad of the freedom
that war had given her and her escape from a stifling family and rigid
Catholic upbringing.
Maddie had checked the oil, topped up the water in the radiator and
filled the Humber Snipe’s hungry belly with a jerry can of petrol. Just a
quick wash and brush-up for the old girl now. The car was a reliable
workhorse if you were good to her: Maddie always thought of the car as a
she. She’d christened her Harriet. Harriet the Humber. Blokes would have
sniggered, she knew. But Harriet had become a close ally and, at times,
Maddie even found herself talking to the thing. Bizarre, maybe. Still – not
as bizarre as being ordered off on a sight-seeing trip. It would be easy to
follow an order like that, and the man was her boss, at least for the time
being. But would she get in trouble with her own commanding officer back
in London? Stuff in life had a way of hanging you, even if you were
innocent.
A voice cut through her thoughts: ‘You leaving that there all day?
You’re right in the way of the lorry. All the same, you ATS girlies are; ain’t
got the sense you was born with.’ There was a loud tut. ‘Never should ’ave
let women join the army,’ the man grumbled under his breath. But Maddie
heard it.
She looked up at the man, his red, angry face. His sergeant’s stripes. She
opened her mouth to speak, but he jumped straight back in: a one-sided
conversation, then.
‘Pull it up over there and leave enough room in front for the prisoners’
transport. They’ll be leaving soon.’
‘I’m washing the car.’
‘I don’t see no water. Anyroad, you can do that just as easy, parked up
over there.’ The sergeant pointed to a spot behind her right shoulder, like
Maddie’s brain was somehow inferior and couldn’t work out the directions
by herself.
Some of the regular army blokes felt intimidated by women in the ATS,
as if somehow the women’s army section was tainting the whole service.
Had brought it into disrepute. The man is one of those, she decided. It
wasn’t the first time she’d come across that sort of prejudice, and it annoyed
her. But she always tried to ignore it. The sexual slurs were harder to ignore– when a bloke sniggered and called you an officer’s blanket. And it wasn’t
true: very few of the ATS girls were easy.
She watched the sergeant puff himself up with power. NCOs – the
backbone of the army, but some of them misused their position, became
bullies.
‘I’ll get some of them lazy buggers who ain’t going out on work detail
to bring you buckets and stuff,’ he said. ‘Do ’em good. Some of ’em think
they’re on holiday.’ The small, fat sergeant guffawed as he marched away.
