Maddie had settled into a routine. And routine was always good to hold on
to. To stop her mind lingering over the bad stuff. But mostly things were
good. Decent food, which might have been strange, had they not been
serving in a posh mess where the cooks sometimes gave them illicit titbits
to take home to their billet in Sunnyfield.
The first weeks had been hard. Gertie especially found it tough, had
looked forward to bringing in the New Year. Maybe even the odd glass of
porter back at the billet with the rest of the ATS girls. Instead, they had run
themselves ragged, making sure the officers had enjoyed their New Year’s
Eve celebration.
Gertie pointed to the unfairness of life but Maddie had been relieved,
for celebrations made her maudlin nowadays. A few drinks and she would
dwell on past sadness. Things she had lost. People she had lost. Her baby.
Molly. Rudi.
Some of the officers were kind. Others didn’t even recognise the
existence of the two young waitresses who served them in the mess, who
tidied up after them in their quarters, made their beds like chambermaids,
scrubbed their floors.
Gertie’s quick evaluation had been ruthless: the higher up the ranks they
crawled, ‘… the more up theirselves these blokes become.’ When a visiting
brigadier had taken a cup of tea from her hand, and not even looked at her,
nor said thank you, Gertie had complained: ‘What are we – invisible?
Bleedin’ snobs!’
But Maddie saw most of these young men with different eyes. She
watched sadly as some of them left for action. Men who might not return.
The war wasn’t going well. And did it really matter what rank you were?
Dead was dead.
Gertie had settled down after a few months. Maddie had even heard her
friend humming as she went about her work, and yesterday she’d noticed a
massive grin on Gertie’s face. The reason was obvious: Bill Adams.
Gertie had met the man a month ago at the local dancehall. She’d
dragged Maddie along to the Palais de Dance, because if there was one
thing Gertie was keen on, it was flinging herself around the dance floor in a
Lindy Hop.
It never ceased to amaze Maddie just how energetic and fearless her
friend became the minute her feet touched a sprung dance floor. Gertie
never held back. And the Lindy Hop was surely invented with her in mind
its freedom and exuberance.
And apparently, Lance Corporal Adams felt the same way.
The man was slight and small in height, only an inch or so above Gertie:
if some higher deity had designed the pair of them with a match in mind, he
had made a decent go of it. They had hit it off from the beginning and as
dance partners went, they were impressive.
Maddie watched in awe as Gertie’s feet left the ground in the acrobatic
air-steps. But Bill Adams was always right there to catch her. It was a
breath-taking sight and other dancers would be forced to make way, for fear
of being knocked over like skittles.
‘My kind of gal,’ Bill had said. ‘Full of gusto.’
And Maddie couldn’t fault the man’s observation. Gertie certainly had
life force. Especially now that she’d found this one special man, someone
who seemed to fit her like a well-worn glove.
But it left Maddie with one small problem. For some reason, Gertie kept
insisting that she go along with them both to the Palais. Maddie didn’t
dance with any of the chaps who asked. And sometimes she ended up
wandering off to the balcony or ordering tea in the restaurant high above the
ballroom. A safe place to watch without ending up with somebody in your
lap, for the dance floor was usually packed with hundreds of couples, all
making their way around it in a circular motion. One-way traffic. Except
rogue elements among the dancers didn’t always follow the flow.
And so they passed their Friday nights. The start of a weekend pass was
spent sitting at a table in a fancy ballroom, drinking tea or weak beer. A
strange trio: Gertie and Bill, two lovebirds, who should be alone, and
Maddie, feeling out of place, playing gooseberry, watching others – couples
who laughed and joked and gazed into each other’s eyes.
Her friend was being kind. Didn’t want Maddie to be on her own back
at the billet. That’s what she guessed.
A bomb fell close to their house in Sunnyfield. It was a reminder to Maddie
that living or dying in this war was a random thing and that she should live
every day like it was the final one she’d been allotted.
Bill Adams turned up soon afterwards, worried about them. He’d
brought flowers for Gertie and the two of them went off to the nearby fields
for a walk. Maddie watched them leave hand-in-hand, saw Bill slip an arm
around her friend’s waist. An intimate gesture of protection. Of love. They
were such a natural match, an equal match, and they were both content with
that.
Give and take, it was a simple idea, men and women giving each other
equal respect. Maddie believed in it and her friend seemed to have hit the
jackpot with a man who did too. Not all men did.
Maddie was happy for them both. Her friend Gertie was a rough
diamond, an honest woman who spoke her mind, despite the trouble it got
her into at times. But it was a gift to have her as a friend, with her loyalty
and downright common sense. No frills, no pretension. You got the real
thing with Gertrude. And now, she’d fallen in love. And Maddie was glad,
even though the thought was bittersweet. For she’d once been in love
herself.
Hours later, Gertie came back from her walk, alone. Looking serious.
‘He’s asked me to marry him, Madds.’ She looked as if she might cry.
‘That’s wonderful,’ said Maddie. ‘Well – isn’t it?’
‘I guess so. It’s just that…’
‘What?’
‘I’m scared.’
‘You! Scared? Of what?’ Maddie asked.
‘When you’re really happy – you sometimes get it taken away from
you.’
‘But that’s daft. If you love him and he loves you and you want to marry
him – why wouldn’t you?’
‘I couldn’t bear to lose him, Madds. His lot’s set to go off any time
now.’
‘But that would happen whether you marry him or not,’ said Maddie.
‘I know, but. Well – what if he cops it?’ She started to cry.
Maddie pulled her friend in close to her. Held her tightly while Gertie
cried out her fear.
‘I won’t lie to you,’ said Maddie. ‘Life doesn’t come with guarantees.
He might be killed. Any of us could get killed at any minute. But isn’t it
better that you have time with him?’
‘You think I should do it then? You really think I should?’ asked Gertie.
‘Not up to me, is it? But if somebody loved me the way that daft beggar
loves you – I’d grab him. And I’d enjoy the time together. No matter how
long or short that turned out to be.’
A month later, Gertie became Mrs Gertrude Adams and she disappeared to
Blackpool for a week’s honeymoon. A whole week with the man of her
dreams, she told Maddie. All that and the Tower Ballroom as well. They’d
be able to marvel at the Wurlitzer organ as it magically appeared from
below the floor. Maddie tried to picture the ballroom and Lance Corporal
Bill Adams flinging his bride in the air. The adoring looks on their faces.
A postcard arrived from Blackpool showing the illuminations. A
reminder of how things used to be before blackouts and rationing. Maddie
pinned the card up on her bedroom wall and went downstairs to join the
others in the lounge.
She missed Gertie, of course, but the atmosphere in the room was
friendly. And two of the younger girls, Sissy and Dot, who usually found
something to squabble over, even seemed to have called a truce. Everyone
was in a cheerful mood as they listened to a dance-band on the wireless.
They gathered around the blazing fire, toasting bread on the end of a long
fork. And drinking tea.
So very British, thought Maddie, and smiled. Her thoughts rewound to
another place, another time. The tea was lukewarm but she’d drunk it
gratefully from the flask Lizzie Retallack had given her. In a barn. In
Gunwalloe. And then Rudi had wakened from his nightmare.
Her mood changed now: high spirits plunging to gloom as she thought
of him. Of missing him. Of wanting him. Of touching him, here and now,
not only in her dreams.
Rudi, where ARE you? she screamed. But it was only in her head.
Bluebells arrived in the countryside close to Sunnyfield, trumpeting the
beginning of spring. Acres of them spread out in a carpet of cobalt-blue. In
not so very long now, farmers would be thinking about building their
haystacks. Some of the ATS girls, who’d been in the billet for a while,
described the delights of sneaking across the fields and climbing the giant
hayricks in summer. With some willing chap perhaps. Maddie hadn’t asked.
Now that the Americans had joined the war, there was no shortage of
men in exotic uniforms with time on their hands and plenty of money in
their pockets. The American GIs were paid far more than a homegrown
British Tommy and weren’t shy about spending it. Overpaid, oversexed and
over here. It was a familiar refrain. But, so far, the arrival of what people
were calling ‘the Yanks’ had been a friendly invasion.
The weather was fine, and when they were off duty, Maddie cajoled her
friend into going for long walks with her. Anything to stop Gertie mooning
around and take her mind off Bill. After their honeymoon, Lance Corporal
Adams had been swallowed up once more by the giant machinery of the
British Army, confined to a special training camp somewhere in the wilds
of Scotland. He wasn’t allowed to say where. And all leave had been
cancelled.
Maddie worked hard at keeping up her friend’s flagging spirits. She
understood the misery of finding love and having it wrenched from your
grasp. And there were times when she caught that faraway look in Gertie’s
eyes, a wistful expression like the world had offered her its riches and then
betrayed her.
