Pam Weaver - Pack Up Your Troubles

It had taken Connie a while before she’d got to know the other girls. At sixteen, Sally’s secretarial course was due to start towards the end of September. She may have been a lot younger than the rest of them, but she fitted into the group well. Jane was the joker. Having heard of Sally’s ambition to be a private secretary rather than ending up in the typing pool, Connie had asked Jane about her ambitions. Jane had looked thoughtful and then said, ‘I think I’ll marry a man with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana skin,’ and they’d all laughed.

‘How’s your boyfriend in the army?’ said Connie making small talk while they waited.

Sally had just refused to dance with a tall, lanky man with buck teeth. ‘Terry? Fine,’ she nodded. She picked up her handbag and rummaged inside. ‘He’s still in Germany. He says he’ll be stuck there until he’s demobbed next year.’

‘What rotten luck,’ said Connie. ‘A year is a long time.’

‘I’ll wait for him,’ said Sally, pulling out a dog-eared photograph. ‘That’s my Terry.’ He looked about twenty and was tall with round-rimmed glasses.

‘He doesn’t mind you coming to dances?’

‘Well, he can’t expect me to live like a hermit,’ Sally retorted, ‘but I shall always be faithful to him.’

A good looking man with slicked-down hair came up to the table and gave the girls a short bow. ‘May I?’

‘And what the eye doesn’t see …’ said Sally, taking his hand.

Connie went back to the gypsy camp whenever she had a spare minute. Kez was a willing pupil even though some of her relatives teased her when they saw what she was doing. She had been right about the books. Kez had loved the Stories from the Arabian Nights and who could blame her. All those handsome, dark-eyed men fighting for the women they loved and looking at the girls in their pretty Eastern dress made enjoyable reading.

‘The way you two sit like that,’ Reuben remarked one day, ‘you could be sisters.’

Connie smiled. She would have liked to have had a sister like Kez. Simeon was a nice man too. He sat close to his wife and a couple of times, as Connie traced the words with her finger on the page, she caught him mouthing the words along with her. So he was illiterate too? Connie was amazed. He had created a real work of art in wood on the outside of the trailer. He clearly had a good eye because the few times she had watched him at work, she’d noticed that he didn’t have a pattern to follow. It was all in his head. Eventually Connie plucked up enough courage to ask him about the pram.

‘Bring it with you next time,’ Simeon smiled, ‘and I’ll see what I can do.’

People labelled gypsies as stupid but Kez and her family were far from that. They may have lacked formal education but their skills and knowledge in other areas were second to none. Isaac was always turning up with a river fish or a couple of rabbits, and at one time a couple of pigeons for their supper. Kez invited Connie to stay but most times she declined, preferring to be home in time to read Mandy a bedtime story.

When Connie got back home on 24 July, her mother and Ga were glued to the radio. At the beginning of the month the whole country had been full of election fever. Most people thought it a foregone conclusion that Mr Churchill would get back into Downing Street but there was also a groundswell of opinion that the country couldn’t go back to the old ways. It was time for radical change. All the same it came as an enormous shock when the final count was declared after the overseas votes had been collected by RAF Transport Command. The Labour Party headed by a rather weedy looking man called Clement Attlee had won a landslide victory.

‘God help us all,’ Ga said darkly as she turned the radio off. ‘It’s going to be just like Churchill said. We beat the Gestapo in Germany and now they’ll come here, you mark my words.’

‘I’m sure it won’t be that bad, Ga,’ said Gwen good-naturedly.

‘And you can hardly blame us for wanting change,’ said Connie tartly. ‘Look what’s on offer, full employment and a free health service.’

‘Stuff and nonsense,’ Ga retorted. ‘Anyone with half a brain could see that’s all rhetoric and empty promises. A welfare state from the cradle to the grave? It’ll never happen in my lifetime.’

It had taken a bit longer than they’d thought but Clifford came home with the minimum of fuss. Connie and her mother were anxious about him because they had no idea what kind of state he might be in. Immediately after the war, the newsreels at the pictures showed some harrowing sights coming out of Germany. Whole cities flattened by Allied bombing, women and children picking their way through the ruins and of course the opening up of those terrible concentration camps. It was a lot to take in and it must have been even worse for those who saw it at first hand. Joan Hill from the village found a wreck of a man waiting on the platform when her Charlie came home and he still wasn’t right in the head.

Clifford was due to come back on a Saturday and so Connie took Mandy out for the day in order to give her mother a little space. They went to Arundel on the bus and on to Swanbourne Lake. Pip invited himself too and had been as good as gold on the bus, lying by their feet until it was time to get out. Mandy fed the ducks with some crusts of bread and then they walked right around the lake. Pip loved it. He didn’t chase a single duck but enjoyed his freedom to scent and smell as he pleased. They stayed until late afternoon and Connie treated them to tea in a little tea rooms while Pip lay on the pavement outside and waited for them.

As it turned out, Clifford had come through his experiences with little evidence of trauma. A clean shaven man with a strong jawline and firm resolve, he looked a little too small for his demob suit but he was still good looking enough to cut a dash. His Brylcreemed brown hair had retained its colour although there were a few grey hairs at either side of his ears. When he spotted Connie and Mandy walking up the road, he ran to meet them, and catching Mandy into the air he swung her up. Pip barked and jumped at his legs and Connie laughed. Clifford’s daughter was a little more reserved in her greeting and wriggling out of his arms, as soon as he put her down she ran and hid behind Connie’s skirts.

‘She’ll be all right,’ Connie whispered when she saw the look of disappointment on his face. ‘Just give her time.’

Clifford put his hand lightly on her shoulder and kissed Connie on the cheek. ‘Is it good to be back?’ she asked.

Her mother was standing by the front door, looking on. ‘I’ll say,’ he smiled, adding out of the corner of his mouth, ‘although your mother looks a bit pasty.’

‘I’ve tried to persuade her to go to Dr Andrews,’ Connie whispered as she smiled brightly, ‘but she won’t go.’

‘I’ll get her to make an appointment as soon as I can,’ he said as they turned to walk back to the nurseries.

‘She probably won’t tell you,’ Connie said while they were still far enough away from the door to be out of earshot, ‘but I’ve offered to look after Mandy if you want to go away for a holiday.’

‘Can I go on holiday too?’ Mandy piped up.

‘Oh my, what big ears you have,’ laughed Connie and Clifford ruffled Mandy’s hair.

‘Was Ga all right with you?’ Connie asked as her sister skipped up the garden path.

‘Same as usual,’ said Clifford grimly. ‘I swear that woman looks more miserable than Queen Victoria with every passing year.’

Connie put her hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.

The rest of the weekend was good because everyone was on their best behaviour. Clifford insisted her mother go to the doctor on Monday. A touch of anaemia, that’s all it was, and she was prescribed a tonic. ‘Take a rest if you can,’ he advised and so Clifford went ahead with his plans for them to go to Eastbourne for a few days.