Pam Weaver - Pack Up Your Troubles

The cab smelled musty and a bit like a compost heap on a sunny day. After a while it made her feel queasy so Connie was more than relieved to see the gates of her camp looming out of the darkness. She thanked Doug profusely and walked the few hundred yards to the sentry post. She fancied that the guard wrinkled his nose as she walked by and her only thought was to have a good strip-down wash or if she was lucky, a small bath before lights out.

‘Connie! There you are,’ Rene sounded really pleased to see her as she walked in their Nissen hut. ‘Where did you and Eva get to? We looked everywhere for you both but you’d completely disappeared. I’m so sorry. Did you have a terrible time? I mean, you don’t know London at all, do you? Oh, I feel perfectly dreadful about it. How on earth did you get home?’

‘If you’ll let me get a word in edgeways,’ Connie laughed as she threw her bag over her iron bedstead, ‘I’ll tell you.’

As Rene sat on the bed beside her, Connie told her some of what had happened. Listening to her friend’s abject apologies, Connie felt a twinge of guilt. She’d been having such a good time, she hadn’t given Rene and Barbara a moment’s thought since they’d lost sight of each other on The Mall. ‘Please don’t worry,’ she smiled as Rene apologised yet again. ‘It wasn’t your fault. I had a great time anyway.’

‘If you don’t mind me saying so,’ said Rene, pulling a face, ‘you don’t smell too good.’

‘Neither would you if you’d sat in that awful van,’ Connie laughed. ‘Let me go to the bathroom.’

Sitting in the regulation five inches of water, Connie sponged away the smell of the pig food, but somehow she didn’t feel clean. She’d already gone over some of the things Eva had said to her, and now she was remembering the unkind things she had said in return. She shouldn’t have been so sharp with her. After all, Eva was a war widow and being with her mother-in-law again had obviously brought back some painful memories. Hadn’t she suffered enough?

She climbed out of the bath and towelled herself dry. What could she do about it? The Dixons and the Maxwells had been at loggerheads for donkey’s years. She pulled the plug and watched the dirty water swirl around the plughole before disappearing. Wrapping herself in her dressing gown, Connie sighed. There were some stinks that needed a lot more than soap and water to wash them away. Ah well, it was done and dusted as far as she and Eva were concerned. She’d never see her again anyway.

The dream came in the early hours. It was one of those strange moments when you are asleep and you know it’s only a dream and yet you are powerless to wake yourself up. She struggled to make sense of it but as the moving forms in front of her grew darker, the overwhelming fear reached panic proportions. The tap-tapping of the cigarette on that case grew louder. Wake up, Connie. Wake up. Oh God, he was coming for her. Her eyes locked onto his and she couldn’t get the door shut. The door … the door … Now he was inside the room … coming closer and closer. She could smell his breath, feel his hand pinning her shoulders down. Connie, wake up. She was screaming but no sound came from her lips. His rasping voice filled her ears. You’ll like it … He opened his mouth and beyond his yellow teeth she saw his fat, pulsating tongue. She felt that if he came any closer, he would devour her whole. The weight of his body suffocated her. She thrashed her arms to push him away and the rushing sound in her ears grew louder.

‘Connie, it’s all right. It’s just a dream.’ The moment Rene’s voice penetrated the terrifying sounds, they vanished as quickly as someone turning the radio off. Her eyes sprang open and she saw a torch on the pillow beside her. Rene was leaning over her, her hands as light as a feather on her shoulders but she had obviously been shaking her to wake her up. Connie sat up suddenly and blinking in the half light, saw a dozen anxious faces gathered around her bed. At the same time, she became aware that her nightdress was drenched in perspiration and her hair stuck to her forehead.

‘You had a bad dream,’ said Rene. ‘You were shouting out.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Sorry I woke you all up.’

The girls began to move away and get back into their own beds.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ said a disembodied voice in the darkness.

Connie lay back on the pillow and shook her head. ‘No, thanks. It was only a dream.’

As Connie staggered through the front gate of Belvedere Nurseries with her suitcase two months later, the dog opened one eye. He was lying across the path, snoozing in the early July sunshine. A mongrel, he had a black and white coat, a feathered tail and more than a touch of the sheepdog about him. When her father had bought him as a pup for her thirteenth birthday, they were told that he was a Border collie, cross retriever but his legs were too short and his mouth lopsided. Connie didn’t care what he looked like; she had loved Pip at first sight. ‘You always did go for the underdog,’ Ga had mumbled in disgust when they brought him home. As soon as the puppy was placed on the mat, he peed a never-ending stream, never once taking his coal black eyes from the old lady’s face. Hiding her smile, Connie knew that like her, Pip had a rebellious streak and they became inseparable. Later on, it was Pip who helped her get over the loss of her father and her brother Kenneth going away like that. She took him for long walks and unloaded her brokenness onto him. When she sat on the grass to cry, he would lick her tears away and wag his tail in sympathy. Although she was careful to obey Ga and never mention ‘that business’, Pip seemed to understand exactly how she was feeling. Pip was her adored companion until she was nineteen years old and joined the WAAFs and he had never quite forgiven her for leaving home. As the gate clicked shut behind her, Connie called out, ‘Here, boy. Here, Pip.’

He rose to his feet, yawned, stretched lazily and she noticed that he was getting quite a few grey hairs around his muzzle. He was nine years old, much more than that in doggie years. She watched him turn around and walk ahead of her to the front door where he waited. When she got to him, Connie reached down and patted his side before ringing the doorbell. ‘Silly old dog,’ she said softly.

As the door opened and her mother stood on the step, Pip came to life, panting and jumping in the small porchway like a thing demented. ‘Connie!’ Gwen laughed as Pip’s joyful barks obviously delighted her. ‘What a wonderful homecoming Pip is giving you.’

‘Warm welcome my eye,’ Connie laughed. ‘He hasn’t even come to my call. He’s doing all that jumping about for your benefit.’

Her mother smiled uncertainly. ‘Well, come on in, darling, let me look at you. I like your new hair.’

‘They’re called Victory curls,’ said Connie patting the back of her head. ‘I have to curl them up with Kirby grips every night and wear a scarf in bed but I think it looks quite nice.’

‘It certainly does,’ her mother enthused.

Gwen Craig was small with high cheekbones and an oval face. Her hair was still dark but Connie could see a few grey hairs and she had tired eyes. It alarmed her to see that her mother had lost weight. Her clothes positively hung on her. Gwen had married Connie’s father Jim Dixon in 1919 when she was only eighteen and bore him two children, Kenneth, now twenty-three, and Connie aged twenty-one. 1936 was an eventful year. First she’d had Pip, then soon after their father had died after a long illness, and Kenneth had left home abruptly. Her father’s illness had sapped them of all their money and because they were living in a tithed cottage, Gwen and Connie would have been homeless if Ga hadn’t come to the rescue. In exchange for housework, Gwen and Connie moved in with her in her small cottage in the same village. A couple of years later, and much to Connie’s surprise, Gwen had married Clifford Craig, a man she had thought was only a nodding acquaintance. Their union had produced Mandy now aged six and the exact image of her mother. Gwen held out her arms and, dropping her case on the mat, Connie went to her.