Ruby Jackson - On a Wing and a Prayer

‘But what about his bad mood?’

‘You’ll see a good mood – a beautiful sight. Maybe he’ll sing. A force of nature, remember? You’ll tremble and say, “What does he do with all this energy when he’s angry?”’

‘He uses as much energy being angry as he does when he’s happy?’ Gladys was laughing.

‘Exactly. Now who has an afternoon off soon?’

Rose smiled. She would miss her friends from Preston, just as she had missed the friends she had made at Guildford, but she knew she would like most of these hard-working, dedicated women just as much.

‘There’s a very pretty girl here called Francesca,’ she wrote to Stan later.

She’s about twenty-one, I think. And then there’s a woman, Gladys, who must be about thirty; she can be touchy but maybe that’s because she’s a lance corporal in a billet with several privates. Bit of a shame we have to move around so much. We say we’re going to keep up but it’s almost impossible to find time to write home, never mind write letters to all the lovely people I’ve met. I remember Grace Paterson telling us she’d made a really good friend at her training farm, but when she did get around to writing the friend had moved. Maybe Grace’s letter is travelling all over England looking for her. Who knows?

She was going to add that Grace had Sam to write to now but that seemed a little insensitive. After all, Grace and Sam were in love. Stan and Rose were not. We’re best friends, she decided, and always will be.

‘I’m off duty on Sunday afternoon, Francesca,’ she said later that evening when she met Francesca in the washroom, a place where the girls seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time. Many of them liked washing small items of clothing every night and hanging them up to dry in the warm, damp atmosphere rather than sending them to the efficient but often time-consuming laundry service.

‘Lovely.’ Francesca smiled broadly. ‘I am too. We’ll sweet-talk someone at the stables to take us in. Maybe Gladys will come too.’ She looked at Rose who had the strangest expression on her face. ‘Is there is a problem, Rose?’

‘Stables? I didn’t know we had stables and, even if I did, I think my riding skills aren’t up to riding a horse all the way to York. And what on earth would we do with them once we got to your granddad’s café?’

To Rose’s surprise Francesca burst out laughing. The fact that even her laughter was attractive and highly contagious did not, in that moment, actually endear her new friend to Rose.

‘My riding is limited to hanging onto the mane of a great carthorse; lovely animal, but I prefer car seats.’

Francesca patted her gently as if she was a small child. ‘We’re not going to ride in, Rose, although I must admit it would be quite lovely. No, no horses. The only mode of transport in our stables is on four or more wheels – well, there could be a bicycle or two…’

‘Before I pick you up and—’ began Rose.

‘Cavalry officers refer to “the stables” when they are talking about vehicle storage. I have a chum in the Blues and Royals. One picks up their jargon.’

‘Does one indeed?’ asked Rose.

‘There’s the loveliest MTWO,’ began Francesca with a worried look at her new friend.

‘I understand our own jargon, thank you: motorised transport warrant officer.’

‘He’s become rather a close family friend, Rose. Indeed, after a slice or two of Nonno’s lasagne, he is putty in my hands. I’m sure if anyone is going into York on Sunday, we’ll be offered a lift.’

And so it proved. Warrant Officer Starling himself had to visit the town and would be pleased to drop the girls off at the café and pick them up later.

Immediately after the all-ranks church service on Sunday, the three young women hurried to change out of their uniforms. The prospect of a few hours with no heavy stockings, no shirt and tie was delightful. Rose and Francesca, who were slender, laughed to see that they were both wearing almost identical dresses. The dresses had been fashioned taking into account the new austerity. They were A-line and reached just below the knee; material was in short supply and so there was very little swing to the skirts. Francesca, with her dark colouring, had chosen the shirtwaist in red and white, whereas Rose, a blonde, was wearing a very similar dress in light green, but with white cuffs on the short sleeves, and a white collar. The buttons on her bodice were dark green while those on Francesca’s were white. Gladys, slightly more mature in age and figure, had chosen to wear a floral skirt and a simple white blouse with a blue cardigan thrown around her shoulders.

‘Wish I was a bit skinnier, like you two,’ she grumbled.

‘Well, they do say Bile Beans are the answer, Gladys. At least, according to an advertisement in one of Dad’s catalogues, they’re all you need “for radiant health and a lovely figure”,’ Rose said mock-seriously. Gladys looked at her questioningly. ‘Is a word of that true? Bile Beans?’

‘She’s teasing, Gladys. You don’t need to be thinner; you look very nice.’

The opinion of the warrant officer was the same. ‘And very nice too,’ he said as he looked at his passengers. He himself was in uniform as he really did have a delivery to make in York.

Rose and Gladys enjoyed their second glimpse of the famous city. They saw the spires of the fabled minster rising up into the skyline, long before they reached the outskirts.

‘Will we have time to see it, Fran?’ asked Gladys. ‘I’d love to get a postcard for my mum.’

‘Great idea,’ echoed Rose. Propaganda was already reminding the populace to keep in mind members of the Forces in their Christmas mailings and, although Rose felt it too early to even think of Christmas, she knew her family would love postcards. ‘My sister was here, before the bombing.’

‘Then she is one of the lucky ones,’ said Francesca with a heavy sigh. ‘For some reason they didn’t bomb the minster and fires never reached it, but thousands of houses were destroyed. It will take years to replace them or repair the damage.’

Rose felt cold. ‘All those homes. It’s ghastly. There must have been so much loss of life.’

‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? The raiders came at night when most people were sound asleep in bed. We were. But somehow, can you believe it, only about three hundred people died. Have you ever been bombed?’ Francesca looked at her two friends.

Gladys had never experienced an air raid in her home town, but Rose, of course, had lived through many, as Dartford lay directly in the path of enemy aircraft heading for London from Berlin. ‘Dartford’s had some bad times, hospital wards destroyed, some houses, but apart from in London, I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s frightening.’

‘’Course, I’m not telling you anything you shouldn’t know,’ Warrant Officer Starling piped up suddenly, ‘but they say as some Luftwaffe general thought it was a good idea to destroy all the cities in England that featured in a German guidebook: Bath, York, Norwich, Canterbury and others. They made a right mess of Canterbury, missed the cathedral but destroyed the medieval centre. We can build new houses but we can’t rebuild our past, our history.’ He stopped, as if suddenly embarrassed by his own eloquence.

‘You’re so right, sir,’ said Rose, ‘but we can make certain that we remember it.’

‘Come on. We’ve gone all doomy and gloomy,’ complained Gladys. ‘We’re off base, we’re going out to a delicious lunch and every girl in the unit will be jealous when we report back. Where are you dropping us, Officer?’

‘Right here,’ said Warrant Officer Starling as he drew up close to a shining café window over which hung a very pretty blue-and-white awning.