Annie Groves - As Time Goes By

‘I’ve got to go,’ Sally told her, ‘otherwise I’m going to be late for picking up my two boys from me neighbour.’ When Patti went thin-lipped she reminded her firmly, ‘I did tell Charlie when he first asked me to do this that I’d got other obligations. And I’m not a permanent member of the band, after all; I’m only standing in for Eileen.’

‘Go on then. But mek sure you’re here on time tomorrow for the rehearsal for Saturday night,’ Patti warned her.

Nodding, Sally picked up her bag and hurried towards the exit.

Stan Culcheth, the ex-sergeant major who had been invalided out of the army after losing an eye in the action in the desert, and who the owner of the Grafton had taken on to deal with any unwanted rowdiness amongst the large number of service personnel who came to the dance hall every week, gave her a cheery smile as he opened the back door for her.

‘Heard from that husband of yours yet?’ he asked kindly.

Sally shook her head, pulling up the collar of her coat against the evening air. ‘He’s probably gone AWOL with some pretty girl he’s found,’ she joked. But she knew from the look he was giving her that Stan wasn’t deceived. The truth was that she was worried. How could she not be? There hadn’t been a single day not filled with anxiety in the long months since she had received that telegram with the news that Ronnie – her Ronnie, whom she had thought was serving in Africa, but who had in fact been in Singapore with the rest of his unit when the island fell – was now a Japanese prisoner of war.

Unlike the women whose men were German POWs, Sally had not had the comfort of letters from Ronnie, passed on by the Red Cross, who had taken on the task of monitoring the treatment of all POWs and ensuring that it complied with the terms of the Geneva Convention.

‘Aye, well, it’s early days yet,’ Stan offered her comfortingly. ‘It takes time for the Red Cross to sort out who’s who and where they are. Like as not you’ll be hearing from him any day now.’

His voice was too hearty and he couldn’t look her in the eye, and of course Sally knew why. Other women almost shrank from her when they knew that Ronnie was a Japanese POW, not knowing what to say, what kind of commiserations or sympathy to offer to her. There were some horrors that even the most stalwart heart could not reasonably contemplate, unthinkably sickening horrific things that had to be kept locked away and not spoken of. Sally tried not to think about them either; that was one of the reasons why she liked to sing. When she was singing, she could pretend that everything was all right, just like it was in the songs.

‘Oh, I know that. My Ronnie’s not some raw recruit, after all,’ Sally answered the doorman stoutly. ‘He’s seen plenty of action. With the BEF at Nantes, he was, at the time of Dunkirk, and he came through that. Then he got shipped off to Italy, and then the desert supposedly, although seemingly he wasn’t going there at all but to Singapore.’

‘He’d be proud of you if he could see the way you’re coping, lass. When a chap’s bin taken prisoner he needs to know that all’s well at home. Means the world to him, that does. It’s what keeps him going sometimes,’ Stan told her, so obviously wanting to sound optimistic that Sally felt obliged to respond in a similar cheery vein, as she said goodbye to him.

After all, she wasn’t on her own, she reminded herself, as she made her way home. There was hardly a household in the country in which the women were not worrying about their menfolk, and that included her neighbours on Chestnut Close, in Liverpool’s Edge Hill area, as well as the girls she worked with both here at the Grafton and at Littlewoods, where they were making parachutes and barrage balloons for the war effort. It was a matter of everyone at home pulling together to support one another and to give their fighting men the comfort of knowing that those they had left behind were being looked after by their community. A matter of getting on with things as best they could without making a song and dance about it.

But Sally was feeling far from as chirpy as she tried to pretend, and not just because word was creeping back that the Japanese treatment of POWs was so cruel. She also had problems at home. Trying to bring up two exuberant and sometimes mischievous boys wasn’t always easy without their father there. It was not even as though the boys had an uncle around who could have shown them a firm hand when things got a bit unruly. Like the other teatime, when three-year-old Tommy, born the day war was announced, had started a scrap with his younger brother, Harry, which had led to them both yelling blue murder.

And then there was that other matter that kept her awake at night, and that seemed to get worse, no matter how hard she tried to get on top of it. She did some anxious mental arithmetic. She knew there were those who disapproved of the fact that she was singing at the Grafton on her night off from her late shift at Littlewoods. After all, with her children under five, and rationing making sure that everyone in the country got their fair share even though it was barely enough to fill people’s stomachs, she could have stayed at home with her boys, never mind have taken on two jobs. But they didn’t know what she did, and they didn’t have to worry about it either. She needed every penny she could earn and somehow it still wasn’t enough.

Sally thought she was lucky to have her job at the Grafton, especially with Stan Culcheth there. Stan had a heart of gold, and all the girls who worked there knew that they could turn to him if they ever needed help dealing with the sometimes over-keen admiration of the men who flocked to the ballroom to enjoy themselves. Not that keeping the peace amongst these young men was an easy job at the moment, what with more and more American servicemen arriving at the huge Burtonwood American base near Warrington, all determined to enjoy themselves after their journey across the Atlantic and before they were sent off to join units in other parts of the country.

There had already been several scuffles, and on a handful of occasions more serious fights, between British and American servicemen, sparked off by what the Brits saw as the unfair advantages the Yanks had when it came to getting the prettiest girls.

The American Military Police were very quick to step in and restore order amongst their own men, though – Sally had to give them that.

Personally she did not feel any animosity towards the Yanks. After all, they were the allies and here to help win the war.

‘Oh, well, you would be in sympathy wi’ them Yanks, Sally,’ Shirley, one of the Waltonettes, had sniffed deprecatingly when Sally had said as much. ‘What with your Ronnie being a Jap POW and all them Yanks being took prisoner by the Japs as well, wi’ Pearl Harbor and all that.’

When Sally had related this conversation later to her best friend, Molly Brookes, Molly had immediately sympathised and tried to comfort her.

Yes, Molly was a good friend to her, and yet it had been June, her elder sister, whom Sally had palled up with first, when they had been young wives and then young mothers together. But then poor June had been killed during a bombing raid. Molly had gone through her own fair share of heartache, what with one engagement being broken off, and then losing her handsome young Merchant Navy fiancé when his ship had been torpedoed, before June was killed. June and Molly had been particularly close on account of them losing their mother very young, so perhaps it was no wonder that Molly had ended up marrying her sister’s husband, in January, and was now mothering June’s little girl, Lillibet, just as if she were she own, while waiting for the birth of her and Frank’s own baby.