Chapter 35
Bobby had dreaded the route marches before she had experienced one, and it was certainly true that there was little worse than a wet, windy, muddy tramp over the hills with no home comforts to come back to. But when the weather cooperated, they were her favourite part of her new life.
On the fells, she didn’t feel homesick. She could shut out the sound of chatter and pretend she was striding up Great Bowside with Charlie by her side, or imagine she was hiking to see her friend Andy Jessop in his farmhouse at Newby Top.
From a certain vantage point she even thought she could make out the tiny dot of Silverdale in the far distance, and smiled as she thought of her friends and family there, going about their day.
Bobby found it hard to enjoy today’s hike though, in spite of the sunshine, the birdsong and the spring flowers bursting out all over.
Her head was too full of thoughts of Charlie, and what might be waiting for her when the women were finally allowed their post. All the fells did was remind her of him.
The WAAFs weren’t sent on long-distance marches – at least, not compared to the RAF recruits, who might go as far as twenty miles in a day. Today’s hike was to be a mere six miles. Still, that was more than enough for Bobby’s less countrified companions.
‘Ugh,’ Carol said, wrinkling her nose as she wiped something off her shoe. ‘Cow muck. Hope I don’t stink of it for the dance tonight. How does a ruddy cow get up here?’
‘That’s sheep muck,’ Bobby told her. ‘Dales sheep are like mountain goats. They can get everywhere.’
‘Since when did you become an expert in the difference between cow and sheep muck?’ Dilys demanded.
Bobby shrugged. ‘I like walking. You quickly learn that sort of thing here.’
‘Never catch me traipsing through fields of muck, ruining my stockings,’ Dilys muttered.
Bobby smiled. ‘Is this not what your people do? I thought Wales was all running through the valleys in those funny hats on the trail of feral herds of male voice choirs.’
Dilys gave her a dirty look before marching off. She had tried to hide it, but Bobby saw her face crumple as she walked away, almost as if she was going to cry.
‘What did I say?’ Bobby asked, turning to the others. ‘I didn’t mean to be nasty. I was trying to make her laugh, that’s all. I keep trying to make friends, but she just looks daggers at me.’
Carol shrugged. ‘I guess Welsh people get a bit sick of the English taking the mickey. There’s no need for her to be that sensitive about it though. She’s said a lot worse to you.’
‘I don’t think it’s that,’ Mike said quietly. ‘She’s got something on her mind. I wouldn’t take it personally, Bobby.’
Bobby watched Dilys striding off. ‘What is it?’
‘It isn’t for me to say.’ Mike sighed. ‘Poor kid.’
They walked on, Bobby wondering what it could all be about.
She had learnt a little about her companions over the past two weeks, and had soon found there was more to them than she had assumed. All were volunteers rather than conscripts – in the WAAF by choice, unlike her.
Violet Carmichael, known as Mike, was twenty-seven years old, curvy, platinum blonde, fun-loving and glamorous.
On first meeting her, Bobby had marked her down as a good-time girl with a somewhat cynical outlook on life and love.
She had been surprised to learn, however, that despite her aversion to having children, Mike had a strong motherly streak.
It was she who had taken the other three under her wing, and helped them find their feet in this strange new life.
Bobby had also discovered that in spite of the unconventional arrangement at the heart of her marriage, Mike had a deep love for her husband David.
Carol, too, had her secrets. She had told Bobby at her medical that she had followed her sister Trish to the Air Force in search of a husband, but Bobby had seen the bruises on her friend’s skin when they had been changing.
Dark references to wanting to escape a stern father had quickly pointed Bobby to the real reason the Boyes sisters had been keen to leave home and find men who could protect them.
Dilys Baines’s boyfriend Richie sounded just such another. At only eighteen, Dilys had joined up to escape his jealous rages and his fists, hoping to meet someone better.
Dilys continued walking apart. Even when they stopped on a stretch of limestone pavement for a cup of tea from their Thermos flasks, she sat a little distance away.
‘She’s still cross with me for teasing her,’ Bobby said to Mike and Carol. ‘I ought to go make it right.’
‘Be careful,’ Mike said as Bobby stood up. ‘She’s liable to bite someone’s head off today. Possibly literally.’
Bobby headed to where Dilys was sitting. She wasn’t drinking tea but writing in a notebook.
‘Hello,’ Bobby said, taking a seat by her.
Dilys ignored her. However, Bobby wasn’t going to be put off. She was determined to make a friend of this girl, one way or another.
‘Look, I’m sorry about before,’ she said. ‘I was trying to make a joke, but I guess it came out wrong. That’s the story of my life really. I’m not good at making friends – never have been. If I offended you then I apologise.’
Again Dilys remained silent, but she deigned to shrug, which Bobby thought might be a good sign.
‘What are you writing?’ she asked, squinting at the notebook. She couldn’t understand a word of what was written there. To her eyes, it seemed a mere jumble of letters.
‘Letter home,’ Dilys mumbled.
‘What code is that?’
Dilys’s mouth twitched. ‘It’s Welsh, Dumbo the elephant.’
Bobby smiled. ‘I thought you must be spying for the Jerries. Who’s it to?’
‘Richie. He’ll have a fit if I don’t write soon as I’m allowed.’
‘Didn’t you say you were going to ditch him?’
‘I can’t.’ Dilys hunched over her notebook. ‘Not yet.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because… what if I can’t get anyone better?’ She shuddered. ‘End up an old maid like Mulligan?’
‘Better that than with a man like him,’ Bobby muttered darkly. ‘Besides, you’ve got plenty of time to meet someone. A good man, who values and deserves you.’
Dilys turned to look at her, scowling. ‘Why’re you being nice to me?’
‘Because I want us to be friends.’
‘No you don’t,’ Dilys said, still scowling. ‘I’ve seen how you look at me.’
‘How?’
‘You know full well. Like I’m not worth a damn. Like you think you’re better than me.’
Bobby frowned. ‘Now why on earth would you think that?’
Dilys shrugged again, and went back to her letter.
Bobby thought back to the day they’d met, when she had heard Dilys condemn her as a prig. She tried to recall all their interactions since then. She knew she could be stiff and awkward with new people, but did Dilys really believe Bobby despised her?
Or was this not really about her at all?
‘Does he make you feel like that?’ she asked quietly.
‘Who?’
‘Richie. Does he make you feel like you’re worthless?’
Dilys looked up sharply. ‘Who said that? Was it Mike?’
‘No one said it. I’m saying it,’ Bobby said. ‘He does, doesn’t he?’
Dilys bit her lip, fighting back tears. Sensing she was embarrassed, Bobby looked away.
Colourful spring flowers had popped out across the peaty fells after so many weeks of rain: golden saxifrage, purple dog-violet. Bobby took a deep breath, listening to the harsh whistle of a curlew and thinking of home. When she turned back, she found Dilys watching her curiously.
‘What?’ Bobby said.
‘What are you looking at? Your eyes have gone funny.’
‘Just… this place, I suppose. Don’t you think it’s beautiful?’
Dilys turned an unimpressed gaze on the rolling country around them. ‘This? It’s just fields. Bright lights, busy theatres, Piccadilly Circus at Christmastime – that’s what I call beautiful. That’s where I’d have wanted to be when they turn the lights back on.’
‘Well, and who says you won’t?’
‘Richie wouldn’t ever take me to London. He’s never even left Swansea. He just wants to stay there the rest of his life and play darts in the pub every night.’
Bobby shrugged. ‘Then go without him. Go with someone else, or by yourself if you like, and tell Richie he can jolly well go hang.’
A reluctant smile appeared on Dilys’s face. ‘You’d do that, I bet.’
‘If that was where I wanted to be.’ Bobby drew in another deep breath. ‘Nothing beats this for me though. The freedom of it. Now, my twin sister Lilian, she’d be off with you to the bright lights. Lil’s all about the good times. You’d never have called her a prig.’
‘I’m sorry I called you that,’ Dilys murmured. ‘You’re not a prig. I thought you were dead stuck-up, but you’re not really, are you?’
‘No. Just a bit odd and shy,’ Bobby said, smiling. ‘I’m sorry if you thought I didn’t like you. I mean I didn’t much, but only because you were mean to me, not because I think I’m better than you or any of that. I’d much rather be friends.’
‘Does she have a lot of boyfriends, your sister?’
‘Not any more,’ Bobby said quietly. ‘She… she found out she was going to have a baby. Now she’s married to the father.’
Dilys lowered her head. ‘Me too,’ she whispered.
Bobby stared at her. ‘Oh, Dilys, no.’
‘I think so. I haven’t seen the quack, but I should’ve got my curse a week ago. That’s what the letter I’m writing’s about. I have to tell Richie, don’t I? I mean, it’s his. I’ve never been with any other lad, though he must’ve accused me of it a hundred times when he was tight.’
‘Oh, sweetheart.’ Bobby put an arm round her and gave her a squeeze.
‘You won’t tell anyone, will you? I told Mike about it, and I don’t mind Carol knowing, but I don’t want it to get around camp. I’ll see the MO if it doesn’t come this week, but I want to keep it quiet as long as I can.’
‘Of course not.’ Bobby leaned round to look at her. ‘But please… if this Richie is violent with you, I wish you’d think again about going back to him. You don’t have to, even with a baby coming.’
‘How can I not, when he’s the dad? At least Rich doesn’t hit as hard as some of them. He’s never broken anything. Always keeps it where no one’ll see.’
Bobby swore under her breath.
‘He’s a brute,’ she muttered. ‘Please, Dilys. For your sake and the baby’s, run away from him. He won’t stop, whatever he might promise.’
‘What, and be an unmarried mother?’
‘Better that than a battered wife.’
‘Who’d look after us then?’ Dilys swallowed. ‘My mam’s strict Chapel. She won’t let me in the house if I go back with a baby and no husband.’
Bobby sighed. ‘I wish I knew the answer to that. You really shouldn’t have to make that choice.’
Dilys looked up at her. ‘What’s your man like? He ever raise his hand to you?’
‘If he did, I can promise he wouldn’t be my man for long.’ Bobby smiled. ‘He’s sweet. Funny. Brave. Good with children and animals. He respects me, and the things I want to do with my life. He’s… apart from my sister, I suppose he’s my best friend.’ She sighed. ‘At least, he was.’
‘Because he’s not been writing, you mean?’
‘Yes. He’s always written regularly, then suddenly, nothing for weeks. It’s possible they’ve been held up, but if there’s nothing again this afternoon… that’ll be five weeks without a word, although I know he’s been writing to his brother and sister-in-law as usual.’
‘You think he’s found someone else? Mike says all the airmen have got a girl on the side.’
‘They can’t have. Not all of them. Not Charlie.
’ Bobby’s gaze drifted to her engagement ring.
‘But it’s so hard to know. He has changed, since he joined the RAF.
He has these unpredictable dark moods, and he has to live with so much death and fear.
I’m worried the war’s changed him so completely, it’s driven him away from me.
’ She glanced at Dilys. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t be burdening you with this. You’ve got your own worries.’
‘No, it’s nice. I mean, it’s not nice what’s happening to you, but I like you telling me things.’ Dilys looked different without her customary expression of hostility: younger, sweeter, more like a girl than a woman. ‘And I won’t pass it around, I swear.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You shouldn’t give up hope though. It probably is just missing post. There might be a pile when we get back.’
‘Oh, I do hope so,’ Bobby whispered.
When they returned to camp, they found their letters had been distributed and left on the bunks.
Bobby felt a smidgeon of relief when she saw that there was indeed a sizeable pile waiting for her, but she didn’t dare look at the envelopes.
Instead she snatched them up, mumbled an excuse and ran to the ablutions block, where she could shut herself in the latrine and open her post without being observed.
There was one letter from Mary, two from Lilian, one from Topsy and Teddy, one from Piotr and one from Jolka.
But still nothing from Charlie.