The Nickum (23 page)

He did contemplate discussing his problem with Pat Michie, but although his pal was a little over a year older, he had never, by his own admission, been attracted to any girls and would thus never have been anywhere near this situation. But it might be a good idea to get him interested in the feminine sex. If they started going to places where they would meet some decent females, there was always a chance and once Pat experienced the temptations, he’d be better able to give advice on how to avoid them.

Edinburgh being fairly near, this was their new stamping ground. Instead of going for walks to admire the countryside, as they had been doing until now, they frequented dance halls and tearooms on the hunt for feminine company. Willie had ruled out pubs. Really decent girls didn’t go drinking.

The two young men, both inclined to be too shy to make inconsequential conversation, had no luck on their first two visits to the capital – one to a small tearoom in the Grassmarket, one to an even smaller café in Rose Street – but when, as a last resort, they tried a quiet little pub in a side street, they had only been sitting in a corner for a few minutes when two WAAFs came in. While one disappeared, probably to the Ladies, the other had a quick look round and then came over and addressed Pat shyly. ‘Excuse me, are these two seats taken?’

A red wave running over his cheeks, he mumbled, ‘No, they’re not.’

She plumped down next to him. ‘Thank goodness! We’ve been trailing round for ages looking for a decent place. All the rest seemed to be full of Yanks, loud mouthed, gum-chewing Yanks that think they’re God’s gift to women.’

‘I take it you don’t like them,’ Pat ventured.

‘Can’t stand them. They think a pair of nylons is their password to heaven.’ She laughed at his puzzled expression. ‘They think they can exchange nylons for a girl’s virginity.’

‘Oh.’ His face was now a deep shade of puce. Never having had any dealings with girls, he had no idea what nylons were, but he did not dare to ask. ‘We don’t have nylons to give away.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’ She waved to the other WAAF who had been held up by a raucous crowd of sailors. ‘Over here. This is Josie,’ she went on by way of introduction, ‘and I’m Dot.’

Pat did the needful. ‘He’s Willie and I’m Pat.’

Dot, the tallest one, raven-haired and rosy-cheeked, with dancing brown eyes and a happy smile, went to the bar for their drinks, leaving Josie, mousey-haired, pale complexion, serious eyes, looking like a scared rabbit at being alone with the two men. Surprisingly, it was the older lad who tried to soothe her fears, smilingly informing her, ‘Willie and I are stationed in Redford. We haven’t been there for very long, but we’ve discovered a few nice walks already. If you’re interested, we could show you, some time.’

Both his face and hers were flushed now, but she nodded. ‘That would be great. Dot and I love walking, but we’ve been a bit scared of going on our own, with so many Yanks about.’

Pat grinned, seemingly finding it easier to make conversation now that he had started. ‘Thank goodness at least some girls don’t fall over themselves to make up to them.’

Grinning too, Josie shook her head. ‘They think far too much of themselves for me. Even Dot doesn’t like them, and she’s more a one for boys than I am.’

‘Have you and Dot been friends long?’ Pat asked now.

‘We went to school together, and joined up together, so we’re pretty close.’ She turned as her friend came back with two glasses of tomato juice. ‘I was saying we’ve been pals a long time.’

Josie kept on talking to Pat, to whom she was clearly attracted, Willie was glad to see. ‘You two are Scotch, aren’t you?’

‘Scots, yes we are. Willie’s from a wee place in Aberdeenshire called Tillyburnie, and I’m from Elgin, a bit farther north.’

‘Dot and I are both from a wee place …’ she imitated his accent, ‘… in Wiltshire called Mere. Not far from Stonehenge. I suppose you’ve heard of that?’

‘Never been there, but I have heard of it.’

Dot suddenly lifted her glass and went round to sit next to Willie. ‘We may as well get to know each other. That two look as if they’ve forgotten we’re here.’

He smiled, but felt at a loss. It was all right for him to plan for Pat to meet a nice girl, but he hadn’t taken into account that the nice girl may have an equally nice friend. He did not want to cause any more problems in his life, but he could hardly ignore her. ‘Before we go any further,’ he began, hesitantly, ‘I’d better tell you I have a girlfriend at home. I’m going to marry her once the war’s finished.’

She beamed happily. ‘That’s good. I’ve got a boyfriend, Brylcreem boy, who, like you, wants to wait until after the war to get married. I thought he wanted to be free to have a good time with the girls, so I hope he’s as honest as you. I admire you for it, and as long as we know it’s all above board, we’ll get along fine.’

It was an ideal arrangement, as far was Willie was concerned, even when a niggle of conscience warned him that even a platonic friendship could go badly wrong if one of the pair got serious about the other. Still, there was little likelihood of that, since both of them had a true love waiting in the wings, so to speak.

‘Some people think Josie and me are an odd pair – one shy and quiet, and one, me, who speaks far too much.’

‘Josie’s been managing fine on her own up to now,’ Willie observed, ‘and so has Pat. He’s usually tongue-tied if a girl as much as looks at him.’

‘So you’re usually the one with more to say?’

‘Not really.’ Casting a quick glance round, he was pleased to see that Pat and Josie were still carrying on a quiet conversation on their own. ‘They’re getting on, anyway.’

‘Thank goodness. Sometimes it’s like pulling teeth to get a word out of her, but she seems to like Pat. Have you two known each other as long as Dot and me?’

‘No, we just met when we were doing our basic training.’

They had split naturally into two couples, and while the other two were finding out about each other, Dot and Willie discussed their romantic partners. He gave her a brief account of how Millie and he had met, had liked each other from the very start, how liking had grown into love. He did not mention that she was still at University as far as he knew, nor give the reason for his voluntary enlistment.

Dot gave him an equally brief account of how she and Paul had met – both had worked with the same firm since they left school – and how their liking had also become deep love. ‘So that’s everything out in the open,’ she grinned, at last. ‘We can enjoy ourselves without anything silly happening. Yes?’

‘Yes.’ He shook the hand she held out. He liked her, could maybe have more than liked her, but it was better this way. Far better.

When the barman shouted ‘Last orders’ they quickly emptied their glasses and stood up to leave, Dot turning to Josie and saying, ‘We’ll catch the quarter to ten bus if we put a step in.’

It was Pat who said, sounding quite disappointed, ‘Can’t we walk you back to your billet? We won’t mind how far it is, eh, Willie?’

Willie gave an exaggerated bow. ‘We’d be delighted, ladies.’

‘It’s too far,’ Dot said, firmly. ‘In the opposite direction from where you’ve to go.’

On their way outside, Pat and Josie tried to arrange a date, but were having great difficulty because their times off duty did not coincide. At last, however, they came to an agreement. ‘Half past seven next Saturday, here?’ Pat’s eyebrows were raised in hope.

Willie felt obliged to issue a note of warning. ‘There’s rumours of us being posted, remember? We might not manage to get word to them in time.’

‘Good thinking,’ Dot agreed. ‘Well, we’ll leave it at that. Next Saturday, but if you don’t turn up, we’ll know you’ve been posted.’

Willie was saddened suddenly by the fraught look that passed between Pat and Josie. They were obviously attracted to each other, but service personnel had really no right to be planning ahead – not during a war. He did yield a little, though, by allowing the pair to fall behind as they walked towards the bus stop, to allow them a little privacy.

As it happened, the rumours of a posting were true, and the Wednesday found the two young men en route for a new destination. Their days, and nights as often as not, were spent on manoeuvres, the Yorkshire moors being ideal for testing the stamina of these young lads. They were gruelling times, purely to discover how they would survive under great pressure. Thankfully, it was never a case of one man being on his own. They worked in groups, each group at war with the other, divided into sets of six, four or even two, which was the hardest of all. Sleeping where they could find a place, eating the hard tack rations provided for them, stalking the enemy while trying not to show themselves. It did no good to moan to the umpires who went round them at unspecified intervals to check that all the combatants were still surviving. These veterans had survived the last war and had no sympathy for any namby-pamby youths. Willie was determined that he and Pat would not cave in, no matter how bad the circumstances became, but it took much persuasion at the outset to make his friend see how important it was to pass every test set for them. There came a point, however, when fighting the hardship was all they had to live for; nothing else mattered.

It came to an end at long last, and those who had not been ‘wounded’ and sent back to the ‘hospital’ set up in a local school, were conveyed back to their camp by lorries, triumphant at being real survivors, and ready to boast to the men who were about to start on the scheme that, ‘It was nothing. A dawdle.’

After his first, aborted-successful attempt at fraternising with the opposite sex, Pat felt rather easier with girls now, but, although they chatted up several in Yorkshire, he never let his feelings get the better of him. Willie was soon telling him about Millie, giving the excuse he had recently invented for why he couldn’t go home on leave: that she had been getting far too serious for his liking. He did feel guilty for putting the blame on her, but how could he admit to his own failing? ‘I don’t want to fall out with her,’ he said, earnestly. ‘I really do love her, but as for marriage – not yet. The thing is, she’s so determined, anything could happen.’

‘It wouldn’t be any hardship to marry her, would it? That’s what you want, anyway, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, by God, that’s what I want, but you don’t understand. Her father’s the headmaster, was
my
headmaster, and there’s other reasons I can’t … Oh, it’s impossible to explain, but I’d rather not go home for a while. I think I’ll get a warrant to Edinburgh. I liked it there when we were at Redford.’

‘I liked it as well. If I get leave at the same time, would you mind if I came with you?’

‘No, I’d be delighted, but wouldn’t you rather go home? Your mother would …’

‘My mother wouldn’t mind. She’s very understanding.’

As it happened, their leaves did not coincide, and Willie spent his ten days in Edinburgh on his own. It would have been better if he’d had some company, but at least it gave him plenty of time to think, mainly when he was walking between the various ‘sights’. Before the war, these tourist attractions would have been besieged by holiday-makers, but they were now being visited by groups of foreign servicemen, the Americans in particular loud in praise of the ancient buildings and their history.

Willie generally spent around an hour or more every evening in one or other of the quaint drinking establishments, finding himself regarded as a mine of information since, with his previous interest in history, he could answer most of the questions they fired at him because he was ‘Scotch’. He explained the religious hatred between Mary, Queen of Scots and John Knox, and related the story of Jenny Geddes throwing her stool at the preacher in St Giles Cathedral because she did not agree with what he was saying. In the Palace of Holyrood House he showed them the small room in which Mary’s jealous husband, Lord Darnley, had killed Rizzio, her musician, who was suspected of making advances to the Queen. One of the GIs gave a long whistle at this. ‘Geez! That’s even better than anything Hollywood could produce, and it’s
real
.’

They always wanted to know more, and as Willie smilingly obliged one night, he realised that he hadn’t once thought of Millie and his love for her while he was ‘lecturing’. But it wasn’t a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’, he decided, when he was lying in his room in the small, but perfectly adequate hotel he had found. It was more a case of love versus his interest in the past. If she were here with him, he wouldn’t be wasting his time teaching Americans about the history of Scotland.

When he returned to Yorkshire, he had to wait until Pat came back from his leave before he could entertain him with the silly questions he’d been asked by his ‘pupils’, and the general lack of knowledge they had had about Britain as a whole. But it was evident that Pat was still pining for Josie. They had known each other such a short time that they hadn’t thought to exchange service numbers or addresses, or even surnames, so there had been no correspondence between them. The experience had, however, given him a deeper insight into the pitfalls of love.

As Willie said without thinking, ‘When I was with Millie, I couldn’t even look at her without wanting to … ravish her.’ He came to an abrupt halt, looking at Pat shame-facedly. ‘No, that’s not strictly true, but I do get fired up.’

‘That’s only because you’re not seeing her all the time,’ his friend suggested.

‘It’d be worse if I were seeing her all the time.’

Shortly after this, their battalion was sent even further south. ‘Maybe the next move’ll be across the Channel,’ Willie observed hopefully as they unpacked their kitbags in Aldershot. ‘It seems to me that’s what they’re aiming for.’

‘I doubt it.’ Pat did not look in the least thrilled at the prospect. ‘No British troops have been sent to Europe since Dunkirk. If we do go overseas, it’ll be farther afield than that.’

‘Wherever, I’m ready for it.’

Their next few weeks were mostly spent apart. Willie volunteered to be a stand-by dispatch rider, and went through a gruelling training course. ‘One of the instructors let something slip today,’ he told his friend one evening. ‘Apparently they’re training us in case the official dispatch riders are wounded or killed and there’s nobody available to take over. It looks to me as if we
are
heading for active service somewhere.’ But no other rumours surfaced, and the daily life of these Gordon Highlanders went on as usual.