said, the five new arrivals kept together, waiting until some of the other girls were ready to leave the hut and then tagging along behind them, Ruby complaining that she was ‘starving’.
‘Yes, we all heard,’ Ellen pointed out.
‘Ablutions block is over there, just in case no one told you that when you arrived,’ one of the girls ahead turned round to tell them. Sturdily built, with a mop of chestnut hair and bright blue eyes, she nodded in the direction of another brick building. ‘I’m Hawkins – Jessie Hawkins – by the way, and these two here are Lawson and Marsh.’
Taking her lead, Lou and the others quickly introduced themselves, all using their surnames.
‘You’ll find that Halton takes a bit of getting used to if you did your square bashing somewhere small,’ Jessie Hawkins informed them. ‘We’re pretty close to Chequers here, of course, so we get an awful lot of top brass coming in. You’ll find that the officers and NCOs are pretty hot on discipline. Do you remember that girl who got court-martialled for jumping into a Lancaster?’ she appealed to the other two.
They nodded silently.
‘For a Waaf to fly is, of course, a court-martialling offence,’ she continued, ‘and whilst we all know there are some places where you can get away with it, you can’t here. One wrong move and you’re out.’
Lou felt a shiver of apprehension run down her spine at the thought of that happening to her and her having to return home in disgrace to face her parents. When she had broken her news to them after Grace’s wedding her father had been not just angry with her for enlisting without their permission but also scathing in his opinion that she wouldn’t be able to ‘stick it out’ since she had spent her life finding ways to get round the parental rules he and her mother had put in place to protect all their children.
‘In fact,’ Jessie continued warningly, ‘there’s a bit of competition between the huts to get good reports, and the best pass-out rate from the courses. Our hut came second last year and this year we’re hoping to be first. I’m just telling you so that you know what’s what and to make sure that there’s no letting the side down.’
Behind Jessie’s back Betty pulled a face at Lou as they were forced to quick march behind the others to keep up, and whispered, ‘I thought it was the corporals who were supposed to tell us what to do, not one of our own. I reckon she’s going to be on our backs all the time, bossing us and spoiling our fun. Part of the reason I joined up was so that I could have a bit of fun.’
Although it wasn’t daylight yet, the length of their march toward the mess indicated how big their new base was, the more practical-looking buildings dominated by the big house to the rear of them.
‘So what’s that posh-looking place then?’ Ruby asked cheekily, gesturing towards it.
‘Top brass and high-ranking RAF officers’ mess,’ Jessie told her promptly. ‘And strictly off limits to you lot.’
Under cover of Jessie’s answer Betty dug Lou in the ribs and giggled, ‘If some handsome officer tried it on with Jessie, I reckon the first thing she’d say to him would be, “No, it’s strictly off limits.”’
Betty was fun, Lou acknowledged, as she struggled to keep her own face straight.
‘I suppose the officers still get a plimsoll line painted round their baths?’ was Ellen’s comment, referring to the new practice of painting a line to mark the five-inch depth of water one could have in one’s bath.
‘You can forget about baths here,’ Jessie told her. ‘It’s showers for us and if you aren’t quick enough it will be a cold shower.’
Although Lou hadn’t seen much of the base yet, what she had seen of it seemed to be immaculately spruce and smart, a regular showplace compared with her brother’s old army barracks at Seacombe and the small base in Wilmslow where she had trained. Halton was smarter and prouder of itself, somehow. The Buckinghamshire countryside around them looked far less war weary than Liverpool. There was no doubting the pride of the girls here. Backs were ramrod straight, shoes were highly polished, and the girls themselves all seemed so neat and confident. Would she fit in here, with her renowned untidiness? Lou hoped so.
The mess was huge, or so it seemed to Lou, and filled with girls either already eating or queuing up for their breakfast, whilst the smell of frying bacon and toast filled the air.
Soon the five newcomers were tucking in to a very welcome meal.
‘At least the grub’s good,’ Ruby announced with relish when she had polished off her own breakfast. She looked at Lou’s plate. ‘Are you going to eat that toast?’ Then, without waiting for Lou’s response, she removed it from Lou’s plate to her own, with a cheeky grin.
It was left to Betty to say what Lou suspected they were all thinking. ‘I think we’ve all done very well getting posted here. Halton’s got everything anyone could want to have a good time, and that’s what we’re going to do, isn’t it, girls?’ she demanded, lifting her cup in a toast.
Half an hour later, marching on the parade ground flanked by the RAF regiment, led by its sergeant major with its mascot – a goat with a dangerous-looking set of horns – Lou knew that she dare not look at Betty to see if she was sharing her own desire to break into nervous giggles. There had certainly not been anything like this at Wilmslow. Halton quite obviously took its square bashing very seriously indeed.
Those Waafs already on courses were marched to their classrooms until only thirty or so girls were left, to be marched over to the medical facility ready for their medicals.
‘I don’t know why we have to have another medical and more inoculations,’ Betty grumbled.
‘They’re probably testing our pain threshold,’ Lou grinned, quickly standing to attention when a medical orderly appeared and shouted out her name.
‘Bye, Mum. I’m off to work now.’
‘Well, you take care, Sasha, love,’ Jean Campion told her daughter as they hugged briefly, ‘and no dawdling home tonight, mind, because your dad’s got an ARP meeting and he’ll be wanting his tea on time.’
Jean shook her head ruefully as the door closed behind Sasha. Automatically wiping the already pristine sink, she tried desperately not to think about the unexpected and unwelcome changes the last few weeks had brought to the family, and the grief and upset they had caused. There was still a war on, after all, and, as Sam had said, life had to go on, no matter how they all felt. It was their duty to put a brave face on things. But to suffer two such blows, and over Christmas as well. Her hand stilled and then trembled.
It had been bad enough – a shock, even – to learn that Lou had volunteered for the WAAF and not said a word about it to anyone, including her own twin sister, without getting that letter from Luke, saying that he and Katie were no longer engaged.
Jean looked over to the dresser, where the polite little letter Katie had sent them was sitting, her engagement ring still wrapped up inside it, to be returned to Luke. Jean’s caring eyes had seen how the ink was ever so slightly blurred here and there, as though poor Katie had been crying when she wrote it.
Jean had done as Katie had asked in her letter, and had parcelled up her things and sent them on to her, obeying Sam’s command that she must not try to interfere in what had happened, but it hadn’t been easy.
‘It’s
