My head swivelled toward Roger, who was leaning against the bar while the bartender drew his pints. He gave me a green leer.
“When you arrived, we agreed at once that you’d be perfect. You know, keep it in the family, what?” She squinted at me through a cloud of smoke.
“Pamela — I’m sorry, but it’s out of the question.” I had to refrain from a shudder of revulsion, although part of me wanted to scream with laughter.
“Oh, well, just a passing thought.” Her voice was cool.
Roger returned to the table, bearing three pints of beer.
“It’s no go, I’m afraid, Rog,” his wife said.
I thought he looked a little relieved. He reached over and patted my hand. “Perhaps another time. No hard feelings.”
The next day I woke early and found my own way to the nearest recruiting office.
8
I sat on my cot in the drafty wooden barracks and pulled on a pair of woollen bloomers called passion killers that hung to my knees. A pale pink cotton brassiere followed, with wrinkled, oversized cups. Over that, a woollen undervest.
I pulled up the ugly grey lisle stockings one at a time, and fastened them to the garters dangling from my suspender belt. Then I buttoned my shirt and slipped the black necktie over my head, still knotted from yesterday because I hadn’t learned yet how to tie the knot.
Next I scrambled into the scratchy blue woollen skirt and battledress tunic, belted around the waist. The wool had the texture of an old horse blanket, but I was pleased that the air force allowed me to wear my Canada badge on each shoulder, thanks to Mackenzie King.
Tucking my thick shoulder-length hair into a roll, I secured it with bobby pins before putting on my peaked cap. Rather than cut off my wavy hair, which was maddeningly unmanageable, I had decided it would be simpler to keep it pinned out of the way. Finally, I tied up the laces on my thick black leather shoes.
“Where are you from?” asked an English girl, in the midst of the same procedure at the next bed.
“Touchwood,” I said, as I slipped a string around my neck bearing two metal identity discs. “That is, I mean Canada.”
“You have a boyfriend over here, I suppose.”
“No, I don’t know anyone in England, except my mother’s cousin in Cambridge.”
“I say, you are a plucky one. The Women’s Auxiliary Air Force has become very unwaffy since conscription came in — the last stragglers flocked to volunteer so they wouldn’t be sent to work at a factory or a farm. This scruffy lot would rather be in the pub, most likely.”
She gestured to the photograph one girl had hung above her bunk: wearing brief shorts and a midriff-baring sweater, she was making the V-for-Victory sign by lying on her back with her legs spread-eagled in the air. “I mean, really. So common.”
I secretly agreed. Nothing had prepared me for the vulgarity in the barracks. I had never rubbed shoulders with the English working class, whose manners were quite different, to say the least, from those of my mother.
I literally gasped when I first heard several girls singing, to the tune of the “Colonel Bogey March”: “Hitler has only got one ball; Goering has two, but very small; Himmler has something similar, but poor old Goebbels has no balls at all!”
Even that paled compared to the song I heard the following week, a parody of the popular “Bless Them All,” in which the word “Bless” was replaced with a word starting with F that I had seen only once before, after Ernie Snyder carved it on the barn door and was soundly strapped by our teacher.
“What about you?” I asked the friendly girl.
“I’ve wanted to volunteer ever since the war started, but I had to take care of my mother. She’s gone to live with relatives in Ireland now, so I took my chance. No matter how bad it gets in the service, it can’t be any worse than home life.”
I thought sadly of my own happy home. Having never spoken to a woman in the armed forces before, I had no idea of the humiliations that were in store. The first was a medical inspection, stark naked, for “scabies, babies, and rabies.” And my life was now controlled by a bell or a bugle or a shout. Going to lecture, going to grub, going to briefings, going on parade; it was like being a trained poodle in a circus.
And that first awful night, the sound of muffled sobs all over the room after lights out. Homesick is a good word, I thought as I wept into my pillow, because I’ve never felt so sick in my life, not even the time I had blood poisoning from stepping on a rusty nail.
I remembered that dreadful two weeks each spring when Dad weaned the calves by penning them into the barnyard. The cows lined up along the fence, groaning in pain and frustration, while the poor calves gathered on the other side and cried: “Maa, maa, maa!” The din lasted for several days and nights while we covered our ears and suffered along.
In fact, I heard someone sobbing “Mama, mama,” in the bunk below me. It was Daphne, the frightened child I had met on my first day. She doesn’t look a day over fourteen, I thought, feeling almost matronly now that I had left my teens behind.
Poor little Daphne had made herself into a laughingstock by entering the showers in her bathing suit. I didn’t blame her. I showered quickly in a room full of naked girls, my eyes averted. Even worse, the toilets had no doors. The ablutions, as they were called, faced the entrance so that anyone could see you sitting on the toilet. I was deeply offended. I may have grown up using a biffy, but at least it had a door.
After breakfast we lined up in crooked rows on the parade ground for our first marching exercise. The burly, red-faced RAF drill sergeant looked as if he enjoyed his job even less than we did. Maybe he was being punished for something.
“Swing them bleeding arms — they won’t drop off!” he yelled at Daphne, who was mincing along self-consciously as if she were strolling through the park. She stopped dead and burst into sobs, which made the ready tears spring into my own eyes.
“Jesus bloody Christ!” he yelled. “What do we have here, a bunch of crybabies or members of the King’s Own? Get back in line or I’ll put you on notice!”
Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, I told myself fiercely. I stared straight ahead, trying to harden my face into a mask of stone. Fortunately, thanks to Mr. MacTavish, I was accustomed to being yelled at. Unfortunately, thinking of him made me want to cry again.
The next six weeks were the worst I had ever known. Time after time I asked myself whether I was crazy. Most of the other girls thought so. “You want your head examined,” said a coarse-looking girl, when she found I had come from Canada to enlist. “I plan to fall pregnant on my next leave. That’s the only way out of this hell hole.”
I suffered from fatigue, sore muscles, blisters on my feet, and a gnawing homesickness that was worse than physical pain. I woke each morning with my eyelids swollen from weeping. After five weeks, I checked the calendar and discovered that I had skipped my period. Off I went to the medical officer.
“No chance that you’re expecting, I suppose?” he asked.
“None, sir!”
“You do know where babies come from?”
“I have a pretty good idea, sir,” I replied stiffly. “I grew up on a farm.”
“Well, I have to ask. It’s surprising how many girls don’t have a notion. Anyway, it’s nothing to worry about. The combination of hard work and emotional stress causes many girls to stop menstruating. Carry on.”
I was surprised he didn’t mention the food. It’s enough to throw anyone