‘Bomb’s got to be defused, and that’s that.’
Sam felt a thrill of genuine horror ice through her. ‘You mean you’re going back to do that?’
When he started to laugh her horror turned to chagrined angry pride, her face burning hotly. She had never liked being made fun of.
‘It’s only commissioned officers that do that – you know, them as wear the posh hats and the egg yolk,’ he mocked her, using the current slang expression to describe the gold braiding on top-ranking officers’ uniforms. ‘Me and the lads only get to mess around in the muck, making sure they can get to the fuses. And that’s what we’ll be doing come daylight.’
He was moving off her now and getting to his feet. Quickly Sam followed suit, sucking in her breath when he suddenly turned his torch on her, exposing her face to his scrutiny. For some reason she felt self-conscious and uncomfortably aware of what to him would be her shortcomings, compared with the kind of girl he no doubt admired, and at the same time angry and resentful because something in the way he was studying her was forcing those thoughts on her. It was a relief when the beam of the torch moved downwards.
‘ATS. I thought you lot normally hunted in packs,’ he said derisively.
Sam was well aware of the low esteem in which some men held girls who had joined up. She had heard all the crude jokes about their supposed lack of morals and their man-chasing, and now her temper was well and truly up.
‘That’s only if we think there’s anything around worth pursuing,’ she returned smartly, ‘which there isn’t right now.’
A bus rumbling past further down the road broke the silence stretching between them. What was she doing standing here trading insults with this stranger? She had been out far longer than she had intended and she still had to find her way back to the billet. The bus was slowing to a stop. Making up her mind, Sam hurried towards it, refusing to give in to the temptation to turn round to see what he was doing and if he was watching her.
*
‘I’m afraid I’m rather lost and I need to get back to my billet,’ she told the conductress slightly breathlessly, giving her the address.
‘You’ll need the number sixty-seven. Nearest stop is three streets away.’
Sam’s face fell.
‘Look, we’re on our way back to the depot – if you want to stay on board you’ll be able to pick one up there,’ the conductress offered.
Thanking her, Sam subsided into a seat, allowing herself to look down the sandbagged street only once they were almost past it, but there was nothing to be seen, and no one to be seen either.
Sally opened the door just enough to allow her to peer out, her heart sinking as her worse fears were confirmed.
‘About time. I was just beginning to lose me patience.’
The man standing on her front step was small and squat, with powerful shoulders, the look in his eyes as hard as his voice, but Sally refused to let herself be intimidated.
‘You’ve got no business coming here. I made arrangements with Mr Wade—’
‘I don’t care what arrangements you made with the old man. Things have changed now, and in future I’ll be calling round every week on the dot to collect what’s due, and let me warn you, missus, there’s new management in charge now and they don’t intend to put up with any soft-soaping or sob stories, so if you’ll tek my advice you’ll have your money ready and waiting when I call round for it, otherwise it will be the worse for you.’
Sally felt sick with a mixture of anger, helplessness and dismay. ‘How do I know that you’re from Mr Wade?’ she challenged him. ‘We’ve all heard about bogus debt collectors setting themselves up and claiming to be working for moneylenders when they’re doing no such thing. Mr Wade never said anything to me about there being any changes.’
‘Aye, well, mebbe he didn’t know there was going to be any hisself.’
‘What do you mean?’ Sally asked sharply.
‘There’s some as thought the old man was losing his grip and that folk weren’t paying up when they should, so there’s bin some changes made. If you don’t believe me that’s up to you but I ain’t leaving here wi’out your payment.’
Sally hesitated. She had half been expecting something like this when she had called round at the anonymous terraced house the moneylender rented to pay her week’s money and had found it locked and empty. All manner of rumours abounded about the network of moneylenders, who traditionally had supplied small loans at extortionate rates to the city’s poor, being forced to hand over their businesses to those who ran the gangs of the black market spivs. One of the most notorious of all of these gangs was run by ‘the Boss’, Bertha Harris, and her five sons. It was said that the Harris family thought nothing of administering beatings and breaking limbs when debts went unpaid.
Whilst she worried about what to do, suddenly from upstairs her maternal ear caught the sound of baby Harry waking up.
‘Wait here,’ she told the man, flushing when he put his foot inside the door before she could close it, wrapping his huge meaty hand round the door edge.
By the time she reached the back parlour her hands were trembling so much she could hardly count out the money from her purse. Not that she needed to count it. After all, she knew to the penny just how many extra hours she had to work every week to pay for the pitifully small sum of money Ronnie had originally borrowed when they had first got married.
She had known nothing about this loan until before the end of Ronnie’s last leave. He had been on edge and distant with her, alternating between moody silences and outbursts of angry temper the whole time. Then when she had begged him to tell her what was wrong it had all come pouring out. Tears had filled his eyes as he had admitted how he had borrowed money from a moneylender just before their wedding, primarily to pay off some betting debts he had run up. He had, he said, got in with a crowd of other young soldiers who all wanted to have a good time. The moneylender had persuaded him to borrow a bit extra to help out with the wedding expenses, and to pay for the honeymoon. Everything had been all right at first, he had told her, until he had increased the loan when Tommy had been born, and now he had fallen behind with the payments and Mr Wade’s debt collectors were pressing him to make good the deficit.
It gave Sally a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach just thinking about that afternoon even now. At first she had been disbelieving. Ronnie was a serving soldier, earning as much as any other man, and she certainly wasn’t an extravagant housewife – far from it; she budgeted carefully and was proud of herself for doing so. Now Ronnie had revealed to her a side of his life she had never dreamed existed: betting, borrowing money and getting into debt. These weren’t things that belonged to the kind of life she had believed they had had; the decent respectable safe kind of life that had made her feel so secure and which had deepened her love for Ronnie for being the good provider she had believed he was. Then suddenly she had felt as though a trap door had opened beneath her feet, plunging her into a frightening place. As the reality of what Ronnie was saying to her had sunk in, her shock had given way to anger against him for being so irresponsible. That in turn had given way to compassionate pity when she had seen how sorry and ashamed he was. They were a married couple sharing the good and the bad times together, she had told him firmly as she held him as tightly and protectively as though he were their young son’s age. Somehow they would find a way to pay off the money that was owing.
That had been when she had first started working at the Grafton.
But somehow the loan just never seemed to get repaid, and then Ronnie had admitted to her that he had got involved with a betting syndicate during his leave and that he had had to increase their loan to cover his share of its losses. They had had