She had never imagined when she had first met him that Ronnie would turn out to be a betting man. He had seemed far too respectable and decent. She had thought they were the kind of young couple who could keep their heads held up high, and she had even felt sorry for the poor of the city who lived down by the docks, living constantly with the shame of having to borrow against tomorrow to pay for today, opening her purse freely to slip a few pennies to the children she saw begging.
Now the pride she had originally felt in Ronnie and their marriage had given way to fear – and that fear had more than one face. Initially her fear had been because she had discovered that Ronnie wasn’t the sensible worldly-wise husband and provider she had believed him to be; the rock she and their children could depend on. But then later had come the fear of the shame she would suffer if their debt became public knowledge, and most of all, fear of how they were going to repay the money and what would happen if they fell behind with their repayments.
When Ronnie had broken down and admitted to her that not only had he foolishly borrowed from a moneylender once but that he had also gone back to him and borrowed again, Sally had struggled to understand how the strong capable Ronnie she loved and depended on so much could have turned into this man who was weak and vulnerable and afraid, and who was admitting to her that he didn’t know what to do.
One of the things Sally had loved so much about Ronnie was his dependability. As a child she had grown up in a chaotic family environment with her father often out of work, but well paid when he was in work, and so life had seemed filled with the giddy highs of her mother’s excitement when they had money and the frightening lows of her despair when they didn’t. Sally had yearned for a life in which those highs and lows were exchanged for the calm of a decent steady man with a nice steady job, and part of the reason she had fallen in love with Ronnie was because he had seemed to embody those virtues. To discover that he had done something that even her own parents had steadfastly refused to do, and gone to a moneylender, had left her feeling as though her whole world had been turned upside down. Only the very poorest of the poor, or the feckless and weak, went to moneylenders, and certainly not people who lived on Chestnut Close.
Sally had known real shame along with her shock and her fear. But she was a young woman with a lot of common sense and courage, and so she had gone to see the moneylender from whom Ronnie had borrowed the money, and they had come to an arrangement whereby she would call on him weekly with their payments instead of him sending round a ‘tallyman’ to collect it from the house. That way at least she had hoped to keep up a front of respectability.
It had made her feel physically sick to see written down the amount they now owed, so very much more than she had thought. She had told Mr Wade proudly that she wanted to increase their repayments so that they could reduce the money owing faster, swallowing back her longing to beg him not to lend Ronnie any more. She could not go behind her husband’s back in such a way, and humiliate him.
She admitted now, as she hurried back to the door and handed over the money to the waiting man, that maybe she should have gone back to see Mr Wade and asked him to let her reduce the payments once she realised what a struggle she was going to have meeting the increased amount she had volunteered to pay, but she was desperate to get the loan cleared as quickly as she could, and she had her pride just like everyone else.
It seemed to take for ever for the man to count slowly through the amount she had handed him before he finally gave a grunt of satisfaction and stashed it in his pocket.
He was about to turn away when Sally reminded him firmly, ‘Mr Wade always writes the amount down and signs it.’
‘Mebbe he did, but that’s not the way the new owners do business.’
He had gone before Sally could object, melting into the darkness, leaving her feeling relieved that none of her neighbours had seen him but at the same time highly anxious. This wasn’t like worrying about rationing or being bombed; it wasn’t an anxiety she could share with anyone else and find comfort in the fact that they were in things together.
It was far later than Sam had planned when the bus finally set her down at the stop closest to her billet. The earlier sea mist had now become a steady downpour, the rain trickling down inside the upturned collar of her greatcoat. Quickly she hurried towards the entrance to the school, dismayed to find that the door now seemed to be locked. Now what was she to do? To her relief, before she had to decide the door was suddenly opened from the inside, allowing her to step inside and quickly close the door behind her to observe the blackout rules about not allowing any light to escape into the night darkness and so potentially provide a target for German bombers.
In the dim light from the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling she could see that the chair behind the desk was now occupied by a very stern-looking warrant officer.
‘Private Grey reporting for duty, ma’am,’ Sam offered hurriedly, suddenly very conscious of the rubble and brick dust on her greatcoat.
‘Strange,’ the warrant office marvelled nastily. She was well into her thirties, Sam guessed, with an unusually broad, somehow flattened face and slightly bulbous protruding eyes, ‘only we seem to have someone of that name here already, at least according to her kitbag. Got a double, have we, Private?’
‘I … no … that is … There wasn’t anyone here to report to when I arrived, ma’am,’ Sam told her desperately, ‘and so I thought I’d just get some fresh air and familiarise myself with the city …’
One thin grey eyebrow rose as the warrant officer looked Sam up and down. ‘Acquainting yourself with the city, was it? It looks to me more like you’ve been acquainting yourself with something very different indeed, Private.’ She pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘Let me explain something to you, Private. Here in this billet and this unit we do not waltz in and dump our kitbags and then waltz out again like we was out of uniform.’
Sam had come across a wide variety of authority figures since she had joined the ATS but never one like this. Instinctively she knew that the woman confronting her now was someone who relished the power her authority gave her. She wouldn’t hesitate to bully and terrorise those under her, Sam guessed, and she also deduced that the warrant officer had already made up her mind that Sam was someone she didn’t very much like.
Well, that was fine, Sam decided, determinedly ignoring the sickly little feeling in her stomach that said she was upset by the hostility she could sense. She could feel herself starting to shake a bit inside and she was longing for the calming effect of a cigarette.
‘Sorry, ma’am,’ she apologised dutifully, fixing her gaze on a point to the left of the warrant officer’s shoulder rather than risk engaging in eye contact with her. ‘It won’t happen again.’
Sam could almost sense the warrant officer’s disappointment that she wasn’t going to give her the opportunity to tear another strip off her. Sam was surprised herself. It wasn’t like her to allow herself to be intimated, or to pass up an opportunity to have a bit of fun by coming up with some far-fetched explanation for what she had done.
‘No it won’t,’ the warrant officer agreed meaningfully, ‘because—’
The sudden opening of a door behind the desk and the appearance of a tall, slim, grey-haired woman wearing a captain’s uniform had the warrant officer along with Sam springing to attention and saluting.
Whatever the warrant