Apple Blossom Time by Kathryn Haig

Author:Kathryn Haig
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466888630
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

1945

I sat, one of a long row of women on wobbly benches in a freezing Nissen hut. Under our greatcoats, we were all naked except for our khaki knickers. Under each chair was a little jar of urine. What a waste of time. Heaven knows what it would take to test the urine of every demobbed servicewoman. I was pretty certain the country didn’t have resources on that scale. And why do it, anyway? Still, if that was what it took to get into civvie street …

When my turn came, I accidentally kicked the jar as I stood.

‘Oh, blast, now they’ll never let me go.’

‘Here, have some of mine, love,’ offered the woman next to me, tipping some from her full jar into my empty one. ‘Plenty more where that came from!’

A weary doctor listened to my chest, tested my reflexes, peeped into my knickers (and I still hadn’t found out what they were looking for) and passed me as fit.

In a chattering line, shrill as parrots, we filed into the clothing stores and handed in our kit. The stiff serge tunics were a bit more woman shaped than they had been when they were issued, the caps squashed into an amazing variety of non-regulation shapes. All along the long counter, women were dipping into the pockets and taking out nipped-off cigarettes, old bus tickets, cinema stubs, washbasin plugs (very desirable possessions), kirby grips, lighters made from polished brass ammunition cases, odd earrings. We were allowed to keep a pair of shoes. Useful, that, with so much still on coupons.

And that was that. Feeling oddly naked in a Utility frock, a hand-knitted cardigan and no hat, I hefted up my cardboard suitcase, collected my last ever railway warrant plus £12/10 and fifty-six coupons for civilian clothes (no baggy demob suit for us, thank goodness – but with a tailored costume costing £4/15, shoes around 25 shillings and a pair of stockings at ten bob, that wasn’t going to go far) and walked out of the gates. In my bag was a 14-day ration card and two weeks’ worth of sweets. I had fifty-six days’ leave to look forward to, plus an extra day for every month spent abroad.

I could go wherever I wanted for the first time in five years.

* * *

‘Well, darling,’ asked Grandmother after I’d been home for a few days. ‘And what are you going to do with yourself now?’

‘Do?’ I echoed, dully.

‘I hope you’re going to be sensible and stay at home. You’ve done quite enough gadding around lately.’

‘You sound as though I’d just spent a winter sunning myself on the Riviera.’

‘There’s no need for that! It hasn’t exactly been fun at home, while you’ve been globe-trotting,’ she remarked, acidly. ‘I suppose you have looked at your mother – actually looked? Five years of make-do-and-mend and growing vegetables have worn her out. She’s done night fire watch twice a week on top of the church tower. Every Thursday she’s pushed a trolley of tea and sandwiches for servicemen round Salisbury station.

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