The Gypsy's Daughter by Katie Hutton

Author:Katie Hutton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Newstead

October 1958

‘There woh all sorts in army. The sergeant kept telling us it wor a great leveller. I can tell yuh it wor no more a leveller than the bleddy Grand Lodge in Goldsmith Street. Who got a commission and that. There wor the grammar school boys pretending they wor like the toffs – the public school boys – to hear ’em – as if it was only a mistake they wurnt eating in the officers’ mess and all that. But there was one in our hut – this was before we woh sent east – that shouldn’ta been in the army at all. He wor picked on. I think he wor a nancy boy, but if he dint know it, the others did, or decided they did. Some o’ the borstal types thought it wor fun to tek a rise out o’ the way he spoke. I comm in one evening to find ’im crying in his underpants, and they wor all wet, and them all standing round laffin. I’d no idea what they’d threatened him with – still don’t. I saw red then, an’ took a swing at the one that wor laffin most. I bust ’is nose. Sergeant comm in to see what all the row wor about, and I got confined to barracks and fatigues. The poor nancy never comm back from his next leave. I hope he wor invalided out, but there wor a story went abaht that his mother found him hangin’ in the wash-owse.’

‘Oh no!’

‘I never knew what really happened. But the ones that were tormenting him dint cause any more trouble around me after that, an’ the NCO comm and thanked me on the quiet.

‘Dad said I wor lucky. I’d see the world, he said. Dad’s allus been dead keen on anything in uniform, which is funny for someone who never wore one hissen. Wanted me to be a scout an’ all.’

‘At school they encouraged us to go into the Girl Guides. I liked that idea no more than I liked hockey. All much too jolly.’

‘I think it wor easier for them public school types. Apart from getting commissions, they’d been used to square-bashing at school. And bein’ away from ’ome too. But if any of that wor a leveller, it wor the medical. Yuh shoulda seen uz, Harry, stripped to the skin, most of us looking about as appealing as a bundle of spring onions. An’ after I’d given my sample the doctor grabbed my tackle and told me to cough – stop laffin, Harry! Have yow ever tried to pee only a little bit, and then stop?’

‘No. But I’ve had check-ups I haven’t liked.’

‘What is it, mi duck?’

‘Oh, nothing really. I suppose we all have to put up with unpleasantness sometimes.’

‘Harry?’

‘Go on, Ned.’

‘Yuh still want my war stories?’

‘I’ve heard my brother Tom’s – only because he was in the actual war, in Italy.’

‘The actual war? If yer fightin’ someone, it feels real enough. Malaya did.’

‘Sorry . . .’

‘Don’t be. I wor allus getting into bother, though, ending up in the glass’owse.

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