‘Yes. Thank you.’ Bobby flashed the young corporal a grateful smile. In all her dealings with the military, this was the first time anyone had spared her the time to actually answer some of her questions. She pocketed her certificate of enrolment and the travel warrant she had been given and left.
Chapter 20
After she left the recruiting centre, Bobby jumped on a tram to East Bowling, where the Scotts lived – if not quite with a song in her heart then at least with a lightness of spirits she hadn’t been able to feel since the day she had learned she was to be called up.
It was the best she could hope for. For her training period, at least, she would be within easy distance of Silverdale. That meant she could spend all her leave there, even if she only had a pass out for a few hours.
And she could stay in the Dales. Bobby hadn’t realised how much the thought of leaving the stark and magnificent fells, and the terse but generous-natured folk who lived among them, had been weighing on her heart. The fells felt like a bridge, somehow, between this unasked-for new life and the old one she was leaving so reluctantly behind.
She would feel closer to Charlie too. Ryland Moor had been where he trained and now she could see it from the inside. Knowing something of his routine, having mutual acquaintances not only in the civilian world of Silverdale but in the Air Force, would go a long way to closing that distance Bobby was always afraid might grow between them.
She would be at home for Topsy’s wedding as well. Bobby would have hated to miss seeing Topsy and Teddy finally tie the knot after everything she had done to help them reach their happy ending.
When the tram halted, she almost skipped off it.
Bobby walked to the Scotts’ grimy terraced house and rapped the door knocker. Mrs Scott – or Mrs Scott Senior, as Bobby supposed she ought to call her now – answered a moment later. She was wearing the bottle-green uniform of the Women’sVoluntary Service, hat on and coat over her shoulders as if preparing to go out. She was unsmiling as ever while she smoked a cigarette.
‘You’re the other one,’ she said, on looking Bobby up and down. She didn’t remove her cigarette, which perched precariously at one side of her mouth.
Bobby hadn’t exactly expected her sister’s new mother-in-law to roll out the welcome mat, but a ‘good afternoon’ might have been nice.
‘Um, yes,’ she said. ‘Hello again.’
‘Come up from t’ country, have you?’
‘That’s right. Is my sister at home?’
‘In the kitchen,’ Mrs Scott said, jerking her head in that direction as she buttoned up her coat. ‘Mind you take your shoes off. I’ll noan have mud and cow muck smeared all over my clean carpets.’
Without another word she marched out of the house, brushing Bobby aside as she did so.
Bobby assumed this was as much of an invitation to come in as she could expect and entered the dark little house, closing the door behind.
The carpets didn’t look particularly clean to her. They were faded and threadbare, yellow in places from decades of tobacco smoke. Still, not wishing to arouse Mrs Scott’s ire, Bobby removed her shoes as instructed.
It was less than a fortnight since she had last seen Lilian, but when she sought out her sister in the kitchen, Bobby was shocked to see the change in her. Lil looked harassed and ill-kempt, her normally carefully styled hair shoved untidily under a headscarf. She had no make-up on, which emphasised her pallor and the dark circles under her eyes. When Bobby came in, she was on her knees sweeping out the fire grate.
‘Should you be doing that in your condition?’ Bobby asked.
‘Bobby.’ Lilian put one hand against the small of her back, wincing as she knelt upright. ‘I thought I was dreaming when I heard you talking to the Wicked Witch of the West. Isn’t my new mama a delight?’
Bobby smiled, pleased to hear that her sister’s sense of humour hadn’t been quashed by this spartan new life. ‘Don’t ask me. I’m only a humble country peasant girl covered in cow muck, apparently, and hardly worthy of an opinion.’
‘I see you’ve been given the traditional warm Scott welcome.’ With an effort, Lilian got to her feet. ‘I won’t hug you, since I’m covered in cinders. Has she gone?’
‘Yes, she went out as I came in.’
‘Thank the Lord. Then I can have a rest.’
Lilian went to a cupboard and took out a bottle of Wincarnis. After pouring a generous glass of the syrupy, slightly meaty-smelling tonic wine, she threw herself into a nearby chair.
‘Honestly, I think the only reason she agreed Tony and I could live here was slave labour,’ she told Bobby, drinking her tonic wine down in one gulp. ‘At first she was absolutely raging about the baby, Tony says. Determined I’d done it on purpose to trap her precious boy into marriage.’
Bobby smiled dryly. ‘Right. Because he’s such a catch.’
‘Oh, please don’t say that,’ Lilian murmured, rubbing her temples.
‘Sorry.’ Bobby went to crouch by her sister. ‘It was supposed to be a joke. Perhaps it was in rather poor taste.’
