Meet Me Under the Clock Read online

  Turning into the yard, amid the gaggle of other trouser-clad workers, Sylvia caught sight of an unmistakably female pair of legs walking past her. For a moment she looked hungrily at the sleek shoes with their inch of heel and at the smooth, feminine stockings. How nice they looked, even if they were getting splashed up the back with spots of mud! Who was that girl? Sylvia wondered. She must have had a good supply of stockings before the war to be looking so good now. She caught a glimpse of the young woman’s face under a dark felt hat with a narrow brim. Then she was gone, on her way into the offices. Sylvia felt a pang for a moment. There was something nice about being able to wear a skirt and dainty shoes to work, instead of the tough black boots she had to wear – not to mention working in an office instead of freezing out here.

  Still, she thought resignedly, if I worked doing anything in there, I’d only make a hash of it. I’m better off outside.

  When she reached the Amenities block everyone was milling round, coming either on or off a shift. Sylvia didn’t give the girl she’d seen another thought then. Men from last night’s shift – women porters were not assigned to working nights – were all clocking out in the Time office, all tired and unusually quiet as they made their way home. Edie, the night cook who made sure the men all got a meal in the foremen’s mess room, was on her way out too. When Sylvia came in, she saw Edie calling out to Madge, who was clocking in.

  ‘Ta-ra!’ she said. ‘Behave yerself, bab.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll do that all right,’ Madge said. ‘Chance to do anything else’d be a fine thing. All right, Sylvia?’

  ‘Hello, Madge,’ Sylvia said as they went to put their things in the porters’ mess room. Sylvia noticed that Madge looked weary and unusually dejected. ‘Everything all right?’ she asked, cautiously. She always felt rather young and foolish next to Madge.

  ‘Oh, ar – I’m all right,’ she said morosely. She looked as if she was not going to say any more, but then she added, ‘Had a bit of a barney with my feller last night.’

  ‘Oh.’ Sylvia wasn’t sure what to say, so she added, ‘I hope you made it up all right.’

  Madge heaved one of her ample legs up to tie her bootlaces and looked round. ‘Oh, we made it up, but not before I’d given him a shiner. ’E always wants more than ’e’s getting, that one. I said to ’im, “Yer can put that away right now. I ain’t getting myself into anything I shouldn’t.” My sister’s at home with Mom, with a babby, and ’er’s only sixteen. I’m the sensible one, see.’ Madge restored her foot to the floor with a thud and righted herself. ‘It’s all ’e ever thinks about – specially when ’e’s ’ad a few. So I laid one on ’im – that’ll teach ’im. Till the next time, any’ow. ’E’s like a bull at a gate.’

  Sylvia was blushing furiously at this surfeit of information. She had never before heard anyone talk like that in her life. It was certainly an eye-opener. Though she knew Ian was a decent man who wanted to do the right thing, she still felt pressure from him constantly to give him more, to go further, because his own desire was so strong. At least it’s not just us, she thought. But she could hardly punch Ian, as Madge had apparently done, to keep him at bay!

  Madge looked at her confused face and let out a loud laugh. ‘Sorry, bab. ’Ave I spoke out of turn?’

  ‘No,’ Sylvia said, grinning suddenly. ‘Not at all.’

  The yard was busier than it had ever been: lines and lines of wagons full of ammunition and components, and every sort of equipment for the war effort pouring out of the factories to be sent south. Trains streamed in and out, and queues backed up, waiting to get into the shunting yard. The place was working at full capacity, and more. Sometimes staff from the offices were called out to work as porters as there was so much stuff to shift.

  All that morning they were emptying wagons nonstop. By the early afternoon Sylvia and Madge were outside with Bill Jones, their checker, unloading a dray that had been filled from a joey boat in Hockley Basin. The boxes of nuts and bolts seemed endless as they worked in the unceasing drizzle, barrowing in loads from the yard to wagons in the shed and unloading them again there. It was very heavy work, not helped by the endless wet, the wheels of trucks and carts churning up the muddy ground.

  By the time Sylvia was pushing one of the last barrowfuls into the shed, she really felt she was running out of steam. Her face was soaked with rain, her clothes limp with sweat under her coat. She had walked miles, her shoulders were aching and her arms trembling with the effort of pushing the laden barrows.

  ‘Right,’ Bill said at last, signing off the list with a flourish. ‘That’s your lot, ladies! Time for a well-deserved tea break, I reckon.’

  There was a burst of watery sunshine as they headed across for their break. The light reflected in the puddles across the yard, making them look like eyes, staring up at the sky. Sylvia caught sight of someone squatting down by the corner of the Amenities block, reaching out to stroke a cat. The young woman looked a little familiar, as did quite a number of the station staff by now. She had neatly bobbed, wavy fair hair. Sylvia moved closer, drawn both by the cat and by the person stroking him. The muscular tabby rat-catcher was known in the yard as Tiger.

  ‘Hello, Tiger Tim,’ said Sylvia, leaning over to stroke him. He arched his back and purred like an engine. ‘Oh, you’re in a good mood today.’

  Just as the other girl looked up at her, smiling, Sylvia noticed her elegant black shoes and realized that she must be the same person she had passed that morning.

  ‘He’s a darling, isn’t he?’ the young woman said, looking up at her. Sylvia was immediately struck by her face. She had prominent cheekbones, large, soulful grey eyes and eyebrows plucked into a slender arch. Her voice was high and pleasant, although the next thing she said was drowned out by loud whoomp-whoomping from one of the shunting engines behind, the shriek of a train whistle and the roar of a truck starting up, all at the same time.

  Sylvia made a face, laughing and covering her ears. ‘I didn’t hear a word of what you said – sorry!’ she said when things had quietened down a bit.

  The girl stood up. Even in her heels she was almost a head shorter than Sylvia. She lit a cigarette and held out the packet. ‘Want one?’

  ‘Thanks,’ Sylvia said. She didn’t smoke often, but she liked the odd cigarette now and then. She leaned in to light it from the match the young woman offered, shielding it from the wind.

  ‘All I said was: he thinks he’s king of the walk.’ She laughed as the cat rubbed against her legs. She was petite, with thin arms and neck, but a large bust for someone so small and an hourglass figure. Even in her sober office clothes there was something about her that made you take another look. Her hair curled attractively at her temples. She was not exactly pretty, Sylvia thought; there was something too unusual about her face, but with those huge eyes and her manner, she drew you in.

  ‘So you’re one of the porters?’ she said, blowing out a mouthful of smoke, rather stylishly, Sylvia thought. ‘I do admire you. Actually, I sometimes think you’re lucky being outside, when we’re stuck in that morgue there!’

  ‘What d’you do?’ Sylvia asked. She liked the warm, confiding way in which the girl talked to her. It was nice to meet someone close to her own age, who might be similar to her. With the Gould boys gone, and Audrey and Jane, her old school friend, away too, she did feel lonely, when she had time to think about it. She had grown to like Madge, but there was a gulf between them in age and experience.

  ‘Oh, I’m a comptometer operator – very boring,’ she said, breathing smoke out through her nostrils. ‘We used to be in there before . . .’ She nodded her head at the wrecked office block. ‘So they’ve moved us into a storeroom, which is like the Black Hole of Calcutta.’ She rolled her eyes.

  ‘I wouldn’t know where to begin with one of those compt . . . those machine things,’ Sylvia admitted. ‘I’ve no head for figures.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not difficult.’ Leaning closer, in a way that made Sylvia feel strangely honoured, t
he girl went on, ‘I’m Kitty by the way.’

  ‘Sylvia.’ She bent down to stroke the cat again.

  ‘Nice having some animals around, isn’t it?’ Kitty said. ‘I’d love to keep a cat, but . . .’

  ‘They’re no trouble,’ Sylvia said. ‘We’ve got two. And rabbits. We’ve got a big lop-eared chap called Mr Piggles. He’s my little brother’s really, but I end up looking after him a lot of the time. We keep hens as well.’

  ‘Oh, you’re lucky!’ Kitty said. Sylvia decided that she did look pretty when she smiled. She had a wide mouth and a face full of vitality.

  ‘It means we have eggs, at least.’

  ‘That sounds ever so nice.’ Kitty sounded wistful. ‘My father doesn’t like that sort of thing. There’s just him and me. Mom died last year.’

  ‘Oh,’ Sylvia said, touched by this, ‘I’m sorry – how sad. Where d’you come in from?’

  ‘Handsworth Wood,’ Kitty told her.

  ‘That’s a shame.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Only that we’re over in Kings Heath. Otherwise you could have come round.’

  ‘I could come,’ Kitty laughed, with a merry, infectious sound. ‘It’s not the end of the earth, is it?’

  ‘No, I s’pose not, if you could be bothered,’ Sylvia said. ‘We live near the station, but they’re about to cut the passenger service. Savings for the war effort apparently – it’s going to be goods only. You could get the bus, though.’ She had a happy feeling that they were making friends.

  As they stood talking, a couple of shunters sauntered across the yard. They stared brazenly at the two young women as they passed, one with a shunting pole in his hand. He leaned close to the other and said something and they both laughed. Sylvia saw Kitty follow them mischievously with her eyes. The yard was growing busier again, with trucks coming in, pausing at the weighbridge, then drawing up to be unloaded. Sylvia could see more teams of porters coming out with their checkers.

  ‘I’d best go,’ Sylvia said. ‘No rest for the wicked. We’ll be on again any minute. I must get some tea – I’m dropping.’

  ‘I should think you are,’ Kitty said. ‘I don’t know how you do it. But look, how about we get together sometime?’ She threw her cigarette butt down and ground it under the heel of one of the neat black shoes. Wryly she added, ‘Paint the town red?’

  Sylvia felt her spirits lift and she smiled warmly. She had found a friend! ‘That’d be nice,’ she said as she backed away. ‘I’d really like that. See you around.’

  Eleven

  Kitty Barratt stood in front of the mirror in her bedroom. It was still pitch-dark outside and she was getting ready for the early shift. As she leaned closer to the elegantly framed glass to apply her lipstick, the electric light above created interesting shadows under her cheekbones. However, it also made her look grey and washed-out. She rubbed on a touch of rouge, bared her small, even teeth to check they were not marked with lipstick, and dabbed at the corners of her mouth with a hanky.

  Hands at her waist, she twisted back and forth to check her figure and her clothes. She had on a plain enough office outfit: a straight black skirt and a cream blouse covered by a sage-green cardigan. Her curvaceous, full-breasted figure would have looked impressive in anything. Her honey-blonde hair had a natural soft wave and was cut to jaw-length, curling neatly underneath and framing her forehead and large grey eyes. She patted the ends of her hair, wrinkled her nose, then gave a mischievous, self-satisfied smile.

  ‘Go get ’em,’ she purred. ‘Kitty the cat!’

  She stood listening for a moment. Was he up? Could she sneak out before the old sod was awake?

  After hunting for her shoes, which she had kicked off last night, she held them in her right hand and opened the bedroom door with her left, wincing at its squeak. Her room was at the end of the landing. Tip-toeing along the red carpet, Kitty avoided looking at the next door, which she had to pass to go downstairs. For years it was a spare room in their generous-sized villa. But during those last months until she died last summer, Kitty’s mother had moved in there. That room crouched in the house like a dark beast, full of agonized memories. Kitty still half-expected that if she went in there she would see her mother’s grey face on the pillow, her eyes pleading away the pain. But, no, Mom was gone. Her mother had never been a strong woman, but she was the only heart the house had ever had. The maids had deserted them too, once Mom was gone. There was more work to be had now, and more cheerful places to spend your time. Only old Ethel stayed on, coming in for a couple of hours each morning.

  Kitty ran swiftly down the carpeted stairs. At the bottom she slipped on her shoes before going out to the cold quarry tiles of the kitchen. She thought she was alone, that she had got away with it, but there he was in the chair, a dark-blue rug over his knees: Josiah Barratt of J. Barratt & W. Stone – Non-Ferrous Die-Castings, self-made industrialist, failed alderman and widower. He was a paunchy, balding man of fifty-five, stubble-cheeked this morning. He stared blearily as her as she came into the kitchen.

  ‘ ’Bout time,’ he complained, pushing himself up in the chair. A belch rumbled up and escaped loudly. ‘Get me some tea. What time is it?’

  ‘Gone five,’ she said. ‘I’ll put the kettle on, but I’ve got to go—’

  ‘I said GET ME A CUP OF TEA, yer useless wench. You ain’t going anywhere before I get my tea. I should’ve thought that was the least yer could do, for me keeping a roof over your pretty head. I’m starved, sitting here all night long.’

  Well, why didn’t you go to bed, you silly old sod? She kept this thought to herself, silently putting the kettle on. She winced at the way he spoke. Josiah Barratt was proud of the fact that he had come up the hard way: through the school of life and hard knocks, he had risen out of the Victorian slums. But he could turn it on, and talk posh in public when it suited him – when he wanted votes. Time and again he had stood for the Conservative Party in the council elections. He longed for his place of prominence, for civic recognition – even to wear the chains of mayoral honour. He’d lost again and again in elections, most recently to a smooth-cheeked public-school boy twenty years his junior, who had then proved his heroism by joining the RAF. Josiah was never going to satisfy his desire to call himself Alderman Barratt. The truth was that, even by Conservative standards, he was unpleasant. No one liked him.

  At home he no longer put on airs. If only Mom could see what he’s turned into, Kitty thought. Mom had been gentle and well-spoken, reared among the Plymouth Brethren. Josiah had dazzled her with his house, his successful business. He could turn it on all right.

  Kitty always made sure she spoke well. She hated to sound common. Anything but be like him.

  Her father groaned and stretched in the chair. A powerful stink of booze came from him and there was an empty Scotch bottle on the table.

  ‘Pass me my boots,’ he ordered. ‘And yer can pass them an’ all, while yer at it.’ He nodded at his ciggies on the table in their plain, rationed packaging. Beside them was a little book called Aircraft Recognition. Her father was obsessed by the idea that they might still be invaded. ‘They’ll find a way, those scheming Krauts.’

  Kitty passed him the boots. He pulled them on with a grunt, then lurched out to the back toilet to pass water. As the clank and whoosh of water assailed her ears, the kettle came to the boil, to her relief. She made tea as fast as she could.

  ‘That’s right, just bugger off and leave me,’ he moaned as she went for her coat. ‘I’m the one that puts the shirt on your back, yer know.’

  No, you’re not, she thought. I earn my own wages. She cast him an icy look. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘What about my breakfast!’ he roared. ‘What does a man have to do to get summat to eat in this house?’

  ‘Ethel’ll be in later,’ she said, going to the door. He didn’t have to be at work for ages yet, and all he had to do was climb into his car. ‘And I hope it chokes you, you old bastard,’ she added under her breath.
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  And she was gone, seizing her coat and hat and hurrying out into the drizzle, out of the dark house where her mother had lived in fear. Never would Kitty let a man have power over her like that!

  On the train she stood amid the packed crowd, hoping Ethel would remember to do the bits of shopping she had asked for. For a while she dwelt on practical details, and then she allowed herself to slip into a daydream about Joe Whelan. Would she see him today? And might Joe give her one of his special rides tonight?

  Twelve

  That afternoon Kitty stood on the platform at Hockley passenger station. She tugged her collar up against the raw wind, which carried sounds from the Goods Yard: the shunting of wagons and an intermittent clanging from the Round Yard, as if lengths of metal piping were being thrown to the ground.

  ‘Come on,’ she murmured, tapping her foot.

  Would Joe Whelan be on today? She was almost sure he must be, and a thrum of excitement had begun within her. Her heart was thumping and her nerves were on edge. She felt that she couldn’t bear it if he wasn’t there today. The waiting was awful. She was hooked on his attraction to her. So what if he was old enough to be her father? The train guard was a big, good-looking man and she knew that the sight of her set him off-balance. She enjoyed knowing that he was full of desire for her.

  Soon she and the other shuffling, muttering passengers heard the rhythmic puffing of the engine, and a plume of smoke appeared as it came on the mile-long journey from Snow Hill. When the train drew alongside the platform, Kitty positioned herself where she guessed the guard’s van would stop. Before it had fully halted, its brakes squealing, she saw the door of the guard’s van swing open and Joe standing ready to step out.