Read Online An Officer and a Gentlewoman by Heloise Goodley - Free Book Online

under the pressure of her glare).
    ‘Whiskey, one, zero, six, one, four, five, one, Officer Cadet Goodley. Room ready for your inspection.’
    I then stood outside in the corridor facing away and holding my breath as she prowled around my room finding fault: litter in the bin, laundry in the linen basket, water in the sink, a speck of toothpaste on the mirror, a trace of mud on the sole of a running shoe. As I stood outside in the corridor I was unable to see what was going on inside and would look to the face of the personstanding opposite me for an expression to indicate how the inspection was going, waiting for a little nod or sideways eye movement. Was SSgt Cox looking in the wardrobe or simply out of the window? The longer the silence, the greater the tension as I awaited her verdict; which was always a fail.
    Misdemeanours were slight but the punishments severe as all my hard work would come crashing out into the corridor, pulled down off shelves, flung out of drawers or hauled out of the window into the puddles below, leaving me to pick up the pieces and start the ironing, folding and cleaning all over again in time for the following morning’s inspection.
    The mercurial moods of SSgt Cox made every morning a gamble to see what she would fail you for, as she hunted through drawers and cupboards looking for imperfections. Then when she found something she would gleefully pounce at it and tear you apart, like a terrier with a rat.
    ‘Miss Goodley, what do you shagging call this?’ she barked at me one morning, brandishing my water bottle under my nose.
    ‘Er, it’s my water bottle, Staff Sergeant.’
    ‘No, you idiot, this, here inside your water bottle.’ She pointed at a tiny drop of water near the rim where my water bottle hadn’t yet dried out following that morning’s water parade.
    ‘Erm, it’s water from this morning, Staff Sergeant.’
    ‘I don’t want your shagging excuses, Miss Goodley,’ she said, scolding me like a young child. ‘It’s gopping. 7 If you don’t clean out your water bottle, it’ll breed germs, you’ll go down in the field with scurvy and die. And it’ll be your own fault for being so f-ing gopping,’ she screeched, tossing the offending water bottle on the floor of my room and spinning on her heel to storm off and attack her next victim, leaving me relieved another inspection was over, but questioning my understanding of the causes and infective severity of scurvy.
    The worst inspections were on the occasions when SSgt Cox was accompanied by our platoon commander, Captain Trunchbull.
    Captain Trunchbull was a bulky, angry lady, with a most vicious tongue and flaky temperament. As strong as an ox, she towered over each member of Eleven Platoon in a frightening manner. On duty she wore her ill-fitting uniform stretched taut over her plump backside and constricted in tightly at her waist with a belt, like a knotted sack of spuds. Like SSgt Cox she too, scraped and gelled her hair back into a small bun fixed smartly to the back of her head like a button none of us would ever dare press. Across her lips she maintained a permanent disapproving pout as she scowled and prowled around the Academy, poised like a jack-in-the-box ready to spring with menacing terror at anything she disapproved of.
    SSgt Cox and Captain Trunchbull made a terrible twosome, working in tandem as they scrutinized each room, goading one another like a pair of Roald Dahl’s witches.
    ‘SSgt Cox, would you say you could see your face in this mess tin? It doesn’t look very shiny to me.’
    ‘Nah, ma’am, it’s gopping.’
    And then smashing out into the corridor would come the offending mess tin.
    ‘Oh dear, SSgt Cox, this looks like rust on here to me. Here on this magazine.’
    ‘Certainly is, ma’am.’
    And another clatter as rifle magazines, springs and metal came smashing out into the corridor as the cackling couple would move on, revelling perversely in the moment. This charade would go on from