Read Online As Time Goes By by Annie Groves - Free Book Online Page A

you put another copy in the file marked Shelving Number whatever, and you give my sergeant a copy so that he can give it to me, and heaven help you if I find out that all these lists don’t tally up when I do my checks. Anyone coming into the stores for anything, no matter what it is, has to sign for what gets taken and you have to put a mark on the lists to show what’s gone. Savvy?’
    Savvy? Of course she did! Sam gave him a seething look of indignation as he turned away from them, her face burning a dark angry red whenshe heard him mutter insultingly, as he walked away, ‘ATS. Bloody officers’ groundsheets, that’s what they are!’
       
    Sally knew that a lot of the girls didn’t like working the night shift, but she didn’t mind. For one thing it meant that she could have time during the day to be with her boys, and for another it meant that she could bargain for extra nights off when she needed them to sing with the Waltonettes, by offering to do other girls’ night shifts.
    The changeover of shifts meant that there was the usual hectic busyness outside the factory, with those women arriving for work pouring off buses that were then filled up by those waiting to leave.
    ‘War work, I’m sick of it,’ one of the women on Sally’s shift grumbled as they changed into their overalls and got ready. Sally, like most of the women with longer hair, covered hers with a turban to keep it safely out of the way of the machinery.
    ‘It could be worse,’ Sally to her cheerfully. ‘We could be working on munitions.’
    ‘Aye, and if we was we’d be earning a fair bit more, an’ all.’
    ‘Oh, give over moaning, our Janet, will yer? You was saying only the other day as how you felt sorry for them as worked on munitions and that you’d never do it no matter what you was paid on account of the danger and ending up with yellow skin.’
    ‘Oh, that’s typical of you, Zena Harrison,’ Janet sniffed. ‘If you wasn’t me cousin I’d have a fewsharp words for you, that I would, allus picking a person up on everything they say.’
    ‘’Ere, you lot, you’ll never guess what I just heard when I was coming past the medical room.’
    ‘Well, I’m telling you, Wanda, if it was some gossip about some daft lass going crying to the nurse of account of her having been doing what she shouldn’t with some chap …’ Zena started to warn, but the other woman shook her head and laughed.
    ‘No, it’s nowt like that. They had some new girls in there waiting to have their medicals and I heard this one saying as how she was scared she wouldn’t be able to give a urine sample like you have to, and blow me if the woman next to her in the queue doesn’t pipe up loud and clear, “Don’t worry about that, lass. You can have some of mine, ’cos I can piss for England.”’
    Sally could just imagine the reaction of that stuck-up new doctor to their conversation. His wife wouldn’t have to work in anything so common as munitions; if she did war work it would be something refined and ladylike like being in charge of a group of WVS women. Just thinking about the way he had looked at her and the boys was like peeling a scab off an unhealed wound, her emotional reaction immediate and sharply painful.
    The others were still laughing. The girl who had told them the story shook her head and asked them all, ‘Anyone going down the Grafton tomorrow night, only I fancy a bit of a night out?’
    The other two girls shook their heads whilstSally didn’t say anything about the fact that she would be singing. She didn’t want them to think she was trying to show off or that she was getting above herself. Not that she kept her singing a secret, she just didn’t want to be accused of boasting about it. But the thought banished her anger about the ill-tempered doctor. An evening spent singing with the Waltonettes was something to look forward to.

FIVE
    Their work over for the day, the ATS girls crowded onto the bus that would take