be sending the next draft to camp on Monday so report here by eight thirty.’
They were ushered into a further room to be measured for their uniforms. Here, both men and women were working at sewing machines, treadles clattering as they sewed. Rolls of cloth stood on end, some neatly in line, some leaning at angles against the wall like a parade of tipsy soldiers. More bolts of cloth that looked like tent canvas were piled haphazardly together in a heap on the floor. George wished that he hadn’t had the thought that they were like soldiers.
One of the men got up from his machine. He had a tape measure draped around his neck. He took each man’s name and measurements and wrote them down; then he disappeared into a storeroom and returned with a pile of uniforms in a blue cloth and began to distribute them.
‘They’re the wrong colour,’ Rooke said under his breath.
‘What happened to the khaki?’ Haycock said with disappointment in his voice.
The machinist said, ‘There are too many recruits; we can’t get the supplies so we’re forced to requisition from the post office.’
‘Might as well stay as you are then, Farrell,’ Turland said cheerily.
George was relieved to be given trousers and a jacket, bundled together. Turland and Haycock only had trousers. He slipped the jacket on. It was a bit bigger than his post-office uniform and less tight across the back but the arms were a little short. He turned to find Rooke trying his and stifled his own complaint. Rooke was drowned in his jacket: the shoulders stood out well beyond his actual shoulders and the sleeves were inches too long.
The machinist tutted. ‘That’s the smallest we’ve got, I’m afraid, lad,’ he said to Rooke. ‘Get your mother to turn up the sleeves or they’ll be getting in your way.’ A woman whose needle had broken called him over and he went to attend to her machine.
Haycock said, ‘Well, it fits where it touches,’ and laughed.
Rooke scowled at him and took it off.
George took off his jacket and refolded it. They stood there, uncertain what to do next. The machinist, who had given the woman a new needle, turned and seemed surprised to see them still there.
‘That’s all,’ he said, looking amused and gesturing to a door at the far end of the room. ‘You’re free to go.’ He made a flapping movement at them with his arms and they trooped out feeling a little foolish.
In the parade ground, men were still queuing to enlist; others carrying bundles of uniform like their own were waiting around watching two horses being unharnessed from a cart and led away. The backboard of the cart was unfastened and its load of boots and shoes, of many different styles and clearly not army issue, was tipped out on to the paved ground. The quartermaster arrived and held each pair up in turn, shouting out the sizes. Men called out, ‘Me, sir! Here, sir!’ in return and he would toss each pair over, a scrum ensuing as men scrambled to get hold of them. Rooke, who took a small size for which there was no great competition, got a pair of boots fit for a farmer and said that they more than made up for the jacket, even though it was so big it stood still when he turned round. George decided that he would stick with his own boots. The legwork on his rounds had taught him the value of a pair of boots that were well ‘broken in’ and he had no desire to change.
Whilst the scrum was going on around the pile of boots, Turland waiting patiently and Haycock darting forward every now and then to make a grab, George noticed that a pair of fellows had detached themselves from the recruitment queue and were moving casually along the line to the edge of the square. Something in their manner made George immediately certain that they had changed their minds and sure enough they were making towards the gate. One of the men waiting in the queue spotted them and knocked the arm of his companion.
‘Oi!’ he shouted. ‘Where you off to?’
One of the men glanced back, and then carried on walking, his gaze fixed firmly on the ground.
A ripple of movement ran along the line as men turned in curiosity.
‘Enjoyed your march through town but had enough of the glory now, eh?’ shouted another man.
A mutter rose from the line. The man who was leading the way to the gate said something in reply that George couldn’t hear and he saw him stumble as someone shoved him. He recovered himself and for a moment squared up to his attacker, but then clearly thought better of it and stepped away from the line, beyond easy reach. There were boos and jeers from the crowd and shouts of ‘Cowards!’ and ‘Turncoats!’ The two men hurried away without looking back.
George felt his cheeks and neck burning as if he had been one of them. How horrible it would be to have everyone against you in that way. He almost hated the men for drawing down upon themselves the very thing that George dreaded most himself: that someone would see through him and realise that although he had been buoyed up by the glitter and the camaraderie, lurking close to the surface on which he floated was a current of dark, cold fear. Surely he wasn’t the only one to feel it. He looked around at the others; Turland was smiling, and Haycock laughing as Rooke hopped around absurdly trying to pull on the second of his new boots. He took a deep breath, thought of the feeling he had experienced as he stepped forward in the street and looked up at the blue sky. The moment passed.
Rooke tied the laces of his old boots together and slung them over his shoulder. They set off companionably towards the gate. Haycock said goodbye. He said he was going to drop in at the gas works to let them know not to expect him next week and then go on to visit a few friends and say cheero.
George walked back with the others to retrieve his bike from behind the basement railings. He didn’t relish the prospect of breaking the news of his enlistment to his family or the Ashwells. Nonetheless, now that he had overcome what he told himself was a fit of the ‘collywobbles’, he felt again the excitement of the great change that was to come. As he shook hands, first with Turland, who wished him a safe journey, and then Rooke, whom he joshed about his luck in squeaking into the army at all, he felt a little rebellious pride begin to grow, that he had instigated this and was being his own man. As he set off back towards the main road out of the town, the strains of the silver band reached him faintly once more and he found himself pedalling to the rhythm of imagined marching feet.
Feeling hot and dusty, George came through the gate into the yard, squeezed past the privy and the shed and propped his bike against the coal bunker. He took his new uniform out of the basket and tucked it under his arm. Lillie was sitting on the back step, surrounded by cooking pans. She was singing to herself and pouring water from one pan to another, using a broken-handled cup.
‘Hello, our Lillie,’ George said and squatted down opposite her. ‘What have we here? Is it a tea party?’
Lillie offered him the cup and he started to drink from it.
‘No, no,’ Lillie said crossly. ‘P’tend!’
George pretended to take a sip and said mmm. He was rewarded by a pat and a smile. Lillie’s ‘Fums Up’ doll lay on the ground with its painted lick of baby hair and rosy cheeks, looking up with a cheeky expression from the dandelions growing in the cracks in the brick path. George picked her up, put the cup between her hinged arms so that she held it and swivelled them up as if she were drinking. Lillie started to laugh. His mother’s voice came from inside saying, ‘What’s tickled you, Lillikins?’
George put his finger to his lips and passed the doll and the cup to Lillie. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘You feed Baby.’