Cat in a Bag

As she tells me that she’s in trouble, she looks at me in the same way that a kitten might. She wants me to pick her up and pet her. Tell her that I’m going to keep her. But every bit of me wants to bundle her up in a sack and drop her in the deepest part of the Thames.

She’s been trailing me ever since I got back on my 48 hour pass from the base. I thought she was just hungry for some more of what she had last time, but there was never going to be any of that. Poor, innocent little kitten, doesn’t she know there’s a war on? Everything’s temporary these days. But now she’s telling me that there’s something lingering after that regrettable whiskey fumble. She’s telling me about reputations. Apparently I should be making hers my business.

But I’ve got another idea. Didn’t I once hear about a quack fellow in Soho who took care of these problems? It’s just persuading her. She’ll be hard work. I can see the reflection of the wedding flowers in her tiresome tears.

I regret my curiosity. I only wanted to be sure that all that kind of thing wasn’t for me. A test.  Now I know for sure that girls are just not my thing. The sooner I’m rid of this one… Then I can get to the boys on the base and the frisson of the smell of their sweat in the huts. There’s going to be some nice new raw recruits joining us tomorrow.

She’s stopped her jabbering now. She’s waiting for me to speak. I take out my wallet and offer her crumpled notes. She throws them back at me, and, oh Lord here we go, she begins to wail. The air raid siren starts up in sympathy. I turn her around and push her towards the tube station steps. The steep, steep staircase delves down into the ground before us. The place begins to get crowded. A stumble into the depths would be easy to engineer in the dark and the rush...all I have to do is prise those little claws out of my jacket sleeve.

Some People Use War as an Excuse for Everything

Mrs Bagshaw lived for disapproval.  Not that she wanted anyone to disapprove of her.  Her behaviour was of course exemplary.  Otherwise she wouldn’t be qualified to offer out her opinions on the way that other people ran their lives.  Everyone else was doing it wrong.  But Mrs Bagshaw had a husband, two children, a full washing line and front doorstep that gleamed, even on a foggy day.  Of course she was doing everything right.  But her across the road at number 12, well!  She was a different kettle of fish altogether.

It was in the war when her at number 12 went wrong.  Women of her sort used the war as an excuse for all sorts of ridiculous behaviour.  First of all she married that pilot.  She went silly over the uniform.  And if anybody was going to get themselves killed it was a pilot.  The marriage didn’t last a year before he went down in the North Sea.  And what had she done in the meantime?  Got herself pregnant.  Talk about setting yourself up for sorrow.  So, there she was – no husband, a kiddy that won’t stop crying because it’s got an unfit mother and no food in the cupboard.  No time to grow anything she said – even though she’d a lovely patch of soil round the back.  So, she fetched round the ARP warden to see about growing some potatoes – and ends up growing much more into the bargain.  Another baby no less.  The ARP Warden went running back to his wife, saying that there was no proof that the blighter was his.

But the real disapproval started at the end of the war, when young Peter Bagshaw turned 19.  Just the day after his birthday, he was caught sneaking out of number 12 at 1 o’clock in the morning.  Peter got a red ear but he never lost his grin.  Local opinion was divided on whether number 12 had done it out of spite to Mrs Bagshaw, or because she just genuinely couldn’t resist a strapping young lad.  Either way, when there’s a war on, you take your pleasure where you find it.

*Title inspired by a line from Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald