Читать книгу Sand In My Shoes: Coming of Age in the Second World War: A WAAF’s Diary - Joan Rice - Страница 21

Owing to the pleasing fact that all surplus No. 11 Company WAAF are being posted away from Hendon at a great rate, our previous billet, No. 7 Booth Road, was formally condemned and Joyce and I this evening moved into the top bedroom of No. 18. After No. 7, where every time you put the blackout down, part of the wall falls with it and where our bedroom was like trying to live and sleep on a dirty, busy railway platform, this is the Ritz Hotel.

We have a large room intended for three but which we trust to keep exclusively to ourselves, and now we have got it straight we have to keep on looking to believe it's true. One thing it lacked was a table. Remembering that No. 7 was condemned anyway we decided that we, as well as anyone else, might as well enjoy the pickings. With this in mind Joyce and I carried out the table under cover of the blackout down Booth Road, but even in a blackout a table is not easy to disguise. We were caught on our new doorstep by Johnston, one of the girls downstairs, but were able to laugh it off airily and take it upstairs, without removing any great part of the staircase wall, where it now rests, very fetching with our wireless on it.

Later in the evening Joyce returned to collect the last of her luggage from No. 7, while I washed and scrubbed in the bath. Frances and Mike and some chaps had returned from the cinema and cried angrily about the missing table. Joyce not only denied stealing it but questioned a justly indignant Mickey about its disappearance. She was about to depart when Frances asked if she could come round in the morning and see what sort of room we's got. ‘Yes,’ said Joyce, turning a little blue. The table is very large and very obvious. The situation is not what I's call happy.