Cold shoulder for the ice cream girl

BACK in September 1958, I was called up to do two years’ national Service in the royal Army ordnance Corps. At the time, I was serving a six-year apprenticeship as a compositor in the printing trade. I did six weeks’ basic training at hilsea Barracks in Portsmouth, followed by two weeks’ trade instruction in Aldershot. I was then posted to didcot, now in oxfordshire, but then in Berkshire. I was billeted in a wooden hut with ten other national Service soldiers. After three days, I asked them if there was a cinema in town. There was, so one evening I wandered there on my own. I don’t remember the film I saw, but in the interval I bought an ice cream from the beautiful usherette. When the lights dimmed, she stood at the back near my seat and smiled every time I looked at her. When the film finished, we started chatting and I asked if I could walk her home when she’d finished work. ‘Ten o’clock,’ she said. ‘I’ll meet you out the front.’ After walking down the road for a while, I realised that she was guiding me towards the married quarters at camp. Ah, I thought, her parents must be regular soldiers. As we stood near the back door of her home having a kiss and cuddle, the kitchen window opened and a voice said: ‘Come on in, now, I know you’re out there with someone.’ ‘Blimey, I recognise that voice,’ I thought. ‘It’s the regimental Sergeant Major!’ I said a quick goodnight and dashed down the path towards my billet across the road in my crepe-soled shoes (I’d been a bit of a teddy boy before being called up). When I arrived back at the hut, six of the soldiers were playing cards. I told them of my escape and they just laughed. ‘Sorry, mate,’ they said. ‘We should have warned you. don’t go near the ice cream girl — she’s the rSM’s daughter!’

Len Hunt, Colchester, Essex.