Gunner Girls and Fighter Boys Read online

  Then she felt herself falling, tumbling with the carriage as the giant kicked it away. Earth and black sky, earth and black sky, repeating as the carriage rolled down the embankment, till it came to rest with a groaning shudder. She blacked out, but only for a minute. The heat woke her, and acrid smoke pouring through the carriage, which was lit with the red glow she recognized too well. The train was ablaze.

  She struggled, trussed still in the netting of the luggage rack. Kicking like a drowning woman, pushing against bags and bodies, she swam towards the smashed window. Grasping the jagged edges of broken glass, she pulled herself through, gasping for air, letting herself fall back on to wet grass. She felt an irresistible urge to sleep and closed her eyes. But something called her back, for she opened them to find herself staring into the blinding light of a spouting flame. Soil filled her mouth. She spat it out and registered sounds: someone moaning, another crying out for help, and from further down the train an incessant screaming. Pushing herself slowly to her knees, she crawled towards the whimpering huddled figure of a woman, face down on the embankment. Rolling her over gently, May saw it was Eileen, the girl from Dockhead. Blood was spouting from a gash in her forehead. She tried to listen for breathing, but if it was there, it was weak. May looked around desperately for help, calling to running figures, backlit by flames licking out of the carriage windows. With the train now a crazy jumble of carriages piled into the ditch, rescuers were pulling out bodies from wherever they could and dragging them away from the train. Clearly the fire was likely to take hold of it any minute.

  ‘Help! Help, over here, someone’s wounded!’ she screamed, her voice scraping her throat hoarse. Unable to attract anyone’s attention, May put her hands under Eileen’s armpits and heaved. Halfway up the embankment she spotted another recruit from her party. It was Pat, a well-spoken but rather loud girl, who’d spent most of the journey standing outside in the corridor, being chatted up by a soldier with a seemingly endless supply of cigarettes.

  ‘Pat, come and help!’ May shouted hoarsely, still tugging at Eileen’s shoulders, ‘She’s too heavy.’ May shielded her face from the flames, which were getting hotter and hotter. ‘We’ve got to move her away from the fire.’

  But Pat’s face was a blank, her eyes wide. She shook her head and took several steps back. She turned and ran.

  ‘Pat!’ May called after the girl, but she had seen such terror before. Sometimes it froze people to the spot; sometimes they ran. Pat was so petrified she probably hadn’t even registered the wounded girl in May’s arms. She turned back to Eileen. Finding strength, which later she wouldn’t recognize as her own, she dug her feet into the soft earth and heaved. Straining every muscle, till the dead weight of the young woman yielded to her will, inch by inch, May dragged her up the rest of the bank. Nearing the top she felt her strength drain away, but with one last effort pushed Eileen out in front of her, up over the embankment. The last thing she heard was a boom, louder than all the ack-ack guns in Southwark Park combined. She rolled back down the embankment as a red flash seared her eyes and then there was blackness.

  She came round, lying a few yards from the track.

  ‘Eileen?’ She looked frantically around.

  The girl was nowhere to be seen. May pushed herself up and hot gimlets pierced her eyes. She shielded them from the light and the heat. The whole train was engulfed in flames, shooting out like tentacles of fire, ready to grab the nearest prey – which seemed to be May.

  The embankment was clear of bodies and as she tried to push herself up, she realized her strength was spent. It served her right for leaving her home. She was about to give into the heat and the pain, lay her head on the soft yielding earth beneath her, when she heard a voice coming from the top of the embankment. Though her head felt too heavy to lift, she raised it, and outlined by fire she saw an ATS girl, pointing down the embankment to where she lay. It was Pat.

  Feet in mud-caked boots surrounded her, then strong arms lifted her. Her cheek nestled against a rough khaki tunic. ‘You’re all right, love,’ a gravelly voice reassured her, and she looked up into the soot-streaked face of a fire warden.

  He carried her up the embankment, past ranks of wounded, and laid her on a stretcher. Job done, he turned to leave but not before May, with great effort, raised her hand to stop him. It shot fiery pain up her arm.

  ‘Thank you!’ she whispered, her voice hoarse from the fire.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, crouching at her side. ‘You’re a brave young woman – you saved someone’s life tonight.’

  A Red Cross nurse wrapped her in an army-issue blanket and bandaged her hand. Then, as some Auxiliary Ambulance women carried past a body on a stretcher, May recognized Eileen’s fair curls.

  ‘Is she all right?’ May called out. She tried to get up.

  ‘Careful now! You’re not going anywhere.’

  May groaned and felt her head; it was sticky with blood.

  ‘Can you tell me how my friend is?’ she asked, before falling back into unconsciousness.

  *

  May awoke in the local cottage hospital. The night before had melted into a blur of flames and molten metal and pain. Was it a dream, or had giants really picked her up and hurled her out of London? After a confused hour, having her bandages checked over by auxiliary nurses, and lights shone into her eyes by a doctor, she was finally pronounced walking wounded and allowed to get up.

  She found the rest of her ATS friends in the hospital canteen. They had largely escaped injury, and had decided to bed down in the hospital wherever they could find an unoccupied chair.

  ‘Eileen?’ May asked.

  Ruby nodded. ‘Doing all right, but she won’t be travelling nowhere for a while.’

  ‘Thank God,’ May said and noticed that Pat, not so loud now, avoided looking her in the eye.

  It took all May’s courage to get back on a train going north. The girls were all far more subdued on this leg of the journey than they had been when they set out. She looked out of the carriage window at the ever-changing countryside and wondered how it was that she’d gone through months of the Blitz with hardly a scratch and yet the minute she left her home the heavens turned against her. She knew it was senseless, a combination of exhaustion and a crack on the head, but still, she felt it as a punishment for leaving. Yet there was a trickle of something else, running through all her murky misgivings, like a clear stream. She had been blown clear out of London and had survived. More than that, she had perhaps saved her new friend’s life. She had stepped out of the bounds of all that was familiar, and nothing could ever be the same again.

  9

  Poppies and Planes

  February–April 1941

  It had been strange, going back to Atkinson’s. When Peggy had left after getting married, she’d imagined such a different life ahead of her. She’d envisaged a couple of children by now; perhaps George giving up his dodgy dealings, going into some legitimate business; even a little house, out Bromley way. A car dealership, that was what he’d talked about, when he’d promised her things would be different once they were married. But now she wasn’t sure if he ever intended to change his ways. Thieving, gambling, wheeling and dealing, it was all he’d ever known. There was a reason he’d grown up with the nickname Wide’oh.

  The factory was situated at the end of a cobbled alley, just wide enough for a horse and cart. Too narrow for a lorry, the drivers cursed its awkwardness and had to leave their vehicles in Southwark Park Road when making deliveries. But Peggy had always loved the approach to the factory, for the smell was delicious. A heady mixture of wildflowers and roses, all the sweet essence of the countryside distilled, funnelled from the factory down this little alley. It was all the more surprising that Atkinson’s should smell so sweet, since it was sited next to Young’s gelatin works, with its knacker-yard aroma. Peggy, when she’d started work, had chosen Atkinson’s primarily for its fragrance. She didn’t know how May stuck it at Garner’s, but by the time her sister
had started work, there were far fewer jobs about and May couldn’t afford to be fussy. Their parents had needed the money, with Dad in and out of work at the docks. But Peggy had always felt that it should have been poor May, the shrinking violet with her quiet, shy ways, working here and not herself. So she breathed deeply as she walked towards Atkinson’s, for in a borough which had been the dumping ground for every foul-smelling industry, from tanning to vinegar brewing, working in this place was a luxury, and the alleyway was like the secret entrance to a sweeter world.

  She’d assumed she’d be making plane parts, but after reporting in she found she’d be working on cosmetics. The factory was still producing face powder, cold creams, perfume and soap, though in smaller quantities than before the war and in the much plainer wartime packaging. Before the new intake of workers could start, they’d had to sit through a short rousing talk from the works manager. It was a well-rehearsed call to duty, about how they might not be in the forces, but they were doing valuable war work, not just those who would be making plane parts, but even those put on cosmetics.

  ‘You’ll be helping to keep up morale!’ he said. ‘What woman, even in the forces, doesn’t feel better facing the day with a bit of war paint on! And what chap in the forces ain’t cheered up by the sight of his sweetheart looking glamorous!’

  Peggy heard a few groans coming from the other women starting with her that day. But she was just glad to be back at work, with the chance to earn her own money, make her own choices.

  She and three other new women were sent to the powder room and as she pushed through the double swing-doors, she had to smile to herself, that a woman who’d been forbidden to wear make-up by her husband would now be making it for the war effort. She toyed with the idea of slapping some on and trying that line on George when she visited: ‘Oh, I’m only wearing make-up, dear, because it’s good for morale!’ But she decided it wouldn’t be fair to rub his nose in her newfound liberty. She was nervous enough as it was about his reaction to her return to work. She wouldn’t be able to keep it from him for ever.

  The forelady approached, leaving tracks like footprints in snow across the factory floor, which was coated in fine white powder. Peggy recognized her, Hattie Bustin. They used to work alongside each other, on the California Poppy packing line, though for some reason, the woman now pretended not to know her and made an unnecessary show of treating Peggy like any other new employee.

  ‘This is where you load up your powder.’ She led them along a row of high wooden hoppers, each with a ladder leaning against it. ‘It goes down your chutes to the mixing and packing rooms, down there.’ Hattie pointed a finger to the floor beneath them.

  ‘Your powder gets mixed with the California Poppy, White Rose and Black Tulip, then the girls pack it. Now there’s a war on, it goes in the brown cardboard boxes, saves tin.’

  Peggy remembered the pretty talc and face-powder tins, printed with sophisticated women and bright flowers. It was a shame they had to go – it made the job drabber, without all those illusions of glamour in a tin.

  ‘You work in twos. One of you gets yourself a bucket of powder, out the chests over there, you carries it up the ladder and tips it in the hopper. The other one holds the ladder steady. Got it?’

  They all nodded. Hattie’s nickname was Hatchet-face. Unsmiling, square-jawed, straight-lipped, she didn’t have the sort of demeanour that invited questions. But Peggy knew all there was to know about the simple task required of them. She also had a vivid memory of aching calves and shoulder muscles, after a day spent filling the hoppers. The best thing about working on this floor was the freedom. Once she’d set you up, the forelady didn’t hang around. There was nothing for her to supervise, and she would leave them alone for the rest of the day. The three other women had never worked at Atkinson’s before, so once Hattie had disappeared and they’d paired up, Peggy explained.

  ‘So long as we keep the powder coming for them downstairs, nobody’ll bother us. When the hoppers are nearly full, we can take a crafty break. Once they’re half empty, we’ll start again.’

  The young girl she’d paired up with looked a bit worried.

  ‘Trust me, love, you’ve got to pace yourself, otherwise your legs’ll be falling off you by the end of the morning.’

  Peggy volunteered to be the one going up and down the ladder; in the afternoon they would swap. She scooped up a bucket of powder, and started up the ladder, the first of many trips which, by clocking-off time, had her ruing the day she ever thought she should go back to work. But that night, when she stretched herself out across the empty bed, Peggy found that she didn’t mind her aching legs at all.

  After a week on days, hatchet-face Hattie came to her with a request. ‘We need you on nights for a week,’ she said unceremoniously.

  ‘But I said I only want days. I’m doing voluntary work on the canteens at night!’

  Hattie jerked her head in the general direction of the offices. ‘They say it’s urgent. Everyone’s got to do Saturdays and nights till the order’s got out.’

  ‘How can a tin of talc be more urgent than looking after the poor sods who’ve been bombed out?’

  Peggy wasn’t at all sure the order had come from the office.

  ‘With your old man in the nick I’d have thought you’d do anything to keep this job. Ne’ mind about voluntary work! Anyhow, the talc’s for soldiers’ packs, going out to the Far East. That useful enough for you?’

  Peggy wasn’t sure what she’d done to upset Hattie, but she’d obviously made up her mind about a woman whose husband was spending the war in prison. The forelady was right about her needing the job, but for Peggy being back at Atkinson’s still felt less like work than a sort of holiday – from her old life and that perfect little flat.

  *

  She could have wished for a more efficient partner, but she was stuck with Ada for a week of nights. A sweet young girl, who turned out to be a niece of her parent’s neighbor Flo, she was so nervous of heights that Peggy was the one spending most of her time atop the ladder.

  On their last night shift, as she was standing on the top rung, leaning forward to tip a bucket of white powder into the hopper, the room suddenly exploded. The wooden boards of the hopper blew outwards, the ladder toppled backwards and Peggy found she was swaying on top of it. Any minute she would crash to the floor below; instinctively she threw all her weight in the opposite direction. The ladder sprang back towards the hopper, but instead of the comforting thud of solid wood against the ladder, there was only air. She could see nothing. The room was filled with clouds of choking white powder, and from her unsupported perch, she glimpsed through the high windows what looked like swirls of snow. Time seemed to freeze, the blast turning the room into a snow globe, and she was trapped inside. Peggy screamed for help, but her mouth filled with talcum powder as she fell forward. Bracing herself for the bone-crunching landing on the hard factory floor, she felt instead a soft thud, as if she had fallen on to Granny Byron’s feather mattress. She had landed on top of a yielding mound of talcum powder, spilled from the hopper. She lay spread-eagled, mouth, eyes and ears full of the cloying snow. Her hands curled into it. She didn’t know if she were facing up or down, or if anyone else had survived the bomb blast. For now her senses were returning, she knew a bomb was the only explanation.

  She spat clay from her mouth and shouted. ‘Help! Anyone there?’

  Immediately she felt a hand grip her ankle. ‘You’re all right, Peg, just let yourself fall.’ The small hand pulled her firmly down the side of the snowy mountain of powder, till her feet touched the floor and she was helped to unsteady feet. As she rubbed her eyes, she could see it was her young helper, Ada.

  ‘Christ, you look like a snowman, Peg!’ she said.

  Wiping powder from her lashes, Peggy looked at her rescuer. ‘And you look like a bloody ghost!’ Putting her arm round Ada’s shoulders, she hobbled across the powder-strewn floor to where the door should have been. It had been blown clean
off and now she could feel a draught. The back wall of the factory was breached and she saw it was raining outside. As sheets of rain blew in through the powder room, the mountain of talc began to turn into a slushy china clay.

  ‘Come on, Ada, let’s get out of here.’

  Outside they were greeted by a scene of panic. They had been hit with a lightning raid. It seemed there had been no warning, perhaps because of the moonless night and the driving rain, the spotters hadn’t seen the plane coming. But the ARP wardens were now in action, stretchering the injured and leading the walking wounded slowly out of the building. Out in the street, shivering with shock and cold, she found herself being draped in a blanket and guided towards a Red Cross van. But before she reached it, she noticed that Babs had already turned up in the mobile canteen and was doling out mugs of tea to walking wounded and rescue workers.

  ‘You go on, Ada,’ she said, straightening up. ‘Looks like I’ll be on the canteen tonight after all!’

  She rolled up her sleeves and, still covered from head to foot in white powder, got into the back of the van – much to the amusement of Babs.

  *

  She should have been exhausted. For weeks she kept up a relentless routine of working all day at the factory, dashing home for her tea, then spending most evenings out in the mobile canteen. If she was lucky, she’d get a nap before setting off for the WVS station and then try to catch a few hours when her stint had ended. But she was exhilarated more than exhausted. Since returning to Atkinson’s she’d been moved all over the factory. Working in the powder room was the most tiring, and she found herself praying to be sent to the perfumes section, where the only part of her that was exercised was her index finger. As rows of filled bottles of California Poppy passed before her on a conveyer belt, Peggy had to dip her finger into a pile of black bottle-caps and dot a cap on to the open bottle-top, ready for a woman further down the line who screwed on the top. It was so monotonous that sometimes Peggy’s eyes closed and she did the work almost in her sleep. But the foreladies were like ferocious guard dogs prowling the lines and wouldn’t hesitate to dock her pay if she was found to be slacking.