Gunner Girls and Fighter Boys Read online

  They circled the crater. ‘Jack remembers everything, don’t you?’

  The little boy grinned up at her.

  Just then Peggy noticed a bent wheel with mangled spokes, propped against the back wall, and next to it the frame of what appeared to be an old bicycle.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked. And taking charge, little Jack said, ‘Penny-farving.’

  Mrs Gilbie led them further round the edge of the crater. ‘The old penny-farthing came off worse than Sam. I think my husband was more worried about the bike than himself, to be honest. It was his father’s, and he’s kept it all this time…’

  Peggy watched May bend down to look at the old machine. She looked up sadly. ‘Oh, what a shame! Bill told me all about this – he said you used to ride it as well!’

  And Mrs Gilbie threw back her head and laughed. ‘I did, and what a sight I looked on it too!’

  Peggy left the Gilbies’ house feeling that, in spite of bombs in the backyard, Jack could not be in a safer place and that, like Mr Gilbie, she herself would emerge from the bomb crater of her life one day, perhaps able even to laugh at the experience.

  The next day May was travelling back to Essex and Peggy made sure she set the alarm for an hour earlier. She’d been finding it harder to drag herself out of sleep these days. Perhaps it was the pregnancy, but she thought it more likely just a result of the long months burning the candle at both ends. But she wanted to send off her sister with a good breakfast. With so many train cancellations and delays, who knew what time she’d arrive back at the base. She had just wrapped a packed lunch of fish-paste sandwiches when her sister walked into the kitchen.

  ‘Look at you, late on parade! And them buttons could do with a bit of polishing,’ she joked, as May came to inspect the sandwiches. Peggy thought she looked good in her uniform, but it still seemed unreal that her little sister was a soldier in charge of a gun team.

  ‘Now sit down. I’ve made you porridge and a sausage sandwich for breakfast.’

  ‘Oh thanks, love, but you need to be saving rations for yourself!’

  Peggy put the porridge in front of May and went back to the frying pan. ‘Got to feed the troops first.’

  ‘Well, you are the troops too. You know what they say about war workers, the girl that makes the thingamabob and all that…’

  ‘Oh yeah, I wish. They put me back on talcum powder last week!’ Her war work was obscure, but Peggy liked the idea that a plane part would have her stamp upon it.

  ‘Well, packing talcum powder for keeping soldier’s feet dry is all part of the war effort, I suppose,’ May said.

  Peggy laughed, but the contrast with her sister’s return to the guns was stark and she began to have that old dragging sense of uselessness she’d had when George was home. Sometimes she’d felt like one of those ginger ale bottles, with the glass stopper pulled down tight. When he was put away, the glass stopper had come off and she hadn’t stopped fizzing since. She dreaded a return to that old life, which had never felt hers. But, whatever work she did, she had her independence and the WVS canteen, and she had Harry, however forbidden and far away he might be.

  ***

  After May had left for Essex, Peggy felt the burden of family responsibilities as never before. She began to realize how shielded she’d been by her early marriage to George, and she appreciated for the first time, how much May had held things together at home while she had lived in her sheltered little palace on the Purbrook Estate. Now she was the one to jolly their mother along and keep her in the land of the living, but she could do nothing about her father’s lonely vigil in the bombed-out house in Southwark Park Road.

  She worried about his health. Half the house was uninhabitable. January had come in with a deep frost, so that Bermondsey’s streets were six inches deep in snow. The house had only half a roof and he was living in the kitchen, with only a primus stove to cook on. When she went to catch the bus for work one morning, Tower Bridge stood like a white-laced web across the Thames and all the sky above it was grey, with swirling snow filling the space between the towers. She shivered as she got off the bus and hurried down the snow-choked alleyway leading to Atkinson’s gates. She made her way to the plane parts department, but was met by Hattie, the forelady.

  ‘Sorry, Peg, you’re still on talc,’ she said.

  ‘But I thought it was temporary!’ Peggy said, disappointed.

  ‘Still short-staffed. We’re not getting enough of the new conscripts – all seem to be going into the ATS!’

  It was no use grumbling. She walked upstairs to the hoppers and began the first of her many trips, heaving buckets of talcum powder up the ladder.

  ‘Make sure you keep it steady!’ she called down to her partner Ada, who had never conquered her fear of heights. ‘No, don’t look up at me, you’ll get a crick in your neck – you just concentrate on holding the bloody ladder!’ she shouted down from the top, and began tipping in the first bucket. But she was caught by a coughing fit, and remembered the major drawback of this job, the fine powder invading nose, eyes and ears, so that at the end of the day her face would look ghost-like with its white mask. As she coughed, she felt the ladder wobble.

  ‘Hold it, hold it!’

  But Ada’s hands had slipped and the ladder swayed. Peggy made a wild grab for the edge of the hopper, letting go of the half-empty bucket, which tumbled down towards Ada, banging against the side of the hopper and showering its snow-like contents all over the girl as it fell. Ada screamed, ducked out of the way and let go of the ladder altogether. As Peggy felt the rung slip from under her feet and fall away, she grasped the edge of the hopper with both hands, like a high-wire act on a trapeze.

  ‘Oh my gawd! Get the ladder back!’ she screamed down to Ada.

  Legs swinging wildly, her feet looking for purchase somewhere, she daren’t look down, but heard a great deal of scrabbling and banging as the girl struggled with the heavy ladder.

  ‘Hold on, Peg!’ one of the other women shouted. ‘I wasn’t thinking of bloody well letting go!’ Peggy shouted. ‘Hurry up!’

  Her arms were pulling out of their sockets and she felt her palms slipping on the powdery wooden edge.

  ‘Here it comes!’

  The ladder thudded against the side of the hopper and she edged one foot out until she felt it. Gingerly resting her feet on the top rung, she tested it.

  ‘Are you holding it?’ she called down. When she was sure the ladder was rock-steady she put all her weight on it, coming down one rung at a time. But her legs were trembling so violently and her palms so sweaty that she lost her footing. She felt herself falling and, gripping the ladder so tightly that her hands burned, she tried to slow her descent. Five feet from the floor, she lost her grip and thudded to the ground, her legs twisting beneath her and her head thudding against the floor with a crack.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Peggy!’ Ada was covered head to toe in the white powder from Peggy’s bucket.

  But Peggy couldn’t move her legs and she winced as a sharp pain shot up the side of her head.

  ‘Are you all right, love?’ One of the other women was trying to help her up. ‘I don’t know about munitions, but I reckon they should give us danger money! You nearly had your lot! That would’ve been a good ’un, the first war worker killed by talcum powder!’

  From a long way off, Peggy heard laughter, a couple of other women chuckling with relief. Then the grating voice of the forelady broke through the fog.

  ‘Oi, oi, oi! What’s all the bleedin’ noise about? It’s not a soddin’ beano you know, you’re meant to be working!’

  ‘Sorry, Hattie,’ Peggy heard Ada say. ‘It’s my fault, I let go of the ladder.’

  ‘What d’you do that for? It’s all you’ve got to do! Don’t think I ain’t noticed it’s that poor cow going up and down it all day. Now stop pissin’ about.’

  As Hattie bent down to help, Peggy saw two of her hatchet faces looming above her, before she slipped away into darkness.

&
nbsp; *

  Peggy reached up to pat her helper’s cheek. She was lying somewhere soft and comfortable, not the hard factory floor she remembered tumbling on to.

  ‘Dad!’ she said, her mind still a fog of powder. ‘Dad? What are you doing here?’

  She knew he shouldn’t be here, but for the moment she couldn’t remember why.

  ‘I’ve run all the way from Southwark Park Road,’ he said, his chest heaving, and she could feel his heart thumping as he drew her in tightly. He smelled of burned ashes and snow. ‘Ada came for me. You’ve cracked your head, love.’

  He stood aside and she realized that he had been holding her, and she didn’t want him to move away. She held him with her gaze.

  ‘You’re all right now, gel. Just let the nurse have a look at you.’

  And she obediently opened her eyes wide, as the factory nurse shone a torch into them, before pronouncing her fit to leave.

  ‘The ankle’s sprained, but no broken bones.’ The nurse addressed her father, as if Peggy were a child. ‘Just take her to a doctor if she starts to get drowsy.’

  Her father draped his jacket around her as Hattie came into the first-aid room.

  ‘You keep her at home till she’s feeling up to it, hear me?’ Hattie ordered her father, and the woman gave her an unexpected hug.

  ‘Come on, love,’ her father said. ‘Let’s go home.’

  So Peggy found herself back in Southwark Park Road, sitting in her father’s little camp, as this was what he’d meant by ‘home’. It was certainly nearer than the Purbrook, but had none of the comforts.

  He put into her hands a steaming mug of tea, which he’d loaded with condensed milk and a drop of brandy. ‘Get that down yer, gel,’ he said, and turned to stoke up the fire which he’d got going, throwing on to it something that looked very like a piece of her mother’s carved wardrobe door.

  He had put her in a chair, so close to the fire that her legs began to mottle, and he hunkered down next to her on a little stool so that she could look down into his anxious face.

  ‘You don’t look well, Dad.’

  ‘Oh, I’m rubbing along all right, don’t worry about me.’

  She looked around the room. It was filled with an assortment of furniture saved from the fire damage: a wash stand and a few drawers from her parent’s bedroom, and a pile of clothing that looked to Peggy to be going mouldy.

  ‘Do you want me to go through that stuff for you? It smells a bit, Dad.’

  He shook his head sadly. ‘I tried to save some of the home, for when your mother comes back, but I suppose it’ll have to go.’

  Her head was aching and the muscles across her shoulders seemed suddenly on fire.

  ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help, Dad.’

  He shook his head. ‘You would’ve been, if it weren’t for me. Stupid, stupid – I realized that when I thought you might have got killed in that factory and I never had a chance to say – well, I was wrong. Whatever you’ve done, blood’s thicker ’an water and… you’re me daughter when all’s said and done.’

  He wiped his hands across his forehead, shielding his eyes. But soon she realized he was crying.

  ‘Oh, don’t do that, Dad, don’t, there’s no need.’

  When Peggy felt strong enough, he took her home to her flat. He insisted that she lie down on the sofa as soon as they got in.

  ‘Let’s get you comfy,’ he said, tucking a blanket around her, before laying a fire. He hadn’t shown her such tenderness since before she was married.

  ‘If you’re sure you’re all right on your own, I’d best be getting back to the house,’ he said, picking up his cap. He stood in front of the sofa and suddenly bent to kiss her cheek.

  ‘I’m sorry, love, I should never have let you marry George. I thought it was for the best, you know, that he’d give you everything I never could…’ She had never seen her father so vulnerable.

  ‘Oh, Dad, I made my own choices…’

  But he interrupted her. ‘No, I’m your father. I should’ve known, and there’s a lot I’ve found out about George since he went inside that I didn’t know before. Stories about him selling stuff from bombed-out houses, standing in for shirkers at the recruitment office. I was shocked.’ There was always a call for someone with such ill health as George, to stand in for recruits and get them signed off as ‘unfit’ for service. Peggy had suspected it was one of George’s sources of income, but she hadn’t been sure. Yet she had never wanted her father to hate her husband, just to forgive her.

  ‘George is always going to be a villain, Dad, and I can’t say he was a bad husband… I just felt… well, dead,’ she finished weakly, exhausted from the day, and asked, ‘Why don’t you pack up Southwark Park Road, and stay with us here?’

  He hesitated, holding his cap. ‘I suppose I could do.’

  And Peggy felt nothing but gratitude that after the gulf that had opened between them her father was here, and she was forgiven. As the door closed, she had to smile at how this morning she’d gone to work anticipating another dull day. She should have known that in this war, dullness and danger were never far from each other. It was as she turned over to sleep, that she felt a sharp pain shoot through her stomach. ‘Oh God, no, not now,’ she prayed. ‘Not now.’

  20

  Gold and Pleasant Land

  January–Spring 1942

  The water in the bucket was frozen over. May picked up the shovel propped outside the hut door and started hacking away at the ice. The pipes had frozen in the ablution block, so the only water they’d have for washing was in the fire bucket. After a couple of whacks she’d chipped a hole in the surface and eased off the crust of ice. It wasn’t going to be a very thorough wash this morning. She poked her head back through the door of the hut. ‘Come on, rise and shine and bring us your mugs!’ She heard groans from inside and a ‘Put some wood in the soddin’ hole!’ from the direction of Emmy’s bed.

  ‘Well, when the water’s gone, it’s gone!’ she warned, dipping her mug into the bucket and splashing her face and hands with icy water. Her fingertips turned white, burned by the ice. She flapped her hands around to get the blood moving and decided a cat’s lick was all she could stand today. It was the best she could do with a cup of icy water and, shivering, she pulled her greatcoat closer round her, peering across the iron-hard ground towards frost- rimmed trees at the edge of the gun park. Today her team was on reserve, which meant fatigues. She was almost glad she’d been detailed to help out in the stores. At least she’d be warm. Even if the rest of the camp froze, there was never a shortage of coal for the stores’ stove.

  As she entered the stores building she was hit with a blast of heat from the cylindrical cast-iron stove. The pipes here hadn’t frozen and May was set to cleaning floors with bucket and mop. Pat’s transfer to stores had gone through with no quibbling from her superiors and though she might not be the bravest of soldiers, she was a hard worker. She came over at once to help May and they soon got up a rhythm, their mops synchronized like a pair of rowers.

  ‘How was Christmas at your uncle’s?’ May asked. For Pat had told her she was expecting another dull leave, with just herself and the bachelor uncle at his horse farm in Gloucestershire. May had felt sorry for her, but after her own troubled Christmas she’d begun to envy Pat’s uncomplicated home life. Now the girl surprised her with a slow spreading smile.

  ‘Not so dull after all – I met a chap!’

  May always had the impression that Pat was somehow impervious to men; she flirted a lot, but never seemed to take things further than that. So to see her now, her face softened by the memory of a man, was something novel.

  ‘You?’

  ‘Well, don’t sound so surprised. I’m not that unattractive, am I?’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that! I just thought that you weren’t interested in settling down.’

  Pat, with her glossy dark hair, almost-black eyes and high colouring, was certainly not plain. But May had discovered that her attra
ctiveness grew with familiarity. Initially her features could seem hard, her expression suspicious, sometimes arrogant. But over the months, May had seen Pat’s appearance increasingly soften as her trust grew. It had been like watching the sun behind a bank of clouds; first the gilded rim had appeared and gradually the shadows of her face had lightened.

  They had finished mopping one section and went to refill their buckets with clean water.

  ‘I’ve got nothing against settling down, just never met the right man, I suppose. But this one… he’s just…’

  ‘Right?’

  Pat laughed. ‘Well, I think so – but I’m not so sure my father would agree if he found out. Mark works for my uncle…’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Oh, because he’s a stable lad – my father would think he wasn’t good enough for me. I’m not sure if my uncle will approve either. My only hope is if I can get the major on my side – he’s got a soft spot for me, probably more so than my father.’ The old hardness flashed in Pat’s eyes as she spoke.

  May was confused; she thought Pat’s father was the military man.

  ‘Who’s the major?’

  ‘My uncle! He retired from the army years ago, but everyone still calls him the major. He’s nothing like my father, though – at least he cares about me being happy. With Dad, it’s all about appearances.’

  ‘Oh.’

  This was more than Pat had ever let on about her soldier father; she’d always seemed so proud of him.

  ‘Anyway, it doesn’t really matter what I do. I’ll always disappoint my father. I wasn’t born a boy, was I?’

  May shook her head ruefully as they carried back their full buckets. ‘Don’t talk to me about disappointed fathers. We had murders at home over Christmas. Dad’s not talking to my sister, and you know we got bombed out? Well, he’d rather camp in a ruin than go to her place. I thought poor Mum was getting better, but now she’s practically living down the Underground again…’