by AJ Pearce
I understood what he was saying. There was a strange comfort in seeing the power of the munitions factory for myself. In peacetime I would perhaps have felt differently. In the middle of a world war, I wanted to know that Charles, or my brother Jack, or any other man who was risking his life, would have every possible chance to defend himself.
‘Of course, they’re also good at the detail work. It’s the smaller fingers.’ He held up a sausagey hand. ‘They’re better equipped for the fiddly bits. Now, what else do you want to know?’
I wanted to say, ‘Everything.’ What guns were the women making? How many hours did they work? What were they paid? And was it as hard as it looked?
Most of all, I wanted to talk to the women themselves, to find out how they felt about their jobs and being part of such an enormous team effort. Politicians said, ‘We’re In It Together,’ endlessly but I wanted to see if Chandlers’ women workers felt the same way. Did they really feel they were doing their bit for their boys, or was Mr Rice just being fanciful?
‘When can I speak with the women?’ I shouted as a screeching noise threatened to drown me out.
As Anne re-joined us, Mr Rice looked at his watch. ‘Not long, now. And Mr Terry definitely said he was happy about this?’ he said, which I thought enigmatic. Then his face changed completely.
‘Hold up,’ he snapped. ‘What the hell’s that?’
I followed his stare. To my astonishment, two young children were sitting cross-legged on the floor by the wall. They couldn’t have been more than twenty feet from one of the lathes.
‘Take Miss Lake to the canteen,’ Mr Rice barked at Anne. ‘TO THE CANTEEN, MRS OLIVER,’ he shouted, as Anne made a move towards the children instead.
‘Blast it,’ she said, as women at their benches began to look round and I tried to see what was happening. ‘Come on, Emmy. It’ll make it worse if we stay. He’s going to hit the roof.’
Looking over my shoulder, I saw that one of the men with clipboards had rushed over to Mr Rice and the two of them were now having a very animated discussion. Mr Rice had his hands on his hips and looked absolutely livid.
‘Anne,’ I said as she dragged me out. ‘What on earth are children doing in a munitions factory?’
‘Ssssh,’ said Anne, even though with the noise of the factory there was no chance we could have been overheard.
She hustled me out of a side door and into the damp air where she finally let go of my arm.
I asked again. ‘Why would anyone in their right mind bring their children here? This is the last place in the world they should be.’
Anne’s face had been a picture of concern, but now a look of anger flashed across it. ‘Don’t be so quick to judge,’ she said, hotly. ‘Their mum Irene is one of my friends. She hasn’t a choice. They’ve nowhere else to go.’
*
As Anne and I made our way to the canteen in the building next door, she began to fill me in on what was happening in the factory.
‘I’m sorry to shout at you. This is the third time Irene’s been caught since I’ve been here,’ she said in a low voice as we walked through an empty corridor. ‘The chargehands usually turn a blind eye because there’s nothing Irene can do, but now that Mr Rice has seen them, it’s another matter. Honestly, Emmy,’ she stressed, ‘it’s not her fault.’
She pushed open the door to the canteen. ‘We’re not supposed to be in here for another ten minutes but let’s try to bagsie a table. The other girls are due at half past. I hope you don’t mind eating so early. Our shift started at six.’
I wasn’t at all interested in food or drink. I was still shocked at seeing children in such a dangerous place.
‘It’s pretty grim though, isn’t it?’ I said, after Anne had told one of the dinner-ladies that we’d been sent by Mr Rice, so she let us sit at one of the long wooden tables. ‘What if one of the children gets hurt?’
‘Of course it’s grim,’ said Anne, who I could see was trying not to be short with me. ‘But her husband’s in the navy and she hasn’t any family locally. Sheila – she’s seven – is at school mostly, but if a neighbour can’t look after Enid then she’s up a gum tree. So Irene’s managed to sneak the girls in here. Sheila looks after Enid and stops her running around.’
A seven-year-old looking after her younger sister in a factory. No wonder Mr Rice had seen red.
‘Sorry to be snappy,’ said Anne, again. ‘I was on the same section as Irene when I first started. She was very kind to me, and we’ve become friendly. My mum had the girls once, but Irene lives on the other side of town, and Mum has her hands full with my two as it is.’
Anne leant her elbows on the table. She looked worried and tired.
‘What about you, Anne?’ I asked. ‘How are you settling in?’
Anne took a deep breath and smiled, immediately changing to a cheerier look. ‘Oh, I’m fine thanks,’ she said. ‘The girls are a good lot and I enjoy the work. If I was single, like Betty, I wouldn’t have a care in the world. But it’s a twelve-hour day including the bus, so I go home, help Mum with the kids and the house and by then, I’m almost dead on my feet.’
She laughed, slightly unconvincingly. ‘Do you know, I can sleep at any time of the day, now? Crash, I’m asleep! Although if I’ve been on the nightshift the children think I’m there to play with them all day. I’m not complaining, Emmy. I miss them ever so much when I’m here. But I’m flipping lucky to have my mum.’
‘Do you have to work such long hours?’ I asked. ‘Could you share a shift with someone else? And please tell me if I’m being too nosy.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Anne. She put her head slightly to one side and stared at me for a moment. ‘I don’t mind telling you. I need to work full-time,’ she said. ‘When Anthony was alive, because he was off fighting, I got twenty-eight shillings a week Married Woman’s allowance, and twelve and six for each of the children. With the money he sent out of his wages it added up nicely if I took care. But if your boy dies, you lose his wages of course, and they stop the twenty-eight shillings because they say you’re not a Married Woman anymore. So then, you have to pay single woman’s tax on your wages and the pension, too. It makes a big difference.’ She paused. ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s poor form to talk about money.’
For the first time today, Anne’s face lost its stoicism. She looked utterly defeated. Then her brown eyes narrowed, and she raised her eyes to meet my gaze.
‘You know, Emmy, you don’t just lose them,’ she said quietly. ‘Even if no one ever wants to talk about it, the fact is, loads of us have lost almost everything.’
CHAPTER NINE
It’s the Same Everywhere
I SEARCHED FOR something to say. We’d had letters to “Yours Cheerfully” from war widows, women who were struggling with the unspeakable pain of loss, and some who were now struggling in very different circumstances, but no one had ever spelt it out so starkly. And there was me blithely suggesting Anne could just go and work part-time.
‘I’m the one who should say sorry, Anne,’ I said. ‘That was stupid of me.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Anne said, leaning forward and patting my hand. ‘You can’t know everything.’
‘Well, I jolly well should know these things,’ I said. ‘I work for a women’s problem page, for goodness’ sake.’
Anne shrugged. ‘Chandlers doesn’t have part-time workers anyway. But let’s not talk about me. I’m more worried about Irene finding someone to look after the girls, or at least a nursery for Enid. But she hasn’t a chance. Nurseries don’t fit in with our hours.’
Before I could find out more, Anne stood up and looked for the friends she had arranged to come and talk to me during their break. Spotting them, she waved vigorously, and a small group of women hurried across the canteen.
‘Here they come,’ she said. ‘Now then, I’ll let you have a good chat before I mention Irene. I want you to get a decent view of this place, but if we start off by talking about her being in troubl
e, you’ll end up thinking we all hate it, which wouldn’t be fair. And you wouldn’t have much to write in your article either,’ she said, now smiling. ‘We can’t have that.’
I quickly agreed and thought how lucky I had been to meet Anne. She was one of the most generous people I knew.
While we had been talking, the room had begun to fill up. Large groups of women in their brown work coats and overalls streamed in for their lunch break. The huge canteen was now a hubbub of noise as women put bags on chairs or tables and then grabbed trays and joined the queues for a hot dinner, standing in line and stretching their arms and moving their shoulders after working in the same position for hours.
‘Girls, this is Miss Emmeline Lake, from Woman’s Friend,’ said Anne, becoming rather formal. ‘Emmeline, this is Betty who I’ve mentioned, and these are my friends Violet and Maeve. We all work together.’
‘Hello,’ I said, as we shook hands. ‘Do call me Emmy. Has Anne volunteered you all for this? It’s not too late to back out.’ I gave them what I hoped was a reassuring smile.
‘Oh, no,’ said Betty. With her brown hair and dark eyes, she could have been Anne’s sister. ‘We don’t mind at all. We’ve never been in a magazine before.’
‘I hope I won’t say the wrong thing,’ said Violet.
‘You always say the wrong thing,’ said Maeve, and the girls laughed.
‘It’s all right, Violet,’ I said. ‘So do I.’
Everyone laughed again and with the ice broken, we went off to get some food.
As we queued up, Maeve gave a running commentary of the ups and downs of the menu.
‘Avoid the Scotch Broth,’ she said, pulling a face. ‘The greens are nice enough, but if there’s sprouts, they’ll be like bullets. They do a good steak and kidney pud and you get loads of potatoes if you ask nicely.’
I hadn’t had kidneys in ages, and at three courses for a shilling it was nice to see something to be cheerful about after my conversation with Anne. I glanced at the posters that lined the walls, advertising lunchtime concerts in the canteen.
‘We had Arthur Askey last week,’ said Betty, noticing me looking. ‘He’s even smaller than you’d think. But he did make us laugh. I wish we could get Gracie Fields though.’
‘Or Ambrose and his Orchestra,’ said Maeve.
‘You’d never fit them all in,’ said Violet. ‘Remember when we had those jugglers? One of them kept falling off the side of the stage. They had to pretend it was part of the act.’
The conversation turned to our favourite performers and within minutes we had started on our loaded-up trays and were chatting, with any nervousness now gone. Workers’ Playtime started playing out of some loudspeakers and the tunes added to the feeling of not having to do or say anything ‘the right way’.
I had out my notebook although everyone seemed keener to ask questions about Woman’s Friend.
‘We’ve all started reading it since we met Anne,’ said Violet.
‘Viyyye,’ interrupted Anne. ‘What did we say?’
‘Oh, bother,’ said Violet. ‘I told you it would be me. Sorry, Emmy, we promised to tell you we’d all been reading it for ages.’
Violet was clearly the youngest of the friends and seemed quite happy in her role as scatterbrain.
‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘I don’t want you to think you have to.’
‘Oh no,’ said Vi, poking an errant curl back under her yellow headscarf. ‘We really enjoy it. It’s not half as old-fashioned as I’d thought.’
Anne shook her head in dismay.
‘We are proper readers, honestly,’ said Maeve, looking at me sincerely through her glasses. ‘Are you allowed to tell us about the problem page? We’re all dying to know about it.’
‘I’ll say,’ said Vi. ‘Do people ever write back? I’d like to know what happened to the girl who was having the lodger’s baby.’
‘Or the woman whose husband went off with her friend?’
Now they were all firing questions at me. Half the time, they said, they were convinced that the letters printed in “Yours Cheerfully” had been sent in by people they knew.
‘I’m ever so pleased you like it,’ I said. ‘But honestly, I want to talk about you.’ I looked up at the big clock on the wall by the window. ‘Tell me anything you like. What made you choose working here?’
Encouraged by Anne, the four women began to tell me their stories.
They had all started their jobs in the last few months and agreed that it felt wrong if you weren’t doing something as part of the war effort. Maeve had fancied joining the ATS, but didn’t want to leave home, so as she had three brothers in the army, munitions work was the least she could do. Betty said she was bored of working in an office so had decided to apply to Chandlers rather than wait to be called up and run the risk of getting sent to the back of beyond. Violet wanted to work and save up for when her husband came home. She was nineteen and they had got married last year. Now her husband was somewhere near Singapore. Violet carried a letter from him in her handbag, in which he’d said how proud of her he was for pulling her weight.
‘I don’t mind the long hours,’ Violet said. ‘But I wish I didn’t spend three hours a day on the bus.’
‘Especially when Betty starts going on about politics,’ added Maeve, giving Betty a nudge with her elbow.
Betty grinned. ‘I was only saying I thought it was about time Mr Churchill had a lady MP in the War Cabinet and this old bloke in front got all funny and told me to be quiet.’
She looked entirely undaunted.
‘I don’t think it helped when you said, “Put a sock in it, Grandad,”’ said Maeve, deadpan. ‘But I agree with Violet. It is a long day.’
I noted it down.
‘Is there anything else that’s hard, apart from the work itself of course?’ I asked. It was a leading question, but I was interested to know if everything was quite as wonderful as Mr Terry had made out. ‘I won’t put it in the article.’
There was a pause as the women glanced at each other. Then Betty spoke first.
‘I’ll tell you what makes me peeved,’ she said. ‘And that’s the men getting paid more than us for doing the same work. I don’t think that’s fair.’
‘They don’t have to do all the shopping and cooking at home either,’ said Maeve, scraping the last bit of sponge out of her bowl. ‘But that’s never going to change. Personally, I’d rather not work at weekends because of the kids, but as my husband said in one of his letters, they don’t get weekends off in Libya either.’ She looked philosophical. ‘So that’s what I tell the children. “If your dad’s got to work weekends to win the war, then so do I to make sure he’s got enough guns to kill all the baddies.” ’
The Ministry of Labour didn’t mention this in their adverts.
‘We aren’t moaning,’ said Maeve, quickly, as she noticed me listening intently. ‘It has to be done.’
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘I can’t really complain,’ said Betty. ‘I’m single and live in digs, so I don’t have to do much. The others have to fit in loads more than me.’
‘And old Rice Pudding is all right, really,’ said Violet, meaning Mr Rice.
‘Don’t say that to Irene Barker,’ said Anne, who had been quiet up until now. ‘We were with him just now when he spotted the children.’
Everyone looked at her with concern. Clearly word hadn’t reached the whole of Shed Twelve yet.
‘Why didn’t you say?’ said Violet.
‘Poor Irene,’ said Maeve. ‘What happened?’
To a chorus of sympathy, Anne told them the little that we had seen.
‘It’s just not fair,’ said Betty. ‘She’s been so unlucky to get caught.’
‘Do other people do it too?’ I said, perhaps a little too quickly.
There was a moment’s hesitation.
‘It’s nobody’s fault,’ said Maeve, firmly. ‘If you can’t get someone to look after them, what can you do? I’m lucky mine
are old enough to fend for themselves. Not,’ she added, ‘that I like leaving a thirteen-year-old in charge all the time.’
‘Isn’t there a Women’s Welfare Officer?’ I asked. ‘One who might understand? Irene can’t be the only one here struggling like this.’
‘You’re joking,’ said Maeve. ‘I don’t think the management realise that we have different lives to men. I don’t mean to be rude. As Vi says, Mr Rice is decent enough when he’s not in a grump, but Mr Terry’s the one who decides, and everyone knows he prefers to have girls here who don’t have kids.’
‘Not that we ever see him,’ said Betty. ‘Him and his big car. Flash Harry.’ Then, as if she’d noticed the others looking downcast, she began singing to a George Formby tune.
‘He thinks we’re impressed
He’s bursting out his vest,
Mr Terry, Rich from Jerry.
That’s Mr Terry.’
Violet joined in with the last line and everyone laughed, before looking round to make sure no one important had heard. I glanced over at Betty with renewed respect. I had the feeling she played up her role as the single girl with few responsibilities while actually trying to keep the others’ morale up.
The women were a good bunch all round, but it bothered me that if anything went wrong, Anne or Maeve might find themselves in the same jam as Irene Barker.
‘What about nurseries?’ I asked, following up on Anne’s earlier comment. ‘Not the normal ones, but the Government ones. We’re doing an article on them next week as they’re crying out for people to work for them.’
‘There’s your answer,’ said Maeve. ‘Everyone wants us to come into munitions, but they haven’t thought it through. It took a petition to get mirrors in the Ladies’ and when they put them in, you’d have thought they’d given us each a gold clock. Blimey,’ she added, ‘Emmy, you must think we’re a right bunch of whiners.’
‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘It’s really interesting.’