The Orphan Sisters: An Utterly Heartbreaking and Gripping World War 2 Historical Novel
Page 8
‘See you tomorrow,’ she said.
No one replied. Feeling downhearted, she made for the factory exit and, punching the time card, opened the door and emerged into the bright sunshine.
It was unusual to walk down the drive without hordes of workers pushing and shoving and bicycle wheels slamming into her legs.
‘Hang on, Etty!’ a voice called from behind.
She turned and saw May hurrying towards her, pushing a bicycle. The lass wore a grey two-piece suit with square shoulders and low-heeled slip-on shoes suitable for wear in the canteen.
‘Eee, I’m sorry about the commotion in the canteen.’ Flushed and apologetic, May came alongside. ‘The staff get shirty when they want away on time.’
‘I noticed.’
‘They’re a happy team, normally,’ May said, loyally. ‘Anyways, I wanted to catch up with you. I’ve a favour to ask but I didn’t want to say in there,’ she nodded towards the factory.
‘What kind of favour?’
May’s shining black hair hung naturally around her face and she wore no make-up. With thick, curly eyelashes and creamy skin, she didn’t need any. But she was too thin and her bones stuck out prominently. There was no denying that May was pretty, and with her vulnerable look, she reminded Esther of the young actress Judy Garland.
‘Tell your Dorothy I don’t know when I’ll next get to meet up with her.’
‘Any specific reason why?’
‘Billy’s due some leave.’
Esther had noticed an engagement ring on the lass’s left hand. ‘Your fiancé?’
A look of adoration crossed May’s face. ‘Yes.’
‘He’s seen action, hasn’t he?’ Esther was sure Dorothy had told her something of that nature.
‘Yes. In France at Dunkirk.’ May’s eyes grew enormous. ‘Billy thought he was going to be taken prisoner but he managed to escape the beaches on one of those civilian boats. Poor lamb, with all the marching before, he was footsore and exhausted. His left foot went septic and he spent time in a military hospital in Leeds.’
‘How is he now?’
‘Champion… He’s back with his battalion.’
‘Where’s he stationed?’
‘He can’t say. He’s with the Northumberland Fusiliers. His battalion joined Home Forces and is somewhere down south.’ Pride shone from May’s eyes. ‘He hitchhikes home whenever he gets a pass.’
As they neared the gate, the pair of them stopped and faced each other.
‘Have you been engaged long?’ Esther surprised herself by asking.
May shook her head in wonder. ‘I still can’t believe I am. Billy proposed the day war was declared…’ She looked uncomfortable. ‘There’s not been an opportunity to arrange a time to get wed.’
‘Have you known him long?’
May appeared at a loss to know how to continue. ‘Billy and me, we… we went to school together. Oh, it’s a long story…’
Straddling her bicycle, she rode off.
‘Ta-ra,’ she called.
As the bus passed the grain warehouse and turned the corner, Esther, gazing out of the window, watched the scenery go by.
The road ran parallel with the ribbon of the River Tyne and beyond a high brick wall were the timber yards, docks, and cranes that soared high on the skyline.
The air was humid and Esther fought to keep her eyes open. The long shifts at the factory were gruelling and left her drained, but the fact that she was helping the war effort made it all worthwhile.
Her only wish was that she had a mate. A high level of camaraderie existed amongst the factory women – which Esther was excluded from. Listening to the conversations and the scandalous chatter, usually about fellows, was an education, and enough to make her toes curl. She was positive the married women were making fun of the younger girls but how could she tell? Esther had no experience on such matters. What she did know – and was shocked to realise – was that she wanted to hear more of the banter.
Bertha usually obliged.
‘Best you check out a lad’s shoe size before courting him,’ she told the machinists last Friday with a roguish gleam in her eye.
‘Why?’ came their cry.
‘It’s common knowledge,’ Bertha pulled a knowing face, ‘that big feet means big apparatus.’ The sight of their incredulous faces sent her into hoots of laughter. ‘And don’t any of you think you can get away with a bit on the side without us older ’uns knowing. Isn’t that right, ladies?’ Her eyes swept the married women around the table.
‘Aye,’ they chorused in unison.
‘How can you tell?’ Maisie Beale wanted to know.
A brunette, Maisie was renowned for gormlessness.
‘Suffice to say,’ Bertha met Maisie’s eye, ‘don’t go showing behind your ears.’
‘Why?’ Maisie’s eyes grew big and frightened.
‘Because, everyone knows, lass, it’s the one place you can tell if you’ve had a bit of how’s your father.’ Bertha stretched forward. ‘Shift your hair and let’s have a gander. I’m sure you’ve nothing to fear.’
Maisie, scraping back her chair, fled from the table.
In the shocked silence, Bertha threw back her head and laughed till she cried.
Later, in the cloakroom, as Esther washed her hands, she looked in the mirror at the group of machinists standing behind her.
A pretty redhead, who drew nervously on her ciggie, said, ‘I don’t care what anybody says… why shouldn’t me and Stuart go all the way? We’re engaged.’ She took another draw on her tab. ‘What if a bomb’s got our name on it, and we hadn’t… y’know… tried it,’ she pouted. ‘Anyway, what Bertha says is a load of codswallop.’
‘It worked on Maisie, though,’ someone said and laughed.
‘Who’d have thought it, though,’ the redhead stubbed her cigarette out on the concrete floor. ‘Maisie Beale of all people.’
Esther must have dozed because when the bus came to a halt, she jerked awake and the riverside scene had given way to the marketplace. She’d taken the long way around home and, changing transport, boarded one of the new trolley buses in King Street. Dorothy told her how only a couple of years before tramlines had been dug up in this street to make way for the modern trolleybuses. A lot of routes, apparently, had been taken over by the trolleys and they were a less jarring ride, and much quieter than trams.
As the trolley made its silent journey up Fowler Street, Esther saw the magnificent town hall, where the statue of Queen Victoria stared regally out from beneath a sweep of wide steps.
Staring out of the window, Esther saw a lad emerge from behind an anti-invasion blockade and sprint over the road to the bus stop, a lad she felt sure she’d seen before but couldn’t remember where. He looked through the window and, as their eyes met, a spark of interest gleamed in his.
Climbing up onto the platform, he walked purposefully along the aisle and sat down next to her.
The trolley moved away from the kerb and the lad turned towards her. ‘You live in Whale Street, don’t you?’
Certain he was making advances, Esther was unsure how to behave.
‘Second block,’ she said. Their shoulders were touching and she felt self-conscious at such close proximity.
‘I live at the top end, number twenty-eight.’
So that’s why she recognised him.
‘You been to work?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
He had bright green eyes and his black hair, raked down, was parted at the side. Despite his somewhat aloof expression, she found him rather handsome.
‘You headed for home?’ he questioned, appraising her.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘So am I.’ He wore a navy three-piece suit with high waisted trousers held up with buttoned suspenders. It was obvious from his black-rimmed eyes and grimy appearance that he worked at the coal pit. The lad had a quiet intensity about him and as he continued to stare, Esther felt herself flush.
‘Have you got a boyf
riend?’
Taken aback, she retorted, ‘What’s it got to do with you?’
‘Absolutely nothing. But if you haven’t, I was going to ask you out this afternoon.’
‘To do what?’
‘I don’t know. A walk… a game of tennis in the park… anything you fancy.’
He was asking her on a date… Esther’s first. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Trevor Milne.’
‘Yours?’
‘Esther Makepeace, though I now prefer Etty.’
The idea of a game of tennis made her grin.
Trevor took her smile as confirmation. ‘That’s settled, then.’
The day, cloudy but warm, had a quiet, somnolent Sunday feel to it but, Etty, all of a sudden, felt carefree and daring.
‘Why not? It’s a beautiful day…’ she replied, ‘and it would be a shame to be indoors.’
‘I’ll have to tidy mesel’ up a bit first.’
‘Me too.’
As they approached their stop, Etty stood up, as did Trevor. She was pleased to discover that he was head and shoulders taller than her.
First to alight, he turned and helped her step from the platform. They crossed the busy main road and Etty, conscious of his long strides at her side, thought of the conversation in the cloakroom about a bomb having your name on it. Life was uncertain and she vowed, from now on, she would live a little. Not that she’d become a ‘good time girl’ with a rotten reputation. Heaven forbid. She fancied finding a fellow and enjoying a bit of gaiety. Some harmless, innocent fun – she certainly didn’t want to settle down for a long while.
As they approached Trevor’s front door, he said, ‘I’ll call for you when I’m ready.’
Opening the door, he disappeared into the dim passageway. As she ran down the street, it occurred to Etty that she hadn’t looked at the size of Trevor’s feet.
9
May bumped the Raleigh bicycle up the four concrete steps to the front door. Automatically, she cast an eye to the bay window where the net curtains tweaked. Ernie Robinson’s gaunt and aggrieved face appeared, to be withdrawn when he saw that no one of great importance had called and that it was only his wayward daughter.
‘Is that you, our May?’ May’s mother’s voice called from somewhere in the bowels of the house.
May clattered the bicycle through the inner coloured-glass door and leant it against the passage wall.
She peered into the dim passageway. ‘It is.’
‘Thank Gawd for a bit of female company.’ Her mother came to stand in the kitchen doorway. Wiping her brow with edge of her pinny, she gave her daughter an affable smile. ‘The menfolk are driving me crackers with all their war talk. And not one of them thinks to give me a bloody hand.’
The ‘menfolk’ were May’s father and Mr Grayson, one of the current lodgers. Mam ran a boarding house that took up most of her time and the work was never done.
Dad, in his younger day, was a celebrated lightweight boxer but his injuries in the Great War put an end to his career.
‘Recuperating from his injuries has taken your dad a bloody lifetime,’ Mam told May with jaundiced eye.
With no income, Mam – a shrewd woman – had used her husband’s savings from his boxing days to secure a deposit on a house big enough to start a lodgings business.
She’d fumed, ‘Your dad never lifted a finger to either help run the business or bring up his bairns. All that bugger does is sit in a chair with a jug of ale at his side. If you ask me,’ which no one ever did because they’d heard it many times before, ‘having his head bashed in when he was young addled his brain.’
Up until a few years ago, May, as the youngest and only girl, had been her father’s favourite, but since her transgression he had virtually disowned her.
May came into the large kitchen where Mam stood at the sink that overlooked a red brick wall.
‘Here, I’ll give you a hand,’ May took off her coat and hung it behind the door.
‘You’ll dee nowt of the sort. You’ve been slavin’ all morning at work. Anyway, there’s only the pans to drain dry.’ Mam rolled the sleeves of her blouse down and fastened the buttons at the cuffs. ‘Why are you so late?’
‘Latecomers, dawdling over their dinner.’
‘They should be telt to hop it. In fact, war or no war, working on a Sunday shouldn’t be allowed. It’s a downright disgrace.’
May was about to point out that Mam had slaved all morning making Sunday dinner but thought better of it. Her mother looked tired. Though still a bonny woman, she was round-shouldered with grey-tinged hair and a defeated look in her eyes, looking every one of her fifty-five years. May worried that she had been the cause of her mother’s decline as she had loyally stuck by May in her darkest hour all those years ago. She would do anything to lighten her mother’s load, not because she was indebted but simply because May loved her.
‘Go and put your feet up and I’ll bring you a cuppa,’ May told her.
‘You’re a good lass, our May. Though, you’d better bring your dad and Mr Grayson a cup too, else there’ll be ructions on.’
As Mam hung her pinny behind the door and left the room, a pang of sadness poked May.
Mam pretended to be tough and strong but May knew differently. She knew she missed her sons but they rarely visited or brought her grandchildren. And not a word of reproach did she make.
‘They’re good lads at heart,’ she told May. ‘And they’ve got busy lives of their own. I don’t blame them. Yer dad’s never made the time of day for his sons.’
May knew her two brothers despised their father because, in their eyes, he was a good for nothing layabout who’d allowed their canny mam to age beyond her years.
May dried the saucepans. Wiping her hands on the tea towel, she noticed the ovenproof dish on the table and recognised the contents as the remains of an apple suet pudding – Derek’s favourite. May reflected, as she set the tray with everyday china, that it was good that her mother had Derek to lavish love upon. Once upon a time, May had considered her mother too old to bring up another bairn, but Mam had proved her wrong, and older and wiser this time round, she made sure she had time to enjoy her young son.
May padded along the passageway to the front room and, entering, placed the tray on an occasional table in front of the fire. The room was decorated with regal red and cream striped wallpaper, with a mismatch of faded high-backed chairs placed around the walls. Today it was bathed in yellow sunlight. Dad and Mr Grayson were sitting opposite each other in the bay window.
‘I heard two unexploded sea mines were washed up on the shore yesterday,’ Mr Grayson was saying. ‘One of them only a hundred yards from Trow Rocks.’
As May walked into the musty-smelling room, her father gave her the usual disgruntled look.
‘Were they British made?’ he asked.
‘Yes. The admiralty disposed of both.’ Mr Grayson, a comparatively younger man, sat bolt upright. With his smart suit and round-rimmed metal spectacles halfway down his nose, Mr Grayson looked every inch the bank employee he was.
Mam looked up from where she sat in front of the hearth on the floor. With Derek at her side, she studied a jigsaw puzzle on the mat. ‘Only the crown to finish.’
With a start, May noticed the bairn had had his haircut and lost all his lovely blonde curls.
‘Whose crown?’ she wanted to know.
‘Why! King George’s. It’s a picture of his coronation.’
‘That’s too advanced for a lad of five,’ Mr Grayson piped up.
‘Rubbish,’ Mam replied, looked annoyed. ‘There’s no flies on you, is there, son?’ She ruffled Derek’s hair.
With his plump cheeks and enormous blue eyes, Derek was as cute as any picture. May dropped on one knee. A clammy, boyish smell emanated from him and May gave him a hug, a rush of tenderness washing over her.
‘Gerr-off,’ he said, shrugging himself free and returning to the puzzle.
Mam gave her a sympathet
ic wag of the head.
‘You’ll have yon lad soft the way you gan on.’ Her father’s voice was nasal.
Mam stiffened. ‘A hug never did anyone any harm.’
The two women’s eyes locked.
May’s father had no time for Derek, calling him a pest, but he could only go so far. Because of her father’s drunken ways he was estranged from his sons and Mam was determined that history wouldn’t be repeated with Derek.
He had complained only once about her devotion to their young son and like a tiger protecting its cub, Mam had turned on him.
‘It would pay you, Ernie Robinson, to remember the hand that feeds yi,’ Mam growled. ‘Never let me hear another word against me son again, understand?’
Apart from harmless moaning, he never did cross his wife over Derek again.
May poured the tea and handed a cup to Mr Grayson. Noticing a bus pass by the bay window, she scoured the heads looking for Etty Makepeace – but on second thoughts, she realised the lass would have been home long ago. She was canny enough but her sister Dorothy was easier to get to know. Etty had a guarded look to her that always made May feel awkward, as if she’d done something wrong.
‘Stop gawping lass,’ her father broke into her thoughts, ‘and give us me tea afore it gets cold.’
May never knew where she stood with her father, and wished for the idyllic relationship they had once shared. But since her disgrace, he’d never found it in his heart to forgive her.
‘Our May,’ Mam asked, ‘when are you expecting that fiancé of yours home on leave? It’s been some time.’
Now that Billy and May were engaged, Mam had agreed that he could stay in one of the attic bedrooms when he came home on leave. Billy’s family lived in a two bedroomed house and now his younger sister had grown, Billy was required to sleep on the couch.
‘Billy didn’t say when in his letter. But he should be due some leave soon.’
The thought of Billy made May’s heart swell with love and joy and she made a mental note not to be clingy – or to talk wedding plans – when he did arrive home, as she knew it would annoy him.