Dark Days for the Tobacco Girls

by Lizzie Lane

  ‘Dad, I’m fourteen next year,’ said Sean, unhanding himself from his mother’s feverish embrace. ‘I’ve decided I want to work on a farm.’

  His father only just managed to stop himself from ruffling his son’s hair again, a sad smile curving his lips. His eldest son was growing up, and this war was hastening the process. ‘Is that right, me boy. Well, let’s see if you still feel the same next year before you make your mind up.’

  Bridget’s mother tried to speak as she brushed the tears from her eyes. ‘Don’t wish the time away,’ she finally managed to say.

  ‘Used up all those crayons and paints yet?’ Bridget asked them.

  Acting as he’d seen grown men do, Sean shoved his hands into his trousers. They were long trousers and looked new. Just the sight of them brought a lump to his mother’s throat.

  ‘We didn’t really ’ave much use for them so gave them to Molly and Mary. They don’t get to do much else when they’re not in school. They’re in town and that funny old pair…’

  Kate Cottrell noted the sudden alarm on the faces of Bridget’s parents. ‘Sean. Michael. Look to the food and fill yer bellies,’ she ordered. Her voice was firm and her face serious. Whatever it was she wanted to declare about the youngest girls’ billet, she wanted it said in private.

  Michael didn’t wait to be told twice. Sean sauntered after him. He was on the verge of manhood and keen to fulfil the part as quickly as possible.

  Kate Cottrell directed a calmly reassuring look at Bridget’s parents. ‘There’s nothing to worry about. Everything’s been sorted.’

  Although her guests looked concerned, Kate Cottrell turned her attention back to thirteen-year-old Sean and ten-year-old Michael.

  ‘Get your boots off before you makes a start,’ cried Kate Cottrell.

  The boys duly obeyed, went outside, left their boots beneath the frowning presence of the stone porch and raced back in to help themselves.

  Nobody was aware that somebody else had entered the room until a brandy-deep voice said, ‘I’ve still got mine on, Ma.’

  ‘Go on with you,’ said Kate Cottrell, reddening and clucking like a proud mother hen. She almost glowed at the visitors, so bright with joy was her face. ‘My son, James,’ she introduced with pride.

  An instant shock shot through Bridget as her calm blue eyes met those of the young man she’d seen smoking a cigarette in the walled garden. At a distance, the resemblance hadn’t been so obvious, but close up…it could be him! It could be Lyndon come all the way across the Atlantic to surprise her. His smile was Lyndon’s smile and so too were his features: dark blonde hair, sun-touched in places; sky blue eyes; the same lethargic cheerfulness playing about his lips. Even the way he moved and held himself matched the same self-confidence, no doubt inherited from his father, but also reminiscent of the way Lyndon had strolled, as though the world was his for the taking.

  She stared, aware of a strange buzzing in her head until realising the buzzing was words and he was speaking to her.

  ‘I heard you sneeze,’ she heard him say. ‘Hay fever I expect, though only short term. The countryside can get you like that at first.’

  ‘Yes.’ Her response was almost breathless.

  ‘James,’ he said.

  His hand was warm and totally encompassing her own.

  She was aware of him shaking her parents’ hands, mentioning the children, asking if they’d had a good journey down – so much longer nowadays. Trains were slower, names of stations removed.

  ‘Not always easy to tell if you’re on the right train,’ said a smiling James. ‘Never mind the enemy being foxed without signs, how about the natives?’

  Bridget laughed, at the same time seeing an approving look on her mother’s face, even greater joy on hearing that her sons had been missing home but enjoying the countryside.

  ‘The older girls too,’ added Kate Cottrell. ‘The vicarage has a very big garden.’ Her joviality diminished somewhat when she added that the two youngest girls would soon be sorted out. ‘They should never ’ave been placed with them two…’ An odd look passed between her and her son. ‘But there,’ she said, regaining her exuberance. ‘They’ll be ’appy ’ere with their brothers.’

  James handed Bridget a cup of tea. ‘Fancy a slice of apple cake with that? We use our own cooked fruit – or at least my mother does. I don’t cook. Do you?’

  She said that she did, though not so much lately with the children all being down here. It was hard not to be tongue-tied, but she couldn’t help it. A train journey to Devon and she’d found a dead spit of Lyndon O’Neill standing here in an old manor house.

  ‘Will the girls be here soon?’ she heard her mother say. Satisfied that her boys were being well looked after, she needed to know how the others were doing.

  ‘Think they’re ’ere,’ said Kate Cottrell, one ear cocked towards the door that led into the angular hallway of flagstone floor and old paintings of fat cows, sheep and sprawling landscapes.

  ‘My mother’s got amazing hearing,’ said a bemused James when Bridget’s father exclaimed that he hadn’t heard a thing.

  What sounded like wheels and horse’s hooves became loud enough for everyone to hear and preceded the arrival of the vicar. A big man with a bushy beard, he filled the doorway, his chest like a barrel beneath the glaring white of his dog collar and the ruff that was his beard. ‘Hello one and all,’ he bellowed.

  He was introduced as the Reverend Roger Roebuck.

  ‘That’s my name,’ he said jovially. ‘Though the boys mostly refer to me as Roy Rogers on account of the horse-drawn buggy – saves petrol, you see.’

  The girls who had followed him into the room, let out little screams of delight on seeing their parents, the youngest hugging their mother’s legs, the older ones smiling up at their father and proceeding to tell him something of their day: of paddling in a brook and the fact that one of their friends had been caught stealing apples from an orchard; of a pig that had rampaged through the town chased by a gang of men shouting out for Percy to come back.

  ‘That was its name,’ cried a thrilled-sounding Ruby, less overcome by emotion as her sisters. ‘Percy the Pig!’

  The youngest two, Molly and Mary, remained with their faces buried in their mother’s dress, clutching her with half-buried fists.

  ‘They didn’t like living with them funny old women,’ said a solemn-faced Katy who was only slightly older than her younger sisters but sounded older. ‘One of them had whiskers.’

  The Cottrells exchanged a look with the vicar.

  Bridget’s mother plastered her hands on their heads, pressing them ever closer into her skirt. Over their heads, she exchanged a worried look with Bridget’s father.

  As sharp of sight as she was of hearing, Kate Cottrell patted Bridget’s mother’s arm and told her everything would be all right. ‘They’re looking forward to coming here. I’ve got their things and told Molly and Mary that they’ll be staying here from now on,’ she said in response to their enquiring looks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Bridget’s mother said hesitantly. ‘Perhaps we should take them home…’

  ‘And split the family,’ her husband pointed out.

  She lowered her eyes and clasped the two youngest even closer, too tightly perhaps because they began to fidget, aware their siblings were here, plus the feast set out on the table.

  ‘We’ve got room,’ Kate Cottrell said reassuringly.

  The vicar smiled benignly at the visitors from the city. ‘I’ll give you the details later.’

  Kate Cottrell again took charge. ‘Soon enough, soon enough. Now come on you lot. There’s food waiting to be eaten.’ Kate Cottrell was one of those women who showed love and affection through food, her creed being that a well-fed child – or adult for that matter – was a happy one. ‘Let’s take our cups of tea into the front parlour.’

  Her invitation was given in a forthright, uncompromising manner to Bridget’s worried-looking parents. The vicar went too; Bridget
and James knew they were not required.

  ‘Left to our own devices,’ said James. There was a twinkle in his eyes and a blithe smile played round his lips. Both turned Bridget’s legs to water.

  ‘Look at me. I’ve got a jam tart.’

  Little Molly, who a moment ago had clung to her mother for dear life, was now on her second jam tart, the stickiness from the first one smeared round her mouth.

  ‘I likes this farm,’ said Mary.

  Bridget was tempted to ask her whether she was missing her parents. Of course she was, so why ask? Mentioning it would only exacerbate the moment when they would be once again separated from their parents. London was being bombed. It was only a matter of time before Bristol received the same treatment. Sad as it might be and difficult to live with, they were safer here in the country.

  Being slightly older, it was Ruby and Katy who had adjusted best out of the four girls. The younger two stood close to each other, barely an inch between them, their eyes scrutinising their surroundings with reserved interest.

  Bridget felt emotional watching them, seeing small differences in their appearance and the fact that they seemed closer as a result of their isolation, separated from the rest of their siblings. The presence of their two brothers, especially the more mature Sean, also helped to bring them out of themselves.

  ‘It seems the youngsters have acquired a country appetite. I would say it might not be a bad idea to grab another slice of cake before this lot have gobbled it all up.’

  Bridget started. Engrossed in what the youngsters were up to, she’d almost forgotten that James was there.

  ‘I think I might be in the RAF when I grows up,’ declared Michael.

  ‘Do you now,’ said a smiling James. ‘Better eat some more cake then to help you grow big and strong.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said her disbelieving brother. ‘I s’pose you’re gonna say next that I needs to eat loads of carrots to improve me eyesight.’

  ‘The more the merrier,’ said James, shaking his head and adopting a serious expression. ‘A pilot flying at night needs good eyesight to see where he’s going. It’s not much good having a pilot who can only fly in daylight.’

  Michael’s jaw dropped as he swallowed this fact.

  ‘Better get and take another piece of this carrot cake before it’s all gone,’ said Sean with a grin.

  ‘Good oh!’ said James. ‘Carrot cake as well as apple cake. We are lucky.’

  Bridget recalled a newsreel at the cinema and a pilot being asked how he managed flying at night. His answer had been that he ate plenty of carrots and that was the reason why. She smiled. It was obvious the boys greatly respected James and that he in return gave them his time.

  Sean declared that when he was old enough, he would never leave the country, wouldn’t join the air force but would drive a tractor.

  ‘That’s what I wants to do,’ he declared.

  ‘That’s it, Sean,’ said James, ruffling her brother’s hair. ‘Do something you love.’

  He exchanged a slight smile with Bridget before again addressing the boys.

  ‘My,’ he said, tilting his head so he could more easily see out of the window. ‘There’s a few sunny hours left before the sun goes down and you’re all off to bed. Sean, you’re the eldest in the family. How about you all show your sister here round the farm. She’s come a long way and I bet she needs to stretch her legs.’

  Sean swallowed the last of the sandwich he’d been eating. He addressed James in a man-to-man way that made Bridget want to cry. ‘You coming too, Pilot Officer Cottrell?’

  James saluted. ‘You bet I am.’

  Touched by the orange glow of evening sunshine, they trooped outside, Sean walking beside Bridget and James, a subtle signal that he belonged in their company now, his childhood just about left behind.

  Michael led the girls ahead of them, pointing out the fields, the names of cows, chasing the chickens that came pecking round their feet.

  Before long, the girls were bounding into fields, picking flowers, throwing sticks for the dogs and patting the pony Michael told them was named Brandy that nuzzled their hands as they fed it bunches of wildflowers.

  Ruby stopped some way ahead of them and asked if she could go into the pony’s field. Her younger sisters gathered round, all seemingly keen to do the same.

  ‘Only if your brothers go in with you. Where’s Michael?’

  ‘Up here.’

  The shout came from the middle branches of an oak tree.

  James addressed Sean, ‘Get your brother down. Both of you go into the field with your sisters. They’re not used to farm animals, and Brandy can get uppity when strangers are around.’

  ‘Kids,’ exclaimed Sean with a disgusted toss of his head.

  Bridget hid what would have been a loud laugh with her hand. ‘He sounds like my dad.’

  ‘He’s growing up,’ returned James.

  Bridget had not fully recovered from finding herself faced with a man who bore such a close resemblance to Lyndon. As they walked, she studied him anew. She wanted to dispel this sudden unwieldiness in her heart, the feeling that she’d been knocked off balance or had fallen into a dream, similar to that endured by Alice when she’d followed the white rabbit and fallen down the well.

  James’s shirtsleeves were rolled up past his elbows, exposing lower arms as brawny as his father’s and just as hairy.

  Fronds of grass, red poppies, cornflowers and golden rod flicked against her legs. She picked one, chewed its end and contemplated what to say to fill the silence between them, anything to cope with this strange occurrence.

  ‘I like silence,’ James said suddenly. ‘It gives you chance to breathe. To think.’

  ‘Away from the airfield and bombing raids,’ she replied, glad that he was the one who’d broken the silence.

  He laughed. ‘Truth be told, Bridget, I haven’t been on a bombing raid yet, but I do know how to get there.’ He went on to tell her that despite the incursions and air raids on London, there had not been much in the way of retaliation. ‘But there will be,’ he added, his light laugh reduced to a wavering smile. ‘We’ll get to fly over Germany and drop bombs, not just leaflets. So what do you do?’

  ‘I’m just a factory girl.’

  That’s how she began. Funnily enough, she felt no shame about telling him what she did and the fact they lived in a council house.

  He remarked on the little he knew about Bristol, so she told him.

  There was something surreal about telling the same things she’d told Lyndon, almost as though she was repeating it to the same man.

  She added a bit about Southey the poet, of Humphrey Davy the man who’d invented a lamp for miners that would give them more safety working underground, of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge, of Samuel Plimsoll who had noted sailors losing their lives on overloaded ships and had devised a measuring device to prevent it happening.

  When James failed to respond, she stopped abruptly and apologised. ‘I do go on,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Not at all. It makes a change to listen to a woman who’s well read as well as attractive. One other thing, why do you stare at me as you do?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. Just tell me why it is? Do I remind you of someone?’

  She blushed. Without an ounce of encouragement, she’d talked to him as though they’d known each other for longer than a couple of hours and hadn’t realised she was staring at him. Of course she was. He looked like Lyndon, another golden haired young man with searching blue eyes.

  ‘You remind me of someone. His name’s Lyndon.’

  She looked down at her hands.

  ‘I look like him, act like him or both?’

  She smiled and looked up at him from beneath her voluminous fringe. ‘You definitely look like him. I don’t know you well enough to know whether you act like him.’

  ‘Then we need to work on us getting to know each other better.’


  They stopped at a stile, watching Sean leading the pony by its forelock, the girls taking it in turn to ride on its back. Her youngest sisters, who had tearfully clung to their parents, were now whooping and laughing along with the rest of them.

  ‘They look happy,’ said Bridget. ‘Your mother said they’re moving into Winter’s Leap.’

  ‘One big happy family,’ he said. ‘Two coming here, the other two staying at the vicarage, though if there was room, my mother would have them here too. It’s a kids’ paradise.’

  ‘Better than being with the Crawfords?’

  For a moment it proved hard to judge his expression. His jaw tightened and then he held his fist in front of his mouth and coughed, as though smothering distasteful amusement.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, removing his hand from his mouth and the vague smile that lingered there. ‘What I was going to say that there are no Crawford sisters.’ He paused. She sensed something out of the ordinary was about to be said – and it was. ‘There’s only Evelyn Crawford and her brother, Edward.’

  Bridget frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

  They stopped in the shade of a tree whose branches draped over a stile. He offered her a cigarette. ‘Edward was called up some months ago.’

  ‘Not two sisters?’

  His smile widened. ‘Evelyn and Edward are pretty much the same build. Her dresses fitted him.’

  ‘What?’ Bridget’s jaw dropped. ‘Her brother Edward was dressing as a woman?’

  James nodded. ‘Got called up, didn’t like the square bashing so deserted. His sister took him in, told everybody he was a long-lost sister.’

  ‘Oh! The girls might have unwittingly noticed something, so the letters were written for them!’

  ‘Right. Evelyn tried her best to keep them and her brother separate – just in case they let anything out.’

  ‘Such as a woman taking a shave on a morning,’ pronounced Bridget.

  ‘Believe me, there’s some that do,’ laughed James.

  She slapped him playfully on the arm. ‘Then you’ve known some pretty strange women, James Cottrell.’

  Their laughter came with heightened relaxation. Other comments followed; other small tales about their lives and experiences until it seemed they could talk to each other about anything.