Dark Days for the Tobacco Girls

by Lizzie Lane

  32

  Bridget and Maisie

  Twelfth night had come and gone and the girls in the stripping room were as morose as the weather.

  Maisie had moved in with her grandmother in Totterdown. Grace Wells’s eyesight was going, but her intellect was sharp and despite her suffering, she had a lighter air about her, which in Maisie’s opinion was due to the fact that Frank Miles was awaiting sentence for his involvement in the deaths of two children by way of selling rotten meat.

  ‘Don’t care if ’e ’angs,’ declared Maisie after she’d confided in Bridget at lunch. ‘I’d pull the rope if I was asked.’

  Being of a more lenient disposition, Bridget winced and manoeuvred the conversation in another direction. ‘Heard anything from Sid?’

  Maisie grinned. ‘Funny you should ask. I got a letter from ’im. Fancy reading it?’ She brought out a folded piece of lightweight paper from her overall pocket. ‘Go on. I don’t mind if you read it,’ she said on noting Bridget’s hesitation.

  ‘All right.’ Bridget opened the letter and read the few lines Sid had written to Maisie. The first line was about how hot it was. The second was that he could see the sea from where he was and it was very blue. The third line suggested they regarded themselves as engaged. ‘He wants you to get engaged,’ she said with some surprise.

  Maisie smirked. ‘Silly bugger. I’m too young. I’ve already told ’im that. And what about you? Made your mind up yet?’

  The blue eyes of Bridget Milligan stayed fixed on the job in hand – eating her lunch. ‘About what?’ she said, as though she’d not understood the question.

  ‘Your bloke in Devon and the American. Who’s your favourite?’

  ‘You make them sound like a couple of racehorses,’ Bridget replied indignantly.

  ‘Well, they are in a race – of a kind – aren’t they?’

  ‘No they are not! Anyway, what’s the hurry? I’ll consider getting married once this war is over. Whenever that might be.’

  Maisie frowned, then shrugged her shoulders casually. ‘Bridget Milligan, you’re going to be left on the shelf if you ain’t careful.’

  ‘Or I might become a nun,’ returned Bridget.

  ‘Really?’ Maisie’s eyebrows arched in surprise, and on seeing Bridget was only joking, the pair of them burst out laughing.

  The canteen was warm and moist thanks to the steam given off by the cooked vegetables displayed on the server. They’d been lucky enough to bag a table for two in a tight little corner.

  Maisie eyed Bridget over the top of her teacup. It had long occurred to her that Bridget was a bit standoffish with men; she didn’t go on loads of dates like Phyllis, nor as many as she did for that matter. She liked Bridget, but sometimes she seemed so far away and had things buried so deep inside, they were never likely to see the light of day. ‘The trouble with you is that you think too much.’

  Her sudden comment caught Bridget unawares. ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve got something on yer mind. Come on. Spill the beans!’ She was, thought Maisie, like a stone angel in a churchyard; beautiful but stiff and silent. Maisie put down her cup and leaned closer across the table. ‘A problem shared is a problem halved – or is it the other way round?’

  ‘Don’t keep on.’

  ‘I will too!’ Maisie flashed that resolute, challenging look that told Bridget in no uncertain terms that she was going to keep asking, like a terrier with a bone.

  With gruff deliberation, she sprang from her chair and headed for the exit and the corridor leading back to the stripping room.

  A rather hurt and dumbfounded Maisie looked after her. ‘Bridget!’

  ‘Everything all right?’ Aggie pulled out the chair Bridget had recently vacated.

  Maisie shook her head. ‘I always thought Bridget knows ’er own mind. No muddles in ’er brain. Now I’m not so sure.’

  33

  Bridget

  The pong of the gasometer fouled the fresh evening air as Bridget made her way home across the cut. A cold wind chilled her bones and whistled between the gaps in the houses. Every so often, the light from her torch picked out small movements; dried leaves racing across the frozen ground, the more furtive scuttling of a rat, the beating of wings followed by a scream as a water vole was taken by an owl’s sharp talons.

  In peacetime, the glow from windows would lend a welcoming light to finding her way. So would that of street lamps, but in the dense blanket of blackout there was nothing except her torch.

  The other girls she’d been with had fallen behind and she was all alone with her thoughts. She recalled Maisie’s words about people in love. She hunkered down further into her coat and pulled up her collar against the cold wind. Maisie was young, brash and outspoken. That’s what she told herself, yet deep down Bridget accepted she’d always possessed a wisdom beyond her years.

  At long last, she had left the gasometer behind her, though the impenetrable darkness persisted, the circles of light from her torch like stepping stones across the dark ground. In the past she had used her key to get in, but due to blackout regulations she now knocked at the door of her own home, giving her mother chance to turn out the hallway light and draw back the curtain before opening the door.

  She heard her mother’s voice, hushed and urgent. ‘Bridget. We’ve a visitor.’

  The door was closed and the curtain drawn behind her. The hallway light, a dull single-bulb affair in a tulip-shaped glass shade threw a dubious glow over the small hallway.

  Curious as to who the visitor might be, she took off her coat, adding it to the bundled mass already hanging on the wall mounted coat hooks. On following her mother into the living room, she found her father sitting in his favourite chair closest to the window. Seated in the matching armchair on the other side of the fireplace was Mrs Cottrell. She held a handkerchief in one hand, her expression was strained and her eyes red from crying.

  ‘I’m the bearer of bad news, me dear. It’s James. He’s been injured. In hospital at the infirmary.’

  ‘In Bristol?’

  ‘It was the nearest hospital with an orthopaedic surgeon experienced with broken bones.’ Kate Cottrell explained.

  Bridget’s jaw dropped. ‘Oh my God. Is he all right?’

  His mother nodded and, though a fresh bout of tears threatened, Mrs Cottrell swallowed the impulse. ‘They tell me he’ll live, but he is badly injured. I’ve got to get back to the farm, but I wondered if you could call in on him. He said he’d love to see you. We did notice, ’is dad and I, that you seemed to get on. So if you could…’ There was pleading in her voice and in her eyes. Bridget was touched.

  Despite the shock she’d suffered, Mrs Cottrell was a pragmatic country woman. She went on to explain that she was staying that night but had to go back to Devon the next day.

  ‘I’ve made up one of the beds in the other room,’ Bridget’s mother explained, though Bridget had already guessed that. ‘You can stay longer if you wish,’ her mother added, but Mrs Cottrell flung her shoulders back like a soldier and declared that she had duties that could not be shirked.

  ‘It’s the farm. Labour is short and there’s the children to think of.’

  As a matter of duty rather than affection, Bridget promised to go in and see James the following evening straight from work. ‘If I’m allowed, seeing as I’m not a relative. They’re very funny about visiting hours.’

  ‘Not for members of the armed forces,’ stated Mrs Cottrell. ‘Extenuating circumstances, anyways I told them his girlfriend would likely be calling in. It’s not a problem.’

  But it is, thought Bridget, or it could be if I dwelt on last summer. By rights she should marry him, shouldn’t she? Even though it was only a moment in time. That’s what nice girls were supposed to do, weren’t they?

  Their footsteps echoed along the hospital corridor, the smell and sound of Bristol Royal Infirmary unchanged since her last visit here with Maisie.

  That very morning, she’d told Maisie what had happe
ned and that she was visiting the hospital straight from work.

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ declared Maisie in that no-nonsense tone she used when determined to have her own way.

  The news had spread far and wide throughout the stripping room. Sympathetic looks and comments abounded, weighing Bridget down, stifling the urge to explain that he was just somebody she knew and not her boyfriend or fiancée as some of them assumed him to be.

  She peered through the porthole-type windows set at eye level in the double doors of the ward.

  ‘Can you see him?’ asked Maisie.

  She shook her head. All she could see were a series of low lights in cone-shaped shades, nurses, doctors and ward sisters moving soundlessly between the beds.

  Nerves on edge, Bridget took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know that I can do this,’ she whispered.

  ‘You can walk away right now if you like. It’s your life.’ Maisie gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. ‘I’ll wait out ’ere.’

  The door swished closed behind her and there she was, coldly upright walking up the centre of the ward, rows of beds on either side of her. As she approached each one, she sought his familiar face and blonde silky hair. Finally, she found him lying white-faced, his eyes closed and a frame encompassing his legs.

  Although she told herself that he meant nothing to her, the sight of him pained her eyes and her heart. His mother had been reluctant to explain the details of his injuries. She now thought she knew why. His legs! She remembered him striding across fields, climbing the ladder in the hay barn, the hardness of his thigh muscles against hers. He’d laughed then. Looking at him now lying here, she thought she might never hear him laugh again and that would be a great shame. She couldn’t help feeling pity for him.

  She approached him softly so as not to disturb him, trying to find the right words to say – as if there would ever be ‘right words’.

  Suddenly, without her saying anything, his eyes opened.

  ‘Bridget?’ His smile was wide and warm. ‘Thanks for coming.’

  She leaned over him, caressed his hair, then kissed his forehead.

  His eyes closed and his smile vanished as though both had required too much effort.

  Bringing a chair beside the bed, Bridget glanced at the frame holding the bedclothes away from his legs.

  The ward sister came along to check his pulse. Her eyes met Bridget’s.

  After the nurse’s clipped footsteps had strode off down to the far end of the ward, his voice suddenly broke into her thoughts. ‘It was bad luck. Flak over Holland. Untouched all the way there but caught it on the way back.’

  She leaned in closer, placed her hand on his shoulder, and although he hadn’t said so, she knew beyond doubt that he would never fly again. ‘Just get better,’ she whispered, her eyes filling with sadness for a life ruined. ‘Your parents need you down on the farm.’

  His eyes looked tired when he trained them on her. ‘What about you? Do you need me?’ She noted the bitterness in his voice, the need for somebody to want him, now he was no longer a healthy and handsome specimen of a man, though even without legs he was still quite a catch.

  Her heart felt as though it was climbing into her throat. What could she say? He looked so pitiable, so in need of good news to take away his pain. Much as she’d primed herself to stick to the truth of how she was feeling, she took the coward’s way out. Between copious tears, she told him that she needed him too.

  ‘Are you sure?’ He sounded like a small boy needful to feel that somebody really cared for him.

  The sobs racked her shoulders as she threw herself across him, felt his fingers running through her hair, the warmth of his cheek, the sinews standing proud of his neck.

  Her eyes locked with his and in that moment they were back rolling in the hay. Everything had seemed so simple on that one warm night.

  He looked dismally at the frame covering his legs. ‘I was thinking we might get engaged, even get married. Seize the day, somebody said. In war, there’s a hundred times more of a reason to do that. So how about we get married, though I won’t be able to walk you down the aisle unaided. I might have crutches or… false legs.’

  She wanted to remind him that it had only been a one-night stand, that they barely knew each other. His predicament stilled her tongue and kept the truth inside.

  ‘It’s both legs,’ he said to her almost spitting the words. ‘Both bloody legs!’

  There was great anger, but who could blame him? The floor of his world had disintegrated and he’d gone crashing through it. Giving solace and a sense of hope was one thing that she could do, at least in the short term.

  She asked him if he’d had any other visitors besides his mother.

  ‘Only a friend based with me.’

  His eyes flickered as though reliving the visit, but he didn’t go into detail, his eyes once more fixed on the frame covering his legs. She sensed his seething anger building up inside.

  After telling him she would visit again the following evening, she rejoined Maisie outside in the corridor. She felt her friend’s searching look as they made their way to the lift and the outside world.

  Maisie remarked that she was white as a sheet. ‘How is he?’

  ‘He’s lost his legs.’

  ‘Oh.’ It was all Maisie could say. She was totally lost for words, sorry for both James, who she’d never met, and her dear friend Bridget who she suspected would fall in with whatever James wanted, mainly because she felt sorry for him. Should she broach the subject? Criticism might not be welcome. For now at least she would mull it over before making comment.

  Their mutual silence lasted all the way along the corridor until the hospital, its echoing silence and its antiseptic smell was behind them. Outside, as they pulled on their gloves and got out their torches, Maisie sniffed and said, ‘I take it you’re going to see him again.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Should you? I mean, he might get the wrong idea.’

  ‘I can’t help that. He’s been injured. I have to do something.’

  It was exactly as Maisie had feared. ‘You’re too soft fer yer own good, Bridget. He’s injured and you want to make ’im feel better.’ She shook her head.

  ‘I’m just being kind!’ Bridget exclaimed.

  ‘Or riddled with guilt?’

  Bridget rounded on her. ‘Guilt about what? I’ve nothing to be guilty about.’

  It wasn’t entirely true, but Bridget was befuddled. She didn’t think it was love but they had had physical contact. It had to mean something, surely.

  ‘He’s very dejected,’ Bridget finally proclaimed.

  ‘I know what yer saying, Bridge, but what if ’e takes it the wrong way?’

  Bridget licked the dryness off her lips and walked on. Although her feelings were muddled, she told herself she would sort them out. He just needed somebody to care for him, to even think that there might be some future for them as a pair. A man with no legs was bound to feel dejected. There had to be hope and if she conveyed that hope, she’d let it be. If it helped him, then all well and good – at least for now.

  34

  Lyndon

  ‘You’re not going to let this idea go, are you.’

  The words were said through an eddy of thick cigar smoke and were a statement rather than a question. Lyndon O’Neill the second, had long come to the conclusion that his son, Lyndon O’Neill, the third, was a chip off the old block and capable of filling his shoes. Only he wanted him to do more than fill his shoes; he wanted him to fly in higher circles – become something in government. Hell, if that old bootlegger Joe Kennedy could rise to becoming ambassador to the Court of St James with ambitions for his sons, why couldn’t his son move in similar circles?

  Lyndon’s response was terse, almost to the point of discourtesy. ‘No. I’m not.’

  He eyed his father through his own fug of cigar smoke, chin as stubbornly set as his sire and determined that he would go his own way, do his own thing. He’d
lost patience with his country’s attitude to the war in Europe and had voiced his opinion that at some point – debatable as to when – they would have to stand their ground.

  ‘You’d be going into a war zone. OK, the US isn’t directly involved in this war, but that doesn’t mean to say that the day won’t come when we are involved. We got sucked in back in nineteen seventeen. And it don’t matter that we’re neutral. Hitler has categorically stated that neutral shipping is not exempt from attack. You’ll be in danger from the minute you head across. Don’t that worry you, son?’

  His father’s eyes narrowed as he awaited his son’s response.

  ‘Dad. A few years back everyone was saying that Hitler wouldn’t be so bad once he had the responsibility of power. Well, he got that power and sorely abused it. We can’t ignore it indefinitely. I’d like to go over there. I’d like to see what’s going on.’

  His father grunted and lowered his eyes to his desk and the letter lying there. Lyndon’s answer was not unexpected. He was prepared for this.

  On raising his eyes to meet Lyndon’s, he said, ‘You’re my son and as stubborn as I am. A real chip off the old block. So I’ve pulled a few strings in Washington. You’re not going on any holiday. It’ll be a working visit. Will Oakby is a pal of mine; works for Cordell Hull.’

  ‘The Secretary of State?’ Lyndon pulled a surprised face. It never ceased to amaze him how many famous and influential people his father knew.

  ‘The very same,’ said his father in a tone of voice that made it sound no big deal. ‘I’ve arranged for you to accompany a delegation attached to the embassy. Their job will be to get a “hands-on” feel for what’s going on over there. The likes of Ed Morrow are all very well, but the president wants feedback from others besides broadcasters and journalists. He wants to know what’s happening on the ground and wants bona fide reports from people he can trust. The British are doing something similar. They’ve set up a unit entitled Mass Observation Department. To feedback groundswell opinion that helps form government policy. That’s what we want to, but from our own sources otherwise we’d be accused of being swayed by British propaganda.’