Survivor

by Lesley Pearse

  Almost everyone put their hand up.

  ‘And I bet you were all really proud to see them in their uniform?’

  There was a general nod of agreement.

  ‘Well, every one of those uniforms was sewn by women like you,’ she said, letting her eyes travel along the rows of workers. ‘Here in Shoreditch it’s very hard to imagine what our men are facing, and I’m sure most of you are afraid that those you love won’t come back to you. But those who have already enlisted and are now in France are just a small part of the army that England needs so we can win the war. Each day, thousands more join up. And that means thousands more uniforms.

  ‘I’m asking you to work faster and longer so that every one of those men can look smart and feel confident in his new uniform. A confident man will make a better soldier. And the better our soldiers feel, the more likely we are to win this war.’

  She paused for just a second, letting that sink in.

  ‘But that’s not all I ask,’ she went on, and raised her voice a little. ‘I’m asking you to sew love into each seam, and to send your good wishes for the safety of the man who will wear the uniform. You will never know the name of the man who will be wearing it, but it could be one of your husbands, brothers or sweethearts. Here in this factory none of you will ever face bullets and tanks. But the men wearing the uniforms will. So is it too much to ask that each of you gives a few extra hours a week so those brave men of ours look their best? You may not get rewarded in money, but when the war is over and your men come back, you too can be proud that you did your bit to help.’

  There was silence for a moment, then suddenly they all applauded very loudly. She even saw a couple of women wiping tears from their eyes. Not one of them stood up to demand more money.

  Solly came forward then to address the women. ‘Back to work now,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to you about the rota for extra hours tomorrow.’

  As the machines were switched on again, Solly took Mariette’s elbow to show her the way out.

  ‘I didn’t really know what to say,’ Mariette admitted once they had reached a quieter area where Solly could hear her. ‘I mean, looking smart in a uniform won’t protect our boys from bullets or mines.’

  Solly clapped her on the shoulder. ‘No, it won’t. But you made the women think about the men who will be wearing the uniforms, and that is enough motivation for them. You know, you were born for public speaking, Miss Carrera! When you told me what Mr Greville wanted you to achieve, I half expected a riot. But instead they took your words to heart. Let’s just hope they don’t get the idea of sewing love letters into the seams.’

  Mariette laughed; she was so relieved it was over. ‘I think people need reminding of the importance of a job they are doing, and then it seems more worthwhile.’

  ‘My father and my grandfather before him were tailors,’ Solly said. ‘I was taught to take pride in how good the gentlemen looked in the suits I made for them. In hard times, all I had was that pride. I think you have given the machinists that same idea. But I think you must also try to influence Mr Greville, persuade him to offer the workers some kind of bonus too. Pride in your work alone does not put food on the table.’

  Mariette nodded in agreement. She didn’t know how Greville had the cheek to expect the women to work longer hours without extra pay, while he was making a fortune.

  ‘I’ll suggest it as soon as he gets back from Yorkshire,’ she said.

  As she left the building and was walking to the gate, the dark-haired man she’d seen inside the factory came up to her.

  ‘You’ve got the gift of the gab,’ he said with a wide grin. ‘I was fully expecting them to throw things at you, but you charmed them.’

  He had a fascinating face, with very green eyes and sharp cheekbones. His were not matinee idol looks, by any means, but the kind anyone would look at a second time.

  ‘To tell the truth, I was expecting trouble,’ she admitted. ‘It wasn’t as if I had anything to sweeten the bitter pill.’

  ‘Well, you did good. They all know what a mean cove Greville is and what a packet he’ll be making from the war.’

  Mariette couldn’t openly agree with him, it might get back to Greville. ‘The war is getting closer and closer, everyone will need to do their bit and make a few sacrifices,’ she said. ‘But what’s your job here?’

  ‘Jack of all trades, that’s me,’ he grinned. ‘Mechanic when the machines break down, driver, packer, floor sweeper and tea maker.’

  ‘How come you haven’t joined up?’ she asked.

  ‘Reserved occupation,’ he said. Seeing her look of surprise, he laughed. ‘Not jack of all trades! I mean the Fire Brigade. I just help out here in my time off. I’m Greville’s nephew, John Abbott, his sister’s son.’

  ‘Good to meet you, Mr Abbott,’ she said.

  ‘Johnny to everyone,’ he said. ‘Come and have a cup of tea with me, there’s a café round the corner.’

  ‘I have to get back to the office,’ she said, but she found herself looking into his green eyes and feeling tempted.

  ‘Solly is bound to ring my uncle and tell him what a marvel you are, so if you’re a bit late back he’s not going to fire you.’

  ‘He’s gone to Yorkshire, so he won’t know anyway,’ she said. ‘And I could do with a drink.’

  The café was grubby, with broken lino on the floor, and a pall of cigarette smoke hung in the air from a dozen or so people who all appeared to have taken root. The oilcloth-covered tables needed a good wipe down, and the red-haired woman behind the counter looked half asleep. But Johnny grabbed the table by the window, then told her to sit down while he got the tea.

  ‘It’s a bit of a dive,’ he whispered when he got back with two mugs of tea. ‘But, believe it or not, they do the best bacon sandwiches you’ve ever tasted. Funny, really, because the owner is Jewish and they don’t eat pork.’

  Johnny, it seemed, knew quite a bit about Mariette already – that she had just turned twenty, was from New Zealand and living with her uncle and aunt in St John’s Wood. He said his uncle was impressed at her secretarial skills and claimed she was the best he’d ever had. ‘Mind you, he’s had some old trouts in the past,’ he laughed. ‘And he’s bowled over that you can speak French. What made you work for him, Miss Carrera? Surely, with your looks and brains, you could have found a better job?’

  ‘I had to get some secretarial experience somewhere, and the office is only a short walk from home,’ she said. ‘But I’ve grown to like it there. And do call me Mari – that’s short for Mariette.’

  ‘Mar-i-ette,’ he said, sounding each of the syllables. ‘A very pretty name, and very ooh la la!’

  She smiled. ‘It means “Little Rebel”. But I haven’t done any rebelling since I arrived in England.’

  ‘Does that mean you were a rebel back home?’

  ‘I suppose I was,’ she agreed. ‘But it was a sleepy little town with nothing much to do. There weren’t many opportunities, and my folks thought coming here would be good for me.’

  ‘Are you walking out with anyone?’

  She was a little surprised by such a point-blank question. ‘That’s a really silly expression.’ She giggled. ‘It’s so very English, implying that the relationship is one that only involves walks.’

  ‘Well, how about I ask you if you have a sweetheart? That implies kissing and cuddling.’

  ‘No one serious,’ she said. ‘I have a couple of men friends I’m writing to while they are away. One is in the army, the other in the RAF. What about you?’

  ‘There are girls I see now and then, but no one special. The way I see it, this war is going to offer opportunities. I’m not sure exactly what shape they’ll take, but I want to be unattached when the moment comes.’

  That remark made her feel a little uncomfortable, but she didn’t know why.

  ‘When the bombing starts, you’ll be kept very busy with fires,’ she said reproachfully. She could see he was what Rose called a ‘Jack the L
ad’, a bit too cocksure, someone who wouldn’t hesitate to bend the rules or break the law, if the price was right.

  ‘That’s true,’ he sighed. ‘I almost wish it would start, and then we could get it over with. All this hanging around waiting for something to happen wears me down.’

  ‘That’s a terrible thing to say,’ she exclaimed, but she couldn’t help but smile. It did seem like the whole of London was holding its breath.

  She had to go then, but as they stood outside the café he took hold of her hand.

  ‘Can we meet up again?’ he asked, looking right into her eyes. ‘I could take you to a club, dancing, whatever you like. Just have some fun, nothing serious. And very little walking.’

  ‘I’ll have to give that some thought,’ she said, and began to walk away.

  But she couldn’t resist looking back over her shoulder. He was leaning against the wall, his hands in his pockets, watching her. There was something about his stance, and the way he was looking at her, that made her think he could be fun.

  ‘Ring me at the office,’ she called back.

  Just three days later, it was announced that Winston Churchill had been signed in as head of the wartime coalition government. Not a minute too soon as the Germans were thundering their way through Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. That frightening news drove Johnny from Mariette’s mind.

  The Dutch Army surrendered a few days later, and it was said that the British and French troops were retreating to the French coast.

  She hadn’t heard from Morgan, but when she and Rose went to the cinema to see Gone with the Wind, the Pathé newsreel of what had happened in the Low Countries was very alarming. Columns of massed German tanks backed by motorized infantry and preceded by accurate aerial bombing smashed through outmoded defences in Antwerp and Brussels. They saw on the screen the smoking ruins of what had once been homes, churches and schools. Thousands of people, many with babies and young children, were taking to the roads to try to reach some place of safety.

  A couple of women in the cinema became completely hysterical, yelling out that the Germans would soon be here in England. Mariette had seen the huge coils of barbed wire all along the coast while in Littlehampton, and there had been warning signs that the beaches were mined too, but the German Army looked invincible. She didn’t think mines and barbed wire were going to deter them from making their way across the English Channel.

  The day after that film, the sky seemed to be full of Spitfires and Hurricanes. Compared with the German planes she’d seen on the news, they seemed pitifully small.

  Rose got herself into a terrible state at the thought of Peter being shot down.

  ‘They won’t stand a chance in those little planes once they’re hit,’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t bear the thought of losing him.’

  Mariette could hardly reassure her that he would never be shot down in his plane – it was all too obvious that many airmen would be lost – and yet, when Peter came to the house with Gerald a few nights later on a twenty-four-hour pass, they seemed untroubled and couldn’t wait to be sent out on a mission.

  ‘Aren’t you scared?’ Mariette asked Gerald later, as they sat in the garden alone together.

  ‘Not of flying, I love it,’ he grinned. ‘But I expect I will be scared when I’m faced with a Messerschmitt on my tail. Doesn’t do to show it, though, got to keep a stiff upper lip and all that.’

  He asked for a photograph of her, and she gave him one taken on the night of her surprise party when she’d left college. ‘I shall kiss you for luck each time I go out,’ he said as he tucked it into his wallet. Then he kissed her with all the abandonment of a man who thought it might be his last embrace.

  ‘I love you, Mari,’ he whispered when he finally broke away. ‘You are on my mind all the time, I go to sleep imagining us getting married one day and never having to say goodbye ever again.’

  She couldn’t bring herself to say she would happily marry him. But his passionate kiss had stirred up feelings inside her, so she held him close and kissed him back. If he took that as meaning she felt the same as he did, well, she couldn’t help that. And besides, if he kept kissing her that way, she might find it was true love.

  It was through anxiety for Gerald that she turned Johnny down when he rang her to ask her out. She really wanted a fun night out dancing, especially with a man who wasn’t in real danger of being killed in the near future, but it seemed wrong when Gerald thought of her as his special girl.

  The evacuation of thousands of British and French soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk began on 27th May. Noah went down to Dover the following day to write an article about the evacuation. He stayed on there until 4th June, when the evacuation of the troops was completed. During that time, Mariette, Lisette and Rose all remained glued to the wireless each evening as reports came in that, aside from the troopships that had been sent for the evacuation, hundreds of ordinary people all along the coast had taken out their little boats to rescue as many soldiers as they could. It was reported that some people did the forty-four-mile round trip in heavy seas twice, crossing the English Channel with German aircraft firing down at them. It was so stirring and heroic that all three of them listened with tears running down their faces.

  They saw it all on the Pathé news at the cinema, watching the film showing thousands of French and English soldiers patiently waiting on the beaches of Dunkirk, even though they were under heavy fire. Even more telling were the images of the wounded being carried off ships at Dover and Folkestone on stretchers.

  Each day, Mariette waited anxiously for the postman to call, but there was no letter from Morgan telling her that he was safely back in England. She wondered whether anyone would even know to contact her, if the worst had happened. His brothers were his next of kin, after all.

  On 18th June, they listened to a stirring speech by Winston Churchill in which he said that the Battle of France was now over, and the Battle of Britain was about to begin. ‘Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties,’ he said, amongst other lines that both chilled and thrilled, ending with, ‘Men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”’

  The very next day, an exceptionally brief letter arrived from Morgan, sent from a hospital in Folkestone. It said:

  I copped some shrapnel. But I’m OK. Don’t come here, I don’t want to see you while I’m like this.

  Yours

  Morgan

  She didn’t know if that was just bravado, or if he really wanted her to visit him.

  But Lisette said she should take him at his word. ‘He might be in a lot of pain, and perhaps he can’t walk at the moment. Some men like being babied, but some hate anyone to see them looking vulnerable. Besides, all the trains coming back from there will be packed with wounded men. That’s no place for you.’

  Winston Churchill had been right in saying that the Battle of Britain was about to begin. On 14th June, the Germans entered Paris. With the enemy now just across the Channel, and the Luftwaffe firing on British shipping, suddenly invasion looked imminent.

  The newspapers reported that wolf packs of German U-boats were inflicting enormous damage on shipping in the Atlantic, and the Italians had joined with the Germans to attack British troops in Egypt. For Gerald, Peter and their fellow airmen there was no leave now as they bravely set off in their little Spitfires and Hurricanes again and again to defend England. Airfields in the south of England were being targeted by the Luftwaffe. Noah reported, on returning from some business near Brighton, that he’d witnessed fierce dogfights overhead.

  It was clear to everyone that, despite the indomitable courage of the British fighter pilots, Germany had a huge advantage in deploying so many more aircraft.

  The arrival of thousands of Commonwealth troops in England was heartening. And yet, at the same time, everyone suspected they were here because the invasion of England was about to start.

  On 2nd July, Mariette arrived home from work to find Rose and Lisette sitting in the kitchen, both in tea
rs.

  ‘Whatever’s happened?’ Mariette asked, her stomach beginning to churn with fear. ‘Where’s Noah? Is it him?’

  ‘No, Noah’s fine,’ Lisette croaked out. ‘It’s Gerald … he was shot down today.’

  Mariette sank down on to a chair in shock. She didn’t need to ask if he was dead, she could see it on their faces. ‘How do you know?’ she asked.

  ‘Peter rang. They went out this morning with three other pilots,’ Lisette said quietly. ‘Gerald had shot down a Heinkel, and they were all returning to the airfield in formation when another Heinkel came out of the clouds firing at them. Peter said Gerald’s plane was hit on its tail, it went into a spiral and then burst into flames. He didn’t stand a chance.’

  Mariette covered her face with her hands. She remembered Gerald’s passionate last kiss, and how he’d said he loved her. If only she’d told him she loved him too, let him go off with the belief one day they’d get married. She doubted if she would ever meet another man with such wonderful qualities, and it hurt so much to know she’d never see him again.

  Suddenly the war became very real to her. Thousands of men might have been killed all over Europe – two women in the factory at Shoreditch had lost their husbands at Dunkirk, and another pilot, who was a friend of Gerald and Peter’s, had been shot down on his first mission – but she hadn’t known any of them. She hadn’t heard them laugh, hadn’t danced with them, and certainly hadn’t been kissed by them. Gerald’s death brought the war into sharp focus, right in front of her, and all those sandbags, air-raid shelters and gas masks had real meaning for her at last. People were going to die, here in London – not just strangers, but people she knew well – and life as she’d known it was never going to be the same again.

  That night, she stayed up late writing a long letter home. She was no longer devious Mariette; the words she was writing came straight from her heart. Alexis was seventeen now, Noel sixteen, and the thought that her brothers were close to the age when they would be called up made her blood run cold. Suddenly her family seemed so much more precious to her, and she felt she had to tell them. She wrote: