Christmas with the Bomb Girls

by Daisy Styles

Seeing him getting tired, Violet put aside his teacup, then sat beside the bed as he drifted off to sleep. She stayed by her husband’s side, holding his hand until the visitors’ bell clanged and she, along with the other friends and relatives, was ushered out of the ward.

  Violet got back to Yew Tree Farm just in time to bath Stevie and put him to bed. As he snuggled down in his borrowed cot, Violet sang ‘Golden Slumbers’ to him until he fell fast asleep. Tiptoeing in order not to disturb Stevie, she looked around the room, which Kit had decorated in a pretty, flowery wallpaper. She wondered sadly if there was anything left of their home. The domestic site had been hastily thrown up to house munitions workers and their families, but they’d been a place to call their own. Violet recalled how Arthur had arrived home every Friday with a bouquet from his allotment behind the despatch yard – spring blossoms, followed by summer blooms, followed by autumn flowers. She remembered the last bouquet he’d brought: a bunch of big, floppy, late chrysanthemums that she’d last seen on the kitchen windowsill before she walked out of the house with Stevie. She sighed. It had been a humble dwelling, but it was the place where she’d first shared a double bed with her husband, and Stevie had been born there. It made her sad to think of it in ruins, but at least they were alive, not like the poor woman Arthur had tried to save, who lost her life under a pile of rubble.

  12. The Phoenix Rises

  In the weeks that followed the bombing, Violet, Stevie, Kit and Billy were a surprisingly happy little group, loving their unexpected time together, even if it was in difficult circumstances. The boys, though different in age, bonded as they played together and shared their mealtimes, whilst Kit and Violet, who had always been close, grew even closer as they cared for their children and cooked and cleaned side by side in Kit’s big old farm kitchen. At the end of the day, after Violet had returned from visiting her husband in hospital and the babies were fast asleep, the two women sat together beside the cosy Aga, smoking Woodbines as the bitter autumn wind whistled across the dark moors outside.

  ‘It’s just like old times,’ Kit said with a nostalgic smile. ‘Remember, when we all lived together in the cowshed?’

  Violet nodded. ‘Goodness,’ she recalled. ‘How we got ourselves tied up in knots keeping secrets from each other.’

  Kit leant closer and added in a low voice, ‘I’ve got another secret,’ she confided. ‘I really want to help find Edna’s daughter, Flora.’

  Violet gasped in astonishment. ‘How on earth can you do that?’

  Kit’s shoulders slumped as she expressed her disappointment. ‘It turns out to be much more complicated than I thought,’ she confessed glumly. ‘Ian said that even if we could trace Flora, which might be impossible, we have no right legal right to approach her, so it’s hopeless.’

  ‘Oh …’ Violet’s deflated voice expressed her own disappointment.

  ‘He said,’ Kit continued, ‘that the only thing we can do is keep an eye on the adverts in the local and national papers.’

  Violet’s brow crinkled in confusion. ‘How’s an ad in the paper going to help?’

  ‘People sometimes advertise when they’re searching for their birth parent,’ Kit explained. ‘I’ve seen a few – though not Flora’s, unfortunately.’ As she spoke, Kit stood up and walked over to the highly polished oak sideboard, where she picked up several newspaper clippings, which she handed over to Violet who read them out loud: ‘Ronald Pemberton living in Tonge Moor, Bolton, born 1923, searching for birth mother, whose name might be McManus, originally from the Old Trafford area of Manchester.’ Violet glanced up at Kit. ‘It is a bit of a long shot,’ she remarked.

  Kit shrugged as she lit up another Woodbine. ‘I know, but it’s all we can do – chances are that Flora knows nothing at all about Edna, nor being adopted either.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Violet muttered thoughtfully to herself. ‘But what if her adoptive parents have died and Flora’s found her birth certificate with her real mother’s name on it? You do hear of these things.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Kit replied with a wistful smile.

  ‘You mustn’t give up, Kit – keep on trying,’ Violet urged. ‘Just imagine how happy Edna would be if her lost daughter walked back into her life.’

  With work suspended until the Phoenix was safe for the workers, Rosa had a brainwave. When she heard from Violet that children were not allowed on the ward at visiting time, she thought of a way of helping Arthur, who was desperately missing his little boy.

  ‘I’ll do drawings of Stevie which you can take to hospital for Arthur,’ she told a delighted Violet.

  ‘That’s a wonderful idea,’ Violet cried. ‘It will definitely cheer him up.’

  Rosa wasted no time in visiting Yew Tree Farm, where, using sheets of paper ripped from a writing pad, she drew black-and-white images with a stubby pencil: Stevie fast asleep in his cot with his arms thrown back in abandon; Stevie reaching out to grab Kit’s tabby cat; Stevie hungrily drinking milk from his bottle – lots of tender images that delighted Arthur and momentarily brought his boy closer to him. When Violet passed on her husband’s grateful words of thanks, Rosa smiled. ‘I am the one to thank Arthur,’ she remarked. ‘Now my hands feel empty without a pencil – I want to draw everything I see!’

  Two weeks after the bombing, the front part of the factory, which had survived the explosion, was passed as safe by an inspector and the munitions girls returned to work.

  ‘I can’t believe we’re back,’ Nora said as they all clocked on.

  ‘It felt like a holiday to start with,’ Maggie admitted. ‘But then I started to miss all of my friends, plus I was worried sick that Les’s infantry wouldn’t have enough bombs to fight Jerry!’

  ‘The Phoenix doesn’t exist just to send ammo to your boyfriend!’ Nora teased.

  ‘Maybe not, but I often mark my bombs with a kiss for Les or a cheeky message like “This one’s for you, Adolf!” ’

  ‘You’re mad!’ Nora joked.

  ‘Like as not,’ Maggie giggled. ‘But it helps to pass the time of day.’

  ‘Welcome back to the Phoenix!’ Malc exclaimed as the girls trooped up to their workbenches. ‘Come on, lasses,’ he urged. ‘We’ve got to make up for lost time – we don’t want the enemy to think they’re winning the war.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ a woman in the filling shed scoffed. ‘We’ll have bombs flying out of here by this time next week.’

  As the bomb line started to roll, the women combined to work harder than ever; it was their duty to keep the men with the Howitzers on the front line well stocked with ammunition, and if it meant working overtime to meet their quota, they’d do it for love of King and Country.

  The Phoenix nursery didn’t reopen at the same time as the factory. ‘We’re in the process of rebuilding the domestic units,’ Mr Featherstone explained to the mothers. ‘We can’t have you and your babies tramping through a building site. You’ll just have to arrange alternative child care for the time being,’ he advised.

  Violet and Kit developed a plan that suited both them and their children: they worked alternate weeks, so one of them could be at Yew Tree Farm minding the babies whilst the other went out to work. They felt guilty when they knew how hard the other munitions girls were working, but, like Kit said, they couldn’t possibly take their babies into the factory and there was nobody else to mind them. Knowing how anxious Violet was about leaving Stevie, Kit had a quiet word with her friend. ‘You don’t need to worry when you’re away from Stevie,’ she assured Violet. ‘He’s perfectly safe with me, sweetheart.’

  Violet blushed. ‘I’d trust you with my life, Kit,’ she responded. ‘I know Stevie couldn’t be in a safer place, it’s just that I …’ Her voice faded away in embarrassment.

  ‘You don’t have to explain,’ Kit said gently. ‘You love him so much you can’t stop worrying about him. You did have a fright – it’s not surprising you feel that way.’

  Violet nodded her head before blurting out, ‘But it’s not healthy, Kit! I don
’t know any other mother who worries so much about her baby. I don’t want Stevie growing up soft and mollycoddled.’

  ‘You’ll worry less as Stevie grows older,’ Kit told her. ‘It’s just because he’s so little and precious, and because of the troubling times we’re living in.’

  Violet stared at her friend with her wonderful wide blue eyes. ‘I never imagined I could feel such love,’ she confessed. ‘I thought I couldn’t love anybody more than my Arthur, but when Stevie was born I felt possessed by such a fierce protective love, a bit like a lioness with her cub,’ she added with a shy smile.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with that!’ Kit cried. ‘Look how hard I fought to get my son back. I’m sure all mothers have that feeling from time to time –’ She stopped short, as she was interrupted by a loud squawk from the cat. ‘Except when my cheeky little monkey chases the cat around the room and pulls her tail!’ Kit laughed.

  Back at work, Rosa got into the habit of sketching her friends and other women in the canteen, smoking, eating, laughing and chatting as they relaxed during their tea break. Eager to extend her repertoire, in her free time she moved out of the canteen in order to draw images of Bomb Girls at work in the filling shed, on the cordite line and in the packing shed, loading bombs into wooden boxes. Seeing her around so often, Rosa’s fellow workers lost their inhibitions as they became accustomed to her presence, and this easy familiarity enabled Rosa to catch images that had an individual style all of their own.

  ‘Make sure you keep ’em safe,’ Malc said as he admired Rosa’s most recent sketches, of women lining up beside Edna’s mobile chippy on a frosty night with a new moon shining silver light down on to the yard. ‘They’re a record of your time here, like a diary,’ he observed. ‘But I tell you what, kid,’ he added with a chuckle, ‘I’m going to get you a proper artist’s sketch-pad – them little scrappy bits of paper don’t do proper justice to your artistry.’

  Rosa laughed at what she thought was a preposterous idea. ‘And where you get artist’s sketch-pad? They rationed too, no?’

  Malc winked as he tapped the side of his nose. ‘Leave that to me, lass,’ he replied. ‘Least said, soonest mended!’

  True to his word, Malc showed up a week later with a proper sketch-pad and some coloured pencils. ‘There you go,’ he said with a pleased smile. ‘Let’s see what you can do with that lot.’

  It was during the second week back at work that Gladys’s allergic condition really flared up. It got to the point where her hands itched so much she scratched them until they bled.

  ‘You not go on like this,’ Rosa protested as she smoothed cream into her friend’s hands before they went to bed. ‘You must see doctor.’

  With all the local tragic events that had recently taken place at home and the exciting progress of the Allies in Italy, the last thing Gladys wanted to do was to stop building bombs. ‘This isn’t the time to be slacking and fussing over chapped hands – I want to work, and that’s that, Rosa,’ she staunchly protested.

  But in the end, she was forced to report to Dr Grant, the Phoenix doctor, when her wounds became infected. He’d been brought out of retirement to take charge of the small Phoenix Infirmary and was shocked at the condition of Gladys’s raw, red hands.

  ‘You have a chronic condition, young lady,’ he pronounced after he’d completed his examination. ‘It looks like a serious allergic reaction to cordite.’

  ‘But I’ve worked with explosives before,’ Gladys pointed out. ‘And never suffered a reaction as bad as this one.’

  ‘It’s perfectly clear cordite doesn’t suit you,’ he pronounced. ‘You’re going to have to take at least two weeks off work if you’re ever going to give your skin a chance to heal.’

  Gladys was yet again indignant at the prospect of being taken off the bomb line. ‘I won’t stop work!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘You have no choice, my dear. Being away from raw explosives is the only way to ease your condition,’ the doctor insisted.

  ‘Surely I can wear gloves?’ Gladys pleaded.

  Dr Grant shook his head firmly. ‘Cordite gets everywhere – you need a complete break from a toxic explosive environment; come back in two weeks,’ he said, as he firmly ushered her out of the surgery door.

  Feeling guilty about not pulling her weight, and wondering what on earth she would do with herself for two weeks, Gladys returned to the cowshed, where Rosa had made a pastry-based pizza, as there was no yeast to be had. The improvised pizza, topped with tinned tomatoes, a scratching of cheese and some wild thyme picked on the moors, was so delicious it briefly cheered Gladys up, but, as she wiped pastry crumbs from her lips, she grumbled to Rosa about the doctor’s decision to lay her off work.

  ‘I’ll go mad staying at home all day!’ she declared. ‘Not to mention how bad I’ll feel, sitting twiddling my thumbs whilst all my friends are slaving away putting in extra hours for the war effort,’ she told Rosa, who hummed to herself as she cleared away the dirty dishes. Recognizing the tune, Gladys looked at her incredulously. ‘Surely it’s too early for “Jingle Bells”!’ she exclaimed.

  Rosa giggled. ‘Nora teach me tune, so I know by Christmas.’

  ‘She might have taught you the tune, but not the words – you’ve got them all wrong, again!’ Gladys remarked as irrepressible Rosa incorrectly warbled, ‘Oh, jingling bells, jingling bells, all the jingling way.’

  Seeing Gladys shaking her head, Rosa protested, ‘Okay, so teach me the right words!’

  After Gladys sang the correct words in her wonderful, lilting voice, Rosa clapped her hands in sheer delight. ‘The Bomb Girl Nightingale!’

  Gladys pulled down the corners of her mouth as she said, ‘I suppose I could go around the factory singing to my pals – at least it would give me something to do during my damned sick leave.’

  ‘No, no, no!’ Rosa chided as she wagged her finger at her friend. ‘Stay away from explosive – do what the doctor say, mia cara.’

  Gladys looked thoughtful as she put a kettle full of water on top of the crackling wood-burning stove. ‘You know, I’ve been thinking about asking the staff at Belmont Sanatorium if I could help nurse Myrtle: that would be a good way to spend my time when I’m off work.’

  The two women exchanged a sad look. All the rest and fresh air hadn’t done anything to improve Myrtle’s condition, and the bombing of the Phoenix had severely shocked the sick woman. Even though her friends regularly visited her, they all knew that Myrtle, in a hospital that was chronically short staffed, spent most of her days lying in bed waiting for death to claim her. Rosa reached out to hug Gladys. ‘That a wonderful idea.’

  Gladys gave a shy smile. ‘Do you think they’ll have me?’ she asked doubtfully.

  ‘Certo! Of course,’ Rosa replied robustly. ‘And poor Myrtle will be very happy.’

  It was round about this time that Kit started feeling sick in the morning. Recalling her pregnancy with Billy, she vividly remembered how ill she’d been in the first months with him – so ill that she’d been forced to confide in her sister, who’d begged her not to let on to their father. ‘He’ll kill you if he finds out you’re expecting a babby!’ she’d said in a terrified whisper. ‘He’ll tear you limb from limb.’ Knowing her father as she did, Kit never doubted her sister’s words, so she’d suffered in silence until her body could keep her secret no longer and her belly swelled out under her ragged pinafore. Putting bad memories aside, Kit surveyed her comparatively flat stomach as she examined herself in the wardrobe mirror. Sometimes she couldn’t believe that the woman looking back at her with flowing, waist-length black hair, huge dark eyes brimming with contentment and a slender body that showed no sign of the bag of bones she had been on her arrival in England was Kitty Murphy from Chapelizoid, Dublin. Even in a time of war, love and happiness had transformed her into a beauty – not that Kit ever described herself as such, but her husband assured her she was at least once a day and Billy always called her ‘Pretty Mummy’ every time he kissed her. Examin
ing her small, firm breasts, Kit recalled how tender and swollen they’d become when she was pregnant with Billy; a sudden tingling sensation made her acutely aware that she could be repeating the whole process over again, but this time with Ian as the father of her child. Instead of a man who’d raped her, she would have a husband to love and care for her, a wonderful man who had already taken Billy as his own son and given him a name he could be proud of. She smiled secretively as she slipped a silk underskirt over her naked body and started to dress. In the weeks after the terrible explosion at the Phoenix, she and Ian had been even more passionate in their love-making; the fear of losing each other had accelerated their joy in one another and they’d made love more often than ever before. It would be surprising if she wasn’t pregnant, Kit thought with amusement to herself; she’d hardly been able to keep her hands off Ian, and he’d obviously felt the same way too. For the time being, Kit decided, as she hurried downstairs to help Violet with the children, she wouldn’t mention anything to her husband; she’d wait to see if she missed another period, and then, when she was sure, she’d break the good news.

  13. Gladys and Myrtle

  Gladys wasted no time in arranging a meeting with the matron of Belmont Sanatorium, who eagerly accepted Gladys as a volunteer.

  ‘With Myrtle bed-bound these days, it would be company for her to have you close by,’ she said gratefully.

  And so Gladys became a daily visitor to the sanatorium. Striding the three miles over the moors, Gladys enjoyed the bracing wind on those cold, damp days, and the smile on Myrtle’s thin, pale face that greeted her as she breezed in smelling of fresh air made the long walk, often in the rain, worthwhile. The sight of Gladys reading to Myrtle became a familiar one to the staff; Gladys sang to her as she brushed her now entirely grey hair, helped her use a bed pan and fed her, though most of the time Myrtle was too weak even to eat, but she tried her best just to please Gladys.

  ‘It doesn’t feel as awkward as having the nurses wash me,’ Myrtle whispered gratefully as Gladys gently soaped her back and shoulders. ‘I hope you don’t mind, dear?’ she asked with a shy apologetic smile.