by Daisy Styles
Daisy Styles
* * *
THE BOMB GIRL BRIDES
Contents
1. London, January 1944
2. New Digs
3. The Shop Floor
4. Settling In
5. Maggie’s Grand Plans
6. Roger Carrington
7. Holkham Beach
8. Wrigg Hall
9. Flora’s Visit
10. Volunteers
11. In Kit’s Safekeeping
12. Good News/Bad News
13. Dig for Victory
14. The Girl with the Tea Trolley
15. Percy
16. Secrets and Lies
17. Grow Your Own
18. Suspicions
19. The Truth
20. Consequences
21. London
22. A Change of Plan
23. Edna and Flora
24. Home
25. A Cold Reception
26. The Package!
27. The Family Visit
28. Encounters
29. The Swap
30. Hugo
31. Catching Up
32. Tempers Flare
33. Visitors
34. Home Truths
35. The Big Day … at Last!
36. All Change
37. The Usual Place
38. D-Day Landings
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE BOMB GIRL BRIDES
Daisy Styles grew up in Lancashire surrounded by a family and community of strong women. She loved to listen to their stories of life in the cotton mill, in the home, at the pub, on the dance floor, in the local church, or just what happened to them on the bus going into town. It was from these women, particularly her vibrant mother and Irish grandmother, that Daisy learnt the art of storytelling.
By the same author
The Bomb Girls
The Code Girls
The Bomb Girls’ Secrets
Christmas with the Bomb Girls
For my youngest daughter, Isabella, who when she was a little girl liked nothing more than sitting on church benches watching weddings with her mum!
Love you x
1. London, January 1944
Julia Thorpe hurled an armful of clothes into her suitcase; as skirts, blouses and cardigans fell in a heap on top of her precious books, she began to cry. She wouldn’t need Shakespeare, Jane Austen and T. S. Eliot where she was going!
Falling on to her bed, Julia abandoned herself to tears, which just made her feel even guiltier. What if all the millions of conscripted women across the nation reacted in the same self-indulgent manner as she had? There’d be no bombs or planes built and who would work the land to provide food for a nation that was on the edge of starvation? Buses and Red Cross ambulances would stand empty without their female drivers; the country would literally grind to a halt.
Julia knew that signing on as a Bomb Girl was unquestionably her duty, but she’d been so close to her dream of going to Oxford. In her mind she’d walked the streets of the old city on her way to early-morning lectures; she’d pictured her garret room overlooking a leafy quad; and she’d imagined herself on autumn days cycling around the town with a long scarf wrapped around her college gown.
‘Damn! Damn! Damn!’ Julia seethed as she pummelled her lilac satin eiderdown.
Her sobs were too loud for her to hear a tap at the door, so she was startled when her older brother, Hugo, walked in, calmly puffing on his pipe.
‘Cheer up, sis, it’s not that bad,’ he said with a cheery smile.
‘Go away!’ she mumbled as she wiped away her tell-tale tears on the eiderdown.
Ignoring her red, scowling face, Hugo settled himself on the pretty padded chair beside her dressing table.
‘Can’t you see I’m busy packing?’ Julia said, as she struggled to her feet and straightened her golden-blonde bobbed hair.
Hugo hid a smile at the sight of the flimsy silk underwear and nylons she’d flung into her case.
‘You’ll need something more substantial than that lot to keep you warm up North,’ he joked.
‘What do you suggest? Clogs and shawl?’ she asked crossly.
‘Warm jumpers, trousers and skirts – and stout boots,’ he suggested with a knowing wink.
‘I’m not going on a walking tour of the bloody Alps,’ she snapped, as she turned her back on him to resume her packing.
‘Okay, okay,’ Hugo said, as he rose to his feet. ‘I’ll leave you to your bad mood.’
‘It’s all right for you,’ Julia grumbled. ‘Just because you’re a man you get away with everything!’
Hugo burst out laughing. ‘Don’t be so damned silly!’
‘Daddy would have let you go to Oxford,’ she said sulkily.
‘He would not!’ Hugo exclaimed. ‘He wouldn’t have let either of us shirk our duty and you know it.’
Their eyes locked: Julia knew exactly what her brother was talking about. Hugo had lost his left hand when he’d been attacked by a German Messerschmitt as he was heading home across the Channel after a night raid. He’d insisted he could fly with one hand, but, for all his bravado, he’d been discharged from military service and now worked for the Ministry of Information in London. It was a worthy enough job, but Hugo never got over leaving his beloved RAF.
‘So why didn’t he stop me taking the wretched entrance exam in the first place?’ Julia continued. ‘Did he hope I’d fail and that would be the end of my academic ambitions?’
‘We’re in the middle of a war, sis. I actually doubt the old man gave your Oxbridge exam much thought,’ Hugo said in his father’s defence.
‘That sums it up perfectly!’ Julia cried miserably. ‘Daddy’s life belongs to the army and Mummy’s to the Red Cross – duty’s really all that counts in this house.’
Hugo’s expression darkened as he listened to his younger sister. ‘Stop right there, Jay!’ he commanded. ‘Damn it, of course father’s life belongs to the British Army: he’s deploying troops all over Europe. You can hardly blame him for not keeping up with what’s going on at home.’
Feeling embarrassed, Julia flushed at his words.
‘And as for Ma, she’s a bloody hero,’ Hugo continued. ‘Driving around the city during enemy air attacks, risking her life to dig out the dead and the wounded from blazing ruins.’
Julia’s head drooped. Swallowing back tears, she managed to murmur, ‘I’m sorry. I know I’m behaving badly. It just seems so cruel to get a place at Oxford and then have it snatched away because of this damn, blasted war.’
Hugo’s heart ached to see his sister so wretched. Pulling her into his arms, he held her close to his chest and kissed the top of her head. ‘Darling girl, when this filthy war is over you can follow your dreams, but for now you must do your duty, just like millions of other men and women up and down the country.’
Julia lifted her beautiful green eyes flecked with little golden flashes to gaze into Hugo’s sombre face. ‘I know. I’ll buckle down once I get there,’ she promised feebly.
‘That’s my girl,’ he said, as he gave her a kiss on each cheek. ‘Now finish your packing and I’ll drive you to the station.’
After he’d left the room and closed the door behind him, Julia stared at her suitcase. Damn it! She’d take the books, even if she didn’t read a single one – the sight of their familiar covers would make her feel better. And she’d take her typewriter too; she’d started to write her first novel when she thought she was going to Oxford, and there was no reason why she shouldn’t continue with it just because her circumstances had changed. She packed all the sensible clothes Hugo had suggested – plus, seeing as she was
going to Lancashire, a raincoat as well!
‘You shouldn’t be wasting your precious petrol ration coupons on me,’ Julia said, as they bounced along the rutted streets littered with shattered concrete, brickwork and broken glass. Areas that had once been leafy and green were now blocked by trees that had been uprooted by bomb blasts. Julia stared at a tenement block that looked as though it had been sliced in half with a knife: upstairs, beds and wardrobes seemed to be balancing precariously, as if any minute they would tumble and fall into the street far below.
‘God!’ groaned Hugo, as he expertly steered his ministry car around a gaping man-hole. ‘There’ll be nothing left of London before long.’
Julia gazed sadly at the wretched sights all around them. ‘Do you think the war will end soon?’ she asked.
‘Ah, if only, sis,’ Hugo sighed. ‘I fear Herr Hitler will never capitulate – even though the war is turning in our favour, megalomaniacs like him never give in. The best we can hope for is that his generals will shoot him themselves!’
‘Miracles happen,’ Julia said with a sigh.
The Manchester train was packed to bursting point with soldiers, sailors and young men in RAF uniforms, all on the move up and down the country. But they were happy enough to give up their seats for a stunning slender girl with a winning smile.
‘Here, love, take mine,’ a cheerful sergeant said, as he rose from his window seat.
‘That’s very kind of you,’ Julia responded gratefully. ‘If you’re sure you don’t mind?’
‘Nah,’ the cheery sergeant replied. ‘Me and the lads’ – he indicated with a nod his men in the compartment and the outside corridor who seemed barely more than boys – ‘we’ll be hopping out at Watford Junction.’
Julia gratefully accepted his seat and sat down just in time to wave to her brother standing on the platform. Smiling at his sister, who looked small and vulnerable in a carriage packed with uniformed men, Hugo gave her a cheery grin as the huge locomotive belched a cloud of sooty black smoke, then started to shunt slowly out of Euston Station. Standing on the empty platform littered with discarded cigarette packets, spent matches and trampled newspapers, Hugo wondered how his clever but often too outspoken sister would fare in the bomb-building factory in Lancashire.
2. New Digs
Flushed, hot and excited, Maggie and Nora staggered into the cowshed, a modernized farm building that the Phoenix Munitions Factory had requisitioned to accommodate some of their residential female workers. Bearing bulging shopping bags and heavy suitcases, they were red in the face and gasping for breath.
‘I’ve packed everything but the kitchen sink!’ Nora giggled as she collapsed on the sofa, which Rosa, already a resident of the cowshed, quickly vacated.
Keen to share her home with her best friends, she gave both girls a quick kiss. ‘Benvenuto, welcome!’
‘I’m too tired to understand Italian, our kid, just put kettle on for a brew,’ Maggie said affectionately to Rosa, who, though Italian, now spoke English with a heavy Lancashire accent and understood all the idioms her workmates used, though she still kept to Italian endearments for the ones she loved best.
‘Certo, cara,’ Rosa replied, as she quickly put the little black kettle on top of the wood-burning stove that kept the cowshed warm and cosy all through the cold winter months. ‘Promise me you two won’t squabble when you’re sharing a bedroom together,’ she teased.
‘I’m so happy to be here I’d agree to anything,’ Nora admitted with her sweet, gap-toothed smile. ‘I’ll never get over mi dad allowing me to leave home and come up here to live on’t moors with mi best friends,’ she said with a rush of pure joy. ‘I feel right proper grown up now,’ she announced, as she handed round a packet of Woodbines.
Maggie eagerly accepted a cigarette, but Rosa preferred to roll one of her own strong-tasting cheroots.
‘Mi mother couldn’t get me out of house quick enough,’ Maggie confessed. ‘I know I’ve been driving her and mi dad round the bend and back again since me and Les got engaged.’
‘You can say that again!’ Nora exclaimed. ‘It’s wedding this and wedding that with you these days.’
‘So?’ an aggrieved Maggie cried. ‘A girl only gets married once in her life.’
‘If she’s lucky,’ Rosa said sceptically. Seeing a hurt expression flash across her friend’s happy, glowing face, Rosa quickly adjusted her comment. ‘Though I am quite sure in the case of you and Les, your marriage will last a lifetime, carissima.’
When the little kettle whistled on the stove, Rosa brewed the tea, which she then poured into mugs. ‘A letter arrived from Gladys today,’ she told her friends excitedly. ‘It’s to all of us,’ she added, as she drew the envelope out of her cardigan pocket.
‘Oh, read it out,’ Nora implored. ‘I miss her so much.’
‘Me too,’ Maggie said. ‘But, you know, we should be grateful for small mercies: if it weren’t for Gladys going to London, we’d never be living here in the cowshed.’
All three girls smiled a little sadly as they recalled darling Gladys with her long, dark-mahogany brown hair and brilliant deep-blue eyes dancing round the cowshed in her new nurse’s uniform. She’d had to retrain as a nurse when her skin reacted violently to the cordite she handled daily. She’d struggled at first, but it turned out Gladys loved her new job, was born for it, in fact. She’d done so well she’d been offered a job working alongside her handsome boyfriend, Dr Reggie Lloyd, at St Thomas’ Hospital in London. But taking up that position had left an empty space not just in the cowshed, where she’d lived happily for almost two years, but in her friends’ hearts too.
Rosa unfolded the letter and started to read:
Dearest Mags, Nora, and Rosa,
I’m snatching a few moments to write to you as I’ve not had time to draw my breath since I arrived in London. Reggie was waiting for me at Euston Station and when I stepped off the train he presented me with a bouquet. (I dread to think how much he paid on the black market for red roses in winter!)
‘Ah, lucky Glad. I wish I could see my Les,’ Maggie said in a low yearning voice.
I’m back on the post-op ward, which I requested and which I love. It’s not a pretty sight, nursing men with terrible wounds who need life-saving surgery, but I admire their strength and humour and their determination to return to the front just as soon as they can.
‘Only to be shot at again, poor sods,’ Nora murmured sadly.
They’re heroes in my opinion and I’m proud to be able to ease their pain when they’re recovering from surgery; some don’t make it, which always upsets me, especially when they’re no more than boys and call out for their mothers on their death beds. Anyway, on a more cheerful note, it’s lovely that I’m so close to Reggie – even if I only see him for five minutes a day, it’s more than I would ever see him if I were still at the Phoenix. How is everybody? Are you all well? Rosa told me that you two girls would be moving in with her – I’m glad she’ll have company. Don’t give the poor girl earache with your nattering every night! I miss you all so much. Write when you’ve got five minutes to spare and give my love to everybody.
Yours ever, Gladys xxx
As Rosa folded the letter and returned it to the envelope, there was a thoughtful silence.
‘Do you think she’ll ever come back here?’ Nora asked.
Rosa slowly shook her head. ‘I don’t think so, not if she wants to do specialist nursing and be with her beloved Reggie,’ she replied.
‘Nothing ever stays the same,’ Nora murmured mournfully. ‘There’s always somebody coming or going.’
‘That’s wartime for you,’ Maggie groaned. ‘Nobody’s in one place for long.’
‘We’re sure to have somebody new in here with us soon,’ Rosa added as she topped up everybody’s mug of tea.
‘That will make a full house,’ Nora commented.
‘What difference does it make?’ Maggie said mournfully. ‘Whoever comes next won’t hold a candle to our lov
ely Glad.’
A few hours later, after the girls had shared a frugal supper of baked beans and slices of cold spam, there was a knock at the door. It was Nora, wearing an old woolly dressing gown, who got up to answer it. Swinging open the door, she squinted in the dark, and was just about able to make out the tall, slender figure of a woman silhouetted against the night sky.
‘I think this might be my new lodgings?’ the woman declared in a clear, ringing voice, as she handed Nora a sheet of official-looking typewritten paper.
‘Oh … yes, come in, please,’ Nora warmly responded. ‘We were told to expect somebody soon but we didn’t think it would be right away,’ she added, as she bustled the newcomer into the warm room.
After her long walk up the dark cobbled lane to the cowshed, with a fox-fur stole thrown carelessly around her neck and a soft brown felt trilby hat set at a jaunty angle on her blonde bob, Julia blinked as she entered the room; the other three girls blinked for altogether another reason. Who was this willowy, elegant woman dressed like a model in expensive tweed trousers and smart brown tie-up brogues?
‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said, as she extended a slim pale hand to the three women in their nightwear. ‘I’m Julia Thorpe.’
Overawed, the three girls just about managed to make their own introductions, before Nora, thinking the tight-lipped girl might loosen up with tea inside her, moved forwards.
‘Fancy a cuppa?’
‘I’m awfully tired,’ Julia said apologetically. ‘I’ve been travelling all day and I’m longing for my bed. Would you mind very much showing me to my room?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Though taken aback by Julia’s formal tone, Rosa nevertheless responded politely as she led her towards the vacant bedroom.
Rosa was quick to notice that Julia’s face appeared to fall as she took in the stark metal bed and cheap flimsy wardrobe. She wondered what kind of surroundings Julia had come from, given her stylish clothes. No doubt she had her own lovely room with a luxurious double bed, and a deep closet full of glamorous ball gowns, the likes of which most of the girls at the Phoenix would never even have seen, let alone owned.