by Liz Trenow
My thanks, too, to Kate Wigley and others at the Warner Archive in Braintree, which is where I first became entranced by a scrap of extraordinary silk, in cream damask with pure silver threads, which became the central focus of the quilt and the narrative. This was one of the May Silks, hand-woven for the wedding dress of Princess May (later Queen Mary) by Warner and Sons in 1893. Also to May Bercouwer who introduced me to the mysteries of fabric conservation.
My daughters Becky and Polly both read early drafts and gave me useful feedback as well as helping me get into the mind of my contemporary character, a thirty-something professional metropolitan girl.
Finally, I am indebted to the support and guidance of three wonderful women: Caroline Hardman, of Hardman & Swainson Literary Agency, and my two editors at HarperCollins/Avon, Caroline Hogg and her successor Lydia Newhouse, without whom this book would never have happened.
About the Author
Liz Trenow is a former journalist who spent fifteen years on regional and national newspapers, and on BBC radio and television news, before turning her hand to fiction. The Forgotten Seamstress is her second novel. She lives in East Anglia with her artist husband, and they have two grown-up daughters. Find out more at www.liztrenow.com and join her on Twitter @LizTrenow
Also by Liz Trenow
The Last Telegram
Read on for an extract from Liz Trenow’s new book
The Poppy Factory
coming soon
Monday 11 November 1918
RED LETTER DAY!
Even now I have to pinch myself!
I have sorely neglected this diary since starting at the factory – having felt so exhausted and dispirited each evening, and my entries so dull. But now! There is so much to write about I barely know where to begin.
It started out as another gloomy winter Monday with us all bent over our benches carefully mixing ‘devil’s porridge’ and then, at 11 o’clock this morning, the siren wailed. We jumped out of our skins of course. We always do. Explosion warning? An air raid? Everyone stood stock still, looking at each other over our respirators like yellow-faced frogs. And then we twigged. We’d heard rumours, of course, there had been plenty of reports in the newspapers, but no one really believed them. There’ve been so many false promises. Could it really happen this time?
Then the boss came over the tannoy and told us it was official: fighting had been suspended on the Western Front. Just as he was talking all the church bells of East London started clanging with a deafening din – such a surprising sound that we hadn’t heard for four years – and we were cheering so loud and laughing that we couldn’t hear the rest of what he said. But the word got round soon enough: not that we’d have carried on working, in any case, but they were closing the factory for the day.
We threw off our overalls, grabbed our coats and tumbled out into the street like a pack of puppies, where there was already such a great crush of excited people singing and cheering, running and dancing, hugging and kissing, that we could barely make our way through the streets. Being so short and slight Freda was virtually carried along, and I had to hold her tight so’s we wouldn’t get separated. A group of young lads adopted us: ‘Come on canaries,’ they yelled, ‘we’ll look after you, show you a good time.’
On a normal day we wouldn’t have given them a second glance, but the world had suddenly been painted in bright colours and even those spotty boys looked handsome. The weather was grey and a bit drizzly but it felt like the sun had come out, beaming down on us lot, all lit up with happiness.
We had a notion to get ourselves to the West End and somewhere near Buckingham Palace ‘cos word was that the King and Queen were going to come out and talk to us but there wasn’t a cat’s chance of that. The buses were crammed to the nines with people piled high on the top decks and hanging off the rear doorways, but they weren’t going anywhere due to the crowds. It was almost impossible to push your way through even on foot, so we just let ourselves be carried wherever the crowd took us.
We passed by Smithfield, and a surge of greasy, blood-stained lads had poured out of the meat market, and on to the edges of the City where a great black wave of clerks and business types had flooded the street. They were throwing their bowlers in the air, hanging out of windows and balconies and climbing lampposts, without a thought for their smart city clothes. No one cared a jot.
The pubs were opening by now, and tankards being handed out around the crowd, and bunting being hung from upstairs windows so the city looked like a fairground. At one junction someone had set a gramophone going in an open window, and we started dancing to it. After a while, as we moved slowly forwards, the bands came out – Salvation Army, musicians from the dance halls and proper classical players – just about anyone who had an instrument seemed to gather on every street corner and they played together, all the old favourites: Pack up Your Troubles and It’s a Long Way to Tipperary. If they stopped, someone would hand them each a pint and we’d shout for more till they tuned up again.
Freda and me both got horribly drunk and kissed a dozen unsuitable types, which as a married woman I really shouldn’t have, but we were so happy we just didn’t care.
Then there was a great roar from the crowd and people shouted ‘God Save The King’ again and again, and the musicians struck up with the national anthem. We were still in Cheapside and nowhere near The Mall, but word had spread through the crowd that King George and Queen Mary had come out onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace and waved to all those lucky beggars who managed to get within sight of them.
After He’s a Jolly Good Fellow, the crowd started on other songs and I was joining in cheerfully until they struck up with the hymn All People That on Earth Do Dwell, and a sudden surge of sadness engulfed me. I don’t suppose the beer we’d drunk on empty stomachs helped, but my legs went wobbly and I felt I might fall over if I didn’t find somewhere to sit. I pushed my way through the crowd to the side of the road and found an empty doorstep.
Then the tears came, coursing down my face in a deluge, as I remembered all those poor boys. Those thousands and thousands of boys, even millions, who were never coming back, who would never be able to celebrate the victory they lost their lives for. Not just Ray and Johnnie, but my uncles Fred and Ken and the three Garner brothers, Billy and Stan, Tony and Ernest, Joe, William and Tom Parsons. And those were just the boys in our neighbourhood we knew well.
After a bit, Freda came and sat down beside me and put her arm around my shoulders.
‘What was it all for?’ I wailed. ‘They’ll never come home, never get married, have children or grow old.’
‘But my brother’s alive, Rose,’ she said, putting her arm around me. ‘That’s a blessing, isn’t it? It won’t be long before he’s home.’
We sat there for a while, both of us lost in our thoughts despite the great noise going on around us, until we realised that we were both ravenously hungry. Freda managed to grab the last two baked potatoes from a street vendor, and a cup of tea, which made us feel a little better.
The afternoon was drawing in and it was starting to rain. ‘Let’s get home,’ I said. ‘Our folks will be wanting to see us.’ I couldn’t imagine what Mum might be doing – she’s spent so long in mourning for my brothers I wasn’t sure she’d have the heart to celebrate.
The best sight of all was as we crossed London Bridge and it seemed every craft on the Thames had taken to the water: ferries and tugs and steamboats and skiffs, all decorated with flags and full of happy cheering people.
My hand is so tired I can write no more, except for these words:
THE WAR IS OVER!
Yes, my dearest Alfie, perhaps it won’t be long until we are together again. I must stay strong for you and prepare for the start of our married lives together.
Tuesday 12 November 1918
Thick head and early shift, ugh.
When I woke this morning I thought at first I must have dreamed it, but it must be true because it’s all over the ne
wspaper billboards. You wouldn’t have thought they’d still need us to carry on making shells, now the war is over, but the manager says there is still a job for us for the moment and we will continue until they tell us to stop. I don’t care. We’re earning good wages and heaven knows what we’ll do when they lay us off.
At tea break we had such a laugh, telling tales of yesterday and what we’d all got up to. When Freda and I finally made it back to the Old Kent Road we’d found her mum and my Ma and Pa well ensconced at The Nelson, singing old wartime songs along with the rest of them – except those who were past it, slumped in their chairs and on the floor.
Ma was weeping even while she sang, not even bothering to stop and wipe the tears flowing down her cheeks, so I managed to squeeze in beside her and tried to comfort her. But what can ever make up for the loss of two sons? Nothing, I suppose, except perhaps grandchildren. When Alfie comes home we will do our best to oblige.
At teatime today Pa told me I had to be patient. It would be weeks before we were likely to hear anything and I shouldn’t expect ‘young Alfred’, as he calls him, to be demobbed any time soon. There was all kinds of clearing up to be done after a war, he said, and it takes time to get all those thousands of troops back to the boats and then ferry them home. We haven’t heard anything from him for weeks, but there’s been no telegram, no knock at the door, so surely that means he is safe? And that is enough for me.
Freda says her brother’s got the luck of the innocent, though I haven’t a clue what that means and nor do I believe it, either. Were Ray and Johnnie not innocent enough to be saved? May they rest in peace, wherever they lie.
Monday 18 November 1918
Cutting from a feature in the Daily Sketch. It made me cry:
All over the world, on November 11, 1918, people were celebrating, dancing in the streets, drinking champagne, hailing the armistice that meant the end of the war. But at the front there was no celebration. Many soldiers believed the Armistice only a temporary measure and that the war would soon go on.
As night came, the quietness, unearthly in its penetration, began to eat into their souls. The men sat around log fires, the first they had ever had at the front. They were trying to reassure themselves that there were no enemy batteries spying on them from the next hill and no German bombing planes approaching to blast them out of existence. They talked in low tones. They were nervous.
After the long months of intense strain, of keying themselves up to the daily mortal danger, of thinking always in terms of war and the enemy, the abrupt release from it all was physical and psychological agony. Some suffered a total nervous collapse. Some, of a steadier temperament, began to hope they would someday return to home and the embrace of loved ones. Some could think only of the crude little crosses that marked the graves of their comrades. Some fell into an exhausted sleep. All were bewildered by the sudden meaninglessness of their existence as soldiers. What was to come next? They did not know, and hardly cared. Their minds were numbed by the shock of peace. The past consumed their whole consciousness. The present did not exist, and the future was inconceivable.
I thought about the ‘crude little crosses’ which might be the only thing that marked my brothers’ graves and sent up a prayer that we might one day see them laid to rest in a proper place, where we can visit and spend some time with them, that time we’ve been denied.
Then I set to wondering about the living, and whether Alfie is one of those with a ‘steadier temperament’, or one of the other types? Does he find the future inconceivable? I have been so consumed with planning his homecoming in my mind (I imagined a party with banners and barrels of beer, a feast of meat pies and mash and then, of course, some quiet time just for ourselves), that I haven’t for one moment imagined that he might actually be worried about returning to ‘normal life’.
Saturday 14 December 1918
Nearly a month has passed since my last entry but it is so hard to keep up my diary when I am still working hard and so little seems to be happening.
Rationing is getting worse and there seems no end in sight. Meat, butter and sugar are all very short, though surely the blockades must have stopped by now and supplies will start up shortly. Dad hoped to recruit a new boy to help him in the butcher’s shop but with hardly any meat to sell he’s opening just a couple of days a week and barely making enough to pay the rent. It’s only from my earnings and the little that Ma makes taking in mending that we manage to cover the other bills.
So I don’t know what we’ll do for money, now my job is finishing. At the end of our shift today the boss called us all together and told us that the factory will close early for Christmas – ie at the end of this week – and would not be re-opening. Of course we’d been expecting it, but that didn’t stop it being a real shock. Some of the girls were in tears.
‘Merry Christmas maties, thanks for working your fingers to the bone and ruining your complexions for the past few years. Now you can go back to being obedient little housewives,’ Freda whispered as we watched the boss’s departing back.
When we clocked off this afternoon someone started to sing, softly at first: ‘Good-bye-ee, good-bye-ee, wipe the tears, baby dear, from your eye-ee’, till all the rest of us picked it up and there was a great chorus of us going down the street.
It’s not just the pay I’ll miss. It’s a terrible job, dangerous and all (none of us can forget the explosion at Silvertown), but we’ve had such a good time with the other girls and made so many good friends here, it will be a wrench to leave them.
Some of the men are starting to come home now and most seem to be in good heart. The Nelson is doing great trade and the dance halls are busy. But yesterday today a young stranger came into the corner shop when I was buying needles and thread for Ma. He looked like a ghost, so pale and thin. When he came to the counter and spoke, he could only manage a hoarse kind of whisper and seemed struggling to get his breath, but I recognised the voice from somewhere. It was only later I realised that it was Percy Gittins, who used to be a great lardy lump at my old school who terrorised the smaller boys. Now he was reduced to a wraith who walked in a shuffle and could barely speak.
‘Must have been gassed,’ Ma said, when I told her about it later. ‘Destroys their lungs.’
The lost generation, they’re calling it. All the sacrifices they’ve made. Was it really worth it? That’s the main topic of conversation in the pub these days.
Still no word from Alfie.
Download Liz’s debut novel The Last Telegram here
Copyright
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013
Copyright © Liz Trenow 2013
Liz Trenow asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007480845
Ebook Edition © December 2013 ISBN: 9780007480852
Version: 2013-10-03
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