by Daisy Styles
‘Months of waiting and now this!’ cried ecstatic Elsie as she waltzed around the canteen clutching Tommy’s letter close to her pounding heart.
‘You’re not the shy, wilting violet that walked in here a few years ago,’ Lillian teased.
‘You’ll give birth in the canteen if you don’t stop jumping about,’ Agnes said with a smile.
Elsie proudly rubbed the big, round, baby bump.
‘To think Tommy might not even know he’s going to be a dad,’ she said with a dreamy expression on her face.
‘He’s in for the shock of his life. I’d faint clean away if somebody presented me with a baby,’ Daphne said as she pulled down the corners of her mouth in disgust.
‘Wouldn’t you like bairns, Daphne?’ Elsie asked.
Daphne shuddered at the thought.
‘Certainly not!’ she exclaimed in her snootiest voice. ‘Though …’ she dropped her voice to a sexy whisper, ‘I do like the way they’re made!’
‘Me too!’ laughed Lillian as Elsie blushed bright crimson.
‘We’re surrounded by sex maniacs!’ Agnes joked.
Emily smiled feebly. If Tommy was coming home would Bill be coming home too? She’d heard from her mum, who’d heard from Bill’s mum, that Bill’s division were waging war on the Tunis line. It seemed unlikely that the entire battalion would be granted leave at such a crucial time of fighting.
As they prepared for bed back at the digs, Elsie, who was calmer than earlier in the day, returned to the subject that worried her more than anything: her dad.
‘Remember not to mention a word to Tommy of mi dad coming here and knocking me about,’ she reminded her friends.
‘We won’t do anything that will upset your time together,’ Emily assured her.
‘What will I do about seeing Tommy?’ Elsie asked. ‘I mean …’ She hesitated shyly.
‘You mean where will you sleep with him?’ Lillian finished the sentence for her.
‘You can have my room,’ Agnes volunteered.
‘Darling!’ Daphne gasped. ‘You can’t possibly be thinking of having sex in your condition!’
The look on Elsie’s face was a comical mixture of shock and horror.
‘I wasn’t thinking of that, like …’ she stammered. ‘It was more where could we be a bit private, you know … ?’
Before poor Elsie fainted clean away in embarrassment, Emily came to her aid.
‘In your condition you could get a few days’ leave,’ she said. ‘Then you can stay at Tommy’s mum’s house, you’ll have much more privacy than here.’
‘Yeah, this place gets more and more like Bradford market on a busy Saturday afternoon!’ joked Lillian.
Daphne rolled her eyes as she teased Elsie further.
‘I just hope you survive your night of orgy, Elsie darling!’
Emily picked up a cushion and whizzed it across the room at Daphne.
‘Leave the poor kid alone!’ she laughed.
Elsie had no problem getting a few days off.
‘You’re one of the hardest-working girls at the Phoenix,’ Malc told her. ‘I’ll have a quiet word with Mr Featherstone, so don’t worry your pretty little head.’
‘I’ll be back at work as soon as possible,’ Elsie said earnestly.
Malc smiled as he looked at her burgeoning bump poking through her overalls.
‘Not too soon, lovie. We don’t want a babby on the bomb line, do we?’
The same day that a smiling Elsie walked down the hill to meet her husband at Clitheroe station, Esther was discharged from hospital and brought back to the digs, where she was fussed and petted. Daphne had ordered a beautiful china doll with blinking blue eyes and a golden wig, from Hamleys toyshop in London; Emily had baked a mock-chocolate cake using all their sugar rations; Lillian had made her a new blouse. With her usual ingenuity for ‘fashion on the ration’, Lillian had made the blouse out of an old green silk blouse of her own. She’d added a Peter Pan collar made of lace she’d picked off an old pillow case and some tiny pearl buttons rescued from a moth-eaten cardigan in a second-hand shop.
‘It cost nowt!’ Lillian announced as she showed off the pretty new blouse to her friends.
‘Darling, you really should go into business,’ said Daphne, who was distinctly impressed by her friend’s nimble fingers.
‘Darling, I couldn’t possibly!’ Lillian fondly mocked. ‘I’m far too busy on the bleedin’ bomb line!’
During Esther’s convalescence in the Phoenix hospital, Agnes had had plenty of time to develop a plan that would keep Esther close to her side. She visited the day nursery, where she asked the nursery nurse in charge if Esther could join the children of other factory workers. Agnes explained that Esther wouldn’t be strong enough to travel back to Keswick when she was discharged from the ward; plus, she and Esther needed time together after their traumatic trip to Cambridge.
‘Esther worked a little miracle when she visited her dad in hospital,’ Agnes explained to the nursery nurse. ‘But she’ll need time to understand that Stan won’t be joining us right away.’
The nursery nurse agreed that they could care temporarily for Esther while Agnes was working. So when Mr Featherstone made enquiries about Agnes’s domestic arrangements she told him with a smile, ‘It’s only temporary, until she’s well.’
But in her mind, Agnes was already formulating a more permanent plan for Esther, one which she prayed would mean they’d never have to part again.
Elsie took the bus to Clitheroe station, where she stood on the platform with her heart pounding, waiting for the London train to chug into view. Tommy was only minutes away! Her husband, who she hadn’t seen since their honeymoon, her wonderful loving husband, was coming home! She spotted Tommy before he saw her: tall and lanky with a mop of mousy brown hair that, even with an army crop, still fell over his eyes. He dropped his duffel bag when he caught sight of Elsie and ran the length of the platform to scoop her into his arms and kiss her full on the mouth.
‘Tommy!’ she said, torn between modesty and a lustful longing that shot through her body like fire.
Tommy didn’t answer. His eyes were locked on her belly, gently swelling from underneath her duffel coat.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she said, stating the obvious.
‘A baby!’ he cried as he crushed her in his arms.
‘Not too hard!’ breathless Elsie gasped.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked.
‘I did!’ she cried. ‘I wrote loads of letters to your battalion in North Africa.’
‘Probably got blown up or scorched by the heat,’ he answered with a laugh. ‘Christ, it was as hot as hell out there. Worth it, though. Montgomery reckons we’ll break through the Tunisian line soon then we’ll move on Italy.’
Elsie wrapped her arms around her husband and kissed him long and hard.
‘Let’s not talk about the war,’ she pleaded. ‘All I want is you safely home with me and the baby.’
He smiled as he again gazed incredulously at her bulging tummy.
‘I still can’t believe it,’ he said.
She laughed as the baby started to kick.
‘You’d better! This one’s a real bonny fighter!’
The terrifying meeting with her dad, which Elsie was desperate to keep secret from her husband, was accidentally revealed to Tommy when he came across a letter in her handbag, written by Elsie’s grasping stepmother.
You should be helping your family at a time like this. If you don’t hand over your wages as a dutiful daughter should then your father will pay you another visit and this time you won’t get away with it.
‘What’s all this about?’ Tommy asked when Elsie walked into his mother’s kitchen and found him reading the letter.
Elsie went as white as a sheet then swayed as if she might faint. Tommy grabbed her and led her to a chair.
After giving her a glass of water, he said in a softer voice, ‘You never mentioned your dad paying you a visit, sweet
heart?’
Tears welled up in Elsie’s eyes.
‘He turned up out of nowhere,’ she blurted out. ‘He wanted mi wages.’
‘The bastard!’ Tommy seethed.
As she anxiously watched Tommy pace the room, Elsie attempted a half-hearted smile.
‘I lied,’ she said. ‘I told him I had no money, but all mi savings were in a tin under the floorboards he was standing on.’
Tommy didn’t seem to hear what she was saying; shocked and angry, he continued to pace around the room.
‘He threatened you – in your condition?’
‘Nothing stops him when he gets a mood on,’ she replied.
‘I’ll KILL him!’ Tommy said through gritted teeth.
‘He won’t bother me again,’ Elsie said with a pretend laugh. ‘Emily put the fear of God in him.’
Seeing she was getting agitated, Tommy appeared to drop the subject. But later, whilst Elsie was taking a nap, Tommy, wearing his regimental uniform, stood on the main road north, where, with all the army transport on the move, he had no difficulty hitching a lift to Newcastle. Feeling guilty that he was leaving his beloved Elsie, Tommy reasoned he had plenty of leave left to spend with her. He didn’t relish the thought of a single moment out of her sight, but this was one thing he really had to do.
With Elsie’s letter folded in his pocket, Tommy arrived in Newcastle grimly determined. He soon tracked down her family home in Gateshead, and, straightening his rather thin shoulders, he rapped on the door.
It was opened to him by a woman with a face like a greedy hawk.
‘Aye?’ she asked.
‘Can I speak to Mr Hogan?’
‘Who is it?’ a man’s voice yelled from inside the house.
‘A man … for you,’ the woman yelled back. She grudgingly opened the door for Tommy to pass. ‘He’s in the back,’ she said.
Tommy walked into the grubby kitchen, where Elsie’s dad sat smoking at the table with Elsie’s two stepsisters on either side of him. They all eyed Tommy with dislike and suspicion.
‘I’m Elsie’s husband,’ he announced.
‘And who the bloody hell gave you permission to marry my daughter?’ Mr Hogan snarled.
‘She didn’t need your permission; she’s over twenty-one, and a woman in her own right,’ Tommy replied.
Mr Hogan sprang up from the table and glared at Tommy, who was roughly the same height but half the size.
‘Was it you that knocked her up or some other bastard soldier home on leave?’ Mr Hogan demanded.
Struggling to keep his temper and stick to the reason why he’d travelled a hundred miles to confront Elsie’s half-crazed father, Tommy retorted, ‘If you threaten my wife again I’ll have the police on you.’
It was as if somebody had lit a blue fuse paper under Mr Hogan; he went up like an erupting volcano. Blind anger replaced words as he picked up a chair and threw it into Tommy’s face. As Tommy ducked to avoid getting his head smashed, Mr Hogan grabbed him by the hair and started to drag him around the kitchen.
‘I’ll bloody kill you,’ he snarled.
As the three women stood in a corner screaming, Tommy lunged at his attacker and butted him in the chest with all the strength he could muster. Losing his balance, Mr Hogan fell over backwards and banged his head hard against the kitchen sink. To Tommy’s amazement, he slithered down the edge of the sink, leaving a trail of blood from a wound on the back of his skull.
Elsie’s stepmother ran to him, trying to rouse him.
With a mounting sense of unease, Tommy watched, hoping to see the wretched man stir. But his eyes were blank and his colour terrible.
And then, after what felt like the longest wait, Mrs Hogan let go of her husband’s hand and looked at Tommy with venom.
‘You’ve killed him!’ she snarled. ‘MURDERER!’
Tommy stood gaping in horror at Mr Hogan, who was lying spreadeagled on the floor with an ever-growing pool of blood seeping under his head. Reaching down, he shook him, but Mr Hogan’s head lolled over sideways like that of a hideous broken doll.
Hysterical now, the stepsisters ran out of the front door screaming, ‘HELP! MURDER!’
Tommy stared down at the dead body of Elsie’s father, while her stepmother eyed him malevolently.
‘You’ll hang for this, soldier boy. I’ll see you swing!’
Tommy froze. This was never meant to happen. He’d travelled north to sort things out once and for all with Elsie’s bastard of a father, and now he was lying dead on the floor. What on earth had he done?
Hours and hours later, the Gateshead constabulary tracked down Elsie’s whereabouts, listed officially as the Phoenix Munitions Factory. It was Agnes who took the phone call from the police in Mr Featherstone’s office.
‘It sounds urgent,’ said Marjorie, his nosy secretary as she handed the phone to Agnes, who’d been called off her line by Malc minutes earlier.
‘Hello, Agnes Sharpe speaking.’
‘Are you a supervisor at the Phoenix Munitions Factory, Pendle, Lancashire?’
Agnes’s pounding heart slipped at least three beats: had Stan escaped from the hospital ward? She swayed as a more hideous thought assailed her. Could he have committed suicide? Thrown himself in front of a train or overdosed in order to escape his demons?
‘I am,’ she answered calmly even though her palms were clammy with sweat.
‘Is there a young woman in your charge by the name of Elsie Carter?’ the police constable continued.
By this time Agnes was so tense she felt like throwing the phone at the wall.
‘Yes!’ she almost snapped. ‘What is it?’
‘Her husband, a Mr Thomas Carter, has been arrested and is being held in custody, charged with the murder of Mr Hogan.’
A picture of young Tommy, tall and lanky with a shy smile, floated into Agnes’s head.
‘You can’t be serious!’ she exclaimed.
The constable ignored her outburst.
‘You are requested to inform Mrs Elsie Carter, née Hogan, of her husband’s situation right away.’
Feeling sick, Agnes placed the phone back in its cradle.
Marjorie was inquisitive.
‘Bad news?’
Agnes nodded vacantly, then, walking almost in a trance, she returned to her friends on the cordite line.
‘Is Stan all right?’ Emily immediately asked.
‘He’s all right,’ Agnes answered weakly.
‘So what’s up?’ said Lillian.
‘Tommy’s only gone and murdered Elsie’s dad,’ Agnes said bluntly. ‘He’s in custody.’
Given the gravity of the situation, Malc allowed the four women a few hours off. After changing out of their work overalls they walked down the hill into town to Mrs Carter’s house. Crazy with worry, Elsie rushed towards them as they crowded into the room.
‘Have you seen Tommy?’ she cried. ‘We’ve not heard or seen him since this morning.’
‘Sit down, sweetheart,’ Emily said as she guided Elsie towards the nearest chair.
Clutching her tummy, weary Elsie slumped into the chair.
‘Is he hurt … is he in trouble?’ she whispered.
Agnes took a deep breath.
‘Look, there’s no easy way to tell you this …’ She paused, then added. ‘Tommy went to see your dad, lovie. And something awful’s happened. I don’t know quite what, but your Tommy’s with the police now, charged with murder.’
Elsie went white. She knew in her heart that Tommy, like the honest man he was, would think that he could straighten things out with her dad. What Tommy had never understood was that Elsie’s dad was like no other man; he was a monster. Feeling sick, she hardly dared ask the question.
‘Was it my dad he killed?’
Emily slowly nodded.
‘Yes, it’s your dad,’ she replied.
‘NO! NO!’ Elsie gasped.
She looked desperately up at her friends. How could everything have gone so wrong when just
hours earlier she had been rejoicing in Tommy’s homecoming?
‘I’ve got to get to Tommy. I’ve got to tell the police what my dad’s like. Tommy wouldn’t have stood a chance with him – it must have been self-defence,’ she said in a panic. She got up and started looking for her bag and coat.
‘Quick, one of you please take me to the –’
But before she could say another word, she stood stock-still as a dribble and then a rush of liquid gushed out from between her legs. Daphne gagged at the sight and almost fainted.
‘Oh, God!’ she cried. ‘The poor girl’s in labour!’
CHAPTER 24
Lancaster Assizes
The nearest hospital to Mrs Carter’s house was the Phoenix.
‘She’ll need somebody with her,’ said the ambulance driver who came roaring down the hill to fetch her. ‘But I can only take one of you lasses.’
‘Agnes!’ Emily, Lillian and Daphne said in chorus.
As the ambulance drove away, the remaining three girls ran up the hill to the hospital, where they sat tense and anxious in the waiting room for some time. They jumped to their feet when Agnes finally joined them.
‘She’s having a hard time of it,’ Agnes told her friends. ‘She was so frantic about Tommy that the midwife gave her morphine to calm her down. Now she’s rambling so much she doesn’t know where she is and can’t handle the contractions.’
‘Can you stay with her till the baby’s born?’ Emily asked.
Agnes nodded.
‘This midwife doesn’t seem to mind me being with Elsie, given the circumstances, but she’s not sure that the next one will be so accommodating.’
‘Thanks for the update, now for God’s sake go back and calm the poor girl down,’ Daphne urged.
As she turned to go, Agnes said, ‘Can you pick up Esther from the nursery? I could be here all night.’
The girls made tea for Esther, who’d settled into the digs like it was her second home.
‘Where’s my mummy?’ she asked as she tucked into toast and dripping.
‘She’s helping Elsie have her baby,’ Emily explained.
Her big dark eyes widened with excitement.