Girls on the Home Front

by Annie Clarke

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’ Sarah snapped. ‘He’s our leader and we’re all together, that’s the main thing. And he’s had enough heartbreak from that lass to fill a lifetime, and we don’t need any more … Well, any more trouble, and I’ve the devil of a headache, so I have and if Cecil doesn’t slow down I’ll be sick.’

  Fran yelled, ‘For the love of God, slow down Cecil, or you’ll have to clean the bus when we all get off.’

  He took no notice, just rushed on beneath the overhanging branches of the oaks which lined the road. Fran looked at Sarah, her pale face, her obsession with Stan’s heartache and she felt scared suddenly because life was getting far too complicated. Fran leaned her head against the window, suddenly desperately tired of the dark, the war, of black lung and the swirls of temper, of the doubt and uncertainty all around, and the mercury, the itching. And besides, her da’s chest was getting worse.

  She concentrated on the familiar slag heaps, on Davey, on light, warmth and life. Yes, she told herself, it’s dark, but then the day comes, or the slag heap flares, and there’s Davey, always there’s Davey.

  Davey was waiting for Fran at the bus shelter. He liked to see the bus coming: first its slit headlights, then the bus, and at last the girls toiling off and seeing Fran’s face light up as she saw him.

  He looked to the left, which was the way the bus would come, but then he heard a throaty revving and a backfire and saw the slit lights of a car shutting off. There was the slam of the driver’s door. He knew before he saw the roadster that it was Ralph. What the hell was he doing here? He’d been on shift today, so should have scrambled home to get over being the buffoon they had all heard he had been.

  Ralph came to stand in front of him, jangling his car keys. ‘No bike today then, Davey?’

  Davey shifted his weight from his bad leg to his good one. ‘Unless it’s invisible, no. I’m here to meet Fran.’

  Ralph continued to play with his keys, eyeing the road to Sledgeford. ‘It’s a long way to— Where is it the bus is returning from?’

  Davey shrugged. ‘Who knows. Some things are best not talked about in wartime, as you should know.’

  ‘Should I, more than you? You, the man who was too scared to take up a scholarship, or take another stab at it and let another set of exam results decide? It would, after all, have given your girl a better life. “Is Davey Bedley the best Fran Hall can do?” I ask myself. Then I answer, “Do you know, old boy, I don’t think he is.”’

  Davey felt the air leave his lungs and he did what he had done under the rockfall. He breathed in and out slowly, counting to four each time, because it stopped him from punching the bugger’s lights out, which he couldn’t afford to do or his da would lose everything. But would Mr Massingham really chuck them out of the pit, and the house? He didn’t know, that was the trouble.

  ‘All I know is she loves me, and I love her,’ Davey said calmly.

  ‘Ah, love’s young dream, but dreams fade when one of you is in the pit hacking up his lungs and, ah yes, the other is whacking, or is it dadding you pit folk call it, the filthy clothes against the outside wall, whack, whack, until your coal dust is filling her lungs, then she’ll be in the scullery scrubbing them till her hands are raw. Such a lovely thing to wish on someone you love. I thought that today when I was working on the screens with imbeciles, rude ones at that.’

  Davey turned his back on him, hunching his shoulders, hands deep in his pockets and the doubt born of Ralph’s words niggling at his soul. As he stood there, others came to wait for their women, only to fall silent when they saw Ralph. Vicar Walters passed and doffed his cap. No one would ever doff a cap at Davey, or his wife.

  He longed for the bus to come. As Ralph drew closer to him, Davey could smell his cologne. For heaven’s sake, a man with cologne? Davey was conscious then that in spite of his bath in front of the range he smelled of the residue of coal and sweat. And there’d be no blue scars on Ralph’s body, though they’d always stain Davey’s. But now he thought about it, if the whelp kept on at the mine, he would have blue miners’ scars. Had Ralph thought of that – for ever scarred and identified as a pitman?

  He smiled grimly as he watched pinpricks of light emerge through the evening darkness and the bus appeared, taking the corner too fast. Of course, it was Cecil on the aft shift, the bloody fool. It was his Fran on the bus – precious goods. It grew closer, the brakes screeching as the bus slowed, then jerked to a stop. He turned and Ralph was just behind him, smiling and nodding.

  ‘She could be taking a ride in a car if she was lucky enough to have someone like me, not rattling along in that boneshaker. Indeed, if she chose someone like me, she could instead be mistress of her own rather splendid home, wearing frocks and discussing menus.’

  Davey couldn’t believe the bastard’s words. The bliddy cheek. Had he lost his mind, or was he just a bliddy fool? And why say this to him, why bother Fran? He stopped for a moment. Was he getting back at Stan for something? Was he less able than Stan at Oxford? Howay, he couldn’t be doing with it. He pushed past the beggar and stood where he always stood, so that she’d see him when she started to alight. And here she came, and yes, her face lit up and she ran down the last few steps and flew into his arms, with Sarah not far behind, grinning.

  But as he held Fran, Sarah’s smile faded and Davey caught the whiff of cologne. And there was Ralph, standing close beside him.

  ‘Ah, Fran. I have my car, so in the absence of your bike, ride with me. Sadly, only room for one.’ He nodded to Sarah and Davey.

  Fran stepped back and held out her hand. ‘Evening, Mr Massingham. That’s right kind, but I’m walking with Davey. I always walk with him for we’re to be married. Not yet, but one day.’

  Ralph shook her hand and as she squeezed, he winced.

  ‘Mr Massingham has been on the screens,’ Davey said. ‘He’s some way to go before he’s safe for the pit or his hands harden.’ He watched the muscles of Ralph’s face working and knew he’d made a mistake. He added, ‘No one goes down until they’ve hardened up, Mr Ralph. Don’t take it personal. It’s good that you want to do yer bit.’

  Ralph merely jangled his keys and said, ‘Well, I’ll let you all get home on Shanks’s pony, by which I mean walking.’

  Maisie was getting off the bus and cackled at Ralph’s words. She didn’t give a damn what anyone thought now her Derek was dead. Besides, she lived above the local shop her mam owned and wasn’t beholden to anyone. ‘By, you’d think we’d all been born yesterday, the way you talk, Mr Ralph, or were feeble-minded. My old bugger saw you in your Mosley uniform. Just the once, in Newcastle it were. Right smart. He liked the boots. Black, weren’t they?’

  Davey intervened, hoping to calm things for too many were at the mercy of this man’s family and the air was fairly crackling with anger. ‘Ah, that was a time when we were all trying out this, that and t’other.’

  Maisie tossed her head and click-clacked along the road, arm in arm with Mrs Oborne, their heads close together. More laughter rang down the street.

  Ralph said, ‘She is mistaken. Whoever she saw, it wasn’t me.’ While he watched Maisie go, Sarah, Fran and Davey slipped away, with Fran holding Davey’s hand tight and whispering, ‘What’s all this about? Does he think giving me a lift’s doing Stan a favour, or just the opposite?’

  ‘He was always a difficult lad, and real nasty with it, not like Mr Massingham at all,’ Sarah said, walking the other side of Davey.

  ‘Perhaps he doesn’t like people bringing up his past. After all, lots went to meetings, then never again,’ Davey said.

  Fran muttered, ‘But if he had a uniform, it wasn’t just now and then, was it?’

  Davey shrugged. ‘He could afford one. Probably liked the look of it, that’s all. Anyway, it was years ago.’

  They walked on. Sarah, slipping her arm through Fran’s, said, ‘That still doesn’t explain why he was here and came to the beck an’ all.’

  Davey wasn’t really listenin
g; he was wondering if Ralph was right, and he should have fought more for the scholarship if he wanted the best for Fran. But he’d really thought hard about it and couldn’t leave her. Anyway, one day he’d have his magazine and then she could have help to dadd the clothes if she wanted it, just like she paid Madge to do it for Mrs Hall. He smiled suddenly, because if he said that to her, she’d dadd him instead. She might want to help with the magazine because she had such good ideas and that would be fine, but his Fran could do whatever she wanted when they were married. Aye, that she could, for he intended to be earning good money by then, so stuff that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr Ralph Massingham.

  He looked down at Fran as she leaned against him while they walked, struck by the thought that she might not love him as much as he loved her. After all, Stan had said it were over with Beth, as though it had never been. People changed.

  But would he and Fran? He couldn’t begin to believe such a thing was possible.

  Chapter Ten

  Three weeks later

  Fran and Sarah sat on the bus as they travelled to the Factory for the afternoon shift, feeling sick and their heads aching. Fran looked at her hands and compared them to Sarah’s. ‘Yours are worse, they’re a real yellow now. You’d better watch it or your da will put you in one of their canary cages.’

  Sarah pulled down Fran’s headscarf. ‘That’s enough from you, our Fran.’

  ‘Aye, well, we’ll be in there together, Sarah, and your hair’s blonde already so the green’s fetching, and it at least tells us the powder has got past your tiny brain to your skull in order to tint your golden locks. Mark you, it’s such a small brain it’s no wonder it has.’

  The two of them laughed, and it made Fran cough. ‘By, me chest’s one thing I can’t blame on the chemicals, it’s just this damned cold.’

  ‘Aye, well, don’t give yer cough to me. Mark you, Cecil’s driving’s a right pain and that doesn’t help the sickness, but coughing isn’t a good idea – something might slop out. And shut up about me brain, because yours isn’t that grand. Your hair’s got red strands to match Beth’s, though hers has gone a bit sort of greenish an’ all.’ Sarah removed her scarf and pulled a long green strand of hair from her French pleat. ‘Would you look at that. If it’s not getting more green, I’m a Dutchman.’

  Cecil screeched round the corner and onto the straight road leading to the junction with the Hanging Tree. Fran felt even worse as Sarah waved the strand in front of her face and flicked it away. ‘Aye, it’s green all right, but what can we do?’

  There was nothing, just as all the complaints about Cecil’s driving made no difference. Just like Fran’s attempts not to be rude to Ralph when he turned up at the bus shelter day after day were doing nothing to stop her dislike turning to hate and fury—No, no, she mustn’t even think about it, her mam was right to say ignore it …

  She felt the rage tearing at her, though, and breathed slowly, looking out of the window at the countryside – her countryside, her slag heaps, the place she loved. She calmed down and instead watched as Sarah pulled out a hairpin and captured the strand, shoving the hairpin back in before pulling her faded old headscarf over it. This was stained yellow too, just like their sheets. Fran watched as Sarah knotted it under her chin with her yellow fingers.

  Fran looked at her own hands. They weren’t just stained, they were more like a couple of strange things that had attached themselves to her and needed shaking off.

  She breathed in for the count of four, and out for four, making herself remember that once they spent time away from the stemming shop they’d recover. Her body would be the ‘right’ one again, though that wouldn’t be any time soon. She started to breathe too quickly again, but it wasn’t the stemming, it was Ralph, who kept turning up, wanting to walk her home. Why, when she looked as she did? Why? She shook her head. No, don’t shake it, daft lass.

  Instead, she pictured herself pouring powder into the drum in the shop, pulling the handle so that the powder came whooshing through a funnel into a rubber thingummybob, as they called the container. This powder was used to fill shells in one or all of the other sectors, so it must be TNT, or something like that, but no one said. It was just ‘the yellow’. All day they pulled the lever and the powder whooshed and filled the air, then settled on, and in, them – just ten of them from their bus – because this is where they’d been transferred. Nothing would explode, they’d been told, because the yellow needed a detonator and, she thought, a fused pellet, but it was all a guess, like everything at the Factory.

  And who cared anyway, for they’d been moved from detonators to somewhere horrid but safe after someone had become careless and dropped half a tray. It had taken off the girl’s foot. They didn’t know her, but they’d seen her lying there, footless, and the blood, and heard the screams. They were now just along from the booster, or fuse pellet, shop, where millions of pellets were being wrapped to make them ready for use.

  Would she and her marrers wrap the pellets, or go back on detonators? Who knew? Well, it might be bliddy safe in stemming, but the yellow settled on any hair that stuck out from under their turbans, clinging to their hands and floating onto their blue overalls, where it sank in until it reached their skin. Would it go deeper than that? she wondered. Would they breathe it in? Well, of course, but she mustn’t think of it.

  She tried to push away the nausea and dizziness, telling herself not to ask why. It was Cecil’s driving, of course. She mustn’t think of Ralph. Looking out of the window again, she saw that they were flashing past the trees lining the road, and that made her feel even worse. At least she wasn’t having to worry about Stan and who he loved, or didn’t, because all the girls felt so unwell no one was thinking of their love lives. She allowed herself to think instead of Madge, whom Fran paid to do Mam’s dadding, washing and ironing, because she was the one who had to do her best with Fran’s sheets. The yellow never faded.

  ‘I wonder what the powder is?’ Fran muttered, for something to say.

  ‘It’s the yellow, daft lass,’ replied Sarah. ‘And that’s all we’ll ever know.’

  Anyway, Fran thought, they’d feel better on the bus next week, with Bert driving the transport for the night shift. Fran hated the night shift – she found it difficult to sleep in the day, and she hated missing her Sunday with Davey even more, because her mam made her stay in, resting. If she wasn’t working, that was. She stared down at her hands, then closed her eyes against the glare of the low early autumnal sun on changing leaves, and muttered, ‘Yellow, yellow, everywhere. There might be no bananas, but I certainly feel like one.’

  ‘Or a canary, more like,’ Sarah muttered back.

  They laughed together quietly as Cecil careered round another bend, whistling. Yes, Fran thought, Ralph might shove his way into her life for a few moments each day, but it was no more than that. It’s what she and her mam, too, had decided. No more than that, and it was up to her to make sure it wasn’t more.

  Fran heard Mrs Oborne, who sat nearer the back because she didn’t want to be at the front if Cecil crashed, shout loud enough to carry over Cecil’s whistling: ‘Night shift can’t come soon enough. Just think, lasses, we’ll get shot of this racing driver. I reckon I’ll give Bert a right kissing on our first bus ride into work.’

  They all laughed. Cecil broke off his whistling. ‘If you lot got yourselves on the bus a sight quicker, I wouldn’t have to rush.’

  Mrs Oborne led the catcalls, while Cecil hooted his horn. As the noise died, Fran yelled, ‘Wouldn’t matter how quick we were, you’d still get your foot down. You’re a menace, Cecil Woodward, that you are.’

  As the others clapped, Sarah laughed fit to burst, then said quietly to Fran as the noise died, ‘But nowt like the menace that damned Ralph’s become. Three weeks now he’s been turning up to meet you off the bus, almost shoving our Davey out the way. Not that he dares to touch our lad, but you can see he wants to, and I don’t know what we can do to stop him?’

 
Fran didn’t want to be dragged back to Ralph, but she had to say something. ‘He and Stan are to go down the pit any day now, and the daft beggar won’t have the energy to do anything other than crawl home.’ Yes, she thought, that sounds tough enough. Yes.

  Sarah agreed. ‘Aye, wonder how he’ll take to being tucked away in the muck? I bet he turns tail and buggers off back to Oxford. Sick of the sight of him, I am, lolling at the shelter. It’s a bloody cheek. Anyone would think he was king of the walk.’

  Maisie, who was sitting in front of them, turned round. ‘Well, he is just that for the pitmen, in’t he? He’s the boss’s son, and our Fran’ll be getting ideas above her station if this goes on.’

  Sylv, who had recovered sufficiently to be back at work, but only in the clean and safe sewing room, whispered to Maisie, loud enough for Fran to hear, ‘She must be givin’ him the come-on, else he wouldn’t do it.’

  Fran opened her mouth, but it was Sarah who poked at Sylv’s shoulder. ‘You wash your mouth out, you stupid moo.’

  Sylv swung round, Maisie too, as Fran pushed Sarah back into her seat, hushing her. Sarah shook her head. ‘I’m not having it. Sick I am of the looks, cos you haven’t done anything. Let me tell you, Sylv Plater, and you, Maisie, while I’m about it: our Fran doesn’t want him near her and neither does our Davey, and you’d damn well know that if you weren’t so daft. It’s just one of the whelp’s games. You know what he’s always been like – just causing a nuisance makes him happy.’

  Fran felt a wave of sickness as Cecil roared on towards Sledgeford, its slag heap brewing up in the rising wind. She muttered, ‘Oh Sarah, don’t. He’s not worth it. Ignore him, ignore it. Ignore the lot of them.’

  But Sarah was leaning forward again. ‘It makes me sick, do yer hear me, Sylv Slater, cos it’s making me brother mad and miserable. Not to mention our Fran, and it don’t help to hear you shouting your mouth off. Yes, it makes me sick.’ Sarah suddenly sat back, her hand over her mouth. ‘I feel really sick – not just that sort of sick.’