Girls on the Home Front

by Annie Clarke

  Meanwhile, Fran made her way to the Massinghams, who were waiting a respectful distance from the multitude.

  Fran said, as she sensed Sarah and Beth behind her, ‘Thank you for coming, Mr and Mrs Massingham, and of course, you, Ralph.’

  The yews around the churchyard were almost bent over in the wind. Mr Massingham had given up trying to keep his homburg on and held it instead. His wife clearly was made of sterner stuff and had stabbed hers with hatpins. Ralph stood quietly, looking from Davey, still over by the flowers, to Fran, his mouth set in a grim line. He also carried his hat, though Fran would have been happy to ram it on his head, and secure it with a powerful thrust from a hatpin borrowed from Mrs Massingham.

  The pleasantries were spoken and just about heard despite the wind snatching them away. Mr Massingham sort of bowed in farewell, but before he turned, Fran said, ‘Mr Massingham, you might have heard that the bus we take to work …’ She gestured to her friends, and as she did so she saw Amelia with Miss Ellington heading away from the flowers, clearly trying to decide whether to follow the co-op ladies or linger. Did Amelia fancy a ham tea at the Miners’ Club which is where the ladies were rushing, in order to take the covers off the food? Well, it was spam, so what would she think of that?

  Mr Massingham leaned forward. ‘You were saying, Miss Hall, or may I call you Fran?’

  Fran forgot about Amelia, and said, ‘Yes, of course. But I realise I don’t know your name.’

  Mr Massingham smiled slightly. ‘Ah, that would be Reginald.’

  Mrs Massingham laughed. ‘Quite right, young lady. And I’m Sophia. You know Ralph.’

  ‘Yes. I was saying about the bus … In the worst of the snow it skidded as a car came too fast round the corner, causing us to lose the road.’

  Reginald Massingham sighed and looked at his son. ‘Not you, Ralph?’

  Fran shook her head. ‘That’s not my point, Reginald. You see, not long after, me da and Tom produced enough lamb for tea, as they felt we women needed a feed to help fight the yellow we get from—’ She stopped. ‘Well, I can’t tell you from what.

  ‘I thought he’d poached the sheep,’ she continued, ‘but he, or rather they, hadn’t. It was roadkill, it was hit by the bus when yer sheep got out, and Da and Tom found it and fed all who travelled from Massingham to the Factory. I wanted you to know, for some think as how it were poaching.’ She had decided to include no one else in the deed except the dead. ‘But when I think of it, we all rebuilt the wall after we’d herded in the sheep, so perhaps we paid for it, don’t you think?’

  Reginald was looking at her intently. ‘Ah, I surmised as much, when we were one short – the deep skid marks which were evident, and the blood which seeped up through the fresh snow. I mentioned it, did I not, having seen the area?’ He turned to look at his family, then back to Fran. ‘I agree it has been paid for, and more, for you saved the other sheep in dire circumstances, and without a second thought. So for that I am more than grateful. I hope that it hasn’t concerned you greatly. I am always open to discussion … er … Fran. Another time, come to me and let me know, then secrets need not be protected, eh?’

  ‘That’s grand,’ Fran said. ‘So, our houses are safe then? We families won’t lose them because of the roadkill, or the fact that our fathers are dead?’

  Mr Massingham nodded, smiling. ‘Of course, quite safe, Fran.’

  Ralph was looking from his father to Fran as though he feared she would say what he’d done. She merely shook hands with Mr Massingham and his wife. They smiled, turned and headed on down the hill. Mrs Massingham was sensible, and wore sturdy boots. Fran looked after her, liking the woman and the laughter and life in her eyes. Ralph remained. She shook his hand and he squeezed hers, hard.

  ‘Fran, I was only trying to help keep you going while Davey was away.’

  She said against the wind, ‘No, you weren’t. I’m free of you now. Never bother me or my family again, because your family don’t know, and they won’t, unless …’

  Ralph stepped close, far too close, his voice low. ‘Are you threatening me, Frances Hall? Best to remember I’m the one with the power. Nothing’s really changed. You just watch yourself, you hear me?’

  Fran didn’t move, just stared up at him, eventually saying, ‘If you don’t step away, Ralph Massingham, I will raise my voice and tell the whole bliddy world what a right bastard you are. Is that quite clear?’

  Ralph returned her stare, then swung round, making sure to elbow her, but she held her ground and didn’t tell him Stan knew all about it, and what’s more, could tell the pitmen, and it was they who had the power down there, in the dust and dark. No, not a word about that, for it was to be kept in case of need.

  She turned round, almost smacking into Beth and Sarah. They smiled at one another, and she said, ‘Time we were going.’ But Sarah nodded towards Ralph. Fran turned back, for he was still there, staring with those cold, dead eyes. No, she wouldn’t tell him more than she had, yet, because they were equal now: he had his status as the owner’s son, but she had knowledge of his actions, the pitmen and, most importantly, was one of The Factory Girls.

  She heard someone calling Ralph. It was Mr Massingham, who was halfway down the hill. Ralph waved in reply, then said to Fran, ‘You should never threaten your boss.’

  ‘Ah, but you’re not my boss, are you? Your father owns the mine, and our house, not you.’

  Sarah and Beth stood alongside her now as Ralph stalked off towards the path, past Miss Ellington and Amelia who had clearly decided to linger. He stopped. ‘Miss Cartwright, you’re a long way from Worplesdon?’

  Amelia shook her head slightly. Ralph leaned closer and said something. Fran, Sarah and Beth looked at one another, and now Miss Ellington was heading towards them, leaving Amelia with Ralph.

  ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’

  Sarah muttered, ‘Never mind about that. Worplesdon? I thought she was from Guildford?’

  Miss Ellington turned to look, but Ralph was striding down the hill and Amelia was making her way towards them. ‘I think Worplesdon is near Guildford,’ Miss Ellington said, ‘but she worked in Oxford, I believe. The Massingham boy was there, wasn’t he? Perhaps they were ships that passed in the night.’

  Amelia had reached them. ‘I’m so sorry about your fathers, I really am. And I’m sorry I’ve been thoughtless. Being a long way from home has stripped me of my manners. Shall we go down to the club, Miss Ellington? I think these girls have families to comfort.’

  Later, after the refreshments had been cleared, Beth went home with her mam and Ben with his. He carried his da’s boots, which would come in handy for him or Stan, and Mrs Bedley had taken Tom’s for when Davey was back in the pit.

  Davey and Fran walked round the village, Davey’s arm around her shoulder, talking of the day, and how the boots placed on each coffin had somehow seemed to hold the shape and sum of the men. They smiled over Miss Ellington’s words at the wake, when she’d thought they would be buried with the pitmen, and Simon’s shocked reply, ‘Nay, lass, good leather, good steel in the toe, what be the point of waste like that? Seems I should take some time to tell you the ways of the pitmen, and maybe canaries?’

  Fran grinned. ‘I thought she’d run off, but I think they’re going to meet. All I heard her say, waving her stump, was, “I can’t stroke and hold a canary at the same time. You’ll have to do one or t’other for me.” Then Simon said, “Oh aye, I’ll give yer a stroke any time you like.”’

  Davey laughed. ‘Oh aye, he’ll have the beer and she the sherry, but he’s not to reckon on a stroke, or is he? Hard to tell from the twinkle she gave the lad.’

  Fran held his face and kissed his lips, knowing more than ever how much she had missed him and needed him, because she couldn’t bear the space that he left when he was gone. It was only now that she realised how strong he had been, how much they had relied on him. They walked on, talking of Ralph while the slag smouldered and the pithead flag flew half mast.
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br />   Davey stopped and kissed her, again and again. He needed her more than ever before now that his da was gone. He had been such a grand man, and he didn’t know how any of them could bear it without him. They walked on, and as Davey gazed up at the winding gear and the cold wind tossed the smell of sulphur around like the scent of his childhood, she told him what she’d said to Ralph after the funeral, and he replied, ‘It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t taken his damned ball …’

  ‘Don’t be daft, there must be something wrong with him if he’s that twisted. It’s as though he’s gone wrong, or were wrong all along, so bitter, so angry. Anyway, I don’t want to think about him any more because at the saddest time of our lives we’re together, and always will be, wherever we both are, if you can decipher that gobbledygook.’

  Again he pulled her to him and leaned back against the horizontal pole that guarded the allotment, where somehow they’d ended up. ‘I will always love you, bonny lass, with all my heart. Do you hear? With all my heart for ever and a day.’

  They kissed and he couldn’t bear to leave her again, but he must. Not this minute, but soon. Today was theirs, and tomorrow it would be the beck. It made the loss slightly more bearable, but all the while he was trying to put away the thought of Daisy, the bed, his stupidity. God almighty, what had he been thinking?

  Fran said, ‘Do you remember when we used to hang from this bar by our legs, all of us, all the gang?’

  Tucking her skirt in her knickers, she gripped the bar and hung on it. Then she tucked her legs through her arms and up and over the bar again and was hanging by her legs. She looked up at him, laughing. ‘Look, Davey, nothing’s changed. I can still do it. Can you?’

  He did the same, though his head touched the ground. As he stared at the upside-down world, he forced his mind away from the pain in his legs, saying, ‘Aye, lass, nothing’s changed, we’re hanging here like a couple of bats, looking like idiots.’ They hung there, laughing, until they could barely breathe, which was when Stan, Sarah and Beth found them. Within a few minutes they were all hanging like bats until the blood ran into their heads and their ears buzzed.

  But Davey knew that something had changed. He had – well, what? Been disloyal, cried on a woman’s shoulder, slept the night on her bed. On her bed, he repeated. He should tell Fran, but not now, not today.

  Later, they walked back together, their hands smelling of rusty metal, as they always had when they were young and had been at the allotment. Sarah said, ‘D’you remember when it was hot, and the earth dried and cracked? We thought we could get through to Australia if we dug and dug.’

  Davey said quietly, ‘And our das tanned our backsides till they stung, cos we’d dug up their baby leeks.’ The days had seemed so full of sun back then, and as they talked of those times they laughed and cried, because their three fathers would not be here to dig the allotment or care for the canaries ever again, and it was good for Davey at last to bury himself properly in grief.

  When the moon was high in the sky, Stan took Sarah and Beth home, and Davey and Fran clung together in her yard. The hens had been shut in, a dog barked along the alley, and in the familiarity of home Fran allowed herself to believe that everything would be all right; she and the two girls would be careful at the Factory, Stan would be safe in the pit, and Davey at wherever he was, and both would be doing as the girls were, helping to win the war.

  She looked up as the cold sank into her bones, and Davey’s arms held her close. ‘I reckon they’re up there, my da and yours, having a good laugh about being carried up the hill.’

  Davey hugged her and said, ‘I reckon you could be right.’

  Dear Reader,

  It’s such a huge pleasure to be able to write about the North-East in which my roots are firmly embedded. Though I live now in North Yorkshire, my mum was born and lived in a pit village in County Durham at the start of the First World War. Orphaned by the age of eleven, life was tough but she finally became a nurse and worked at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, in the early years of the World War Two. When air raids sounded, the nurses and doctors would move the patients beneath the beds. She wasn’t sure how useful that would have been, but it was the best they could do.

  She became a QA and was on her way to nurse in Singapore when it fell to the Japanese, (lucky her, some friends were not so fortunate). She continued to India with the convoy.

  I grew up with her memories of miners as neighbours, friends and patients. Her memories became mine because she had such recall, and was so proud of ‘her’ people, not just miners, but her friends, some of whom became ‘the factory’ munitions girls. Much later they shared a great deal with her, and she shared it with me.

  My mum was devastatingly attractive, hilariously funny, but along with many nurses of her generation or so I’ve found, as tough as old boots. I remember whingeing about feeling rough with a cold, and was told to run round the garden a few times and I would pick up. Actually I did, which was infuriating. Like most Northerners she just got on with things. She wanted a patio and dad was a bit slow in getting it sorted. She took some brick-laying classes, organised her labour force, we kids, and built it.

  We frequently spent our holidays in Mum’s pit village with my Uncle Stan and Auntie Isobel in the sweet shop, which had been my grandpa’s. The smell, the sight, the noise of the mining community is as clear today as it was then, and so too the one-handed woman who nipped in for a visit, and brought fabulous little cakes. Mum whispered that her friend had been ‘careless’ at ‘you know where’. We didn’t then, but later learned much more about the munitions factories.

  Now the mines have gone, the slag heaps used as ballast for roads and my mum’s family’s shop is a house. I was there not so long ago, having a look round, thanks to the kind owner who caught me peering through the entrance.

  So, here is the first book in the series I felt driven to write as homage to the fabulous women, so gutsy and funny, and to the men, and the communities which hung tight and brave, and the extraordinary world of our decoders. With each page I heard Mum’s voice, and her stories. She’ll be up there on her cloud, as she used to say, hopefully enjoying the view I’ve created.

  The Munitions Factories

  With the advent of the First World War it became apparent that the country needed to move the economy on to a war footing. This was done by changing the production of goods in factories to munitions, as well as building new factories to do the same. Fine, so there were the factories, but most of the workers had gone to war. Step forward the women. These eventually comprised roughly 80% of the workforce.

  The same situation occurred in World War Two, with one crucial difference: the government had been improving the infrastructure for munitions manufacture during the 1930s as international crises burgeoned. However, the problem of a disappearing workforce was repeated. Step forward the women once more. It was these women who helped to make survival and then victory possible. But the very nature of munitions, which are created to harm the enemy, means they can also damage those producing it. These dangers were accepted by the women: women of all ages, some with children, some whose men were engaged in dangers of their own. But thought could not be given to personal traumas or worries, only total concentration could preserve their and their fellow workers’ lives. In spite of the pressures, security forbade discussion of their work with those outside their work zone. They found respite through their own gumption and the company of their fellow workers, and the most common sound was, allegedly, laughter and song. We owe these workers a very great deal.

  Bletchley Park

  War cannot be won on munitions alone. Intelligence is crucial. Bletchley Park, this former country house fifty miles from London, became the nerve centre for Britain’s code breakers: code breakers drawn from the world of mathematics, linguistics, chess and cryptic crossword setters.

  It was home to some of the finest minds, the greatest lateral thinkers, who found the work fascinating, frustrating, addictive, re
petitious and sometimes boring beyond belief. How fortunate for us that they stuck at it, because these were the people who saved thousands, if not millions, of lives as they decoded the enemy’s messages, carried hotfoot to them from intercept sites around the country. The decoders at BP worked in huts set up in the grounds, with outside lavatories, and inadequate heaters. In winter layers of clothing were worn, and like the women in the munitions factories, they worked in huge secrecy.

  But what were they doing, precisely? What I gleaned from Bletchley Park is that the Germans used a machine to encrypt (encode) messages. This was called the Enigma, which you probably know is a machine with keys a bit like a typewriter but with innards far more complicated. Alongside would be another keyboard capable of lighting up. The operator would type a letter on the normal keyboard using the setting or ‘key’ for the day. Inside the typewriter an electric current converted this into another letter as it passed through a rotating wheel, and temporarily lit up this alternative letter on the adjacent keyboard. This letter would be jotted down, and so on until the end of the message. This gobbledegook was then sent by Morse code to the recipient who had ‘set’ up his machine to match the sender’s. He would type in the encoded letters and the original letters would light up on his adjacent keyboard. Voilà, the message. Of course the message would be in German, or Japanese, or whatever language the sender was using.

  Now just think of that day’s messages arriving from the intercept stations, and BP decoders trying to work out the enemy’s setting or key – to enable them to break the code. This was Bletchley Park’s role, and once the setting was deciphered (slow work and often impossible), it was distributed to all the other decoders, who could decode a stack of messages, and pass them to the translators.