War Girls

by Adele Geras

  ‘The editor seemed a bit dubious, but it turned out he had one or two stories that would be easier to investigate with a woman on the staff. He agreed to give me a month’s trial.

  ‘As far as I was concerned, that was a done deal. I took a cab back to our London house. Father and Mother were sitting together in the drawing room. “I’ve got some news!” I told them. “I’m not coming back home. I’ve got a job. As an investigative journalist. I’m going to investigate iniquity and poverty among the working classes. I’m moving out at the end of the week.”

  ‘Pandemonium, of course. There were tears and fury – but actually much less tears and fury than I’d expected. You see, by this point we’d already had Sylvia’s pandemonium. I wonder now if my parents had foreseen something of this nature. I think perhaps they were just grateful that I didn’t want to go on to the stage or marry the dustman.

  ‘Mother helped me to find a room in a boarding house for unmarried girls. It was a little sparse, but entirely respectable. I had my own room, with a bay window and a washstand with a basin and ewer painted with pictures of laughing milkmaids. Breakfast and dinner provided.

  ‘Society column aside, the newspaper I worked for had a decidedly left-wing bent. I spent a lot of my time writing shock pieces on working conditions in factories, and living conditions in workhouses, hospitals and orphanages. I went on protest marches. I talked to youths in sweatshops. I think my editor had intended to shock me, and possibly to scare me away, by sending me to such places. But I surprised us both by thriving.

  ‘I’ve always loved talking to people, and I soon discovered how easy it is to make a friend when you’re a sympathetic young woman who lends a cigarette or buys a cup of tea. I visited dosshouses and prisons, factories, lunatic asylums and backstreet tenements where families of ten or eleven lived piled up on top of each other in one or two little rooms. It was long, difficult work, often dirty, occasionally dangerous. I was spat at, insulted and threatened. People wrote letters to the newspaper denouncing me as a fake. They didn’t believe that my articles could have been written by a woman. But I didn’t care. I was young, and I was powerful, and I was probably immortal.

  ‘And because I was the only woman on the investigative staff, I also got the “women’s” stories. No knitting patterns. Real stories, about real women. I wrote about the campaign for women’s suffrage, and the joy in 1928 when women like myself were given the right to vote. I wrote about women who went to university but weren’t allowed to gain degrees, and about the fight for equal pay for women teachers and pensions for women.’

  She saw the look on my face and nodded.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘It’s quite a new thing, this idea that a woman should earn the same as a man. A man has to support a family, after all. That’s how the argument went.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ I said.

  ‘It is,’ said Miss Frobisher. ‘But it’s astonishing how hard it was to persuade people of that. And it isn’t a battle that has been won yet either. Women still earn less than men, even now, though now it’s more subtly done, and harder to fight.

  ‘It was a wonderful thing to be part of, seeing women realise their power and their potential. I covered all sorts of campaigns. Take the fight for pensions for spinsters in the 1930s. I covered their big march through London to Hyde Park, four abreast, all singing:

  ‘“Come spinsters, all attention,

  And show that you’re alive.

  Arise, demand your pension,

  When you are fifty-five.”

  ‘There was a brass band playing. There were hundreds of women – working women, mostly, waving placards. WE ARE NOT DOWNHEARTED BUT DETERMINED, the banners read. And, A FAIR SHARE FOR ALL. The women sang and waved their banners, and generally looked like they were all off for a nice day at the seaside. It was like a party. And as we marched down the streets, people seemed to feel the same. I’d written articles about protest marches where people had booed or just looked on indifferently, particularly during the Great Depression, where poverty was treated like an embarrassing skin complaint, and people avoided it where possible, in case it was catching.

  ‘On that day, though, no one was looking away and no one was booing. People cheered, and waved from the windows of the houses we passed.

  ‘“Good for you!” they called and “Pensions for spinsters!”

  ‘It was wonderfully thrilling.

  ‘When we got to the park, a stage had been set up. When the speakers talked about the work single women did, everyone clapped and waved their banners and agreed that, yes, we were a pretty deserving lot. Afterwards, there were more songs and then the gathering broke up, with all the women who’d come down from the north heading off to visit Buckingham Palace and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and whatever else they thought was necessary on a trip to London.’

  ‘And you won?’ I said. ‘You did win, didn’t you?’

  ‘We did,’ said Miss Frobisher. She laughed. ‘You’d be astonished at what battles people have won by simply standing up to be counted. Like those young people you see marching in America. They’ll win too, mark my words.’

  I wasn’t so convinced. The young people in America wanted all sorts of things. Free love, and the Bomb banned, mostly. I was in favour of banning the bomb and had a CND button to prove it. I’d sort of assumed it wouldn’t happen though. But who knows? I thought of all the battles Miss Frobisher’s friends had won – equal pay for women, pensions, university degrees, the vote. It was astonishing when you thought about it.

  ‘It was an exciting time to be a woman,’ Miss Frobisher said. ‘So many firsts! The first woman to graduate from university. The first woman stockbroker. The first woman MP. A generation of pioneers.’

  I felt a little cheated. Miss Frobisher’s friends had stolen everything. What did I have left? First woman on the moon?

  ‘When I grow up,’ I said, experimentally, ‘I’m going to be the first woman on the moon.’

  I looked sideways at Miss Frobisher.

  ‘If you like, dear,’ she said. ‘I always thought it looked like a miserable sort of place, myself.’

  So did I, really. I would have liked to go into space if it looked like the space in Star Wars, but an airless grey desert wasn’t my idea of a good time. Could I be the first woman prime minister? I couldn’t even get my brother and sister to do what I told them. So probably not. And anyway, I’d much rather be a protest marcher and get the politicians to ban the Bomb.

  Maybe I’d do that. Or maybe I’d be a journalist, like Miss Frobisher. I quite liked the idea of being an investigative journalist. It was the sort of job that impressed people when you told them you did it. Miss Frobisher had impressed me, and even though I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, I was pretty certain I wanted to be impressive.

  But Miss Frobisher’s thoughts were still with the women marching.

  ‘It’s funny really,’ she said, ‘when you think about it. If the War hadn’t happened, would we still have a set-up like that now? Men having all the choices, and women having none. The War changed everything, you see. Single women weren’t an oddity any more. We were an organised collective – or some of us were.’

  She leaned forward and poured herself another cup of tea. I watched as she stirred in the milk with her tiny silver teaspoon. She looked small and delicate and utterly unremarkable.

  ‘So is that what you did?’ I wasn’t sure if the story was over or not. ‘Were you an investigating journalist for the rest of your life?’

  ‘Well. Not quite. You see, when I was thirty-nine, the second war broke out. Obviously my paper’s priorities changed somewhat then.’

  ‘Did they sack you?’ I said.

  She laughed. ‘Sack me! Certainly not! No, I stayed in London for the first year, covering the Home Front. Then, in 1940, they sent me to Egypt, as a War correspondent. I was there for the rest of the War.’

  I boggled. Meek Miss Frobisher? A war correspondent! Wait till I t
old my brother that!

  ‘What was it like?’ I said. ‘Did they shoot at you?’

  ‘Sometimes.’ Miss Frobisher looked pleased to be asked. ‘It was … well, parts of it were dreadful. We never got enough sleep, and it was so hot, and of course, living in a war zone is its own kind of awful. But even when things were at their hardest, I always had that sense that I was working for something important. Something that meant something. I’d felt the same way in London.

  ‘Sometimes, I’d look at myself and the life I was living, and I’d think, I’m so lucky. Here I was, in this strange, beautiful, violent place, bringing back news to all the people waiting at home. To be given the chance to do that … I was so grateful.’

  She paused. I was astonished. She was astonishing. I tried to imagine going out to Egypt or somewhere like that and writing about a war, and just not caring about getting married. I knew a few girls who didn’t want children, but I didn’t know anybody who didn’t want to be married.

  It was getting late. In the street outside, the lamps were coming on one by one. I could smell my mother’s shepherd’s pie wafting up from downstairs. Pretty soon they’d be calling for me to come down for dinner.

  ‘But didn’t you mind, at all?’ I said. ‘Didn’t you miss … well …?’ I wasn’t sure how to put it politely. Kissing? Men?

  ‘You mean sex?’ said Miss Frobisher. She threw back her head and laughed delightedly. I could see her small, white teeth in the back of her mouth. ‘Ah, my dear,’ she said, ‘now that’s a whole other story.’

  I thought about that for a bit.

  ‘Another day?’ I said.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘When you’re older. Go on now, your dinner will be waiting.’

  I went, reluctantly.

  ‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ I said. ‘For piano.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Until tomorrow then.’

  My mother was dishing up shepherd’s pie at the kitchen counter.

  ‘There you are!’ she said. ‘Can you lay the table for me – quickly now? Kids! Stop fighting! Dinner’s ready!’

  I went over to the cutlery drawer and began counting out forks.

  ‘You were wrong about Miss Frobisher,’ I said.

  ‘Hmm?’ said my mother, as my brother and sister came charging in. ‘No, don’t sit down. Go and wash your hands. Hey! What did I just say? Wash your hands, I said. Now!’

  ‘All those leftover women didn’t just do nothing.’ I laid the forks out neatly on the table, one for my sister, one for my brother, one for me.

  ‘What?’ said my mother. ‘No! Go back and do it properly. Properly, I said.’

  ‘They didn’t just do nothing,’ I said. ‘All those women. They changed the world.’

  But I don’t think she heard.

  Author Biographies

  Theresa Breslin is the Carnegie Medal-winning author of over thirty books for children and young adults, whose work has appeared on stage, radio and television. Her books are read extensively in schools and universities and enjoyed worldwide in many languages. Writings on the First World War include Remembrance (now in an updated version with book notes), Ghost Soldier, for readers aged 9–12, and a contribution to Michael Morpurgo’s anthology Only Remembered. ‘Shadow and Light’ was inspired by Norah Neilson Gray, an artist who, during the First World War, volunteered as a nurse with the Scottish Women’s Hospitals organised by Dr Elsie Inglis. The hospital scenes she painted while in France now hang in the Imperial War Museum and Helensburgh Library.

  Matt Whyman is the author of several acclaimed novels, including Boy Kills Man and The Savages. He is married with four children and lives in West Sussex.

  Matt says, ‘The fog of war often creates difficulties for historians seeking to establish the facts. For storytellers, it can be a liberation, which is what drew me to write about the Gallipoli disaster. The presence of female snipers remains disputed. Many dismiss it outright as a myth, though several compelling accounts from Allied soldiers exist. There is nothing as told through the eyes of such a woman, however, which is what persuaded me to write “Ghost Story”. It is said that all fiction contains a grain of truth. At the very least, I hope you find this here in my exploration of what might drive a grieving widow to take aim on the front line.’

  Mary Hooper has been writing books for young adults for a while, but some years back she began writing historical fiction and decided she never wanted to write anything else. She does lots of research for whatever period she’s writing about, finds tales about things that really happened, then usually invents a central character who has to try and survive all the horrors thrown at them. Sometimes (as in Newes From The Dead) the main character is someone who really existed. The idea for ‘Storm in a Teashop’ came about when Mary was researching Poppy, a book about an eighteen-year-old nurse in the First World War, and wondered to herself what sort of people became spies …

  Rowena House lived and worked in France as a foreign correspondent for the Reuters news agency. Following further posting to Europe and Africa, she returned to England and started a family. Now settled in Devon, she began writing fiction for her son. Then, in 2012, Bath Spa University offered her a place on their prestigious Masters programme in Writing for Young People. ‘The Marshalling of Angélique’s Geese’ is her winning entry for a short story competition run for the Bath Spa students by Andersen Press. Her initial inspiration was a TV documentary featuring British virologist Professor John Oxford, who is one of the world’s leading experts on the ‘Spanish’ ’flu pandemic.

  Melvin Burgess has been writing for young people ever since his first book, The Cry of the Wolf, was short-listed for the Carnegie Medal in 1990. Since then he has published over twenty books and won numerous prizes including the Carnegie Medal for Junk and the LA Times Book of the Year for Doing It. His work has been widely adapted for stage and screen.

  Melvin says, ‘The idea for “Mother and Mrs Everington” came from a piece by Helen Zenna Smith, from her semi-biographical novel, Not So Quiet: Stepdaughters of War. In it, the narrator imagines showing her war-loving mother and her friend around the hospital and shocking them with the terrible injuries she treated every day. I love the voice Helen Zenna Smith uses, which is typical of many women at that time, Suffragettes in particular – so passionate, so militant, so committed to proving their worth. They wanted to show they were men’s equal and many saw the War as a chance to do just that. Instead, they found out they were just as fragile.’

  Berlie Doherty writes stories, novels, plays and poetry, and has won awards in all fields. She has won the Carnegie Medal twice, for Granny Was a Buffer Girl and Dear Nobody. Her recent books include Treason and The Company of Ghosts. Her inspiration for ‘Sky Dancer’ came from the research she did for Thin Air, her play about a First World War pilot, and from Lena Ashwell’s invaluable book Modern Troubadours, a record of concerts at the Front.

  Anne Fine has won the Guardian Children’s Book Prize, and both the Carnegie Medal and Whitbread Award twice over. She was the Children’s Laureate from 2001–3 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her books are published in forty-five languages.

  Anne says, ‘Adults don’t have imaginary friends. But if you lost someone precious, imagine what a comfort it would be to think you could still be in touch with them. It’s hardly surprising that the parents and widows of so many soldiers were drawn to those who claimed they could talk to the dead.’

  Adèle Geras was born in Jerusalem and spent her childhood in many different countries. She was educated at Roedean School, Brighton and St. Hilda’s College, Oxford. She has been a writer since 1976 but before that, she was a singer and a French teacher. She lives in Cambridge and has two daughters and three grandchildren.

  Adèle says, ‘I’ve written more than ninety books for readers of all ages and what inspired me to write this story was a simple desire to write a spooky love story. The First World War has become a byword for violence and slaughter. But I
was not interested in describing the mud and blood of the fields of Flanders, so much as the effect of the War on the girls and women left behind. I set it in Kew Gardens because that’s one of my favourite gardens and I wanted the whole story to be full of things we don’t associate with war at all: flowers, nice clothes and so on. I also like writing about sisters, maybe because I’m an only child.’

  Sally Nicholls was born in Stockton, just after midnight, in a thunderstorm. She has always loved stories, and spent most of her childhood trying to make real life more like an Enid Blyton novel. Her first novel, Ways to Live Forever, was published to great acclaim in 2008, and was followed by Season of Secrets, All Fall Down and Close Your Pretty Eyes. She has won many awards, including the Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize and the Glen Dimplex New Writer of the Year Award. Sally is fascinated by the generation of ‘spare women’, who challenged so many 1920s assumptions, and opened the doors to so many opportunities that we now take for granted. Miss Frobisher’s story in ‘Going Spare’ is fictional, but her account of a ball filled almost entirely with women is taken from a real description from that period.

  Will you, won’t you? Should you, shouldn’t you?

  Have you …?

  A gift? Or a burden?

  MELVIN BURGESS, ANNE FINE, KEITH GRAY, MARY HOOPER, SOPHIE MCKENZIE, PATRICK NESS, BALI RAI AND JENNY VALENTINE.

  Losing It is an original and thought-provoking collection of stories from some of today’s leading writers for young people: some funny, some moving, some haunting but all revolving around the same subject – having sex for the first time.

  Everything you ever wanted to know about virginity but your parents were too embarrassed to tell you.

  9781849390996 £5.99

  A collection of short stories about the afterlife by some of today’s leading writers for teens: Keith Gray, Jonathan Stroud, Philip Ardagh, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Malorie Blackman, Sally Nicholls, Julie Bertagna and Gillian Philip.