The Bluebird Girls: The Forces' Sweethearts 1

by Rosie Archer

  Rainey stood up and stared down at her mother. ‘He did this, didn’t he?’ Without waiting for an answer she added, ‘I should get you to the hospital.’

  ‘No! The last time they asked so many questions . . .’

  Rainey looked at her in disgust.

  In the scullery, Rainey shook the kettle and, satisfied there was enough water in it, lit the gas. Anger was consuming her. She thought of Ellen. Her friend and her younger brother had been playing Cowboys and Indians with their father while their mother was at the market. When she’d closed their front door to come home, she was still smiling at the sight of Ellen’s dad lying on the floor tied up with bits of string as the ‘hostage’ caught by seven-year-old Tommy.

  She could neither remember nor imagine her own father making a happy spectacle of himself like that. But, then, her father wasn’t home a great deal and she hated it when he was. Immediately he set foot inside the house a big black fog seemed to settle over everyone. She even thought twice about singing when he was around and she loved to sing.

  ‘I’m not stupid, you know.’ Rainey pushed open the kitchen door and looked at her mother, who’d managed somehow to settle herself in the armchair. ‘This is just the latest of the many times he’s taken his temper out on you. We have to leave.’

  She saw the tears spring to her mother’s eyes and waited for the usual protestations, but instead she heard her say quietly, ‘I know. But I shouldn’t have goaded him.’

  Rainey didn’t ask questions. Ellen had confessed to overhearing her parents whisper about Alfie Bird and ‘that blonde’ being spotted in a pub. Her mother must have discovered he was once again entangled with that Janice he couldn’t seem to let go of.

  The sad thing was her mother still loved him. She had since she was a girl and now, after taking all Rainey’s father had dished out over the years, she hadn’t the confidence to leave him. But if she didn’t . . . Rainey didn’t want to think about the consequences and, even, life without her beloved mother.

  At sixteen, Rainey was old enough to leave school and get a job but her parents wanted more for her. If she left Portsmouth she could return to school in another place, couldn’t she? Her mother wouldn’t like her to throw away her education. But Rainey could perhaps get a part-time job and her mother would be able to go out to work, like she’d always wanted. Her father had decided early on that Jo’s place was in the home. But they’d need to earn money if they left this house. If only she could persuade her mother to leave.

  She watched her mother splay her fingers, saw the agony on her face as she moved her arm. Rainey sighed. Jo might have lost confidence in herself but Rainey had enough for the two of them. The kettle began to whistle. Rainey went back into the scullery and began making tea.

  ‘I should get the doctor to see you,’ she called. As the words left her mouth she knew if her mother could stand upright she would sweep away all Rainey’s suggestions. She’d certainly never tell anyone that Alfie Bird knocked her about. Rainey remembered the time her mother had been taken to hospital. She’d not disclosed the truth: she’d lied to save Alfie’s reputation.

  ‘But nothing’s broken. It’ll soon get better. I really should watch where I’m going. Fell over that damn chair . . .’

  There she goes again, thought Rainey. Already she’s forgotten she’s admitted Dad hit her. Now she’s pretending it never happened.

  Rainey slammed the teapot down on the table, causing the lid to jiggle and hot tea to spurt from the spout. With the cups in her hands she went into the living room.

  Her mother obviously hadn’t expected her to enter so had her jumper pulled up and was examining dark red marks blooming over her ribs. Rainey almost dropped the cups at the sight of the bruising. After putting them on the table she fell on her knees in front of her mother. ‘Oh, Mum, we have to get away.’ She eased Jo’s jumper down, then pushed back the fair hair that had fallen across her mother’s face, tucking it behind her ear. She looked into her eyes. ‘If we tell no one where we’re going, we can build a new, happier life.’

  ‘But what about your friends, school?’

  Rainey clutched her mother’s left hand. She wanted to say, ‘I’d miss them but sooner or later I have to escape into the big wide world and I’d rather do it with you beside me,’ but instead she said, ‘I can go somewhere else to carry on studying, if that’s what you want for me.’ She paused. ‘We could both get jobs . . .’ She’d stared into her mother’s tear-stained face. ‘Please?’

  And that had been the start of it.

  She’d urged her mother to find them a place to live. That hadn’t happened straight away because her mother’s shoulder had taken a while to mend sufficiently for her to gain control of her arm and hand.

  Now Rainey shivered again. It was so cold in the stinking room. She looked across at the big black range. Tomorrow after they’d cleaned it they could see if it worked. That should warm the place. Light from the torch and later a dim candle had shown up bits of broken furniture they could burn.

  It was a pity they’d had to leave so much nice stuff behind but the small car had been loaded to the gills as it was.

  Her father would never find them here.

  Into her head came the words of ‘With a Smile and a Song’. She’d gone to see the picture Snow White with Ellen and they’d sung that tune as they’d walked home together, arm in arm. In her mind, the music played. At the pictures all the films ended happily. Her life and her mum’s might not be like a film but she’d try her hardest to make sure there was happiness ahead.

  One thing she was sure of: she’d never let any man treat her the way her mother had been treated.

  Chapter Four

  ‘Thanks, Mrs Perry. That’s you paid up until the end of November.’ Jo ticked off the money owed and wrote down in the ledger the final amount with the day’s date. She took the cash, slid out the drawer and put the money into the till, then exchanged smiles with the woman in the fur coat, who walked out of Alverstoke’s village newsagency carrying the latest issue of Woman’s Weekly .

  She turned to the next customer.

  ‘Packet of Woodbines, Jo?’

  ‘You’re in luck, Tom. We’ve still got some left.’

  The young man stepping impatiently from one foot to the other was dressed in paint-spattered overalls. He handed the exact money across the counter. Jo passed him his packet of cigarettes and he grabbed it, already turning to disappear out of the door and shouting, ‘Thanks, Jo. They’ll have my guts for garters if I’m missed!’ The door slammed behind him and Jo was alone once more. She knew he was supposed to be painting the shopfront of the baker’s opposite.

  She perched on the stool in the corner and carried on marking up the copies of the Portsmouth Evening News in readiness for the paper-boys when they arrived. Six lads who came straight from school: she had to keep her eyes on them to make sure nothing went missing from the sweets counter.

  Jo smiled to herself. She liked working in the paper-shop with the wide counter between her and the customers. It made her feel safe.

  It wasn’t big, just a single largish room, but it housed a lending library, shelves of magazines and comics, daily newspapers on a rack, cards for all occasions – some had been there a very long time, judging by the state they were in. Cigarettes and cigars sat on the back shelf.

  Jo had been advised by her boss, Mr Harrington, to try to keep her regular customers happy by putting aside their favourite smokes beneath the counter whenever she could because it was likely, due to the war, tobacco would soon be in short supply.

  The shop also sold shoelaces, matches – ordinary and red Swan Vestas – cotton reels and a myriad of odds and ends that customers rarely wanted. Outside, on a rack attached to the wall, there were more daily papers.

  Jo liked the smell of the newsprint and was happy that Mr Harrington trusted her on her own in the shop. Mostly she was busy serving and answering the telephone to irate customers when the lads were late with the de
liveries. When it was quiet, she got ahead of herself, checking the payment ledger, dusting shelves, leaving notes for Mr Harrington to re-order goods, and looking through glossy magazines that she could never hope to buy.

  The bell tinkled again. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any of those leather bootlaces hidden away somewhere, Jo, the long ones?’

  Jo looked up to see a tall red-haired man in greasy overalls. He didn’t look happy.

  She knew who he was: Syd Kennedy, the owner of the small garage on the corner of Coward Road. Earlier he’d picked up his usual Daily Mirror but he didn’t often come back to the shop.

  Leaving the pencil she’d been using to mark up the papers near the till, she smiled at him, apparently taking him by surprise. ‘Actually we have,’ she said, and balancing on the stool, she reached high up on the top shelf and pulled down a battered cardboard box. She set it on the counter and slid off the lid. As the contents were revealed, his hand sprang forward, brushing accidentally against her fingers. It was well shaped and looked as if he had recently washed it, but lines of grease lay in his fingernails.

  ‘Oh.’ Jo pulled back her hand as if she had been burned.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.’ He was contrite. ‘I was just trying to see if the laces were the right sort.’ His face had reddened.

  Jo’s heart was beating fast. She stared at him. Since moving to Gosport she couldn’t erase the fear that Alfie would suddenly pop up and hurt her again. Sooner or later she knew he would come looking for her. Her fear of him had made her wary of all men. While she was inside the house she kept the front and back doors locked and only left her home alone to go to work. When Rainey wasn’t at school they went into town to discover cheap treasures in second-hand shops to make the small house more homely. Week by week it was becoming more of a place of safety.

  ‘No harm done.’ She forced herself to smile at Syd, who seemed almost as embarrassed as herself. She shuffled the assorted laces, pulling out a sturdy pair of black leather strings. ‘Will these do?’

  A smile broke across his face. ‘Oh, well done,’ he said. ‘I can sort out my work boots now.’ He looked down at his feet. Jo couldn’t see what he was wearing because the counter was in the way. ‘Damned lace broke this morning,’ he said. ‘How much?’

  ‘There are no prices on the box.’ Jo picked up the lid and looked at it, then wrinkled her nose – no price there either. She thought for a moment. ‘Why don’t you take them and pay Mr Harrington when you come in next?’

  ‘If you’re sure? I only live above the garage.’

  ‘I’m sure it’ll be all right.’

  ‘Well, thanks,’ he said. ‘It’s not very comfortable walking about with one bootlace. I thought I’d have to make a quick repair with a bit of string and that wouldn’t impress my customers, would it?’

  ‘No,’ Jo said, putting the lid back on the box and watching him walk out of the shop. The bell clanged behind him. After returning the box to the top shelf and resolving to ask Mr Harrington for missing prices, then write them on the articles to which they applied, she felt ashamed that she’d nearly jumped out of her skin when Syd Kennedy had touched her.

  She rubbed her shoulder. When she had reached up high for the laces, it had twinged. She wondered how long it would take her arm to recover completely and stop reminding her of her suffering.

  ‘All right, Jo?’

  Mr Harrington had emerged from the passage door that led from the living quarters he shared with his wife, Bella. He was a small round man in his sixties with twinkling eyes, practically a carbon copy of his wife. Jo had liked him as soon as she’d met him for the first time when the Labour Exchange had sent her to apply for the job. ‘I am,’ she replied. ‘The papers are all marked up and the magazines and comics are slipped inside.’

  ‘Well done. I suppose it’s time you were on your way.’

  She was allowed to leave early each afternoon so she could be home for Rainey when she got in from St John’s School.

  The newsagency didn’t pay as much as the factories and armament yards that needed women workers now that the men were leaving to fight in the forces, but Jo knew she wasn’t ready to work with a crowd of people after being at home for so long. Rainey had a Saturday job in the greengrocer’s at the end of Albert Street and, with careful planning, their combined wages enabled them to live frugally.

  Mr and Mrs Harrington were kind people but not blessed with children. Bella Harrington didn’t enjoy good health so she rarely served in the shop, but each morning at eleven o’clock she went over the road to the bakery and came back with a freshly baked confection that she would present to Jo with a cup of milky Camp coffee.

  Mr Harrington rose early in readiness for the delivery of the morning papers. He often went back to bed after the paper-boys had returned from their rounds. Jo arrived at nine just as he was about to walk their beloved elderly Dalmatian, Freckles. The timing suited her because she was able to see Rainey off to school before she left the house.

  Now she said, ‘I’ve left a note. Syd Kennedy owes for a pair of leather bootlaces. I didn’t know how much they were.’

  ‘I shan’t worry too much about asking him for a few pence, not when he does all sorts of favours for me. You ready for home, Jo?’

  Jo nodded.

  ‘Off you go, then. See you tomorrow.’

  Jo collected her handbag and headscarf, then lifted the counter flap. She went through the Harringtons’ living accommodation into their hallway, where her coat hung on a hook opposite the long mirror. Jo stared at her reflection. In the short time since they had left Portsmouth she thought she had changed. She looked quite different. There was a glow about her face, which no longer had a haunted expression. She realized that, for the first time in years, she was happy. When she was dressed against the cold outside and had tied her headscarf over her hair, she shouted her goodbyes. She left by the Harringtons’ rear door to collect her bike from their garage.

  The bike, with its wicker basket, was a godsend. She’d discovered it hidden at the rear of the shed at Albert Street. After a clean and with the tyres pumped up, she could ride it to the shop, then home again – she pedalled down Green Lane and along Queens Road to cross the railway bridge to Albert Street – and into town for shopping, saving on bus fares.

  Each time she put the bicycle into the shed she looked longingly at the MG. She had the registration book but needed to apply to the local issuing clerk for coupons. Alfie might discover her whereabouts from the Divisional Petroleum Office. However, she often gave it a quick polish with a rag, wishing she could take Rainey out somewhere for a treat but she didn’t dare risk running out of petrol.

  It took about twenty minutes to cycle home in the November cold. The trees were leafless and frost was already making white patches on the pavements and roads. By the time Jo reached number fourteen she was shivering.

  Her heart lifted as she opened the front door to a blast of warm air from the range and the sound of her daughter singing along with the wireless. She could smell cooking and sniffed appreciatively.

  Rainey stopped singing long enough to yell, ‘’Lo, Mum. I got home a bit earlier this afternoon so I’ve made some potato cakes. I’ve got the kettle on.’ She sounded so happy, Jo thought, and in that moment she knew that more happiness would follow.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Don’t forget you’re coming up the school with me tonight to see the teachers, Mum. It’s parents’ evening.’ Rainey’s words broke through the cut-glass voice of the wireless announcer’s.

  ‘Hang on, Rainey! I can’t listen to two people at the same time. Can you hear what he’s saying? The Germans have dropped bombs on the Shetland Islands!’

  Jo threw down the tea-towel she was using to dry the dishes at the stone sink. ‘That’s the first on British soil!’

  ‘It’s a long way from here—’

  Jo rounded on her. ‘But don’t you see, love? It’s started. All this talk of war, t
he rationing, the handing out of gas masks, it’s really happening, my girl!’

  Glenn Miller music was now pouring from the set.

  ‘Does it mean you’re not coming to the school?’

  Jo shook the end of the tea-towel at her daughter. ‘Of course I’m coming, although what the teachers will have to say when you’ve only been there five minutes I don’t know. Is there any tea left in that pot?’

  Rainey took off the lid and peered into it. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Pour it for me, love. I need a sit-down and a cuppa. You finish drying up.’

  Jo took the willow-patterned cup and saucer from the scullery into the kitchen and sat down at the table where earlier she and Rainey had eaten their evening meal. Idly she stirred her tea. She had been a young girl when the last war had ended and that was supposed to have been the war to end all wars. Her father had never returned from the fighting and her mother had succumbed to the influenza that had swept the country shortly after. An elderly aunt, her father’s sister, had brought her up.

  Jo was sixteen and eager to be married to Alfie before their child was born. Her aunt had given her permission to wed but had passed away before Rainey arrived.

  Alfie used to say he’d like to put her in a matchbox and carry her around in his pocket so he could see her whenever he wanted. That had been in the early days before he’d hit her. He hated to see her reading. He’d snatch the book from her, tearing it. He liked her to stay in the house and questioned her long into the night if he suspected she’d disobeyed him. It got so it was easier to do his bidding than to bear the aftermath of his silences.

  She shivered. Alfie wasn’t in this little house, this sanctuary. She was free. As free as she could be with the war news hanging over everyone. Alfie would be sent to fight for his country. While she hoped for his safety, the prospect of him being far away from her and Rainey was comforting.