‘I have an idea it will be made into a cover for a footstool, that sort of thing.’
Colonel Atkins looked momentarily regretful. Edwina could see that he could not quite come to terms with his beautiful stitching spending the rest of its days under the weight of someone or other’s feet, but much as she was sure that his tapestry deserved a better fate, she could bear his procrastination no longer. She determined to come to the point before the fillets of sole were placed in front of them.
‘Colonel Atkins, I wonder if it would help us both if I reminded you that I had hardly walked in the door, hardly parked my car outside the flat, all freshly returned from my seventh trip to the coast, bringing back and taking, bringing back and taking, when you telephoned through to say that you wished to see me on urgent business.’
‘I did, didn’t I?’ Colonel Atkins feigned surprise.
‘Yes, you did, and I hurried round to meet you here, after the quickest change since Gertrude Lawrence in London Calling—’
‘Ah, now that was quite a show, delightful. He’s been in America, you know, Noel Coward, on government business, and now questions are being asked in Parliament, and I know not what. Press can’t mind their own business, Beaverbrook gunning for him and all that. All disgraceful, and unnecessary. Anyone would think we should have better things to do than go for our own people, but there you are, that’s newspaper barons for you.’
‘Colonel Atkins, what is it that you want from me? Please put me out of my state of animated curiosity.’
Colonel Atkins looked embarrassed. ‘Are you sure you want to talk about it before we have pudding?’
Edwina’s eyes flashed. ‘I certainly do,’ she assured him. ‘Because once I hear what you have to say, perhaps I will not feel like eating pudding, Colonel, dotey!’
As the sweat ran off Betty’s forehead, and she quickly wiped it away with the sleeve of her boiler suit, lest it drop on one of the items she was making, she was sure she could hear the jeering voice of the principal of the orphanage. ‘You’ll never make anything of yourself, Betty Thomas, never! You’ll always be an also-ran, sitting at the bottom of the pile, Miss Going Nowhere.’
She had made it to seven hours at a sitting, or rather a standing, because they had to stand to assemble everything. Foolishly she had been quite determined to notch up that seven hours, and of course she had paid for it, as you surely always did with factory work, even in wartime. She had paid for it with aching limbs and cracking headaches; she had paid for it with Trixie’s teasing her, endlessly, but not it seemed without reason. Worst of all she had paid for it by being marked out as a goody-goody by the rest of the factory women.
She glanced up at the clock. Five hours would have to do today, five hours and five minutes. She stepped away from the line, her place soon taken by a newcomer, and peeled off to the changing room, if that was what you could call it, before staggering back to their digs.
‘I tried to warn you,’ Trixie told her, almost smugly. ‘You might take half a crown off of me—’
‘Off me, not off of me, Trix—’
‘Off me. Anyway – that!’ Trixie laughed. ‘My grammar is going backwards from being in the factory. At any rate, you might take half a crown off me – and my fault for betting you, I grant you – but even so, seven hours! Mind you, I did try to warn you that by notching up the best time ever and being singled out by the supervisor, you would make enemies of just about everyone except the supervisor.’
‘Mrs Ludgrove did say she was pleased, that no one else had ever notched up seven hours at a go.’
‘Of course she’s pleased, now she’s got your hours to beat the rest of them over the head with so she’s pleased all right. And, as I said, you have made three hundred enemies at one go. And that too is something to be proud of, all right.’ Trixie looked resigned. ‘Still, seeing that they work in shifts, you won’t be seeing all of them at once. So you might get let off lightly – only get your shoe laces tied together and your handbag rifled, and castor oil put in your tea.’ Trixie gave a short sarcastic laugh. ‘I, on the other hand, have made more friends than you’ve made explosives, my deah. Full of popularity, I am, because me and the work is chalk and cheese, and that’s for certain.’
‘Well, you were right,’ Betty stated, lying back down on her narrow bed, while deciding not to correct Trixie’s grammar yet again, ‘and I was wrong, and nothing to be done about it now.’
‘No, nothing,’ Trixie agreed. ‘Except to say I’m a bit worried about you, because what with one thing and another, it could really turn in there for you, you know? I mean, it could get dangerous, with all of them being the kind they are.’
She sat down on her own bed opposite Trixie.
‘I don’t think you should stay, Betty, really I don’t. I mean, the work’s dangerous enough without all those cats waiting to scratch your eyes out.’
‘I’ll be all right. Spiders in my tea, cutting off the bottom of my boiler suit, whatever else they do, I’ll be all right. You forget I was brought up in an orphanage.’
Betty glanced at Trixie and then stared up at the ceiling. Actually, if she was to be honest with herself, she knew Trixie was right to be worried. Since the infamous moment when she had clocked up seven hours, there had been an unpleasant incident every day, sometimes more than one. Only this evening a gang of women had stopped by her station and jeered at her. They had only fled when Mrs Ludgrove fetched up unexpectedly.
After a long pause, during which she set herself to think about the situation a little more seriously than usual, Trixie spoke.
‘The trouble is, Betty, we have to face it, there’s no one else like us in the factory. I mean, we stick out like sore thumbs, and sore thumbs is what we got and all, for all the trouble we’ve been put to, and that’s a fact. It’s funny really, here were we – me the chauffeur’s daughter, and you Little Orphan Annie, well, Betty, from the institution down the way – and yet we’re not like the rest of them, and you know why? Because of being at Chevrons. Because I was born there and you were adopted there, we wanted to better ourselves, and now that we have bettered ourselves, like I said, we stick out like sore thumbs, and go in fear of getting ourselves taken out. I mean, let’s face it, it’s dangerous enough work all right, but if I’m going to have danger I’d rather it came from the enemy than from some long-faced girl on the assembly line who’s just got in the straw for the third time.’
Betty sat up. ‘Language, please, Trixie!’
Trixie shrugged. ‘Once upon a time, what seems like fifty years ago, I was learning to speak like a lady to fit in at Chevrons, so now I’m learning to speak like that lot, because I’m in a factory making things to blow up little children just because they happen to be German.’
‘They started it.’
‘I know, I know, but even so, it’s not nice, is it? I can’t help thinking of the innocent people we’re going to kill with those things.’
‘War’s not nice.’
‘No, is that the truth?’
Trixie now lay down on her bed and stared up at the ceiling in similar fashion to Betty, hands behind the head, expression glum.
‘It all seems like another world, doesn’t it? Us being at Chevrons, and Mrs Garland taking you out of the orphanage, because she was one – an orphan, I mean – and she took such an interest in the place. I often think back on Dad taking us on trips in his car on Sunday afternoons, and picnicking with him on the hill above the town, and going looking for things he’d hidden on a treasure hunt, and all that. Seems like another world.’
‘It was another world, and it’s not going to come back, and we know it.’
Trixie glanced sideways at Betty. ‘Well, what are we fighting the war for, then?’
‘To try and hold on to it, bits of it, not all of it but bits of it, so we can try to bring it back … bring back bits of the old life, if we win.’
‘We’ve got to win, Betty. I mean to say, what else is there to do except win? We’ll be i
n a prison camp for the rest of our lives, or on a chain gang, if we don’t win.’
‘Much good we’d be breaking up rocks!’
‘Knowing you, Betty, you’d break up so many you’d spoil it all for everyone else.’
Betty started to laugh. ‘Maybe you’re right, Trixie. Maybe I’m nothing but trouble, just as they used to say at the orphanage.’
‘You’re not trouble, Betty, you’re a saint. I know, because Mrs Garland used to say, “The trouble with Betty is, she’s a saint. She can’t help it, it’s how she is, and I fear her bleeding heart will get her into trouble.”’
‘Did she really say that?’
‘Yes, she did.’
Trixie was silent then, because she felt she’d gone too far. She remembered now that Mrs Garland also used to say that she knew what it felt like to be rescued, and that like all rescued creatures Betty would always feel grateful for the rest of her life.
‘First thing we’ve got to do is to get out of this factory,’ she continued eventually. ‘Especially you,’ she added, half accusingly. ‘We have to think who could help us. There must be someone.’
‘No one can help us, Trix. We’ve got to help ourselves. I wasn’t going to tell you in case nothing came of it, but a letter arrived for me this morning when you were out, and I’m going up to London again tomorrow.’ Betty sat up, and after a minute of searching she produced a piece of paper from her handbag. ‘I’ve been asked back to see that gentleman in the War Office again.’
Trixie stared at the letter. ‘How did he know you were here?’
‘I don’t know, but he did, so I’m going back to see him, and maybe this time I will get a job as a secretary.’ She pulled some of her books down from the meagre shelf beside the bed. ‘So, if you will, just start dictating to me, Trix, because I’m afraid I’ve got stale, and I don’t want that. You see, this could be an opportunity for me to prove what I can do.’
Betty picked up her pencil. Her hands still hurt from the assembly line, her back hurt, her head hurt, but once the phrases started to come towards her the old feeling of contentment stole over and finally through her, that feeling of being at peace with herself. After all, this was something she could do. A hundred and fifty words a minute, that’s what she had been doing before the war, and that was like doing seven hours on the factory floor; that was a bull’s-eye of a speed.
Trixie read at a good speed, which she could now, and as she did so she remembered Caro Garland and the sessions they had enjoyed together: Miss Caro correcting her pronunciation, Trixie revelling in the attention, both of them taking secret enjoyment in the idea that Trixie was determined not to stay a maid. Trixie was going to become a lady, and drive a car like her father, and wear nice clothes like Miss Caro.
‘Getting on is what it’s all about,’ Caro had agreed. ‘We all have to. I have to because I’m not a beauty. Oh, yes, I have to get on too, you know, Trixie. I will never be sought after the way Miss Katherine is sought after, but that doesn’t matter. I am determined to really live my life, not just sit about waiting for something to happen, which it never does unless you give life a good shake and kick it in the shins. Otherwise it will settle round you like a fog, and you’ll never find your way round it, not ever. I know this the same as I know my own name.’
Now Trixie read on, taking a pride in her voice, refining it as she imagined herself back at Chevrons, and as she did so she could not help filling up with pride. Betty must have been written to by the man at the War Office because of Trixie’s scheming.
Trixie had been so worried about the enemies Betty had made at the factory that she had written to Miss Caro, begging her to find Betty a position as a typist, or just as something, anything, in an office, before she came to harm in the factory. Miss Caro, bless her cotton socks – or rather, her shiny French nylons – must have come up trumps or Betty surely would not have received that letter.
Trixie gave an inward sigh of relief. She could manage all right at the factory. She had a way of getting round the cats that worked alongside her, having learned to become a chameleon, pleasing everyone all the time. At Chevrons she had learned to duck under the invisible barriers and make good friends of everyone. It was an art that poor old saintly Betty had not yet acquired, and perhaps never would.
The man who had taken the decision not to send the whole of the RAF to take on the Germans at Dunkirk was being proved right. As the London Blitz began, the plucky little aeroplanes manned by young men barely out of their teens took on the invasion from the air. Whatever the outcome – and please God, against all the odds, they would win – the man who had stood firm against everyone knew he would never be forgiven, most particularly since he was being proved right.
As he watched the young Waafs moving the pieces, representing his precious Spitfires and Hurricanes and all the rest, across the boards, while others chalked up losses and victories on the wall blackboards, he was aware that he had long ago resigned himself to his fate. No one would thank him for keeping back so many of his planes from Dunkirk, but what would that matter if they could win this invasion of the skies? The important thing now was to give Hitler a thrashing, put off the invasion, and begin to turn the odds against him.
As the news vendors broadcast the scores of enemy planes shot down, and played down the home team’s losses, as people grew so used to seeing aerial battles overhead they sometimes did not even look up, as telegrams arrived at households that had never known loss, but now would know too much, the man responsible for saving England from invasion went outside and lit a much-needed cigarette.
It was not being proved right that was gnawing at him. No, what was eating him up was the idea that had he not held out for what he believed, he just might have given in to the pressure to throw everything that he had at Dunkirk – and in so doing would have lost England.
Chapter Eight
Edwina glanced down at her watch. It was well after half past seven. Robert was meant to have picked her up at six thirty, and they were to have gone dancing at the Savoy. Well, drinks first, and then dancing, and dinner. She snapped open her evening bag, and taking out a new small gold cigarette case – a divine present from Ben, bless him – she lit a cigarette, not caring that she was wearing evening gloves, not caring very much about anything at all except that Robert was late, not there, had not arrived.
Over their dinner together Colonel Atkins had hinted that he knew Edwina to be a bit of a goer. How had he known? Edwina knew she should have felt angry at his impertinence, but somehow war put paid to all that too.
‘I’m not a goer, Colonel Atkins,’ she had finally said, ‘but I do believe in being just a little, what you might call loving to those who know they are about to die. There is nothing wrong with their last memory being of the smell of French scent, the sight of pretty legs in silk stockings, and a pretty girl’s kisses – nothing more. In fact, it should be obligatory for the services to supply them! That is all I have offered our gallant young men. I have beaux, Colonel Atkins, admirers, worshippers, not boyfriends. I am after all an Irish girl. We are not the same as those from here.’
Edwina knew, from the look that Colonel Atkins had given her, that if he could have blushed at her dignified reply, he would have done, but he really was not the blushing type. Instead he allowed his blue eyes to rest on her face as he looked at her over the top of his wine glass. He was more than able to appreciate that Edwina O’Brien was a beautiful woman, and now he could also appreciate that she was an intelligent one. All this was to his advantage.
Of course, the files back at the office had already told him that Edwina O’Brien had never been a goer, but now she had confirmed this he felt both encouraged and disappointed: encouraged because, like so many attractive men of his generation, he enjoyed the thought that not all beautiful women were easy; and disappointed because he was sure, from the look that she had given him, that she was about to spin his idea.
However it was, and whatever she thought of him,
he was proved right, for the dinner had finally ended with Edwina turning down his proposed offer.
Colonel Atkins had taken it very well, stating calmly that he had thought she might react as she had, and that being so, he would never mention the matter again. He would wait for her to come back to him if she changed her mind. After which he had called for another bottle of wine, and they had fallen to talking about the good old days in Ireland, when it seemed he had known Edwina’s esteemed grandmother, and had stayed at Clonakilty Castle – not, he was forced to confess, that he could remember a great deal of it.
‘Hunting all day and drinking all night rather puts paid to the memory, you know.’
Edwina had laughed at that, and been surprised too, because she somehow could not imagine Colonel Atkins having been young and drunk, but she did not say as much.
Oh, but where was Robert?
An American officer stopped momentarily and stared at her admiringly. Edwina stared right back. Look your fill, her glance said, but I have what, I believe you would call ‘a date’.
She moved off into the thick of the people milling about the foyer. It was a miracle that during the recent air raids the Savoy had not yet been hit. The Dorchester was actually proving to be the most popular of the London hotels, because it was rumoured, rightly or wrongly, that it had concrete foundations, or some such idiocy. As if that would make any difference if it took a direct hit! But nevertheless all the old dowagers, and God knows who else, now crowded its basement every night, carrying Dorothy bags filled with their precious jewels. As if jewellery would make any difference when you were dead.
The truth was Edwina had never before been in love, until now. So, much as she did not regret being the comfort of first Tom and then Ben, her heart had not been captured by either of them. No, her wild Irish heart had, for some reason best known to the gods, been stolen by beloved Robert.
‘Edwina O’Brien? Edwina O’Brien?’
Goodnight Sweetheart Page 19