At the Coal Face

by Joan Hart

  As Jessie approached the magnificent piano, Mrs Hedqvist sat down on a chair and took some knitting out of a little bag. She often liked to knit while Jessie played, and the regular klick-klacking was almost as good as a metronome.

  Jessie began to run through a few scales. Then, when she felt she was properly warmed up, she moved on to a piece she had recently learned, a nocturne by Chopin in G minor. She was pleased to find that she could get through the whole thing without the sheet music – and even more pleased, when she reached the final notes, to hear applause echoing around the drawing room.

  Jessie looked over to Mrs Hedqvist, but the caretaker was still busy with her knitting. Then she turned and looked behind her, where she discovered the source of the clapping. A young soldier was standing by the doorway, clearly enraptured by the music. ‘That was wonderful,’ he exclaimed, beaming at Jessie enthusiastically.

  ‘Oh – hello!’ Jessie replied, her cheeks flushing red. ‘I’m glad you liked it.’ The soldier was a couple of years older than her, with dark hair and a beautiful smile, and Jessie found him very attractive.

  The young man approached the piano. ‘I don’t suppose you take requests?’ he asked her.

  ‘Well, what do you like?’ Jessie said. ‘If I don’t know it, you can always hum the tune and I’ll try to pick it out.’

  ‘How about “There’ll Always Be an England”?’

  ‘Oh, that’s easy,’ Jessie told him, launching into the popular tune. But what seemed easy to Jessie obviously impressed the young soldier. As she played, she looked up now and then, and every time she saw him grinning from ear to ear, clearly enchanted by her performance.

  Jessie had come to Bleak House intending to practise her classical pieces, but that afternoon she found herself playing a host of popular tunes instead as the young man requested one song after another. Soon they were both so lost in the music that they had completely lost track of time, and it was only when a grandfather clock in the corner of the room began to chime that the young man suddenly came to his senses. ‘Oh my goodness,’ he said. ‘I’m supposed to be on duty!’

  He dashed for the door, shooting Jessie another quick smile as he went.

  Jessie remained seated at the piano for a moment. ‘That was charming, my dear,’ Mrs Hedqvist commented, giving her an encouraging smile.

  Jessie had almost forgotten that the older woman was still in the room. ‘Oh, thank you,’ she replied, as she stood up and brought the lid down over the keys. But somehow she wasn’t quite sure that it was the music which Mrs Hedqvist had been charmed by.

  The following day, Jessie was on her bike, riding home from her job at the greasy spoon, when she saw the young soldier cycling towards her on the other side of the road. ‘Oh, there you are,’ he called as he spotted her, wheeling around until they were side by side.

  ‘Hello again!’ Jessie said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Looking for you, of course,’ the soldier replied cheekily. ‘I’ve just been round to your house and your mum said you’d be coming along this way.’

  He must have got my address off Mrs Hedqvist, Jessie thought. She couldn’t help smiling.

  ‘Would you mind if I cycle with you?’ the young man asked politely. ‘I thought you might like some music on your way home.’ As they pedalled away, he began singing ‘Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye’, one of the songs Jessie had played for him the day before. She noticed that he remained perfectly in tune throughout, and his delight in the music shone through just as it had in the drawing room at Bleak House.

  ‘That was lovely,’ Jessie told him when he came to the end of the song.

  ‘I’m glad you liked it,’ he replied. ‘I take requests too, you know.’

  Jessie laughed. ‘All right, how about “Run Rabbit Run”?’ she suggested.

  The man launched into a spirited rendition of the song, and for the rest of the two-and-a-half-mile journey, he kept her entertained with one tune after another.

  In between songs, Jessie learned that the young man’s name was Jim Winkworth, and that he had worked in the kitchen of a top London restaurant before joining the Army Catering Corps. ‘I’m in charge of the food for all the bigwigs,’ he explained.

  ‘Well, I suppose you could say I work in catering too,’ Jessie replied, ‘but we mostly serve truckers, not Army top brass!’

  ‘Oh, I’d swap with you any day,’ Jim told her. ‘You’d be surprised at the table manners of some of the majors and colonels.’ But it was clear when he talked about the fancy dinners they laid on for the officers at Bleak House – with the finest crystal and silverware the grand stately home had to offer – that he loved his job very much, and took great pride in getting every detail just right. ‘When I was out in France, we’d have killed for a pantry stocked as well as the one they have here,’ he told her wistfully.

  ‘You were in France?’ Jessie asked, surprised.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Jim replied. ‘I was sunk twice on the way back from Dunkirk, but both times I got pulled out of the water. In the end I came back on a little fishing boat.’ He grinned at her. ‘I guess I must have just been born lucky.’

  ‘Most people would call being sunk twice pretty bad luck!’ Jessie pointed out.

  ‘Well,’ Jim shrugged, ‘there’s plenty of men who didn’t make it back at all.’ After a moment’s silence, he began to sing again. Clearly whatever horrors he had seen had only made him more determined to embrace the joy of life.

  When they got to Holbeach Bank, Jessie invited Jim in for a cup of tea, and soon he was entering her parents’ little house for the second time that afternoon.

  ‘Oh, he found you then?’ Mrs Ward commented dryly as Jessie ushered the young man into the kitchen.

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ Jessie replied, hoping her mother wasn’t going to be rude to him.

  ‘So, Jim, where do your family come from?’ Mrs Ward asked, as she plonked the teapot down on the table, gesturing for Jessie to pour the tea.

  ‘To be honest, I have no idea,’ he told her. He explained that he had spent his childhood in a Dr Barnardo’s orphanage in Hastings and had never found out who his parents were.

  As she listened to the sad story, Jessie’s heart went out to Jim, but his words had a different effect on her mother. ‘I’m not keen on that one,’ she told Jessie, after the young man had set off back to Bleak House. ‘He’s got no family, no background. You don’t know who he is.’

  ‘Neither does he, Mum,’ Jessie reasoned. ‘You can’t hold that against him.’

  But Mrs Ward shook her head firmly. ‘You don’t want to get involved with him,’ she said.

  Jessie took little notice of her mother’s advice, however, and soon Jim was stopping by at the greasy spoon several times a week to see her. They spent hours at a time cycling around the countryside together, pausing every now and then for a kiss and a cuddle, until it was time for him to accompany her back home.

  Jim hadn’t failed to notice Mrs Ward’s coolness towards him. ‘I don’t think your mother likes me,’ he told Jessie one day, as they were cycling back to Holbeach Bank.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. She doesn’t like anyone!’ Jessie replied, trying to make light of the situation.

  But Jim was uncharacteristically serious. ‘You know, it’s hard for me to meet new people,’ he told her. ‘They always want to know about my family.’

  ‘Well, I don’t care who your parents are,’ Jessie declared. ‘And anyway, the way some families are, you’re probably well off without one!’

  But despite Jessie’s words, Jim was determined to win her mother over. One evening, he turned up at the little house in Holbeach Bank bearing an enormous fillet of smoked salmon. ‘Don’t worry, I haven’t stolen it,’ he told Mrs Ward when he saw the suspicious look in her eye. ‘We over-ordered at the officers’ mess and it was going to be thrown in the bin.’

  ‘Well, in that case, I suppose we’d better eat it,’ Jessie’s mother replied, taking the fillet off to the kitch
en.

  When the food was served, even Mrs Ward had to admit that the salmon was delicious, and fresher than anything the family had eaten since the start of the war. But her frostiness towards Jim didn’t thaw one bit.

  Mr Ward, on the other hand, clearly enjoyed having a soldier in the house. ‘You know, the cooks are the most important people in the Army,’ he declared over dinner, looking over approvingly at Jessie’s guest. ‘When I was in the trenches, they were the ones who kept our peckers up. As Napoleon said, an army always marches on its stomach!’

  After Jim had left at the end of the evening, Jessie’s father turned to her. ‘I like that young man,’ he said. ‘And I’m glad that he’s an Army lad, not one of those stuck-up Navy or Air Force types.’

  But despite the wonderful salmon, the expression on Mrs Ward’s face made it clear that her opinion of Jim hadn’t altered one bit.

  Jessie soon discovered that Jim was forming his own views about her mother as well. ‘You know, you take too much notice of her,’ he announced one day while they were out cycling. ‘You shouldn’t let her boss you about so much.’

  ‘Well, there’s no point arguing with her,’ Jessie told him. ‘It only makes things worse.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Jim replied. ‘But don’t let her keep you under her thumb.’

  The more time Jessie spent with Jim, the more she felt herself falling in love with him – but her feelings were of no concern to the Army. One day, out of the blue, orders went up at Bleak House announcing he was being transferred to Sleaford, 25 miles away. There were no more romantic bike rides after work, and Jessie found she missed Jim terribly.

  Fortunately, he was billeted with a kind local vicar who allowed him to use the phone once a week. He would write to Jessie and let her know what time he would be calling, so that she could queue up at the phone box in the village for a quick snatched conversation. It was wonderful to hear his voice, even only briefly, but afterwards she always returned home glumly, knowing it would be another seven days before they could speak again.

  Before long, Jim was sent even further away, to Woodhall Spa, where they could no longer even talk on the phone. Now Jessie lived for his letters, which arrived faithfully every other day. He was a natural writer, and the two of them filled pages and pages with heartfelt reminders of their love.

  When Jim wrote one day and asked Jessie if she would marry him, she knew instantly that her answer was yes. But she also knew that her mother would do her best to talk her out of it.

  Jim’s words echoed in Jessie’s mind: ‘Don’t let her keep you under her thumb.’ She picked up a pen and quickly wrote back accepting Jim’s proposal, making sure the letter was signed, sealed and posted before she went in to tell her parents the news.

  ‘Jim’s asked me to marry him – and I’ve said yes,’ she announced excitedly, when she found them together in the living room.

  Mrs Ward shot an annoyed look at her daughter, but she could see it was too late to change her mind. Instead she said coldly, ‘Well, you’ll have to wait until the war’s over. It would be very unwise to marry before then.’

  Jessie was determined not to give too much ground. ‘We’ll have to wait and see,’ she said boldly.

  Her father grinned at her. ‘I don’t mind what you do love, as long as you’re happy,’ he said.

  A few weeks later, when Jim was granted a day’s leave, he and Jessie met up in King’s Lynn. There he presented her with the most beautiful ring she had ever seen – it was made of platinum and encrusted with tiny diamonds.

  As much as Jessie was thrilled about her engagement, it made life at home even more difficult. Her relationship with her mother was frostier than ever, and she realised that, even if she did defy her and marry Jim while the war was still raging, with the Army moving him around constantly, she would still be stuck at home until he was finally demobbed.

  It didn’t look like the war would be over any time soon, either. When they gathered around the wireless in the evenings, Jessie and her family heard reports of aerial bombings in London, Birmingham, Liverpool and other big cities, including nearby Peterborough. A few bombs had even landed near Spalding. ‘Those blooming Germans are walking all over us,’ Mr Ward fumed.

  Jessie was beginning to wonder what she was doing to help with the war effort. All she did was spend her days serving beans on toast. Surely there was something more she could do – perhaps even something that would have the added bonus of getting her out of Holbeach Bank.

  Ever since Dunkirk, stories had been circulating about the brave ATS girls who had travelled to France with the British Expeditionary Force. Some had heroically escaped after having been captured by the Germans, while others had endured terrifying dive-bombing by the Luftwaffe. Their efforts had proved that the women’s forces deserved to be taken seriously, and now a massive recruitment drive was underway.

  Jessie had seen the posters and advertisements up around the village, calling for girls to join the ATS – ‘YOU ARE WANTED TOO!’ they proclaimed in large, bold letters, alongside an image of a young woman marching in uniform. Jessie liked the idea of joining the Army, like her father, and when she wrote to tell Jim about her idea he was supportive. But she had a feeling that if she spoke to her mother, she would try to put a dampener on her plans.

  When a friend who lived ten miles away in Boston invited Jessie to come and visit her for the weekend, she realised it was the perfect opportunity for her to join up without any interference. She took the bus into Grantham, where she knew there was an ATS recruiting office, and was ushered into a hall where a male Army sergeant was seated behind a desk. He took down her name, address and date of birth, and told her she would be hearing from them shortly.

  ‘I’ve signed up for the ATS,’ Jessie told her parents, as soon as she got back home after her holiday.

  Mrs Ward didn’t even look up from her knitting. ‘Well, the Army ought to teach you what hard work is,’ she muttered.

  ‘I don’t mind working hard,’ replied Jessie. After all, her mother had been treating her as a domestic drudge for years.

  Mr Ward, of course, was over the moon at the thought that he was going to have a daughter in khaki. ‘My Jessie’s going to win us the war, you know,’ he began telling anyone in the village who would listen.

  Now that she had made the decision to join up, Jessie’s excitement was growing, but it soon began to be mingled with impatience. She had volunteered in December of 1941, and had been rated ‘A1’ at a medical exam in Grantham just before Christmas, but she was told that it wouldn’t be until the new year that the Army would get around to calling her up.

  At long last, one crisp January morning, an official-looking envelope arrived on Jessie’s doormat. She tore it open to find a railway warrant and instructions for getting to an ATS training camp at Leicester the next day. She was to bring just one small suitcase, containing two pairs of pyjamas.

  Jessie didn’t own any pyjamas, so she rushed into Holbeach to buy some, stopping off along the way to let her boss at the greasy spoon know that she was leaving to join the Army. ‘Well, I can’t argue with that!’ the woman said, wishing her luck.

  The next morning, Jessie was up bright and early, ready to begin the journey to Leicester. To Mr Ward, it was a red-letter day, although his wife treated it just like any other. As far as she was concerned, Jessie might have been setting off for her usual shift at the cafe, not leaving home for the duration of the war.

  Right now, though, nothing could dampen Jessie’s spirits, and she walked the two and a half miles to Holbeach Station fizzing with excitement. At the station, she presented her railway warrant and boarded a train to Spalding, where she had been instructed to make a connection that would take her to Leicester.

  As she got on the second train, Jessie spotted a couple of girls she recognised from her medical in Grantham, and soon they had introduced themselves and were chatting away. One of them, Mary, was tall and slim, and carried herself with an air of quiet conf
idence. The other, Olive, was more cuddly-looking, with glasses and an infectious laugh.

  As they got to know each other, the girls talked about their reasons for joining the ATS. Olive, it turned out, had signed up after a love affair turned sour. ‘I just got so fed up that I had to leave!’ she told Jessie and Mary with a giggle.

  When they arrived at Leicester station, the girls were met by a railway transport officer, who pointed them in the direction of a fleet of ATS lorries. They clambered up over the tailgate of one of the vehicles, along with a group of other young women. They were all anxiously clutching little suitcases, with the same expression of bewilderment on their faces. They didn’t exactly look like an Army in waiting.

  When the girls finally arrived at the barracks it was well into the afternoon, and they were led into the canteen for a late lunch. Jessie went up to the counter to get her food, and was surprised to find a familiar face serving her. It was Peggy Hogg, a girl she remembered from school, who was now on permanent staff at the camp as an ATS orderly.

  ‘Fancy seeing you here, Peggy!’ Jessie exclaimed, as the girl slopped a portion of mashed potato onto her plate. ‘I didn’t know you were in the Army.’

  ‘Oh yeah, I’ve been here a year now,’ Peggy replied with a sigh.

  As Jessie returned to her seat, she couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for her old schoolmate. Wasn’t joining the ATS supposed to be about doing something important and exciting? Yet here was Peggy still at a training camp a year after she had signed up, with nothing more thrilling to do than doling out slop.

  When they had eaten, the new recruits were led to the stores to be issued with their kit. A woman took one look at Jessie’s diminutive form and declared, ‘Size one in everything, and if it’s still too big you can take it in yourself with your hussif.’