by Pam Weaver
Pip had made a good job of the suits. Gone were the pockets over the breast that gave everybody a big, blousy look. Pip had swapped the plain collar on her suit for some pretty material and matched it with the pocket on the waist, thus drawing attention away from her hips. Lillian’s outfit had tapered sleeves and some sparkling beads down the front as far as the waistband. She had added her own belt, which complemented the changes beautifully. Stella’s siren suit had flared trouser bottoms rather than the usual gathered leg, and all of them had been taken in enough to make the girls look slim and attractive.
Once they had put on their colourful turbans, they made their way to the makeshift stage. The canteen was very noisy. Stella peeped through the side curtain.
‘There’s nobody at the piano,’ she said, ‘so it looks like I’m playing.’
‘What’s it like out there?’ Pip whispered nervously.
Stella peeped again. ‘It’s packed, but they’re all drinking at tables and playing cards.’
‘Ready, girls?’ someone asked.
They turned to see an officer with a clipboard standing behind them.
Lillian nodded.
‘When I’ve introduced you,’ he went on, ‘get out there straight away. They don’t like to be kept waiting.’
Pip squeezed Lillian’s hand.
‘And,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘don’t take it personally if they boo.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’ said Lillian crossly.
‘They’re hard to please,’ said the officer. ‘We had a troupe from ENSA last week and most of them were booed off stage.’
‘Isn’t anybody else coming tonight?’ said Stella, looking around. ‘Where are the rest of the performers?’
‘I couldn’t persuade them to come back again,’ said the officer. ‘So just for tonight, honey, you’re it.’
There was a stunned silence as the girls looked at each other with sinking hearts. ‘Talk about a baptism of fire,’ Pip muttered.
‘Right, then,’ said the officer. ‘I’ll get out there and introduce you.’
They watched him burst through the side curtain and struggle to make himself heard over the din.
‘Five songs,’ said Lillian. ‘That’s never enough to fill a whole evening. What are we going to do?’
‘We haven’t practised anything else,’ said Stella. ‘We’ll do the lot and then go. It’s their loss if they don’t have anything else.’
‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ said Pip.
‘Oh no, you’re not,’ said Lillian. ‘Whatever happens, we’re all in this together. If the act dies tonight, so be it, but at least we’ll have given it our best shot.’
‘Break a leg,’ said Phyllis. They turned to Stella’s mother with startled expressions. ‘That’s what they say when they go on stage,’ she protested. ‘It’s a form of reverse good luck.’
On stage, the officer was facing them with his left arm extended as he bellowed, ‘And here they are, the Sussex Sisters!’
‘I hope this b-well works,’ Stella muttered darkly as they ran through the curtain.
A few members of the audience looked up as they reached the piano, but most carried on with what they were doing. All around the room, the conversations continued unabated. In a corner near the back, some men were playing a noisy game of cards. Others stood at the bar shouting orders to the harassed barman, who was obviously rushed off his feet.
Stella sat down at the piano and played a short introduction before they began their first song, ‘Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree’. They belted the song as loudly as they could, but it was only heard by the men in the front row. They obviously wanted to listen because the girls heard them telling their comrades to ‘shut up’, but it had no effect.
The girls finished the song to a paltry round of half-hearted applause.
When Pip glanced at Stella, she could see she was almost in tears as they began their rendition of ‘I’ll Be With You in Apple Blossom Time’. The racket in the room hadn’t dimmed in the slightest, and Stella only played a few bars before she stopped. It was hopeless. There was no reaction from anyone in the audience; in fact, no one seemed to notice they were on stage doing absolutely nothing.
‘I think it’s time to go,’ Stella said quietly.
‘But we can’t give up in the middle of the act,’ Pip whispered urgently.
‘Why not?’ said Stella. ‘Look at them.’
‘What’s wrong, sugar?’ a man called from the front seats. ‘Why don’t you come and sit on my lap and I’ll give you somethin’ to sing about.’
Stella and Pip blushed to their roots as he and his mates roared with laughter.
Something flashed in Lillian’s eyes. Marching to the front of the stage, she put two fingers in her mouth. The room was suddenly filled with the loudest whistle Pip had ever heard. Everybody stopped what they were doing and turned round. Stella and Pip stared open-mouthed as Lillian, her legs akimbo and her hands on her hips, jutted her neck and glared into the crowd. When she spoke, she didn’t shout. She didn’t need to. A deathly hush had fallen across the whole room.
‘I used to be impressed by the Canadian soldier,’ she began in a measured voice tinged with anger. ‘I thought him a fair-minded, honest chap who would give a girl a chance. That’s why I considered it an honour to come here to sing to you tonight. We heard what you did to ENSA, and to be frank, we won’t mind if you see fit to boo us off the stage, but at least have the decency to listen first!’
No one made a sound, until someone near the bar called out, ‘All right, lassie. Off you go,’ and with a leap of excitement, Lillian recognized Mr Knight. Their eyes locked and he raised his glass of beer in her direction. She could have jumped over the chairs to kiss his cheek.
Returning to the piano, Lillian said, ‘Go on, Stell. Let’s do it.’
Stella played the first two bars of ‘I’m Sending a Letter to Santa Claus’ and they began to sing. It was an emotional song about a little boy whose father was fighting overseas. The child was sending his letter to ask Santa Claus ‘to bring my daddy safely home to me . . .’ They began nervously, but as the room remained quiet, they gained in confidence. At least the men were listening now.
The song ended and the girls bowed. A few seconds later, the whole place erupted into loud applause. When they looked out onto the sea of faces, it was obvious that the words of the song had struck a chord. Several men were surreptitiously wiping away a tear.
As the applause died down, Stella sat back down at the piano. ‘From the beginning?’ she whispered. The others nodded eagerly, and so for the second time that evening, she struck up the introduction to ‘Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree’.
Back at Stella’s place later that night, the three of them flopped into chairs.
‘I can’t believe we did that,’ said Lillian.
‘You were amazing,’ said Pip.
‘Anybody fancy a bit of toast and jam?’ Stella’s offer was greeted with enthusiasm and she left the room.
‘How’s your little Flora doing now?’ asked Pip.
Lillian was cuddling a cushion. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘It seems she was very lucky. Everything has healed well, and the doc reckons that in years to come, she’ll hardly even have a scar.’
‘That’s good,’ said Pip, pushing some sheets of music away so that she could spread herself out a little more. ‘I notice her hair is growing back.’
‘Mostly,’ said Lillian. ‘There’s one patch that looks a bit thin, but with careful brushing, we can hide it fairly well.’
Pip shivered and nodded and shook away the memory of another person with burns, a person who still bore terrible scars to this day, scars that were all her fault.
‘Are you all right?’ Lillian said anxiously. ‘For a moment there, you went awfully white.’
‘I’m fine,’ said Pip. ‘A bit tired, that’s all.’
‘It’s been a long day,’ Lillian agreed. The smell of warm toast drifted through fro
m the kitchen.
Pip stood up. ‘I think I’ll go and give Stella a hand,’ she said. ‘I’m more peckish than I thought.’
‘Do you ever hear from your Peter?’ Lillian asked. ‘You never mention him.’
Pip shook her head. ‘Not a dickie bird since he was captured,’ she said sadly. ‘I did have a letter from his regiment. They said they were doing all they could, but apparently the Japs don’t recognize the Geneva Convention. The men don’t even get Red Cross parcels.’
‘How awful!’ cried Lillian.
‘What’s awful?’ said Stella, coming into the room with a tray of tea and toast.
‘Pip says her Peter doesn’t get Red Cross parcels,’ said Lillian. ‘Gordon gets British and Canadian parcels.’
The other two looked impressed, and they all sat down again.
‘He says the Canadian ones are best,’ Lillian went on. ‘He has to share the British ones between two sometimes, but they get half a pound of sugar, sweets and chocolates, and tins of condensed milk. The Canadians send butter, coffee, packets of biscuits and fifty cigarettes. I’d volunteer to be a prisoner of war if I could eat all that. It’s better than two ounces of butter a week, isn’t it?’
Stella laughed, but Pip only smiled.
‘Sorry,’ said Lillian, immediately embarrassed by her crassness. ‘That was a stupid thing to say. It must be such a terrible worry for you, and you’ve got no one to really talk to.’
Pip waved her hand dismissively.
‘What about your family, Pip?’ said Stella, passing the plates and toast round. ‘I’ve never heard you talk about them. Do they live far away?’
‘I have no family,’ said Pip.
‘What, none at all?’ cried Lillian.
Pip took a bite from her toast and shook her head.
‘God, that’s terrible,’ said Lillian.
‘I’ve no wish to pry,’ said Stella uncertainly, ‘and you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but what happened to them? Did they all die?’
‘I went to live in a children’s home,’ said Pip, looking away.
Her voice was flat, and it was obvious she didn’t want to elaborate. Lillian leaned over and squeezed her hand. Stella waited a second or two, then changed the subject to more mundane things.
CHAPTER 15
By the second Saturday in December, the festive season was well under way. Christmas carol singers gathered in Montague Street, and all the old favourites – ‘Hark! the Herald Angels Sing’, ‘We Three Kings’ and ‘Silent Night’ – drew the crowds. While Georgie, Hazel and Flora were becoming more excited by the day, the preparations for the festive season were giving Stella, Pip and Lillian a bit of a headache. The same tired old Christmas decorations came down from their lofts, but finding suitable presents that they could afford and having enough coupons to buy them was proving to be very hard. The few toys to be had in the shops were extremely expensive. Of course, you could get things at an inflated price and without coupons on the black market, toys that had ‘fallen off the back of a lorry’, but as they had been reminded, if you got caught, you could end up with a hefty fine or, even worse, a prison sentence. After their argument about the bolt of midnight-blue material, none of the girls had the stomach for risk-taking.
Pip had been preparing for Christmas for some time. With no other relatives around and her husband a POW, she had to be mother and father, grandparent and aunt all rolled into one. With rent from her shops, money wasn’t quite so much of an issue. It was availability that was proving difficult. Some months ago, she’d found a pretty-looking dolly in the Red Cross shop. Since then, she’d spent her evenings knitting the doll a complete wardrobe from odd scraps of wool. Georgie had asked Father Christmas for a train set, sadly an impossible request. There wasn’t anything like that to be had in the whole of Worthing. Every available toy was war-related: a tank, a Spitfire or a battleship. Georgie wasn’t in the least interested in them, so Pip was delighted when she found a battered sled in the junk shop on the corner of North Street and Lyndhurst Road. While he was at school or playing with friends at their houses, she was beavering away repairing a broken slat and painting it bright green. What a good job Pete was such a hoarder. The paint came from a tin she’d found in the shed, left over from when he’d painted the gateposts in 1939. Once it was ready, all she had to do was pray for snow!
Pip had to move a few things around to make room for the sled in the shed. At the back, she found a tin that rattled. She hadn’t noticed it before, and when she opened it, to her horror, she found several spent bullets. Where on earth had they come from? She’d tackled Georgie about it that evening.
‘They’re not mine,’ he’d protested. ‘I’m looking after them for somebody.’
‘Who?’
Georgie lowered his head and stayed silent.
‘If those big boys have made you do it . . .’ she began.
‘Nobody made me do it, Mummy.’
‘Well, you can tell them from me, I’m giving them to the police.’
‘No, Mummy,’ Georgie cried. ‘You can’t. They won’t let me in their den if you do.’
‘Georgie, I’ve told you before – stay away from them,’ said Pip.
‘But, Mummy—’
‘But nothing,’ Pip said firmly. ‘I’ve said all I’m going to on the matter and there’s an end to it.’
With an angry pout, Georgie turned on his heel and ran upstairs to his room.
‘And from now on,’ his mother called after him, ‘keep out of Daddy’s shed.’
In the run-up to the big day, Stella invited Pip to spend Christmas in Phyllis’s house with her. At first, Pip refused, saying that she and the children might ‘spoil’ the family occasion. She was also afraid that Stella might be thinking that being on her own was a problem to her. She didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for her. Luckily, Stella allayed her fears on both counts.
‘If you come, we can pool our resources,’ she said. ‘We can share the meal. That way, we might be able to enjoy more than we could if we stayed on our own.’
Her suggestion made Pip change her mind, and straight away she was looking forward to it. She envied Stella and Lillian their close-knit families. It must be wonderful to have a mother on hand to step into the breach when needed.
When she’d been allowed to go back to work, Stella had initiated the school kitchen garden. It had proved to be very successful on several fronts. Not only did the school have plenty of vegetables all year round, but the children enjoyed their nature lessons outdoors, weeding, hoeing and, later on, harvesting the fruit and vegetables. Everyone in the school enjoyed wholesome food, and it was surprising how keen the children were to eat up their carrots and greens when they’d grown them themselves. Stella had adopted a crop rotary system for planting. This meant that the area used for peas, beans and onions the first year had Brussels sprouts, broccoli and swede the second year. In the third year, which would be 1943, she planned to have carrots, early potatoes and main-crop potatoes in that same plot. By dividing the whole garden up into three separate areas, she minimized the risk of clubroot and other diseases, and because she’d been the one to spearhead the project, the school cook made sure that she had some of the preserves the children had produced in their cookery lessons. As a result, Stella would be bringing a jar of pickled onions, a jar of pickled beetroot and two Kilner jars of stewed fruit to the Christmas meal.
It made sense to join together, and it promised to be an enjoyable time. Pip belonged to a pig club, which meant that in exchange for her kitchen waste, which was used to feed the animals, she had a share of the meat when the pig was slaughtered. As the pig was expected to reach the required one hundred pounds in weight by Christmas, she would be able to bring a nice piece of pork to the table.
‘My mother will love having the children,’ said Stella. As she said the words, Stella felt her chest tighten. How she wished she and Johnny had a child of their own. She sighed, and catching the change in Pip�
�s expression, she added quickly, ‘I hope you don’t mind if she spoils them rotten.’
‘Oh, I think I can cope with that,’ Pip said with a grin.
‘My mother can’t wait to have grandchildren of her own. Not much chance of that with this damn war on,’ Stella added with a hollow laugh.
Thanks to her new job, Lillian would be a little better off this Christmas. Flora was to have a toy china tea set and a brown teddy bear with a loud growl when his tummy was pressed. Lillian knew she’d love it. Dorcas was busy too. Although they’d both agreed not to bother with presents for each other, she’d been saving her sugar ration to make home-made sweets. Lillian had to decline Stella’s invitation for Christmas Day because she was expected to be with her aunt and the rest of the family in Lancing for the day. ‘But if the offer still stands for Boxing Day . . .’ she added with a cheeky grin.
The run-up to Christmas brought more invitations for the Sussex Sisters. They were mostly local and for lunchtime performances in works canteens, army camps and hospitals. They were selective over the ones they accepted. They couldn’t go far. There wasn’t time. Lillian and Stella only had their lunch hour.
Stella’s headmistress had been very helpful, but she didn’t want to take advantage of her. If the school day was changed slightly, Stella was able to go for her lunch a little earlier. Providing she was willing to set up her class with a project that could be unsupervised, she had just enough time to do a twenty-minute performance and get back for the rest of the working day. The other teachers agreed to pop in to check on the children, and everything went smoothly.
‘I can’t see this happening after the war,’ Stella remarked to her mother, ‘but people are more than happy to go the extra mile to boost the nation’s morale.’
Lillian found much the same kind of cooperation at the station.
‘The Sussex Sisters, lovely girls,’ Mr Knight told anyone who had the time to listen. ‘Do you realize one of them works on this station?’ In fact, Mr Knight had been so lavish in his praise for the Sussex Sisters that Mr Rawlings was happy to release Lillian every now and then for an extra-long lunch hour.