Home Front Girls

by Rosie Goodwin

  ‘I will,’ Dotty agreed, and then there was a mad scramble as the couple got ready for the office.

  ‘Young Lucy is worrying me,’ Mrs P remarked a few days later as she got Fred’s snap tin loaded for work. He’d enjoy his dinner today; cold tongue and mustard was one of his favourites. ‘She just seems to have gone into herself, don’t she?’

  ‘I suppose she is a bit quiet,’ Fred agreed as he wound his scarf around his neck. ‘But then everyone is out of sorts at present. Seems the whole bloody world is at war now. There’s the Japs, the Italians, the poor bloody Jews . . . they’re all involved now an’ still there’s no end in sight. I’ll forget what me kids look like at this rate,’ he added gloomily.

  Mrs P glanced towards the photographs on the sideboard and her eyes filled with tears. ‘An’ they’ll be shootin’ up an’ all,’ she said in a wobbly voice. ‘Happen nothin’ will fit our Barry an’ Beryl by the time they come home.’ She and Fred had written to tell them that their elder brother had died bravely in combat, and to think of him as a hero. But oh, how Gladys Price had longed to comfort her little ones in person!

  ‘That’s the least of us worries, so long as they do come ’ome safe an’ sound,’ Fred retorted, and then after planting a hasty kiss on his wife’s cheek, he snatched up his snap tin, went out into the yard to collect his bicycle and pedalled off for work.

  Alone with her thoughts, Mrs P pondered about Lucy, who had just collected Harry after working a night shift. It was hard to get more than two words out of the girl nowadays, and she seemed to have lost all her vitality and sense of humour. Admittedly, Lucy had always been very guarded when it came to discussing anything about her family life, but things were going from bad to worse. Still, Mrs P thought optimistically, the girl had mentioned that Dotty and Annabelle were coming home for a visit the following week, so happen that would cheer her up a bit. Humming ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’, she shook out her duster then and began to polish her children’s photographs, just as she did every single day. It was as close as she could get to them for now, and the way she saw it, that contact was better than nothing.

  ‘So what made you become a VAD then?’ Joel asked one day as Annabelle plumped up his pillows and straightened his blanket ready for Madam’s inspection. ‘What I mean is, you lot seem to get all the dirty work to do, what with emptying bedpans, washing smelly bandages and cleaning. Wouldn’t you have preferred to become a State Registered Nurse?’

  ‘I have thought about doing that once the war is over,’ Annabelle replied, ‘but when Owen Owen was bombed I needed to get a job fairly quickly so I became a VAD instead. After all, someone has to do the dirty jobs, don’t they? I was helping out in the operating theatres, but I don’t mind being back on the wards. As Madam always tells us, keeping the patients happy and the wards clean is as important as the job the trained nurses do.’

  ‘I suppose it is when you put it like that, but I still never pictured you doing something like this. You always seemed so . . .’ He tried to find a tactful way of saying what he was thinking, but Annabelle actually finished his sentence for him.

  ‘I always seemed so self-centred and spoiled? Is that what you were going to say?’

  ‘No, no of course I wasn’t,’ he muttered hurriedly.

  ‘Well, looking back, I was,’ she told him calmly.

  ‘So . . . what happened to change you?’

  Annabelle straightened and eyed him thoughtfully, wondering if she could confide in him. The secret her grandmother had let slip had been festering like a boil inside her and it would be nice to speak to someone about it. But now wasn’t the time, not with Madam’s ward inspection imminent. ‘I’ll tell you another time,’ she said, then collecting the dirty sheets she had just changed she walked briskly away, leaving Joel to stare after her.

  As Madam was leaving the ward, she stopped Annabelle, who was entering the sluice room, to tell her, ‘I’d like to see you in my office, Smythe. Shall we say about two o’clock after you’ve had your lunch?’

  Annabelle’s heart skipped a beat as she tried to think of what she had done wrong, but she nodded politely. ‘Certainly, Madam.’

  The woman walked away with the doctors as Annabelle chewed on her lip. Try as she might, she couldn’t think of a single thing that might have annoyed the woman . . . but as worrying about it wasn’t going to get the rest of her jobs done, she hastened away and got on with things. VADs were famous for being good at that. They had to be.

  ‘So, Smythe, the Ward Sister has spoken very highly of you,’ Madam told Annabelle as she stood before her desk a few hours later. Annabelle still felt apprehensive, but at least the woman’s opening words had sounded hopeful. Perhaps she wasn’t in trouble, after all?

  ‘As you know, I don’t usually encourage friendships between staff and patients, but the Ward Sister has informed me that your company seems to act like a tonic for young Mr Ford, which is why I have let you stay on that ward.’

  Annabelle shifted uneasily from foot to foot but remained tight-lipped as the older woman went on, ‘Because Mr Ford is so much improved now, we are thinking of transferring him to a convalescent home sometime next week. We desperately need the beds and find that patients tend to recuperate much better when their relatives can visit. However, I understand that Mr Ford has recently lost two members of his family and so I hoped that you would be able to tell me if there is anyone left to visit and care for him when he is eventually discharged?’

  ‘Oh yes, there is,’ Annabelle told her. ‘My friend, Lucy, is Joel – Mr Ford’s sister. They share a house in Coventry.’

  ‘And do you think she would be capable of caring for him? I’m afraid his leg is still very fragile and it may be some long time before he can get about on it properly again, even after he leaves the convalescent home.’

  ‘I’m sure Lucy would cope. In fact, I know she’d be delighted to have him home. He is all she has left in the way of family now.’

  ‘In that case I shall arrange a transfer just as soon as I can. Thank you, Smythe.’ Annabelle smiled and turned to go, but Madam stopped her then when she added sternly, ‘And Smythe, whilst I accept a friendship, I would frown on a romance. Do you understand what I am saying?’

  ‘Yes, I understand, Madam,’ the girl said quietly. ‘And I assure you there is nothing between Mr Ford and myself other than friendship.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it. It just wouldn’t do to go setting a precedent for the other girls, would it?’

  Annabelle’s chin set as she marched back to the ward. It was commonly known that the patients flirted outrageously with the nurses and most of the girls could give as good as they got. Annabelle had even heard of the odd romance or two that had flared up. But she could understand why Madam insisted on that rule. Not that there was anything to worry about with her and Joel. He had never behaved as anything other than a perfect gentleman, and even if he had – what good would it have done? Who would ever want her now when they discovered that she didn’t even know who her birth mother was? Shaking her head, she went off to resume her duties. She had learned the hard way that there was no sense in wallowing in self-pity. She just had to make the best of things now.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The Ward Sister was waiting for Annabelle when she got back onto the ward and without preamble she told her, ‘I’d like you to go and sit with young Private Reed in the side ward if you wouldn’t mind, Smythe.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘He’s deteriorating rapidly now and there’s nothing more that we can do for him, poor soul. But at least somebody can be there to hold his hand at the end. That’s the least we can do for him, isn’t it? No one should face death alone. His name is Johnny, by the way.’

  Annabelle was saddened but not really surprised considering the state the poor young man had been in when he arrived. His innards had been spilling out of his stomach and although the surgeons had worked diligently to repair him, an infection had set in and everyone knew that this might be the end
for him. She had sat with many other men in much the same situation; the ones suffering with gangrene were the worst. Nothing could remove the foul smell of their afflicted limbs, and one poor man had been so bad that she had been forced to sit holding a handkerchief over her nose and mouth until he died.

  As she turned to go and do as she was told, the Sister warned her, ‘I’m afraid he’s delirious and keeps calling for his mother.’

  ‘I’ll cope,’ Annabelle replied, and seconds later she stood looking down on the wretched boy lying in the bed. He can’t be more than eighteen or nineteen, she found herself thinking as she wrung out a cloth from the bowl at the side of the bed to wipe his sweating brow. His eyes instantly sprang open and he reached out to grasp her hand. His was feverishly hot.

  ‘You must tell me mam that I love her,’ he muttered chokily and Annabelle nodded reassuringly.

  ‘Sh-she’s special, see? Me real mam couldn’t keep me when I was a babby an’ she took me in out o’ the kindness of her heart an’ treated me the same as her own.’

  Annabelle swallowed deeply as she looked gravely down at him. His breath was laboured but even so it seemed that he wasn’t going anywhere until he had passed on his message.

  ‘O-one in a million, she is. Yer will tell her, won’t yer?’

  ‘I’ll make sure she gets your message, I promise, Johnny,’ Annabelle whispered, and a look of contentment settled across his face as his eyes fluttered shut. She sat down on the chair at the side of the bed, gently stroking his hand until at last his chest became still and the sound of his rasping breaths ceased. He was at peace now.

  Annabelle sniffed and swiped a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand as her thoughts raced to the woman she had always thought of as her mother. Since the night she had learned of her true birth mother’s existence, she had held Miranda at arm’s length. She had even joined the VADs to get away from her. Yet this boy had only loved his adoptive mother all the more for bringing him up and loving him as her own. For the first time she wondered if perhaps she had been a little harsh, but this was not the time to be thinking of it now, so she folded his arms across his thin chest, then after gently drawing the crisp white sheet across his face, she quietly left the room.

  It was much later that evening when she was returning from a walk along the sea wall that she spotted Joel sitting in the day room having a cigarette. One of the nurses must have pushed him down there to give him a change of scenery, so she made a detour and popped in to join him, removing her red cape from her shoulders as she entered the room.

  ‘Hello there,’ he greeted her. ‘Care to join me?’

  ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ Annabelle answered, taking a Woodbine from the packet he offered. He lit it for her with a match then asked, ‘Been for a stroll, have you?’

  When she nodded, he went on, ‘Bad do about that poor young Johnny Reed, wasn’t it? I saw the porters come to take him to the morgue.’

  It was just the chance that Annabelle had needed and now she told him, ‘He asked me to pass on a message to his mother – only she wasn’t his mother, not really. He said she’d taken him in when he was a baby because his real mum couldn’t keep him, and she brought him up.’

  ‘Then she was his mother, wasn’t she?’ Joel said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘That’s the way I see it anyway. She was the one who no doubt nursed him through his childhood illnesses. She was the one who read him bedtime stories and kissed him better when he fell over, so in my eyes that makes her his mum.’

  Annabelle gulped. ‘Do you really believe that?’

  ‘Absolutely. Why do you ask?’

  Her lip trembled, and before she knew it she had blurted out the whole sorry tale of what had been disclosed on her birthday. Joel wisely let her get it all off her chest without interruption.

  When she was done, he fished a clean handkerchief from the pocket of his dressing-gown and handed it to her, and she blew her nose noisily. ‘How the mighty are fallen, eh?’ she said shakily. ‘There was me, all airs and graces, thinking I was a cut above everyone else when all the time I was a nobody!’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, puzzled. ‘You’re still the person you were before. Nothing’s changed, only how you think of yourself.’

  ‘B-but my mother was a runaway! Who would ever want me now?’

  He shook his head. ‘That’s not the way I see it,’ he told her. ‘Look at it this way: your mother is at home in Coventry and you would still think of her as your mother if your grandmother hadn’t let slip what happened after you were born. Does she really deserve to lose you now after all the years she’s loved you? We all have secrets in our past,’ he went on bitterly, ‘but we have to learn to live with them and get on with our lives. And as for who would want you now . . .’ he suddenly took her hand and bowed his head. ‘I would, Annabelle. You must have realised how I feel about you. But I have a secret too, so much worse than yours, and it would be you who wouldn’t want me if you knew what it was, believe me.’

  Despite being so upset, she was intrigued now. ‘If it’s about your mother dying in a mental asylum, Lucy already told us about that,’ she whispered.

  ‘Huh, but she only told you half the story,’ he answered, and then squeezing her hand, he asked urgently, ‘Do you think you might ever have been able to care for me, Annabelle, even a little, if I had been someone else? Someone from your own class with a bit of money?’

  ‘None of that matters now.’ She squeezed his hand in return. ‘That’s one thing this war has taught me. When you love someone, nothing else matters. But what’s this secret that’s so terrible?’

  Shutters suddenly seemed to go down across his eyes. ‘That’s something I can never share,’ he told her. ‘Just know that while Lucy is alive, I can never leave her for anyone.’

  Annabelle was shocked. ‘What? You’re telling me that you’ll never leave Lucy?’

  He nodded, his eyes bleak, and without another word she quietly rose and left the room. It seemed that there was nothing more to say. In one breath he had told her that he had feelings for her – and in the next that he would never leave his sister. None of it made any sense.

  Miranda saw a distinct change for the better when her daughter returned home for a two-day leave the following week. Annabelle didn’t seem so stand-offish any more, and within minutes of being home she had enquired if there had been any news of her father. The Red Cross had been trying to track him down for months.

  ‘Actually there is,’ Miranda told her, ‘although I’m not sure if it’s good news or bad, to be honest. He’s in a German prisoner-of-war camp, and we all know the horror stories we read in the papers about those places. I just pray that he’ll survive.’

  ‘He will,’ Annabelle told her with conviction. ‘And once the war is over he’ll be home, you’ll see.’

  Miranda raised a smile, hoping her daughter was right. ‘Dotty and Lucy should be here soon,’ she told her. ‘That’ll be nice. I’m so looking forward to seeing them. How is Joel, by the way?’

  ‘He was transferred to a convalescent home in Watchet, in Dorset yesterday,’ Annabelle said, and there was something in her tone of voice that made her mother raise her eyebrows.

  ‘That’s good,’ she replied cautiously. ‘It must mean that he’s on the mend.’

  Annabelle nodded and without another word, lifted her small case and went upstairs to put her things away as her mother watched her go with a bemused expression on her face.

  When the other two girls arrived they were all shocked to see the change in Lucy. She had lost so much weight that her clothes hung off her, and there were dark circles under her eyes. However, they all tactfully said nothing as Dotty proudly handed them copies of her new book hot off the press.

  ‘I can hardly wait to read it,’ Miranda told her, thinking how well Dotty looked. She was a complete contrast to Lucy and seemed to have filled out a little. Her skin and her eyes were glowing, and it was obvious that she was happy.

 
‘I’ve just got to pop out to see Mum’s solicitor in a while,’ she told them apologetically within minutes of arriving there. ‘But I shouldn’t be long and then I’ll stay until the morning, if you don’t mind, Miranda.’

  ‘It would be a pleasure to have you,’ Miranda said sincerely. ‘But I thought you’d dealt with all the legalities now?’

  ‘I have,’ Dotty agreed. ‘But Mr Jenkins wrote to tell me that he needed to see me about a personal matter.’

  ‘Then you’d better go and find out what it is and put us all out of our misery,’ Miranda teased her.

  An hour and a bus ride later, Dotty was shown into Mr Jenkins’s office. The kindly gentleman rose from his desk to greet her, and shook her hand warmly.

  ‘May I say how well you are looking, Mrs Brabinger?’ he smiled. ‘Married life must be suiting you.’

  ‘It is,’ Dotty answered. ‘But I’m very curious as to why you want to see me, Mr Jenkins.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He steepled his fingers as he sat back down and regarded her over the top of them. ‘I sincerely hope that you won’t think that I’m an interfering old fool,’ he said quietly. ‘But the thing is, as I’ve come to know you over the last months, I’ve realised how much it meant to you, to know who your mother was.

  Dotty nodded, looking perplexed.

  ‘With that in mind, I felt that you might also like to know the identity of your father.’ Seeing her shock, he hurried on, ‘I happen to know who your father was, and seeing as he is now deceased, I see no harm in you knowing too – if you want to, that is?’

  ‘Oh I do!’

  ‘Very well then. I’ll begin by telling you that when your mother first started work, she was employed here, in this very office, as a receptionist. My dear, your father worked here too, as a solicitor. His name was Jeremy Matthews and he was a very nice chap. Anyway, it transpires that after a time he and your mother began an affair. Now I know you might condemn him for that, but his wife, to be perfectly honest, was a shrew of a woman. However, they did have two lovely children – which is why your father chose to stay with her. He had no idea that your mother was having you until after you were born, by which time it was too late to do anything about it. But I can tell you that he was absolutely mortified and riddled with guilt, and before he left the firm to join the RAF he entrusted to me a sum of money, with the instructions that should you ever be found, it would be passed to you on his death, which sadly occurred when he was out on patrol with his squadron recently.’ Mr Jenkins went over to a safe in the wall, opened it and returned with a large envelope.