A Girl in Wartime

by Maggie Ford

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Maggie Ford

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Acknowledgements

  Sneak Preview

  Copyright

  About the Book

  There’s no escape from the effects of war . . .

  It’s June 1914 and young Connie Lovell should be helping with the war effort. Instead, she applies for a job at the London Herald where she meets the handsome editor Stephen Clayton.

  Nine years her senior, she knows her family won’t approve. She is helplessly drawn to him, and despite a past he won’t talk about, he is undeniably attracted to her. But as the war rages on, will Stephen be forced to enlist, and can their union survive the consequences?

  About the Author

  Maggie Ford was born in the East End of London but at the age of six she moved to Essex, where she has lived ever since. After the death of her first husband, when she was only twenty-six, she went to work as a legal secretary until she remarried in 1968. She has a son and two daughters, all married; her second husband died in 1984.

  She has been writing short stories since the early 1970s.

  Also by Maggie Ford:

  The Soldier’s Bride

  A Mother’s Love

  Call Nurse Jenny

  A Woman’s Place

  The Factory Girl

  In memory of those caught up in WWI

  and the East Enders for whom war was brought

  to their own door steps.

  Also to my son John and my daughters

  Janet and Clare.

  Chapter One

  June 1914

  Louise Lovell glanced over her sixteen-year-old daughter’s shoulder as she passed the kitchen table; in her hands were several large spuds which she would peel and cut into chips to go with the cold roast lamb left over from Sunday.

  About to tell her that she’d have to clear the table ready for that evening’s dinner, she paused, gazing fondly at what the girl was doing. She was wasted working in a factory making cardboard boxes.

  ‘Wish I’d been given your gift, love,’ she remarked. ‘That’s really lovely.’

  Connie looked up from the pencil drawing she was doing. ‘You think so, Mum? Thanks.’

  ‘Ran in me family, drawing, y’know, but passed me by, didn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe it’s in you too, Mum, somewhere,’ Connie said absently, returning her attention to the country scene she was copying from a black-and-white picture she’d found in an old newspaper.

  Later she’d colour it in, using her own imagination for the hues from the cheap box of watercolour paints she’d got for her twelfth birthday four years ago. The little pallets of bright colours were hollowed from much use. Soon they would be all gone but when she’d be able to afford a new box was anyone’s guess. Dad said she was too old for such soppy childish things.

  ‘Time you got out of them kids’ toys,’ he’d said. ‘You’re sixteen now, and in work. It’s about time you started acting your age.’

  Dad didn’t – or wouldn’t – understand how essential they were to her. Drawing and painting were her life. She had a gift, as Mum said. Even at twelve she’d been able to look at a person’s face and draw it well enough for people to instantly recognise the owner. Under her bed in the back bedroom she’d once shared with her sisters, both now married and moved away, were pencil portraits of the current silent screen stars, men who’d made her heart go pit-a-pat: Maurice Costello, Charles Ray, James O’Neill, each a perfectly recognisable likeness.

  Alone, she’d dream of one day meeting one of them, becoming his adored lover, showered with gifts, envied and rich, though chance would be a fine thing. It was only a fantasy. In the real world she worked in a factory, standing at the assembly line for hours on end turning the cardboard edges of boxes into place and dabbing them with sticky paste as they passed, and it looked as if she’d be staying there doing it until, like her sisters, she got married and became a housewife.

  ‘Come on, love, best clear away,’ her mum said. ‘Your dad’ll be home soon, and you know he likes to sit straight down to his meal.’

  Obediently, if reluctantly, Connie got up from her chair and began carefully to collect all her bits and pieces, the two pencils, the India rubber, the nearly completed drawing on its sheet of off-white paper she’d smuggled out with a thin stack of similar sheets from her workplace – for how could she afford proper parchment on factory wages?

  Carefully she rolled up the landscape drawing so that it wouldn’t crease, and, with her arms full, went out of the kitchen and up the dark, windowless stairs of her terraced home in Cardinal Row, Bethnal Green, to stash all her stuff away under her bed.

  Soon she would be vacating this room, with its cheerful sunshine coming in first thing in the mornings, for the back room downstairs. It wasn’t a prospect she looked forward to. She had no option but to comply with the wants of her family.

  This house being two-up-two-down like all those around here, she and her two sisters, Elsie and Lillian, had shared this room for as long as Connie could remember; the other bedroom was occupied by her parents. But since her sisters had left to get married, Elsie the year before last and Lillian just a few weeks ago, she’d had the room all to herself. And lovely it had been too, but not for much longer.

  Her brothers, George, Albert and Ronald, had slept in one bed in the downstairs back room since they were kids, two at the head and one at the foot. But now they were grown men: George twenty-one, Albert – Bertie – nineteen and Ronnie seventeen. So, as from next week, they’d have her room and she’d have the downstairs back room. No more privacy, just the curtain around the bed behind which she’d retire after everyone had gone up to their rooms around ten o’clock.

  Of course, if they were home late they’d go straight upstairs, so there was no fear of her being bothered. But there’d be no more lingering at a window to gaze down into the neighbouring backyards, or the pleasure of having the early morning sun pour through the window on to her face.

  Her mother’s voice calling up the stairs interrupted her thoughts.

  ‘Hurry up back down here, love, I need you to lay the table while I dish up your dad and brothers’ dinners. It’s getting late and they’ll be home any minute now, hungry as blessed hunters.’

  Connie couldn’t see why they’d be hungry as hunters, except Dad, who was a coalman delivering heavy sacks of coal to households by the hundred and needed lots of sustenance. The boys had far less energetic jobs as far as she could see.

  Ronnie was a packer in a sweet factory while Bert
ie was a milkman, which meant admittedly he was up early, but it was not exactly hard work. As for George, he was a law unto himself, doing casual work on and off but he was more than decently involved in his Free Church pursuits, which were held in a small hall half a mile away. Its pastor was his mentor, and he hoped to be one himself one day.

  He was always going on about it to his family and how enlightened a person would become if they joined. Not that there was anything wrong in that, except that it got a bit tiresome sometimes, none of the others being all that religious. It was more that he wasn’t in proper work as often as a young man should be. How he’d ever be able to save up to get married, much less support a family, was beyond her.

  ‘Connie, love, the time’s getting on.’

  ‘Coming, Mum,’ she called back. Dismissing her meandering thoughts she hurried downstairs.

  Arthur Lovell opened his paper, and being a bit politically minded more than usual these days, made a point of scanning the headlines before turning to the sports pages to see if there was anything on his local football team, Tottenham Hotspur, not that there’d be all that much, it being Monday.

  This evening, though, it was the headlines that caught his attention, making him pause in shovelling his dinner into his mouth. Letting the still full fork fall back into the bowl, he let out a deep, irascible growl as he squinted against the June evening sunlight that slanted through the kitchen window directly on to his newspaper.

  ‘Gawd – I dunno what’s wrong with this bloody world! What with that bloody Ireland making trouble and them perishin’ suffragettes causing even more bother! I don’t know what they expect to gain. What do women know about politics, I ask you?’ He eyed his family but they knew better than to respond.

  His bushy eyebrows met in indignation, his large moustache bristling.

  ‘Now it says ’ere someone’s gone and shot some archduke in the Balkans. That’s going to cause trouble, you mark my words. Always trouble somewhere on the continent, countries squabbling among themselves. Thank Gawd we live in England.’

  Peering closely at the smaller print while Connie and her mother paused to gaze at him, though his sons continued eating their dinner, he went on, ‘Some damned upstart or other wanting to prove a point, I suppose.’

  Dad loved shouting politics each time he opened his paper. Having now got this bit off his chest, he turned abruptly to the sport pages, the newspaper rustling noisily. His wife gazed at him for a moment or two, the bread knife paused in the act of slicing bread.

  ‘Never mind, love,’ she said quietly, not all that interested, before resuming slicing the loaf. ‘Finish your dinner, there’s a dear, before it gets all cold and horrible.’

  Chapter Two

  July 1914

  ‘Wouldn’t be a bit surprised if this don’t develop into a perishing full-scale war,’ muttered Arthur Lovell, glancing up from his paper. ‘So long as it don’t involve us.’

  Connie glanced at her father from where she was sitting at the kitchen table, covertly sketching his likeness on a bit of paper, one hand shielding it in case he noticed what she was doing and made some mocking remark.

  He wouldn’t get that annoyed but she would feel an idiot as he tossed his head and tutted – that to her was as good as ridicule. Mum, on the other hand, would smile and nod, might even voice her pride, which would make him shake his head even more and ask lightly whether she hadn’t got better things to do, again inadvertently making her feel a fool.

  ‘Goin’ out tonight, love?’ Mum asked her now, though it was obvious, Connie having already changed into nicer clothes than those she wore for work.

  She was meeting a couple of friends, Cissie and Doris, and the three of them were going Up West to gaze in all the big London shop windows for an hour or two and dream about wearing the lovely expensive garments they saw displayed there that they could never afford. It was a pastime of which all three never tired.

  Later they’d come home to hang around for a while by the shrimps and winkles stall outside the Salmon and Ball pub under the railway arches to laugh and chat and maybe flirt a bit. Connie was tall for her age and boys often made a beeline for her, even though her friends were just as pretty.

  She brought her mind back to her mother. ‘Meeting Doris and Cissie at half past,’ she replied.

  ‘Then you’d best be off, love, or they’ll be wondering where you are.’

  Connie got up from the table, folding the paper with her drawing and tucking it into the pocket of her hobble skirt, already thinking of the evening ahead: the bus they’d catch, boarding it as ladylike as possible with her tight hem hampering her ankles. If any man watching dared smirk, she’d be ready to glare at him as haughtily as she could until he finally pulled a straight face again.

  There were several more bits of blank paper in her Dorothy bag along with a couple of pencil stubs, for, if she got the time, she intended to quickly sketch one or two of the garments that most caught her eye. Later she’d have a go at running up something similar on Mum’s sewing machine, the material bought locally and far cheaper. This was how she kept up with the fashion, to the envy of friends and workmates. To her mind the talent for dressmaking was another art, going hand in hand with that of drawing.

  Giving Mum a quick kiss on the cheek and her dad a peck on the top of his slightly balding head – to which he growled, ‘Get orf!’ – she was away to enjoy her evening of window shopping.

  ‘Let’s just hope our government keeps its own nose clean and stays out of it – all this squabbling between Germany and Russia and now France. Ain’t none of our business, and besides, this country can’t afford to dabble in other people’s wars.’ Connie heard her father growl contemptuously from behind his Daily Mail.

  Tension was beginning to mount daily, the newspaper full of this growing unease in Europe. Connie could see it in her own parents’ faces as foreign governments began glaring at each other across borders.

  These last few days there had been reports of Austria breaking off diplomatic ties with Serbia; Serbia mobilising its army; the Tsar warning Germany that he couldn’t remain indifferent if Austria invaded Serbia.

  Recent news had been of Austria declaring war on Serbia and of Russia ordering the mobilisation of a million troops, then, as July turned into August, came reports of the Kaiser warning that if they didn’t cease within the next twenty-four hours, Germany too would mobilise. That deadline ignored, Germany had declared war on Russia.

  Connie could see the concern on Mum’s face, but all her father said was: ‘Bloody storm in a teacup!’ as he turned to his beloved sports pages.

  But Dad’s words, meant to reassure himself as well as those around him that in no way would Britain let herself be dragged into conflict, held a note of anxiety and for once Mum didn’t lightly change the subject by asking if he wanted the window opened wider on this hot evening or did he fancy another cup of tea. She merely stood looking at him, her round face blank, her mouth slack, her plump shoulders slumped, the tablecloth she was still holding, limp and only half folded.

  Connie, in the process of getting ready to pop over to Cissie’s house, felt the tension her father’s comments had brought to them all: Bertie on the point of going outside to light a cigarette, Mum not minding pipe tobacco but hating cigarette smoke; Ronald, his younger brother, about to follow him out, their older brother George doing nothing as usual. Having finished their tea of ox tongue sandwiches, her three brothers had their minds more on going out to find girls, or whatever young men did when well away from the house of an evening.

  Bertie was already courting: a pretty, fair-haired, easy-natured girl, Edith Kemp, or as he called her, Edie. He’d brought her home to meet them all earlier this year and it was recognised that come next Christmas the two of them would get engaged, both sets of parents happy for that to happen.

  Young Ronnie said he’d be seeing a few mates this evening but beyond that gave no more away. George was off out to yet another of his odd chape
l meetings, saying he was taking part in helping organise a fete for August. To Connie it seemed he hardly ever went anywhere else but there. In a way it touched her as being just a bit unhealthy but she said nothing and carried on getting ready to go off to Cissie’s house. Their friend Doris would be over too and they’d probably play gramophone records and giggle over one thing and another.

  ‘Well,’ Connie heard her dad burst out. ‘Didn’t think we’d be foolish enough to end up being dragged into this war too.’

  No one responded to the irascible remark as they all crowded around the morning paper which was spread out on the parlour table, its headline staring up at them: Britain Declares War with Germany.

  Yet as they read, Connie felt she detected more a sense of euphoria than dismay among her brothers at least, a feeling of pride more than fear. Germany would quail before the might of the British bulldog and, before it knew it, they would soon have Germany on the run, tail between its legs. The Government was already saying it would be over by Christmas, although Lord Kitchener was declaring vehemently that the Government was wrong, that this could prove to be a far more drawn out process than they imagined – or at least were trying to convince the country.

  It was hard to credit how swiftly everything had moved on in a matter of days. Three days ago Germany had asked France, Russia’s ally, to remain neutral, but France had declared that impossible, leaving Germany to demand the right to send troops through neutral Belgium so as to invade France. Yesterday Belgium had refused, while Britain warned Germany that if it did march on to Belgium soil, she would have no choice but to stand by an old treaty with Belgium and declare war on the invader. In the small hours of this morning Germany had ignored the threat and now every newspaper carried the headline in huge letters that Britain was at war.

  Beyond the front-room window, even in this small side street, Connie could already see a more than usual amount of people passing, mostly men, each with a set look of fierce determination, or so it seemed. Her first instinct had been to find paper and a pencil to sketch that look she saw. But there were other things to think about. As they had finished breakfast, both her sisters had come knocking frantically on the front door in a panic. Now they sat around the table, straight-backed with fear.