A Girl in Wartime

by Maggie Ford

  Seeing them, Ronnie could think himself lucky, thought Connie as she and Stephen paid her parents a visit that Sunday, and she felt embarrassingly indebted to her wonderful husband for his generosity to her brother.

  Alone in the kitchen, her mother’s rounded face was creased with concern when they entered, which prompted Connie to ask what was wrong.

  ‘It’s our George,’ she said quietly.

  Mum reached into her apron pocket and brought out a letter still in its envelope but the envelope flap already opened.

  ‘Came yesterday but I’ve not shown your dad yet,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know what he’ll say about it.’

  ‘Can I read it?’ asked Connie, she too feeling the need to whisper.

  Her mother handed it to her. ‘I really don’t know what to make of it. I don’t want your dad going off the handle. What if he throws it straight in the fire?’

  ‘Maybe it would be best if I read it out aloud to him. He can’t do anything then.’

  ‘What about your Stephen, him there to witness if your dad does throw it in the fire. I’m not keen on other people seeing what goes on between our George and your dad.’

  ‘Stephen is family, Mum,’ Connie reminded her, and saw her mother nod slowly.

  ‘I suppose he is.’ She lifted her head in sudden determination. ‘All right, love, get it over and done with and see what ’appens. But I’m not ’aving your dad show us up. I’ll warn ’im to take care, in no uncertain terms.’ Connie couldn’t help but smile at her set expression. When she wanted, Mum could have her way in her own quiet manner.

  But what she’d read was no laughing matter. She felt suddenly empty at what she’d read, but her brother George was his own master – he’d proved that long ago.

  The others hardly looked up as she and her mother entered the room, Dolly sitting with Violet on her lap; Stephen with his little daughter on his, talking to Ronnie; Dad listening. Ronnie and Dad were puffing away, filling the room with both pipe and tobacco smoke.

  Mum took one sniff and went and lifted up the lower sash window a fraction. ‘All this stink. It can’t be good for the kiddies,’ she said sharply. Connie was only grateful that Stephen hadn’t been included in her disapproval. Stephen had never smoked as far as Connie knew. If he ever had it would probably have been after losing his first wife.

  ‘Bloody ’ell!’ Dad exploded, catching the full force of cold November air, his chair backing straight on to the window despite the lower sash having been lifted not much more than half an inch. ‘You shut the bloody thing, woman!’

  If there was to be a row, thought Connie, best it be over the letter she held rather than over a small waft of draught.

  Going to her father, she said loudly, ‘A letter came yesterday. It’s for you and Mum. It’s important.’

  He looked at his wife, his moustache bristling visibly, the draught forgotten. ‘Then why didn’t you say yesterday?’

  ‘She couldn’t,’ Connie said sharply. ‘It should be read while there are people here.’

  People here could stop him throwing it straight into the fire in temper.

  He held his hand out for it but Connie held it away from him. Ignoring him, she began reading aloud:

  Sorry if this is only a short letter but I’m on my way to Paris. I shan’t be coming home, at least not for quite a while. It depends. I know how Dad feels, but that’s not why I won’t be coming home, at least not just yet. I need to tell you why.

  While in France I spent a few leaves in Paris – no point in coming home. You understand why. In Paris I met a girl. Her name is Camille. She’s Parisian and has been teaching me French. We got serious and I asked her if we might become engaged and she said yes, so I’ll be living in France and we plan to get married in a couple of months’ time. It’ll be a quiet affair. She has no family so only a few friends of hers are invited, and as I say, I won’t be home. So you don’t have to concern yourself on that score, Dad. Maybe one day we’ll come and visit or maybe Connie and her husband might like to come and see us.

  Connie paused. She had written to him regularly while the war raged, telling him of her coming marriage and the birth of her daughter. But somehow she had felt it best to keep this exchange of correspondence secret from her parents for the time being. Her brief pause was met by utter silence, she bent her head to continue reading:

  I know Dad won’t care to read this but hope you’ll read it out to him, Mum, whether he likes it or not. I don’t hold him any grudges. The war’s over. It’s behind us and there’s no use looking back into the past. It solves nothing. I know I was a fool. At least I admit it. But now I’m well and happy and hope all of you are too, including you, Dad.

  Connie folded the letter and handed it back to her mother, not once taking her eyes off her father.

  She saw him slowly tap out the glowing tobacco from the bowl of his pipe into the fire, replacing the empty pipe on the mantelpiece, a sign that he was divorcing his mind from what he had heard.

  Then just as slowly he retrieved the pipe and, reaching for his old black leather tobacco pouch, began refilling the bowl, tamping it down as the others watched, taking a taper from the holder by the side of the fire, holding it to the flames until it ignited and applying it to the fresh tobacco.

  Puffing steadily, he leaned back in his wooden armchair.

  ‘Well, I’m buggered,’ he rumbled quietly and slowly, almost like someone in awe. ‘Our George gettin’ married. Well, bugger me!’

  Acknowledgements

  In the process of writing A Girl in Wartime I got some valuable info from the War Office who were very obliging. I also gained a good deal of general information from a very heavy tome called Chronicle of the Twentieth Century which gives really valuable help on anything one needs to look up, including pieces from newspapers.

  Chapter One

  February, a raw Saturday afternoon – not a day to choose to go up to the West End, more one for huddling by a nice, warm fire, with her nose in the romance she was currently reading, Drifting Petals.

  Today, though, Geraldine Glover had a purpose in mind. Time was running out, cold weather or no. In four weeks her older sister, Mavis, was getting married to Tom Calder. Three months had passed since the Armistice. Young men were still coming home, couples were making up for lost time and all a man wanted after maybe four years of hell in the trenches was to get married to the girl who had waited for him. Mavis and Tom wanted the same thing: to get married, settle down and forget the war.

  It wasn’t as easy as it sounded. Men coming home in droves to no jobs, and with little money to find the rent for somewhere to live, usually ended up living in one room in a parent’s house. This was what Tom and Mavis were going to have to do. With no room at home with Mum and Dad, who had two sons and three daughters crammed in a shabby East End terraced two-up two-down in Burgoyne Road off Grove Road, they’d go to his parents’ house.

  It would be a frugal wedding with no frills or flounces. With food shortages the wedding breakfast would be made up of whatever the family could bring. At least Dad had work at the docks and there was the promise of a job there for Tom if Dad could pull strings, so Mavis would have her trousseau.

  Even so, Geraldine envied her sister, wishing it was she who was getting married and leaving her cramped home where three girls had to share one bed, while her brothers, one older, one younger, shared a single bed in the back room where the family ate. It meant they couldn’t go to bed until everyone else did or went off into the front room, normally kept for best.

  Some families around here had even more kids and heaven knows how they coped. But all Geraldine ever dreamed of was one day having her own room to do what she liked in, as Mavis would four weeks from now. But as yet she didn’t even have a regular boyfriend, let alone one to marry. There were plenty who fancied her and whom she’d been out with, but none she’d want to marry. The only one – Alan Presley from Medway Road – was married although going through a divorce and had
no interest in other girls these days – a case of once bitten twice shy.

  When she was fifteen and he was seventeen they’d gone around together in a group and he’d been sweet on her, but they’d lost touch when he went into the Army in 1917. Writing letters was a chore and later she heard that he’d found a girl from the next street to hers while home on leave. The girl had got pregnant and on his next leave they had to marry, but a year later he’d come home from France to find her in bed with another bloke and that was it. Even so, you can’t start making eyes at someone still married, if separated and waiting for a divorce. Wouldn’t be appropriate. But he was a handsome-looking bloke and her heart still went pitter-pat for him.

  Standing in the bus queue outside Mile End Station, Geraldine eyed the clock outside a watchmaker’s opposite: ten to two. If a Number 25 didn’t arrive soon she’d end up frozen stiff. Huddling deeper into her thick jacket with the wind pressing her heavy hobble skirt against her ankles, she sighed.

  The queue was growing steadily as there had been no bus for nearly fifteen minutes. The first one along would no doubt be full by now, not even standing room, and would probably sail right by, though it might be followed by another after all this delay – buses seemed to love keeping each other company.

  Geraldine turned her mind to signs of life from the London & General Omnibus Company. She was partially correct about buses keeping each other company as finally two 25s appeared, the first doing exactly as she’d expected, the driver looking smug as it trundled straight by.

  Crinkling her pretty face into a wry grin as she took her turn boarding the second bus, she managed to find a seat on top where at least she could have a smoke. Lots of girls doing men’s jobs during the war had learned to smoke and it had become accepted. She didn’t smoke all that much herself, but the odd puff helped a girl of eighteen get through a humdrum week as a machinist on piecework in a clothing factory where utility dresses, blouses and skirts offered very little variety of design. Anyway, she was tired having worked like mad all Saturday morning and a cigarette helped to perk her up.

  Today, however, she felt perky enough, eagerly looking forward to what she had in mind to do once she’d alighted on Oxford Street. She’d done it many times before but today was special for she needed to look good at her sister’s wedding, and for someone on a meagre wage there was only one way to do it.

  She found little in Oxford Street to tempt her even though London’s West End had all the newest fashions. Moving on to Regent Street, there was nothing there either that really caught her eye. Disappointment growing, she found herself wandering down New Bond Street. If there was nothing here she’d be properly stuck. There was such a scarcity of fabrics even though the war was over, and unless you could afford to pay something like ten or twelve guineas, which for her represented nine to ten weeks’ earnings, a really stunning dress was out of the question. But what she was looking for had to be extra special to make her stand out at this wedding, though she always aimed to stand out anywhere.

  True, for most of the time she and her fifteen-year-old sister Evelyn would be wearing bridesmaid’s dresses – skimpy things in cheap rose-pink cotton that would make them look like a pair of candlesticks following the bride up the aisle. Tom’s six-year-old cousin Lily, in pale blue, to Geraldine’s mind would just about put the kybosh on the whole ensemble. Though it was all Mavis could do on so little money, she’d never had any dress sense. How they could have ever been sisters was beyond Geraldine.

  ‘Let me make the dresses,’ she’d implored. ‘I’m a good dressmaker, as good as anyone.’

  But Mavis had been adamant. ‘I want ter buy them ready-made. That way I can be certain of ’em.’

  ‘I could make them all at half the price.’

  ‘I want proper ones.’

  ‘And I don’t know how to make proper dresses, I suppose!’ she had stormed at Mavis, getting angry. ‘Look at what I make for meself – everyone thinks they’ve been bought. And I save loads of money.’

  ‘I don’t care!’ Mavis had stormed back. ‘It’s my day. And I decide what I want and ’ow I want it.’

  ‘And end up makin’ a pauper of yerself!’

  ‘No I won’t! Cos I’ve bin puttin’ by fer ages for a decent weddin’ dress.’

  Mavis and Tom had been saving for this for two years but still hadn’t much to show for it, with Tom away in the Army while she had got herself a job in a munitions factory, though now she worked in a local bread shop.

  ‘All I want is a decent wedding,’ she’d gone on. ‘And I’m buyin’ me own dresses.’

  ‘Sewn tergether with cheap cotton what breaks as soon as you stretch a seam by accident, you wait and see. And, I’m sorry, Mave, but I think that rose pink you want us to wear is an ’ideous colour.’

  Mavis had yelled at her again that she liked pink and it was her day and she’d do what she liked, walking off close to tears, leaving Geraldine to give up on her. Mavis was getting more uppity and highly strung the nearer her big day came and was best left alone. She would put up with the horrible colour as best she could and anyway, it would only be for a couple of hours.

  Thinking of it, Geraldine wandered on down New Bond Street, gazing in the shop windows she passed. Moments later all other thoughts were swept from her mind at the sight of the most beautiful dress she had ever seen.

  Mesmerised, she stared at it through the window. Draped tastefully on a graceful papier-mâché manikin was an ankle-length afternoon gown in pale-blue silk with separate dark-blue velvet panels. It had a square neckline and was cut in the latest barrel line, loose panels of velvet falling from the waist back and front with a square, tabard-like silk overbodice from shoulders to hips.

  Real silk! It could be seen at a glance. She could never afford real silk. But artificial silk like Courtauld’s Luvisca and a cheaper velvet would look every bit as good.

  It took some courage to push open the boutique door. Usually she’d aim her sights lower. Big London stores held no fears for her, nor did most high-class shops. But this place – the opulence of it, the perfume wafting out of it crying, ‘Nothing under fifteen guineas!’ She was stepping on hallowed ground.

  Clenching her teeth and trying to look as though fifteen guineas was nothing to her, although her beret decried all that, she approached another manikin draped in an identical dress to that in the window. So at least the outfit wasn’t exclusive. Even so, she needed time to browse, to study the garment and make mental notes of every stitch, the cut, to see how the material fell. Real silk always fell beautifully. Would cheaper artificial silk do the same?

  ‘May I be of assistance, madam?’ The measured, almost sarcastic, cultured tone right behind her nearly made her leap out of her skin, as though she was already being accused of stealing.

  Gathering her wits, she turned to the voice, immediately aware of the haughty, intimidating frigidness on the face of a woman neatly clad in a black dress with white collar and cuffs, her hair pulled back from her brow and not a trace of powder on her face. There was no warmth in her enquiry such as she might have used to a valued customer. The way it was couched practically screamed her opinion of a common working girl trespassing on her domain, riff-raff needing to be got out as quickly as possible and without fuss.

  Steeling herself, Geraldine stood her ground, putting on her best high-class accent, which she could do when needed. ‘I am browsing at the moment.’

  She knew immediately that the sort of patron who entered here did not browse but would make straight towards an assistant to state what they had in mind and request to be conducted and advised.

  The woman’s face was vinegary. ‘I should not imagine we have here anything that would suit madam.’ In reality she was saying that would suit her pocket. ‘Perhaps if madam tried one of the large stores.’

  Geraldine ignored the broad hint. ‘No, thank you,’ she replied in her best West End voice, though even she was aware that to an ear accustomed to such there was no dis
guising a trace of flattened East End vowels.

  ‘This caught my eye,’ she went on, ‘and I felt I needed to decide as to whether it would suit me or not.’ She was overdoing the accent a bit.

  The woman, thin, middle-aged and no doubt a spinster, was shorter than her, which gave Geraldine some feeling of advantage.

  ‘I will let you know what I decide,’ she dismissed her as haughtily as she could.

  But still the woman hovered, saying nothing, her mien one that announced she would be keeping her eye on this intruder. It was humiliating but there was nothing Geraldine could do except turn back to the garment on the pretence of being deeply interested in buying it. All the time she could feel those eyes boring into the back of her neck lest she made off with something without paying for it. Suspicious old crow, trying to make her feel she was the lowest of the low.

  There was no ticket on the gown – a place like this would never stoop to such practice. The type of customers who frequented here probably took it for granted that they’d be able to afford it whatever the price. Rude even to ask and she for one wasn’t going to lower herself to ask either.

  How exactly did they handle themselves, these people who frequented places like this? She could still feel those eyes burning into the back of her neck.

  But there, it was done – every stitch, every fold and tuck, every line committed to memory. Turning back to the hovering assistant, she smiled.

  ‘Thank you for your assistance, but I don’t think this will suit me after all.’

  How delightful, seeing the look on that prim face at being robbed of its triumph of catching her out for a tea leaf or turning her out as a common time-waster.