Women on the Home Front

by Annie Groves

  Olive had made sure that hers was kept swept and tidy, its door opened on sunny days to make sure it was aired, and the vexed question of ‘needing to go’ sorted out via a discreet curtain with a bucket and a wooden seat behind it.

  ‘Will we hear the German planes?’ Tilly asked Olive nervously.

  ‘I should think so, but they won’t get as far as London, Tilly, I’m sure, not with all the defences the Government has put in place.

  ‘I’m glad I thought to dash into the kitchen and turn down the gas, otherwise that nice piece of beef I’ve got in the oven will be ruined.’

  It was easier to talk about mundane, everyday things than to let one’s mind be filled with the horror and fear of what was happening.

  ‘Oh, don’t talk about food, Mum,’ Tilly groaned. ‘I’m scared, but I’m still hungry. Do you think the others will be all right – Agnes and Sally and Dulcie?’

  ‘They’ll be fine, love,’ Olive reassured her. ‘Sally will be at the hospital and they’ve got a big shelter there, I’m sure.’

  ‘She’d probably have to go down into the basement,’ Tilly told her.

  ‘Agnes is helping tidy up the orphanage before they hand it over to the council to use for extra billeting for refugees and that, so she’ll be able to go into the cellar there,’ Olive continued, ‘and as for Dulcie, well, I’m sure she’ll find somewhere.’ Olive’s voice hardened slightly, the thought in her mind that Dulcie would be safe because she was that sort, the sort that always fell on their feet.

  ‘You don’t like Dulcie very much, do you, Mum?’ Tilly asked.

  For a moment Olive was tempted to fib and say that she didn’t know what Tilly meant, but her daughter was growing up. She herself had been married at eighteen and a mother not long after, and although the last thing she wanted was for Tilly to grow up too fast, Olive knew that it wouldn’t be fair to lie to her and treat her as a child. So she admitted quietly, ‘No I don’t. She isn’t the sort of person I was thinking of when I thought of us having lodgers.’

  ‘You mean because she’s pretty and likes makeup and goes out dancing a lot?’

  Olive could hear not just the questioning in Tilly’s voice, but also, more worrying, a hint of rebuke.

  ‘No, not because of those things,’ she defended herself. ‘After all, you are pretty and although young skin like yours doesn’t need anything more than a dash of lipstick and a brush of mascara on those lovely long eyelashes of yours, you too wear makeup and I dare say you would go out dancing a lot yourself if I let you. No, Tilly, it isn’t because of any of those things that I feel the way I do about Dulcie.’

  ‘What is it then?’

  Moving closer to her daughter, Olive put her arm round her, smiling, filled with maternal love, when Tilly put her head on her shoulder just as she had done as a child.

  ‘It’s the way Dulcie speaks to Agnes, the way the things she says and does show that she doesn’t have the kind of . . . of consideration and compassion for others that I hope I have always encouraged you to have. There’s a . . . a selfishness about Dulcie that makes it hard for me to warm to her. Tilly, I know you find her exciting and glamorous – of course you do, and at your age I dare say I would have done as well – but think of this, sweetheart. Her own family live within walking distance of here and yet she’s chosen to turn her back on them.’

  ‘Because there isn’t enough room, and her sister borrows her clothes.’

  Olive’s heart sank a little. Plainly Dulcie had had more of an effect on Tilly than she had realised if Tilly was already willing to take Dulcie’s side and defend her.

  ‘I do know what you mean though, Mum,’ Tilly acknowledged. ‘But don’t you think that Dulcie might be the way she is because people haven’t always been, well, kind and considerate to her?’

  Hard on the heels of Olive’s jolt of surprise that Tilly could be so acutely perceptive in pointing out something she hadn’t yet recognised herself, Olive felt a surge of love and gratitude that she had been lucky enough to have such a special daughter.

  ‘I don’t know, Tilly, you might be right. We shall have to see,’ she answered.

  ‘Cigarette?’ Dulcie’s rescuer offered her, from the safety of the air-raid shelter, its dark interior illuminated by the lamps that had been lit by one of the three ARP wardens who had taken charge of the place. The lamps gave off a strong smell of paraffin, making Dulcie wrinkle her nose before she shook her head and started to turn away from her rescuer, but he refused to take her hint.

  ‘I’m Jim Andrews, Private Jim Andrews, 3rd Battalion The Rifles.’ He gave her a rueful smile. ‘I was supposed to be on leave but I reckon with this lot happening, we’ll be recalled before I’ve so much as got me feet back under me mother’s kitchen table, and be on our way to France.’

  ‘Regular soldier, are you then, son?’ an older man sitting on one of the narrow benches down the side of the shelter asked.

  ‘Joined up six months ago after I’d done me training,’ Jim confirmed.

  He was looking at Dulcie as he spoke, and she suspected that if she gave him half a chance he’d end up asking her out, which wasn’t what she wanted at all. He looked the settling-down type, and Dulcie wasn’t interested in anything about settling down. To her relief, just as he opened his mouth to say something, the sound of the all clear reached their ears, causing a wave of relief to surge through the shelter. Then those inside gathered up their belongings and started queuing up to leave.

  ‘’Orrible place. You won’t get me going back in one. I’d as soon die in me own bed,’ one elderly woman was telling anyone who would listen as they started to file out past the ARP wardens, who were now trying to write down everyone’s names and addresses.

  ‘No point in giving him mine, seeing as I won’t be here much longer,’ Jim told Dulcie.

  ‘Me neither,’ she agreed, it being Dulcie’s nature not to want to oblige officialdom in any of its many forms.

  ‘You mean you’re going into uniform?’ Jim asked her as he stood back to allow her to step outside and then rejoined her, sticking firmly to her side.

  ‘No. I mean you’d never get me back in a place like that again even if you paid me,’ Dulcie informed him pithily. ‘It smelled to high heaven, and all them old women going on about the last war and us being gassed got on my nerves. Anyway I shan’t need to, seeing as we’ve got our own shelter in the garden. Thanks for looking out for me,’ she felt obliged to say, ‘but I’d better run, otherwise I’ll get what for, for missing dinner.’

  ‘I dare say you’ve already got a chap, a pretty girl like you,’ Jim was saying, but Dulcie pretended not to have heard him, deliberately turning away and plunging into the growing crowd thronging the pavement, and then hesitating. The siren going off like that would have given her mother a real fright. Perhaps she should take the bus back home just to check that everyone was all right, and to reassure them that she was too. Not that they’d care. Her mother would probably be too busy having palpitations worrying about ruddy Edith and her singing to even notice she was there. And besides, if there was to be another air-raid warning then she’d rather spend it in number 13’s Anderson shelter than in the public shelter her family would have to go in.

  Turning on her heel, Dulcie headed for Article Row.

  In the kitchen of number 13, Agnes was listening wide-eyed as Sally told them, ‘I saw the police sergeant who lives at number one on my way here.’

  ‘Sergeant Dawson,’ Olive and Tilly said together, Olive turning her attention from the potatoes she was putting into the hot roasting tin as she did so to look at Sally.

  ‘Yes, Sergeant Dawson,’ Sally confirmed. ‘He was standing by his gate when I walked past and he said that he’d heard that the sirens going off had just been a false alarm, that was all.’

  ‘A false alarm!’ Olive exclaimed. ‘Well, of all the things, nearly giving us a heart attack just for that. It’s just as well I dashed in here to turn the oven down. This piece of brisket wouldn�
��t have been worth eating otherwise. Is it twelve o’clock yet, only the Prime Minister’s announcement is bound to be on the news.’

  ‘Nearly, just a couple of minutes to go,’ Sally told her.

  As Olive had guessed, Sally had sheltered at the hospital when the siren had gone off, thankful that because it was a Sunday no operations were scheduled, and no emergencies had come in. They’d had a busy enough night in the operating theatre with an appendix that had to be taken out, followed by a lad with a piece of glass from a broken bottle stuck in his leg, which had only just missed severing an artery, and another with a badly broken arm after a fight had broken out at a local pub.

  ‘It’s twelve now,’ Sally warned, as Olive slid the roasting tin back into the oven and closed the oven door, wiping her hands on her apron before slipping into her chair just in time to hear the wireless crackle and buzz as Tilly frantically adjusted the reception.

  Then, after comment from the announcer, they could all hear the Prime Minister saying, ‘This country is now at war with Germany. We are ready.’

  The sound of the kitchen door opening distracted them all, Dulcie coming in, saying crossly, ‘I’ve nearly ruined my best shoes and now I’ve just heard one of your neighbours saying that that ruddy air-raid warning was just a false alarm . . .’

  ‘Shush . . .’

  ‘The Prime Minister’s on.’

  Dulcie glowered as both Olive and Sally spoke at once, demanding her silence. What was the point in listening to the Prime Minister telling them what they all already knew?

  The announcer was back on the air, telling them that the King would be broadcasting to the country that evening.

  ‘So it’s really happening then?’ Agnes asked uncertainly. ‘We really are going to be bombed by the Germans?’

  ‘We’re certainly at war with them, Agnes,’ Sally answered her briskly, ‘but as for them bombing us, well, I dare say the RAF will have something to say about that.’ Her eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep with being on nights. Thank goodness she started back on days tomorrow. There was nothing like night duty to drain a person of energy. Yes, it was definitely lack of sleep that was making her eyes sting and her throat ache, nothing else, and certainly not the thought of three people in Liverpool who now mattered as little to her as she obviously did to them.

  It was a sombre group of women that sat down to the Sunday dinner Olive dished up later than its normal time of one o’clock, thanks to everything that had been going on.

  Afterwards, whilst Tilly and Agnes washed up and Dulcie perched on the edge of the kitchen table watching them, Sally and Olive went into the garden so that Sally could discuss with Olive her plans for starting up a vegetable garden.

  ‘Huh, growing veggies, is it?’ Nancy from next door demanded, popping her head over the fence, obviously having heard them talking. ‘My Arthur thinks it’s a daft idea trying to grow stuff when we’ve got Covent Garden so close by. He reckons that the Government’s got itself a load of seeds it wants to get rid of.’ She sniffed disparagingly as she spoke, causing Olive to suppress a small sigh.

  Sally, though, shook her head and told her calmly, ‘I agree that you can’t get better veggies than those from Covent Garden, but the veggies have got to be got into the country and up to London, and that won’t be possible once this war gets going properly, so it makes sense for us all to do our bit and grow what we can for ourselves.’

  ‘Well, I suppose there is that,’ Nancy agreed grudgingly, after a brief pause, ‘although I hope you aren’t thinking of fattening a pig like some seem to be doing down on the allotments by the railway.’

  Sally laughed. ‘I certainly can’t see us going that far, although I suppose we could think about having a few chickens.’

  ‘Chickens? Nasty dirty things. Bring rats, they do.’

  ‘Not if you keep their food out of the rats’ reach, and think of the lovely fresh eggs.’

  Sally was dealing beautifully with Nancy, Olive recognised, treating her neighbour with the respect that was due to her seniority in years, but at the same time making it abundantly clear that she could and would stand her own ground. Nancy was inclined to be a bit of a bully and, like all bullies, if she sensed weakness or fear that only made her worse.

  Changing tack, Nancy told Sally, ‘I saw you stop and talk to Sergeant Dawson earlier. I feel sorry for him, I really do, with that wife of his.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with Mrs Dawson, Nancy,’ Olive protested. ‘I know she keeps herself to herself but that’s because of them losing their son. At least that’s what Sergeant Dawson hinted to me.’

  ‘Well, she won’t be the only one here with a son to mourn, now,’ Nancy predicted direly. ‘And have you seen how fast them houses further down that are let out to civil servants and the like have emptied? Cowards, they are, the lot them.’

  ‘Mrs Windle told me that the Government have evacuated lots of civil servants. I expect that’s why they’ve gone. They wouldn’t have had any choice. Not if they wanted to keep their jobs.’

  ‘Well, you would say that, you being the charitable sort. I’m not so easily taken in. Before you know where we are we’ll have them empty houses filled with refugees wot don’t know how to live amongst decent folk. It’s bad enough us having them Greeks or whatever they are living so close.’

  ‘They’re Greek Cypriots, Nancy,’ Olive explained patiently, ‘and they don’t do any harm. They keep themselves to themselves, you know that.’

  Nancy, though, was plainly not in the mood to be appeased, her mood perhaps reflecting that of the whole country in its refusal to be appeased by Hitler’s offers and explanations of why he had invaded Poland, Olive thought.

  ‘How do we know them Greeks aren’t on Hitler’s side, that’s what I want to know. They could be spying for him,’ Nancy told Olive with the air of someone who was determined to have the last word.

  ‘Nancy can be a bit difficult, I’m afraid,’ Olive told Sally after her neighbour had returned to her own house, leaving them to continue their discussion about Sally’s vegetable bed. ‘She does tend to get a bit of a bee in her bonnet about things, so it’s best not to tell her too much.’

  ‘I know what you mean. We had a neighbour who was much the same. My mother always used to say that she loved finding fault with others. Sadly some people are like that.’

  Such a sad look crossed Sally’s face that Olive instinctively reached out and patted her arm.

  ‘You must miss your own folk,’ was all she could think of to say, not wanting to pry.

  ‘Not really.’ Sally’s voice and expression changed and hardened. ‘My mother is dead, and . . . and my father remarried and has his own life now. I had the most happy childhood, thanks to my mother, but that’s in the past. Shall we have the veggie bed here, do you think? It’s a good spot with plenty of sunlight?’

  Recognising that her lodger did not want to talk about her family, Olive nodded.

  ‘I noticed a decent-looking hardware shop a couple of streets away when I was walking back the other day,’ Sally continued, changing the subject. ‘I’ll call in there and get some string and some other bits and pieces so that we can mark the bed out.’

  ‘You might find there’s everything you need in my late father-in-law’s shed,’ Olive told her. ‘He was a keen gardener before he got too poorly to work. When we go back inside I’ll find the key and then you can have a look. Mind you, if you are going to call in at Hargreaves you might see if you can buy some extra torch batteries, if you don’t mind, and some more candles. I’ll give you the money.’

  ‘Good idea. We’ll all be needing them once the nights draw in and we’ve got to deal with the blackout.’

  ‘Yes. I’m going to sticky-tape the windows tomorrow now that it’s official and we’re at war. I got the tape a while back when the Government started sending out those leaflets about gas masks and evacuating the kiddies and all that.’

  Whilst Olive chatted to Sally in the garden, in the
kitchen the washing up had been finished and the dishes put away – by Tilly and Agnes. Dulcie, who had watched them without offering to help, was sitting on the table, swinging her long slim legs and eyeing them with a bored look.

  ‘I suppose your brother will go straight into service now, once he’s finished his army training?’ Tilly commented.

  ‘I suppose he will,’ Dulcie agreed. Agnes had removed the apron she’d been wearing whilst she helped with the washing up, and now what looked like several pieces of folded paper had fallen out of the pocket of her too large dress and onto the floor.

  ‘What’s this?’ Dulcie demanded, swiftly picking up the papers.

  ‘Oh. It’s what Ted gave me.’ Immediately Agnes reached out for the paper, her obvious anxiety making Dulcie taunt her, holding it up out of her reach.

  ‘Ted? So who’s he, then? A boyfriend? Been sending you love letters, has he?’

  Dulcie was astonished that any male would show an interest in someone as drab and dull as Agnes, never mind write to her, as well as feeling just that little bit put out that Agnes, with her love letters, had stepped into territory that Dulcie considered to be more properly hers. It wasn’t that she wanted a boyfriend, especially not one who was keen on someone like Agnes, but it still aroused her competitive spirit and galled her a little that plain Agnes should be the first one of them in the house to have a male in tow.

  Her face scarlet with anxiety and mortification, Agnes denied that as quickly as though Ted himself were there to hear Dulcie’s comments.

  ‘It isn’t like that. Ted isn’t my boyfriend.’