The Night Raid

by Clare Harvey

  ‘Good, well, just stay sitting a little longer – keep your head low, that’s the ticket.’ Violet looked up at the welfare officer. Even in work clothes she managed to look well put together: red lipstick, plucked brows, hair tucked neatly in a hairnet – elegant, somehow, despite the overalls. ‘I was hoping to find you, anyway – lucky I caught you when I did,’ she said. ‘The thing is—’

  ‘I can’t afford it,’ Vi interrupted.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I know you’re doing a whip-round for Mabel Jones, but I haven’t even got enough left to buy a packet of fags, so you can’t expect any more from me this week, Miss Fitzlord, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite follow?’

  ‘They’ve taken thirty shillings out of my wages for the bathroom damages, and then on top of that there’s the deduction for the hostel and the medical scheme and there’s not much left, see?’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Elevenpence.’

  ‘Well, that’s ridiculous. They can’t possibly expect you to survive on that – you send money home, too, don’t you?’

  Vi nodded.

  ‘They should be deducting your damages incrementally. I’m sure we can have that altered for you, have the payments spread out over a period of weeks.’

  ‘Can you do it today?’

  ‘No, not today, I’m afraid, but—’

  ‘I need the money urgently.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ Violet took a gulp of the dank-tasting water. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It’s obviously not nothing, and I shall try my best to get things rectified as soon as practicable, but I can’t promise anything today, I’m afraid. But the reason I needed to find you was—’

  ‘Pardon me for asking, Miss Fitzlord, but why are you here on the night shift anyway? I thought you were the welfare supervisor?’

  ‘I am, but I occasionally cover for sickness, should the need arise.’

  ‘You covering for Mabel Jones?’

  ‘No, I’m on the capstan lathe at the moment, taking your old room-mate’s workload.’

  ‘Mary McLaughlin? But she’s not off sick, she’s—’

  ‘And talking of which,’ Miss Fitzlord interrupted before Violet could finish her sentence, ‘I’m going to need her bed, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘There’s a famous artist called Dame Laura Knight who’s arriving to paint the night shift, and she needs a single room in the hostel. And as it’s only myself and Matron who have singles at the moment, and there’s a spare bunk in your room – well, I took a guess that you’d rather share with me than Matron?’

  Vi thought of the night of the bathroom hullabaloo and nodded. So, the welfare supervisor was moving in with her? Oh, heck.

  Chapter 10

  Laura

  It had gone. As if it had never existed. Number 33 was still standing, just about, roof gable toppled sideways, doorway gaping, windows caved in – like a Whiteface clown after a tumble. But number 35 Noel Street had completely disappeared: the house where they’d had so much bad luck and the doctor had said they never should have moved to in the first place, as it had been built on an old cess pit. Laura sighed. Perhaps it was for the best that the place had been bombed to oblivion in the Nottingham Blitz.

  Laura walked on to where Noel Street crossed the ‘Bullyvard’ as they’d called it: Gregory Boulevard, cutting a dash between Hyson Green and the race track (gone now, replaced by a football stadium), empty except for a distant rag-and-bone cart clopping up past Forest Fields. Here was the church on the corner. She remembered those endless Sundays: dying a slow death to the tolling of church bells – she hadn’t even been allowed to draw, let alone go out to play. She wondered what that bored little girl would think of the woman she’d become?

  As she crossed the wide street, wind whipped dust into her mouth. She coughed and wiped her lips on her sleeve. Eastwards, the small sun was rising higher behind streaks of cloud: white-mauve-grey-blue, pulling sideways as if the sky were shot silk cut on the bias. She strode on up the hill, struggling to breathe a little: she hadn’t remembered it being so steep – but then, how long since she’d walked up this road? Fifty years?

  She stomped on, striving upwards, to the bigger houses with better views and cleaner air: onwards and upwards. Here it was: Ethel Villas, number 9 Noel Street. There were better memories from here: leaning out of the bedroom window to watch the crowds at the race track, Mother’s studio upstairs, gas jets in their round opal globes, and the attic crammed with the lumber of past generations. She remembered walking all the way from here to Wilford on painting expeditions with Mother, Nellie and Sis. But all that had been before Mother’s illness, and the money problems at the lace factory, when they’d had to move down the street, to the wrong side of the Boulevard.

  Laura looked down the hill to the empty space where 35 Noel Street had stood. There were a few other bombed-out buildings, too. Nottingham hadn’t had it nearly as bad as London or Plymouth, they said, but it hadn’t escaped unscathed. The city was pockmarked: empty spaces in familiar places, like an old woman’s failing memory. And she should know about that, Laura thought, starting to walk on up the hill: keep on going, Laura, no matter the rumbling stomach or the gasping breathlessness. Keep on going, because that’s what you do. Plenty of time for rest when it’s all over, when there will be endless rest. But now is the time for toil, honest sweat, come on, Laura. She crossed the road and cut through the top of the recreation ground: trees with bulged trunks, scabbed bark, half-clothed branches poking skywards, and underfoot the damp, muddy grass.

  At the top of the hill, Noel Street joined Waverley Street and here at the junction was Brincliffe School, where she’d had to take over Mother’s classes when Mother got ill. She’d been no older than the girls she was supposed to instruct: too young to be a teacher, even though she looked older than she was, even though she had talent, even though her struggling family were desperate for the money. No wonder they hadn’t asked her back for another term. No, there were no good memories from Brincliffe School.

  Laura hurried on down Waverley Street, legs snap-snapping under her skirt, winding the pavement in towards her like a skein of wool. She smiled to herself. Hadn’t she always had excellent endurance: strong limbs and good lungs? She remembered the time she and Harold had had to run miles through a rainstorm to catch the London train for their first show at the Leicester Galleries.

  She was at the arboretum already, little pond like a chamber pot, still the same. Funny how in her memory the arboretum was always bathed in sunshine. It couldn’t have been sunny every day, could it? Perhaps it was just the patina of happiness. She had been so happy, strolling here with Harold, after classes. ‘I do wish you were here to share this with me, Harold,’ she said aloud. But the only response she got was the coo of a wood pigeon in the arboretum and the far-distant rumble of a goods train.

  She was worried that the College of Art might have caught it in a raid. The man on the train had said that the University buildings in Shakespeare Street had gone. But look, the College was still here, just as it was, the stern faces of Wren, Hogarth, Titian and the others glowering down from the beige stonework. Here was where she’d met Harold: slender and dark with his pince-nez and aristocratic nose. She was just fourteen and he was seventeen, and already the most precociously talented artist the College had ever had. Here was where he’d painted her portrait, in the studio upstairs. She still had it: her apple-cheeked, frizzy-haired fourteen-year-old self, prepared to sit still forever if it meant that she had Harold’s gaze fixed on her. She remembered how those long afternoons in the studio were punctuated by the grunts and yells of labouring women and the siren-screams of newborns from the maternity hospital next door. Was that why they’d never had a family, she and Harold? Had hearing the agony of childbirth in her formative years put her off for good?

  No, Laura, stop deceiving yourself. You
know fine well why you and Harold did not have children.

  For a moment Laura thought she could smell oil paint and hear the mewling wail of a newborn. But then the smell and sound were gone, and Laura thought she must have imagined them.

  The clouds were ripping apart now, the sunshine breaking through yellow-gold on her lifted face. It was time to move on. Time to get back to the present. There was work to be done.

  Zelah

  Zelah looked out of the grimy bus window onto the industrial landscape: smokestacks and brickwork. She thought about the conversation she’d just had with Mr Handford. He was not at all the man she’d been led to believe he was. Arrogant, they said. Stern, impatient, caring only about targets and output – no, they had him wrong. She wiped a finger over the condensation and it made a faint squeaking noise. Or at least, she thought they had him wrong. She was hardly likely to find out the truth, not now.

  They said it used to be fields round here: the Meadows. The bus wound through rows and rows of tiny terraced houses. Her top-deck window was on a level with the chimneys and broken roof slates. She heard the murmur of voices from the other girls on their way back to the hostel, the fug from their cigarettes rising to the bus roof and sitting like low cloud above their nodding heads.

  The girl next to her was reading a magazine. The pages flapped every time they hit a pothole, which was often, and the girl kept snuffling and pushing her spectacles up her crooked nose. Zelah took out one of her Senior Service and offered the packet, but the girl flushed and mumbled, ‘No, thank you,’ holding her magazine up high to her face, like a shield. Zelah struck a match and inhaled, glancing at the magazine. It was an old copy of Woman. On the cover a dark-haired girl leant against the shoulder of a fair-haired man. In the background were rocks, the sea and a swooping gull. In the bottom right-hand corner you could just make out the dark blue of the man’s navy uniform. It could almost have been a picture of me, Zelah thought, if things had turned out differently. She carried on smoking as the bus trundled through the dirty streets, letting her mind drift back to how it had been, that day, before the raid, when happenstance had collided, briefly, with happiness:

  She is walking down Union Street in the hazy sunshine, looking for somewhere that sells camping stoves, because there is nothing to cook on in the new place. Just then a doorway opens in front of her and a woman in a peach silk frock with a fur bolero rushes out and bumps into her. ‘I do beg your pardon,’ the woman says, looking accusingly at Zelah, and then storming off across the road, causing a bus to swerve out of her way.

  The door is still open, seeping band music out into the street, and Zelah is about to walk on when a man appears from inside. He sighs and shrugs. ‘Apparently I’m the type who won’t amount to anything and she wishes she’d never laid eyes on me.’

  ‘You don’t seem all that bothered,’ Zelah says, looking over at him. He is in naval uniform, blue bell bottoms smartly creased.

  ‘I would never have passed muster with her parents. A girl like that needs a chap with land, and preferably a peerage to boot.’ He pushes wavy blond hair off his face and shakes his head. ‘I don’t suppose you fancy a tipple? They’ve just popped the cork and it’ll only go to waste otherwise. The band aren’t half bad, either.’

  Zelah hears the music drifting out across the pavement, laughter from down the stairwell. She ought to be sensible, she tells herself, be buying the camping stove and some food whilst the shops are still open, as well as registering at the Labour Exchange and getting on with the business of sorting her life out. ‘A glass of bubbly? At this time of day?’ she says. He nods and she glances into his eyes: pale blue, with fine lines cobwebbing the corners. A girl could drown in those eyes, she thinks, and smiles, despite herself. ‘I don’t mind if I do.’

  It is like a knife, she thought, now, as the bus pulled in to the hostel entrance. This war is a sharpened blade, with love on one side and tragedy on the other, and all of us just balanced on the slim edge in between. The naval officer – James Astley, his name was – was lost to her before their romance even had the chance to begin. And she hadn’t agreed to go out with a man since – until George Handford had asked the other day. But that had been a mistake, hadn’t it? She sucked in the last of the fag and ground out the butt on the floor.

  Zelah waited. The snuffly girl was stuffing her magazine into her handbag and the queue for the stairs caterpillared all the way back along the aisle. When she finally got off, she noticed that the sun had gone in and the clouds had started to thicken, piling up like the coils of swarf on the factory floor. She followed the other girls in through the double doors and up the stairwell to the first floor. She put the key in the lock of room 102, the second door along. Sandwiched between the cleaning store and the bathroom, it was barely bigger than a broom cupboard, but it was hers, had been hers alone, ever since she arrived in ’41.

  She pushed open the door and went inside, remembering how the builders were finishing off the building when she first moved in, the road still a rutted farm track, and the air heady with wet-paint fumes. She’d picked the room to be alone, justifying it to herself as not being able to hear properly and so being no good at chit-chat with room-mates. But her hearing had almost recovered by the time she arrived at the hostel. The truth was she’d felt incapable of social contact. It was all she could do to get up, get dressed and do her shifts. The anaesthesia of factory work was a relief: a numbing privacy found amongst the noise and the boredom of it all.

  Zelah went across to the window and opened the blackout curtains. The rectangle of brown earth and grey skies was just the same as it had been the day she arrived, all the way from Plymouth, with nothing but her ID card and the clothes she had on. I’ll do anything, she’d told the woman in the Labour Exchange, any kind of war work you have, anywhere in the country. And she hadn’t heard the woman’s reply because her ears were still ringing and her head throbbing, but it said Royal Ordnance Factory, Nottingham, on the travel warrant. She didn’t even know where Nottingham was, but it didn’t matter – so long as it wasn’t Plymouth.

  Her eyes scanned the room, taking it all in. It wasn’t much: cream gloss paint on the lower half of the walls like a half-drunk glass of milk, the bed with its grey blanket, the wardrobe so slim that the hangers had to be angled sideways or the door wouldn’t shut properly, the small sink with her glass and toothbrush. It wasn’t much, but it was everything; all she had in the world was here.

  She’d been one of the first to arrive at the hostel. There were still mostly men on the tools, back then. But as more girls arrived, the men were conscripted into the forces, the hostel filled up, and the shop floor, too. She began just by helping out, because she’d been there the longest, meeting the girls when they arrived, showing them the ropes. She was older than most – an old maid by their standards. Someone must have seen on her file that she had some relevant experience. When they created the job of welfare supervisor for her, she could hardly refuse.

  And now she had to move out of the room that had been her sanctuary all this time. She tossed her handbag onto the bed and went to get the bleach and a rag from the cleaning cupboard next door. But she paused, just before opening the cupboard door, and instead turned on her heel and walked back downstairs into the foyer. She would clean the room and move out to make space for Dame Laura Knight, but there was something she urgently needed to do, first.

  George

  The bus had already gone – he’d missed her. He’d felt bad about the way he’d been with her earlier, wanted to apologise, but by the time he’d got away, the transport had left. She’d go back to the hostel thinking him a discourteous oaf. And that wasn’t what he wanted. Even though there wouldn’t – couldn’t – be anything between them, he found that he didn’t want Miss Fitzlord to think badly of him. So he’d raced out through the shift-change crush. But too late. Dammit.

  George strode back into the factory, taking no notice of the sloe-eyed girls who turned from the queue to gaw
k as he pushed past. The clocking-in machine was a slack-jawed mouth and they knocked the knob like a blow to the teeth as they punched their cards. George knew there would be eye-rolling and titters-behind-hands as soon as his back was turned. Those silly, silly girls. Why had they been allowed into the factory, gossiping and ruining everything? Why couldn’t it just have stayed as it was, as it had been since he joined, a male preserve, where everyone knew their place, and there were no distractions? He knew why. Of course he knew why: the war effort, releasing men for front-line work, all of that, but even so . . .

  He stomped up the stairs, banging open the corridor door and cutting along the open mezzanine, hearing the familiar orchestra of sound: the whine of the reamer, drone of drills, thunk of the stud-press and hiss of the steam-cleaning jets. Then, a sudden clatter, like a percussionist losing the beat. He paused and looked down. Someone had tripped on a pile of dirty rags and swarf and dropped a tray of casings, scattered like beads. ‘Clean that lot up! Get that swarf in the salvage bin!’ Nobody looked up. No one had heard him above the din. The girl who’d dropped the tray was on her hands and knees but not one of her colleagues had bothered to pause to help her. It was a disgrace.

  ‘All right, George?’ Bill Simmons, the day-shift manager, was on his way out of the office, mug of Bovril and half-smoked fag in his right hand.

  ‘Incident in Bay Three.’

  ‘I’ll take a look. I’m on my way out to supervise the testing, any road. You get off. Looks like you could use a bit of shut-eye. Busy night?’

  ‘Not nearly busy enough. We’ll never meet the new production targets at this rate.’

  ‘What’s the worst they can do? Send Winnie up with a big stick to chivvy us along? Anyway, now we’re fully manned, things will pick up.’

  They both looked down at the girl, who seemed to have retrieved the casings and had begun wandering back to her work station, leaving swarf strewn like hay on a barn floor.