by Clare Harvey
‘But I don’t want to have it at all,’ Vi said. What was the point of carrying a baby for nine whole months, going through all that agony of childbirth, and then giving it away? Even if she had it fostered – how long until she found someone to marry, and anyway, what man would be prepared to take on someone else’s child?
The doctor made a tutting sound. ‘Well, why don’t you just tell your parents, let them help?’
Vi thought of Ma, still sick, Pa away in North Africa, all the others, struggling for money as it was. She thought of what had happened when her sister Bea had got herself in the family way, how Ma had claimed Baby Val and never let Bea near her own child. ‘I can’t do that,’ Vi said.
‘Nonsense. It will do them good. A new life is always a blessing.’
What do you know about it? Vi thought. You and your sort, telling us all we should be making jam and knitting scarves for prisoners of war and doing our bit. But you don’t know what it’s like to have a bedridden mother, a father away with the army and seven mouths to feed. You don’t know about the freezing winter nights, the doctor’s bills, the overdue rent, and every evening having to smile and laugh behind the bar in the King’s Arms as if life’s a ruddy fairground ride because nobody likes a misery guts, Violet Smith, it puts them off their beer. You and your sort, you don’t have a clue, Vi thought. ‘I want to get rid of it,’ she said again, looking directly into the doctor’s squinty old eyes.
‘You do know it’s against the law, dear.’ The doctor talked to her like a schoolmistress talking to the dullest girl in class.
‘But women do it all the time; you hear about it. And I thought, because you’re a doctor, and because you’re a woman, you might know somewhere – someone – who was safe, who’d do it properly. You wouldn’t have to write anything down. The conversation wouldn’t go outside this room,’ Vi said. She didn’t want to end up on the sepsis ward at the hospital, because that’s what had happened to Ivy Sharp, one of her old classmates, when she’d got herself in trouble. She’d only been able to get enough money to go to some old woman down by the docks – they said she shoved a rusty coat hanger up – poor Ivy. At her funeral her family told everyone she died of ‘peritonitis’, but they’d all known the truth.
‘Very well,’ Doctor Gibbs said, sliding her stethoscope very slowly from one side of the table to the other and not looking at Vi at all. Vi listened carefully, ready to commit details to memory, because surely the doctor would help her? But instead of giving her a useful name or address, Doctor Gibbs said: ‘It is, of course, entirely up to you if you choose to murder your own child.’
‘Yes,’ Vi said, pushing herself up out of the chair, her face burning with a sudden rush of blood. The doctor did not look at her or get up out of her own chair. ‘Yes, it is. Up to me. Entirely.’ Vi walked over to the door. She paused and turned back, but the doctor was still staring down at her desk, not moving or speaking. ‘Thank you for your time, Doctor.’
Laura
‘As still as you can, dear!’ Laura called out over the chunk-thud of the machinery. The brunette – Violet Smith – was fidgeting again, and it didn’t help with the detail of their hands if she constantly twitched like that. ‘Thank you!’ She had finished the underpainting now, and wanted to get on with the meat of the picture.
Laura had a particular purple-grey she’d mixed whilst they’d been on their final break (using the cadmium red instead of the crimson with the ultramarine, for more depth). She wanted to use it to fill in the shadows around inner wrists and palms, as the two sets of arms twined round, soft flesh looping over the hard metal. She’d got the women to roll their sleeves right up, to make the most of the juxtaposition of skin and steel. Yes, she was very happy with the composition, Laura thought, beginning to trace the slippery shadows with her brush on the canvas, very happy indeed. She had the girls positioned so that the viewer would see along the barrel of the half-made Bofors gun, foreshortened, but drawing the eye along from the dark circle (where one day soon anti-aircraft shells would pulse out into the night skies), along to the two pale heart-shaped faces of the women working together to create it. And the vertical line of the gantry behind them would bring the gaze up and around nicely to take in the background, which she’d already begun to rough in: mottled blues of overalls and the green from the funny protective caps that most of them seemed to wear.
Oh dear, now Violet was fidgeting again. But the other one – Zelah – managed to keep perfectly still. She was an excellent model, that one, Laura thought, wiping her brush on a rag, before popping it into the jar. As good as any of the professional models she’d worked with over the years. Pity she couldn’t keep her on as a life model, but the War Office would never allow her to give up essential war work, even if Laura could afford to pay for a full-time model these days, with things being the way they were. She sighed. Still, maybe after the war? Bring her to London – if there was anything left of their house in St John’s Wood after all this wretched bombing. She sighed again.
Laura decided to give up on the hands and arms for now. No point forcing it with all that twiddling going on from Violet. Now, she’d need a strong yellow-white, to contrast with the purple shadows, for cheekbones and foreheads, where the light hit and spread. Laura squeezed a good dollop of titanium white onto the palette and paused. Or maybe just pure white first, and add the yellow-gold tint afterwards? She tapped the end of the paintbrush against her lip. Yes, the nuances could wait, get the highlights in first, and maybe it would work with the harshness of the electric strip lights overhead, three of them: dash-dash-dash, punctuating the grimy mishmash of joists and steel cables overhead. Yes, maybe keep it simple . . .
‘Watch out!’ An urgent shout, but only just audible above the factory noise. Laura sensed something near her head, ducked, swerved, slipped. Her easel clattered to the floor. Hands under her arms, lifting her to her feet. The three-and-a-half-foot Bofors barrel swinging on the sling, just inches away, head height, like the branch of a storm-lashed oak.
Laura looked up to the gantry. High up, a portly woman was mouthing an apology. Laura nodded at her, as if it were fine, just fine, that she’d been almost brained by a half-finished anti-aircraft gun. She saw her paintbrush on the floor at her feet and leant down to pick it up. One of the setters had run over and was helping Zelah and Violet re-erect the easel, which had got all tangled up with a long coil of orange hosing that snaked the floor.
The gun was still swinging at eye-height. How many thousandths of an inch had it missed her by, Laura wondered, popping the brush in the pocket of her work apron. If she’d been anywhere else she could have made more of a joke of it, regaled them all with some of her other near-death experiences: the collapsing big top at the circus, dodging the charging elephant; the drunken gypsy with his blade, furious with her for painting his new wife; the perilous walk on the stagehand’s gangplank at the Regent Theatre, where she’d almost fallen fifty feet onto the stage mid-performance; not to mention the sinking boat on their return from Holland, and, when she was just a girl, the white slaver who’d tried to entrap her at the Gare du Nord in Paris. You don’t notch up three score years without cheating death a fair few times, she’d say. But it was impossible to hold a proper conversation down here, what with all the noise from the machinery and the likes of Gracie Fields being continually played through the loudspeaker system on top of all that (to keep them all cheerful and productive, Laura supposed).
Her heart was still beating fast from the shock of it, as she brushed the sharp coils of swarf from her oily palms, and walked over to where her work-in-progress lay, face down like a dropped slice of buttered toast on a hearthstone. She squatted down on the greasy concrete. The jar of turps had spilled: a pungent puddle spreading towards the painting. Violet and Zelah helped her pick up the canvas. Together they placed it on the easel. Laura stepped back to look. As she feared, the grimy floor had left smuts and dirty oil all over the picture. Was it utterly ruined? She picked the paintbrus
h out from her pocket and chewed the end of it, noticing Zelah and Violet in her periphery, waiting to see what she’d do. She put the paintbrush back and reached in her pocket for the palette knife. If Harold were here, what would he advise? Scrape it off and start again, he’d say. There’s no shame in it. If you make a mess, start afresh. Laura could sense eyes on her.
She began to scrape away at the oil paint, dragging off the blackened grittiness from all the spots that she’d been about to highlight in titanium white, but leaving behind the purple-grey shadows, and the blue-green background, leaving all that with a mucky film of factory floor, which would dry in with the oil paint, over time. Yes, the grit and grime of the factory would become a bit of real life embedded in this piece of propaganda, she thought, wiping the trowel off, and working on. She could sense an anecdote beginning to form – the press would love it: how almost dying on the factory floor saved my painting from mediocrity, something like that. She imagined being interviewed by some keen young journalist when this picture was hung in the National Gallery (something inside her made her feel quite certain that this particular painting would end up there): I felt that this double portrait was all about the literal and metaphorical grit involved in the dangerous lives of these hard-working ordnance factory girls. Something like that, anyway. Oh yes. The swinging gun, the slippery floor, it was all serendipitous.
‘As you were, ladies,’ Laura called out, wiping her trowel off and swapping it with the brush. The women re-draped themselves over the equipment, as she directed. Violet’s fingers were still twitching as if an invisible thread were attached to them. Laura decided to continue to work on their faces – the hands could wait.
Violet managed to keep her head still, at least: her curved cheeks and Cupid’s-bow lips made her look like one of those china figurines of milkmaids, Laura thought. And even though she’d let herself be talked into painting her, out of pity, really, her face did provide a good foil for Zelah’s. Laura loved the sharp angles of Zelah’s face: that strong, almost mannish jaw – lots of Plymouth girls had jaws like that, Laura remembered – and thick brows arching up like wings. Features like that are never considered attractive, Laura thought. People always seem to prefer moderate symmetry in girls’ features. But in its calm, strong way, Zelah’s face was strikingly attractive, Laura thought – beautiful, even.
Laura could no longer feel her heart pounding. She even began to smile to herself as she mixed up a brown-black with a little dab of indigo. She breathed in the familiar scent of oil paint, felt the fluid stickiness of it as she dipped in her brush. There was a particular curve at the base of Zelah’s skull, where tendrils of hair escaped from her turban, that Laura wanted to capture just exactly as it was. There. Yes. Brush on canvas, a curlicue smudge in the perfect spot.
And Laura wondered why she had felt so drawn to paint this particular young woman, amongst all the hundreds of young women in the factory. Her height, perhaps, her elegant neck, the angular jaw and brows. What a joy to find a muse in such a place.
Serendipity indeed!
George
Beethoven’s Fifth blared tinnily from the trumpet-shaped ceiling speakers, louder even than the screeching whine of the machines. George rested his hands on the railing and looked down at the North Shop. In the control room the red bulb would be flashing, even though it was just a drill.
The music seemed to increase in volume as workers reached for ‘off’ switches and tools droned to a halt. Turbanned and netted heads bobbed towards the corrugated entrances to the shelters at the end of each section. Dame Laura? Yes, there she was, in her green skirt, striding past the oxyacetylene cylinders, as if she were leading a hiking trip instead of scurrying for cover. The workers eddied into the open-doored shelters and the ceiling lights began to shut down, section by section, from the farthest end, like fingers running down a scale on piano keys: dark-darker-darkest.
Beethoven came to a scratchy stop. George imagined Mr Wragg, in the control room, pulling the needle off the record and jamming on his helmet, as if it were the real thing. Which it never was – never would be. Nottingham wasn’t a target. Children were even evacuated to Nottingham from other parts of the country for heaven’s sake; that’s why they’d situated the ROF here, because it was relatively safe (as safe as anywhere could be, nowadays). And even if the bombers were to stray this way on a sortie, the factory roof was painted to look just like all the other terraced roofs of the Meadows; it was impossible to spot from the air. Still, the man from the ministry had told the Board that drills were necessary, and Mr Wragg liked to do things properly, regardless of the disruption to production.
George saw the small creamy oblong of Dame Laura’s canvas in the darkness down below. The factory seemed eerily quiet, now. The shelter doors had all shut. He should probably pop up to the roof and do a spot check on the sand bucket and stirrup pump, so Mr Wragg could tick that off his checklist. It was as he lifted his hands off the railings when George saw the movement.
He bounded down the stairs and out onto the shop floor, his eyes still adjusting to the gloom. Someone – a girl, it looked like – walking through Bay Five.
‘What the hell d’you think you’re playing at?’ The figure stopped. ‘You know the regulations. Get inside!’ It was a woman. He expected her to hurry on her way, but she turned, and answered back.
‘Someone left a reamer switched on.’
He recognised the voice. ‘Your safety’s more important than a blasted reamer, Miss Fitzlord.’
She turned away without answering him. And he realised that she hadn’t spoken to him since Dame Laura’s arrival, that each time he’d seen her she’d turned away, just like she was doing now. He’d put it down to her being distracted by Dame Laura – and he’d been madly busy with the production drive himself, but, ‘See here, have you been avoiding me?’ She began to walk off, towards the shelter. ‘Have I done something to offend you, Miss Fitzlord? Zelah?’
She paused, and he took three large strides to catch her up. ‘I don’t know if it’s me or some other woman who should be offended, Mr Handford.’
‘What are you talking about?’
He moved round so that he was facing her, blocking her path. He couldn’t see the expression on her face, just her lips moving, dark in her pale face as she replied.
‘Mr Handford, I am flattered by your attention, but I think we should keep our relationship on a purely professional basis. Now, if you’ll let me pass?’
She made a move, but he stepped across her path. ‘Listen, Zelah—’ he began.
‘Don’t,’ she said, side-stepping him. ‘Your wife is a lucky woman, Mr Handford. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?’
‘Wife? Who told you I had a wife?’ he said, reaching out to her, but just then the sound of the ‘Colonel Bogey March’ thumped out from the speakers – the all-clear, already: Mr Wragg wasn’t hanging about tonight. The shelter doors swung open and the lights flared back on. Workers streamed from the shelter doors. She slipped from his grasp, lost in the throng, and it was too late.
Chapter 13
Zelah
‘Goodbye then,’ Zelah said, as Mrs Scattergood shut the front door. Zelah looked up to the upstairs window where Mary’s face was just a watery blur behind the glass. She’d been knitting a yellow matinee jacket when Zelah had gone in to visit. She hadn’t said much when Zelah had asked after her health, told her she could have her old job back as soon as she was ready, apologised for not having been able to visit sooner. She’d nodded and carried on working the wool. Mrs Scattergood said it was important for the girls to have something to occupy themselves with during their confinement. All the babies from Cloud House went to their homes with a full set of home-made clothes, booties, and a crocheted blanket, she said, nodding importantly at Mary’s ravelling wool. Zelah waited, waved again, but Mary couldn’t have seen her; she didn’t wave back.
Mrs Scattergood had said it would be any day now, gesturing at Mary’s swollen belly, as M
ary’s needles clicked against each other.
‘But will she be all right?’ Zelah asked. ‘I can’t come and visit her for another week because we’re so busy with the production drive right now.’
And the reply came that the girl was young and strong and would be back to the factory in no time, and that all the expectant mothers were sent to church every day, to repent for their sin, and that there were no reports she’d heard of any repetition of this kind of immorality. Zelah thought she saw a flush in Mary’s cheek as Mrs Scattergood talked, but she couldn’t be sure, because the girl was hunched over her knitting and her hair fell forwards over her face. And Zelah had wanted to say that that wasn’t what she’d meant when she’d asked would Mary be all right – she’d meant would Mary be all right going through the experience of having a baby and giving it away to strangers and having nobody to support her through it all.
Of course she wouldn’t be all right, Zelah thought now, turning away from Cloud House’s front door and out through the gate. How could anyone be all right after going through that?
The afternoon sun shone thick and gold, but the air wasn’t hot; it churned with early spring winds: the cockerel weather vane twisted on top of the church spire across the way. A thin whistle came from the station and the sound of a train pulling out. She’d just missed the Nottingham train and it would be a good half-hour until the next one. It was too far to walk back to the hostel from here, so she’d have to find something to do. She decided to go to the churchyard, find a quiet place to sit, and enjoy the feel of the breeze on her sun-starved skin.
As she walked across the dusty street, Zelah was nearly knocked over by a bike, veering round the corner. The cyclist swerved and shouted. She glimpsed his red, angry face and felt her heart beat fast as he zoomed away. He’d been going too fast. But she should have checked, heard him, not walked straight into his path. It never was just one person’s fault, was it? She sighed and walked on, passing the back garden of a red-brick villa where a woman was hanging nappies on a washing line: bending, stretching, reaching, pegging, working rhythmically along, as if it were a production line. Wisps of brown hair escaped from an orange headscarf and fine droplets of water flew out from the thrashing washing, like sea foam. Zelah walked on towards the church.