Gunner Girls and Fighter Boys (32 page)

He stood aside and she realized that he had been holding her, and she didn’t want him to move away. She held him with her gaze.

‘You’re all right now, gel. Just let the nurse have a look at you.’

And she obediently opened her eyes wide, as the factory nurse shone a torch into them, before pronouncing her fit to leave.

‘The ankle’s sprained, but no broken bones.’ The nurse addressed her father, as if Peggy were a child. ‘Just take her to a doctor if she starts to get drowsy.’

Her father draped his jacket around her as Hattie came into the first-aid room.

‘You keep her at home till she’s feeling up to it, hear me?’ Hattie ordered her father, and the woman gave her an unexpected hug.

‘Come on, love,’ her father said. ‘Let’s go home.’

So Peggy found herself back in Southwark Park Road, sitting in her father’s little camp, as this was what he’d meant by ‘home’. It was certainly nearer than the Purbrook, but had none of the comforts.

He put into her hands a steaming mug of tea, which he’d loaded with condensed milk and a drop of brandy. ‘Get that down yer, gel,’ he said, and turned to stoke up the fire which he’d got going, throwing on to it something that looked very like a piece of her mother’s carved wardrobe door.

He had put her in a chair, so close to the fire that her legs began to mottle, and he hunkered down next to her on a little stool so that she could look down into his anxious face.

‘You don’t look well, Dad.’

‘Oh, I’m rubbing along all right, don’t worry about me.’

She looked around the room. It was filled with an assortment of furniture saved from the fire damage: a wash stand and a few drawers from her parent’s bedroom, and a pile of clothing that looked to Peggy to be going mouldy.

‘Do you want me to go through that stuff for you? It smells a bit, Dad.’

He shook his head sadly. ‘I tried to save some of the home, for when your mother comes back, but I suppose it’ll have to go.’

Her head was aching and the muscles across her shoulders seemed suddenly on fire.

‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help, Dad.’

He shook his head. ‘You would’ve been, if it weren’t for me. Stupid, stupid – I realized that when I thought you might have got killed in that factory and I never had a chance to say – well, I was wrong. Whatever you’ve done, blood’s thicker ’an water and… you’re me daughter when all’s said and done.’

He wiped his hands across his forehead, shielding his eyes. But soon she realized he was crying.

‘Oh, don’t do that, Dad, don’t, there’s no need.’

When Peggy felt strong enough, he took her home to her flat. He insisted that she lie down on the sofa as soon as they got in.

‘Let’s get you comfy,’ he said, tucking a blanket around her, before laying a fire. He hadn’t shown her such tenderness since before she was married.

‘If you’re sure you’re all right on your own, I’d best be getting back to the house,’ he said, picking up his cap. He stood in front of the sofa and suddenly bent to kiss her cheek.

‘I’m sorry, love, I should never have let you marry George. I thought it was for the best, you know, that he’d give you everything I never could…’ She had never seen her father so vulnerable.

‘Oh, Dad, I made my own choices…’

But he interrupted her. ‘No, I’m your father. I should’ve known, and there’s a lot I’ve found out about George since he went inside that I didn’t know before. Stories about him selling stuff from bombed-out houses, standing in for shirkers at the recruitment office. I was shocked.’ There was always a call for someone with such ill health as George, to stand in for recruits and get them signed off as ‘unfit’ for service. Peggy had suspected it was one of George’s sources of income, but she hadn’t been sure. Yet she had never wanted her father to hate her husband, just to forgive her.

‘George is always going to be a villain, Dad, and I can’t say he was a bad husband… I just felt… well, dead,’ she finished weakly, exhausted from the day, and asked, ‘Why don’t you pack up Southwark Park Road, and stay with us here?’

He hesitated, holding his cap. ‘I suppose I could do.’

And Peggy felt nothing but gratitude that after the gulf that had opened between them her father was here, and she was forgiven. As the door closed, she had to smile at how this morning she’d gone to work anticipating another dull day. She should have known that in this war, dullness and danger were never far from each other. It was as she turned over to sleep, that she felt a sharp pain shoot through her stomach. ‘Oh God, no, not now,’ she prayed. ‘Not now.’

January–Spring 1942

The water in the bucket was frozen over. May picked up the shovel propped outside the hut door and started hacking away at the ice. The pipes had frozen in the ablution block, so the only water they’d have for washing was in the fire bucket. After a couple of whacks she’d chipped a hole in the surface and eased off the crust of ice. It wasn’t going to be a very thorough wash this morning. She poked her head back through the door of the hut. ‘Come on, rise and shine and bring us your mugs!’ She heard groans from inside and a ‘Put some wood in the soddin’ hole!’ from the direction of Emmy’s bed.

‘Well, when the water’s gone, it’s gone!’ she warned, dipping her mug into the bucket and splashing her face and hands with icy water. Her fingertips turned white, burned by the ice. She flapped her hands around to get the blood moving and decided a cat’s lick was all she could stand today. It was the best she could do with a cup of icy water and, shivering, she pulled her greatcoat closer round her, peering across the iron-hard ground towards frost- rimmed trees at the edge of the gun park. Today her team was on reserve, which meant fatigues. She was almost glad she’d been detailed to help out in the stores. At least she’d be warm. Even if the rest of the camp froze, there was never a shortage of coal for the stores’ stove.

As she entered the stores building she was hit with a blast of heat from the cylindrical cast-iron stove. The pipes here hadn’t frozen and May was set to cleaning floors with bucket and mop. Pat’s transfer to stores had gone through with no quibbling from her superiors and though she might not be the bravest of soldiers, she was a hard worker. She came over at once to help May and they soon got up a rhythm, their mops synchronized like a pair of rowers.

‘How was Christmas at your uncle’s?’ May asked. For Pat had told her she was expecting another dull leave, with just herself and the bachelor uncle at his horse farm in Gloucestershire. May had felt sorry for her, but after her own troubled Christmas she’d begun to envy Pat’s uncomplicated home life. Now the girl surprised her with a slow spreading smile.

‘Not so dull after all – I met a chap!’

May always had the impression that Pat was somehow impervious to men; she flirted a lot, but never seemed to take things further than that. So to see her now, her face softened by the memory of a man, was something novel.

‘You?’

‘Well, don’t sound so surprised. I’m not that unattractive, am I?’

‘No, I didn’t mean that! I just thought that you weren’t interested in settling down.’

Pat, with her glossy dark hair, almost-black eyes and high colouring, was certainly not plain. But May had discovered that her attractiveness grew with familiarity. Initially her features could seem hard, her expression suspicious, sometimes arrogant. But over the months, May had seen Pat’s appearance increasingly soften as her trust grew. It had been like watching the sun behind a bank of clouds; first the gilded rim had appeared and gradually the shadows of her face had lightened.

They had finished mopping one section and went to refill their buckets with clean water.

‘I’ve got nothing against settling down, just never met the right man, I suppose. But this one… he’s just…’

‘Right?’

Pat laughed. ‘Well, I think so – but I’m not so sure my father would agree if he found out. Mark works for my uncle…’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Oh, because he’s a stable lad – my father would think he wasn’t good enough for me. I’m not sure if my uncle will approve either. My only hope is if I can get the major on my side – he’s got a soft spot for me, probably more so than my father.’ The old hardness flashed in Pat’s eyes as she spoke.

May was confused; she thought Pat’s father was the military man.

‘Who’s the major?’

‘My uncle! He retired from the army years ago, but everyone still calls him the major. He’s nothing like my father, though – at least he cares about me being happy. With Dad, it’s all about appearances.’

‘Oh.’

This was more than Pat had ever let on about her soldier father; she’d always seemed so proud of him.

‘Anyway, it doesn’t really matter what I do. I’ll always disappoint my father. I wasn’t born a boy, was I?’

May shook her head ruefully as they carried back their full buckets. ‘Don’t talk to me about disappointed fathers. We had murders at home over Christmas. Dad’s not talking to my sister, and you know we got bombed out? Well, he’d rather camp in a ruin than go to her place. I thought poor Mum was getting better, but now she’s practically living down the Underground again…’

Pat gazed at her sympathetically. ‘Oh, May, I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to go on about my troubles. It must be awful, to have your home destroyed… but as I’ve never had one myself, I don’t suppose I can
really
understand what it’s like.’

May had gleaned, from a few conversations with Pat, that the girl’s shell had been fashioned by a childhood so different from her own as to seem no childhood at all. With a widowed father in the military, she’d never had a fixed home. Shipped off to boarding school at an early age, she seemed to have put down no roots at all. May, with her inexplicable love of smelly, crumbling, noisy Bermondsey, found it hard to imagine not being attached to anywhere. She’d once shared her nickname with Pat, who’d looked thoughtful for a moment before replying, ‘If you’re a homing pigeon then I must be that bird who never lands at all, a swift, I think it is.’

‘Can’t your home be repaired?’ Pat asked, as the two of them sloshed their mops into the full buckets and started mopping again.

May shrugged. ‘Maybe, but the repair crews are so busy it might not be for a while.’

May shuddered at the idea of her father still camping in the unheated Southwark Park house during the winter.

‘I’m sorry, and there I was complaining about having to stay miles from anywhere. It’s definitely got its advantages…’

‘One of them being the stable lad!’

Again came the slow, secret smile, which robbed Pat’s face of all its harshness.

‘Oh, but what about your chap, whatever happened to him?’

‘What chap? I haven’t got one.’

‘Yes, you have, the one you were with when you found the baby!’ She’d told the tale, one night over cocoa, when they were all swapping bombing stories, but she didn’t remember divulging any more information about her feelings for Bill.

‘No, we were just friends,’ she said, rewriting her history, as much for her own sake as to keep Pat quiet.

‘Friends!’ Pat swished the mop and shook her head. ‘I don’t buy it. You were always looking out for a letter.’

May couldn’t think how Pat had come to know her secret. Perhaps she hadn’t veiled her emotions as much as she’d thought, unless… ahh, of course, Emmy. Emmy was a good friend, but she loved to gossip. Not that May minded. What did it matter now?

‘Oh well, it’s never going to come to anything. I found out Bill’s got himself engaged.’

Pat groaned. ‘Oh, you poor thing. God, you did have an awful time at Christmas.’

‘I suppose I did. But don’t you think this war makes you see things differently? When I look back on that leave, you know what I think I’ll remember? Going dancing in Tottenham Court Road and learning the jitterbug! And I’ll remember meeting that little baby we saved, me and Bill, and then it’ll be only good memories, as if the rest never really happened...’

Pat looked at her sceptically. ‘Well, it might be the war, or it might be you’re just an insufferable optimist!’

‘Maybe. But there’s one thing I couldn’t feel good about, and that’s Mum. She can’t take much more of London. Me and Peg think she’ll go off her rocker completely if we don’t get her away.’ May hesitated. ‘And actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’

‘Me?’ Pat straightened up, leaning on her mop.

‘I need to ask you a big favour.’

‘If I owe anyone a favour, May, it’s you,’ Pat said, looking at her intently.

May explained something of her mother’s plight, while they finished their cleaning duties and then walked briskly back across the frosty gun park to change out of their boiler suits. All the while, Pat listened without comment. They ducked their heads against the chill blast that caught them as they rounded the ablutions block, but once in the lea of their hut Pat stopped.

‘Do you fancy coming into town for tea and cake? We can have a better chat there.’

May agreed, for in the hut or the NAAFI there was always someone listening or ready to chip into any conversation, and it was almost impossible to keep a secret, as she’d just found out. She made a mental note to give Emmy hell later on for sharing her heartbreak with the world.

Because May had been on fatigues all morning, she was entitled to a half-day pass out of camp, and that afternoon she found herself in a little tea room in Barkingside, seated opposite the one person in her new life she’d been sure she could never be friends with. But this Pat seemed a very different girl from the one who’d accompanied her on that disastrous train ride to Pontefract. And no doubt, she herself was different. Either way, it seemed an odd, topsy-turvey world, where the friends you wanted to keep disappeared and those you never wanted in the first place ended up being the ones who stuck around.

‘So, I was thinking, if your uncle still wants evacuees for his cottage, do you think he’d consider taking Mum?’

Pat had taken a bite of her toasted teacake, and it was a while before she answered.

‘Brilliant idea!’ she said, her mouth still half full.