The Bomb Girls (3 page)

Sitting on the lower deck of a London bus with her long dark hair plaited tightly under a thick net and a thin coat pulled around her tall angular frame, Agnes scowled at the April shower that battered the bus bouncing over the rutted road to Greenwich. Exhausted after a twelve-hour shift supervising a line of Bomb Girls all aged under twenty, Agnes grimly pondered her options. She could stay in London and get blown up or she could move to Lancashire where she stood less of a chance of getting blown up. It was a lose/lose situation apart from the singular fact that by moving north she would be in the adjoining county to Esther.

Just thinking of her little daughter brought tears to Agnes's eyes. She'd been separated from her in the autumn of 1940, which was only six months ago but it already seemed like a lifetime. Even though her heart was breaking there'd been no choice but to let Esther go; evacuees were on the move up and down the land and a little girl suffering from polio was considered a priority case for a move out of London. Agnes had just about held it together as she was parted from hysterical Esther, who ripped at her clothes and clung onto her, screaming her little heart out.

The nurses looking after the sick children on the train heading north to Penrith were kind, firm and determined.
Esther's nurse unwound the child's little fingers from her mother's grip, stopped her mouth with a jelly baby then slammed the carriage door on Agnes. The last sight she had of sobbing Esther was swallowed up by a thick cloud of smoke as the train pulled out of Euston station. Wiped out by grief, Agnes had all but fallen to the ground. She had no memory of how she got home but she would never forget the sight of the empty flat when she did return. There on the lino floor was Esther's little dolly with one leg shorter than the other. Agnes had knitted it herself and used it as a tool to explain to Esther why one of her legs was strong and healthy whilst the other remained limp and twisted. Clutching the dolly, Agnes crumpled into an armchair where she finally allowed herself to cry until her chest hurt.

She hadn't seen Esther at Christmas time, though she had received a charming card and photograph of her daughter from the old couple in Keswick who looked after Esther when she wasn't having treatment at the local cottage hospital. Her little girl looked taller and stronger, though the sight of her daughter's leg strapped into an iron calliper shocked Agnes.

All winter she'd tried to get a few days off from the Woolwich Arsenal where she worked but nobody was granted leave, especially a mature, trained supervisor on a vital bomb line. It was the Luftwaffe who'd eventually done Agnes a favour. Their nightly bombing of the Woolwich Arsenal had become a cause of huge national concern. If the arsenal should blow the blast could reach the West End, leaving a crater over half a mile long and untold casualties. It was essential that bomb plants and Bomb Girls
were moved swiftly to places of safety outside London, places like Cardiff, Aberdeen, Poole, Glamorgan, Ellesmere Port and Lancashire. Agnes smiled as she dismounted from the bus swinging her gas mask.

Lancashire, she thought to herself, the next county to Cumberland, that has to be a move for the better – only one county away from Esther.

The foreman told Agnes that she'd be moved to Pendle by the beginning of May.

‘Could I take a few days off before, to visit Esther?' Agnes enquired.

The foreman shook his head.

‘Sorry, no dispensations for leave,' he said with a guilty look.

‘You've been saying that since Esther left last year,' Agnes said bitterly.

‘It's your fault for being such a first-rate supervisor,' he replied. ‘It was you who spotted that witless Vera wearing hair grips and earrings last week. One spark off them and the whole cordite line would have blown!'

Agnes gave a grudging nod. Vera just couldn't get it into her empty head that metal in a bomb factory was banned because of its sparking potential. It had taken Agnes some time to make Vera wear a turban; she said it flattened her permawave! Nobody argued with Agnes for long. Her dark brooding eyes behind her black bottle-top glasses and her determined jaw brooked no nonsense, and anyway the workers had big respect for their supervisor. It was common knowledge that her husband had been reported missing at the start of the war.

Agnes would never forget that sunny, sultry morning,
Sunday, 3 September 1939. Everybody knew war was coming: Hitler had unleashed air and ground forces across Poland in direct response to Neville Chamberlain's ultimatum.

Sitting side by side, she and Stan had listened to the fateful radio bulletin which announced to the world that Britain was at war with Germany.

As he listened, Stan frowned and shook his head.

‘Hitler doesn't give a bugger about Chamberlain when he's got his eye on the whole of Europe.'

Agnes gripped his hand.

‘What will we do?' she said quietly so as not to upset baby Esther, sleeping in her crib.

Stan stared at her with his honest brown eyes as he replied, ‘We'll fight, that's what we'll do, Agnes. We have no choice, not if our little Esther's going to grow up a free Englishwoman.'

Without saying a word to Agnes, fearless, loyal Stan enlisted with the Royal Engineers within days of the outbreak of war.

‘I've joined the Sappers,' he told his wife that night as he bathed his baby daughter in a tin bath in front of the fire.

Agnes, stirring a mutton stew over a flaring gas ring, gasped in shock.

‘Why so soon?'

‘It has to be done, Agnes,' Stan replied. ‘Hitler's a maniac and he has to be stopped.'

Within months of Stan's first and only leave Esther fell ill with polio, shortly after which she was evacuated to Keswick in the Lake District. It was no wonder the
workforce had a lot of time for Agnes, who never complained or invited sympathy; she just kept focused on her belief that one day Stan would come home, one day they would be a family again and one day her little girl would run unaided into her mother's arms.

As April warmed into May and blossom bloomed on stumps of trees that had missed the bombing raids, Agnes collected together the few things she'd need for her imminent move north. The cherished tin of family snaps, Stan's call-up papers and Esther's birth certificate, her ration book and overalls, the few clothes she had in her wardrobe and Esther's little dolly. Looking around the half-empty flat, Agnes realized she'd be glad to get away from London, the Luftwaffe and the Woolwich Arsenal. She'd had enough. A new start far away, one with no memories, was what she needed and she was counting down the days to a new beginning.

Lillian sang to the tune of ‘Little Brown Jug' blasting out on the radio as she mixed hair colour in a glass dish.

‘With a bit of luck I'll be dancing to this at Bradford Palais tonight,' she said chattily to her customer, who was sitting staring woefully at her hair in the salon mirror.

‘God, I look ninety,' she groaned.

‘You'll be fine once I've got this lot on your roots!' Lillian assured her.

In between applications Lillian couldn't help but admire herself in the salon mirror. She'd never have let her mousy roots show a three-inch re-growth like her client. As soon as she'd started in the hairdressing business she'd taken great trouble choosing exactly the same hair dye as her favourite film star, Olivia de Havilland. Lillian was proud of her long, dark, curling locks. They brought out the sultriness of her big brown eyes, especially when she wore the same-coloured, crimson-red lipstick as Olivia de Havilland, which accentuated her soft pouty mouth. Lillian's figure was good too: thirty-four inches up and down, she had a teeny waist, fantastic legs and a sexy swing to her shapely hips.

Lillian took great care of herself; she knew that her face and her body were her fortune and had decided early on in life that she was going to do ‘well', whatever it cost. She knew she could do better than Reg, the randy landlord of
her shop, but Reg was a man who could lay his hands on anything. In return for black-market knickers, nylons, cigarettes, gin and chocolates, plus a room upstairs rent-free, Lillian put up with Reg's fumbling wet kisses. They were a price worth paying, especially as he had a car and could drive her around the Bradford clubs where she entertained the boozy clientele.

‘It was a great night last week with that swing band up from Sheffield,' Lillian enthused. ‘I could've sung till dawn.'

‘Regular little songbird, you are,' chuckled her client.

Seeing her scruffy younger sister approaching the shop door, Lillian swiftly lowered the noisy hairdryer over her client's head and set it to full so that she wouldn't be able to eavesdrop on their conversation.

‘You look like you need a good wash,' she said to her sister.

‘I haven't got a fancy man to keep me,' her sister cheekily retorted.

‘If it's money you're after, I've got none. I just paid Reg the rent.'

‘And there was I thinking you paid him by other means,' her sister said slyly.

Lillian rolled her eyes.

‘Tell me what you've come for and get lost.'

‘I've come to take you down to the Labour Exchange,' her sister answered.

‘I've got a job! If you smarten yourself up they might find one for you cleaning the public lavatories.'

The woman under the hairdryer yelped as the machine began to overheat.

‘Turn this bloody thing off, will you, Lillian?' she called out.

As soon as Lillian raised the hairdryer her sister addressed the woman, who was cautiously tapping her hot rollers.

‘I was just telling our Lillian about compulsory female conscription,' she said with undisguised glee. ‘I said she might have to close down the shop and go and work in a munitions factory.'

The last thing Lillian wanted was to give her gloating sister any satisfaction.

‘You've said what you came to say, now push off,' she snapped.

Edging towards the salon door, her sister said, ‘While I'm down there shall I tell them to send you a letter as you're too busy to sign on in person?'

Before Lillian could hurl a brush at her sister she skipped out of the door, slamming it loudly behind her. Seeing her client's shocked expression, Lillian started to busily unwind the rollers in her hair.

‘Cheek!' she said with a laugh. ‘I've got a job, why do I need another one?'

Lillian's sister made sure she got a call-up letter from the Labour Exchange, which Lillian immediately burned. When Reg came round later Lillian was unusually responsive to his advances.

‘Let's not get too carried away,' Reg said as he broke into a sweat. ‘The missus is expecting me home for tea in ten minutes.'

Normally Lillian thanked her lucky stars for Reg's domineering, hugely overweight wife. He jumped at her
call, which meant his amorous encounters with Lillian were mercifully brief and always around his domestic timetable. Tonight, though, Lillian needed reassurance and Reg was the only person she could turn to.

‘You know this female-conscription malarkey?' she started.

‘I heard a bit about it on't radio t'other day.'

‘Well, is there any way out of it … ?'

Reg glanced at Lillian's pleading face and burst out laughing.

‘So that's your game, eh?'

Stung by his mocking words Lillian leaped away from him.

‘I don't want to go traipsing all over England filling bloody shell cases!' she cried. ‘I've got a good job right here in Bradford.'

‘You can't buy your way out of this one with a bit of slap and tickle,' Reg retorted. ‘It's compulsory for lasses your age.'

‘I bet your missus will find a loophole,' Lillian raged.

‘She's over the age limit,' he replied.

‘Lucky cow!' mumbled Lillian.

A policeman (probably sent by her evil slag of a sister) came knocking on Lillian's salon door the next morning.

‘I'm here to ask you to fill out your conscription papers,' he boomed, loud enough for the whole street to hear.

‘I've lost them,' she replied sulkily.

‘I thought you might so I've brought some more,' the policeman replied as he waved a fresh set of papers in her face. ‘I'll wait here, if you like, and take 'em back to the Labour Exchange miself.'

Cornered and humiliated, Lillian snatched the papers from his hands.

‘How kind!' she snarled as she scrawled her name and handed the papers back to the grinning policeman.

‘Is it farming or factory work you fancy?' he asked, as if she was booking her holidays.

Knowing the fight was over, Lillian shrugged her shoulders.

‘What do I care? Either way it's a prison sentence.'