The Bomb Girls (37 page)

A few months later, just before Victory in Japan was declared, the Phoenix reopened as a cotton mill and the digs where Emily, Lillian, Elsie, Alice, Agnes and Daphne had lived for four years would soon revert to being a cowshed.

A terrible war was still raging in the Far East and the Lancashire Fusiliers were sent there, including Tommy, but not before he and Elsie had a wonderful few days' leave and Elsie fell for another baby.

‘Honest to God, you two are like rabbits!' Lillian teased poor Elsie, who blushed to the roots of her hair.

Gary didn't come home – well, not to Pendle. He and his squadron were flown home to the States where Lillian, after the long years of waiting for her love, was shortly to join him.

Which is why the girls gathered one breezy day in their old digs. After collecting kindling from the moors they lit the old wood-burning stove just for old times' sake and prepared a farewell meal for each other. The food laid out on the table reflected their different tastes and their very different lives. Daphne had brought her favourite: foie gras and Bolly; Emily turned up with hot meat pies; Elsie had discovered black puddings in Bury market, and she could not get enough of them; Lillian settled for gin and chocolates, whilst Agnes arrived with lamb chops.

‘Courtesy of Stan's sheep farmer,' she said.

As they cooked together and drank tea, champagne or gin, they discussed their futures.

‘Well, we all know what you're doing, Lillian,' laughed Agnes as she turned the chops in the frying pan.

‘At last I'm going to Ohio!' Lillian exclaimed as she boogied around the room. ‘I'm going to get my hands on Gorgeous Gary and drag him into bed for a week. I don't care if I fall pregnant right away,' she added in a softer voice. ‘I want that baby I never had.'

‘Will we ever see you again, Lil?' Elsie asked sadly.

‘Of course!' Lillian replied robustly. ‘We're sisters and we stick together.'

‘Cheers to that, darling,' said Daphne as she raised her glass of champagne. ‘Though Ohio wouldn't suit me. Isn't it full of wagon trains and gun-punching cowboys?' she teased.

‘You've seen too many westerns,' Lillian retorted.

‘What about you, Daf?' Emily asked.

Daphne inserted a cigarette into her cigarette holder before replying.

‘I'm getting a divorce.'

There was a collective gasp of disbelief.

‘
Why?
' cried Elsie, who was shocked rigid. ‘You've only been married a few years!'

Daphne blew out a ring of smoke.

‘Rodders is a crashing bore!' she declared.

‘I'd second that!' giggled Emily.

‘I was hoping he'd be posted to Burma – somewhere I wouldn't have to see him – but, just my luck, he's got an office job in Whitehall, which means he's home most nights and I can't go out with my new lover.'

‘You're not generally supposed to have lovers if you're married,' Agnes pointed out.

‘Well, I'm not the marrying kind, I've decided,' said Daphne totally unconcerned. ‘I like men and I like fun and Rodders is certainly neither of those!' she concluded.

‘One thing's for sure – I'm going nowhere,' said Elsie predictably. ‘When Tommy comes home, and pray to God he does,' she added as she crossed herself, ‘we're going to save up and buy a little two-up, two-down near Tommy's mum.'

Lillian burst out laughing.

‘You're joking!' she cried. ‘Two-up, two-down? You'll need a six-bedroomed house for all your kids, the way you two are going!'

‘Come on, let's eat,' Emily called before Elsie started hurling cushions at cheeky Lillian.

As they gathered round the table where they'd sat so many times in the past, Emily wiped away a tear.

‘Alice should be sitting here with us.'

‘Raise your glasses, ladies,' said Agnes.

As they did so, Emily made a toast.

‘Blow a kiss to heaven where Alice said she'd be.'

After kisses were blown and the toast was drunk a sad silence fell.

‘She and her like gave us our freedom,' Elsie said as she recalled the words on Alice's memorial stone.

Taking a deep breath, Emily forced a smile.

‘Come on now, the last thing Alice would have wanted was sadness on a day like today,' she said.

‘Absolutely right, darling,' said Daphne. Then, picking up on Emily's determined spirit, she turned to Agnes.

‘What are your plans? Surely you're not staying on that ghastly sheep farm?'

Agnes laughed.

‘Actually we're saving up to buy our own sheep farm. We love the life up here and the fresh air does Esther the world of good.'

‘So you'll be a farmer's wife? Collecting eggs and baking scones on an old Aga!' Daphne teased gently.

‘I'm planning to do more than bake scones, Daphne,' Agnes replied with an excited smile. ‘I want to be Stan's partner and work alongside him rearing sheep.'

‘Darling, rather you than me!' exclaimed incorrigible Daphne.

‘So that just leaves you, Em,' said Agnes.

As all eyes turned on Emily, she smiled radiantly.

‘When Bill gets back from the war we're getting married!'

Daphne lit up another cigarette.

‘Has he bought the ring yet?' she asked.

Emily grinned as she took a big gulp of her fizzing champagne.

‘No,' she replied. ‘I asked for a chip shop instead!'

I'd like to thank Jacky Hyams for
Bomb Girls
and Russell Miller for
Behind The Lines
. Both books provided invaluable background material, as did the BBC World War 2 Archives. Thanks to Diane Banks' Agency, which led me to the wonderful editorial team at Penguin: Clare Bowron, Maxine Hitchcock and Eve Hall. I'm especially grateful to Jon Styles, for his patience and time spent on endless research, to Sebastian Neave, for his fascinating and detailed knowledge of military history, and to Isabella, my youngest daughter and a writer too, for her constructive criticism on all the drafts I wrote. Thank you, Kate Wheale, for the hot brandy and pep talks, Theresa Plummer-Andrews, for giving me the confidence to take the plunge, my older children, Tamsin and Gabriel, for their excitement and support, and my sister, Kathryn, who shares the same memories as me. And last of all to the real Bomb Girls who helped win the war and give us our freedom.

‘Friday dinner time,' thought Ava as she tucked her long, dark hair under her cook's hat and checked her reflection in the small cracked mirror hanging on the canteen wall. Even smeared with grease the glass revealed the irrepressible sparkle in Ava's dark blue eyes, she beamed her characteristic wide, open smile, which revealed her small white teeth and a charming dimple in her left cheek. She was taller than most of her girlfriends, long legged and shapely with a full bust, softly curving hips and a willowy twenty-inch waist. Ava was fortunate: her strong frame and athletic build was down to hard work and years of horse riding on the wild Lancashire moors.

With her voluminous hair neatly tucked under her cotton hat Ava wrote the day's menu in white chalk on the canteen noticeboard; two years ago Friday's menu would always have been fish – cod and haddock freshly delivered from Fleetwood market. Ava had quickly learned how to skin and fillet fish, but that was two years ago before the outbreak of war and the start of food rationing. Nowadays it was impossible to buy enough fish to feed a family, never mind two hundred mill workers. As rationing got tougher and tougher Ava had tried variations: parsnip fritters, corn-beef fritters, fake-sausage fritters, and mince (very little) mixed with oatmeal and herbs made a tasty fritter too. But on a Friday the workers, predominantly Catholics, didn't eat meat as it was a day of abstinence. The best and most popular alternative to fish was Ava's delicious ‘scallops', fresh local spuds washed, peeled and thickly sliced, then dipped in a thick creamy yellow batter, made from dried eggs combined with milk and water. Deeply fried in a vat of fat, Ava served the golden brown ‘scallops' with mushy peas or butter beans and pickled red cabbage. It made her laugh when customers asked for chips as well.

‘You'll sink like a stone with all them spuds inside you!' she teased.

‘You've got to have chips on a Friday, cock,' one of her customers said with a wink. ‘It's a bugger we can't 'ave fish like in't th'owd days but your scallops are bloody beltin'! Give us another, wil't?'

Ava smiled as she dropped a few more on his plate; she loved these people and she loved her strong, tight-knit, hard-working community. Half the people queuing up for their dinner lived within a block of Ava, in identical red-brick terraced houses, stacked back to back, row upon row reaching up to the foothills of the moors which dominated the landscape of the mill town. Everybody knew everybody else's business, it couldn't be otherwise when outdoor privies were shared and women gathered at the wash house to swop gossip and smoke cigarettes while they did their weekly wash, which they hung on washing lines threaded across the network of back streets where children played under wet sheets flapping like ships' sails in the breeze. The neighbours' over-familiar questions about her future had recently become both an irritant and an embarrassment to Ava.

‘So when are you going to get yourself conscripted, our Ava? All't lasses in't town have gone off to do their bit for't war but you're still here. Can you not stand thowt o' leaving us?' neighbours and relatives alike teased.

Ava had self-consciously assured them she was definitely leaving, there was in fact no choice: female conscription was obligatory for women between the ages of eighteen and thirty. Women were being deployed all over the country, most of Ava's friends had already gone: some to munitions factories in Yorkshire and Wales; others had signed up to work as Land Girls in Scotland, but Ava had held back. She'd felt guilty of course. Would people think she was trying to duck out of war work, that she was unpatriotic? She was in fact fiercely patriotic and passionately believed in committing one hundred per cent to the war effort but she was determined to do something big, something bold that would take her outside of her comfort zone and push her to the limits in her sacrifice for king and country. Three months after female conscription had been authorized by the government, Ava was well aware that she had to do something soon otherwise the Labour Exchange would be on her tail and find war work for her.

‘AVA! Check on them apple pies, lovie!' Audrey the canteen boss yelled as the workers settled down on long wooden benches that ran alongside scrubbed wooden tables to eat their meal.

Ava dashed over to the huge oven where her pies were turning a soft golden brown, she was excited to see what the customers' reactions would be when they tucked into their puddings, which she'd added a surprise ingredient to. Last night she'd ridden her horse, Shamrock, across the moors to her favourite spot where wild winberries grew in abundance. Leaving the mare to crop clumps of tough grass, Ava had collected a large amount of small fruity berries that she'd mixed with baking apples then covered with a thick pastry crust. As she inspected the pies she could see rich purple juice seeping through the edges, they would taste delicious served with custard, but she'd have to warn Audrey to cut thin slices if every worker was to have their fair share of her pudding.

Ava loved the Lancashire moors, especially at this time of the year, late spring when the days were long and the nights were warm. Once work was finished and tea was cleared away at home she'd change into a pair of baggy old tweed trousers and head for the hills. Just a short walk up an old cobbled lane lined with oak and ash trees and Ava was on the moors, where most evenings she rode an old cob mare who belonged to a local farmer. He'd asked her if she'd like to take care of Shamrock, who needed exercising now that his daughter had left home. Not that Ava was an experienced rider but she was certainly not going to turn down the offer. Luckily Shamrock was willing and patient with Ava who took many a tumble as she learned the hard way how to walk, trot, canter and keep her seat over the bumpy moorland terrain. Ava and Shamrock developed a trusting, companionable relationship, both of them enjoying their rides over the rolling moors with only the skylarks and curlews for company.

It was while she'd been up at the farm the previous evening, tacking up Shamrock in readiness for a ride out that she'd caught sight of the local newspaper left lying around by the farmer in the tack room.

‘WOMEN WORKING IN COMMUNICATION CENTRES'

Ava's heart had skipped a beat. She laid down Shamrock's reins and hurried over to read the article.

‘As the war rolls on more and more women are required to fill the spaces left by men fighting on the frontline. Conscripted women are needed for training in communications, tracking, signalling, administration, interception and mapping intelligence in military command control centres. Training centres offering an intense six-month training are opening across the country to provide women with the necessary skills for this vital war work.'

Ava's deep blue eyes blazed with excitement. With her heart beating double time and her pulse pounding she let the paper drop into her lap as she gazed out over the open stable door at the arching blue sky.

‘THIS is what I've been waiting for, she said out loud.
‘I
could be a code girl! That's the work for me.'

At the first available free moment she dashed into the Labour Exchange in the High Street and marched boldly up to the desk.

‘I want to be a code girl,' she announced with a proud ring to her voice. The lady being the desk raised her eyebrows.

‘Code girl?' she asked.

‘I want to work in communications,' Ava explained. ‘Please can I sign up?'

‘What's your present employment?' the woman asked.

‘Canteen cook.'

There was no doubting the shock on her face.

‘Canteen cook!' she exclaimed.

Ava nodded.

‘In Dove Mill, I'm second in charge,' she added with a proud smile.

‘Cooking isn't exactly the right kind of background for a trainee in communications,' the woman retorted. ‘They'll be looking for more academic lasses, them with a bit of schooling behind them.'

Ava's eyes flashed with indignation.

‘Women are doing jobs nobody ever expected them to be doing all over England right now – why shouldn't I?'

The woman nodded.

‘You're right there,' she replied as she handed Ava an application form and a pencil. ‘Fill this in, when it comes to present employment you must state your job.'

‘But –' Ava protested.

‘You can add that you want to train in communications because you feel you have an aptitude for it,' the woman quickly explained.

Smiling happily Ava filled in the form, writing ‘Canteen Cook' as her profession but adding in big bold capitals that she wanted to switch to communications. ‘I want to be a code girl as I believe it's far more beneficial to my king and country than cooking in the Dove Mill canteen in Bolton'. ‘That should do it,' she said as she returned the completed form to the woman at the desk.

‘Don't build your hopes up, lovie,' the woman advised. ‘Be prepared to knuckle down to anything that's required.'

‘I'll knuckle down to anything, just so long as it's not cooking!' Ava said with a winning smile.

The woman watched Ava walk away. There was no doubting she was a stunning girl but good looks didn't pay dividends, with a war on people got what they were given and did as they were told.

‘I've enlisted as a code girl,' Ava proudly told her boss. Audrey looked up from the mound of pastry she was mixing and burst out laughing.

‘And what's a code girl when she's at home?'

Standing by the massive industrial mixer stirring a mince and onion stew that was bulked up with root vegetables, suede, parsnips and turnips, Ava reiterated what she'd read in the paper.

‘It could be anything from operations, tracking, signals, administration, interception or working in military command control centres,' she said with a bit of a swagger.

‘Sounds bloody scary to me!' Audrey joked. ‘Here, roll that lot out,' she added, as she pushed half the pastry across the table to Ava. ‘Roll it thin, mind, we've two hundred hungry mouths to feed; a little must go a long way.'

As the two women at either end of the table rolled and cut pastry to fit into huge tin trays Audrey continued.

‘How are you going to cope with all that brainy stuff?'

‘I'll learn,' Ava said with conviction. ‘I really want to improve myself.'

‘Well good luck to you, lass, but I bet they turn you down,' Audrey said as she poured the cooled mince and onion mix into the trays now lined with pastry. ‘It's not like you went to grammar school and got a good education, mark my words,' Audrey said as she slapped a pastry crust on top of the meat and neatly nipped in the edges. ‘Them stuck-up communications toffs will be looking for brains, certificates and qualifications – none of which you've got Ava, love!'

Ava smiled confidently.

‘Don't worry, Audrey – I'll be a good code girl. Just you see.'

A fortnight later Ava was packing her small, cheap suitcase, helped by her mother who was carefully folding her few dresses before laying them on top of Ava's freshly ironed blouses and new tweed skirt.

‘Do you think you've got enough frocks?' Mrs Downham asked.

‘They'll do for now,' Ava replied as she wrapped her two pairs of battered shoes which her mother had polished till they shone in newspaper.

‘I wish I could have bought you a warm twin set,' Mrs Downham said wistfully.

‘Mam!' Ava cried. ‘Stop worrying; it's a communications centre not a fashion school.'

Seeing the tears welling up in her mother's eyes Ava took hold of her hands.

‘I'll write every week,' she promised.

Mrs Downham nodded sadly.

‘I wish you weren't going so far away, Norfolk's the other side of the country, miles away from here.'

‘I have to go where the government sends me,' Ava pointed out. ‘You should be thrilled it's only Norfolk; I could be in Scotland felling trees like Marjorie Carter from round the corner!'

Mrs Downham gave a bleak smile.

‘I always knew this town wasn't big enough for you,' she said as she stroked her daughter's long dark hair. ‘You were made for better things.'

‘Mam, this isn't about day dreams, this is my contribution to beating Hitler,' she said with a laugh as she kissed her mother's cheek.

Before leaving Ava knew she had to say goodbye to Shamrock, something she'd been dreading doing since the moment she'd signed up; the old mare's excited whinny did nothing to lift Ava's spirits.

‘Hey, sweetheart,' she said softly.

Shamrock nudged her gently in the chest.

‘I haven't forgotten,' Ava murmured as she produced the mandatory carrot expected on every visit.

As Shamrock contentedly crunched on the carrot, Ava gulped back tears that were threatening to overwhelm her.

‘I don't know how to say this, sweetheart,' she said. ‘You see, I've got to leave you.'

Oblivious to the changes that were about to unfold Shamrock snickered before nuzzling Ava's arm. Even though Ava had found a nice, local lass to replace her she still felt guilty about leaving Shamrock; how could you explain to an animal that her life was about to change for ever? Ava thought about the thousands upon thousands of young men who had joined up in September 1939 when the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, had announced that England was at war with Germany. How many lives had been shattered by their departure? How many homes broken and families wrecked by the loss of a loved one who never came home?

Sighing, Ava bent to kiss Shamrock's soft velvety muzzle. Her sacrifice amounted to nothing compared to the soldiers, sailors and pilots who were risking their lives fighting the enemy in planes, ships and on land, in armoured tanks. Two years in and the war was not going well; Britain was ill-prepared and ill-equipped when compared to the organized might of the Third Reich. The Dunkirk evacuation had shown the true grit of the British, who'd launched thousands of boats into the North Sea on a hazardous, often fatal mission to rescue soldiers from the beaches, but the losses on that fateful day had cut deep as did the continuous bombing of Britain's major cities. The nation, no longer gripped with the irrefutable belief that they would win the war, began to fear the worst, an invasion.