The Clippie Girls (3 page)

‘I don’t know. Whatever Peggy wants.’ Bob hesitated a moment before saying generously, ‘You can come with us, if you like.’

Rose threw back her head and laughed. ‘What? Play gooseberry? No, no, I wouldn’t do that to you, Bob.’

At that moment, there was a noise on the stairs and Peggy came into the room.

‘Guess what?’ Rose teased saucily. ‘Bob’s asked me to go with you.’

Peggy smiled and nodded. ‘That’s fine. Hadn’t you better get your coat then? It’s time we were going.’

For a moment Rose looked startled, then she spluttered with laughter. ‘’Course I’m not coming. Get on with you,’ she added, shooing them both out of the room, but as the door closed behind them, Rose’s merriment faded. Had she imagined it or had there been a look of disappointment on her sister’s face when Rose had refused Bob’s invitation? But then she shrugged off the thought and turned to go up to the attic bedroom she shared with Myrtle to play records on the wind-up gramophone.

As she put her foot on the bottom step, Grace’s voice from the living room reached her. ‘Rose, there’s the washing up to do.’

Four

‘I need some help with the blackout when you get home tonight,’ Grace warned them all at breakfast the morning after the Prime Minister’s sombre announcement. ‘I’m not climbing up stepladders and on chairs at my age.’

As Mary had predicted, once Grace had got over the initial bewilderment as to how and why the governments of all the countries involved had been so foolish as to allow another war to come about, she threw herself into organizing her own ‘home front’. Now she accepted that, as more than one journalist had already suggested, the armistice in 1918 had not really ended the Great War. The intervening years had merely been an extended truce. But now the dictator who’d risen to power in a demoralized Germany and was invading country after country with his jack-booted army had to be stopped.

‘Your mother’s going out today to get the blackout material, and Tom from next door has given me some wooden battens and plaster laths in case we need to make frames for the windows instead of curtains. I should have got it organized before this,’ she muttered, more to herself than to the others. ‘But I just didn’t want to believe it was really coming.’

Mary was dressed smartly for going into town. She allowed herself few clothes; what money there was had always gone on her daughters, but those she had were of good quality and lasted well. Today she wore a beautifully tailored Scotch tweed to fit her slim figure. It had a skirt with wide, stitched-down pleats and a jacket with breast and hip pockets and she teamed it with a pink silk blouse. As she pinned her broad-brimmed hat into place, she said, ‘I must get some extra non-perishable food in. The government said we could.’

But Grace shook her head. ‘You’ve left it too late. That was back in July. We can’t do it now the emergency has started.’

Mary looked crestfallen. ‘Oh dear, it seems we’ve all been burying our heads in the sand, hoping it would go away.’ She sighed. ‘I’ll just get one or two bits extra then, shall I?’

‘Don’t forget the blackout material for curtains and you can get thick brown paper from the stationers to make the frames.’ Grace issued her orders. ‘And get me the
Daily Sketch
. There’s bound to be picture of the King. And I want to see who’s in the War Cabinet. I just hope Winston’s back at the Admiralty.’

Rose winked at her mother. Gran was back on form.

‘Bob’ll help us with the blackout,’ Peggy said, as she and Rose were about to leave for work. Peggy had been going out with Bob for just over two months and the family were used to his visits. ‘I’ll ask him to come round tonight, shall I?’

Grace shrugged. ‘If you like, but he’ll have to help his mam with hers, won’t he?’

Bob Deeton lived with his widowed mother and Peggy had told them that she relied a great deal on her son. ‘I don’t know what’ll happen if he ever leaves home,’ she’d said with a wry smile. ‘She’ll fall to pieces, I reckon.’

The family had exchanged amused glances wondering if they should read more into Peggy’s words than she was saying.

That evening, despite the seriousness of the task and all that it implied, there was great hilarity in the living room. Even Grace smiled as she watched Rose wielding a saw, cutting up battens and laths into the required lengths to make frames to fit each window in the house. Then she picked up the hammer and began to join the pieces together with nails.

‘Ouch!’ she cried and sucked her thumb. ‘I thought you said Bob was coming to help, Peg?’

‘He said he’d try,’ Peggy said, ‘but his mother is panicking about getting their blackout up. She’s a real worrier. Here, let me have a go.’ Rose gladly handed over the hammer.

Lastly they stretched several sheets of brown paper over the frame, pinning it in place. A lath nailed diagonally across the back of it held the frame rigid.

‘How are you going to fasten it in the window frame?’ Myrtle asked. ‘It won’t just balance there. It’ll fall out.’

‘Aha,’ Peggy said triumphantly. ‘I thought of that today and asked Bob how to do it. He told me to get these – ’ she picked up a paper bag she’d put on the sideboard when she came in from work – ‘cupboard door fasteners. We’ve to screw one of these to each corner of the window frames and they’ll hold the blackout frames in place.’

‘Holes in my window frames?’ Grace was scandalized.

‘It’s the only way, Gran. I’m sorry.’

‘That Hitler’s going to have a lot to answer for before this is over,’ Grace muttered, but said no more. It had to be done.

Peggy and Rose were struggling upstairs with a completed frame, giggling so much that they were in danger of dropping it, when a knock sounded on the front door.

‘That’ll be Bob, I expect.’

‘Don’t let go, Peg. I’ll drop it. Shout to Myrtle. She’ll let him in.’

But when Myrtle opened the door, a man she didn’t recognize, dressed in an unfamiliar uniform, was standing there.

‘Hello, love. My name’s Joe Bentley. I’m the air-raid precautions warden for this area. You’re showing a light at the back.’

‘Oh – er – yes. Sorry. We’re just putting up the blackout.’ Myrtle opened the door wider and indicated her two sisters halfway up the stairs.

‘It should have all been up earlier than this.’ Joe hesitated. He was a friend of Tom Bradshaw, who lived on the corner next door to the Booth household. They often played darts together on a Saturday night in their local pub. He knew all about Tom’s neighbours from bits he’d overheard Letty Bradshaw telling his wife as they sat together drinking a half of shandy. There was no man in this house, Joe remembered, and though the girls were doing their best, it must be difficult, he thought, without a handyman around the place.

‘Tell you what,’ he said, removing his helmet and stepping through the door. ‘Let me give you a hand. We’ll have it all up in a jiffy.’

As Myrtle closed the front door, he nodded towards the stained-glass panel in the upper half. ‘You’ll need a curtain across this an’ all, love.’

Within an hour, Joe had helped put up frames or curtains over every window and all light showing from the house was successfully blotted out. As he left, with their effusive thanks still ringing in his ears, he reminded them, ‘You’ve done a grand job, ladies, but don’t forget a curtain for this door.’

‘We’ll do it right away, Mr Bentley,’ Mary promised.

‘And whilst you’ve got your saw handy, Rose,’ Grace said, ‘you can cut me a piece of that lath about a foot long and then mark it from one end at five inches.’

‘Right-o, Gran. What’s it for?’

‘The bathroom. From now on that’s the depth of water we’re allowed to have. I don’t want anyone painting a black line round my bath, thank you very much.’

‘Five inches! That’ll hardly cover my—’

‘Thank you, Rose, that’ll be enough of that. And another thing – we’ll have to share bath water.’

Now four pairs of eyes stared at her.

‘Well, if you’re thinking I’m getting into the bath with either Peggy or Myrtle, you’ve got another think coming,’ Rose said firmly.

‘Don’t be silly!’ her grandmother snapped. ‘Not taking a bath
together
– just using the same water like we used to do in the old days. Children first, then mother and, lastly, father.’

‘That’ll be me in first then,’ Myrtle said happily, adding with a smirk, ‘and you last, Gran.’

Grace glared at her and sniffed. ‘I was thinking you three girls could share one lot of bath water and me and your mother another. I’d go first, of course. It is my bath and my water.’

‘Of course, Gran,’ the three girls chorused and avoided looking at each other in case they should burst out laughing. Grace frowned, but said nothing, whilst Mary turned away to hide her smile. After years of being reminded that she and her family were living with Grace under sufferance, she felt as if she now had three allies. Well, at least two in Peggy and Rose. She wasn’t too sure about Myrtle; she and her grandmother often shared a joke at the expense of the others.

‘What are these, Gran?’ Myrtle asked on the following Saturday morning when there were only the two of them left in the house.

‘A luggage label with your name and address on it. Everyone’s got to carry them until we all get our identity cards.’

Grace had taken charge of all the public information leaflets that were being issued. She listened carefully to the announcements on the wireless and, when she went out shopping, she read all the posters that were appearing around the city.

‘Identity cards?’

‘Yes, we’ll get them in about a month’s time. But until then you carry this.’ Grace handed a label to her. ‘I’ll leave these on the table for the others when they come in.’

Myrtle eyed her suspiciously. ‘I thought these were only for kids being evacuated?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘You’re not thinking of sending me away after all, are you?’

‘Only if the bombing got really bad here.’

Myrtle’s eyes widened. ‘It won’t, will it? Not in Sheffield?’

‘Nothing’s happened yet as they expected, Myrtle. London’s still expecting to be bombed any day and then the enemy will target other major cities. And, don’t forget, we’re a major industrial city and much of our output from now on will be for the war effort, I’ve no doubt. And you just be careful in this blackout, Myrtle. It’ll soon be almost dark by the time you get in from school and—’

‘Coo-ee – anybody home?’ A voice sounded in the yard followed by a knock and then the sound of the back door opening. Grace groaned. ‘Not her, again. She’s been round twice today already.’ She raised her voice. ‘Come in. Make yourself at home.’ She dropped her voice as she muttered, ‘You will anyway.’

Letty Bradshaw – dressed as always in her pinafore, her hair covered by a headscarf folded into a turban – lived next door in the corner house of the terrace with her husband, Tom, and her family. She’d given birth to five boys. Her eldest son, Walter, was married and lived in Walkley and now worked in the steel industry. The second, Simon, had joined the navy and was somewhere at sea. The third, Albert, known as Bertie, was living in lodgings in London and was ‘summat in the city’, as Letty, with pride and something akin to awe in her tone, told anyone who would listen. Only the two youngest, Sidney, aged ten, and Jimmy, aged eight, now remained at home. They were the tearaways of the street and any pranks were always laid at their door whether the boys were guilty or not. They were often spanked by their father, whilst still protesting their innocence of a particular misdemeanour.

Tom was not fooled. ‘Happen tha’s done summat else, though, that ah don’t know about,’ he would say and the boys would grin, knowing full well that there was plenty of mischief their father didn’t know about. They would take their punishment like the men they would one day be.

‘Can I borrow a cup of sugar, love?’ Letty began, almost before she stepped into the living room.

‘You can and you’re welcome,’ Grace said. Whilst Letty irritated her almost beyond endurance at times with her gossiping, Grace was shrewd enough to know that in the coming months – maybe even years – neighbours would need each other. And Tom Bradshaw – big and burly and strong – was the nearest male that the Booth household had. But with him came his wife. So Letty had to be tolerated. And Grace realized that with five boys, one already in the navy, Letty would have her own anxieties to face.

‘“Needs must . . .”,’ Grace could often be heard to mutter under her breath on various occasions and putting up with Letty Bradshaw was one such.

‘But,’ Grace went on now, ‘we might not be able to oblige for much longer.’

Letty gaped at her. ‘Eh?’ Then she spotted the little pile of luggage labels on the table and the one Myrtle was holding. ‘Tha’s not goin’ away? Not bein’ evacuated?’

‘No, no, but we’ve all got to carry these until we get our identity cards. And in another month or so – November they say – we’ll get our ration books.’

‘Ration books?’

‘That’s right. A lot of foodstuffs will be on ration and I’ve no doubt sugar will be one of them. So that’s why I say you’re welcome to a cupful now, but soon we’ll all be going short.’

‘Eh, tha’s a mine of information, Mrs Booth. Who needs t’ papers or t’ wireless when tha’s around? An’ wait till I tell my Tom he’ll ’ave to stop ’aving sugar in his tea. He’ll not like that.’

‘Then he’ll have to lump it, Letty, just like we all will. Myrtle, get Letty a cup of sugar, love, will you? I’ll have to sit down. I’ve been on my feet all day.’ Grace sat down in her armchair and eased off her shoes. ‘Queuing’s getting bad already.’

‘Hast tha had a stirrup pump and a shovel delivered?’ Letty asked, sitting down uninvited as if settling down for a nice long chat. Grace glared at her but said nothing, whilst Myrtle hid her smile.

‘We have. I’ve put them down the cellar.’

‘What a’ they for?’

‘If we get incendiary bombs.’

‘Oh, my lor’,’ Letty cried and fell back in the chair. ‘It’s really goin’ to ’appen, Mrs Booth.’

Soberly Grace looked at Letty and was the gentlest she’d ever been with her exasperating neighbour. ‘I’m afraid it is, Letty.’