Home Fires and Spitfires

by Daisy Styles

  Ada, who had comforted many heart-broken young women, knew exactly what to say. ‘You’ve had a long, hard day, dear, you must rest,’ she murmured, as she settled her patient back on the pillows that she’d banked up. ‘I’ll pull the curtains around your bed to give you a bit of privacy,’ she whispered, and her patient slumped backwards on to the pillows and closed her eyes. ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes with a nice cup of tea.’

  By the time Ada returned with the hot tea, the girl was sound asleep. Ada gazed sadly at her patient’s face, young but worn with fear and worry and streaked with tears.

  ‘Poor child,’ she said, as she tucked the bedding cosily around her. ‘Get some rest while you can, sweetheart – you’re certainly going to need it.’

  2. Barrow Shipyard

  With her heavy welder’s mask pulled down over her face, nobody could see Gracie Price’s long, wavy brunette hair, or her sparkling green eyes and full red lips. The masculine work overalls (allocated to all welders, male and female alike) drowned her small, slim, wiry body; even so, nothing could fully disguise the swell of her full breasts and the swing of her shapely hips.

  Completely absorbed in welding plates of heavy sheet metal that would form the hull of the latest warship presently being built at Barrow Shipyard, Gracie was grateful for her clothing (ugly and mannish as it was), which protected her body from the red-hot sparks that flared and hissed as she welded together two metal sheets. Gruellingly hard though the job was, Gracie loved it with a passion; her family, like most others in Vickerstown, had been shipbuilders for generations, but now, with the war on, women were urgently needed to take over men’s work in the shipyard. Though keen to do their bit for the war effort, some of Gracie’s workmates disliked the heavy, dangerous job of welding, but tomboy Gracie loved it. Admittedly, in the early days of her apprenticeship, her back felt like it would snap in half, while her eyes burned from the glare of the welding torch, and her ears rang with the constant clamour of the shipyard. Now accustomed to the work, Gracie had developed strong muscles in her arms, legs and back, which eased the strain of the constant heavy lifting of tools and sheet metal essential to the job.

  Gracie took pride in her welding when a new ship was launched, sometimes by the King and Queen, who regularly visited the shipyard to support and encourage the workers. As the ship that she had helped to build or repair slid down the runway, then out into the open sea, her heart would beat with patriotic zeal.

  Adjusting her position in order to get a better grip on the welding iron in her thickly gloved hands, Gracie glanced anxiously towards her friend Ethel, whom she could just make out through the narrow visor in her welding mask. Married and pregnant, Ethel lived just a few doors down from Gracie’s family. The two girls had been playmates since childhood, learning to walk in the cobbled back streets that separated the rows of redbrick terraced houses, where washing flapped on lines strung between the backyards.

  Seeing Ethel struggling to manoeuvre her bulky belly around some heavy machinery, Gracie frowned. ‘She would have been better off staying at home,’ Gracie fretted to herself.

  Glancing over to the vast number of ships lined up in dry dock awaiting urgent repairs, Gracie knew full well why even pregnant women had to drag themselves into work. The ships were always needed by the Royal Navy but especially so now, with the Germans forcing British, French and Belgian troops to retreat towards the coastal beach-heads.

  Returning to the seal she was painstakingly welding, Gracie blinked as the fizzing sparks bounced off the red-hot metal plate. Feeling the heat through her mask, Gracie was glad that nobody could see her face, which right now was creased with worry. Here she was, worrying about her friend’s health when she was increasingly sure that she was pregnant too. Determined not to think of her situation right now, Gracie concentrated harder than ever on her work, until a sudden tap on her shoulder made her jump.

  ‘Take Ethel home, lovie,’ the Charge-hand yelled over the din of the clattering machinery. ‘I don’t want the poor lass going into labour on the job.’

  Gracie quickly switched off her welding rod and removed her visor. ‘I’ve been worrying about her too,’ she admitted.

  ‘Tell her, for the love of God, not to come back to work until after she’s had her baby,’ the Charge-hand added. ‘I know she’s a good lass, but there is a limit.’

  Leaving their work clothes in their lockers, the two women linked arms and made their way through the busy, bustling shipyard. Gracie never ceased to marvel at how many skilled men and women were needed to build a ship – platers, shipwrights, hammer-boys, drillers, welders, riveters and riggers – many of whom she knew by sight.

  ‘Oi!’ one man called. ‘Clocking off early?’

  As they made their way past the Time-keeper’s office, a sharp sea-breeze caught Gracie’s long brunette hair, sending it flying around her pretty, smiling face.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back,’ she called over her shoulder.

  On their way home, Gracie gently chided her breathless friend. ‘You’re due in less than a month – you should be at home, with your feet up.’

  ‘I know,’ Ethel guiltily admitted. ‘But the thought of sitting on mi own all day, worrying myself sick about mi husband, drives me outdoors. I’ve not heard from Gerald in weeks!’ she cried.

  ‘Gerald wouldn’t want you working like this,’ Gracie firmly pointed out. ‘Promise me you’ll stay at home until after the baby’s born?’

  Ethel gave a feeble smile. ‘I promise.’

  Making slow progress through the network of terraced streets that provided housing for the fifty thousand inhabitants who lived in Barrow, they finally reached Ethel’s house in Steel Street, where Gracie settled her friend on the sofa, with her legs up.

  ‘Stay right where you are,’ she commanded. ‘I’ll make us a brew before I head back to the yard.’

  Ethel gratefully accepted a mug of strong hot tea, and, by the time Gracie had washed and tidied away the cups, her friend was fast asleep on the sofa. Creeping out of the house, Gracie retraced her steps through the back streets, dodging drying sheets flapping on washing lines. Alone, Gracie’s thoughts immediately returned to her own problems. She knew her mother wouldn’t throw her out into the street. Tough, working-class Vickerstown had seen many a local lass get wed in a rush! Nevertheless, if she really was pregnant, Gracie dreaded the moment when she would have to tell her parents that she was in the family way.

  Before he had bolted, her cowardly lover had left Gracie a hundred pounds inside a farewell letter in which he had revealed that he was married and the father of three. The letter she had immediately thrown on the fire, but the money she had carefully kept. If she had to go away to have her baby, Reggie’s guilt money would pay for her stay in a Mother and Baby Home. The sight of a gleaming Ford motor-car cruising down the main road into town caught Gracie’s eye. Blinking away hot tears of anger, she roundly cursed herself. ‘Stupid, stupid woman,’ she seethed. ‘You should have walked away the minute he offered to take you for a ride in his blasted car!’

  Tall, handsome, thirty-something Reggie from down South had turned quite a few heads on his arrival, an experienced Foreman from London’s Dockland, he had been transferred to Barrow, where he had given every impression of being single and unattached. Nobody could fail to notice the good-looking new Foreman with his sweep of black hair, flashing dark eyes and elegant high cheekbones.

  ‘He reminds me of a film star,’ one of the welding girls had giggled. ‘Cary Grant or Robert Mitcham!’

  Gracie drained her mug of tea and lit up a Woodbine. ‘Don’t be daft!’ she had mocked. ‘He’s a Southerner, he won’t want now’t to do with the likes of us poor Northern lasses.’

  But Reggie’s wandering eyes had lingered on the stunning, slim brunette sitting on the dockside with seagulls winging overhead and a fresh sea-breeze blowing her long, dark hair around her sweet young face. Determined to make a play for the sexiest girl in the shipyard, Reggi
e had flirted with the welding girls whenever he passed their way.

  ‘Cheek!’ one of them had grumbled. ‘Coming up here with his flirty Southern ways.’

  ‘He is gorgeous,’ another girl sighed. ‘So mature, and he talks dead posh too.’

  Pulling on her thick protective gloves that finished at the elbow, Gracie rolled her eyes at her silly, infatuated friends. ‘I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him,’ she declared.

  ‘How right I was,’ Gracie murmured under her breath as she re-entered the shipyard. ‘If it hadn’t been for his damn fancy car, I might have followed my instincts and stayed well out of harm’s way.’

  Gracie knew now, with the wisdom of hindsight, that it had been Reggie’s stylish Hillman motor-car that had broken her resolve. She knew nobody in Barrow who could afford a car like Reggie’s, or any car at all in fact; plus petrol was regarded as a precious commodity.

  Gracie’s love of cars had begun in her childhood, when she and her dad had taken an ancient Morris apart; dismantled, the old heap had stood on bricks for months while her dad tried to work out how to put it back together again. Gracie, a regular little grease monkey, who loved the smell of the engine oil from the time she was a little girl, had always dreamt of learning to drive.

  Working at the yard, watching the crane drivers skilfully swinging their mighty cranes out over the sea to hoist goods from the ships lining the dockside, made Gracie’s heart race. What must it be like to be up there, seated in the driver’s cab?

  ‘It’s always fellas that get to drive the cranes,’ Gracie thought resentfully. ‘Would the gaffers ever allow a woman to drive one?’ she wondered. ‘Maybe they’d have to if the war continued, and more men were called up. Who else would replace them but women?’

  When Gracie had first seen Reggie cruising out of the shipyard in his Hillman Fourteen, with its shiny chromework and expensive leather upholstery, her green eyes had all but rolled out of her head. Having systematically ignored the brash interloper for weeks, she found herself gaping at his car in open-mouthed admiration.

  ‘Smart little number,’ she had murmured under her breath.

  Reggie had smiled and waved at a blushing Gracie, who had quickly turned away from him, but not before he had seen the rapt expression on her face. Smirking, Reggie had slammed his foot on the accelerator and roared away; after weeks of trying to engage with aloof but gorgeous Gracie, Reggie realized that he might have just discovered her weak spot.

  3. Scandal

  On a sunny morning in early June, Sister Mary Paul, the Home’s beloved cook and housekeeper, opened Mary Vale’s front door to a pin-thin waif of a girl with hollow cheeks and big, dark, almond-shaped eyes. The nun’s habitual welcoming smile fell from her face at the sight of the stricken girl, who was wearing a floral headscarf over her long red curly hair and a coat that drowned her. Standing on the doorstep, she clutched the handle of her old battered suitcase so hard her knuckles shone through her pale skin. Struggling to communicate with the bemused nun, the visitor spoke in a faltering mixture of English and German.

  ‘My name is Zelda, Frau Fischer … I am refugee from Germany.’

  Some of the residents, passing the open door, stopped dead in their tracks when they overheard her German accent. A tall, big-boned girl called Annie dramatically rolled her eyes. A born gossip who loved a bit of scandal, Annie laid a finger on her lips as she crept closer to eavesdrop.

  ‘Zelda Fischer … are we expecting you, dear?’ Sister Mary Paul gently enquired.

  ‘Nein, no, I come for help, to have my baby.’ Zelda rolled her hand over her tiny tummy.

  Catching sight of snooping Annie, Sister Mary Paul bustled Zelda past the gathering crowd of girls in the hallway. Seeing their curious expressions and raised eyebrows, the nun briskly dispatched them. ‘Off you go, ladies, I’m sure you’ve all got plenty to do.’

  Annie threw quaking Zelda a filthy look before she moved off with her friends. As soon as they’d gone, Sister Mary Paul led the visitor into the dining room, where she managed to communicate to the girl that she should wait until someone came to help her.

  Leaving Zelda in the empty dining room, Sister Mary Paul scuttled down the corridor to Ada’s office, where she burst unceremoniously into the room.

  ‘Ada!’ she gasped. ‘Come – quick!’

  Rushing after the nun, who breathlessly retraced her steps, Ada wondered what on earth could have panicked Sister Mary Paul. Hurrying Ada into the dining room, the nun introduced her to Zelda, who jumped up from the chair she’d been sitting in.

  ‘She’s just arrived,’ Sister Mary Paul announced before dropping her voice to a whisper. ‘She turned up on the doorstep.’

  Seeing the obvious feeble state of the girl, Ada gently urged Zelda to sit back down again, then, smiling kindly, she took a seat beside her. ‘How can I help you, dear?’ she enquired.

  Looking increasingly agitated, the visitor repeated virtually the same words she’d used to Sister Mary Paul, who had already left the room intent on making a pot of strong tea.

  Suddenly pulling a letter from her pocket, she thrust it into Ada’s hands; gabbling nervously she added, ‘From relative in London, she explain me …’

  To whom it may concern,

  My niece, Zelda Fischer, arrive from Berlin, she escape to England on train with false papers. Her husband, a Jew, he shot dead by Gestapo. Zelda is very weak and ill, London is bad place for her, she frightened it will be bombed. She hear from doctor that Mary Vale is nice quiet home in countryside to have her baby, I pray the child survive. Zelda decide to make long journey to you. She will pay. Please God protect her, I can do no more.

  Ada read the letter calmly before refolding it and handing it back to Zelda, whose resolve completely crumbled as she started quietly to sob.

  ‘Please, please, I stay?’ she wildly blurted out, before lapsing into a torrent of words in German.

  The little German Ada had been taught at school didn’t help her to understand, but one thing she did recognize was the abject misery of the woman before her. Laying an arm around Zelda’s shuddering shoulders, Ada murmured, ‘Shhh … don’t upset yourself.’

  Zelda paused to wipe her streaming eyes on a grubby hankie. ‘Help me?’ she begged.

  Trying desperately to think of words that the wretched girl might comprehend, Ada said, ‘I go and talk to Manager.’

  Leaving Zelda in the good care of Sister Mary Paul, who had returned with hot tea and coconut biscuits, Ada went in search of Father Ben. Mercifully, he spoke some German and was able to comfort Zelda with assurances that they would do everything they could to help her and her baby.

  ‘I have money,’ Zelda told him in German. ‘I can pay for my stay here.’

  ‘Good, that will make things easier,’ the priest answered in German. ‘I’ll speak with the Reverend Mother; meanwhile I’ll leave Sister Ada to settle you in.’

  Seeing Zelda literally wilting before their eyes, Ada took her off to a bedroom that had already been prepared. After they had both left the room, Sister Mary Paul turned to Father Ben with a frown on her face.

  Seeing her expression, Father Ben spoke first. ‘We must do all that we can for the poor soul.’

  ‘I agree, Father, but what if the residents see her as the enemy?’ she asked nervously.

  The priest threw his hands up in the air. ‘For the love of God!’ he exclaimed. ‘We can’t throw her out just because of other people’s prejudice.’ Agitated, Father Ben paced the room. ‘For the time being, I think we should let the poor child settle in and avoid questioning her.’

  Sister Mary Paul nodded in agreement with him. ‘God only knows what horrors she must have been through,’ she said sadly.

  On the Home’s second floor Ada led Zelda into a large, airy room that had two single beds and a wide bay window overlooking Mary Vale’s lovely gardens and the Irish Sea. The newcomer actually gasped with pleasure when she saw the clean, quiet room with its stunning view. />
  ‘Danke, danke,’ Zelda whispered repeatedly. ‘You, kind lady,’ she added, as she threw off her coat and lay back on the nearest bed.

  Ada stifled a gasp at the sight of Zelda’s stick-like, white legs poking out from underneath her long skirt. Leaving her patient curled up on the bed, Ada crept out of the room hoping that the newcomer might get some rest. Sadly, rest didn’t come easily to Zelda: left alone, she rolled over to face the wall and all too soon felt the familiar coursing of hot tears on her dry cheeks. As the pillow beneath her head grew damp, Zelda forced herself to will up her dead husband. The process might tear her apart, but she needed to remember Izaak, to etch his face forever into her mind. His soft, intelligent, dark brooding eyes, his silky jet-black hair, his gentle mouth and even gentler touch, and his wonderful brilliant mind.

  ‘Izaak, Izaak, my dearest darling,’ she wept, ‘mein Lieber, mein Schatz.’

  News of Zelda’s arrival spread like wildfire around the Home.

  ‘I couldn’t believe mi ears,’ Annie gossiped. ‘A bloody Hun in our midst.’

  Her equally spiteful friend, Bessie, melodramatically rolled her eyes. ‘She dun’t even look like she’s up the duff,’ she whispered. ‘She could be lying, pretending to be expecting just to get herself into the Home to spy on us!’