by Daisy Styles
‘It’ll be a bloody miracle if you ever get that wreck going!’ her mam regularly complained. ‘It’s blocking the path to the privy, and I can barely get to the coal hole too.’
‘We’ll ’ave it up and running in no time,’ Gracie’s dad, an eternal optimist, always answered cheerfully. ‘Me and my little helper,’ he had added, with a fond wink at his grinning daughter.
After unlocking the back door, Gracie was relieved to find the house empty. Her mother was helping out with the evacuee children at the local church hall and would be home later to make supper; for now Gracie had the place to herself. Sighing heavily, she curled up on the sofa in front of the old black cooking range and did what she’d been longing to do all day: fell fast asleep. Sometime later the sound of a whistling kettle woke Gracie with a start.
‘Want a brew, lovie?’ Mrs Price asked.
Blurry-eyed and suddenly nervous, Gracie struggled to sit up, frightened that she might lose her nerve and further delay telling her mother the news she’d been holding back for too long. She drew a deep, shuddering breath and blurted it out. ‘Mam … I’m expecting.’
Mrs Price stared at her daughter for a long few seconds before bursting into tears. ‘Oh, Gracie, love,’ she wept. ‘You were always so independent-minded – how could you have got yourself into this mess?’
Gracie didn’t even try to defend herself. ‘Because I was bloody stupid!’ she cried, and started to weep too. ‘It’s the oldest trick in the book – married man sweeps young girl off her feet.’
Looking white and tense her mother asked, ‘Married? So there’s no chance of him marrying you?’
‘Mam, he’s long gone,’ Gracie angrily blurted out.
‘Who is this fella?’ Mrs Price insisted. ‘Your father will have a thing or two to say to him.’
‘You’re wasting your breath,’ Gracie sighed. ‘He ran back to his wife and children the minute he heard I was pregnant.’
Reaching for her packet of Woodbines, Mrs Price, in a voice thick with fury, said, ‘The pig! How could he do a thing like that to an innocent young girl?’
‘It takes two to tango, Mother,’ Gracie answered bitterly. ‘I blame myself just as much as I blame him. God! I was so bloody stupid!’
Mrs Price took several deep drags on her cigarette before she asked, ‘Are you planning on keeping the baby?’
Gracie vehemently shook her head. ‘No, I’ll have it adopted; a lass as witless as me is no fit person to bring up a child,’ she muttered miserably. Now that she had started to confess, Gracie rushed on. ‘Mam, I’ve booked myself into a home for unmarried mothers in Kents Bank,’ she gabbled nervously. ‘It’s run by nuns – they’re expecting me there soon.’
Gracie’s green eyes brimmed with tears as she gazed into her mother’s sad and bewildered face.
‘I have to get right away from Barrow: I don’t want you and Dad shamed by what I’ve done.’
Mrs Price slowly nodded her head. ‘Aye, mebbe you’re right, love.’
‘Please, Mam, will you come to the Home with me?’ Gracie asked anxiously.
Mrs Price gathered her daughter into her arms. ‘Aye, lovie, I’ll take you,’ she replied. ‘We’ll go together as soon as you’re ready.’
Gracie’s last week at the yard was more miserable than she could ever have imagined. Hiding her burgeoning tummy behind her overalls and protective clothing was difficult enough, but that, combined with the heat from the soldering iron and the flying sparks, made her sweat until she felt almost faint. As much as she loved her job and her workmates, Gracie was forced to acknowledge to herself that her timing to leave was spot on. Only a few weeks ago she would have been able to manoeuvre her way around any sheet of plate metal she was welding; now she felt awkward and clumsy, and the soldering iron she had handled with such dexterity seemed to weigh a ton.
It wasn’t just her pregnancy that Gracie was hiding; she was also keeping to herself the fact that when she finished work on Friday she wouldn’t be back in the yard until well after Christmas. She would behave perfectly normally when the hooter blew to announce the end of the working week; she would wave goodbye to all her pals, just as she always did; then quietly slip away. When awkward questions were asked, she would be miles away.
After an emotional farewell with her heartbroken father, who had been informed of his daughter’s condition by his wife, Gracie and her mother boarded the train. Gazing out of the window at the passing landscape, Mrs Price gave a deep sigh. ‘My …’ she murmured, as the train sped along the track that skirted Morecambe Bay glittering bright in the sunshine. ‘When you think there’s the shipyards just around the corner and all the RAF bases up near Walney … but here,’ she said, gazing out of the window, ‘you wouldn’t even know there’s a war on.’
‘Unfortunately, there is a war on, Mam, a terrible war,’ Gracie said grimly. ‘All them poor lads shot down or drowned at Dunkirk, massacred as they waited for transportation to get them back home. So many thousand dead or wounded.’
‘Don’t go forgetting how many thousands were saved by them little boats crossing the Channel, volunteers of all ages, risking their own lives to bring our boys back,’ Mrs Price reminded her daughter. ‘When I think of the nation’s response to Churchill’s call for help, it makes me want to weep – if I’d had a boat I’d have set sail myself!’ she said, wiping tears from her eyes. ‘Hitler might think he’s winning, but I tell you, our Gracie, he may have more weapons and planes, but us Brits have got more guts,’ she finished proudly.
Gracie smiled at her mam’s passionate expression. ‘You’re right, Mam,’ she agreed. ‘We’ll win in the end.’
She carefully avoided adding, ‘Though God only knows when the end might be.’
As the train shunted past Cark and Flookburgh, bringing her ever closer to Kents Bank, Gracie couldn’t stop herself from thinking of handsome, two-timing and two-faced Reggie, who, as she herself had said, was long gone but who nevertheless haunted her thoughts. How she wished she could turn back the clock. If only she had followed her instincts instead of allowing him to charm and seduce her. Thank God she had the loyal support of her mother who, Gracie knew, would never let her down. Mrs Price would see this ordeal through to its conclusion, and she would be waiting faithfully for her daughter when she returned home after the baby’s birth.
At Kents Bank they were the only passengers to disembark from the steam train, which, as it halted, sent out great clouds of thick black smoke that briefly obscured the lovely view of the salt-marsh. Following the guard’s directions, they took a leafy track through a small wood, then entered the spacious grounds of Mary Vale, where Gracie’s pretty face suddenly crumpled.
‘I’m scared, Mam,’ she sobbed like a terrified child.
With her arms firmly around her trembling daughter, Mrs Price nodded in the direction of Mary Vale. ‘You’re in the right place, our Gracie. Now come on, chin up, let’s go and introduce ourselves.’
Oddly enough, once Gracie was inside the Home, she immediately felt calmer; some of the residents passing her in the hallway smiled briefly in Gracie’s direction, and as usual Sister Mary Paul came bustling out of the kitchen to greet the visitors.
‘Welcome, welcome, ladies. I’ll get one of the girls to fetch Sister Ada, but, in the meantime, do you fancy a cuppa and a slice of cake, only coconut and carrot,’ she chatted on. ‘You’ve missed dinner, so I fancy you might be feeling a bit peckish?’
Mrs Price immediately accepted her kind offer. ‘I’d love a cuppa tea,’ she replied.
‘What about you, dear?’ Sister Mary Paul politely asked Gracie.
Too nervous to eat anything, Gracie shook her head. ‘I’d like to unpack first, if you don’t mind?’
‘Of course, you settle yourself in, while I see to your mother. This way, Mrs Price, you’ll be comfortable in the dining room,’ Sister Mary Paul said, as she led Gracie’s mum out of the hallway.
No sooner had they moved off than Ada arrived. ‘Yo
u must be Gracie!’ she said cheerily. ‘We’ve been expecting you.’
Ada’s wide-open smile and her welcoming, big dark-blue eyes immediately put Gracie at her ease. ‘Hello,’ she answered a little shyly.
Grabbing the handle of Gracie’s suitcase, Ada said, ‘I’m Sister Ada – let me take that.’
Gracie followed Ada up the stairs to the second floor, where she was relieved to find the room she had been assigned was, in fact, beyond her expectations. Rather than the dark, dingy accommodation she had envisaged, this room, with its two single beds, was big, bright and spacious. After placing Gracie’s suitcase on the bed by the bay window, Ada said, ‘You’ll be sharing with Zelda, but, before I introduce you to her, I need to explain something about her background.’ Ada paused briefly before she added, ‘Zelda is German.’
Gracie gave a little gasp of surprise. ‘German?’ she spluttered.
Ada nodded. ‘She’s Jewish, a refugee who’s recently arrived in this country. She’s a widow; her husband was killed by the Nazis,’ she said starkly. ‘She’s only recently arrived and she’s still getting acclimatized.’
‘Acclimatized,’ Ada mused to herself. ‘More like shell-shocked, punch-drunk, a complete nervous wreck.’
Though shocked to find herself sleeping in the same room as a German, Gracie made an effort to remember her manners.
‘I look forward to meeting her,’ she said diplomatically.
After unpacking her clothes, Gracie walked downstairs with Ada and joined her mother in the dining room, where, now starving, she gratefully accepted Sister Mary Paul’s offer of a cup of tea and a slice of bread and butter.
‘The butter is from the Mary Vale Farm, just across the meadow,’ the old nun quickly explained. ‘We’re not fiddling the ration books,’ she chuckled.
In the shabby but comfortable dining room with sunshine flooding in through the wide-open French windows and jars of wildflowers dotted along the windowsills, filling the room with a fresh fragrance, Gracie started to relax. Her mother beside her suddenly became very emotional. ‘So, what happens now to my little lass?’
‘You needn’t worry, Mrs Price: Mary Vale isn’t a prison,’ Ada assured the tearful mother. ‘Gracie can take herself off for a walk whenever she needs a bit of peace and quiet.’ Turning to the newcomer, Ada explained, ‘When the tide is out, I often walk out on the marsh. It’s beautiful, full of wildflowers and sea-birds. I love the place, especially in the evening, when you can stand and watch the sun go down over the Irish Sea.’ Turning back to Mrs Price, Ada added, ‘You can visit your daughter whenever you want; the residents generally look forward to their family’s visits.’
‘Thank you, Sister. I’d like to come and see how she’s progressing, especially after she’s er … given birth,’ Mrs Price ended awkwardly.
‘Of course!’ Ada cried. ‘Come on, let me show you around before you leave.’
In the nursery, Gracie and Mrs Price were unexpectedly moved at the sight of cots covered in stout white canvas, lined up side by side in neat rows. As they passed them, both Gracie and her mam peered into the cots, where some babies lay wide-eyed, staring out at the new world they had only recently entered, while others whimpered either from hunger or for attention. Ada quickly introduced the visitors to Dora, who was supervising the never-ending bottle-feeding rota.
‘The babies need feeding every four hours; sometimes we can have as many as a dozen babies at a time in the nursery. The only way we can make the rota work is by asking the residents to get stuck in and help with the shifts; otherwise we would have every baby in the place screaming blue murder,’ Dora explained. Rocking a new-born baby girl in her arms, she went on, ‘The girls don’t complain too much about the rota, not unless they’re on the 4 a.m. feed in the middle of the night – nobody likes that,’ she chuckled. ‘All the girls have chores to do, bottle-feeding is just one of them.’
‘We appreciate the residents’ help; the Home couldn’t function as it does without their input,’ Ada continued. ‘We try to keep the chores as light as possible: general cleaning, lending a hand in the kitchen and helping out in the nursery, as you’ve just seen. We limit the housework to the mornings, so that the residents can rest in the afternoon or do some gentle exercise classes, which I lead most afternoons.’
After an inspection of the ante- and post-natal wards, Ada led the visitors into the delivery room, where Gracie’s big green eyes filled with tears.
‘I can’t believe I’ll give birth in here,’ she gulped, as she reached for her handkerchief.
Ada smiled. ‘Hopefully that will be the case, though I have had the occasional girl give birth in the corridor!’ she laughed.
‘Are the babies taken to the nursery immediately they’re born?’ Gracie asked curiously.
‘We go by whatever the mother wants,’ Ada told her. ‘Some want to hold their babies for hours on end and visit them in the nursery. Not many choose to breast-feed: they worry that if they do so it will be harder to part with their babies. Most of the new mums opt for bottle-feeding, which they can do themselves if they wish. Our aim at Mary Vale is to assist the mothers who will be leaving, while nurturing the babies that are left behind.’
‘Do most of the babies get adopted?’ Gracie asked.
Ada nodded. ‘The majority do. Occasionally a mother will leave with her baby; that will start to happen more, now that married pregnant woman are being evacuated out of the cities. Since the start of the war we’ve had a few evacuees here, and their older children too,’ she informed the listening women.
‘Who arranges the adoptions?’ Mrs Price asked.
‘Father Ben,’ Sister Ada replied. ‘He’s attached to the convent; he’s a genius at matching up babies and families.’
‘Do the mothers have any say when it comes to choosing the adoptive parents?’ Gracie asked.
‘Yes, if they want to get involved,’ Ada responded. ‘To be honest, Gracie, most of the girls prefer to leave it to Father Ben’s good judgement. You’ll get to meet him soon,’ she promised.
After they’d completed the tour of the Home, Gracie accompanied her mother back to the railway station, where, as they waited for Mrs Price’s train to arrive, Gracie told her about her new room-mate.
‘Sister Ada told me that her husband was shot by the Nazis,’ she explained.
Big-hearted Mrs Price exclaimed, ‘Poor little bugger! You make sure you keep an eye on her.’
‘I’ll do mi best, Mam, but I must admit to feeling a bit shocked,’ Gracie admitted.
Mrs Price looked her daughter straight in the eye. ‘You might think you’ve got troubles, lovie, but think what that poor kid’s going through – it can’t be easy being German in this country, refugee or no refugee, and on top of that a widow and pregnant,’ she murmured compassionately.
‘I’ll try my best, Mam,’ Gracie promised.
As the train loomed into view, the two women clung on to each other. ‘I’m sorry I’ve let you and Dad down,’ Gracie whispered.
Mrs Price gave her daughter a long, hard look. ‘What’s done is done,’ she said firmly. ‘Time to move on, eh?’
Struggling to hold back her tears, Gracie gave a feeble nod. ‘I’ll miss you, Mam,’ she cried.
‘I’ll miss you too, my lass,’ Mrs Price gulped as she boarded the train. ‘Be brave, sweetheart, God bless.’
For all of Ada’s warning, Gracie was alarmed by her first sight of the girl she was to share a room with. Pale-faced, with huge, dark, sad eyes, Zelda looked more like an abandoned child than a pregnant woman. Glancing anxiously at Ada, who had just introduced the two young women, Zelda held out her hand to her new room-mate.
‘Hello, I happy to see you,’ she said in a low, trembling voice. ‘I hope you are happy with me?’
Ada, who knew what an enormous effort Zelda had put into her welcome, and how much she must have rehearsed it, was relieved and impressed when Gracie responded warmly. ‘Thank you, I hope we will be friends?’ she said,
as she firmly shook Zelda’s hand.
Ada could have hugged Gracie; she was a good girl, straight as a die, just like her mother. She was the perfect room-mate for Zelda, who needed all the friends she could get.
6. RAF Duxford
Diana Bishop’s slender waist and narrow hips weren’t built to disguise her advancing pregnancy. Her years at an exclusive boarding school in Surrey had taught her deportment and a passion for tennis and hockey, which (with her long legs and muscular frame) she excelled at. Diana also excelled at mathematics, and, had it not been for the war, she would most certainly have gone on to study at university level. The demand for smart, analytical women with a flair for maths soon drew Diana into the WAAFs, where her talents were quickly spotted by her senior officers. They agreed that Miss Bishop would be perfectly suited to the work of a radio locations plotter. Shortly after Diana was transferred to Duxford, an RAF air base a few miles outside of the ancient university city of Cambridge. Diana’s smart Women’s Auxiliary Airforce uniform, of which she had originally been inordinately proud, was presently causing her great concern. The tight-fitting, blue barathea wool skirt (worn with a black tie over a crisp white shirt) was bursting to the point of ripping at the waistband. Diana had bought larger shirts to replace the ones she had outgrown, which she draped artfully around her thickening waistline in the hope that nobody would guess her condition. Diana’s biggest fear was that her colleagues at Duxford would guess that she was pregnant before she even had a chance to inform the father.
Her beloved, RAF Senior Officer Harry Ferguson, whom she had met in Duxford’s Control Room, was regularly absent. ‘Working the Field’ was the official term. Harry’s colleagues never referred to his unexplained absences, which got longer and longer, and, because they didn’t mention it, Diana felt that she should not do so either. Right now, she longed to know when Harry would be returning. She had to tell him he would soon be a father, but, if the truth were known, Diana was dreading it. What would his reaction be when she dropped the bombshell? She was sure he would be shocked rigid, possibly disappointed; he might even be angry with her. When Harry finally showed up in the officers’ gallery, Diana’s knees went weak with relief. Just the sight of him standing tall in his pale-blue RAF officer’s uniform, broad-chested and in command, puffing studiously on his pipe, instantly made her feel calmer. His still powerful presence dominated the space as he studied the gridded table-map, around which several WAAFs were working. Though the atmosphere in the Ops Block was always one of high tension, Harry’s focus and composure never faltered as he made swift mathematical decisions that would save lives. The sound of his deep, strong voice on the line to Radar Intelligence soothed her addled nerves, and, taking her place around the mapping table, Diana put on her radio headset.
