Christmas with the Bomb Girls

by Daisy Styles

  Daisy Styles

  * * *

  CHRISTMAS WITH THE BOMB GIRLS

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. The Cowshed

  2. The Phoenix Songbird

  3. Rosa

  4. Introductions

  5. The Liberation of Naples

  6. Myrtle

  7. Flora

  8. Belmont Sanatorium

  9. Fear in the Sky

  10. The Search

  11. Visiting Hours

  12. The Phoenix Rises

  13. Gladys and Myrtle

  14. Romance

  15. Farewell

  16. The Phoenix Artist

  17. The New Girl

  18. ‘Women at War’ Exhibition

  19. Trainee Nurse

  20. St Thomas’ Training Hospital

  21. ‘The Winner is …’

  22. Mr Snowman

  23. The Worst News

  24. Riding the Storm

  25. A Wild Goose Chase?

  26. Night School

  27. The Best News

  28. Two Little Bridesmaids

  29. Arthur’s Choice

  30. A Christmas Rush

  31. Christmas Eve

  32. Christmas Day

  33. Christmas Carols

  Acknowledgements

  Read More

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  CHRISTMAS WITH THE BOMB GIRLS

  Daisy Styles grew up in Lancashire, surrounded by family and a community of strong women. She loved to listen to their stories of life in the cotton mill, in the home, at the pub, on the dance floor, in the local church, or just what happened to them on the bus going into town. It was from these women, particularly her vibrant mother and Irish grandmother, that Daisy learnt the art of storytelling.

  By the same author

  The Bomb Girls

  The Code Girls

  The Bomb Girls’ Secrets

  For Clare Marsh, Catherine Wheale and Susie Stevenson, like the Bomb Girls in my story our friendship has grown stronger over the years, regularly watered with tears of laughter and joy.

  Prologue

  Sweating in the intense heat of a late-summer afternoon, Gladys wiped her brow with the silk scarf she was impatiently trying to shove into her battered suitcase. The thought of being late for the troop-ship that was bound for England made her sweat even more. If she didn’t get out of Naples soon, she honestly thought she’d lose her mind. Sitting on the suitcase, she snapped it shut, then noticed she hadn’t packed the silky red ball gown she’d regularly worn on stage over the last six months.

  How she’d loved the feel of the fabric when she’d worn it for her very first overseas ENSA performance – the slither of silk falling over her slender, tanned body, the deep colour of the fabric that brought out the darkness of her long brunette curls, and the luscious redness of her smiling lips. When she’d sung, swaying to the rhythm of the music she and her fellow musicians played, she had relished the feel of the silk clinging to her hips and breasts, emphasizing her long legs and flat stomach. She’d never felt more vibrant or empowered in her entire life. Catching a glimpse of her wan reflection in the bedroom mirror brought tears to Gladys’s eyes; could this be the same girl who had landed in Italy such a short time ago? She’d been brimming with confidence, excitement, curiosity and a determination to bring a smile to every weary serviceman’s face. She wasn’t just there for fun; Gladys had been on a mission to create happiness wherever she went. ENSA was indeed an accolade in her career, but she also saw it as a duty, her part of the war effort. ‘Well, I obviously took that belief one step too far,’ she thought cynically to herself. She’d been so star-struck, so green and keen. She simply hadn’t been able to believe her big blue eyes when their ship had finally docked in the Bay of Naples. She remembered now that one of the girls had pointed to a plume of dark smoke curling up from a high grey peak that dominated the headland.

  ‘Good God! Is that the latest Jerry bomb drop?’ she cried.

  The sailors eagerly helping the girls to disembark had guffawed at her naivety.

  ‘It’s bloody Vesuvius!’ several of them pointed out. ‘It’s a live volcano – that’s why it’s smoking.’

  Gladys had gaped in amazement; she’d heard about Vesuvius, seen pictures of it in library books, but nothing matched the dramatic reality of it. Her naughty friend Pam, who played the double bass in the All-Girls’ ENSA Swing Band, had given Gladys a nudge in the ribs.

  ‘Forget volcanoes, sweetheart. Take a look at all these gorgeous fellas who haven’t seen a woman in months!’ her best friend had giggled as she slipped her bare arm through Gladys’s, and laughing together they’d strutted ashore.

  ‘But that was then,’ she remembered mournfully. ‘And how very naive I was.’

  Lifting the heavy suitcase with an equally heavy heart, Gladys determinedly didn’t look back at the red silk ball gown that lay in a crumpled heap on the floor where she’d left it.

  1. The Cowshed

  Gladys dropped her now even more battered suitcase on the moorland track where she’d stopped to take in deep breaths of clean air. After an arduous sea-trip in a packed troop-ship, followed by a long journey on several packed and smoky trains, she was grateful for the fresh moorland breeze.

  ‘I’m back at the Phoenix,’ she muttered dejectedly.

  After her surprise appearance in Leeds, where Gladys had emphatically told her parents she’d left ENSA for health reasons, she’d refused to answer any more questions and registered at the local labour exchange, where she had asked to return to her former munitions work at the Phoenix Factory on the Lancashire moors.

  ‘No problem, lovie,’ the woman behind the counter had briskly replied. ‘Four years into the war and we need more bombs than ever. Churchill’s so desperate for more ammo he’s now conscripting women of all ages; they’ll welcome you back with open arms,’ she said as she handed over the forms for Gladys to fill in.

  Her father, sitting on one of the benches in the exchange, didn’t return his daughter’s awkward smile when she announced, ‘I’m a Bomb Girl – again!’

  Rising, Mr Johnson put on his flat cap, even though the sun was hot outside, then gently drew his daughter’s arm through his. ‘I’ll never understand why you’ve given up your ENSA posting,’ he grumbled as they stepped out into the high street, where sand bags were stacked against shop windows and people hurried by carrying their gas masks and net bags containing small packets of rationed food. ‘You were on’t top of world when you got called up and now you won’t even talk about it.’

  Gladys’s large blue eyes clouded over. ‘It just wasn’t for me, Dad.’

  Mr Johnson snorted dismissively. ‘Don’t give me that, our Glad!’ he protested. ‘It were all your dreams come true: playing your alto sax and singing on a stage every day.’

  ‘People change, Dad,’ Gladys said as she hurried her grumbling father past a woman pushing an old rusty pram loaded down with coal.

  Seeing his precious daughter’s troubled eyes brim with tears, Mr Johnson’s tender heart contracted. He knew instinctively something had happened to his little girl out there; she certainly wasn’t the bright-eyed, shining, talented girl her family and friends had waved off in February. Something had radically altered her former buoyant personality, and, more shocking than that, he hadn’t heard Gladys sing once since she’d come back, nor play her saxophone, which had stayed locked in its case under her bed. It was simply incomprehensible to him that his daughter, a born songbird, was now mute. He sighed but said nothing. If her younger brother, Les, had been home, maybe he could have cracked Gladys’s hard shell – she’d always responded to his
teasing laughter and cheeky questions – but he was at the Front, somewhere in northern Europe was the last they’d heard. Maybe returning to the Phoenix would bring a smile back to Gladys’s face, Mr Johnson thought. Maybe being with old friends and in familiar places would help ease whatever the pain was that she was suffering.

  Picking up her suitcase, Gladys carried on up the track that led to the cowshed that she’d specifically asked to return to when she reregistered at the Phoenix. She wasn’t sure with whom she’d be sharing, but it would be comforting to be back in the place where she’d spent so many happy hours. Pushing open the door, she stepped inside and quite spontaneously called out, ‘Anybody home?’

  Getting no reply, Gladys peered into the bedrooms, which were empty, with the curtains drawn. She looked around in surprise after she had opened them to let in the light. The rooms were dusty, so clearly nobody had been living there, and the wood-burning stove, which had kept them warm through the hard winter, was stone cold. Leaving her case in her old bedroom, Gladys sat on the doorstep and gazed out over the moors, where pheasants cackled and curlews called. Of course Kit and Violet weren’t living there any more. Kit had written to tell her that she and Ian had bought a big old farmhouse on the Pennine moors, and Violet was living in the Phoenix’s domestic accommodation with her husband, Arthur, and their new baby, Stevie. But why had nobody else been allocated the cowshed as their digs? It was a decent enough place, even if it was a little breezy in the harsh winter months.

  Maybe other Bomb Girls preferred the convenience of the on-site factory accommodation to the renovated cowshed.

  Gladys glanced back into the main sitting room, which was eerily still. She smiled as she recalled the constant babble of noise she, Kit and Violet used to make as they rushed to clock on at the factory or returned home exhausted after a twelve-hour shift. Kit had been the best at rekindling the wood-burner with whatever she could collect from the moors, and Violet had never wasted time in filling the little kettle for a much-needed brew. There’d been occasional sadness in this place, Gladys remembered, and dark secrets too, which had slowly unfolded over the year as the girls got to know each other. But, oh, there had been so much laughter and joy! Gladys would never forget the first time they’d sung together, and the evening she’d come up with the idea of the Bomb Girls’ Swing Band. Neither would she forget dressing Violet on her wedding day or the sight of Kit’s son, Billy, toddling around the dining table when he’d finally been reunited with his mother. These women were her best and most beloved friends; along with Maggie, Myrtle and Nora, they were as close to her as family. An overwhelming sense of need brought a lump to Gladys’s tense throat; the sooner she could see her friends, touch them and hug them, the better. Leaping to her feet, she quickly closed the door of the cowshed, then retraced her steps, lighter now without her suitcase, down the lane to the Phoenix Bomb Factory.

  Kit and Violet were sat around a metal dining table in the noisy canteen, which rang with the strains of the Andrews Sisters’ ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy’.

  ‘I can never hear that song without thinking of Glad,’ Kit said with a heavy sigh. ‘Remember how beautiful she looked up on the stage, holding her sax in one hand as she clicked her fingers and swayed her hips. She was a sensation!’

  ‘We weren’t so bad either!’ cheeky Maggie quipped as she set down her plate of red cabbage, potato pie and mushy peas. ‘Even in our overalls we looked good.’

  ‘I preferred wearing our ball gowns,’ Nora added as she set down her plate too. ‘I’ve always thought mi bum looked big in mi overalls,’ she admitted, with not a trace of embarrassment.

  ‘Really!’ Myrtle exclaimed as she took a sip of hot, strong tea. ‘There’s a war on and you’re complaining about having a big bottom!’

  Nora smiled her sweet, guileless, gap-toothed grin at the older woman, who’d become more of a mother figure than a friend since the death of Nora’s mother, who’d been killed in a bomb attack along with Nora’s younger sister.

  ‘I’ll never get a fella if I’ve got a big bum,’ Nora joked.

  Myrtle rolled her eyes and looked disapproving, but it was hard to hide the love she had for the gawky girl who wore her heart on her sleeve.

  ‘Men like something substantial to get hold of,’ she said reassuringly.

  ‘What, like the sideboard!’ Nora tittered.

  As the women around the table burst into raucous laughter, Myrtle appeared momentarily distracted – was she seeing things? But as the tanned, long-legged figure she’d spotted walking through the canteen came closer, she couldn’t believe her eyes. Could this really be Gladys, who, when last heard of was on tour with ENSA? As incredulous as she was observant, Myrtle was immediately struck by a physical difference in her dear friend. She was distinctly thinner, and Myrtle saw she’d lost the happy glow in her eyes, and an infectious smile no longer played around her full red lips. Myrtle gave an involuntary shiver; it was as if something had wilfully reined in Gladys’s previously wild extrovert character, replacing it with a sadder, older, more sombre woman altogether. What on earth was going on?

  As Gladys headed towards her laughing friends, Myrtle was surprised by the unusually cautious smile on her face. Even her voice when she called out ‘Hiya!’ didn’t have the ring of joyful confidence Myrtle so clearly remembered.

  The other girls, like Myrtle, were as shocked as she was at the unexpected sight of Gladys, who, they’d imagined, they wouldn’t be seeing again for many months, possibly years. Maggie all but choked on a lump of pastry, and Nora just gawped. Violet and Kit were the first on their feet, embracing Gladys in a bear hug that, when combined with those of Nora and Maggie, followed by a discreet kiss on the cheek from Myrtle, all but knocked Gladys off her feet!

  ‘What a surprise!’

  ‘Why didn’t you let us know you were coming?’

  ‘How long can you stay?’

  ‘I love your tan!’

  ‘You’ve lost weight.’

  ‘Sit down, have a cup of tea.’

  Barraged with questions, more hugs and mugs of tea, Gladys sank into a vacant chair.

  ‘I came home a few weeks ago … I’m not going back,’ she announced flatly.

  Her statement stopped short all the curious chatter.

  ‘NOT going back?’ spluttered Maggie, whose secret dream had always been to join Gladys and her ENSA troupe.

  ‘WHY?’ cried Nora, whose romantic head was full of images of singing to handsome Desert Rats under palm trees.

  Gladys put on a tight bright smile. ‘It didn’t suit me, all the travelling. I got ill, had to come home, no choice,’ she finished firmly.

  Kit and Violet exchanged a quick, knowing look. They instinctively sensed that Gladys was holding something back. Between them, they had harsh personal experience of keeping dark secrets for far too long. It had taken Kit almost a year until she’d been forced to open up about her illegitimate son in Ireland, and Violet had lied for nearly the same amount of time about her abusive husband in Coventry. As Maggie opened her pretty mouth to ask yet another question, Myrtle quickly stemmed the young girl’s curiosity.

  ‘Let’s not be too demanding,’ she chided as she readjusted her winged, diamanté-tipped glasses. ‘Gladys has given you an explanation – we need pry no further.’

  Gladys shot Myrtle a grateful look. ‘It’s wonderful to be back at the Phoenix,’ she said with real affection.

  ‘It can’t be better than –’ Maggie was stopped mid-speech by a fierce glance from Myrtle.

  ‘But the cowshed is empty,’ Gladys hurried on. ‘Nobody seems to live there.’

  ‘You could live on-site if you don’t want to be on your own,’ Violet suggested. ‘It’s convenient for clocking on,’ she added with a giggle. ‘No running down that wet cobbled lane in the pouring rain.’

  ‘Or you could come and live with us,’ Kit said warmly.

  ‘She lives in a big posh house up on’t moors,’ Maggie chipped in. ‘Black-and-white
timbered, like summat out of Wuthering Heights.’

  ‘With SIX bedrooms and a drive,’ Nora elaborated.

  Kit laughed off their exaggerated descriptions.

  ‘Glory be to God, it’s a big owd heap!’ she said in an Irish accent that was softening after months of living in England.

  ‘And glorious views of the Pennines,’ Myrtle murmured appreciatively.

  ‘I can’t wait to see it,’ said Gladys eagerly, then added uncertainly, ‘but I think I want to stick with the cowshed. I know it well and I like it there.’

  ‘For sure, if that’s what you want,’ Kit replied. ‘It’s only been empty a few months. It’s summer too, so not much damp.’

  ‘But do you really want to live there on your own?’ Violet asked anxiously.

  Faced with the question, Gladys realized she very much wanted to live on her own. There’d be far fewer questions if she was all by herself, and she’d have time to heal her wounds in private.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ she replied cautiously.

  ‘Maybe me and Nora could move in?’ Maggie giggled.

  Seeing the look of alarm on Gladys’s face, Myrtle quickly intervened. ‘Let’s give Gladys time to get her breath back, shall we?’

  Charmed by the idea of living independently, away from home, Maggie wasn’t going to let the idea go.

  ‘Maybe later on,’ she said with a wink in Nora’s direction. ‘Imagine the fun the three of us could get up to.’

  Determined to steer the cheeky giggling girls away from the heady idea of cohabiting with her, Gladys said briskly, ‘It’ll need a good tidy-up.’

  ‘We’ll lend a hand,’ Violet and Kit said together.

  Gladys shook her head. ‘You’ve both got enough to do,’ she said firmly. I’ll enjoy giving the cowshed a good cleaning and mopping; it’ll be like putting my roots down all over again.’

  Nora whispered melodramatically, ‘Won’t you get scared up yon in’t dark?’