The Cobweb Cage

by Marina Oliver

  She wasn't at all sure what she was helping to make, apart from the fact it was something to do with guns. She had a simple machine to operate, just a few moves to learn as she pushed and twisted levers, and it was all desperately, mind-numbingly boring. And the workshop was so noisy she couldn't distract herself by talking to the other girls.

  The girl on the next machine laughed when Poppy complained once during their dinner break.

  'I know. Me brother worked 'ere before 'e enlisted, an' yer should 'a seen the fuss 'e created when 'e knew women were goin' ter do 'is job! Yer'd 'a thought it needed a year's trainin' ter learn 'ow, not five minutes!'

  On Christmas Eve they finished an hour earlier.

  'Two days off!' she sighed. 'No more work till Monday! Yer goin' 'ome ternight, Poppy? Where d'yer live?'

  'No,' Poppy said quickly. 'I – I can't. I live too far away.'

  She smiled slightly and scurried out, avoiding the other girls who were calling cheery greetings to one another. She didn't dare go home. She knew that once she had Mary's arms round her she'd never find the courage to come back. Going home meant confessing failure, admitting she couldn't manage on her own. She'd have to face the accusations of stealing Ivy's money. Everyone would laugh at her, and Poppy could bear the thought of that even less than she could endure the prospect of endless tedious toil in the factories.

  Her room was at the top of a tall, narrow house. There was a small fireplace, and she was permitted to have a fire, and cook on it if she wished, but she couldn't do much with just one saucepan. Most of the time she existed on bread and jam, and fish and chips she bought from the nearby fried fish shop. She kept the fire for boiling water for tea, and to wash with.

  Tonight, though, as she dragged her weary feet homewards, she thought of the two days ahead. Suddenly hungry for the sort of food she'd had at home she turned into the market, spending her wages recklessly without a care for anything else, buying some scrag end of mutton, bacon and onions, carrots, parsnips, potatoes and turnips. She would have a good stew for once, it would last her all Christmas, and probably several more days.

  It would keep her busy, too, stop her thinking about what they were doing at home, whether they missed her.

  She hurried to her room and left the food, then almost ran to the coal merchant's, where she bought the biggest sackful she could manage. She would enjoy Christmas, she would be warm and she would eat as much as she could. Why, then, was she crying silently as she dragged the coal up the four flights of stairs to her lovely, independent room in her life of freedom?

  *

  'My darling Lucy,

  'It seems like two years rather than two months since I was with you. Leaving you again to come back to this hell-hole was the hardest thing I ever did, and the week we had together was wonderful. I'd hoped to have leave for our first anniversary, but it wasn't to be. And now we have endured our second Christmas apart. Thank you for the hamper you sent, your cakes and jam are the best food I've ever tasted, and certainly better than what we get here in the canteens. And unlike most of the chaps I eat at several different ones when I'm driving around, so I can truthfully say they are all as bad as each other.

  'I pray with all my heart that the stalemate which continues here will break soon, and I can be back with you for ever. Especially when I received your last letter with the marvellous, fantastic news that you are going to make me a father! It's unbelievable, incredible, but every time I think of it I want to dance for joy.

  'You must not dream of continuing your job. You must give it up at once, and take care of yourself and little Lucy (or little Johnny, whichever it is to be) for my sake.

  'There is little to do here as a driver, in the way I expected at first. But I am driving an ambulance with the casualties to the hospitals. When I see what they have suffered I feel a sense of guilt that I am not enduring the same horrors, but then I know my skills in driving, and even more so in keeping the motors going when they break down, are better used in this way. Sometimes we would not make it if I weren't able to mend parts and contrive makeshift replacements from all sorts of oddments. Someone not used to the engines or the working of a motor, just driving one, would be unable to cope.

  'Has Mom heard any more from Poppy? If she was going to write she could have given an address. I suppose she is in Birmingham, as the letter was posted there, but I wonder why she did not wish us to reply? Perhaps she was afraid Pa would go and fetch her back. And it was very odd she didn't say more about what her job was, almost as if she was ashamed of it. I pray she has not fallen in with bad company. She's an odd girl, moody, and one could never tell what her thoughts were. Not like Marigold, who is so sweet and open with everyone, or Ivy, who has rages and sulks, but can be loving when she wants.

  'I'm pleased she's coming to see you for a day or so. It was kind of you to ask her. But you mustn't let her tire you, demanding to see everything in the entire town. I know what she's like, she'll want to draw everything. She sent me a very clear drawing of little Dick for Christmas. She'd done it when he was a month old. I wonder how he and Marigold are enjoying their palatial life in Richard's mansion? Well, our child may one day be invited there! What a turn up!

  'It's time for lights out, and I want to post this first thing in the morning, so I'll say goodnight, my darling, and God bless you both,

  'Your loving husband,

  'Johnny.'

  *

  'Everybody's left me, it's horrid now,' Ivy complained.

  She and Marigold were sharing their old bed. Dick lay in a wicker basket beside Marigold.

  'But we all have to leave sometime,' Marigold tried to console her. 'You'll want to leave one day, to get a job or get married. It's normal.'

  'I don't ever want to leave home, and who'd want to marry me with my horrid scars?'

  Impulsively Marigold turned to hug her, and Ivy snuggled close.

  'Do they still bother you? They really can't be seen if you keep your hair the way it is,' Marigold said. 'I'm so sorry, I always blamed myself for leaving you alone. I want to make it up to you.'

  'I do love you, Marigold. Better than Lucy, she can only talk about Johnny and their silly baby! And better than horrid Poppy, she was always cross and she stole my money.'

  'But I gave you some to replace it, and I'm sure she only borrowed it to help her leave. You see, she'll come home one day and give it back to you.'

  'Then shall I have to give you your money back?'

  Marigold laughed. 'Of course not, love. It was a present. You'll be able to buy lots more paint and drawing paper.'

  'I wish I could go to an art school,' Ivy said wistfully.

  'But then you'd have to leave us, and I thought you didn't want to leave home?'

  'It's different with all of you gone. Johnny won't ever come home now he's got Lucy, Poppy will find someone else to love, and you love Dick better than me.'

  'I love you all,' Marigold said firmly. 'Dick's my baby and of course I love him, but that doesn't stop me loving you and Mom and Pa just as much as ever I did before.'

  'You haven't enough love to go round.'

  Marigold thought for a moment. Was that true? Had she, in her passion for Richard and now for his son, ever reduced her love for her family?

  'It's odd,' she replied slowly, 'but as you have more people to love, the amount of love you've got to share out somehow seems to get bigger.'

  Ivy was growing sleepy.

  'Stay here with us, Marigold. Stay with me for ever. I could help look after Dick. I like being an aunt.'

  Marigold didn't reply, and soon Ivy was breathing deeply, fast asleep, cradled in her sister's arms.

  *

  'Miss Smith, you're not concentrating!'

  'I'm sorry, I'm so cold.'

  She remembered to turn towards him so that he could lip read her words. The noise was fearsome within the workshop, and he was deaf too. Not surprising, Poppy thought, if he'd been forced to endure the clangs and rattles and whirring
and shrieking noises the machines made as they sliced through metal and transferred it with teeth-rasping clatters to the next stage where it was thumped and banged into shape.

  'Then wear warmer clothes. We can't afford too many rejects or we'll never win the war.'

  The foreman, an elderly, bent, and perpetually bad-tempered man, moved on, and Poppy's neighbour gave her a sympathetic grin.

  'Don't let old grumps get to you,' she advised when they stopped for their midday meal, and had been able to escape outside to sit on the canal bank.

  Poppy shivered.

  'I'm freezing,' she complained, 'but I had to get away from that racket for a few minutes.'

  'It's a lot warmer than it was back in February. Are you ill?'

  'I don't know,' Poppy said miserably. 'I had a dreadful cold last week, and had to stay away from work for three days. I haven't been warm since.'

  Too ill to fetch coal, too miserable to care whether she ate or not, Poppy had huddled under the inadequate blankets, wearing almost all the clothes she possessed in order to keep warm. No one else in the house had seemed to care, certainly no one had offered to help her or brought her food. She thought back longingly to the way neighbours would have rallied round at home, Mrs Tasker bringing in hot stews, others coming in to keep the fire made up, if she'd been in a similar situation there.

  In big cities they didn't seem to care. In fact all her dreams of a life of freedom and happiness had withered long ago, and it was a struggle just to keep going.

  Part of the reason she was still cold was that as she'd staggered, half unconscious, home from work on that awful day when she'd felt too ill to care if she lived or died, her purse had been stolen with all her money in it. She always carried it with her, for she dared leave nothing valuable in the room, which had no lock. It was two more days until she had this week's wages, and she'd been living on what meagre stores she'd accumulated in her room. But stale bread and mouldy jam couldn't keep her warm. And now that was finished and she had nothing.

  'Haven't you got any dinner?' her companion, a woman in her early twenties who lived in Aston, asked.

  Charlotte Harrison was the widow of a regular soldier, an officer who had gone to France with the Expeditionary Force and been killed within the first few days. Although she was much better educated than the rest of the girls in the factory she never put on airs, and when they realised she was determined to work as hard as the rest of them she was accepted as an equal.

  Gradually, as she made Poppy eat some of her own dinner, good beef sandwiches, she heard the story. She didn't comment, but Poppy felt more cheerful as well as warmer when they went back into the workshop.

  At the end of the day Charlotte was waiting for Poppy when the girls poured out of the building.

  'Poppy, will you come home with me for a few hours? For a meal and a chance to get warm. That will help you get better more quickly. I don't think you are properly well yet.'

  The kindness was more than Poppy could bear. She began to sob, and went unresisting, snuffling into her handkerchief all the way to Charlotte's home on the tram.

  It was a small house, one of a terrace, but better by far than her own home. Charlotte made up the fire, which had been banked down all day, and hung a kettle over the flames.

  'We'll have a cup of tea first, and then you can tell me all about it,' she said cheerfully, bustling about and getting a large fruit cake out of her larder. 'This is just something to keep us going, we'll have a proper meal later.'

  In the end, as she prepared potatoes and saw to an appetising stew which had been simmering all day in the oven, she heard all about Poppy's home, and the freedom which had turned into a worse prison.

  'How old is your sister?' she asked quietly, after Poppy told her about Scrap's death.

  'She was ten then, she'll be eleven now. It was her birthday in January.'

  'I doubt if a child that age could know anything about poisons. Not enough to prepare poisoned food,' Charlotte said thoughtfully. 'And it would have been a very wicked thing to have done. I just can't believe a young girl could be so evil.'

  'You don't know Ivy,' Poppy said mutinously, but to hear the actions she accused her sister of called wicked and evil made her pause.

  Had she been too hasty? Might Scrap have scavenged for food and found some rat-poison? It would have been easy enough. The houses were plagued with rats and it was a regular chore to set bait. Not everyone was as careful as they might be to keep it out of reach of domestic pets.

  Seeing the beginnings of doubt Charlotte took advantage of it. She liked Poppy, had admired her determination, her grim concentration on the task at work, and suspected for some time Poppy was younger than the seventeen she claimed.

  'Your parents must be frantic with worry about you,'she said. 'Have you told them where you are?'

  'I sent them a letter saying I was all right, soon after I got here and found a job,' Poppy defended herself. 'And I wrote again after Christmas.'

  'Don't you think you ought to go home and see them? No doubt they are used to the idea of your being here now, and you have proved you can look after yourself, so they might be happy to let you stay.'

  'But I can't, can I?' Poppy said bleakly. 'I can't look after myself. It's not at all how I thought it would be. I'm even too tired to go out to the cinema or anything.'

  'Dinner's ready. Will you lay the cloth for me, Poppy, the knives and forks are in the table drawer, with the cloth I'm using.'

  Charlotte judged it wiser to say no more yet. Poppy had admitted she was in need of help. Soon she might wish of her own accord to visit her parents. Undue pressure might make her stubborn.

  Poppy sat back, replete, licking her lips.

  'That was even better than Mom's cooking,' she said with a shy smile. 'Thank you, Charlotte, for helping me. I'd better go home now.'

  'Why don't you stay here for the night? It's getting late and your room will be cold. I've a spare bed and we can soon put some bricks in it to air it.'

  Poppy knew she ought to refuse, but she suddenly realised she had no money for the tram fare, she didn't know where she was, and certainly couldn't find her way back to her room in the dark. She was warm, comfortably fed, and had the prospect of a good bed with a hot, flannel-covered brick to cuddle up to.

  'If you don't mind? Yes, please, I'd love to.'

  On the following day Charlotte insisted on giving Poppy a few shillings so that she could buy food and coal. Poppy vowed to repay her as soon as she had her wages. Charlotte had been tempted to ask Poppy to come and lodge with her, but restrained her impulse, feeling it would be better for the girl to go back to her parents. Now the cracks in Poppy's determination had appeared, Charlotte judged they would deepen faster if she had to return to her cold, cheerless attic.

  Two weeks later Poppy gave in. Shyly she told Charlotte she had written to her parents asking if they would have her back, and received a letter telling her to come at once.

  *

  'When am I going to be able to leave hospital?' Richard demanded for the hundredth time.

  The pretty blonde nurse playfully slapped his hand. She made no attempt to disguise her favouritism.

  'Your leg is still not strong enough, Hans. You were fortunate not to lose it. If you'd had to stay in the field hospital they'd have had it off within days. They're nothing but butchers there, not surgeons at all. Besides, we don't want to lose our most handsome patient. Be thankful for your good fortune. And until we discover who you are, or your memory returns, where can we send you?'

  He had been in one hospital after another for almost a year. He knew he'd been incredibly fortunate, both in the medical treatment he'd received, which was due to his borrowed officer's uniform, and his continuing ability to pretend loss of memory.

  Sometimes he wondered if he talked in English in his sleep, or during the spells of fever he'd suffered during the bout of pneumonia he'd had that winter, but no-one ever showed any suspicion. If they'd had the sli
ghtest doubt about him he would, he knew, be interrogated ruthlessly, injuries or not.

  In other ways his luck had not held. His wounds had been extensive and taken a long time to heal, with many relapses. He had been moved, this last time, to a converted church in a small town on the Baltic coast. The sea air was supposed to be good for almost convalescent officers, and many of the municipal buildings had been requisitioned for hospitals. But he was about as far as he could be from the western front, and the problem of how to get home was not made easier.

  If he could reach a port he could attempt to stow away to a neutral country like Norway. He could demand, alternatively, to be returned to the fighting, but without an identity that might be difficult, and he was far from fit enough. Or he could somehow make his way overland to Holland or Switzerland. From there he would have a good prospect of getting home by going round the lines of trenches that stretched from the borders of Switzerland to the English Channel.

  'Time for your medicine.' The pretty nurse had returned.

  'What's the date? I lose track, every day's so like another.'

  'The last day of March, 1916. When's your birthday, Hans?'

  He frowned as if trying to think.

  'I don't know.'

  They were always throwing unexpected questions at him, in an attempt to surprise some recollection. He suspected that once he appeared to begin remembering things they would redouble their efforts, so he adopted a policy of utter blankness, even sometimes pretending to forget incidents which had occurred a few weeks or months earlier.

  'Never mind, we'll celebrate your birthday on the day you were found.'

  He shuddered, not pretending. The agony of that journey was still vivid, both the physical pain, and the mental torture at having failed to cross the lines back into France.

  'Do you have a sweetheart, Hans?'