A Strong Hand to Hold

Home > Nonfiction > A Strong Hand to Hold > Page 21
A Strong Hand to Hold Page 21

by Anne Bennett


  In fact, tales of their exploits were told far and wide. Beattie, who’d become a great friend of Maureen’s over the years, had told them what it was like living amongst them as she’d dropped into Maureen’s one evening in June, just a month or so after Linda’s fourteenth birthday. ‘Taken over a shed they have, the Yanks, by the railway station in Sutton Coldfield,’ Beattie had said. ‘A big shed, mind. Have to be bleeding big ’cos that’s where they’re dealing with all the US mail. Imagine that? But I tell you, Linda; you can’t walk down the bleeding street without being accosted. Our Victoria’s in her element,’ she went on. ‘Wearing make-up now – lipstick, rouge, the lot. And the clothes she wears! I said to her the other day, is there any point putting that on? There was so little of it, you know. Course, she wasn’t best pleased and her mother said I should leave her alone.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Beattie,’ Maureen grinned. ‘Don’t be on about her all the time. The girl’s only young.’

  ‘You don’t know her,’ Beattie said darkly. ‘And she’s not only young, Maureen, she’s a bloody fool.’

  Maureen had pushed a cup of tea and plate of scones across the kitchen table. Beattie stopped to draw breath, and taking up a scone she split it and buttered it lightly, before she said, ‘I don’t know how you get the stuff to make things like this.’

  ‘Well, it’s just flour, a bit of fat and a bit of milk.’ Maureen was glad to get off the subject of Beattie’s niece. ‘It fills a hole, anyway.’

  ‘It certainly does,’ Beattie agreed. ‘Have you tried the horsemeat yet? That fills a bleeding hole as well.’

  ‘Aye, Peggy got some down the Bull Ring,’ Maureen said. ‘Jenny got some too, didn’t she, Linda?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Linda answered, but added. ‘She didn’t dare tell her mom and the other one though. They think it was beef. You wouldn’t know the difference, ’cept it takes more cooking. It’s better than the whalemeat they sell, any road. I never thought I’d eat that stuff.’

  ‘Aye, but that’s not so bad made into fish pie, and at least it’s something else to eat on a Friday,’ Maureen said.

  ‘And better than dried egg that doesn’t taste like egg at all,’ Beattie put in.

  ‘Still and all, it makes a meal,’ Maureen said. ‘And God knows we can’t afford to be choosy. Stop moaning now and let Linda tell you her bit of news.’

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s about what I’ll do after July. You know, when I leave school,’ Linda told her.

  ‘What’s that then?’

  A smile played around Linda’s mouth as she remembered back to that day nearly two years before and how excited she’d been, but she’d said as nonchalantly as possible, ‘I’ve got a job in the jewellery quarter in Hockley.

  ‘God it took such a hammering I’m surprised there’s anything left of it.’

  Linda nodded, ‘Yeah quite a lot of it did go up in flames, but there’s still a fair bit left and they don’t make jewellery now.”

  ‘Oh, what do they make then?

  ‘Well it’s all sort of hush hush,’ Linda said. ‘No one’s really supposed to know, but they make radar parts.’

  ‘How do you know that.’

  The head teacher, you know Mrs Daniels, told me,’ Linda said. ‘Jenny told me to go and see her ’cos she knows I’ve always wanted to work there. Anyway she recommended I try for it and thought I ought to know what they do now. Apparently a neighbour works in one of the workshops and told her.

  ‘Good on you, kid,’ Beattie said sincerely. ‘You go for it, if it’s what you want.’

  And it was what Linda had wanted. Most of her friends, including her best friend Carole, were going into dirty noisy munitions factories where people said the smell of cordite would near choke you to death. Jenny had said that Linda might have to fight for what she wanted. And so, armed with an astonishingly good report and a personal recommendation from her headmistress, she’d set out with her knees knocking together for an interview at Wall’s Jewellers in Pitford Street just three days after the calliper had been removed.

  Linda knew she’d looked good that day. She’d worn a blue suit that had been one of Vicky’s. Jenny had put it away hoping Linda would grow to fill it, and she had. She wore a crisp white blouse under it and Jenny had loaned her a pair of her blue shoes. She’d offered her a loan of her precious silk stockings as well, but Linda refused them. Her legs were now as straight as anyone else’s, but they were thin, almost shapeless and still badly scarred, and though the doctors and nurses said the scarring would fade, Linda was very self-conscious about them and was happier with them covered up with thick lisle.

  Her hair had grown long down her back and she’d worn it in plaits to school. After washing it the night before the interview, Jenny had brushed it until it gleamed the following morning and then plaited it into one long braid, which she rolled into a bun shape at the back of Linda’s head and fastened with grips. Dressed in her good clothes and with her hair up, Linda was surprised how old she looked suddenly. It was as if she’d shed her childhood.

  She’d felt the familiar butterflies in her tummy when she alighted from the tram in the city centre and made her way through the little cobbled streets by St Paul’s. The Wall’s building, like most of the places, had once been a dwelling house, but had been converted to a workshop.

  She’d been interviewed by a Mrs Jenkins and Linda hadn’t been in her office five minutes when she knew she was a snobby cow. She had a long nose, ice-cold blue eyes that glittered spitefully, and a thin tight mouth, and she held the report and headmistress’s letter as if both were infected with anthrax.

  Still Linda remained polite and answered her questions respectfully, and to her delight, got the job. She was better pleased when she was shown the fascinating workshop and met her boss Mr Tollit, whom she liked on sight. To her great relief, he told her there was little communication between the workshop and the office staff. ‘If you’re ever summoned there, lass, it’s usually to deal with some complaint,’ Mr Tollit had said.

  Linda had thought it plain daft that the workshop and office staff didn’t mix, but then she wasn’t there to change the system, but work within it. She remembered so well the first day she started work. She finished school on Friday 17 July and had arranged to begin work the following Monday. ‘Take a wee holiday first,’ Jenny had urged. But Linda wanted no holiday. She wanted to get out and earn some money, she had a big debt to repay.

  The workshop was made of wood; it was low and dark, and reminded Linda of a very large garden shed. Very little light came from the small grimy windows that looked out onto the narrow cobbled street. The bare floorboards had such deep cracks between them that Linda thought if anything fell down them, it would be the devil’s own job to get it out again. She was to find out this was very true.

  Mr Tollit was a fairly old man who’d been working in the same place for thirty-five years. ‘Of course, before the war we made jewellery, and blooming good jewellery too,’ he’d said. ‘But now we all make radar parts, and in time, you’ll learn to make them too.’

  Linda didn’t doubt that she would, because she wanted to succeed at this job. She was seated like all the others, mostly women all older than her and another man besides Mr Tollit, on a bare three-legged stool. It took her bottom days to get used to the hardness of that stool, she remembered. Their benches were circular with semi-circular recesses cut out where the stool was placed, and a gas-light hung above each bench sending a pool of light over it all.

  There was very little noise and people didn’t talk much as they worked. Linda soon realized the job of assembling the radar parts needed precision and concentration, and she talked as little as the rest. Often though, they had Workers’ Playtime on the wireless and that eased the boredom a little. Mr Tollit was pleased with Linda. By the end of the first week, he’d told her she had jeweller’s fingers and she was ridiculously pleased to find something she was good at.

  Linda had been at work just over
a week when the sirens went off as the O’Learys were sitting down to tea. No one could quite believe it, for it had been a full year since any air raid at all. ‘Maybe it’s a false alarm,’ Eileen said.

  ‘And maybe it isn’t,’ Jenny replied, getting to her feet because she was on duty. ‘I’d best be off as soon as possible, just in case,’ she said. Then she looked at Linda and said, ‘Go down the shelter if it turns out to be the real thing, OK?’ She knew it was no good asking her mother and grandmother.

  Linda’s eyes were alarmed. She didn’t want to go and sit in some shelter on her own. Jenny saw her fear and said, ‘Go next door, if you like. The Patterson’s won’t mind you sharing.’

  ‘Can’t I go to Gran’s?’

  ‘Not if there’s a raid on over here, you can’t,’ Jenny answered briefly.

  Eileen had got to her feet. ‘That’s it,’ she sneered. ‘Look after the girl. You haven’t a thought in your head for your mother and myself.’

  ‘You won’t go to any shelter,’ Jenny said wearily. ‘You never have.’

  ‘I didn’t say anything about a shelter. I’m talking about you expressing concern for us.’

  ‘Oh Grandmother, please. I must go,’ Jenny said. ‘If this is a raid, everybody could be needed.’

  ‘Then go!’ Eileen said. ‘All your life you have put other people before your dear mother.’

  Knowing it was no good arguing, Jenny said not a word, but just glared at her grandmother before she left the kitchen and went upstairs for her coat. Linda, left in the kitchen, felt the old lady’s eyes bore into her back as she collected up the plates. She said nothing and tried not to look at her, but carried the dirty things to the sink as they heard the barrage of ack-ack guns barking into the night and the distant drone of the planes.

  ‘See what you’ve done, girl!’ Eileen spat out at last, as Linda filled the kettle for hot water.

  ‘Me! What have I done?’ Linda cried. Normally she didn’t retaliate, but she felt the accusation was unfair.

  ‘Destroyed the family, that’s what,’ the old lady said. ‘You’ve set the children against their mother.’

  ‘I ain’t! I never did! That ain’t fair!’ Linda had burst out.

  And it wasn’t fair, yet she knew what the old lady meant. If sides had to be taken in this family conflict, Linda knew whose side the family would take. They couldn’t understand, and in no way condoned, the way their mother and grandmother treated Linda. Martin and Francis weren’t averse to saying so, and Jenny of course consistently championed Linda.

  But it wasn’t Linda’s fault. If Jenny’s mother and grandmother had been the slightest bit welcoming, instead of treating her as if she was invisible half the time and the rest turning on her viciously, she’d have been friendly with them, if only in gratitude for allowing her to share their home. Many times in that first few months, Linda remembered how she’d wanted to walk out, and it was only the thought of Jenny’s face that made her stay put. Then there was also, of course, the little matter of where she was to go; she’d never been over-burdened with choice. However, from the day she got a job, she knew she’d stay because her wages would ease the financial burden considerably. For that reason alone, she would have to learn to put up with the old dragons.

  She’d heard Jenny call goodbye and the slam of the front door, and she had looked at the old lady, drawn herself to her full height and said coldly, ‘Do you know, I think you’re mad, quite mad?’

  Then she’d walked past her startled, hate-filled face, glad the old lady would be unaware of her own trembling limbs, opened the back door and stepped into the garden. Although the raid was still in progress, the thumps and crashes were far away, by the city centre. Jenny told her she wasn’t to go to Maureen’s in an air raid if it were overhead, but it wasn’t. Anyway, Linda reasoned, if she’d stayed in any longer with that vindictive old woman, she’d have done her a mischief, and so she set off.

  Many times over the years, Maureen O’Leary’s home had been Linda’s bolt hole, as it had been Jenny’s before her. She was there again two days later when the sirens wailed out for the second time.

  Jenny had told them the first raid killed and injured many people, mainly in the city centre, who, believing it to be a false alarm, hadn’t taken to the shelters. ‘And the Americans, of course, had never seen the effects of a raid,’ she’d said. ‘People say the city centre was full of them. They were more scared than the average Brummie who’d been through it so many times before, but at least now perhaps they have some idea of what our country has suffered.’

  And was still suffering, Linda thought as she brought her mind back to the present and checked that the pie in the oven was browning nicely. Anyway, she had to get on. Jenny would be in soon and fair clemmed with hunger. Jenny and Peggy seldom had a day out in the Bull Ring now, since the birth of Peggy and Gerry’s small son Dermot eighteen months before. Although Peggy had returned to work when Dermot was four months old, leaving him in Maureen’s capable hands, she disliked asking her to look after him at weekends, feeling it was putting upon her. However, there were bargains to be had in the Bull Ring, and both women had been anxious to go. Though Jenny could say nothing about it to Linda, she was hoping to find her a nice wrist-watch for her sixteenth birthday. Linda was unaware of that, but did think Jenny deserved an odd afternoon off at times and here she was, having a trip down memory lane instead of getting a meal ready when she came in. She set out into the living room with her hands full of cutlery to lay the table.

  They had to have the dinner over and done fairly soon that evening too, she thought, for she was appearing at Whittington Barracks, just outside Sutton Coldfield, as part of a concert party put together to entertain the troops. She’d seen the advertisement in the Evening Despatch. ‘Entertaining the troops it said, straight up,’ Linda told the girls at work. ‘There’s auditions next week.’

  ‘I could entertain the troops,’ one of the women said with a laugh. ‘One at a time, like.’

  The other women laughed, and then Linda went on, ‘Why don’t you try though?’ and as the laughter mounted again she cried, ‘Not that way. Seriously – singing or summat.’

  ‘’Cos, me ducks, I ain’t got a scrap of talent in anything like that,’ the girl replied. ‘Singing and dancing ain’t in my line, like,’ she went on impishly. ‘I’d be better off at other things now and I’d have said the soldiers would be bloody pleased. Proper entertained, they’d be.’

  The raucous laughter rose again and someone else shouted, ‘We could form a troupe of strippers.’

  ‘Somehow, I don’t think that’s the sort of show they had in mind,’ Mr Tollit said mildly, and added, ‘Now, get back to your work before her in the office comes down to see the cause of our hilarity.’

  The women grumbled, but quietly, for they knew what Mr Tollit said was true, and they returned to the job in hand. ‘Pity that Mrs Jenkins don’t go in for a bit of stripping and entertaining herself, eh ducks?’ one of the women whispered to Linda. ‘That’s what the matter is with her. Silly old cow is as frustrated as hell.’

  Linda wanted to laugh but she didn’t, because she spotted Mr Tollit’s eyes on her and didn’t wish to get anyone into trouble. She bent over the bench, but the idea of the concert party kept going around in her head and she mentioned it at home to Jenny.

  ‘Why not try it, love,’ Jenny said. ‘I’d say you’d be doing them a favour and didn’t Francesca Masters say you had to keep singing?’

  Francesca had wanted Linda to apply for the College of Music, when she told her she could teach her no more, but she’d refused. ‘There are scholarships,’ Francesca had said. ‘Jenny would not have to pay a penny.’

  Linda had looked at Francesca pityingly and said, ‘Come on, Francesca, you know that isn’t the end of it. What about the books I’d need, and you said they like you to be able to play at least one instrument. How would Jenny afford that? Then there’s the cost of keeping me at school for years.’


  Francesca didn’t answer. She knew Linda felt guilty about the expense she’d already cost Jenny. She couldn’t altogether blame her for she knew, certainly at the beginning, that Jenny had often had a job to manage. She could have helped Linda, helped them all, and taken joy in doing so, especially someone with such a talent in music, but she knew neither Jenny nor Linda would accept that; a fierce pride would prevent it. ‘Francesca,’ Linda had said, ‘don’t think I’m not grateful – please, please don’t think that. But I owe Jenny so much. And, it’s not just money either. You know that.’

  ‘She wouldn’t want you to feel this way,’ Francesca had once said.

  ‘How do you know what she’d have wanted?’ Linda had asked her angrily. ‘I’ll tell you how it is at home, Francesca. Jenny has been trying to squeeze a quart into a pint pot. All she had to manage on until now is the pittance of a widow’s pension that her mother gets and what she brings home each Friday. Soon I’m going to add to that and make life easier for her. Nothing you can do would convince me that my duty lies in any other direction, and even if I was the best singer in the whole world, I would still choose to find a job some other place that pays a wage.’

  Francesca gave in. She knew Linda had her mind made up. ‘All right,’ she’d said, ‘but you have a rare talent, Linda. Don’t let it dwindle away to nothing. Keep singing. Sing at every opportunity. Who knows, you might use it yet.’

  Linda had never recounted this conversation to Jenny, though she did say that Francesca had said she’d taught her all she knew and had advised her to keep singing. Jenny was no fool, but she knew it was no good raising Linda’s hopes. There was no money for her to continue any sort of education in music and that was that. Francesca had taught her so much already and with that, Jenny thought, she’d have to be content.

 

‹ Prev