The Bomb Girls

by Daisy Styles

‘Ooh! Can I help too?’ she cried. ‘I know all about doctors and nurses in hospital,’ she added proudly.

  Emily smiled as she kissed the little girl on the cheek.

  ‘You can help as much as you want once the baby’s home,’ she promised.

  They took it in turns all through the evening to pop into the hospital for an update.

  ‘She’s calmer now the morphine’s worn off. And she’s well dilated and breathing with the contractions rather than fighting them like she was earlier,’ Agnes told Daphne, who went green at the thought.

  ‘Too much information, darling,’ she said with a grimace.

  ‘Well, you did ask!’ Agnes laughed.

  When Emily visited an hour later Agnes couldn’t leave Elsie for more than five minutes.

  ‘She’s started bearing down, so it could be any minute now,’ she said as she hurried back to Elsie.

  Emily was sitting on a chair in the corridor when she heard Elsie’s baby give its first cry. She was so happy for her friend – but her happiness was tinged with worry over what on earth was going to happen with Tommy. Pacing up and down, she waited for Agnes to appear, and when she did she was carrying a tiny bundle in her arms.

  ‘Elsie’s son,’ she told Emily, who burst into tears at the sight of the little boy.

  ‘He’s so beautiful,’ she said as she stared into his peaceful, sleeping face. ‘How’s Elsie?’

  ‘Exhausted, losing a lot of blood and worried sick,’ Agnes replied. ‘If she carries on fretting her milk might not come through and the baby needs feeding,’ she said as the little boy stirred in her arms.

  ‘It’s one problem after another,’ groaned Emily. ‘Does Tommy’s mum know the baby’s born?’

  ‘The ambulance driver said he’d call in and tell her on his way home. Poor woman, she must be worried sick too,’ Agnes answered.

  ‘I’ll go and tell the others,’ Emily said. ‘None of us could settle until we knew Elsie was okay.’

  The next forty-eight hours were a nightmare, despite the happy new arrival. The girls visited Elsie as often as they could, dashing to the hospital whenever they had a spare moment, but there was no consoling feverish, frantic Elsie, who – probably due to stress and weakness – suffered a haemorrhage and had to be removed to a private room, where visitors were banned until her condition stabilized. The girls watched in helpless misery as the poor little baby was taken to the hospital nursery.

  Tommy’s mum, in floods of tears, visited her grandson, but mercifully she wasn’t allowed near her daughter-in-law.

  ‘You have to leave,’ the ward sister told the anxious visitor. ‘Mother and baby need peace and quiet.’

  ‘Poor Mrs Carter. She’s so upset she’ll just make things a thousand times worse,’ said Emily.

  When Elsie’s son, who she named Jonty, was five days old Agnes was allowed to see her.

  ‘I’ve got to see Tommy, I must see him!’ a fretful Elsie told Agnes, who didn’t argue with her for fear of making her ill again.

  ‘We’ll sort something out as soon as you’re well enough to leave here,’ she promised. ‘Right now, you’ve got to focus on getting your strength back and trying to feed your son.’

  ‘He’s not taking to the breast,’ Elsie said anxiously.

  ‘He won’t whilst you’re so upset; there won’t be enough milk to satisfy the poor little thing. The calmer you are, the more contented he’ll be,’ she assured Elsie.

  The thought of seeing Tommy did calm Elsie, who improved slowly but steadily, though Jonty’s hungry cries kept her awake night and day.

  ‘How on earth am I going to keep my promise once she’s out of hospital?’ Agnes asked her friends. ‘I more or less promised I’d get her and the baby to Preston Prison and back.’

  ‘God!’ Daphne exclaimed. ‘That’s a big ask.’

  Lillian shocked them all by saying quite calmly, ‘Malc’s already agreed to drive Elsie there as soon as she’s on her feet.’

  ‘You asked him?’ Agnes gasped.

  ‘Course I did,’ Lillian laughed. ‘He’s the only man I know with a car!’

  ‘Lillian, you didn’t … ?’ Emily started, but Lillian finished the sentence for her.

  ‘No, I didn’t go behind the bike sheds in return for a favour,’ she replied. ‘Those days are well and truly over.’

  Daphne let out a peal of laughter.

  ‘The quaint things you do on these heathen moors!’ she teased.

  ‘Malc may not be my lover but he’s not my enemy any more,’ Lillian pointed out. ‘He’d do anything for Elsie; we’ve seen that in the past. I don’t know why you’re all so surprised – or suspicious,’ she added with a smile.

  So as soon as she was well enough, Malc drove Elsie and her baby, Tommy’s mum and Agnes to Preston Prison. His new Austin 10 just about accommodated all the passengers. They were quiet as they drove over Belmont Moors, which were bright green with fronds of new ferns and loud with the sound of spiralling skylarks.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe that anything bad could happen on a day like this,’ said Elsie, who hadn’t been outside the Phoenix hospital since her baby was born.

  They found Tommy in the visitors’ room, waiting for them with a haunted expression on his face. Always a long, lanky boy, he now looked painfully thin, with sunken cheeks and a neck so skinny his Adam’s apple protruded like a stone caught in his throat. Tommy took one look at his son cradled in Elsie’s arms and he started to sob.

  ‘My boy, my little boy,’ he said as he pulled Elsie and his son into his arms.

  ‘Take him, hold him,’ said Elsie.

  ‘I might drop him,’ Tommy replied nervously.

  ‘You won’t,’ said Elsie as she handed over the baby.

  Shaking with emotion, Tommy took Jonty, who stirred and made a sound like a kitten.

  ‘I’ve made him cry!’ he said in alarm.

  ‘He’s only dreaming,’ Elsie assured him.

  Rocking the baby in his arms, Tommy told them what had happened on his fateful visit to Gateshead.

  ‘I couldn’t risk your dad troubling you again, Elsie,’ he explained. ‘I went up to ask him not to visit you, nothing more than that. You have to believe I had no intention of killing him!’

  Elsie vehemently nodded her head.

  ‘Of course I don’t think you killed him on purpose!’ she cried. ‘But you can’t …’ She quickly corrected her grammar to the past tense. ‘You could never talk to mi dad like he was normal; he was mad, always had been. For sure he’d try to kill you – that’s the only language he spoke.’

  ‘He would have killed me if I hadn’t pushed him away. Admittedly it was a hard shove, but I didn’t expect him to go down like a tree. He smashed his head on the sink on the way down and cracked his skull; that’s what the police said when they charged me with his murder.’

  ‘Murder!’ cried his mother as she started to wail, causing the baby to wake up and scream too.

  ‘At worst, it’s a case of manslaughter,’ Agnes yelled over the din.

  ‘That’s what my solicitor says,’ Tommy replied. ‘But Elsie’s stepmother’s saying that I went there with the intention of killing him, and both her daughters agree with her. So it’s their word against mine,’ he added miserably.

  ‘So she’s got two witnesses?’ Agnes said grimly.

  ‘Two scheming, bloody little liars!’ Elsie raged.

  ‘Whatever they are, Elsie, love, they’re witnesses and I’ve got nobody to speak in my defence,’ Tommy told her gloomily.

  With both his mother and baby bawling their eyes out, nobody could hear themselves speak.

  ‘We’ll go outside for a few minutes,’ Elsie said, taking Jonty from Tommy and dragging her mother-in-law with her.

  Once alone with Agnes, Tommy crumpled into the nearest chair and sat with his head in his hands.

  ‘I’m trying to keep a brave face for Elsie’s sake,’ he blurted out. ‘Poor kid, she’s suffered enough. She looks so thin and draw
n, and the last thing I want to do is worry her even more.’

  Agnes nodded in agreement.

  ‘She’s been through a lot. But she’s tough, Tommy, a lot tougher than she looks,’ she added.

  He smiled as tears filled his eyes.

  ‘Thanks for looking after her so well. I don’t know what she’d do without you girls,’ he said with a sob in his voice.

  ‘We’re family, Tommy; we look after each other all the time,’ Agnes answered.

  With a face as white as stone, Tommy murmured, ‘If I’m found guilty of murder at Lancaster Assizes I’ll hang.’

  Agnes’s blood ran cold but she smiled hopefully as she reassured him.

  ‘If your solicitor presents a good case you’ll get manslaughter. Don’t give up hope, Tommy.’

  Tommy nodded glumly.

  ‘And the charge for that stands at ten years.’

  Later that evening at Mrs Carter’s house, Elsie’s friends came down to see her after her stressful prison visit, and they were shocked. She was deathly white and still, staring blankly at the wall.

  Without any preamble, she suddenly spoke in a flat, calm voice.

  ‘I’m going up to Gateshead.’

  Her friends gazed at her, open-mouthed.

  ‘You’re bloody mad!’ Lillian exploded.

  ‘What on earth can you possibly hope to achieve?’ Daphne asked.

  ‘I’m going there to bribe my lying stepsisters,’ Elsie announced

  ‘Bribe them? How?’ Agnes asked.

  ‘I’ve got savings,’ Elsie replied. ‘We’re well-paid munitions girls, remember?’ she said with a shadow of her old sweet smile. ‘I’ve had no cause to spend much,’ she said with a self-deprecating grin.

  ‘No, you’ve never been one to lash out on fags and gin!’ Lillian joked.

  ‘I’ll use mi savings to twist their rotten little arms,’ Elsie said with steely determination.

  ‘Isn’t that somewhat illegal?’ Daphne asked.

  ‘No more illegal than what I know they’ve done,’ Elsie retorted.

  ‘You’re confident you can do it, just like that?’ Agnes said as she snapped her fingers.

  ‘I know exactly what makes those scheming little bitches tick,’ Elsie answered with confidence. ‘Will one of you come with me?’

  Agnes had had too many days off work and was desperately missing Esther, and she hesitated, but Emily immediately volunteered.

  ‘I will.’

  It wasn’t a problem leaving Jonty with Tommy’s mum. After struggling to breastfeed her baby Elsie had finally given up and switched to Cow & Gate powdered baby milk, which Jonty took to in a blink. Before she left, Elsie prepared several bottles then left Tommy’s mum written instructions so she could make up fresh feeds in her absence.

  Elsie and Emily took the train to Elsie’s family home in Gateshead where, hiding behind a bush, they waited in the rain for Elsie’s stepmother to leave the house. Holding her breath, Elsie watched her stomp up the road with a shopping basket over her arm. The minute she was out of sight, Elsie bolted towards her old home with Emily in her wake.

  ‘Stay outside and keep an eye out for my stepmother coming back,’ Elsie told her.

  ‘Will you be okay on your own?’ Emily nervously asked.

  Little Elsie threw back her slight shoulders and nodded.

  ‘I’m not frightened of them!’ she declared.

  ‘When you see her, come round the back and knock on the door,’ Elsie said as she slipped down a side alley then into a back yard.

  Knowing the back door was always left unlocked, Elsie stepped straight into the kitchen, where her stepsisters were washing up.

  ‘What’re you doing here, bitch?’ Ivy snarled.

  ‘Gettout!’ snapped the younger sister, Edie.

  Elsie didn’t bat an eyelid but got straight down to business.

  ‘I’m here to save you from joining my husband in Preston Prison,’ she said, cold as ice.

  ‘What’ve we done wrong?’ Ivy demanded.

  ‘Perjury for a start. That carries at least a ten-year sentence,’ Elsie replied.

  Clearly, neither girl had a clue what perjury was, but they weren’t prepared to admit that.

  ‘What the hell are you on about?’ Ivy shouted.

  ‘Lying in court,’ Elsie answered calmly. ‘Telling the judge that Tommy killed Dad on purpose is a black lie, and you know it.’

  ‘Who ses? You weren’t even bloody here!’ Edie yelled.

  ‘I know how mad mi dad was,’ Elsie answered emphatically.

  The sisters exchanged a conspiratorial look.

  ‘Your bloody husband killed him; he pushed him,’ Ivy insisted, but Elsie detected a wobble in her voice.

  ‘Totally unprovoked?’ Seeing her sister’s blank expression, Elsie simplified her question. ‘Did mi dad start the fight?’

  She left the question hanging in mid-air. Neither girl replied but Elsie could tell they were hiding the truth.

  ‘Here’s the deal,’ she said as she cut to the chase. ‘I’ll give you a hundred pounds each, every penny of mi savings, if you’ll give me written evidence of what really did happen when Tommy met Dad.’

  The girls’ eyes almost bugged out of the heads.

  ‘A hundred pounds!’ they said in unison.

  ‘Each?’ gasped Ivy.

  ‘Each!’ Elsie said as she opened her bag and took out a thick wad of banknotes, which her stepsisters ogled incredulously. ‘On condition I have a written statement of exactly what happened between Dad and Tommy.’

  Ivy dragged out a chair in order to sit at the table.

  ‘Give us a pencil and some paper,’ she said with a greedy glint in her eyes.

  Elsie had everything ready for them. Taking paper and pencils from her bag, she laid them on the table too.

  ‘Mi mam’ll be back any minute,’ Edie said in a panic.

  Though her heart was pounding in her ribcage, Elsie kept her calm.

  ‘I’ve posted a look-out in the street; she’ll let us know when your mother’s on her way back. Don’t rush, and write down everything that happened in the order you remember.’

  ‘Your dad lost his temper and threw a chair at your husband’s head,’ Ivy said.

  ‘Write it down,’ Elsie urged.

  ‘He ducked and it smashed against the wall,’ Edie added as she copied her sister and quickly wrote down her evidence.

  ‘Then your dad grabbed hold of your husband’s hair and dragged him round the kitchen, punching him around the head and face. Your husband butted your dad in the chest and he fell over backwards. That’s when he hit his head against the sink,’ Ivy added.

  ‘He flopped onto the floor and then he bled a lot; it were a big pool of blood all over’t floor,’ Edie said out loud as she scribbled the words onto the paper in front of her.

  ‘Mother said he was dead … She said we was to tell the police your husband murdered him. She said she’d kill us if we didn’t.’

  ‘Write it down,’ Elsie said.

  A sharp rap at the kitchen door made all of them jump sky-high.

  ‘She’s on her way back!’ Emily called from the yard.

  With a sweat breaking out on her brow, Elsie cried, ‘Sign your names! Don’t forget the date. Quickly, quickly,’ she begged.

  ‘She’ll kill us,’ gasped Edie as the kitchen door opened.

  Ivy grabbed the banknotes off the table.

  ‘Not if we’ve got this, she won’t!’

  As they grasped their money, Elsie folded the precious sheets of written evidence and carefully put them into her bag. Before all hell could break loose, she sidestepped her bewildered stepmother and, with a victorious smile on her face, she joined Emily waiting for her outside.

  ‘I’ve not a penny in the world,’ she said. ‘But I’ve got enough evidence to save my Tommy from swinging!’

  Tommy’s trial took place a few days after Elsie’s dad’s funeral, a ceremony that Elsie had no intention of attendin
g. From across the courtroom she watched her stepsisters cower under the beady eyes of her stepmother. When they were questioned by Tommy’s lawyer, who had read their written evidence, they didn’t falter from what they had written, which left their mother in a more than awkward position.

  ‘So why, madam, did you accuse an innocent man of murder?’ the lawyer said as he turned on the dead man’s widow.

  Feigning grief and shock, Mrs Hogan said she was in no state at the time of the accident to know exactly what was going on. The lawyer sternly warned her that if her daughters had not volunteered the truth, they might all have gone down for ten years on a charge of perjury.

  The court decided Tommy’s actions were carried out in self-defence and he was allowed to leave the courtroom a free man.

  As Tommy walked out, clutching a tearful Elsie in his arms, Mrs Hogan tapped her stepdaughter on the shoulder.

  ‘Don’t you ever darken my door again,’ she said with hatred in her voice.

  Elsie gave her and her miserable, cowering daughters a radiant smile.

  ‘With the greatest of pleasure,’ she said as she turned her back on them for ever.

  CHAPTER 25

  Flight Lieutenant Rodney Harston-Binge

  Tommy was granted a few weeks’ compassionate leave with his wife and new baby, and when he did finally return to his battalion it was to wonderful news: after the surrender of the Germans and Italians in North Africa, the Lancashire Fusiliers, under Montgomery, were already advancing in mainland Italy.

  Though their farewell was tearful, both Elsie and Tommy knew it could have been a lot worse – at least he wasn’t in prison with a death sentence hanging over him. And Elsie, after some happy and relaxed time with her husband and son, was a picture of health again.

  ‘Sweetheart, are you really well enough to go back to work at the Phoenix?’ Tommy fretted.

  ‘I’m a lot better than I was!’ she laughed. ‘Anyway, if you’re doing your bit, fighting the Eyeties, I can do mine by filling shells to end the war,’ she answered robustly.

  ‘And what about our little lad?’ said Tommy as he cradled Jonty in his arms.

  ‘He’ll be fine. He’s got a place at the Phoenix day nursery, so he’ll be close to me, and there’s your mum too – best of all worlds!’ Elsie answered with a happy smile. ‘Little Esther was pushing him around yesterday and I heard her telling everybody he was her little brother!’