Girls on the Home Front

by Annie Clarke

  Fran tweaked his ear and came to stand in front of him, pulling up strands of hair either side of his head. They seemed the same. ‘What d’you say, Da, is our bairn tickety-boo?’

  Her da laughed. ‘Aye, I reckon so.’ He raised his voice. ‘When’s tea, Mam?’

  ‘Now.’

  Her mam came out and while Fran carried the towel into the yard and shook it free of hair, her mam laid the table.

  The meal seemed to go quickly, and as always Fran only had half the amount the others had as she’d already eaten at dinner time.

  The two women washed the pots while Ben rushed off to see Davey. Then her mam made a cup of tea and while it mashed Fran wiped down the table and her da resumed his place at the mantelpiece, pressing down the baccy into the bowl of his pipe. He lit it with a taper from the grate, sucking to draw the flame in the bowl while keeping his finger over the top. Without turning he said, ‘I hear from our Tom that his Davey had a letter from Stan, with one for you along wi’ it.’

  Fran stood quite still. Why hadn’t she realised Tom, Davey’s da, would have seen the letter? For heaven’s sake, they’d have been nattering together in the Miners’ Club as they took the contributions for the sickness insurance, which Mr Massingham matched. So it was bound to come up.

  Again, she felt pure rage, hurt and worry, for her mam had come to the doorway of the scullery, the teacups on the tray, curiosity vying with anxiety on her high-cheekboned face. Fran moved to take the tray from her and placed it on the table, just as her da turned from the mantelpiece to face the room. ‘Well?’ he said.

  Fran was standing by the table, still covered with its threadbare spotless tablecloth, forcing herself to stay still and not fiddle with her hands or tear at her hair, or run from the room. ‘Aye, he wrote because—’ She stopped when her da spoke, pointing the stem of his pipe at her.

  ‘I also heard that there’s a sorrow in Sledgeford this day as a lad is lost, and there’s a grandmother caring for a bairn in Massingham until his mam is out of hospital. But if that mam had worked in the office, she would have been safe.’

  ‘Oh Da, don’t. Just don’t,’ Fran pleaded.

  ‘At least our Stan—’

  Fran held up her hand. Her da coughed, dragged out his handkerchief, and held it to his mouth. The mucous was black. The grandfather clock ticked. It had been her grandda’s. He had died of black lung, his wife of grief, so they said. For a moment Fran looked from one to another full of fear for them. She swallowed, trying to find some courage. It was she who balled her hands now, as Swinton and Amelia had. Her nails dug into her palms as she turned full square to her da.

  ‘Stan is coming home. That’s what was in the letter. He wanted me to tell you, to prepare you, Da, and you, Mam. He’s going back into the pit because he—’

  Her da didn’t shout, he just seemed to groan, then fold up achingly slowly, finally slumping into his armchair. He dropped his pipe onto the proggy, spilling ash. Fran ran to pick it up, rubbing the burn with her fingers, blackening and burning them. She held it out to him, but he looked at her as though he didn’t understand anything.

  Her mam came and touched Fran on the shoulder. ‘On your feet, Franny. I’ll tek the pipe.’ Fran moved away, and her mam stood in front of her husband. ‘Here’s your pipe, bonny lad. Tek it, and put more baccy in it, there’s a canny one.’ She kept on, almost crooning the words until at last they reached her husband.

  Da looked up and did as she said, then rose to his feet. Only then did Fran notice that he had a hole in the heel of his sock, and somehow it made her da even more vulnerable. Her mam moved to the table and sat. She poured tea while her husband filled the bowl of his pipe with trembling hands. Fran watched as he breathed heavily, in and out, in and out. It’s what he had always told his bairns they should do to gather their wits. Her mam topped up each cup with milk, her hands quite steady, but the beads of sweat on her forehead showed the effort required.

  As though exhausted, her mam nodded to Joe’s cup. Fran took it to the mantelpiece. Her da ignored her as he drew on his freshly lit pipe. Only when it was glowing red did he say, not looking at either of them. ‘Well, our Frances, perhaps you’d tell me why our Stan has done this?’

  Fran stayed by the mantelpiece, one hand gripping it. She copied her da’s breathing, in and out, in and out. ‘What he said, Da, was to break it to you, because it wasn’t the news he wanted to burst on you in a letter, or news simply to arrive with him, through the door.’

  Her da continued puffing on his pipe. Her mam said nothing, just sat with her hands in her lap, her cup of tea steaming.

  ‘He said he couldn’t go to war, but he could hew for the war effort. He said he’d written to Mr Massingham, who has offered to hold his scholarship over until war’s end. He means to do his bit, Da, like you did in the First War. He said he has to hold his head up, for he is a Hall.’ Stan hadn’t said that, but he should have done, to try and make Da understand.

  At those last words, her da looked at her. Their eyes met and there was a glimmer of the old Da there, amused, understanding, and dear. The old Da, before she’d defied him and gone to war herself. He said, ‘He shouldn’t have got a lass to break the news, our Franny. He’s got soft, has our Stan, and he didn’t say he wanted to hold his head up, for that’s what you think about yerself. He’s a pitman. He’d just say there was nowt else he could do.’

  He looked past Fran to her mam. ‘’Tis all been for nowt, our Annie. All of it.’

  Annie Hall shook her head. ‘They’re your bairns, Joe Hall. You told yer da just the same when t’last war started. What you needs now is to get off out and get yourself sorted. Shout at Stan if you must when he comes, then accept it, but no shouting at our Franny. I’ll not have it. What if Sylv’s da had railed at her last night, or Jimmy’s da? No, I’ll not have it. Pit families stick together. Now go and see Tom Bedley and Simon Parrot and them canaries of yours, lad. This minute.’

  Fran and her mam watched him to the door, which he closed behind him, but didn’t slam. Her mam looked at her. ‘I’ll darn that sock when it comes out of t’wash.’ That was all. Pit wives were all the same, stoic, daily expecting the accident hooter, and blessing the end of the shift if they hadn’t heard it and they had their man for one day more.

  Joe Hall clattered in his boots along the Bedleys’ back lane. He lifted the sneck on their back gate, and strode across the yard. Sarah heard him and met him on the back step. ‘Me da’s howay to the shed, Mr Hall.’

  Joe tipped his cap. ‘Reet.’ He turned on his heel, and felt the hole in his sock that had been growing all shift. He’d put on another pair tomorrow and Annie’d darn it after washday. He clattered along the back lane, thinking that for a few weeks she’d darned nothing, done nothing after he’d had to carry the bairn to the funeral parlour. All white and cold the bairn, Betty, had been, and somehow something had broken in his mind. A fear had grown, because now he knew that the worst could actually happen to his bairns.

  He stopped a minute as the Bedleys’ back lane gave way to Main Street, feeling the breath leave his body and his head swirl, his throat thicken and his eyes fill, but he made himself breathe slowly, and all he could think of was that his remaining precious bairns were so full of life and promise, and so wonderful, that he blessed the ground they walked on. Though he could still have whacked them two older ones good and proper, that he could.

  He reached the shed that the Canary Club had set up at Simon Parrot’s allotment. Strange that, a parrot who liked canaries, folks said, and how can it be a club with three members? Well, it can, they’d said, and shut your noise. Joe tapped on the door in case any birds were flying free, but no shout reached him. He entered. Simon and Tom were sitting on the bench, facing the cages.

  ‘How do,’ he said, at the same time as they. He sat alongside the two of them and looked at the neat rows of cages they’d built, stretching from floor to ceiling and then the full-size flight cage along the length and breadth of th
e adjacent wall, where the canaries were flying and singing, white ones and all. He liked the white ones and had bred a few, and even had a few bairns in the top cages.

  There were seed husks on the floor of the shed, and the clean smell of sawdust, even though it was full of the cage droppings, but after the pit every smell was clean. Had Stan remembered the stink? The rats, the mice and the blacklocks like giant cockroaches. The squeezing of the coal as the weight above strained the pit props and ceiling planks. Had he remembered the jagged rock as you lay full length to hack at the face? Had he? Daft bugger.

  ‘Run yer fingers through this lot, Joe, and stop looking as though your Fran were hurt today at that damn place. ’Tweren’t our lasses and that’s what you have to remember, or so our Simon said when I mithered in ’ere a moment ago,’ Tom said.

  Tom was pointing at the sack of seed standing on the ground in front of Simon, who sat in the middle of the bench. ‘We reckon there’s not enough hemp, eh, Simon, and too much red rape. Have a gander and a fiddle, Joe.’

  Joe sank his hand into the seed. This part of his world was calm, here, with his marrers, and birds. Aye, no matter what other muddle the rest of his life brought, here was calm. ‘It’ll do, lads, an’ sort out the mites for the little fellas all reet.’

  Tom rose and tied chickweed to the bars of each cage. ‘Give us an ’and, Joe.’

  Joe did, and slowly, slowly he felt as though his feet were beginning to rest on solid ground. As he found that balance, he felt growing anger for his son, who had thrown his scholarship to the wind. After the war it’d be given again, so he said, but who knew when the war would be over and who would win? Or even if Massingham would be around then. If not, and that sly young whelp Ralph with his fancy talk and schooling took over all that his father had built, what price would a scholarship be then?

  He helped tie the chickweed while Simon strolled along the flight path and the cages’ nest pans, which had birds sitting on eggs. Silly bugger, silly, daft bugger, his son was, but the battle wasn’t over. He could always face him, and bring his own words to bear and send him back. Yes, that’s what he could do. He joined Simon, and pointed to one of the birds. ‘Best little sitter, she is. Nowt to look at but knows what she’s about, and she can’t half turn out a few show birds.’

  ‘Aye, that she can, our Joe, that she can.’

  At home, as the clock ticked and bedtime loomed, Fran sat at the table, relaxing as her mam wrapped her inflamed hands in the sphagnum-moss poultice that her own mam had used, and her grandma before her; it was not just absorbent, but antiseptic.

  ‘There you go, pet,’ Ma murmured as she always did when tucking in the torn strips of sheeting that passed for bandages. ‘That’ll keep the itch at bay, so we’ll keep at it, eh. What about your trunk?’

  ‘No, Mam, that isn’t bad. It’s me hands that are worst.’

  Sarah’s mam would be treating her daughter’s hands in the same way. It not only seemed to keep the rash there under control, but also helped the severity and spread around her trunk.

  ‘I don’t think it’ll work on the yellow stuff you had to work with a week or so ago, but at least that were only for a couple of days till the worker came back off sick, or so I reckon, though you won’t say owt about owt so I’m talking to meself. I reckon there’s some fumes where you are now that makes the rash grow—’ She suddenly stopped and Fran smiled as her mam looked around the room before finally whispering, ‘Enough said, eh?’

  She touched Fran’s cheek as Fran said, ‘Aye, Mam, best we don’t.’

  Her mam carried the hessian bag of fine dried moss back to the mantelpiece, and the jam jar of her mixture of goose grease and moss back into the scullery. She returned, smiling slightly. ‘We must do as we’re told, our lass. Can’t have one of Hitler’s men earwigging, then sabotaging all the work and hurting you into the bargain. I’m not having it.’

  Fran roared with laughter. ‘Then that’s decided. No sabotage at the Factory, or the wrath of Annie Hall will descend on the Nazis.’

  Her mam laughed too, and it was a real one, which was getting to be a habit, unlike the pale imitation that had existed for months after the babe, and Mam’s sickness. Fran hugged her mam gently, feeling as she had since that day that this woman must be treated like one of her da’s canary eggs, or a detonator shell. At that thought, she shook her head because using that image summed up how the world had changed.

  Her mam seemed to read her mind, and said, ‘Don’t fret, our Fran. I’m much more meself these days, and there’s no way I’m going to break into bits. That’s past. Away to bed, as you’ll be up before the sparrows again tomorrow. Take no notice if there’s a dark cloud over your da in the morning, for I believe our Stan was wrong to lay it on your shoulders, and your da will feel that too. And it’s for your da and me to remember that it’s not our lives you’re all living. Not ours at all …’

  Her mam returned to her armchair where she’d work on her rugs until Joe came in from the canaries or the Miners’ Club, which is where the men would probably drift to.

  Fran climbed the stairs and walked into the box room. She stared out of the window, across the village. The slag heap was doing what it did, the winding gear was standing sentinel as the night shift set things up for the fore shift or did maintenance beneath the ground. Nothing changed, but then you found everything had changed. War and pestilence … She laughed. Well, war at least. Pestilence was another matter and so was the plague, and as for locusts, none of these had arrived. Ben might feel it had when Stan arrived home, if his mutterings as he had headed for bed earlier this evening were anything to go by, the loudest being, ‘It’s a bugger cos I’ll have to share me bed with the big lug again. He’s a bliddy pest.’

  ‘Language, lad,’ their mam had snapped.

  Ben, standing in the doorway, had shrugged. ‘Well, his feet’re cold and he divint cut his toenails short enough.’

  Fran laughed again, her breath misting the window, because her mam had replied, ‘Just like your da’s, but not the toenails. I daresay yours are cold an’ all, lad, and you know you’re hankering to see him again, as he hasn’t come back for the vacation, or whatever he calls it.’

  And that’s the trouble, she thought. I could strangle the tyke, but I want him back. It’s not right without him.

  Chapter Five

  In the Hall kitchen just before four in the morning on Saturday, Fran’s da shouldered his way past her, heading for the back door. He hauled his boots out from beneath the old chair by the back step, and put them on. He was wearing a different pair of socks.

  ‘Be safe, Da,’ Fran said.

  He didn’t reply as he tugged his cap down and stamped across the yard, jerking up the sneck and disappearing into the back lane. She shrugged into her mackintosh and followed him outside, knotting her scarf, easing her bag and gas mask, listening to him clattering along the alley with all the other pitmen, and sighed. She was about to call goodbye to her mam when she heard the hinges of the gate creak as Da peered back into the yard. He stood there, defiance in every fibre, as he muttered, ‘Waste of bliddy money getting you trained to type, but if yer have to be the bliddy fool yer are, and yer brother too, be safe.’ He slammed the gate and stamped off, joining the endless stream of men flowing through the darkness towards the pit.

  Her mam was behind her on the top step, the wind snatching at her flowered overall, her arms crossed in the moonlight.

  ‘He swore,’ Fran said.

  ‘Aye, well, he loves yer, and it’s all moving a mite fast for him. Just like you should be, if you’re to catch your bus. Just think, our Stan’ll be home later today. Oh, just think—’ It was as though her mam was excited, but at the same time, subdued. The colliery hooter sounded, and her mam’s hand went to her mouth. Now Fran saw the fear in her eyes, for da, and Stan.

  Fran nodded, reached out and gripped her hand, then ran on to Main Street, seeing Davey and his marrers in the flow. He stepped out and caught her. ‘Hey,
spare me a second.’

  He swung her round and kissed her. She laughed against his mouth. ‘I love you, Davey Bedley. Right up to the sky and back again, but I’m late for the bus, or the bliddy bus, as me da would say this mornin’.’

  Davey was grinning, his cap at its usual angle off to the left. Sarah was at the bus stop but had obviously heard because she called out, ‘You best get into this queue, or we’ll all be swearing at you. And you, David Bedley, get on to your work, for pity’s sake.’

  Fran snatched another kiss and he gripped her hand. ‘One day,’ he muttered. ‘One day …’ She backed away, as he did too, and she longed for the time they’d share a colliery house of their own, with bairns. She’d type his articles and then he’d start up his magazine … She paused, wondering how you would put in the crossword’s straight lines for the printing firm? He was still watching her, and she him, and he called, ‘Be safe, bonny lass. And don’t yer fret, I’ll tek care of our Stan.’

  Then he was off and running as Sid shouted, ‘For the love of God, man, shift yer arse.’

  ‘You be safe too, you daft galumphs,’ Fran called after them all.

  She turned and ran as Sarah laughed, standing back and watching as Maisie waltzed Fran to the steps of the bus, saying, ‘Don’t think of Stan, just tek it day by day, eh?’

  The driver was Bert again, but on Monday it would be Cecil driving them in for the 2 p.m. start when their shifts changed. Maisie shoved Fran ahead of her down the aisle. Sarah brought up the rear, singing, ‘Put your left foot in, and your left foot out …’ and the women all shouted, ‘Then shake it all about.’

  Fran, Sarah and Maisie did just that as Mrs Oborne called, ‘Decorum, please, lasses.’

  Patsy from Lindon Lane called, ‘Who’s he when he’s at home, Mrs Oborne?’

  The women fell about laughing as Bert hooted his horn and yelled, ‘All aboard for the crazy farm.’

  Sarah shoved Maisie down next to Patsy, who’d been beckoning to her. Would she be taking over Sylv’s shift as well? Sarah sat down on the spare seat next to Mrs Wilks, then Fran took the double behind so that Beth could be one of a pair today. Mrs Wilks continued her knitting. She was in the sewing department at the Factory – the clean room, as they called it, meaning it was chemical-free. She’d be training all the new girls in cutting out and running up their blue overalls until they had come to grips with the Factory, and she herself was less yellow and itchy when she’d return to ‘active duty’. Sitting back, Fran wondered if one’s innards went yellow as well? She wanted to think of this, for Stan was coming back today, well, it would be in the evening by the time the train arrived, if there was no bombing …