The Victory Girls

by Joanna Toye

  ‘Well, you know we’ve landed in France, don’t you?’ she began. The papers had naturally been full of it – not that Gladys could read them. ‘They say—’

  ‘Hang on,’ Gladys interrupted her. She put out a hand. ‘Lily, you’re sitting over here, aren’t you?’ She extended a hand towards Lily’s chair.

  ‘Ye-es.’

  ‘I can see you! Well, I can’t – but I can see your shape against the light! I can’t see your face, but I can see … it’s blurry, but I can see the outline of your head and your shoulders, definitely I can!’

  ‘Oh Gladys! That’s wonderful! You’re starting to see again? Shall I get the doctor?’

  The doctor came. Gladys found that she could see him, too, at least when he stood with his back to the light. He was cautious. He couldn’t promise anything, and he still couldn’t give any kind of timescale, but he confirmed it was definitely a step in the right direction.

  Lily floated back home. Ages ago, in one of the darkest periods of the war, she’d taken the advice in one of her mum’s magazines to write down Three Good Things that had happened every day.

  On Monday she’d written:

  Sold three items AND

  Going back to Childrenswear next week.

  As first sales!

  Yesterday she’d written just one thing, but in huge letters:

  D-Day!

  When she got home from the hospital that evening, though, she couldn’t stop writing.

  Gladys started to see again!

  Gladys started to see again!!

  Gladys started to see again!!!

  And then, as three times simply wasn’t enough:

  Gladys started to see again!!!!

  Next evening, they both went to visit Gladys, Lily and Jim together. This time, Gladys wasn’t just sitting out, she was standing, feeling her way round the bed, straightening the cover. She turned when they opened the door and moved cautiously towards them. This was an improvement already: they hadn’t got the full light of the window behind them. She peered at them for a moment.

  ‘Lily!’ she said. ‘And you’ve got a light dress on, with a lighter collar, your blue, is it? And a scarf or a hairband in your hair?’

  ‘Yes!’ cried Lily. ‘You can see all that?’

  Gladys nodded. She peered upwards. Jim was six feet tall. ‘I’m having to crane my neck, so it must be Jim!’

  ‘Spot on!’

  Gladys beamed and Lily turned to Jim, biting her lip. It was so moving to see her coming back to life.

  They sat down and talked. Gladys welled up when she told them about seeing the shape of the twins’ heads for the first time and their little hands and feet, even if she couldn’t see all their features properly yet. Then they talked plainly and honestly about what Gladys had been through. Only now did she confess how desperately low she’d felt, and what she’d tried so hard not to show her visitors: the terror that she’d never see again, that she’d never be able to be a proper mother to the twins or wife to Bill. In other words, exactly what Lily, Dora, and everyone who cared about her had been feeling and hadn’t wanted to say either.

  ‘And not just that, but the little things that got me down as well!’ she said. ‘I say little, but they’re not really, when you do them every day. You try cleaning your teeth and spitting out into a cup that someone else is holding when you can’t see. Try it when you get home! Close your eyes and try eating anything that you can’t pick up with your fingers, and even then, finding your mouth every time! Try drinking a cup of tea and getting it back on the saucer … let alone daring to take a single step on your own or think about finding a job you might be able to do.’ She shook her head. ‘It taught me a lesson or two. I swear I’ll never again go past a blind war veteran begging on the street without giving them something.’

  Gladys spoke from the heart and Lily felt her own heart wrench. What had she ever had to complain about, she thought guiltily, remembering how she’d chafed about Rita or fretted over a snagged stocking or a miserly helping of custard in the canteen. The picture Gladys had painted was shocking and they all sat in silence for a moment. It was a ‘there but for the grace of God’ moment – not the first in five years of war, and probably not the last, either.

  Then Jim cleared his throat and said something about the news from France. Gladys and Lily leapt on the subject gratefully; Gladys was taking more of an interest in things now. On convoy duty in the Northern Exchanges, Bill’s ship was always at risk of U-boat or air attacks, but Gladys was relieved that he hadn’t been in the thick of the landings in Europe.

  Now, at last, they could tell her how they’d managed to fill their letters to him with a lot of guff about how the boy looked like him and the girl like Gladys, which at this stage was nonsense – as Jim had remarked, they both looked like the Prime Minister, though without the Homburg hat and cigar. They’d managed to say nothing about Gladys except that she was doing a wonderful job of feeding the babies and that they’d both regained their birth weight. They apologised for the lack of photographs, saying there was no camera film to be had – this at least was true, as was the fact that Gladys hadn’t finally fixed on the babies’ names.

  ‘I’ll be able to write to him myself soon I hope,’ Gladys smiled. ‘Or dictate a letter you can write for me, Lily. We can say I’ve got my hands full, which’ll be the reality!’ It was so good to see her smile again, a proper smile, not the pinned-on one for visitors. ‘Oh, and by the way,’ she added casually, ‘I’ve decided what to call them.’

  ‘What? Well, go on then!’ cried Lily. ‘What?’

  Chapter 10

  ‘It came to me this morning,’ Gladys explained. ‘I’d fed them, and we were all having a cuddle and a little chat, with them in my arms’—and as Lily looked surprised—‘well, don’t look at me like that, I was doing all the chatting, obviously!’ She sighed happily. ‘It’s just so … and now I can start to see them a bit … they’re so perfect and so beautiful and such a miracle. You just feel so filled with love … I can’t explain. Anyway, we were sitting here and the sun was coming through the window. And the nurse came in to take away my breakfast and said it had been on the wireless about how we were doing in France, how we’d got five miles inland and taken some town where there’s a famous tapestry, Bayoo or somewhere.’

  ‘Yes?’ urged Lily. This was typical Gladys, taking ages to get to the point. ‘Go on!’

  ‘I looked down at them, and I thought about how I was feeling, just so full of happiness, now I could start to see their little faces, and how thrilled Bill is going to be when he sees them for the first time … And I was so full of it I could have burst and I thought to myself, joy, that’s what this is, pure joy. So that’s what I’m going to call her.’

  ‘Oh Gladys! Joy! What a lovely name!’ Lily glanced at Jim. He was no tough guy, but he didn’t often show his emotions. Even he was swallowing hard.

  ‘And what about the boy?’ he asked.

  ‘That just came to me as well,’ said Gladys simply. ‘It’s obvious, with us going into France and everything. He’s going to be called Victor.’

  Right on cue, the nurse brought the two little scraps in to be fed. Jim immediately excused himself so Gladys could have some privacy, but Lily leapt up to help with the pillows as Gladys settled herself on the bed. Both swaddled in white, Lily couldn’t tell which twin was which, but by craning at the wristband, which still said F. I. Webb, she realised that the nurse was handing over little Joy. Then she promptly handed the other screaming shawlful to Lily and disappeared through the door, explaining over her shoulder that she had six other babies to deal with.

  ‘He doesn’t seem very impressed,’ Lily said nervously as M. I. Webb – Victor, as she must learn to call him – showed his displeasure by turning up the volume and trying to bury his hot, red face into Lily’s chest.

  ‘He’s rooting,’ said Gladys, crooning to Joy as she calmed her down before trying to latch her on. ‘Thinks you’re his milk tank.’


  ‘He’s in for a big disappointment then!’

  ‘Give him your finger to suck,’ advised Gladys, ‘but suck it yourself first to give it a clean.’

  Lily did as she was told and the punishment of her eardrums subsided.

  Gladys turned back to her daughter.

  ‘There’s nothing to cry for, precious,’ she murmured. ‘It’s all right, Mum’s got lots of milk for you. Yes, you’re hungry aren’t you? Let’s get you settled.’

  Then, as Lily watched, she tucked Joy neatly under one arm and, with the baby’s head supported on a pillow, latched her on. The baby clamped her mouth, Gladys winced, then stroked the soft skull as she started to suck.

  ‘Now for you, trouble,’ she said, holding out her free arm towards Lily.

  ‘You’re doing them both at once?’

  Lily didn’t know whether to be amazed or aghast.

  ‘I’ve got to, if I don’t want to be sat in a chair all day with my bosoms hanging out,’ said Gladys practically.

  Lily blinked. What a lot Gladys had learnt in a short time! And without being able to see, as well! Her admiration for her, which was already sky-high, rocketed. Grateful, she handed the baby over and while Gladys held her daughter’s head in place, helped to secure the little boy under her other arm and angle him so he could feed.

  Mission accomplished, she sank into Gladys’s vacated chair. Apart from the surprisingly loud sound of suckling, peace reigned.

  ‘And you have to do this how many times a day?’

  Gladys laughed.

  ‘Oh, Lily, I feel for your Jim, I really do! It’s every few hours, day and night! You may be forging ahead at Marlows but outside of work, you’ve still got a lot to learn, haven’t you?’

  It was another week before they let Gladys out of hospital, with strict instructions that there must be no unnecessary stress and she mustn’t get overtired.

  ‘Have they listened to themselves!’ snorted Dora. ‘She’s got two-week-old twins, for goodness’ sake – and they’ve never met Florrie!’ The old woman’s selfishness was staggering. She’d visited Gladys just once in the hospital, and that only to raid the fruit basket and the bedside locker. ‘There’s nothing for it,’ Dora added. ‘I shall have to go round every day.’

  So she did, fitting in a visit between the daily round of housework, queuing for food, washing and cooking, plus the afternoon duties she’d resumed at the Red Cross and WVS tea bar. Poor Buddy was sorely neglected, or felt he was, fretting and whining in the backyard, to the displeasure of Jean Crosbie next door, who never failed to report it to Dora. Lily suspected Buddy was trying it on, hoping that Jean would throw him a bit of bacon rind or a bread crust over the fence, because in the evenings he’d got used to being thoroughly spoilt by them all. Feeling guilty about leaving him, Dora sweet-talked the butcher into extra bones and scraps, and for walks Jim had started taking him along on his night-time ARP patrols. And Buddy needed the exercise, what with the biscuits he was fed by the kindly wardens when they got back to the ARP post.

  Dora might be back on the tea bar rota, but the WVS was on Lily’s conscience. With all the visits to Gladys, she also hadn’t been able to do so much, not at the Drill Hall anyway. Now though, she and her mum could both rejoin the merry throng refashioning the unwanted seaboot socks into the famous polo-neck jumpers and sewing the thick shoulder and elbow patches that they’d cut at home onto hefty crew-necks for the rifle brigades. After her initial enthusiasm, Lily found it pretty dull, but at least she was doing something – and she could still help Gladys too, which consoled her when she saw other girls in uniform.

  One evening towards the end of June, Lily was late getting to the hall. She’d called on Gladys after work, as she often did, but had been held up. After Victor had been fed and changed, he’d promptly soiled his clean nappy. Lily had had the job of stopping him throwing himself off the chest of drawers that was used as a changing table while Gladys went to fetch another off the clothes horse.

  Lily arrived at the hall, though, to find it in even more of a flurry than she was. The usual circle of chairs for companionable chat wasn’t in place; instead, Mrs Russell, the organiser, was bustling about with a clipboard, while helpers sorted piles of blankets and what looked like children’s jumpers, shorts, and dresses.

  As Lily hung up her jacket, Dora came over.

  ‘You won’t believe it!’ she said. ‘Evacuees on the way!’

  ‘Evacuees?’

  Lily was baffled. Then she realised what it must be. The wretched doodlebug bombs – officially V1 rockets – that had started to rain on London.

  ‘Evacuees …’ she repeated. ‘How many?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. But a good few. All the really safe billets in the countryside have been taken up long ago so they’ve got to resort to towns like us.’

  ‘Are we going to take one in at our house?’

  Dora shook her head.

  ‘I’d like to help, but where’d they sleep, in Buddy’s kennel?’

  ‘The front room?’ said Lily.

  ‘I can’t put them in there, with that damp that’s come through. It might not hurt Sid on the occasional night he’s home, but no one’s going to thank me for giving their child TB, are they?’

  Lily had to agree. The damp patch was growing, even in summer.

  ‘No, there’s nothing we can do,’ her mother resumed. ‘Except … it’s your half-day tomorrow, Lily. Will you come to the station with me and the others and meet them off the train?’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘We’ve got to do squash and biscuits for them when they arrive, then keep them occupied while we try and sort them out,’ Dora explained. ‘Mrs Russell only got warning of it last night; she’s been ringing round ever since trying to rally a few people to take them in. But we’ll end up walking them round the streets, I reckon, knocking on doors. Not much of a welcome for the poor little mites, is it?’.

  Poor little mites was about right. As the children straggled off the train the following afternoon, Lily thought what a sorry-looking bunch they were. There were about thirty of them, the oldest perhaps ten or eleven, the youngest only about three. They’d come from Bermondsey, Bow, and Mile End itself, where the very first buzz bomb had dropped. They were among London’s poorest districts and just as much a target for the new breed of bombs as they had been in the Blitz. All because they cradled London’s docklands.

  A few of the children looked around curiously, almost excited. The rest were mute, disorientated, and fearful. Tearful, too – some of the smaller ones were crying, whether from anxiety or exhaustion it was hard to say. There were two adults with them as chaperones, a hawk-faced woman and a hollow-eyed man. Mrs Russell, in her full WVS rig of green suit and felt hat, bustled towards them, clipboard at the ready. The beaky woman produced a list of names from her bag and the complex negotiations over who might go where began.

  ‘Come on.’

  Taking Lily’s arm, Dora made for the massed crowd of children. She clapped her hands and the little faces turned towards her. Close to, Lily could see just how scruffy they were. It came as no great surprise.

  Last year, a quest with Gladys to track down Bill’s mother had taken them to Stepney where he’d grown up in the orphanage. Lily had been shocked. Hinton was her home town and for that reason she loved it, but without it being exactly ugly, she knew it was nothing special. Beyond a few old Georgian buildings and the central shopping streets, it was a web of small factories, warehouses, pubs, corner shops, and terraces, like her own, crowded around the railway line and canal.

  Her own home was nothing grand but in Stepney she’d seen proper slums, cramped and insanitary even before the Blitz. Add a layer of dust and grime, broken bricks, broken houses, broken windows, and half-cleared bomb sites and the sum total was a vision of hell. However, it had been home to these children and was all they knew. It must have been a wrench to leave. She hoped they’d settle in Hinton somehow.

  The
numbers were about even, boys and girls. Some were obviously siblings, the older ones either protective or dismissive of the little ones’ tugging hands. Some of the older boys were boisterous, pushing and shoving, some of it genuine, some bravado, Lily suspected. The older girls looked resigned or bored. In the early days of the war, there’d been mass evacuation of children from the big cities, but in the months of the phony war, many had gone back, only to be caught up in the Blitz. Off the children had been sent again, only to be reclaimed or to drift back home when the bombings had eased off. For some of these children, this might be their third journey into the unknown.

  ‘Now listen,’ Dora was saying to them. ‘Over there at the tea bar there’s refreshments for you while we try to sort a few things out. But— No, wait—’

  It was too late. The children had already started streaming noisily towards the offer of food and drink.

  ‘Get after them, Lily!’ cried her mother. ‘We don’t want to lose any! Here was I thinking I could get them into a nice orderly crocodile!’

  They chased after the children and tried to corral them.

  ‘I should have brought Jim’s fire-watching whistle,’ Lily grinned when finally the children were slurping noisily at squash and stuffing arrowroots and malted milks into their mouths and pockets.

  ‘No choclit?’ complained one lad. ‘When I was evac to ’Ereford we got biscuits and choclit when we got there!’

  It was a taste of things to come.

  When Lily had told him she’d be busy that afternoon, Jim was delighted – not that he showed it. They normally spent every hour of their free time together, but after the hiatus caused by Gladys and the babies, Lily’s offer to help with the evacuees meant he could resume his secret ring shopping.

  He’d settled on his chosen jeweller’s – Samson Newman and Son, jeweller, watch mender, and silversmith – whose window, he felt, held the best selection. Still in his work suit to give the impression of being a serious purchaser, his Post Office book in his pocket, Jim headed for the shop. He paused before the window to straighten his tie, and as he did so, a hand poked through the velvet drapes at the back and removed one of the pads of rings.