Gunner Girls and Fighter Boys

by Mary Gibson

  ‘May, I don’t think we should wait,’ he told her, as they left the infirmary together.

  ‘Mum will go up the wall, you do know that, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘I’ll take the blame,’ Bill said. ‘Besides, you told me there’s nothing left of Dockhead Church, so we couldn’t get married there anyway!’

  ‘There’s a hut in the convent grounds…’

  Bill put his hand over hers, which was linked through his arm. ‘We’ll have a blessing in the hut then,’ he said firmly. ‘But I am not getting off this ship until we’re married.’ He hesitated an instant. ‘That’s if you’re sure you want me.’

  She looked up at him with a straight face. ‘What do you think I came halfway round the world for?’

  He threw back his head and laughed. His bronzed face had already filled out; he was almost her old Bill again.

  Three days before Christmas 1945, within sight of the North African coast, May and Bill were married by the captain and spent their honeymoon cruising back to Liverpool. May made sure they were on deck to see the coast of England come into view. She would have to disembark with the ATS girls, and he with the RAF boys, but for now she was content to have him close by, his arm touching hers, leaning upon the ship’s rail. As the distant docks came closer, she could see the waiting crowd lining the quayside, the bunting fluttering and strains of a military band striking up. She gripped his arm and, resting her head on his shoulder, felt that there couldn’t be enough days ahead to contain her happiness.

  But the procedure for getting out of the services wasn’t as swift as May had hoped. Almost as soon as the vessel berthed, they were separated. Bill trooped down the gangplank with the other ex-POWs and the wounded, who were the first to leave the ship, and May watched anxiously to see where he was taken. Bill had been warned he’d have to undergo a medical to make sure he was fit enough to travel, then stay overnight in a transit camp. So they’d made arrangements to meet up the next morning at the train station. When May walked off the ship with the other ATS girls, she felt like royalty. Cheering crowds welcomed them and complete strangers clapped her on the back as they passed along the dockside. England smelled so different. She had grown used to fresh, salty air and before that the spice-rich thicker scent of the Far East. Now she drew in a deep breath of cold English December air. Moisture-laden fog, mixed with burnt coke and smoke from berthed vessels, stung her nostrils. She let herself be shepherded to a waiting lorry, and looked out at a misty Liverpool morning. The colours seemed muted, after the vibrant palette of Singapore and the Med. They drove through streets of dun brick and grey stone, and tracts of ruined ground, until they arrived at the army barracks. There was little ceremony to mark her nearly five years’ service. A lance corporal stamped her paybook and doled out money owed from a tin on the counter. She was issued with a travel warrant and clothing coupons, then shown to the barracks in the transit camp. She could hardly believe that tonight would be her last as a soldier, and she had to admit that she felt more at sea today than she had on all the oceans she’d sailed through. How could Liverpool seem more alien to her than the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea or the storm-tossed Mediterranean?

  ***

  ‘What do you mean, you’re staying at the Gilbies? Peggy’s made you up a bed in my room.’

  She had barely extricated herself from her mother’s welcoming embrace when the consequences of her impetuous seaboard marriage hit home to May. She and Bill went first to St James’s Road to break the news to the Gilbies. They were overjoyed, not just to have their son back, but to be given the added bonus of a daughter. May doubted her own mother’s reaction would be as easygoing.

  ‘Well, Mum,’ she said, looking to Bill for support and noting that he hung back at the kitchen door. She put out her hand and he took it, giving her an encouraging squeeze. ‘We’ve got some good news!’ She felt a flush rising to her cheeks. ‘We’re married!’

  ‘You’re what?’

  ‘Married. We couldn’t wait, could we, Bill?’

  Bill seemed to have lost all his bravado. He’d been ridiculously proud of being a married man. He’d fought through a war, survived horrific privations at the hands of cruel captors, and yet the thing he felt most proud of was marrying May. She pulled him in closer.

  ‘We did it on board ship…’

  Her mother and Peggy had similar open-mouthed expressions on their faces.

  ‘It’s all legal,’ she said.

  ‘Well, sod me. You’ve gone and got married without me.’

  Her mother sat back in the chair and crossed her arms in uncompromising disapproval. May glanced at Peggy. Surely her sister would come to her rescue.

  ‘You could have waited – I wanted to be your bridesmaid!’ Peggy said.

  Considering she’d rescued her sister from ten tons of rubble, May thought she’d at least be on her side.

  ‘We’re having a blessing at Dockhead Church, though,’ she added, looking from one to the other. ‘So the family can celebrate.’

  ‘You’ll be lucky, it’s flattened,’ her mother said, straight-faced.

  ‘I know that. We’ll have it in the hut in the convent grounds.’

  ‘Lovely. If it wasn’t enough your sister’s a divorced woman, I’ve got you coming home not married in the eyes of the Church.’

  It was an odd fact, which May was beginning to realize since she’d been home, that the things which upset people nowadays seemed so trivial, compared to the trials of the past six years. Perhaps the old May would have swallowed it.

  ‘Can’t you just be glad I’ve got Bill back in one piece? And, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve come home without a scratch too. After all we’ve been through, Mum, don’t you think it’s time to be grateful just to be alive. And if I can be happy, married to Bill by a captain instead of a priest, then I think you ought to be as well!’

  Her mother was dumbstruck. Little home-bird May was showing the tips of her talons. But her retort had at least brought Peggy to her senses.

  ‘May’s right, Mum. I should know. What wouldn’t I give to have my Harry walking back through that door.’

  May looked at her sister’s face, which wasn’t that of a young woman any more. She wanted to weep. She had delayed her own marriage, waiting for Peggy to recover. But now May realized that though she would make a life for herself and Harry’s children, Peggy would never recover. She went to her sister and held her tight.

  ‘I’m sorry, Peg.’

  Peggy wiped the corner of her eye. ‘Shhh. Don’t be. I’m happy you two found each other out there. Miracles really do happen, don’t they?’

  There was no more carping from Mrs Lloyd, who had joined in her daughters’ embrace, and it was settled that until they had their own home, May and Bill would live at the Gilbies’, sleeping in Bill’s old bedroom, which Mrs Gilbie had made into a little bedsitting room for them.

  After Peggy had seen them off, May said, ‘I suppose the sooner we can find somewhere of our own the better.’

  ‘It’s not going to be easy – half the houses have gone!’

  ‘And if they haven’t gone they’ve got bomb damage.’

  It was the one thing that had struck May on her return to Bermondsey. There simply wasn’t an undamaged house, church, school or factory. On every street were whole tracts of cleared land, places that she’d grown up in, obliterated or damaged beyond repair.

  ‘Shall we have a walk down to your old house?’

  May was silent for a long moment. ‘It’s not there, Bill.’

  ‘I know. I meant, well... Let’s just walk along Southwark Park Road, see what’s gone.’

  It seemed a strange pilgrimage. ‘How can you see what’s gone?’ She knew she was being awkward, but why was he making her face it? ‘All right, darling, if you want to.’

  They cut through Thorburn Square on their way to the Blue. The three-storey Victorian houses were largely undamaged, and the missing railings from the churchyard were the most it had suf
fered. May cheered up.

  ‘At least there’s one place in Bermondsey that hasn’t changed much! Don’t you think this would be a nice place to live, Bill?’ she said as they rounded the square, looking over the area walls and down into basement flats. Most of the houses, which had once belonged to the more prosperous Victorian residents, were now occupied by two or three families, with the basements the cheapest to rent.

  ‘Anywhere’d be nice to live, so long as you’re there,’ he said, slipping his arm round her waist.

  They turned into Southwark Park Road and Bill pointed out a whole row of bombed-out houses.

  ‘Wonder how long it’ll take them to get all that cleared? I used to imagine, when I was in Changi, I’d come back and all this would be rebuilt! Stupid dreams you have, when you don’t know what’s going on back home.’

  Half the shops in the Blue still had hoardings covering broken windows, and there were still empty, burned-out shells waiting to be demolished. Then they came to the remains of the John Bull pub, with the arch beyond, and May hung back.

  ‘Don’t you want to?’ Bill asked.

  ‘No, no, I’ll be all right. I can’t live in Bermondsey and never go under one arch or another.’

  ‘No, but this one is the hardest, I know.’

  Now she knew why he had insisted. This wasn’t a walk down memory lane. He wanted to lay to rest all the demons that might come back to haunt her now that she was home.

  She took in a deep breath and walked under the arch. Just then a train passed overhead, rumbling like a distant explosion. If this was a test, she was determined to pass it. She carried on walking, and once out the other side, quickened her pace. They passed Raymouth Road, half gone courtesy of a doodlebug, and before long they came to the flattened row of houses that had once been May’s home. They stood silently, as evening came on. The cleared bomb site had been fenced about with hoardings. There was nothing to see.

  ‘It’s all right, Bill,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be all right.’

  And they turned and walked back to St James’s Road.

  But their final visit had to be to the oracle, her Granny Byron. Next day they went to Dix’s Place.

  ‘Do you think your nan will be surprised we’re married?’ Bill asked and May snorted.

  ‘Nothing surprises that woman. I swear she foretold it all before I’d even signed up. Knew about you… and Doug! Knew I’d go overseas.’

  ‘Do you really believe all that?’

  ‘All I know is that she gets a lot right!’

  As they walked arm in arm up Grange Road, they stopped outside what was left of Garner’s, just a single storey.

  ‘Well, at least they kept working all through the war,’ May said, and Bill looked doubtful.

  ‘It’s not what it was, though, is it?’

  Nothing was what it once was, May thought, and perhaps that was as it should be.

  Her grandmother, however, was the one fixed point in the ever-changing world. She showed them into the smoke-yellow kitchen where Troubles the dog, still unburdened by any of his own, greeted them with wagging tail and bright eyes. After making them tea, Granny Byron sat puffing on the old clay pipe, while May told her about finding Bill and their marriage aboard ship.

  ‘As God’s my judge, didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I?’ Granny Byron sucked in a lungful of smoke.

  ‘Still not given that up?’ May asked hopelessly.

  ‘It’s me comfort,’ her grandmother said, ‘and gawd knows I need it, what with him running up the stairs to see Jack Ketch!’

  Bill looked at her for enlightenment but it took some deciphering, even for her. She took the ‘he’ to be her grandfather, and Jack Ketch she knew from childhood warnings was the hangman all naughty children were heading for.

  ‘What’s Granddad done now?’ she asked, stirring the tea and adding more milk to the mahogany brew.

  ‘They’re sayin’ he’s had that Ronnie Riley topped. They found him floating in the river up by Cherry Garden Pier.’

  May choked on her tea and poor Bill looked as if he was considering whether he’d married into the wrong family.

  ‘No! He wouldn’t do that, Nan. He’s just a tea leaf, he’s not a… anything worse!’

  ‘I’m not saying he is. I think that Wide’oh knows something.’

  ‘Peggy’s George? What’s he got to do with it?’

  Her grandmother tapped the pipe on to the grate and sat back, arms folded.

  ‘Granddad found out it was Ronnie Riley stole your poor brother’s wallet and papers, while he was layin’ in the street half dead. He went up the wall, May. To think Ronnie would let us go through all that heartache looking for our Jack. Three days of it… if he’d had his papers we’d have found ’im, wouldn’t we? Well, your granddad walked out of here… I won’t say he did it himself, but I looked at the leaves after he’d gone and I saw death, as God’s my judge, I did.’

  There was a long silence and May was aware of Bill pulling at his collar.

  ‘You don’t think George was in on it, that he knew about Ronnie… all the time we were looking for Jack?’

  Granny Byron shook her head, so the gold earrings swung.

  ‘Nah, he’s got his faults, but Wide’oh wouldn’t do that to one of his own. Not that he’s blameless. Granddad found out why our Jack was out in that raid in the first place – doin’ a favour for Wide’oh, got it all written down in his little book. Paid Jack ten bob to deliver a parcel…’

  May felt suddenly sick, letting the truth of Jack’s final hour sink in. All the times she’d puzzled over what had kept her brother out in that raid and the answer had been there all along. Wide’oh.

  ‘Still, once your granddad told Wide’oh what Ronnie done…’ She paused to tamp down the pipe and gave May a meaningful look.

  ‘Sounds like it’ll be George running up the stairs to Jack Ketch then...’ she said.

  Bill’s eyes widened and she added quickly, ‘Not that I think he’d have done anything like that… of course I don’t.’

  And Bill looked relieved.

  *

  After that, May and Bill took several more walks around Bermondsey, retracing their old haunts, taking inventory of the world that had once been theirs and was no longer. And on the day before their marriage blessing, coming back from talking with the priest in the makeshift chapel at Dockhead, they both, without even asking each other, turned towards the river. It was a bright January day, sparkling with frost. Snow had fallen the night before and their feet crunched as they walked along Shad Thames, towards the street where they had first found little Jack. Apart from the structural damage, another noticeable effect of the war years was that the streets of Bermondsey were half empty. Bill had read that a third of its population simply hadn’t returned. Either dead or displaced, whatever the cause, the result was a sometimes ghostly, deserted air, especially in the back streets down by the river.

  Now not a soul was there to witness as they searched out the site of the ancient narrow house where they’d found baby Jack in his dead mother’s arms.

  They walked the entire length of the street.

  ‘I think it was here,’ Bill said finally.

  ‘But wasn’t there a pub next door? And I’m sure there was a warehouse the other side?’

  ‘Both gone,’ Bill said, taking her hand.

  The only memorial to their encounter would be the memory they carried with them. There was certainly nothing left in the physical world to remind them.

  ‘Just think, if we’d never rescued Jack, we might never have found each other again,’ May said.

  Bill drew her in close. ‘You’re right, Harry wouldn’t have had my address to give to Peggy!’ he said, as they retraced the route of their first walk, up on to Tower Bridge. They stood on the very centre of the bridge, looking towards Surrey Docks, which had been burning the last time they were here together. May stood with feet either side of the gap between the bascules, and, haltingly, she confessed to Bil
l her true feelings on that day.

  ‘I felt that somehow I had one foot in the past, and one in the future. And I can remember thinking I didn’t have a clue if my life was going to work out. It just seemed like I was walking forward into the dark.’

  ‘But we stole a march on the future, didn’t we, May?’ he said, almost like a fellow conspirator. ‘Reunited, married, honeymooned, all before we set foot back in England! We’ve spent so long dreaming about “tomorrow”, though, I wonder what the future will hold for us?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve given up trying to predict the future,’ May said. ‘I’m leaving that to Granny Byron!’

  For as she held Bill’s hand and gazed downriver towards her Bermondsey home, May understood that the war, full of predictable tragedies and unexpected miracles, had taught her that the only true guide to the future was love.

  ~

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  Acknowledgements

  About Mary Gibson

  About The Factory Girls series

  An invitation from the publisher

  Preview

  Read on for a preview of

  They call them custard tarts – the girls who work at Pearce Duff’s custard powder factory in Bermondsey – ‘London’s larder’ – before the First World War. Conditions are hard, pay terrible and the hours long and unforgiving, but nothing can quench the spirit of humour and friendship – or the rising tide of anger that will finally bring the girls out on strike for a better deal.

  For one of them, striking spells disaster. Nellie Clark’s wages keep her young brothers and sister from starvation, while her father sinks into drunken violence after the death of their mother.

  While Nellie struggles to keep her family together, two men compete for her love, and over them looms the shadow of the coming war, which will pull London’s East End together as never before – even while it tears the world apart.