Keep the Home Fires Burning

by Anne Bennett

  Peggy and Violet laughed. ‘My mother finds the same, I think,’ Peggy said. ‘My dad was crippled in the last war, see. He nearly lost his foot but though they saved it, he has to have his shoe built up and still walks with a pronounced limp, so we knew he wouldn’t be called up.’

  ‘Have you a farm?’

  Peggy shook her head. ‘A farm is too grand a name for it,’ she said. ‘I’d call it a smallholding. We have a few hens, two big fat sows and a host of piglets, and a few cows. Dad missed Sam when he enlisted because his leg is often painful.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marion. ‘I’m sure your brother was a great help to him.’

  ‘He was,’ Peggy said. ‘Though my younger brother, Peter, is no slouch, but he is only twelve yet and so has another two years at school. Sam will be virtually running the place, I should imagine, when the war is over.’ She paused and added softly, ‘That’s, of course, if he survives.’

  ‘Ooh, don’t say that,’ said Violet.

  ‘Got to be faced,’ Peggy said, and gave a rueful smile. ‘But I know it will break my heart if anything does happen to him.’

  She gave a sudden shiver and Marion knew just how she felt. She tried to lighten the mood a little. ‘Violet’s right,’ she said. ‘Dwelling on things that may not happen does no good at all, so let’s not even think of it.’ Turning to Violet she said. ‘Do you have a similar setup to Peggy’s?’

  ‘Yes,’ Violet said. ‘But ours isn’t so big. My dad also fought in the last war, and he was gassed. His breathing sounds like a steam engine sometimes and a lot of the work falls to my mother or my brothers when Dad has a bad spell. That’s why it was so hard for them when Mom was ill with pleurisy last year. She does most of the digging, see.’

  ‘So you are able to grow your own vegetables as well?’

  ‘Yes, but there’s other free food about in the country,’ Violet said. ‘Like rabbits. Your dad traps them, don’t he, Peggy? He’s brought a few to us. Dad was sure it was the good food that pulled Mom round.’

  ‘But a lot of bartering goes on,’ Peggy said. ‘You swap anything for what you haven’t got and sell any surplus at the market, and the butchers are always glad of the rabbits. We have an orchard too, so we can also swap or sell apples, pears and plums. Of course, when a pig is slaughtered by any farmer, the meat is shared around our neighbours.’

  ‘Oh, Peggy, you’re making my mouth water,’ Marion cried. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a bacon sandwich right now.’

  Both girls laughed and Marion said, ‘I’m really surprised, as you’re both country girls, you didn’t opt for the Land Army.’

  ‘Our mothers would have preferred us to do that,’ Violet admitted. ‘They thought it meant that we’d be nearer home, but there’s no guarantee of that. They could send you anywhere.’

  ‘And you didn’t fancy it anyway?’

  The girls shook their heads emphatically. ‘We wouldn’t be any better off and might have been worse,’ Peggy said. ‘The village is surrounded by farmland and so we know many of the big farmers – those with farms big enough to need to hire staff, at any rate. Some of the wealthier ones were sometimes asked to dinner at the Buckinghams’ and we would wait on them and hear them talking. Most of them seemed to have little time for the Land Girls they claimed were being forced on them, and no intention of having the girls sleep in the house, but thought a draughty barn quite adequate.’

  ‘We thought them in the same mould as the Buckinghams,’ Violet put in. ‘All posh and stuck up, and we knew they would treat us like dirt – and the wages were rubbish as well.’

  ‘Yeah, they were,’ Peggy agreed. ‘Anyroad, we wanted to see somewhere other than our village, and try a different kind of work.’

  ‘But won’t your parents worry about you living so far away from home?’ Marion said.

  ‘Not really,’ Peggy said. ‘In service we had to live away from home anyway. I mean, our houses were close and all that, but we still had only the same time off as anyone else.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s different somehow,’ Marion said. ‘You are looked after, in a way, by the housekeeper, or perhaps the cook if you worked in the kitchen.’

  ‘Watched over, more like,’ Peggy muttered resentfully, ‘to see if we were enjoying ourselves too much or, Heaven forbid, if any of us met a boy we liked because we weren’t allowed followers.’

  ‘Yeah, like they wanted to control all of our lives,’ Violet said. ‘How were we ever to make a lives of our own, living in a place like that? My parents are used to me not being there now because I haven’t lived at home since I was fourteen.’

  ‘I don’t wish to be rude,’ Marion said tentatively, ‘but to me you don’t look much older than that now.’

  Violet sighed. ‘I know. I can’t help how I look, and I know that I’m not very big, but I am turned seventeen.’

  ‘Even so …’

  ‘Her mom made me promise to look out for her,’ Peggy said. ‘And I am twenty, and sensible enough,’ she added with a twinkle in her eye, ‘when I need to be.’

  Her comment brought a wry laugh from Violet and Marion, but still Marion wondered if the girls realised exactly what they were taking on. One of Polly’s neighbours, being declared unfit for the army, had taken a job at the forge and he told Polly when the ovens were opened it was like Dante’s inferno, whatever the hell that was, and the noise was indescribable. Marion could only imagine it, but she did know that when the huge hammers dropped anyone standing in Lichfield Road would feel the vibration under their feet.

  The children were agog with questions about the new lodgers they would soon have living in the house. ‘If we’re having lodgers will I still have to go and get coal every morning?’ Tony asked.

  ‘No you won’t, Tony,’ Marion told him, and saw the relieved smile steal over his face. ‘And I will no longer be beholden to the Christmas Tree Fund and will be able to buy you clothes myself. So it’s good news all round.’

  Polly, who popped in later, also wanted to know all about Marion’s lodgers, what they looked like, where they came from. She couldn’t understand either why they had chosen to work in a drop forge.

  ‘These girls’ families have small farms out in the country and it seems a completely different world from ours,’ Marion told her.

  ‘Then God help them, that’s all I can say,’ Polly said. ‘They’ll likely not stick it.’

  ‘I hope they do, Poll,’ Marion said. ‘I badly need the money.’

  ‘I know you do. But don’t worry. If it don’t work out for them there, I’ll have Pat put in a word for them at the munitions.’

  ‘That won’t do no good,’ Marion said. ‘Peggy promised her mom she wouldn’t work in a munitions factory.’ She recounted the tale that Peggy had told her about her aunt. ‘Doesn’t that worry you, Poll?’ she asked as she finished.

  ‘No,’ Polly said, and then added more truthfully, ‘Well, I suppose a bit, but Pat said things are different now from the conditions in the Great War. He said then there were explosions, and people say that it sometimes stopped women conceiving, although facts like that weren’t made public, like. Imagine the outcry if they had been?’

  ‘Well, how do you know that things are much better now?’

  ‘Marion, it was over twenty years ago,’ Polly said. ‘Name me one thing that has stayed the same for twenty years?’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘They will have learned summat from making them munitions in that first lot,’ Polly said. ‘And this time around they have factory inspectors and everything, to make sure all the rules are obeyed. It’s safe as houses now compared to what it was, and I know that our Mary Ellen would prefer it to work in a drop forge any day of the week.’

  ‘I can’t say I blame her one bit,’ Marion said. ‘Even the sound of those drop hammers sends chills running down my spine. Let’s hope that Peggy Wagstaffe and Violet Clooney are tougher than me.’

  TEN

  Peggy and Violet found the work in the for
ge harder than anything they had ever done in their lives, but they made a pact not to complain about it at the Whittakers’. They had made the choice to go into the forge of their own free will and therefore they thought they had no right to moan. But Marion guessed they were finding it hard because she had seen the exhaustion on their faces.

  But it wasn’t just the work that was so unnerving, it was everything. In their sleepy little village they had never seen so many people, nor so much traffic nor such a vast array of shops, and that took a bit of getting used to.

  ‘Didn’t you notice the crowds that day you came to look at the room?’ Marion asked.

  ‘Yeah, we did,’ Peggy said, ‘but we just thought it looked exciting then. I mean, we chose somewhere that was as unlike home as possible, but it’s different when you live in a place.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Violet added. ‘It’s the smell of the place too, and that’s all mixed together with the things made in the factories, particularly around here, where so much is made.’

  ‘Beer, sauce and custard, to name just three,’ Peggy agreed. ‘That’s what makes it such a vibrant place, of course.’

  ‘The country is all well and good, but not much is happening,’ Violet explained. ‘We love it here now, but crikey, the first time I went on a tram I was sure that it was going to jump off the rails and we would all be killed.’

  Marion laughed. ‘Yes, I can see exactly what you mean.’

  ‘Now we never give getting on a tram a second’s thought, and as for the work in the forge, well, I’m sure we will get into the swing of that too eventually.’

  ‘It’s happening already,’ Violet said. ‘We’re not half as tired as we used to be when we come home in the evening.’

  Marion had to agree with that. She had immense respect for both girls, and it was just amazing how well they had settled into the family, considering they had been there not quite three weeks.

  Just a couple of days later Sarah, meeting her grandmother outside the church one Sunday morning, let slip about the lodgers working at the drop forge. Marion hadn’t told any of them to keep what work the lodgers did a secret, though she had not told her mother for she knew that Clara would think it a totally unsuitable place for two young girls to work.

  Sarah quickly realised her mistake as she watched her grandmother go puce in the face and begin exclaiming so loudly about the couple of guttersnipes her daughter had taken to live in her house that many stopped and stared, including the priest, who was in the porch. Sarah, mortified with shame, left her grandfather remonstrating with his wife and slipped into the pew beside her mother. She told her what had happened.

  ‘Sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I just didn’t think.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Marion whispered back. ‘I had thought that with the girls at work all week and Sunday teas being a thing of the past, they might never need to meet my mother, or at least not very often. I did explain to Peggy and Violet just the other day that my mother was very old-fashioned and didn’t really approve of women taking over many traditionally male occupations, but really this had to come out sooner or later. After all, Peggy and Violet are doing nothing they have to be ashamed of. That being said, I don’t want a scene outside church so we will all slip away in the last hymn.’

  She knew, though, that her mother never let things drop and was heartily glad she had said something to the girls when she saw Clara come in the back gate, just as the family were finishing their bowls of porridge. Marion and Sarah exchanged looks across the table and Marion gave an inward sigh. She guessed Clara was here to finish the tirade begun before Mass and, because she had come alone, that her father had not approved of what she was doing.

  However, the two girls stood up as Clara came in and Peggy turned to face her with a smile on her face and her hand outstretched as Marion said, ‘Mammy, these are the two girls I told you about, Peggy and Violet.’

  Clara ignored her daughter’s words and Peggy’s hand. She glared at them both with a face that Peggy maintained later would have soured cream, and almost hissed, ‘I’ll have you know that this was once a respectable home.’

  Peggy dropped her hand and said mildly, ‘Yes, I know that. That’s one of the reasons we chose to stay here.’

  Clara was outraged. ‘You have the effrontery to … Don’t you realise that your presence here has tainted that respectability?’ she almost snarled.

  ‘Just how do you work that out?’ Peggy asked in a reasonable tone.

  ‘Because you are two sluts, for only sluts would work in a drop forge, of all places,’ Clara said. ‘You are not wanted here so the sooner you go back where you came from, the better it will be for everybody.’

  Sarah wanted to floor to open up and swallow her, and Marion gasped at her mother’s insults. But she was angry too and she burst out, ‘Just a minute. In case it escapes your notice, this is my house and I say who stays here and who doesn’t. And just now, and for as long as it takes, Peggy and Violet are more than welcome. I will thank you to keep your nose out of my affairs.’

  ‘I’m telling you they will corrupt your children.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Marion snapped. ‘They will do no such thing. And now if you have said your piece and thoroughly upset and insulted everyone, it would be better if you left.’

  ‘I’ll go when I am good and ready.’

  Richard knew it was up to him. It was what his father would have done and so he stepped forward and said, ‘No you won’t, Grandma. As Mom said, this is her house and just now she doesn’t want you in it.’

  Marion was astounded and yet very grateful to her son, but her mother, she saw, was even more amazed. Her malicious eyes raked round them all, from the nervous younger children to Sarah, her face red with shame, and Richard, with the steely glint in his eyes that she had never noticed before, and finally rested on her daughter. ‘On your own head be it then,’ she snapped. ‘I think I will write to Bill and tell him what’s going on under his roof.’ And with this parting shot she swept from the room.

  ‘Phew!’ Tony said with feeling, and Marion hadn’t the heart to chide him because she felt much the same.

  ‘Will she do that?’ Peggy said to Marion. ‘Write to your husband, I mean.’

  ‘I’ve given up trying to work out what she might do next,’ Marion said. ‘She may write to Bill, but she’ll be wasting her time because I’ve already written and told him all about you and Violet, and where you’re working. In contrast to my mother he has nothing but praise for the two of you because he knows the hard, though essential, work you will be doing working in a drop forge. But after that little upset it wouldn’t surprise me if you intend to look for other lodgings straight away.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be daft,’ Peggy said. ‘As if we would let ourselves be pushed out by one sad and embittered old woman. Anyroad, that’s how I feel. How about you, Vi?’

  ‘I agree with you,’ Violet said. ‘But, Marion, as you said, it is your house and if you would like us to go—‘

  ‘Oh, no!’ Marion cried. ‘No I don’t, not at all, but at the very least, you deserve some sort of explanation as to why my mother behaves the way she does …’

  Marion explained about Clara’s life and how many of her siblings had died, and then about the death of Michael on one of the coffin ships en route to America.

  ‘His death, more than any of the others, seemed to break my mother up completely,’ she said. ‘To tell you the truth I often felt the lack of a mother because mine has always been so linked to the past and those she had lost.’

  ‘I never knew you felt that way, Mom,’ Sarah said. ‘You never said.’

  ‘There wasn’t any point to saying anything, was there?’ Marion said. ‘It would have changed nothing.’

  ‘I know exactly how you felt,’ Peggy said. ‘Our family had something similar. My mother had a little boy stillborn when I was not quite two years old and my elder brother, Sam, was four. My mother said the doctor warned her not to try for a baby too soon,
to give her body time to recover, but she had a little girl the following year that she called Therese. She was a frail little thing, always ailing, so everyone has told me since, but I can’t remember that. What I can remember is seeing her lying in her little coffin as if she was fast asleep and would wake up any minute.’

  ‘How old was she?’ Marion asked gently.

  ‘Three,’ Peggy said. ‘And she had died from whooping cough. I was six and I remember her funeral and everyone crying, and my mother’s white face. Afterwards it was like my mother was behind a pane of glass. It was as though I could see her and hear her and yet seemed unable to touch her and there was no light in her eyes. I just felt so lonely and so did Sam. We sort of looked after one another. My father seemed at a loss too.’

  ‘That describes it very well,’ Marion said. ‘I was lonely too and my mother stayed behind that pane of glass.’

  ‘I thought mine would,’ Peggy said. ‘In the end, Mom said the vicar went to see her and, while he commiserated with her and acknowledged the deep sorrow she was feeling, he told her that a mother with other children couldn’t allow herself the luxury of wallowing in grief for ever, and she should be thankful for the two healthy children she did have.’

  ‘I so wish that someone had had the courage to say that to my mother,’ Marion said.

  ‘It might have helped you all if someone had,’ Peggy said, ‘because from that moment, it was as if our mother returned to us. Then my brother Peter was born when I was eight years old and Daisy three years later.’

  ‘We dealt with it by giving our mother incredible licence,’ Marion said, ‘always making allowances, and you see the result. Now I wouldn’t know what to do to correct it.’

  ‘I don’t think you can,’ Peggy said. ‘Not now. What you can change is the way you respond to it. Stand up to her like you did today.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Marion said. ‘I do see that you’re right but it’s incredibly hard to face up to her when I’ve spent a lifetime appeasing her.’