A Girl in Wartime

by Maggie Ford

  ‘I’ve had a busting row with Harry,’ Elsie was saying, her face taut as she sipped agitatedly at the cup of tea Mum had handed to her. ‘As soon as we read the paper he started going on about how it was his duty to sign up as soon as he could. I ask you, where are his brains? We’ve got a little’un now. He can’t go and leave us. What if he got killed, and me left on me own with just me and a little kiddie?’

  She’d had the baby just before Christmas. They’d named him Henry after his father, for all he’d always been called Harry.

  ‘I told him, point blank,’ she went on, her voice rising, ‘if he went out that door and signed up, he’d never see me again. I’d leave him. I would.’

  Her words made Connie shudder involuntarily. If her brother-in-law did join up, how easily those words could prove true.

  ‘My Jim’s saying the same,’ Lillian put in. ‘And me having just discovered we’re going to have a little’un of our own. How would I cope if he got killed?’

  ‘It won’t come to that, love,’ Mum said, sipping her own tea as if her life depended on it. ‘We’ve got our regular troops and the Government is already saying it’ll all be over by Christmas.’

  ‘That Lord Kitchener don’t think so,’ Elsie put in harshly, ‘says it could go on for years. He’s already talking of calling for ordinary men to volunteer. Harry says they’re already opening up recruiting offices all over the place and expect thousands to enlist. But I don’t want my Harry to be one of them.’

  ‘If I was younger, I’d be there, up front like a bloody shot,’ their father said, his voice grating with harsh determination. Now that the inevitable had happened, her father had been the first to change his tune about the war.

  ‘Then bloody good job you aint!’ her mother burst out, sharp for once, even to the extent of uttering a swear word, which she rarely did. Dad shut up and she turned to Connie’s sisters.

  ‘You two had any breakfast? I could make some. The baby’ll be fine in his pram. You can take him in the other room when he wants feeding – give you some privacy. Though your dad’ll be off to work as soon as he’s finished his breakfast. The boys aren’t home. Bert’s already off finishing his milk round, and Ron has to be in work by seven thirty. Neither of them has seen the paper yet. George was here but as soon as he read the news he was off to have a chat with that minister of his, so he said. So I don’t know when he’ll be coming home.’

  Connie wasn’t interested in her eldest brother’s pursuits but her sisters’ words had set her thoughts working, and deeply concerned thoughts they were. Ron and Bert would have seen the newspaper placards on the way to work or heard the news from their colleagues. Had either of them already gone to see if they could enlist? Mum had said the country already had professional soldiers: the British Expeditionary Force – the BEF – proper soldiers who’d soon have Germany on the run, and the war would indeed be over by Christmas, if not sooner. And Lillian and Elsie’s husbands and the boys, all full of impetuous eagerness with no idea of what fighting could entail and what could happen to them, wouldn’t be wanted. At least that’s what she hoped.

  She shuddered, imagining her brothers and brothers-in-law fighting in a foreign land, maybe killed. Mum and Dad – their sons gone … Hastily she turned her thoughts back to the present.

  ‘I’d better be off to work too,’ she said. ‘They’ll be wondering where I am, and be upset with me if I’m late.’

  She made to leap up from the table but her mother countered, ‘I don’t expect many people will get to work on time on a morning like this, love. It ain’t exactly a normal day, is it? Same with your dad, I think.’

  Glancing up from the newspaper he was still reading, he looked as if struck by lightning. ‘Good Gawd, I forgot all about work!’

  He glanced at the ornate mantel clock over the fireplace as though it might bite him. ‘Look at the bloody time! I should’ve been on my rounds an hour ago. War or no war, housewives expect their coal to be delivered.’

  ‘I don’t suppose anyone’ll be fretting over late coal deliveries on a day like today,’ his wife said, murmuring somewhat absently, turning her attention to her eldest girl. ‘Look, love, I’m sure if you go home and have a quiet talk to your Harry, without getting all riled up and starting another row, I’m sure he’ll see sense and not go galloping off like a wild bull.’ She looked at Lillian. ‘You too, love. Go off and have a proper talk with your Jim. At the moment everyone’s running about like headless chickens, doing things they might regret. If we give ourselves time to calm down, we’ll all be better off.’

  Anxious about what her employers would say to her for being late, Connie rushed out of the house even before her sisters left.

  From the short street where she lived, she turned on to Bethnal Green Road only to find herself caught up in a hurrying mass of people, most of them heading in one direction – westward. Some were on foot, others on bicycles – loads of bicycles – the buses that passed her crammed full. They usually were, but today everyone looked obviously bent on joining those already gathered in front of Buckingham Palace or Downing Street. There they would be cheering themselves hoarse, she imagined.

  Resisting the urge to join them, she crossed the road as best she could towards Dover Street, where her firm was situated. Inside she was met by almost complete silence, hardly a soul to be seen except the foreman she saw striding towards her – a heavy-set, stern but fair man in his forties. One hand was raised as if waving her away.

  ‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ Connie began automatically, half expecting to be handed her cards.

  ‘You’re not late. You’re one of the few who’s bothered to come in and you probably won’t be working at all today. Everyone’s too riled up. Bet they’re all cheering like mad up the West End, I shouldn’t wonder. You might as well go back home or go and join them. Tomorrow it will all calm down and when you come in, see that you’re on time. The company can’t put up with any more of this.’

  His tone had sounded agitated, but she guessed it was more from a sense of excitement that had caught the whole country, it seemed. Sighing, thanking the war itself for giving her a day off, even if it would be unpaid, Connie turned and left, remembering to say a polite thank you as she went.

  What to do now? Back in Bethnal Green Road, she decided at first to resist following the crowds, but moments later found herself joining them. In her jacket pocket were some scraps of blank paper and the stub of pencil she always kept handy, together with a piece of India rubber. She would spend time drawing the expressions on people’s faces, maybe a crowd scene, maybe Buckingham Palace itself. And if Their Majesties came out on the balcony to show themselves to the cheering crowds, she would sketch them too, as best she could from where she guessed she would end up, standing at the back of the vast throng.

  Excitement at the prospect caught at her. Those drawings would be something to add to her scrapbook. As she walked with the crowd she silently thanked her school teacher who’d taken her under her wing when she’d been twelve, recognising her talents, and had given her art lessons when she should have been outside at playtimes and lunchtimes.

  ‘You’ve a rare gift,’ Miss Eaves had said. ‘When you leave school you must protect that talent, nurture it, practise it at every moment you can spare. Then one day you will become a good artist and even make money from it. And please, don’t let it drop once you leave school, thinking it all a waste of time. Make quite sure to do as I say, won’t you, my dear?’

  Overawed by such dedication and earnestness, she had nodded and, to this day, that tutor’s words still rang in her head. But how did a factory girl like her go about becoming a real artist? She didn’t know. Yet she was sure that one day it would come about. Until then all she needed was faith and dedication. Dad and her family – except Mum, of course, who showed such pride in her – could say what they liked, make fun of her if they wanted. At this moment her heart was filled to the brim with determination.

  Chapter Three
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  September 1914

  In Connie’s place of work, Sybil Potter, who stood beside her at the slowly moving conveyor belt, said, ‘Ain’t it just wonderful, the news this morning? Ain’t it wonderful?’

  Connie kept her eyes on the small cardboard box whose ends she was folding with nimble fingers, quickly dabbing glue around the edges ready for Sybil to press together before the conveyor belt bore the object onwards. Her eyes already moving towards the next box approaching to be dealt with, she said, ‘What news?’

  She’d been too pre-occupied by her own thoughts this morning, her mind full of the drawing she had done – a really successful one of baby Henry when Elsie and Harry had come round last night. No one but Mum had noticed her in the corner working away, the small piece of paper supported on an open book, everyone probably assuming she was reading. But Mum had cast a few sly glances towards her, her eyes full of secret pride.

  The drawing had become a perfect likeness of the child and as she made her way to work this morning her mind was on mounting it in a sort of framework of black, sticky passé-partout to make it look as professional as it was possible to be and giving it to her sister and her brother-in-law as a sort of present. They’d be delighted, at least so she hoped, and it would be her first ever presented portrait of someone, if only of a baby. She just hoped that they’d see it for what it was and hold on to it as a keepsake. Thinking all of this as she walked, head down, she hadn’t looked up to notice the news placards.

  ‘What news?’ Sybil mimicked as she stuck down the ends of yet another box. ‘What … You must have heard the newspapermen yelling it out on your way to work?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Connie said. ‘My mind must have been elsewhere.’

  ‘Oh, you!’ Sybil spat derisively.

  ‘Well, what news?’ Connie demanded, suddenly feeling just a little shirty.

  ‘Why, we’re winning, of course!’ Sybil went on as if quoting, ‘The BEF and the French have already pushed back the German troops, almost back to where they started. And the BEF have only been over there a few weeks. Like the Government said, it’ll be a quick war. And you never noticed the news on all the placards on your way here?’

  ‘I was thinking of other things,’ Connie cut in – all she could think to say, but already her heart was thumping with relief.

  Wonderful news! Why hadn’t she noticed? It meant that the ordinary man in the street wouldn’t be required to fight, wouldn’t be told it was his duty to volunteer. Last night at home there’d been such a ruckus – her sisters were still upset, Elsie about her Harry and Lillian about her Jim. And then there was Mum crying her eyes out because Albert, only nineteen, had told them of his intention to enlist, with Dad going off at him saying he was a bloody fool and to wait until he was called up, not go rushing off like a silly sod to get himself killed and what would his Edie have to say about that.

  Young Ronnie had added to their father’s anger, saying he intended to follow his brother.

  ‘No you don’t,’ Dad had warned. ‘You’re still under age.’

  ‘Then I’ll just tell ’em I’ve just turned eighteen,’ Ronnie had shot back at him. ‘All my mates are going to do it and I don’t want to be the one what’s left out. No one’s going to question whether I’m old enough, and I do look eighteen, maybe nineteen, because they’ll need all the men they can get if it comes to finishing off the enemy in double quick time. And I’ll be eighteen in a few weeks’ time anyway, so what’s the difference?’

  Dad had risen up off his chair in his anger. ‘You bloody well listen to me, you silly sod! You want to see that eighteenth birthday of yours? Well, if you get yourself killed, you’ll never live to see it, will you? You ain’t going to no recruitin’ office, and that’s that. Till you’re eighteen, you come under my orders and you do as I say. After that I can’t stop you.’

  Sitting back down abruptly into his chair, he had leaned forward to grab his pipe off the mantelpiece and thrust it into his mouth, reaching for his tobacco pouch and stuffing some of its contents into the pipe’s bowl.

  The others had watched as though mesmerised as he reached into his pocket for his matches, striking one, applying it to the bowl, noisily sucking in as the tobacco ignited, to puff smoke all around his head like a grey halo. Connie recalled the smell of the smoke as she had never done before, while everyone fell silent, struck by his outburst, except for Mum, who could be heard snivelling quietly.

  Now, from what Sybil Potter had just told her, she couldn’t have heard more wonderful news if she’d looked for it. It meant that her brothers had been saved from their mad impulse to join up; that her sisters would stop quarrelling with their husbands over this talk of volunteering, and that this country could return to peace as soon as the enemy was beaten back by the French and the wonderful British Expeditionary Force – back to their own country to lick their wounds. That would serve them right for thinking they could push other countries around.

  The Battle of the Marne it was being called. The Germans losing all the ground they’d captured, Paris now breathing a sigh of relief as the enemy found itself pushed back. Its only course, the papers were saying, had been to dig in and hope for recovery. Open warfare on what was being called The Western Front was a hopeless task. In six weeks all it had done was to march through Belgium with only a fraction of French soil gained and now lost.

  But now the papers were reporting that with the enemy forces firmly entrenched, French and English troops were finding it hard to dig them out and had decided to dig in as well so as to stop the casualties it was causing. As autumn passed, the front line seemed to have suddenly become a stalemate.

  ‘It ’aint right!’ Connie heard her dad burst out as he crumpled up his evening paper in a fit of frustration. ‘Soldiers are supposed to stand up and fight, not cower in bloody trenches.’

  ‘Maybe there’s no other way,’ Mum said mildly as she poured yet more tea into the quarter-full one sitting within reaching distance on the parlour table beside him.

  Taking his ease after a day hauling hundredweight sacks of coal on his back to one customer after another, Dad now sat with his feet on the fender of the fire which blazed away against an uncomfortably chilly September day that had rained non-stop since early morning.

  ‘Well, I can’t see it being a short war if they’re goin’ to carry on doing that,’ he answered her. ‘Someone’s got to give way in the end, then they’ll have to fight like proper soldiers. This sort of lark could go on for ever ’n’ ever as far as I can see.’

  Connie sat at the table gazing into the fire and occasionally at Dad’s boots, idly wondering how long it would take for them to start smouldering and Mum to say as she always did, ‘Watch them boots of yours, love, before they catch fire,’ and him moving his feet to stare at the boots before returning them to their usual position.

  Connie had arranged to go down to the library with Doris but she wasn’t looking forward to the prospect in weather like this. Umbrella or no, she’d probably return home looking like a drowned rat.

  In fact a drowned rat was coming through the front door even now, the door closing with a loud bang. There stood Albert, dripping wet but on his face an expression of triumph mingled with defiance.

  Going straight through to the kitchen to take off his sodden topcoat and boots, he came back into the parlour to plonk himself down on an upright chair just by the curtain that shielded Connie’s bed.

  From there he surveyed his parents’ faces, first his mother’s. ‘Sorry I’m a bit late coming home, Mum. Been out with some of the blokes. Me tea in the oven, is it?’

  She nodded. ‘I’ll bring it in here for you, love.’

  As she disappeared, he turned his attention to his dad. ‘Well. I’ve done it!’

  ‘Done what?’

  ‘Signed up.’

  There came a gasp from his mother, who was coming back with his dinner, a cloth shielding her hands from the hot plate as she stood there stock still.

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sp; His father glared at him. ‘You’ve what?’

  ‘Signed up. Took meself into the recruiting office and volunteered.’

  His father took his feet off the fender, almost falling out of his chair.

  ‘You bloody fool! What the bloody ’ell for?’

  While his mother, like some automaton, put the hot dinner plate carefully on the cloth-covered table, his father, half out of his chair, leaned belligerently towards his son.

  ‘You bloody, silly fool! What about your girl? What about Ada?’

  ‘Edith,’ Albert corrected calmly. ‘Edie. I’m telling her tonight, when I see her.’

  His mother had sat down, limply. ‘Oh, Bertie, love! You should’ve told us what you intended to do. You should’ve spoke to Edie first – warned her. And what about you, love, say if you get ki … hurt, wounded?’ Her voice faded, choked into silence by stifled tears.

  He looked at her affectionately. ‘I’ll be all right, Mum. I’ll make sure of that. But I had to,’ he added firmly. ‘Everyone’s doing it. You can’t be the odd one out, standing back and watching them go and you do nothing. It’s not right.’ He gave a shrug. ‘So I’ve done it, and there’s no going back.’

  Connie watched her father still sitting forward in his chair as if turned to stone, then abruptly he got up and stalked out, passing his son without a glance at him.

  ‘I’m going down the pub.’ His voice drifted back to them from the kitchen.

  Moments later he reappeared in his overcoat and cap as he stomped down the narrow passage, heading for the front door, his wife’s voice calling out, ‘Don’t be too long, love,’ but the door had already slammed shut.

  There was silence for a while then she said to her son, ‘Your tea’s on the table, Bertie, love. I think I’ll have an early night.’ So saying, she moved away, going slowly up the stairs, shoulders hunched as though her clothes were now a heavy weight, too heavy to bear.