by Maggie Ford
Connie too got up from where she’d been sitting by the window with its curtains closed against the miserable weather outside.
‘I’ve got to go out now,’ she informed Bertie, who had taken himself over to the table to begin his dinner. He nodded without speaking.
‘I won’t be all that late,’ she added. She didn’t know what to say about her brother enlisting. She was proud of him, she guessed. Proud and a little afraid. ‘I’m off to the library.’
Somehow the thought of braving the bad weather for the bright, warm lights of the library seemed now strangely enticing.
The parlour was deserted when she got back home, Mum already in bed as she’d promised, Dad not yet back from the pub. Albert had mentioned going round to see Edie, and Ron hadn’t yet come home from wherever he was. And George was no doubt at his church. Connie settled down in the silent cosiness of the parlour to start on the book she had borrowed from the library: Sons and Lovers. She’d taken a fancy to it, while Doris had got herself a light, humorous book, peeking into it and laughing out loud until the librarian had frowned at the two of them.
The library had been practically empty, most people no doubt preferring to leave it until a day when the weather might be kinder. Now, back at home with the place to herself for once, she was looking forward to at least an hour or two before Dad and her brothers came trooping in.
Settling back in Dad’s empty fireside chair, absorbed by the story, she didn’t know she’d fallen asleep until the sound of a key fumbling in the lock brought her awake with a start, her book having fallen to the floor.
Quickly retrieving it, she leapt out of the chair, thinking it was her father coming home; by the sound of the fumbling key, he was a little the worse for wear from drinking with his mates. Or perhaps it was Ron, equally tipsy, he too no doubt having met friends.
The street door opened and Connie could make out someone trying to creep quietly along the passage, in his effort making more noise than he intended. Connie heard her mother’s tired voice call down from upstairs. ‘Love, try to be quiet, you woke me up, dear.’
It was Bertie’s voice that answered, a tiny bit slurred. ‘S-sorry, Mum – didn’t mean to wake you.’
‘Albert?’ Connie called. At the sound of her voice, the parlour door opened. Albert peeped around the door, a foolish expression on his face as it moved into the room followed by the rest of him.
‘Sorry to disturb you, Con. Was you asleep?’ No doubt she looked like she had been, but she shook her head.
‘I was reading.’
‘Won’t keep you, then,’ Albert began, but in seconds had started to expand on his remark. ‘Just come back from Edie’s. Had to tell her what I done … enlisted … you know.’
So saying, he flopped into Dad’s now vacant chair. ‘I’m sorry, Con, I had a couple of glasses while I was round there, Dutch courage, I guess.’
‘How’s she taken it?’ Connie asked cautiously.
‘Not sure,’ he muttered. ‘But it’s done now. No going back. Have to hand me notice in at me firm tomorrow. Give up me milk float, say goodbye to poor old Jinny, me horse. Been good to me, Jinny, pulled me milkfloat ever since I started the job, never ever got skittish. Now I’m going to be whipped off to be a soldier and Lord knows where I’ll end up. Don’t s’pose I’ll ever see poor old Jinny again.’
‘So how did your Edie take it?’ Connie repeated in an effort to make him talk more sensibly. She feared she knew the answer – as if his Edie would take his news with smiles and cries of good luck, well done, he not even consulting her before doing what he had. Where were his brains?
Albert grimaced. ‘Not too happy, I’m afraid.’
‘Did you expect her blessing?’
‘Lots of blokes are going off to war with the blessing of them that love ’em. It’s our duty.’ He looked as if he were about to cry.
‘How much drink did you say you’ve had?’ she asked abruptly.
‘A couple of beers, maybe a couple of whiskies. She had a port and lemon. Her mum and dad went to bed – said we needed to be left alone. We was glad, we needed to talk proper about things. Embarrassing with them there.’
‘Is she all right?’ Connie asked, wide awake now and thinking of Edie faced with this sudden revelation. What would she herself have done if she’d got a young man who’d gone and signed up out of the blue without a word to her first and expecting her to take it lightly and with a smile? Maybe one of these days she’d have a young man and find herself faced with some awful news or other. She hoped that when she did find someone her life would be smooth and lovely.
‘She had a bit of a cry,’ Albert said. ‘Well, in fact she burst into tears, said I’d gone behind her back, why didn’t I tell her what I’d intended to do before I did it and ask what she thought. She said I could get myself killed and what would she do then? She also said she loved me. She’s never really said that before, not like that. Then she just fell into my arms and said she never wanted to lose me, then all of a sudden she stopped crying and she said, “I know you had to – you had no option.” And kept saying she loved me over and over again and then we cuddled and she said she respected me for what I’d done, and that she’d wait for me and …’
He stopped, looking suddenly sheepish. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this, Con. It’s sort of private, like. Do you think I’m being daft, telling you all this?’
Connie shook her head, her heart going out to him. But for the beer and the whiskies he might never have opened his heart to her, for fear of embarrassment or that his sister might have laughed in his face.
But embarrassment on his part seemed to dissipate as he went on, ‘She loves me, Con. And I love her. She said she’d wait for me,’ he repeated. ‘And I know she will. We’ve been going out together for months and now I know she’ll be waiting for me – when I come back, we’ll be married and—’
With this he broke off, lowered his head to hide sudden tears while Connie sat looking at him, her own not far away. One day she hoped her own tears would be for some wonderful man, and that he would love her as much as Albert clearly loved his girl. But for now she just felt sad: sad that her brother was going away to fight and that the future for all of them was far from certain.
Chapter Four
October 1914
As young Ronnie burst into the house, his face aglow as if in triumph of some sort, his mother got up from her chair, glancing questioningly at him.
‘Bit late home tonight, love? Doing a bit of overtime?’
‘No, I left on time,’ he answered, plonking himself down at the table in readiness for his evening meal.
He grinned at Connie, she halfway through her own dinner, while their mother went out to the kitchen to bring in his plate, which she’d been keeping warm for him.
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘Extra shift, Mum said,’ Connie replied, her mouth full of sausage and mash. She glanced over to where George sat on a chair in the corner having finished his own food with almost indecent haste. She resisted the urge to comment: no work yet, then?
When was the last time George had worked? There he sat in his nice suit, his nose in that blooming Bible – well, not exactly a Bible, a sort of coloured book with a picture of the coming of Salvation, whatever that was. It was a wonder he didn’t take his bed to that church of his – which was more of a bleak wooden hall than a proper church, sitting well back from a tiny row of houses in Three Colts Lane.
He’d go there most days, all over that minister of his or pastor or whatever he was called, and then come home to spout the odds about this wicked world and if people stopped to listen to what the Lord was trying to tell them, it’d be a far better place – da-di-da-di-da – until they were sick of hearing it. Usually when he started up in the evenings, Dad would get up, tell them he was off to the pub, leaving the rest of them to suffer. Much as she loved her brother, Connie couldn’t help but feel it wouldn’t do George any harm to pray less and work more, be
an asset to the family instead of driving them barmy with his religious outbursts.
That George hardly worked got up all their noses, especially Ronnie and Albert, though when he did the odd casual job, he’d give nearly all of it to Mum, and when she asked how he was fixed for money, he usually said something like ‘the Lord will provide’.
Currently, he was so engrossed in his reading, he’d hardly spoken to her, much less Mum. He seemed to live in a world of his own. It shouldn’t have but it got on her nerves sometimes, and this evening she felt glad to be getting out of the house, meeting some friends of hers. The three of them were going to a young persons’ club they belonged to in Old Gosset Street to have a laugh and a joke with a few boys, enjoy a soft drink or two.
‘What’s made you so late, then?’ Mum’s question to Ronnie cut through her thoughts as her mother came in with his dinner, all steaming hot from the oven.
Connie saw him grin. ‘I’ve been stuck for ages in a blooming great queue, everyone there looking to sign up.’
About to take up Connie’s now empty plate to bear it off to the kitchen, his mother turned back to stare at him. ‘Sign up?’ she asked. ‘What for?’
Dad, who had just come into the room, stopped short. No one had heard him enter the house. He was in time to catch his wife’s last words: ‘Sign up? What for?’ Now he stood there glowering. ‘What you mean, sign up?’ he growled.
‘For the army,’ Ronnie said calmly as if explaining in monosyllabic words to a child. ‘You should’ve seen the size of the queue there.’
Connie saw her father’s bushy brows come together, his generous moustache twitch. ‘You can’t sign on. You ain’t eighteen yet.’
‘I will be in November.’
‘That’s still five bloody weeks away.’
‘They don’t ask questions so long as you look old enough.’ He started back a fraction as his father came to stand over him, still in his coat and cap, his face black from the sacks of coal he’d delivered all day to endless households.
‘Go and wash up, love,’ Connie heard her mother say anxiously, but he took no notice of her plea.
‘I don’t bloody care what or who they want. You go back there and tell ’em you still only seventeen, and I’ll come with you to make sure you do.’
Ronnie looked his father straight in the eye.
‘I’m a man now, Dad. I signed up as one. I’m a man – a soldier. It’s done. I leave on Friday – for Aldershot.’
Albert was still stationed at Aldershot, approaching the end of his six weeks training. ‘I might meet Bert. We’ll be together. They do put brothers together, and close friends and sometime whole streets or neighbourhoods, if they sign up at the same time, all in the same regiment whenever possible. It’s good for morale.’
‘Then I’ll tell ’em you’re under age,’ his father raged, obviously not listening to a word of what Ronnie had said.
Connie’s mother remained hovering in the doorway, her hopes of her husband leaving the matter to go and clean himself up for his evening meal forgotten.
It seemed to her that Mum had still not taken in the full significance of what she had been hearing. ‘Oh Ronnie, love, what’ve you gone and done?’ she asked unnecessarily.
‘I’ll tell you what he’s gone and done,’ Dad bellowed. ‘He’s gone and bloody well buggered up his life, that’s what he’s gorn and done. And I’m going back there with ’im to undo it. He’s underage.’
‘They’re taking lots of blokes underage,’ Ronnie cut in, only to have his father swing round on him.
‘Then I’ll tell ’em, it ain’t going to be my son! Not ’till he’s—’
‘Can you hear yourself, Dad?’ Ronnie interrupted. ‘You don’t tell the army what’s what. And as far as I’m concerned, it’s done, finished, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’ His tone moderated. ‘Don’t worry about me, Dad. I’ll be all right. But you do see that I’ve got to go. The country needs every man it can get. In five weeks I’ll be eighteen and I’ll have to go then. A few weeks, what does it matter? There’s nothing you can do, Dad.’
He leapt up from the table, startling Connie as well as her mum. ‘I’m off to see a couple of mates of mine. We joined up together, we’ll be going off together and that way we’ll probably stay together.’
Connie saw him turn to look at George, still apparently absorbed in his Bible as if oblivious to the argument going on around him.
‘What about you, George? You going to sign on too? We all need to pull our weight for this country.’
His mum gave a gasp. ‘Not all three of you! If all of you was to get—’
‘What about it, George?’ He cut through his mother’s words. ‘You ain’t even mentioned the war since it started except to preach against it. You can come along with me if you want, what d’you think?’
Connie turned her eyes to her eldest brother to hear what he had to say, but he hadn’t even looked up. It seemed to her that he feared to meet his youngest brother’s eyes.
Finally he said, ‘I think too many are panicking, doing things on the spur of the moment that they could regret later on.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I mean, maybe best to wait a bit, think about what we’re doing. Men killing each other is not the way out. I mean—’
‘Then what bloody way out do you mean, George?’ Ronnie broke in savagely. ‘You mean sit here on your arse while Germany marches across Europe without a by your leave – that what you mean?’
George’s gaze remained trained on his Bible. ‘Talk is what we should be doing,’ he said. ‘We should talk, discuss our differences, peaceably.’
‘Talk?’ Ronnie was obviously having a job to hold his temper. ‘They’re not going to talk! Not now! Not any time!’
George’s voice remained steady. ‘Our Lord said, “If a man smite thee, turn the other cheek …”’
‘Sod you, George, and your bloody other cheek!’ Ronnie burst out. ‘If you’re too scared to go and fight for your country, say so!’
‘That’s enough, love.’ His mother’s voice was trembling. ‘There’s too much going on out there without our own family fighting each other.’
His father grabbed the parlour door and flung it wide open in a temper. ‘Come on, you, we’re going down there to sort ’em out right now.’
‘You’re not washed, Dad,’ Connie cut in. ‘You can’t go like that.’
‘And I ain’t going nowhere,’ Ronald cut in. ‘Except with me mates. We’re all going out tonight.’
Before anyone could move, her brother was out the door, grabbing his coat off a coat peg in the passage as he went, the door slamming behind him.
It seemed, having handed in his notice to his employers, that they, instead of displaying annoyance at the loss of a worker, had given Ron their blessing, seeing him off with their good wishes and saying that when the war was over his job would still be open for him. A week later he was in the army.
‘Measly job like that?’ Connie scoffed. ‘When this war’s over and he comes back he’ll be worth more than some old packing job!’
In reply, her dad, having now resigned himself to his youngest son going off to fight, glanced up from his morning newspaper.
‘Ain’t it about time you started looking for a better job?’ he growled. ‘There’s loads of jobs goin’ in the vacancy columns. With men all goin’ into the forces and no one to fill their jobs, they’re lookin’ for women to fill ’em. And there’s you, still fartin’ about in a factory making boxes when you could be doing something towards the war effort.’
Connie felt irked by her father’s low opinion of her, but it was food for thought.
Chapter Five
February 1915
Her seventeenth birthday had come and gone and been hardly noticed. Christmas had also come and gone and already it was February. Nineteen fifteen, her two brothers in the army though not yet sent to fight, and just as well, judging by the awful news from the front:
men bogged down by wet winter weather since November. Trenches full of mud, it was said, yet giving little cover from pitiless enemy shellfire; thousands being sent over the top at the mercy of enemy rifle fire, thousands already killed and the war only six months old. It was said that freezing weather was causing even more misery. How long before Bertie and Ronnie were sent over there? The prospect hung over the family’s heads like the Sword of Damocles, dulling any joy of a new year.
Her two sisters and their little families, Lillian with new baby James and Elsie with little Harry, both named after their fathers, had enjoyed Christmas dinner round Mum’s. Both of them still had their husbands at home, but for how much longer?
Connie found her mind turning to that as she made her way to work through a wet February morning. From what the newspapers were saying, instead of calling for volunteers, the Government was beginning to contemplate general call-up of all able-bodied men not in a crucial job. It was frightening. Two months into nineteen fifteen. They’d said the war would be over by last Christmas. Now there was this threat of conscription whether a man was willing to fight or not.
And George – still at home, still sitting on the sidelines hugging his faith to him like a safety belt. If there was a general call-up he’d have no choice but to obey. Lately a feeling of contempt for him had begun to steal over her, one she tried vainly to stave off, but what about her? She too was guilty of doing nothing. At school she’d reaped high marks for English, history, geography, drawing, especially drawing, praised by her teachers. So why was she hanging on to some mundane job in a box-making factory? She’d been there over two years since leaving school at fourteen. It was time she bettered herself.
Ever since Christmas, Dad had been on about women doing war work, so maybe she should begin looking for something more rewarding than just standing at a conveyor belt?
That morning, instead of going directly to work, she bought a local newspaper, turning to the job vacancies pages. Standing at the corner of Bethnal Green Road and Shoreditch High Street, she scanned the more interesting list of job vacancies, pausing at one which had caught her eye. It wasn’t anything to do with the war effort but a small Fleet Street newspaper – a vacancy for a filing clerk. That had to be easy, surely. Filing things didn’t call for much more brains than gluing boxes together. And working in an office would be a luxury after factory work. She nipped quickly home to get her school report before returning to the bus stop.
