A Girl in Wartime

by Maggie Ford

  As for George, one day she promised herself that she would sketch what she saw on his face, if, unable to help herself she suddenly asked why he’d chosen to detach himself from what was every young man’s duty in these desperate times.

  In a way, however, he was not getting away with it lightly as far as Mum was concerned. For some time now he’d had the bed he and his brothers had shared all to himself. But that night, after the boys returned to war from leave, Mum had put her foot down.

  ‘I don’t see why he should be comfortable with a room all to himself when Ron and Bertie returned home with lice,’ she said to Connie. ‘He can sleep down here and you can use the boys’ bedroom upstairs while they’re away.’

  It was wonderful: a room all to herself, if only temporarily while Ronnie and Albert were away. George, compelled to obey Mum, was getting no more than he deserved.

  Chapter Thirteen

  July 1915

  It had been over a month since they had returned home from leave, but Ronnie couldn’t get his brother George out of his mind.

  He wanted to think of Dorothy, dwell on how they’d made love behind the park shelter, of the long letter he’d written to her and how long before hers to him arrived.

  Instead all that kept invading those thoughts was the way his brother George had stood in the doorway back at home, grinning like a Cheshire cat. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to disturb.’

  And Albert saying coldly, ‘What makes you think you’re disturbing us, George?’

  ‘Meant to be home earlier but a lot’s been going on.’ George either hadn’t noticed the sarcasm or had chosen to ignore it. ‘It’s been a real busy day.’

  ‘Too busy, George,’ Albert had sneered, ‘for a farewell chat to your brothers before they go back to fight for their country?’

  George had winced. ‘At least I’m here in time to say cheerio.’

  ‘In time to save you suffering from a guilty conscience, eh?’ Albert had grated.

  Ron had felt himself cringe. He too felt nothing but contempt for his eldest brother but would never have shown it like Bert had. But the more he thought of the incident, the angrier he was growing, because the memory kept pushing away thoughts of Dorothy and those last exquisite moments together.

  He’d thought of what he was going back to while George stayed at home, protected by the shield of his so-called beliefs. How could a man shrink from being a man yet still endure the scorn of those who had gone to fight? Was that a kind of courage? If so, it wasn’t the courage Ron wanted to have.

  Lying on an unforgiving army bed next to Albert’s in a billet some miles behind the front line, Ron tried not to think of tomorrow. Orders were that their unit wouldn’t be going back to Ypres where they’d been supporting the Belgium troops, but would march all the way down to Loos in France to fight alongside the French there. He fervently prayed to survive, to return home to Dorothy, alive, unhurt, pick up where they’d left off. To lose out now horrified him more than the carnage of a front line trench.

  He’d not told his parents about Dorothy; too early, despite their frantic union behind the park shelter. Telling Mum he’d met someone would just have her saying, ‘You shouldn’t let yourself get too involved with any girl, love, not the way things are.’ But he had told Connie and she had grinned and said how happy she was for him and that she’d make friends with her so that she wouldn’t feel out of things. ‘In time I’ll ask her if she’d like to come and meet us all.’

  Sitting at her desk, Connie’s mind was miles away. Ronnie had a girlfriend now. Albert had Edie. She had no one. Would Stephen Clayton one day be hers? She doubted it. But in December she’d be eighteen. Admittedly he would be one year older too, but as time went on, nine years’ difference wouldn’t be seen to matter so much.

  This morning he’d sent her out with a photographer, Kenneth Fenton, to record the devastation from a zeppelin raid last night. She’d stood a little removed, unnoticed, sketching the scene being played out a little way off but not so far off as to be unable to record the expressions on the faces of those whose homes had been destroyed, whose treasured possessions had been smashed, whose lives had been wrecked. It was heart-breaking. Wars took place elsewhere. British soldiers faced the enemy in distant corners of the earth, not here, not civilians here, not on British soil.

  Several newspapers had been there, popping cameras being met by blank expressions of half-concealed anger at being exposed to the cold press. That was where she could score over the camera, her silent pencil catching the real soul of those devastated people. Nothing else could do that and she had silently thanked Stephen Clayton for his belief in her and her talent. But it went deeper, she was certain – in the way he would look at her of late, the way his vivid blue eyes lingered, to switch away abruptly as their eyes met.

  Now she gazed down at a sketch she’d surreptitiously done of him a few moments ago. He seemed to have liked the ones she’d done of those poor people this morning and was now with his chief editor showing them to him – he himself having taken a deep breath from wonder and excitement as he viewed them.

  She curbed the thrill that passed through her, aware that it came at the expense of the misery of others: homeless, everything they’d owned now swept away. Where would they go? Worse, who had they lost? Not a thing to rejoice about on her own account.

  The zeppelin raid had been around midnight. A couple of miles east of where it had let loose its bombs, she, Mum and Dad and half the street had come out of their tenements to stand on the pavement watching the thing glide past overhead, low in the sky. There’d been more than one, but that one had passed directly overhead, with all those beneath it holding their breath. At what seemed a snail’s pace, its ghostly shape gave out a low throbbing that vibrated inside her chest. Searchlights swept the black sky, seeking to trap it in a criss-cross of light and bring it down with shellfire. Impervious, it glided on over the rooftops. Mum had whispered, ‘Hope it don’t decide to drop its load on us,’ and Dad had replied, ‘Expect they’re aiming fer the City, more like.’

  But there had been one small moment that had made her smile, that made her smile now as she thought back on it.

  Standing in the dark street alongside their neighbours, most having left their beds lest a bomb fell, hurriedly slipping a coat over pyjamas, feet into slippers to come out and stare up at that gliding instrument of death, her mother had given her a nudge with an elbow, inclining her head towards where several neighbours stood together. ‘Take a gander at old Wilkins over there,’ she’d hissed.

  And there was old Wilkins, well into his eighties, bent of knee, bow-legged, standing in nothing but his vest and long johns, his long, wispy-haired chin jutting out as he gazed upwards. It had been hard to suppress a giggle, the spine-chilling zeppelin forgotten for a moment.

  Connie smiled now at the recollection. But watching the thing go over always carried a weight of anxiety, and as it continued to glide on its way to another part of London, a sigh of relief had been heard all round.

  Speculation broke out on who would get it. Old Man Wilkins had toddled back indoors. After a few goodnights, an exchange of hope that nothing crucial would be hit, everyone had melted back indoors to bed, the danger past, but maybe not for those further west.

  Going back indoors to her bed, she had heard faint explosions, shivered at the thought of devastation for someone and had said a little silent prayer that lives had been spared on this occasion.

  Then this morning, Stephen Clayton had approached, laying a hand on her arm, its warmth penetrating the long sleeve of her summer dress to send a thrill coursing through her veins, and leaning close with a broad grin to tell her he’d managed to arrange for her to go with young Ken Fenton to one of the bombed homes and do some sketches.

  ‘You don’t know how much I am banking on you, Connie,’ he’d said, a thrill rushing through her as he had not called her Miss Lovell. ‘This could be the making of you. Would you care to have dinner with me this evening,
somewhere nice, where we can talk about your future here on the paper?’

  Her future, here on the paper. Hadn’t that already been decided? She felt she was doing well, and he wouldn’t take her out to dinner to censure her. She’d hardly been able to answer; she had merely nodded instead, felt him squeeze her arm lightly, saying he intended to show her sketches to Mr Mathieson, hopefully to gain his approval for them to appear in tomorrow’s London Herald.

  ‘Fingers crossed,’ were his parting words, but all she was aware of was the warmth of that somewhat intimate pressure on her arm which she could still feel.

  Now he was back, triumph spread across his handsome face. ‘We’ve got Mathieson’s approval! In fact he said you’re a marvel. He said this sort of thing could get the paper selling like hot cakes as our readers get to see more. What do you think of that, my dear?’

  His excitement transferred itself to her but began to dim a little as common sense took over.

  Asking her to have dinner with him, it could only have to do with work. And here she’d been kidding herself that it could be something more. Even so, her heart racing, she kept imagining being seated opposite him in a lovely restaurant, the two of them drinking wine, eyes on each other …

  Stupid fool! Her mind snapped back, the cigarette-smoke-filled news office seeming to slap her in the face: the clacking of typewriters, the ringing of telephones, deep male voices talking shop, every now and again a female voice – three women working here beside herself, taking the place of men who had joined up.

  Her old friend Sybil had written saying she was on a factory line filling shells with explosives. ‘Paid men’s wages,’ she’d written, ‘thirty-two bob a week, three quid for nights, work round the clock to keep up with demand.’

  Connie pulled her mind back to Mr Clayton. Could she dare think this dinner date was more than just business? He squeezing her arm – it could have been merely a hopeful outcome to his negotiating with his superior. But asking her to have dinner with him – just to discuss how her talent could best serve his paper? That could have been done in the office, surely? There were other signs: the times she’d noticed him studying her from the window between his office and the newsroom. If she met his gaze, he’d turn away to his desk, leaving her to wonder why he’d been looking at her.

  It should have raised her hopes. Instead it only served to confuse her. But this invitation had come right out of the blue; dare she bring herself to believe it to be anything other than about work and how her future career would go? But what if it had to do with something else, something she would love to happen? As to the chief editor’s acceptance of her sketches, she could hardly wait to get home to tell Mum and Dad her good news.

  Letting herself into the kitchen by the back door, she saw the girl sitting at the table; Mum was standing beside her. The girl had her head bent but Connie could see she’d been crying, was still tearful, in fact.

  ‘This is Dorothy,’ Mum announced, her expression grim. ‘Her and our Ronnie met when he was home on his last leave. Been writing to each other every week, she says, since he went back.’ Connie instantly was alarmed that something had happened to her brother, but taking a fortifying breath, her mother went on, ‘He’s said nothing to us about it but it seems she’s missed her monthly since he went back and her people ’ave turned her out, don’t want nothing to do with her. Her own mother – I ask you! She come ’ere ’cos she was desperate.’

  The girl looked up, her tear-stained face defensive, her voice small and shaky. ‘I didn’t know where else to go.’

  Mum glanced down at her. ‘I’m not going off at you, love.’ Then she looked at Connie. ‘I couldn’t turn her away. I left her ’ere and went straight round to her people and gave her mother a good piece of my mind.’

  The thought of her mother giving anyone a good piece of her mind made Connie smile. Even though on the whole she was a quiet-tempered person, her mum could have her moments. But she kept a straight face, feeling for the distraught girl. She nearly came out with, ‘It is Ronnie’s?’ but thought better of it.

  ‘So what’re you going to do?’ she asked instead.

  ‘Take her in. What else can I do? She ain’t got nowhere else to go, poor thing.’

  Connie made to ask where she’d be sleeping but her mother got there before her. ‘She can ’ave the boys’ room while they’re not here. I’ve got to ask you if you’d have the bed down here again until we sort something out.’

  ‘What about George? Where will he sleep?’

  ‘He’ll have to put up with the sofa in the front room,’ said her mother, adding with a wry smile, ‘when he’s home. He’s hardly ever here anyway.’

  George more usually stayed at one of his chapel friend’s homes.

  So that was it, down in the back room again, and for how long this time? Mum was always ready to help any poor soul in trouble, and this poor soul claimed that she was carrying her first grandchild too. ‘What about when the baby arrives?’ she asked, to which Mum shrugged. ‘We’ll come to that when it happens.’

  ‘Does Ronnie know?’ she asked, not caring that the girl heard.

  ‘She wrote telling ’im and he wrote back saying he’s over the moon, though he’s not mentioned it in his letters to us.’

  ‘How does he know if it’s his?’ That was cruel, but she felt angry, at the girl and at her Mum for being so gullible.

  Her mother’s sharp voice startled her. ‘He’ll know. She’s missed her monthlies and says she’s always so regular. She has other signs as well, and it’s been since our Ronnie and her got together, so that adds up. She’ll ’ave it around March and if that don’t prove …’ She let the rest go unsaid.

  Chastened, Connie put that aside. ‘What about Dad?’

  ‘I’ll deal with your dad,’ came the reply, and the look on her mum’s face told Connie that Dad would knuckle down once he’d let off steam. Mum was a quiet woman but when she wanted her way she got it.

  The girl had stopped crying. Looking from one to the other, she offered Connie a small tremulous apologetic smile, and in that instant Connie found herself liking her.

  Heavy barrage began making itself heard miles before they ever reached their destination, having already done a hundred or more miles from Loos. ‘Don’t sound too ’ealthy, do it?’ Ronnie hissed to Albert marching beside him.

  ‘I think it’s ours,’ Albert whispered back, keeping his eyes on the soldier in front, hoping he was still moving in a reasonably straight line and not meandering all over the place in his weariness, to which his brother muttered, ‘Just ’ope so, that’s all.’

  ‘All I want is to lie down and put me feet up. Boots are killin’ me.’

  ‘Mine too,’ sighed Ronnie.

  What had started as a brisk march had become little more than a trudge after two days of it. Even so it had been a relief to be told to report for this journey and for a while at least escape this endless round of slaughter. Though what they would meet at the end of this trek was now beginning to announce itself from the energetic power of the distant heavy gunfire.

  They hadn’t exactly been told where they were going, but south had been the general direction, and finally the name Somme had been uttered, to which they were drawing ever closer and to another battle area.

  ‘Be glad when we get there, that’s all, barrage or no barrage,’ Ronnie added and fell silent, concentrating on his painful feet in his sweaty boots and stinking wet socks.

  Despite the days of walking through the heat of summer, it had been an indescribable relief to be ordered away from the devastation that had been Loos: the unending confusion of enemy bombardment, snipers, being ordered over the top time after time only to retreat, some in one piece, some not at all – God knows how he and Bert had survived, hardly a scratch except from tangled barbed wire, while all around men went down writhing, screaming, their agonies ignored in the orders to get back, while others went down without a murmur to lie silent in death. Attempt after attempt to re
ach let alone overpower the enemy had proved little more than a blood bath.

  Suddenly their company had been ordered out, no reason given, told to return to their billets five or six miles to the rear to pack and make ready to march. It had been a relief – one that had stayed with them for most of the trek south. But the noise of heavy gunfire up ahead was starting to shatter that relief. Yet in another way, it would be a relief to get there, throw themselves down in a new billet and get some proper food down them.

  ‘I could sleep for a week,’ Bert muttered as they queued for the mash and bully beef that was sending out such appetising smells to set every stomach rumbling.

  Ron grinned. ‘Sleep – you’ll be lucky. I bet we’ll get just enough time to drop our stuff and then march to the front.’

  ‘Not after two days of bloody footslogging. I could sleep till the cows come ’ome.’

  Ron sighed. ‘We’ll see.’

  But Bert was right. Given decent if hard beds to flop down on, most lost themselves instantly to fill the barrack with snores and grunts.

  That night was bliss. They were oblivious of the continuous bombardment some five miles away, five miles they’d be ordered to cover, taking them to the front line. What we’ll find there, God only knows, but I can guess, was Albert’s last thought before he fell into a deep sleep to dream of walking arm in arm with Edie by the Serpentine on a bright, sunny, London summer’s day.

  Despite desperate weariness, Ronnie hadn’t dropped off straight away. He laid awake, thinking of the letter he’d had just before leaving Loos. Had they left one day earlier, Dorothy’s letter wouldn’t have got to him, might never have reached him, or not for weeks, months maybe. By then he could have been …

  Hastily he turned from that thought and concentrated instead on the wording of her letter, and especially on the way she had begun: ‘My darling Ronnie …’