A Girl in Wartime

by Maggie Ford

  Even so, it was a relief to be away from those peering eyes. What she had selected was etched in her brain as clearly as though she still circled it – now to find the material as near a match to those lovely blues as possible.

  A week perhaps to make it, meticulously copying the design now fixed in her mind, and then on the evening of the wedding, once out of that awful bridesmaid’s gown, she’d have all eyes on her. And on her the next day too, compliments from all the family at Mum’s – aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents – as they gathered around the big table in the front room for Sunday dinner to round off the celebration, the newly-weds having gone off on honeymoon to Eastbourne.

  In her fifteen-guinea outfit – it had to be at least that, though hers would cost not much more than fourteen shillings at the most, still a whole two weeks’ pay – she’d be the talk of the family. She could hardly wait to seek out just the right stuff that would make her look like a lady of means.

  It was in triumph, if very wearily, that she made her way back home, the parcel she clutched containing material from Selfridges in nearly identical colours to those she’d seen in New Bond Street, together with poppers and buttons that nearly matched, a spool of light-blue cotton and one of dark blue.

  She’d need a nice row of beads to set it off, stones of rich sapphire blue – not the real gems of course. And she knew just where she could get something exactly like that, made and strung especially for her at nothing like what the real gems would cost.

  Perhaps she would put in her order right now. Oddly, the thought of doing that, of going into the shop and speaking to its proprietor, made her heart step up a beat, and not just because of a mere necklace.

  Chapter Two

  It was well dark by the time she reached home, walking through the streets from the bus stop. Ten to five. The jewellers near the corner of Grove Road and Burgoyne Road where she lived was already closed. She’d have to wait until Monday, calling in on her way home from work, which was a nuisance.

  Geraldine itched to secure just the right sort of necklace for the gown she would make. On the other hand she ought not be too impatient – better to finish it properly before looking for jewellery. She’d know by then what she really wanted and it would only take three or four days to do. Best to wait until then. But it would have been nice to pop in there now, if only to tell the proprietor what she was looking for.

  She’d been in there a couple of times for cheap Christmas presents for her mother and sisters. The goods being cheap were an attraction and she’d found him very polite and helpful; being young and nice-looking was an even greater attraction to someone her age. The name above the shop said Hanfords and she assumed he was the Hanford who ran it but she didn’t know his first name and she longed so much to know, especially as just lately she’d been seeing him in her dreams.

  He’d only set up in the shop a couple of weeks before Christmas. Before that the place had been a store for clothing until the small factory renting it had closed a year ago. Its windows gradually became begrimed from neglect and it had stood there all forlorn among other busy shops.

  Then last December there had been signs of work being done on it. Some evenings as she cycled home from work, she’d seen the young man supervising the refurbishment, her mind already rushing ahead of her.

  As soon as the shop had opened she had gone in on the pretext of looking for Christmas presents, but while busily inspecting affordable trinkets laid out on the counter and in glass cabinets, her eyes had been on him. He’d seemed more interested in selling than returning her gaze, which was a pity, but after her third foray – she making sure to buy only one present at a time – he appeared to recognise her and she was sure there had been apprasial in those dark-grey eyes. She hoped so. It hadn’t progressed any further so probably she was wrong. Since Christmas, though, she’d not had cause to go in there. She was not so well off that she could go buying things willy-nilly, even to get a glimpse of the proprietor who’d had the ability of making her heart do a little flip when he’d looked at her.

  She noticed that he always closed his shop a little earlier than most on Saturdays. Perhaps he could afford to. He did seem to take more satisfaction from making jewellery than selling it. Even coming up to Christmas, a busy time, he’d never been in the shop when she’d gone there, the tinkle of the doorbell bringing him hurrying from the back, dragging off a heat-soiled blue apron as he came. And he sold only jewellery made by himself. That wasn’t any way to make a living unless he was well off. Perhaps he’d find out soon enough and close up and go away and she would never see him again. Geraldine’s heart sank at the thought.

  Not all that many people appeared to go into his shop despite what he sold being cheap. Not cheap and nasty – cheap and nice, attractive, different. The stones were only semi-precious – garnets, tiger eye, moonstones, that sort of thing – and the metal was silver rather than gold, but his workmanship was wonderful, delicate and unusual, attractive to those with little money to spend on expensive stuff. It was still early days of course. Surely in time he would make a real living and stay on. Life would be bleak if he were to pack up and go.

  She spent as much time as she could gazing through the tiny window at rings, pendants and brooches, always hoping for a glimpse of him. Not earning enough to keep forking out on jewellery, she couldn’t keep on going in on the pretext of buying, but next week she’d have a legitimate excuse to be there, wouldn’t she?

  The Glover family always used the back door of the house. The passage from the front door was an assault course, with bicycles, tools, household bits and pieces not immediately needed, and what her younger brother Fred called his stuff – old toys mostly, toys he’d grown out of as he was now thirteen and due to leave school soon, but was still loath to part with. So with no access by the front door everyone went round to the back to get in.

  Every house in Bow, like everywhere in the East End, was identical to the next – row upon row of two-up two-downs in an unbroken terrace, back to back but for a small backyard; every street was the same, in a grid pattern without a tree or one touch of greenery, not even a bend in any of them to break the monotony.

  The streets were playgrounds for the kids – cobbles, broken kerbs, bucked pavements, scuffed doorways and the peeling paintwork of windows bravely cleaned of East London’s incessant smoke and grime were witness to every game a child could devise.

  Of course there was always Victoria Park, that huge expanse of open space that was the nearest East London dwellers got to accessible countryside. But that was quite a traipse up Grove Road. It was easier playing in the street where a kid could be home in a second if hurt or upset, or wanting a wee or a skipping rope, or whatever. Victoria Park was for Sundays. Take sandwiches, a bottle of drink and spend a whole afternoon there feeling as though it was miles away from London.

  Geraldine’s house being an end terrace on the corner of Burgoyne Road and Conyer Street had an opening dividing it from the backyard of the end house in the adjoining street. But to come in by the back way had its unsavoury moments. As she came in, Geraldine wrinkled her nose in distaste at the smell of pee that wasn’t coming from the outside lavatory. Each house had its outside lav. Mum kept hers scrupulously clean; some didn’t. Brick-built, it was stuck on the back of the house, had a concrete floor and a wooden door, was dark, cold, uninviting and noisy when the chain was pulled, enough for all to know every time someone went, so that their next-door neighbours were starkly aware of Dad’s weak bladder.

  ‘Mum, it stinks out there!’

  In the kitchen Mum was unwrapping newspaper containing fish and chips bought on the way home from the flicks. She, Dad and Fred went off regularly on Saturday afternoons no matter what films were being shown. Mum, not being much of a reader, had young Fred read the words out loud to her while the pianist gave it his all as drama or comedy unfolded.

  Young Fred was hovering with his mouth watering but the walk from the fish shop on a cold evening
had taken the heat out of the food and it needed to be rewarmed for a few minutes while Dad was upstairs taking off his suit and getting into something more comfortable.

  ‘Mum, has Dad been peeing outside the door again?’

  Her mother looked up from inserting plates into the warm gas oven, her face registering defence of her husband. ‘Yer dad was busting and Fred was in the lav, taking ’is time as usual.’

  ‘It weren’t me,’ protested Fred. ‘It was ’im in there and me what was bustin’. I ’ad ter go.’

  ‘Then you’re a dirty little sod!’ his mother rounded on him.

  Young Fred looked belligerent. ‘If ’e can do it, why can’t I?’

  ‘Because yer dad’s got a weak bladder. He can’t always wait, that’s why.’

  ‘But ’e does it in the night too, an’ no one’s in there.’

  Ignoring the fact that as a mum she ought not let herself be drawn into argument with a thirteen-year-old, she said, ‘I don’t like yer dad usin’ a po and it stinking the bedroom out all night. I’d sooner ’e goes downstairs. But sometimes ’e can’t hold it and ’as ter go as soon as ’e gets out the back door.’

  ‘It’s only a couple of blooming yards away,’ retorted Fred. ‘It ain’t the other end of London! It ain’t the other end of Timbuctoo, is it?’ he added, pleased with himself at the extent of his geographic knowledge.

  Now she was cross. ‘You mind your lip!’ she shot at him. ‘And wipe that grin off your face or I’ll wipe it off for yer.’

  ‘Don’t matter who did it,’ cut in Geraldine, ‘it still stinks out there.’

  Mum ignored her, her glare riveted on her son. ‘What your dad does ain’t nothink ter do with you, yer cheeky little bugger. He’s excused if he can’t make it to the lav in time with ’is waterworks. He’s got an affliction – you ain’t. An’ I won’t ’ave you piddling anywhere yer fancy. I don’t care if you are leavin’ school soon, I won’t ’ave that sort of behaviour in me own house.’

  Another slow grin spread across young Fred’s face despite her earlier warning. ‘I didn’t do it in the ’ouse,’ he sniggered, the snigger sharply cut off by an aggrieved yelp as a clout caught him across the back of his head.

  ‘Get up them stairs,’ his mother exploded, and as he made his escape she yelled after him, ‘Gettin’ backchat from you – a bloody kid! And don’t come down again till I say. I might even sling your fish and chips away.’

  ‘Aw, Mum?’ came the protest from the top of he stairs. ‘I’m starvin’.’

  ‘Then serves yer right fer being so cheeky,’ she called up then, turning to Geraldine, now taking off her jacket in the warmth of the kitchen, added angrily, ‘He’s a little sod, that Fred. I won’t ’ave him takin’ after ’is dad. Yer dad’s got trouble.’ There was apology in her tone now. ‘I’d sooner ’e do it out there than the chain going a dozen times a night and the neighbours ’earing it. He can’t ’elp leaking, there’s somethink wrong with ’im. He should see the doctor but that costs and we can’t afford ter fork out just to ’ear he’s got a weak bladder. Poor bugger, it’s rotten fer ’im at work. Them dockers can be cruel and if they noticed it they’d be the first to take the piss out of him.’

  Geraldine ignored the unwitting pun and went to hang her jacket in the passage, negotiating the four bicycles leaning one against the other to do so.

  They all used bicycles – she to get to the clothing factory, Fred to get around with his mates, and a battered, second-hand old thing it was too, Dad to go to work at the docks, and Wally her older brother also to the docks, Dad being fortunate enough to have got him a job there after coming home from the war.

  Reaching over them to get to the coat hooks on the wall, she heard Mum call to her, ‘While you’re there, Gel, call your dad down for ’is tea.’

  She hated being called Gel. Her workmates called her Gerry, which wasn’t too bad. But Gel! It was East End practice to shorten a long name. You couldn’t do much with Fred, but Mavis was Mave and young Evelyn was Evie. Dad called Mum, Hild. But why give someone a decent name if it was going to be shortened to something horrible or ridiculous? Saying Hilda in full wouldn’t take all that much more energy, but no, it was Hild. She called him Jack, because not even God Himself could shorten that name any more.

  Dutifully she yelled up the stairs to Dad. ‘Mum says your fish ’n chips is ready.’ His okay floated down from behind the bedroom door.

  Fred adding his plaintive voice to it called, ‘Can I come down too?’

  ‘I don’t know. Better asked Mum.’

  ‘M … u … m!’

  ‘You stay where you are, you little bugger,’ came the responding yell. ‘I don’t want no dirty little devil sittin’ at my table.’

  Mum, skilfully carrying cutlery, salt, vinegar, a jar of pickled onions and several large, white, somewhat chipped plates passed her on the way from the tiny kitchen where you couldn’t swing a cat, let alone feed a family, to the back room. The flap-leaf of the table had been raised to accommodate them all, a cloth spread over it, a loaf waiting to be cut into slices and spread with dollops of margarine.

  The back room was where the family ate, despite Fred and Wally’s bed in one corner. With just two bedrooms it was the only place for them, the main one being Mum and Dad’s, with the girls in the other one, it being unthinkable for them to sleep downstairs and their brothers accidentally seeing them in their nightdresses or worse, in their underclothes. Boys were different – sharing a bed downstairs, it didn’t matter them being seen in their vests.

  Even upstairs all three sisters shared one bed, it practically taking up the whole room with just enough space for the wardrobe, chest of drawers and a board they called a dressing table that housed a sewing machine belonging to Geraldine, but shared by all three. How families with even more children managed was a mystery to Geraldine, though friends had at times mentioned four or more to a bed. After evening meals, if not going out, everyone would end up in the front room, most of which were spent around the gramophone, allowing the boys to go to bed when they were ready.

  ‘Mum, let Fred come down,’ pleaded Geraldine, following her mother into the back room.

  ‘It’ll do ’im good ter stew up there for a bit,’ said Mum, laying out plates. ‘Teach ’im a lesson.’ By this, she knew Mum would relent before the meal was finished.

  Mum turned to her as Dad came creaking downstairs. Every stair creaked, as did the beds, chairs and cupboard doors. There were no secrets in this house.

  ‘I didn’t get you any fish ’n chips, Gel. Didn’t know when you’d be ’ome. I could take a bit off each of ours if you like.’

  ‘No, I’m fine, Mum. We ’ad a big dinner, remember. I’d much sooner ’ave a sandwich. Fish and chips make you fat.’

  Her mother smiled, glancing at her daughter’s slim figure, still in the best dress she’d put on for going up West, one she’d made herself in slate grey some while back. Geraldine had more dresses than most, being skilled on the sewing machine, artistic. She was proud of her.

  ‘I got some in for Evie. She’s at ’er friend’s ’ouse down the street – should be ’ome any minute now. You could ’ave a bit of ’ers.’

  ‘No thanks, Mum.’

  ‘Well if yer don’t want any there’s some cheese in the larder. Yer could ’ave that. I weren’t sure when you’d be ’ome, that’s why I didn’t get yer any.’

  She eyed the parcel Geraldine had put down on a chair on coming in. ‘Is that what yer went up the West End for? Spending yer ’ard-earned money on more stuff ter make. What yer goin’ ter make now, as if you ain’t got enough?’

  This at least was a secret. No secret that she’d gone off up the West End – it was a rule of Mum’s that her family always said where they were going in case they were needed urgently at home or had an accident out. Though how they’d have contacted each other if there had been any trouble had never been explained. The police coming round, she supposed, or some messenger from a hospital.

/>   But the dress was a secret, at least until she had it all finished or the moment she started treadling away on the machine, the noise rumbling all over the house and Mum coming up to see what it was she was doing. She’d want to know all the ins and outs of what she was making, and in the end when it finally came out, she would inevitably say, ‘Yer’ll be wearing a bridesmaid dress, so why make somethink else? Yer’ll upset Mavis thinking yer don’t like what she got yer.’ Though Mavis knew that already. She’d told her so, that she hated rose pink.

  ‘Did yer go with a friend then?’ Mum was asking.

  Geraldine shrugged. ‘No, on me own.’

  Her mother moved past her to get the food from the oven as Dad went into the back room to seat himself at the table. ‘’Bout time you got yerself a boyfriend,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve got boyfriends.’

  ‘I mean a real boyfriend, someone steady. You’ll find yourself left on the shelf if you ain’t careful.’

  ‘Mum, I’m only eighteen. I’ve got time.’

  Not bothering to reply to that, Mum hurried off into the back room, each hand now carrying a loaded plate, a tea towel protecting her skin from the oven’s heat. ‘Fred!’ she called out as she went. ‘Yours is on the table.’

  As Fred came thumping down the stairs, all forgiven, the back door burst open to admit Evie. ‘Blimey!’ exploded the twelve-year-old. ‘It don’t ’alf stink out there!’

  Her mother gave her a warning look as she returned to the kitchen to get two more plates from the oven. ‘That’s your sweet brother!’ she said, her tone sharp. ‘’Cos he’s leaving school this summer, he’s feeling ’is feet and thinks he can get away with murder. I wish you lot wouldn’t keep blaming yer dad for everything.’

  ‘I never even mentioned Dad,’ protested Evie hotly, dropping her coat on a kitchen chair and following her mother into the back room.

  Left alone in the kitchen, Geraldine heard her mother call out one more request. ‘You sure yer don’t want some of ours divided up for yer?’