Women on the Home Front

by Annie Groves

  The Winstanleys had survived the worst Hitler could throw at them. They were all in good enough health and in little Neville there was a new generation to follow on. God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world, she thought, smiling, and jumped on the bus.

  It took a native to admire the finer points of her home town, Lily mused, peering out at the rows of terraced houses that grew smaller and smaller as they drew closer to the edge of Grimbleton town centre, rows and rows of neat red-brick terraces, with whitened doorsteps and cotton net valances at the windows.

  The mill workers had long gone to their shift, and the schoolchildren had yet to throng the pavements, but the bus was full of familiar faces all muffled up against the frost and chill. A bus full of grey gabardines and brown coats, sombre hats and gloves holding wicker baskets, printed headscarves hiding iron curlers and pin curls. Not a glamour puss amongst them in pompadour kiss curls and high heels; a drab world of duns and greys, a tired world, weary after so much turmoil and uncertainty, trying to get back on its feet.

  But this is my home town, Lily sighed, all I’ve ever known.

  The route into town got darker as they passed Magellan’s Foundry, with its chimney belching smoke, the sparks flickering from the half-open door of the engineering works, the smell of tannery where piles of cow hides lay in the sun, and the bomb sites still gaping with half-built walls and rubble that grew purple with rosebay willowherb in the summertime.

  Then came Horton’s garage, which had taken a direct hit. No one had survived. It still saddened her to pass that spot. Wherever she looked there were the telltale signs of black-sooted buildings, empty half-boarded-up houses in need of repair. It would take years to freshen up the town.

  Yet only half a mile into its heart were majestic civic offices, the town hall, with its Palladian portico, a bustle of shops and streets, and down the side street the magnificent entrance to the Market Hall.

  It still gave her a thrill to walk through the doors, to see the huge iron-vaulted glass roof high above her head, the smell of brewing tea, meat paste and fresh baking mingled with cardboard boxes, cheese rind, starched linen and newly mopped tiles.

  The market was quiet on a Monday morning. Everyone was spent up after the weekend. Only the usual customers wanting a tonic or to use the weighing scales would grace the stall before noon. Plenty of time for Lily to dust over the stock, sort out the warehouse order, and chat over the football results with passers-by.

  She drew back the canvas curtains and sniffed the familiar smells of dandelion and burdock, liquorice roots, cough linctus, linseed, herbal smells mingled with embrocation oils: a heady brew that filled her with nostalgia.

  Winstanley Health and Herbs was more than just an alternative chemist’s shop, it was a piece of Grimbleton history. Lily’s grandfather, Travis Winstanley, was one of the first stallholders, a founder member of the Market Traders’ Association. No one could accuse him of being a quack selling remedies from the back of a wagon. He had studied the science, kept himself up to date and advertised his cures far and wide in the district. He had patented his own ‘Fog and Smog Syrup’ to clear chests of soot and grime. In summer the family made up elderflower skin cream and, in autumn, elderberry cordial, roaming the highways and countryside for produce.

  Travis’s son, Redvers, took over the business in due course and trained up his children to respect their calling. Thank goodness people got piles and warts, stomach upsets, skin rashes and embarrassing itches as regular as the four seasons. Dad knew more about the internal workings of Grimbleton bowels than any quack in the district. No one wanted to shell out for a doctor’s bottle, though there was talk of a free health service that might affect them one day. So far so good, though.

  But despite their father’s efforts, Levi was always halfhearted about the business and Freddie had no interest whatsoever. The one thing that united all of the family, young and old, male and female, was an undying passion for football and devotion to Grimbleton Town United in particular. ‘The Grasshoppers’ were now making slow progress through the ranks towards the First Division. It was Lily’s father who suggested the team use an osteopath to sort out any bad backs. He even found them Terry Duffy, who got some tired legs up and running in the Cup tie against Bolton Wanderers that nearly went to a replay at Burnden Park, alas to no avail.

  Then Dr Baker kicked up a fuss and said Terry was taking his trade away and got him kicked out. Redvers threatened to resign from the Board but it was an empty threat. When the Grasshoppers were doing well the whole town was on fire; when they slumped it was as if a blanket of cloud hovered above the mill chimneys. A win was the best tonic for all. Lily supposed it was because football and romance ran side by side in her family.

  Esme had been a player in her younger days, turning out for the Crompton’s Biscuits ladies’ team. They had played a friendly on the town pitch and that’s when Redvers and Esme eyed each other up across the turf and the dynasty was founded.

  Even Lily and Walt had met standing side by side to watch one of the special friendly matches laid on during the war. It turned out they both worked in the Market Hall, he at the far end in his uncle’s stationery stall. Small world indeed, and now when they could match shifts, they went together to see their team of local lads.

  Sometimes when she drew back the stall curtains Lily half expected to see her dad smiling, pristine in his white coat, waiting to help his customers, his thick wavy hair slicked back, his moustache waxed and with that twinkle in his blue eyes that charmed the ladies.

  How she had missed him over the years since a sudden stroke took him from them! Mother had taken to ailments and fits of misery since he had gone. She blamed his early death on the Great War and his time in the trenches. He was one of the few of the Grimbleton Pals Brigade to make it home in one piece.

  ‘It weakened him, took the stuffing out of him. Not that he would ever say a word about it, mind,’ she sighed. No one talked about the Great War much. She was glad he hadn’t known both his sons went into another war so quickly after the last.

  He had his own theory how to keep world peace. ‘If only we could play life fair by the football rules,’ he would say. ‘There’d be no more war. We’d just get on that pitch and give each other hell until full time. Sort it out clean and proper.’

  Not that he practised what he preached, for standing next to him at a match was a revelation. He would yell and rant and cuss and swear. ‘Get them off, the pair of sissies! Hang up yer boots, lad, yer shot was a twopenny bus ride from the goal!’

  If only the Zion minister could have heard his trusty steward letting rip at the goalie, Lily smiled.

  Theirs was a special bond built on his delight in having a girl in the house. ‘This one’s the sharpest blade in the knife box.’ He would point to her with pride. ‘Not the fanciest to look at but she does it right first time, my Lily of Laguna. If you want owt doing, she’s your gal!’

  He would be proud that, like the famous Windmill Theatre Revues, they never closed for the entire duration of the war. Together with Esme, Lily had kept the stall going against the odds when all the rules and restrictions came into force. Many herbal stores were forced to close but they decided to open half the stall as a temperance bar, serving juices, hot cordials and a good line of medicinal sweets and herbal homemade cough candy, dispensing what little stock they could.

  It was a tough time, fire-watching in the evening, keeping the Brownie pack alive with badge work and salvage drives, but nothing to what her brothers had to go through in Burma and on the Continent.

  She was looking at her wristwatch, surprised that it was mid-morning already, when a welcome figure tapped her shoulder.

  ‘Time for our cuppa?’ Walter towered over her in his brown dust coat, pointing to the café opposite. She could sit down and keep her eye on the stall at the same time.

  ‘You bet,’ she smiled, pecking him on the cheek. ‘Where were you yesterday at the Armistice parade? I missed you at the
cenotaph.’

  ‘I was there with Mam but you know it gets her all upset. We went home early.’ You couldn’t fault a man who was kind to his mother, but Lily had been hoping to invite him back for tea.

  ‘Hey, you missed a cracking match on Saturday, two nil to the Grasshoppers. They’re on a roll this season.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve been hearing reports all morning,’ she sighed. ‘I had to stand in for Levi again.’

  ‘I saw him in the directors’ box with all the toffs, lucky beggar.’

  ‘I just wish he’d give me a Saturday off, once in a blue moon. When did you and I last get to watch a match together?’

  ‘It was the best game this season.’

  ‘So everyone keeps saying, so shut up,’ she snapped.

  ‘The lads were on form, Wagstaff dribbling the ball down the outside right, passing to Walshie and he spins it straight in the net, brilliant!’

  ‘Walter Platt, don’t torment me.’ She tugged his sleeve but he was oblivious.

  ‘The second goal came just before half-time. I reckoned we finished them off there and then.’

  She missed the crowds gathering, the noise and cheering, a chance to let off steam. Redvers had taken them all as a treat and left them at home as a punishment. There were chips in newspaper on the way home, which no one was to tell Esme about, for it was too common for a Winstanley to eat in the street.

  ‘When we’re married we’ll bring all our kiddies to see the game,’ Lily sighed, imagining a five-a-side of gleaming faces.

  ‘Oh, no, love, it’s not a place to bring youngsters with all that swearing and rough talk, and there’s germs to think about.’

  ‘It never did us any harm,’ she replied, surprised by his attitude.

  ‘Mother says it’s all that standing as did my back in. I grew too tall for my bones.’

  ‘I thought the doctor said you had a bit of a curved spine…’

  ‘It’s the same thing,’ he replied.

  ‘No, it’s not. It means you’re born with a bend in your back,’ she continued.

  ‘Oh, you do like to go into things, Lil. All I know is, it never bothered me until I was out of short trousers, when my legs just sprouted like rhubarb. I bent over one day and couldn’t get up. Never bin right since. You’ve no idea what it’s like to live with backache.’

  ‘I’m sorry, it must be a pain,’ she said, seeing the grimace on his face.

  ‘So you should be. You’re going to have to nurse it when we’re wed, with one of your liniment oils.’

  ‘Shall I give you a rub down later?’ she winked.

  ‘Lily Winstanley, none of that sauce from a respectable woman! Mother can see to it, thank you very much. By the way, could she have a few more liver pills? Her stomach’s playing up again.’

  ‘Has she thought of trying a lighter diet? She does like her pastry and her chips,’ Lily offered, knowing that Elsie Platt was a little beer barrel on legs.

  ‘A widow’s got to have a little comfort in life. We’ve no money spare for fancy diets,’ he said, staring across at her stall. ‘It’s all right for your family.’

  Money was always a sensitive topic between them. His wage was small but steady, and her family had two wages and a war pension and shares from Esme’s connection with Crompton’s Biscuits. Better not to go down that route again.

  ‘It must be hard,’ was all she could say. ‘Did you go and see that house for rent in Forsyth Lane, the old cottage by itself? It’ll need doing up. But it’s worth a second glimpse, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh, no, love, Mam says they’re built over wells, and damp, and it’s a bus ride away from Bowker’s Row. It’s much too far for her to travel.’

  ‘You didn’t even look, then?’ Lily felt the flush in her cheeks. When would he do anything off his own bat? ‘That’s a pity because I thought it was ideal for us, half in the country but on a bus route. It was you who wanted to have fresh air and a nice view.’

  ‘Perhaps we should try for something bigger and bring her with us? She gets mithered when I’m not there.’

  And I shall go mad if Elsie Platt is on the other side of the wall listening to our sweet talking, Lily thought, but swallowed her words back just in time. ‘It says in my Woman’s Own that a young married couple should be alone for a while to set up their home.’

  ‘What about your Levi and his wife? They live with you.’

  ‘That’s different…’

  ‘No it’s not.’

  ‘It’s just that Waverley House has five bedrooms. They have their privacy and a baby.’

  ‘So, we’ll be having babies and Mother can look after them for us so you can do all your gallivanting.’

  ‘I’m not gallivanting, just serving my community. I’d hardly call choir practice and Brownies gadding about!’

  ‘There you go on your high horse over nothing. It was just a suggestion,’ he barked.

  ‘I’d like us to start off together on our own,’ she repeated, sipping her Bovril and noticing his shirt collar was frayed at the edge and needed turning round.

  ‘Then we’ll have to keep on looking until we find something that suits us both.’ His voice was hard and his lips were pursed up just like Elsie’s whenever they arrived back late.

  Lily looked at her watch. There was still no sign of Levi. ‘I’d better get back. Are you coming for your tea tonight? We can look in the Gazette to see if there’re any more flats to rent, then borrow the van and go and view them together.’

  ‘If you can give us a lift back home first and get my mam’s washing. Now you’ve got that new-fangled machine, she was wondering if you’d lend us a hand and throw a few things in for us.’

  Anything to oblige, Lily mused. Word travelled fast and Elsie was not one to miss a trick. Would she expect the washing to come back ironed as well?

  Oh, don’t be mean, she sighed. Walt’s mother was widowed young in the Great War, her son is the sun, moon and stars to her. The thought of him leaving her clutches is painful and threatening. Be grateful you can help them out.

  They were just about to part company when Sam Parker from the upstairs office suddenly appeared round the corner, waving to Lily. ‘There you are…I’ve just had a phone call from Levi. Can you shut the stall and come home?’

  A flush of panic rushed through Lily’s body. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I don’t know, he didn’t say, but he said you were to get back to Waverley at once.’

  Her mind was racing with possibilities. Had Mother been taken ill? Had the washing machine blown up and left them homeless, or was it a pleasant surprise? Was it the one surprise they were all waiting for? Freddie was back at last! That was it. He had docked and turned up without telling them, sprung a big surprise on everybody. That was just like her young brother, giving them no time to make preparations. They ought to have bunting fluttering over the street, and flags flying and lots of balloons if there were any in the shops.

  ‘Freddie’s come home. Oh, Walt! He’s sprung one on us, the devil. Mother’ll be beside herself. What wonderful news! I’ll call out Santini’s for a taxi.’

  ‘That’s a bit extravagant,’ he said. ‘Fred won’t be going anywhere fast.’

  ‘I haven’t got the van and I haven’t seen my brother for six years. I’m not missing a precious second of him.’

  Ten minutes later she was riding through the town with a grin from ear to ear. Just wait until she saw that cheeky monkey. She’d be giving him an ear-bashing.

  Suddenly the whole town looked brighter. They rose up the cobbled street to the top end where the Winstanley residence stood foursquare on its own.

  It was at the point where the grime turned to greenery, the country met the town and houses were spreading out with gardens backing on to fields. Waverley House had four bay windows edged with cream bricks, a smart tiled porch and steps leading to a small path with gaps where the wrought-iron railings had stood before they went for salvage.

  She paid the driver a
nd turned to face her home. Only then did she notice that all the curtains were drawn tight.

  2

  The Telegram

  Esme Winstanley watched the colour drain out of her daughter’s face when she saw the telegram in her lap.

  ‘No! No! Not our Freddie…The war’s over. I don’t believe it. They’ve made a mistake.’ Lily collapsed in a heap, sobbing, and Neville stared up at her, not old enough to understand that their world had just fallen apart.

  ‘I thought he’d come home to surprise us…I was so sure…I never thought it was bad news. The war’s over…’ she repeated.

  ‘Not in Palestine, it’s not. That’s why he was sent over there to quell the terrorists. You know what happened when they blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Things have got worse since then,’ said Levi, not looking at her.

  ‘Have they got the right name? It could be all a mistake. They get things wrong, don’t they, Levi? Look how they thought Arthur Mangall was dead and he turned up as right as ninepence.’ Lily turned to her brother for comfort but he just stood there stunned, silent, shuffling while Ivy fussed over them, trying to be the ministering angel, putting a cup of tea in Lily’s hand.

  ‘I’ve put you some extra sugar in it,’ she smiled.

  ‘I hate sugar,’ Lily brushed it aside. ‘He never said it was dangerous, or am I the last to find out?’

  ‘You don’t tell your nearest and dearest you’re living on a minefield that could blow up any minute. I’m sure there’s a number to ring for more news and there might be something on the six o’clock Home Service.’ Levi turned to his mother for support but she could only shake her head. The news had not yet sunk in.

  ‘They don’t tell you anything on the news. We found that out in the war,’ Lil snapped. Her face was ashen. ‘It’s not fair.’

  Whoever said life was fair? thought Esme, but she bit her tongue. The girl was not up to listening to home truths and she hadn’t the energy to move from the chair and reach over to her. It was as if someone had kicked all the stuffing out of her.