Women on the Home Front

by Annie Groves

  7

  The Olive Oil Hunt

  It was the children who brought the feud to an end. Placid little Joy began clambering to be picked up and fussed while Su was busy tidying the bedroom clutter.

  ‘Lazy slut, she never helps me,’ Su muttered loudly whilst picking up scattered clothing. ‘How Freddie made a baby with her…’

  ‘I not listen. She think she is Queen of England. I not listen.’

  Joy began to cry and that set Dina howling.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done!’

  Lily knew it was now or never. ‘Girls, girls, this has to stop right now,’ she barked in her sharpest Brown Owl voice. ‘What is the matter with you? If I can help I will, but this must stop. The business with my brother nothing can change, but sit down like ladies and let us clear the air.’ She pointed to the bed and the basket chair.

  ‘All she talks about is olive oil. What is so important about olive oil? She cries and beats her breast and upsets my Joy,’ said Su.

  ‘I think Ana is sad, yes?’ Lily turned to the Cretan girl. ‘You want to go home? Yes?’

  ‘Yes…óchi… I not know.’ Ana looked up with tears in her eyes.

  ‘No one is stopping her going to her island. I am sick of this beautiful island with olive trees, oranges and melons. It makes me hungry,’ Su responded.

  ‘No go back. Village is bombed. No one there.’ Ana shook her head, and Lily wondered what it must be like to have no family at all. Whatever she thought of her own, she couldn’t imagine not having anyone left at all.

  ‘I lose family too. There is just Auntie Betty but I will not go back, never. Here is the best place for my Joy.’

  ‘A girl with baby and no man not go back to Crete. All the men are dead. I bring shame on family name,’ Ana sobbed.

  ‘Don’t be so sorry for yourself.’ Su was losing patience again. ‘You have made it safely to England. You are lucky.’

  ‘But my sister…How I say it…soldiers come from sky like falling umbrellas to fight Tommies in the fields. We shoot them down like birds. My brother Stelios hide in the hills and Eleni takes food and guns strapped to her legs. Many Tommies are hit and we hide them in houses. The doctor at Red Cross show me how to tie up bleeding and keep them safe. Then the Germans march into village and search all the houses, smash our door, push us outside. We line up in square and they take the men away. They turn to see if women hide guns. They tear our shirts and shame us. Eleni have big mark on her shoulder from shooting gun, the pressing make a mark. They take her too. I have no mark on my shoulder, I am not taken.

  ‘My mama is screaming and we follow to where they take them. They tie their hands and shoot them and leave them in the sun. My beautiful sister is lying there. The flies buzz over her. How I go back now?’

  Lily felt sick just picturing the scene. ‘You did your best. No one blames you, Ana.’

  The girl shook her head. ‘I feel bad inside. Everyday I feel bad. When I run in the hills and down into the town, I think of her. I help in the hospital. I see terrible things…’

  Lily sat beside her trying to comfort her.

  ‘Terrible things happened in the jungle too,’ said Su. ‘My cousin stayed to help wounded soldiers and bring them to the border crossing. They caught him and tied him to a tree and stuck bayonets in his belly. I heard cries over and over in my head, ashamed that I am alive and he is dying and ashamed how much I want to live. A girl must flee the Japanese. They like fair-skinned girls to send to whorehouses. I have to run away but it is over now. We have to look forward.’

  Ana nodded and wiped her eyes.

  ‘Soon Dina will walk like Joy and talk proper English like the lady on the wireless,’ Su offered.

  ‘No, she will talk Greek,’ Ana replied.

  ‘What for?

  ‘So she knows who she is: Konstandina Eleni.’

  ‘That name makes her foreign. Dina is better, like the film star Dina Durbin.’

  ‘Who is Dina Durbin?’ said Ana, turning to Lily.

  ‘I think she means Deanna Durbin, the Hollywood star.’

  ‘Huh! Deanna, Diana, Dina-all the same pretty name,’ sniffed Su. ‘An English name. She must be a proper English girl. You are in England now so why do you need olive oil?’

  Ana looked up and smiled. ‘Oh, no. You cannot live without the olive tree. We crush the fruit into golden oil. I just want to smell it and touch it one more time before I die. It is the oil of life, oil of the Gods…’

  ‘There she goes again! There is plenty of time before you die,’ Su snapped.

  Here we go again indeed, Lily sighed, just when things were calming down. ‘I’ve got some Palmolive soap.’

  ‘Tommy soldiers use the oil for piles on bottom,’ Ana grimaced. ‘All they want is chips, chips, chips.’

  ‘If it’s piles troubling you…we can try the chemist, love, the pharmacy? Timothy White’s or Boots will do. It’s too cold to grow olives in this country. We did have some little bottles on our stall before the war,’ Lily chipped in.

  ‘How can you cook without olive oil? We have big pot in the corner of kitchen. Creta oil is best in world. Does pharmacopia have some for me?’

  ‘We could go and find out,’ Lily offered with a twinkle in her eye.

  ‘Will you come with us?’ Ana asked with shyness in her voice.

  ‘If you wish, we will all go together in search of this golden oil and stockings. I will buy you a new pair to put a smile on your face,’ said Su.

  ‘If it’s stockings you are after, try the Market Hall. Levi knows someone who sells them without coupons…but don’t say I told you or Ivy will have my guts for garters,’ Lily added.

  ‘Guts and garters-where can we buy these things?’ giggled Su.

  Ana shrugged her shoulders. It was going to take a long time for them to learn the subtleties of the local lingo, and they’d need a referee for all their fallings-out, but at least the pair of them were agreeing on something. Perhaps a joint expedition into town would be a good place to start.

  It snowed all night, to Lily’s dismay. The morning after, Susan was in the back garden screaming with delight.

  ‘Look! Look, Ana, Christmas card snow!’ she screamed, scattering the powdery white with her shoes like a child.

  The girls were going into town for the first time. Perhaps the trip would be better postponed for another day, but they were already kitted out for the weather.

  The sky was heavy with more snow to come and everyone was out in the back field, jumping, making tracks in the snow and throwing snowballs while the babies toddled and Neville shrieked in delight.

  ‘This is not proper snow,’ Ana declared. ‘In Germany it was as high as a house.’ But even she was racing around, helping to roll snow into a huge scrunching ball. Lily fell backwards, flat out with her arms outstretched. ‘I’m making a snow angel.’ Soon Su and Ana joined her, lying in a line like paper cut-outs, holding hands.

  ‘Get up at once!’ screamed Ivy from the back gate. ‘Don’t make an exhibition of yourselves. What will the neighbours think?’

  ‘That we’re having a jolly good time,’ Lily yelled back. ‘Don’t be stuffy. Neville’s fine.’

  Ivy clomped through the snow in her gumboots and snatched her child away. He kicked her and struggled so she fell onto the freezing ground in a heap.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done!’

  Serves you right, thought Lily, but she bit her lip. They needed Ivy’s big pram for the outing to town.

  Lily was accompanying them, to keep the truce and make sure they could navigate the streets into town. The little ones were muffled against the chill and topped and tailed in the large bucket pram, a blue Silver Cross and Ivy’s pride and joy. It had taken Lily hours to get this concession from her. Time to go inside and sweeten her up again.

  Esme lent Ana a pair of galoshes but Su’s feet were so tiny that she wore overshoes that fitted over her bootees.

  They picked their way down the pavements, someti
mes walking in the road where the kerb was piled high with black slush, over cobbles that rattled the pram springs, making a jiggling ride for the children. It was a slippery downhill slide towards the town centre from the better end of Division Street, past the tannery and Magellan’s Foundry, the railway station and over a slippery wooden footbridge. The cold wind stung their cheeks and Lily was glad of thick knitted mittens over her chilblained fingers.

  In her pocket was a list from Esme and instructions for Levi from Ivy. Could she risk leaving the two girls alone while she covered for Levi on the stall? They had the price of a cup of tea and a bun each, and were told not to dawdle on the way home for it would get dark early and there might be more snow.

  ‘It’s madness letting those two out by themselves,’ said Ivy. ‘I don’t want them hanging around the market, making an exhibition of themselves…You’ll have to keep an eye on them, Lil. I don’t trust them.’

  ‘We can’t keep them cooped up out of sight like prisoners of war,’ Lily argued. ‘Have a heart. Don’t you think that two women who’ve faced jungle and mountains, prison and interrogation, lived by their wits, scavenging for food and shelter in makeshift tents and first-aid posts, can find their way around Grimbleton without us sending out a search party?’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re getting so pally with them all of a sudden. I’m sure Walt’s not enamoured with all the fuss you make of them,’ Ivy sneered. There was a mean glint in her eye. Whatever Levi saw in this woman was a mystery. Why did she have to rub the sore spot on Lily’s conscience that since Freddie’s wives arrived there was no time to run round after him like before? If she could split herself in two it would help-no, make it three counting the market stall.

  Before Freddie’s memorial service, the last time she had made the effort to call into Bowker’s Row, Walt was down the pub and she sat all evening listening to the rumblings of poor Elsie Platt’s stomach and fending off all her questions about the new arrivals. That thought reminded her to make up a peppermint tisane for Elsie’s indigestion.

  It was not as if she was deliberately avoiding her future husband and mother-in-law, but it seemed important to keep Freddie’s affairs strictly within the family and Walt wasn’t family, not yet. Elsie could fish all night but Lily wasn’t rising to the bait.

  The pavements were clearer in the town but the pram was splashed by trams and buses and children throwing snowballs on their way home from school. They sauntered through the shopping parade, looking in all the windows, but there was nothing to see but cardboard pictures of stock and notices for coupons. How many they would need. They found their way to the outdoor market stalls where the men shouted across the aisles and Ana smiled.

  ‘It is like agora in Canea where village people sell eggs and fruit, honey and chickens.’

  Here there were only potatoes and roots, and not many of them. No fruit, no eggs, no honey, but further on there were stalls selling cotton material, stripes and spots and plain colours by the yard.

  ‘I make pretty dress for Joy,’ said Su, shoving through the crowd, picking over the fabric remnants in a basket and barging into the fray. ‘And Dina.’

  ‘I make lace for them,’ Ana added, not wanting to be outdone, digging into the basket too.

  ‘Here, you lot…wait your bleedin’ turn!’ shouted one irate shopper in a woolly checked headscarf.

  Su looked up, surprised. ‘There is no queue,’ she smiled sweetly.

  ‘And which jungle did you come out of?’ the woman retorted. ‘Go back to where you came from! We don’t want your sort in our country!’

  ‘But I am British, like you,’ Su said, puzzled by her outburst.

  ‘Pull the other one! I don’t see many your colour in my street,’ the woman laughed. She turned to Ana, seeing her all muffled up. ‘And you don’t want to be hanging about with darkies, young lady, not if you want to get on in this town.’

  ‘Parakaló? Please, no understand.’ Ana stared at the stranger.

  ‘Hell’s bells! Two of them as bad as each other…You’d better learn some proper English. We don’t want you sort round here!’

  Lily rushed over, red in the face. ‘Take no notice of her, she’s just a rude old biddy!’

  ‘’Ere, who are you calling old?’ came the reply, but Lily was already guiding the girls quickly out of earshot. Perhaps they weren’t so safe in town as she had thought.

  There was a wet fish stall, which was closed, and a butcher selling scrag end bits. Finally Ana found a bag of pot herbs, green, red and white bits of herbs, and sniffed it. The stall woman looked at them with suspicion.

  ‘Nowt wrong with my stuff,’ she called out. Ana nodded politely. ‘I just like smell,’ she said, and they walked away.

  They were fingering everything and then putting it back, making Lily pink with embarrassment. Everyone was staring at them. ‘We don’t touch before we buy,’ she suggested.

  ‘How do you find a good chicken if you do not smell it?’ said Susan.

  ‘Chicken is for Christmas, if you’re lucky. We’ve not had one for years, just scraggy potboilers from the allotment. You have to get what you’re given here.’ Lily tried to explain how food shortages were hitting both shops and customers.

  ‘War is over. Why no chickens, no eggs, no fruit?’ Ana shook her head. ‘England is poor country now. Poor Lily. At home we have chickens and eggs and fruit-oranges, lemons, cherries in our yard-but Jerry steal all food on the island though we hid oil in caves and bury food in hills. They bring dogs to find it.’

  ‘You have sun and so things grow quickly.’ Lily tried to explain how damp and cold and long the winters were. ‘We have to eat food that keeps us warm: potatoes and stew and hot soup.’

  ‘I don’t like that,’ Susan said, looking at the stalls. ‘It makes plenty ladies fat, but not you, Lily. You are a bamboo pole.’

  Lily was not sure if that was a compliment or not.

  The search for olive oil took them to three chemists, all to no avail. ‘No call for that here,’ an assistant said, pointing to castor oil and ointments. ‘What’s yer trouble?’

  ‘She wants to cook with it,’ Su said, and the assistant stared at Lily as if they were mad.

  ‘We cook with lard and dripping,’ the lady explained, shouting as if they were all deaf. ‘Oil is for engines and rusty iron.’

  ‘But we cook meat with olive oil, and make soap.’ Ana was puzzled.

  ‘This is England, not the Continent. I’ve got a bar of Palmolive,’ smiled the chemist. ‘Will that do?’

  They dawdled down to the indoor Market Hall, a huge vaulted building with wrought-iron rafters and a glass roof. The stalls were dotted around the floor in ovals divided into four, with canvas curtains they could pull round at night. There was that oh-so-familiar smell to welcome them.

  ‘We will find oil in here,’ said Ana determinedly. ‘It smells of market.’

  There were clothing stalls and delicatessens, grocery stalls and millinery, sweet stalls and pastry makers, and tucked in the middle was Winstanleys, with a big poster on the back advertising: ‘BLISS. NATIVE HERBS. The great purifying kidney and liver regulator. Herbal medicine vendors for 100 years.’ Levi was standing in a white coat as if he were directing traffic, while a little woman in a striped overall darted hither and thither at his command.

  ‘Now then, Enid, come and meet the two Mrs Winstanleys,’ he winked.

  Lily was getting tired of his insinuations but smiled politely at the little woman with iron curls clipped around her head so tight she looked like a pinwheel. Enid Greenalgh helped out when Lil wasn’t around, and knew the contents of each box of remedies better than anyone.

  ‘Pleased to meet you…Dreadful news about Fred,’ she whispered to Lil. ‘Which one is the widow? He was allus one for a lark. It were a right good turnout for the memorial. It was the best that could be done with such a sad do…’ She paused, looking at both the girls with sympathy. ‘And them so young to be widows. I do know what it’s like
. My Harry went west at Passchendaele…sad job all round,’ she sighed. ‘Are you staying long?’

  Levi was quick to jump in with a, ‘Just till they get settled…bit of a shock all round. Can I help you ladies or are you on a sightseeing trip to view the natives at work?’ he quipped.

  ‘Ana is looking for olive oil,’ Lily replied, searching the shelves.

  Levi looked as if they had asked for diamonds. ‘Ooh…no, no. Not had any in for months. Can’t get that sort of stuff yet, not since before the war. I can give you Macassar oil or beechnut oil, but that tastes like engine cleaner. There’s castor oil to clear your system but no olive oil. Sorry, there’s no call for it. Some of our lads saw a bit too much of that stuff in Italy…you know how it is. They want fish and chips and lard. You could try Szymanski’s, the stall the Poles go to. They sell foreign stuff or you could ask the Eyeties at Santini’s. I bet they use it on their hair.’

  Lily hadn’t thought about Santini’s. That might be just the place to try.

  ‘You’ll find them by the King’s Theatre,’ she offered. ‘Out of the door, turn left and up towards the church. I’ll come and join you later.’

  ‘Don’t you go telling Mother and Ivy you’re into fancy cooking. They like stuff plain and NO garlic. It smells the place out.’ Levi tapped his nose in mock conspiracy and Lil felt like hitting him. If ever someone needed taking down a peg or two it was him. Brother and sister they might be, but they had no common ground, not since he came home and took over the management as if he was cock of the midden. It was sad he wasn’t the big brother she’d had as a kid. And she didn’t like the way he was eyeing Su as if she was a piece of pork tenderloin.

  By now Joy was fighting over ‘Precious Teddy’ and wanting to get out of the pram for a toddle, being nearly a year older than Dina.

  ‘They’ve got their hands full,’ smiled Enid. ‘As it is their first outing, you should go with them and I’ll hold the fort. I’ve got my sandwiches in my tin box.’

  ‘But it’s your break, love,’ Lily replied, knowing how desperate she herself got to get off the stall on quiet mornings.