by Anne Bennett
‘What’s that?’
‘I’m planning on getting a job in a munitions factory.’
‘Munitions!’ Mary cried. ‘Why on earth would you be wanting a job there?’
‘Well, army pay doesn’t go far.’
‘Not with you, it doesn’t seem to,’ Mary snapped. ‘I’ve never known such a one for wasting money. You can never make Tom’s pay stretch. I get the same as you now, don’t forget, and I’m able to manage.’
Ah, but would you manage so well if you had to put ten shillings a week aside for a blackmailer, Bridie longed to say, but she couldn’t and took the rebuke from Mary silently.
Instead, she tried another tack. ‘It’s not just money though, is it?’ she said. ‘All men between eighteen and forty-one are being called up and many of them were previously making things for the war. Well, it’s no good having soldiers if they have no ammunition. Look how much was left behind on the beaches at Dunkirk. We can’t fight a war without armaments and lots of women work in such places.’
Mary knew Bridie had a point there, but Liam was still so wee. ‘What about Liam?’ she asked. ‘Surely you’re not expecting Ellen …’
‘Of course not,’ Bridie said. ‘I know he’d be too much for Ellen. She’s not getting any younger, I know that as well as you.’
‘Then who?’
‘No one,’ Bridie said. ‘I was thinking of a nursery. They have one in Rea Street and people say the mothers who work in war-related industries get priority.’
‘A nursery?’ Mary said. ‘I’m not sure …’
‘I am,’ Bridie said. ‘It would do Liam good. There would be children to play with and it would get him away from the dirty streets and courtyards. Your Jay could leave him down in the morning and then take Katie on to school. It could be done, Mary, and if you see to them after school …’
‘I might be going with you,’ Mary said. ‘A little extra money wouldn’t go amiss and I’d feel as if I were pulling my weight. But I’d like to talk it over with Eddie first and you should discuss it with Tom.’
There wasn’t time for that, but Mary wasn’t aware of Bridie’s urgency for money. ‘I don’t want to bother Tom with this,’ she said. ‘He’s still recovering and I don’t want him worrying about me. I’ll tell him, certainly, but I want it all signed and sealed by then. I’m going up now to see about it. Really, Tom won’t mind.’
Mary knew that; he didn’t mind anything if it pleased Bridie. The man would get the moon from the sky for her if she so desired it. Mary wondered if her sister realised how loving and kind Tom was. Eddie was a good husband and father and she had no complaints, but Tom seemed to adore Bridie. But she decided to go along with her sister that day and find out about the nursery and all. She found it just as Bridie said. The nursery was prepared to offer a place to Liam if any work Bridie took up was related to the war effort.
They both noticed how little Liam’s face had lit up at the large array of toys, but he made no effort to play with anything, or speak to any of the children, but just watched them shyly, as he held tight to his mother’s hand, while she talked to the teacher, Mrs Walton.
Liam’s large eyes grew even larger as they were shown around the brightly-painted rooms, the walls covered with children’s artwork. Noticing Liam’s interest, Mrs Walton asked, ‘Do you like to paint, Liam?’
Liam nodded his head. He supposed he did, though he’d done precious little of it, but he’d like to have a go and he looked joyfully at the children doing just that at the easels. They were covered with apron things around them and yet they still had paint all over their hands and one girl even had a smear of blue across her face. Liam waited for Mrs Walton to tell the children off for making such a mess, but nobody did.
Mrs Walton, passing by the easels as she led the way to the playground, stopped by the painting done by the little girl with the blue-smeared face and said, ‘What a lovely blue sky you have done, Margaret.’
‘I like blue,’ Margaret said. ‘It’s my favourite colour. What’s yours?’ she demanded of Liam.
He shrugged. No one had ever asked him such a thing before. ‘Dunno.’
‘You going to come here and play?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Dunno much do you?’ the little girl said scornfully, and then added, ‘If you come here, you can be my friend if you like. D’you want to?’
Liam shrugged again and was about to say ‘Dunno’ when he remembered the little girl making fun of him the last time he’d done that. ‘Don’t care,’ he said and then as the little girl pouted at his words, he added, ‘If you like,’ and they smiled at each other before Liam hurried after his mother and Mrs Walton, who had made their way outside.
When he saw all the tricycles and the trucks in the playground and the grassed area with the slide and swings, he felt excitement tingle all the way down to his toes. He wished he could leap after the other children who seemed to be enjoying themselves so much. ‘Can you just play with them?’ he asked Mrs Walton.
‘Of course.’
But Liam had to be sure. ‘For nowt like?’
‘Yes, Liam, for nothing,’ Mrs Walton said with a smile, and Liam gave a sigh of contentment.
After that, Bridie hardly even had to ask Liam as they made their way home. ‘Would you like to go there?’
He nodded eagerly. ‘Every day?’
‘Aye. Well, except Saturday and Sunday.’
‘Can I play with all the toys and things?’
‘Of course you can.’
‘Can I paint and that, even if I get it all over me, like?’
‘There are aprons to wear.’
Liam thought of the little girl Margaret and how she had paint everywhere, despite the apron, and said doubtfully, ‘Yeah, but if I got paint on me, they wouldn’t tell me off, would they?’
Bridie gave a little laugh. ‘No,’ she said and Mary added, ‘I shouldn’t think you could paint much without making a mess, Liam.’
‘And those other kids, there, they won’t bash me if I join in?’
‘No, not at all. They’ll play with you.’
‘Oh,’ Liam said, and he thought about Margaret who said she would be his friend and smiled as he said, ‘All right then, I think I’ll go.’
Mary and Bridie laughed. ‘First hurdle over,’ Mary said. ‘Now we just have to get a job.’
But that was even easier for two women who didn’t care what they did and the next day Bridie and Mary got a job making shell cases at Wainwright’s Guns, a small factory in Cregoe Street, starting on Monday. This was what Bridie told Peggy when she came around the next week. ‘I can’t raise a pound this week,’ she said. ‘I can’t give you what I haven’t got. But when I get paid next week, I’ll have the money for you.’
Peggy knew she’d get the money. Bridie was too frightened not to pay her so she said, ‘All right, I’ll do with ten bob for now and I’ll give you one more week. If you haven’t the money for me next week … Well, let’s just say I warned you.’
‘I will,’ Bridie promised desperately. ‘I’ll put it up as soon as I have my wages.’
Bridie wrote to Tom, as Mary had insisted, telling him of her decision to work in a munitions factory. She told him Liam’s reaction to going to nursery and how, with Jay’s help and Ellen’s offer to see to them in the evening till she came home, it could be achieved easily.
Tom didn’t mind Bridie taking a job, but really he would have preferred her, Mary and the children out of it altogether. But he knew it was no good asking her to reconsider, she’d only refuse.
He understood her decision to want to work towards the war effort. Things were so dire, it helped somehow to be doing your bit, and so he told her he was proud of her doing war work as long as she didn’t wear herself out. He said too that he’d been delighted to learn that Eddie was alive and well and had gone over to see him. He also said they’d both be home before too long and sent his love to her and the children.
Three days after Tom wr
ote his letter, bombs fell in West Bromwich. They caused structural damage, although no loss of life, but it put paid to the people who thought Birmingham was safe being two hundred miles inland. Birmingham braced itself for a bombing campaign, for the city made so much for the war effort from Dunlop’s making tyres in the north to Cadbury’s in the south where cordite was put into rockets rather than soft centres into chocolates. The jewellery quarter was another area where the deft hands that set diamonds had been adapted to the fine and delicate work of making radar. The car factories hid shadow factories making military vehicles and, in the case of Vickers, Wellingtons and Spitfires. Birmingham guns were famous the world over. And then there were the small factories everywhere, churning out all manner of materials – Birmingham was a prime target.
‘Hitler’s intent on invasion, all right,’ Sam said one evening, when Bridie and Mary had called in for the children. ‘But our navy is stronger than theirs, he’ll try to demoralise the people first, see. He’s got a lot to learn, Hitler. When the British have their backs to the wall, they fight harder than ever.’
‘And he won’t get it all his own way either,’ Ellen put in. ‘Our air force will stop him.’
Bridie hoped Ellen was right. So far, nothing had stopped the madman.
Bridie found it was a mad rush each morning to get herself and the children up and dressed and fed in time for her to get to the factory on time. She didn’t know how she’d have managed without Mary and Ellen, for often they would pop in to give her a hand. Then they’d leave Katie in with Jay and Mickey until it was time to take her to school, and drop Liam at the nursery on their way to work.
The children settled well into the new routine. Katie did not object to staying with her cousins for a wee while before school and they were seldom averse to playing a game to amuse her.
After school, Jay, Mickey and Katie would go back to Ellen’s until their mothers came home and she would always have a little snack for them when they came in: a few scones she’d made, or bread and a smear of precious jam, or dripping toast. Ellen would even make time to lift Katie onto her knee and help her learn the words she’d been sent home with, or listen to her stumble her way through a reading book.
Liam’s nursery opened longer hours to fit in with factory times, but he didn’t seem to mind being away from his mother for so long, and when Mary and Bridie collected him in the evening, he was usually clutching pictures he’d painted, or models he’d made, which Bridie would display proudly around the room.
It was a good job the children were fine about everything, for Bridie felt the factory was very trying at first. She hated the green overalls she had to wear and the big thick boots, and the way she had to roll her hair up under a turban.
She found the place dirty, noisy and smelly and everything she touched seemed to be covered in oil. The work was boring too and the hours long, and the noise far too great for there to be much chit-chat between the women. Bridie was unnerved by some of the women, who seemed to shout a lot, and swear and smoke like any man and often wore lipstick so red, it was like a scarlet slash across their faces.
But when she said this one night to Mary as they made their way home, she told her off. ‘Don’t be such a little snob,’ she said.
‘I’m not!’ Bridie said indignantly.
‘Yes, you are, judging people.’
‘I wasn’t. I just said …’
‘I know what you just said and let me tell you those women work as hard as anyone and that’s all that matters in this damned war,’ Mary retorted sharply. ‘If it helps them cope to shout, or swear or smoke, then so be it. As for the lipstick, it’s possibly to remind themselves they are women.’
Bridie thought Mary was probably right. After all, they hardly looked very desirable in their sexless overalls and boots with their hair coiled beneath a scarf in an effort to keep it clean as well as for safety reasons. But then Mary suddenly squeezed her sister’s arm. ‘Don’t mind me,’ she said. ‘I snapped at you like a weasel. It’s not you, it’s me. I’m tired out and that’s a fact.’
‘Don’t worry about it. I’m the same,’ Bridie replied.
It was true. In the first fortnight at the factory, Bridie nearly followed her children when they went to bed, she’d been so worn-out. It reminded her of the early days on the farm when she’d been so exhausted. She knew, like before, it would pass, her body would get used to it, and now, though she was still tired coming home, she would revive after a meal. In those early days she had come home in a sort of stupor, so weary she was barely able to put one foot before the other.
In an effort to ease the boredom, Workers’ Playtime from the wireless was broadcast to the various workshops and it belted out the popular songs of the day, loud enough to drown out some of the noise of the machinery, especially when the women’s voices singing along raised the decibel level.
Liam, largely influenced by his days at the nursery, loved singing too and often entertained Bridie and Katie before bedtime, belting out the nursery rhymes and other songs he’d learned at school.
Now he and Katie interspersed these with ‘Run Rabbit Run’, ‘Hey Little Hen’ or ‘Mairzy Doats’, and other songs from the war like ‘Kiss Me Goodnight, Sergeant Major’ which they’d learned from Jay and Mickey.
But despite Workers’ Playtime the work was often heavy and very tedious. There was often overtime, which Mary and Bridie would do if they were able and not for the money alone either, but to make as much as possible to fight this blessed war. It used to wear both Mary and Bridie down, but what depressed Bridie most was seeing a pound of her hard-earned money going out to Peggy every week.
The woman was well able to find a job herself and with all her youngsters working now, she had no need to squeeze the money out of Bridie. But Bridie never bothered saying this, she just paid her, so that she’d leave quickly.
She could just about cope with seeing that much of Peggy and didn’t want to give her any excuse to hang about and prophesy dire accidents that could befall her children when God took his revenge. That always made Bridie feel sick. She loved her children with a passion and protecting her children through the war was enough of a worry without Peggy adding to it.
But, even with the pound given to Peggy, Bridie was well paid and by careful husbanding of the money, she knew she would be able to replenish most of the money she’d taken from the post office account. This was made easier with the children having their main meal at nursery and school, enabling her to make the rations she was allowed go further.
But there was no sign of frugality when the men wrote to say they were being discharged. When the hospital authorities found out they were related, they’d found them beds in the same ward and arranged to have them released on the same day.
They’d been in hospital for six weeks when they came home that bright summer’s day in mid-July, far longer than Bridie and Mary had thought. Tom was pleased, however, for though his physical injuries had healed, his mental scars had taken longer and he’d been in no fit state to be released earlier for his nightmares frightened him. He had dreaded going home until he was fully better because the sight of him screaming and thrashing in the bed, sometimes muttering and shouting or laughing hysterically, would seriously affect Bridie. That was all behind him now, thankfully, and he and Eddie had three clear days to spend with their family before they rejoined their unit.
When Bridie first saw Tom, she realised with a pang that the young man she had fallen in love with had gone for ever. There were drawn lines on his face and greying hair at his temples.
But his smile was still the same and she sped across the room, enfolding him in her arms, feeling the tension seep from him, as he said huskily, ‘Oh God, Bridie, how I’ve longed for this, to hold you tight and to cuddle my children. Nothing matters to me but you three. You must know that.’
Bridie did know. But Tom had seen things he could never tell her about that made his family all the more precious to him, like the town of Tournou
they were making for as they’d been ordered to retreat. Before they reached it, they came upon lines of refugees – women, old men and children – machine-gunned as they had tried to escape the bombing. Some had been gunned down in the road and they lay there, spread-eagled in puddles of blood; others had cowered in ditches, but it hadn’t saved them. Some had prams or barrows piled high with their possessions, the richer ones had donkeys or ponies pulling carts or had been leading their horses out of the town when the bombers came.
They heard the screams and cries of the animals before they got there. The scene would stay with him always, the dead bodies with the stench of death mixed with the smell of blood, their pathetic belongings spread along the road, their pet dogs dead or dying beside them, carts overturned and horses trapped beneath them, riddled with bullets and often with broken legs. They screamed in pain and the dogs whimpered and Tom and his friends put many out of their misery before going on, unable to do little else.
Tournou itself was pulverised by the bombing. Everywhere they looked, they saw shattered buildings reduced to a pile of rubble. Other buildings were split asunder, leaning drunkenly against their neighbour, their contents spilled out before them. The dead lay in rows on the streets and pavements and rescue workers tore at the piles of rubble with bloodied, blistered hands in the hope of finding more survivors, while dust swirled in the air, stinging eyes and lodging in noses and throats.
Tom was devastated. He’d heard of Blitzkrieg, the lightning bombing the Germans had practiced in Spain which had killed a thousand people in one attack. But a grainy photograph in a newspaper, or a broadcast on the wireless, did not begin to touch on the horror of it all.
He was appalled that what had happened in that Belgium town might happen in Birmingham, that Bridie and the children might be mercilessly gunned down trying to escape. He was desperate to get out of it, back to England where they could regroup and have another go at the madman and his brutal, butchering army.
