The Clippie Girls

by Margaret Dickinson

  ‘I’m so sorry, my dear, and I’m afraid that we’ll have to ask you to identify him.’

  Mary shuddered and bit her lip, but nodded bravely. She was trembling as the sister led her to where her father lay. He looked surprisingly peaceful – as if he was just asleep. She fancied that at any moment he might open his eyes and smile up at her. But poor Daniel would never again smile gently at his daughter and lovingly dandle his granddaughters on his knee. Or take them for walks. If only he hadn’t gone out that bitterly cold morning. Grace had been right and now Mary knew she’d never hear the end of it.

  And she was right, for Grace’s first words on hearing that her husband was dead were to lay the blame. ‘If he hadn’t been wheeling out your crying baby, he’d still have been here. And now what are we supposed to do with three screaming brats and an invalid?’

  ‘Peggy’s no trouble, you know she’s not, and the baby’s a good little thing – most of the time.’ Mary hesitated to say anything about her middle daughter. Rose was a handful, there was no denying it and Grace certainly wasn’t going to. She sniffed and muttered, ‘But that Rose makes up for it. Well, I’ll tell you something, Mary. Now he’s not here to spoil her any more, she needs taking in hand and if you won’t do it – then I will.’

  With that, Grace had turned away and retreated to her bedroom, leaving Mary to make all the necessary arrangements for Daniel’s funeral.

  It was a sad day. Tears streamed down six-year-old Peggy’s face and even Rose, at four, seemed to realize that her beloved Grandpa wasn’t coming back. She cried loudly standing at the graveside and refused to be hushed.

  ‘Funerals aren’t the place for young children,’ Grace told Mary tartly. ‘You shouldn’t have brought them.’

  Only a few months later, in the summer of 1925, Ted’s war wounds, which had never healed properly, became infected and he died of septicaemia five days before Rose’s fifth birthday. Mary mourned the loss of the man her husband had been before the war, but he had come back so very changed and had suffered so much that she couldn’t help feeling a sense of relief that he was now at peace. So, the household became a family of women with no man to influence the growing children or soothe the inevitable tensions between Grace and Mary.

  They settled into a routine. Mary returned once more to her work at a department store in the city, leaving a reluctant Grace to look after the baby. Myrtle was a placid child and Peggy biddable and, at seven coming up to eight, did her best to be helpful about the house.

  Trouble only erupted when Rose came home from school.

  Three

  The three girls grew at an alarming rate and the furniture, which Grace had bought during the early years of her married life, soon began to look shabby. But she was not going to replace it whilst three young children rampaged through the house. Besides, there was little money for such luxuries as new furniture, but as the children grew older and more respectful of her belongings, Grace managed to pick up second-hand furniture in auction sales. Dressed in her dark coat and felt hat, she loved the excitement of bidding for a piece and winning. In the living room, where the family spent most of their time, two easy chairs were set either side of the range, which Grace resisted all attempts to have removed. The dining table and straight-backed chairs and the square of carpet – all had been shrewd purchases in the salesrooms. Even the wireless that stood on top of the sideboard, close to Grace’s chair, was second-hand.

  Between them, Grace and Mary redecorated the rooms when they needed it, hanging serviceable green wallpaper in the living room.

  ‘It’ll not show the smuts from the fire as much as a pale wallpaper would,’ Grace had decreed.

  ‘But we saw a nice beige wallpaper we could put in the front room. We don’t use that room much,’ Mary pointed out. ‘Only on special occasions.’

  Grace’s best front room had a three-piece suite covered in light brown moquette with a flowered motif. A crewel-embroidered fire screen stood in the tiled fireplace and a glass-fronted cabinet housed Grace’s precious china tea set, which had been a wedding present.

  ‘True,’ Grace had agreed, ‘though I like a fire lit in there now and again – specially in winter – to keep it aired.’

  Mary was thrifty with her money, but was hard pressed to keep her three daughters clothed and shod. By the time dresses, coats and shoes reached Myrtle, they were so worn that Mary often had to relent and buy new ones for her.

  ‘So I get all the hand-me-downs,’ Rose grumbled, ‘and Myrtle gets new ones like our Peggy.’

  ‘I’m not buying you brand-new clothes.’ Mary smiled. ‘They’d still be torn and dirty in no time.’

  ‘That’s true.’ Rose had to agree and she did so with a merry smile. Rose was the tomboy of the family. Always laughing and always in some scrape or other. She played football and cricket with the boys next door rather than with dolls and tea sets.

  ‘I don’t know why you let her run wild, Mary. That girl will come to a bad end, you mark my words.’

  So, whilst Peggy dutifully helped around the house and Myrtle, even from an early age, applied herself to her studies, Rose ran free. Peggy was of average ability academically, but she had no desire to stay on at school longer than the statutory leaving age. As soon as she could, she left school and found work in the tram workers’ canteen. Two years later Rose joined her and they worked side by side. The sisters were popular with their work mates and especially with the tram drivers and conductors, who flirted outrageously with all the canteen staff.

  But there was one, quieter than the rest, who seemed to have his eye on Peggy. Bob Deeton, with light brown hair and hazel eyes, was a solid, dependable young man, who’d been selected to train as a driver earlier than most and he came into the canteen regularly. He always contrived to have Peggy serve him, though at first he seemed tongue-tied, too reticent to strike up a conversation.

  ‘I reckon he likes you.’ Rose nudged her sister.

  ‘Don’t be silly. He’s never even asked me out.’

  ‘Would you go, if he did?’

  ‘I might.’

  Rose glanced thoughtfully across the room to where Bob was sitting eating his dinner. ‘Well, I would, if he asked me.’

  Peggy laughed. ‘Don’t be daft, Rose. He’s not your sort. Far too quiet for you.’

  ‘He’s shy, that’s all.’ Rose defended the young man. ‘I like that. I’m fed up of all the flirting that goes on here.’

  Peggy gaped at her. ‘But you love the banter. I’ve heard you giving back as good as you get.’

  ‘Well – yes, I suppose I do, but I realize it’s all insincere. If I was to take any one of them seriously, they’d run a mile. No, Bob’s nice. He’s kind too. Have you seen how Mr Bower always puts the young trainee conductors with him? That’s because he knows Bob will look after them and help them.’

  Peggy chuckled. ‘I think it’s you Bob ought to ask to go out with him, not me.’

  Rose shrugged. ‘It’s not me he’s interested in.’

  Peggy could not fail to hear the note of wistfulness in her sister’s tone.

  Slowly, as time went on, Bob plucked up the courage to ask Peggy to go out with him. At first she refused him gently, but the young man was nothing if not persistent and the invitation was repeated every Saturday he was not on duty. For a while Peggy still resisted. But, in the end, her excuses sound lame even to her ears. At last she said, ‘Yes,’ and Bob almost danced around the canteen with delight.

  ‘Hello, Bob,’ Rose greeted him, when he arrived to take Peggy out for the first time. ‘Come on in. She’s still upstairs titivating, making herself beautiful for you.’

  ‘She’s already beautiful,’ Bob said gallantly.

  ‘By heck, you have got it bad,’ Rose teased as she ushered him into the living room. Myrtle was seated at the table, her schoolbooks spread around her. Mary was sitting with a pile of darning on her knee and Grace, closest to the fire, was reading a newspaper. The older lady was small and wir
y. At home, she was always dressed in her pinafore, with her grey hair pulled severely back from her face into a bun in the nape of her neck. She wore round steel-rimmed spectacles, behind which her sharp, pale blue eyes missed nothing. In contrast, Mary took her pinafore off as soon as she’d finished the household chores. Her hair was cut short, with curls and waves close to her head and nothing – except the smart, close-fitting hat worn at a jaunty angle when she went out – was allowed to cover her hair.

  ‘This is our mam.’ Peggy gestured towards Mary and then nodded towards Grace. ‘And this is Gran. Don’t take any notice of her, her bark’s worse than her bite.’

  Bob shook hands politely with the two women and sat down in the chair which Rose pulled out for him.

  ‘Like a cuppa, Bob?’ Mary asked, half rising from her chair.

  ‘No, no, please don’t trouble, Mrs Sylvester. We’ll be off as soon as Peggy’s ready.’

  There was an awkward silence for a moment, whilst Mary bent over her sewing, Grace rattled her paper and eyed the young man over the top of her round spectacles. ‘Been working there long, young man?’

  ‘I started in the repair shop until I was old enough to train up to be a driver.’

  Grace grunted and shook her paper again. ‘Mm.’

  There was another awkward silence before Rose, trying to fill the gap, asked, ‘What are you going to see?’

  ‘I don’t know. Whatever Peggy wants.’ Bob hesitated a moment before saying generously, ‘You can come with us, if you like.’

  Rose threw back her head and laughed. ‘What? Play gooseberry? No, no, I wouldn’t do that to you, Bob.’

  At that moment, there was a noise on the stairs and Peggy came into the room.

  ‘Guess what?’ Rose teased saucily. ‘Bob’s asked me to go with you.’

  Peggy smiled and nodded. ‘That’s fine. Hadn’t you better get your coat then? It’s time we were going.’

  For a moment Rose looked startled, then she spluttered with laughter. ‘’Course I’m not coming. Get on with you,’ she added, shooing them both out of the room, but as the door closed behind them, Rose’s merriment faded. Had she imagined it or had there been a look of disappointment on her sister’s face when Rose had refused Bob’s invitation? But then she shrugged off the thought and turned to go up to the attic bedroom she shared with Myrtle to play records on the wind-up gramophone.

  As she put her foot on the bottom step, Grace’s voice from the living room reached her. ‘Rose, there’s the washing up to do.’

  Four

  ‘I need some help with the blackout when you get home tonight,’ Grace warned them all at breakfast the morning after the Prime Minister’s sombre announcement. ‘I’m not climbing up stepladders and on chairs at my age.’

  As Mary had predicted, once Grace had got over the initial bewilderment as to how and why the governments of all the countries involved had been so foolish as to allow another war to come about, she threw herself into organizing her own ‘home front’. Now she accepted that, as more than one journalist had already suggested, the armistice in 1918 had not really ended the Great War. The intervening years had merely been an extended truce. But now the dictator who’d risen to power in a demoralized Germany and was invading country after country with his jack-booted army had to be stopped.

  ‘Your mother’s going out today to get the blackout material, and Tom from next door has given me some wooden battens and plaster laths in case we need to make frames for the windows instead of curtains. I should have got it organized before this,’ she muttered, more to herself than to the others. ‘But I just didn’t want to believe it was really coming.’

  Mary was dressed smartly for going into town. She allowed herself few clothes; what money there was had always gone on her daughters, but those she had were of good quality and lasted well. Today she wore a beautifully tailored Scotch tweed to fit her slim figure. It had a skirt with wide, stitched-down pleats and a jacket with breast and hip pockets and she teamed it with a pink silk blouse. As she pinned her broad-brimmed hat into place, she said, ‘I must get some extra non-perishable food in. The government said we could.’

  But Grace shook her head. ‘You’ve left it too late. That was back in July. We can’t do it now the emergency has started.’

  Mary looked crestfallen. ‘Oh dear, it seems we’ve all been burying our heads in the sand, hoping it would go away.’ She sighed. ‘I’ll just get one or two bits extra then, shall I?’

  ‘Don’t forget the blackout material for curtains and you can get thick brown paper from the stationers to make the frames.’ Grace issued her orders. ‘And get me the Daily Sketch. There’s bound to be picture of the King. And I want to see who’s in the War Cabinet. I just hope Winston’s back at the Admiralty.’

  Rose winked at her mother. Gran was back on form.

  ‘Bob’ll help us with the blackout,’ Peggy said, as she and Rose were about to leave for work. Peggy had been going out with Bob for just over two months and the family were used to his visits. ‘I’ll ask him to come round tonight, shall I?’

  Grace shrugged. ‘If you like, but he’ll have to help his mam with hers, won’t he?’

  Bob Deeton lived with his widowed mother and Peggy had told them that she relied a great deal on her son. ‘I don’t know what’ll happen if he ever leaves home,’ she’d said with a wry smile. ‘She’ll fall to pieces, I reckon.’

  The family had exchanged amused glances wondering if they should read more into Peggy’s words than she was saying.

  That evening, despite the seriousness of the task and all that it implied, there was great hilarity in the living room. Even Grace smiled as she watched Rose wielding a saw, cutting up battens and laths into the required lengths to make frames to fit each window in the house. Then she picked up the hammer and began to join the pieces together with nails.

  ‘Ouch!’ she cried and sucked her thumb. ‘I thought you said Bob was coming to help, Peg?’

  ‘He said he’d try,’ Peggy said, ‘but his mother is panicking about getting their blackout up. She’s a real worrier. Here, let me have a go.’ Rose gladly handed over the hammer.

  Lastly they stretched several sheets of brown paper over the frame, pinning it in place. A lath nailed diagonally across the back of it held the frame rigid.

  ‘How are you going to fasten it in the window frame?’ Myrtle asked. ‘It won’t just balance there. It’ll fall out.’

  ‘Aha,’ Peggy said triumphantly. ‘I thought of that today and asked Bob how to do it. He told me to get these – ’ she picked up a paper bag she’d put on the sideboard when she came in from work – ‘cupboard door fasteners. We’ve to screw one of these to each corner of the window frames and they’ll hold the blackout frames in place.’

  ‘Holes in my window frames?’ Grace was scandalized.

  ‘It’s the only way, Gran. I’m sorry.’

  ‘That Hitler’s going to have a lot to answer for before this is over,’ Grace muttered, but said no more. It had to be done.

  Peggy and Rose were struggling upstairs with a completed frame, giggling so much that they were in danger of dropping it, when a knock sounded on the front door.

  ‘That’ll be Bob, I expect.’

  ‘Don’t let go, Peg. I’ll drop it. Shout to Myrtle. She’ll let him in.’

  But when Myrtle opened the door, a man she didn’t recognize, dressed in an unfamiliar uniform, was standing there.

  ‘Hello, love. My name’s Joe Bentley. I’m the air-raid precautions warden for this area. You’re showing a light at the back.’

  ‘Oh – er – yes. Sorry. We’re just putting up the blackout.’ Myrtle opened the door wider and indicated her two sisters halfway up the stairs.

  ‘It should have all been up earlier than this.’ Joe hesitated. He was a friend of Tom Bradshaw, who lived on the corner next door to the Booth household. They often played darts together on a Saturday night in their local pub. He knew all about Tom’s neighbours from bits he
’d overheard Letty Bradshaw telling his wife as they sat together drinking a half of shandy. There was no man in this house, Joe remembered, and though the girls were doing their best, it must be difficult, he thought, without a handyman around the place.

  ‘Tell you what,’ he said, removing his helmet and stepping through the door. ‘Let me give you a hand. We’ll have it all up in a jiffy.’

  As Myrtle closed the front door, he nodded towards the stained-glass panel in the upper half. ‘You’ll need a curtain across this an’ all, love.’

  Within an hour, Joe had helped put up frames or curtains over every window and all light showing from the house was successfully blotted out. As he left, with their effusive thanks still ringing in his ears, he reminded them, ‘You’ve done a grand job, ladies, but don’t forget a curtain for this door.’

  ‘We’ll do it right away, Mr Bentley,’ Mary promised.

  ‘And whilst you’ve got your saw handy, Rose,’ Grace said, ‘you can cut me a piece of that lath about a foot long and then mark it from one end at five inches.’

  ‘Right-o, Gran. What’s it for?’

  ‘The bathroom. From now on that’s the depth of water we’re allowed to have. I don’t want anyone painting a black line round my bath, thank you very much.’

  ‘Five inches! That’ll hardly cover my—’

  ‘Thank you, Rose, that’ll be enough of that. And another thing – we’ll have to share bath water.’

  Now four pairs of eyes stared at her.

  ‘Well, if you’re thinking I’m getting into the bath with either Peggy or Myrtle, you’ve got another think coming,’ Rose said firmly.