The Bomb Girls (5 page)

Agnes smiled gently as she gazed into Elsie's earnest face. What kind of previous life could she have had if relentless hard work at the Phoenix made her so very happy?

Giving her a reassuring pat on the shoulder, Agnes
simply said, ‘You're a good girl, Elsie, and you've nothing at all to worry about.'

On a free night off, all five room mates decided to go and see Laurence Olivier in
Rebecca
at the Phoenix picture house.

‘I can't wait to see all the posh frocks,' Lillian whispered as she passed around a bag of nut brittle.

As they settled down in their seats, the lights dimmed and the Pathé News preceding the main feature film flashed up. A hush descended over the packed picture house as the narrator spoke.

‘Secret footage of British POWs in German concentration camps has been released to the War Office. It is clear that Hitler's officers have thrown aside the rules laid down by the Geneva Convention.'

There was a collective gasp of horror as stark images of skeletal men staggering half naked around a prison yard appeared larger than life on the wide screen.

‘Oh, my God!' a woman behind them murmured.

Some of the cinema-goers had to cover their eyes at the sight of British soldiers crawling on the ground and begging for food, but it was Agnes who reacted the most dramatically. Stifling a cry of agony, she literally jumped over the top of her cinema seat.

‘NO! Please, God, I can't bear it!' she cried as she ran out of the building.

Emily, Alice, Elsie and Lillian looked at one another, shocked. Then they left their seats and ran after their distressed friend.

‘Maybe she recognized somebody in that terrible film,' Alice gasped as they hurried up the steep hill back to their digs.

‘Poor girl,' murmured Emily. ‘She sounded like she was in agony.'

They found Agnes lying white-faced on her bed.

‘Is there anything we can do?' Alice gently asked, perching on the end of the bed.

‘There's nothing anybody can do,' Agnes whispered as slow tears rolled unstopped down her cheeks. ‘My Stan might be in one of those camps … He could be dead for all I know.'

Emily, Elsie and Lillian quietly approached the bed.

Elsie stroked Agnes's limp hands.

‘Why didn't you tell us?'

‘Talking doesn't help,' she replied bitterly.

‘How long's he been gone?' Alice asked.

‘Almost two years; he was reported missing right at the beginning of the war.' She took a deep ragged breath then sobbed, ‘If he is alive I can't bear to think of him being treated like those poor men, like an animal.'

There was a long pause as Emily, Alice, Lillian and Elsie, all totally lost for words, wondered how any one person could bear so much.

Seeing Elsie peeking at the photograph on her bedside table, Agnes whispered, ‘That's my daughter, Esther. She's got polio. She was evacuated to a hospital in the Lake District just after Stan was reported missing. She doesn't know anything about her daddy,' she added sadly.

Filled with pity, Emily said, ‘So your whole family was taken from you at the same time?'

Agnes nodded.

‘I'm hoping to see more of Esther now I'm working in the north.'

‘Well, that sounds a step in the right direction. Look, I'll make you some tea, lovie,' Elsie said softly.

‘I need a drink too,' muttered Lillian. ‘And I don't mean tea!'

Alice stayed with Agnes while the others crept into the sitting room, where they whispered together as they made tea for Agnes and mixed it with a dash of brandy.

‘What with a daughter in hospital and a husband in a concentration camp, it's a wonder she's not topped herself,' Emily murmured.

‘She's so brave,' Elsie added quietly.

Lillian nodded grimly. ‘Bloody tough too,' she said as she took a deep pull at the brandy bottle.

‘Well, we've certainly seen a different side to our boss tonight,' Emily remarked.

‘There was I thinking she was a tight-lipped, toffee-nosed southerner,' said Lillian self-deprecatingly. ‘How wrong can you be!'

‘From now on we're going to look after Agnes,' Emily said firmly.

‘Cheers to that!' said Lillian as she took another swig from the brandy bottle.

Things changed after that. On the factory floor Emily, Alice, Elsie and Lillian were civil and obedient with their line supervisor; but once back in their digs Agnes was their dear friend who they treated with love and kindness. Apart from the respect and affection they had for Agnes, they all shared a secret desire to reunite her with her little girl, Esther, as soon as possible.

The Bomb Girls had arrived at the Phoenix in time to enjoy a mild spring followed by a warm, wet summer.

‘Does it ever stop raining up here?' Agnes asked.

‘Moanin' southerner!' Lillian teased.

‘Rain's good for the complexion,' Emily added.

Agnes stared at the rain belting against the factory windowpanes and clattering down onto the metal roof.

‘A bit of sunshine wouldn't go amiss.'

‘I wouldn't worry about it, pet, it's not like we get out much,' said Elsie, who put a positive spin on everything.

A damp and misty autumn gave way to a hard winter in the Phoenix, and what with the constantly damp floors and the blustery Pennine winds whistling round the factory, the workers were chilled to the bone from dawn till dusk. There were, however, the welcome breaks in the warm canteen, where Emily had made great friends with the cooks. They had welcomed her help and her new ideas with open arms.

‘Mek yourself at home, lass, the more the merrier!'

Emily's flaky pastry, improvised from shin-beef dripping and reconstituted lard, had gone down a storm, so had her herb dumplings, and nobody in Lancashire could cook fish and chips like Emily. Spuds grown locally were in abundance but fish was scarce so, as ever, Emily
improvised, making scallops from thick slices of potato deep-fried in a light golden batter.

Elsie nearly fainted with ecstasy when she tasted her first crispy golden scallop.

‘Mmm!' she groaned in pleasure. ‘How do you do it, our Em?'

‘Desperation!' Emily replied. ‘If I have to eat any more boring canteen food I might start gnawing my elbows,' she added in a low voice so her new friends in the canteen wouldn't hear her. ‘The cooks try their best but they don't think outside the box. Rationing makes cooking a challenge not a drag.'

‘Is there owt else you can deep-fry, cock,' a big woman from packing asked. ‘Them bloody scallops were a treat!'

The workers' unabashed enthusiasm for ‘good grub', as they called it, drove Emily on. There was only one thing Emily liked more than pleasing her friends, and that was cooking, so when the two were combined she was in her element.

Emily knew that the local farm grew plenty of root crops, and one morning, after batting her beautiful blue eyes at the farmer, she walked away with a sack of parsnips which she peeled and boiled then mashed with margarine, salt, pepper, dried sage and thyme. With Elsie's help she rolled the cooled mashed parsnips into little balls then deep-fried them in a big pan of lard and the shin-beef dripping that she kept exclusively for her own purposes.

As the parsnip fritters crackled in the sizzling hot fat, Elsie was anxious.

‘Won't we get told off for being in't canteen, like?'

Emily confidently shook her head.

‘It gives the cooks time off. Look at them,' she added, as she nodded in the direction of the canteen ladies, who were sitting at one of the tables reading the papers with their feet up. ‘Plus, we're doing this out of the goodness of our hearts in our spare time,' she pointed out.

‘If you ever open a chip shop, Em, can I work for you?' Elsie said with a sweet shy smile.

‘For sure, on condition you don't eat everything in the shop!' Emily replied.

The parsnip fritters were served with an improvised Spam hash that Emily concocted with onions, carrots, blobs of marg and potatoes. She topped the meal with bread pudding, which she spiced up with cinnamon and bulked out for the hungry workers with prunes and apples.

‘Eeh, lovie, I wish we could eat like this every day,' an appreciative Bomb Girl said as she hurried back for seconds.

‘You could, if they took me off the bomb line and put me in't canteen,' Emily said with a chuckle.

On cold winter days Emily made warm nourishing food to keep the workers going through their long hard shifts: a rich broth from pearl barley and mutton, or soup from dried peas and a pig's head, which she boiled up for stock and meat she could slice out of the cheeks.

Malc, the overseer, had to take Emily on one side to remind her she was a Bomb Girl not a cook.

‘I'm not paid to cook, I just love it – and I do it in my free time,' she reminded him.

‘I quite understand,' Malc hurriedly replied. ‘Just wanted to remind you of your priorities.'

Pretending innocence, Emily stared up at him with her big blue eyes. ‘I can stop if you want … ?' she added mischievously.

Malc paused for a few seconds. No way did he want Emily to stop; there'd be a riot if her fritters, scallops, soups and broths weren't on the menu.

‘We don't have to go that far,' he prevaricated. ‘Just don't make it obvious when Mr Featherstone's around.'

There was great camaraderie among the two hundred-strong women at the Phoenix. It wasn't as if they all liked each other, far from it, there were rows and differences every day. People got tired and grumpy, the repetitive hard work, long shifts and relentless cold weather ground the workers down. The fact that most of the women were far away from their loved ones caused spats of anger or tears of sadness. Agnes was always good when these situations erupted. She never offered platitudes because she knew from experience that sort of talking was a waste of time. She had a calm way of addressing problems and asking the right questions, and she always remained focused and strong.

‘
Never
give up!' was her unequivocal advice to all.

The increase in the number of deaths, casualties and reports of ‘missing in action' had a profound effect on the workforce. A young girl on the next section to the cordite line collapsed when she heard her kid brother had died of septicaemia in a lifeboat. He'd been a young sailor on a minesweeper that had been torpedoed by German U-boats, and the lifeboat he was in had drifted in the freezing North Sea for days before it was picked up by a merchant ship.

Life was unbelievably hard and getting harder by the
day, but the best the Bomb Girls could do was work harder, stay cheerful – and pray.

The need for more and more bombs put pressure on the munitions factories; stringent targets were set and had to be achieved on each shift.

‘I know the new targets are going to make things even tougher than they already are,' Agnes said to her overworked team. ‘But the boys we love need a lot more bombs, and that's why we have to do it.'

Conscientious Elsie's green eyes opened wide with anxiety.

‘We can't fill the bomb shells any faster,' she said. ‘If we did we'd end up spilling cordite then God knows what would happen.'

Lillian rolled her eyes.

‘We all know exactly what would happen – BOOM!'

Agnes quickly interrupted.

‘I'm not saying take chances; health and safety come first.'

‘What you're really saying,' said clever Alice, ‘is that you want us to work longer hours?'

Agnes smiled apologetically.

‘That's what it boils down to, Al,' she replied. ‘It really is the only way we can reach the production target.'

Though weary from their twelve-hour shifts the girls did put in an extra hour a shift when called for.

‘I'd love to tell Mr Featherstone where to stick his bloody targets,' grumbled Lillian as they took a brief cigarette break.

‘You do get into a rhythm of work,' said the ever-philosophical Alice.

‘So do mad rats in a run!' laughed Lillian.

‘What I mean is that even though you're tired to the bone your brain's on automatic pilot: shell, cordite, detonator, shell, cordite, detonator. Sometimes I say it in mock French,' she said as she pronounced the words in a French accent. ‘Case, detonateur, cordite, case, detonateur, cordite.'

‘Sounds sexier in French!' laughed Lillian.

As the girls' friendship deepened and their trust and confidence grew, Agnes talked increasingly about Esther, especially when they settled around the wood burner in their digs, swapping Woodbines and drinking tea.

‘I know the extra hours and the increase in productivity are in a good cause but there's always something that gets in the way of me seeing my Esther. At the Woolwich Arsenal it was impossible; they said they couldn't spare an experienced supervisor to go gadding about the countryside visiting relatives.'

‘I wouldn't call visiting a sick child gadding about,' Emily protested.

Agnes continued angrily, ‘Now their excuse is that time off is impossible because of the blasted targets. I tell you, I can't win!' she exclaimed as she threw her hands in the air with sheer frustration.

‘It's a right bugger,' Lillian agreed.

‘Maybe we could have a word with Mr Featherstone,' Alice suggested.

‘And what good would that do?' Agnes asked.

‘Compassionate grounds,' Alice quickly replied.

Agnes was silent for at least a minute then she said, ‘Maybe I should go and have a word with Mr Featherstone myself?'

Elsie vehemently nodded her head.

‘Thems that doesn't ask doesn't get,' she said solemnly.

Agnes smiled at her intense, loving face.

‘You're right, Elsie, them that doesn't ask never gets!'

A few weeks after her meeting with Mr Featherstone Agnes got her much-deserved compassionate leave. When she found a leave pass sitting in her pigeonhole she was so stunned she couldn't stop shaking.

‘Two days! TWO DAYS!' she gasped incredulously.

‘That's all we can spare,' Lillian teased. ‘Then we want you back, bossing us about on the bomb line!'

Agnes threw her arms about Lillian.

‘I'm so, so happy,' she said on the verge of tears.

Lillian hugged her tightly. How could she have ever thought Agnes was stern and miserable? She was one of the best and kindest women she had ever met. But there was no doubt about her dress sense; it was unquestionably the worst Lillian had ever seen!

Disentangling herself from Agnes's embrace, Lillian said firmly, ‘Now, Agnes, we've got to get you smartened up. We don't want you arriving in Keswick looking like you work down a coal mine, do we?'

Agnes took off her glasses to wipe tears of laughter from her eyes.

‘Honestly, Lillian, only you would think of clothes at a moment like this!'

‘She might be thinking frocks but I'm thinking food,' Emily said with a secret smile. ‘Chocolate truffles for Esther.'

‘CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES!' hooted Elsie. ‘How do you plan to magic them up?'

Emily smiled as she gave a knowing wink.

‘Mock chocolate,' she replied. ‘All I need is a bit of marzipan, golden syrup and cocoa powder, some breadcrumbs – and all your sugar rations!' she ended with a peal of laughter.

‘And maybe a little book you could read to Esther at bedtime,' Alice suggested. ‘I'm sure I've got an old copy of Grimms' fairy tales at home.'

‘I've got nowt to give the wee bairn,' Elsie said candidly. ‘But when she gets here I could teach you a right bonny lullaby.'

Smiling, Agnes held out her arms to embrace all her friends.

‘I promise you Esther will love you all as much as I do!' she cried.

On a chilly December morning Agnes stood at Clitheroe station looking quite unlike she'd ever looked before. Wearing a borrowed pale blue hat and coat of Alice's and carrying Lillian's best leather handbag, she looked a good ten years younger.

‘Don't forget to wear your glasses when you're on the train,' Emily said. ‘You don't want to miss the view of the mountains.'

Agnes winked as she patted her glasses tucked away in her coat pocket.

‘They're right here. Lillian said they ruined my new image. I'll put them on the minute she's out of sight,' she said with a low chuckle.

Emily and Alice handed over their gifts for Esther: Emily's home-made mock-chocolate truffles which they'd
spent all their sugar allowance on, wrapped in pretty paper and decorated with coloured string, and Alice's old battered copy of Grimms' fairy tales.

‘I hope the big bad wolf doesn't frighten her to death!' Alice giggled.

‘Give Esther our love!' Elsie said.

A blast of black engine smoke sent the train shunting sharply forward.

‘Get in, be quick,' urged Lillian as she hustled Agnes up the steps and into the train. ‘Enjoy yourself!'

‘Don't forget to come back!' joked Emily.

‘Take care,' cried Alice.

Agnes hung out of the open window and waved goodbye to Emily, Alice, Elsie and Lillian standing on the platform. Before she disappeared from view around a twist in the railway track Agnes blew them kisses.

‘THANK YOU!' she cried as the train gathered momentum.

Sitting back against her scratchy upholstered seat, Agnes put on her glasses and gazed out of the window. Joy bubbled like a fizzy drink all the way through her. After months and months of waiting she was only two hours away from her beloved daughter. But now their meeting was a reality what would Agnes tell her little girl if she asked about her father? Esther had still been a baby, not even two years old when Stan had joined up and even then, at such an early age, she adored her father. Images of the horrific Pathé News footage floated into Agnes's mind: walking dead men beaten into submission like dogs, hopeless and unloved. As the train hurtled north,
Agnes gritted her teeth; she had to keep believing that none of them could be her Stan.