Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings (7 page)

In a corner of a field a mile from the Bayliss farm, Christine, Hester and Annie were loading a cart with swedes, heaving them from the straw beneath which they had been stored
through the winter until now, when they were needed as fodder for the livestock. A cold, fine rain beaded the girls’ hair and was being absorbed by their clothes. Their hands were blistered by the pitchforks and the muscles in their backs and thighs were already tightening. Christine, a smudge of mud across her nose, leant on her pitchfork, arched her back to ease its stiffness and then laughed as Annie groaned under a load of swedes.

‘Wish you were back at your sewing machine?’ she asked and then ducked as Annie lobbed a clod of mud at her.

As dusk fell the girls had tumbled out of the truck and come roaring through the rain into the porch where they were confronted by Rose, her voice cutting the air like a whetted knife.

‘Don’t think you’m comin in ’ere in that state,’ she bawled. Gwennan, ahead of the others, was brought up sharply against Rose’s aproned chest.

‘We’re freezing cold and soaked to our skins, Mrs Crocker!’ she whined.

‘That’s as maybe! Get those boots clean under the pump! Then into the linhay with you! Take off your wet things in there!’ Leaving their cleaned boots in the porch they did as they were told. Soon the linhay was hung with damp dungarees and soaked sweaters. As Marion, Winnie and Gwennan, now clad only in shirts, socks and knickers, went shivering through into the house and up the stairs to fight over the first bath, Annie, Mabel and Georgina stumbled
into the linhay and began to peel off their own muddy,
rain-soaked
garments.

The meal that evening, ready on time and consisting of shepherd’s pie and trifle, was received appreciatively. Rose, taking each loaded plate from Alice and adding carrots, found herself with an extra portion and counted the heads round the table.

‘Six…seven…’ she said. ‘Who’s missing?’

‘Chrissie,’ said Mabel with her mouth full and her attention on the food which was disappearing swiftly from her plate. ‘She’s gone to bed. Didn’t want no supper. She’s upset she wasn’t allowed to go to Plymouth.’ Several of the girls looked at Alice who, catching Rose’s eye, resisted the temptation to assure them that she had tried, on Christine’s behalf, to get permission and had not been in agreement with their boss’s decision to refuse it.

‘Reckon it’s a shame!’ Annie said.

‘Yeah. Me too,’ said Mabel, polishing her plate with a wedge of bread. Annie eased herself uncomfortably in her chair and complained about her aching back.

‘Wait till tomorrow!’ said Marion.

‘You’ll be that stiff!’ Winnie added, cheerfully unsympathetic.

‘Know all about it, don’t you!’ Annie muttered.

‘Should do!’ said Marion. ‘Been at it long enough!’ Rose made a small but significant sound that caused both Marion and Winnie to turn and stare accusingly at her.

‘Did you say something, Mrs Crocker?’ Marion demanded.

‘Just clearing my throat, dear,’ Rose answered innocently. Another silence followed, this time broken by Georgina who said that some of the girls had not yet been able to have their baths.

‘The hot tap ran cold, Mrs Todd,’ she said, trying not to sound censorious. Mabel, still eating, announced that she would have her bath on Friday.

‘Don’t bath that often, me,’ she said. Winnie and Marion became convulsed with laughter. Even Hester was forced to smile. ‘What’s funny?’ Mabel asked, looking from face to face. She had amused them but couldn’t for the life of her see the joke herself. She laughed anyway, which set them off again.

‘You’m gonna have to share the bath water,’ Rose informed them and relishing the look of horror on Georgina’s face, continued, ‘Don’t look so shocked, my lover! I shared a tub with my three sisters till the day I wed and after that with me ’usband! There’ll be enough for two good bathsful when you first gets back each night. That’ll take care of four of you. The others’ll have to wait till after supper for it to heat up again!’ They ate in a subdued silence.

‘Down the pub we had as many baths as we liked, didn’t we, Marion!’ Winnie grumbled, remembering the handfuls of hyacinth-scented bath salts and the slippery, sodary,
pink-tinted
water.

‘Yeah. Steamin’ hot they was. Lovely!’

Rose snatched Marion’s plate from under her nose, reached for Winnie’s, then Gwennan’s and began, noisily, to stack them.

‘The least said about “down the pub” the better, if you ask me!’ she said harshly, everyone following her progress as she moved towards the scullery.

Although the huge task of feeding the girls on time with food that was as plentiful and as nourishing as possible had been successfully performed there was still work to do. After the washing-up of the dishes and the setting of the table for breakfast there were eight cut lunches to prepare which, with very limited ingredients to put between the slabs of bread, was a formidable task. Alice positioned first one and then another of the long, square loaves into the slicer and worked it to and fro.

‘You mind out for your fingers,’ warned Rose, darkly, spreading margarine. ‘A warden over to Yelverton cut the top clean off of one of ’ers las’ week!’ They mashed a tin of corned beef, sliced up some beetroot and filled the sandwiches. Rose divided up a ginger cake that she’d baked that afternoon. The individual sandwiches and portions of cake were then wrapped in greaseproof paper and stacked ready for the morning. Then the airing racks were lowered from above the range and the day’s damp clothes were brought through from the linhay, spread out on the racks and hoisted up to dry.

‘Reckon we should get ’em to do this for theirselves,’ Rose gasped, almost speechless with fatigue.

‘I’ll work out a roster,’ Alice said and later, sitting up in her bed, her pillows at her back, a notebook on her knees, had begun to do so when she fell asleep.

Christine waited on the windswept platform of Ledburton Halt for the Plymouth train which, delayed by bomb damage to the track near Slough, was almost an hour late. She had changed out of the thick, muddy layers of her work clothes and was wearing a silk dress that, under her winter coat, left her shivering. Every minute the train was late shortened her precious time with her husband but, an hour and a half later, when she stepped down onto the platform in Plymouth and he put his arms round her and ran with her across a deserted street and into the small bed and breakfast hotel where he had booked a double room for their single night, the waiting and the cold and the loss of time together evaporated.

The bedroom walls were papered with a design of leaves in crude autumnal colours. Sagging floorboards
caused the furniture to lean dangerously and the stale reek of fried food which had greeted them in the hallway below had permeated the bedrooms and the lavatory on the landing which, together with the luxury of a hand basin in their room, was as far as ablutions went in this establishment.

Christine bounced happily on the edge of the bed while Ron put her coat on a hanger and hooked it over a peg on the back of the door. He then made a flying tackle in the direction of his wife, spreading her under him. She squealed with pleasure, pretending to fight him off before surrendering provocatively, enjoying his mouth and the feel of his hands sliding up under her skirt. But when she felt him hard against her she wriggled free, giggling as he kissed and kissed her, preventing her from speaking.

‘You have got some what’s-its, haven’t you?’ she managed, finally and breathlessly.

‘Ah, shit, Chrissie!’ he said, the mood broken. She put her lips against his moist, sulky mouth.

‘You’d better get some, lovey,’ she whispered, meeting his eyes. ‘I know…’ she coaxed. ‘But remember what we said.’ The decision not to have children during the war had been mutual. It would be just their luck, she told him, for them to take a chance and get caught out. He capitulated, climbed off her, took her hands in his, turned them and kissed the palms, watching her eyes widen as he forced his tongue between her fingers.

‘Hey, what’s this?’ he said, examining the row of rosy blisters across her right palm.

‘Swedes,’ she said proudly and mimed the loading of the farm cart. ‘Up and over! A whole ton we shifted, me and my two mates!’ Ron kissed the blisters and looked tenderly into her happy face.

‘Wish you didn’t have to!’ he sighed.

‘What?’ she laughed. ‘You reckon I should sit at home while you go off and have your war! I want
my
war!’ She pushed him playfully away from her. ‘Go on!’ she said. ‘Sooner you go the sooner you’ll be back.’ From the door he told her that he loved her. As it closed she called after him.

‘Fetch us some fish and chips while you’re at it! I’m famished!’ He mock-saluted and she laughed at him. After the door had closed behind him she took the new nightdress out of her attaché case and spread it on the bed. It was deep pink with a lacy bodice decorated with tiny bows of white satin and she loved it. Then she sat down at the dressing table and slid the grips from her hair so that it fell down round her shoulders.

Ron found the chemist, asked directions to the nearest fish and chip shop, queued for five minutes and was making his way through the deserted streets, the warm, clammy, newspaper-wrapped parcel under his arm, when he heard the plane.

Christine heard it too. She was standing in front of the looking glass, wearing the nightdress, turning this way
and that, watching the way the imitation silk skimmed her nipples and her hips before falling away over her thighs. She felt like a film star.

Sigurd Wender, the twenty-two-year-old pilot of the Junkers Eighty-Eight, had been on a raid targeting the RAF repair and storage unit at Aston Down, east of Bristol. With half his bombs gone he had dropped his port wing and was bringing the aircraft round in a slow sweep, sighting up his target for a second run, when he was struck by shrapnel from an ack-ack shell. It smashed through the body of the plane and ruptured a fuel tank. With a brief plume of ignited aviation fuel in his wake Sigurd fought to control the aircraft. The tail rudder was responding erratically and he was choking on acrid fumes. There had been the sensation of an impact against his left side and as soon as he felt the plane stabilise he examined the damage. A piece of shrapnel which had penetrated the floor of the cockpit was lodged in his seat. It had pierced the canvas valise that contained his ’chute, slicing through the folded silk before lacerating his thigh. At first he felt nothing but a physical and mental numbness which affected both his flesh and his intellect. Under this sensation was the absolute, yet unacceptable certainty that he was not going to survive this. In a reflex response to his training he asked his crew for their assessment of the state of the aircraft. His bombardier reported that the shell had knocked out the release mechanism in the bomb
bay and that there was too much structural damage for him to manually discharge their remaining
two-hundred-pounder
. In view of his own injuries, the loss of fuel and the uncertain performance of the tail rudder, Sigurd told his crew to bale out, assuring them that, after setting the plane on a course that would take it as close as possible to their target, he would follow them. Unaware of his injury or that his parachute had been destroyed, they obeyed him, their ’chutes opening behind him as he carefully eased the stick over and began a slow, banking turn. The fire was out now but the pain from his leg was beginning to reach him. He was overwhelmed by a sense of outrage at what was happening to him. He muttered his mother’s name, conscious of how much he wanted the life of which he was about to be deprived. His eyes burnt with tears in the lingering fumes as he clenched his teeth and made his decision. He was hardly more than a child but he would fly his plane at the target, taking his remaining bomb and his life directly into it at maximum speed. Pushing through the nausea of shock and blanking the prospect of certain death, he lined up the airfield and the scatter of hangars and workshops which were intermittently visible through strips of mist below him. He eased the stick forward and began his run. As he approached, tracer floated up and drifted past him. The beam of a searchlight licked through wisps of cloud. The aircraft bucked and juddered in the concussion of exploding shells and metal fragments
whacked into its fuselage. Pain was sapping his energy now and the effort to stay focused and functioning made him sweat. Briefly he blacked out. Seconds later, as he lurched back to consciousness, he found himself flying through dense cloud. The probing searchlight and the tracer attack had been swallowed by a swirling darkness. Easing the throttle forward he pulled back the stick, emerging suddenly from the clag into the pale light of a waning moon. Below him the cloud mass was solid. With difficulty he circled, searching for a landmark which would establish the position of his target. Finding none he checked his compass bearing and headed south. He felt weak. The inside of his left flying boot was warm and wet, filling, he guessed, with his blood.

As he approached Southampton the cloud thinned and he could see activity over the Portsmouth area. A raid was in progress. The sky was alive with searchlights, tracer and ack-ack fire. As he watched, explosions blossomed silently amongst the warehouses and marshalling yards which were under attack. He still had his bomb but he was weakening now and the intense cold combined with the shock of his injury was deadening his senses. To his left he could make out the line of the Channel coast and was drawn to it, seduced by its delicacy. He dropped his starboard wing and let the machine drift westwards, out over the Solent, leaving the Isle of Wight to port. The land, white with hoar frost, lay peacefully against the silver sea. Darkened
villages and small towns were virtually invisible. He lost concentration and the plane began to yaw, lurching from side to side. Instinctively he fought the damaged rudder and levelled out. Poole Bay slipped behind him, then Portland and the sweep of Chesil. With one tank gone and the other possibly leaking, he was low on fuel. He could have turned then and slipped across the Channel, perhaps making it back to the airfield at Caen where he was based. With his undercarriage damaged it would be a crash landing. Provided the impact failed to detonate his bomb he might, just possibly, survive but a thought, clouded by pain and blood loss, had drifted into his mind, lodged there and now obsessed him. He would not simply slide into oblivion. Something must be achieved before his life ended. Fifty miles further west was Plymouth where, two years previously and on his debut operational flight, he had taken part in the raid which had blown the heart out of that small, naval city. He was losing height as Torbay passed under his starboard wing.

Ron listened to the sound of the solitary plane. He was familiar with the tones of aircraft engines. One of ours, surely. No. One of theirs. But no anti-aircraft fire. No siren to warn people of a raid. Must be coming in low. Under the radar. He stood on the pavement opposite the boarding house, the parcel of fish and chips warming the inside of his arm. He could see a narrow streak of light escaping
through the blackout curtains of the room in which Chrissie was waiting for him.

Over Start Point and as the cloud thickened below him, Sigurd had slipped into unconsciousness, regaining his senses only when the change in the tone of his engines penetrated his dulled mind. He must, he was certain, be close to Plymouth now. He nosed down through the cloud and there was the breakwater, a thin, dark line across the Sound. And the Tamar, snaking inland, narrowing sharply, creeks and mudflats shining in the faint moonlight. He identified the dockyards and let the plane drift round, throttling back, pushing the pain in his leg away from him. Then he was in cloud again. Either cloud or the other mist which kept forming in the cockpit before his eyes or in his brain. He flew blind, easing the stick forward now, losing altitude, his head emptying.

It was obvious to Alice that the best if not the only time for her to use the bathroom and be sure of hot water was immediately after the girls had left the farmhouse each morning. First she and Rose cleared the kitchen table of breakfast dishes and while Rose washed them and stacked them in the wooden racks over the sinks, Alice toasted slices of bread and spooned out the remains of the porridge into two bowls, one for herself and one for Rose. Over breakfast she planned the evening meal and then, leaving Rose to
start work on the vegetables, went to her room to collect towel, soap, talcum powder and clean underwear. There was plenty of hot water at this time of day and she lay in the bath while shafts of sunlight lit the steamy room which was permanently rich with the warm, suggestive smell of girls.

While Alice was still suffering from the stress of her undertaking it was now Friday and she was conscious of having somehow survived four days of it. As long as she was able to keep her mind off what her life had been and still should be, or let herself dwell on what it had so suddenly become, or worry about the uncertainties of the future, it seemed she could at least remain calm. The waves of panic and the feelings of desolation had subsided.

She dried herself, dressed, brushed her thick, dark blonde hair and coiled it at the nape of her neck. She powdered her face and put on lipstick. Apart from the trousers, shirt and thick sweater, her appearance, reflected in the steamy mirror, was recognisably her own.

They had decided on toad-in-the-hole for supper. It would be served with mashed potato and tinned peas. Rose raised her eyebrows when Alice said that as wartime sausages consisted mostly of bread they would put extra eggs into the batter to make up for the lack of protein. Rose longed to know what protein was but, unwilling to disclose her ignorance, did not enquire.

‘There’ll be eggs in the barn be now,’ she said, being
familiar with the habits of the farmyard fowls. ‘Shall I collect ’em or will you?’ Alice said she would.

The morning was warm for February. Alice pushed her feet into the rubber boots with which Margery Brewster had issued her. She walked, without her coat, through the sunshine, around the building, skirted the yard and entered the barn. The hens, Rose had informed her, tended to lay in a disused manger at the far end of it. Here Alice collected five warm, brown eggs which, with the half-dozen which were already in the kitchen, would be enough for tonight’s meal. On her way back to the house Alice stood for a moment with her shoulders against the barn wall. The air was soft. She closed her eyes, feeling the warmth of the sun on her lids. In the scullery, as she peeled potatoes, Rose was singing about the white cliffs of Dover. Alice heard the sound of a vehicle arriving on the far side of the farmhouse. The butcher’s van, probably, bringing tonight’s sausages and some stewing steak for tomorrow. She would be calm. She would take each day as it came and not think of the past or the future.

She opened her eyes as a young man appeared round the corner of the building. He was dressed in an Able Seaman’s uniform, which was dusty and soiled. Blood was seeping through a grubby bandage on his right hand, his hair was dishevelled and on his face there was a look of total despair.

Mabel had known there was something wrong as soon as she reached the lorry. Breakfast had been chaotic, the girls tumbling, still half asleep, into the busy kitchen, swallowing their porridge, smearing margarine and a scrape of jam onto their toast, gulping tea, snatching up their packed lunches and, pulling on boots and waterproofs, hurrying out into the darkness where Fred sat, engine running, sounding his horn to hurry them. Mabel had picked up Chrissie’s lunch as well as her own and was the first to reach the truck.

‘Where is she?’ she hissed, through the driver’s window, over the rattle of the idling engine.

‘She weren’t on the train,’ Fred told her and saw her eyes widen and her face blanch in the glare reflected from his headlights.