The Grafton Girls (3 page)

Without giving him the opportunity to respond, Diane stepped past him, keeping her head held high as she virtually marched up the street, away from him. Outwardly she might look fully in control but inwardly she was quaking in her shoes, she admitted, as she refused to give in to the temptation to turn round and see if he was watching her. It made her feel physically sick to think of what could have happened to her if he hadn’t turned up when he had, and it made her feel even more nauseous to recognise what he had thought of her and how he had condemned her without bothering to check his facts. She knew that there was already a lot of antagonism in some quarters towards the American soldiers who had arrived in the country, but until now she had felt that they were being treated a bit unfairly. Feeling superior
because they had better uniforms and equipment was one thing, but behaving as they had towards her was something else again, Diane decided angrily. Did they really think they were so important that they could get away with treating decent British women like that? By the time she had reached Edge Hill Road, she had walked off some of her temper and was feeling calmer, but it wasn’t until she had closed the door of her bedroom behind her and dropped down onto her narrow bed that she realised how shaky the incident had left her feeling.

‘Oh, Kit,’ she whispered, wishing he could take her in his arms and comfort her. But it was no use crying for her ex-fiancé. He had made it plain that she meant nothing to him any more.

‘Come on, girls, we’d better get back to work. We’ve overrun our break by five minutes as it is.’

‘Another few minutes won’t do anyone any harm, Janet,’ Myra protested. ‘I haven’t finished my ciggy yet.’

‘Huh, you’re lucky to have any ciggies to finish,’ sniffed the third Waaf gathered round the canteen table in the Navy, Army, and Air Force Institute – or the Naafi as all the canteen facilities provided for the armed forces were affectionately nicknamed. ‘I suppose you’ve been cadging some off them Yanks again, have you? I saw you talking to that handsome corporal earlier on.’

‘He’s only a bit of a kid and he looked half scared to death,’ Janet Warner, the most senior member of their small group, said drily, adding under her breath, ‘Watch out – here comes Sergeant Riley.’

‘What’s this then, a mothers’ meeting? Haven’t you lot got any work to do?’

There was a sudden clatter and the scrape of
chairs being pushed back as all the girls
apart
from Myra reacted to the sharp voice and hurried to the exit.

‘We’re just on our way, Sarge,’ Janet assured the thickset, sharp-eyed RAF sergeant who was surveying them before turning away to head for the counter.

‘Come on, Myra,’ Janet urged in a hissed whisper from the doorway as Myra took her time crushing out her cigarette before starting to stroll insolently towards her friends. ‘Sometimes I think you go out of your way to wind up Sergeant Riley I really do,’ Janet muttered crossly.

‘It gets on my nerves the way he throws his weight around and thinks he can tell us what to do.’

‘He’s a sergeant, Myra; he doesn’t “think” he can tell us what to do, he knows he can.’

‘Stone, over here.’

Myra hesitated just long enough to make the anxiety sharpen further in Janet’s eyes and to have the satisfaction of seeing the red tide of anger starting to burn up the sergeant’s face, before obeying his summons.

‘It’s your kind that give women in the services a bad name,’ he told her when she eventually reached him. ‘And if I had my way—’

‘But you don’t, do you, Sarge?’ Myra taunted him. ‘Have your way, I mean. We all heard about that little Wren turning you down. Shame. She’s dating an American now, I hear. And who can blame her? Good-looking lot, they are, and generous.’

‘You’ve got a husband who’s away fighting for his country.’

‘So I have.’

‘It hasn’t gone unnoticed that you’ve been carrying on like you are single.’

‘Hasn’t it?’ Myra gave a shrug. ‘So what?’

‘You ought to be ruddy well ashamed of yourself.’

‘Jealous, are you, Sarge, ’cos other people are having a good time and you aren’t? Well, I’ll tell you something, shall I? I don’t blame your little Wren for turning you down in favour of her Yank, not one little bit. In her shoes, I’d have done the same.’

‘Sarge, your tea’s going cold,’ the Naafi manageress called out.

The sergeant turned his head, giving Myra the opportunity to escape.

She and the sergeant had clashed from the moment they had set eyes on one another. He reminded her in many ways of her father. A small shadow darkened Myra’s eyes. How her mother had stuck him for so many years Myra didn’t know. Part of the reason she had married so quickly had been to escape her home. She hadn’t known then, of course, that her father would have a seizure in the middle of one of his furious outbursts of temper and die three months after the wedding.

Men! Once you let them get the upper hand they thought they could treat you how they liked. That was why she was determined that no man would ever control her life the way her father had controlled her mother’s and had tried to control
hers. She wished passionately now that she had not been stupid enough to get married and land herself with a husband hanging around her neck and thinking he could tell her what to do. Well, he could write as many letters as he liked telling her he did not want her going out whilst he was away. They weren’t going to stop her doing a single thing that she wanted to do.

Ruthie tensed as she opened the front door, her shoes gripped tightly in her free hand as she glanced fearfully over her shoulder into the blackout-shrouded darkness of the silent house, terrified of making the slightest sound that might wake her sleeping mother. If that happened…but no, she mustn’t think about that.

Once she was safely outside in the cold dawn air she slipped on her pair of Mary Jane shoes, polished over and over again to make them last as long as they could. It was summer now, but in the winter, wet shoes had to be stuffed with paper and left to dry out, not always successfully. Mothers did their best, warming their children’s thick hand-knitted socks on fire guards in an attempt to send them to school with warm dry feet, whilst young women submitted to the sensible habit of wearing thick lisle stockings, even though they itched dreadfully…

All Ruthie had to do now was make sure she reached the appointed place in time.

Her mother would never forgive her for this; she would tell her truthfully how shocked and upset her father would have been.

Her father! Ruthie paused outside the gate of the neat red-brick semi, not daring to risk putting the gate on the latch just in case the noise might alert her mother to her departure. It hurt so much to think about the way Dad had died, crushed beneath the masonry blown apart by the German bomb that had devastated the Durning Road Technical College in the autumn of 1940. He had been on duty there as an air-raid warden. Her mother, Ruthie knew, would never recover from his loss; it hung over the small house like the pall of smoke and dust that had hung over the destroyed college. When the news had come her mother had insisted on them going down there, even though she had been advised not to do so. The rescue work had still been going on when they had arrived – what could be salvaged of once living, breathing human beings, tenderly and respectfully brought out of the carnage. Ruthie knew she would never forget what she had seen that night: a human hand and wrist – thankfully not her father’s – the watch on it still going, a baby’s rattle, a woman’s torso, images too horrible for her to want to recall.

Ruthie had reached the Edge Hill Road now and she continued down into the area of terraced streets that lay below it, once filled with people’s homes but now ravaged by Hitler’s bombers’ assault on the city during the first week of May 1941, when Liverpool had endured a week-long
blitz that had destroyed hundreds of buildings and killed so many people.

Had she come to the right place? She wasn’t sure and she started to fret, her hazel eyes darkening with anxiety as she pushed a nervous hand into her soft mousy brown hair. How long would she have to wait? She stared into the half-light, her heart thudding. She still couldn’t believe she was actually doing this. Her mother would be so shocked and so unforgiving. She could almost see the sad, gentle look her father would have given her if he knew.

She could hear the sound of a bus coming up the road towards her. Automatically she stiffened. She flagged down the driver and it pulled to a halt.

‘Is this the bus for the munitions factory?’ she asked anxiously as she stepped onto it.

The interior of the bus was packed with women, and one of them called up sarcastically, ‘Course it bloody is. What does it look like – a ruddy chara trip to Blackpool?’

Ruthie blushed bright red as the women burst out laughing. A pretty redhead with a mass of curls and smiling eyes looked Ruthie over and then said determinedly, ‘Give over, Mel. The poor kid looks half scared to death. Just starting, are you, love?’ she asked Ruthie, making room for her on the seat next to her.

Ruthie nodded, feeling tongue-tied and uncomfortable.

A lot of people said that it was only the poorer sort of women who signed on to work at the
munitions factory at Kirby, and Ruthie suspected from the coarse language and dress of those on the bus that it was probably true. But she needed a job, and not just because now that she was nineteen it was compulsory for her to do war work. She and her mother needed the money, and she had heard that the munitions factory paid good wages, even to unskilled, untrained workers like her.

‘I must be daft in me head tekin’ on a ruddy job like this,’ the woman who had mocked Ruthie grumbled. ‘Up at four and working ruddy long shifts, and tekin’ me life into my hands every day.’

‘Come on, Mel, it isn’t as bad as that,’ the redhead that had offered Ruthie a seat objected. ‘The wages are good, and then there’s them concerts that the management put on for us, and these buses…’

‘Oh, trust you to say that, Jess Hunt. A right little ray of ruddy sunshine, you are. What about the danger then? There was that girl last week had all of her fingers blown off, she did. You could hear her screaming three sheds away,’ Mel announced with relish, whilst Ruthie sucked in her breath and fought back the nausea cramping her stomach.

It had been three days before they had found her father in all the rubble. Her mother had been too distraught to identify his body so Ruthie had had to do it. There hadn’t been a mark on his face – he looked like he was asleep – but where his feet should have been there had been nothing. Ruthie’s had been a innocent childhood, her parents
loving and protective, but that single act of identifying her father’s body had stripped that innocence from her.

‘So what’s your name then,’ the redhead asked.

‘Ruthie Philpott,’ she responded.

‘Well, I’m Jess Hunt, and that there is Mel, and sitting next to her there is Leah, and behind her, Emily.’

‘Tell you what to expect, did they, when you went up for your interview?’ Mel asked.

Ruthie nodded her head.

‘Aye, well, it won’t be owt like that,’ Mel told her sourly. ‘A right rough lot some of them as works there are. I know of girls who’ve had to walk home in their bare feet on account of having their shoes pinched from them bags they give you to put your stuff in. That lot you’re wearing won’t be there when you go looking for it at the end of your shift,’ she warned Ruthie unkindly. ‘That’s why we allus wear our oldest stuff.’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’ Ruthie faltered.

‘Stop scaring her, Mel,’ Jess chipped in. ‘It’s all right, Ruthie, it’s just that when you have to get changed into the coveralls they make you wear, you have to put your own stuff in this bag they give you and then you hang it up on a peg, next to the locker they give you for your purse and that. Most of the time your things are safe enough until you come off shift but there’s a few there that aren’t as honest as they should be and it has been known for someone to find their bag’s empty. That’s why we all wear our oldest things.’

Ruthie was too shocked to be able to conceal her feelings.

‘Gawd, just look at her face,’ Mel said derisively. ‘A right know-nothing, this one is and no mistake. Green as grass, she is. You might as well get off the bus now ’cos you won’t last a day.’ Turning her back on Ruthie she added to one of the other girls in a voice easily loud enough for Ruthie to hear, ‘If you ask me they shouldn’t be tekin’ on folk like her, and time was when they wouldn’t have. She’s the kind that would have turned up her nose at our kind of work. There’s too many of her sort coming wanting jobs in munitions now on account of them having heard that the pay is good.’ She gave a derisive sniff. ‘Seems to me that whilst her sort thinks they’re too good to mix with the likes of us, as soon as there’s a sniff of a bit of money to be had they can’t wait to change their tune.’

Ruthie tried to pretend she hadn’t heard what Mel was saying and to look unaffected by it, but she could see from the quick look Jess was giving her that she hadn’t succeeded.

‘Come on, Mel, there’s a war on, remember,’ Jess broke into her complaint. ‘We’ve all got to do our duty.’

‘Oh, aye, but I’m not daft, and if you ask me it isn’t just doing their duty that’s bringing her sort into munitions. Like I just said, she wouldn’t be wanting to work wi’ the likes of us if it weren’t for the good wages.’

Ruthie could feel her face burning with self-consciousness and guilt. It was true that the only
reason she had been able to steel herself to apply for a job at the munitions factory was because of the high rate of pay and because it would mean that she didn’t have to leave her mother living on her own, like she would have had to do if she had joined the ATS or one of the other women’s services. To her relief she realised that the bus was pulling up to the factory gates.

‘Come on,’ Jess said. ‘We all have to get off here.’ A little uncertainly Ruthie followed the other girls towards the small opening in the factory gates. Her instructions were that she was to present herself at the factory as a new worker, but as she watched the women, who all seemed to know exactly what they were doing, streaming towards the gates from the buses, Ruthie began to panic. She had lost sight of the girls she had been on the bus with already, and even though she had only known them half an hour and had not exactly been welcomed amongst them, she would have liked the comfort of their presence. She looked desperately towards the gate, trying to remember what exactly she was supposed to do and where she was supposed to go. Why had she done this? Mel was right: she did not fit in here with these girls, she was an outsider amongst them – and right now she felt sick with nerves and misery. She tensed as she felt a quick tug on her sleeve, remembering Mel’s warning and half fearing that her top was going to be torn from her, but when she turned round it was Jess, her eyes crinkled up with a reassuring smile.

‘It’s bloody bedlam here this morning,’ she puffed as she managed to stop them from being parted by the press of girls making for the gate. ‘I just came back to tell you that you’ll have to tell them on the gate that you’re new. There’ll be other girls who’ll be starting today and they’ll keep you back and then get you sorted out. Ta-ra, now, and good luck.’ Jess wriggled back through the crowd.

‘Wait, please…’ Ruthie begged her. There was so much she didn’t know, and Jess’s jolly manner had been comforting in the alien surroundings of this frightening new world. But it was too late: Jess had already disappeared into the mass of women milling around.

‘Here, you. New, are you?’ a brisk voice demanded sharply, as a stern-looking woman gave Ruthie a sharp dig in her arm.

‘Yes. Yes, I am,’ Ruthie confirmed.

‘Name?’ the official demanded, making ready to write it down on the clipboard she was holding.

‘Ruthie…’ Ruthie answered her, flushing when the woman demanded witheringly, ‘Ruthie what? Lord save us, my cat’s got more nous than this one,’ she announced to no one in particular. Some of the other women, waiting by the gate, laughed.

‘Ruthie Philpott.’

‘Right. Next…?’

‘OK, are you? Only I heard her over there mekin’ fun of you, when we was waiting to be let in.’ Ruthie blinked away the tears that were
threatening, to focus on the young woman who had just addressed her. She was a well-built girl with small pale eyes, and a sharp glance that seemed to be looking everywhere but directly at her, as though she was looking around for someone or something more interesting, but Ruthie was too grateful for her kindness to be critical.

‘Not giving her my surname was such a stupid thing to do.’

‘Aye, well, we all do daft stuff at times and anyone can see that you’re a bit out of yer depth, like. Couldn’t get into any of the services, like, could yer not? Same here. Tried for the ATS, I did, but they wouldn’t have me on account of me having flat feet.’

‘I needed work that would let me stay at home. It’s my mother, you see,’ Ruthie heard herself explaining.

‘Wanted yer to tip up at home and give her wot you was earning, did she? My mam’s like that, an’ all. Seems to me like you and me ’ave got summat in common and we should stick together.’ She gave a disparaging sniff. ‘There’s some right common sorts working here. Thieving and Lord knows what goes on, so I’ve heard.’

Ruthie could only nod her head. She wasn’t used to having her friendship courted. Suddenly her new life didn’t seem as threatening as it had done. ‘I’d like that,’ she offered shyly.

‘Aye, well, my name’s Maureen, Maureen Smith.’

‘Ruthie…’ Ruthie began, but Maureen snickered and shook her head.

‘Aye, I know I heard you telling it to her wot’s
in charge, didn’t I? Live on Chestnut Close, you told her. So where’s that when it’s at home?’

‘It’s between Edge Hill and Wavertree.’

‘Oh ho, you’ll be a bit posh then, will yer, living up there?’

‘No, of course not,’ Ruthie denied. There was something about the way Maureen was looking at her that made her feel slightly uncomfortable.

‘Course you are. Anyone can tell just by looking at yer. Them nice clothes you’re wearing. Got much family, ’ave yer?’

‘No. It’s just me and my mother.’

‘Well, you’re the lucky one then and no mistake. Our house is that full wi’ me mam and da, and me and me sisters, two of them with kiddies of their own, living in it, a person doesn’t have room to breathe. I’m going to be looking for a new billet just as soon as I’ve got a bit of money together from working here.’

‘Right you lot, this way…’

‘Let them others go first,’ Maureen advised Ruthie with a warning nudge as she prepared to obey the overseer’s command. ‘Then we can tag on at the end, like. It don’t do to get yerself too much noticed by them wot’s in charge. Yer don’t want ter seem too eager.’

Ruthie allowed her new friend to take the lead. She gulped as she took her first step into her new world, wondering what on earth she had let herself in for. Far from being exciting, right now this new life of hers threatened to be alien and frightening.