Buch lesen: «The War Widows»

1 Business as Usual

November 1946

It was a normal Monday washday rush at 22 Division Street, Grimbleton. First there was a mound of coloureds and whites to be sorted out, young Neville Winstanley’s silk blouses and knitted jumpers separated for hand washing, a pail of his soaking pants to be scrubbed, last week’s overalls from the market stall and Levi’s boiler suit left until last.

Polly Isherwood, the daily help, came in early to watch the setting-up of the new Acme Electric Agitator enthroned in the outside shed. Esme Winstanley came down in her tweed dressing gown to inspect the whole procedure. She still couldn’t believe a machine could do a week’s washing without shredding seams or blowing up the whole building.

‘If that thing tears all our smalls, don’t come asking me for coupons, Lil,’ she snapped at her daughter, never at her best first thing. ‘It’s the slippery slope to idleness in the home, relying on machines to do your dirty work. I don’t trust those paddles. Whose big idea was this? Someone’d better stand over it, just in case.’

‘I’d have thought you of all women would be glad to see the back of all that slavery in the scullery, pounding dolly tubs and winding up the mangle. What’s wrong with a bit of help in the home?’ Lily argued back.

Mother was always preaching how women were the backbone of this country and had kept the Home Front going in two world wars. She had marched the streets in her Suffragette colours in her youth, on fire with indignation at not getting the Vote. Middle age was softening her militant ideas.

There was no time for anyone to be standing around like a statue with three generations in one house. The Winstanleys were lucky enough to be the first in the street to own this labour-saving device and Lily, for one, thought it was a godsend.

‘I’ve no time to stand and watch over it,’ she said. ‘Polly’ll be around for the morning. She’ll keep her eye on it with the handwritten instruction sheet stuck on the wall, and she can slip a few of her own things in the washer.’

‘All that electric it’s using up-what if the power goes off and all our week’s wash is trapped in the drum? Your father would turn in his grave…’ Esme snorted back, wanting the last word on the matter.

‘Don’t start all that again. Dad was all for progress. He’d be pleased no one has to rise before dawn to heat the copper boiler. We’re living in the modern age now. I don’t know why you’re getting so worked up. Business is doing nicely; we’ve never missed an electric bill yet.’

‘When you’re a married woman with a home of your own you’ll worry about bills and lights left on. We’ve spoiled the lot of you, giving you driving lessons, a van and a fancy education. Now you’ve all got ideas above your station.’

There was no arguing with Esme when she had got her Monday mood fired up.

‘Oh, Mother! I’m duly grateful so let me get on with my breakfast or I’ll be late for work! There’s many round here who’d give their false teeth for an Acme.’

‘Lily, that’s very cruel. You know I can’t stand for long without my hip giving me jip.’

‘All the more reason to let Polly get on with her job then. That’s what we pay her for.’

‘I suppose so, but it doesn’t feel right to be standing around like Lady Muck, giving orders. It’s the thin end of the wedge. Vacuums, irons…it’ll be refrigerators next. It wasn’t like this in my day,’ Esme sighed.

‘Lil’s right for once. We’re the envy of the street for having a washing machine,’ said Lily’s sister-in-law, Ivy, from the doorway, carrying yet another armful of her little son’s clothing.

She was wearing her glamorous pink quilted dressing gown, which puffed out like a satin eiderdown. The effect was spoiled by a line of steel waving clips in her hair, making her look like one of Flash Gordon’s robots.

‘While I remember, Lil,’ she added. ‘Remind my husband to fetch some butterscotch sweets back from the Market Hall. Callard and Bowser’s, the best, not that cheap stuff from the corner shop, and a quarter of dolly mixtures for the little laddie. No use me asking Levi, he’ll only forget.’

‘Neville’ll choke on them,’ sniffed Esme, who disapproved of all the sweet bribery dished out to her grandson.

‘Never! He can pick them over while he’s on the potty. It helps him concentrate.’

‘You spoil that bairn. All my children were clean and dry by the time they could walk, none of this pandering to whims and fancies. I’ve seen that little monkey sitting until his bottom has a rim round it and then you dress him up like a doll and off he goes in a corner to relieve himself. He needs a smacked bottom, not dolly mixtures.’

‘I know,’ Ivy simpered, ‘but we do things differently now. Oh, and, Lil, grab me something from the lending library while you’re passing. Something lighter than the last rubbish you brought me. What would I be doing with War and Peace?. We’ve seen enough of war in this house.’

‘What did your last slave die of?’ Lily muttered under her breath. What was the point? Since Levi’s return from the war, she’d slipped down the pecking order at number 22. Still single and the daughter of the house, she was at everyone’s beck and call.

‘Lily’ll open the shop this morning and do a stock-take so Levi can have a lie-in. She won’t have time to be doing your errands, young lady,’ replied Esme, coming to her daughter’s rescue for once. ‘He made a right racket last night tripping on the steps, and I never thought to hear such language on my stair carpet.’

At last, some welcome support, but it was short-lived.

‘But while you’re there, can you try and get me the latest Nevil Shute novel or another Forsyte Saga?. But not the first two-I’ve read them. I’d go myself but it’s the Women’s Bright Hour committee, followed by a speaker from Crompton’s Biscuits this afternoon. I’ll be giving the vote of thanks, of course, seeing how Crompton’s is a family business, so to speak. How’s Levi, still in the land of Nod?’

‘Sleeping it off, so Lil’ll have to take the bus this morning,’ Ivy replied. ‘He’ll be needing the van. They made a bit of a night of it at the Legion, an Armistice night lock-in. Beats me how they get the booze, with all the rationing, but parading is thirsty work. You know how it is when the lads get together. Well, no, you wouldn’t, Lily. Walter never made it to the Forces, did he?’

Why did the woman always have to rub in the fact that her fiancé, Walter, failed his medical?

‘He’ll need a stomach liner for his breakfast, then,’ Esme added.

Bang went all their bacon rashers for the week again. Levi’s nights out at the Legion were getting to be a habit, leaving his sister to open up and set the stall in order. Not that she minded back when the war was on. She was proud to be holding the fort while the men were away, but now he was back he was happy to play at being the manager while she did all the work. It wasn’t fair.

Esme had seen the pout, the flash of steel in Lily’s grey eyes. ‘Now don’t begrudge your brother a bit of extra, Lily. We’re lucky to have our boys in one piece when there are so many families still in mourning. Being a prisoner of war took it out of him. He was nothing but skin and bone when he came home. You had it easy, my girl.’

But that was two years ago. It was Freddie who was still out in the Middle East doing his duty. There’d not been a letter this week. Perhaps that meant he was being shipped home for Christmas, as they’d promised. She couldn’t wait to see him again.

Levi had milked his hero’s return for all it was worth, though his limp and scraggy bones were long gone. Time to make a fuss of her little brother, who had been on active service since 1940.

Freddie wouldn’t recognise his big brother. He was not the lad who marched away all those years ago; the ace outside half who once had a trial for Grimbleton’s professional football club, the lynx who could shin up and down an apple tree faster than any of the boys in the street, who used to have a spring in his step when he swung the girls around the Palais de Danse in a quick step. Levi had gone to seed.

If it wasn’t for the Winstanley wavy hair and grey eyes, Levi wouldn’t pass for a Winstanley. Now those eyes were dull like damp slate, and he stooped and had grown a paunch, the only one in the family to grow fat on austerity rations. He never looked them in the eye when he was talking and was always turning up late.

Marriage to Ivy Southall had done him no favours. Of all the girls in Grimbleton he could have had his pick-the cream of the grammar school prefects, the tennis club and Zion Chapel-but he’d landed himself with a painted doll who whined like an air-raid siren and put on an accent so thick you could spread it on toast. She’d spun a sticky web of false glamour around herself and he’d flown into her trap, wedded and bedded within a year.

That was mean, Lily thought, as she was biting her toast and Marmite on the run. You’re just jealous because after all these years you and Walt have not got round to naming the day.

It was only right that Levi, who was the eldest, was married first. He’d been to war and back. He deserved to be settled down with his family in the upstairs best bedroom, but she’d done her bit too. It just wasn’t the same as wearing a uniform and doing proper war work, though. Someone had to keep the family business-Winstanley Health and Herbs-in the pink, help Mother with the stall and keep the Home Front loose, limber and productive. No one worked fast when they were constipated.

All those dreams of leaving Grimbleton to join the WAAF or the WRNS and travelling abroad were sacrificed. It was only fair to hold the fort. Freddie had been all over the world: the Far East, the Mediterranean serving with the Military Police, and Levi served in the army on the Continent, in France and Belgium, until he was captured. The furthest Lily had been was the Lake District and Rhyl. There was no time to gallivant when there was a war on.

Stop this. It was too bright a morning to be nitpicking. Time to gather her sandwiches and flask and run for the next bus into town.

It was a new day, a new week. ‘Every dawn is a new beginning,’ said the Reverend Atkinson from his pulpit in Zion Chapel. She was lucky to have a life to live. The poor names etched on the war memorial had nothing. ‘For your tomorrow, we gave our today.’ How could she forget that?

With a bit of luck Levi would show up at lunchtime and she could nip to the library and to the fent shop to look for some off-cuts for the Brownies’ costumes. The Christmas review would be upon them before long, rehearsals and costume-sewing bees, choir practice. No wonder there weren’t enough hours in the week for all her jobs. No wonder Walter complained he never got to see her alone. Bless him. With a bit of luck he’d be on duty at his uncle’s stall and they could have a sip of Bovril together and plan their wedding day.

Lily stood at the bus stop looking up at the bright blue sky. It looked set fair for the day. There was still a tinge of bonfire smoke in the air. The leaves had turned crisp and golden. The world was lighting up again after years of darkness. There was hope in the air. The parson was right: a new day was a new beginning. No more moaning.

The Winstanleys had survived the worst Hitler could throw at them. They were all in good enough health and in little Neville there was a new generation to follow on. God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world, she thought, smiling, and jumped on the bus.

It took a native to admire the finer points of her home town, Lily mused, peering out at the rows of terraced houses that grew smaller and smaller as they drew closer to the edge of Grimbleton town centre, rows and rows of neat red-brick terraces, with whitened doorsteps and cotton net valances at the windows.

The mill workers had long gone to their shift, and the schoolchildren had yet to throng the pavements, but the bus was full of familiar faces all muffled up against the frost and chill. A bus full of grey gabardines and brown coats, sombre hats and gloves holding wicker baskets, printed headscarves hiding iron curlers and pin curls. Not a glamour puss amongst them in pompadour kiss curls and high heels; a drab world of duns and greys, a tired world, weary after so much turmoil and uncertainty, trying to get back on its feet.

But this is my home town, Lily sighed, all I’ve ever known.

The route into town got darker as they passed Magellan’s Foundry, with its chimney belching smoke, the sparks flickering from the half-open door of the engineering works, the smell of tannery where piles of cow hides lay in the sun, and the bomb sites still gaping with half-built walls and rubble that grew purple with rosebay willowherb in the summertime.

Then came Horton’s garage, which had taken a direct hit. No one had survived. It still saddened her to pass that spot. Wherever she looked there were the telltale signs of black-sooted buildings, empty half-boarded-up houses in need of repair. It would take years to freshen up the town.

Yet only half a mile into its heart were majestic civic offices, the town hall, with its Palladian portico, a bustle of shops and streets, and down the side street the magnificent entrance to the Market Hall.

It still gave her a thrill to walk through the doors, to see the huge iron-vaulted glass roof high above her head, the smell of brewing tea, meat paste and fresh baking mingled with cardboard boxes, cheese rind, starched linen and newly mopped tiles.

The market was quiet on a Monday morning. Everyone was spent up after the weekend. Only the usual customers wanting a tonic or to use the weighing scales would grace the stall before noon. Plenty of time for Lily to dust over the stock, sort out the warehouse order, and chat over the football results with passers-by.

She drew back the canvas curtains and sniffed the familiar smells of dandelion and burdock, liquorice roots, cough linctus, linseed, herbal smells mingled with embrocation oils: a heady brew that filled her with nostalgia.

Winstanley Health and Herbs was more than just an alternative chemist’s shop, it was a piece of Grimbleton history. Lily’s grandfather, Travis Winstanley, was one of the first stallholders, a founder member of the Market Traders’ Association. No one could accuse him of being a quack selling remedies from the back of a wagon. He had studied the science, kept himself up to date and advertised his cures far and wide in the district. He had patented his own ‘Fog and Smog Syrup’ to clear chests of soot and grime. In summer the family made up elderflower skin cream and, in autumn, elderberry cordial, roaming the highways and countryside for produce.

Travis’s son, Redvers, took over the business in due course and trained up his children to respect their calling. Thank goodness people got piles and warts, stomach upsets, skin rashes and embarrassing itches as regular as the four seasons. Dad knew more about the internal workings of Grimbleton bowels than any quack in the district. No one wanted to shell out for a doctor’s bottle, though there was talk of a free health service that might affect them one day. So far so good, though.

But despite their father’s efforts, Levi was always halfhearted about the business and Freddie had no interest whatsoever. The one thing that united all of the family, young and old, male and female, was an undying passion for football and devotion to Grimbleton Town United in particular. ‘The Grasshoppers’ were now making slow progress through the ranks towards the First Division. It was Lily’s father who suggested the team use an osteopath to sort out any bad backs. He even found them Terry Duffy, who got some tired legs up and running in the Cup tie against Bolton Wanderers that nearly went to a replay at Burnden Park, alas to no avail.

Then Dr Baker kicked up a fuss and said Terry was taking his trade away and got him kicked out. Redvers threatened to resign from the Board but it was an empty threat. When the Grasshoppers were doing well the whole town was on fire; when they slumped it was as if a blanket of cloud hovered above the mill chimneys. A win was the best tonic for all. Lily supposed it was because football and romance ran side by side in her family.

Esme had been a player in her younger days, turning out for the Crompton’s Biscuits ladies’ team. They had played a friendly on the town pitch and that’s when Redvers and Esme eyed each other up across the turf and the dynasty was founded.

Even Lily and Walt had met standing side by side to watch one of the special friendly matches laid on during the war. It turned out they both worked in the Market Hall, he at the far end in his uncle’s stationery stall. Small world indeed, and now when they could match shifts, they went together to see their team of local lads.

Sometimes when she drew back the stall curtains Lily half expected to see her dad smiling, pristine in his white coat, waiting to help his customers, his thick wavy hair slicked back, his moustache waxed and with that twinkle in his blue eyes that charmed the ladies.

How she had missed him over the years since a sudden stroke took him from them! Mother had taken to ailments and fits of misery since he had gone. She blamed his early death on the Great War and his time in the trenches. He was one of the few of the Grimbleton Pals Brigade to make it home in one piece.

‘It weakened him, took the stuffing out of him. Not that he would ever say a word about it, mind,’ she sighed. No one talked about the Great War much. She was glad he hadn’t known both his sons went into another war so quickly after the last.

He had his own theory how to keep world peace. ‘If only we could play life fair by the football rules,’ he would say. ‘There’d be no more war. We’d just get on that pitch and give each other hell until full time. Sort it out clean and proper.’

Not that he practised what he preached, for standing next to him at a match was a revelation. He would yell and rant and cuss and swear. ‘Get them off, the pair of sissies! Hang up yer boots, lad, yer shot was a twopenny bus ride from the goal!’

If only the Zion minister could have heard his trusty steward letting rip at the goalie, Lily smiled.

Theirs was a special bond built on his delight in having a girl in the house. ‘This one’s the sharpest blade in the knife box.’ He would point to her with pride. ‘Not the fanciest to look at but she does it right first time, my Lily of Laguna. If you want owt doing, she’s your gal!’

He would be proud that, like the famous Windmill Theatre Revues, they never closed for the entire duration of the war. Together with Esme, Lily had kept the stall going against the odds when all the rules and restrictions came into force. Many herbal stores were forced to close but they decided to open half the stall as a temperance bar, serving juices, hot cordials and a good line of medicinal sweets and herbal homemade cough candy, dispensing what little stock they could.

It was a tough time, fire-watching in the evening, keeping the Brownie pack alive with badge work and salvage drives, but nothing to what her brothers had to go through in Burma and on the Continent.

She was looking at her wristwatch, surprised that it was mid-morning already, when a welcome figure tapped her shoulder.

‘Time for our cuppa?’ Walter towered over her in his brown dust coat, pointing to the café opposite. She could sit down and keep her eye on the stall at the same time.

‘You bet,’ she smiled, pecking him on the cheek. ‘Where were you yesterday at the Armistice parade? I missed you at the cenotaph.’

‘I was there with Mam but you know it gets her all upset. We went home early.’ You couldn’t fault a man who was kind to his mother, but Lily had been hoping to invite him back for tea.

‘Hey, you missed a cracking match on Saturday, two nil to the Grasshoppers. They’re on a roll this season.’

‘Yes, I’ve been hearing reports all morning,’ she sighed. ‘I had to stand in for Levi again.’

‘I saw him in the directors’ box with all the toffs, lucky beggar.’

‘I just wish he’d give me a Saturday off, once in a blue moon. When did you and I last get to watch a match together?’

‘It was the best game this season.’

‘So everyone keeps saying, so shut up,’ she snapped.

‘The lads were on form, Wagstaff dribbling the ball down the outside right, passing to Walshie and he spins it straight in the net, brilliant!’

‘Walter Platt, don’t torment me.’ She tugged his sleeve but he was oblivious.

‘The second goal came just before half-time. I reckoned we finished them off there and then.’

She missed the crowds gathering, the noise and cheering, a chance to let off steam. Redvers had taken them all as a treat and left them at home as a punishment. There were chips in newspaper on the way home, which no one was to tell Esme about, for it was too common for a Winstanley to eat in the street.

‘When we’re married we’ll bring all our kiddies to see the game,’ Lily sighed, imagining a five-a-side of gleaming faces.

‘Oh, no, love, it’s not a place to bring youngsters with all that swearing and rough talk, and there’s germs to think about.’

‘It never did us any harm,’ she replied, surprised by his attitude.

‘Mother says it’s all that standing as did my back in. I grew too tall for my bones.’

‘I thought the doctor said you had a bit of a curved spine…’

‘It’s the same thing,’ he replied.

‘No, it’s not. It means you’re born with a bend in your back,’ she continued.

‘Oh, you do like to go into things, Lil. All I know is, it never bothered me until I was out of short trousers, when my legs just sprouted like rhubarb. I bent over one day and couldn’t get up. Never bin right since. You’ve no idea what it’s like to live with backache.’

‘I’m sorry, it must be a pain,’ she said, seeing the grimace on his face.

‘So you should be. You’re going to have to nurse it when we’re wed, with one of your liniment oils.’

‘Shall I give you a rub down later?’ she winked.

‘Lily Winstanley, none of that sauce from a respectable woman! Mother can see to it, thank you very much. By the way, could she have a few more liver pills? Her stomach’s playing up again.’

‘Has she thought of trying a lighter diet? She does like her pastry and her chips,’ Lily offered, knowing that Elsie Platt was a little beer barrel on legs.

‘A widow’s got to have a little comfort in life. We’ve no money spare for fancy diets,’ he said, staring across at her stall. ‘It’s all right for your family.’

Money was always a sensitive topic between them. His wage was small but steady, and her family had two wages and a war pension and shares from Esme’s connection with Crompton’s Biscuits. Better not to go down that route again.

‘It must be hard,’ was all she could say. ‘Did you go and see that house for rent in Forsyth Lane, the old cottage by itself? It’ll need doing up. But it’s worth a second glimpse, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, no, love, Mam says they’re built over wells, and damp, and it’s a bus ride away from Bowker’s Row. It’s much too far for her to travel.’

‘You didn’t even look, then?’ Lily felt the flush in her cheeks. When would he do anything off his own bat? ‘That’s a pity because I thought it was ideal for us, half in the country but on a bus route. It was you who wanted to have fresh air and a nice view.’

‘Perhaps we should try for something bigger and bring her with us? She gets mithered when I’m not there.’

And I shall go mad if Elsie Platt is on the other side of the wall listening to our sweet talking, Lily thought, but swallowed her words back just in time. ‘It says in my Woman’s Own that a young married couple should be alone for a while to set up their home.’