The Glory Girls (4 page)

‘Mary! What can I do for you, dear?’

She handed over her grandmother’s prescription. ‘More of the same I’m afraid,’ she told him and heard him sigh.

‘Ah, poor Mrs West. I’ll just get this for you. You all right, Mary, dear?’ The pharmacist studied her closely, peering over his spectacles. ‘You look blooming, as usual.’

‘I’m fine, Mr Morrell, thank you. Fighting fit, actually.’

He laughed and said, jokingly: ‘In that case, maybe you should join the FANYs. I hear they’re looking for girls like you.’

‘The what? The Fannies, did you say? What on earth is that?’

‘Well, didn’t you see that young woman just now? It’s a voluntary organization. Been going for more years than I care to remember. Started long before the Great War.’

‘Are they soldiers of some sort?’ Mary was more than a little interested,
though she couldn’t imagine herself wearing a uniform of any kind.

‘Yes and no. They’ve changed over the years. Used to be auxiliary nurses and helped with the wounded out in Flanders and the Somme. I had a cousin in London who was a FANY – that’s short for First-Aid Nursing Yeomanry. Brave women, the lot of them. Brave or brainless. I never could make my mind up on that score, but then who am I to judge?’

‘And now they’re back at war?’

‘Yes, but it’s not just bandages and bedpans these days, apparently. They still drive ambulances, but now they’re expected to be mechanics and wireless operators. It’s all a bit masculine, but we’ll need all the help we can get when most of our boys are involved in the actual fighting.’

‘Yes.’ Mary nodded. ‘I hear there are quite a lot of women already working on the docks and in the shipyards.’

‘So much for a woman’s place being in the home bringing up the bairns and giving succour to the husband, eh?’ Mr Morrell chuckled and handed Mary a packet containing a bottle of tincture and some tablets. ‘There you are, dear. Tell your grannie to take this little lot three times a day and not to miss. She’ll be as right as rain in no time.’

Clutching the package to her, Mary hurried back to Harper’s, her mind buzzing with what she had just heard. The shop was busy with lunch-time shoppers. Iris Morrison was looking harassed as she tried valiantly to cover both her counter, where she sold woollen garments, and Mary’s. When she saw Mary the look of relief on her face could be felt right across the shop floor. Unfortunately for Mary Mr Harper also saw it and turned on his heel just as Mary threw off her coat and slid behind the ladies’ underwear counter.

‘Miss West! You are five minutes late back from your lunch and I will not tolerate it.’

Mr Harper was almost purple with rage and he displayed it in front of a host of shocked customers. One or two women decided to make a hasty exit rather than witness the embarrassing spectacle of the young sales assistant being dragged out from her post and marched back to the door, the owner ranting and raving at the top of his voice.

‘I told you last week that the next time you were late you would have to seek employment elsewhere and that’s exactly what I am telling you to do right now.’ Mr Harper gave Mary a push and she collided with a customer before she bounced painfully off the doorframe. ‘Out! I will have your wages sent out to you, if anything is owing.’

He slammed the door in her face and Mary stood in the freezing street, shivering and not sure what to do. She didn’t like the idea of going
back inside, but it was cold out and she had no coat. Not only that, her grandmother’s medicines were also in there, sitting on the counter where she had left them.

She took a deep breath and started to push open the heavy glass door, but Mr Harper saw her and raised an accusing finger in her direction, his face as black as thunder.

‘Out, I said!’

‘But Mr Harper, I …’ Mary stamped her foot and gritted her teeth, no longer caring whom she embarrassed. ‘Is this because I won’t let you molest me? You, a married man?’

Her loud words drew shocked gasps from the customers inside the shop and a string of women passing by.

‘Out!’

She glared at him through the glass, then saw Iris grab her things and rush forward with them.

‘Miss Morrison, back to your post at once. I will not have you
fraternizing
with Miss West at any price. She’s a very bad influence and I won’t put up with it any longer.’

There was a murmur of guarded conversation passing among the ladies queuing up to buy their lisle stockings and stays and bloomers. There were sympathetic comments, for Mary was well liked by all of Harper’s clientele.

At the risk of losing her own position, Iris ignored her employer, though it would have been more unfortunate for Mr Harper had he fired her too. The shop was already functioning on reduced staff.

‘Here you are, Mary, love,’ Iris said, thrusting Mary’s coat, bag, and old Henrietta West’s medicines at her. ‘Mind how you go, now.’

‘Thanks, Iris. See you later.’

As they exchanged smiles the air all around was ripped apart by the air-raid siren and the peaceful town of Felling instantly erupted into action. Feet slapped on the pavements as everybody rushed to get under cover. Had Mary been behind her counter at Harper’s she would have joined the rest of the staff in the stock-room, padded liberally with
sandbags
. Today, that wasn’t going to happen. Happily, the warning had been announced on the wireless and in the newspapers. It was just one of the many practice drills that were essential to keep everyone from getting too blasé about the war that was taking such a long time to get going and, therefore, never seemed real.

‘Hey, you…!’ Mary saw the khaki-clad girl from the chemist’s
looking
her way and beckoning frantically. ‘Come on. This way.’

She hesitated, but behind her there was a kind of explosion and muffled screams. The noise spurred her on and she sprinted over the road, almost falling into the girl’s arms, tripping in her haste and
thinking
that the air-raid was real after all.

‘Steady on!’ said the uniformed girl in Mary’s ear as she pulled her firmly inside a makeshift shelter between the bicycle-shop and the
ironmonger’s
.

‘Was that a bomb?’ she said, disbelief making her want to laugh, but she didn’t think it would go down well.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ the girl said, then she bellowed towards the entrance of the shelter. ‘Come on, you lot. If that had been a real air-raid, you might be dead by now.’

Mary saw the small band of Harper’s employees staggering towards them, shedding clouds of dust and coughing fit to burst. Dummy bomb or not, something serious had happened over there.

‘That
stupid
man!’ Iris said, spitting out dust as she came to join Mary. ‘He’d moved all his blooming antique furniture into the room above the stock-room. The whole lot came crashing through the ceiling. We were seconds away from being buried alive.’

Mary smiled sympathetically, glad that no one had been hurt. She turned her attention back on to the girl soldier through the gloom of the shelter. There was something familiar about her. She ought to have recognized her in the chemist’s, but she had been too busy with her thoughts, worrying about her gran, agitating about getting back to work, and wondering curiously about Dr Alexander Craig. There were far too many distracting things going through her head these days.

‘Good heavens! It’s Anne Beasley, isn’t it?’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve only just realized that it’s you.’

‘Oh, hello, Mary. Didn’t recognize you either. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?’

‘What on earth are you doing in that uniform?’

‘Goodness, didn’t you know? I’m in the FANYs. It’s jolly good. So much more exciting than life with Mummy and Daddy.’

‘Really?’

‘Mm. I was always so envious of my brother being in the Army. Well, now I have my own little army life and it’s wonderful.’

Mary had thought that Anne was the very last girl in the world who would do anything that involved being part of a regiment and answering to orders. She had been such a quiet, withdrawn child, then a rather unlikeable adolescent with snobbish tendencies. However, she did
remember how Anne used to be jealous of her brother’s adventurous life, free of parental restrictions. He had followed willingly in his brigadier father’s footsteps and became a professional soldier. He was very much his own man.

‘How is Alfred?’ Mary asked, feeling that there was a need for some polite conversation.

‘He’s a captain now and quite important. Daddy’s very proud of him, of course. I think he’s quite pleased with me too, in his own peculiar way. One can never tell with parents, can one?’

Anne had spent two years in a Swiss finishing-school. It had left its mark on her accent, which had been a little plummy at the best of times, and which the snob in her always emphasized when speaking to people she considered beneath her. 

Mary watched her childhood companion organizing the people in the shelter, then went to talk to Iris, who looked as if she was in need of some moral support.

‘Come on, Iris,’ she said to the shaking girl with whom she had worked for the past three years. ‘There’s more room further inside. I hope you won’t lose your job too because of me.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, Mary.’ Iris squeezed her hand and gave a wobbly smile. ‘I was going to leave anyway. I told you about the interview with the War Pensions people, didn’t I? Well, they’ve told me I can start right away. It means I won’t get drafted if they start pulling us women into the war. You should think about it.’

Well, thought Mary, it was certainly time to do some thinking and make a choice. Good Lord, the world was her oyster now that she was free of old Harper. She could get a job driving a truck at Reyroll’s, become a riveter in the shipyard, or a clippie on the buses. However, she thought that she would try for an office job, like Iris. She had often dreamed of being a secretary, ever since she had taught herself to type on Brigadier Beasley’s old Imperial typewriter when she was fourteen.

Or, she thought with an amused smile, she could join the FANYs like Anne over there and look important in khaki. Anne had always liked uniforms, but usually when there were men inside them. It was so strange seeing her now, taking charge and being so efficient.

Anne turned and caught her looking. She gave a half-hearted smile tinged with curiosity; the kind you gave to people you didn’t know very well. It was a long time since they had been friends and Mary wasn’t sure that she wanted to be Anne’s friend again.

D
R
Alex Craig parked his car outside the redbrick Victorian terrace house in Elsdon Street. Although there was a certain shabbiness about the paintwork, the house had an air of past elegance about it. The tiny, postage-stamp of a garden had once been full of roses, but was now sadly neglected.

From the street he could look down over the Tyne Valley for miles, and it was possible to see ships’ funnels moving up and down the river. With such a magnificent panorama it was no wonder they called the area Mount Pleasant.

‘Hey, mister, you lookin’ for Jerries, then?’

The scratchy voice of a small boy with dirty, scabby knees and a runny nose made him turn.

‘Good heavens, no!’

‘Me da says it pays to be on the look-out, like.’

‘Does he really?’

‘Aye, but me ma says they’ll nivvor git up this far.’

‘Well, young man, let’s hope that your “ma” is right, but we’d better all be on the look-out anyway, eh?’

‘Aye.’ The boy’s eyes slid down to the black bag Alex was carrying. ‘You a doctor or summat?’

‘That I am.’ Alex started down the garden path of number
twenty-eight
.

‘Ye’re Scotch, aren’t ye?’

‘That too.’

‘Is the auld witch bad, then?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Alex hesitated, struggling to make sense of the lad’s guttural Geordie accent.

‘That Miss Croft wot lives in there. She’s a witch. You wouldn’t catch me gannin in hor hoose.’

‘I’m sure she’s a perfectly nice lady. You mustn’t believe all you hear about people.’

‘She’s a witch, I telt ye. Me grannie says.’ The boy nodded sagely. ‘Nivvor smiles. Just stares doon hor nose at folks and doesn’t say a word.’

Alex glanced at the patient’s packet of notes, which he had at the ready in his hand, convinced that he must have come to the wrong house. The lady in question was purported to be fifty. Hardly the age to be taken for a witch, he thought. However, to a twelve-year-old that could seem pretty old.

‘Here!’ he said, delving into his pocket and drawing out a penny for the lad. ‘Start saving for your old age.’

The boy gave the penny a round-eyed look, grabbed it out of Alex’s outstretched hand, grinned cheekily and hopped away down the street.

There was no need to pull the bell-chain, though Alex suspected it had probably stopped working long ago. As he approached the door, it opened a fraction and a long thin face peered out at him.

‘Miss Croft?’ he enquired. ‘Miss Frances Croft? I’m Dr Craig. I was told you weren’t feeling too well.’

The face frowned at him. A pair of thin, dark eyebrows knitted together and the sharp nose gave an indignant lift.

‘I didn’t send for you,’ the woman said, her voice surprisingly strong and cultured. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me, I assure you.’

‘I see.’ Alex felt irritated, but the irritation soon passed when the
air-raid
siren shrieked and the woman backed into the hallway with a small gasp and a hand to her heart. ‘Do you have a shelter, Miss Croft?’

‘Yes, but …’ She looked rigid with fear. ‘I can’t go in there. Claustrophobia, you see. It reminds me too much …’

‘You had a bad experience in the past?’

She swallowed hard and nodded. ‘In the war ….the
other
war.’

‘You were …?’ Alex felt the need to tread warily; the woman looked to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown if her facial twitching and jerky body movements were anything to go by.

‘I was in Belgium at first,’ she said, her eyes glassy. ‘Flanders. And later, in France … I was raised in France, you see … I thought … but it was … it had changed so …’

Alex glanced down at her record with a curious frown.

‘Forgive me, Miss Croft, but you were not a child in the nineteen-
fourteen
war, so …?’ All these open-ended sentences waiting for
information
volunteered were beginning to irritate him.

‘No. I was at the front, doctor. I drove an ambulance … helped out
in the field hospitals. We did everything … anything that was demanded of us … and more.’

‘You were with…?’

‘The FANYs.’ She gave a minute smile, knowing that he did not
understand
, then went on to explain. ‘The First-Aid Nursing Yeomanry. A voluntary service … all women, of course.’

‘Aye. I have heard of them,’ Alex said. ‘Then you must be very proud of yourself, Miss Croft.’

‘Yes.’ It was such a small, unenthusiastic sound. He thought the subject was best left. ‘Though it’s not an experience I should wish to repeat.’

Miss Croft flinched afresh as the sound of distant ambulance sirens and the clanging of a fire-engine bell drifted up the valley.

‘I believe it’s just practice,’ Alex told her, ‘but best to go inside, Miss Croft.’

‘Yes,’ she replied, rather vague, not moving.

‘And if you wouldn’t mind, I’d appreciate being able to come in rather than stand out here in the street.’

‘Oh, but …’ She clasped her throat with the hand that wasn’t
clasping
her heart and looked as if he had suggested something quite out of the question.

‘I am your doctor, Miss Croft,’ he said softly.

‘My doctor is Dr Gordon,’ she told him stiffly and her fear could be heard in the quaking of her voice.

‘Dr Gordon is my uncle. I work with him in the Crowhall Lane
practice
.’ He gave her an encouraging smile. ‘And since I’ve come all this way, I might as well check you over, just to be on the safe side.’

‘Well, in that case …’ She stepped back even further and motioned for him to enter. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor. The place is such a mess. I don’t have any help, you see, and lately … well, it’s been difficult.’

She led the way into a comfortable living-room where the windows were well blacked out behind heavy velvet drapes. The black-out curfew wasn’t due to start for another thirty minutes, but Alex suspected that it was like this permanently, cutting out all hint of daylight. No wonder the woman was depressed, Alex thought.

At either side of a wide fireplace glass globes shimmered with
flickering
gas-flames turned as low as they could get. Apart from an open book, a scattering of papers and a cup of cooling tea, he couldn’t see that anything was out of place, but she was, as his uncle had warned him, a very proud lady.

‘I’ll make a fresh pot of tea, Doctor,’ she murmured and left him
standing there, his eyes growing slowly accustomed to the gloom.

Alex couldn’t help whiling away the few minutes Miss Croft took to make the tea by glancing at the items spread out over the green-baize cloth on the dining table. There were letters and photographs, all of them rather old and well-worn.

One photograph in particular attracted his attention. He could have been mistaken, but it did appear to be a much younger Frances Croft looking not exactly pretty, but certainly striking. She was standing by an army vehicle that was probably an ambulance, though the style was
military
and very much out of date. Another showed her in nurse’s uniform sitting by the bed of a wounded soldier, she with her arm about the young man. Both of them were smiling happily into the camera.

A letter that was lying open near the photographs showed signs of water damage and the ink was smudged, but he could make out what was written there in a bold, sweeping hand.

The all-clear sounded as Miss Croft walked back into the room, proudly erect, carrying a tea tray on which there were two cups of tea and two slices of Dundee cake. Alex straightened quickly and took a step back from the table, feeling a rush of guilt at having intruded into the woman’s personal, most private world.

‘Oh!’ She gave a soft exclamation as she noticed the papers and quickly put the tray down over them before Alex could offer to clear a space for it. ‘I’m sorry … I forgot I was sorting out some old papers …’

‘Nostalgia’s very good at times, but it can be a little depressing too, don’t you think, Miss Croft?’

Alex watched her face start to crumple, then was amazed at how she managed to get her emotions under control without shedding the tears that welled up in her small, sad eyes.

‘War is a very depressing time,’ she said. ‘Even a war where nothing
much seems to be happening. Do have a piece of fruit-cake. I made it myself.’

‘Delicious,’ Alex said after his first bite, thinking that the woman certainly did not partake too freely of her own cooking, for she was painfully thin. ‘Now, tell me, Miss Croft. What is it that’s troubling you?’

‘What makes you think something is troubling me?’

‘Well, I can see it for myself, in your eyes, in the trembling of your lips and the shaking of your hands. I wouldn’t be much of a doctor if I declared you fit and well, now, would I?’

‘I’m not sick. Is that what they told you?’ She flashed him a look over her teacup.

‘All right, Miss Croft, I think I can be honest with you. A very kind and well-meaning neighbour told Dr Gordon that you had been behaving – shall we say, a little out of character? She’s quite worried about you. Looking at you right now, I’d say she has cause, wouldn’t you?’

Miss Croft’s mouth twisted slightly. She put down her cup and saucer and pushed it away from her.

‘It’s nothing,’ she said, her voice too high, too urgent. ‘It’s just my nerves. I have suffered from my nerves since … for many years. I was there amidst the fighting, the shelling – in those filthy trenches. I was there, Doctor … and it’s all coming back, like a bad, recurring dream.’

‘And you never married?’ Alex saw the woman’s eyes dart to the open letter that was still showing beneath the tea-tray.

‘No. I never married. I … he …’ She gulped and swallowed with difficulty. ‘There was someone. Things are different, you know, in wartime. He was among the injured men whom I nursed. There was a time we thought he wouldn’t make it, but he pulled through. We … we fell in love. It was wrong. We both knew that, but I really thought that when the war was over, he would come back to me. How selfish. He loved his wife, too. There were children – three of them. How could he not go back to them?’

‘Indeed.’ Alex watched as tears slid down her hollow cheeks. ‘It must have been hard for you, Miss Croft. And now, of course, the memories are all flooding back.’

He saw her gulp and nod. He bent forward and picked up a felt badge that had once graced the uniform she must have worn during that horrendous time out in the Flanders fields.

‘We rode horses, you know,’ Miss Croft said. ‘and many of the
ambulances
were horse drawn too. It was a good life … at first. I was useful, speaking both French and German so fluently. I even nursed a German
soldier once. A nice boy. So polite. All he could think of was getting back home to his family, to his girl. Just like our boys. He didn’t want to be fighting in any war.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘He died. They shot him when they found him trying to escape.’ She looked up with a shrug of her shoulder. ‘He was the enemy, you see.’

‘Yes, I see.’

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t like to speak of those times …’

‘I understand. Look, I’ll give you something that will help.’ He took out his prescription pad and scribbled something on it, passing it over to her. ‘By the way, I met someone today who asked me to send you her regards. Mary West. She said she was a pupil of yours.’

‘Oh, dear me! Goodness, yes. Dear Mary. Such a bright, happy-
go-lucky
child.’ Miss Croft managed a smile through her tears. ‘I used to teach her along with the Beasley girl … yes, Anne it was. Now
she
was a different kettle of fish. Such a difficult, moody child. They were both extremely talented, but I tended to prefer Mary, even though she had a mischievous streak. She was always getting into trouble of one sort or another. Not exactly a tomboy, you understand, but … well, she had a way of getting the utmost enjoyment out of everything she did, making the most of any difficulty.’

‘She sounds like a wonderful person.’ Alex smiled wistfully, thinking of the girl he had met earlier, remembering her calm, gentle face that was like a ray of sunshine after the rain, saw again the upturned mouth that always looked as if it were smiling. She had vitality and an inner beauty that somehow shone through features that could almost have been described as plain.

‘Oh, yes … yes, she was wonderful. A miner’s daughter, would you believe! Her mother must be so proud of her. I know I would be.’

Alex nodded thoughtfully and took his leave of Frances Croft. It was already dark outside in the deserted street. Further down, there was an ARP warden banging on a front door and demanding that they adjust their black-out curtaining so that the ‘ruddy Jerries’ didn’t zoom in on them.

‘Good night!’ he called out and the man swung his masked torch around to pick him up in its muted beam.

‘Aye. Good night, sir! Mind you don’t drive on full headlights, eh? Sidelights only.’

‘I’ll remember.’

‘What on earth are you doing home at this hour, Mary?’

Mary’s mother was on her hands and knees, scrubbing the scullery floor when she arrived earlier than usual. Jenny West’s ample rear end swayed to and fro with the rhythmic movements of her scrubbing brush and she didn’t stop to talk, simply threw her words over her shoulder.

‘I got the sack, Mam,’ Mary said, wincing as the scrubbing brush paused, then was dropped with a great splash of dirty water into the bucket next to her mother.

‘What did you say, our Mary? I don’t believe it! The sack? Well, you just go right back there and ask Mr Harper to take you back, do you hear me? No West has ever lost a job. Not in this family.’