Family of Women (14 page)

She eyed the other women. The one nearest to her was so skinny and frail she looked as if she’d snap, and had red hair and scared rabbit eyes. One was big and sullen-looking, with thick black hair and mannish hands that looked as if she might break your neck without much provocation. The third one had pretty chestnut hair and seemed rather posh and confident and the other two . . . Violet had blinked the first time she looked at them. They must be identical twins! Both small and mousy and very young-looking, with thin brown hair and exactly the same pale, squinting faces.

Violet’s heart sank. She was shy at making friends and none of this lot looked very promising.

Gilbert was telling them that the main works were over in Washwood Heath, making tanks – Cromwells, Valentines, Tetrarchs . . .

‘. . ickere. but we get to finish some of ’em off. So – it now befalls me to drum into you lucky lot, the rudiments of welding . . . Come on – inside. I s’pose we’ll have to start somewhere.’

As they turned, almost rigid with cold, to go back inside the works, to Violet’s surprise the red-haired girl came up to her and, nodding mischievously at Bert’s swinging trouser legs, murmured, ‘D’you think our wee man’s expecting a flood?’

Violet giggled. She’d have liked to think of something clever to say in reply but nothing came to mind. The girl had a strong accent.

‘We could sew a bit of gold braid round the bottom for him!’ The red-haired girl was wearing bright red lipstick which clashed with her hair but the overall effect was very cheerful. ‘I’m Muriel, by the way. Who’re you?’

‘Violet.’

‘Well – nice to meet you, Violet.’

The girl’s blue eyes were full of real friendliness. Violet immediately felt better.

They spent the next weeks being trained in the art of welding.

From the beginning the women seemed to fall into pairs. The twins, who were twenty-one but looked fourteen and had never been parted at any stage in their lives, were called Maureen and Doreen and seemed, as Bert put it, to be ‘flaming welded together’ themselves. Joan, the posh one, was from Sutton Coldfield, and she worked with the big girl, May. And Violet and Muriel worked together from the start. Muriel was from Ayr.

‘My mother died last year,’ Muriel told Violet the first day as they stood in the canteen at Midwinters, nursing mugs of tea with frozen hands. ‘It’s not been the same back home. I did nae want to leave my sister, but then they conscripted the both of us anyways. She’s gone into the army, so I thought well, that’s that then. I’ll be on my way.’

‘What about your dad?’ Violet asked.

‘Och no – ’ Muriel said grimly. ‘I was nae staying home wi’ that miserable old sod. And I was only working in the tobacconist’s – it was just a wee little job so I could be near my mum. Not much for the war effort that. I would have trained up there, but they did nae like Catholics.’

Violet was overcome with admiration. Here was she, after being spurred on from a distance by Rosina, thinking she was making a break in her life, and she’d only gone up the road. Muriel had come hundreds of miles – and she looked such a fragile little thing!

‘Have you got somewhere to live?’

‘Aye – with a lady along the way. I only got here yesterday so I don’t know what it’ll be like.’ She shrugged. ‘Who d’you live with?’

‘Just my girls – my old man’s in the army.&holwant t qmy.&holwarsquo

‘You’re lucky then.’ Muriel’s lipstick lips parted in a grin to show a line of uneven teeth. ‘And you’re bonny too – some people have all the luck!’

The two of them quickly became friends, thrown together by the work. Both of them soon became adept at welding. Muriel had little, nimble fingers and was given intricate jobs if there were any.

‘It’s no different from decorating cakes when you come down to it,’ she said. ‘My mother used to do them to sell – she taught me.’

‘If you say so,’ Bert said resignedly. He had quickly come to be know as ‘Bert the Flirt’, because despite his quaint manner he certainly had an eye for the girls. And despite the fact she was the only married woman among the group, he had a special fancy for Violet, the prettiest of them. He seemed to spend more time hovering around her, overseeing their work, than anyone else.

‘Why d’you nae go and see how the doormice are getting on?’ Muriel asked sometimes when Bert was once more lurking round them. ‘They’ve got a lot more to learn than we have.’ The ‘doormice’ was her name for Maureen and Doreen, who did scuttle about like two little rodents.

‘Exactly so – it’s a pleasure to watch you ladies work,’ Bert said ingratiatingly.

‘More like it’s a pleasure to stare at your backside in those gorgeous slacks!’ Muriel muttered to Violet, and both of them got the giggles.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever worn anything that makes me feel
less
gorgeous. And what with this on an’ all . . .’ She pulled her welding mask down over her face with a mock seductive air. Joan, the posh girl, wouldn’t wear her mask at all and insisted on having a hand-held one, so as not to spoil her permanent wave.

Violet was at first puzzled, then slightly flattered by Bert’s attention. He was an odd bloke, she thought, and she wasn’t interested in him, but it had been a long time since Harry had paid her any compliments. She started paying more attention to her appearance, despite her jokes to Muriel about the welding masks. Since Harry left she hadn’t bothered with make-up, but now she put on a touch of lipstick and powder again.

‘You look pretty, Mom,’ Joyce told her one day as they were getting ready in the morning. ‘You’ve got quite a nice face really.’

Violet laughed, and heard a light-heartedness in herself that she had barely ever known before.

‘Well – we all have to try and be cheerful,’ she said.

Bessie took one look at her powder and lipstick and said, ‘You want to go careful, my girl, going out looking like that.’

Her tone was so condemnatory, so offensive, that Violet immediately felt angry and crushed.

‘What d’you mean? It’s only a bit of lipstick!’

Viole qm" at=">Vlign="justify">‘You know what I mean. Going about painted up like a fourpenny rabbit. You want to watch yourself.’

Once again, Violet thought furiously as she went to get the bus to Witton, there was Mom going out to do her down! Going on as if wearing a bit of make-up made you into the Whore of Babylon! What the hell was the matter with her?

‘Ooh, I say!’ Muriel said when they clocked in together. ‘Don’t we look lovely today?’

‘Don’t you start,’ Violet snapped. ‘I’ve had my mom keeping on already this morning.’

‘What – about your warpaint? But you look
gorgeous
!’

The compliment was made with such sincerity that Violet calmed down.

‘Sorry. Mom just gets me worked up. She’s such a bully – she has to rule everyone’s life for them. Sometimes I bloody hate her!’

As she said it, she realized she’d never said that to anyone before – even to herself.

When she got home on Christmas Eve to find Harry waiting for her, it was a shock. She’d come in from Bessie’s, not too late, but having no idea he was coming. Harry had lit the fire with the few remaining bits of coal and was sitting waiti
ng.

‘Dad!’ Joyce and Linda ran to him.

‘Hello, Joycie – ’ello, Linda.’ He scooped them up and held them against his chest. ‘Didn’t your mother tell you I was coming?’

‘I didn’t know!’ Violet said. It was a shock to see him. It took a minute to adjust, and then she was smiling. ‘So you’re home for Christmas? You never said! I mean I wondered . . .’

‘I sent a wire . . .’

He put the girls down and came over to her, and she found herself pressed against his chest. He smelt of the smoky inside of a railway carriage. And it felt almost as if he was a stranger.

Soon after Christmas, Violet asked Muriel whether she’d like to come to them for Sunday dinner. She was a bit nervous of it as Bessie was often very off-ish with strangers.

‘Scottish, did you say?’ Bessie demanded suspiciously, when Violet suggested the idea to her. ‘I look after my own,’ was one of Bessie’s phrases. Anyone outside her small orbit didn’t count as ‘my own’, and had to go out of their way to prove themselves, especially if they spoke or looked differently from her. Violet knew she’d better keep quiet about Muriel being a Catholic as well.

‘She’s nice, Nan,’ Joyce said. ‘She talks funny.’

In the event, Muriel charmed Bessie with her absolute respectfulness and sense of humour. Bessie said she was ‘ars. will right – once I can make head or tail of a word she’s saying.’ And Joyce and Linda loved her. With Harry gone it soon seemed the obvious thing to ask Muriel to move in as a lodger. Though Muriel put a brave face on it, Violet could tell she was finding it lonely where she was, as the one lodger of an elderly widow.

‘I know it’s not such a good neighbourhood as the one you’re in now,’ Violet said, nervous at asking. ‘And I wouldn’t charge you much rent. But if the girls move in with me, there’s a room if you want it.’

Muriel was delighted. ‘That’d be grand! We can have a laugh – and I’ll help you with your weans. Better than mouldering away where I am night after night, drowning in the smell of mothballs!’

Those months of 1942 were some of the happiest Violet had ever had. With Muriel in the house, she retrieved her ration-book from Bessie and said that they would now have their tea at home. She picked up Joyce and Linda from Spring Street while Muriel started on the cooking, and they spent cosy evenings together. Bessie sulked about this for a time, but Violet took no notice.

One of the other girls in the factory called Muriel a ‘rapscallion’. She was always prepared for a laugh and a practical joke, often at the expense of long-suffering Bert. She also had an astonishing range of skills. Soon after discovering that the roof over her room in Violet’s house leaked and she was going to have water dripping loudly into a bucket all night, she said, ‘That’s all right – I can fix it. You got a ladder?’

‘Well, no,’ Violet said. ‘You can’t do that, can you?’

‘Aye,’ Muriel said, without expanding on this any further.

She sweet-talked the use of a ladder off a builder’s down the road and managed, from somewhere, to find several new slates for the roof. The next thing was that one Sunday morning in January, returned from Mass from which nothing short of an earthquake would keep her, Muriel was up on the roof, boiler-suit on, a green scarf holding back her hair, fixing the slates. It was drizzling lightly and the slates were dark and slippery-looking.

‘I can’t bear to watch,’ Violet shouted as Muriel reached the top of the ladder and set off towards the roof ridge on her hands and knees, holding on to the chimney stack, tools in a bag slung round her neck.

‘Don’t then,’ Muriel called down crisply. ‘Go and do something useful like making me a cup of cocoa – it’s cold enough to freeze a monkey’s tackle off up here.’ She twizzled round for a second. ‘Sorry – forgot the weans were down there!’

Joyce and Linda watched, mesmerized, eyes full of sky. A few other people started to notice, the men shaking their heads in disbelief.

‘For God’s sake be careful,’ Violet said, heart in her mouth as Muriel’s wiry figure scrambled up the roof. In a moment she was straddling the ridge, making a thumbs-up sign.

Violet was supposed to have climbed up and passed her the slates, but one of the neighbours wasn’t having tha cng shorthexing that and insisted on doing it himself.

‘Can’t ’ave two of you killing yourselves,’ he muttered.

But Muriel got the job done very proficiently and was soon sliding down towards the ladder, calling out, ‘Got that cocoa ready for me then?’

Poised at the top of the ladder, she looked from her bird’s-eye vantage point along the street.

‘Oi, oi – new neighbours, look,’ she called, pointing to her left. A baker’s van had drawn up outside one of the houses and Violet saw two men begin unloading bits of furniture from in the back. She didn’t take too much notice, being far more interested in the moment when Muriel’s feet finally touched the ground and she felt herself relax again.

‘Lord – you’ll be the death of me,’ she said. ‘Can’t you stick to cake decorating?’