Judy woke with a start and the strange feeling of not knowing where she was, then through her sleep-drugged brain she heard knocking on her door. On her call of “Come in” Clara, fully dressed, came to the bedside with a cup of tea.
“It’s half-past six.”
Judy pushed her hair off her face. She sat up and stared at Clara.
“Whatever time do you get up?”
Clara was pulling back the curtains.
“Half-past five. There’s a lot to do, you know, in a house this size, and Desmond wakes early.”
Judy sipped her tea.
“Oh, yes, Desmond, I haven’t met him yet.”
“I don’t think it’s good for children to mix too much with adults, so I usually give him his meals by himself, he’s very highly strung. Unusually brilliant. I don’t send him to school, he’s taught privately.”
Although it was early morning and Judy was half asleep, she was not so half asleep but she tried to sort out these statements. There was a vast difference between one story and another. Miss Rose had said that Desmond was such a silent child, having him was not like having a child in the house at all. Mrs. Former had said that Mr. Former used to forget how young Desmond was and lose patience with him. None of it fitted somehow with Clara’s “unusually brilliant”. It probably was because the child was highly strung, old people would not be likely to understand that sort of temperament, they would not want to be bothered with moods.
“I’m glad there’s a child in the house,” she said cheerfully. “I like children. If he’s highly strung he’s probably interesting.”
Clara came to the bed foot. She leant against one of the posts.
“This isn’t the house for you. You’re young and pretty, and ought to have a good time.”
Judy grinned at her.
“Well, you’re not so old yourself, and I can’t see anything the matter with your face.”
Clara was looking down at her hands. She twiddled her wedding-ring round her finger.
“I don’t want anything. My life’s finished, I only live for Desmond.”
She said this last sentence with such intensity that Judy’s eyes were full of pity. How fond she must have been of her Alfred, who was blown to pieces in his chemist’s shop! How appalling for poor Clara to have been so early on the scene! Mrs. Former’s “it was a dreadful sight” probably covered a lot. She tried to think of something comforting to say.
“Such a mercy you’ve Desmond. I think it must help a little when there’s a child.”
Clara gave her a quick look, as if to see if she were being sincere or not, which Judy found queer. It was hardly likely that somebody would be insincere in sympathizing over an awful thing like that. Clara, as if impatient with herself, made a quick dive at Judy’s empty cup. Her voice was abrupt.
“Well, I mustn’t stand here gossiping or you’ll never be up in time. The bath water’s hottish, if you can’t bear it come to the landing and shout over and I’ll bring you up a kettle.”
Judy met Desmond in the lane on her way to work. She saw ahead of her a thin dark little boy wearing a canary yellow shirt and shorts. She ran after him to catch him up.
“Hullo! Are you Desmond?”
The child gave her a blank stare.
“Say?”
Judy repeated her question, and added:
“I’m sure you are because you’re very like your mother.”
Desmond stared at Judy with an enraptured expression, but was not apparently taking in what she said.
“There’s a place down the spinney where I saw a boggart.”
Judy searched her brain to remember what a boggart was.
“An elf?”
“He’s all brown like earth and his eyes is blue like bits of sky.”
“Where d’you go to your lessons?”
“Mr. Mutch has a new car.”
Judy looked down at Desmond. “If this child were mine,” she thought, “he would have no meals at all until he answered when he was spoken to.” However, she was not going to let somebody of eight beat her, so she struggled on.
“Look, this is my case to carry my things to the works, it’s new to-day.”
“They’ve dug a new hole in the churchyard. Last time they put great-grandad in.”
“Well, the new one won’t be for him, they won’t want to put him in again.” She gripped Desmond by the arm. “I was showing you my case, what do you think of it?”
Desmond raised his head.
“That there’s a lark singing, sometimes he sings so loud he bursts. I saw a note that a lark had sung come down once after a lark had burst.”
Judy remembered thankfully that Clara had said that Desmond did not mix much with adults. Clara had said it was because grown-up people were not good for Desmond, but it seemed to her to stand out a mile that Desmond was not good for grown-up people. She found herself in the ridiculous position of being annoyed with him. However, she let go his arm and struggled with the question of the burst lark.
“What does a lark’s note look like when it comes down after the lark’s burst?”
“I don’t go to an ordinary school because of letters. I don’t read them. Mum says she understands why I don’t, but the school wouldn’t.”
Judy looked at the child with a fresh eye.
“Surely you know some of your letters, don’t you? You’re eight. You must at least know the alphabet.”
They had come to cross-roads. One led downhill with a winding grass-bordered path, the other was a high road, up which rows of men and girls were streaming on foot and on bicycles. Desmond turned down the grass-bordered track.
“A butterfly can sing if you sit very quiet to hear it.” Judy thankfully left him and joined the stream of men and girls.
“If I’d been that taxi-driver last night,” she thought, “it’s not Mrs. Former and Miss Rose and Clara that I’d have said queer and funny. Of course Clara may be right and that child shows unusual brilliance, but to me he’s just plain scary.”
The hours of that first day at the factory seemed interminable. The whirring of thousands of straps, the turning of thousands of lathes, the banging, the hammering. Dimly Judy heard the instructions screamed into her ear as to how to work her lathe. At twelve o’clock a hooter, so loud that it beat all the other noises in the factory, howled, and Judy followed the example of the rest of the workers, who had taken up their place in a queue leading to the canteen. The works’ canteen was vast. On a tray you collected your lunch and took it to a table; it was a good lunch, hot joint and two vegetables, and a pudding and a cup of tea, all for one and four-pence, but Judy was almost too tired to eat it. At twelve-thirty the canteen wireless was turned on. At her hospital the wireless was not used a great deal, and she had no idea how music could help. It was extraordinary, she found, what the swinging tunes did to straighten your back and take the ache out of your feet.
The patch from one o’clock to half-past three, when the tea-wagon came round, Judy found intolerable. Her head ached from the noise, her feet ached from standing, and her hands ached from gripping the capstan handle. Her fellow workers were as kind as they could be, but each one had to work hard and each one was tired. During the afternoon her lathe jammed and the setter was sent for. He repaired it for ten exquisite minutes while Judy sat in a heap on a box.
“Gets you at first,” said the setter.
“It shouldn’t get me,” Judy retorted. “I’ve been working in a hospital and, believe me, there’s nothing about the use of the feet that a nurse doesn’t know.”
“That’s right,” agreed the setter, “but it’s the noise here, see? We got over a thousand lathes working, and over there,” he jerked his thumb to the opposite side of the factory, “there’s over a thousand women gauging, and though gauging don’t make much noise their tongues do. I tell my mate I’d rather have another thousand lathes than them. Then, outside, there’s the shell-filling, and beyond that the experimental huts.” Judy’s face lit up.
“Have you met a Mr. Parsons who experiments here?”
“Nick Parsons. I’d just about say I have. Do you know him?”
“No, we travelled on the train together yesterday, he seemed nice.”
The setter nodded.
“I’ll say he’s nice, and he’s brave too. He works by himself on something you and me mustn’t know nothing about, but it’s so damned explosive that just covering it in with grass like they usually do wasn’t enough, and they built a great blast-proof wall round it. They say hereabouts that if what Nick Parsons is working on comes off, and is got into production, Hitler’ll eat all the carpets left in Germany.” He moved away from the lathe. “There you are, dear, you don’t want to jerk too much, work the thing more smooth. Try humming as you turn the turret. The girls in this group say that ‘White Christmas’ just swings it nicely.” He was moving off when a thought struck him. “Mr. Parsons asked me to make him a little tool he wants, and I got to speak to him about it on the phone presently. Shall I tell him I’ve seen you and that you’ve settled down all right?”
Judy gave the setter a lovely smile.
“Yes. My name’s Judy Rest. Tell him that I’m getting along all right, and what I’m working on.”
The setter moved off down the aisle whistling. The tune he was whistling was “I’ll walk beside you”, but his mind was saying, “If that Nick Parsons has hooked that bit of skirt, he’s a different boy to what we took him for. That’s one of the tastiest bits of crackling that’s come inside this factory since we opened.”
The last stretch, from the departure of the tea-wagon to knock-off, passed in a muzzy dream of fatigue for Judy. She hummed as the setter had suggested, but she was a long way past realizing she was doing it. Nevertheless, because of the humming of “White Christmas”, or through sheer exhaustion, she was becoming mechanical, her work improved. Her arms and feet moved with rhythm, and the small pieces of shell case on which she was working dropped into their container with a speed and regularity which would have been impossible to her in the morning.
“Pretty good!”
Judy swung round. The words had been said in her ear and made her jump. Nicholas was standing behind her. He had on grey flannel trousers and a white shirt, and looked cool and clean. Judy, conscious of a sticky, probably dirty, certainly unpowdered face, glared at him.
“So splendid our girls, aren’t they? England’s proud of them.”
His smile lit up his face.
“As a matter of fact you do look rather like a poster. You know, ‘The girl behind the gun’.”
“I bet I do, shining nose and all.” She looked at her machine. “Well, I mustn’t waste time. This horror needs constant attention.”
He directed her eyes to the girls around her. “It’s knock-off and clean-up.”
Judy turned. A few of the girls were still working, but the majority had a lump of waste in their hands and were cleaning their machines. One of the girls saw Judy’s enquiring look and came over. Nicholas grinned at her.
“Hullo, Shirley, how’s the voice?” He turned to Judy. “This is the factory soprano. I’m the accompanist. Shirley has had a lot to put up with.”
Shirley giggled.
“Give over, Mr. Parsons!” She turned her attention to Judy. “You get waste and some oil from that hatch. You sweep all the filings into that box and, as they say, leave your machine as you’d wish to find it. Matter of fact, it’s you who’ll do the finding, there’s no night work on this group at present.”
Judy thanked Shirley. “She’s nice,” she told Nicholas. “She’s helped me all day.”
He turned to go.
“I live at The Bull, you can’t miss it. It’s opposite the church. Come and have a cocktail, it will give you the strength to get home.”
“A cocktail! Could I do with one! But I mustn’t be late.”
“You won’t. Get cracking at that cleaning and be ready to run as soon as you hear the hooter.”
The Bull was a nice old place, evidently originally a coaching inn. Judy found Nicholas in the bar parlour. He had two cocktails on a table.
“It’s gin and lime. I had to guess what you’d like. Not that there’s much choice, and, of course, more days than not there’s no gin. We’re lucky to-night.”
Judy sank thankfully into a chair.
“I suppose you get used to making yourself heard above the noise of the machines, but I feel now as if I must shout.”
“You won’t even need to shout in the works in time. It’s pitch. You’ll get it.”
Judy looked around at the rest of the bar users. She thought she was being furtively stared at.
“Is it the custom for the likes of me to drink with the likes of you?”
“I’ve no idea and I certainly don’t care. How’s the billet?”
Judy took the cigarette he offered her.
“Well, I wouldn’t call it home from home. I mean, I shan’t go scampering up the road saying, ‘Goody, goody, there’s my dear billet waiting for me’.”
“What are the family like?”
“There’s old Mrs. Former. She’s rather a pet, a bit talkative. She’s got a wheezing, aged dog called Mr. Jones. I’m sorry for Mrs. Former, I think she misses her husband. He was a vet who specialized in treating bulls.”
“That’s the old fellow who died suddenly a few weeks ago.”
“That’s him. Then there’s daughter Rose. She’s rather a pet too. Does the cooking and sings hymns at the top of her voice.”
“And what about Mrs. Roal?”
Judy fixed her eyes on his.
“I would love to know why you are curious about Mrs. Roal.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. I don’t think you know it. Perhaps it’s left you interested.”
“Well, what is she like?”
“Young. Nice looking. Her mother-in-law was Millicent, Miss Rose’s sister. She married a man called Roal, who was a chemist. They had a son called Alfred, who was this Clara’s husband. Alfred was killed by a bomb which hit his shop. Clara’s got a boy called Desmond. He’s eight. She says he’s brilliant. I should say he was simple, and that’s being over-generous.”
“What’s the house like?”
“Old and could be lovely, actually it’s like living in grandmother’s photograph album. Nothing’s missing. Mantelpieces with bits of stuff hanging off them, ghastly ornaments, all the lot.” She got up. “I ought to be going. I don’t want to get a bad reputation to start off with. They’ve had people billeted on them before, as you know, and they’ve grasped exactly what hours one ought to keep.”
He finished his drink.
“I’ll walk with you a bit of the way. The air will give me an appetite for my fried spam.”
It was a lovely evening, the road was almost deserted for the workers had mostly gone home. Judy took a deep breath.
“It smells good, doesn’t it? Is the country nice round here?”
“Lovely. About a mile in any direction and you are out in the open. This factory is a war-time growth. It was small to start with, but it was expanded after Bristol was bombed. But Pinlock, in spite of the grandeur of a railway halt, is just a sleepy, self-contained village, and it won’t surprise me if, after the last enemy has been shown what happens to people who make war on their neighbours, it slips back into being just Pinlock again. I think even the station will disappear. The people hereabouts prefer the bus.”
“What does one do for entertainment?”
“If you don’t mind being crushed and standing all the way you can go to Bristol. Once in a while E.N.S.A. gives us a show, but mostly we amuse ourselves. Dances, whist drives, concerts, theatricals, you wouldn’t believe what a whirl of gaiety we live in.”
They had come to the cross-roads. As they left the high road and turned up the lane leading to the private road to Old House, a sigh escaped Judy. It was quite a loud sigh and she hurried to laugh it away.
“Sad to hear me, isn’t it?”
Nicholas said nothing for a moment, then he gave her one of his nicest smiles.
“The thought of home getting you down?”
She squared her shoulders.
“Anything would and, anyway, home my foot. I’m tired. So would anybody be at the end of their first day in a factory.”
They walked on in silence until they reached the private road. Then Nicholas stopped.
“I shan’t come any farther. Perhaps one Saturday you could get me invited to tea. Have they said anything about followers?”
Judy suddenly felt horribly forlorn, but not for worlds would she let him see it.
“No, but I expect it can be arranged. Good night, Mr. Parsons.”
He hesitated as if he wanted to say something. Then he changed his mind.
“Good night, Miss Rest.”