Pip was up first. Years of keeping an ear out for the children had conditioned her so the moment she heard a padded footfall on its way to the kitchen, she was wide awake. However, it took a second or two more to remember where she was. She lifted her head. The other two were still sleeping soundly, but it was morning. She could tell that by the faint haze round the edges of the door.
She got up carefully and crept silently out of the room. There were low voices and the smell of toast coming from the kitchen. Pip pushed the door open and the two land girls looked up sharply.
‘Oh, hello,’ said one.
Pip put her finger to her lips and closed the door quietly. ‘Any tea in that pot?’ she said, sitting at the table with them.
One girl reached for another cup and saucer. ‘I’m Vera,’ she said, ‘and this is Brenda.’
‘I’m Pip Sinclair,’ said Pip, stifling a yawn.
‘Are you working with us?’ asked Brenda.
Pip explained briefly what had happened and why she was in Stella’s kitchen so early in the morning. ‘I’m sorry if we disturbed you when we came in.’
‘Didn’t hear a thing,’ said Vera, ‘but we did wonder about the pram in the hallway when we came downstairs this morning.’
‘That plane coming down must have been the awful bang we heard last night,’ said Brenda, glancing at her companion. ‘We thought a sea mine had gone off.’
‘Stella told us you were crop-picking,’ said Pip, sipping her tea.
‘Cucumbers,’ said Vera. ‘Eight ruddy greenhouses stuffed full of them. There must be millions of the damned things.’
Brenda giggled.
‘What on earth will you do with them all?’ gasped Pip.
‘We’re packing them for Covent Garden,’ said Vera. ‘The owner’s son died and he had a breakdown. The government couldn’t let good food go to waste, though I doubt he’ll be allowed to grow them again next year.’
‘I should hope not,’ Brenda chuckled. ‘Not much muscle-building power in a cucumber.’
Vera glanced up at the clock. ‘Come on, Bren,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘It’s ten past six.’ She gathered her flask and some sandwiches. ‘Nice to have met you.’
When they had gone, Pip had a quick wash and made another pot of tea. A minute or two later, Lillian put her head round the door. ‘Blimey, look at the time. I’m on duty at seven.’
Stella woke to the sound of children’s voices. Her back ached, and she had a dent at the top of her leg where the springs had dug in. She was alone in the room. By the time she had emerged tousle-haired in the hallway, Pip had already dressed her children and was putting them back into the old pram.
‘Sorry to rush off,’ she said, ‘but the kids want their breakfast.’
‘You can have your breakfast here,’ said Stella.
‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Pip, ‘but I run a small nursery in my front room and one of the children comes in just before eight. If I don’t get a move on, I’ll be late.’
‘Where are the others?’ Stella asked.
‘The land girls went to East Worthing to pick cucumbers, Dorcas went home, and Lillian went to the station.’
‘Off out for the day?’
‘No,’ said Pip. ‘She works there. She’s a porter.’
‘Of course,’ said Stella. ‘I had a sneaky feeling I’d seen her somewhere before.’
‘I’ve cleared up a bit in the kitchen,’ said Pip, opening the front door. The early morning sunshine flooded in. ‘Thanks for everything. You were an absolute brick.’
Stella waved her hand to kindly dismiss the compliment and the door closed. For a second or two, she stood in the hall and tried to collect her thoughts. It was very quiet, and for the first time since Johnny went, she felt utterly alone.
When her mother had told her to grab her things the night before, Lillian had taken her uniform. She was on an early shift this morning. When women were conscripted into war work in 1941, Lillian had been among the first to volunteer. The government required women between the ages of eighteen and sixty but started off with single or widowed women in the twenty-to-thirty age group. These women were assigned to munitions factories, heavy industry and ship-building, sometimes miles away from home. Other women joined the three services, the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, Women’s Royal Naval Service and the Auxiliary Territorial Service.
It didn’t take long before the shortage of manpower led to the inclusion of married women and older women in the scheme. Women with small children, like Lillian, weren’t exempt either. Those who didn’t have a relative or friend who could look after their children were expected to make use of the nurseries the government had set up. Luckily, Dorcas was only too delighted to look after her little granddaughter, and so long as they made sure their shift patterns didn’t clash, everything worked out very well. On the rare occasions when both were working, Pip looked after Flora for a while, and she didn’t charge too much.
Dorcas Cooper was part of a hush-hush thing called Radar, based on High Salvington. She wasn’t allowed to talk about it (the Official Secrets Act and all that), but she spent her time up there counting aircraft. When Lillian registered, there was a chronic local shortage on the railway. No fewer than five local station staff had been called up to be part of the British Expeditionary Force, so Lillian was told to report to Worthing, where she began work as a railway porter. She had a uniform consisting of a jacket with the metal initials ‘SR’, for ‘Southern Railway’, on the lapel and a peaked cap, and for the first time in her life, she wore trousers.
It was hard going at first. She had to load heavy mailbags onto the station trolleys and wheel them to the train. There was usually someone inside the train to help, but there were occasions when she had to propel them through the doors of the waiting train by herself. She also had passenger luggage to stow on the train, and it was the porter’s job to make sure all the train doors were slammed shut before the guard could blow his whistle and wave his green flag. Only then could the train move off.
Another one of the porter’s jobs was to keep the platforms clean, so in between trains, Lillian swept the concourse and emptied the bins. It was an endless task because the soot got everywhere, but Lillian took a pride in her work. Not only were the platforms spotless but she even went to the trouble of wiping the enamel advertisements as well. The plaques extolling the virtues of Rinso washing powder, Cut Golden Bar tobacco and Camp coffee had never gleamed so brightly.
The trains were always busy. The Railway Executive Committee’s poster campaign ‘Is your journey really necessary?’ fell on many a deaf ear. If the trains weren’t packed with troops being moved all over the country, they reunited families or sent people to new places of work many miles from home. Despite the noise, the dirt and the hard work, Lillian loved being part of a giant moving machine. In fact, she often sang as she worked.
‘You’ve got a nice little voice there, Mrs Harris,’ Mr Rawlings, the stationmaster, said on one occasion. ‘You ought to be on the stage.’
Although she worked as hard as ever, Lillian didn’t feel like singing today. In spite of her resolve not to, she was still worrying about Flora. It was already afternoon and she had been separated from her daughter for almost twenty-four hours. Was she in pain? Lillian was willing to bet that all her lovely curls had gone on one side of her head, and even though it was bandaged, it was probably sore. The burns on her shoulder and body were covered in cream. They weren’t so serious. The burn on her head was much worse. Would Flora keep the bandage on? After all, she was only three. Lillian glanced up at the station clock. Twenty past three. Dorcas would be with her now.
The news that a plane had crashed in Lyndhurst Road was the talk of the day and rumours flew.
‘I heard that the Germans were machine-gunning people as it came down,’ said Iris Keegan, the woman who ran the station cafe.
The doors to the canteen were wide open on account of the heat, so Lillian, who was checking the level of sand in the fire buckets, couldn’t help overhearing.
‘They say a couple of Canadian soldiers were killed,’ said a passenger.
Lillian frowned and made a mental note to ask Woody when she met him at the dance on Saturday week if he had known any of the poor chaps.
‘One of them Germans was hanging in a tree by his parachute,’ someone else said.
‘And two girls who were working for the doctor,’ said Betty Shrimpton, who worked in the ticket office and was on her break, ‘jumped from the upstairs window.’
Iris poured her customer another cup of tea. ‘My neighbour told me that one of them Canadian soldiers put his hand up her knickers,’ the customer said.
‘Wouldn’t surprise me,’ said Iris. ‘Always strike me as a bit gung-ho, that lot.’
Lillian suddenly saw red. ‘That’s not true,’ she said, coming into the cafe. ‘Those boys saved her life.’
Looking around at her audience, Iris laughed sardonically. ‘I bet he did.’
‘They jolly well did!’ Lillian said crossly. ‘Those girls would have burned to death if it wasn’t for those men.’
‘And what makes you the expert?’ Betty asked.
‘Because I live in the next street,’ Lillian retorted. ‘I was there. I saw what happened, and you’ve no right to cast such aspersions.’
Iris threw some empty plates into the sink with a clatter. ‘I don’t know, I’m sure. I was only repeating what I heard,’ she said haughtily.
‘Well, you should make sure of your facts first,’ Lillian retorted.
‘Mrs Harris.’ The stationmaster’s sharp tone right behind her made Lillian jump. ‘When you’ve finished with that, come to my office.’
Lillian stared after him as he strode back down the platform.
‘Sounds like you’re in for a rollicking,’ joked another passenger, coming out of the cafe.
Lillian tossed her head and cleared up her things. She wasn’t going to back down, but the passenger might be right. She shouldn’t have sounded off like that in front of them. Mr Rawlings certainly sounded very serious. Maybe she’d done something else that was wrong. Her mind raced over all the tasks she’d completed this morning, but she couldn’t think of anything out of the ordinary. In fact, she merited a gold star! It was only as she topped up the sand in the last fire bucket that it occurred to her that it might have something to do with Flora. Her heart went cold. But how would Mr Rawlings know that her daughter was in hospital? Apart from her set-to with Iris, she hadn’t even mentioned what had happened the previous day. She didn’t want to talk about it. It would only encourage endless questions, which was why she hadn’t bothered to correct Iris about the machine-gunning. Nobody had got shot. She caught her breath. Had the hospital rung the station? Were they trying to contact her? If they were, then something must be badly wrong. She virtually threw her cleaning box into the store cupboard; then locking the door with a trembling hand, she ran to the stationmaster’s office.
Back in the cafe, Iris wiped down the counter with her dishcloth. ‘Stuck-up little madam,’ she said as she watched Lillian hurrying down the platform. ‘She had no right to talk to me like that. I hope he gives her the ruddy sack.’