Ethel Twomey was happy. She was so filled with joy that she imagined she might burst into flames as she walked beside her soon-to-be fiancé, Wesley. Her dark eyes had glowed as she’d looked up at him, imagining the fun of telling everyone and also, rather shamefully, the relief of being able to leave her miserable home for ever.
Thought of home dulled her excitement. She had managed to put aside the usual feeling of dread as the time to re-enter her house drew near but now, as the road curved to the left and the hotchpotch building, quaintly called The Dell, came into view, the anxieties flooded back. Whenever she had been out, and had been able for a while to forget, the approach to the house caused an increase in fear. ‘One day,’ she regularly told Wesley, ‘one day, I’ll walk in and find my mother knocked out cold and my father still beating her.’
On this special day, when she and Wesley Daniels had agreed on a date for their engagement and their wedding, there was room for nothing else in her mind, just happiness and the thought of leaving home for good. It wasn’t until the turn in the road gave her a first sight of The Dell that her mind returned to the dreadful possibility of walking into the house and facing her father in one of his rages, and the sight of her mother, cowed and utterly defeated, listening to his complaints, real and imaginary.
She was returning from the café where she cooked and occasionally served at table. She reflected that she might be the only one among thousands who actually hated it when her day ended and she had to walk away from the busy café and its sometimes difficult customers.
As she walked on alone through the lanes that early spring evening in 1940 she tried to hold on to the happiness for a while longer. It was dark and blackout restrictions were in force, forbidding any light to be shown, so not even the light from one of the isolated cottages and farmhouses she passed shone out to help her find her way, passing fields where she had run to hide from her father’s rages, and beyond, the Baileys’ farm where she had often worked as a child, helping with the harvest.
She walked over the small footbridge that led to the gate and up the garden path, through the complications of blackout curtaining, and into the house, relieved that at least there was silence, no sound of raised voices. Her father, Dai Twomey, was dozing in his usual chair beside the fire range, dulled with too much food and an excess of drink. His blue eyes, so round and angry, opened and glared at her as he demanded, ‘What time d’you call this?’ before nodding off again. He slept through most of the evening so the meal was a peaceful one.
One evening a few days later, Ethel and Wesley walked through the town, arm in arm and stopping occasionally to kiss. They had been to the pictures and afterwards had peered with difficulty, owing to the unlit displays, through jewellers’ windows to stare again at the engagement ring they planned to buy for her eighteenth birthday a month hence on the eighth of April.
‘We’ll buy it tomorrow,’ Wesley said. ‘In case someone buys it first.’
‘I’ll meet you at three, but I’ll have to go straight back to the café,’ Ethel told him. ‘It’s a pity we can’t have a day out and celebrate.’
‘Tomorrow we’re buying it, we’ll have our celebration on your birthday when I put it on your finger,’ Wesley smiled. ‘What a happy day that’ll be.’
When they climbed on to the bus in town, Ethel’s brother Sid and her sister Glenys called to them from the upper deck, and beckoned for Ethel and Wesley to join them. Sid and Glenys had been to visit friends, young men who had joined the forces and were on leave, determined to enjoy what might be their last visit home for a long time.
‘It started with four of us but others joined in, bent on enjoying their last days at home, and it ended with a sing-song,’ Sid told them as the conductor handed them their tickets.
The sing-song that had ended the evening was revived and was carried on throughout the journey as Ethel and Wesley joined in. Old music hall songs mostly. ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’, ‘Hands, Knees and Bomps-a-Daisy’, ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’, and Ethel’s particular favourite, sung to her by Wesley, ‘Oh, You Beautiful Doll’ – songs that were known to everyone. The other passengers on the bus joined in and even the conductor mouthed a few words.
Ethel was glad they had met up with Sid and Glenys, thankful that she wouldn’t have to make that step into the house on her own and grateful too for the cheerful singing to push aside the fears that would accompany it.
Ethel was much younger than both her sister and her brother. Sid had been fifteen and Glenys sixteen when she had been born, a mistake, her mother often told her, quickly adding that it was one she had never regretted. She envied both Sid and Glenys their lovely auburn hair, inherited no doubt from their father’s angry red.
‘You two make me feel dowdy,’ she complained now, looking at her sister’s blue eyes and those of her brother, so like their father but without the anger.
‘What? You wouldn’t really want this colour?’ Glenys laughed.
Ethel shook her long black hair free from its restraining ribbon as Wesley said proudly, ‘I love your hair, in fact, wouldn’t change a single thing about you, Ethel.’
Shouting goodbye to those left on the bus at the copse called Bagley’s Bank, laughing for no particular reason apart from being happy, they set off down the dark lane, still singing.
Part of the reason for the announcement of her engagement to Wesley was the imminent conscription. Wesley was talking of joining the Naafi, and her brother Sid, at thirty-three, was already working in a factory recently converted to making machine parts for lorries and armoured cars. So far, both Ethel and Glenys were exempt although there were constant requests for women to do their bit.
As they reached the place where, during daylight hours, the house came into view, she wondered anxiously what her parents’ reaction would be when she told them of her and Wesley’s plans. Oh how the thought of leaving this house excited her. Marrying Wesley and building a home for him to return to was all she dreamed of, and it was only on rare moments she wondered whether it was love for Wesley or the urgent need to leave her family that was the strongest.
When they passed Wesley’s home, a field and a small woodland away from hers, he insisted on walking the rest of the way with her. The singing had stopped, the thin beams of their torches showing the path.
‘If you tell your parents we’re going to marry, I want to be there, just in case your father – you know – gets a bit wild,’ he said.
Flattered by the implied protection he offered, Ethel hugged him and smiled up at him in the darkness.
Sid agreed. ‘He’s less likely to start a fuss if we’re all there,’ he said.
‘Our dad is more of a worry to us than the war,’ Glenys sighed. ‘I keep hoping he’ll grow too old to pick fights, but there he is, sixty years old and in court again last week for attacking the barman for some unintended insult.’
‘Called him a red-headed giant, he did, and for some reason Dad took offence,’ Glenys laughed. ‘But at six foot three and with thick red hair with hardly a hint of grey, what was insulting about that?’
They reached the bend in the road and Ethel clutched her throat as though already hearing her father’s rage. She clung more tightly to Wesley, glad he had decided to see her home.
Inside the back door, the entrance was barricaded with a home-made screen on which black material had been fastened. This prevented the light escaping and presumably, her brother used to joke, would stop a patiently waiting German airman from pin-pointing the area and placing a bomb neatly down their chimney. They all joked about the restrictions after months during which no enemy planes had been seen, but they did as they were instructed for fear of fines.
Dai Twomey was sitting near the fire, wearing corduroys, a torn jumper and in his stockinged feet; his wife in a chair opposite. Molly Twomey stood up and smiled at them but Dai turned his head menacingly and demanded to know why they were so late.
‘We’ve been celebrating, Dad,’ Ethel smiled, going to stand near her mother. ‘Wesley and I are getting engaged on my birthday, before he goes off to war.’
Ethel’s brown eyes looked like dark, secret pools in the light of the oil lamp, her dark hair casting a deep shadow over her face as she waited for her father’s reaction. The anxious expression was hidden, but involuntarily Wesley stepped closer and held her arm protectively.
‘What d’you want me to do about it?’ Dai demanded.
‘Nothing, I suppose. I hoped you might wish us luck.’
‘You’ll need it,’ was the terse reply.
Her mother stood and headed for the kitchen. ‘I’ll make us some cocoa.’
Deflated, yet thankful the evening hadn’t ended in anger and a display of temper, Ethel lay in bed, stared at the old, cracked ceiling and wondered how soon she could get away. The war was a terrible thing, but it did offer the opportunity for freedom where before there had been none. Perhaps she didn’t have to wait until she and Wesley married, next year?
She woke early the following morning and went outside, glad as always to escape from the boxed-in atmosphere of the boarded-up house where no single chink of light was allowed to go out or in. Opening the front door she walked down the path to the road. There was a stream running alongside the gravelled road with its grass edging, and the front path led to a footbridge that spanned it. Now, with the melted snow running down from the hills, the water ran fast and furious, close to the rim.
The stream sparkled as it bounced against stones sticking out where the earth had weakened its hold and been worn away. Did she imagine the hint of a rainbow in its spray?
Every year workmen came and dug out the bed of the stream, maintaining its depth so it didn’t overflow and flood the garden or the road. Today, with the prospect of going into town to buy her engagement ring, ready for the celebration in a few weeks’ time, the stream was beautiful.
As a child she had thought it dull. Too fast for frogs’ spawn, too unpredictable for watercress. Now she admired its fringe of wild flowers. Celandines, spreading the banks with shining gold interspersed by the ubiquitous daisies. Later would come the softer yellow of Welsh poppies and the delicate loveliness of enchanter’s nightshade. Today, for Ethel Twomey, the war was a long way off and the world was perfect.
She went back inside, revived the fire and slid the kettle over the coals to boil for the first cup of tea. As she waited, she looked around the shabby room noting her mother’s attempts to beautify the place with embroidery and a few cheerful cushions. In the silence of the early morning in the sad little room she felt a flood of compassion for both her parents. They worked so hard. Her father worked as a lorry driver, her mother looked after chickens and, during the autumn, also geese and turkeys. Both parents worked in the huge garden, selling their produce to shops and on occasions around the streets, knocking on doors and pushing a handcart laden with their harvest. She suspected that people bought from them out of sympathy for her mother.
Ethel hated working on the land but would sometimes help her mother with some of the tedious jobs outside. At Christmas she kept well out of the way during the killing, and it was her brother Sid who dealt with the preparation of the birds. Her distress was one of the few things that amused her father.
She waited outside the jewellery shop and watched for Wesley’s arrival. She had been given an hour off. Time to buy the ring and to go to another café and sit for a few minutes admiring it and talking over their dreams and plans. She saw him coming, footsteps fast, hands in pockets, his thin frame wrapped in a coat several sizes too large. She watched him, noting the serious expression, and waited for him to look up and meet her gaze, see the smile open out and transform his solemn face into something quite beautiful. Life, she decided happily, was good.
Rosie Dreen heard Gran making her slow way down the stairs. As she woke she remembered. Today was her birthday. The day when she had promised herself that everything would change. As she roused herself and rubbed her blue eyes, childlike, with the backs of her hands, she listened to the familiar sounds of her nan busy in the kitchen. Dear Nan. But sentimentality was forbidden from this day on. Today she would do something towards that new life she had promised herself.
She was eighteen and she knew that if she left it much longer she would never get away. Timid, unworldly and lacking in confidence, she was afraid of stepping outside the familiar world of her job at a local farm, and being cared for by Nan. Yet she knew she had to, or spend the most important years of her life in the cocoon she and Nan had built around themselves. She had to get away. And soon, or it would be too late. After a breakfast of porridge she opened the gifts Nan had got for her. Nan stood watching anxiously, afraid her choices would be a disappointment. She had patiently knitted her a pair of gloves and a hat. Hiding her dismay at the unexciting gifts, Rosie hugged her grandmother and told her she considered herself the luckiest of girls. A knitted hat was one of the things she had sworn never again to wear.
She went into town and looked at all the posters asking for women to do something to help the war effort. What could she do? No experience, no skills, nothing to offer. Apart from factory work which she knew she would hate, or the forces, who wouldn’t want someone as stupid as she, what was there? She saw her reflection in a shop window, her smallness more apparent because of the ill-fitting coat she wore, guileless blue eyes, her fair hair scragged back and hidden with the brimmed hat that was much too large and made her look even more stupid than usual.
Why hadn’t she been born glamorous? she wailed inwardly. Perhaps Mam wouldn’t have left me if I’d been born beautiful. Being poor and living with Nan, neither had helped. She continued to stare at her reflection: a coat that had been cut down in an attempt to make it fit, sensible shoes with the addition of heel studs to make them last, and a brown felt hat that had been Nan’s! She smiled as she remembered buying lipstick and rouge, trying them out, then being too embarrassed to leave her bedroom before washing it all off.
Best she stayed on the farm where she worked as a part-time housekeeper and occasional farm hand. Yet with the war taking men from the farms, she knew that unless she got out quickly she- would never be allowed to leave. What could she do that would take her away from Nan?
She turned to go home when a poster caught her eye. Join the Naafi, she read. Was it possible? She understood that they provided a shop for essentials and prepared cooked meals and snacks for the forces. She’d been cooking simple food for as long as she could remember – perhaps she did have something to offer? Cooking was a skill, of sorts.
She made her way home clutching some leaflets and wondered whether she dare apply. Her love for her grandmother was a part of her reluctance to leave home. Nan would be terribly hurt unless there was a valid reason for her going. Advertisements urging women to do something to help win the war soon became so familiar they faded into unimportance. She doubted if Nan had been aware of them, and knew that even if she had, she would not have considered them relevant.
Rosie wished she dared go into a café alone and order tea, but if she tried, her embarrassment would have her imagining everyone staring at her. ‘I am stupid,’ she muttered angrily, ‘and stupid I’ll remain unless I get out and do something soon.’
Rosie had lived with her grandmother since the age of five. It was her nan who had taken her to school on her first day, and Nan who had helped her through her early struggles to learn to read and cope with adding and subtracting. Nan too who went to the school and sorted out a problem with teasing and bullying and persuaded the teacher that Rosie needed extra attention owing to her sad circumstances.
Her father had died when she was two, in an accident at the flour-mill where he worked. Then her mother had met Geoff, who had given the ultimatum to choose between him and Rosie, as he did not like children. Her mother chose Geoff and a very confused Rosie had been left with Nan. Since then there had been no contact with her mother and Nan had been her only family. It made it very difficult to tell her loving grandmother that she wanted to leave.
Kate Banner was eighteen a few days after Rosie Dreen. An only child, she sat up in bed surrounded by neatly packed parcels, most of which were provided by her parents. The rose-coloured eiderdown and cover were thick, ornately embroidered and obviously expensive. Her elegant pink nightdress was lacy and the bed-cape was crocheted in fine pink wool and fringed with swan’s-down. Her fluffed-out hair, a bright blonde which was occasionally assisted by the contents of a bottle, framed her pretty face with its long-lashed, greeny-grey eyes.
She knew she looked a picture and that her parents adored her. How could she tell them she wanted to leave home?
She heard her mother coming up and fluffed her hair a little, rubbed her cheeks to add to their rosiness, and glanced into the dressing-table mirror to satisfy herself that, even without makeup she looked good. Then she turned her eyes towards the door and smiled.
‘Mummy, you shouldn’t,’ she said as her mother appeared carrying a tray.
‘My little baby girl is eighteen, of course I have to give her breakfast in bed,’ Mary Banner smiled. ‘Happy birthday, darling girl. Daddy will be here in a moment, he’s just removing the blackout screens so you can come down to a cheerful room. He’s bringing your special present.’
Hopefully, Kate imagined her father struggling up with a bicycle, something for which she had been asking for two years. ‘Is it something I really want?’ she asked.
‘Something you want and need,’ her mother replied.
Not working, just staying at home and helping her parents by dealing with the accounts of the grocery business her father ran, she knew she didn’t really need a bicycle and also knew that her parents thought riding a bicycle was rather common when they owned a car as well as a van. Prepared for disappointment she managed to show great excitement as she unwrapped a watch.
‘Now, Daddy, show our girl her other gift.’
Giving her a kiss, Henry Banner handed her an envelope. Opening it with curiosity creasing her brow, Kate read the note inside which told her she was starting driving lessons that afternoon. Her delight was genuine. The ability to drive would help her decide what she would do when she joined up for some war work. Her thanks, her declaration that she was the luckiest of girls were accompanied by tears, and as she tucked into the breakfast of a fresh boiled egg followed by best butter and homemade marmalade to spread on dainty triangles of toast, her mind was buzzing with plans, which, had her parents known, would have had them in tears of a different kind.
Downstairs there were further surprises. A new dress, in pink, with a hand-knitted jacket to match and a bow for her hair in the same colour.
‘Mummy, why didn’t you choose a different colour?’ she asked with a gentle sigh.
‘Nothing suits you as well, and pink is a colour few can wear to such effect, darling girl.’
Unkindly, ungratefully, Kate wondered how her mother would cope with her wearing khaki!
The first driving lesson began in disaster, with the mysteries of double declutching and hand signals seeming to need more hands than she possessed, but by the end of the second, she felt confident that driving was something she would enjoy.
Ethel knew there was trouble brewing. Her father’s rage had begun a week ago and had been slowly, terrifyingly building. Next week she would be eighteen and for some reason she couldn’t imagine, that fact seemed to be the centre of his fury. He hadn’t mentioned it but when she did, she found he was staring at her with a strange look in his round, angry blue eyes.
Not for the first time she blamed herself. It must have been a disappointment for him to have had a child when Glenys and Sid were almost grown up. The extra expense, the lack of freedom when they had been able to come and go more or less as they pleased, her mother giving up the job she had in the wood yard office. Even with Sid and Glenys working, because of her father being in prison several times, twice for long stretches, the family had suffered the lack of her mother’s earnings. Her father had been in prison when she was born and hadn’t appeared in her life until she was more than one year old. The house was shabby, there was no money for anything beautiful. When something wore out or had been broken, the replacements were never good quality, just sad, utilitarian basics. Her mother’s attempts to brighten the place only emphasized its drabness. It must be her fault, her birthday bringing back reminders of how much they had lost because of her unwanted arrival.
She was careful not to cause offence. Anger filled the house, everyone was subdued and as she watched the behaviour of her family she began to realize that her sister was unusually nervous, starting in alarm every time someone spoke. The tension and anticipation of trouble that was almost palpable, was emanating not from her father, but seemed to come from Glenys. Perhaps she was wrong and it was not herself whom her father blamed for whatever was gnawing at him. She wondered what her quiet, inoffensive sister could have done to cause such seething resentment in their father. She gave a sad grimace of a smile as she realized it was April Fool’s Day. No possibility of any fun in the Twomey household.
She coaxed her sister to go for a walk. The weather was mild, the April sun weak but adding a cheerfulness to the bare trees and the early flowers. The blossom on the leafless branches of the blackthorn hedges had spread its lacy white beauty around the fields and Ethel’s heart lifted with the excitement of burgeoning spring. She glanced at Glenys in the hope of seeing similar joy reflected in her sister’s blue eyes, but Glenys’s face was sombre, she was clearly worried.
‘Glenys? What’s wrong?’ she asked as they bent low to avoid spiky branches as they went into the wood. At first Glenys forced a smile and denied her melancholy. Some of the sturdy lower branches of ancient ash and sycamore were distorted and made enticing seats though they were damp and covered with mosses. Nevertheless Ethel sat on one and patted encouragement for her sister to join her.
‘Have you thought any more about joining up?’ Glenys asked before Ethel could repeat her question. ‘I think you should. Wesley will be away from home and I… well, I might be leaving and Sid almost certainly will. I don’t want to think of you being here with just Mam and Dad.’
‘Dad wouldn’t hurt me if that’s what you’re thinking,’ Ethel said bravely, although from the way her father had been with the whole family there, she had wondered whether he might be even more unpredictable with only two people to shout at and bully. She bounced to make the branch swing. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked. ‘You and Sid don’t have to join up, your work in the factory is classed as war work.’
‘I’ll have to go away, I can’t stay here,’ Glenys spoke sadly. Ethel instinctively hugged her.
They walked on, looking at the ruined barns and other places where they had both played as children. Secret places where they had acted out their adventure games. Years apart, both had enjoyed the freedom. ‘Don’t go if you’d rather stay. Don’t let our dad drive you away. You see,’ Ethel admitted, ‘I think I might do as you say and join the ATS or something. What would Mam do without either of us?’
‘Promise me something, Ethel!’ Glenys, with her red hair burnished gold by the early sun and her beautiful alabaster skin, stared at her in such an intense manner that Ethel felt afraid.
‘Of course. What is it? You aren’t ill, are you? Tell me what’s worrying you!’
‘I can’t tell you. I hope you’ll never know. Just promise me that you’ll move away as soon as you’re able. You’ll be eighteen next week, you aren’t a child any more. You can be free if you choose to be.’
‘How will Mam manage?’ Ethel repeated. She was frightened by Glenys’s unwillingness to tell her what was wrong and her imagination spiralled into panic. ‘You’re ill, aren’t you? Tell me, Glenys, please tell me?’
Glenys hugged her and said, ‘Remember always, that I love you. Very, very much.’ Then she ran from the wood across the field towards the distant rooftop that was Wesley Daniels’s house but veered off before she reached it and disappeared through the hedge in the direction of town. Ethel didn’t see her again that day. The following morning Glenys had gone out before Ethel rose.
It was very early and she walked through the field and into the wood and stood near the tree on which they had both sat the previous day, listening as though the trees could answer the questions her sister had refused to explain. She waved at Wesley as he set off across the field to the hospital where he worked in the kitchens.
The smell of bacon frying enticed her and as she turned to go back inside to eat and get ready for her own day’s work, she heard her father shouting. Her mother’s voice then, high pitched and fearful. The rumble of her father’s complaints was followed by the scraping of a chair, the crash of china and more shouting. She ran in and saw her parents glaring at each other across the room, her mother holding a poker for protection against the huge angry man who was her father. Pointless to intervene. She’d learned that long ago. A number of bruises had taught her to walk away, to leave them to it. Forgetting about breakfast, for which she no longer had an appetite, she grabbed her coat and handbag and ran to the bus stop.
Rosie Dreen stared at the poster and read and reread the words.
Join NAAFI. The Ideal War Job For Women.
Her heart raced with excitement. She had all but made up her mind. Tomorrow – or some day soon – she would make herself walk into what the locals referred to as the call-up office. Telling Nan she was leaving would be easier once she had signed the forms and was committed. Telling Nan first meant there was a strong chance of her being persuaded against it. For a moment she was tempted to do that. Nan would make up her mind for her. She would stay at home and tell herself the alternative was impossible. That her duty was to stay with Nan. She looked again at the poster. Servitor Servientium (Service to Those who Serve) – that was the Naafi motto. She knew she had prevaricated too long. Tomorrow she would sign.
She had been shopping, her arms were full of packages. While she had been standing there cogitating about her war effort, it had begun to rain. The moment she moved, the paper carrier fell apart, leaving her holding the cardboard strip and the loops of string. The paper bags gave no protection to the biscuits or silverfoil packet of tea and a bag of sugar would soon be ruined. In her hand she held a white paper bag containing eggs brought from the farm, the paper opaque and useless.
Sheltering in a shop doorway she struggled to get as many packages as possible into her pockets. With the eggs held precariously in her hand she stepped out into the now steady downpour. A girl was running past, wearing a pink dress, and a grey, pink-trimmed coat swinging open. She couldn’t see where she was going because of the open umbrella she carried. They bumped together, both sliding on the wet surface of the pavement and slithering to a halt just yards apart and falling to the ground.
‘Idiot!’ Kate hissed. ‘Look what you’ve done to my stockings. And this is a new dress! Now I’ll have to go home and change!’
‘Look what you did to my eggs!’
Both girls stared at the growing patch of yellow on the pavement between them and then at the buckled umbrella which Kate still held. Inexplicably they laughed like friends sharing a huge joke.
Rosie picked up the mess of shells and soggy paper, squealed with laughter and threw it into the gutter. When they had picked themselves up, Kate examined her new coat to assess the damage.
‘I expect it was my fault, stepping out from the doorway,’ Rosie conceded.
‘No. I wasn’t looking where I was going. I was in a hurry to catch the recruitment office before it closes.’
‘You’re joining up?’ Rosie’s wide blue eyes opened in what Kate thought was admiration.
‘We have to do our bit, don’t we?’ Kate replied airily.
‘You want to escape from home too?’ Rosie queried.
‘Well, yes, I admit that’s the big temptation.’
‘Me too. But we can’t go looking like this or they’ll kick us out.’
‘Come and have a cup of tea in the café around the corner,’ Kate invited.
‘Nan will wonder where I am,’ Rose said doubtfully, shy of this smartly dressed girl, conscious of her own shabby appearance and surprised at the result of the unexpected encounter.
‘If we’re going to join up and help fight Hitler you can’t start off being afraid of offending your Nan!’ Kate announced firmly.
Kate placed her distorted umbrella in a corner and rather haughtily ordered tea and cakes. Rosie rubbed egg from her shoes and tried to hold back nervous laughter. The café was a rather expensive one and a place she had never entered before. Her new friend Kate seemed perfectly at home there.
‘I thought I’d join the Naafi,’ Rosie told Kate.
‘Now that isn’t a bad idea. All those hungry men to look after. I hadn’t thought of the Naafi.’ Her greeny-grey eyes gleamed with mischief as she added, ‘I’d better tell Mummy and Daddy I’ll be working in the office though, not at the counter! Will your parents cause a fuss?’
‘I only have Nan,’ Rosie told her. Opening out to this girl was a new experience for Rosie, who had kept her thoughts, disappointments and dreams locked safely away all her life. She was thankful that Kate Banner accepted the story without excessive sympathy and declared it interesting. ‘Interesting’, Rosie was soon to learn, was one of Kate’s favourite words.
They met the following day and went for an interview at the information centre in the church hall. Rosie went in first on Kate’s insistence. She recognized in the unsure Rosie a person who might back out, use some invented excuse and go back home to ‘Nan’.
Rosie came out and told Kate that she had agreed to sign up for the Naafi.
Kate went in and was asked if she would consider the army. The thought of marching and the heavy uniform made her shudder. The Wrens didn’t appeal either and when she mentioned the Naafi her first question was about the uniform.
‘I expect it will make me look like a sack of coal,’ she sighed prettily. The officer handed her a photograph of the trim blue counter-overalls and Kate nodded. ‘So long as it isn’t pink,’ she said without explanation. Beaming, she went out to join Rosie and they went to the café again to celebrate.
‘Now we only have to tell our families,’ Rosie said, making a moue, opening her blue eyes wide.
Kate gave a broad wink. ‘Tears. Shed a few tears and they’ll be so busy comforting me they’ll forget to be angry.’
‘If I tried that I’d end up giggling,’ Rosie confessed.
Ethel Twomey went home on her birthday not expecting any celebration. The atmosphere at home had made it impossible to even consider a party. She would meet Wesley later and he would give her his ring. It was a Monday just like every other Monday. She approached the house with her usual expectation of trouble. She was not disappointed. Shouts and screams filled the air, punctuated by the sounds of furniture being dragged around. She wanted to run, cover her ears and run, but this was different from the usual argument. She had to make sure her sister and her mother were all right. Then she would run as far and as fast as possible and wait for her father’s latest rage to die down.
She heard footsteps behind her and turned to see Wesley running to catch her up.
‘I’m coming in with you.’
‘No, you might make things worse. You know what Dad’s like, it’s probably nothing more than a complaint about the fire needing coal or his tea not ready when he wants it.’
‘Mam says they’ve been arguing since dinner time and your sister ran out of the house with a terrified look on her face about an hour ago.’
Ethel’s footsteps slowed as she walked over the little footbridge and began to make her way up the front path. ‘Perhaps, if Glenys is safely out of the way, I’d better wait until they’ve calmed down,’ she said. Instinct told her that this was something worse than one of her father’s usual moods. ‘Perhaps we’d better go and find Glenys.’
They went back to Wesley’s house where his mother made sandwiches and a pot of tea. Sitting in the front room, a paraffin stove sending out some heat and a lot of smell, Wesley tried to take her mind off the violence going on between her parents.
‘I wanted to tell you this in better circumstances, but I’m leaving next week to work for the Naafi.’
‘The Naafi?’ Ethel frowned, only half her mind on what he was saying. The fact of his leaving so soon didn’t register at all.
‘I have experience in catering. My first aid certificates will be an advantage too they told me. And, I don’t fancy learning to kill. I suppose those are the only real reasons. And the fact the Naafi needs men like me with some ability to feed large numbers of people.’
‘I might come with you,’ Ethel told him. ‘I can’t stand much more of this.’ She gestured in the direction of her home. ‘Glenys told me she’s going away. Sid might too. He might be told he has to do something more than he’s doing at present.’
‘You’d hate it, love. Stay near, so I can picture you here, waiting for me.’
‘I have to get away from Dad’s anger.’
‘It’s rarely directed at you.’
‘Not yet. But if there’s only me there you don’t think he’ll suddenly turn into a calm, quiet man, do you? Someone will have to take the stick and I don’t want it to be me. 1 can’t think of anything that would be worse than living at home with only Mam and Dad for company. Specially if you’re going.’
The following week was worse than anything she remembered. Something had happened and no one would tell her what. Her sister locked herself in her room and refused to come out. Dad looked larger than usual as he stormed around the house, calling Sid evil, her mother spineless and warning Ethel, repeatedly, to stay away from men. He threatened to beat Wesley to a pulp if he saw Ethel anywhere near him.
‘You’re sure to go bad,’ Dai snarled. ‘You’re as evil as the rest of this tainted family. You mustn’t go near a man. Any man, d’you hear me? You have to stay here when you aren’t at work and never go out without me or your stupid mother with you, d’you understand? You stay in this house and keep away from men.’
‘Why?’ she whispered fearfully.
‘You’ll go to the bad like your… sister!’ He emphasized the word as though it was an insult. What could her inoffensive sister have done to make him so angry? To her horror and disbelief she woke in the morning to find her bedroom door locked, and no amount of knocking brought someone to open it. Bread, milk, boiled eggs and a few apples were on her dressing table.
She climbed out of the bedroom window that night and ran down the road to find Wesley.
Mrs Daniels opened the door in her nightgown and shook her head. ‘Sorry, Ethel, dear, but Wesley is forbidden to visit you.’
‘Why? What happened?’ A movement caught her eye and she looked toward the landing, as Wesley came down the stairs, fully dressed.
‘How did you get out? Your father told me you were forbidden to leave the house.’
‘I climbed out of the window but I’m not going back that way. I’m going to knock on the door and demand an explanation. I’m not a child!’
‘I’ll come with you.’ Wesley put a coat around her and she was aware for the first time that she was shivering, dressed in only a nightdress, a dressing gown and a pair of slippers – her father having emptied her wardrobe, presumably to ensure she didn’t leave.
‘Sorry we couldn’t celebrate our engagement properly,’ she said tearfully. From her dressing-gown pocket she took out the ring and gave it back to him. ‘I’ll wear it when this trouble has been sorted. I want to wear it proudly, not hide it for fear of sending Dad into a worse rage.’
‘I’ll walk you back home.’ Ignoring his mother’s entreaties to be careful, he left to face the furious Dai Twomey with less confidence than he showed.
The house was quiet, no voices could be heard. The door wasn’t locked and they went in to see her mother on the floor being kicked by her father. She was making no sound. The hall door opened and Sid staggered in, his face bruised, one eye practically closed, his red hair sticky with blood. As though in a daze he walked past Ethel and Wesley and out into the darkness.
Wesley and Ethel leapt on her father and tried to pull him off her mother. Dai turned and grabbed Wesley, throwing him with ease against the wall. He swung Ethel and released her, forcing her to stumble through the doorway and land at the bottom of the stairs. Every time Wesley stood up, her father hit him until he was dazed. It seemed to go on for ever but it was only a few minutes before Sid had gone, and Wesley was out of the door and staggering away down the path. He stopped at the stream and put his face into the water to cool his head then went back to rescue Ethel. At the door her father waited, smiling. He punched and kicked until the boy gave up and staggered away.
Wesley made his way into town, shamed by his inadequacy, stopping to rest, sometimes crawling, staunching his wounds with handfuls of grass, two miles across the fields, and told the police. Then he sat in a cold damp field and watched dawn break on the rest of his life. A new dawn, new day, and life would never be the same. The shame at being unable to help Ethel and her mother printed on his mind at that moment was destined to stay there for ever.
Her father was arrested, her mother refused to go to hospital and sat in an armchair, propped up with pillows. Ethel was taken to hospital to replace a dislocated shoulder but insisted on returning home to look after her mother. For what was left of the night and through most of the following day she sat near her mother and made her plans. Of Sid and Glenys there was no sign.
Her mother slept quite a lot and every time she roused, Ethel pleaded with her to go to hospital. ‘Talk to the doctors and to the police. There’ll be evidence now for you to insist on his leaving.’
‘I can’t go anywhere before Sid and Glenys come back.’ She insisted that she would not give evidence. ‘I told the police I fell and I won’t say different,’ she whispered through damaged lips.
In the morning Ethel went out to get some fresh air, wondering how she could prevent her father from returning home. She knew her mother would never be persuaded to give evidence and would also forbid her to do so. Loyalty at any price, even when your very life was at risk, seemed so utterly stupid.
Her mother stood up and shakily made her way to the kitchen and made tea, which she would find difficult to drink. Despairing of talking sense into her, Ethel decided she should concentrate on finding Glenys. Sid had often fled from his father’s anger and would come back when he was ready, but Glenys had never run away before. She thought of Glenys’s friends; there were surprisingly few. Her sister had led a very quiet life. She would call on them and see if Glenys had stayed with one of them overnight.
It was late afternoon and she looked up and down the road, hoping to see her sister appear. Beyond the field she saw smoke rising from Wesley’s house and wondered if he was all right. Realizing with a jolt that she hadn’t thought of him as much as someone in love ought to, she walked down and knocked on his door.
Mrs Daniels told her tearfully to go away. After being assured that Wesley was safe but badly bruised and humiliated, she left and began searching for her sister and Sid. Although Sid could look after himself, she needed him and hoped he too would soon return home.
None of Glenys’s friends had seen her and, with growing alarm, Ethel walked through the fields towards the wood where she had recently sat with her sister. Glenys had told her she was leaving, but surely not like this, without a word or an explanation?
Without much hope of being heard, she walked through the trees and called her sister’s name. There were a few old buildings in the vicinity, the places where they had played childish games. Perhaps Glenys had sheltered there and was still sleeping. Rows like the one her father created were very exhausting.
It was in the barn once used to store grain that she found her, hanging from a beam, swinging slightly in the draught from the open door.