Clarrie waved to Peggy across the production line and mouthed something, but the combined noise of the machinery and the closing moments of Workers’ Playtime on the wireless meant that whatever she was saying was completely inaudible. Peggy frowned at her friend. ‘Good luck, all workers!’ said the man on the wireless, as he did at the end of every show, and Peggy sighed with relief. That meant she and Clarrie could go for their late-meal break. The factory no longer stopped for lunch; half the workforce had to carry on through the usual hour, and then they were released to the canteen when the first half had finished eating. By that time, Peggy’s stomach was usually rumbling.
‘I’ll need more than good luck, thank you very much,’ she muttered to herself as she pitched up the sleeves of her overall. It was too warm for long sleeves but they had to wear them for their own protection. Dust rose as she did so, making her sneeze. Crossly she kicked aside a fragment of cardboard box.
‘Here, watch what you’re doing, I could have tripped on that,’ Clarrie complained, though it didn’t sound as if she really meant it. ‘So what do you think of my idea?’
Peggy looked puzzled. ‘What idea? No, don’t stop to tell me, let’s get to the canteen. I could eat a horse.’
‘Fat chance of that,’ said Clarrie, hurrying to keep up with her hungry friend. They fell into line with the rest of their shift, eyeing the watery stew that was on offer. At least there was a good dollop of mashed potatoes to go along with it. They took their trays and found the end of a table where there was room to sit down.
‘So, my idea. You still haven’t said.’
Peggy shook her head. ‘Is that what you were trying to tell me before we stopped? I couldn’t hear you. I could see you were saying something but couldn’t work out what it was.’
Clarrie took a mouthful of stew and made a face. ‘Not much meat in that, horse or otherwise,’ she said flatly. Then she brightened. ‘All right, what I said was, we should save some of the scraps from the floor before they’re swept up.’
Peggy’s expression was dubious. ‘What, like the bits of cardboard?’
Clarrie put down her fork. ‘No, more like the plastic or rubber.’
‘Whatever for?’ Peggy tried the stew and grimaced. ‘Ugh, I see what you mean.’
Clarrie explained. ‘I’m fed up of not being able to buy nice things, not being able to dress up, so I thought we could make our own.’
‘How do you mean? What, like clothes? I can’t see how that would work.’ Peggy shovelled more stew and potato into her mouth, too hungry to care what it tasted like.
Clarrie shook her head and loose strands of her red hair gleamed in the late summer sunlight pouring through one of the high windows, with its panes still crisscrossed with tape in case of bomb blasts. ‘No, not clothes. Jewellery. I’ve tried mending my necklaces when they break, of course, and I’m always catching them in this.’ She patted her hair, still tied up in its old scarf. ‘But I’m tired of them, same old things every time. I reckon we can use the bits that get thrown away, make brooches maybe.’
Peggy cocked her head. ‘Really? Could we?’
‘I’m sure my pa would let us use his tools.’ Clarrie was warming to her theme. ‘If we cut shapes with his hacksaw, we could then file the edges … all right, I can see you don’t believe me but I haven’t come up with the details yet. Give me time, then you’ll see. We could make ourselves glamorous, Peg. Knock ’em dead on the dance floor and all that.’
Peggy nodded, considering. ‘Been a while since I went near a dance floor. I wouldn’t mind a few new things, and that’s a fact.’ She looked down sadly. They couldn’t wear jewellery while on a shift, for fear it would catch in the machinery, but she had precious little to start with. Her wedding ring was on a chain around her neck these days, and a bracelet Pete had given her after they got engaged sat safely in her bedside drawer. In money terms it wasn’t valuable but it was priceless to her. Other than those, she had a few bits and pieces of costume jewellery but not much else. ‘Do you want to try to make a start later on, then?’
Clarrie scraped the last of the potato from her plate. ‘I can’t, I’m on fire-watching duty.’ Even though the raids had died out, a group of factory workers had formed a roster to ensure no damage befell the building overnight. Clarrie had recently been recruited, and trained to deal with the effects of incendiary bombs. ‘But you could start looking out for any odds and ends. We should make a start collecting them and then pool what we’ve managed to gather at the weekend.’
‘Fair enough.’ Peggy glanced at the big clock above the serving counter and stood up. ‘Come on, time to go back. There’s never long enough to chat properly, is there?’
Stretching with a groan, Clarrie also got to her feet, then followed the shorter young woman through to the factory floor, tucking her stray locks back into their faded strip of fabric. ‘There, that’s the sort of thing I mean.’ As they approached their work stations her eyes were caught by a small fragment of clear plastic, not much bigger than a penny. ‘Not much on its own, I admit, but a few of those together with a bit of decoration, well, who knows?’
Peggy nodded, but if Clarrie said anything further it was lost in the rising hubbub of noise as the production lines pounded away and someone turned up the wireless once more.
With no Clarrie to talk to after the shift finished, Peggy decided to pay her first visit to Kathleen and Billy’s new daughter. The baby was now two weeks old but there hadn’t been a convenient moment to go around to the little house before, and Peggy suspected that the new arrival would not have been short of visitors for the first fortnight of her life. She found Kathleen smiling and happy in her living room, which was such an improvement on the poky flat she’d lived in before. There the main room had been lounge and bedroom to both Kathleen and Brian – and to her ex-husband Ray on the very rare occasions he had been there. Trouble had always followed him on such occasions and Kathleen was far better off without him. Now she finally had a household that she could be proud of.
Brian solemnly led Peggy to the cot in the corner, where his sister lay sleeping. Peggy breathed in, absorbing the little face crowned with an impressive amount of thick dark hair, just like her father’s. ‘She’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘Does she sleep like this all the time, Kath?’
‘No,’ said Brian before his mother could answer. ‘She cries a lot and wakes me up in the night.’
Kathleen came across to him and ruffled his hair. ‘But we don’t mind, do we? It’s only because she’s hungry. She soon stops when she’s had a feed.’ Brian nodded and then retreated to the opposite corner, where he had been building a mighty fortress of coloured wooden bricks. Peggy stood up straight again, afraid of waking the tiny creature.
‘I brought you something.’ She reached into her battered handbag and drew out a paper-wrapped bundle. Kathleen took it and undid it to reveal a pair of small white woollen bootees, edged in pale yellow ribbon.
‘Peggy, you shouldn’t have.’
Peggy grinned. ‘I didn’t make them, in case you’re wondering. Pete’s mum got the wool from one of her WVS friends and knitted these the moment she heard the news.’
‘Well, you must thank her from me,’ said Kathleen, her eyes shining, in full knowledge that knitting was not one of Peggy’s strengths. ‘You can never have too many when they’re this age. Even when it’s warm weather, it’s a struggle to keep everything washed and clean.’
Peggy looked around; the room was spotless, and as tidy as it could reasonably be expected to be, given that it contained a young baby and a very active toddler. ‘Do you want a hand with anything?’
Kathleen laughed and sat on the settee, new to her at least, even though it was second-hand. ‘No, Flo was round earlier and insisted on doing everything. I’m barely allowed to lift a finger really. I told her, I’ve got to do something or I’ll never shift my baby weight.’
‘What baby weight?’ Peggy looked at her friend’s trim figure in her bright printed dirndl and matching blouse. ‘You’re scarcely different to how you were this time last year.’
Kathleen shrugged. ‘Maybe. Can I get you anything? Would you like to eat with us? Brian’s had his tea but I was waiting for Billy to get home.’
‘No, no,’ Peggy said hastily, knowing that – even with extra rations for nursing mothers – there would not be much food to spare. ‘I’m on late lunch breaks this week.’ She sought to change the subject. ‘Now, don’t keep me in suspense. You must have chosen a name by now?’
Kathleen rose to put the kettle on in the small back kitchen. ‘We have,’ she called though the interconnecting door. Peggy smiled to see her. Her friend’s old kitchen had been dark and grim, even though it was always scrubbed and polished, but here the sunlight came through the back door to the little yard, as well as piercing the small window above the big ceramic sink. ‘We liked what Mattie said when Alan was born – give him his own name first of all and then have a family name in the middle. So she’ll be Barbara for herself and then Frances for Billy’s mother.’
‘Barbara Frances Reilly.’ Peggy tried the name out aloud. ‘I like it. Goes well with Brian too.’
Kathleen reached for cups from the row of hooks beneath the wall cupboard. ‘And Brian is now officially Brian Reilly,’ she said with a mixture of delight and relief. ‘We wanted to have that sorted out before he’s old enough to start writing his name. Billy’s so proud, you can’t imagine.’ She carefully measured tea leaves into the slightly chipped brown pot she had inherited from their landlady.
‘Oh, I can,’ said Peggy, turning so that she had a good view of the little boy demonstrating his building skills. Billy had always been extremely fond of Brian, far more than his biological father had ever been. ‘He’s good at that, isn’t he? Perhaps he’ll be an engineer like Joe.’
Kathleen brought the tea through. ‘Sorry there aren’t any biscuits. Mattie made some but we finished them yesterday.’
‘I’m really not hungry,’ Peggy insisted, even though she was. They were never still for one moment at the factory, and used up plenty of energy, meaning they were usually ravenous by the end of the day. Gratefully she accepted her cup.
‘Would you like to hold her?’ Kathleen offered.
Peggy hid her expression by taking a swift sip. ‘Oh, no, it would be a shame to wake her,’ she said. ‘Of course I’d love to but let her sleep – I’ll give her a cuddle next time I’m round.’ She couldn’t offend her friend outright, but she definitely did not want to hold the child. She had told very few people, even her closest friends, about the miscarriage she had suffered not long before the news of Dunkirk had reached them. Even though it had happened eighteen months ago, the memories of losing what would have been Pete’s child were still painful, and every sight of a newborn brought it all flooding back. She hoped Mattie had never noticed when Alan was tiny, and she would have to revive all the excuses she’d made at the time now that Kathleen also had a small baby.
Quickly finishing her tea, she made her apologies for the visit being so brief and rushed back outside, into the side street not far from Butterfield Green. If she had stayed longer, she knew Kathleen would have pressed her to join them for their evening meal, shortages or no shortages, and Peggy couldn’t allow that. Also, she was thrilled to see her friend so happy, in her new house with its cheerful aspect and homely proportions, obviously content in her marriage and delighted with her children. Yet Peggy was devastated as well, as that was what she should be enjoying herself: in another life, with no war, Pete would be with her and their child would have lived.
She had had to get out.
Peggy arrived back home just as Mrs Cannon was preparing to go out. ‘Oh, Peggy love. I have to leave you on your own this evening. We just got word, there’s an unexploded bomb down towards Liverpool Street and we need to provide a mobile canteen for those brave UXB boys.’
Peggy hung her old handbag over the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Goodness, you mean you’ll be right there if it goes off? Please be careful!’ It struck her that she would be lost if anything were to happen to Pete’s mother. Annoying as she could sometimes be, she had shown no lack of bravery since joining the WVS.
‘Don’t give it another thought. I’m sure they’ll make sure we’re somewhere safe,’ said Mrs Cannon, fastening her light jacket with its cheerful ric-rac edging. ‘Now, did I pack my apron? I don’t want to get splashes of milk on my good frock.’ She turned around to check her own bag. ‘Yes, of course I did. What am I like, I’d forget my own head if it wasn’t screwed on.’ She tutted as Peggy smiled.
‘Nonsense, you’re the most organised person I know. Oh, Kathleen says thank you for the bootees. She loved them.’
Mrs Cannon broke into a wide smile. ‘And did you see the new arrival?’
‘I did. She’s gorgeous, looks just like her dad.’ Peggy made a supreme effort to keep her tone light; if Mrs Cannon noticed it falter, she had the decency not to say. ‘Hair as black as ink.’
‘How lovely.’ Mrs Cannon had one hand on the front door and then she stopped. ‘Goodness gracious, I’ve gone and forgotten that other thing. Mrs Bellings from over the road brought a letter for you that went to her by mistake. It’s the new postman, he’s still getting used to who’s where. Did you know that nice Mr Chandler has signed up for the army?’
‘Really? I thought he was my dad’s age.’ Peggy gasped in surprise.
‘Maybe not quite, but he didn’t have to go. Still, he said he wanted to do his bit. Very good of him, but the new fellow is a bit slow at learning the ropes. He’s not exactly in the first flush of youth, shall we say. Ah yes, here we are. From that American gentleman unless I’m much mistaken.’ Mrs Cannon’s eyes gleamed. ‘Must be off, Peggy dear. There’s a cold pie in the larder.’ She hurried off, leaving Peggy in the shady hall, holding the letter.
Peggy bit her lip as she felt a giggle rise inside her. She would have loved to have been a fly on the wall as Mrs Bellings handed over the letter. Perhaps she’d worn gloves so she wouldn’t have to sully herself by touching the same envelope as the soldier of whom she so deeply disapproved. Peggy’s spirits perked up as she went through to the kitchen, which faintly smelt of the pie that had been baked earlier. She reached into the cutlery drawer for a knife.
Gently she slit open the envelope and put it carefully to one side; paper was becoming too short to waste. Then she savoured the moment before reading the letter itself.
Damn that interfering neighbour. How long had she had this before handing it over? Then Peggy stopped that line of thought, deciding that the mean-spirited woman wouldn’t have wanted it in her house for any longer than was strictly necessary. The main thing was that James was in London for a brief period of leave. He was staying in the centre of town, at a Red Cross dormitory. Would she like to come to meet him, show him the best spots to go dancing?
Would I ever, breathed Peggy. Even if I haven’t got any new jewellery to brighten myself up, I don’t reckon he’ll care. She checked the date and worked it out on her fingers. She could go on Friday – in two days’ time. Suddenly the world didn’t seem so bad after all.