The Flower Girls; or, Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better

Yared lay sprawled on his back under the covers, relaxed and floppy.

‘Well,’ said his nanna, ‘I think you might be too tired for a story tonight, after all your gallivanting around this afternoon.’

‘No I’m not,’ Yared said. ‘I’m not tired.’

He was a bit worn out from Aunty Kat and Uncle Michael’s visit –  from building forts with Max and Tamieka and playing cops and robbers for so many hours. But he was sure he could stay awake for a story; he wasn’t that tired.

‘Please, Nanna,’ Yared said. ‘I won’t fall asleep. I won’t be grumpy tomorrow. I’ll listen really hard.’

‘Well…’ said his nanna. ‘Perhaps I could.’

She flicked the light switch and came to sit on the end of his bed.

‘When did this story happen?’ asked Yared.

‘In the early 1940s; during the Second World War,’ his nanna said. ‘If you’d waited I would have told you.’

‘Did they have TV yet?’

‘No, they didn’t.’

‘Did they have cars?’

‘If you listen to my story you’ll find out,’ said his nanna. ‘Now keep quiet or I can’t begin.’

Yared yawned and rolled onto his side. ‘Oh and Nanna,’ he said, ‘can–’

‘I thought you were supposed to be listening, Yared, not talking.’

‘I was just going to ask to hold the penny.’

His nanna shook her head, but smiled as she passed him the coin. Yared held it in his fist and closed his eyes.

Betty was crouched at the bottom of the trench with a wooden clothes peg clenched between her teeth. The hessian bag draped over her head and shoulders as camouflage was itchy and smelled of onions. She was hot and sweaty and thirsty and hoped that the air-raid drill would soon be over.

Betty scratched at her scalp. She didn’t mind trench drill, because it interrupted lessons, but she wished they didn’t have to wear the hessian capes; she would have to wash her hair tonight to get rid of the onion smell, and that was so much bother. A fly began crawling up her leg. As Betty reached down to brush it away her elbow bumped Harry Holthouse, who was squatting beside her picking at the dried mud in the bottom of the trench.

‘Watch it,’ said Harry. He’d taken his clothes peg from his first aid kit but hadn’t bothered to put it in his mouth. There had never been any real bombings before.

Betty didn’t answer. Harry was often unpleasant; she was sure he wouldn’t wash his hair tonight, no matter how much it smelled of onions or potatoes, or whatever his hessian bag had carried before it was turned into a camouflage cape.

‘Listen,’ said someone further up the trench.

A faint humming noise reached Betty’s ears and as she listened it gradually grew louder and louder to become a buzzing drone. She clamped her teeth tighter on the wooden peg as the noise of the plane grew closer. Perhaps this wasn’t just a drill after all.

‘Where is it?’ asked George Morrissey, Betty’s other neighbour.

He and Harry peered upwards, craning their necks.

‘There,’ George said, pointing towards a clump of clouds on the horizon, where a large speck was growing larger. ‘It’s a… It’s a…’

‘Cobra,’ Harry said.

‘No it’s not, it’s a Kittyhawk,’ said George.

Betty wasn’t very interested in aeroplanes, but now that she knew this one wasn’t an enemy her jaw muscles relaxed. She watched the small shape move across the sky, and wondered if the man inside could see them.

‘It’s probably come from Amberley,’ said Harry. ‘They must be testing it.’

‘It’s going to Archerfield, I reckon,’ said George.

‘Or Eagle Farm.’

‘No, that’s the wrong way,’ George said. ‘Eagle Farm’s over that way. It’s heading towards Archerfield.’

Betty sighed. Just her luck to be sandwiched between two boys like Harry and George, who could prattle on about planes for hours. She always found trench drill much more fun when she could talk to her best friend, Jocelyn Paterson. But today Jocelyn was hidden somewhere around the corner; the trenches had been dug in a zigzag shape so that enemy planes would have trouble shooting them, and Betty couldn’t see more than a dozen children.

The noise of the Kittyhawk faded as the plane passed into the distance.

‘My dad flies one of them,’ Harry said, staring after it.

Betty spat her wooden clothes peg into her hand. Harry was always boasting about his father. ‘You’re a liar, Harry Holthouse,’ she said. ‘Your dad isn’t even in the air force, he’s in the army.’

Harry made a face at her. ‘Well at least he joined up,’ he said. ‘At least he’s gone to fight, instead of staying at home like your dad.’

Betty went red. ‘He’s not allowed to fight, they won’t let him,’ she said fiercely. ‘They’d stop him if he tried.’ She repeated the explanation her mother had given her: ‘Suppliers are too important and if they all went to war then there’d be no-one to make sure the shops had enough food in them.’

Harry made a rude noise and from further down the trench the shrill blast of a whistle came back, like an echo, to signal the end of the drill. Betty snatched off her hessian cape and slipped her clothes peg into her first aid kit.

‘Besides,’ she said to Harry as she scrambled to her feet, ‘if all the fathers went to war, who would have dug our trenches for us?’

‘Anyone could’ve,’ Harry said. ‘And if your dad wasn’t a coward he would’ve joined up anyway.’

Betty’s eyes narrowed. ‘My father’s not a coward.’

‘Yes he is.’

‘He’s not,’ Betty said. ‘You don’t know anything.’

‘He’s a coward if he won’t fight,’ Harry said and turned to file out of the trench.

Betty clenched her fists and wished she was a boy. Then she would be allowed to hit Harry. She knew her father wasn’t a coward – he wasn’t afraid of thunderstorms,  he talked politely to fierce dogs and he even seemed to like spiders. And he would have gone to help fight overseas if only he had been allowed to; she’d overheard him talking to her mother one night, suggesting that he try to join up anyway by writing a false occupation on his enlistment papers. But Betty’s mother had persuaded him not to: if the government thought that food suppliers were too useful to go to war, then they must have had a good reason for thinking so. Besides, she had added, it would be lying, and that would be a terrible example to set for Betty and her younger sister Joan.

But sometimes Betty wished that her father had joined up. She felt left out when the other children talked about their fathers or brothers who were overseas, where they were stationed and what news they had sent. She did have cousins and uncles in the forces, but somehow that didn’t feel quite as special.

She tried to make up for it by doing her best to help with the war effort at home. Miss Shaw always talked in class about how important it was for everyone to do their bit for the war effort: to do things like saving paper by writing on both sides, or during holidays helping to weave camouflage nets. Betty’s class had even organised to hold a stall at the train station the next morning, and Betty was looking forward to it. She wanted to show Harry Holthouse and the rest of her classmates just how committed she was.

So when Jocelyn called at her house at a quarter to nine the next morning Betty was ready and waiting in her freshly-ironed blue frock. She slipped out the front gate and together she and Jocelyn set off down the wide grassy footpath dotted with paperbarks.

‘You might have told me you were going to wear your blue frock, Betty,’ said Jocelyn as they ambled past the wooden fences and weatherboard houses, knitting as they walked. ‘If I’d only known I would have worn mine to match. But I do think yellow’s a much nicer colour, don’t you? Did I tell you that I’m to have a new skirt from the material Mum bought with the last of my ration coupons? I hope I won’t have to wait long for it.’

‘Yes, you told me that,’ Betty said, trying to count stitches at the same time as talking. She and her friends always knitted when they had spare time – as they walked to and from school, or during lunchtimes. Sometimes they knitted squares to make hospital blankets, and often they knitted socks or scarves to send to the soldiers. It made Betty feel special to think that she was helping her country, even though her socks weren’t always quite the right shape.

As it was a Saturday there were plenty of people around as Betty and Jocelyn strolled towards the station. They waved to old Mr Carmel down the street, who was busy tending his garden, and said good morning to Mrs Williams and her two small sons when they passed them walking home from the butcher’s.

‘Don’t you think it will be fun to sell flowers?’ Jocelyn asked as they came in sight of the train station. ‘I am looking forward to it. It’s just exactly like Eliza in Pygmalion, you know, only of course it won’t be on a street corner in London.’

‘Yes,’ said Betty, ‘and her flowers weren’t for the war effort. They were just for herself.’

They made their way past an overhanging wattle tree and up the wooden steps to the platform. Further along, Miss Shaw and a handful of their classmates were gathered behind two worn trestle tables – the boys behind one and the girls behind the other. Miss Shaw wore her usual crisp blouse and skirt, but the children were specially dressed in bright frocks or buttoned shirts, their leather shoes shiny.

Betty followed Jocelyn along the dusty platform and slipped in behind the girls’ stall. On the table were jars crammed with colourful clumps and bunches of the flowers that they had grown: bright orange marigolds, velvety purple pansies and clusters of sweet-smelling lavender. She glanced over at the second trestle table, which was heaped with pumpkins, tomatoes, squashes and other vegetables the boys had grown in the school vegetable patch. They were rather small, Betty thought, but she supposed they would taste the same.

People wandered past the stalls in dribs and drabs, and Betty watched them eagerly, waiting for her first customer. At last a thin, spectacled lady stopped in front of their table and began inspecting a bunch of marigolds.

‘And where is the money from your sales being sent?’ she asked in a scratchy voice.

‘It’s going to the Prisoner of War Fund,’ Betty said.

‘Did you know,’ said Jocelyn, ‘that if we raise twenty shillings we can support one whole prisoner of war?’

‘One whole prisoner of war?’ the lady said with a cackle as she delved into her purse. ‘Well that’s impressive, isn’t it?’

Betty was glad the money they raised would be going to the Prisoner of War Fund. Her family had found out only the week before that Les, Betty’s cousin, who had been fighting in North Africa, was now a prisoner of war in Germany. She didn’t like to think of easy-going Les locked up somewhere overseas – she remembered him carrying her round on his shoulders when she’d been younger.

When they weren’t serving customers Betty and the other girls pulled out their knitting to keep them busy. Betty was hard at work trying to turn the heel of her sock when she heard Jocelyn give a cry. She looked up to see that Harry Holthouse had come over from the boys’ stall and grabbed the girls’ jam jar of money.

‘What are you doing?’ Jocelyn asked. ‘Put it back, Harry.’

‘No,’ said Harry. ‘You can’t make me.’

‘If you don’t put it back I’ll tell Miss Shaw.’

‘Don’t be such a girl,’ Harry said. ‘I only wanted to see how much money you’d made.’

‘Five and six pence,’ Betty said. ‘You could have asked.’

‘Ha!’ said Harry. ‘We’ve got eight shillings already, that’s loads more than you have.’

Betty frowned. ‘It’s not loads more,’ she said. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It’s all for the war effort.’

‘Besides, vegetables cost more than flowers, because you can eat them, you know. And you can’t eat flowers,’ said Jocelyn.

‘Well, I bet we sell more vegetables than you do flowers, anyway,’ Harry said.

Betty crossed her arms. ‘So what if you do?’

‘So then we’ve done more for the war effort than you have, just like I did more last week, because I brought in the most old tyres. Not like you, Betty Fletcher. You didn’t even bring in any.’

He thumped the money container back onto the table and strode off to the boys’ stall, leaving Betty glaring after him. She had felt bad the previous week when she hadn’t brought any old tyres to school, but her family didn’t have a car so she simply hadn’t been able to find any.

Jocelyn slipped her arm through Betty’s. ‘Just ignore him, Betty,’ she said. ‘He’s such a horrid boy. You know he only found so many tyres because he sneaked into the car yard down the street from his house and stole them – I heard him telling Eric.’

Betty wasn’t sure if this was true or not – Jocelyn sometimes told fantastic stories – but it made her feel better anyway. She tried to go back to her knitting but couldn’t remember what she’d been up to, so she was glad to see a plump woman in a flower-print dress wander towards their stall. She wound the sock around her knitting needles and slipped them into the long cardboard container that was slung over her shoulder.

‘Would you like to buy some flowers?’ Betty asked.

‘There are seeds as well,’ Peggy, one of Betty’s classmates, added. ‘So you could grow your own flowers if you like.’

‘And the boys have vegetables,’ Jocelyn said. She paused. ‘But our flowers are prettier, don’t you think?’

The lady smiled. ‘Yes, they certainly are pretty. But I might go and have a look at the vegetables all the same.’

She moved up the platform towards the boys’ stall. Betty watched her go, disappointed. She knew she’d told Harry it didn’t matter which stall sold the most – they were going to combine the money at the end, anyway – but now she wished more people would buy their flowers, to show just how much she and the other girls were helping with the war effort.

‘Oh well,’ Jocelyn said, ‘perhaps she’s just a vegetable-y sort of person. Some people are, you know.’

The others went back to their knitting but Betty stared after the plump woman, watching as she inspected the different vegetables at the boys’ stall then finally bought half a dozen potatoes from George Morrissey. At least, Betty thought, she didn’t buy them from Harry.

‘Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine,’ Jocelyn muttered. ‘Oh bother, I’ve dropped a stitch.’

Betty watched the plump woman pick up her bag of potatoes and shuffle back down the station platform. She was holding the brown paper bag in one hand, and with the other hand was trying to slip her change into her purse. As Betty watched, three coins fell out and skittered across the concrete. The woman looked down and scooped up one of the coins but didn’t seem to notice the others, which had come to rest under a nearby bench.

As the woman began walking down the platform once more Betty glanced around to see if anyone else had noticed. Harry saw her looking towards the boys’ stall, rattled his money jar at her and poked out his tongue, but no-one seemed to be paying attention to the plump woman.

Betty shot Harry a glare then slipped out from behind the table and ran down the platform to the wooden bench. She bent down, picked up the two fallen coins and hurried to catch up with the woman.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘but you dropped these.’

The plump woman looked around. ‘Oh, did I? Thank you, dear.’

Betty held out the coins – one shilling piece and one penny – and the woman reached down and took the shilling from her hand.

‘You keep the penny, dear,’ she said.

Betty smiled. ‘May I? Thank you.’

The woman continued on her way and Betty clutched the penny. She thought she might save it to buy sweets: her favourite was toffee and it was a long time since she’d had any. She dropped the coin into the pocket of her frock and hurried back to the flower stall, where Peggy and Jocelyn were selling roses to a young man in uniform. Oh goody, thought Betty. The roses were expensive. That might help them catch up to the boys.

‘I bet he’s going to give them to his sweet-heart,’ Jocelyn said as they watched the man stride off down the platform.

‘Or someone else’s,’ Peggy said with a grin. ‘He was a Yank.’

Jocelyn laughed. ‘Do you know, my cousin Daphne was once asked to a dance by a Yank, but Aunt Beryl said she wasn’t to go. Don’t you think it strange how they talk, though? They use all sorts of queer words. Betty, do you think my scarf is long enough now, or shall I add a few more inches?’

As the morning went by Betty kept hoping that everyone who passed would buy their flowers – and, though she felt naughty, now she also hoped that they wouldn’t buy from the boys. She couldn’t help but notice, though, that the boys were selling more than the girls were. She watched a brisk young woman in tailored trousers striding along the platform, and hoped that she would turn towards their stall. But when the woman grew closer and did turn towards them, Betty caught her breath and crouched to the ground.

‘Whatever are you doing down there, Betty?’ Jocelyn asked.

‘Um… tying my shoelace,’ Betty said.

‘Oh,’ said Jocelyn. ‘But you haven’t any laces. You’re wearing your party shoes.’

‘Be quiet. Don’t look at me,’ Betty said as the lady approached. She pinched Jocelyn’s ankle. ‘I said don’t look at me, Jocelyn.’

Jocelyn gave a squeak and turned her attention to the young woman, who had now stopped in front of their stall.

As Jocelyn served the woman, Betty knelt behind the table and pretended to adjust her socks. She listened to Jocelyn’s chirpy voice and the woman’s brief answers, heard the clinking of coins then gave a sigh of relief as the woman moved away.

Betty climbed to her feet to find Jocelyn staring at her.

‘Whatever was that about?’ she asked.

‘Do you know that lady?’ asked Peggy, who was also looking at her.

‘No,’ said Betty. ‘I don’t know who she is. Not really, anyway.’

‘Then why were you hiding?’ asked Jocelyn.

Betty bit her lip. ‘She stopped my dad once when we were at the post office and asked why he hadn’t joined up.’

‘Oh,’ said Peggy. ‘That’s right. Your father’s not fighting, is he?’

Betty wished she hadn’t spoken so loudly. Now all the boys had turned to watch too.

‘No, he’s not fighting,’ Harry called. ‘He’s not fighting, is he Betty?’

Betty glared across at the boys’ stall. ‘Well the prisoners of war aren’t fighting either,’ she said. ‘They’re just sitting around doing nothing. At least my father’s being useful at home, making sure we have enough food to eat.’

‘Really, Betty,’ Miss Shaw said with a frown, rising from her seat beside the boys’ table. ‘What an unkind thought. You know our prisoners of war have risked their lives for this country.’

‘And they’re not just sitting around doing nothing,’ said Jack Hunter, whose father had been in a camp for the last nine months. ‘They’re trying to escape.’

Betty dropped her head and stared at the chalky concrete. She hadn’t really meant it. She knew that her cousin Les and the other prisoners like Mr Hunter were brave men who would now be lonely and discouraged, and she was glad really that the money from their stall might help to cheer them up. But Harry Holthouse could be so infuriating. Betty pulled her knitting from her cardboard container and pretended to be engrossed in counting stitches, and as the rest of the morning passed she tried not to watch the customers who stopped at the boys’ stall.

By midday, when the stalls were to end, the girls had sold most of their flowers and the boys all of their vegetables. Betty, Jocelyn and the other children crowded around while Miss Shaw counted the change from their money containers.

‘Well, that’s sixteen shillings and five pence in the first one,’ Miss Shaw said once she’d finished sorting through the coins in the girls’ jar. ‘Dorothy, you remember that for me – sixteen and five.’

‘Sixteen and five,’ Dorothy repeated.

‘Good. And now the second one…’ She tipped the second jar of change onto the table with a clatter and began sifting through it quickly, muttering to herself. ‘Twelve, fourteen, sixteen… sixteen and six, seventeen… that’s eighteen and nine pence, twenty and six, that’s twenty-two shillings… twenty-three shillings and six pence altogether.’

‘Yes!’ said Harry Holthouse. ‘Loads more than the girls. I told you we’d make the most, didn’t I, Betty?’

Betty pressed her lips together and tried to ignore him.

‘Now,’ Miss Shaw said, ‘that was – how much in the first jar, Dorothy? Sixteen and five? So that’s twenty-three shillings and six pence plus sixteen shillings and five pence… that’s thirty-nine shillings eleven.’

‘And we’ve done the most for the war effort,’ said Harry. ‘The boys have done the most.’

‘Now Harry, that’s quite enough,’ said Miss Shaw. ‘You’ve all done very well. Thirty-nine shillings eleven. That’s almost forty shillings. If we’d made one penny more that would have been enough to support two prisoners of war.’

One penny more… Into Betty’s head came the thought of the penny the plump lady had given her – the penny still sitting in her pocket. She slipped her hand down and closed it around the coin. One penny more would give them forty shillings: enough to support two prisoners of war. Enough to support both Jack Hunter’s father and Les, or two other men lucky enough to receive the parcels that would be bought for them with this money.

‘Miss Shaw,’ Betty said, bringing the penny out of her pocket, ‘I’d like to buy something from our flower stall, please.’

‘Oh,’ said Miss Shaw, ‘of course, Betty.’

Betty walked over to the trestle table and looked at the flowers that hadn’t been sold.  They were slightly wilted now, and most of them cost more than a penny. She had just decided she would have to be content with some droopy daisies when she spied a heap of little white packets – the flower seeds Peggy had been selling. Betty picked up one of the packets and saw that on the front in uneven cursive was written “Sweet pea seeds, twenty a penny”. She smiled. They didn’t have any sweet peas in their garden, but she was sure her mother would like some. She took the small packet back to her classmates and handed her penny to Miss Shaw.

‘Why thank you, Betty,’ Miss Shaw said, ‘that was very thoughtful of you.’

The penny landed on the mound of coins with a tinkle, and Betty felt a surge of pride. She knew one penny wasn’t much. It wouldn’t win the war. But it was the best she could do, and her mother always said that doing your best was the important thing.

‘Well,’ said Miss Shaw, ‘that takes our count to forty shillings. Well done, children.’

Jocelyn nudged Betty and grinned. ‘Two whole prisoners of war,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Betty, slipping the seed packet into her pocket, ‘two whole prisoners of war.’

They made their way down the station platform towards home, knitting as they walked. The packet of seeds was rattling in Betty’s pocket, and although she knew she wouldn’t be buying sweets today she was sure to get some for her birthday. Just at the moment she didn’t care what people thought of her or her father; she had done her bit for the war effort today.

‘Well,’ Betty said with a smile, ‘that Harry Holthouse can’t talk now. He didn’t spend any of his own money at the stall, did he?’

‘No,’ said Jocelyn as she tried to untangle her wool. ‘And you know, whatever he says about his beastly old vegetables, flowers are so much cheerful-er.’

That night Yared dreamt of knitted socks, fighter planes and school children who threw giant flowers at each other.