I searched for something to say. We’d had letters to Yours Cheerfully from war widows, women who were struggling with the unspeakable pain of loss, and some who were now struggling in very different circumstances, but no one had ever spelt it out so starkly. And there I was blithely suggesting Anne could just go and work part time. I searched for something to say.
“I’m the one who should be sorry, Anne,” I said. “That was stupid of me.”
“Don’t worry,” Anne said, leaning forward and patting my hand. “You can’t know everything.”
“Well, I jolly well should know these things,” I said. “I work for a women’s problem page, for goodness’ sake.”
Anne shrugged. “Chandlers doesn’t have part-time workers anyway. But let’s not talk about me. I’m more worried about Irene finding someone to look after the girls, or at least a nursery for Enid. But she hasn’t a chance. Nurseries don’t fit in with our hours.”
Before I could find out more, Anne stood up and looked for the friends she had arranged to come and talk to me during their break. Spotting them, she waved vigorously, and a small group of women hurried across the canteen.
“Here they come,” she said. “Now then, I’ll let you have a good chat before I mention Irene. I want you to get a decent view of this place, but if we start off by talking about her being in trouble, you’ll end up thinking we all hate it, which wouldn’t be fair. And you wouldn’t have much to write in your article either,” she said, now smiling. “We can’t have that.”
I quickly agreed and thought how lucky I had been to meet Anne. She was one of the most generous people I knew.
While we had been talking, the room had begun to fill up. Large groups of women in their brown work coats and overalls streamed in for their lunch breaks. The huge canteen was now a hubbub of noise as women put bags on chairs or tables and then grabbed trays and joined the queues for a hot dinner, standing in line stretching their arms and moving their shoulders after working in the same position for hours.
“Girls, this is Miss Emmeline Lake, from Woman’s Friend,” said Anne, becoming rather formal. “Emmeline, this is Betty, whom I’ve mentioned, and these are my friends Violet and Maeve. We all work together.”
“Hello,” I said as we shook hands. “Do call me Emmy. Has Anne volunteered you all for this? It’s not too late to back out.” I gave them what I hoped was a reassuring smile.
“Oh no,” said Betty. With her brown hair and dark eyes, she could have been Anne’s sister. “We don’t mind at all. We’ve never been in a magazine before.”
“I hope I won’t say the wrong thing,” said Violet.
“You always say the wrong thing,” said Maeve, and the girls laughed.
“It’s all right, Violet,” I said. “So do I.”
Everyone laughed again, and with the ice broken, we went off to get some food.
As we queued up, Maeve gave a running commentary of the ups and downs of the menu. “Avoid the Scotch broth,” she said, pulling a face. “The greens are nice enough, but if there’s sprouts, they’ll be like bullets. They do a good steak and kidney pud, and you get loads of potatoes if you ask nicely.”
I hadn’t had kidneys in ages, and at three courses for a shilling, it was nice to see something to be cheerful about after my conversation with Anne. I glanced at the posters that lined the walls, advertising lunchtime concerts in the canteen.
“We had Arthur Askey last week,” said Betty, noticing me looking. “He’s even smaller than you’d think. But he did make us laugh. I wish we could get Gracie Fields, though.”
“Or Ambrose and His Orchestra,” said Maeve.
“You’d never fit them all in,” said Violet. “Remember when we had those jugglers? One of them kept falling off the side of the stage. They had to pretend it was part of the act.”
The conversation turned to our favourite performers, and within minutes we had started on our loaded-up trays and were chatting, with any nervousness now gone. Workers’ Playtime started playing out of some loudspeakers, and the tunes added to the feeling of not having to do or say anything the “right way.”
I had out my notebook, although everyone seemed keener to ask questions about Woman’s Friend.
“We’ve all started reading it since we met Anne,” said Violet.
“Viyyy,” interrupted Anne. “What did we say?”
“Oh, bother,” said Violet, “I told you it would be me. Sorry, Emmy, we promised to tell you we’d all been reading it for ages.” Violet was clearly the youngest of the friends and seemed quite happy in her role as scatterbrain.
“Not at all,” I said. “I don’t want you to think you have to.”
“Oh no,” said Vi, poking an errant curl back under her yellow headscarf, “we really enjoy it. It’s not half as old-fashioned as I’d thought.”
Anne shook her head in dismay.
“We are proper readers, honestly,” said Maeve, looking at me sincerely through her glasses. “Are you allowed to tell us about the problem page? We’re all dying to know about it.”
“I’ll say,” said Vi. “Do people ever write back? I’d like to know what happened to the girl who was having the lodger’s baby.”
“Or the woman whose husband went off with her friend?”
Now they were all firing questions at me. Half the time, they said, they were convinced that the letters printed in Yours Cheerfully had been sent in by people they knew.
“I’m ever so pleased you like it,” I said. “But honestly, I want to talk about you.” I looked up at the big clock on the wall by the window. “Tell me anything you like. What made you choose working here?”
Encouraged by Anne, the four women began to tell me their stories.
They had all started their jobs in the last few months and agreed that it felt wrong if you weren’t doing something as part of the war effort. Maeve had fancied joining the Auxiliary Territorial Service, but didn’t want to leave home, so as she had three brothers in the army, munitions work was the least she could do. Betty said she was bored of working in an office so had decided to apply to Chandlers rather than wait to be called up and run the risk of getting sent to the back of beyond. Violet wanted to work and save up for when her husband came home. She was nineteen, and they had got married last year. Now her husband was somewhere near Singapore. Violet carried a letter from him in her handbag, in which he’d said how proud of her he was for pulling her weight.
“I don’t mind the long hours,” Violet said. “But I wish I didn’t spend three hours a day on the bus.”
“Especially when Betty starts going on about politics,” added Maeve, giving Betty a nudge with her elbow.
Betty grinned. “I was only saying I thought it was about time Mr. Churchill had a lady MP in the War Cabinet and this old bloke in front got all funny and told me to be quiet.”
She looked entirely undaunted.
“I don’t think it helped when you said, ‘Put a sock in it, Grandad,’ ” said Maeve, deadpan. “But I agree with Violet. It is a long day.”
I noted it down.
“Is there anything else that’s hard, apart from the work itself, of course?” I asked. It was a leading question, but I was interested to know if everything was quite as wonderful as Mr. Terry had made out. “I won’t put it in the article.”
There was a pause as the women glanced at each other. Then Betty spoke first. “I’ll tell you what makes me peeved,” she said. “And that’s the men getting paid more than us for doing the same work. I don’t think that’s fair.”
“They don’t have to do all the shopping and cooking at home either,” said Maeve, scraping the last bit of sponge out of her bowl. “But that’s never going to change. Personally, I’d rather not work at weekends because of the kids, but as my husband said in one of his letters, they don’t get weekends off in Libya either.” She looked philosophical. “So that’s what I tell the children. ‘If your dad’s got to work weekends to win the war, then so do I to make sure he’s got enough guns to kill all the baddies.’ ”
The Ministry of Labour didn’t mention this in their adverts.
“We aren’t moaning,” said Maeve quickly as she noticed me listening intently. “It has to be done.”
“Of course,” I said.
“I can’t really complain,” said Betty. “I’m single and live in digs, so I don’t have to do much. The others have to fit in loads more than me.”
“And old Rice Pudding is all right, really,” said Violet, meaning Mr. Rice.
“Don’t say that to Irene Barker,” said Anne, who had been quiet up until now. “We were with him just now when he spotted the children.”
Everyone looked at her with concern. Clearly word hadn’t reached the whole of Shed Twelve yet.
“Why didn’t you say?” said Violet.
“Poor Irene,” said Maeve. “What happened?”
To a chorus of sympathy, Anne told them the little that we had seen.
“It’s just not fair,” said Betty. “She’s been so unlucky to get caught.”
“Do other people do it too?” I said, perhaps a little too quickly.
There was a moment’s hesitation.
“It’s nobody’s fault,” said Maeve firmly. “If you can’t get someone to look after them, what can you do? I’m lucky mine are old enough to fend for themselves. Not,” she added, “that I like leaving a thirteen-year-old in charge all the time.”
“Isn’t there a Woman’s Welfare Officer?” I asked. “One who might understand? Irene can’t be the only one here struggling like this.”
“You’re joking,” said Maeve. “I don’t think the management realise that we have different lives to men. I don’t mean to be rude. As Vi says, Mr. Rice is decent enough when he’s not in a grump, but Mr. Terry’s the one who decides, and everyone knows he prefers to have girls here who don’t have kids.”
“Not that we ever see him,” said Betty. “Him and his big car. Flash Harry.” Then, as if she’d noticed the others looking downcast, she began singing to a George Formby tune.
He thinks we’re impressed
He’s bursting out his vest,
Mr. Terry, Rich from Jerry.
That’s Mr. Terry.
Violet joined in with the last line and everyone laughed, before looking round to make sure no one important had heard. I glanced over at Betty with renewed respect. I had the feeling she played up her role as the single girl with few responsibilities while actually trying to keep the others’ morale up.
The women were a good bunch all round, but it bothered me that if anything went wrong, Anne or Maeve might find themselves in the same jam as Irene Barker.
“What about nurseries?” I asked, following up on Anne’s earlier comment. “Not the normal ones, but the Government ones. We’re doing an article on them next week, as they’re crying out for people to work for them.”
“There’s your answer,” said Maeve. “Everyone wants us to come into munitions, but they haven’t thought it through. It took a petition to get mirrors in the Ladies’, and when they put them in, you’d have thought they’d given us each a gold clock. Blimey,” she added, “Emmy, you must think we’re a right bunch of whiners.”
“Not at all,” I said. “It’s really interesting.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Maeve. “But we’re not the only ones. My cousin works in munitions up past Birmingham and it’s the same there. As I say, they just haven’t thought things through.”
“Mind you,” said Anne, “I’m not sure a Government nursery is ready for my Ruby. Unless it’s run by the police.”
Everyone laughed, although no one actually disputed it, and I took the opportunity to ask how the children were. Anne had been right about not mentioning Irene Barker until I had got to know the others a little. The tone of our discussion had certainly changed.
Perhaps Anne was aware of this as she began to say how Ruby was keen on the neighbour’s rabbits and now wanted one of her own. Conversation became lighter again, and with more than enough food for thought on my part, I stopped asking questions and joined in with the chat.
As Workers’ Playtime came to an end with a song and then a cheering message from Vera Lynn, a piercing whistle sounded, which was the sign for everyone to go back to their work. Perfectly on cue, Mr. Rice appeared in the canteen. He was looking less apoplectic than when we had left him, although Anne and her friends stopped talking as soon as he came over.
“Well, ladies,” he said, “I hope you’ve given Miss Lake the information she needs.”
“Oh yes. Everyone has been enormously helpful,” I said, beaming at him. “They are an absolute credit. Mr. Terry must be very proud of such a committed workforce.”
Betty, who was sitting next to me, innocently smiled at Mr. Rice and started humming “Our Mr. Terry” under her breath. The rest of us tried to ignore her, although Violet looked as if she were going to burst.
“Indeed,” said Mr. Rice, in quite the most neutral voice I had ever heard. He took his fob watch out. “Isn’t your photographer supposed to be here soon?”
I said that he was due any minute now, as my new friends took the hint and began to gather up their trays. I knew they all wanted to find out about Irene.
I thanked them all profusely for their help. I had much to be grateful for. Anne and her friends had given me the sort of honest views I would never get from official information.
My challenge now was what to do with it.
As Anne and her friends left the canteen, Mr. Rice said he would show me back to reception to wait for the photographer.
“Mr. Rice,” I said as we walked back down the corridor, “what is your view on children in the factory?”
Mr. Rice looked at my notepad as my hand hovered over it, ready to write. “Are you from a women’s magazine or the Daily Herald?” he said shortly.
I softened my approach. “It’s just that shift work and all the travelling looks quite hard if you have a family?”
“That’s why conscription is for unmarried women,” said Mr. Rice, which was rich, seeing as Chandlers must have hundreds of mothers working right under his nose.
“But it’s not just about conscription, Mr. Rice, is it? A lot of married women have to work, don’t they? Especially if their husband has gone.” I thought of Anne. “And you’ve said yourself that they are really pulling their weight.”
I waited, hoping I hadn’t pushed my luck. I now knew full well that Mr. Terry had allowed my visit as he thought it would make Chandlers—and him—look good. I hadn’t been allowed in to ask difficult questions. More to the point, I didn’t want Mr. Rice thinking that Anne and her friends had been trying to use my interview to make any sort of demands. I thought quickly. “I don’t wish to speak out of turn,” I said before he could answer. “I’m just concerned about the children I saw.”
Mr. Rice sucked his teeth. Finally he spoke. “Miss Lake,” he said evenly, “all you need to tell your readers is that our sole aim is to do everything we can to help win the war, and that that is what we will do if more of them work for us and the other munitions factories. Now, after your photographer has finished, what time is your train?”
He hadn’t gone red and didn’t even sound cross. In fact he was peculiarly mild, considering the fury he’d been in earlier.
Then the penny dropped. This may have been my very first assignment, but I’d bet a week’s wages Mr. Rice had been speaking to Mr. Terry’s Public Relations Manager. Mr. Rice may not have been Mr. Terry’s biggest fan, but when it came to it, he was very much a company man. I felt like a rather green young boxer who had ambled into a ring unprepared.
Luckily, he hadn’t quite knocked me straight out. There would be lots more rounds to go.
“They’re every hour,” I said pleasantly. “But Mr. Terry said we would speak again.”
Mr. Rice looked at me as if I had said that the Factory Director had offered to buy me a pony.
“I think you’ve had your chance there,” he said. “He’s a very busy man.”
So much for Mr. Terry’s big show this morning.
“I quite understand,” I said smoothly. “You and the ladies have been more helpful than I can say.”
A phone rang, which was answered by Mrs. Noakes, who informed Mr. Rice that Security at the main gate needed him to come and sort out a funny-looking chap with a camera.
Mr. Rice made one of his hmmf noises and told me to come with him, so I dutifully followed as he began to talk about tool shops. My mind, however, had already turned to the article I was planning to write. What if Maeve was right and the women of Chandlers weren’t the only munition workers feeling the strain? I thought of Yours Cheerfully. There had certainly been letters about war work, but had I taken them seriously enough, or had I been concentrating too much on the lovelorn and romantically baffled?
Who exactly was I trying to help? The Ministry I was so desperate to impress, or the readers I had promised to do everything I could to support?
“Do you have what you need for your magazine now?” asked Mr. Rice.
“Very much so,” I said. “I have lots to be getting on with for now, thank you.”
I gave him my best professional yet approachable smile and said nothing more.
I was thinking what to do with the information I was sure the Ministry would want me to leave out.