The Allotment Girls

The fifth winter of the war had crawled in like a Limehouse fog, the coldest since it began, freezing lead pipes and turning the allotments into solid sheets of ice. There was little cause for merriment or cheer with the dawning of a new year, only weeks of back-breaking digging once the ice had thawed to keep the ground turned over. The girls were just heading there after work on a Thursday to discuss Annie’s plans for crop rotation, when Millie suddenly remembered something.

‘Oh, Mrs Frobisher wanted me to pop in and see her quickly. I’ll catch you up.’

‘Millie,’ said Annie tactfully, resting her hand on her pal’s swollen tummy. ‘Why don’t you get off home after you’ve seen Mrs F, and rest?’

‘Rest! Whatever for?’ she snapped. ‘I’m not dying, I’m expecting a baby!’

With that, she turned on her heel and hurried in the direction of the main office block. Honestly, she did wish people wouldn’t try to wrap her in cotton wool. At four months gone, she had never felt so well.

As she passed through reception, a familiar photograph pinned to the noticeboard drew her eye and she wandered over for a closer look.

‘I don’t believe it,’ she gasped, unpinning the notice with a trembling hand.

My wife and I would like to pass our gratitude to the workers of Bryant & May for the letter and handsome wreath which was delivered to our home, in time for the memorial service of our son, Pilot Samuel Taylor.

Your kind words and thoughts come as a great source of comfort during this time of mourning. Samuel greatly enjoyed his time spent helping to develop the Bryant & May allotments during his leave, and wrote often to tell us all about his admiration for the match girls and the friendships he had formed. We hope one day to visit and see the fruits of his labours.

Making the decision to hold a service, in which we honoured our beloved only son’s life was not an easy one, but in light of recent news, we felt it necessary as a means of accepting and coming to terms with our loss . . .

Tears streamed down Millie’s cheeks as she turned on her heel and took the stairs to Mrs Frobisher’s office two at a time.

The Welfare Officer was locking up her glass-fronted medicine cabinet and whirled round in shock when Millie burst through the door.

‘When were you going to tell me about this?’ Millie demanded, angrily brandishing the notice. ‘Or were you just hoping I wouldn’t see it? You had no right to keep news of his memorial from me.’ Even though privately Millie knew there was no way on earth she could have attended, it still hurt to have been deliberately kept in the dark.

‘Calm down, my dear,’ she soothed, rushing over and guiding Millie to a chair. ‘Please don’t upset yourself, it won’t do in your condition to be getting in a state.’

‘It’s a bit sodding late for that!’ she blazed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, and what do they mean, “in light of recent news”?’

‘That’s why I asked to see you,’ she said, drawing up a chair and tenderly taking Millie’s shaking hands in hers.

‘There’s no easy way to say this, but it seems that Samuel’s navigator astonished everyone by turning up out of the blue last month at the home of his station commander.’

‘He escaped capture and managed to walk and bicycle across France, quite an epic journey by all accounts . . .’

‘B-but surely that means there’s hope for Samuel too,’ Millie stuttered, feeling a brief jolt of joy.

‘I’m afraid that is an extremely remote possibility,’ Mrs Frobisher replied quietly. ‘The navigator reported that after they were hit by flak, he and the rest of the crew bailed out. Only Samuel remained. I’m told it’s protocol that the pilot is always the last to leave.’

‘Protocol or not, Samuel would never have deserted his crew,’ Millie said loyally.

‘Soon after the navigator’s parachute went up, he saw the plane hit the ground and explode in a fireball . . .’

‘He didn’t see Samuel bail out . . . so, so you see, my dear, to cling to hope in those circumstances is, dare I say it, futile.’

Millie felt her anger deflate, to be replaced by an aching chasm of sadness. The last shred of hope, the hope that had sustained her these past three months, was now dead.

‘And the memorial,’ Millie whispered, ‘why didn’t you tell me? I’d have liked to have gone.’

‘Oh, my dear, do you really think you could have turned up there?’ she questioned delicately. She laid a tender hand on Millie’s tummy. ‘I think it would have been . . . inappropriate.’

‘You’re right,’ Millie said, regaining her composure. ‘Well, thank you for telling me.’

She wasn’t aware of leaving Mrs Frobisher’s office. Her body seemed to move of its own accord. All she could see was one image. Samuel pinioned by the G-force of his descent, desperately struggling to free himself as the burning aircraft corkscrewed to earth. She closed her eyes, but in the sudden darkness the ferocity of the flames just glowed brighter.

As she walked outside to the yard and hurried to the allotments, the icy air hit her lungs, causing her to gasp, but the blast of air acted like a wake-up call. There and then, Millie made a decision. If she allowed it to, this news could destroy her. She could not buckle and surrender. She had to survive this. For Samuel and their unborn baby. As the allotment hove into sight, Millie made a snap decision not to tell the girls. She couldn’t stand to see their pity, for she knew it would cause her to cry. And she worried that once her tears began, they might never stop.

Annie was just in the middle of explaining her ambitious crop-rotation plan when Millie joined them at the yard allotment.

‘There you are, Millie,’ said Annie impatiently, looking up from her Allotment & Garden Guide. ‘Everything all right?’

‘Tickety boo,’ Millie muttered. ‘Mrs F just wanted to know if I’d had my extra ration of orange juice.’

‘Good,’ Annie replied. ‘I was just saying how, on plot A, we’ll have the green vegetables. Plot B is peas, beans, onions and leeks, and C, potatoes and root crops . . .’

‘Sorry, Annie, I’m just so tired,’ she replied, rubbing her face. ‘Also, I can’t stop thinking about The Swan.’

Earlier that day, the chairman had gathered them all in the yard to break the news that the Spitfire they had paid for had been shot down by enemy fighters while carrying out a sweep from Cassel to Hazebrouck.

‘He was Samuel’s pal,’ said Millie, cradling her tummy. ‘Poor bugger, just trained as a lawyer before war broke out. He was going to look into my marriage, see if there was any way . . .’ She broke off, looking like she was fighting off tears. ‘Oh, what’s it matter now, anyway.’

‘Yeah, don’t worry about me, girl,’ she replied, nailing on a smile. ‘I’m gonna be fine. I have to be! Got this little one to think about now, ain’t I?’

Rose smiled and reached out to touch Millie’s burgeoning belly. She was over four months gone now, and Pearl couldn’t remember when she last saw a woman suit child-bearing so well. Mrs Frobisher had given permission for Millie to carry on working until she could no longer reach the conveyor belt, which seemed to suit her just fine.

‘He’s still buying it, if that’s what you mean, ignorant chump! Even better, he’s leaving me well alone. Thinks if we have sex, it’ll harm the baby.’

‘And who will he harm when he finds out the truth?’ Annie demanded angrily, picking up her pitchfork and turning the compost so Millie wouldn’t see her expression.

Annie had made it perfectly clear she didn’t agree with her nan’s idea of tricking Curly into believing the baby was his, and used every opportunity to voice her concerns.

‘How can you be so sure?’ she asked, throwing down the pitchfork. It landed with the prongs sticking up in the air.

‘You should pick that up, a good gardener takes care of their tools, as you’re so fond of telling us,’ Millie muttered.

‘Sod the pitchfork, Millie,’ Annie snapped. ‘Have you forgotten who you’re dealing with?’

‘’Course not. He’s my husband, but like I keep on saying, what choice have I got?’

‘But it’s a lie,’ Annie persisted. ‘What’ll you tell your child when he or she grows up? Daddy was a pilot you had sex with in the potting shed?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, Millie,’ Annie sighed. ‘That wasn’t fair. But I’m only saying all of this because I care about you, and I’m worried.’

‘I know you are, Annie, but trust me, this is the only way. Besides, show me a mother and I’ll show you a liar,’ she added sourly.

‘Pearl, what do you think?’ Annie demanded. ‘Sometimes I feel like you’re the only voice of reason here.’

Pearl was grateful for the shadow of the factory walls, which plunged her face into darkness. She thought of the Curly she knew, the one who had wormed out her secret and turned it to his advantage. The man who had taken such pains to find out the identity of her husband and even now was using it to blackmail her into keeping quiet about the stolen goods he’d hidden at the allotment.

‘Who deserves everything he’s got coming?’ rang a voice out of the darkness. ‘Not me, I hope.’

‘William,’ Rose grinned, grateful for the interruption. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Just thought you girls might be in need of some more manure, especially as you’re digging over. Courtesy of my old girls.’

‘That’s kind of you, William,’ Annie smiled. ‘But we were just thinking about heading home, it’s getting too dark to work now.’

‘Plus it’s freezing,’ Rose added. ‘And the skin on my hands is peeling off like paintwork.’

‘I don’t know, these southern softies,’ Pearl said teasingly. ‘Here, let me help yer, William.’

She could see the lad flush as he set down his wheelbarrow. Pearl smiled; she could tell he was soft on her and a little kindness went a long way at that age.

‘Very well, I’ll tell Nan you’re coming. We’ll wait for you before we eat tea.’

Pearl and William spent a companionable twenty minutes forking pigs’ droppings onto the compost and chattering about this and that, before he picked up his wheelbarrow.

‘I’m chuffed, but don’t you think I’m a bit old for yer? You’re only fourteen.’

‘Fifteen now, and I’m going places,’ he said proudly. ‘Got my own pig club, and I’m thinking of expanding.’

‘Oh, William,’ she said gently, suppressing the smile she could feel twitching at the corner of her mouth. ‘One day you’ll make some lucky girl very happy.’

‘I shan’t give up,’ he vowed, picking up his wheelbarrow and pushing it out of the allotment. He turned at the gate and threw her a cheeky grin. ‘You’re everything a man could want.’

Once he’d gone, Pearl sat down on the bench, lit a cigarette and allowed her thoughts to wander. She shouldn’t have said anything earlier about Curly. It wasn’t her business. She had already told Elsie too much about her past. Not that she regretted it. It had felt good telling someone, and Elsie had been the right person to confide in.

An iron fist in a velvet glove, was Annie’s nan, but still, Pearl had come here to make a clean break. As she smoked, her gaze travelled up the steep factory walls to the dark office windows above. All the secretaries who worked there had gone home, and, with a jolt, Pearl realized that with the exception of the guard on the front and back gates, she was all alone. Even the boys in the sawmill had clocked off. It was unnerving being alone in a place that usually teemed with people and noise. To see it deserted like this gave her the collywobbles.

In the distance, she heard an owl hooting. Out of nowhere, the blackout seemed to have swallowed Bow whole. Darkness oozed about her. The wind changed direction and the stench of something unspeakable drifted from the whalebone factory in St Stephen’s Road, all the more potent in the darkness. It was time to get home.

Mashing out her cigarette, she stood up, and for a moment felt disorientated. Where was the path leading out of the allotment? The darkness of the tenebrous blackout was so heavy, it seemed to bleed into the factory walls.

Then she heard it. A rustle followed by a tapping. Something was moving through the allotment. Her heart began to pick up speed and, rummaging in her bag, she found a torch, its beam masked by tissue paper to comply with the blackout. It threw out a slim band of light as she cast it over the allotment, hoping to see a fox, or even a hedgehog. Nothing. Just damp black earth and beyond, the faint outline of a giant stack of logs.

Suddenly a conversation popped into her head and the memory made her smile in relief. Ted and some of the fire brigade reckoned that when they worked a night shift, you could tell the prostitutes patrolling down Fairfield Road looking for trade in the blackout, because they hammered tacks into their heels. That was it. Pip was fast asleep in his kennel; she could hear his faint breath nearby and if it hadn’t woken him, he must be used to the sound. ‘Daft cow,’ she scolded herself. ‘You’d think after five years of war, you’d be used to the blackout by now.’

Picking up her bag, she followed the faint beam of torchlight along the narrow path between the dug-up plots.

She reached the fence circling the allotment and breathed a sigh of relief as she pushed open the gate. She could run from here to the back gates of the factory, and then she was out on the street. But even though she’d opened the gate, there was something blocking her way. Groping with her hand in front of her she felt something cold and wooden. Strange. She shone her torch on it and jumped back.

It was a long wooden yardstick with the brush head pulled off and both ends lashed with leather. The breath froze in her throat.

Her head started to spin. Panic bloomed in her chest. The coincidence was too much. She had never seen anything like it at the allotment. She had only ever seen it before in her husband’s hand.

His face drew up out of the darkness in front of her. No longer a memory, but the man himself. The dark muscled mass of his body edged closer until she could see the whites of his eyes, smell the sour scent of him even over the stench of blubber.

Later, she wondered why she hadn’t run like the wind; could she have avoided the chaos and horror? But in truth, she knew she had been paralysed by fear, absolute mouth-parching terror, which allowed him to run his hands up her rigid body. Her flesh shrank.

‘Oh, my Pearl,’ he said in an awful whisper, gripping the collar of her coat. ‘Why did you go and leave? You should’ve stayed, we could’ve worked it out, but you didn’t, did you?’

‘I can’t let that go, I’m afraid,’ he went on, stroking her cheek. ‘Silly, silly girl.’

‘One of my pals saw you in the paper, selling tomatoes, outside Bryant & May. Said you worked here. Imagine my surprise that you’d left Liverpool without even telling me.’

‘Which is funny, ’cause everyone else seemed to think you died in the bombings. But I knew better, see.’

Sour spittle flecked her face as he pushed the back of her head so that their noses touched.

‘You. Are. My. Wife,’ he said slowly, drawing out every syllable. ‘You belong to me.’

Pearl whimpered as his fist smashed into the side of her skull, felling her to the ground with one blow. Through double vision, she saw him reach for the yardstick. His ‘attitude adjuster’, he called it.

She rolled into the foetal position, and it all came flooding back. Confusion. Straining muscles. Sobbing breath. A roaring in her head as he brought down the stick again and again on her prone body . . .

‘That’s for leaving,’ she heard him say dimly as a searing pain streaked across her abdomen. The world was going dark and fuzzy now and she waited for the merciful moment when unconsciousness would come.

Suddenly, he pulled back and howled in pain. Pearl opened her eyes, confused. Pip had his jaws clamped round his ankle.

‘Get this bloody mongrel off me,’ he roared, pulling a blade from his pocket.

‘No!’ she rasped, struggling to sit up as he sliced the air around Pip’s head. Then his hand locked round the dog’s neck. She heard a whine as John’s heavy boot smashed into Pip’s ribcage, caught the flash of steel as he pulled back his knife.

Lurching to her feet, she threw herself at him. Her body made contact with his with a thud and he fell, landing with a heavy, wet-sounding grunt, followed by the rushing of breath.

For a moment, there was perfect stillness as he lay sprawled on the damp earth. A look of profound surprise crossed his features, and a minute later, a trickle of dark blood seeped from one nostril. Beneath his head protruded the prongs of Annie’s discarded pitchfork.

Pearl’s cry elongated into the night air, then the giant walls of the factory seemed to loom over her and buckle, as though the sky was caving in. Blackness.

When Pearl came to her senses, she was sitting by the hearth in Elsie and Annie’s, covered in a blanket. A glass of brandy had been pressed into her rigid hand. She was trembling. Violently.

‘Pip . . .’ she groaned, as a red-hot poker of pain seared through her ribs.

‘What happened, Pearl?’ Annie asked. ‘You turned up with Pip as white as a wedding.’

‘I-I can’t really remember. Just that John . . . He found me. He . . . He was going to hurt Pip. He hit me, with the attitude adjuster.’

Her voice trailed off. She remembered running, and now she was here. Everything between was confusion and darkness. The words came out of her in a tremor.

‘Because I wanted to leave it all behind. When the Matchy was destroyed, John was away at army training camp. I hoped he’d believe I was killed that night in Liverpool.’

Suddenly she saw his face, cold and white against the bare earth of the allotment.

Her mouth was a tight scarlet slash in the pale pallor of her face as the awful reality began to dawn on her.

‘I think the question is, what are we going to do?’ Millie asked, looking tremulously around the group.

‘Annie and I will go back. Millie and Rose, you’re to stay here and look after Pearl.’

‘No,’ said Pearl, groaning as she struggled to her feet. ‘I’m coming. I have to see for myself.’

‘Very well,’ said Elsie, and, fetching her coat, she turned to a stricken-looking Rose and Millie.

It was approaching 10 p.m. by the time Annie, Pearl and Elsie made their way past the night guard, who fortunately Annie had kept sweet with extra tomatoes last summer. How she managed to stay so calm when she told him they’d forgotten to lock the tools away was beyond her. She’d only seen one dead body before, and that was a dismembered torso strewn amid the rubble of a bombsite after the first night’s bombing. No face. No identity.

How she hoped it was all a grotesque mistake. That Pearl had got it all wrong. That somehow John had picked himself up and even now was on his way back to Liverpool. But as they drew closer to the allotment, their breath ragged in the frozen night air, she saw the dark outline of a body slumped in the ditch she had dug earlier.

Annie swung her torch beam onto his face and a cry seemed to burst out of her. He didn’t look like the man she had seen in the wedding photo. His face was like a waxwork, so still; the blood had frozen on his cheek, the pitchfork she had so casually discarded earlier appeared to be embedded into the back of his skull. His tongue lolled pink and lifeless from the side of his mouth.

Pearl whimpered, turned a queer greenish-white and ran to the gate of the allotment where she threw up violently. Only Elsie remained calm, a look of resolute determination on her face.

Annie drew a shaky breath, and when Pearl returned, she turned to her nan. ‘What . . . What’ll we do? Ought we to call the police?’

‘Elsie, this is my mess,’ Pearl protested. ‘You go and I’ll call the police. I’ll tell them it was an accident.’

‘Oh, my dear girl. Do you really think they’ll see it that way?’ Elsie said slowly. ‘You’ve a lot to learn if you think you can just walk away from this.’

‘You ran away from your marriage, led people to believe you were dead, and you expect people to believe it was an accident? Without a single witness save for a dog to back you up? Setting aside the fact that the army has lost a soldier. This is war, dear girl. You’ll not be treated with compassion.’

‘You’re right,’ Pearl wept, her face ash pale and wet with tears. ‘I’ll hang. I’ll bloody hang.’ She started to quiver and sank down on the earth beside her husband.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, placing her hand softly on his cheek. ‘May God forgive me.’

‘Stop that,’ she ordered, shaking her. ‘He was a monster and the world’s a better place without his kind.’

‘Now, girls,’ she said, turning to them both. ‘We bury his body deep. Then we never speak another word of this again. It’s done.’

Annie nodded with a feeling of utter unreality as Elsie turned to the shed and began to hand out shovels. And there and then, with fog licking their faces, they began to dig.

It could have been ten minutes, it could have been an hour, but finally the grisly job was done. His body was buried in the yard allotment. Slap bang in the middle of the East End’s oldest factory, John Brunt was consigned to his final resting place. The gradual pull and suck of East End roots and microscopic creatures would slowly make him at one with the earth. The thought made another wave of panic begin to bloom inside Annie. What had they done? Her head was swimming with exhaustion and she was in a state of lassitude. It had been a night of cold, creeping despair. A night none of them would ever be able to erase from their minds.

Annie drew Pearl into her arms as she began to sob like her heart had broken wide open. Elsie simply stood and stared at the freshly dug and covered ground. Over Pearl’s quivering shoulder, Annie gazed at the elderly matriarch. Maybe she was used to death, having laid out the bodies of countless dead in the neighbourhood over the years, but Annie couldn’t fathom where she got her strength from. How she wished she could see into her nan’s thoughts, but she was afraid to. Afraid of what she might see there. Thoughts, bleak and confused, swirled through her mind as they traipsed from the allotment, earth ingrained beneath their fingernails.

Over the next three days, Pearl smelt and saw death everywhere. It was in the lorries full of bones heading to the soap works, in the clammy stench of the whalebone factory. It hung like a dreadful reminder over everything, clinging to her hair and her skin. Every time she closed her eyes, the image of her husband’s lifeless body was burnt onto her retina, dancing tauntingly through her mind.

On the fourth day, a Monday, she came down with a fever. Elsie took control once more, packed Annie off to work with instructions to tell Mrs Frobisher that she would not be in all week.

As Pearl’s body burnt like fire, Elsie carefully drew back her shift and inhaled sharply as she saw the purple and black bruises that covered her torso like a grotesque tattoo. A sympathetic doctor was called.

‘Four broken ribs, concussion and shock,’ he declared. ‘If it were anyone but you looking after her, Mrs Trinder, I’d have had her admitted to hospital immediately. You must bring down this fever,’ he instructed, discreetly asking no more questions and waiving his fee.

Elsie tended to her like a new-born. No one was allowed in the room but she, with Annie banished to the parlour floor with Pip for comfort. She swaddled Pearl’s body with cooling poultices, fed her tiny sips of bone broth and mopped her brow with cooling orange-flower water.

By Thursday, the fever had broken and Elsie wrapped her in blankets and threw open the windows. She allowed the girls to visit after their shift had finished.

‘Oh, Pearl,’ said Rose, bursting into tears as she sat down gingerly on the side of the bed. ‘We’ve been so worried about you.’

‘Just a bit. How you feeling, sweetheart?’ said Millie, clutching her lower back as she eased herself down into a chair by the bed. Annie hung back nervously in the doorway, her face pale against the smattering of apricot freckles over the bridge of her nose.

Pearl and Annie locked eyes, both of them bound by the unspeakable horrors they had witnessed one week previously.

‘Please, come and sit down, Annie,’ Pearl whispered. ‘There are things I need to explain.’

Pearl found that once she started, the words tumbled out of her. This time, she left nothing out. She told them the real reason she had fled her home. She described the brutality she suffered at her husband’s hands, and his sadistic mind games, in unflinching terms.

‘I knew there was more than you were letting on,’ said Millie, shaking her head. ‘I’m just so sorry we didn’t ask more. We’ve let you down.’

‘No,’ Pearl protested weakly. ‘I wasn’t ready to tell anyone. Except your nan, Annie, she guessed.’

‘Soon as we met. It sounds like a cliché but I just kept hoping he’d change, made excuses for his behaviour. The Depression made it worse. He got laid off at the docks. I felt so sorry for him, which is why I agreed to marry him.’

‘The day we married, even, Rose,’ Pearl said, almost in a trance, and Annie’s mind wandered to the wedding portrait she had stumbled upon like a thief.

‘Because some men only feel alive if they’re controlling women,’ Millie interjected.

‘Millie’s right,’ said Pearl. ‘It was all about control. He beat me because he was angry, unemployed, sometimes just because it was Tuesday . . . Who knows, Rose? He’s a sick man. Was a sick man.’

‘Was there no one you could talk to?’ Annie said, feeling a tear break and trickle down her cheek.

‘It wasn’t that simple. He used to have this stick, he called it his attitude adjuster. He used it whenever he felt I was getting too big for my boots. Kept one in every room in the house, so he didn’t have to go too far to give me a beating.’

Pearl groaned as she tried to shift herself under the covers. ‘It didn’t ’arf do some damage.’

‘He told me I was worthless and I believed him. Until I came here. Until I met all of you.’

Drawing in a big shaky breath, she turned to the girls. ‘Working here at the allotment with you has been the happiest time of my life. I’m just so sorry you’ve all been caught up in this.’

The girls wrapped their arms around her, as firmly as they dared, as the tears splashed down her pale cheeks.

‘Well, I think Elsie’s right,’ said Millie, drawing back. ‘You didn’t kill him. It was a dreadful accident.’ She glanced round at the girls. ‘Let this be an end to it. Pearl’s suffered enough.’

Only Annie didn’t look convinced. However you dressed it up, a man was dead and they had buried him in the allotment like a bulb.

The door swung open and Elsie walked in with a tray. The scent of chicken broth and fresh-baked bread filled the room.

Annie looked at her crisp and capable nan, gently setting down the tray before plumping Pearl’s pillow. The sharpness of her voice in the allotment was all gone now, no trace of the woman who so adeptly buried bodies and scandal.

‘Not a moment more, you need rest,’ she said, quietly shutting the door behind her. Pearl had made up her mind to tell Millie everything about Curly, about the blackmail and the stolen goods he had buried in the allotment. She was done with secrets and, besides, what could Curly do to her now?

‘What you choose to do with this information is up to you, Millie,’ she said, when she had finished. ‘But he’s your husband, and you have a right to know.’