Chapter 4
Bobby wasted no time in bearing the sombre document to Mary in the kitchen at Moorside. It was she who had always been the girls’ confidante, and was the closest thing they had to a mother.
‘Her will!’ Mary said as she looked over the document. ‘What on earth can have prompted her to do that?’
‘I was hoping you might know.’
‘Nay, she’s noan said a word to me.’
Bobby was silent while she wrestled with nausea. The kitchen was filled with what under other circumstances would be the delicious fragrance of cinnamon and candied fruits, but right now it wasn’t agreeing with her at all.
‘She must believe she’s ill,’ Bobby said when she had the sick feeling under control. She pulled up a chair next to Mary at the kitchen table.
‘Nonsense,’ Mary said stoutly. ‘I’ve never seen such a healthy specimen of a bairn.’
‘She looked ever so tired today, Mary.’
‘Oh, that’s nobbut her age.’
‘Well she’s obviously worried about something. And Jess seemed so frightened for her.’
Mary smoothed Florrie’s will down in front of her. ‘She’d have left me her mother’s pearls,’ she murmured. ‘The most precious thing she has. My poor lamb.’
‘She can’t really be sickening for something, can she?’
‘It’ll be nowt. The child’s always had too much imagination for her own good. You remember how she was about our Charlie flying, half convinced she could see into the future.’
‘What should we do?’
‘I’ll speak to the girl. Happen she’ll open up to me. And if not… we’ll have to talk to her father about calling the doctor, I suppose.’
They were interrupted by the arrival of Lilian.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said. ‘I took Annie out for a walk. Tony’s got her now so I’m ready to do my share of the work.’ She glanced at the neglected mince pie ingredients. ‘Not that there’s a lot of it going on. Is everything all right?’
Mary beckoned her over. ‘Look at this.’
‘What is it?’ Lilian asked, approaching the table.
‘Young Florrie made it out. Her will.’
‘Her will! Whatever for?’
‘That’s what we can’t work out,’ Bobby said. ‘She won’t talk to anyone about it. Jess is in on the secret, but Florrie made her swear on the Bible not to say anything. The poor love seems to believe she might be dreadfully ill.’
Lilian’s gaze skimmed the list. ‘What would make her believe that, do you think?’
‘I’m not sure. She seemed tired when I saw her, and a little moody, but vigorous enough otherwise. Jess told me she’d woken to find her sister crying a few times recently though.’
Mary was looking seriously concerned now, and Bobby went to put an arm around her.
‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ she said gently. ‘Like you said, anything can seem like the end of the world when you’re a bairn.’
‘I was just thinking of the poor child’s mother,’ Mary murmured. ‘I don’t believe George has ever said what illness took her off. Do you girls know?’
Lilian looked up from perusing the list.
‘It was a cancer of some kind,’ she said quietly. ‘Poor Rose. It sounds as though she just wasted away after Jess was born.’
‘Could Florrie be thinking of that?’ Mary suggested. ‘She’s old enough to remember her mother getting ill, even if only vaguely.’
‘Lil, what do you think?’ Bobby asked. ‘You see more of them than I do.’
Since Mary had joined the ranks of the Women’s Voluntary Services, which claimed much of her time during the week, Lilian had taken over collecting the girls from school and minding them until their father came home from work.
‘Hmm.’ Lilian was still staring at the list. ‘I suppose… I suppose someone’s had a talk with her, haven’t they?’
‘I tried to, yes, but she wouldn’t tell me what was wrong,’ Bobby said.
‘I mean the talk. You remember how Mam sent Dad out with the boys and sat us down to explain everything, when we were ten or so?’
Bobby turned to Mary as realisation dawned.
‘Jess told me Florrie had woken her in the night for help with something,’ Bobby said quietly. ‘And when I saw her in her bedroom, she was filling a basket with washing.’
‘Oh my word.’ Mary pressed her forehead. ‘Oh, the poor motherless thing. Of course she thinks she’s dying, if no one’s had a talk with her about her monthlies.’
‘Poor Jess too,’ Lilian said with feeling. ‘She must have been scared out of her wits to find her sister bleeding.’
‘I don’t suppose it occurred to their father to talk to them,’ Bobby said. ‘What an idiot I’ve been! It’s natural, growing up without a mother, that some facts of life might have passed them by.’
Mary groaned. ‘It’s my fault. It’s me they look to to fill their mam’s place, but the only experience I’ve had of raising bairns that age was with Charlie. It never occurred to me that some woman they trust ought to speak with them about it.’
‘One of us ought to put the poor child’s mind at rest right away, before she worries herself into a real illness.’
Mary shook her head. ‘No. I mean you’re right, Bobby, but George ought to be spoken with first. I’m sure he’ll be relieved to have one of us offer, but it isn’t right to be discussing the facts of life with his daughters without his knowledge.’
Lilian nodded. ‘That is true.’
‘He ought to be made aware of what his daughter’s going to need as well,’ Bobby observed. ‘Sanitary napkins and so forth. We can offer to buy them.’
‘He’s at home now,’ Lilian said. ‘I saw him when I was walking from the village.’
‘We should tackle him right away, before the girls lose any more sleep,’ Mary said decisively.
Bobby grimaced. ‘To talk about it with a man though. I feel like I’d want the earth to swallow me.’
The way Mary’s cheeks coloured suggested that even the redoubtable old Daleswoman would find this difficult. However, she squared her shoulders. ‘For Florrie’s sake, I’ll force myself.’
Lilian rested a hand on Mary’s shoulder.
‘Let me go to him,’ she said quietly.
‘Could you do it?’
‘Perhaps it’s because George was the one to find me the night I nearly died in labour, but… yes, I believe I could. I mean I’m sure I’ll blush myself silly, but I won’t dry up. A father raising girls alone ought to know about these things.’
‘I could come with you, if Mary doesn’t mind deferring the baking for another hour,’ Bobby suggested.
‘He’ll be less embarrassed with only one of us,’ Lilian said.
‘I’ll call at the cow house and tuck some bunnies into my bag, then when I’ve spoken to George I can see Florrie.
It’s no bad thing for her to get the talk from a new mother.
I can help her understand that her monthlies are a natural part of growing into a woman. ’
‘I suppose you are the best suited of the three of us,’ Bobby said. ‘Come back afterwards and tell us how it went.’
Lilian nodded. She took Florrie’s will and left.
‘Well!’ Mary said when she and Bobby were alone. ‘Nowt like a bit of drama on a Saturday afternoon.’
‘I’m just glad it’s nothing truly dangerous.’
‘It’s good of your sister to speak to Florrie. I’m sure the child would only be embarrassed to have an old lady like me explaining the facts of life to her.’
‘Do you think the captain will be shocked? I wonder he never asked us to have a talk with the girls before.’
‘Well, he’s a man, isn’t he?’ Mary said, rolling her eyes. ‘A good father, but a man all the same. They rarely think about women’s problems unless they’re forced to.’
‘Still, he was married.’
‘Married too long ago when he’s daughters to bring up, if you ask me.’ Mary started weighing out ingredients. ‘I’m surprised he hasn’t looked elsewhere before now. He’s not forty yet, and eight years a widower.’
‘I don’t know if the captain would marry again,’ Bobby said. ‘He seems to have been devoted to his wife.’
‘He ought to find himself someone who can be a mother to those girls.’ Mary passed Bobby a bowl of flour to sift. ‘Happen she might put a smile on his face while she’s about it. It’s no sin to love again.’
‘They’ve got you for their mothering,’ Bobby said, giving her a squeeze. ‘They’ve grown close to Lilian too since she started minding them – and to me, I suppose.’
‘Aye, but the three of us don’t live with them, do we?
Look at Florrie. Fretting herself sickly over the most natural thing in the world, and all of us so busy with husbands and homes that we never noticed until she’d fairly made herself ill.
’ Mary started rubbing fat and flour together with a vigorous, housewifely arm.
‘They need someone in the home. Someone young, who can help them do their growing up. It’s high time George realised that. ’
It was nearly 2 p.m. when Bobby left Moorside. She only made one brief stop on the way home, to pop an envelope into the pillar box outside the post office.
The contents of this envelope had been kept a secret from nearly everybody.
The only people in on it were Bobby’s WAAF friend Scarlet, who was the entertainments officer at RAF Wykeness, and her pal Archie Sumner, currently touring with an ENSA party.
Bobby was trying not to pin too much on this letter, but she couldn’t help hoping it might give her the lifeline she was craving when forced to stop work.
The address was Broadcasting House, London.
This task completed, Bobby fairly rushed to get home. She hadn’t forgotten her promise to let Charlie lure her back to bed after work. The novelty of being able to hold each other whenever they wanted would, she was sure, take a long time to wear off.
Bobby could have left for home quarter of an hour earlier, the mince pies having been consigned to the oven, but she had been waiting for Lilian to return with news.
Lil had looked pale when she had come back, as if the experience had tired her, but she had been smiling.
The captain had taken the news with little embarrassment, she said, although he had been angry with himself for failing to address this aspect of his daughters’ growing up.
Naivety and not neglect had been the reason – not that he wasn’t aware this was a natural part of every woman’s life, but that he had never been told at what age he might expect it to begin.
He had seemed to believe it would be four or five years until Florrie would experience this particular phenomenon.
In his eyes, Bobby supposed, his daughter was very much a baby still.
Anyhow, it was a comfort to know the little girl’s mind had been set at rest. Florrie had been relieved, of course, but this had been paired with horror when Lil had told her that the bleeding would be a monthly occurrence until Florrie was – in her own young mind, at least – a quite elderly lady.
Once Lil had explained that the bleeding was only the sign of a normal, healthy growing-up body, however, Florrie began to seem a little pleased at this mark of encroaching womanhood.
There was little that appealed more to twelve-year-old girls than the prospect of joining the ranks of the grown-ups.
The icing on the cake had been the promise of a girls’ shopping trip for Florrie, Jess and Lilian, to buy not only the things Florrie would need for her monthlies but some other little luxuries as well – perhaps even her first lipstick, if her father agreed and she only wore it for play.
Lilian said she had left the girl tear-stained but smiling, secure in the knowledge that the afterlife wasn’t beckoning just yet.
Honestly, it was a foolish world, Bobby reflected.
Women were supposedly the naive ones, many of them kept so in the dark about sex that they were little better than children.
This made them easy prey for a certain type of man.
Bobby was aware of too many girls who had suffered at men’s hands not because of what they knew but what they had been kept ignorant of.
Some who, even on their wedding night, had no idea how one would go about creating a baby.
The poorer a girl was, the more likely she was to learn the facts of life at a young age – especially if she came from a big family.
It was hard to avoid if you were growing up in a two-up-two-down terrace, sharing a bedroom with older siblings and even, sometimes, with parents.
This could lead to a very wobbly understanding of what reproduction involved if it came without any explanation from elders, however.
Bobby was thankful that her own mother, a progressive woman for her age and class, had never been shy about such things.
Nelly Bancroft had made sure her daughters knew all they needed to prepare them for adult life.
Female naivety was taken for granted, yet men, too, were kept ignorant of things they ought to know about.
Why? Why had Bobby and Lil been warned never to mention their monthlies in the presence of their father and brothers, or any man?
To spare those poor fragile males embarrassment, or disgust?
Men might not experience monthly bleeding but they would be husbands and perhaps fathers to those who did, yet girls were taught to cover up their natural functions like something shameful.
It seemed to Bobby that if men were to fulfil their role in the creation of new life – and all of them seemed eager enough to be involved in that part of it – then they should be aware of all it entailed.
She wondered how Charlie would be about these things.
It wasn’t something that had cropped up in their married life so far.
For the first few months, they had been separated by their respective roles in the RAF.
By the time they began sharing a home, Marmaduke had put in an appearance and Bobby’s monthly bleeding was temporarily no longer an issue.
She liked to think her husband wasn’t the sort of man to react with revulsion to matters of nature, although he might be a little embarrassed, perhaps.
If Marmaduke turned out to be a girl, she would want Charlie to be better prepared than George Parry had been for what his daughter’s future held.