Chapter 17
Enid didn’t want to be a housewife, she wanted to work in the factory with Cora, Gladdie and Megan.
Temperance was dead against it, because he liked having her at home.
They turned up together at Cora’s after tea, both looking for an ally.
Cora was washing her father’s shirts in the sink, and she left them to soak and dried her hands on her apron.
She was dog-tired because a machine had broken down and she’d had to work faster to make up her quota.
She closed her eyes and she could still see the hard beauty of the rows upon rows of gleaming shells, and feel the camaraderie of the women and their sympathetic smiles.
It had been a good day on the whole because at lunchtime Gladdie had started a jive class to teach them the steps that she’d learnt from Charles, her GI.
Gladdie had got Megan to pretend she was Charles, which made Megan laugh herself limp. Cora smiled to herself. It was good to let off steam before getting back to work.
‘Wakey wakey!’ Enid was brandishing a newspaper around. ‘They’re advertising for women to work in the factory again. I’ll be safe there, playing my part against the Nazis.’ She slapped Temperance with the newspaper. ‘Tell him, Cora!’
Cora looked at Temperance. She knew he didn’t want Enid to go to work in a factory, of all places, partly out of pride and partly because he was afraid for her.
‘It’s true, they’re always looking for more workers,’ she said.
Temperance did a double take as if he’d only just noticed her.
‘Dew, Cora! Look at you! Your hair’s as green as ivy and your skin, well – you remind me of a daffodil, you do.
’ He turned to Enid. ‘See? That’s what Brackla does to you, it colours you unnatural.
Trying to put her off, I am, Cora. She cares about her looks. ’
‘So do I,’ Cora said ruefully. Budgies. Who’s a pretty girl, then?
‘I’ll wear make-up,’ Enid said. ‘I’ll be able to afford it if I work.
The job offers good conditions and good pay, and we’re killing that lot while we’re at it,’ Enid said, jerking her head in the direction of the singing from Island Farm camp.
It had started in just one hut, but now the whole place was lively with marching songs.
Oh, but Enid was beautiful, Cora thought, with her copper hair curled back from her pale face, perching on the edge of Jane’s kitchen table because she liked an audience.
Dio came in carrying the coal scuttle, letting in a roar of song before slamming the door on it.
‘Did you hear the singing from the camp last night?’ Temperance asked him. ‘Incessant, it was.’
‘Heard it?’ Dio gave a grim laugh. ‘Hard not to, isn’t it?’
‘You know, I’ve never thought of the Germans as being musical.’
Dio mulled it over. ‘J. S. Bach was a German.’
Temperance nodded. ‘Aye, that’s true enough. But he’s got a Welsh name.’
Of all the neighbours that Island Farm had housed since 1937, the Germans were by far the worst. They sang their loud, patriotic marching songs day and night, and their singing throbbed above the camp and became corralled by the mountains, creating a funnel of music over Island Farm Avenue.
Although the prisoners were contained behind barbed wire, their voices weren’t, and the noise was driving them mad.
Temperance turned his pleading gaze onto Dio. ‘Tell Enid, will you? Munitions is no job for a married woman, is it? You wouldn’t let your Jane work there, would you?’
‘Jane’s got no need to work there,’ Dio said, defending his wife.
‘Exactly!’ Temperance said, throwing up his hands. ‘Neither has Enid.’
He was usually a cheerful man, with a plump boyish face, full of an energy that he didn’t always know how to channel constructively.
He had been barred from Swansea football club for being rowdy.
All the supporters were rowdy, truth be told, but his rowdiness was the loudest and he expressed his emotions freely, without the safety net of civility.
Enid said she was so utterly bored with her life she was glad of any diversion. Boredom was a terrible thing, it sapped the energy out of her. ‘The hand that held the Hoover turns out shells,’ she added, holding up the advert.
Temperance looked dismayed, because there was no getting away from it.
‘If you don’t like boredom you won’t like the factory,’ Cora said, resting her chin on her fist.
‘Whose side are you on, Cora?’ Enid asked sharply.
Dio crouched to put the coal on the dying embers. When he straightened he had a fringe of soot on his white hair. ‘I’ve been thinking of getting up a petition to send to Hitler,’ he said, ‘asking him to put an end to the singing. I can’t get to sleep when I’m on the night shift.’
‘I’m not sure he’s going to take much notice of a petition, Dio,’ Temperance said doubtfully.
‘Someone needs to put a stop to it anyway, because the rumours in the pit are that they’re singing to drown out the sound of tunnelling.’
For a moment they all fell silent and looked at each other. It was an awful thought if it was true.
Cora stared at her father and folded her arms defiantly. ‘The Germans can’t dig a tunnel without making a mess,’ she said logically. ‘And they’d be digging through solid concrete floors. And then once they were through the floor, they’d have to start digging through clay.’
‘I’m just telling you what I’ve heard,’ her father said. ‘And our chaps managed to do it,’ he pointed out.
They fell silent for a moment.
‘Little good it did them,’ Temperance said.
He lifted his chin and scratched the bristles on his neck.
He glanced at the feeble flame in the grate.
‘We should plan for it anyway, I suppose,’ he said after a moment.
‘We should work out what action we’ll take if they do escape.
We’ll have to organise a committee, work out our roles.
We should keep our shotguns ready at all times. ’
Dio nodded. ‘It’s about time we took action.’
‘Tell you what, we’ll meet at our house.’
‘Will we, Temperance?’ Enid said, tilting her head. ‘Heaven help us!’
‘I’ll pass the word around there’s going to be a meeting,’ Dio said. ‘It will set Jane’s mind at rest. It agitates her something awful that there are hundreds of them just a stone’s throw away and she can’t do anything about it. You know, because of…’ He trailed off.
Cora knew the unspoken end of that sentence.
‘I’ll put the kettle on.’ He headed for the stove and changed his mind. ‘Tell you what, this calls for something stronger than tea. How about a whisky, Temp?’ he asked, rubbing his hands together.
Whisky? Cora was suddenly wide awake and her heart plunged as she watched her father go into the pantry. He’d gone to fetch the decanter. She stared at him in panic.
Last May, when her mother was at the WI knitting socks for servicemen and her father was at choir practice in the pub, Gladdie would bring her GI Charles around to Cora’s house.
Very sociable it was, too, because Charles always brought a friend with him and a couple of pairs of nylon stockings.
Why GIs had unlimited access to nylons she didn’t know. It was a mystery.
Gladdie’s Charles was a tall, good-natured man from Texas with a face full of freckles and bright red hair that was almost the same colour as Gladdie’s, only natural.
The first time he came with the gift of stockings, Cora was so delighted that she felt she should be generous with him in turn.
She had gone into the pantry to look for something, and standing on the shelf next to a half-full packet of dried milk was the crystal whisky decanter that her father had inherited from his father, whisky and all.
Her father had never touched it, so it was full.
Cora removed the glass stopper, took a sharp sniff in case it was off, and blinked her watering eyes. Dew! She fetched the four small glasses that they’d used for egg cups before the war, poured whisky in each and handed them around.
‘Bottoms up!’ Charles said, and Gladdie giggled.
‘Bottoms up!’
‘Good health!’
Cora topped up the whisky decanter with water, and she clinked glasses with whoever Charles had brought with him as company for her, making small talk and getting the boy to tell her about America, that land of films and glamour, while Gladdie and Charles went to the front room to cuddle and murmur in private.
Now, Cora was full of dread as she watched her father come back into the kitchen and pour the whisky into those same glass egg cups, one for Temperance and one for himself, crouching to check the levels with scrupulous fairness before giving up and extravagantly filling them to the brim.
As he poured, the crystal decanter threw rainbows of light on the tablecloth.
The whisky had been dark once, Cora remembered, but now it was pale as straw.
Oh, Lor, she thought, going back to the sink to rinse the shirts and letting the water drain out.
She braced herself as Dio choked on his drink.
Now I’m for it, she thought.
‘My word! That’s strong stuff!’ he said, patting his chest.
A miracle! Cora relaxed and smiled at him, feeling drunk with relief.
‘Takes me back,’ Temperance said approvingly. ‘It’s good stuff, Dio.’
‘Belonged to my father, it did.’
The back door opened and Jane came in, removing her black hat. She frowned at the sight of her husband and Temperance with the decanter between them, and Enid sitting on her table like a pin-up.
‘Hello, Jane,’ Enid said brightly.
Dio held up his whisky glass and looked at his wife through it.
‘Hello, Enid.’ Jane prided herself on being polite so she swiftly turned her irritation onto Dio. ‘Drinking, is it?’
‘Just a small one,’ he said. ‘We’re planning what we’ll do when the Germans tunnel free. They’re singing to cover the digging.’
The words changed Jane’s mood in an instant. ‘I knew it wasn’t for the love of music! Good!’ she said. ‘I hope they dig like the wind! And when the enemy gets out, we’ll be waiting for them.’
The enemy. As if they weren’t individuals, Cora thought, with their own families, their own beliefs. It was the way she said it that made Cora look at her small, broken mother with an awful foreboding.
‘I’ve been praying for this to happen,’ Jane said to her fervently, clutching her hat to her chest. ‘They’ve been delivered unto us for a reason. So that we can pay them back for what they’ve done to us.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ Temperance said.