Chapter 29
Les was married, of course.
He had a nice wife, Sara, and she was waiting for him outside the factory at the end of the shift one evening.
Gladdie saw her first and pointed her out. ‘That’s Sara, Les’s wife,’ she said.
Gladdie knew everyone personally, or at worst, once-removed.
Cora could see that to be honest, looks-wise, she wasn’t a patch on Enid. Her nose was big, her chin was weak, her brown hair too straight under her hat. She looked painfully unhappy, and Cora’s heart went out to her.
‘She’s looking for Les,’ Gladdie said. ‘Come on, let’s go and talk to her.’
‘No, don’t,’ Cora said quickly. She knew. And that meant that other people would know, too, which was sickening to think about but that’s the way it was. It was impossible in a town like this to avoid gossip, because people shared everything: opinions, outrages, scandals and fears.
‘What are we going to say if she asks us about Enid direct?’ Megan asked Cora, keeping her voice low. The conversation was interrupted by Gladdie calling them over so Cora and Megan traipsed reluctantly behind Gladdie, keeping a bit of distance.
‘Hey! You two! This is Les’s wife,’ Gladdie said cheerfully.
‘Oh! Really?’ Cora said, feigning surprise. ‘Hello!’
‘We know Les,’ Megan said, turning her collar up against the cold.
‘I’ve come about his sandwiches, see.’ Sara was strangely furtive as she said it.
It was an odd thing to come about, Cora thought.
‘I give him his sandwiches every morning, wrapped up in brown paper.’ Sara looked at them with an expectant expression on her face as if it was something she thought they would know. ‘I don’t like him going to the canteen. Someone’s started a dancing class.’
‘That’s me,’ Gladdie said. ‘Don’t worry, it’s just a bit of fun.’ She added quickly, ‘Les doesn’t come to it though, it’s girls only.’
‘He says I should save myself the trouble of making sandwiches, but I’m his wife, aren’t I? I do it out of love.’
‘He doesn’t deserve you,’ Megan said.
Everyone saw this coming. In the factory the women far outnumbered the men.
‘It’s unnatural to have men and women working together so closely, it’s asking for trouble.
He’s different now. When he leaves for work he kisses me on my head, here,’ Sara said, pointing to her forehead.
‘If the factory was bombed, that’s all I’d have left to remember him by. An eye roll and a dry kiss.’
Suddenly, as if she’d gone completely mad, Gladdie swiped Sara’s hat off her head.
Sara shrieked and Gladdie flapped her hands and picked it up, apologising.
‘Sorry, I was just having a look what you were pointing at,’ she said. ‘Oh look, there’s Les!’
They turned to see Les, yes, and there was Enid, too, knees bent, blending in with the crowd of women waiting for their bus.
Les hurried over to them. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked his wife. ‘Don’t you trust me?’ He tilted his head and gave her a strange smile, half guilt, half mockery.
‘No, I don’t, Les Pugh,’ she replied, pushing her face in his.
‘No getting away from it, I’m not much cop to look at, not from any angle.
But I’m a good person, I try to do right by others, I don’t misbehave, I take communion in chapel without hypocrisy and I can leave through that wooden door with my head held high, with no fear of being struck down by a disapproving Almighty. ’
Not like you, her tone implied.
‘Good for you,’ Les said heartlessly, as if he didn’t care two hoots about being struck down by the Almighty.
‘And I’ll tell you this, I’d rather lose you to a bomb than to a woman,’ Sara said.
It was a heartless thing to say, in Cora’s opinion.
They’d lived in fear of a bombing raid, and no one really knew how the Luftwaffe had managed to miss the factory so far, all nine hundred acres of it, when they’d managed to demolish so much of Cardiff’s residential area.
It was surprisingly incompetent of them, she thought.
‘Steady on, girl,’ Les said, winking at them to pull them over to his side. ‘What are you trying to do, kill off the lot of us?’
‘Dew!’ Sara said with relish. ‘Imagine it! The explosion would rattle the windows! And then I’d be widowed and free to grieve for the man I wanted you to be. Poor old Les!’ She blinked. ‘The boys would miss you, I suppose.’
A bus trundled past, tugging their clothes and warming their legs with exhaust fumes.
‘Well,’ Gladdie said, clapping her gloved hands together, ‘we’d better be off! We’ll leave you to it! Good night, Sara! Good night, Les!’
They hurried away.
‘Thanks a lot, Gladdie,’ Cora said when they were out of earshot. ‘What if she’d asked us outright about Enid?’
‘She wouldn’t, because she doesn’t actually know anything, she only suspects. That’s what I was trying to find out.’
Their footsteps were noisy on the frosty pavement and the air was chill.
‘Poor woman,’ Megan said. ‘She looked so upset, I wish Enid could have seen her. She might have thought twice about flirting with Les if she had.’