Poppy Day (25 page)

‘Right, girls – come on over ’ere and gather round – I’ve got summat to say to all of yer!’

Vi, who was still the unofficial gaffer at the factory, was out in the yard, waving her brawny arms to get their attention.

It was a bright day, with a feeling of warmth and promise peculiar to early summer. It had rained in the night and there were puddles dotted about, but now they could hear birds on the waste ground beyond. Pigeons were muttering on the roof of the Rumbling Shed.

Sis winked at Jess as they met outside the office on their way to the canteen.

‘What does she want then?’

Jess shrugged. ‘Soon find out.’

There was already a crowd of women round Vi, and a sallow, jaundiced-looking lot they were, a number obviously full of cold even though the winter was long over, some with red, itchy skin from contact with the powder. They were all squinting, coming out of the sheds. Quite a few were coughing, including Sis who complained continually of having a sore throat. In the bright light Jess saw she was thin and tired-looking. Perce had been posted now and she had joined the ranks of the permanently worried.

Someone handed Vi a chair and she stepped up on to it, wobbling and flailing her arms before standing upright as it creaked under her.

‘To my mind,’ she bawled across the yard, ‘we’re all in need of a bit of a day out.’

Jess and Sis looked at each other and raised their eyebrows. ‘We’ve had a long, hard winter,’ – murmurs of agreement – ‘and yer all looking like yer’ve bin locked up in the cellar for six month—’

‘Feels like it an’ all!’ someone shouted.

‘So ’ow about a picnic out somewhere Sunday? Bring some grub—’

‘That’s if yer can get ’old of any!’ There was laughter.

‘—and we’ll go over the park . . .’

A discussion broke out about where it should be. Some wanted more of a day out, right out of town, and eventually it was decided that they’d go across to Sutton Park.

‘Ooh—’ Jess said. A quiver of pleasure went through her. ‘How lovely. It’s s’posed to be real nice up there.’

‘Poll could come, couldn’t she?’ Sis said. Polly was back at work, but had decided to find another job nearer home so she could pop back at dinnertime and look in on Grace. She found it difficult enough to be separated from her for even an hour or two.

‘I should think so,’ Jess said. ‘And Ronny’d love it.’

She went up to Vi. ‘Can I bring me cousin – ’e’s five?’

‘Bring who yer like, bab, so long’s yer can get ’em on the bus.’

As they dispersed to go and fetch their daily cup of milk, Peter Stevenson was standing watching, leaning against the wall by his office door. Jess saw Vi go up to him. A few moments later she came in to the little canteen.

‘’Ere – guess what. ’E wants to come along an’ all.’

‘What – Mr Stevenson, on a picnic with us lot!’

‘Blimey – ’e must be lonely.’

‘Did yer say ’e could?’

‘Well I could ’ardly tell ’im ’e couldn’t, could I?’ Vi grunted, lowering herself on to a chair, the enamel cup in one hand. ‘Oh me legs! Flamin’ ’ell, I’m old enough to be ’is mother! Now there’s a thought.’

It had been a dismal winter indeed. The cold and shortages of food, the queueing, the triumph of finding a potato in the shops when there was such a scarcity of them, the long, grinding hours at work day after day made nearly every aspect of life a struggle. Added to that was the yearning for loved ones, some had now been absent so long, and the constant gnawing anxiety for their safety.

My life, Jess thought sometimes, is made up of work and Ned. She dreamed about him as she worked, hour after hour, her arms and back aching. Of their future, when the war was over. Some days she burned with optimism, others she was full of fear and insecurity. He might be killed. He might change his mind. Perhaps already he’d decided he didn’t love her any more but couldn’t bring himself to tell her? On days like that she felt low and hopeless and tried to put him out of her mind. It was too unbearable to think about. If he was taken from her, her life would be empty. It would have no meaning.

She was comforted though, with regard to his safety, by his letters throughout the winter. He was at a quiet part of the Front, he told her. It was bitterly cold for a large part of the time, frosts which broke French records, but there was little in the way of shooting and shelling.

She tried not to ask more than to know he was all right. In the April his Company were involved in the fighting at Arras, helping to capture Vimy Ridge. Soon after he wrote and told her he was safe. Just occasionally he managed to say more to her than the facts and these parts were the greatest treasure to her.

Sunday started off cool and misty but they had hopes of finer weather. Jess, Polly and Sis piled on to the bus with Ronny. Polly had Grace in her arms.

‘You can come too, yer know,’ Jess had said to Olive. ‘It don’t matter who goes so long as they make their way and bring their food.’

Olive smiled. She was sitting back comfortably in anticipation of a day on her own. ‘Nice to be asked, but I’m going to ’ave a day’s peace without them two.’ She nodded at the two little ones. ‘No one keeping on at me or causing trouble.’ She fixed Ronny with a dire look.

There was a festive atmosphere on the bus as quite a few of the other workers had caught the same one. Ronny sat on Jess’s knee and Polly was next to her with Grace. Ronny had lost all his baby fat and was now a thin little thing with white, stick legs and knobbly knees, hair a vivid carrot colour and freckles all over his face. And he was trouble in motion, despite the innocent expression.

‘You’re not going to run off and be a nuisance, are yer?’ Jess spoke close to his ear over the noisy rumble of the bus.

Ronny shook his head absent-mindedly, knowing this was the right answer.

‘I wish this one’d get up and run about,’ Polly nodded at Grace. She was over a year now, and despite the limited amount of food about, was a rounded pudding of a child with thick brown hair and big blue eyes, who was barely showing any inclination to walk. ‘Tires me out lifting ’er, that it does.’

They’d got no sense out of Sis who sat reading and re-reading a letter she’d had from Perce and grinning to herself.

‘From the look of yer I take it ’e’s awright,’ Polly said.

‘’E’s being trained up to work in them tank things,’ Sis said proudly. ‘In the Tank Corps.’

‘Blimey,’ Polly made a face. ‘Well p’raps ’e’s safer inside one of them.’

As the city fell away and they moved towards the old town of Sutton Coldfield, things started to look more cheerful. The sun found a chink in the clouds and shone in a determined sort of way. When they got off the bus and walked into Sutton Park, the smell of the grass rising to meet them, Jess suddenly felt her spirits lift further than they had in a long time. She wanted to drop everything and run across the open expanse of green, over to the fresh spring trees at the other side, but knew she couldn’t leave Polly to carry the bags as well as manage Grace.

They strolled across among a crowd of other women from the works with their families around them, calling out noisily, the children chattering with excitement. Ronny, for the moment, seemed awed by the space round them.

Vi was there with two of her daughters, and a carrier in each hand, swaying from side to side as she walked across the grass. As usual she took charge.

‘Best stay in the sun,’ she squinted up at the clouds. ‘There ain’t much point in sitting in the shade when the sun’s hardly shining.’

Jess, Polly and Sis settled with a group of others. There were more arrivals from another bus and gradually the group grew, snaking across the grass, everyone close together but gathered into smaller clusters here and there. Some laid out mats and coats on the damp grass. Behind them, a short distance away was a row of trees edging a stream which ran through the park, and in front stretched the wide swathe of grass.

It was only mid-morning and too early for dinner, although that didn’t stop a few having a nibble of the food they’d bought. At first Ronny sat quietly between Jess and Sis as the women chatted, enjoying the freedom to loll on the grass and talk for as long as they wanted without having to go back to the sheds and fill grenades. Then a set of identical twin girls, both about seven, with ash-blonde hair and freckles, went up to Ronny and pulled him to his feet, each hoicking him by the hand.

‘We’m gunna play tag,’ they commanded. ‘So come on with us.’

Jess smiled over at the twins’ mom. ‘No saying no to them, eh? Bet they give you the run around?’

‘Not ’alf.’ The woman smiled wearily.

‘Eh—’ Vi said. ‘Look – ’e’s come an’ all!’

Peter Stevenson was walking towards them, a little self-consciously, Jess thought, one long arm raised in greeting. He was dressed casually in grey flannel trousers and a dark green sweater, with a jacket over one arm. Beside him, holding his spare hand and walking with stolid, rather uncertain steps, was a young boy.

‘Oh look,’ Sis said. ‘His little lad. Poor little bugger.’

‘Oi,’ Vi said. ‘Watch yer mouth.’

‘Morning!’ Peter Stevenson put his bag down. They all replied, cheerfully though with a shyness that his own reserve brought out in them. He wasn’t like some of the men they were used to, full of lip, and they weren’t sure how to talk to him.

The whole group must have numbered about sixty or seventy people, and now they were closer, the little boy was overcome and turned away, pressing his face into his father’s thighs.

‘Now, Davey – there’s no need for that, is there?’

Peter Stevenson gradually prised the boy away from him and squatted down to look into his face. The child tried to move close again and hide his eyes.

‘These are the ladies from the factory and their families,’ he said gently. ‘They all want to see you, and we’re going to have a picnic together, remember? Maybe have a game or two.’ He turned, smiling. ‘He’s always been shy, but recently . . .’ He stopped. They all knew what he meant.

Jess watched the careful way he looked into his son’s face, reassuring him. But David’s eye was caught by a movement beside him. Grace had crawled across the grass and was looking up at him with her mouth open, drooling. The boy squeaked with alarm and clung to his father again.

‘She wants to play with yer!’ Polly said. Grace moved closer, kneeled up at the side of him, wrapped her arms round the boy’s legs and started sucking experimentally on one of his kneecaps. He started to giggle.

All the women laughed too, and for the first time Jess could remember, so did Peter Stevenson. By the time they ate dinner the sun came out, coats and cardigans came off and everyone relaxed visibly in the warmth. Jess lay back, straw hat on the grass beside her, feeling the sun on her eyelids, warming her stiff limbs. She stretched like a cat. It was so nice to lie still! She knew in a while she’d have to give Polly a rest and take her turn traipsing round after Grace who wouldn’t sit in one place for a second. But for now she felt drowsy, half detached from the shrieks and laughter around her, the distant chug of a bus on the road. She could hear women talking lazily round her, and mixed with their chat, the occasional low sound of Mr Stevenson’s voice which she found reassuring. She remembered the tender way he had looked at his son and for a moment a great longing filled her. When had her own father ever looked at her like that? The sunlight and country smells of grass and earth took her mind back. The orchard at Budderston, the hayfield, Louisa . . . And Alice. She recalled Olive’s sudden, so far as she could see, unprovoked anger that day. Had it been out of bitterness at all Olive had endured, when Louisa had escaped so much of it? The three women haunted her. Even though Olive was part of the present, the past felt mysteriously, nudgingly present. But shortly the actual present crashed in on her.