The Poppy Factory (10 page)

‘Must have been gassed,’ Ma said, when I told her about it later. ‘Destroys their lungs.’

The lost generation, they’re calling it. All the sacrifices they’ve made. Was it really worth it? That’s the main topic of conversation in the pub these days.

Still no word from Alfie.

Sunday 15th December

Ma helped me cook a meat pie for Sunday dinner, the first I’ve ever made.

She’d decided it was time to cheer us all up and invited the Barkers over, too. Before the war they used to be always in and out of each other’s houses, Freda’s parents and mine but, after Ray and Johnnie died, Ma said she felt so angry with anyone whose sons were still alive that she could barely stand to be in the same room as them.

Of course when Alfie and me got married she had to be nice to them, and the Barkers are now part of our extended family, being my in-laws and all. So I really appreciated that Ma was ‘extending the hand of friendship’ as she says, and offered to help with the cooking.

Pa came home on Friday with some scraps of meat, mostly beef, pork and rabbit that he’d been collecting over the week, he said, that were too small to sell, and some streaky rashers, a lump of dripping and a bag of bones for the jelly stock. We started boiling and skimming the stock on Friday evening and yesterday morning we chopped up the meat together with potato, a few carrots and spices, and made the pastry by boiling the dripping with water and mixing the flour into it – what a lovely sticky mixture!

When we were ready to build the pie we rolled out the pastry and pressed it up the sides of the ring with our fingers till it reached the top, lined the inside with bacon and then laid the layers of meat inside until we were ready to give it a lid. We pinched the edges to make a pretty crust and Ma cut out some leaves to decorate the top but we couldn’t afford a precious egg for the glaze like she said you’re supposed to.

Once it had cooked we let it cool for a bit then poured the stock in through a hole in the top and let it all cool properly in the larder. Ma says the jelly seals the air out of the meat so it would last several weeks if needed, a bit like how a tin can works, she said. But that pie smelled so good and was such a pretty sight that my mouth watered just to look at it, so it was never going to last long around here. I was so curious to see whether the jelly had set properly, I could hardly wait for today to cut it open.

It had taken an age to make, but the end result was delicious and the dinner was a great success. Everyone loved the pie and said we should go into business making them. The Barkers were in great spirits and brought two jugs of ale with them which made us all very merry. First of all we toasted to peace, and to the memory of Ray and Johnnie, my two brave brothers, and to all those others who weren’t coming home.

Then they made me blush all over when they toasted the newly-weds who would soon be reunited, and Pa let slip that he’d been thinking that when he gets home we might have a proper wedding reception for me and Alfie to make up for what we missed at the time. Perhaps in the parish hall, he said, and I got so excited that I nearly hugged him. Freda said this time I should have a proper wedding dress (‘but she can’t wear white, not now,’ some joker said) and she could have a proper bridesmaid’s dress.

The talk got round to politics and the fact the Kaiser has now actually, formally, abdicated but an armistice was one thing, what we needed was a proper peace treaty. Mr Barker said he’d heard there were going to be discussions in the New Year so that all those countries who had been fighting, and been fought over, could get back to normal life again. Everyone agreed that Germany should be properly punished for starting such a terrible war.

Friday 20th December

Last day at the factory. We got paid up to the end of the month which is a bonus, because I have no idea what I’ll do after Christmas. I’ll have to find work somewhere but the newspapers are all reporting that jobs should be reserved for returning servicemen. I agree with that, it’s only fair, but what about us women who have worked hard all this time? Are we to be sent back to the kitchen?

Here’s a cutting I kept from the
Daily Mail
:

THE world is fresh and new for womenhood. It is not possible for us to go back to what we were before the flame of war tried us as in a fire. And why should we?’

Still no word from Alfie and I have given up hoping he’ll be home for Christmas.

Sunday 22nd December

Freda has a new beau called Claude which sounded like a made-up name to me till he explained that his mother was French. Anyway he uses too much hair oil, flashes his money around and has all kinds of airs and graces, even using a cigarette holder! She is all doe-eyed about him, not the usual feisty Freda I’m used to.

When I asked him what he did during the war he mumbled something vague so I suspect it wasn’t anything very valiant, and he’s not wearing uniform nor an injury band. I am trying to reserve judgement but first impressions are not good, which is a worry. I so want her boyfriend/husband to be a straight sort of chap like Alfie, so that we can all be friends together.

Monday 23rd December

It’s our first wedding anniversary, and I can’t summon up the slightest spark of excitement about Christmas because Alfie is not here to celebrate with me.

Ma got out the photos and they reminded me what a rushed affair our wedding was – no special outfits and just down the Town Hall followed by drinks at The Nelson – but he was being posted on Boxing Day and we were determined to tie the knot before he went. We’ve known each other forever, ever since our first day at school and he came dashing round the playground to meet Freda and his ma at coming out time. I liked him more than the other boys, even then, because he was the only one who didn’t pull my pigtails.

Though I pleaded with him not to, he was dead set on signing up as soon as he became of an age. And when he was about to turn nineteen and got back on Christmas leave before they were all shipped out to France, he asked me to marry him. Neither of us said it, but we both knew it was ‘just in case’.

I’m struck by how young we look, even though it was only a year ago. He’s in uniform, of course, and all his lovely curls shorn off into that horrible army haircut. His face is already leaner with all the exercise he’d been doing on training, his chubby cheeks disappearing and, although it’s hard to see under the bulk of his jacket, his chest and arms were already shaping up nicely. I thought him the handsomest boy in the world.

All I had to wear at short notice was the navy blue wool serge dress that matches the colour of my eyes. It looks unfashionably long, now that hemlines are rising, and not helped by the low heels I always have to wear, since Alfie’s only an inch or so taller than me. I put my hair up under a black narrow-brimmed hat borrowed from his mum that Ma trimmed with some netting that matched the dress.

My face is split with a grin like a monkey, partly from the happiness of the moment but also to stop my teeth chattering with the cold, it being a bitter day and me being too vain to wear my ugly old topcoat.

There were no fresh flowers to be had at that time of year of course, but a neighbour lent me a posy of artificial roses, which I’m gripping with white knuckles as we pose on the Town Hall steps, me with the grin and him with his strangely shorn hair and a faraway look, as if his mind is already on his big adventure.

The second photo is with the families posed in the lounge bar of The Nelson after the ceremony: Alfie and me, Ma and Pa, Freda and my new in-laws, Mr and Mrs Barker. Pa is on the edge of the group and I noticed for the first time tonight that there’s a space next to him at the edge of the photograph: as if we’ve left a space for Johnnie and Ray. Johnnie was already dead by then, of course, and Ray was out in France. It’s tempting to draw their faces onto the gap, because if it is possible to conjure up the presence of the dead by the power of thoughts from the living, they were definitely there in spirit that day.

He promised me a weekend in Brighton when he gets home. I wish! A letter would do me, right now.

Tuesday 24th December

I had a miserable Christmas Eve. The Nelson was packed with newly-home soldiers and their families celebrating together. Everyone was in high spirits and why not, it’s our first Christmas of peace, after all?

But I had no Alfie, and I had to put up with Freda and her new beau Claude canoodling all the time without a thought for anyone else. I can’t bring myself to like him and I wish he would just tell the truth about what he did during the war. He seems to have too many sophisticated ways and too much money, and I can’t help wondering whether he’s one of those black marketeers who Pa says should be shot at dawn.

Ma couldn’t take it, and went home early. It was bad enough when all mothers seemed to be in the same boat, but the pain is even harder to bear now the war is over, and everyone else’s sons and brothers are returning. I worry about her: she is pale and listless and although we tell her that getting on with something will make her feel better – even just taking Bessie for a walk up the park – she prefers to sit in the house by the fire. Which is all very well but coal is getting so short and pricey we can ill afford to keep the fire banked up all the time. This time of year there are no vegetables growing in our little plot at the back, which she would normally tend, and there’s been no laundry or mending coming in of late, either. Everyone’s pulling in their horns at the moment.

Most of the time she won’t allow us to mention them. But sometimes she says: ‘If only we could bury my boys, so’s we’d have a grave to lay flowers on.’ For the lack of a grave, she’s turned their bedroom into a shrine, with nothing touched since Ray’s last leave home. She sneaks in there when no-one else is around and, on their birthdays she places cards in the room, same as at Christmas, addressed to them as if they were alive.

I like to go in there too, from time to time, and think about my brothers, and what they might have become had they been allowed to grow into men, with wives and families and homes of their own.

A niggling worry eats at me: when Alfie comes back we won’t be able to afford a house of our own until we both get some work. He’s got a room at his parents’ place, of course, but it’s tiny. So we’d have to stay here, and my room is only big enough for a single bed. The most obvious thing would be for us to have the boys’ room, but I can’t see Ma ever accepting that.

What seems to upset Pa most is the fact that the boys won’t be around for him to train up as butchers, and there’ll be no-one to take over the family business my grandfather started back in the last century. Perhaps he could take on Alfie, now that he’s family?

All this thinking about my brothers has made me sad. It’s a bitter coincidence that they both died at the very same age, one I haven’t even reached myself, yet:

RIP:
Johnnie Appleby: b. 17th January 1897 d. 1st July 1916, on the first day of the Battle of The Somme, aged 19 years and 6 months.

RIP:
Ray Appleby: b. 7th April 1898 d. 13th October 1917 at Passchendaele, aged 19 years and 6 months.

Friday 27th December

ANOTHER RED LETTER DAY!

This time it’s a real letter! The best Christmas present of all, even if it was a couple of days late. It has taken over two weeks to arrive.

12th December 1918

My darling Rose,

At last I can write with good news. We are being demobbed! They say it should be next week or the week after so there’s a chance I might be home for Christmas or at least soon after. It’s been chaos over here since the Armistice and they say it will take a while to get us all back to the coast and across the Channel. I am so impatient to see you again. Please send my best regards to your parents.

Your loving husband, Alfie.

I’m sure I shall not sleep tonight with the excitement, so I’ll keep on writing until I feel tired.

Christmas was a very quiet affair and Pa had sold the few turkeys and chickens he’d managed to lay his hands on, so he brought home more scraps, bones and dripping and we made two more large pies – one for the Barkers and one for us. Mrs B was so grateful when we took it round and said again that they were so delicious we should start selling them. It certainly set me thinking. Pies are ideal for making a little meat go a long way, so there would surely be a good demand while rationing is still on?

‘What about you and me going into business, Pa?’ I said, only half joking, and although he looked a little shocked because he thinks a woman’s place is in the home, I could see him thinking. I’ve been a working girl for over two years now, so I’ve proved that I can do it. Of course he’d hoped my brothers would follow him into the shop, but all he’s got left is a daughter.

My presents were a new scarf and a lovely bar of Pears, and Freda gave me some Elizabeth Arden talcum powder which smells delicious. The yellow munitions tinge is almost gone from my skin and I’m seriously considering getting my hair cut into a bob. It would be so much easier to manage. Freda said that Alfie wouldn’t like it. Well, he might be her brother but he’s
my
husband, so I should know what he likes and doesn’t like, shouldn’t I?

Tuesday 31st December. New Year’s Eve.

Writing this at one o’clock in the morning but I am so excited I cannot sleep. At last this year is over, and we can start to celebrate peace properly.

All the talk in The Nelson this evening was about plans for a public celebration next summer and they’re going to set up a Peace Committee to organise it, though some people are already saying they shouldn’t waste money on official occasions but should give the money to the returning servicemen. I agree with this. We should just have an enormous street party (lots more pie customers for me!) and then provide proper houses and good jobs for everyone who fought in the war.