The Poppy Factory (9 page)

‘Shall we look at them together, now?’ Jess asked

Susan looked at her watch and yawned. ‘Not tonight, love, it’s gone midnight,’ she said, stroking Jess’s hair. ‘Are you coming up?’

‘In a while,’ Jess said. ‘I’m not sleepy yet. I’m going to have a bit of a read, if you don’t mind. I’m really curious to find out about Alfie.’

‘Are you feeling better?’

Jess nodded. ‘Thanks for being so understanding, Mum.’

‘No drinking now?’ She gave her daughter a stern look.

‘I’ll do my best,’ Jess said. ‘See you in the morning.’

After her mother had gone, Jess made herself a cup of coffee with a whisky chaser, and placed the cardboard box beside her on the sofa. Milly came to join her, snuggling her furry face onto Jess’s knee.

She lifted out the top notebook and flicked through the pages filled with the same careful handwriting, interspersed with stuck-in cuttings and letters. Then she checked the dates on the other notebooks to make sure they were in the right order, and began to read.

BOOK ONE

Rose Barker – PRIVATE

Monday 11 November 1918.

RED LETTER DAY!

Even now I have to pinch myself!

I have sorely neglected my writing since starting at the munitions factory, having felt so exhausted and dispirited each evening, and my entries so dull. I found these notebooks on a charity stall a few weeks ago and they are begging to be filled. And now there is so much to tell I barely know where to begin.

Today started out as another gloomy winter Monday with us all bent over our benches carefully filling shells with ‘devil’s porridge’ and then, at 11 o’clock this morning, the siren wailed. We jumped out of our skins, of course, we always do. Explosion warning? An air raid? Everyone stood stock still, looking at each other over our respirators like yellow-faced frogs. And then we twigged. We’d heard rumours and read plenty of reports in the newspapers, but no-one really believed them. There’ve been so many false promises. Could it really happen this time?

Then the boss came over the tannoy and told us it was official: fighting had been suspended on the Western Front. A moment later all the church bells of East London started clanging with a deafening din – such a surprising sound that we hadn’t heard for four years – and we were cheering and laughing so loud that we couldn’t hear the rest of what he said. But the word got round soon enough: not that we’d have gone on working, in any case, but they were closing the factory for the day.

We threw off our overalls, grabbed our coats and tumbled out into the street like a pack of puppies, where there was already such a great crush of excited people singing and cheering, running and dancing, hugging and kissing, that we could barely make our way through the streets. Being so short, Freda was virtually carried along, and I had to hold her tight so as we wouldn’t get separated. A group of young lads adopted us: ‘Come on canaries,’ they yelled, ‘we’ll look after you, show you a good time.’

On a normal day we wouldn’t have given them a second glance, but the world had suddenly been painted in bright colours and even spotty boys looked handsome. It may have been grey and a bit drizzly, but it felt as though the sun had come out, beaming down on us lot all lit up with happiness.

We had a notion to get ourselves to the West End and somewhere near Buckingham Palace cos word was that the King and Queen were going to come out and wave to us but there wasn’t a cat’s chance of that. The buses were crammed to the nines with people piled high on the top decks and hanging off the rear doorways, but they weren’t going anywhere due to the crowds. It was almost impossible to push your way through even on foot, so we just let ourselves be carried wherever the crowd took us.

We passed by Smithfield where a surge of greasy, blood-stained lads had poured out of the meat market, and on to the edges of the City where a great black wave of clerks and business types had pushed out onto the street. They were throwing their bowlers in the air, hanging out of windows and balconies and climbing lampposts, without a thought for their smart city clothes. No-one cared a jot.

The pubs were opening by now, and tankards being handed out around the crowd, and buntings being hung from upstairs windows so the city looked like a fairground. At one junction they’d set a wind-up gramophone going in an open window, and we started dancing to it. After a while, as we moved slowly forwards, the bands came out: the Sally Army, musicians from the clubs and just about anyone who had an instrument seemed to gather on every street corner and they played together, all the old favourites: Pack up Your Troubles and It’s a Long Way to Tipperary. If they stopped, someone would hand them each a pint and we’d shout for more till they tuned up again.

Freda and me both got horribly drunk and kissed a dozen unsuitable types, which as a married woman I really shouldn’t have, but we were so happy we just didn’t care.

Then there was a great roar from the crowd and people shouted ‘God Save The King’ again and again, and the musicians struck up with the national anthem. We were still in Cheapside and nowhere near The Mall, but word had spread through the crowd that King George and Queen Mary had come out onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace and waved to all those lucky beggars who managed to get within sight of them.

After He’s a Jolly Good Fellow, the crowd started on other songs and I was joining in happily until they struck up with the hymn All People That on Earth Do Dwell, and a sudden wave of sadness hit me. I don’t suppose the beer we’d drunk on empty stomachs helped, but my legs went wobbly and I felt as though I might fall over if I didn’t find somewhere to sit. I pushed my way through the crowd to the side of the road and found an empty doorstep.

Then the tears came, coursing down my face like a waterfall, as I remembered all those poor boys. Those thousands and thousands of boys, even millions, who were never coming back, who would never be able to celebrate the victory they lost their lives for. Not just Ray and Johnnie, but my uncles Fred and Ken and the three Garner brothers, Billy and Stan, Tony and Ernest, Joe, William and Tom Parsons. And those were just the ones in our neighbourhood we knew well.

After a while, Freda came and sat down beside me and put her arm around my shoulders.

‘What was it all for?’ I wailed. ‘They’ll never come home, never get married, have children or grow old.’

‘But my brother’s alive, Rose,’ she said, putting her arm around me. ‘That’s a blessing, isn’t it? It won’t be long before he’s home.’

We sat there for a while, both of us lost in our thoughts despite the great noise going on around us, until we realised that we were both ravenously hungry. Freda managed to grab the last two baked potatoes from a street vendor, and a cup of tea, which made us feel a little better.

The afternoon was drawing in and it was starting to rain. ‘Let’s get home,’ I said. ‘Our folks will be wanting to see us.’ I couldn’t imagine what Ma might be doing – she’s spent so long in mourning for my brothers I wasn’t sure she’d have the heart to celebrate.

The best sight of all was as we crossed London Bridge and it seemed every craft on the Thames had taken to the water: ferries and tugs and steamboats and skiffs, all decorated with flags and full of happy cheering people.

My hand is so tired I can write no more, except for these words:

THE WAR IS OVER!

Yes, my dearest Alfie, perhaps it won’t be long until we are together again. I must stay strong for you and prepare for the start of our married lives together.

Tuesday 12 November 1918

Thick head and early shift, ugh.

When I woke this morning I thought at first I must have dreamt it, but it must be true because it’s all over the newspaper billboards. You wouldn’t have thought they’d still need us to carry on making shells, now the war is over, but the manager says there is still a job for us for the moment and we will continue until they tell us to stop. I don’t care. We’re earning good wages and heaven knows what we’ll do when they lay us off.

At tea break we had such a laugh, telling tales of yesterday and what we’d all got up to. When Freda and I finally made it back to the Old Kent Road we’d found her mum and my ma and pa well stuck in at The Nelson, singing old wartime songs along with the rest of them except those who were past it, slumped in their chairs and on the floor.

Ma was weeping even while she sang, not even bothering to stop and wipe the tears flowing down her cheeks, so I managed to squeeze in and tried to comfort her. But what can ever make up for the loss of two sons? Nothing, I suppose, except perhaps grandchildren. When Alfie comes home we will do our best to oblige.

At teatime today Pa told me I had to be patient. It would be weeks before we were likely to hear anything and I shouldn’t expect ‘young Alfred’, as he calls him, to be demobbed any time soon. There was all kinds of clearing up to be done after a war, he said, and it takes time to get all those thousands of troops back to the coast and then ferry them home. We haven’t heard anything from him for weeks, but there’s been no knock at the door, no telegram, so surely that means he is safe? And that is enough for me.

Freda says her brother’s got the luck of the innocent, though I haven’t a clue what that means and nor do I believe it, either. Were Ray and Johnnie not innocent enough to be saved? May they rest in peace, wherever they lie.

Monday 18 November 1918

ALL over the world, on November 11, 1918, people were celebrating, dancing in the streets, drinking champagne, hailing the armistice that meant the end of the war. But at the front there was no celebration. Many soldiers believed the Armistice only a temporary measure and that the war would soon go on.

As night came, the quietness, unearthly in its penetration, began to eat into their souls. The men sat around log fires, the first they had ever had at the front. They were trying to reassure themselves that there were no enemy batteries spying on them from the next hill and no German bombing planes approaching to blast them out of existence. They talked in low tones. They were nervous.

After the long months of intense strain, of keying themselves up to the daily mortal danger, of thinking always in terms of war and the enemy, the abrupt release from it all was physical and psychological agony. Some suffered a total nervous collapse. Some, of a steadier temperament, began to hope they would someday return to home and the embrace of loved ones. Some could think only of the crude little crosses that marked the graves of their comrades. Some fell into an exhausted sleep. All were bewildered by the sudden meaninglessness of their existence as soldiers. What was to come next? They did not know, and hardly cared. Their minds were numbed by the shock of peace. The past consumed their whole consciousness. The present did not exist, and the future was inconceivable.

This is a cutting from a feature in the
Daily Sketch
. It makes me so sad to think about the ‘crude little crosses’ which might be the only thing that marks my brothers’ graves, and I pray that we might one day see them laid to rest in a proper place, where we can visit and spend some time with them, that time we’ve been denied.

It set me to wondering about the living, and whether Alfie is one of those with a ‘steadier temperament’, or one of the other types? Does he find the future inconceivable? I have been so wrapped up with planning his homecoming (in my mind I’ve been imagining a party with banners and barrels of beer, a feast of meat pies and mash and then, of course, some quiet time just for ourselves), that I haven’t for one moment considered that he might actually be worried about returning to ‘normal life’.

Saturday 14th December 1918

Nearly a month has passed since my last entry but it is so difficult to keep up this diary when I am still working hard and so little seems to be happening.

Rationing is getting worse and there seems no end in sight. Meat, butter and sugar are all very short, though surely the blockades must have stopped by now and supplies will start up shortly. Pa hoped to recruit a new boy to help him in the butcher’s shop but with hardly any meat to sell he’s opening just a couple of days a week and barely making enough to pay the rent. It’s only from my earnings and the little that Ma makes taking in mending that we manage to cover the other bills.

So I don’t know what we’ll do for money, now my job is finishing. At the end of our shift today the boss called us all together and told us that the factory will close early for Christmas – i.e. at the end of this week – and would not be re-opening. Of course we’d been expecting it, but that didn’t stop it being a real shock. Some of the girls were in tears.

‘Merry Christmas, maties, thanks for working your fingers to the bone and ruining your complexions for the past few years. Now you can go back to being obedient little housewives,’ Freda whispered as we watched the boss’s departing back.

When we clocked off this afternoon someone started to sing, softly at first: ‘Good-bye-ee, good-bye-ee, wipe the tears, baby dear, from your eye-ee’, till all the rest of us picked it up and there was a great chorus of us going down the street.

It’s not just the pay I’ll miss. It’s a terrible job, dangerous and all (none of us can forget the explosion at Silvertown), but we’ve had such a good time with the other girls and made so many good friends here, it will be a wrench to leave them.

Some of the men are starting to come home now and most seem to be in good heart. The Nelson is doing great trade and the dance halls are busy. But yesterday a young stranger came into the corner shop when I was buying needles and thread for Ma. He looked like a ghost, so pale and thin. When he came to the counter and spoke, he could only manage a hoarse kind of whisper and struggled to get his breath, but I recognised the voice from somewhere. It was only later I realised that it was Percy Gittins, who used to be a great lardy lump at my old school and terrorised the smaller boys. Now he was reduced to a wraith who walked in a shuffle and could barely speak.