Starring Adele Astaire, page 28
Inside their rented flat, Violet had kept her voice calm, hoping not to worry her sister. “We’ll be together in a munitions factory.”
“Munitions?” Pris had plucked a plate from beneath a napkin and set it at Violet’s place at the table. “I suppose we should be happy it isn’t the fields, like Caty, else the country would be in grave danger with your black thumb.”
Violet had snorted, handing her sister the telegram, grateful that they’d remain together. “I am most assuredly not fit for the Land Girl Army. Caty, however, seems to be thriving.” Violet could barely keep a houseplant alive, let alone work as a farmer.
So now here they were, munitions women, billeted in a house in the country with two others. Violet rubbed the sleep from her eyes, watching as her sister tried determinedly to snooze for a few more minutes. If she’d been sent here without Pris, it would have been misery, every second spent in worry.
Performing had for a time raised morale and that had seemed good enough for her, but now she was helping fight back. Actually doing something that would make a difference. Every shell she touched was going to take the life of a German who’d tried to kill her friends and countrymen. An enemy who’d bowed to the man who desired to oppress entire communities. Sadly, it was also entirely possible it would take the life of an innocent, as had the German bombs dropped on Britain. But Violet liked to think British pilots had better aim.
She and Pris along with the other women at the munitions factory were doing their bit to make a difference. Daily the “munitionettes”—a name coined during the Great War—in the factory were given pep talks about how the lives of the soldiers depended on them. It was enough for Violet to think about Paul being protected by the munitions she helped create.
With Paul having joined the RAF, she thought making bullets and bombs would be the best way to help him fight the Nazis, end the war sooner, and get him home so they could finally get married. And she was going to demand it this time. No more waiting around.
Though the shifts at Rotherwas were long, Violet walked along the River Wye that bordered the estate when she could. One could never tell that this had once been a grand family estate, considering there were twenty-six sheds built for filling the munitions, more than eighty air-raid shelters, offices, and police and fireman huts. Rotherwas had been used by the Canary Girls during the Great War, too, and every day Pris and Violet checked themselves to see if their skin and hair were turning as yellow as the women in the First World War from handling the Lyddite and TNT that went into the munitions. So far, they each had only a lovely shade of lemon on their fingers and nails, despite the gloves and scrubbing after every shift, but their hair had remained dark.
There were thousands of women there, working in twelve-hour shifts. Those who couldn’t billet in town or in a nearby town slept on barracks-like cots that Violet imagined Paul camped out on when he wasn’t flying over enemy territory.
For their shifts, they dressed in boiler suits and rubber shoes, their short hair tucked up under felt hats—because one loose strand of hair could cause an explosion. They worked until their yellow-tipped fingers were numb, fitting exploders to shells, then clearing the screwheads and gauging the depth before inserting the detonator. One wrong move and the entire thing could blow up in their faces. Violet never forgot how incredibly dangerous their mission was.
Once the shell was assembled, they stenciled the destructive marks on it and rolled it onto the cart, complete. When her supervisor wasn’t looking, Violet put a tiny white V under the mark, so if Paul ever saw it he would know it was Violet who’d made the shell, but anyone else might get a kick out of thinking it meant Victory, which it did. Some of the other girls would slip notes into the cartridges, telling the boys abroad that they were brave.
Violet got dressed and shook her sister’s shoulder, then meandered down the narrow stairs to where their landlady—ironically, named Miss Beech, like their landlady growing up—would serve them breakfast, or, rather, dinner. This week they were working the night shift at Rotherwas, having worked the day shift the week before.
Pris joined her and they ate pease porridge in silence. When they were through, she scraped away the remnants into the bowls that Miss Beech set aside for her dogs. Although the fare was reminiscent of what Mum had made them back in Hoxton, it was filling, and, despite the rationing, they still had plenty to eat. Miss Beech was an avid gardener, so much so that she’d even started to sell or trade some of her extra bounty with the other women in the village. Violet and Pris were lucky to be where they were; besides, it was very close to the factory, and a lot of the girls they worked with spent hours on the train commuting.
They weren’t the only women billeting at the house. Two other girls—Sarah and Mary, sisters from the East End working at the factory—had been placed there as well. They were closer to Pris’s age, and worried for their brothers, who were soldiers. Their mother and father had been killed when a bomb fell on their house.
The four of them shared the two spare bedrooms upstairs, while Miss Beech occupied a room on the main floor. Taking care of the tenants allowed Miss Beech to remain out of factory work, which she said suited her well enough. She made them breakfast and supper each day, and set up their twice-a-week bathing schedule. On Sundays, after they all trekked to the church service—if they weren’t working—Miss Beech made them some sort of treat, whether crunchy biscuits sweetened with a bit of beet juice or a potato-crust pie with apples from the trees in her yard.
Violet put the bowls out for Miss Beech’s dogs, noting that if she and Pris didn’t hurry the sun would set before they got to work, and she hated walking in the dark.
“Ready?” Violet asked, eyeing Pris, who was cleaning up the table where they’d eaten.
“Yes.” Pris always managed to look bright-eyed despite the hard labor and scarcity of sleep.
They trudged up the road with the other women in the village who were either billeting or residents. Nearly to the gate, a loud explosion sounded in the distance.
“The Germans!” one of the women shrieked, causing mass panic.
All of them ran for the ditches at the sides of the road, diving for cover in the few Anderson shelters that had been buried there in case something like this happened.
The earth was still warm from the day, though the sun was setting, and Violet thrust her fingers into the ground, dirt filling beneath her fingernails. Was this what it was like for the men at the front? Diving for cover with soil pressed into their palms?
“It’s not even full dark yet,” Pris said. “They’ve bloody doubled the size of their bollocks about when they drop.”
Violet nodded. They’d been warned of the risks of working in the munitions factory, told that if the Germans found out the location they would blow them all to smithereens. They were sworn to secrecy about their methods and schedules, but everyone in town knew what they did. Hell, most of the townsfolk were the ones doing it. And those who weren’t billeted right there came from the surrounding towns, some commuting as much as three to four hours each morning and night. All of the county knew what happened here, if not the country.
Violet peeked up toward the sky, noticing the lack of buzzing that indicated Luftwaffe, as well as the lack of an air-raid siren wailing.
“That’s odd.” She squinted at the sky, as if that would help her hear better. “I don’t hear anything other than shouting from the factory.”
The rest of the women peeked up, listening and then nodding, the murmur of their agreement resounding through the ditches.
Slowly they climbed from their makeshift shelters and looked toward the factory, where dark smoke curled toward the sky. There was no doubt an explosion had occurred. My God. But it wasn’t from the Luftwaffe. Not yet. Even still, it was just as dangerous.
Violet took off at a run toward the factory, fearful of what they’d been told since day one—a loose piece of hair, a sneeze, the wrong calculations in the chemical, a day of bad luck.
As they drew closer, they could see that one of the filling sheds where she and Pris normally worked was ablaze. Firemen carried their stirrup pumps and buckets, propelling water onto the flames, but it did no good. The explosion had caused the rest of the shells inside to detonate one after another, pushing the firemen back and making the blaze grow larger. Uncontrollable flaming arms undulated in the air and out to the sides, a fiery toddler in full tantrum.
“What happened?” Pris asked a woman crouched on all fours, her clothes a mess, wiping her soot-smeared brow with a handkerchief.
“Not sure, but they thought it might have been one of the milling machines overheated and caused the shells to detonate. It had been wonky all day, but the sup wouldn’t let us turn it off.” She started to hack a cough, as tears made flesh-colored streaks in the soot on her cheeks, and Pris attempted to soothe her.
“How many . . . were left inside?” Violet didn’t want to ask the question, her mind automatically spinning visions of what had transpired.
“Only a handful, as far as I know.” Fresh tears fell from her eyes. “Shift change and all that.”
Pris’s gaze met Violet’s, the fear on her sister’s face something foreign. Since the moment of their mother’s passing—hell, the moment of Pris’s birth—Pris had made the world bend to her will as much as any penniless girl from Hoxton could. But this was something she couldn’t work around and fight against. Accidents happened. And here, at Rotherwas, the accidents were deadly.
Violet put her arm around Pris’s shoulders and led her away a fraction. “Do you want me to tell the sup you’re sick? You can go home and rest. I’ll work a double if it makes him happy.” With the rest of the sheds unharmed and work to be done, they wouldn’t be shutting down.
Pris shook her head. “No. I’ll be fine. I can’t turn chicken and run when women we knew, women we worked beside, just gave their lives to the cause. I can’t honor them by disappearing.”
She was right. Their comrades in munitions work were casualties of this war and they both owed it to them to stay and help.
Violet let out a long breath and pressed her cheek to the top of her sister’s head, the same way she had a decade ago when they’d been left alone to fend for themselves in this world. “Sometimes I forget how smart you are.”
“I did work in a bookshop,” Pris snorted, having grown quite adept at making light of situations.
Violet let out a one-syllable laugh. “And as we all know, that makes you genius level, as far as Woods go.”
“Mum certainly would have thought so. Told me to get my highfalutin’ head out of the bloody clouds.” Pris’s inflection was dry, but her body trembled slightly as she pulled away and made a show of fixing her hat. As if straightening her cap could somehow straighten out this mess.
“Similar to her telling me to get my fancy good-for-nothing twinkle-toes out of the bloody dancing shoes. If only she could see me now. She’d probably think the rubber boots they have us wear were high fashion.”
The sisters laughed quietly, and Pris wiped at her tears. It felt good to joke about the pain of the past in order to mute the pain of the present. It certainly beat sobbing.
“Well, big sister, we’d best get to it. No better way to feel better than to be the cause of some evil Nazi’s end.” Pris straightened her shoulders, the armor back in place.
Violet grinned, emulating her sister’s movements, and surprised at how stacking her spine made her feel more put-together. “Like I said, genius.”
* * *
October 1942
The unread letter—heavily redacted—trembled in Violet’s hand. “Pris! It’s about Paul.”
The water splashed in the small tub behind the makeshift curtain, where Pris bathed. “Read it to me.” Her sister’s voice was even, though there was the faintest sharp edge to the first syllable.
Violet’s gaze impatiently skimmed the tattered paper, of which pieces had literally been cut out, including all the important details. Why the military felt the need to read all correspondence was understandable, but why cut from it even the most mundane things? Nearly half the letter was cut out, leaving the paper looking like a maze of thin, flat strings magically connected.
Violet’s voice was rushed as she tried to quell her own panic. “Something about a dancer and a castle. The balloon popping, and needing a nap with the sheep.”
“What in the world?”
Violet nodded, though her sister couldn’t see her. “I think it’s code. A dancer, a castle, sheep.”
“There’s only one person we all know where those three things fit—Adele.”
“Yes. It has to be. They cut out so much, but I’m guessing he wrote ‘a dancer’ and a ‘castle’ and the ‘sheep’ so I would know he meant Ireland. Lismore.”
Oh, how she wanted to book passage right away to get to Paul. She was nearly fainting with relief to know that he was alive, especially after she’d feared him dead when news had come of many airmen being shot down, Paul’s letters coming few and far between.
“Vi? You still there?” More splashing, as if Pris was about to climb from the tub.
“Don’t get out,” Vi rushed to say. “I’m still here.”
That night over a small cuppa, she penned a letter to Paul, hoping it would reach him at Adele’s castle, then settled into bed with one of the books she’d borrowed from the makeshift library at the factory.
The following morning she stopped at the post office on the way to her shift, and the postmaster waved her down.
“Telegram for you, Miss Wood.”
With shaking hands, Violet accepted the yellow note, the blocky black letters blurring in a sudden rush of emotion. Telegrams nowadays only brought news of loss. Never one to have the patience not to look, she sucked in a breath and focused on the words. Prepared for the worst.
paul with us. recovering well. come stay too. delly.
Violet’s knees buckled at the words and what they meant, her hand trembling so hard that the paper crinkled. Relief flooded her at the confirmation that Paul was with Adele.
How she longed to drop everything now and run to Ireland. To scoop up Pris and say The hell with this, let’s go be with the ones we love far away from anything that could hurt us. But the fact was that she might be able to request a day or two of leave, but nothing long enough to make the trek. She’d have to turn around halfway to get back in time for her next shift, which made visiting impossible.
“I need to send a telegram,” Violet said, approaching the desk.
The postmaster nodded, sliding her the form to fill out.
thank you. can’t come. conscripted. much love. vi.
She prayed that Paul would understand that her hands were tied, and made a vow that when this war was over she was going to make her way to Ireland to stay with Adele, because she’d been invited and had to decline so many times.
The following day, she received another telegram.
understood. taking good care of him. we miss and love you. delly.
After their shift that night, Violet lay in bed, reading the same page repeatedly because she couldn’t concentrate. Then the door bounced open and Pris was there, grabbing her hand, forcing her to sit up.
“Downstairs with you.” Pris’s tone held no argument, reminding Violet of their mother ordering them out of bed on the coldest winter mornings.
“I’m tired.” Violet drew out the syllables in the same whine she’d tried on her mum all those years ago. With the same chance it would make a spit of difference.
“You won’t be when you see what I’ve done.”
That got Violet up, having memories of some of the pranks that her sister had done in her youth, thinking they were funny—face cream in her dance shoes was decidedly not amusing. “Please tell me that Miss Beech is not going to toss us out.”
“She isn’t.” Pris’s smile widened, filled with gleeful anticipation. “Come on.”
Violet followed her sister down the stairs, the sounds coming from the front of the house unfamiliar. Gathered in the small sitting room were Miss Beech, Sarah, and Mary.
“We wanted to cheer you up.” Miss Beech held up a dusty bottle of wine, and Mary presented her with an old Victrola that Sarah had pulled from the attic, along with several records.
“What better way than to make the sitting room into one of the clubs you used to visit before the war?” Pris exclaimed, clapping her hands.
“I . . .” Violet was struck with emotion, her throat blocking her words from exiting the way the guards at Buckingham Palace obstructed the uninvited.
“Because you’ve made it your mission to see that we’re all happy, and now, when we know you want nothing more than to be with your wounded airman, you’re here still putting up the good fight.” Pris grabbed hold of Violet’s hand and forced her into a twirl, her brushed-under bob loosening to kiss the sides of her face.
“You’ve taken such sweet care of my Lady and Belle, you’re worth celebrating,” Miss Beech said, referring to the giant, thick-furred hounds that Violet gave all the scraps to.
Sarah and Mary said similar nice things, warming her heart. She’d not realized until that moment that she might be making a difference in other people’s lives besides the ones whose lives she consciously worked to improve—Pris, the airmen, the cast of a show.
Joy clawed its way past melancholy and Violet put her arm around her sister’s shoulders, hugging her. “Well, then, if we’re to make this into a makeshift dance club, I suppose you’ll all have to learn some steps.”
“Oh, you mean like this?” Pris struck a pose before doing a full shuffle step and twist, complete with stage smile and wiggling jazz hands.
The move was a complicated one, and Violet was left dumbstruck. “My goodness, where did you learn that?”
Pris laughed and tugged at the end of Violet’s hair. “You’re kidding, right? I grew up watching you dance my whole life.”
