The Bomb Girls' Secrets Read online

  Daisy Styles

  * * *

  THE BOMB GIRLS’ SECRETS

  Contents

  1. Kit

  2. Gladys

  3. Manchester

  4. Violet

  5. The Phoenix

  6. Raw Recruits

  7. The Filling Shed

  8. Gladys’s Secret

  9. Edna

  10. Gladys’s Launch

  11. Swing Band Debut

  12. The Sisters of Mercy

  13. Billy

  14. Plans

  15. Mr Ian McIvor

  16. Dance Band Competition

  17. Palais de Danse

  18. Flowers and Birdsong

  19. Nora and Nellie

  20. The Irish Visit

  21. Brave Girl

  22. Semi-final

  23. August 1942

  24. Hopes and Fears

  25. Stockport Final

  26. Stage Fright

  27. Edgwick

  28. Consequences

  29. A Claddagh Promise

  30. Mr O’Rourke

  31. Loose Lips

  32. Chapelizod

  33. Home

  34. Penance

  35. Cursed

  36. Manchester Royal Infirmary

  37. Connections

  38. Small Gifts of Love

  39. Spring Band Wedding

  40. Mother Gabriel

  41. Happy Family

  42. Bridesmaids and Bomb Girls

  43. Bomb Girls’ Christmas

  44. London

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

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  THE BOMB GIRLS’ SECRETS

  Daisy Styles grew up in Lancashire, surrounded by family and a community of strong women. She loved to listen to their stories of life in the cotton mill, in the home, at the pub, on the dance floor, in the local church, or just what happened to them on the bus going into town. It was from these women, particularly her vibrant mother and Irish grandmother, that Daisy learnt the art of storytelling.

  By the same author

  The Bomb Girls

  The Code Girls

  For the real Kitty, my beloved Grandma, who, against all the odds, refused to have her son, Bill, adopted and loved him passionately till the day she died. Bill, my father, loved swing band music, so Daddy, if you’re ‘In the Mood’, this is for you too!

  1. Kit

  On a freezing January night, twenty-four-year-old Kitty Murphy lay in her berth and prayed for death. The biting howling gale whipped around the passenger ship bound for Heysham, sending it tossing and spinning over the churning grey sea. As it plunged and rose like a monstrous sea serpent in the rolling waves, Kit stopped thinking about the possibility of being torpedoed by a German warship or bombed by a German Luftwaffe flying low over the Irish Sea. Instead, she groaned as her stomach went into yet another spasm of dizzying nausea. She’d been sick since the moment of departure from Dublin, and all through the wretched dark night too. In the bunk beds on either side of the cabin that smelt of vomit and cigarettes two other women lay sprawled and groaning on their berths, whilst a third cheerfully sat upright on her bed chain-smoking.

  ‘She must have guts of steel,’ thought Kit as sleep mercifully engulfed her.

  She suffered tormented dreams of Billy, new born, pink and warm in her arms. The baby she had had to leave behind, only a matter of weeks after a hard birth. Tears rolled unchecked down Kit’s thin cheeks; it was less than twenty-four hours since she’d left Billy at home in Chapelizod and it already seemed like a lifetime. Rosie had escorted her sister to the bus stop, where they’d stood in the rain, waiting for the bus that would take Kit to Dublin. Clutching Billy tightly in her arms, she’d inhaled the sweet baby smell of him for the last time, and as the bus loomed up she’d kissed him over and over again, before Rosie had literally wrenched the screaming child from her arms and Kit stumbled on the bus, blinded by tears.

  Kit could scarcely remember how she got from the bus station to the Dublin docks. All her instincts had told her this was wrong: she should be walking in the opposite direction. Even her body had protested. Her breasts were sore and engorged with milk, food that Billy, she was quite sure, would be wailing for right now. The thought of him lying in his makeshift crib, a drawer taken from the dresser, crying for food, nearly killed her. Would her younger sister have time to change Billy’s nappy and give him the bottle she’d left with instructions on how to sterilize it with boiling water after Billy’s feeds? Her womb throbbed from the long walk to the docks; the sensation reminded her so much of when she’d first fed her son. As he caught on the nipple and sucked greedily, she’d felt her womb contract. Just the thought of his birth, the sweet memory of him entering the world, brought a brief barely visible smile to her lips.

  Kit’s father had refused point-blank to pay out money for a midwife.

  ‘To hell with a feckin’ midwife!’ he’d announced. ‘You’ll not find me paying out for your bastard child.’

  It was a long hard labour for Kit, who was small and narrow hipped, and Billy, a big bouncing boy, almost tore her apart, but all the pain and fear had been worthwhile. She cherished the moment of holding Billy for the first time, of putting him to her breast, and worn out by the long labour he slept peacefully in her arms.

  As the rain had started to fall and the Dublin docks loomed up in the wet mist that suddenly shrouded the city, Kitty vividly recalled how she’d marvelled at Billy’s dark eyelashes fanned out on his soft, pale cheeks. Could this miracle of a child really be the product of Lionel Fitzwilliam?

  ‘He’s like an angel, Ma,’ she’d whispered to her mother when the labour was over. ‘A gift from God.’

  After a prolonged spell of coughing, Mrs Murphy had remarked in a frightened whisper, ‘Don’t be after letting your da hear you talking like that – you’ve brought shame upon this house.’

  When she’d missed her first monthly, Kit wilfully told herself that the shock of Fitzwilliam’s brutal attack had upset her body, but when she missed the second and was sick every morning she knew she was pregnant.

  ‘Mi da will kill me,’ she whispered to Rosie as they lay together in the single bed they shared, covered with old coats to keep them warm.

  ‘Jesus, Kit! He’ll crucify you,’ Rosie whispered in a voice full of fear.

  Lying in her narrow berth in one of the cheapest cabins, which were close to the engine room, she remembered the long queue of passengers she’d joined the previous day, all poor families hoping for a better life in England. Kit’s eyes had instantly picked out the babes in their mothers’ arms. She would willingly have sailed around the world and back again if she could only have her baby safe in her arms. She should have known it would end badly after her father’s reaction to her pregnancy, which he’d discovered when she started to show in her fifth month. He hadn’t crucified her, as Rosie had predicted, but he’d bounced Kit off every wall in the cottage, then hit her repeatedly until stars blazed in her head. The sound of her mother’s high-pitched screams finally brought him to a halt. As he stood panting and swearing over his daughter’s battered body, Kit tried to tell him what had happened to her.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault!’ she sobbed.

  ‘WASN’T YOUR FAULT?’ he roared like a raging bull. ‘It was YOU that opened yer legs, yer filthy little tramp!’ he sneered.

  ‘Da, as God’s my witness –’

  Kit got no further: after giving her a final kick, her father turned away and left the house.

  Despite all the terrible things going on in the war-torn world, for Kit the 7th of December 1941 had been the start of a whole new wonderful world; for
the first time in her life she felt complete. With her son’s arrival the sky was bluer, the grass greener, and the birds sang more sweetly. In a state of blissful infatuation, Kit had no idea that her son’s birth date was the fateful day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, an event that, she would later learn, changed the entire course of the war.

  When Billy slept in his dresser-drawer cradle, Kit ached to hold him; when he woke, she waited for his blue eyes to open and search out hers. As he grew, his little hands reached for her, and Kit was the first to see his heart-stopping, lop-sided smile. Mrs Murphy, who was weak and breathless after having suffered for two years from tuberculosis, advised her daughter to let Billy cry.

  ‘He can’t be having you all of the time,’ she chided.

  Kit was shocked by her mother’s harsh words. ‘I don’t want to let him cry!’ she exclaimed. ‘If he’s hungry I want to feed him; if he’s sad I want to cuddle him.’

  ‘Picking him up and mollycoddling him every five minutes will turn the little lad into a big softie,’ her mother warned.

  ‘Ma, he’s a few weeks old – what harm can a kiss and a cuddle do?’ Kit protested as she scooped Billy out of the drawer and put him to her breast, where he suckled eagerly.

  ‘Mark my words, you’ll ruin the boy,’ Mrs Murphy said as she shook her head in deep disapproval.

  Staring up at the ceiling, trying to stop the waves of nausea overwhelming her, Kit was glad that she had spent those precious first weeks with Billy, responding to his every cry, examining every inch of his soft warm body, kissing his little toes and stroking his rosy cheeks until he drifted off to sleep. As if sensing they would be parted, she had imprinted her baby into her memory: his irresistible smell, his sky-blue eyes, his dimpled chin, the way he sighed when falling asleep, the arch of his small strong back. There was nothing about her son that went unnoticed by his adoring mother.

  Only the night before she’d stood at the quayside, standing on Irish soil for as long as she could, clinging to the thought that she and her son were still breathing the same air, still living in the same country.

  ‘All aboard! All aboard!’ a sailor had cried, startling Kit, who realized she’d been staring into space, unaware of fellow passengers bustling by.

  ‘Come along, young lady,’ the cheerful sailor said as he helped Kit on to the gangplank. ‘England awaits!’

  ‘England!’ Kit had groaned as she leant over the rails and watched the crew raise the anchor. ‘It’s Ireland where I should be,’ she whispered as the ship’s engine powered the massive propeller and they headed her out to sea. As the dark and misty coastline of the land she’d grown up in faded into darkness, Kit wondered if drowning herself in the crashing waves far below would be easier than living without Billy.

  And the misery hadn’t dissipated. Drifting in and out of a restless sleep, Kit recalled with a shudder how she had come to be on this boat in the first place.

  When Billy was almost three weeks old, Mr Murphy had returned rolling drunk from the pub, threatening to send the child away for adoption. Kit, wild and fearless as a tigress guarding her cub, had fought her father with every fibre of her body.

  ‘He’s my son!’ she protested. ‘He belongs to me – I’ll never let him go.’

  A few days later, and this time stone cold sober and therefore more dangerous, her mercenary father had come up with an alternative plan.

  ‘We’ll take care of your bastard in return for five pounds a week.’

  Kit’s jaw dropped in disbelief.

  ‘That’s impossible. You know how much I earn working on the farm: not even half of that!’

  ‘I’m not talking about working on the feckin’ farm, yer eejit!’ her father snapped. ‘It’s the Lancashire mills you’ll be heading for.’

  Kit’s incredulity changed to blind panic.

  ‘Lancashire!’ she exclaimed. ‘My baby’s not a month old – I can’t leave him.’

  Ignoring her words, her father continued. ‘There’s good money to be had in England.’

  ‘But I want to be with Billy,’ Kit said as she started to cry. ‘Please don’t make me go, Da. Please, please let me stay.’

  ‘You’ve brought disgrace to the family with your dirty little bastard. The only way you can keep him is by going to work in England and sending money home to us to look after him.’

  Kit knew full well that any money she sent to her father would disappear down the pub; none of it would go to Billy, who’d be left with her sickly mother whilst her self-seeking father drank himself into oblivion. She bit back the words which, if spoken, would only make her position worse. Through distant relations who’d recently crossed the waters to settle in Manchester, her father had heard of the comparatively high wages paid to workers in the Lancashire cotton mills, and his mind was set on sending Kit there. No matter how much she sobbed and implored, ranted and wept, Mr Murphy remained resolute, until she slowly realized that leaving home and providing her family with money was really the only way she could keep Billy and avoid his adoption.

  After the longest and loneliest night of her life, the ship finally heaved to a halt and Kit, briefly unaware of where she was, thought for a split second that she was back home in bed with Billy.

  ‘Don’t cry, my darling,’ she said as she reached out to comfort him.

  She pictured him gurgling and cooing in her arms, smiling trustingly at his mother, the person who loved him most in the world. Grasping thin air, Kit wept. She had shattered that innocent new-born trust, abandoning him to her mother, who’d be lucky if she lived to see the year out, and her cruel father, who didn’t care if the child lived or died. Her only hope was that Rosie would have the time and patience to look out for her precious son.

  ‘Thank Jesus! We’ve landed,’ the chain-smoking girl announced.

  Weak and shaky, Kit found a bathroom, where she washed her ashen face and combed her hair. Staring at her reflection, she hardly recognized the girl she’d been a year ago. Her dark hair was still long but it had lost its rich lustre, as had her dark brown eyes. The worry of leaving her son had dramatically reduced her appetite, though she’d still managed to breastfeed Billy until the day she left. Her breasts tingled with the milk seeping from her nipples, sustenance for the baby she’d abandoned, she thought bitterly as she stuffed handkerchiefs into her ragged vest to absorb the liquid. Bone weary, Kit returned to her cabin, where she picked up her cheap, battered suitcase, then she walked down the ship’s gangplank and on to English soil with her heart as heavy as lead.

  2. Gladys

  Gladys Johnson opened her beautiful dark blue eyes wide so she could sweep black mascara on to her long lashes.

  ‘Be sharp now, or you’ll miss the bus,’ her mum nagged from the back kitchen, where a sheep’s head bubbling in a pan on the back burner made the air unpleasantly sickly. Though Gladys knew her mum would later drain the stock off the boiled head and use it to enrich her meat pies, the sight and smell of the sheep’s brains always turned her stomach.

  ‘Come on, our Glad,’ said Leslie, her handsome young brother, as he flicked her long hair on his way to pick up his coat. ‘I’ll walk to’t bus stop with you.’

  ‘You won’t if you keep messing up my hair!’ she laughed. ‘Gimme a minute to finish mi make-up.’

  Les shook his head and smiled fondly as he watched his beautiful big sister apply red lipstick to her full pouting lips, then pull a comb through the rich, glossy brunette ringlets that framed her smiling face.

  ‘Thou art vainest lass in’t th’ole of Leeds!’ he mocked.

  Gladys gave him a cheeky wink. ‘You’ve got to make the most of what you’ve got, our kid!’

  Calling a cheery goodbye to their mother, brother and sister swung down the cobbled terrace street where they’d grown up. With only a couple of years separating them in age, they’d always had a strong bond: they shared the same sense of cheeky humour, they both regularly played in the local Sally Army band along with their dad, and they both ha
d a passion for swing music. They also shared the same good looks: tall and strong, they both had thick curling brunette hair, stunning deep blue eyes, a dimple in the right cheek and a wide smiling mouth.

  ‘Don’t mention owt to our mam, but I’m thinking of joining the Yorkshires,’ Les said in a whisper. ‘I might even get a chance to play my trumpet in the regimental band,’ he added excitedly.

  Gladys stopped dead in her tracks. ‘I knew this was coming!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Come on, Glad,’ he reasoned. ‘A lot of lads I know joined up as soon as war was declared.’

  ‘Aye!’ she said angrily. ‘And a lot of them lost their young lives at Dunkirk in 1940.’

  ‘It’s my duty, Glad,’ he said flatly.

  She knew he was right; there were hardly any young men in evidence in Leeds these days, not unless they were briefly home on leave. Of course Les should fight for his country, even though he was her kid brother whom she used to protect from the bullyboys at primary school. As if reading her thoughts, Les added, ‘I’m not a kid any more.’

  Gladys nodded. ‘I know …’

  Tears filled her eyes at the thought of him going away. The house often rang with his laughter and the sound of his trumpet blasting out of his bedroom. ‘God, how I’ll miss him,’ she thought to herself, but she knew that he was of the age for conscription. Nobody could miss the stern government posters all over the city: BRITAIN NEEDS YOU.

  Standing up to kiss Les she gave a brave smiled as she said, ‘In that case, I wish you good luck!’ She hugged him hard, praying that God would keep him safe. Bravely she swallowed her tears for his sake.

  They went their separate ways: Les to the factory where he worked as a welder and Gladys to the Lyons Café on Hudson Road. Lyons employed over a hundred staff to serve food throughout the day and into the evening in a restaurant arranged on four levels. Whilst an orchestra played in the background, Gladys offered hungry customers a dizzying choice of starters, main courses and puddings, followed by coffee, and all for one shilling and sixpence. Wearing a black dress and an immaculately starched and pressed white apron and cap, Gladys glided through the noisy dining room packed with tables, all draped with snowy-white cloths and laid with gleaming cutlery. Skilfully balancing a heavy tray loaded with fish cakes, vegetable hotpot, baked currant pudding and apple turnovers plus a pot of tea, Gladys gracefully circumnavigated boisterous children, impatient old ladies and flustered Nippies to bring food to her expectant customers.