The Staircase Girls Read online

  ‘Cooked breakfast!’ exclaimed Joyce. ‘Every day? How come? Can I have one every day please!’

  ‘Shush,’ Celia told her, and turned to Aggie. ‘Must cost the earth to feed grown men of that age?’

  ‘Yeah, but they paid a fair price to live here, and they paid in advance every term, so we always knew what we had to spend on them. There’s lots of us university landladies who’ve had eminent young gentlemen living with us, and it’s a good way of making a living. Better than the jam factory, anyway. Some of my young gents send Christmas cards and sometimes pop in and visit when they’re here for May Week. Or, at least they used to. Bit different with the war on, naturally.’

  On the night of 16 January, the sirens went off in Cambridge just before Joyce’s bedtime. Rather than battle their way through the snow and icy wind, Aggie suggested that they stay put, and if they hear any planes near them, they get under the stairs and the table. Joyce was asleep by the time that the drone of aeroplanes was close enough for Aggie to lift her and put her on a pillow under the table. For the following half hour or so there was a constant thud and bang of what turned out to be mostly incendiary bombs landing about a mile away from them. Long after the planes had gone, there was a bright light in the sky over towards Regent Street, reckoned Aggie. She hoped the Regal hadn’t gone up in flames, ‘’cos that would be an end to dancing on Saturday night’. The following morning Aggie went out ‘to ’ave a look-see at what happened last night’. When she returned she told them that ‘Hyde Park copped it proper last night!’ Celia looked confused. ‘What, in London? How d’you know?’

  ‘No, silly,’ Aggie unwrapped her head and neck from the thick scarf she’d only finished knitting two days earlier, ‘Hyde Park Corner over near the Catholic church. One of the air raid wardens reckon that 200 fire bombs got dropped round there. A warehouse went up, and bits of the posh school, The Perse. He said the firemen couldn’t get their pumps going ’cos they couldn’t find the water taps, and them they did find were frozen solid. It didn’t take long for some of them to thaw with all that burning, though, I bet.’

  ‘Was anyone hurt?’ asked Celia.

  ‘Don’t think so. Sorry, loveys, we didn’t have any of that kind of thing before. ’Ere, you don’t reckon Jerry’s after you, do you?’ Aggie laughed, but Joyce noticed that her mum looked worried.

  Aggie repeated the question a couple of weeks later, on 30 January, when the women were caught in an air raid on Mill Road at four in the afternoon. With no shelter close enough to run to as the siren went, which was closely followed by the thrum of engines overhead, Celia and Aggie crept under a big lorry that was just high enough that they didn’t have to lie down to get under. ‘At least we won’t get wet in the snow,’ Celia said to Aggie, clutching her hand tightly as they squatted on their haunches. From their spot a few hundred yards from the bridge over the railway line, they watched – horrified – as first one, and then the matching cottage on the other side of the bridge, were hit by bombs.

  ‘They just sort of crumpled at first,’ Celia told Joyce when they got home, ‘and lots of smoke came out and then bricks started flying everywhere, like in slow motion it was. I was glad we were under that lorry . . .’

  ‘Yeah, until we got out from there, eh, Celia?’ Aggie was grinning so much that her cheekbones looked as if they’d pop out, thought Joyce. Both women had had a giddy air about them when they’d burst through the door, their hair wild, their voices shrieking.

  ‘Oh.’ Celia stopped completely still, her coat half off and half on. ‘Oh.’ She sat down at the kitchen table. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Mum? What?’

  Aggie was beginning to giggle so much that she could hardly speak. ‘Ah . . .’ She took a breath, leaning with both hands on the back of Celia’s chair. Aggie breathed out slowly, giggles breaking into the breath like hiccups, while Celia sat, white-faced and staring. ‘When we shuffled out from under the lorry,’ Aggie said in a trembling voice, ‘this warden came running towards us waving his arms, shouting and pointing behind us. “What’s he want, silly old sod,” I said to Ceel, didn’t I, Ceel?’ A nod. ‘And he came up to us as we started walking back towards home, and grabbed my arm and says, “Din’t you see where you was?” Well, I stopped and said, “Yeah, ’course. What, is it against the law now to hide from bombs?” And he said, “No, but it’s bloody stupid to hide from bombs under a petrol lorry!” Then we both turned round and looked at where we’d been, and sure enough, it was a bloody big petrol tanker! And I said to Ceel, “You sure Adolf ain’t after you personally?” Then we both burst out laughing, din’t we, Ceel?’ Another nod.

  Aggie paused, her smile gone. ‘But now, it don’t seem so funny. I think I’ll go an’ have a lie down.’

  ANN

  Cambridge 1942–43

  ‘Good old Uncle Bill!’ Ann shouted, hugging her sister Bet. They were at Nana Wolfe’s house and he’d just told them that he’d found them a home.

  It was far from being as ‘decent’ as he had promised, he said, but it was definitely big enough to fit them all in. As he explained to Grace, ‘It used to be three houses but it’s more of a warehouse now. The Baldry’s drinks factory bought it and knocked them into one, and then rented it to the Premier brush-making company who kept their brushes there until recently. You lot will be OK. We can soon do it up.’

  The family went to see the place the following day. ‘It’s a dump,’ Grace said, none too quietly, as she stood halfway through the door as the children ran in. They were desperate to explore, and immediately saw the potential for den building and games of hide and seek.

  Bill stood with his arms crossed over his chest and told Grace, ‘I know that it’s in the yard of the Hearts of Oak, but it’s not a rough pub. It only ever really gets busy when the brush factory workers come in for a drink on pay day. And they’re not a bad bunch, mostly girls, so it’s never rowdy or too noisy.’

  Grace didn’t want to complain because she knew they wouldn’t be able to find anything this size anywhere else in Cambridge, and certainly not as cheap as this. Bill had arranged with the brush factory for them to live there until the council could find them something permanent, and all they had to pay was for the gas and electricity.

  ‘Presumably there is electric, is there, Bill?’ Grace asked only half-sarcastically.

  Doubtless because the houses that had been knocked through on the ground floor had been used as a warehouse, all three front windows were shuttered, so the only light came through the door. On closer inspection, Bill could see it was a smaller doorway cut into a larger pair of gates, so he began to unbolt it in order to let more light in. ‘Yes, it’s on, only I don’t think there are any bulbs. Let’s get the big doors open and then you can see.’

  As he and Jack struggled with the rusted bolts on the top of the gate frame, the children began venturing further away from the light. ‘Careful you lot,’ Grace warned them harshly, ‘you don’t know what you might be stepping in, there’ll have been cats and all sorts in here.’

  Suddenly Ann screamed. ‘Mum! Rene’s legs have gone right through the floorboards!’ Derek started to laugh.

  Grace searched in the direction of Rene’s shouts, just as Jack got to her and Bill swung half of the double gates open, allowing more weak sunshine in.

  Derek continued to laugh as their dad pulled Rene out from the hole she’d made in the rotten floorboards. Laughter spread through the family, becoming hysterical when Ann pointed out what looked like a family of rats scurrying away from the light.

  ‘They’re going off to pack their bags,’ said Bill, ‘they won’t stay now you’re here, don’t worry about them.’

  Grace forced a smile, but her disappointment was hard to conceal. Jack caught her looking at him and could almost see the words ‘disappointed with my lot’ forming on her lips.

  Although the ground floor had been knocked through so that there was a huge space and three front windows looking onto the small street, only one of the form
er houses had retained a back room, in which there was a stone sink and cold tap. The upstairs hadn’t been knocked through, so there were three staircases from the ground floor that each led to two bedrooms, a larger one at the front and small at the rear, making six bedrooms in total. There was an outside lavatory for each former house, but no bathrooms. The first floor rooms had beds in varying degrees of decrepitude, along with wardrobes and cupboards, so all they needed was some furniture for the ground floor. And some flooring, of course.

  Over the next few days Jack, Bill and some of his mates carried in floorboards taken from bombed houses and fitted them where needed, while the aunts arranged for some of their furniture to be loaned to the Pilchers at the House of Brushes.

  The younger children had great fun in the ‘brush house’, as they called it, and for the first week had no arguments at all, they so enjoyed being together again. They built dens and hideouts under each of the staircases, and in the three backyards that had also been knocked through, but not fully, so some bits of wall remained. One provided support to the coal shed, another for the lean-to in which an old mangle stood, rusting away.

  Derek and Rene were happier attending the Brunswick, a non-religious school not far from the house, and they soon made lots of friends in the area.

  For a while, as the brush house began to look like a home rather than a warehouse, the Pilchers were beginning to seem like a family again, and Grace felt that they were more protected from the war. There had been raids on the outskirts of Cambridge, and one of the boys at Brunswick claimed that he and a pal had been dive-bombed and shot at by a German plane one morning when they were playing in Ditton Fields, but there hadn’t been a major raid on the city to compare with what the family had escaped in Folkestone. ‘At least there won’t be any bombs dropped on us, they’re all falling in the sugar beet fields miles from here!’ Grace said one day at teatime.

  ‘Drops on the crops,’ Jack had told her when he read about the bombs falling in the fields on the outskirts of the town.

  As summer 1942 bloomed, the family settled into their new home. On warm Friday evenings, the turbaned and dungaree-wearing women from the brush factory took to sitting in the Hearts of Oak yard with their pints and port, smoking and joking with Grace as she took in her washing, or emptied rubbish into the bins out back. Ann and Bet always smiled at the brush girls and Bet even sneaked a sip of beer from a couple who took a shine to her.

  Air raid warnings had gone off occasionally, and the family knew where to go if a raid happened – although Grace, knowing that they were rushing to the cellar under what used to be a petrol station on Occupation Road, was worried that there might still be a tank filled with flammable material nearby. It was the designated shelter for a large number of people from Newmarket Road, and the Pilchers often found themselves sharing a ‘bed’ of an old mattress with strangers for several hours. It was dank, uncomfortable and, Ann thought, embarrassing. Women who did manage to sleep, even when wrapped in old raincoats for warmth in that cold dark cellar, couldn’t help showing their stocking tops, or that they’d drawn a line up their legs because they didn’t have any stockings. Ann noticed men looking at them, with strange expressions on their faces, and confusingly she felt embarrassed for the men as much as the women.

  When bombs dropped close to the shelter, Ann could feel a sense of fear sweep through the place. When it did, some people cried uncontrollably, one man would recite the Lord’s prayer over and over, and an old woman kept saying ‘This is it! This is it! This is it!’ as the ack-ack guns sounded, long after the major bangs and thuds had faded. On such nights Grace lay with her hands over her ears, on her side with Derek clinging to her front while Rene clung to her back. Ann and Bet sat either side of Jack, against the cobwebby wall in a corner, holding hands, their eyes closed.

  Even in the bright glare of the morning sun the dark sounds, smells and sense of fear followed the family as they entered their house. Finally, one morning as Ann thought she couldn’t stand it for much longer, her sister spoke up. ‘I hate it in there, Mum,’ Bet murmured, as Grace found the loaf and some margarine for their breakfast.

  ‘Me too!’ said Rene and Derek in unison. Jack looked puzzled, so Ann wrote on the scrap paper pad that was always kept on the table, ‘We hate being in the shelter.’ Her father nodded. ‘Me too.’

  There were no air raids for the next couple of nights, and so they got to stay in their own beds all night. On Friday after tea Grace chatted with some of the brush girls in the yard. On re-entering the kitchen she looked triumphant.

  ‘Right,’ she began, ‘the girls from the brush factory have said that we can go to their new shelter if there’s enough room.’

  Jack looked up from his newspaper and Bet wrote it down for him. He smiled and said, ‘I’ll make sure to take us some mattresses.’

  Admittedly the brush factory shelter was close and usually the Pilchers were the only people in it if the sirens went late at night, but it was another cellar and the workers didn’t knock off until eight or nine sometimes, and if a raid occurred before the end of the working day, things could get very tight in the airless, arch-roofed rooms. Most of the women who worked at Premier smoked like chimneys and at times Ann couldn’t see the end wall of the shelter because of the blue fug in the cellar.

  But when it was just them and the night watchman in the brush factory shelter, the raids kind of became an adventure for the children – and while they played games and ran around Grace would sit silently in a corner, her back to her husband. Ann thought Grace looked scared and miserable, and that she only didn’t tell them off because of the watchman being in the shelter. Her dad looked as if he was trying to sleep, but that wasn’t easy and more often impossible.

  Just before Christmas, Jack told Grace that he’d decided to buy a Morrison shelter with the little money they had plus a loan from Bill, who helped to assemble it in their kitchen. It was like one they had back in Folkestone, made up of a metal table with steel mesh sides.

  Now, they’d all cram into it when the air raids were on and ask their dad to tell them stories about his time in India and the ‘Batsman’ and especially the one called Christmas. After the third or fourth telling, a clearly fed-up Grace shouted, ‘Oh no! Not again,’ and so they had a sing-song instead. Ann noticed that her mum never sang along, though, and kept her thin lips firmly pursed together. She seemed as stiff as a board to Ann, every moment that she spent in the shelter with them made her tense. For the next year whenever raids happened the Pilcher house of brushes would resound to the sound of ‘Underneath the Arches’, ‘Roll Out the Barrel’, ‘Down at the Old Bull and Bush’ and ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’ from Pinocchio, the cartoon film that the kids had loved when they saw it at the Regal in February, but Grace’s voice was never raised in unison with her family.

  By the summer of 1942, the age of conscription had increased to include men aged between eighteen and fifty-one and all women aged twenty to thirty. Thousands more people had been called up for duty, which meant that there were more jobs going in Cambridge, and Jack finally found employment at the gasworks, despite his disability. It was dangerous because it was a likely target for German bombers, but it was a lot closer to home than the pig farm and meant that Jack was working inside, at least. Now aged fourteen and thirteen respectively, Ann and Bet took jobs at Premier, but money continued to be short. Even if there was little to buy, with rations restricting much of what shops could stock, the cost of coal and keeping four growing children in clothes was stretching the family budget beyond breaking some weeks.

  One Saturday afternoon in May of 1943, Ann called Bet, Rene and Derek together in the kitchen and gave each a duster or a brush, and told them that they were going to have visitors. ‘Mum’s bringing home some of them evacuees to stay. So we have to tidy up.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Rene asked. ‘There’s thousands of them here in Cambridge. We’ve got some at our school and they’ve been there ages. How come we’re h
aving them now?’

  ‘Hardly safe here are they?’ Derek laughed. ‘I nearly fell through the floor this morning up in the back bedroom.’

  ‘Oh, it’s because Mum’ll get some extra shillings for each one, isn’t it,’ Bet realized. ‘She’s always moaning that Dad doesn’t earn enough up at the gasworks, and she says I can’t go to art college. She got us into that ’orrible brush factory before me and Nance could get our school bags off our shoulders.’ She slumped into a chair and looked at her older sister. ‘It’ll never be enough though, will it? Who’s going to look after them when she’s at work?’

  Ann sat down opposite her sister and explained. ‘They’re coming from Aunt Lily’s, where they’d been billeted. She’s had them on her farm but she can’t cope any more. The evacuees are too young to be of any help and she’s got Herbert to see to, and he’s only a year old. We’ve got enough space here. Look at it – it’s huge. We’ll all help, too, won’t we?’ She reached over and rested her hand on Bet’s arm. ‘They’re probably really homesick and petrified – have some sympathy, Bet. And anyway, Derek,’ Ann turned to her brother, ‘there hasn’t been any bombs for ages and there’s talk of there not being any more neither! There’s a girl and two boys, so you’ll have them to play soldiers with.’

  All three looked reluctantly at their cleaning implements. ‘Please come and help me,’ Ann asked, ‘we haven’t got long and I’ve got a rabbit stew on.’

  Bet and Rene knew that they couldn’t leave Ann to do everything because she’d forget about the stew, and never get the cleaning done well enough so she’d be scolded by their mum. ‘I never get it right, sorry, Mum,’ Ann had told Grace after one of her regular housework inspections only a couple of weeks earlier. ‘I don’t know why, but housework just doesn’t like me. I’d rather be cooking.’ Grace liked Ann to do the cooking when Jack wasn’t home, although she could never muster a meat pudding quite as good as her dad’s.