Hope for the Railway Girls

  Maisie Thomas

  * * *

  HOPE FOR THE RAILWAY GIRLS

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  About the Author

  Maisie Thomas was born and brought up in Manchester, which provides the location for her Railway Girls novels. She loves writing stories with strong female characters, set in times when women needed determination and vision to make their mark. The Railway Girls series is inspired by her great-aunt Jessie, who worked as a railway clerk during the First World War.

  Maisie now lives on the beautiful North Wales coast with her railway enthusiast husband, Kevin, and their two rescue cats. They often enjoy holidays chugging up and down the UK’s heritage steam railways.

  Also by Maisie Thomas

  The Railway Girls

  Secrets of the Railway Girls

  The Railway Girls in Love

  Christmas with the Railway Girls

  To the memory of Able Seaman Horace ‘Horrie’ John Walker (1925–1944) and his brother Ivan Clive Walker (1936–1972) who was the camp photographer at Bovington Camp during his National Service.

  And to Margaret Cowlan, for her kindness at a difficult time in my life; and Oliver Campbell, grandson of Margaret and Ivan. Oliver, you have grown into a remarkable man – hard-working, considerate and full of affection. Kevin and I love you dearly and are so proud of you.

  Acknowledgements

  I am grateful to Laura Longrigg, Katie Loughnane and Rose Waddilove, who ensured this book was polished until it gleamed. Also to Caroline Johnson, my copy-editor, whose keen eye and extensive knowledge of the series ensured I didn’t fall into any heffalump traps.

  Huge thanks to Catherine Boardman for choosing the perfect name for the dog in this story. To find out more, please read my short article, Brizo, the Railway Dog, in the back of the book.

  When writing acknowledgements, the word ‘support’ crops up time and again. To avoid that, I’d like to thank all these people for their support, as well as …

  Deborah Smith for befriending and encouraging me from the start;

  Zoe Morton for the book-reveal videos;

  Jane Cable for being the friend every writer needs;

  Beverley Ann Hopper for her generosity;

  Jen Gilroy for sharing all the ups and downs.

  And much love to Jacquie Campbell, who allowed me the honour of dedicating this book to her darling Daddy and Uncle Horrie.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Friday, 2 January 1942

  With the oily smell of the rag making her nostrils itch, Margaret rubbed hard at her allocated section of the locomotive’s enormous body. Polishing the loco sounded like an easy job, but it wasn’t, not if you did it properly. It called for loads of elbow grease – ‘good old Mark 1 elbow grease’, as it was known – but the effort was more than worth it, she had discovered.

  It was funny how things worked out. She had sat the tests in English, maths and geography to work on the railways simply as a means of escaping from her old job, a job she had loved ever since she had started at Ingleby’s the day after she left school, aged fourteen. But she had ended up dreading going to work in case one of her old neighbours appeared. You couldn’t run away and hide, not when you were an assistant in a successful and highly regarded shop.

  Margaret smiled to herself. You were supposed to run away and join the circus, weren’t you? Well, she had run away and joined the London, Midland and Scottish Railway. She had even been desperate enough to write a letter, asking if she could please have a job that didn’t involve working with the public. She had no idea whether anyone had paid attention to her request, or whether she would have been assigned to engine-cleaning anyway, but it didn’t matter. She was here now and she loved it. There was something deeply satisfying about giving a loco a jolly good clean. Everyone depended on the railways. They were an essential part of the war effort and Margaret believed all the way down to her toes that the war couldn’t be won without them. Troops, munitions, food and fuel were all transported around the country by rail. As a railway worker, Margaret was aware that dummy tanks were moved about on the back of huge flatbed wagons, just to keep Jerry guessing when he flew over in his spy planes. And then there were the ordinary passengers, of course, who put up with all sorts of delays because they were at the bottom of the pecking order these days when it came to deciding which trains were given priority; but folk took it on the chin, because everybody knew the importance of transporting soldiers, coal, weapons, food and other essentials.

  Margaret stopped for a moment to roll her shoulders inside her boiler suit. All the women in the engine sheds wore boiler suits or else heavy-duty dungarees with old blouses underneath or, in some cases, old shirts that had previously belonged to their husbands. Although Margaret preferred dungarees in warm weather, she was in a boiler suit now, because this January was proving to be colder than usual.

  ‘Let’s hope it’s even colder in Russia,’ Alison had said a couple of evenings ago at home in Wilton Close when Mrs Cooper was busy preparing hot-water bottles for her, Margaret and Mabel. ‘That’d freeze Jerry in his tracks.’

  Wilton Close. A warm feeling crept into Margaret’s heart as she pictured it. Even now, after living there for a few weeks, she still sometimes felt like pinching herself to make sure it was real. Imagine her, Margaret Darrell, having such good luck. It wasn’t just that she appreciated having a clean and comfy billet after the frankly shoddy bedsit she had lived in previously. It was the feeling of home that permeated the house, thanks to the kindly good nature of Mrs Cooper, her landlady, and also of Mrs Grayson, who was really another lodger but who did all the cooking and was a wizard at producing tasty meals in spite of shortages and rationing. Mabel joked that Mrs Grayson possessed a magic wooden spoon, and she wasn’t far wrong.

  ‘Forget Elsie and Doris Waters and Freddie Grisewood and The Kitchen Front on the wireless,’ Mabel had declared. ‘Mrs Grayson should have her own programme. It could be called Meals by Magic. How does that sound?’

  ‘Get away with you,’ Mrs Grayson had said, but she hadn’t been able to hide how pleased she was.

  Margaret shared a bedroom with Mabel, and Mrs Cooper had turned the old box room into a little bedroom for Alison. Living with the other two girls had helped Margaret to feel very much a part of the group of friends she had been drawn into last summer. It had been daunting, to say the least, to join a group of such established friends. Margaret had Joan to thank for her inclusion. They had known one another back at Ingleby’s, though it hadn’t been until they were put on fire-watching duty together that they had become friendly. Truth be told, it was because Joan had left Ingleby’s in a state of such pride and excitement to join the railways that Margaret had decided to do the same when she had been in need of a bolt-hole.

  And how glad she was that she’d done it. Thanks to that decision, she now had a cosy billet with the loveliest landlady in the kingdom, and she had a group of chums to whom she felt closer than she had to anybody else in a long time.

  Life was looking up and sometimes the past didn’t matter quite so much any more.

  Sometimes.

  At the end of her shift, Margaret hurried to the changing room, which, in spite of the staggered shift patterns, wasn’t big enough for the number of women needing to get changed at any one time. Peeling off her boiler suit, Margaret put on an oyster-coloured faux-silk blouse and a tartan wool skirt that, along with some other items, had been given to her by the women running the local rest centre after her house had been bombed and she had lost nearly everything. Back when she had worked at Ingleby’s, she had always dressed nicely with everything properly coordinated, thanks to her staff discount, though when you’d been bombed out, swish clothes never seemed as important afterwards. You weren’t supposed to use your staff discount for anyone other than yourself, but sometimes Margaret had been unable to resist treating her sister to something special. Anna was kind-hearted and generous, as well as being pretty, and she deserved to have lovely things.

  A pang smote Margaret. She hadn’t seen Anna for such a long time. In some ways, it was worse missing Anna than missing
William, their brother. You sort of accepted that your menfolk had to be away because of the war. Not that that made their absence easier to bear, but at least it felt necessary.

  Anna had had a baby on the way – twins, as it turned out – when war was declared, so she had been evacuated along with all the children and the other mothers-to-be. That had been in the September of 1939 and now it was the start of 1942 – and the country was still at war. To think she hadn’t seen the older sister she had always looked up to in all that time. It would have been unthinkable before the war, but now these things, these separations, were normal. Anna’s twins, one of each, would be two this month. Two! Strewth, but war was a cruel business.

  Over the top of her blouse, Margaret put on her new jumper, which was mainly a warm russet-brown with a three-inch stripe in cream about four inches above the hem. Anna had knitted it for her for Christmas and she was dying to show it off to those of her friends who hadn’t yet seen it. It might not be the best match for her blouse, but Margaret didn’t have so many clothes that she could afford to be choosy. Besides, she would have loved anything her sister made for her and wore it as much as she could.

  She removed the turban she wore all day long to protect her hair and keep it out of the way. Lots of the girls and women wore curlers under their turbans. Margaret hadn’t to begin with, because she had seemed to hear her dear late mum’s voice inside her head. Mum would have seen it as setting foot out of doors improperly dressed, but she had passed away several years ago and things were different now. It was normal for women in factories and other mucky jobs to wear curlers under their turbans. Margaret, declining to do so when she started in the engine sheds, had ended each shift with flattened hair while all the others had been busy fluffing up their curls and waves. These days, Margaret was very much part of the fluffing-up brigade. As for Mum – well, Margaret had done a lot worse than wear her curlers outdoors.

  When her dark brown page-boy cut hung loose and uncurled, it sat on Margaret’s shoulders. She styled it so that full curls waved away from her face and she had let the fringe grow so that it too could be curled and sit in a froth at her temples. She shrugged into her coat, winding her scarf around her neck, paying attention to her brimless felt hat and making sure it didn’t muss up her hair.

  Calling cheerful goodbyes, she set off to walk to Victoria Station, where she was going to meet up with her friends in the buffet. As she entered the station, she was greeted by the mingled aromas of smoke and steam. The sound of a train pulling in lifted up into the arched canopy that covered the station platforms and echoed around the enormous building. Margaret glanced up at the metal and glass canopy. As one of Victoria Station’s fire-watchers, she regularly spent the night up there – not on the canopy, of course, but on the roof.

  The concourse was packed, as always at this time of day, with people going home after work. It was a bit early for the ‘funk express’ crowd, those folk who legged it out of Manchester to spend the night elsewhere in case the city was bombed. One or two people looked impatient as they made their way through all the passengers standing about smoking, chatting or reading newspapers as they waited, but Margaret didn’t care how busy it was. She enjoyed feeling that she was a part of it. She relished her position as a railway girl and loved the thought of joining her friends for a cuppa and a good natter before heading for home. It was to be their first get-together since Christmas Eve. Her heart delivered a bump. Christmas Eve. Oh, Colette. They had all shared their memories and feelings about their dear friend. It had been a deeply emotional experience, but also the beginning of healing.

  The buffet was busy, but Dot had already bagged a table near the fireplace – and with her was Cordelia, one arm in her coat sleeve, the other hidden beneath her coat. Margaret went straight to them.

  ‘Cordelia!’ she exclaimed, only to become aware of eyebrows raised in surprise and disapproval at neighbouring tables at her use of her friend’s first name. ‘I mean, Mrs Masters,’ she corrected herself, feeling heat in her cheeks. For a girl in her twenties to address a lady in her forties by her first name simply wasn’t the done thing and the group of friends were flouting convention by allowing it, so it was important to maintain the proprieties in front of outsiders.

  Margaret sank onto a chair, leaning towards Cordelia, her delight at seeing her washing away her moment of embarrassment. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to be here today.’

  Cordelia smiled. ‘I wasn’t going to miss the chance of seeing you all.’

  ‘How’s the collarbone?’ asked Margaret.

  ‘Mending, thank you. It doesn’t ache anything like so much as it did. I’ll be back at work in no time.’

  ‘Well, it’s lovely to see you,’ said Margaret.

  She went to join the queue, her gaze drawn back to her friends as she waited. Cordelia wore her wine-coloured coat with the fancy topstitched collar and her grey hat with the upswept brim that showed off her fine features, ash-blonde hair and discreet pearl earrings. Dot wore a rather good navy coat with patch pockets and wide lapels – the reason it was rather good being that it had once been Cordelia’s, and that was a mark of their friendship, if anything was. Cordelia had passed on the coat out of pure friendship, not out of concern or charity, as might have been expected by anybody who didn’t know them, given their social differences.

  Those two were great friends. Margaret knew that Mum would have been baffled by their friendship, but that was the war for you. Pre-war, Mrs Kenneth Masters, wife of a solicitor and not just middle class but upper middle class, would never have crossed paths with working-class Dot Green, but thanks to their work on the railways, they had met and become firm friends.

  In fact, so Margaret had been told, it had been Miss Emery, the assistant welfare supervisor for women and girls, who had advised the friends to stick together and overlook all the things, such as background and class, that would normally have separated them in society. Margaret hadn’t been there on everyone else’s first day, but even so, she was grateful to Miss Emery, because she had benefited from the advice as much as any of them.

  When Margaret reached the front of the queue, Mrs Jessop poured her a cup of tea without her needing to ask. Picking up the teaspoon that was tied to a block of wood, Margaret stirred her drink. With cutlery now being in short supply, and certain to remain so for the duration, it was normal for cafés and suchlike to take precautions so that their precious items stayed put.

  Margaret made her way to the table and sat down. Soon they were joined by the others – Mabel, Joan, Persephone and Alison.

  After the first smiling greetings, they all fell silent, looking at one another.

  ‘We’re all thinking it,’ said Dot, ‘so I’m going to say it. Colette.’

  Margaret swallowed a lump in her throat. Colette, their dear friend, had been killed doing fire-watching duty one night the week before Christmas. It was still hard to believe. Being all together like this made it both harder to believe and yet at the same time more real.

  ‘It must have been a pretty awful Christmas for her husband,’ said Persephone.

  ‘He must be lost without her,’ said Mabel. ‘He could hardly bear to let her out of his sight.’

  ‘I’ve been wondering,’ said Dot. ‘Ought we to do something for him, like we did for Mrs Cooper after Lizzie died?’

  ‘That was before your time, Margaret,’ said Alison. ‘We gave Mrs Cooper the notebook we all write in to make arrangements to meet here, and we all wrote our memories of Lizzie in the back.’

  ‘Do you mean us to do that for Tony?’ Joan asked Dot.

  Glances were exchanged around the table.

  ‘It’s one thing to do it for Mrs Cooper,’ said Cordelia, ‘but she’s a woman and a mother. It’s different for a man.’

  ‘It was just a thought,’ said Dot, ‘but happen you’re right.’ She laughed. ‘If I cop it, I can tell you now that my Reg wouldn’t thank you for giving him our notebook.’

  ‘It was a kind thought, Dot,’ said Persephone, ‘but perhaps not appropriate in this instance.’