Secrets of the Railway Girls Read online

  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

  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

  To the memory of Bernard Bourke (1927–1946), who died in a tragic accident during his training to be a Royal Marine.

  And to Jacquie and Annette, whose friendship has seen me through so much.

  Acknowledgements

  My agent, Laura Longrigg, and my editor, Jennie Rothwell, both helped to make this a better book. Thank you, Laura, for making an important decision about Joan.

  Thank you to Emma Grey Gelder and Silas Manhood, who created this book’s wonderful cover. Thank you both for your patience with all those little tweaks. Much gratitude goes to Caroline Johnson, my copy editor, whose eagle eyes spotted my mistakes; and Rachel Kennedy, whose expertise and commitment got the series off to a flying start.

  Thanks to Kevin, my tech elf, who saved the day on the occasion of the Great Apostrophe Disaster and also when something unspeakable happened to the copy-edits document; and to Julia Franklin, for narrating the audiobooks. I am proud to have such a talented reader as the voice of my stories.

  Love and thanks go to Jen Gilroy. Also to Beverley, aka Booklover Bev, my first reviewer.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Late November 1940

  Well! Wonders would never cease. Dot stared across the kitchen at Reg. Gawped would be a better word. There stood Reg, her not-so-loving husband, in his Sunday suit, holding his homburg in his hands, his slicked-down hair thinner than it used to be and his once firm neck looking stringy above his collar and tie, just come home from being interviewed to be an ARP warden. Reg – working for Air Raid Precautions.

  Reg looked from Dot to Sheila and Pammy, their two daughters-in-law, who were sitting with Dot at her kitchen table, here to enjoy a secret meeting about Christmas while the children played tiddlywinks in the front parlour. Other folks kept their front parlour for best, meaning it was hardly ever used, and Dot, nothing if not house-proud, had been the same for years, but once her family had expanded and a new generation had come along, she had adopted a more flexible approach.

  ‘Really, Mother,’ Pammy had once remarked, ‘it would be far more appropriate for us to sit in the parlour and the children to play at the kitchen table.’

  But that wouldn’t have suited Dot. Her kitchen was her natural place. She had grown up in a kitchen, enveloped by the aroma of onion stew, with a bottomless basket of darning in the corner, and more sharp elbows and scabby knees than you could shake a stick at. Meat had been scarce for the likes of her family and what meat they did have went on Dad’s plate and then, later, in smaller portions, on the plate of each son as he started work. Working daughters were expected to get by on bread and carrot-and-swede mash, same as always. Folk today didn’t know they’d been born.

  Anyroad, she loved her kitchen, did Dot, and she loved nowt better than having her family crammed round her table, tucking into a tasty meal into which she had poured all her loving skill. When she dreamed of the end of the war, that was what she imagined. Not bunting and street parties; not deliriously happy crowds whooping and singing as they surged through the middle of town; but her beloved family squeezed around her kitchen table – all of them. Please let her boys come home. Archie and Harry, her sons, both safe and sound, with no nightmares and no missing limbs – that was what she prayed for every night.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Reg. ‘Of me being an ARP man – what do you think?’

  Dot blinked. Was he really asking her opinion? Ever since the boys were small, he had derived pleasure from doing her down in front of them. Did he even care what she thought? And what did she think? She could hardly say, ‘You spent the first year of the war at my kitchen table, waiting for me to put your dinner in front of you, and I thought you’d be there for the duration.’

  ‘I think it’s grand,’ Pammy declared.

  ‘Aye, Reg,’ said Dot. ‘Good for you. We all have to pull our weight.’

  ‘I reckoned it was time for me to sign up,’ said Reg, ‘after all the air raids we’ve had.’

  God, yes. They had lived with air raids since late summer. The whole of Manchester had been affected one way or another as bombers had flown over time and again, dropping their deadly cargo of oil bombs and high explosives, the intimidation increasing after the Battle of Britain ended. In recent weeks, the abattoir had been hit, as had the Brooke Bond Tea Warehouse. The damage to Salford Town Hall had resulted in the burial of many records, though not in the burial of any people, thank God; and, mercifully, there had been no casualties when Manchester Royal Infirmary’s nurses’ home was hit.

  After the numbers of dead and injured in the bombings throughout October, it seemed there hadn’t been so many casualties in November, and that was a blessing. Mind you, friends and relatives of the Winter family of 74 Button Lane in Wythenshawe probably wouldn’t appreciate Dot’s verdict. She had heard about the Winters from someone at work. That was how it was when you worked on the railways. You were surrounded by folk from all over and so you heard the details from all over; but as shocking and heart-rending as it all was, you had to be grateful that Manchester hadn’t been Coventrated.

  Coventrated. A cold shudder passed through Dot in spite of the fire crackling in the grate and the heat from the oven in which she was cooking steak and kidney pie and baked potatoes. Poor Coventry had had seven bells bombed out of it two weeks ago.

  Pray to God they would never have cause to coin the word ‘Manchestered’.

  Dot’s heart swelled with love and concern for her young colleagues, Joan, Mabel and Alison, who were members of first-aid parties, heading out each night they were on duty, not knowing whether they would spend a restless night where they were stationed, or whether they might be called upon to brave the streets during an air raid. Alison liv
ed to the north of Manchester and did her first-aiding over that way, but Joan and Mabel’s depot was St Cuthbert’s School, which wasn’t more than a hop and a skip from Dot’s house. It hadn’t always been Joan and Mabel. It used to be Joan, Mabel and Lizzie, but all too soon and far too young, Lizzie had lost her life in an air raid. Poor Lizzie – and poor Lizzie’s mum.

  ‘I’m proud of you, Reg,’ said Dot.

  She waited a moment. Would it happen again, that surge of love that had come over her during the Dunkirk evacuation? Along with hundreds of thousands all over the country, Reg had mucked in during that national emergency, helping local soldiers get home. He had even carried his shaving tackle in his pocket, just in case any of the filthy, battered, exhausted lads wanted a shave. Soppy old bugger. But he had done his bit and old remembered love had ballooned inside Dot’s chest.

  Would it happen again now? Did she want it to?

  The door burst open and the kids threw themselves in.

  ‘Mummy!’ Jenny launched herself at Pammy. ‘Jimmy’s cheating.’

  ‘It’s only tiddlywinks—’ Dot began.

  ‘Jimmy would cheat at solitaire,’ said Sheila, unperturbed.

  ‘Never mind that now,’ said Dot. ‘Grandpa’s going to be an ARP warden.’

  ‘Will they give you the money back on your gas mask?’ Jimmy demanded, his blue eyes, just like Harry’s, sparkling in his freckled face.

  ‘What on earth is he talking about?’ Pammy looked at Reg.

  Jimmy burst into song. He had a surprisingly good voice. It was a shame that when he’d been invited to sing in the choir, he had taken some indoor fireworks with him. He hadn’t been asked back.

  ‘Under the spreading chestnut tree, Neville Chamberlain said to me,

  “If you want to get your gas mask free, join the blinkin’ ARP.”’

  Jenny gasped. ‘Jimmy said “blinking”.’

  ‘It’s the words of the song,’ Jimmy protested.

  ‘It’s swearing,’ Jenny retorted. ‘It’s a pretend-polite way of saying the B word.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Dot.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Jenny, ‘it shouldn’t be Mr Chamberlain. It should be Mr Churchill. You can’t even get your facts right.’

  ‘It’s the song,’ said Jimmy. ‘Anyroad, are you going to get your money back, Grandpa?’

  ‘The song’s wrong, son,’ said Reg. ‘No one has to pay for gas masks.’

  ‘Can we play air raids?’ asked Jimmy.

  ‘That’s irresponsible,’ said Jenny.

  Oh, heavens. There were far too many times when Jenny opened her mouth and Pammy’s words spilled out. Dot wanted her granddaughter to have fun and enjoy her childhood, as far as it was possible these days, but Pammy seemed more concerned about having a child who was perfect and clean and good. Back when Jenny was a toddler, Dot and Reg had taken a day trip to Southport, where Archie had taken his little family for a week’s holiday. Dot and Reg had offered to take Jenny off her parents’ hands for the afternoon and had secretly taken her to the beach to make sand pies, and took her paddling in the shallows and generally let her get covered in sand and ice cream before cleaning her up and returning her to her unsuspecting mother. Dot felt the same impulse now.

  ‘Irresponsible?’ she exclaimed. ‘To play a game? Nonsense! Reg, take the kids in the parlour and you can all practise shouting “Turn that light out!” Me and the girls have business to discuss.’

  ‘That means they want to talk about Christmas,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘Christmas? It’s far too soon to talk about Christmas.’ Dot made shooing motions with her hands. ‘Get gone, the lot of you.’

  She shut the door on them and returned to her seat at the table.

  ‘It’s going to be a good Christmas this year,’ she told her daughters-in-law.

  ‘I hope so.’ Pammy’s voice was more refined than necessary. She had been fetched up by a mother whose status as the wife of a master butcher had given her ideas. ‘Last Christmas was too awful for words.’

  ‘Now then,’ Dot said briskly, ‘we’ll have none of that, thank you. We want to make this Christmas …’ Just in time she stopped herself from saying perfect. ‘… As good as it can be, for the children’s sakes.’

  Aye, for the kiddies, her beloved Jimmy and Jenny. Their similar names might make them sound like brother and sister, but they were cousins. Jenny’s real name was Genevieve, but that was Posh Pammy for you.

  Posh Pammy and Sheila the Slattern. Dot dropped her gaze to the tablecloth, making a play out of straightening her cup in its saucer. Mrs Donoghue up the road’s daughters-in-law were sensible, house-proud girls who knew their place. Why couldn’t Archie and Harry have brought home girls like that, girls Dot could have taken to her heart as real daughters? Instead, she had been lumbered with Pammy, of the flawless make-up, perfect vowels and fancy ideas, and Sheila, whose idea of housework was to wait for the spiders to choke on the dust before she ran round with a cloth.

  Dot made sure she had a smile on her face before she raised her eyes again. It was a wise woman who loved her sons’ choice of wives, something she had reminded herself of more than once over the years. Did other mothers-in-law feel this way? It wasn’t summat you could ask.

  ‘You’ll do the Christmas dinner, won’t you, Ma?’ asked Sheila.

  ‘Don’t I always?’ Dot flapped her hand in front of her face, wafting away the smoke from Sheila’s cigarette. Sheila always blew her smoke right into the middle of the conversation. ‘I’m all set with my mock-turkey recipe.’

  ‘I take it that means the rabbit is going to meet its maker,’ said Sheila. ‘There’ll be tears from the kids, you mark my words.’

  ‘No, there won’t,’ Dot countered. ‘And keep your voice down. They’re in the front parlour, in case you’ve forgotten.’

  ‘I thought mock turkey meant rabbit.’ Pammy frowned, but only for a second. She was strict with herself about not getting lines. She was a pretty girl whose skilful use of make-up turned her into a beauty. She wore her golden hair parted in the centre and drawn back from her face in waves so tight they almost counted as ringlets.

  ‘It does.’ Dot dropped her voice. ‘But we shan’t be eating our rabbit come Christmas. We’ll be eating Mrs Donoghue’s and her family will be eating ours. So I’ll be able to tell the children, hand on heart, that it’s not our rabbit on the table.’

  ‘Are you still having Jimmy on Sunday?’ Sheila asked.

  ‘Of course – and Jenny. It’s Stir-up Sunday. I’ve got a simple recipe for the Christmas pud. I hope you two will be here to give it a stir an’ all.’ It was really Sheila she was asking, but it wouldn’t do to be so blatant.

  ‘I already said I’d be here.’ Pammy enjoyed doing special things with her daughter.

  Sheila made a fuss of stubbing out her cigarette and managed to avoid a direct answer. ‘I s’pose we should be grateful there’s a pudding at all.’

  ‘My lads always enjoyed their Christmas pudding,’ said Dot, ‘or at least they always enjoyed digging around trying to find the silver thrupenny bits.’

  Sheila laughed. ‘Young Jimmy made a point of reminding me that new thrupenny bits aren’t suitable for putting in the pudding. It has to be sixpences these days.’

  Dot managed not to roll her eyes. As if Sheila would go to the bother of making a pudding. If she and Jimmy hadn’t been invited round here, she would have bought one of those tinned puds for a shilling.

  ‘When are you two going to put up your trees?’ Dot asked. Warm memories filled her of her two as little lads begging for the tree to go up in October.

  ‘I can’t find one anywhere this year.’ Pammy fetched a sigh.

  ‘Well, if you will insist on having a real one,’ said Sheila.

  ‘I can’t say I’d feel like decorating a tree anyway, with Archie away.’

  ‘Put like that, none of us feels like it,’ said Dot, aiming for a tone that combined sympathy and common sense. ‘But that makes it
all the more important for us to do it.’

  ‘For the children,’ said Pammy. ‘I know.’

  ‘And now you’ve ended up with no tree at all,’ said Sheila, ‘and all because you’ve never been happy with an artificial one.’

  ‘Trees are important for us adults an’ all,’ said Dot. ‘We could all do with a pick-me-up in these dark days. I hope you’ll still get your string of electric lights out this year, Pammy, and let me put ’em on the tree here. It’ll be a tree for all the family, with us spending Christmas Day together.’

  Electric lights on Dot Green’s Christmas tree – fancy that! Plenty of folk still had candles, but it was only the best for Posh Pammy. Trust her to have spent Archie’s hard-earned wages on the smartest, swishest decorations imaginable. Dot couldn’t quite come to terms with the notion of electricity being used for summat so frivolous. In the poverty-stricken neck of the woods where she had grown up, they had had oil lamps that gave off sooty smoke when the wick needed trimming. To this day, she remembered her dear mam’s mouth dropping open, her jaw practically landing crunch on the floor, the first time she had clapped eyes on a room illuminated by electricity.

  Dot pictured Pammy’s electric lights on her own old but much-loved tree. Fairy-sized lanterns in red, yellow, green and blue, their soft lights aglow, making the tinsel sparkle and the string of silver bells glimmer. Tiny lights of love and hope in the darkness of wartime.

  Chapter Two

  Joan pushed her sack barrow through the teatime crowds on the concourse of Victoria Station, skilfully weaving her way around pinstriped gentlemen with bowler hats and briefcases, ladies carrying smartly wrapped parcels that showed they had done their Christmas shopping in the best establishments, and boys in uniform arm in arm with pale-faced girls doing their best not to cry. A young couple came running past, hand in hand, laughing, he in uniform, she in a pink and fawn flecked tweed suit and pillbox hat, both of them with confetti on their shoulders. Confetti! Where had they got that? Following them came a string of friends, all smiles, a couple of chaps carrying cardboard suitcases with red paper hearts dangling from the handles.