Home Front Girls

listen to the king’s Christmas speech. It was a very old radio that Joel had picked up second-hand from the Coventry indoor market, and it made crackling noises before gurgling into life.
    Dotty loved the royal family, and while they waited for the announcer to introduce the king, she told Lucy, ‘The king is supposed to be very shy, you know. He has a terrible stammer, poor thing.’
    ‘I daresay he never expected to be king,’ Lucy replied. ‘Poor Prince Albert had no choice but to take the throne when Edward abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson, and it must have been a huge leap from being the Duke of York to king. When he was simply a duke he could stay in the background up to a point, but after Edward met Wallis . . .’ She remembered how the newspapers had been full of it. ‘That certainly caused an outcry, didn’t it? I mean, who would think that a king would do something like that? Just goes to show, they’re only flesh and blood at the end of the day, the same as us.’
    ‘Yes, you can’t help who you fall in love with,’ Dotty remarked dreamily as her romantic mind took flight. ‘Just imagine caring enough for someone to give up the throne for them. And she’s an American divorcée too!’ Then she asked, ‘What sort of man would you like to marry, Lucy?’
    Lucy’s face instantly hardened. ‘I shall never get married,’ she said shortly. ‘Not to anyone !’ She looked slightly embarrassed then as she noted Dotty’s shocked expression. ‘Well, what I mean is, I don’t get much chance to meet anyone, do I? What with looking after Mary and everything.’
    ‘But if someone loved you enough, they would take to Mary too,’ Dotty pointed out. She just couldn’t imagine Lucy never marrying; she was far too pretty to be a spinster, whereas she herself was so plain that she doubted anyone would ever want to marry her.
    Much to Lucy’s relief the announcer’s voice brought the conversation to an end, and both girls listened to the king stammer his way through the speech.
    When it was over, Dotty sighed and they sat and watched Mary playing contentedly with her new teddy. She had refused to put it down all day, even throughout dinner, but then Lucy suggested, ‘How about we wrap up and go to the phone box at the end of the road to give Annabelle a ring?’
    ‘Good idea,’ Dotty agreed as she hurried away to fetch her coat, and soon after they were in the phone box and the operator was connecting them to Annabelle’s number.
    ‘Hello.’ It was Annabelle who answered the phone and when Lucy spoke she sounded pleased to hear from her. ‘I’m having a dreadful day,’ she complained. ‘Mummy has hardly stopped crying because she’s never been parted from Daddy on Christmas Day before and I’m so bored ! I shall almost be glad to get back to work – and we still have Boxing Day to get through yet.’
    Both girls chuckled as they fed their pennies into the slot and took it in turns to speak to her.
    ‘I never thought I’d hear you say that ,’ Dotty teased, and was met with a groan from Annabelle’s end.
    ‘Well, there’s nothing to do, is there, but eat. I shall be the size of a house at this rate.’
    ‘I don’t think there’s much danger of that happening any time soon,’ Lucy responded. ‘You’re so skinny you’d slip down a crack in the pavement if you turned sideways.’
    Five minutes later the girls came out of the phone box.
    ‘Poor Annabelle,’ Dotty said. ‘I’m afraid this war is affecting her far more than you or me. We’re used to staying in, but I think she is missing a more exciting way of life now that most of her male friends have joined up. She’s asked me to go to the cinema with her in the New Year to see Goodbye Mr Chips and I’m quite looking forward to it. Why don’t you ask Mrs P if she would mind Mary and then you could come with us too?’
    ‘It would be fun,’ Lucy admitted. ‘And I do love Robert Donat. He’s just so handsome, isn’t he? Leave it with me and I’ll see what I can do.’
    They then hastened back to the warmth of Lucy’s little terraced house, swinging Mary between them. There were constant reminders of the war all about them, like the grey barrage balloons that floated in the sky above them. It was daunting to know that now only a strip of water divided them from the wrath of Hitler’s army. Rumour still had it that he was only waiting for the better weather next spring before he instructed his army to attack, and