Home Front Girls

envelope in her hand, her face the colour of putty.
    ‘It’s a telegram,’ she breathed fearfully.
    ‘Perhaps it’s good news. Perhaps they’ve found Freddy somewhere?’ Lucy said hopefully. ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’
    Mrs P’s head wagged from side to side. ‘I daren’t. Will you open it for me, luvvie?’
    With a sick feeling of dread Lucy took the envelope from the woman’s hand. She slit it open with her thumb then quickly read what was written on it before looking at Mrs P gravely.
    ‘He’s dead, ain’t he?’ Mrs P’s voice was dead too.
    Lucy found that she couldn’t speak for the lump in her throat so she merely nodded.
    ‘I knew it,’ Mrs P muttered. ‘In here I knew it.’ She placed her hand over her heart. ‘Right from the day when we had that first telegram sayin’ he were missin’ I had this empty place inside an’ I knew that he were gone. I’d ’ave felt it if he were still alive, God bless his soul.’
    Lucy felt completely and utterly devastated. This, on top of what she had witnessed the night before, was just too much and she had the urge to run away and hide. But of course, she couldn’t do that. Mrs P needed her.
    Hurrying out of the front door, she shot off down the next entry where she found Mrs Bloomfield, her next-door-but-one-neighbour hanging out her washing in the yard.
    The woman looked at the state of her in amazement, but before she could comment, Lucy gasped out, ‘Mrs Bloomfield, Mrs P has just had some really bad news. Do you think your Eric could go and fetch Mr P from work?’
    ‘Of course he will, love,’ the woman said, guessing what the bad news was. She had seen the telegram boy through her front window and felt guilty because she was so relieved he hadn’t stopped at her house. Derek, her youngest, was away in the RAF.
    Not stopping to thank her, Lucy then ran back to find Mrs P still standing exactly where she had left her. She could hear the kettle whistling its head off and went to switch off the gas.
    The next three-quarters of an hour passed interminably slowly as Lucy watched the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece. Mrs P sat where Lucy had put her as if she had been carved in stone, with not a tear in sight, until at last, Mr P burst into the room.
    ‘So what’s to do then, ducks?’ He threw his snap tin on the table as his wife handed him the telegram and once he had read it, his face crumpled. Then surprisingly it was Mrs P comforting him.
    ‘Come on now,’ she soothed. ‘It’s strange . . . but I think I’ve already done my grievin’. In fact, in a funny sort o’ way it’s a relief to know what’s happened to him, official-like. I knew he were gone from the time we had the first telegram, but now we can hold a memorial service fer him. Our lad were a hero, Fred, an’ we must never lose sight o’ that. We can be proud he died fighting for his country an’ what he believed in.’
    She glanced towards the photo of young Freddy standing next to the clock on the mantelpiece all upright and proud in his soldier’s uniform, with a watery smile on her face, and suddenly feeling in the way, Lucy slipped out of the back door leaving the bereaved parents to grieve in privacy.

Chapter Twenty-Two
     
    Robert did manage to get to Coventry on the following Thursday and Dotty as usual was waiting at the station to meet him wearing clothes that she had borrowed from Annabelle.
    ‘She and her mum have been marvellous to me,’ she told him once they had greeted each other. ‘And they’ve made me feel so welcome. But between you and me it isn’t like having your own front door. I think I might start to look around for another flat to rent soon when things have quietened down. And of course I shall have to get myself another typewriter.’
    ‘If they quieten down,’ Robert commented grimly. ‘The newspapers reckon this is only the beginning, which is why I wish you’d come to London with me, Dotty.’
    ‘But it will be no safer there than it is here,’ Dotty pointed out. ‘And I’ve had no shortage of offers of a home. Miss Timms said I could go and stay with her too, bless her. Her mother died of a heart attack on the night of the raid, although I don’t think it was entirely unexpected. She’s been poorly for a long time, and reading between the lines I think she ran poor Miss Timms ragged. She wasn’t a very easy patient and was quite a strict, highly religious person from the bits that I’ve picked up on.