Ruby Jackson - Churchill’s Angels

Daisy looked at the old man, wondering for the first time if he was as old as he appeared to be. What horrors had he encountered that had forced him to leave his own country to live in another where he could worship in his own way? Every day that he came in for his paper or a few groceries, he was always perfectly dressed: collar, tie, hat and, in cold weather, gloves. He had his standards and dignity. She smiled at him with affection. ‘I don’t suppose you’re interested in wedding pictures and lists of the guests, but …’ she looked at him shrewdly and decided cricket rather than football might interest him, ‘… there’s some cricket coverage and a very good recipe for cabbage soup.’

‘Today no war and rumours of war, Daisy?’

‘Not really, but my brother Sam – the one in the army – well, you do know that he has been saying since last year that there will be a war with Germany. He says I should think hard about what I want to do for the war effort.’

‘And what have you decided, young Daisy?’

Daisy shook her head ruefully. ‘It’ll be factory work, I suppose, same as Rose. Clever girls with an education will get the exciting jobs.’

‘Someone will still have to sell the newspapers, with or without jam on them.’

‘Actually, it was stewed apple. Mum baked turnovers for the party. Sorry, Mr Fischer, I like you, and most of the customers, but measuring out bits of cheese and weighing tea leaves isn’t very exciting, is it?’

The old man folded the newspaper. ‘One day, Daisy, you may thank God for the comforting ordinariness of it. As always I like our little chats. I may try the cabbage soup; I have a liking for cabbage. Good morning.’ He left the shop, lifting his hat to Daisy as he went and she stood looking after him. Such an odd Dartford resident …

Someday I might be glad to be doing something ordinary – I don’t think so, Mr Fischer. What happened to you? Daisy wondered. She recalled some of their serious discussions and many of the wonderful things he had explained so that she could understand. He should have been a teacher, she decided, and went back to reading the paper until several housewives arrived, almost every one accompanied by children of various ages.

It was a very tired Daisy who closed the shop at the end of the day and climbed the stairs to the flat. Customers accompanied by children were always the most difficult to serve. Sometimes children whined or opened the doors of cupboards they had been specifically told not to touch, and tried to pull out the contents. Some mothers were good at keeping their children in line, others paid no attention to them; it all made extra work.

In the kitchen a pot of carrot, not cabbage, soup was keeping warm on the back hotplate.

‘Thanks, Mum,’ Daisy said aloud to the empty room as she helped herself to a large serving and cut herself a slice of bread.

Daisy had been on duty in the shop all day because Flora and Fred had gone to an afternoon meeting in the Market Street Clinic. Mr Chamberlain might still be telling the nation that there was not going to be any conflict but Dartford had taken the threat of war very seriously and had been preparing for some time. The town had been designated a vulnerable area. To find out the exact meaning of that word, the family had consulted the heavy dictionary in the front room.

Early in May Fred and Flora had gone to the State Cinema in Spital Street to see a film called The Warning , which dealt with the possible effects of an air raid, and Fred had been so affected that he had immediately volunteered to become an air-raid warden.

‘Dartford’s not the safest place to be if war comes,’ Fred had told his children. ‘The enemy’ll have to fly over us before they reach London.’ He tried to smile. ‘Could get quite noisy here.’

Already there were thousands of sandbags, stacked like secondary walls, protecting important buildings, and since it was believed that, if war came, there would be gas attacks, gas masks had been issued. Air-raid shelters and first-aid stations had been set up in the St Alban’s Hall and at the County Hospital. Trenches that reminded Fred and others of the ‘war to end all wars’ had been dug in Central Park and on Dartford Heath. As one of the first wardens to volunteer to help in assuring that Air Raid Precautions were carried out, Fred was learning how to deal with incendiary bombs at the clinic. Flora went along to all the meetings. After all, Fred would often be away from the flat and the shop, and she was determined to find out how to deal with anything that might fall on her home and her children.

‘Nothing learned is ever wasted,’ she was fond of telling her children, ‘but what on earth we’re going to do with all the sand when them that’s in charge decides we’ve been wasting our time, I do not know.’

Daisy decided to make toasted cheese to go with the soup and was busily slicing cheese when she heard the flat door open and her parents and sister come in. They had met on the way home.

‘The boys show up yet, love?’ Flora asked as she hung up her lightweight summer coat and looked for her apron.

‘Sorry, Mum,’ Rose interrupted. ‘I’m that tired I forgot to tell you. They’re doing overtime and said not to worry about their tea, they’ll get some chips on the way home.’ She took herself off to the small family bathroom to change and to wash off the grime from a long day’s work in the oily munitions factory.

‘They’ll have a proper tea when they get home; chips isn’t nourishment for such big lads.’

‘Don’t worry about them, Flo. I bet they take some liquid nourishment with their chips.’ Fred was already sitting in his chair by the empty fireplace, a glass of his favourite Reffells’ ale in his hand while they waited for Rose’s return.

When she reappeared, he teased her, ‘I think it’s our Rose needs nourishing.’

Rose, her long fair hair released from its firm elastic bands, and washed and combed, sat down at the kitchen table. ‘It’d be easier if the people in power would make up their blinking minds. Down the factory we’re past caring, we’re that tired, but we do want to know. There’s been more than enough muttering. I can deal with the truth but all the shillyshallying is getting on my nerves.’

An outburst like that was so unlike Rose that even her father took notice. ‘Pour your sister a cuppa, our Daisy,’ he said as he reached across and patted Rose’s knee. ‘Don’t fret, love; they don’t know neither.’ He turned back to Daisy, who was filling the big breakfast cups. ‘Anything I need to know about the shop, Daisy?’

‘No, except, thank heaven, it’s Sunday tomorrow and I don’t have to go near the place.’

Two Sundays later, after church, the family put their gas masks in the hall cupboard with their Sunday coats and settled down in the front room to listen to the wireless while their dinner was being prepared. Fred was reaching for the switch when, with a groan of exasperation, Flora turned to Daisy.

‘Be an angel and run down the shop for peas. Go nice with that lovely bit of beef, and I forgot them yesterday.’ She gestured to the table by the door. ‘My purse is in my shopping bag.’

Daisy took the purse and hurried downstairs. The Petrie family were meticulous about never taking anything from the shop without paying for it. According to Daisy, reading the newspapers from cover to cover was ‘not exactly stealing’. She stood for a moment enjoying the unusual quiet of the empty shop. The blackout blinds were still on the windows and she pulled one aside for a moment to light her way. Sunlight streamed into the little shop, burnishing the polished oak counter and the brass scales and making a tiny rainbow as it shone on a glass jar of multi-coloured boiled sweets. No customer ever saw it like this. Daisy smiled in satisfaction as she found a tin of peas. She toyed with the idea of opening the old till to pay for her purchase – she loved the musical ping that the machine sang out each time the lever was depressed – but decided against it. After all, it was hardly worth opening the till only to close it immediately. She left a shilling on top of the till, closed the blinds again and hurried back upstairs. Mum wouldn’t mind waiting for her change and, first thing Monday morning, she would finish the transaction.