The Mersey Daughter: A heartwarming Saga full of tears and triumph. Annie Groves

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       CHAPTER SIX

      ‘Blast!’ Laura sat back on her heels and groaned. ‘You must think I’m a waste of space, Kitty, but this is much harder work than I’d ever have imagined.’ She wrung the grey water out from her damp cloth over the galvanised bucket. The sleeves of her overall were dripping from where they’d come unrolled.

      It seemed that all they’d done since arriving was to clean the building, scrubbing and polishing, even though it had evidently been scrubbed and polished to within an inch of its life already by the previous band of new recruits, and alternating this with gruelling rounds of PT. The girls had also been sent on errands around London, taking urgent papers between offices, dishing out tea at important meetings and generally making themselves useful. Kitty had found it a shock to the system. She’d been accustomed to lifting enormous heavy pans of stew around the NAAFI canteen, but running around on her feet all day, minding her p’s and q’s whilst learning the ropes had been exhausting, and it had been almost impossible to take it all in. To begin with it had been hard to adjust to sleeping in their dormitory – which they were told to call a cabin. Soon they would also embark on a series of classroom lectures to learn the rules and regulations of the service, along with the endless jargon everyone used.

      Kitty couldn’t help laughing at her friend. ‘It’s easier once you’re used to it,’ she said warmly. ‘Believe me, I know. I’ve been scrubbing floors since I was eleven – that’s when Mam died and I had to take over. Or even before that, as she couldn’t bend down when she was expecting our Tommy.’ A cloud passed across her face at the memory. ‘Anyway, they won’t have us doing this for long. It’s just to make good use of our time until we’re allocated our new positions.’

      ‘I hope you’re right,’ said the young woman who’d been assigned to clean the corridor with them. ‘This stuff is making my hands red raw. I wasn’t sure what to expect in our first week but it wasn’t this.’

      Kitty regarded their new colleague with interest. She was slight, and had very pale skin and a smattering of freckles across her small upturned nose. While she was not conventionally pretty, she had striking looks and an air of determination and energy about her that somehow reminded Kitty of her old friend Rita back in Empire Street. ‘I bet they think that as long as they have a group of women together they might as well set us to clean up the place,’ she said, shaking the bristles of her scrubbing brush with vigour. ‘But I’m sure they’ll start training us to do something else once we’re all here and the place is shipshape. What did you do before?’

      The girl raised an eyebrow. ‘I was a teacher.’

      ‘A teacher!’ Kitty gasped. ‘You don’t look old enough … sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but …’

      ‘I’m older than I look,’ said the girl. ‘Don’t worry, everyone says the same to me. I’m twenty-three. I trained for two years, and then all the kids got evacuated, and I thought, “Marjorie, my girl, you’d better find something else to do with yourself and do it sharpish.” So here I am.’ She shrugged.

      Kitty couldn’t help staring. Nobody from Empire Street had ever been a teacher, much less any of the women. Hardly anyone stayed at school longer than they had to; they were all needed to go out and work, or help raise the families, or both. It was all she could do to stop her mouth gaping open. ‘Well, at least you’ll be all right with these lectures we’re going to have to go to. I can hardly remember the last time I sat at a desk – I’ll probably be useless. Don’t you miss your job?’ she managed to say after a moment.

      Marjorie looked wistful. ‘I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. I had to fight tooth and nail to do my training. My family thought I was crazy, spending all that time studying for my Higher Cert and then going to college, when I’d only end up getting married and having to give up anyway.’ She shook her head. ‘Well, that’s not going to happen. I prefer teaching to going out with men and I’m not ashamed to say so. When this war ends I’ll be back in the classroom like a shot. But meanwhile I’ll do whatever’s needed here. It’s just a pity that happens to be scrubbing floors, or ferrying urgent messages backwards and forwards, never mind the endless PT lessons. I know we’ll have to be fit, but at the moment my muscles don’t know what’s hit them.’

      ‘Too true.’ Laura sloshed the water around in the bucket and went back to the task in hand. ‘You must have been really determined to get to college, Marjorie. I must say I envy you. I’d have loved to be allowed to study like my brother, but my folks wouldn’t hear of it. My father still thinks that women get ill if they have to think too hard. Doesn’t want me coming down with a fit of the vapours.’ She rubbed at the tiles. ‘There, that’s better. Do you think they’ve ever been so shiny?’ She sat back on her heels once more. ‘I probably shouldn’t СКАЧАТЬ