The Cornish Girls. Betty Walker

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СКАЧАТЬ for the kitchen, Violet wobbled on her heels and winced at the ache in her ankle. ‘Ouch.’

      Her mother looked down and gasped. ‘What’s that? Vi, you’re bleeding!’

      Shocked, Violet glanced down too. Sure enough, the stone had hit her hard enough to break the skin. Luckily, she had not been wearing nylons – too expensive for work! But the small trickle of blood had been enough to alarm her mother.

      ‘Oh, it was only them blasted Dagenham Daggers.’

      ‘Language, Vi!’

      ‘Sorry, Mum, but really … They’re little better than thugs. Patrick Dullaghan threw a stone at me. I think they were lying in wait for me to come home from work.’

      ‘Those horrible beasts. They ought to be dragged off to prison!’ Her mother shook her head in angry disapproval. ‘But in heaven’s name, why throw stones at you?’

      Violet hesitated, then said simply, ‘Because of Ernst.’

      Her mother’s eyes stretched wide. ‘They can’t still think that my own son-in-law would be a …?’ She stopped short of using the word ‘spy’, but a familiar horror was in her voice. ‘Mrs Chilcott told me what people were saying. But I thought that had all blown over. How can they make such mischief? Ernst is missing in action, for goodness’ sake. And his girls have just lost their mother. It’s too awful. My poor Betsy.’ Tears sprang readily to her eyes at the name of her late daughter, who had left the shelter at the end of the street to return to her house for something – nobody quite knew what – and was found later in the rubble of her bombed-out house. ‘Have they no sense of shame?’

      Violet tried to imagine Patrick Dullaghan feeling shame, and failed.

      ‘I don’t think so, Mum.’

      She sat to slip off her heels and rub her sore ankle. No lasting harm had been done, she was sure. But what about next time? And that wasn’t the only thing that worried her about tonight’s attack. Her nieces, young as they were, had started to get a few hard stares from those street boys too. Lily had even reported someone shouting, ‘Bloody Hun!’ after her a few days ago. Next time, Patrick Dullaghan and his cronies might be throwing stones at the girls too.

      Or worse.

      ‘Perhaps we could talk again about Lily and Alice going down to Cornwall,’ she said persuasively. ‘You know your sister Margaret would take the girls if you asked.’

      ‘Of course she would. And she’d put them to work too, on that blooming farm of hers. Anything for unpaid labour! My pretty little granddaughters herding cows in Cornwall? I won’t allow it.’ Sheila shook her head. ‘I left the countryside behind when I moved up here, and trust me, it’s no life for anyone. Fresh air isn’t everything, you know.’

      ‘Lily’s a strong girl and so is Alice. And so am I, if push comes to shove.’ Violet shrugged. ‘If we have to go out herding a few cows in return for bed and board, so what?’

      ‘No, I’m not listening.’ Sheila clapped her hands over her ears.

      ‘Mum!’

      ‘Well, you know I couldn’t bear for them to be so far away from their family.’ Her mum dropped both hands into her lap again. She looked away, her lower lip trembling. ‘They’re still grieving, poor chickens. They need their gran.’

      Thinking hard, Violet tried an argument she suspected might have a stronger effect on her stubborn mother. ‘But the bombing’s been so bad lately, surely it’s time to—’

      ‘We’re safe enough in the Anderson shelter.’

      Violet bit back her instinctive retort. Those Anderson shelters weren’t worth tuppence in the event of a direct hit. Besides, some of the bigger shelters had been hit in recent weeks, and dozens killed. And what about when they were taken unawares and had no time to reach safety?

      Young Alice was a clever girl with only a few weeks left at school; with brains like hers, she had so much potential. And although Lily was seventeen now, she was still as sweet as she was innocent, spending her time helping out at the local hospital while she waited for an official war posting at eighteen. She often said she’d be happy to do her share in a northern factory, if that’s what the Home Office chose for her, but would much prefer to work as a nurse.

      Violet dreaded those lovely girls suffering the same fate as their mother had, blown apart and buried under rubble. The only thing for it was to take them both into the country, far from the bombs, and hope the war ended before Lily was old enough to be posted to a job away from her family. But their doting grandmother would take some persuading to part with her darlings.

      ‘Well, let’s not argue about it tonight. I brought some leftover liver and bacon back from the café. I’ll freshen up the pot and put it on to reheat.’ Violet got up and bent to kiss her mother’s cheek. ‘Please don’t fret about those boys. They’re bound to be shipped out to the country soon. If their parents can ever catch the little beggars, that is.’

      She pinned a bright smile on her face for her mother’s sake as she carried the teapot out to the tiny back kitchen, but inside she was furious.

      Furious for Ernst, who was not a German spy, whatever ignorant fools like Patrick Dullaghan might say.

      And furious for her mum, who had been doing her best to keep the old café going since Dad’s death, and deserved better than whispers of ‘Traitor!’ behind her back.

      Mum and Dad had warned Betsy what people might say when she first announced that she was marrying Ernst Fisher, with his English father and German mother. The Great War had not long been over when they tied the knot, and people had tutted. But everyone had wanted to rebuild their lives, not dwell on the past. Or so Mum was always saying. So Betsy had married Ernst, both of them fresh out of school, and any bad feeling about his German heritage had been pushed out of sight. Until war broke out with Germany again.

      Betsy had begged Ernst not to join up, terrified of losing him. But he had been adamant. ‘I speak the language; I could be useful,’ he told them all at a family meal, having packed in his job as factory foreman to join up. ‘Besides, you think I want to see the look in people’s eyes when I walk past? My surname may be English, but my Christian name is Ernst, and they all know it, even if you lot call me Ernest in public.’

      ‘Only to help you fit in,’ Betsy had said, clinging to him tearfully.

      ‘I’ll fit in better by fighting alongside these men,’ Ernst had insisted, putting her aside and smiling bravely at Lily and Alice. ‘I’ll miss you all. But I’ll write as often as I can. This will be for the best, you’ll see.’

      Ernst had left a few days later, and never come back.

      He had been reported missing in action a week before Betsy was killed, and so there had been no chance to tell him of his wife’s death.

      Lily, and her sister, Alice, a precocious just-turned sixteen, had both been bullied horribly over their father’s German connections. But the teasing had stopped after their mother died, presumably out of a sense of compassion.

      And that should have been an end to it.

      But it seemed Patrick Dullaghan and his blasted Dagenham Daggers were now turning their СКАЧАТЬ