Bia's War Page 4

  “Were you nervous, Nana? I mean, were you worried that the shop wouldn’t be a success and that you’d wasted your savings on it? Savings that you could have used to feed and clothe you and Simon.”

  “I admit, I was rather nervous because I’d put so much time and effort and money into it.” Nana said. “But I had to go through with it, I had no choice. It was either sink or swim and if that was going to be decided by the amount of hard work I was prepared to do, then it was only going to go one way. But I admit I was shaking the day I opened the shop. After Davy had left that first day, I went to get the handcart out of the back yard so that I could go and collect the supplies I’d ordered from the docks and the station. My next-door neighbour heard the noise I was making because I was finding it very difficult to manoeuvre that cart around the yard and she came to see what I was doing. I’d never had much to do with my neighbours, because I wasn’t the sort to stand and gossip in the streets, but we’d always been civil to each other whenever we had met. Annie was a plump little body, probably in her mid-fifties then and she always kept herself to herself, like me. She was a widow, with a son who was about twenty years old, but he had a mental age of about eight. Peter, he was called and he followed Annie about, rather like Simon followed me. The difference between them was that he was a huge lad, with shoulders as broad as a barn door and muscles in his arms that would have made Popeye look skinny, but he was a gentle giant. He had no idea of his own strength and Annie often worried that some unscrupulous man would introduce him to boxing or some such thing and make a fortune out of him. She kept a very close eye on him because of this and I had rarely seen him out without his mother.”

  “Anyway, Annie came to the back gate and asked if I wanted Peter to give me a hand pushing the cart and I was so grateful for his help that I told Annie what I was about to do. I wouldn’t normally have been so forth-coming but I felt she deserved an explanation of what I was doing with the cart, so I told her. Then Peter pushed the handcart to the station and the docks for me and when we got back to the house, I mean shop, Annie had already started to make the pies I had told her I was going to bake when I got back. She had a very light hand with pastry and I was amazed and incredibly thankful for her help. I had a lot more to do in order to be ready to open the following morning and having the baking taken off my hands was a god-send. But I was worried because I couldn’t afford to pay her or Peter for what they had done that day, but she brushed my apologies aside.”

  ‘I admire your determination and your hard work, lass, and I don’t mind helping out a bit. I wondered what you would do when I heard that your William had signed up and I admire the fact that you haven’t sat on your backside, bewailing what is happening to you, which is what a lot of women are doing at this moment. I also think that William was being selfish when he enlisted, although going to fight the Hun isn’t going to make more of a man of him. He just hasn’t got it in him and he should be old enough and man enough to admit that. I think you are worth ten of him, lass and, if I was in your position, I wouldn’t be making excuses for him. But that’s my personal opinion and you can tell me to mind my own business if you want.’

  “I was very much taken aback by what Annie said, because I had expected that other people would all be agreeing with William’s decision and it was such a relief to be able to drop the ‘supportive little woman’ front that I was showing to the world and be true to myself. I promised both Annie and Peter that, as soon as I had made any money, they would be well paid for helping me.”

  ‘Let’s see what happens tomorrow, shall we?’ were Annie’s last words as she and Peter went home for the night. ‘We’ll be here first thing in the morning to give you moral support.’

  At that point in her narrative, Nana Lymer paused because Victoria’s mam had entered the room carrying a tray bearing Nana’s tea.

  “And yours is downstairs on the table waiting for you, Miss. So get yourself downstairs now.”

  “Ok mam, but can I come back after tea?” Victoria pleaded.

  “I don’t think so. Nana looks a bit washed-out to me, so I think she’s had enough excitement for day. She needs to rest this evening and then have a good night’s sleep. We’ll see if she’s up to it tomorrow. Go on, off you go.”

  Victoria had no choice but had to leave Nana and go and eat. She was concerned that she was asking too much for Nana to spend all day recalling the past but she felt that Nana looked much brighter than she had for a long time, even if her mother said that she looked washed-out. She would just have to curb her impatience and wait for tomorrow.

  Chapter Three

  “Why do you want to spend so much time with your Nana?” Victoria’s mother asked the next morning when Victoria announced her intention of spending another day with her.

  “I like listening to her stories about her youth.” Victoria answered, fully aware that she wasn’t giving a completely honest answer to the question, but wary of letting her mother know exactly what it was that the old lady was telling her. Her guilt made her over-compensate and she launched into a list of subjects which were all lies but were what she hoped her mother would believe and not be suspicious of. “She’s telling me about the clothes she had when she was my age and what she liked to do. It was a really different world then and I’m finding it fascinating,” she ended

  Her mother glanced at her, disbelief written all over her face.

  “I’m sure it is, but I would advise you not to put too much credence on what she’s telling you, after all, there are days when she doesn’t even know who she is, never mind what dresses she wore when she was a lass. Go and sit with her if you want to, but take all she says with a rather large pinch of salt. She always did have a very vivid imagination.”

  Victoria trailed upstairs, reluctant now to enter the room when her mother’s words were ringing in her ears. Was Nana only imagining it all or had she really owned the shop like she said she had? Had she had a husband before Granddad Sam or was he a figment of her imagination? And what about Simon? He was the reason Victoria had been interested in the first place, what if he had never existed? She really hoped that what Nana was telling her was the truth, but how could she test that out without upsetting her Nana? Her mother had put doubts in her mind and suddenly Victoria wasn’t sure that she wanted to listen to any more of her tales. She opened the door and stepped reluctantly into the room.

  “Hello, pet, come to listen to some more of the story?”

  Nana was sitting up in bed with a fluffy pink bed jacket round her shoulders and a large biscuit tin on her lap. Victoria hesitated only for a couple of heartbeats, but it was long enough for Nana to glance at her and recognise reluctance when she saw it.

  “Don’t tell me, your mother wanted to know what we were talking about and she told you not to believe a word of what I say.” Nana suddenly sounded tired and Victoria’s guilt washed over her like a cold shower.

  “Yes, she did, but I’m not going to listen to her. I know that what you told me yesterday was the truth and I’ve come to listen to the rest of the story.”

  “Come and sit down, pet. I wondered if your mother would try to stick her oar in, so I’ve got some things to show you which will prove that I haven’t completely lost my marbles.”

  In spite of the echo of her mother’s warning still ringing in her ears, Victoria took her place next to Nana’s bed and held out her hand to take the document which Nana was holding out to her.

  “I think you’ll find that that is my marriage certificate from when I married William and with it is Simon’s birth certificate.” Nana said, watching Victoria very closely as she perused both pieces of paper. “I haven’t been lying to you, nor have I been making up stories to try and keep you with me. If you don’t want to listen to a silly old woman witter on about her early life, that’s fine by me, but I do think it’s doing my conscience good to talk about what happened.”

  Victoria managed to feel guilty for the third time that morning.

&nbs
p; “I want to know what happened, Nana.” She said. “I really do. And I believe every word that you say. Mam isn’t going to stop me from coming to see you, I promise.”

  Nana patted the hand that Victoria had laid on her arm in her eagerness to prove that she did actually want to be with her.

  “Ok so, you tell me where we’d got to when your mam brought my tea last night.”

  “Annie and Peter had helped you get the shop set up ready to open the next day.” Victoria answered promptly. “What was the first day like? Were you busy? Did you sell everything that you’d bought from the docks and the station?”

  “Whoa, lass. You took in every word I said, didn’t you? You don’t have to prove yourself to me. But make me one promise.”

  Victoria looked Nana straight in the eye. “What do you want me to promise? I won’t tell anyone what you tell me, I said that yesterday.”

  “No.” Nana said. “No. I want you to promise me that the minute you get bored with me, you tell me. I don’t want to force you to listen to me and I don’t want you to fall out with your mother because of me. I want you to be here because it’s what you want, do you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand you. And I repeat, I’m here because I want to hear about what happened to William and Simon and you. So can we please go on with the story? What happened the first day you opened the shop?”

  Nana smiled and squeezed the hand she was holding.

  “Right,” she said, thoughtfully. “The first day I opened the shop. Well, I expected that it would be fairly quiet on the first day. After all, there were other shops in the town that had been established for a few years and I didn’t expect that their regular customers would suddenly stop using them and come to me, but it seemed that I was wrong. I unlocked the front door to find that there was a small queue of customers waiting for me to open and they piled in and began buying from me immediately. I had made sure that my prices were fair, because I’d checked what other shops were charging and I had a good selection of what people would want to buy. Annie’s home-made pies went down a real treat with a lot of the customers and I decided that they were going to be a staple in my shop. I was very grateful when Annie came in and began helping me to serve these customers and she brought Peter with her, of course, who kept Simon occupied by playing with him”

  “It was further on in the day, when I overheard two women talking as they waited to be served, that I realised they actually wanted me to succeed. Evidently, I was doing what a few of them would have loved to have done; I was providing for myself and my child without the benefit of a husband. I think that was where the Suffragette Movement had their core supporters – women who were sick of having to rely on often very unreliable men to keep them. This was before the Suffragettes got going properly, of course, but they tapped into a need that was already there. As the war moved on and more and more men went away to war, women provided the work force and did jobs that they would never have been considered able to do in the past. There was also more money about because the men working in our iron works were all working double shifts to help with the war effort and ordinary people had money to spare, for the first time ever. That was the reason why the pies and cakes went down so well. Women had the money to buy them instead of having to make them. It made life easier for a lot of women.”

  “By mid-morning, Annie went into the kitchen to make more pies because the others were selling so well and I carried on with serving customers. It was turning into exactly what I had dreamt it would be and Annie, Peter, Simon and I all danced a jig after we locked the front door for the night. I was able to give Annie and Peter some money for helping me and we ate the last of Annie’s pies for our tea, all sitting round the table in the kitchen. Then Annie and I baked more pies and cakes to sell the next day and I fell into bed, exhausted but the happiest I had been for a long time.”

  “So it was a success, Nana.” Victoria commented. “You were successful right from opening the shop on the first day.”

  “I suppose I was, but I didn’t have time to stop and think about it. The next morning I was up while it was still dark to go and get more supplies, Peter pushing the cart and Simon running along beside us as we walked. Annie stayed in the kitchen and baked again, which was a good thing because the queues for pies were even longer on the second day and we made four batches all together that day and sold the lot. Those first few weeks shot past so quickly because I was always so busy, but the shop was turning into the little gold mine I had always hoped it would be. It wasn’t all plain-sailing, of course, I made many mistakes in the first few months mainly because of my inexperience, but I learnt from them and moved on. I had a bit of trouble with some of the men who worked down the docks and who weren’t too happy having to deal with a young woman, but they soon got used to it, particularly as I always took them pies or pasties which I gave to the ones who helped me.”

  “More and more men were seduced into the army and more women took over their jobs, giving up working in service and earning more money in the factories and driving buses than they’d ever been able to before. They wanted to spend that money, so I began running up skirts and blouses for them and getting in other little luxury items so that the girls wanted to spend their extra money in my shop. I also started making ginger beer and lemonade, because a lot of the work these women were doing was hot and thirsty work and they couldn’t call in at a public house on their way home like their menfolk used to do”

  “You must have been working all day and all night to get all that done, Nana.” Victoria was amazed that this tiny woman had accomplished so much.

  “I had help, don’t forget. Annie was a godsend because she was prepared to work all hours to produce pies and cakes and pastries and when she came to the shop, Peter came with her. He was the muscle I needed to pick up supplies, but he also acted as a minder when I was out buying. I had to carry money around with me in order to pay for what I bought and there were a good few lawless men around the docks at that time, who wouldn’t have hesitated to knock me out to get their hands on my money. I would have been a very easy target because, although I was doing a lot of hard physical work and I was reasonably fit, I was only a smidgeon over five feet tall and skinny with it, because the hard work had sloughed off any excess fat I may have been carrying. Peter was a marvellous deterrent to any of those men who got the idea into their heads of relieving me of my cash.”

  “So Annie, Peter, Simon and I settled into a life of long hours and hard work, but it wasn’t very long before I realised that I needed to take on another member of staff, because the initial rush had never subsided and we were running all the time to stand still. I didn’t mind whether it was a boy or a girl that I employed, but I needed someone to run errands for me, to help with the baking and to stock the shelves. Annie and I discussed it but neither of us could think of anyone who fitted what we were looking for and I must admit I was starting to get a bit desperate. Then the right person dropped into my life out of the blue and I knew we were onto a winner.”

  “Couldn’t you have advertised for staff? Didn’t the local paper carry ‘situations vacant’ like they do now?” Victoria asked. “I bet you would have got loads of candidates if you’d put an advert in the paper.”

  “I probably would, pet, but I didn’t have the time for interviewing loads of applicants. I just wanted to find the right person, which I did. I’d started taking ‘orders’ from women who were going out to work and who didn’t have the time to stand and wait to be served in the shop. All they had to do was to drop a list of their requirements into the shop on their way to work and we would pack them up and Peter and I would deliver them that evening. It was cash on delivery mind, because I didn’t work any other way. Nobody could run a tab in my shop, they had to pay up or they didn’t get the goods, so if they didn’t pay when I arrived with the order then that order went back to the shop with me.”

  “One morning, Annie took an order from a young girl, while I was giving Simon his
breakfast and it was one of the orders Peter and I delivered that night. When we arrived, it was a man who answered the door, which in itself was rather unusual, because it was mostly women who dealt with me. He greeted our arrival with a huge smile and ushered me into the kitchen while he got the money to pay me. Peter stayed outside, keeping watch over the cart and the rest of the orders, because we didn’t want anyone running off with it and also because he was very shy and didn’t mix with other people very well.”

  ‘I’m Sam, Sammy Lymer,’ the man said as he paid for his order. ‘I think I know your husband, lass, William isn’t it? Works in the iron works?’

  “Granddad!” Victoria interjected. “That’s how you met Granddad Sam!”

  “Yes, that was the first time I met him.” Nana agreed. “But let me continue or I’ll lose my train of thought! I didn’t want to talk to a stranger about William. It was late, I’d had a long day and I was finding it difficult to keep on pretending that everything was hunky-dory between me and my husband. I still had work to do when I got back to the shop because I had another batch of ginger beer to make and Simon would be wanting his bedtime story before he would settle down for the night. Annie was baking while she kept an eye on Simon, but she would be tired and ready to go home and I really didn’t want to have to make small talk with a stranger, but he was a new customer and I wanted the repeat business, so I sat on my impatience and answered him.”

  ‘William used to work in the works, but he’s away in France with the army, now. He’s doing his bit for King and country.’ I said, the false patriotic tone which was a part of my new persona coming easily to me because I’d used it so often before.

  ‘I’d heard tell he’d enlisted.’ Sam said. ‘I’m foreman in the next section to where he used to work and I couldn’t understand it when I heard he’d joined up. I thought they were only taking single men as yet, although I suppose that will change cos it’s not looking too good out there. I’ve no wish to follow the colours, but I suppose I’ll still be needed to make iron and steel for the ships and the guns, so hopefully I won’t be conscripted. I mustn’t say that to most people, though, you get called a traitor and a coward if you’re not desperate to get over there and get your head blown off. But it must be hard on you, lass, looking after a bairn and working all hours as well. You must be exhausted.’