Lily's War Read online

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Welcome to the world of Shirley Mann!

  A letter from the Author

  Recipe

  Extract from Bobby’s War

  Memory Lane Club

  Tales from Memory Lane

  Copyright

  To Eileen and David, my parents, who were the inspiration behind Lily’s War

  Chapter 1

  Manchester, 1942

  The knitting was the last straw. Lily cast off the end stitch, measured the uneven grey sock against its partner and made a decision. There had to be something better she could do towards the war effort than knitting irregular socks for soldiers.

  She tried to pull them to the same length but gave up, throwing them in the knitting basket in disgust. ‘I just hope that Tommy’s got one leg shorter than the other,’ she muttered to herself.

  Lily looked around at the morning room of her parents’ terraced house in Manchester. It was the only vaguely warm room in the house, with the black range struggling to keep an ember alive in a pathetic reminder of the blazing fires of pre-war days. She fingered the tassels on the dark green damask tablecloth next to the armchair she was curled up in. So often as children, she and her brother, Don, had peered through them from the other side, hiding from the haunting cry of the rag-and-bone man. She had been frightened then. That was before she knew real fear.

  The room needed decorating. It looked as tired as the family did, she thought. The thermos was upright on a chair next to the table, standing to attention, waiting to be filled with tea at bedtime in case the sirens went off, forcing them to leave their warm beds to take refuge in the Anderson shelter in the garden. The pale cream blankets were on the chair next to it, neatly folded. The candles lay expectantly in their box, the matches on top. They were all becoming experts at this. Lily’s shoulders drooped and she gave a heartfelt sigh. It was the same story every night, waiting for the drone of the planes, wondering whether that night would be their last.

  ‘Mum,’ she called into the back kitchen.

  ‘Yes, dear’ her mum replied, putting a tiny spoonful of valuable honey into the cake she was making. She had saved all her rations for this cake and she needed to concentrate.

  ‘I’m going to sign up.’

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  Lily went into the tiny cold room at the back of the house, pushing past her thirteen-year-old brother, Don. Still in school uniform, he was hovering near the mixing bowl on the stone slab, dipping his finger in when his mother was not looking.

  ‘No, really. I’m going to volunteer. I’m fed up with just doing fire watch duty. If I don’t do this now, by next year it could all be over and I’ll have missed my chance.’

  ‘Missed your chance to get killed, you mean,’ her dad appeared behind her, struggling, as usual, to light his pipe.

  ‘Everyone’s already gone,’ Lily ignored him and held out her hand for the honey-smeared spoon.

  Her mother automatically handed it over the head of her disappointed son and watched Lily lick the silver utensil free of every last vestige of honey. Lily’s shoulder-length hair suddenly caught the late afternoon sun’s rays, reflecting the golden shimmer from the liquid. Like many times recently, the tall, assured nineteen-year-old in front of Ginny took her breath away. She towered above her mother now and Ginny noticed with pride how Lily’s casual shirt, tucked into the waistband of a navy skirt, showed off her neat figure. It was a shame they could not buy her a new shirt though, Ginny thought, the repeated darns and mends were becoming obvious.

  ‘No, Lily, you’re doing well at Liners. With everyone else gone, Mr Spencer is relying on you more and more and you’ve got a real chance to make something of yourself. You’ve still got another year before you’d be called up’

  ‘I’ve already made something of myself,’ Lily said with a grin. ‘I was the back end of a horse in the Rusholme panto three years on the run, remember. No one can beat that for achievement.’

  ‘War’s ugly,’ her dad butted in but didn’t say any more. John Mullins was a Great War veteran whose memories of Gallipoli still gave him nightmares, details of which he had never shared before and he was not about to start now. John squeezed past the three members of his family and banged his pipe against the side of the Belfast sink to blot out the images that came unbidden. Meanwhile, Lily bounded out of the room, unwilling to brook any argument.

  Ginny Mullins wiped her hands on the faded dishcloth and went over to her husband. She placed a tense hand on the darned elbow of his grey sweater.

  ‘She’s nineteen; a grown woman. She could be married by now,’ John said, looking down at his diminutive wife. He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, trying to convince himself as well as his wife. ‘You won’t stop her, you know you won’t and it’s not like she’s been safe here.’ He looked out meaningfully at the corrugated roofed shelter that had been their flimsy defence against German bombs during the Blitz when so many others had died.

  Lily dropped down into the armchair in the morning room and blew out a noisy sigh. She was good at filing, typing and invoicing but when the ticker tapes came into the office sounding the death knell of another of Manchester Liners’ ships, she experienced frustration and anger. She would run her finger over the names of the lost as they came in, trying to feel a connection with them, trying to send her strength to the injured and the families left behind. When she closed her eyes, she saw the heaving seas, grey pictures of listing ships, the spirals of smoke and the sight of flailing sailors in the water. She had failed to come to terms with a world that was no longer safe for her and for everyone she loved. All the security of a carefree childhood had been obliterated amidst air raids and streets that were reduced to unfamiliar rubble. Her journeys to work had made her a witness to the home guard, police and fire brigade frantically digging through flattened buildings while pale relatives stood by, chillingly silent in their fear and grief. She had too often heard the hushed tones in local shops as yet another family received the dreaded telegram. Lily tried to believe she was going to sign up for altruistic reasons, but she knew in her heart she was simply bored.

  In 1939, she had just been allowed to go to dances, had started work and ha
d a wage coming in. She had bought her first pair of kitten heels and was full of excitement about the future. But Hitler had other ideas. When she started at Liners, Lily had felt so important, bustling around the office holding a clipboard and dominating the filing cabinets. But then, once all the young women in the typing pool joined up, she was left with bespectacled, well-meaning colleagues who spent the whole day discussing how to make the most out of an ounce of sugar. And worst of all, most of the young men had gone too, leaving Lily to partner one of her schoolfriends, Ros or Hannah, at the occasional morale-boosting dances.

  Then last week, when she was huddled with her family in the shelter, listening yet again to the ominous drone of the planes above her beloved city, she noticed that the habitual shivering had stopped. She was no longer afraid. She was ready.

  Chapter 2

  Ginny looked crossly at the envelope on the mat marked ‘On His Majesty’s Service.’ It was all so quick, Lily was too young. She pushed her grey hair away from her horn-rimmed spectacles, fingered the letter for a moment but then reluctantly called up the stairs. ‘I think it’s here, Lily’.

  Lily stopped brushing her hair and slowly placed the bevelled silver hairbrush on her walnut dressing table and rearranged the yellowing lace cloth under it.

  She ran downstairs, almost slipping in her stockinged feet on the threadbare carpet.

  ‘Careful love, you’ll break your ankle’, her mother said automatically.

  ‘Well, I never have, have I?’ Lily gave her mum a quick hug before taking the brown envelope from her.

  Lily raced back up the stairs to her bedroom. It was a sanctuary that had comforted her all her life. She needed a moment’s calm to erase the nagging guilt brought on by the wan expression on her mother’s face at the bottom of the stairs. Lily had always been the organiser of the family; the bossy one, her father would say. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she slid slightly on the silky pale lemon eiderdown and felt her knees give way. Raising her chin she sat down more firmly and slid her finger under the seal. The letter was very polite. It thanked her for her application, gave her a date for a medical and informed her that she would be interviewed about her education and schooling so she could choose the area that most suited her abilities.

  *

  Later, once the blackout curtains had been pulled shut and the black iron kettle had boiled, the family sat with their customary cup of Lyons tea and jug of condensed milk. The letter was on the table in front of them, speaking volumes with its black type. ‘Well, the army’s out,’ Lily told her parents, prodding the poker into the three pieces of coal on the range fire. ‘I just look terrible in khaki. I think you need a relative to get into either the air force or the navy,’ she paused, dredging up information she had heard at the Red Cross centre, ‘but do you think the fact that Paul is in the RAF would get me in there?’

  She looked round for confirmation, but none came. Unsure, but wanting to fill the silence, she tentatively said, ‘I think you can ask for the RAF if you have a relative in it. Is a cousin a near enough relative? So that’s it then, air force here I come!’

  Triumphant, she sat back to gauge the impact of her pronouncement.

  ‘Anything but munitions,’ her dad replied, reaching over to pick up a precious biscuit from the round tin on the table. The painting of the thatched cottage on the front reminded him of the England they were all fighting for. ‘I’ll not have you working in a factory. We didn’t send you to a good school like Loreto for that.’

  John Mullins was a printer at the Manchester Guardian in Cross Street. He had worked nights for as long as Lily could remember. Early mornings she would come down in her woolly dressing gown; he was always there carefully rolling up old newspapers for the range, his fingers black from the printing ink. The latest editions would be on the table. Lily loved knowing she was the first in the street to find out the latest news and felt her father’s job gave her a superior, inside knowledge of world affairs. In the morning light, they would discuss the day’s headlines over a cup of tea before he went up to bed in his upside down day.

  She gave her dad an affectionate pat on his arm, leaving it there for a second. He smiled at her.

  ‘I know, lass, but munitions is dirty work and you’d look awful in a boiler suit. It’s a long way from an office job at Liners.’

  ‘I’m a junior assistant,’ Lily said, ‘that must make me top brass material at least! That settles it, then,’ she said, not pausing for breath. ‘I will tell them I choose the air force. As I’m volunteering, they’ve said they’ll consider any preferences I have, but they’re not going to let me fly a plane and I’m no good at maps, so what else can I do?’ She picked up the letter and scanned it for the umpteenth time.

  ‘Mrs Cook’s daughter’s gone in the WAAFs,’ her mother said, pouring out a drop more tea for herself and adding the sweet mixture from the small flowered, china jug. ‘She looked very smart in her uniform when I saw her at the Co-op. And there’s all them lovely pilots. You might meet one o’ them and—’

  ‘Nah’ her dad interrupted. ‘She’ll marry Danny when he comes back. You mark my words. Any more of them biscuits, Ginny? The tin’s empty.’ He shook it and passed it to her.

  Ginny headed towards the pantry, pausing in the doorway to smile at her daughter, who had sat upright in the chair at her father’s words.

  ‘What, that full-of-himself smarty-pants? I don’t think so.’ Lily cocked her head to one side. It was a struggle these days to recall Danny, the young sales rep who used to perch on the edge of her desk, pretending to need her wind-up pencil sharpener. She had been so surprised when, during her first week at Liners, he had walked through the door carrying his coat nonchalantly over his shoulder. She knew him immediately. Three years earlier, for an interminable six months, Lily had been subjected to her friend Ros’s detailed description of his twinkling eyes and unruly black hair. He would often call round for Will, Ros’s older brother, on the way to junior orchestra when Lily was there but with a two-year age difference, Ros and her friend were suitably ignored by the older and much more mature boys and Ros’s crush went unreciprocated. But on that Monday morning at Liners, Danny had immediately recognised Lily and from then on he took it upon himself to help her settle in, giving her endless advice about how to deal with the erratic water boiler in the kitchen, how to use the teleprinter and how to avoid the miserable Miss Carne. She put up with his advice for about two weeks until she told him she was perfectly capable and would manage fine now, thank you very much, at which point he asked her out on a date.

  Lily knew her parents had had high hopes for the well-dressed, polite young man who used to call to pick her up on a Friday night, even though he was Church of England and the Mullins family were Catholics. Lily’s own father had been brought up a Baptist and had converted to marry Ginny, but they had both agreed they would not put their own children through the family arguments they had been forced to endure. This was a relaxed approach that prompted scandalised comments from their relations, but made them feel modern and enlightened. They would whisper in the kitchen about what a ‘nice sort’ he seemed, and her mother had already checked which hats she had on the top of the wardrobe in case an announcement was made. Even Hannah and Ros had started talking about their bridesmaids’ outfits.

  But their dates were abruptly curtailed when he was called up in ’40. Now he was no longer a young salesman whose mum made his packed lunch, but a Tommy in khaki. For a while, Lily missed his cheerful personality but not his irritating assumption that they would become a couple. Their first date had been a surprise – not the usual cinema trip, but a tour of Manchester’s historical sites. She remembered with a blush that she had made him laugh when she tried to impress him with her knowledge of history and made a mess of pronouncing the city’s original name, Mamucium. Lily was proud of the fact that she had stayed on at school to take her Highers and usually she felt a superiority over lads like him who had left school at fourteen, but Danny w
as different. He had read books that she had never heard of, kept abreast of current affairs, and actually understood what had happened in the build-up to the Great War. He was also very cultured from his schooling at Manchester Cathedral School and she knew, from his rendition of carols that last Christmas, that he had a beautiful voice. She tried so hard to be sophisticated, but he always seemed to see through her. Their last date was only a picnic in Heaton Park when he had proudly presented her with an egg sandwich the size of a brick. His jokes were terrible but, somehow, they always ended up rolling around in hysterical laughter. It was only at the end of the date as he gently kissed her, and his hands tightened around her shoulders, that she had suddenly suspected he really cared for her.

  Once he had left, however, she decided she had no intention of pining away, and despite her parents’ constant enquiries about how Danny was doing, she started to date other boys who were not yet conscripted, and she consigned Danny Jackson to a pleasant memory of a first romance. His long and chatty letters came on a regular basis and always made her feel guilty when she forgot to reply. His recent ones told her how he had become a tank transporter driver, she suspected somewhere in Africa, and they always gave a picture of adventure, fun and camaraderie. She knew this was likely far from the truth, but he always made her smile and for a moment, Lily remembered him grinning at her from across the post room. She shook her head to get rid of the vision of a good-looking young man teasing her.

  ‘Nope’, she told her parents, tossing her golden hair back, ‘it’s a high-flyer for me. And a good looking ‘un to boot.’

  Chapter 3

  The next few weeks flew by for Lily, with an interview and a trip to Preston to have her medical and pick up her uniform. The train journey was the first one she had ever taken on her own and felt like the beginning of a new independent life. She watched the ruins of Manchester fade into green fields where animals were grazing. The late autumn colours were a complete contrast to the grey of the devastated city she was leaving behind. The war seemed to move further and further away with the clickety-click of the wheels on the track, and as she dozed, Lily thought about the last three years. It was amazing how quickly everyone had adapted to the war, accepting without question that what started as just shortages of bacon, butter and sugar would soon become two hours of queues at the shops to get anything at all, that their houses were freezing cold in winter because of a lack of coal, and that normal life was turned upside down as its citizens left to fight in countries they had only learned about in Geography lessons at school. But the hail of bombs from the air during the Blitz had threatened the Mancunian spirit like no other catastrophe in its history. Wave after wave of bombers dropped their devastating payload on streets Lily had walked along all her life, obliterating any trace of the ordered existence that had moulded her idyllic childhood. Lily smiled to herself, thinking of her petite mother standing in her nightie in the garden shaking her fist at the dark planes above. It had not taken long for the people of Manchester to rally and refuse to be beaten, in spirit if not in fact. Sometimes, Lily felt so cheated of a young, carefree life that she longed to rail against the fates that had placed her and the whole world in this situation. Only last week, when she had had the temerity to complain in a butcher’s queue, she was greeted with a look of disdain from the woman next to her. The look was followed by the comment that Lily had come to loathe so much: ‘Stop moaning, don’t you know there’s a war on.’