The Clippie Girls by Margaret Dickinson Page A

Laurence approached them one morning when they reported for work.
    ‘Alice won’t be in today – probably not for several days. She’s had news that her husband was killed on the beaches. Evidently, he was up to his waist in the sea, waiting for one of the little ships to pick him up, when an enemy plane strafed them.’
    ‘Oh, poor Alice – I’ll go and see her,’ Rose said at once.
    Laurence shook his head. ‘No point. She’s gone down south to stay with her brother and his wife for a week or two.’
    It was a month before Alice returned to Sheffield and came back to work. After offering her condolences, Rose said, ‘We all thought you might stay down there.’
    Alice’s face was pinched with grief and she looked thinner than ever, but she smiled bravely. ‘I did think about it – all my family is there – but Derek’s parents live in Rotherham. I thought he’d’ve liked me to stay near to them – at least for a while.’ She paused and then burst out, ‘The worst is knowing I’ll never be able to have any children. It was all me an’ Derek ever wanted. But now . . .’
    There was nothing Rose could say. Words of comfort like, ‘Oh, you’ll meet someone else’ would sound hollow and somehow insulting to her beloved husband’s memory. All Rose could do was to keep an eye on her friend and be a sympathetic ear if ever Alice needed one.
    Through the summer of 1940 Peggy and Bob continued to see each other outside their working hours, but the romance did not seem to progress. They went out most weekends, held hands in the back row of the pictures and kissed goodnight outside the front door when Bob delivered her home at the time demanded by Grace. He was the first young man Peggy had gone out with for any length of time. She’d been out once or twice with Walter Bradshaw when she was seventeen, but he’d met a girl from Rotherham and soon became engaged to her. Peggy had never felt as if she’d been jilted; their friendship had been just that and no more. She didn’t weep into her pillow over Walter. But now she wasn’t sure what it meant to be ‘in love’. She read romantic novels but felt nothing of the passion for Bob which the heroines obviously felt for their heroes. She liked him very much, was fond of him even. She was comfortable with him. He was kind and courteous, considerate and undemanding, but her heart didn’t beat faster at the sight of him or her pulses race when he kissed her gently. Being reserved herself, maybe Peggy needed someone more exciting, whilst Rose would have been ecstatic if Bob had even looked at her.
    Myrtle, however, had no problem defining her sister’s so-called romance.
    ‘He’s slow,’ she voiced her opinion to Rose as they undressed for bed one warm August night. ‘Everyone’s blaming Peggy, but he’s not exactly sweeping her off her feet, is he? If you ask me, he’s as dull as ditch water and as slow as a tram on strike.’
    ‘How dare you talk about Bob like that?’ Rose flared in an unguarded moment.
    ‘Ooo-er, touchy, aren’t we? Fancy him yourself, do you?’
    ‘Don’t be daft,’ Rose snapped, angry for having left herself open to Myrtle’s shrewd remark. ‘I just think he’s a nice bloke who Peggy’s not being fair to.’
    ‘Whom.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘It’s “to whom” she’s not being fair, not “who”.’
    ‘Oh, go to sleep,’ Rose muttered, jumping into her single bed and pulling the covers up and then immediately throwing them off again. ‘It’s so hot up here.’
    ‘Well, at least it’ll be nice and cool on your tram platform tomorrow.’
    ‘D’you know what?’ Rose said, changing the subject. ‘Mam’s volunteered for war work and there’s a fair chance she might be sent as a clippie. She told ’em she’d got two daughters who were clippies. Or is it “whom”, Miss Clever Clogs?’
    ‘No, no, “who” is correct in that context.’
    As Myrtle blew out the candle and climbed into bed, Rose smiled in the