Heading towards the door, Ena heard a change in the plane’s engines. She ran back to the window. The entire German Air Force, or so it seemed, was banking to the right and turning south.
She heard the high-pitch wail of distant air raid sirens followed by the rumble of heavy aircraft. The nightmare of six hours before was being repeated elsewhere. She ran out of her bedroom, crossed the hall, and went into her brother Tom’s bedroom. Watching from his window, Ena felt fingers of ice grip her spine as the Luftwaffe rose up from the south-west and began to bomb Coventry again.
With tears streaming down her face – and all thoughts of taking shelter gone from her mind, Ena stumbled back to her own room and fell into bed. Pulling the eiderdown up, she buried her head and tried desperately to ignore the terrifying, unrelenting, blitzing of Coventry for the second time that night.
In the morning, feeling as if she hadn’t slept at all, Ena dragged herself out of bed. Yawning, she went downstairs and had a top-and-tail wash in the cold scullery. Before going back to her room to get dressed, she went to the living room and grabbed her blouse. She fully expected to see her mother asleep on the settee; instead, the room was empty, which meant her father had returned home safely at some point during the night.
After she had dressed, drunk a cup of tea and eaten a slice of toast with a scraping of margarine, Ena crept out of the house. Closing the door quietly behind her so she didn’t wake her father who had to be even more tired than she was, she put her gasmask over her head, placing the strap securely across her chest, and dropped her handbag in the bike’s basket.
Wiping the winter dew from her bicycle’s seat, Ena wheeled it down the path to the lane, mounted, and set off. She was about to turn onto the Lowarth Road when she saw her father cycling towards her. He looked exhausted. His face was pale and dirty, and his eyes heavy with dark circles under them. As they drew level, father and daughter dismounted.
‘Mam said she was waiting up for you last night. When she wasn’t downstairs this morning, I thought you’d come home and were in bed. Good Lord!’ Ena said, leaning forward and examining her father’s eyes. ‘You need to get some sleep.’
‘I will when I’ve been up to Foxden Hall and seen Bess.’
‘Go home first, Dad. Mam’s worried sick. She’s in bed now, but I think she sat up most of the night waiting for you.’
‘Alright. I need to change my clothes before I go up to the Hall anyway.’
Ena lifted her foot from the kerb to the nearside pedal of her bike and prepared to push off.
‘You look smart,’ her father said. ‘Are you going out after you’ve been to the factory?’
‘Kind of. I thought I had better look my best if I’m calling on the boss’s wife at home.’ Thomas Dudley’s brow creased quizzically. ‘I’m hoping to collect the wages from her, so I don’t have to wait at the factory all day for her to bring them. Everyone else is having a day off with pay, except Freda and me. It’s not fair. If all goes to plan, I shall go round to Madge Foot’s at lunchtime, see if she fancies going to the pictures this afternoon. And there’s a dance at Gilmorton Village Hall tonight that Madge and some of the other girls are going to.’
‘It’s time you had some fun, but be careful.’
‘I intend to, don’t worry.’ Ena said goodbye. ‘Oh, and have something to eat before you go up to Foxden.’
‘When did you become so grown up?’ Thomas Dudley asked, laughing. Ena watched her father cycle down the lane. ‘See you later, love!’ he shouted over his shoulder. As he neared the cottage, Ena set off for Lowarth.
Lifting her feet from the bicycle’s pedals, Ena put one foot and then the other on the front wheel to slow the bike down. She had needed new brakes for a while and made a mental note to take the bike to Bradshaw’s Bicycles later in the day.
Jumping off the bike, Ena wheeled it round to the bike-shed at the back of the building. She glanced at her watch. She was early, but she had planned to be. She wanted to check her work, make sure it hadn’t been damaged in the bombing of the previous night, before Mr Silcott took it to… wherever he was taking it.
Every time he delivered Ena’s work to this secret location, Ena hoped he would take her with him, but he always took Freda. It wasn’t fair. Freda was responsible for work that she delivered to a facility near Loughborough, so why did she have to go with him to this other place as well? Unless the rumours about Mr Silcott and Freda having an affair were true. If they were, he would want her with him. Ena tutted. She hated gossip and told everyone who talked about Freda behind her back that she would never sneak about with a married man. ‘Besides which,’ Ena would add, ‘I work closely with Mr Silcott and Freda, I would know if there was any hanky-panky going on.’
Ena felt it her duty to defend anyone who wasn’t there to defend themselves. She was sometimes wrong and this, she thought, after seeing the way
