22nd July 1940
A neighbour gave me some vinegar for tomato chutney, because I couldn’t get any and I gave her some sultanas in exchange. Her evacuees have gone, replaced I noticed by her daughter-in-law—a girl in the WAAF. I admire her pluck, but honestly! This damn silly “officer” business is absurd. Glorified housemaids with a council education only need three more stripes to be equal to the Duchess of Gloucester! I ask you. No wonder the war is costing 11 million a day against 5 million in the last war. The army nurses served for fifty years with the army and no trouble and no army rank. No saluting. No route marches. No drilling. No nonsense.
Morton continued reading the diarist’s amusing ramblings, certain that the neighbour referred to, whose daughter-in-law was in the WAAF, was Agnes Finch. She was the person who had taken in the evacuees and who had stood on the cliff edge, hopelessly searching the incoming ships for sight of her son.
28th July 1940
A fortnight of storms, here! And all the while, the USA is under a giant heat wave that has killed more than 500. I have not been so well lately, but I simply do not trust the local doctor. I have heard several terrible stories of misdiagnosis. Someone staying with my neighbour had a terrible cough for two weeks and was vomiting. I went in. “Whooping cough,” I said, advising that she called the doctor. He came and said it was a “Stomach cough.” Idiot. It took four more days until he was called again and heard the poor girl “whooping” before he determined it to be “whooping cough.” Damned fool not to have known before. Whilst I was there, I discovered the reason that my neighbour—the one with the space for me in her Anderson shelter—is so heavily and suddenly concerned with the moral fibre of our young girls—her daughter is one of the “fallen women!” She didn’t say as much, but I spotted a green ration book, open on the table in her daughter’s name. I do have some sympathy—the woman (a widow) has already lost a son at Dunkirk but I cannot, for the life of me, condone her latest endeavours. Along with Mrs Potter, (an unholy alliance if ever there was one) she has set up her house as some kind of iniquitous refuge for women of low morals. I shan’t be using their shelter, again, I can tell you that much for nothing. I’d rather take my chances with whatever Hitler’s got.
It had to be Agnes Finch. Morton clicked back through to the beginning of her diary entries, photographing each page of the screen and trying to piece together all the various mentions of Agnes. If he was correct, then she, along with a Mrs Potter had set up Cliff House as a refuge for pregnant girls, one of whom was her daughter, Kath. It was little wonder, then, that Elsie had gone there to give birth among other women and girls in a similar situation.
He clicked on to the next entry, dated 22nd August 1940.
Last night – new moon – was by all the rumours, the zero hour for the Conquest of Britain! So far, no signs, apart from the air raids. The aerodrome near here has been struck several times. I noticed that my neighbour’s WAAF daughter-in-law upped and left last week. Her daughter—one of the “fallen women” gave birth last night—a still, apparently. I offered my services but they weren’t required. There are at least three other women there now in a similar condition. I really can’t see why the country being at war should loosen the morals of our young. If anything, it should take effect to the contrary.
As he had been reading the early entries, Morton had imagined that Kath’s baby had been Tamara, but it wasn’t. He flipped his notepad to a rough family tree that he had created for the Finch family and added an extra vertical line down from Kath Finch’s name, then opened up Ancestry to search for the baby’s birth and death record.
The birth had been registered: Richard Peter Finch, but there was no sign of the death.
On his notepad, Morton scribbled ‘baby born September quarter 1940 - still born?’ He double-checked the 1916-2005 marriage register and found Kath’s marriage to John Forsdyke in 1945; Tamara had been born the following year.
Morton added the information to the family tree, then returned to the wartime diaries, picking up where Doris Sloan had continued, following a nine-month break.
May 1941
I have been feeling wretched for some months now. I am convinced that the war situation is making it worse. Barely a night goes by where we are spared the dreaded sirens. Some nights Jerry flies right over and hits London, other nights they target the ports. Some nights it’s as if the pilots are lost and they circle above, drop their load and then head home for the night, which is what happened last week. Mr Wren’s house was hit and a pilot was killed. I saw him passing my house in his uniform, poor blighter. More dead in Folkestone and Dover. When will it end?
August 1941
It is Bank Holiday Monday and the anniversary of the outbreak of war, 1914.
