Elsie was struck then by the awful irony of having a baby just yards from Laurie’s old bedroom. A baby that he had so desperately wished to have. Her thoughts meandered back to the day that he had left for war. Acute stomach cramps that morning had seen the headmistress send Elsie home early. She had hurried back to Bramley Cottage, where she had found Laurie descending the stairs, buttoning up his khaki tunic. Behind him had been a semi-clad tart from the village. Elsie couldn’t now recall what—if anything—had been his defence. The searing pain in her stomach had intensified and she had run to the outside toilet where she had watched it come tumbling out. Then his face had appeared at the door. Conversation had been pointless. She had cried and cried until he had finally gone—left for war—leaving Elsie to mourn all that she had lost. Her body had told her reliably each and every month for as long as she could remember when it had been ripe for producing a baby; she had vowed never to give that gift to Laurie ever again.
The stifling, scratchy heat from her maternity dress—hand-made from an old army blanket—recalled her from her reveries. She stripped down to her underwear, pledging to burn the dress the moment that the baby was born. She moved to the window and yanked it open. She saw her confinement here as a sentence to be served—an enlarged version of the gaol-like utility cot to which the baby would soon be confined. She already ached to get back to her work in the WAAF. Last month had seen the heaviest bombing in England of the war so far, with only three nights without raids. Ports had become the latest targets favoured by the Luftwaffe. She was needed now more than ever before in the operations room.
Elsie’s attention turned to a squadron of Spitfires taking off from the aerodrome in the distance. She thought of her brief time working up at Maypole Cottage. It now seemed a lifetime ago, when she had been a dimmer, paler version of herself.
Hoisting one of the suitcases onto the bed, she began to unpack her clothes; an echo of the naïve girl hanging her pristine uniform into the wardrobe. This time, there was little of pride to be found inside her case, just bastardised items of clothing made from old garments and pieces of scavenged material.
She took her time unpacking, then reluctantly climbed back into her horrible dress and opened her bedroom door. There was muted laughter coming from downstairs and Elsie couldn’t help but think that it was directed towards her when she entered the sitting-room and the three girls fell silent. Then she noticed Kath, sitting quietly in the corner of the room, knitting. She leapt up and greeted Elsie with a hug. ‘Lovely to have you back, Elsie. I’m just making the baby some mittens from an old jumper of mine. Have you met the other girls?’
‘Hello,’ one of them said. She could barely have been seventeen years old. She was pretty with ringlets of auburn hair. ‘I’m Freda.’ She smiled and introduced the other two girls. ‘This is Phyllis’—she pointed to a slender girl with a large protruding belly and neatly styled ginger hair—‘and this is Ivy.’ Ivy waved. She too, was very young. Well made up, blonde hair and a pretty dress.
‘I’m Elsie,’ she said.
‘Welcome back,’ Ivy said with a pleasant smile. ‘We were just reading this Make Do and Mend leaflet for pregnant women. It’s very funny—read some more, Phyllis.’
Phyllis stood up and put on a well-spoken, deep voice. ‘Shortages should be viewed as a blessing in disguise. Rubber knickers are not necessary and, quite apart from the fact that rubber is very scarce, they are very uncomfortable for the baby.’
The girls laughed then Freda snatched the leaflet. ‘This is my favourite bit…where is it…oh, yes. A laundry basket or even a deep drawer, suitably lined, can be adapted to make a very useful cot for the first few months,’ she read.
‘And when they get older, you can stuff them in your wardrobe,’ Ivy added with a laugh. ‘Honestly.’
Now it was Phyllis’s turn to snatch the leaflet, promptly tearing it into small pieces.
‘Phyllis!’ Ivy scolded.
‘Rubbish only a man can have written.’
The girls laughed again and Elsie found herself joining in and relaxing. She eyed Kath several times throughout the exchange; often Kath caught her looking. The whole atmosphere of the house had shifted since she had last been here; something she couldn’t quite put her finger on had changed.
Unassumingly, the afternoon slipped into the evening. The only interruptions to the four women getting to know one another better and the circumstances of their confinement at Cliff House were Agnes’s regular drop-ins. ‘Here are your glasses of milk, girls. Drink up.’ ‘Here are your vitamin A and D tablets—chocolate-covered—you lucky things.’
Elsie’s suspicions about Agnes’s seeming transformation into this caring matriarch that she barely recognised was heightened at the dinner table. ‘Are you sure we shouldn’t just book ourselves into a private nursing home for our confinement?’ Ivy asked.
‘Nonsense!’ came Agnes’s reply. ‘Pay sixteen-and-a-half guineas for two weeks when you can have the baby here, for free? Poppycock.’
Ivy and the other two girls smiled and a lingering stare from both Kath and Agnes made Elsie feel that she too should be joining in the joviality.
Elsie forced a smile, playing along. ‘It’s very kind of you,’ she found herself saying.
Agnes shot her a look of clear contempt.
By way of distraction, Elsie picked up her glass of water and drank the contents. As she went to set it back down on the table an odd sensation swished inside of her tummy. The glass slipped from her hand and smashed on
