Bia's War (5 page)

“That handcart was a godsend to
me until I could afford a proper horse and cart, with stabling and
fodder for the horse, so that was another element that Mr Vine
added to my business empire. I think he must have had great faith
in what I was capable of doing, because a lot of other people
weren’t overstruck on him and said he was mean, but I always found
him open-handed and generous, with material goods and advice. I
used him a lot, professionally, after I began to make money and I
was always completely satisfied with his work and his bills. But
I’m getting ahead of the story now! Where was I? Oh yes, Old Davy
had come to put up the shelves.”

“He worked all morning, did
Davy, and by lunchtime he’d transformed that parlour into a proper
shop, with shelves and a counter made from two tables fastened
together. The last job I got him to do before he went back to Mr
Vine was to put up a sign next to the front window. I’d painted it
myself the night before, on an old blackboard that Simon had played
with. It read, ‘Drinkwater’s Grocers’ in large letters so that
passers-by could see it and know that I was in business. I was
rather proud of that sign. It wasn’t professionally done, but it
was bright and cheerful and as good, if not better, than any sign
outside any other ‘house shop’ in the town.”

“Were you nervous, Nana? I mean,
were you worried that the shop wouldn’t be a success and that you’d
wasted your savings on it? Savings that you could have used to feed
and clothe you and Simon.”

“I admit, I was rather nervous
because I’d put so much time and effort and money into it.” Nana
said. “But I had to go through with it, I had no choice. It was
either sink or swim and if that was going to be decided by the
amount of hard work I was prepared to do, then it was only going to
go one way. But I admit I was shaking the day I opened the shop.
After Davy had left that first day, I went to get the handcart out
of the back yard so that I could go and collect the supplies I’d
ordered from the docks and the station. My next-door neighbour
heard the noise I was making because I was finding it very
difficult to manoeuvre that cart around the yard and she came to
see what I was doing. I’d never had much to do with my neighbours,
because I wasn’t the sort to stand and gossip in the streets, but
we’d always been civil to each other whenever we had met. Annie was
a plump little body, probably in her mid-fifties then and she
always kept herself to herself, like me. She was a widow, with a
son who was about twenty years old, but he had a mental age of
about eight. Peter, he was called and he followed Annie about,
rather like Simon followed me. The difference between them was that
he was a huge lad, with shoulders as broad as a barn door and
muscles in his arms that would have made Popeye look skinny, but he
was a gentle giant. He had no idea of his own strength and Annie
often worried that some unscrupulous man would introduce him to
boxing or some such thing and make a fortune out of him. She kept a
very close eye on him because of this and I had rarely seen him out
without his mother.”

“Anyway, Annie came to the back
gate and asked if I wanted Peter to give me a hand pushing the cart
and I was so grateful for his help that I told Annie what I was
about to do. I wouldn’t normally have been so forth-coming but I
felt she deserved an explanation of what I was doing with the cart,
so I told her. Then Peter pushed the handcart to the station and
the docks for me and when we got back to the house, I mean shop,
Annie had already started to make the pies I had told her I was
going to bake when I got back. She had a very light hand with
pastry and I was amazed and incredibly thankful for her help. I had
a lot more to do in order to be ready to open the following morning
and having the baking taken off my hands was a god-send. But I was
worried because I couldn’t afford to pay her or Peter for what they
had done that day, but she brushed my apologies aside.”

‘I admire your determination and
your hard work, lass, and I don’t mind helping out a bit. I
wondered what you would do when I heard that your William had
signed up and I admire the fact that you haven’t sat on your
backside, bewailing what is happening to you, which is what a lot
of women are doing at this moment. I also think that William was
being selfish when he enlisted, although going to fight the Hun
isn’t going to make more of a man of him. He just hasn’t got it in
him and he should be old enough and man enough to admit that. I
think you are worth ten of him, lass and, if I was in your
position, I wouldn’t be making excuses for him. But that’s my
personal opinion and you can tell me to mind my own business if you
want.’

“I was very much taken aback by
what Annie said, because I had expected that other people would all
be agreeing with William’s decision and it was such a relief to be
able to drop the ‘supportive little woman’ front that I was showing
to the world and be true to myself. I promised both Annie and Peter
that, as soon as I had made any money, they would be well paid for
helping me.”

‘Let’s see what happens
tomorrow, shall we?’ were Annie’s last words as she and Peter went
home for the night. ‘We’ll be here first thing in the morning to
give you moral support.’

At that point in her narrative,
Nana Lymer paused because Victoria’s mam had entered the room
carrying a tray bearing Nana’s tea.

“And yours is downstairs on the
table waiting for you, Miss. So get yourself downstairs now.”

“Ok mam, but can I come back
after tea?” Victoria pleaded.

“I don’t think so. Nana looks a
bit washed-out to me, so I think she’s had enough excitement for
day. She needs to rest this evening and then have a good night’s
sleep. We’ll see if she’s up to it tomorrow. Go on, off you
go.”

Victoria had no choice but had
to leave Nana and go and eat. She was concerned that she was asking
too much for Nana to spend all day recalling the past but she felt
that Nana looked much brighter than she had for a long time, even
if her mother said that she looked washed-out. She would just have
to curb her impatience and wait for tomorrow.

Chapter Three

“Why do you want to spend so
much time with your Nana?” Victoria’s mother asked the next morning
when Victoria announced her intention of spending another day with
her.

“I like listening to her stories
about her youth.” Victoria answered, fully aware that she wasn’t
giving a completely honest answer to the question, but wary of
letting her mother know exactly what it was that the old lady was
telling her. Her guilt made her over-compensate and she launched
into a list of subjects which were all lies but were what she hoped
her mother would believe and not be suspicious of. “She’s telling
me about the clothes she had when she was my age and what she liked
to do. It was a really different world then and I’m finding it
fascinating,” she ended

Her mother glanced at her,
disbelief written all over her face.

“I’m sure it is, but I would
advise you not to put too much credence on what she’s telling you,
after all, there are days when she doesn’t even know who she is,
never mind what dresses she wore when she was a lass. Go and sit
with her if you want to, but take all she says with a rather large
pinch of salt. She always did have a very vivid imagination.”

Victoria trailed upstairs,
reluctant now to enter the room when her mother’s words were
ringing in her ears. Was Nana only imagining it all or had she
really owned the shop like she said she had? Had she had a husband
before Granddad Sam or was he a figment of her imagination? And
what about Simon? He was the reason Victoria had been interested in
the first place, what if he had never existed? She really hoped
that what Nana was telling her was the truth, but how could she
test that out without upsetting her Nana? Her mother had put doubts
in her mind and suddenly Victoria wasn’t sure that she wanted to
listen to any more of her tales. She opened the door and stepped
reluctantly into the room.

“Hello, pet, come to listen to
some more of the story?”

Nana was sitting up in bed with
a fluffy pink bed jacket round her shoulders and a large biscuit
tin on her lap. Victoria hesitated only for a couple of heartbeats,
but it was long enough for Nana to glance at her and recognise
reluctance when she saw it.

“Don’t tell me, your mother
wanted to know what we were talking about and she told you not to
believe a word of what I say.” Nana suddenly sounded tired and
Victoria’s guilt washed over her like a cold shower.

“Yes, she did, but I’m not going
to listen to her. I know that what you told me yesterday was the
truth and I’ve come to listen to the rest of the story.”

“Come and sit down, pet. I
wondered if your mother would try to stick her oar in, so I’ve got
some things to show you which will prove that I haven’t completely
lost my marbles.”

In spite of the echo of her
mother’s warning still ringing in her ears, Victoria took her place
next to Nana’s bed and held out her hand to take the document which
Nana was holding out to her.

“I think you’ll find that that
is my marriage certificate from when I married William and with it
is Simon’s birth certificate.” Nana said, watching Victoria very
closely as she perused both pieces of paper. “I haven’t been lying
to you, nor have I been making up stories to try and keep you with
me. If you don’t want to listen to a silly old woman witter on
about her early life, that’s fine by me, but I do think it’s doing
my conscience good to talk about what happened.”

Victoria managed to feel guilty
for the third time that morning.

“I want to know what happened,
Nana.” She said. “I really do. And I believe every word that you
say. Mam isn’t going to stop me from coming to see you, I
promise.”

Nana patted the hand that
Victoria had laid on her arm in her eagerness to prove that she did
actually want to be with her.

“Ok so, you tell me where we’d
got to when your mam brought my tea last night.”

“Annie and Peter had helped you
get the shop set up ready to open the next day.” Victoria answered
promptly. “What was the first day like? Were you busy? Did you sell
everything that you’d bought from the docks and the station?”

“Whoa, lass. You took in every
word I said, didn’t you? You don’t have to prove yourself to me.
But make me one promise.”

Victoria looked Nana straight in
the eye. “What do you want me to promise? I won’t tell anyone what
you tell me, I said that yesterday.”

“No.” Nana said. “No. I want you
to promise me that the minute you get bored with me, you tell me. I
don’t want to force you to listen to me and I don’t want you to
fall out with your mother because of me. I want you to be here
because it’s what you want, do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand you. And I
repeat, I’m here because I want to hear about what happened to
William and Simon and you. So can we please go on with the story?
What happened the first day you opened the shop?”

Nana smiled and squeezed the
hand she was holding.

“Right,” she said, thoughtfully.
“The first day I opened the shop. Well, I expected that it would be
fairly quiet on the first day. After all, there were other shops in
the town that had been established for a few years and I didn’t
expect that their regular customers would suddenly stop using them
and come to me, but it seemed that I was wrong. I unlocked the
front door to find that there was a small queue of customers
waiting for me to open and they piled in and began buying from me
immediately. I had made sure that my prices were fair, because I’d
checked what other shops were charging and I had a good selection
of what people would want to buy. Annie’s home-made pies went down
a real treat with a lot of the customers and I decided that they
were going to be a staple in my shop. I was very grateful when
Annie came in and began helping me to serve these customers and she
brought Peter with her, of course, who kept Simon occupied by
playing with him”

“It was further on in the day,
when I overheard two women talking as they waited to be served,
that I realised they actually wanted me to succeed. Evidently, I
was doing what a few of them would have loved to have done; I was
providing for myself and my child without the benefit of a husband.
I think that was where the Suffragette Movement had their core
supporters – women who were sick of having to rely on often very
unreliable men to keep them. This was before the Suffragettes got
going properly, of course, but they tapped into a need that was
already there. As the war moved on and more and more men went away
to war, women provided the work force and did jobs that they would
never have been considered able to do in the past. There was also
more money about because the men working in our iron works were all
working double shifts to help with the war effort and ordinary
people had money to spare, for the first time ever. That was the
reason why the pies and cakes went down so well. Women had the
money to buy them instead of having to make them. It made life
easier for a lot of women.”

“By mid-morning, Annie went into
the kitchen to make more pies because the others were selling so
well and I carried on with serving customers. It was turning into
exactly what I had dreamt it would be and Annie, Peter, Simon and I
all danced a jig after we locked the front door for the night. I
was able to give Annie and Peter some money for helping me and we
ate the last of Annie’s pies for our tea, all sitting round the
table in the kitchen. Then Annie and I baked more pies and cakes to
sell the next day and I fell into bed, exhausted but the happiest I
had been for a long time.”