The 9 by Madalyn Morgan (tools of titans ebook .txt) 📕

‘No need to bite my head off,’ Beryl said. ‘I only asked because Madge said she’d never seen her with a man, and Freda’s never mentioned walking out with anyone.’

‘As Mr Silcott’s assistant, she has a position to keep up. She’s all right when you get to know her.’

‘And because she has a position to keep up, she thinks she’s a cut above the rest of us.’

‘If that were true, she wouldn’t be sneaking a bottle of gin into the dance and sharing it with us, would she?’

‘I suppose not.’

By the time they had shuffled to the front of the queue, asked for four glasses of lemonade, and waited for the woman serving to pour them, the hall was half empty. The band had gone to the pub for a break – they always did half way through the evening, along with most of their followers.

When Ena and Beryl got back to the table, Madge was peering into her powder compact’s mirror applying lipstick, and Freda, staring into the middle-distance, looked as if she was a hundred miles away. ‘Penny for them,’ Ena said.

‘The smell of juniper,’ she said, waving the glass of gin back and forth beneath her nose. ‘Reminds me of the Christmases I spent with my grandparents. My grandmother would crush juniper berries and add them to our food. She used to say it made bland food more flavoursome.’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever tasted food that smells like gin,’ Ena said, lifting her glass and inhaling.

‘The band’s back,’ Madge said. Taking Ena’s glass from her hand, she pulled her out of her seat and dragged her onto the dance floor. Taking the man’s part, Madge steered Ena to the far side of the room.

‘Madge? What are you doing?’

‘It’s him. It’s Harry Taylor.’ Ena couldn’t think who Harry Taylor was. ‘It’s the sailor I told you about. The one I met on Boxing Day.’ Ena looked over Madge’s shoulder as she twirled her round. ‘Don’t let him see you looking, or he’ll think we’re dancing over here on purpose,’ Madge said, looking down.

Ena was just about to ask which one was Harry when Ray Walker announced the Gentlemen’s Excuse-Me. Almost immediately, Ena felt a tap on her shoulder. ‘Arthur?’ The sailor who she had danced with earlier was at her side. Standing next to him, beaming at Madge, was a good-looking young man who Ena assumed was Harry.

1941 began with a lull in work. February was busier, but in March there was such an increase in orders that Silcott’s had to set on more workers. With their husbands in the armed forces, most of them overseas, it was up to the women to pay the rent and put food on the table. Women who had never considered going out to work before the war were queuing up for it now.

By the summer, women who had started their training in the spring were given easy, straightforward, jobs, which freed-up the experienced members of the workforce so they were able to concentrate on the complicated jobs. After a few months, the workload levelled out, and for a while everyone, including Ena, went back to working a ten-hour day. There was even time for a social life. Ena and Freda often went for a drink together after work. They went to the Ritz cinema in Lowarth when a new film was showing, and at weekends they would get dressed up and cycle off to a dance in one of the villages.

Freda was in charge of the work produced for a top-secret facility called Beaumanor near Loughborough. Beaumanor was accessible by train from Lowarth station, but often delivery dates clashed. When that happened, Freda took her work to Beaumanor in Mr Silcott’s car, dropping him and Ena – and Bletchley’s work – at Rugby station first. It wasn’t a long drive to Beaumanor, which meant Freda was always back at the factory in time to give out the wages.

As the war went into its second year, men in their thirties and unmarried women were called up. For every single woman who left Silcott’s, there were two married women waiting to take her job. Life was hard. Work was hard. But for Ena and her friends it was not all doom and gloom. On the 7th of September, Ena’s friend Madge Foot married her sailor, Harry Taylor.

Madge wore a cream two-piece. The skirt was straight and came to just below the knee, and the jacket was nipped in at the waist with a length of cream satin tied in a bow at the front. She wore matching gloves and shoes, and on her head, a cream saucer-shaped miniature hat with a fine veil. Her bouquet was blue delphiniums and trailing green fern, and her corsage was cream daisies and blue cornflowers.

Ena was Madge’s maid of honour. Her dress was a blue floral print. She had cream shoes and gloves and instead of a hat, she wore a halo of cream daisies and blue cornflowers.

It was a beautiful warm, sunny, day. The only things in the sky, apart from a couple of Wellingtons returning to Bitteswell aerodrome, were fluffy clouds that were soon blown away by the Indian summer breeze.

As Ena walked down the aisle of St. Mary’s Church behind Madge and her father, the sun burst through the East window and shone on Madge and her soon-to-be husband. A good omen, Ena thought.

MARCH 7, 1942

CHAPTER SEVEN

A squally March wind gusted along the platform of Rugby’s railway station. Ena turned her back on it, dropped her head, and peered under the brim of her hat. What had begun as drizzle when she arrived at work that morning had turned into sheeting rain.

The railway tracks whined and Ena looked to the north. A black steam engine blundered into view, its brakes screeching