Kitty Callaghan pushed a dark curl out of her eyes as she squinted at the keyhole in the fading evening light. There was just enough brightness left in the sky to find it. Of course there would be no street lamps coming on as they hadn’t been permitted since the outbreak of war. In a big city Kitty would have felt happy to stay out longer, knowing that there would be other people about, even if it meant navigating the potholed pavements with a shielded torch. Yet here, in this small town on the south coast, she felt reluctant to come back after dark. She wasn’t a country girl and there was something about her billet’s isolation that made her uneasy. Not that she would admit that to anybody.
Pushing open the door with its flaking paint, she listened for any signs of the other occupants, but the place was quiet. She shared this small house with two other Wrens and their landlady, who had been only too happy to let out her spare rooms after her husband had been called up. The rooms were small but clean, with comfortable if slightly battered furnishings, and Kitty couldn’t complain. She’d had much worse. When she’d first joined up, she had had to share a big dormitory with the other trainee Wrens, sleeping on a bottom bunk and with absolutely no privacy. Then there had been the filthy fleapit she’d been allocated when she’d been transferred to Portsmouth, which she’d managed to leave by claiming it was too far from her place of work. It wasn’t as if she came from anywhere grand either. Her terraced home on Empire Street was no bigger than this and certainly hadn’t been as comfortable, although she’d done her best. But having to run the household pretty much single-handed after her mother had died so young had been a struggle. Her big brothers had tried to help but their father drank away all the money that should have gone towards the housekeeping, and so it had been a matter of survival, with nothing left over for little extras. If it hadn’t been for their kindly neighbour, Dolly Feeny, they’d never have got through.
From Portsmouth Kitty had been transferred again to this small town hugging the coast. It was an ideal place from which to pick up signals from the continent, and in her capacity as a telephone operator she was much in demand. She had proved herself to be calm in the face of crises – when messages were arriving at an impossible pace, she was efficient in recognising which to prioritise, and unflappable when the callers were panicking or aggressive. Fortunately that didn’t happen often. But you never knew what or who you would be dealing with down the line and it was important to respond appropriately. Lives might be lost otherwise. Her exemplary work had led to her rising to the rank of Leading Wren, and everyone could see that this was well deserved.
The door to what had once been the sitting room opened and a young woman poked her face out into the corridor. ‘Oh, it’s you, Kitty. I thought I heard something. Fancy a game of cards?’
‘Sorry, did I disturb you, Lizzie?’ Kitty smiled at the young Wren who now used the ground-floor front room as her bedroom.
‘No, I was just writing a letter home … You don’t fancy playing cards for a bit, do you?’ Lizzie looked wistful, and Kitty remembered how homesick the girl had been when she’d first arrived. Maybe she should make the effort and play cards with her to try to cheer her up. But the truth was she really didn’t feel like it.
‘Maybe just one round, and then I think I’ll go up, if you don’t mind,’ Kitty said apologetically. ‘It’s been a long day.’
Lizzie nodded. ‘That would be nice; I need to finish my letter afterwards anyway. Mum and Dad are always going on at me for not telling them enough of my news.’ She opened the door to her room a touch wider and Kitty went in, sat at the little wooden table in the small bay window, and prepared to play. But her mind wasn’t on it and Lizzie beat her easily.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t much competition there, was I?’
‘It’s all practice,’ said Lizzie, not hiding her delight at beating her housemate, who was usually a sharp player. ‘Better luck next time.’
Kitty pulled a rueful face and stood, going through into the empty kitchen. Carefully she drew the blackout curtain before putting on the light and reaching for the tea leaves. She took a small scoop, mindful that there was only ever just enough to go round. She wondered whether to turn on the Bakelite wireless but decided against it.
The other Wrens in the house were lively and meant well, but Kitty found it hard to be anything other than superficially friendly with them. It wasn’t just because of the age difference; although she was older, it wasn’t by much. She just didn’t have a lot in common with them. Technically she was their superior in rank, which set her a little apart, but it was more than that. They were keen to go out, have fun, make the most of what little entertainment this place could offer. She wasn’t.
Once she had been, but that was before Elliott had died. It had been over two years now, but Kitty knew she would never again be that young Wren eager for adventure. Dr Elliott Fitzgerald had shown her a side of life that she had never thought would be open to her when she’d first met him. He’d been working in the hospital where two of her brothers were being treated, and she had found it hard to believe that he’d preferred her company to that of all the many pretty nurses he saw day and night. Yet he had, and their courtship had stood the test of separation, with him remaining in Liverpool while she began her training in north London. He’d given her confidence, stability, faith in herself and hope for a shared future – until he’d been killed in one of the final raids of the blitz over Bootle. After that she had hardened her heart and directed all her time and energy into her work. There seemed little point in going to nights out at the local hall or nearest air base. Elliott had been a wonderful dancer – even a champion when at medical school – and once she’d had him as a partner and tutor, there was little chance anyone else would come close. She didn’t begrudge her co-billettees their evenings with the airmen, but had no wish to join them.
Slowly she made her way upstairs, carrying the tea, relishing its welcome warmth in her hands. Her bedroom faced the back garden and she stood at the sash window, looking at the vegetable beds in the last of the daylight. Her landlady had dug over her lawn and taken to supplementing the rations with home-grown produce. Soon it would be time to start spring planting, and Kitty had offered to help. Whenever she was home on leave she would be roped in to help in Dolly Feeny’s victory garden, so she knew a little of what she was meant to do. She’d never begrudged helping Dolly on her precious few weekends back home, as it was largely thanks to the Feenys that the young Callaghans had survived their childhoods. It had made the two families particularly close. At one point Kitty had fancied herself falling for the oldest Feeny son, Frank; but now she knew better. He saw her as another little sister, and there had been no more to it, no matter how fast her heart had pounded at the sight of him. These days he was walking out with one of the young women based at his place of work and that was much more suitable all round. She forced her mind away from the image of them together.
Turning back to her room, she sat on the narrow bed with its rather worn candlewick spread, setting down the tea on a little wooden table that the landlady’s husband had made. Kitty sighed. The other reason she wasn’t keen on spending the evening playing cards with Lizzie was that she couldn’t help contrasting her with the two friends she’d made when they had all been trainee Wrens together. Both of them had known and liked Elliott and had helped her through the bleak time after he’d died. Then they’d all gone their separate ways, but had resolutely stayed in contact, mostly by letter, meeting up if their work allowed.
That was what Kitty had been doing today. Marjorie was someone she would never have met if it hadn’t been for the war: a teacher, who had moved in very different circles to those of Empire Street. Kitty had been overawed by her cleverness to begin with, but then again Marjorie had been shy, ill at ease with the opposite sex, unsure of herself in social situations. Kitty had grown up with three brothers and had then managed their local NAAFI canteen, and so was completely at home with young men and their teasing banter. Gradually she had realised her humble beginnings didn’t matter now they were all throwing themselves into the war effort, and Marjorie had relaxed enough to enjoy dancing with the young men from the Forces they’d met in the clubs Elliott introduced them to whenever he’d managed to visit