needs relearning. And we’re the ones to do it.’
As if there wasn’t enough for the Petries to worry about, more foodstuffs were rationed. Many of the customers were stoical but a few complained bitterly and seemed to believe that Daisy could provide more if she really wanted to do so. It was hard sometimes to remain friendly and calm.
‘Meat, eggs, cheese, jam, tea, milk. Wot’s left for God’s sake? Rabbits and fish. If you can catch them you can eat them.’
‘It’s a sensible measure.’ Fred was not so easy to intimidate as Flora and Daisy. ‘This way everyone’s looked after, and anyways, eggs and milk isn’t rationed, they’re allocated.’
‘And wot does that mean when it’s at home, Fred Petrie?’
‘You can’t tell a hen how many eggs she has to lay, or a cow how many pints she has to give. It all depends on supply. If there’s a lot, we gets more, if the animals slows down a bit then we gets less. Whatever comes in gets divided equal. Allocated. Simple.
‘Don’t take no nonsense, Daisy,’ Fred told her later. ‘I got to queue up everywhere to get supplies, and customers is going to have to queue up to get theirs. Tell ’em there’s a war on, if there’s any more grumbling.’
Almost everyone accepted the growing lines outside every shop. Housewives like Flora, and Nancy Humble at the farm, had preserved fruits in their larders and jars of jam on their pantry shelves, and both shared generously. Flora looked at her diminishing stocks and decided that toast, scones, and oatcakes would be served with either butter or jam, never with both.
‘Wish Grace were ’ere, pet. We could have encouraged her to grow strawberries. Next year Alf’s putting potatoes where most of his strawberries are.’
‘Maybe the war will be over by then, Mum.’
Mother and daughter smiled sadly. Each knew that it would not be over.
For weeks there was no word from any of Daisy’s brothers. They were gone and no one could or would tell the Petries where they were. Rumours abounded. The war had begun badly and was taking an even more downward course. Thousands of British troops, who had gone so bravely to free Europe, were themselves now marooned on a French beach, the sea in front of them, the enemy behind them.
‘No war, no fighting,’ Daisy whispered one night to Rose. ‘All the time we thought that nothing was happening, a bloody war was going on in Belgium, France and Holland, and our boys, and Sam maybe, were fighting there.’ And where’s Adair, her heart continued quietly. Not so much as a postcard had been received from him since the day they had finished the work on the plane.
A few days later the newspapers were full of the story of the rescue of British and French troops from Dunkirk.
‘Our Phil’s a sailor,’ Flora tried to tell her customers bravely. ‘Maybe he was on one of them boats as saved men, and our Sam hinted in a letter that he might be going abroad. Very keen to see a foreign country, our Sam.’
‘They’ll be home in no time, Flora,’ said Mrs Roberts, one of the most faithful of the regulars. ‘Just you wait and see if I’m right.’
She was wrong. Weeks went past and no news was received from any one of the boys.
Daisy was worried about Adair, but she reminded herself that she was only the handy mechanic who had worked on the plane with him. Had he time, he would be reassuring his family. His parents were dead but he had said nothing about other family members.
‘He’s a third cousin, God knows how many times removed’ – she thought that was what Alf Humble had said all those long months ago. Someone had to know something about him. She would be told, all in good time.
In the meantime his suggestion that she join the WAAF went round and round in her head. According to the newspapers, girls like Daisy would be conscripted soon. Better to go, as Sam had said, without waiting to be ordered. But every time she tried to talk about war work with her parents, they changed the subject, telling her how important it was that Daisy was able to drive the van, continue with her first-aid course and dig even half-heartedly in the missing Grace’s little garden. She had never once seen Megan Paterson when she had been working, and Grace had not written again. Sally, who was going from strength to strength and had even had a small part in a propaganda film, managed an occasional visit, thrilling all the Petries with her talk of plays and musicals and exciting things like film sets and real live professional actors.
‘It’s important war work,’ Sally told her friends. ‘We’re going to be entertaining the troops, in hospitals and at their camps; boosting morale, it’s called. Who knows, maybe even go overseas. Won’t that be amazing?’
Daisy smiled and congratulated her friend. She did not say, ‘I’ve boosted morale and helped the war effort,’ but reconditioning a plane that would one day be used in the air battles that must soon take place, surely that was war work?
Like so many people in Britain, the Petries loved listening to the wireless. Fred and Daisy had been captivated by the new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. Not only did he write superb speeches but, according to Daisy, ‘He speaks them as good as an actor.’ When his speeches were not broadcast they were covered in the local press and Daisy would read the paper, trying to hear the Prime Minister’s voice in her head. In June, Churchill warned the nation of the battle that was about to happen and Daisy read the report of the stirring speech so often that, had she wanted to, she could have quoted it.
Greatly moved by Churchill’s eloquence, Daisy was persuaded that counting rations was not anyone’s finest hour. There must be something better.
She broached the subject with her father when they were together in the shop at closing time one day.
‘Dad, I want to join the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. You have to make Mum listen to me. Ensuring that everyone in the area gets their proper rations is not enough for me. I’m a good mechanic. Adair even said he could teach me to fly.’ She stopped; she had not expected that most precious secret to spill out.
Fred looked at her, both love and concern in his eyes. ‘Fly, pet, fly, like a pilot in a plane?’
‘Of course, Dad. Adair says I’m just as clever as some of the men he teaches. He says I’m a great mechanic.’
‘Well, me and the lads taught you that, love, but a pilot in the WAAF, a lass from a shop in Dartford? He’s having you on, Daisy, and so I’ll tell him to his face.’
‘He meant I could be a pilot, Dad; no one’s saying anything about being a pilot in the WAAF. It’s the RAF has pilots.’
‘Happen he did mean it, you being a pilot, but he hasn’t been here in weeks, and you’ve not heard from him, else your mum would’ve told me. Forget him, Daisy. His kind aren’t for the likes of you. Not that you’re not as good as he is, every bit, but putting water and wine together spoils both.’ He looked at his daughter compassionately. ‘Don’t you go getting in over your head with this lad, Daisy. I know it’s exciting; it’s like what happens in pictures when the rich hero takes the poor girl off on his white horse to live happy. Pictures and stories isn’t real, Daisy. Don’t … no, you wouldn’t run after a lad, would you?’
Daisy looked at her father, kind, caring, conscientious Fred Petrie, and knew that in many ways she was very lucky. ‘Dad, me and Adair, it’s not like that. We’re friends is all.
