The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [136]
One of the passengers started to cry noisily, but all Jess could do was stare blindly towards the smoke and flames.
‘I left me overalls in me locker, and there’ll be hell to pay if they get damaged,’ she told the woman standing next to her. ‘Dock me wages for them, they will.’
‘Sit down for a minute, love,’ the woman told her in a kind voice, adding gently, ‘You’ve had a nasty shock, I dare say. Lucky you wasn’t up there, if you ask me.’
Jess shook her head. The munitions factory was huge, and all the workshops separated from one another just in case of any kind of accident or incident. Everyone who worked there knew how dangerous the TNT was and how little chance they would have of surviving if their workshop ever took a direct bomb hit.
Another fire engine raced past the stationary bus, followed by an army lorry.
‘I expect they’ll have the bomb disposal lot up there. Bound to get them, if you think about it,’ one man commented knowledgeably. ‘I wouldn’t do their ruddy job for all the tea in China, I wouldn’t. A lad down the road from us was wi ’em. Lasted four weeks, he did. Blown to bits. Told his mam that all they’d found were his little finger.’
Jess made a strangled sound deep in her throat. Please don’t let them send Billy there, she prayed. Please, please don’t let them.
‘Where the ’ell do you think you’re going?’ the conductor demanded as she wriggled past him before he could stop her.
‘’Ere, you come back,’ he yelled after her as she started to walk and then run towards the factory, but of course she didn’t pay any attention to him.
The ARP wardens, aided by the police, were turning back everyone who tried to get close to the factory, warning them that as yet they had no idea what had caused the explosion. The factory had obviously been evacuated because Jess could see where, on the other side of the road, the women were standing huddled together in their overalls.
‘Well, it weren’t no bomb being dropped,’ Jess heard one man saying firmly as she wriggled her way to the front of the crowd gathered at the end of the street. ‘Mind you, I can’t say I’m surprised. What else does the bloody government expect if it lets a load of daft women loose with explosives,’ he added with contempt.
Several of the other men in the crowd were agreeing with him until one of the ARP men stepped forward and told them grimly, ‘That’s enough of that kind of talk. My youngest works in munitions and ruddy hard work it is, an’ all. And I’ll tell you now, mate, without our womenfolk doing their bit, our lads wouldn’t have no shells to fire at ruddy Hitler, and that’s a fact. If you think it’s so easy then how come you’re out here gawking and not working in there yourself?’
‘Here, there’s no call to go on like that,’ the other man retaliated, quite plainly wrong-footed. ‘I can’t go doing no work like that. Got a bad leg, I have.’
The crowd, ready to side with him a few seconds earlier, had now turned against him, its low murmur of anger growing louder as everyone looked towards him, giving Jess the chance to slip past the ARP warden and dash behind the nearest fire engine.
‘Here, love, you can’t go in there,’ one of the firemen called out as he caught sight of her, but Jess had gone before he could reach her.
Her heart was pounding sickly. The air was full of smoke and the smell of TNT. The factory gates, normally closed unless deliveries or collections were due, stood wide open, and there was no one in the small guardroom by the gate the girls used to get in and out of work.
Several fire engines were drawn up close to the shed where Jess had worked, soaking it with arcing plumes of water to try to put out the flames.
Dodging the busy men, Jess finally made it to where the munitions workers were standing.
‘I work in number three shed,’ she told them, demanding anxiously, ‘What’s happened?’
‘Number three shed?’ one of the women responded. ‘Well, you won’t be working there no more, love,’ she