Shelter Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Praise for Shelter

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire: May, 1944

  Spring, 1944

  One: April

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven: May

  Eight

  Nine: Coventry, January, 1944

  Ten: May

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen: Worcestershire, March, 1944

  Fourteen

  Summer, 1944

  Fifteen: June

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen: July

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One: August

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Autumn, 1944

  Twenty-Seven: September

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine: October

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two: November

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Winter, 1944

  Thirty-Five: December

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven: Livorno, 1942

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  1945

  Forty-Three: January

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five: February

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  June 1945

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty: London

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two: July

  September 1945

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Acknowledgements

  Author’s note

  Keep Reading …

  For your Reading Group

  Readers First

  Copyright

  ‘Its characters pulse with life and energy – Connie’s contrary longings and Seppe’s difficult journey to inner peace are vividly rendered, as is the evocation of the forest and its healing qualities’

  DAILY MAIL

  ‘I LOVED it. Seppe is one of the most refreshing portrayals of masculinity I have ever read’

  SHELLEY HARRIS

  ‘A lovely hymn to the woods and the men and women who worked there during the Second World War’

  LISSA EVANS

  ‘Powerful and moving. Connie and Seppe are amazing characters. So well nuanced. I loved her feisty courage. And such heartbreak! This compelling debut shows how outsiders in a time of war seek to rebuild their lives again’

  ESSIE FOX

  ‘A tender and moving debut, which examines the way one can live through love, loss and duty … something wonderful’

  OX MAGAZINE

  ‘An accomplished debut … the perfect read for those who enjoy historical fiction with humour, warmth and a real sense of place’

  DAILY RECORD

  ‘Packed full of beautiful, touching characters in a story that keeps the reader gripped throughout, and goes in directions that aren’t expected. Love is at the heart of this story – romantic love, familial love, love for one’s country and love for one’s self. It’s a passionate, heartwarming and emotional tale that I hugely enjoyed’

  THE BOOKBAG

  ‘What a fascinating read – draws you into the shadows and envelopes you right into the heart of the story. It’s a very unique angle on the second World War’

  THE BOOK TRAIL

  ‘The wartime lives of both Italian POWs and the lumberjills have received surprisingly little cultural attention over the years; in Franklin’s tender, moving debut novel, with its unforgettable heroine, those experiences get the loving attention they deserve’

  IRISH TIMES

  ‘A brilliant book. Everyone should read it’

  ALEX REEVE

  ‘These two displaced people find solace with the rhythms of nature and with each other until the secret that Connie has been hiding threatens to tear them apart. A wonderful, affecting debut novel about the redemptive power of nature’

  RED

  ‘One of the year’s hottest debuts’

  NETGALLEY, Book of the Month

  Sarah Franklin grew up in rural Gloucestershire and has lived in Austria, Germany, the USA and Ireland. She lectures in publishing at Oxford Brookes University and has written for the Guardian, the Irish Times, Psychologies magazine, The Pool, the Sunday Express and the Seattle Times. Sarah is the founder and host of Short Stories Aloud, and a judge for the Costa Short Story Award. Sarah lives halfway between Oxford and London with her family.

  Follow Sarah on Twitter @SarahEFranklin

  For my parents

  ‘Where is the Forest of Dean? It’s still back there. It’s a sort of mythic Forest of Dean … a strange and beautiful place … a heart-shaped place between two rivers, somehow slightly cut off from the rest of England …’

  Dennis Potter

  ‘… women replaced men in every branch of (timber) production. They drove tractors and lorries, they worked on sawbenches, they felled, they measured, they even sharpened saws. They became forewomen and acquisition officers. They became in fact an integral part of the great production machine. Without them the targets could not have been achieved.’

  Russell Meiggs, Home Timber Production, 1939–1945 (published 1949)

  Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire

  May, 1944

  CONNIE STUCK OUT HER tongue at the face gurning at her from the faded looking glass on the tallboy. Mud was everywhere, in her eyelashes and streaked down her face like bad rouge. It was going to take some serious spit and polish to get spruced up. For a moment she couldn’t remember why she’d agreed to go to the dance in the first place. But Hetty would kill her if Connie missed tonight’s final fling before the other trainees scattered, and it had been too long since she’d been out dancing. Time to make sure she still knew how.

  Connie found the edge of the washcloth, spat on it and rubbed her cheek, twisting sideways to see if she’d improved the situation. Not a hope. She was scuppered – time to brave the water. She moved over to the chest of drawers and poured water from the jug that sat there in the porcelain basin. It was as clear as spring water and as cold, too. Nothing like the brown trickle you’d get back in Coventry.

  Connie tangled the brush through her hair until it was stick-straight again and tugged off her drenched socks. When she’d been in the hostel, before she’d been billeted here, some of her fellow lumberjills had made a big song and dance about getting changed as soon as they were home from the woods. They’d swan around putting on dainty tea dresses, or the clean skirts and blouses their mothers had sent them.

  Some hope of that for her. Connie yanked open the wardrobe door and stared at its contents. The cupboard still smelled of the forest; maybe she’d stop noticing once all her clothes whiffed like that too.

  Nothing would fit. She’d have to wear that yellow dress, though she should have got rid of it months ago. Connie pulled it out, hangers jangling. The trousers and overalls that belonged to Amos’s son bumped into her uniforms, releasing another pong of the countryside into the air.

  Connie draped the frock against her overalls and dragged the rickety chair over to the window, craning to catch a glimpse of her reflection. Behind the panes, finger-like twigs tapped at her and she jumped. This place gave her the willies, always something creaking or scratching. Whoever thought the countryside was still and calm hadn’t spent any damn time in it.
>
  She twisted on the chair to get a better look at the dress and nearly toppled over. Hmm. The dress was made for someone else and it showed. It was going to be a hell of a squeeze to get into it after the time on the farm.

  She gritted her teeth, willed the stampeding thoughts away. The yellow dress would have to do – and perhaps the music would snap her out of these doldrums.

  Connie dropped the dress onto the bed. In no time at all she’d be out there on the dance floor, whirling around, and for those few hours nothing else would matter. Not this war, not what the future held, none of it.

  She lay back on the bed for a moment, the counterpane scratching her cheek, and screwed up her eyes. She’d loved the dances back home in Coventry, had lived for that tingly moment when the factory’s closing siren would rise in duet with the shrill clamour of the girls. They’d all dash to the lavs shrieking with the fun of it, the foremen yelling at them to pipe down a bit but them paying no real notice. They’d cluster round the sliver of mirror above the sink and chatter like magpies as they did themselves up, then head out into the city.

  Invincible, that’s what they’d been. But then, before they’d even known what they had, it was shattered.

  Connie shivered. ‘Right, let’s get this thing on.’

  She discarded her overalls and squashed herself into the dress, its faded cotton soft against her skin after the lumberjill dungarees, a reminder of when life was all dances. She twirled and the full skirt span out around her like a chink of light escaping from a blackout. There was no full-length looking glass anywhere in the cottage, so Connie had to trust that she wasn’t flashing her scanties where the buttons that ran down the bodice gaped and strained. She’d get Hetty to check at the hostel, cover up any dodgy bits with a brooch. Wouldn’t be the first time they’d been on display, admittedly, but things were different now.

  Jagged thoughts crawled along the edges of her mind. Connie took a deep breath to shoo them out. Better hang up those sopping wet socks in the window to try and dry them out before tomorrow’s shift. She just couldn’t be doing with drawing stocking seams on her legs tonight; she was licked. Anyway, it itched when she did that, and she’d forget the pencil was there and rub one leg against the other, like she always did. She tiptoed down the stairs, trying and failing to avoid the one that creaked. She jolted past it, the wood cold where the carpet had worn down, and paused at the bottom, one hand on the newel post.

  She’d better go and say goodnight to Amos, or try at least – keep kidding herself that they actually spoke to each other rather than circling like Heinkels waiting for the signal to start the bombing. She pushed open the door into the little back room and the homesickness roared out at her so strongly that she stepped back again. The air in here was heavy, tangy; Connie could almost taste Hillview Road again in the stewed tea and ash from the grate.

  ‘I’m off out, then.’

  The old man nodded, so she persisted, bellowing over the wireless.

  ‘You doing anything nice this evening?’

  What a daft question! She wanted to bite her tongue the second it came out. Amos never went anywhere once he was home from the sheep, as far as she could tell.

  Silence.

  Connie shifted feet. ‘I’m off dancing with some of the girls from the hostel, down at Parkend Memorial Hall. I haven’t half missed a good dance.’

  She was babbling now. Amos had made it clear as day more than once that he didn’t want her there, so the right course of action was to do them both a favour and button it. For as long as he kept a roof over her head, however grudgingly, she’d have to learn to make the most of a bad job.

  By the time she’d fetched Hetty from the hostel in Parkend and they’d walked up to the Memorial Hall, there was a queue winding right round it, coats flapping open in the promise of this late spring balm and making them look for all the world like the bats that swooped out at them from twilight perches. Music warbled from the hall as they inched their way past the pebbled edges of the building and before Connie knew she was doing it, she tapped her hand against her bag, the beat invading like a swarm of Messerschmitts. Connie’s feet were numb, the chilblain on her big toe itching like mad, but there was a dance in there, a bevy of blokes and girls finding their rhythm and losing their minds, just for a while, and she was going to be part of it.

  Connie had never had any truck with the idea of packing your troubles in your old kitbag, as the song went – your troubles were your troubles – but she’d been away from dance halls for too long, had forgotten how music could lift you up. She could almost smell it, for crying out loud, couldn’t wait to be a part of the glamour and the glee. Amos only put the wireless on for the news and the one time she’d suggested the Light Programme he’d glared at her as if she’d suggested dancing naked on the pavement. Not that there were any pavements in this bloody forest.

  Connie grabbed Hetty’s coat sleeve and stood on one leg to scratch one foot against another, but it was useless through her gumboots and she splashed dirty puddle water everywhere. Just as well she hadn’t bothered with those seams. ‘Watch what you’re doing!’ hissed one of the other hostel girls.

  Connie stamped from foot to foot, banging the feeling back into them. ‘What are they doing up there? Can’t take this long to let us in, can it?’

  The girl in front turned around, the mud-splattering apparently forgiven. ‘There’s a crowd of new GIs up ahead of us; don’t have small enough notes yet so it’s taking forever to give them the change they need.’

  Hetty perked up, shoe woes forgotten. ‘GIs? It’ll be worth the wait, then!’ She prodded Connie, who fought the urge to jab her friend hard in the ribs under pretence of jollity. Had none of them ever met a Yank before? Obviously not. Connie’s thoughts slid to Don and her heart slipped into her guts. No sense in pinning your hopes on a GI.

  It was proper crowded inside the hall, every space jam-packed with music, with sweat, with jostled mugs of beer and with the oversweet, over-perfumed girls bunched in corners waiting to be plucked to dance. God, but she’d missed this! The weight came off her, dissolved into the music.

  Connie looked around for a seat, her feet already pushing forward and back, finding the pattern in the music. There was a spare chair behind a pillar; she waved vaguely at Hetty and wandered over to it. After the day she’d had out at the site, she needed to sit down for a minute before she hit the dance floor, whatever plans her feet had.

  She wriggled out of her coat and the lightness enveloped her. One of her dancing shoes fell out of the pocket onto the floor. She smiled at it, but just the thought of squeezing into such a dainty object right now made her chilblains sting. Best to wait until she’d had a gin or two, then go for it. For now, her gumboots would have to do.

  The band was on the makeshift stage at the crowded end of the hall and she squinted at the round sign in front of them. ‘George Thomas and his Gloucester Accordion Band’, apparently. Must be using all the accordions in Gloucester, wherever that was; there seemed to be hundreds of the things.

  Connie relaxed back into her chair and took in the scene around her. A bit hick, but a dance was a dance. She felt the fog in her head clearing, giving her a chance to be herself again. She beamed, fond of everyone in this moment.

  ‘Mind if I join you? You’ve found the best seat in the joint.’

  She looked up through the smog at the man in uniform in front of her.

  ‘Be my guest.’

  He found a chair at another table and pulled it across, the metal legs screeching against the melody of the band. She grinned at him, swung her boots in time to the music. It still got to her, fizzing until she had to get up, had to get moving. That hadn’t changed a bit.

  ‘Shall we?’

  The true woman finds her greatest joy in life in building up a ‘happy home for her husband and children’.

  Advertisement, Dean Forest Mercury, 7th April, 1944

  FOR SALE: 2 Goats in milk. Apply D. Hodges, Hangerberry, L
ydbrook. 10378

  FOR SALE: quantity good sound Shallots, cheap. Hatton, Allastone Cross, Lydney x623

  Advertisements, Dean Forest Mercury, 7th April, 1944

  Spring, 1944

  One

  April

  WHERE WERE THE HOUSES? This would never work if people didn’t actually live here. Outside the window, in the gathering twilight, rows and rows of trees lined up like the Coventry terraces before they’d been blitzed. It was a wonder the train was finding its way through at all.

  Connie blinked, her lashes hot and wet, and dashed her sleeve against her eyes. It reeked of sick and she nearly gagged again. She needed to get that under control before they arrived.

  The train’s whistle shrilled and she pulled herself up on tiptoe to peer out properly, the chatter of the other girls in the carriage fading as she poked her head out of the window, sucking in the damp, fresh air. They were pulling into a tiny station, smaller even than the one in Worcestershire. The trees mingled now with little whitewashed houses and Connie sighed into the strange, furniture-smelling breeze, blowing out all her nerves. Her plan might just come off if she played it right. Then she’d be free to get on with her life.

  The train juddered to a halt and Connie lost her balance, stumbled backwards into the crowd jostling behind her. One of the other Women’s Timber Corps recruits – were they really supposed to call themselves lumberjills? – stamped on Connie’s chilblain and with some effort she bit her tongue. No need to give her a piece of her mind; it wasn’t the girl’s fault that Connie’s back was killing her and her mouth was sour. Not long now until she’d be shown to her digs. With a bit of luck she’d wangle a bath then get under the bedcovers. Maybe her billet would be as cushy as that last place, a couple of hours south of Coventry, when she’d still been doing farm work. There, the farmer’s wife had doted on her, made all her meals.

  Until … well, what’s done is done, and it was probably all for the good that she’d had to move on. This endless war wasn’t all bad; it gave the likes of her the chance to shift around a bit. And as long as there were a few houses here and there, these woods would suit her better, sprawling on for miles as they did.