Cousins at War Read Free Page A

off now, and I don’t think
she’ll come back. It’s the first time she’s seen me in my dungers, and the look on her face was enough to make a cat laugh. Her nose crinkled up like she’d touched a dollop
of shit.’
    Joe slapped his thigh in glee. ‘Olive’s easy scunnered if she can’t stand the smell of a wee bit grease. You should be glad she came, if it put her off you.’
    ‘That’s what I was thinking myself,’ Neil laughed.
    ‘You haven’t washed your hands yet,’ Gracie reminded him. ‘I’m not wanting oil all over the tablecloth.’ She, too, was glad that Olive had been
‘scunnered’. She had often moaned herself about having to wash Neil’s dungarees and how long they took to dry, but not any more.
    Olive was disgruntled. Neil had made it quite clear that he wasn’t pleased to see her, and it had been a mistake to go, in more ways than one. She shouldn’t have
worn her uniform; he had been embarrassed that his workmates – horrible dirty men who had leered into her face – were seeing him with a schoolgirl; and worse, he wasn’t so
handsome when his face was all streaked with grease. She had been nauseated by his filthy overalls when she tried to slip her arm through his, and had been relieved when he shook her off. She would
have to insist that he changed his job before they were married, because she couldn’t face having a mechanic for a husband. It would be much too degrading.
    The thought of him being her husband cheered her up. If he had a white collar job, it would be sheer heaven to wait for him coming home each night, to let him take her in his arms and kiss her,
to have his soft hands running over her body. Absolute bliss! And she was sure it would come to pass, some day. She would just have to figure out another way to get him on his own before she could
start working on him.
    Furious at the butcher – meat rationing had been introduced on 11 March – Gracie took it out on her husband. ‘It’s all a trick, if you ask me. One and
three-quarters pounds per person per week, he said, but I need something for a dinner and a supper every day. Then he’d the cheek to say we’ll get nothing but mutton or rabbit for a wee
while.’
    Neil screwed up his face. ‘Not mutton? Yeugh!’
    ‘Things are getting tight,’ Joe said, cautiously.
    Gracie was not appeased. ‘What right have the Ministry of Food to tell folk what they can and can’t eat? How can wives feed a family on what they’re allowed? It’s like
the loaves and fishes all over again. If this war goes on much longer, we’ll all be skeletons.’
    ‘It’s a good way to keep slim,’ Patsy smiled, ‘and there’s always plenty of tatties.’
    Gracie tutted. ‘They used to say tatties were fattening, and now they’re telling us they’re good for you. They just say what they like.’
    After tidying up, Gracie vented her anger on the balaclava she was knitting for the ‘Comforts for the Troops’ campaign, her needles flashing in and out as fast as the needle of her
mother’s Jones sewing machine. It was very old, marked ‘By appointment to Her Majesty Queen Alexandra’, but still worked as good as new. She had turned a pair of sheets yesterday,
splitting them up the middle where they were worn thin and stitching the side edges together.
    By May, Gracie was even more angry at the Ministry of Food. ‘It said on the wireless that the sugar ration’s to be cut, and the butter’s to be
halved.’
    Joe rolled his eyes. ‘You don’t need to tell me. It’s bad enough just now having to explain to folk that money doesn’t matter these days, without the rations being cut
down. How will old wives understand they can only get half a pound of sugar and a quarter of butter, when they see I’ve got more in the shop? And it’s not just food. They’ve to
contend with other things as well. I was sorry for one poor old soul this afternoon. She must be over eighty, and she’d been caught in that crowd that