to be something more useful she could do. Despite her parents’ protests she dropped out and got a job at a munitions factory, in the belief that the most direct and effective way to contribute was to build weapons with her own lily-white hands. Weapons to kill the men who’d murdered Steven.
It was good to be an automaton, working hard and with no time for moping about. But the other women, all of whom came from less-privileged backgrounds, looked on her with an odd mixture of awe and contempt. Unable to comprehend why someone of Grace’s means should have chosen to work alongside them, handling the TNT that caused jaundice and led to them being nicknamed “Canary Girls” rather than taking an easier, loftier sort of job, they treated her with suspicion, and kept away from her. The only other well-to-do type was the Welfare Supervisor, whom Grace quickly realized had landed her senior role purely as an accident of birth. This woman’s personal style was to attempt to conceal her incompetence and inarticulacy beneath a façade of refined delicacy—rather as one might disguise an ugly mess in the corner of a room by throwing a lace cloth over it. The supervisor, Emily, made friendly but condescending overtures to Grace—herparticular brand of friendliness being far more objectionable than the mild hostility of the other women. More intolerable still were Emily’s whispers of a plan to elevate Grace “off the production line” to work alongside her.
“It was always a silly idea,” said Harold. “Such a waste of a good brain. You should give it up and go back to university. If you’re bothered about doing your bit, you could do something voluntary like your mother and sister.” Nancy, who had taken an office job by day, was fund-raising for war-widowed families in dire financial straits. Catherine, along with many others in the WSPU, had joined the Women’s Police Service, and spent her evenings patrolling the Heath in a uniform, giving wayward girls a jolly good talking-to, and routing out the couples with a big stick.
In the end, it was a second family tragedy that made Grace give up her factory work, though not to go back to university. In February 1917, Harold died of influenza, plunging the family into a profound state of shock that lasted way beyond the funeral. Through the period of acute loss, each of them tried and failed to stifle a private realization that persistently nagged: that bronchial Harold had been quietly ill for ages, and none of them had so much as acknowledged it, he least of all. With so much war bereavement going on around them, they’d lost track of the fact that they were vulnerable at home, too. For a while the household was the proverbial chicken that continues to run about after its head has been cut off. Grace and Nancy went out to work as before, and Catherine continued to tread her beat. But the fires were not lit in the evening because Harold had always been the one to light them. Nobody considered what tasks might be left undone because Daddy wasn’t there to do them, nor what further tasks might need to be tackled as a result of his death. Nobody so much as entered his study.
Chance dictated that it was Grace who happened to be at home on the day when the maid awkwardly announced that while she understood the family were having a hard time, so was she without her weekly wages. It was Grace who answered the door when the milkman stopped by to say he would have to stop delivering if they didn’t settle on the spot. It was Grace who took the telephone call from the family solicitor who wanted to know what the devil was happening about Harold’s affairs. And so Grace was the one to finally sit down in the dusty study and start searching through files.
The factory work had been a sort of game, she realized. She’d been motivated primarily by a sense of duty and patriotism, but she now saw that her first duty was to her family. Catherine might be presenting a cheerful
It was good to be an automaton, working hard and with no time for moping about. But the other women, all of whom came from less-privileged backgrounds, looked on her with an odd mixture of awe and contempt. Unable to comprehend why someone of Grace’s means should have chosen to work alongside them, handling the TNT that caused jaundice and led to them being nicknamed “Canary Girls” rather than taking an easier, loftier sort of job, they treated her with suspicion, and kept away from her. The only other well-to-do type was the Welfare Supervisor, whom Grace quickly realized had landed her senior role purely as an accident of birth. This woman’s personal style was to attempt to conceal her incompetence and inarticulacy beneath a façade of refined delicacy—rather as one might disguise an ugly mess in the corner of a room by throwing a lace cloth over it. The supervisor, Emily, made friendly but condescending overtures to Grace—herparticular brand of friendliness being far more objectionable than the mild hostility of the other women. More intolerable still were Emily’s whispers of a plan to elevate Grace “off the production line” to work alongside her.
“It was always a silly idea,” said Harold. “Such a waste of a good brain. You should give it up and go back to university. If you’re bothered about doing your bit, you could do something voluntary like your mother and sister.” Nancy, who had taken an office job by day, was fund-raising for war-widowed families in dire financial straits. Catherine, along with many others in the WSPU, had joined the Women’s Police Service, and spent her evenings patrolling the Heath in a uniform, giving wayward girls a jolly good talking-to, and routing out the couples with a big stick.
In the end, it was a second family tragedy that made Grace give up her factory work, though not to go back to university. In February 1917, Harold died of influenza, plunging the family into a profound state of shock that lasted way beyond the funeral. Through the period of acute loss, each of them tried and failed to stifle a private realization that persistently nagged: that bronchial Harold had been quietly ill for ages, and none of them had so much as acknowledged it, he least of all. With so much war bereavement going on around them, they’d lost track of the fact that they were vulnerable at home, too. For a while the household was the proverbial chicken that continues to run about after its head has been cut off. Grace and Nancy went out to work as before, and Catherine continued to tread her beat. But the fires were not lit in the evening because Harold had always been the one to light them. Nobody considered what tasks might be left undone because Daddy wasn’t there to do them, nor what further tasks might need to be tackled as a result of his death. Nobody so much as entered his study.
Chance dictated that it was Grace who happened to be at home on the day when the maid awkwardly announced that while she understood the family were having a hard time, so was she without her weekly wages. It was Grace who answered the door when the milkman stopped by to say he would have to stop delivering if they didn’t settle on the spot. It was Grace who took the telephone call from the family solicitor who wanted to know what the devil was happening about Harold’s affairs. And so Grace was the one to finally sit down in the dusty study and start searching through files.
The factory work had been a sort of game, she realized. She’d been motivated primarily by a sense of duty and patriotism, but she now saw that her first duty was to her family. Catherine might be presenting a cheerful
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