A Wartime Welcome: An emotional and romantic WWII saga

By Rosie Meddon

After the Blitz, she’ll need to rebuild her life from nothing…

Clemmie throws herself into volunteering with the very organisation who helped her and her sisters when they were homeless: the WVS. Demonstrating a natural flair, painfully-shy Clemmie is soon drafted to set up one of the British Welcome Clubs aimed at easing American troops’ integration into English life.

There, she meets Squadron Leader Dunning who, shot down in the Blitz, has been left partially paralysed. As friendship turns to something more, Clemmie faces an impossible decision – sacrifice her dreams of motherhood, or lose the man she’s learning to love.

Between her volunteer work, Squadron Leader Dunning and the overarching danger and chaos of war, Clemmie must learn to speak up if she’s to survive and, more importantly, find the joy in life.

An emotional and thrilling Second World War saga for fans of Rosie Hendry, Pam Howes and Vicki Beeby.

Praise for A Wartime Welcome

‘A great saga… looking forward to the next book.’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader review

‘If you love family saga based during the war, you will love this book can’t wait to read more by this author.’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader review

‘Fantastic. Highly recommended read. Can’t wait for the next book!’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader review

‘This second in the series was every bit as enjoyable as the first.’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Reader review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canelo Saga
• Release date: Jul 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781800326569

Rosie Meddon

Inspired by the Malory Towers and St. Clare’s novels of Enid Blyton, Rosie spent much of her childhood either with her nose in a book or writing stories and plays, enlisting the neighbours’ children to perform them to anyone who would watch. Professional life, though, was to take her into a world of structure and rules, where creativity was frowned upon. It wasn’t until she was finally able to leave rigid thinking behind that she returned to writing, her research into her ancestry and a growing fascination for rural life in the nineteenth century inspiring and shaping her early stories. She now resides with her husband in North Devon – the setting for the Woodicombe House Saga – where she enjoys the area’s natural history, exploring the dramatic scenery, and keeping busy on her allotment.

Book preview

Exeter, England

May 1942

I. Loss

Chapter 1

‘Huh. So much for coming back to save our belongings. Look at it all. There’s nothing left. Those Jerry bastards have destroyed the lot.’

Clemmie Warren stared in disbelief. Pearl was right. There was nothing left of Albert Terrace except a mound of charred timbers and smashed masonry, here and there among the smoke and the debris the sorry remains of people’s possessions: an iron bedstead; someone’s tin bath; the mangled frame of a lady’s bicycle. That last item she recognised as the old boneshaker Mrs Dawes rode home on from her job at the public baths every evening and then left propped overnight against the front wall. As a little girl, she’d warned the old dear that one day someone would steal it and she’d have to go to work on foot. Granny Dawes had laughed. Folk on Chandlery Street might not have much to their names, she’d said as she’d bent low to pinch her cheeks, but they respect one another’s property. It was more than could be said of Jerry.

Her eyes continuing to scan the devastation, Clemmie gave in to a despairing sigh. After two and a half years of war, and more false alarms than anyone could reckon, the drone of bombers last night had come as a shock, it taking her a while to recognise the low and oscillating hum for what it was. Even when the first incendiaries had come whistling out of the night sky, their elder sister May had tried to play down the danger. The Luftwaffe, she assured them, were only interested in places like the quayside and the railway yard; being some way up the hill meant Albert Terrace was unlikely to suffer anything worse than the odd shattered windowpane and a few dislodged roof tiles. Having seen pictures in the newspapers from the time Plymouth was bombed, she claimed this as fact.

Clemmie had wanted to believe her. But when the incendiaries had stopped and, in the eerie silence that followed, the crrrrrrump of the first HE to explode nearby had made her ribs rumble, she’d sensed it was going to be worse than May was letting on. And now, in the smoke-filled light of day, it was plain her doubts had been well-founded: Jerry hadn’t given a damn where the bombs fell, much less for the families whose homes and livelihoods they obliterated.

Her head pounding from lack of sleep, the back of her throat dry from the dust, she heaved another despair-laden sigh. Four hours they’d cowered in that dank little public shelter on the corner of Friar Street, forced to listen, helplessly, to the destruction raging overhead: to the boom of explosions; the crashing of glass; the rush of masonry collapsing into the streets. Four hours she’d clung to her sisters, praying with each ragged breath that it wouldn’t be her last; that, against all the odds, they would live to see another day. But standing there this morning, she had to wonder what it was they’d been spared for. With neither home nor belongings, what were they to do? Where would they even go?

As the reality of their plight sank in, she started to cry. How could this be fair? What had the three of them ever done to the Germans? If a single stray bomb had flattened just Albert Terrace, then the three of them might have found refuge with neighbours. But even with a veil of brick dust hanging in the air like a November smog, Clemmie could see that the rest of Chandlery Street was gone too; even Mundy’s the bakers, where she’d worked six mornings a week selling bread. To make matters worse, all she could make out of the Sovereign Hotel, where May had been employed as a cleaner, was a blackened outline of the facade. Pound to a penny the Plaza had been destroyed too, leaving Pearl without her job as an usherette. If none of them had work, how would they buy food? Essentials of any sort? They had nothing but the clothes they stood up in.

Catching May looking across at her, Clemmie reached into the pocket of her jacket, pulled out her handkerchief and blew her nose. ‘What are we… going… to do? Everything’s… gone. All of it. All of it…’

‘Yeah.’ Stabbing at the rubble with what looked to be a fire poker, Pearl agreed. ‘Ain’t so much as a matchstick to be saved from this lot.’

Unusually for May, her response offered little comfort. ‘No.’

Dearest May. When illness had left their mother too frail to continue to care for them, without questioning the fairness or otherwise May had quietly assumed responsibility for everything, from paying the rent to looking after their ration books, from putting meals on the table to ensuring they had clean clothes. For all her pragmatism and determination, though, Clemmie imagined even she was going to struggle to make things right this time. Where would she even start? Those two rooms on the ground floor of that crumbling old terrace might have been rat-infested and damp, but they’d been their home, within its walls what precious few belongings they’d so far avoided having to sell.

‘You know…’ At the edge of the debris, Pearl’s prodding had lost some of its vigour. ‘There is one good thing…’

Clemmie frowned. Amid all this devastation, there was a good thing?

Beside her, May looked equally puzzled. ‘Really? Not sure how you fathom that.’

‘Well, you got to think we’ve seen the last of Charlie.’

Dear God, yes, her stepfather, Mr Warren. When the air raid siren had started up its nerve-shattering wail, they’d crept past him slumped over the kitchen table, reeking of the Stoker’s Arms and snoring like a hog. Was it wicked to pray that Pearl was right – to hope the Luftwaffe really had put an end to him? Given his habit of showing up more times than a bad penny, she doubted they could be so lucky.

Desperate for reassurance, she turned to May. ‘You think he were definitely still in there, then? You don’t think he could have got himself out before the bombs started falling? He couldn’t have… he couldn’t have woken up after we’d left and took himself off to shelter someplace else?’

‘Think about it,’ May said as she cast a glance to where Pearl – the only one of them to have Charlie Warren as her real father – was now clambering over the rubble. ‘When the three of us left, he was snoring fit to wake old Mrs Tuckett on the top floor. So, no, I reckon that skinful he had yesterday was his last, and that when he came stumbling in, cursing and lashing out as usual, it was for the final ever time.’

Pearl was of the same mind. ‘Yeah. There’s no way he could have got out. He’s gone. Dead and buried. And I for one shan’t mourn his passing.’

To hear Pearl talk so coldly about her own flesh and blood made Clemmie wince. ‘But—’

‘Face it, Clem.’ Continuing to poke about in the rubble, Pearl was unrepentant. ‘That foul-mouthed bastard might have been my father, but he was rotten through and through. And yes, I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but you’re not supposed to tell lies, either. So, let’s none of us pretend we’ll miss him. You might have been the one to feel the back of his hand most often but weren’t none of us spared his wrath. It was me he swore at for fighting off the drunks he brought home. It was me he told not to be so prissy every time I complained about one of them putting a hand up my skirt or trying to reach inside my blouse. And if I can’t forgive him that, then why would I mourn him? And you, May – don’t tell me you weren’t brassed off with him constantly helping himself to the coins from your purse…’

‘Trust me,’ May said stoutly, ‘many’s the time I could gladly have taken the carving knife to that man—’

‘…or that you, Clemmie, weren’t browned off with him sending you out with your own money to fetch his fags or his booze.’

To Clemmie, that hadn’t been the worst of it. ‘I daren’t never disobey him.’

‘See, that’s what I mean. So, no, I shan’t lose sleep over him being dead, and nor should either of you.’

Clemmie dabbed her eyes. While Pearl might have a point, it still didn’t seem right for the man’s own daughter to wish him dead.

‘It’s true,’ May picked up again. ‘He don’t deserve to be neither mourned nor remembered.’

But if Clemmie was to rest easy, she needed to know, beyond all possible doubt, that Charlie Warren really had drawn his last breath. ‘Even so…’

‘Look,’ said May. ‘You’ve had a shock. You’re tired. We all are.’

‘Besides,’ Pearl went on, rising to her feet and gesturing about her, ‘we’ve more important things than the demise of Charlie Warren to worry about. I mean, what the hell do we do now? Where do we even go?’

Before their discussion had turned to the fate of her stepfather, Clemmie had been wondering the same thing.

‘Well,’ May replied. ‘When we came up out of the shelter, that warden told us we were to go up the church and wait there. So, I suppose we go and see what the arrangements are – see if a rest centre’s been set up, like that time last month when those stray bombs fell on Marsh Barton. I don’t see as we have a choice. I mean, look about you. High Street’s flattened. Fore Street’s burned out. Even Bedford Circus is gone. There’s nowhere left.’

Turning her attention back to Pearl, Clemmie watched her tug something from the rubble. As it glinted in the light, she recognised it as the sort of little mirror to hang in a birdcage. She supposed it must have belonged to Mrs Duncan upstairs, what with her keeping budgerigars.

Letting the mirror drop from her fingers, Pearl picked her way back across the rubble. ‘So,’ she said, brushing the dirt from her hands, ‘that’s what we’re going to do, is it? Go up the church?’

May nodded. ‘It is. We’ll go and see what’s what. And we’ll do it now, early, before every other soul does the same and we’re left to traipse here, there and everywhere in search of any old place that’ll have us.’

‘Which makes me proper glad then,’ Pearl said, and with which Clemmie noticed her half-sister’s lips curl into a grin, ‘that on the way down the shelter last night, I thought to grab this.’ When she held aloft her pink vanity case, the sight of her sister’s most cherished possession made Clemmie start crying again. ‘Because at least I shan’t be without my curlers or my toothbrush. Nor lipstick and mascara.’

‘Yes, because let’s face it,’ May said, glass crunching under her shoes as she turned away from the ruins, ‘looking your best really ought to be your biggest concern when you’ve just lost your livelihood, your home, and everything that was in it.’

Turning to see her sisters picking their way over the firemen’s hoses snaking up from the river, Clemmie risked a final glance back at the ruins. Dare she believe Mr Warren was dead? Had they really seen the back of him? She supposed only time would tell.

Chapter 2

She really didn’t know why she was there. May would probably say that losing their home had left her needing to seek comfort, and she could well be right. All Clemmie knew for certain was that this morning, when she’d woken up in that narrow little camp bed in the rest centre, she’d felt drawn to come.

Poking a strand of hair behind her ear, she reached with her other hand to trace a forefinger over the inscription carved onto the otherwise plain headstone. The letters of her mother’s name were crisper than those of her father, the latter worn shallow over the seventeen or so years he’d lain there. In loving memory of Frederick Sidney Huxford. More recently, the three of them had scraped together the money to have a stonemason inscribe underneath, & Maude Annie, his wife. When the vicar had agreed they could lay their mother to rest with their father, they’d been enormously relieved; ensuring she rested in peace seemed the last decent thing they could do for the poor woman. That Charlie Warren had deserted them more than a dozen years previously had been handy in that regard, since he hadn’t been there to insist they bury her separately, nor to demand that she be immortalised as Maude Warren. It wasn’t as though he would have covered the cost of doing either: whatever money that man came by was only ever spent on Woodbines, brown ale, or the bookie. And that had to be why, the moment he’d learned of Mum’s passing, he’d turned up again: to see whether she’d still had anything of value he might pawn or sell. When it quickly became apparent that she hadn’t, he’d moved back in anyway and taken to thieving from the three of them instead.

That he, too, was now dead she was still struggling to believe. To know they need no longer fear his wrath was more than she could have dared hope. His temper had been bad enough at the best of times; no matter how quickly she moved, it was never fast enough. But when he’d been drinking – and when hadn’t he? – it was so very many times worse. I won’t tell you twice, he would bawl, his hand raised in reinforcement of his point. May said the reason he’d picked on her most was because she was small and fair; bullies were like that, she’d said, always quick to single out the slight or the frail.

Dear May, she’d tried so hard to shield her from the man’s fury, as had Pearl. But sometimes, when she’d finished work and was home on her own, he would turn up without warning. When that happened, May had said she was to grab her purse and go off up the street, or go down and wait in Mundy’s. But if he started on her the second he staggered in through the door, finding the right moment to give him the slip wasn’t always possible. And he didn’t always pass out straight away, either. Anyway, as they’d seen nothing of him since they’d fled to the shelter on Sunday night, she could only suppose he really was dead.

She returned her eyes to the headstone and let out a sigh. ‘It’s all gone, Mum. Albert Terrace is just a pile of rubble, the rest of Chandlery Street the same. And I don’t know what we’re going to do.’

You’ll be all right, love, she imagined hearing her mother reply. You’re stronger than you know.

But how would they be all right? Albert Terrace might have been a rat-infested dump but, Mr Warren aside, it had been their home. Moreover, the three of them had all worked nearby, meaning they’d just about been able to scrape together the rent every Friday and have enough left over to buy food. But now, without work, they would be destitute, and she couldn’t see how they were going to be all right at all. While her future might never have been exactly bright, at least she’d had one. As Miss Treadgold at school had said, the best you can hope for, Clemmie Warren, is to make someone a good wife. And although she’d known hostilities were looming, she’d been pinning her hopes on doing just that; she’d only ever assumed that, when all the young men came home from war, she would meet one of them, someone kind-hearted but ordinary, someone with whom she would make a home and start a family. And she would have been happy with that. Still would be. But who knew how many of the young men who had gone off to wage war – some of them as far back as the summer of ’39 – would even come home? Would there be any sort of man left to marry, let alone a kind and gentle one? That the war continued to rumble on was bad enough. But now, with the city in ruins, who knew what was in store for them? How they were going to get back on their feet now, she had no idea. She doubted May did, either. And if there was anyone who could be relied upon to be optimistic, it was May.

The weight of her gloom sagging her shoulders, she let out a despairing sigh. One thing was certain: standing at her parents’ graveside wouldn’t solve her problems. No, sadly, there was nothing for it but to head back to the rest centre and see what arrangements the authorities were making for people. And by that she meant people like the three of them, who’d been left without so much as a stick to their name.

---

‘This is ridiculous. We’ll be stood here for ever.’

Inclined to agree with Pearl’s assessment, Clemmie nodded. She, too, had been eyeing the queue snaking ahead of them through the doors into the school hall, concluding that they would be lucky to reach the front before nightfall.

The waiting around was taking its toll on May’s patience, too. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Pearl.’ A glance at her expression made Clemmie glad she’d kept quiet. ‘It’s not as though you’ve anywhere else to be.’

‘Happen you’re wrong. Dreckly we’re done here, I’m going up the Savoy to try an’ persuade them to take me on.’

‘Yes, well,’ May grumbled, ‘admirable though that is, you know as well as I do that just because the place is still standing doesn’t mean they’ll be able to open. Even if they can, I can’t imagine their most pressing need right now will be new usherettes. Not with the city in this mess.’

‘You don’t know that. They might have lost some of their—’

‘Pearl, just this once, do as I ask. We can’t go on without clothes. Nor money nor ration books. And while I can’t speak for the two of you, and grateful though I am for the roof over my head, I’d prefer to sleep someplace that doesn’t involve being woken up by some baby grizzling, worse still by some complete stranger snoring.’

Inwardly, Clemmie had to agree; if the only course open to them was to throw themselves on the mercy of the authorities, they might as well get on with it. If it took all day for them to reach the front of the queue, so be it.

A glance at Pearl, though, suggested she wasn’t persuaded.

‘But the Savoy might be open. And they might need staff. For all you know—’

‘They might well. But if you’re not here when our turn comes, odds are you’ll miss out on getting a new ration book, which will mean—’

‘Can’t you get one for me? You usually do. You fetch all our new ration books when they come in.’

‘That’s different. These aren’t new ones, they’re replacements. If you lose your ration book you have to sign a form to get another one.’

Listening to May explaining, Clemmie stiffened; if you lost your ration book, you also had to pay a fine.

‘Do you think they’ll make us pay?’ she asked. It hardly seemed fair.

Beside her, Pearl scoffed. ‘They’d have to give us the shilling to pay with first.’

‘Can’t see it would be right to fine us,’ May replied. ‘Anyway, when I asked that WVS woman, she said everyone has to come in person. So, Pearl, do you want a new ration book and the chance of some clean clothes or are you not bothered? Because if you’re happy to keep washing out that same pair of drawers in the washbasin for ever more…’

Evidently seeing sense, Pearl huffed. ‘All right, all right. Keep your hair on. I’ll wait.’

Her younger sister’s irritation apparently blown out, Clemmie stood in silence, the whiff of disinfectant reminding her of her schooldays, when she had existed in a state of near perpetual dread of putting a foot wrong and being given the cane. As it happened, the worst she’d ever had was a rap across the knuckles with a ruler for staring up at a butterfly trying to get out of the window, when she should have been writing out her six times table. The humiliation had stuck with her; to this day, it was rare for her attention to wander. This morning, though, concentrating on anything was almost impossible. And she guessed that the people around her felt the same, those queueing to either side of them tutting and fidgeting and shifting their weight, raising their eyebrows at one another in weary resignation.

She glanced along the row of tables where people were being helped to fill in forms. The officials and volunteers assisting them all seemed of a certain ‘type’: exclusively female, they were generally grey-haired and clad in the green cotton overalls of the WVS. The two younger women in ordinary skirts and blouses she supposed to be childless newly-weds, wanting to do their bit while their husbands were away fighting. And hovering behind the tables, watching proceedings closely and directing or intervening where necessary, were two supervisors who looked as though, between them, they could run a dozen emergency committees and still make time for more. Their uniform flannel dresses and low-heeled shoes marked them out as organised and efficient, the seriousness of their expressions suggesting to Clemmie that they were women who brooked no nonsense. Even just watching them put the fear of God into her.

When, sometime later, a distant clock chimed midday, she once again scanned the queue and, counting just three families still ahead of them, studied the appearance of the volunteer talking to the family at the front. Another capable-looking woman, her striking ash-brown hair was fashioned into a loose bun. On her nose she wore a pair of gilt-rimmed glasses; resting on her maroon WVS jumper lay a single strand of pearls. But what fascinated Clemmie most was the elegant way she held herself. Without realising it, she straightened her own spine and lowered her shoulders from where they had become hunched up around her ears. Oh, to have such polish and poise. Oh, for such confidence. Here was a woman who hadn’t grown up with schoolmistresses telling her that if she didn’t buck up her ideas she wouldn’t even get a job as a char, and that even a housewife needed to understand arithmetic if she was to avoid being ‘done’ by a stallholder in the market. Still, Clemmie reflected, she’d fared all right behind the counter in Mundy’s; it wasn’t often she’d had to scribble down a customer’s purchases to arrive at the amount to charge them.

‘Now, my dears,’ the woman in question addressed May when the family ahead of them in the queue was finally directed to a vacant desk, ‘what do you need?’ She had, Clemmie noted, very neat fingernails.

‘To be honest,’ May replied wearily, ‘everything. Our home in Albert Terrace, and what few bits we had in it, are all gone. The whole lot of it.’

‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry to hear that.’ What a lovely voice, Clemmie noted. ‘So, you truly are in need of our help.’

Together with May and Pearl, Clemmie nodded and then, feeling tears welling, held herself rigidly; weeping would only make her look childish.

‘I’m afraid so,’ May agreed.

‘Then let’s see if we can get a few of your most urgent needs taken care of. For certain we can do something about food. Shortly now, our temporary kitchen will be dishing up hot meals. And clothing donations are trickling in all the time. We also have a couple of officials from the local Food Office here today, so you’ll be able to apply for new ration books. And someone from the Registration Office is here to help with lost identity cards. You’ll also be able to apply to go on the list for rehousing. Look, there you go,’ the woman said, pointing to the far end of the row of desks, where an elderly couple were getting up to leave, ‘that’s our Mrs Hughes. She’ll get you started.’

To Clemmie, the paperwork for even the simplest of things seemed complicated beyond belief.

‘I know all these forms and questions are the last thing you want at the moment,’ Mrs Hughes said after a while, her manner kindly, ‘but we have to make sure those asking for help are genuinely entitled. Unfortunately, these days there are some poor sorts around, not to mention a few out-and-out rogues.’

Eventually, by the time the smell of boiling vegetables was wafting into the hall and Clemmie had begun to feel almost sick from the headache hammering away in her skull, a few of their most pressing needs had been taken care of.

‘Thank goodness they were able to give us temporary ration books,’ she remarked as they joined yet another queue, this time for a bowl of split-pea soup and a couple of dry crackers.

‘Not that we’ve any place to keep food, nor to cook it, let alone the means to buy it in the first place.’

May had a point. She was also, Clemmie could tell, still hopping mad over the discovery that Pearl had lost her identity card.

‘What?’ Pearl asked, when she caught May glowering at her.

‘Well, for goodness’ sake, how many times have I reminded you about your blessed ID? Over and over, I told you that when you turned sixteen you had to apply for an adult one. Still, I suppose it’s my own fault. I should have known you weren’t listening. The morning of your birthday, I should have marched you up the Registration Office and made you do it. Worse than yours being out of date, though, is the fact that each and every time that blasted siren’s gone off, I’ve said to both of you, don’t forget your identity card. But the one and only time I didn’t say it, what do you do? Rather than check you’ve got the important things, you grab your vanity case. So now, not only do you need a new identity card when you shouldn’t, but, because your old one wasn’t even still valid, we’ve got to traipse all the way up that bloomin’ Registration Office to fill in a load more forms when it could have been done here, now, today.’

Their soup eaten, the three of them had gone next to apply for rehousing. Clemmie found the process both fraught and dispiriting: what few billets were available were being given first to families, then to the elderly without relatives nearby, then to childless married couples. Single women like the three of them seemed almost not to make it onto the list at all, which, since it wasn’t their fault they had no family to take them in, she thought unduly harsh.

‘I don’t know what we’re going to do,’ she had whispered to May after a particularly depressing encounter with a woman from the city corporation. ‘I don’t want to be put somewhere on my own. I shouldn’t like that at all.’

May’s response had done little to reassure her.

‘Well, hopefully it won’t come to that.’

Pearl, Clemmie had noticed, was also oddly quiet, her silence leaving Clemmie to wonder what hare-brained scheme her younger sister was cooking up now.

---

In the wake of that particularly trying day, the rest of the week dragged: each subsequent dawn coming on the back of another largely sleepless night in the church hall; each new morning bringing watery porridge for breakfast – or, occasionally, a slice of toast and marge – the remainder of the day either stretching emptily ahead or else occupied with a further round of form-filling, none of which made Clemmie any more hopeful. And as the three of them sat watching another family, or another older couple, gather up their few belongings and leave the rest centre for the last time, they could do nothing but envy them their good fortune.

‘That lot,’ a girl Clemmie had come to know as Maggie remarked of the latest departures, ‘have given up waiting and are going to stay with her sister down near Sidmouth. And the tall red-haired woman with the little boy got found a room in a house up near Exwick. And that other lot further over – you know, them in the corner with the tearaway kiddies – well, the authorities found them some place out on the Cowley Road. Gawd, didn’t the mother moan.’ Casting her eyes about the room, Maggie lowered her voice. ‘You should have heard her. "What do we want with