My guest today is Veronica Heley, a British writer of mysteries. I haven’t read her books but I am going to –SOON!

Here’s Veronica:

“Strong Women…

When the second World War broke out in 1939, we were living in Birmingham, a great manufacturing city in the Midlands of Great Britain. As bombing raids began, my mother took us four girls to lodge with a farmer and his wife in the country, and to go to school with his two children. Fortunately the farmhouse was a large one with two staircases and bedrooms leading off in all directions, but there was no gas or electricity, and the water came down by pipe from a reservoir up the hill.

It was an adventure for us children. For the adults it was something else.

My mother was torn between staying to look after us, and the need to return to Birmingham where my father worked by day in his office, and was an Air Raid Warden by night. My parents slept, when they could, in a damp cellar; the garden was turned over to geese, hens, and vegetables. The strain of the nightly bombing raids was a killer. My father was neither young nor physically very strong. My mother was a strong woman, but the constant anxiety told on her as she shuttled between the two parts of her family.

Back in the country, the house sheltered the farmer and his wife, their two children, an ancient cousin who’d been bombed out of her home, us four girls and our mother, two landgirls – and they were strong women, too – plus the occasional soldier who’d been billeted upon the farmer. Also needing to be fed, but going home at night, were two more men who helped run the farm. There were usually fourteen of us round the table in the dining-room for high tea, though we sat on benches on either side of a long scrubbed wooden table on the flagstoned floor for breakfast. A cooked breakfast, mind!

I wonder now how on earth the farmer’s wife managed, cooking on an open fire with an ancient oven built into the wall beside it, plus a couple of trivets for vegetables and the ever-simmering kettle at the front. There were oil lamps to trim and fill, plus candles at night. There were open fires in the two main rooms downstairs but none upstairs, of course. There were fourteen beds to change, though a woman did come in to help with the washing. On top of all that, the eldest daughter aspired to be one of the first women architects from her university, and succeeded! She was another strong woman.

Now I write about two different heroines, Bea and Ellie, both older women trying to deal with crime today, and I wonder how either of my heroines would have fared in wartime. I can’t quite ‘see’ Ellie Quicke in uniform; perhaps she’d be second-in-command running a canteen or volunteering in a hospital? Bea Abbot is another matter. She’d have been officer material in the armed forces, or perhaps drafted into some secret Ministry of Information work. Perhaps a code-breaking operation?

Ellie would not consider herself a strong woman because she is inclined to underrate herself, though everyone else – except her greedy daughter Diana – thinks she’s a very special person . Bea runs her own domestic agency which does not ‘do’ crime – but occasionally finds itself doing just that. She offers a home to two awkward youngsters, and tries to keep her Member of Parliament son to his marriage vows. Both are Christians and try to act as Christians should. It’s a strength which underlies everything they do. —Veronica Heley

www.veronicaheley.com

THE ELLIE QUICKE MYSTERIES – Murder in House, Severn House, hb June 09

THE ABBOT AGENCY SERIES – False Pretences, Severn House, hb Dec 09

Veronica, thanks so much for sharing. I think that people were used to working harder with their hands than now. As I said to my children once, “My mother got way more work out of me than I’ve ever gotten out of both of you!” But that’s another story!–Lyn