Kathy watched her go, feeling uneasy. Mrs Frame wasn’t the best midwife in the district, but she was all Kathy could afford until some more money came through from Mike. And she couldn’t ask the baby to wait! She wondered whether to go over to Jess Budd and ask if she could stop the night in their shelter. She looked at her daughters, who had finished their tea and were playing by the fire.
‘Put your coats and shoes on. We’re just going round the corner to see Mrs Budd.’
Muriel looked up. ‘Mrs Budd’s out. I saw her with Mrs Chapman, pushing Maureen’s pram up the street.’
Kathy felt blank. ‘She might have been just going shopping.
I expect she’ll be back by now.’
Stella shook her head. ‘No, she said they were going to tea with her auntie.’
Her auntie. That must be the one who lived half a dozen streets away, the one Jess and Frank had lived with for a while when they first got married. That meant Frank would go mere too, straight from work, and they might stop on for supper.
Kathy chewed her lip, wondering what to do. She knew most of the other women in the street now, by sight if no more, and she knew that most of them would help if she needed it, but she was reluctant to bother them for what might be only a false alarm. After all, Mrs Frame had said the baby couldn’t be born until the head was engaged, and if that hadn’t happened yet she ought to be safe enough. Why not wait till morning, and then ask Jess if she could go over to them at night until the baby was born?
She tried to settle down to some knitting, but she felt heavy and uncomfortable. The baby’s head was like a hard rock pressing against her pelvis. The girls were uneasy too, looking at her and whispering to each other. Kathy had told them a baby was on the way - she knew most mothers wouldn’t have done, thinking they were too young to know about such things, but you had to take a different view when you were on your own.
She went to the front door and peered out, careful to ensure that no light was showing. The street was very dark.
The worst of the air raids had taken place during the full moons which had occurred during the middle of October and November - Bombers’ Moon, they’d called them. Tonight, there was no moon at all, but the air was clear and the sky prickling with stars. Was that enough to show German aircraft the route to England? For the first time, Kathy wondered how they found their way through the night skies.
During the day, they could follow roads and railway lines, but what did they do at night? She gazed up, thinking how peaceful it looked, and how false.
Footsteps sounded on the pavement and she drew back a little. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness and she could see the figure of a man walking down from September Street.
He caught a glimpse of her movement and stopped.
‘Is that Mrs Simmons?’
‘Yes. It’s Mr Vickers, isn’t it?’
‘Tommy,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’ve never liked being called “mister”. It makes me want to look round to see who’s standing behind me.’
Kathy smiled. She had heard a good deal about Tommy Vickers. He was well known for his cheekiness and good humour. He’d do anything to help anyone too, Jess had told her, and didn’t make a lot of fuss or noise about it either, like some people did. He’d leave bundles of kindling on the doorsteps of old people, for instance, or go round collecting odd bits of shopping for anyone who found it difficult to get out. He wasn’t above a bit of fiddling - he always seemed to know where to lay his hands on a few eggs or a pound or two of potatoes - but he wouldn’t have anything to do with real black marketeering, and he’d never do anyone down.
She supposed he was on his rounds now. He’d become an Air Raid Warden soon after the war broke out, but he wasn’t one to go around yelling ‘Put that light out!’ Instead, he’d be more likely to knock on the door where a light was showing and chaff the offender into being more careful.
‘What are you doing out here?’ he asked. ‘It’s a bit cold to be standing admiring the view.’ He stood gazing up at the glistening sky. ‘Not but what it’s not a view worth admiring.
Look at all those stars. You can see the Milky Way as plain as a main road tonight.’
Kathy nodded. ‘It doesn’t seem possible it could be full of planes, dropping bombs on us. It’s like a - a -‘ she searched for the right word and remembered something the vicar had said in church once ‘- a desecration. What’s it all about, Mr Vickers? What are they doing it for?’
He shrugged. ‘I know why we ‘re doing it. So people like you and me can stand at their front doors of an evening and look at the stars without being afraid of being bombed out. But don’t ask me why Hitler started it all. I wonder if anyone knows now. It’s like a stupid kids’ quarrel that’s got out of hand, and they’ve all been home and fetched their dads to fight it out for them.’
Kathy knew exactly what he meant. She had often heard the boys in the street threatening each other. I’ll get my dad to fight your dad… Well, my dad’s bigger than your dad… The difference was that the fathers usually had more sense than to get involved, and the boys couldn’t do that much damage anyway. With the countries of Europe, it was a different matter.
And it wasn’t just Europe. It was spreading like a canker, all over the world. Japan and China at each other’s throats. Italy, Egypt, Greece. Only America was holding herself aloof and, like most people, Kathy wished they would join in too. Surely with a mighty nation like that on their side, the Allies could finish off Hitler and his cronies for once and for all…
The baby gave a sudden violent squirm and she gasped and put her hand on her stomach. Tommy turned his head sharply; she could see the gleam of his eyes in the starlight.
‘You all right, love?’
‘Yes. It’s just the baby - been restless all day.’ She gave an embarrassed little laugh, but Tommy didn’t seem bothered.
‘It must be due around now, surely?’
‘Yes, I wondered if it might be on its way but Mrs Frame says not for another day or two.’ She sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. ‘I wish it’d come and get it over with. I get scared at night, what with all these bombs and wondering when it’s going to get born … And I’m so tired.’
‘I know, love.’ Everyone was tired, bone tired. Night after night in the shelter, hearing the planes pass overhead, listening for explosions and wondering what had been hit now. And still you had to get up in the morning and go to work. Or see to the kids, get breakfast, do the shopping and housework. Sleep came in snatches these days, like a precious jewel that was handed to you only to be plucked away again just when you thought you had it in your grasp.
‘I just want to lean against the wall,’ Tommy’s wife had said to him a few days ago, and he’d smiled and pulled her close.
‘Lean against me instead, love.’ But he couldn’t be there for her all day, and sometimes he needed to lean on something too.
Now it was Kathy Simmons who needed someone to lean on, and her need couldn’t be ignored.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s a fine night and I reckon there’ll be raiders over any minute. Why don’t you get yourself settled down in your shelter with the kids? I’ll see you settled and then I’ll look in again later on to make sure you’re all right.’
‘That’s good of you, Mr Vickers,’ Kathy said gratefully and he gave her arm a little shake.
‘I told you, it’s Tommy. Now, what d’you usually take down there with you?’
He came into the house and helped her collect together the nightly bundle - blankets, pillows, the mattresses of the two camp beds Kathy had managed to buy. You couldn’t leave things there during the day because of damp. He made a big pot of tea and brought that down too, covering it with cushions to keep it warm as long as possible. He made sure the hurricane lamp had enough fuel and that no light showed through the thick curtain Kathy had hung over the door.
‘There, that’s you all serene.’ He’d kept the two little girls laughing as they paraded up and down the garden path with all their belongings. ‘Now, I don’t want to hear a peep out of any of you till morning.’
‘You can’t hear peeps,’ Stella said cheekily. ‘You can only see peeps.’
‘You’d be surprised what I can see and hear. I’m like Father Christmas, I am, I know everything.’ He pretended to growl and the girls shrieked and scuttled into the corner of the shelter. ‘And what I know now is that you’re both going to go fast asleep till morning.’
‘Even if the bombs come?’
‘Even if the bombs come,’ he said firmly. He looked at the two little faces and felt a spasm of anger, sharp and hot inside him. Why should little scraps like these two have to worry about bombs? And Kathy, sitting there white-faced and obviously uncomfortable. She ought to be tucked up in bed, with someone to look after her, not facing the night all alone.
He wished he could get Freda to come and give an eye to her. But Freda had developed flu yesterday and he didn’t even like the idea of her having to go down to their own shelter, let alone come round to Kathy’s. And it wouldn’t help the young woman to catch flu at a time like this.
Well, it was only a few hours till morning. He’d poke his head in now and then to reassure her, and The wail of the siren splintered his thoughts. He gave a swift look round the dank little cave, and said, ‘I’ll have to go.
You sit tight and don’t worry. And you two little uns, remember what I said. Look after your mum and go to sleep.’
How they were to do both at once wasn’t clear, but Stella and Muriel nodded, their faces suddenly fearful. They were old enough to be frightened of the bombs, old enough to see and understand the destruction around them even if they couldn’t understand its causes. And they still had nightmares about the day their own house was bombed. As Tommy ducked out through the curtain, they drew together on their camp bed, staring up at the flickering shadows on the corrugated iron roof.
‘It’s all right,’ Kathy said, pressing them gently down on the mattress and tucking the blankets around them. ‘It’s all right.
You know we’re safe in the shelter.’
She looked at them, huddled together, their eyes huge in white faces. Why don’t I just give in and take them out into the country? she thought. They’ve been through enough. They deserve to sleep safe in their beds at night.
But if she gave up this house and went out to the countryside, there would be no home at all for Mike to come back to. There would be nothing for him to picture as he worked at sea, no family base to give his thoughts security. No roots for any of them.
Kathy hardly knew how to express these feelings. All she knew was that without a home of their own, their marriage would no longer have its firm foundation, a foundation to which they both - all of them - needed desperately to cling. In a world that was teetering on its axis, some things just had to remain secure, however dangerous it might seem.
It was less than half an hour after Tommy had gone that she felt the first savage pain.
There had been no possibility of sleep. The raid was a fierce one, beaten off at first by a heavy barrage of anti-aircraft fire, and then followed by a wave of planes that burst through the defences, flying low overhead and scattering bombs alI over the city. Kathy and the girls crouched together, feeling the earth shake, remembering that terrible afternoon when their own house had been bombed, wondering if it was about to happen again. The explosions sounded closer, louder was that one their home, gone again? Or that one, or that?
Kathy felt ill. Pain had been circling round her back and pelvis for hours, pushed away until it became too bad to ignore. The baby could not be born tonight. Not in an air-raid shelter, in the middle of a raid, with no one to help her. It could not. It would have to wait till tomorrow. She set her jaw and concentrated, as if by ignoring the steadily increasing contractions, by trying to pretend they weren’t happening, she could postpone it till morning. Why not? Why shouldn’t it be possible? It had to be possible.
It was not possible. As the agony gripped her, starting in the small of her back and spreading like an iron band around her swollen stomach, she knew that nothing now could delay the forces of nature. She could feel the body of the baby, forcing itself along the canal, punching at the walls that had sheltered it for nine months, thrusting its head against the muscles whose strength had carried it and now made their own protesting stand against its assault. Her whole abdomen was clenched in the vice of the most severe contraction she had ever experienced, wave after wave of pain grinding through her until she could hold back the groan no longer and it burst from her lips and swelled like the pain to a scream. And then that was all she was, a scream, a white-hot, searing shriek of anguish that pulsed with the frenzy of flesh and blood and bone that was trying so desperately to escape from the prison of her womb.
Slowly, the waves of pain receded. Kathy opened her eyes, her head swimming, and saw the two little girls sitting bolt upright on their camp bed, staring at her in terror. Shaken, dreading the next contraction, she held out her hands and tried to smile.
‘It’s all right. It’s just the baby, wanting to be born. It’ll be all-oh!’
It was coming again, starting low in her back, spreading its grip like a web over her whole body, tightening and strengthening its grasp until she was once more helpless and could only lie on the flimsy bed, the blood roaring in her ears as the enemy aircraft roared overhead and Portsmouth exploded about her.
Tommy Vickers hurried along the darkened streets. The stars above were dimmed now by the brilliance of the searchlights. The unearthly light filtered down into the city, but he was too anxious about Kathy to be either grateful for its help or anxious about the bombs that would follow.
What a time to be having a baby! What a place. And all on her own too, with two other kiddies scared out of their wits. It wasn’t right that women should have to put up with such things. And it was dangerous.
Tommy didn’t know a lot about childbirth. Freda had told him a bit but mostly it was something women talked about between themselves, in hushed voices. But he did know that women could die if they weren’t properly looked after. Kathy Simmons needed someone to look after her. And it ought to be someone who knew what they were about.