Birmingham Blitz (11 page)

When I couldn’t stand any more of Commercial Loose Leaf I got myself another new job in a little factory in Conybere Street, staining bunk beds which they made for the forces and the shelters. It was a small, dark place, all one room. On one wall there was a poster in big red letters which read: ‘F
REEDOM
IS
IN
PERIL
. D
EFEND
IT
WITH
ALL
YOUR
MIGHT.
Y
OUR
COURAGE,
YOUR
CHEERFULNESS,
YOUR
RESOLUTION
WILL
BRING
US
VICTORY.
’

On one side a few fellers were knocking up the beds, then they came to us to be stained before the webbing was put on. It wasn’t too bad. If it ever got a bit slack I went round and swept up or kept my hand in cleaning windows again.

‘I’ve cleaned that many factory windows,’ I told them, ‘I’m starting to think I ought to set up in business as a window cleaner.’

‘You’re like greased bloody lightning you are,’ one of the lads said to me. He had black curly hair, uneven grey eyes and his name was Jimmy. ‘Don’t you ever let up?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not if I can help it. Gets boring. I like to be on the go.’

‘I can see that.’ He kept watching me dashing about, throwing me the odd wink.

The other girl working with me, a stodgy blonde called Shirley, said, ‘’E fancies you. See how ’e keeps on looking over here? You’re in there, you know.’

‘In there? What’s that s’posed to mean?’

Shirley looked at me pityingly. ‘Don’t you want a bloke? I’d do anything to ’ave a bloke of my own.’

It was odd the way she said it. She might just as well have said she’d do anything to have a dog, a budgie, a house . . . But I can’t say I wasn’t flattered by his attention. I pulled the belt tight round my overall and kept my hair brushed. I couldn’t help thinking about what Lil had said about men and their willies. But then I’d go and look at a real live man – let alone these boys around me – and I couldn’t quite put the two together. I thought maybe Lil was having me on after all. It really was beyond imagining.

Every week we had a letter from Dad, who was down south, somewhere with a funny name. He said he’d started off being billeted in a barn with rats running round his head of a night, the food was abominable and he seemed to spend most of his life digging – trenches, latrines, holes . . .

He said he missed us and hoped he’d be back for Christmas, though the war showed no more sign of being over than it did of getting going.

Mom seemed a bit shaken by this news. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Feels as if he’s been away such a long time. I’ve got sort of used to it. As if he was never here.’

Eric wrote every so often and told us not a lot except that he was all right and Mrs Spenser was a very nice lady, and thanked us for the letters we sent him.

‘Can he come home at Christmas, Mom?’ I asked. ‘We can’t just leave him down there – not then.’

‘Oh, I should think so,’ she said vaguely. I had this feeling when I talked to Mom nowadays that most of her mind was out to graze somewhere else.

‘Couldn’t he stay home? Lots of other kids have -come back. There’s nothing happening, is there?’

‘What?’ Her attention snapped back to me. ‘Oh no – I don’t think so, Genie. Not while there’s any danger of bombs. I mean, they keep telling us to leave the children where they are. And in any case, there’s no one at home to look after him, is there?’

I didn’t dare ask why she couldn’t just give up work. Was it that the country needed her or that she was enjoying herself far too much? After all, as she’d kept reminding us one way or another, we’d been getting in her way for the past fifteen years.

One night after work I got so fed up with doing bits of hand washing, and had a bit of extra energy for once, so I stoked a fire with slack under the copper and had a good go at it, pounding it with the dolly. When it came to mangling it I called Len to come in the kitchen and give me a hand. We just fitted into the room and he turned the handle for me.

‘Things all right at work?’ I asked him. ‘You managing still?’

‘Yes,’ he said in his slow, thick voice. ‘I like it. S’nice.’

‘Good.’ I pulled a snake of wet washing from the wooden rollers of the mangle. ‘I’m glad you’re happy, Len.’

He nodded enthusiastically, looking across at me, his eyes always appealing, somehow innocent. ‘You OK, Genie?’

‘Oh . . .’ I sighed. ‘Yes. I’m OK, Len. Ta.’

There were shirts and underclothes, the lot, draped all round the room by the time Mom got in. We heard the front door and felt its opening jar all the other doors in the house.

‘Come on through,’ I heard her say.

Len and I looked at each other. Her voice was so smooth, soapy bubbles of charm floating from it.

I saw the shock in her face as she came into the back, catching sight of her drawers hung out to dry by the fire. But she recovered herself quickly. Over her shoulder I could see his face – dark brown hair, swarthy, handsome and young – quite a bit younger than her actually. The shoulder of a copper’s uniform. He was looking nervous.

‘This is Bob,’ Mom started babbling. ‘He’s just popping in for a bit. He’s been very kind and escorted me home from the bus a few times and his shift’s finished so I thought a cup of tea was the least we could do.’ She gave a tinkly laugh. ‘This is my brother, Len. Shake hands, Len.’

Len said, ‘’Ullo,’ and did as he was told, dwarfing Bob’s hand in his. Bob coughed and nodded at him. Now he’d got himself into the room I could see he wasn’t much taller than Mom, with a stocky, muscular body.

‘Len’s not quite – you know . . .’ Mom was saying. She slid over that one. ‘And this is my daughter, Eugenie. I had her when I was very young of course. Much too young,’ she threw in quickly.

‘Eighteen,’ I added, pretending to be helpful. ‘And I’m fifteen.’ Mom glowered at me. PC Bob nodded again, even more nervously.

‘Genie,’ Mom said between her teeth. She gave a little jerk of her head. ‘The washing – couldn’t you just . . . Until we’ve finished . . .?’

‘I’ve just hung it all out,’ I said stubbornly. ‘I’ve spent the whole evening doing it.’ My hostility wasn’t lost on her. ‘You could go in the front.’

‘It’s icy cold in there.’

‘Never mind,’ PC Bob said quickly. He gave a stupid little laugh. ‘I take people as I find them in my job. And I have got a family of my own, after all.’

‘Bob’s got two kiddies,’ Mom said, seeing him to a chair. She turned up the gaslight, peeling back the shadows. ‘Kettle on, Genie?’

‘No.’

She clenched her teeth again. ‘D’you think you could put it on?’

We all drank tea while Len and I sat quiet and Mom chattered on about her job, my job and about Eric being away. She didn’t talk about Dad. I watched her. She was like another person from the one we saw every day – alight, talkative, a bit breathless.

I had a good look at PC Bob. He knew I was staring at him but he couldn’t do much about it. It’s not that I dislike people on sight as a general rule, but I couldn’t stand him. I could sense it with them. What was between them. And I didn’t like it.

He didn’t say much. Smiled in the right places when Mom laughed. He had a heavy-set face and dark, mournful eyes which hardly ever looked anywhere but at her. I knew she could feel it, that stare. I’m not sure he was more than half listening to what she was saying, and she was making less and less sense because of the charge his look had set up in the room. His eyes travelled over her as she talked. I think they were a sludgy grey but it was hard to tell in the gaslight. I wanted to get up and shout stop it. Stop staring at her like that. He was following her shape and she talked all the more as if to fight off the magnetic intensity of those eyes.

When he’d drunk up and left, at last, the force of his presence left a hole in the room, like the sudden silence when we switched Gloria off for the night.

Mom was in a dither, cheeks flushed. ‘You didn’t have to be so short, Genie,’ she said. ‘All he came for was a cup of tea.’

‘Just make sure the house is tidy when I come in,’ Mom instructed me at least once a day. ‘Just in case.’

And he was soon back.

I made tea and sat watching them. No one was saying anything much and all you could hear were spoons in the cups and the fire shifting. Mom looked down at the peg rug by the hearth, at her feet, then up at Bob. He was sat forward on the edge of his chair in his dark uniform, sipping the tea, giving Mom soulful looks. When their eyes met she giggled.

God Almighty.

‘What about some music?’ Mom said in the end. ‘No Gloria tonight, Len?’

‘I told him to turn her off when we heard you come in,’ I said.

‘Oh, there was no need.’

PC Bob was giving a quizzical sort of frown. ‘Gloria?’

‘Our wireless.’ Mom tittered again. I’d never seen anything like the way she was behaving. ‘Len calls her Gloria. Go on Lenny – switch her on.’

Len lumbered to his feet and in a second there was music, something soft, violins. Bob sat there dutifully for a few minutes, pushing the fingertips of each hand against the other.

‘Better be off home,’ he said. At last. He put his cup on the floor.

‘Oh yes.’ Mom was sparkly still. ‘Back to your little family. Never let you loose for long, do they?’

They both went into the hall, snickering like a couple of monkeys. It went quiet for a moment. I wondered what they were doing. I thought about walking through to the front just to annoy them, but then I heard her letting him out.

When she came back she saw me staring sullenly at her. Oblivious to this, she gave me a wide smile. ‘He’s such a nice man, isn’t he?’

A week later when she was due home from work, I left Len shuffling a pack of cards in the back with Gloria on, and went to the front room. I left it dark, pulled back the corner of the blackout curtain and slid the window open just a crack. There were no lights in the road of course and I knew I shouldn’t be able to see them coming from far. But the room was very dark as well, and my eyes were settling to it.

Not many minutes later I heard them. I couldn’t make out the shape of them in the sooty darkness, but I could see the burning tips of two cigarettes, and I knew Mom’s tone. Their voices were low and I couldn’t make out any words at first.

They came and stood on the front step and I was scared stiff they’d see me or notice the open window. I felt it must be plain as daylight I was there. But even if they could have spotted anything much out in the cold damp of the evening, the only thing they were interested in seeing was each other. They came and leaned up against the window where I was sitting. Mom perched on the sill, so if I’d wanted I could have pushed my fingers through the slit and touched her coat.

‘Least we don’t have to worry what the neighbours are thinking in this,’ she said, giggling.

Silence. Kissing. The blood pounded in my ears.

‘Bob . . .’ Her voice was wheedling now. ‘You are going to be able to sort out your shifts, aren’t you?’

‘For this week,’ he said, impatient. His mind was on other things. ‘What about your kid? She giving any trouble?’ His voice was a low growl. There was something hypnotic about it.

‘Nah – she hasn’t got a clue about anything. Anyroad – we said you’d got a family, didn’t we?’

‘Oh yeah.’ He thought that was very amusing apparently. ‘My family. My two kids! Come on Dor—’

Mom said ‘Oooh’ and gave a little squeal. Then it went quiet and I knew they were kissing again. After a bit Bob pulled away, giving an impatient sigh. ‘I need more than this, Doreen. I can’t wait for ever, you know.’

‘Oh, I don’t care what anyone thinks!’ Mom squeaked at him. ‘I know I shouldn’t, but I want it too – if only there was a way we could get on our own . . .’

Silence.

‘You do love me, don’t you Bob?’

Lord above, I didn’t want to hear any more of this. I let the curtain drop, reminding myself I’d have to come back later to shut the window.

I was all tight and squirmy inside. As I sat with Len, waiting for her to come in, I thought of my poor old dad in a barn full of rats, of the way he looked at Mom, always wanting, always hopeful.

Cow! I thought to myself. You horrible selfish cow. I felt like killing her.

I didn’t say anything. I started to think I was the only sensible person left around the place, what with Mom and PC Bob and Teresa going doolally over Aston Villa Jack and telling fibs to her mom and dad.

‘Len,’ I said to him one evening, ‘at least I’ve got you. You’ve got more common sense than the rest of them put together.’

‘Yeah.’ Len swayed and grinned. ‘You and me, Genie. You and me.’

The winter set in and our days of limbo crawled past. Work, work, work, was all life consisted of now. All day painting woodstain on the rough bunks with Jimmy the Joiner, as I called him, winking away at me across the small factory floor as he bashed the frames of the bunks together. I started smiling back. What the hell.