Birmingham Blitz (22 page)

I wanted to say something nice but couldn’t think of anything. In fact what I really wanted to do was go and put my arms round him for being kind, for making me feel special. I didn’t do it, but I knew I’d never see Micky Spini in the same way again.

‘Tara,’ was all I said. ‘Hope you get better soon.’

Mary Flanagan’s kids were not the easiest to get to bed. I’d thought of Mary as someone intimidating, forever yelling and carrying on, until she moved in with my nan and I saw her trying to control her kids. It was pitiful.

One night when I was round there the tension of having two families living under one roof was reaching breaking point and although the Corporation had promised to rehouse Mary ‘at the earliest possible opportunity’ so far there was no date.

‘Get up there and stay where I put you or you’ll be feeling my hand across you again,’ Mary was bawling up the stairs in her deep, throaty voice for about the tenth time. Downstairs I was trying to deal with the devastation the kids had caused while they were still up.

Lil sat on the couch chewing her nails as if she’d like to gnash someone’s head off. I could tell she was bubbling inside like a boiler about to explode. She was a stickler for getting her own kids to bed in good time, and once they were there, that was where they stayed, and no messing.

Not long after, despite Mary’s threats and pleas and bribes, we could still hear feet padding back and forth upstairs, then the clattering and squeaking of the bed-frame as the two boys bounced on and off it like little rubber acrobats.

Nan and I exchanged glances in the scullery.

Lil suddenly snapped. ‘Christ Almighty, would you listen to them! They’ll be waking Cathleen again if they carry on like that. What’s the matter with them? Why the hell can’t you get them to do as they’re told? They’re like bloody animals.’

‘I’m doing my best,’ Mary snapped from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Don’t you talk about my kids like that. Eamonn, Colm – I’m coming up to give you a hiding so I am!’

‘They’re unsettled,’ Nanny Rawson said. She was washing up, I was wiping. ‘Poor kids’ve been split up. They’re not used to it.’

‘I don’t bloody well care.’ Lil was on her feet, brown eyes darkened further with fury. ‘I’ve had enough of it. If they come to live in our house they should do as they’re told. We want some peace, no sodding kids running round the place all evening. Some of us have a job of work to do as well you know!’

Suddenly there were wails from upstairs. ‘That’s it!’ Lil exploded. ‘That’s Cathleen. Move, will you.’ She pushed past Mary who was at the foot of the stairs. ‘They’ve really done it now.’

‘Don’t you touch my kids!’ Mary spat at Lil’s back, following her up the stairs.

‘I wouldn’t touch your poxy kids if they were the last ones on earth. I’m going to see to mine now they’ve cowing well gone and woken her up.’ But as she passed through the boys’ room we heard her bawl at them, ‘GET INTO BED AND STAY THERE YOU LITTLE BASTARDS’ at the top of her voice as she went up to Cathleen.

We could hear Cathleen’s weary, half-awake screams downstairs, and it took Lil some time to get her settled again. Eventually she came back down, but the Flanagan boys were still up there tripping the light fantastic with Mary yelling helplessly at them.

‘At least Cathleen’s gone off again,’ Lil said through clenched teeth. ‘I just can’t stand any more of this, I really can’t. Come on, Genie, I’ll take you home.’

‘It’s hardly even dark,’ I protested. ‘I’ll be all right.’ My mind was doing gambols over and over, trying to think what time it was and what exactly might be going on at home.

‘It’s only nine.’ Lil glanced at the clock. ‘I can take you along and sit with you for a while. Have a bit of peace out of this madhouse.’ Lil was already walking out into the spring evening.

‘Just drop me at the door,’ I said. ‘I’ll be all right – really. I’ve walked back much later than this.’

‘Do I smell or summat? I’ve told you – I’ll come and keep you company. See Len. Wait till her in there’s got her act together.’

My mind was racing madly ahead. What the hell were we going to find if Molly was over at our house? And then I remembered. How could I have forgotten? They wouldn’t even be there. Len and Molly had gone to the pictures – big excitement – and wouldn’t be back until after ten. Thank you sweet Jesus.

Lil was carrying on down my ear, sorry for herself, her voice hardly changing tone. Moan tone. ‘I’m that tired I can hardly get about these days. If it’s not work it’s the kids. Sometimes I ask myself why I go on with it all. Why I don’t just go and do the same as Patsy did and jump into the canal?’

‘Don’t say that. You don’t mean it, do you Lil?’

‘I do. Some days I really do. I mean what’s there ever going to be for me now? My life’s over. Only you can’t do a thing like that to your kids, can you?’

I didn’t blame her really. Only I was so relieved, after those moments of outright panic, to think the house would be empty when we got back, I was almost ready to dance down the road.

‘Things’ll get better, Auntie Lil. You’ll get a nice new house and move out – have a garden for the kids.’

‘At the rate Mary’s getting hers it’ll be the turn of the century before they find me one,’ she said despondently. ‘And I’ll be dead by then anyway.’

The house was dark. Blacked out of course, but there were no lights on inside when I opened the front door, finding myself grinning like an idiot with relief.

‘Come on in,’ I said. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

‘Doreen got anything stronger? Drop of port?’

‘Dunno. I’ll look.’

I lit the gaslight in the back room with a spill and found a tipple for Lil. I’d put the kettle on as well and was trying to poke some life into the fire when we heard it from upstairs. Clear and loud and horribly unmistakable.

‘Jesus,’ Lil said. ‘What the . . .?’

I couldn’t answer her. I went straight to a chair, pushed my burning face into it and pulled the cushion over my head as my mother’s cries upstairs reached fever pitch. Knees tucked up on the worn seat of the chair, I curled tight into the smallest speck I could manage.

But Lil was at me, poking my back.

‘Genie . . . Lift your head up. Genie!’ She yanked me out of the chair by one arm. I wouldn’t look at her, just covered my face with my hands, squinting out between my fingers. Lil hissed at me. ‘Who is that up there?’

‘It’s Mom.’ What an admission, my mom behaving like that.

‘I know. I can hear that much. But who the hell is that with her?’

‘Bob.’

‘Who’s Bob when he’s at home?’

‘A copper.’

Lil mouthed air like a fish. ‘Well how long’s this been going on?’

I shrugged. Couldn’t think. I couldn’t think of anything. The noise had calmed down upstairs.

‘The little bitch.’ Lil advanced on the door to the stairs.

‘Lil no, don’t! You can’t!’ But it was like shouting into an avalanche.

My legs were trembling so much as she stomped upstairs that I had to sit down, waiting for all hell to break loose above me. I kept thinking over and over, what are they doing here? They’re not supposed to be here. How could they do this? How could they?

The fight Mom and Lil had that night outdid anything I could ever remember before. Lil was fit to burst with outrage, righteous indignation, fury at being related to such an obvious trollopy bitch of a sister and, though she’d never have admitted it, pure, grass-green jealousy. And Mom – also outrage at being burst in upon while she lay stark naked in candlelight, her head lifting in panic off Bob’s King Kong hairy chest when she heard feet on the stairs. And anger and mortification at being caught in the act of complete, undeniable adultery.

The shouting, sobbing, cursing, slapping and recriminations went on and on. Some time, at about the eye of the storm, Bob slunk downstairs, half dressed in socks, drawers and shirt, looking like an ape in clothes. He pulled on the other bits, the trousers, jacket, even tie, as I sat crying. His shoes came flying down the stairs on the force of Lil shouting, ‘Take these with you, you filthy bastard, and don’t ever come back!’

Bob never said a word to me. Didn’t even look at me. He let himself out and left them to it.

It was soon after that Mom started being sick. Course, not having had a babby myself, the sight of someone heaving over a bucket every morning didn’t automatically make me suspicious.

‘My cooking’s not that bad, is it?’ I said to her.

All I got in reply was a lot of groaning. Some mornings she’d say finally, ‘Oooh, I can’t go to work in this state. I feel terrible.’ And she’d crawl back up to bed and stay there until the middle of the afternoon. She did a lot of crying as well. A real lot.

I started to get worried. ‘Shall I get our nan?’

‘No!’ She found the strength to push herself up on one elbow. ‘Don’t you dare say a word to anyone. D’you hear?’

‘But you look terrible.’

She did too – face greeny white and clammy, hair in greasy strips. The room smelled stale and sweaty.

‘I’ll be better in a while. Just get me some water, and don’t breathe a word to anyone.’

By the evening she’d dress and come downstairs, unsteady on her feet, eat a little bit and sit, silent most of the time. This went on for days. The time that for the rest of us was really the beginning of the war almost passed her by. Suddenly Gloria’s news bulletins were once more the most important notches on which we hung our day. We listened in to
The Nine O’Clock News
in the evening like religious fanatics, shutting up anyone who dared open their mouth to interrupt.

Hitler invaded the Netherlands. More names of places we’d never heard of. More realization that there was a world out there where things were happening. Bombs fell somewhere outside Canterbury. And Mr Churchill became Prime Minister. I liked him. Nearly everyone did, I think, with his way with words. Made you feel carried along and full of strength, not like the others, all muttering away.

‘We have before us,’ he said, ‘an ordeal of the most grievous kind.’

But he made you feel noble, chosen in some way to do it, as if the fate of the world rested on us, each of us. Even Lil, the great sceptic, was impressed. ‘’E makes you feel it might all be worth it, doesn’t ’e?’

Life was beginning to gleam a bit brighter for Lil. Or at least it was going to revert back to what it was before. Mary Flanagan and her kids were to be rehoused in Stanley Street.

‘A front-house too, if you please!’ Lil said. But she didn’t really care whether the Flanagans were being moved into Buckingham Palace so long as they were well out of her hair.

Mom finally admitted one morning, between bouts of sickness, that she was going to have a babby. She was crying when she told me.

‘I can’t keep it to myself any more, Genie. You’re my daughter’ (she’d noticed!) ‘and I’ve got to tell someone.’ She lay back weakly sobbing into the pillow.

I was right out of my depth here. ‘Is it – er . . . is it Bob’s babby?’

‘Course it’s Bob’s!’ she wailed. ‘How many men d’you think I’ve been with the past few months?’

I felt sorry for her. I did, really. Because I knew she didn’t find having babbies any joy, and to cap it all this one was a little bastard and it wouldn’t take the neighbours long to work that out for themselves.

‘Are you going to tell ’im?’

Mom sobbed even louder. I sat down on the bed and touched her shoulder. ‘D’you want a cuppa tea?’

‘No, I don’t want a cuppa tea! How’s that going to help anything?’ Then she softened. ‘Sorry, Genie. No ta.’ She looked bleakly across at the window. I saw dots of white light in her eyes. ‘I want to tell him. I want everything to be all right – for him to want it. But after what happened . . .’

Since the Big Fight with Lil, neither she nor Bob had been near the place. ‘I’m scared he won’t ever want to see me now . . .’ And off she went all over again.

‘D’you want me to find ’im for you? Where does he live?’

‘You can’t go to his house,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘He still lives with his mom and her sister, and he says they’re both proper tartars. Look, he works at Moseley Police Station – if you could take a note?’

The note said, ‘I’ve got to see you. D.’ I made a detour on the way to my nan’s, going to Moseley first.

That night we heard the Germans had bombed Rotterdam. Everyone thought thousands and thousands of people had died, the doom-laden faces were back in my nan’s shop – ‘We’ll be next’ – and everyone started dusting off their gas masks again. Len had to take a cactus in a pot out of his and we sent him off with it again every morning. It was a shock. It was near, and getting nearer. The Dutch capitulated and the next thing was they were moving into France, into Belgium, Antwerp, Liège, Brussels, names falling like ninepins.

‘They’re saying at work,’ Lil told us, ‘that all the Germans’ve got to do is fly over. Some of ’em might even be here already. You got to be careful who you talk to.’

Straight away I had a mad, beautiful daydream that ‘Uncle Bob’ was really a Fifth Columnist spying for the Nazis who would soon be unveiled as the traitor he was, humiliated and tortured in public, then strung up in the Bull Ring to meet as slow and agonizing a death as possible.