Birmingham Blitz (23 page)

Shame life isn’t that simple. When he finally turned up I let him in, still in his uniform.

‘Awright, Genie?’ He was very short with me, pushed past into the hall. We’d had no warning of him coming. Len was still at work at one of his endless shifts at Austin Aero. Luckily Mom was up and dressed and had managed to get some soup down her. She was wearing an old dress, and had dragged a comb through her hair. I didn’t get a chance to warn her, what with old Charmschool barging in like that. I heard her say ‘Bob!’ startled. She struggled weakly to stand up and held on to the back of the chair, smiling so sweetly at him, really trying hard.

‘What d’you want?’ I couldn’t quite make out his tone. It wasn’t angry or abrupt, more cautious and slippery.

‘I er, didn’t get a chance to say sorry. About what happened. My sister . . .’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Can’t ever get away from your family, can you? One way or another?’

Bob didn’t look particularly amused. ‘Is that it? I haven’t got a lot of time tonight.’

‘Bob, please.’ Mom’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Don’t be like that. It was our fault. We shouldn’t have been there – not then. Genie wasn’t to know . . . Look, Bob, stop—’ He was starting to turn away. ‘I’ve summat to tell you. Genie – leave us alone, will you? There’s a good girl.’

I went upstairs, feeling sick at everything that was happening. I didn’t want PC Bob anywhere within shouting distance of our house.

It didn’t take her long to tell him. Didn’t take him long to get to the front door either. Within minutes I heard it slam, and Mom’s howls of despair from downstairs. I found her lying along the hall on her front, arms stretched out as if she was heaving on an invisible rope, trying to pull Bob back.

‘Oh please,
please
. . .’ she moaned, until the words gave out to sobs with no sound coming at all.

Then there was a great banging on the door. I stepped over Mom. There was Molly, a big grin on her pork pink face. ‘Is Lenny in yet?’

‘No, he sodding well isn’t!’ I yelled at her, guilty for it before I’d even finished. ‘Sorry, Molly. No, he’ll be back later tonight.’

Molly peered in between my legs at Mom’s head on the floor behind me. ‘Everything all right, is it Genie?’

‘No, Molly, it’s not,’ I said savagely, and slammed the door in her simple face.

‘Nan, there’s summat you’re going to have to know.’

Mom told me to tell her and Auntie Lil, because she couldn’t face doing it herself. I told our nan first. Didn’t want Lil there ranting and raving.

We had a few quiet moments in the shop. Nan was sorting through sugar coupons. She looked round at me. I could see she was sort of steeling herself for something she half dreaded already.

‘It’s Mom. She’s expecting.’ My cheeks were aching hot. I couldn’t look Nan in the eye. ‘The babby’s Bob’s.’

Nan bent her head and pushed the coupons into her battered tin cashbox, her fingers working fast and nervously. I watched her strong profile, dark hair swept round, half covering her ears. ‘Nan?’

‘What?’

‘Did you hear me?’

She bent to push the cashbox under the worm-riddled counter. ‘I may be a lot of things, Genie, but I’m not deaf.’

‘I just thought you’d say something.’

Nan stood up. She looked tired. ‘What d’you want me to say? That she’s a fool? That she’s throwing away a perfectly good marriage? Your father may not be a Rudolph Valentino if that’s what she was after, but ’e’s been a good husband to her. ’E’s a worker. ’E’s never laid a finger on ’er and ’e’s looked after you and seen you all right. What more does she want?’ She passed a hand back over her forehead. ‘I don’t know.’

She let herself through into the house at the back. I heard her moving the kettle on the range and wondered where it was Nanny Rawson kept her feelings about all the horrible things that happened. She must have had a hump hidden somewhere where she could store and absorb them like a camel.

I followed her through. ‘Mom’s bound to ask what you said.’

Nan didn’t even turn to look at me. ‘No point in me killing the messenger is there? Tell ’er she knows where ’er family are. We ain’t going nowhere.’

‘Is there any news, love?’

Vera had run up to Nan’s shop in a pair of battered old slippers for a packet of fags.

‘I didn’t know you smoked.’

‘I do today.’ She bought matches too and lit up straight away.

‘The last letter we had was all wiggly,’ I told her. ‘He said he was writing in the wireless truck while they were moving along. Said he’d seen German planes dropping bombs and a great big crater where they’d blown up a farmhouse.’

Vera grimaced. I wasn’t sure if it was at what I’d said or the cigarette. ‘I bet your mom’s worried ain’t she, poor thing? If there’s anything I can do to help . . .?’

‘Ta.’ I couldn’t think of anything at all I could say about Mom’s state of mind at that moment. When Dad’s letter came she cried and cried.

‘Poor Victor. My poor Victor.’ Tears of remorse. She’d almost forgotten he existed over the past months and now she could see he wasn’t so bad after all.

I changed the subject quickly. ‘Mr Spini any better?’

‘He’s awright – it’s taking time.’ Vera shrugged. ‘Teresa’s the one who’s trouble – always wanting to be somewhere else away from us. She doesn’t do as she’s told and she makes Micky furious.’ Vera was starting to wave her arms. ‘We don’t know what she’s getting up to. She won’t listen to us. She and Micky had a set-to the other night because he tried to make her stay in and she disobeyed him. If he was in better health she’d’ve more than felt his hand across her.’ She sighed heavily. ‘As if there ain’t enough to worry about. What she needs is to find a Catholic boy like her – one of the lads from St Michael’s. Mixed marriages only cause trouble.’

‘Oh, I’m sure she’s not thinking of getting married!’ I laughed. Vera’s mind always ran on to the worst possible. Teresa marrying a Protestant!

She smiled suddenly, sheepish. ‘You think I’m stupid. But she don’t tell us what she’s doing or where she is. It’s not right. I wish she could be more grown up and sensible like you, Genie. D’you think you could have a word with her?’

Mom was managing to pull herself together by dinnertime these days, have a bit to eat and get to work.

‘The babby won’t show for a bit yet, so I’m not going to get asked any awkward questions. If I don’t get out I’ll only sit here feeling sorry for myself.’ This came as a bit of a surprise to me because I’d thought that was exactly what she would do. What with Bob taking off and his bun in the oven I thought she’d be about ready for the canal herself. But after a few days of pure misery while she mourned her rejection by PC Bob and leaned on me as if I was an iron doorstop, she became almost cheerful. I was baffled. She started going on about my dad.

‘I’ve never given Victor enough credit for what he’s given all of us,’ she said one evening. ‘He’s been a good husband and father – not like some. And he’s given me you and Eric. It’s time I acted like a proper wife to him.’

I was so relieved she wasn’t in the depths of despair at this point that I didn’t think to ask her what she imagined Dad was going to say when he came home to find this little cuckoo in the nest. Surely she wasn’t going to con him again with one of her record pregnancies?

Lil, who’d already had her say in no uncertain terms, came to the conclusion that that was exactly what she was going to do. ‘He was here December,’ she said in her sarky voice. ‘And the babby’s due about next December. So it’ll be a good three months shorter than the first time, any rate. Poor old Victor, he must love her, God help ’im.’

‘Well don’t you go interfering,’ Nanny Rawson told her. ‘We’ve enough trouble already without you letting fresh air in your gob out of place.’

In the meantime, I got myself a new job. Nanny was recovered, barring a stiff knee. ‘You want to get out and earn yourself some more wages,’ she said. ‘I’m all right ’ere now.’

Lewis Broadbent’s foundry was an old family firm with a good reputation in the back streets of Highgate. In peacetime they made brass plumbers’ ware – taps and sink bases, washers and screws, but for the war effort the firm had gone over to making caps for shells and petrol cans, and other small parts.

A middle-aged woman called Doris with jet-black hair and watery brown eyes showed me round the factory, which was hot from the furnaces where they heated the brass, and noisy with the clank of metal and the chunking of the pressing machines.

I was taken on in the warehouse at the back as a checker. It was a wide, not very well lit area with rows of women working at long tables. Doris slotted me into a work place at the end of a table and showed me how to look over the parts, searching them for mistakes or rough bits.

‘See this one—’ She showed me the inside of a petrol cap. ‘The thread’s not taken properly. You’d never be able to screw that up.’

After checking, we had to wrap the parts in tissue paper and a layer of brown paper and string and pack them in tea chests to go to other factories needing the parts.

It kept me busy enough, that did. We were all working flat out and quite honestly it was nice to get away from my family for a bit. I began to see Teresa’s point. Out in the warehouse I was almost the babby of the place. There was just one other girl anywhere near my age, a year older, very pert, called Nancy. She had little freckles on her nose and auburn eyebrows plucked to a thin line. The other women were mom’s age and older. They treated me very well and looked after me in a motherly way. In between chat about the job I learned about their families, those with good husbands and bad, those with none at all, who was in a reserved occupation, who’d signed up, and about their children, mothers-in-law, landlords. And about the Broadbent family who owned the factory. Everyone seemed agreed that Lewis Broadbent was second only to God, that his wife Betty was a scheming hypochondriac, his two daughters no better than they ought to be and his son, who was in the RAF, had the sun shining out of various bits of his anatomy. Nancy went silly at the very mention of Joe Broadbent’s name.

‘’E’s all set to take over the factory when this lot’s over,’ one of the women said, waving her hand over the petrol caps as if they were the war itself.

‘’E’s got no airs and graces though, Joe, has ’e? Comes in and knuckles down to any job ’e’s given. Knows how the place works backwards.’

‘You’d hardly believe ’e was related to the two sisters, would you?’ Nancy said bitchily.

‘Ooh, she’s got her eye on ’im all right,’ someone teased and Nancy looked round coyly.

‘Just hope they look after ’im in the airforce . . .’

The talk turned, and then one of them said to me, ‘You got yourself a nice fella, ’ave you, Genie?’

I shook my head, not looking up.

‘Go on – why not?’

‘Don’t tease her – she’s only young yet,’ a voice said.

I thought with a pang of Jimmy, and of Walt. I’d messed up my chances good and proper with both of them. Oh well, I thought, giving a shrug inside myself. So what. Who cared anyway?

When it came to Dunkirk it was everyone’s news, everyone’s war suddenly, and for those last days of May no one could talk or think of anything else. Gloria was on for every news bulletin whenever anyone was in. Mom, still sick, was in a shocking state.

One evening when it was all going on, Auntie Lil turned up. She came to bury the hatchet and not, for once, in the back of Mom’s head.

‘You still bad, Dor?’ she asked, sweet as jam.

Mom was sitting writing to Eric, and Lil’s sympathy sent her all weepy. ‘I’ve not been into work I feel that terrible.’ Her appearance had gone all to pieces. She was gaunt, her skin the colour of porridge.

‘Come on now,’ Lil said. ‘Genie and I’ll help you, won’t we love?’ She pushed Mom back down into a chair. ‘You need some company – get Stella over for a chat.’

‘She don’t care. Never seen her for dust – some friend that one,’ Mom said despondently.

‘Never mind. You just stay there and we’ll see to everything.’

‘I thought you hated me!’ Mom sobbed.

‘What’s done can’t be undone,’ Lil said. ‘Here – I brought you a bottle of stout for later. Buck you up.’

Lil was a busy sort. Spun round the place doing housework as if it was a race. She’d always been like that. Patsy and Tom, who’d come down with her, were out in the garden playing in the evening sun. Before I could blink hardly, Lil had brewed up tea, dusted and tidied downstairs, rinsed and hung out a bucket full of washing and was all for setting in on the cooking.

I watched her as I worked on carrots and parsnips for our tea, her sleek body bending and straightening in the garden as she pegged out, shouting to the boys now and then. Her life had been the same for so long, I thought, and wondered if it’d ever be any different for her, for any of us.

‘How is Eric?’ she called to Mom as she came in with the empty washpail.

‘He’s all right.’ We could hear the emotion in Mom’s voice. She was never more than a breath away from tears these days. They seeped up into her eyes at the mention of all sorts of things: Dad, Eric, the babby, the war, going to work, sometimes even the thought of getting up in the morning. ‘He doesn’t write much. That Mrs Spenser’s got her claws into him – Victor said when he took Eric down there she had ever such a nice house and she nearly jumped on Eric as if he was her own.’ She gave a little wail. ‘It’s not right. I feel as if I’ve lost him.’