Birmingham Blitz (50 page)

‘Your dad – dead?’

She lowered her hands despairingly. ‘They didn’t even bother to let us know. Probably didn’t think a wop traitor was worth it.’ I’d never heard such hate in her voice before. ‘They just sent Stevie out to do it for them.’

‘When, Teresa? What happened?’

‘Stevie says a fortnight ago. He caught pneumonia. No one’d do anything, although Stevie went on and on at them – said Dad’s lungs were already bad and he needed attention. They didn’t get him to hospital until it was already too late.’ She thumped her fist on the bed, her face twisted with anger. ‘No one was there when he died. None of us. Not even Stevie.’

‘Oh God, Teresa. I’m so sorry.’ I thought of Nonna Amelia’s death, all the family waiting to hand her gently into it. And Micky so much younger, shouldn’t have died at all. Micky who was told the Mother of God would catch him when he fell.

Teresa wiped her red eyes. ‘I’ve been to see you before but you was too poorly. You looked really bad.’

‘Felt it.’

‘I’m sorry – your mom, Lenny . . . It’s terrible, Genie.’

I nodded. ‘Your dad, Teresa – he was good to me.’

‘I know. I knew when he’d gone – what I’d missed. And then when I got to know Carlo properly I started wanting to know all about his life over there, Dad’s childhood, his mom and that. I used to get fed up with him trying to tell me – I was so arrogant. I thought, when he gets back I’ll be able to ask him . . .’ She trailed off, wiping her eyes. ‘Oh, what’s the use?’

She shifted closer and we put our arms round each other.

‘God, Genie, you’re skinny!’

‘I can feel your bones too.’

We rested our cheeks together.

‘When Carlo and I get married, will you be my bridesmaid?’

I squeezed her. ‘Course I will.’

I stayed in just about all the time, mostly up in my room, often lying on the lumpy bed but not asleep, not exactly awake, but in a weak, dreamlike state brought on by my illness. When I thought about moving I had to concentrate hard to make an arm move or a leg. Mister often came and lay on my bed to keep me company and I liked his warm weight by my feet.

Now and then I found the strength to go down, even outside. But people stared, and once I had Clarys bitching at me in the yard. ‘I hope you ’aven’t brought your bombs with you.’ People believed that, that the bombs followed you. Not that we were having much in the way of bombing at the moment anyhow. But I stayed in. It was freezing out. Now and then I sat down by the fire, Mister at my feet. I switched Gloria on, stroked her sometimes. She was all that was left of home as it had been.

Lil and Nan were just getting on with it. Keeping going. The shop opened, the jobs got done, Nan’s hair was suddenly almost white, the skin looser on her face. Lil too looked very haggard, but everyone was gentle. We knew we were all we had.

Now I’d surfaced I started to remember other things. That it was nearly Christmas for one. And that Lil had lost Frank. She never mentioned him, just came and went, looking after me and Cathleen like an angel. She even tried to decorate the house up a bit for the season.

‘What’re you going to do, Lil?’ I asked her, watching her hang snippets of holly on the mantel. I was huddled in my nightdress and a coat by the fire. ‘You going back to the factory?’

She stood back to eye up her decoration. ‘No.’ I saw her chin come out, determined. ‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I may not be able to have Frank, but one thing I’ve got out of all this is that shop. I was doing well at it – got a bit of a flair for it.’

‘But Lil, is it real? It looked like a big con, that lady thinking the egg-holders were the Alps and that?’

‘Depends on your attitude,’ Lil said seriously. ‘Course you can trick people. Tell ’em any old rot. But there’s a skill to the cards and the palm reading and the rest. You can use your instinct. Really try and feel your way into a person, who they are. I can do it – I know I can. People trust me. Sort of open up to me. I’m going to keep the lease and make a go of it. Make it nice inside with a little grotto for the crystal ball and the palm readings. I’ve coped on my own before and I can do it again.’ She grinned at me suddenly. ‘Not as if Frank’s the only bloke in the world, is it?’

She frowned then. ‘Why aren’t you opening your letters, Genie?’

Our post came redirected now, from the old house.

‘Letter. There’s only been one.’

‘Well – one then?’

I shrugged, looking down, pulling the old brown coat close over my knees. ‘Don’t, Lil.’

‘Don’t what?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ I’d thought he’d stopped writing. I was glad. It was over. But then this other one had come.

Lil knelt down in front of me, staring up into my face. ‘You loved him, Genie. Don’t shake your head at me. It was clear as anything.’

I stood up, pushing her away, my throat aching with tears.

‘I told you, I don’t want to talk about it. You don’t know what you’re on about. Just leave it.’

I went up to bed again, swallowing hard, Mister following me, his claws loud on the wood stairs.

We got ready for Christmas out of habit, even though there was nothing to celebrate except the lack of bombing. The night air had been a lot quieter lately. You could sleep right through if habit allowed you. Preparing for Christmas was a way of remaining steady, keeping some of the normal things going when the rest had been smashed apart.

Nan ran the shop, accepted people’s condolences and put up with blokes coming and going to mend Morgan’s roof. Morgan was desperate to get back his access to a private place away from his elderly mom as soon as possible and he kept coming and eyeing up the work, demanding to know how many days it would take. It was a sign of how things were that Nan made not a murmur. Even the thought of Morgan creeping back and forth had suddenly become a sign of longed for normality.

We didn’t speak about Mom or Len much. We all knew what had happened to Mom and no one wanted to bring it out in the open. It was too terrible. Nan hadn’t even been able to see her at the end. In secret shame I wondered how Mom’s life would’ve gone on if she’d lived. Would I have kept finding her eyeing up the gas oven until one day she finished it that way for good?

Instead of talking about Len, we talked of Molly. She was heartbroken, poor thing.

‘We’ll have to give her any help we can,’ Nan said. ‘After all, I’m the babby’s grandmother, aren’t I?’ It was clear to see that if there was ever a little babby going to be swamped with doting nans, this would be the one.

On Christmas Eve we sat round the fire, Nan and Lil drinking hot toddies. Cathleen, full of excitement, was allowed up late and the rest of us were doing our best for her, although I could tell Lil was low. She and Cathleen were missing the boys and it’d really hit home tonight. She’d sent parcels for them out to Leek and was toying with the idea of bringing them home.

‘It’s not over yet,’ Nan said, swirling her drink round to cool it. ‘Now you’ve sent them you might as well wait till it’s safe for ’em – even if it is
his
aunt. She’s good to them by all accounts, and you don’t want Tom all worked up again.’

‘So you don’t think I was all wrong sending them?’

‘No. Even if your reasons were dodgy at the time.’

‘I do hope they’re all right,’ Lil fretted.

‘They sound it. Sure you don’t want a drop of this, Genie?’ Nan offered.

‘No ta.’ I stuck to tea. Mom’d given me a horror of drink. I’d have signed the pledge the way I felt about it. And I still wasn’t well. I felt feverish again tonight, turning hot and cold, my hands shaking so I could only just control the cup.

‘Look at the state of her,’ Lil said. ‘You poor kid.’

I tried to give her a smile.

We had carol singers round, kids mostly, and stood outside the front door listening, door closed because of the blackout. Their feet crunched on the frost and I was shivering.

‘Once in Royal David’s City,’ they sang, not quite in tune but well enough to make you fill up. Made me think of those stories of the last war – the Christmas truces, carols floating across the trenches. How blooming peculiar the world was.

The singing brought our emotions to the surface and we couldn’t stand much of it. We gave them a couple of coppers to get rid of them. We hadn’t sung together at all. Not without Mom and Len. Back inside we were all quiet, full of that swell of emotion that Christmas brings, but for each of us this time, an unbearable amount worse. It brought us up against all we’d lost. I knew everyone was thinking of it.

In the end Lil said, ‘You’re going to have to take her place now, Genie. Should we sing, Mom?’

We both looked at Nan. Her jaw tensed. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t think so. Not yet.’

We got Cathleen ready for bed, eyes still bright with excitement, like a Christmas angel herself in her little nightdress. I thought of how she used to sleep in her raggedy vest and bloomers before the war when times had been so hard for Lil.

‘You get off to sleep now,’ Lil and I told her. ‘Or Father Christmas won’t come.’ Lil had bought her a puzzle and a cheap little ornament, a mermaid with a shiny blue tail. She was going to love it.

On the way down from saying goodnight to her I came over dizzy and had to sit down quick to stop myself falling downstairs. Lil looked at me anxiously.

‘You’re not right yet, are you? Nowhere near.’

‘No. I feel pretty bad. I’m going to turn in too.’

I lay in the dark feeling the fever come over me in hot waves, shivering one minute, pushing the covers off the next, sea-tides of hot and cold pushing me back and to. Thoughts seemed to clang into my mind harder than usual, chopped up, distorted by fever. Thoughts of how this house felt like a home to me, always had, downstairs, Nan’s shop, how I’d once dropped a drawer full of reels of coloured cotton and they’d bounced and spun off all over the shop going ‘plok-plok’ on the floor and it seemed to take for ever to pick them up. The sound echoed loud now in my mind. Eric had been there, a babby then, crawling round the floor, and he stopped, mouth wide open, head turning this way and that and not knowing which one to watch. Everyone paraded through my mind – Dad, Len, Mom, Bob. That fantastic feel of Bob’s thumb crunching between my teeth.

I was asleep yet not asleep. I knew Mister had jumped off my bed and pattered off downstairs. He was barking for a time. Gloria must’ve been on. Music, then voices talking on and on. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, and whether I’d slept in the middle of it.

There was a light in the room, the unsteady glow of a candle, very vivid. Not a dream. Lil come to look in on me. Very drowsy, my eyes kept opening and closing.

‘Can I have some water?’ I managed to say in a hoarse whisper.

I thought I heard her talking, low voices, and I said, ‘What?’ Then the cold cup came to my lips as I half sat up, cold suddenly, teeth knocking against it. I opened my eyes, sipped. ‘Ta.’

Not Lil. Was this a dream? Joe sitting on my bed, face full of anxiety. I heard myself gasp.

‘Genie?’

‘Joe. Joe?’ In my weakness I lay back in the bed and found I was already crying. The wave broke over me, a great wash of tears that I couldn’t hurry or stop. I heard the forgiveness in his voice even when he’d said so little, I saw it in his face, and it began to release everything. The terrible loss, the pain and fear and guilt of these past weeks that had been locked down in me, keeping him out, punishing myself as unworthy of him.

He knelt by the bed and took me in his arms as I sobbed hoarsely. ‘It’s all right.’ He held his cool cheek against my burning one. ‘It’s all right now, my love. Sssh, my sweet one.’

‘I’m s-s-sorry, Joe. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

I felt him take in a deep, shuddering breath and I clung to him, this miracle of love and forgiveness who’d appeared out of my dreams.

‘Mom’s dead. And Len.’

‘I know. Your auntie Lil told me.’

I frowned, all muddled up. ‘When?’

‘Just now. I’ve just got in. From the station. I wrote and said I was coming . . . I know, you’ve had a terrible time.’

‘Did she tell you Mom tried to gas herself?’

His head jerked back, horrified. No, she wouldn’t have done.

‘I felt so bad. So ashamed. I let everyone down. I thought you were too good for me. That’s why I didn’t . . . couldn’t . . .’

‘Sssh, Genie. It’s OK.’ He soothed me like a little kid and that was just how I felt. I wanted someone to be my mom, my dad, my love, all in one. He sat me up and held me on his lap, stroking my hair.

‘I didn’t write because I thought—’ I was still sniffing and gulping. ‘I don’t know what I thought. I just hated myself and it made me think you couldn’t want to see me again.’

‘I was worried.’ There was a flash of hurt, of anger. ‘Your letters were what kept me going, see. But Dad said he’d been to see you and said something about your mom being bad so I thought maybe you were too busy to write.’

I looked up into Joe’s face. Mr Broadbent hadn’t passed on my message. Not what I’d really said. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to hurt Joe. Or did he just plain not believe me?

‘Soon as I got here I had to come and prove to myself things hadn’t changed. And of course when I got to your house, I saw—’ I could hear tears in his voice. ‘Jesus, I thought you were dead, Genie. You were dead and that’s why I hadn’t heard anything. When I saw your house – smashed up, gone – I felt as if everything had been destroyed, everything I’d hoped for, all we talked about doing together. Torn apart. It was the worst moment I can remember, ever.’