Birmingham Rose (16 page)

George woke in the morning often before it was light, to a hard prod from the farmer’s boot and a gruff ‘Get up now’, which was often Mr Evans’ longest utterance of the day. He communicated more readily with a cuff or a kick, as if George was just another of the sheep or dogs from the farm.

Once the snow came, George lived wrapped permanently in the stinking blanket and an old pair of boots of Mr Evans’ that he wore over his own shoes. The snow cut the farm off from everywhere, so there were no letters, there was no one to talk to, not a word of kindness or of even the most basic communication. He lived like the animals: waking, sleeping, eating only when given the chance.

Some time after the thaw came he walked away from the farm one night and reached Llanelli by the morning. From there he jumped trains to Birmingham. He hid his wiry, emaciated body in any cranny necessary to escape the guards on the train, sometimes ducking and dodging as they moved along between carriages. And a couple of days later he was home. They may have abandoned him, but where else did he have to go?

His one remaining, overriding emotion was that of anger towards his family. They had sent him away to this place, left him for months now without a word of contact, as if they didn’t care whether he was dead or alive. And for that he would never forgive them.

Rose moved to Erdington at the end of April and was taken on the night shift at the new ‘shadow’ factory, as the extra factories built to extend wartime production were called, at Castle Bromwich, right on Birmingham’s northern edge. They taught her to use a rivet gun for attaching the metal plates which made up the wings of the Spitfires.

When she first walked through the gates of the huge works she felt so frightened that she nearly turned back and went home again. The rows of long production sheds where they turned out the Spitfires and Lancasters stretched further than she could see. There were people walking about briskly in overalls, all looking as if they knew exactly where they were going.

Workers were needed from any possible source, and Rose found herself working among a wider mix of people than she’d ever been with in her life before. Alongside her stood a girl called Maureen from Londonderry. They worked just far enough apart for there to be little opportunity to chat, but the two of them often sat together in the canteen at break times and became quite friendly. Maureen came from the Catholic side of Derry, and like Rose was from a large family.

‘I’d most likely have come to England anyways, even without the war,’ Maureen told her. ‘But now they’re giving out jobs like First Communion cards, I thought I’d take the chance while it was offered.’

Maureen was a thin, anaemic-looking girl with terrible spots. She was kind and soft-spoken and Rose found her easy enough company. She was also very homesick, and spoke with special affection for the baby of the family, her four-year-old sister Josie.

‘It’s not the same without little ones about,’ Maureen said. ‘I’d give anything to see her.’

One day when she was sitting under the bright lights of the canteen with Maureen, Rose noticed the man with one arm.

‘Hang on a tick,’ she said. ‘I’m going to have a word with him.’

The man was older than many of the employees, and when she got up close to him, Rose saw that on one side of his face the skin was shiny and puckered up as if from a severe burn.

‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I hope you won’t think me rude for asking . . .’

The man turned and smiled with the half of his face that worked. He had one vivacious blue eye; the other was missing. The injured side of his face remained still, as if dead.

‘What’s up love?’ he asked.

‘It’s just when I saw you I thought of my dad. He’s without one arm and a leg from the last war and he hasn’t been in work for years.’

‘Well now’s his chance,’ the man said chirpily. ‘Doesn’t he know they’ll take anyone on nowadays? They’ve found me a little job I can do with one arm – with the petrol tanks. If your dad asks, you can bet they’ll find him something – even if they turn him upside down and sweep the floor with his head!’ He gave a long chesty laugh and Rose couldn’t help joining in.

Within a week Sid was taken on by the Birmingham Small Arms Company, which in peacetime manufactured bicycles and motorcycles. It had reverted to turning out bombs, rockets and guns and all the ammunition needed to feed them. They found him a job packing bullets.

The day he left the house in dungarees to catch a bus to a proper job for the first time in over twenty years, Dora watched him as he pulled himself on his crutch out of Court 11. She reflected with some pride and more bitterness on the irony that her husband, who had been so shattered by the last war, might only begin to feel useful to anyone again now there was a second one in progress.

At the end of May, France fell to the Germans, and a huge flotilla of British boats evacuated all the troops they could transport from the French coast at Dunkerque.

On 2 July, Hitler ordered the invasion of Britain.

‘The Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin,’ Churchill told the House of Commons. ‘The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.’

And the country waited, as if holding its breath for a long descent into deep, dark water.

One night, at the beginning of August, the first bombs to fall on Birmingham dropped on Erdington, in the streets around Albert and Jean’s house.

When she came in from work the next morning, Rose found Jean in a proper state. She was sitting on the old sofa in her dressing gown, with a tearstained face, and clutching Amy and Mary close to her as if she’d never let them go.

‘Thank God you’re all right,’ Rose said, putting her bag down and running to her sister-in-law. ‘You poor things, you must have had an awful night. We heard them come down. We were all in the shelters as well.’

Jean sat and sobbed helplessly. The Anderson shelter down the garden had a puddle right along the middle and it had grown even damper with the condensation from their breath. It had been horrible sitting there all night, cold and scared stiff.

‘I wish Albert was here,’ she cried. ‘He’d know what to do. I hate being here without him. I can’t stand it. And he might never come back!’

‘Look,’ Rose said firmly, wishing Albert had married someone with a bit more to her. ‘You should try and keep things normal for the kids’ sake. Get them dressed and send them out to play.’

‘No!’ Jean protested. ‘I’m not letting them out of my sight – either of them. Them planes could come back any time!’ Her face was getting puffed up with tears.

Rose sighed. ‘Look. Get the kids dressed. Then you give me the ration books and I’ll take them down the shops. That’ll give you a bit of time to pull yourself together and get some things done, won’t it?’

On the streets and in the shops everyone was saying ‘Wasn’t it awful?’

‘We’re not going to stand for that,’ Rose heard a woman say as they queued in the butcher’s. ‘Coming over here and knocking people’s houses down. Who does he think he is?’

They were comments that would recur many times as the bombing intensified. The raids became so much heavier and more frequent that the journey to work in the evening was often hazardous. And then in the morning Rose travelled home, her stomach churning with worry that Jean’s house might not be still standing, and wondering about Dora and the others in Catherine Street.

Every time she got the chance, Rose caught a bus over there. One afternoon in late August Dora’s first words were, ‘Have you heard – the Market Hall’s gone up?’

‘What?’ Rose said, stunned. It seemed impossible that a building she’d known and loved all her life should have been hit.

‘The middle of town’s a right mess,’ Dora said, brewing up tea for Rose. She was delighted to see her, though less likely to show it. ‘Didn’t you see it when you came across? I took the kids in this morning. The Market Hall’s a shell. The roof’s gone – the lot. And what a stink! All burnt and musty. And there was flaming rabbits and guinea pigs running about all over the place.’ She sat down, laughing slightly hysterically. ‘I know I shouldn’t laugh, but I saw this great fat bloke chasing his rabbits all round the churchyard . . .’ She sobered up suddenly. ‘And there was Union Jacks all stuck in the mess – that’s the British for you.’

Rose could see Dora was in a state and trying not to show it. ‘How’s everyone?’

‘All right.’

Rose looked at the worn face in front of her. Dora didn’t look well. She had never really thrown off her cough from last winter and the strain showed in every line of her face.

‘I hope you’re looking after yourself,’ Rose said.

‘I’ll do.’ There was a pause. ‘Could do without spending the night in this thing though.’ She patted the Morrison shelter.

‘What about Dad?’

‘Oh, he’s all right. Better than the rest of us as a matter of fact. He’s palled up with some bloke from the BSA who’s got an allotment over that way. Your dad helps out how he can. Digging for Victory and that.’ Dora smiled, reluctantly. ‘Gives me a bit of peace anyroad. I even heard him whistling the other evening. No, he’s not the problem . . .’

Rose saw her mother’s face cloud over again. ‘George?’

‘He’s started thieving. I found him with a clock this morning and he wouldn’t say where he got it. Next thing is he’s sold it and put the money in his pocket. I reckon it came from one of the houses that got it last night. I’m ashamed of him – I really am. But it don’t seem no good saying anything.’

‘I wish I could do more to help,’ Rose said.

‘You’re doing what you can. And it can’t be a picnic for Jean over there either.’

As autumn came, Dora was taken ill again. Grace gave up work to be with her and take care of the family. The bombing began in real earnest in November. On the fourteenth the centre of Coventry was burned to the ground, and it seemed only a matter of time before the attention of the German Luftwaffe would be turned more fully on Birmingham.

A few days later it began. Night after night the waves of bombers came over, dark, malevolent shadows in the sky. All night searchlights criss-crossed the darkened buildings and the ack-ack guns rattled out their fire.

Across the city fires burned and the water supply was disrupted. In the quiet mornings, after the all clear had sounded, exhausted people emerged blinking and sick with nerves out of the shelters or from under their staircases to the smell of damp, charred masonry, wet plaster and the sour smell of the incendiaries.

One morning, after another heavy raid, Grace arrived just as Rose was about to go to bed.

‘What’s happened?’ Rose shouted down the stairs, seeing Jean letting Grace in. She was down in an instant. ‘What’re you doing here? What’s wrong?’

‘It’s Mom,’ Grace said. She looked pale and exhausted. ‘She’s been taken very bad. We had to get the doctor in after the all clear. He says it’s pneumonia.’

‘Oh my God,’ Rose said. She just stared at Grace, stupid with tiredness.

‘I can look after her,’ Grace assured her hurriedly. ‘Only she’s fretting about the kids. It was so bad last night she wants Harry and the twins over at Edna’s till it’s all over. She’s sure Edna’ll have them.’

Rose felt a momentary pang at the thought of Billy and Susan being sent away, but she knew it was for the best. ‘What about George?’

Grace gave her a look which implied how stupid the question was. ‘I need you to come and stay over a night at Mom’s while I take them over. It’ll be too much to do it in a day.’

Rose thought for a second. ‘I can get Maureen to swap with me for tomorrow. She’ll do anything for kids. I’ll get over early. Do me a favour and don’t go till I’ve had a chance to see them.’

Grace nodded, knowing Rose felt they were almost her own. ‘Make sure you’re over sharpish though.’

*

As Rose made her way home the next day she was horrified at the extent of the damage wreaked on the city. She sat in her old grey coat, looking out of the window of the bus. Some of the solid edges that had outlined her existence were gone. It was shocking, impossible, as if the very foundations of life were shuddering underneath her.

Two of the houses at the end of Catherine Street were down. The house next to them had been shattered in half, some of it still intact, with a chest of drawers with clothes spilling out and a picture still untouched on the inside wall. It seemed indecent: the details of the private parts of people’s lives hanging there on display.

Grace hadn’t told her how bad it was. She must have wanted to avoid worrying her any more.

She gave the little ones as cheerful a send-off as she could. Dora was upstairs in bed and had already said her goodbyes.

‘Why do we have to go?’ Susan raised her dark eyes to Rose with a puzzled frown.

‘Well, it’s because of all the big bangs you keep hearing in the night,’ Rose told her.

‘We don’t like the bangs,’ Billy whispered.

‘No. Well, it’ll be quieter at Auntie Edna’s. And there’s a lot more space to run about. And Harry’ll look after you – won’t you?’

Harry nodded, holding on to a very old rag doll that had been Violet’s.

‘I tell you what,’ Rose said. ‘I’ve got something for you two to look after for me.’

She ran upstairs, and when she came down after a few minutes she put into Susan’s hand a small wooden elephant and into Billy’s the roughly carved little wooden horse. Both of them beamed with delight.

‘I’ll put him in bed when we get there, ’cos he’ll be tired,’ Susan said solemnly.

‘That’s right. You look after them for me until I see you – all right?’

Rose found Dora in a bad state. She was very weak and her breathing through her one good lung was laboured and noisy. She had a high fever and was drifting in and out of consciousness. Rose sat beside her most of the day, offering her sips of water, bathing the hot, sallow skin of her face and rubbing camphorated oil on her chest. When Rose became so tired she could no longer stay upright, she lay and slept beside her.

In the early evening, when Dora opened her eyes and seemed fully conscious for the first time, Rose said, ‘They’ve gone off all right.’