Chrissie's Children (38 page)

Sophie said drily, ‘Well, it could be her ration for months.’

However, they both knew Gurney had been right and Martha had been selling tea on the black market. Chrissie remembered his talk of Martha drinking and finding the rent by making money ‘in
other ways’. Her mother had died as she had lived.

Chrissie organised the funeral and stood dry eyed with Sophie as her mother’s body was interred. Then she and her daughter went home.

‘
Tack! Tack! Tack! Tack! Tack!
’ Chrissie looked up from her desk, at first refusing to believe what she had heard.

Sophie had accompanied Chrissie home but only stayed for one night. She had left to make a tour of army camps and airfields before going back to work for the Leslie Taylor Band in London.
Chrissie went back to running the rebuilt Railway Hotel. The Ballantyne had been requisitioned by the government in January 1940, soon after the outbreak of war, and was now a hostel for workers
directed into the town. Dinsdale Arkley managed the hostel and Chrissie the Railway Hotel. Sarah – Ballantyne since her marriage to Tom in 1940 – worked for and with both of them. The
two women had become very close.

It was on a morning in early October that Chrissie sat in her office in the Railway Hotel, working through the correspondence that had arrived that morning, and listened in disbelief. Then the
dry rattle came again: ‘
Tack! Tack! Tack! Tack! Tack!
’

Chrissie had never heard one before but knew it was a machine-gun. She swung out of her chair and around the desk and ran. She shouted to the girl in reception, ‘
Air Raid! Sound the
alarm!
’ then dashed on along the corridor leading to the rear of the building. The jangle of the fire alarm filled the corridor as she reached the door at the end of it and passed through
into the yard. Then she heard the belated banshee wailing of the air-raid warning sirens.

Billy Hackett was in the yard. Thirteen years old now and home from school for a half-term holiday, he was looking after the two toddlers as they played. Chrissie snatched up Jean, Tom and
Sarah’s one-year-old, and grabbed the arm of three-year-old Robert, Matt and Helen’s son. She tugged him along, his short legs barely touching the ground so that he skipped, making for
the brick-built surface air-raid shelter that took up a quarter of the yard.

She heard a whistling, and knew what caused it, had heard it too often. She shouted, ‘In the shelter, Billy!’ and herded him before her, seeing his frightened face turned to her, to
push him in at the door of the shelter. The whistle became a scream as they stumbled in the cold, concrete darkness of the shelter. Then the floor of solid concrete shuddered under them, the blast
blew open the door behind them and snatched at their clothing. The
boom!
of the explosion deafened them and dust boiled in at the open door.

Chrissie realised young Robert was clinging to her leg and she released his arm then used that free hand to search for the shelf and the torch standing on it. She found it and flicked the
switch. The beam was feeble and she made a mental note to get another battery for it, though that would be difficult since they were in short supply. Nevertheless, the light cut through the
swirling dust cloud and showed Billy comforting little Robert, though he was scared himself but trying to hide it. Jean, the baby, in the crook of Chrissie’s arm, had her face scrunched up,
eyes shut and mouth wide open. It was a second or two before Chrissie realised she had been deafened by the bomb and could not hear the child wailing.

There were three benches, one along each wall of the shelter except that pierced by the door. They served as bunks or seats. Chrissie sank down on one, feeling her legs give loosely under her.
Billy sat beside her, holding Robert on his knee. All of them were covered in the dust that still hung in the air. Chrissie and Billy tried to soothe the young children and waited tensely for
another bomb. It did not come. The dust settled and their hearing returned, their breathing slowed to normal. Then the door was pushed open again and Sarah cried frantically, ‘Mother! Are you
there?’ Then as she saw the little group huddled together in the light of the torch: ‘Oh, thank God!’

She said she had been working on the top floor of the hotel, had been halfway down the stairs when the bomb exploded, and had feared for them. Chrissie surrendered Jean and Sarah clutched her
baby. So they waited together until the sirens sounded the all-clear.

They found every window in the hotel shattered and the yard where the children had played full of broken glass. They learned that the aircraft had been a lone raider which had sneaked in past
the defences. It had dropped one big bomb – a landmine – that had fallen two streets away, flattening two buildings and killing several people.

Chrissie looked at the damage to the hotel and said, ‘We’ll have to find somewhere inside for the bairns to play, then we’ll clear up this lot.’

They faced an awesome task, but before they had been at work an hour Peter Robinson walked in at the front door of the hotel. He stared around at the dirt and broken glass and said grimly,
‘I don’t have to ask. A porter told me about it when I got off the train five minutes ago.’

Chrissie wiped a dirty hand across her brow, smearing it. ‘Peter! By lad, it’s lovely to see you!’

He smiled at her. ‘Nice to be here. We berthed in the Tyne this morning.’ Peter had his second mate’s ‘ticket’ now, earned by his hard work and courage, and the
quicker promotion to meet the demands of wartime. His ship was a coaster on the East Coast convoy run, from the North East down to London and back again. He had seen a lot of ships sunk by U-boats
and E-boats but wore no uniform, just a small badge in the lapel of his jacket bearing the letters ‘MN’ for Merchant Navy. He said, ‘I have to go back tomorrow night but
I’ll give you a hand here.’

Chrissie protested, ‘You’re entitled to a rest while you’re between convoys!’ but he insisted, and by nightfall the broken windows were boarded up and the hotel was
trading as usual.

His ship sailed the following night, and just twelve hours later, on a Saturday morning, Matt Ballantyne walked into Chrissie’s office in the Railway Hotel. She looked up and saw him, tall
and broad as his father now and in the khaki serge battledress of the Royal Army Medical Corps, the three stripes of a sergeant on his sleeve. He held his beret in his hand and his once unruly
sandy hair was clipped short and neatly combed. Chrissie clapped her hands in delight and ran from her desk to kiss him. ‘Matt! How long have you got?’

He grimaced at the question then grinned good naturedly. ‘People always ask the same thing when you come on leave: “How long have you got?” Or “When do you go
back?”’

‘Only because we want to make the most of the time while you’re here.’ Chrissie hung on to him happily, feeling the solid strength of him. Then she saw his attention had
strayed and she pulled away. ‘But you want to see the bairn!’ and Matt stepped past her to where Robert and little Jean played before the fire.

Matt squatted on his heels in front of his son, who looked at him shyly because he had only seen his father for a few days at a time when Matt had leave, and was still uncertain of this big
stranger. But he relaxed with the innocent confidence of a child as Matt played with the children, helping to build a house with a box of blocks.

Chrissie brought Sarah to see Matt and he smiled up at her and asked, ‘How’s Tom?’

She smiled brightly. ‘He’s fine. I get a letter three or four times a week. I don’t know what he’s doing – except flying, of course.’ Tom was in Bomber
Command.

When it was time for the children’s midday meal Matt said, ‘I’ll go up to the hospital and see Helen.’

He met her outside a ward where she had just finished rounds. She was a medical student, in white coat with a stethoscope around her neck that dug into his chest as she hugged him. They walked
in the grounds and talked of Robert. Then Matt said, ‘Now I know what I want to do with my life.’ He had been at Dieppe and seen too many men die, knew how precious life was and was
conscious of his own mortality.

That night before they slept Chrissie said, ‘It was good to see Matt home again.’

Jack grunted happy agreement. ‘I’m looking forward to having him back in the yard.’

But Matt would never return to the yard.

‘It will be a challenge, of course.’ Ursula Whittle, spruce in a Scotch tweed suit, smiled brightly at Chrissie but blinked behind her spectacles. ‘No doubt
the boys will try to take advantage of me but I’ll be ready for them.’ She had been given a post at the local grammar school, which was short of teachers because so many of its young
men had gone to the war. The smile hid uncertainty. Ursula had grown in confidence over the years but now she would be breaking new ground. She had come for reassurance.

Chrissie gave it: ‘Just start as you mean to go on. Jump on the first one who disobeys or gives you cheek. They’ll soon settle down when they know how they stand. I’m sure
you’ll be a success.’

Ursula would give heed to the words later but it was the underlying reassurance coming from Chrissie that she took in. Her smile became less brittle as she relaxed. ‘Where’s Sophie?
And Tom?’

Now Chrissie could have done with some reassurance. She laughed ruefully, ‘Tom is at the same airfield in Lincolnshire but I don’t know about Sophie.’

In fact, at that moment Sophie stood on a makeshift stage fashioned from oildrums and planks on a desert airstrip. A solitary piano accompanied her as she sang song after song for a thousand men
sitting on the sand under a blazing sun. A press photographer was there and took a picture. It appeared in a newspaper some weeks later, and in a shipyard on the Clyde McNally passed a copy to the
man who sat beside him as they ate their sandwiches. Gallagher glared at the photograph then crumpled the paper in his big fist. ‘We’ll get even with the bitch one o’ these
days!’

Then one morning the telegraph boy in his pillbox cap pedalled his bicycle up to the Railway Hotel and took a telegram from the pouch on his belt. It was for Sarah, and Chrissie opened it for
her. ‘Regret to inform you Flight-Lieutenant Thomas Ballantyne missing . . .’ Sarah held Jean in her arms, all she had left of Tom.

May 1945

Almost three years after that telegram, Peter Robinson stood duffel-coated on the bridge of his ship in the last of the night and looked out at the lights. There were the red
and green navigation lights of other vessels in the middle distance and further still to westward lay a line of white radiance that marked the coast of Norfolk. The lights were still strange after
six years of war, blacked-out countryside and cities, darkened ships.

The war in Europe was over. He no longer had to be prepared to meet attacks by submarines or E-boats. He had passed his examinations for his first mate’s ‘ticket’ a year ago
and now was studying for a master’s. The owners of the shipping line which employed him had told him he could expect a command of his own before too long. He watched the sun rise with hope in
his heart.

Gallagher woke when the sun was high with hatred in his heart. He got out of Fannon’s bed and sat at the kitchen table. He gulped tea made for him by the fat bookmaker,
who was dishevelled and worn after spending the night in an armchair with his fear.

Gallagher said thickly, ‘You say there’s a ladder?’

Fannon answered nervously, ‘Aye. In the garage under the flat.’

Gallagher nodded. ‘So now we want a gallon o’ paraffin and a bottle o’ gin.’

McNally sat up on the settee, yawning. ‘I could do wi’ some beer.’

‘I’ll fetch some. And the gin.’ Fannon licked his loose lips. ‘What d’ye want the paraffin for?’

Gallagher glared at him out of cold little eyes. ‘Just get it.’

Fannon left without a word.

That same evening Chrissie and Jack sat in the stalls at the Empire Theatre. They watched and listened as their daughter Sophie, top of the bill as ‘the broadcasting and
recording star’, wound up the show to a roar of applause and several curtains. Jack sniffed and blinked while Chrissie wept openly and dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief.

In Sophie’s dressing-room Jack said gruffly, ‘Well done, lass.’ Chrissie kissed Sophie, who laughed at her parents out of sheer happiness. Topping the bill in this theatre was
a dream come true, all her hopes realised – well, almost.

She told them, ‘I’m expecting Peter home tonight and I want to make some supper for him. So I’ll just clean this make-up off and change then get along there.’

Sophie had told them when she arrived at the start of the week for this engagement at the Empire, ‘I’m going to live in the flat.’ It was empty while Peter was at sea –
Billy Hackett lived with Chrissie and Jack. ‘It will be handy for the theatre and I expect it could do with a dusting.’

Jack had wanted to ask questions but Chrissie had caught his eye and he refrained. Later he said to her, worried about his daughter, ‘What’s going on?’

Chrissie answered tranquilly, ‘I trust Sophie and I trust Peter, so we don’t need to ask.’

Sophie left the theatre at her usual time, only ten minutes after her parents. She knew Peter’s ship was due to dock about one in the morning and he would be at his flat behind the old
Ballantyne Hotel by two. All the streets were lit now, though the narrow lane that led down past the side of the Ballantyne Hotel had only one lamp. That was sufficient to show Sophie, high heels
tapping on the cobbles, the way into the yard through the double gates that stood open. The hotel itself, still government property but no longer a hostel, stood empty and dark. Rain was beginning
to fall as she turned her key in the lock of the door to the flat, locked it behind her and climbed the stairs. There was no light on the stairs but a red glow in the sitting-room above that came
from the embers of a fire in the grate. She thought that first she should put some coal on the fire. As she came to the head of the stairs she saw the furniture in the shadowed room, the table with
its spread cloth and the vase of flowers she had set there. Then as she stepped into the room the hand went across her mouth, and arms wrapped around her.