The Girls They Left Behind (30 page)

Micky came in, swaggering. He dumped a large paper bag on the table and tipped it over. Several tins of fruit rolled out and his mother and grandmother stared at them in astonishment.

‘That’s

peaches!’ Granny Kinch said. ‘I ain’t seen a tin of peaches in a year. Where d’you get those, Micky?’

He shrugged and grinned. ‘That’s for me to know.’ ‘Micky!’ Nancy said sharply. ‘Don’t cheek your gran. Tell us where you got the peaches. Runnin’ errands, were you?’ ‘That’s right.’ He glanced at them sideways. ‘Got meself a job. Errand boy at a shop. The boss said I could take whatever I liked.’

‘He said you could take peaches?’

‘Yeah. Whatever I like, I can ‘ave.’ He struck a nonchalant pose. ‘He’ll pay me too.’

‘What shop’s this?’ Nancy asked suspiciously. ‘Is it far away?’ Nobody around September Street was likely to employ Micky.

‘Down past Kingston Cross. You wouldn’t know it.’ He stood the tins upright, balancing them in a tower. ‘I can go down there whenever I like. An’ I got another job too, choppin’ wood for a bloke down Charlotte Street. He gives me fruit an’ stuff. I can get all sorts.’

He turned away and they heard him clatter up the stairs. Nancy and her mother looked at each other.

‘I s’pose it’s all right,’ Granny Kinch said. `So long as he gets in a shelter when the siren goes.’

‘Oh, he always does that. I made him promise.’

They looked at the tins again.

‘Peaches …’ Granny Kinch said.

Micky had his little gang well organised now. As soon as the siren sounded, they were out in the back alleys, keeping a

wary eye open for air-raid wardens, watching to see people run for their shelters. Nine times out of ten the back door was left open and the boys could slip inside, grab whatever was left lying about, and be gone before the Raiders Passed signal.

You had to be careful, of course — sometimes there was someone left in the house, someone too slow or stubborn to run down the garden. Jimmy Cross once had the fright of his life when he nipped through a back door and suddenly caught sight of a pair of eyes watching him as he riffled through a

sideboard drawer. ‘I thought it was just a pile of old clothes,’ he said indignantly to the others, ‘an’ it was this old bloke, all huddled up in blankets and stuff. He never said a word, just looked at me, like he was a ghost or something. Didn’t ‘alf make me jump.’

‘Too old to take down the shelter, I s’pose,’ Micky said. He sorted through the day’s collection. ‘We got some good stuff here. Cyril found this wallet with nearly three pound in it, and Jimmy got a pot of jam and a bag of sausages, and I got this.’ He held up his own booty with pride and the other boys whistled.

‘Cyr! A model Spitfire. That’s smashing.’

‘Someone’s made it, see.’ Micky set the aeroplane on a box they were using as a table. It was about two feet long, made from wood which had been smoothed and polished, and its wings were made of parchment. ‘I bet it was a real pilot made that,’ he said, touching it lovingly. ‘You can see it’s a proper one.’

Making model aeroplanes was a craze amongst all the boys. Comics like Wizard and Beano carried instructions almost

every week, and nearly everyone had a cat’s cradle of cotton and string festooned across their bedroom ceilings, with aircraft arranged as if in flight.

This one had not been made by. any boy, though. It was clear, as Micky said, that an adult hand had fashioned the wood and shaped the wings; an adult who knew aeroplanes, too. The boys gazed at it with awe.

‘That’s our best thing.’

‘It’s my best thing,’ Micky corrected them, pushing away their hands. ‘I found it.

‘I thought we were going to share everything we found.’ ‘Stuff like food and money, yeah. But not this. Unless you want me to cut it up into bits?’ He picked it up again and held it on his lap, stroking the polished wood. ‘Here, how about making a fire and cooking those sausages? I could do with summat to eat.’

Willingly, the other two boys set about gathering wood from the debris which still littered the bombed house. They lit the fire in the middle of the basement floor — they had already tried using the fireplaces, but found the chimneys blocked — and cooked the sausages on an old tin coal shovel they had found. They were burnt on the outside and raw halfway through, but to the boys they were the best sausages they had ever eaten.

‘We could live in a place like this,’ Micky said, stretching back on his broken chair. ‘When the Germans come, we’ll hide down here and creep out at night and sabotage ‘em. We could murder ‘em and they’d never know who it was.’

Replete with half-raw sausages, they sat in the dank gloom of the ruined basement, gazing at the model aeroplane, and contemplating a future filled with adventure and excitement. Micky’s mind drifted back to the days before the war, days when he had been expected to go to school every day and sit at a desk, bored and frustrated.

‘It’s good, this war is,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘I ‘ope it goes on for ever ‘n’ ever.’

In London, people were changing their entire day in order to accommodate the timetable of Goering’s bombers. Shops and offices closed an hour earlier to allow workers

to reach home in time for a meal before taking to the shelters.

There was no need for a warning — everyone was in place by eight o’clock, women with their bags full of knitting and magazines, men with their newspapers and pipes. After some efforts to prevent it, the Underground stations were now an accepted place of shelter. There was quite a party atmosphere down there, it was reported, with singing and dancing, and even a few impromptu bands composed of mouth organs, concertinas and, if all else

failed, the good old comb and lavatory-paper.

The daily newspapers carried pictures of devastation. Huge piles of nibble were all that were left of the great

Oxford Street stores, wrecked houses stood open to the sky, vast craters swallowed entire streets. Shops had their stocks burned or ruined by water, and people who were suffering the deprivation of rationing were galled to see molten butter flooding from a storehouse and running down the drains, or precious sugar burning like coal.

There was another rush for safety. Children who had come home from the country during the ‘phoney war’ were sent

back again. True to her word, Ethel Glaister sent her daughter Shirley to Canada, going to Southampton to see her off on a big liner.

In Portsmouth, people found themselves spending long hours in their air-raid shelters. And even worse than the frustration and annoyance of such disruption and wasted

time, they found themselves more and more often returning to their homes to find that they had been looted. The newspapers were full of such cases; even a few policemen were found guilty.

‘It’s kids that’s the worst, though,’ Frank said, sitting at the table with the Evening News spread out in front of him. ‘And I bet I know who’s one of the ringleaders. Probation! A young hooligan like Micky Baxter’s not going to take notice of probation.’

‘You don’t know it’s him, Frank.’ Jess took the paper from him and studied it. ‘You shouldn’t paint people black without knowing the truth.’

‘Paint him black! I don’t need to — he already is black.’ ‘We haven’t heard he’s been in any trouble since that

business with the jeweller’s shop. Perhaps he’s learnt his lesson.’ Her eyes moved down the columns. ‘Oh, listen to this. One little boy told the magistrate he’d got no school to go to and no friends to play with. “I just took things to play with,” he said. “I thought the people weren’t coming back.” Poor little chap.’ She laid the paper down. ‘He was just lonely. And frightened too, I daresay.’

But Frank looked stern and shook his head. ‘Stealing’

stealing. If they don’t make an example of boys like him, all the little scamps’ll be at it. People have got enough to put up with, without having to reckon with burglars every time the warning goes.’

A sudden violent knocking at the door startled them both. Jess gasped and reached down to pull the baby on to her lap. She looked wide-eyed at Frank.

‘D’you think it’s them?’ The fear of invasion was a menace in everyone’s minds. Already there had been reports of German landings at Stokes Bay and other south coast

beaches. Nobody knew if it was true that hundreds had been killed, or if it was just rumour, but every unexpected knock on the door brought the same thrill of terror as the wail of the siren. ‘Oh, Frank . .

‘Of course it’s not. They wouldn’t knock.’ But he went down the passage and opened the door with some caution

before he looked out.

Ethel Glaister stood there, her cheeks running with tears. Before he could speak, she was in his arms, her face pressed against his shirt. She clutched him, sobbing, and he staggered slightly then held her, patting her shoulder and looking round for Jess.

‘What’s the matter?’ Jess was at the end of the passage, staring at them. ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s Ethel, Mrs Glaister.’ He gestured helplessly. ‘She’s upset. You’d better come in,’ he said to the weeping woman. ‘Tell us what’s happened. Is it George?’

Ethel shook her head. Even in her distress, she managed to convey the impression that she wouldn’t have been in this

state if it had just been George… She sank down on a chair at the table and leaned her head on her hands. Her weeping was almost hysterical.

Jess pushed Frank aside. She viewed Ethel Glaister’s woe with concern but she wasn’t going to have the woman

weeping in Frank’s arms. She put her hand on Ethel’s shoulder and spoke gently.

‘What is it, Ethel? What’s happened? Try to tell us.’

‘It’s Shirley. Our Shirl.’ Ethel broke into a fresh gust of sobs. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t never have done it, I shouldn’t never

have sent her off . .

‘Shirley? But she’s gone to Canada, she’s gone to be safe. What’s happened to her?’

Ethel raised her head. Her face distorted like a child’s. The make-up she habitually wore was streaked and blotchy. Her eyes were puffed with tears.

‘Safe!’ she echoed bitterly. ‘Safe! They’ve only torpedoed the bloody ship, that’s all. Torpedoed a ship loaded with kids. I mean, what good does that do them, eh? Why should they do a thing like that? Little children!’

Jess and Frank stared at her.

‘They’ve torpedoed the ship? Are you sure?’

‘It was on the wireless,’ she said drearily. ‘They reckon there’s hardly any survivors.’

‘Oh, Ethel,’ Jess said, and put her arms around Ethel’s shoulders, drawing her close. ‘Ethel, that’s terrible. I really am sorry.’

Frank stood hesitantly beside her. He was as appalled as Jess, but had no words to express his horror. He caught Jess’s eye and realised she wanted him to make Ethel a cup of tea. Thankful to have something to do, he hurried out to the scullery and put the kettle on.

Little Shirley Glaister! She was such a sunny little thing, always smiling and skipping on the garden path. She used to talk to him when he was out in the garden, chattering away nineteen to the dozen, telling him what she’d been doing at school and asking endless questions. What are you doing, Mr Budd? Why? Why is the sky blue, why is grass green, why, why, why?

It made his head buzz at times but he liked her questions. He thought they showed a bright little mind. And now that little mind had been snuffed out, the bright smile wiped away for ever, the chatter silenced.

He went back with three cups of tea. After a shock like that, they could all do with one. He looked at Jess, still standing with her arms around Ethel, and he knew that there was no need to search for the right words, for there were none. At times like this, there was nothing that anyone could say.

The report of the torpedoing reached the newspapers a day or so later. Jess went into the newsagent’s and looked at the headlines with Alice Brunner.

‘Poor little mite,’ Alice Brunner said. ‘I don’t wish her any harm, she was a nice enough little scrap. But maybe that cat of a mother of hers has got some idea now of what I’ve been going through all these months.’

‘Oh, Alice.’ Jess hated to hear the bitterness in her friend’s voice. But she couldn’t blame Alice. She had suffered more than enough from the cruel remarks made by Ethel at the

outbreak of war, when she had called Heinrich an enemy and a spy and tried to prevent customers from using the Brunners’

shop. And she had still not heard officially whether Heinrich had died when the Arandora Star had been sunk. That, too, had been on the way to Canada.

‘We don’t even know for sure that Shirley was on that ship,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t give its name here. I suppose they want to let the families know before they read about it in the paper. But you’re bound to think it’s that one, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t know why she ever wanted to send the child the far

away,’ Alice observed. ‘She’s got relations in Devon, hasn’t she? She was always on about them and talking about her holidays with them. Why not send the kiddy there? She just wanted to be better than the rest of us, that’s what it was. Wanted something to be stuck up about.’

Jess didn’t answer. She was growing more and more worried about Alice these days. There was a brittle nervousness about her, a sense that she was hovering on the brink of disaster. She’s going to break up completely if something isn’t done, Jess thought, gazing at the white face with its flushed cheeks and over-bright eyes. But what could anyone do? It was Heinrich she needed.

‘I don’t think it does any good to say that sort of thing,’ she said at last. ‘It’s help Ethel needs now. There can’t be anything worse than losing a child.’

Alice turned away and started to mark up the pile of

evening papers. Joy came in from the back room to help her and they worked in silence for a few minutes. Jess, seeing that Alice didn’t want to talk any more, picked up

her own paper and went out.

‘What difference does it make anyway?’ Alice burst out suddenly. ‘I mean, I’m sorry for little Shirley Glaister, of course I am, but it don’t make any difference whether you’re a little child or a grown man when you’ve been torpedoed. The water was just as cold for your father as it was for Shirley Glaister. It was just as bad for him, floating in hundreds of feet of water, knowing nobody was going to save him. It’s as bad for everyone that gets killed.’