The Girls They Left Behind (32 page)

‘You’re crying,’ she said in a tone of surprise, and then her sobs began again, sobs of fury as well as grief, a wild and useless raging against the war that had taken her Geoff away.

At the back of the room, Iris Blake turned on Dennis, her face contorted with fury. ‘Well, I just hope you’re satisfied!’

she blazed. ‘I just hope you’re enjoying yourself, watching this poor girl suffer. It ought to have been you up there today, getting killed. It ought to be you, giving your life to save your country. Why should you and your yellow friends be allowed to stay safe at home in the country, when better men are getting blown to pieces? What’s so bloody marvellous about you that you get let off? Prison! You ought to have been kept there for the rest of your life. If I had my way, you’d be shot!’

There was a moment’s silence. Erica was still sobbing.

Betty knelt beside her, holding her close, sharing her tears, but at Mrs Blake’s words she lifted her head.

Jack Spencer moved forwards.

‘Now look, Iris ‘

‘Oh yes,’ she retorted, ‘you’ll take his part, won’t you.

You’ll stand up for him. And you with two sons of your own away fighting, risking their lives. I don’t know how you can, Jack, I really don’t, no, nor you, Ada. Don’t you care? Doesn’t it mean a thing to you, what they’re going through? And this

girl, her young man’s been shot out of the sky, burnt to death as like as not and crying for his mother -I don’t know how you can give this lily-livered milksop house-room. You ought to turn him out this minute.’

‘I’ve told you before, Iris.’

Dennis stepped forwards. ‘No. Don’t argue with her, Mr Spencer. She’s got a right to her opinion.’ He turned to Mrs Blake. ‘I know you can’t understand. Not many people can.

But believe me, it’s not because I’m a coward that I won’t fight. It’s not because I’m afraid.’ He paused for a moment.

‘Or maybe it is. Because I am afraid. I’m afraid of having to do what some German did to Geoff this afternoon. I’m afraid to have to shoot another man out of the sky. I’m afraid of having to kill people I don’t know and have no reason to hate. I’m even afraid of killing people I do hate. Because to me, that’s the worst possible thing I could do. Because I don’t believe another man’s life is mine to take.’ He paused again. His face was pale and there was a strange fervour in his eyes, a passion taut in his voice. ‘If it came to a straight choice between doing that and being shot, I’d choose to be shot.’

He turned and walked quietly out of the room. But Betty had seen the set of his shoulders. She knew that he was deeply upset.

Erica was still weeping. Betty tightened her arms about her, rocking her gently as if she were a small child. She felt Erica’s pain mingle with Dennis’s passion in her own body, and her mind reeled with the confusion of it all.

Iris Blake looked around at the shocked faces. She tilted her chin in defiance.

‘Excuses!’ she said scornfully. ‘Just nothing but excuses!’

The city of London exploded and burned about its inhabitants’

ears. There was no doubt now that the war would not be easily won. There was doubt that it might be won at all.

‘Why don’t we just give in?’ Kathy Simmons said miserably.

She crossed her arms over her bulging stomach, as if to keep her growing baby safe. Jess remembered feeling the same when she had been expecting Maureen. But a baby wasn’t any safer inside its mother than out. A mother’s body was as likely to be blown up as a baby’s … ‘Why don’t we just let him come and take over? We could just go back to living normal, without all this killing.’

‘Could we?’ It was tempting to think so, but Frank said that people who thought that way didn’t realise what life would be like under Hitler. They’d already forgotten what he’d done to the Jews. Making them wear yellow stars, not letting them do decent jobs, forcing them to live like rats … And there had been those horrible stories about camps like Auschwitz, reported in the papers last year. And the terrible things that had happened in Poland… Would he let anyone live a normal life?

‘We can’t give up now,’ she said. ‘We’re in it too deep.’ She looked compassionately at Kathy. ‘I suppose there’s no chance of your husband getting home?’

‘Not this side of heaven.’ Kathy flinched. ‘I didn’t hear that! It didn’t come out the way I meant. I just meant, it’ll be heaven when he does come home, not ‘

‘I know. It’s all right.’ It was all too easy to make a casual remark and then realise what it sounded like. ‘Look, you

know you can come over to Frank and me any time you want anything, don’t you? Day or night, it doesn’t matter.’ She thought of Kathy in her air-raid shelter at night, alone with two little girls. Suppose the baby started to come then? ‘If you want to be with us at night anyway, when the time comes well, you know you’re welcome.’

Kathy shook her head. ‘There’s not room, is there? These little dugouts aren’t meant to have parties in. I’ll be all right. I don’t have babies quick anyway, the girls both took over twelve hours. But I’ll be glad of your help just to give an eye to them while I’m laid up.’

Laid up! Why, she wouldn’t even be able to go to the shelter after the birth. She ought to be in hospital, Jess thought, where she can be properly looked after.

‘Haven’t you got any relations? Isn’t there anyone you can go to?’

‘Not a soul,’ Kathy said with a cheerfulness that didn’t fool Jess for a minute. ‘I’m not a Pompey girl, you see. Mike and me, we both come from Basingstoke. My mum and dad died when I was a kiddy, I was brought up by my gran. She’s over ninety now and lives with my aunty, and she hasn’t got room for rite as well, anyway, we never did get on very well. And Mike’s mum’s in a home. She don’t hardly know what time of day it is.’

Jess gazed at her. How lonely it sounded. She thought of her own family, of her sister Annie who lived at the end of the street and whose family had been in and out of Jess’s house ever since they’d moved to April Grove. And Frank’s brother Howard, over in Gosport. She and Annie still had their mum and dad, living down North End, and she and Frank had their own four children, close as a family could be even though the war had parted them for the time being. She felt a sudden savage longing for them. Families shouldn’t be apart, she thought. They ought to be together, no matter what…

‘You come over to us any time you like,’ she said warmly.

‘And I’ll come over and stop with you when the baby’s born, if you want me to. I know our Annie’ll say the same - and Peggy Shaw, and half a dozen other women round here. We won’t let you be on your own.’

She went up the street, pushing Maureen’s pram. We won’t let you be on your own. But Kathy Simmons was on her own, wasn’t she? And so were thousands more like her, young wives and mothers left to manage by themselves, with no idea when their men might be back again. And more and more of them, as time went on, having to manage for the rest of their lives, as widows.

She went into the butcher’s shop. There was little enough on the slab these days, but Mr Hines was a kindly man and often had a few sausages or a bit of liver for her. He’d taken a fancy to Maureen too, and liked Jess to take the toddler into the shop with her. Jess lifted her from the pram and let her stagger in on her own legs.

‘Well, if it isn’t my best girl!’ The butcher wiped his big red hands down his blue striped apron and bent to pick Maureen up. He was wearing his straw hat and the baby reached up and grabbed it. ‘D’you want my hat, then?’ He took it off and plonked it on Maureen’s head. It came down over her eyes and she gurgled with laughter.

He stood Maureen on the counter and leaned across to Jess. His face was serious. ‘Are you popping in to see Alice Brunner today?’

‘I always do. She’s been looking worse than ever lately.’

He nodded. ‘The wife’s proper worried about her. Seems to be losing her grip on things. It’s young Joy does all the work there now. Gets up early, marks up the papers, sorts out the paper-boys. Same again in the evenings. And keeps the shop going too. It’s not right for a young girl.’

‘Joy’s a good girl though,‘Jess said uneasily. ‘She’s always been a help.’

‘Yes, but to run the place more or less single-handed …

She’s not fourteen yet, you know, she ought to be at school by rights. And she needs her mum to be a mum to her, not lay about all day feeling sorry for herself.’

Jess sighed. It was easy enough to say that Alice ought to pull herself together, but who knew what it felt like to have had your husband torn away from you, thrust into prison and then sent overseas all because he was an ‘alien’ - even though he’d lived in England almost all his adult life? And worst of all to hear that his ship had been torpedoed and not even to know whether he was dead or alive … Some days, Alice had told Jess, she was certain he was dead. Other times she was equally sure he was alive. And for much of the time, she could only torment herself by wondering.

‘I don’t know what we can do,’ she said miserably. ‘Except keep popping in, let her know she’s got friends all around who’ll help her.’

‘Well, she’s got those all right,’ Mr Hines said warmly.

‘Trouble is, she’s also got a few of the other sort. Naming no names.’

He didn’t need to. Both of them knew that Ethel Glaister was one of the most vociferous of Alice’s enemies, never averse to making loud remarks about Germans and aliens in her hearing. Both Jess and Peggy Shaw had had sharp words with Ethel over that, but you couldn’t stop spite and Ethel wasn’t the only one.

‘Well, I’ll go in and see her,’ she said. ‘Come on, Maureen, say goodbye to Larry and give Mr Hines his hat back.’

Maureen had crawled along to the end of the counter, where Mr Hines kept his model lamb. It was life-size and made of papier-mache, and it had been fashioned as if it were in mid-leap, with a comical expression on its face. Maureen loved it and Mr Hines had named it Larry especially for her.

‘She’s a cheery little soul,’ Mr Hines said, giving her a smacking kiss as he handed her back over the counter. ‘Keeps us all happy with her sunny smile.’

‘She don’t know a thing about the war, that’s why,’ Jess said. ‘Thinks it’s all a game, going down the shelter at night.

Well, it’s just as well. It’s nice to have someone around who still thinks life’s wonderful.’

She took Maureen outside and held her for a moment before putting her back into the pram. Just let’s hope it goes on being good for you, she thought. Just so long as nothing happens to you. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.

Alice Brunner lay in bed, staring at the net curtain over the window. Her bedroom was over the shop and she could hear the sounds of the street outside, the clop-clop of the baker’s horse, the rattle of the little electric milk-float. There were voices and footsteps too as folk did their shopping, and she could hear the chirpy voice of little Maureen Budd calling goodbye to Mr Hines.

That meant Jess was in the street and would be coming into the shop. She’d be asking after her, wondering why Joy was on her own at this time of day. And she’d probably been talking to Mr Hines already, discussing how she left Joy to do nearly all the work these days. Letting the girl get up at crack of dawn - after a night in the shelter, as likely as not - to heave great bundles of newspapers about and sort them all out for delivery. It wasn’t right. She knew that. But she just couldn’t face it.

She turned over, her face to the wall. Footsteps were coming up the stairs now, not Joy’s quick, light tread, but heavier ones, coming more slowly. And the sound of scrambling which meant that a small child was coming too, heaving herself up step by step.

The door opened and Jess poked her head round it. Alice looked up at her, half ashamed, half defiant but without the energy to express either.

‘There you are,’ Jess said, as if she thought Alice might have climbed out of the window. ‘Well, what’s the matter?’

‘What d’you think’s the matter?’ Alice’s voice was bitter.

Wasn’t it enough that she’d lost Heinrich, her rock? Did there have to be something else the matter as well? ‘I just felt like a lie-in, that’s all.’

‘On a weekday?’ Lie-ins were unheard of in the Budd home. Even on Sundays she and Frank were up before eight, and that was a lie-in, for him. ‘Alice ‘

‘I know what you’re going to say. What about Joy? I’m leaving her to do all the work. Well, she’s young and strong, she’s got nothing else to do. The school’s no good to her now, there’s only a few kids there and a couple of old teachers they’ve dragged out of retirement. She’s better off learning the trade. Anyway, she likes being in charge.’

Jess sat down on the bed, Maureen standing at her knee.

Alice’s voice was truculent but there was a bitter pain behind it. Poor woman, Jess thought, she doesn’t know what to do with herself. She misses Heinrich like losing her right arm, and she doesn’t even know whether to grieve for him or not.

‘I know how you’re feeling,’ she said in a low voice. ‘But it can’t be good for you, laying in bed like this. You’d be better to get up and carry on, you really would.’

‘How do you know? How do you know what’d make me feel better? You can’t know how I feel, nobody could who’s not going through it.’ Alice stared at Jess. Her eyes were dark and hollow, rimmed with red. They looked as if they were set deeper in her head than usual. Her face was like one of her own newspapers, grey and lined. Her hair hung in rat’s tails.

‘It’s all right for you,’ she went on. ‘You’ve got your husband at home, and past call-up age. Nobody’s going to take him away and send him off in a ship to be blown up. Or die struggling in the water, hurt perhaps and not able to keep his head up.’ Her voice shook. ‘Heinrich never liked the water. He’d come out to Southsea with Joy and me because we liked it, but he never went into the water himself, not even to paddle. Can you imagine what it must have been like, drowning in the sea, in pitch darkness, choking on oil, maybe burning …’ The tears came again and she turned her face into the pillow.

Jess stood up. She felt helpless, pitying and angry all at once. It seemed as if Alice was intent on wallowing in her misery, as if she’d rather be miserable.