The Girls They Left Behind (45 page)

‘Blimey!’ Frank exclaimed. ‘That sounded like the whole Yard going up.’

‘What about the truce?’ Jess was clutching the baby, who was screaming in terror. ‘What about Christmas?’

They snatched up the things they kept ready to take to the shelter, the old blankets, the cushions, the biscuits and bottle of water, the tin box that contained all the insurance policies and family photographs. Rose was in a panic, urging them to hurry, the boys were pale, half scared, half excited. They crammed through the half-sunken doorway and found themselves places on the bunks, staring up at the corrugated iron roof and waiting for the next explosion.

‘Coo,’ Tim breathed. ‘That was a whopper. But I can’t hear any more planes.’

‘Well, there’s no need to sound disappointed,’ Jess said sharply. ‘We don’t want any more. And stop trying to peep out through the curtain, Keith, we’ll have Mr Vickers down here telling us off for showing a light.’

‘I only wanted to see the searchlights.’

‘And the Germans’ll see you.’

Frank looked at them and thought again of the head. They ought to have stayed at Bridge End. Christmas or not, they ought to have stayed there.

Even Granny Kinch had been scared into taking cover with her daughter Nancy and the two kids. Ethel Glaister was in her Anderson with Joe and Carol, furiously berating the absent George for not being there to take care of them. Annie, at the top of the street, was thinking anxiously about Ted, skippering his ferryboat across the harbour. But in number 13

Peggy Shaw and her daughter Gladys were setting off for their First Aid Post, ready to deal with whatever casualties the raid might bring.

But there were no more raids that night. The plane had come alone, dropped its bomb and departed.

‘It was Conway Street caught it,’ Peggy told them later, when the All-Clear had sounded and everyone was back indoors. ‘We got the message at the Post. They reckon there was at least a dozen killed. All the houses in the street smashed to rubble, with everyone inside. They’re still trying to get ‘em out. That young Dr Mulvaney’s there of course she’s a marvel, always in the thick of it all, brave as a lion, and only a slip of a thing too. They reckon it was a plane loaded with bombs that got shot down.’

The stories of what had happened in Conway Street abounded. A plane - two planes - three or more, crashed on the houses with their full cargo of explosive. A land-mine.

One huge bomb, of a kind never used before. Whatever it was, it shattered the flimsy old houses packed up against the Dockyard wall and left a scene of devastation yet unrivalled by any of the raids.

‘There’s a crater big enough to get Portsmouth Cathedral into.’ ‘It blew out every window for miles around.’ ‘They’ll never repair all the damage, never.’ ‘They’ll never get all the bodies out.’

The stories started Christmas Eve off on a sombre note.

Nobody could have any faith now in the ‘truce’.

It was as if one man had decided to bring terror instead of peace to their Christmas truce. This is what we can do. This is what you can expect as soon as the truce is over.

‘We can’t let it spoil the children’s Christmas,’ Jess said. ‘I know it’s terrible, all those people killed and others with no homes. But we’ve got to think of the children.’

She set Rose to peeling vegetables, making jellies and helping to decorate the cake. She had saved enough dried fruit during the past few months to make a reasonable fruit cake, and had carefully hoarded a bag of icing sugar for the top. And on Christmas morning she took all the children except Maureen to church. Indeed, it would have been impossible to take Maureen anywhere that morning without taking Larry along too.

Alice was there, in the Deniston Road church where she and Heinrich had so often worshipped. She looked pale but determined, as if she’d made up her mind to cope. That’s better, Jess thought, seeing that Joy too looked brighter, and she was glad she’d invited them to Annie’s. As soon as the service was over, they walked down the street to the house with the little turret and arrived to a scene of rejoicing.

‘We were going to tell you all at dinner,’ Olive said, her cheeks flushed. ‘But I couldn’t keep it back any longer. I just had to tell Mum first.’

‘And so you should.’ Jess gave her niece a hug. ‘A new baby! Well, that’s really lovely. And our Annie a grandma!

How d’you feel about that, Annie?’

‘I daresay I’ll get used to the idea.’ But Annie’s eyes were bright and her cheeks wet. Her smile broke through and she gave both Olive and Derek a kiss. ‘Mind, I still think you ought to have waited. It’s no time to be bringing a baby into the world. But since it’s on its way, there’s not much we can do but give it a welcome.’

‘Go on, our Annie, you’re as pleased as Punch.’ Jess glanced through the window at the children, who were out in the garden playing with Tim’s new football. ‘We won’t say anything to them yet, of course. They don’t need to know. We don’t want any awkward questions.’ She knew nothing of Reg Corner’s sex education lessons to the two boys, nor of Tibby’s kittens. Even Rose hadn’t mentioned that she now knew ‘all about’ babies from helping Mr Greenberry with the sheep.

‘Well, let’s drink to it anyway,’ Ted said, producing a bottle of sherry and filling Annie’s best glasses. ‘To Olive and Derek’s baby, and to a happy Christmas for everyone!’

‘To the baby - and a Happy Christmas,’ they repeated, and held up their glasses and drank.

Jess looked across the room and caught her husband’s eye.

Sherry was the one alcoholic drink he would take, and Christmas Day the one day he would take it. She toasted him silently with her eyes, trying to tell him all that she was feeling about this day, like a precious jewel with all her family about her. And she knew from the softening of his gaze that he understood.

And then her glance moved slowly over the rest of the people in the room. Her sister Annie, still defiantly scrubbing her step every morning, still keeping up the ‘standards’

her time in domestic service had instilled into her.

Olive and Derek, starting their family after such a short married life, deserving so much more. Alice Brunner, who looked shy and as if she felt out of place in this family gathering.

Poor Alice. She must be missing Heinrich more than ever this morning. And there were others who were absent too Colin, still at sea. Betty, away on the farm.

She looked at Frank again, and he must have seen the message in her eyes, for he cleared his throat, so that everyone stopped talking and listened to him.

‘Another toast,’ he said quietly, and lifted his glass. ‘To absent friends.’

And again, they all echoed the toast, in voices that trembled with the emotions they shared.

‘To absent friends …’

With Iris Blake and her children gone, and Erica away at home, the antagonism that had prevailed towards Dennis evaporated. Mr and Mrs Spencer had never been hostile towards him and old Jonas cared about very little provided his beer and tobacco came regularly and his plate was full at mealtimes. He did his work and spent his evenings in the village pub, sitting in a corner by the fire and making a pint last all evening. He had been more hostile towards the girls than to Dennis, but now that they had proved themselves able to do whatever was asked of them, he had relented far enough to give them a grunt of a morning and even, occasionally, a gap-toothed travesty of a smile.

‘He’s all right really,’ Dennis said. ‘He’s just like a lot of old people, can’t take the changes so he pretends they aren’t happening. You can’t blame him, he’s been through one war already, why should he have to suffer another?’

‘He must have been through more than one,’ Betty said.

‘He’s seventy if he’s a day. He’s seen a lot’

Erica and Yvonne departed on Christmas Eve, just before afternoon milking and, without them and the Blakes, the farm seemed very quiet. Betty wondered what it would be like to sleep by herself in the long, narrow attic. Dennis too had moved into the house; until now, he had slept in a sectioned-off part of the barn but now that there was more room indoors Mrs Spencer had decided he ought to be offered a proper bed. Betty thought of him, lying in the room below hers, and felt a quiver of excitement. It seemed almost indecently intimate, somehow, even though there would be a floor and several walls between them.

Christmas was to be a real holiday. Only essential chores such as milking and feeding were to be done, and the rest of the time was free. On Christmas morning, the Spencers would be going to church, and Dennis and Betty decided to go along too.

‘I’d go to Meeting at home,’ he said. ‘But there isn’t one near enough here. We don’t have hymns or prayers or anything like that, but I like the carols.’

‘What do you have, then? Bible readings and sermons?’

He laughed. ‘No, not unless someone feels like it. We just sit quietly together and wait.’

Betty stared at him. ‘What d’you wait for?’

‘For God to speak through one of us. Then whoever it is gets up and says what he feels he should say, and sits down again.’

‘And that’s all?’

‘Unless anyone else feels called upon to speak, yes.

Sometimes several do, sometimes no one at all. It doesn’t matter. It’s a very peaceful, happy feeling to be sitting there all together, meeting in God.’

Betty tried to imagine it. She was accustomed to the Church of England services, busy all the way through with prayers and hymns and catechists and psalms. There wasn’t a moment of quiet, except at the beginning, when you arrived and knelt to say your own private prayer, or at the end. Never a moment when God might ‘speak’ through an ordinary member of the congregation. In fact, when she came to think of it, he would have been hard put to it to get a word in anywhere.

‘Isn’t it boring?’ she asked doubtfully.

Dennis smiled. ‘Depends what sort of mood you’re in.

Sometimes I’ve had a job to sit still at all. But usually I find it very soothing, and afterwards I feel as if I’ve been, well, sort of recreated. It’s not often you can sit with a lot of other people and not be overwhelmed with chatter. It’s as if we give each other strength, even if nobody says a word.’

But this Christmas he came to church with Betty and the Spencers, and as they entered to the strains of the little organ Betty felt her own peace and joy in the warmth of companionship.

She sat in the pew, looking about her at the faces which had become familiar to her over the past few months; the little woman with white hair, pinned into a bun, who ran the post office, the stout butcher, the greengrocer and the publicans.

There were farmers and their wives who were friends and neighbours of the Spencers, and there were a few families who had been evacuated from Portsmouth and Southampton and were slowly becoming a part of the village themselves.

The note of the organ changed and stopped. There was a hushed silence and then the high, clear treble of a boy soprano began to sing. And Betty felt her throat ache with the beauty of his singing.

‘Once in Royal David’s city, stood a lowly cattle shed Where a mother laid her baby, in a manger for his bed.’

She turned and looked up at the man who stood at her side.

And Dennis returned her look. He laid his hand over hers and clasped it tightly, and they stood together, lost in the tremulous joy of simply being together, and in the joy and peace that was being expressed all over Britain at that very moment in village churches, in great cathedrals, in tranquil villages and even amidst scenes of utter devastation.

It was Christmas, and Christmas could not be ignored.

Later that afternoon, when they had finished the milking, they strolled together down the lane and leant over a gate, watching the twilight steal gently over the sleeping fields.

‘Everything seems so much quieter on Christmas Day,’

Betty said softly. ‘Even the animals are gentler, as if they know it’s special. And it really does seem as if there’s been a truce.

A whole day with no bombs.’

‘And if there can be one, why not two? Why start again at all?’ Dennis sighed. ‘If only they’d get together and talk. But Hitler will never see reason. He’ll go on and on.’ He stirred restlessly. ‘Betty, I’ve been thinking about what I should do ‘

‘Oh, Dennis, no, not now!’ she exclaimed impulsively.

‘Don’t let’s talk about the war now. It’s Christmas Day. Let’s just think of happy things.’

He nodded and laid his arm across her shoulders. ‘All right, sweetheart. We’ll leave it for now. But we’ve got to talk seriously, you and me. You know that, don’t you?’

She nodded, feeling suddenly shy. Her relationship with Dennis, which had grown and ripened so slowly, seemed to have shifted into a faster gear and she was half excited, half afraid, and totally unsure as to what should happen next.

In some ways, it had been easier with Graham. Their romance had followed a set of rules. Their meeting had been flirtatious, with Betty responding saucily to Graham’s boldness, and when he’d asked her out it had been to the pictures, which was the accepted venue for any first date. He’d kissed her goodnight that time, after a faint-hearted struggle from Betty, and on subsequent evenings out the goodnight kiss had been taken for granted, lasting a little longer each time and accompanied by caresses which grew ever more daring. It had been all part of the game that Graham should attempt what Betty would forbid, and until the night of the card-game there had never been any serious risk of his demanding more.

Perhaps it was part of the game too that they should be possessive of each other. Betty would have been furious if she had seen Graham looking at another girl, and he was sulky when she announced her intention of joining the Land Army.

But war made everything different, and Betty had always been an independent spirit. In the past few months, she had learned a different set of values, and the naive boy-and-girl games she had played with Graham no longer held any appeal.

With Dennis, nothing was the same. There was no place for sauciness, none for teasing. There was a seriousness about Dennis that brought response from a part of Betty she had never known existed. And there was a depth to the love she felt for him and the love she sensed in him for her, that had never been present when she was with Graham.