The Girls They Left Behind (47 page)

For Colin Chapman, it was a Christmas at sea. His ship, the Exeter, had been active ever since the outbreak of war, and was still in the forefront of the battles of the oceans. But Mike Simmons was home. To Kathy’s almost unbelieving joy, his ship had docked in Southampton on Christmas Eve and would be there for at least a week, perhaps more. In the bare little house at number 16 October Street, furnished with other people’s cast-offs, there was rejoicing and a happy Christmas, with the new baby Thomas the centre of everyone’s attention.

Graham was home too, and made much of by his mother, though he was still smarting over the split with Betty. By now, he had expected a letter of apology and a humble request to ‘start again’. But no such letter had arrived - not even a Christmas card - and he sat glowering at the fire. What was the use of Christmas without a girl? And you couldn’t even go out and find one, everyone was stuck indoors with their families. He didn’t even think there would be a welcome for him at Nancy Baxter’s.

‘Come on, Gray,’ his mother urged him. ‘There’s plenty more fish in the sea. She wasn’t never good enough for you, anyway.’

‘I liked the girl, myself,’ her husband said in his dry, papery voice. ‘Always had a smile and a pleasant word, not like some young people these days.’

‘Oh, you’re just a pushover.’ But Elsie was sorry that Betty wouldn’t be coming over any more. She’d liked the girl too, in spite of what she said to Graham, and she’d hoped they’d stick together. Chances are it was his fault, she thought, trying it on when he ought to have known Betty wasn’t that sort. But men were all the same in that department.

The men of 698 Unit had a peaceful Christmas too. The victims of the latest raid, in battered Conway Street, had all been found homes with relatives or taken away to rest centres or hospital, and the soldiers who were helping to demolish unsafe buildings or repair those less damaged had been given time to be at home with their families. Derek Harker, George Glaister and Bob Shaw were among them.

For the thousands now homeless, it was a time of confusion. Their houses had been bombed, often relatives killed. There were men without wives, women without husbands, children without parents. There were old people who scarcely knew what had happened, babies who knew nothing but turmoil and saw no face for long enough to recognise the features. There were children who had no home and no relatives and who did not know where life would take them next.

And amidst all these were the people who were trying to help them, the Red Cross, the WVS, the Civil Defence, the Salvation Army, the volunteers, the foster parents and the nurses. For all of them, the problem was so immense that they could do nothing but live from day to day, nothing but lend a hand wherever it seemed needed most. ‘Carrying on’ was the order of the day, and ‘smiling through’. And the bulldog tenacity of Churchill, exhorting them to greater efforts. ‘We shall never surrender.’

The spirit took root and grew. From fear and despair, from the misery of loss, rose a determination that the bombed cities would live on. Buildings could be destroyed, cities razed and people killed, but Britain would never be beaten.

The truce had given the country a short respite. But the peace did not last. Two days were all that Hitler allowed. On 27 December the Luftwaffe was back in force, with a hundred bombers attacking London and leaving over six hundred people dead. And two days later the city suffered its worst raid yet, with nearly a hundred and fifty bombers forcing their way past the barrages to drop more than twenty thousand firebombs and something like a hundred and twenty tons of high explosives.

The ensuing blaze was said to be worse than the Great Fire of London. It raged all night, destroying the Old Bailey, the Guildhall and eight of the historic churches of Christopher Wren. Thousands of homes were in ruins, thousands of people homeless. Yet still the spirit of ‘carrying on’ prevailed.

Those who still had homes, left them to go to work. They left early, knowing that they would have to find a new way through the devastation of the streets. They left knowing that they might have no place of work to go to, that everything familiar to them might have been blown away in the night. And as they made their way they gazed at the destruction that had been wrought by the bombs and the fires, and lifted their eyes to see the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral still proudly dominating the scarred skyline. And once again the words echoed in their hearts. We shall never surrender…

In Portsmouth the respite continued, though the nightly warnings still sounded and the removal to the shelters persisted. And the uneasy dread still filled people’s hearts as they looked at the wintry sky, hung with barrage balloons like heavy clouds of foreboding.

Annie Chapman was growing more and more worried about Ted. Ever since Dunkirk, he’d been getting more and more jumpy. He picked at his meals and he couldn’t sleep.

When the siren sounded, he went straight up the stairs to the top of the little turret and stood there, watching for fires, and only Annie knew what an effort it was.

‘You feel like everyone can see you up there,’ he told her.

‘You feel like every Jerry’s looking down from his plane and aiming his bombs straight at you. Same as when I’m on the ferry, the old King feels as big as the Ark Royal.’

‘You don’t have to go up there, Ted. Let me take a turn. I can watch for fires as well as you.’

But he shook his head. ‘I’ve got to go, Annie. I’ve been to Dunkirk, remember. I’ve seen things I don’t want to talk about, never. There’s men living through worse every day than you and I can even imagine. I can’t hide meself while all that’s going on.’

There was no more for Annie to say. She could only do whatever she could to give him comfort, the warmth of a mug of cocoa to take up with him, or when he came back down, white and shrammed with cold. The warmth of her arms on the rare nights when they dared sleep in their own bed.

She was more thankful than ever now that Betty at least was safe in the country. The girl had seemed happier when she was home last, though it had been a shock to her when the young Air Force boys had been killed. Annie had wondered a few times whether she wasn’t fonder of one of them than she’d admitted. But there’d been a sort of glow about her when she came back for her weekend after Christmas.

Betty hadn’t mentioned Dennis to her parents, but Mr and Mrs Spencer had soon realised the situation. They said nothing, simply accepted it as a natural development. The other two Land Girls reacted differently.

‘You seem to get plenty of boys,’ Yvonne said with envy.

‘That sailor, and then Sandy and now Dennis. I wish I could be easy-come, easy-go like that.’

‘I’m not easy-come, easy-go,’ Betty said sharply. ‘It was never really serious between Graham and me. And Sandy was Just a friend. ‘Her voice trembled a little as she remembered him on that last evening, asking if there might be a chance for him. Poor, poor Sandy… ‘It’s different with Dennis and me.’

‘Well, I don’t know how you can do it,’ Erica said. ‘Going with a traitor. I’d be ashamed.’

‘He’s not a traitor,’ Betty said, but her voice was quiet.

Dennis had already taught her to react without aggression to such taunts. And she felt genuinely sorry for the blonde girl.

Suppose she lost Dennis now … The pain was unthinkable.

But it was the pain Erica was suffering. Betty touched her arm.

‘Don’t be angry,’ she said. ‘I know how you feel about Dennis, but he really isn’t a traitor, or a coward. He wants to help his country just as much as the rest of us, he just wants to do it a different way. He’s just as upset as we are about Geoff and the others.’

‘Nobody’s as upset about Geoff as me,’ Erica said, but she allowed Betty to put her arms around her, and she turned her face into Betty’s shoulder as the tears came. And they sat, the three of them close and unspeaking; trying, failing, to understand, yet mourning together.

Tim and Keith Budd were back in the country too. Jess had been reluctant to let them go without knowing where they would be sent, but at the last minute she had heard from Edna Corner that the vicar had room for them. Would she like them to go to him? Jess had agreed at once, though the boys had made faces, protesting that Mr Beckett was an old man, that they’d have to go to church twice every Sunday, that they’d have to say Grace at every meal and never be allowed to play games.

‘You’ll be safe,’ she said firmly. ‘And I’m sure it can’t be that bad. Mr Beckett’s a very nice man.’

‘But he’s a vicar,’ Tim said in outraged tones, and Jess snapped at him in irritation.

‘For goodness’ sake, Tim! You’re behaving as if he’s a man from Mars. He’s no different from anyone else, and if he makes you behave and teaches you the manners you seem to have forgotten, I’ll be grateful to him. I know Mr and Mrs Corner were good to you but you seem to have changed since you went out to Bridge End, and not for the better.’

Tim pushed out his lower lip and went to sit on the floor and stroke Henry the cat. He would have preferred it if Mr Beckett had been a man from Mars. That would have been fun. But a vicar …

Rose flatly refused to return to Bridge End.

‘I don’t want to go back. I’m worried all the time about what’s happening here. I’m frightened you’ll get killed and no one will tell me. I’d rather be here with you and help with the cooking and the baby and everything.’ She clung to her mother. ‘Don’t make me go back, Mum. Please don’t make me go back.’

Jess held her and looked helplessly at Frank. They had both known Rose was unhappy, but had been shocked by her appearance when she came home. She was pale and thin, and not developing as she should. At almost thirteen, she ought to have been beginning to round out, but instead she was hollow-chested and gaunt. Jess had been convinced she was ill and wanted to take her to the doctor, but had agreed to wait until after Christmas.

‘She’s pining,’ Annie had said. ‘That’s all that’s wrong with her. She’s always been your girl, Jess, and she’s missing you.’

Jess repeated her words to Frank after Rose had gone to bed. ‘Girls do pine at her age, Frank. They can just stop eating and fade away, what my mother used to call a “decline”. We can’t let that happen to our Rose.’

‘You’d rather she was killed, is that it?’

‘Of course not! Don’t say such things. But who knows what will happen to any of us? And if she’s as miserable as that, she might as well be back here with us. We can look after her.

She’s not like the boys’d be, wanting to get out and play, and messing about on bomb-sites. Anyway, she’s nearly the age you were when you left school. She can make up her own mind.’

‘Make up her own mind? She’s under my authority till she’s twenty-one, that’s another seven years. And I don’t want her leaving school yet. I want my kids to have an education.’

‘Well, they’re not getting much of that, wherever they are. I reckon Rose would do as well at home, having lessons with Joy Brunner. And that’s another thing. Joy and her have always been friends, and it’d be good for them to be near each other. Joy hasn’t got anyone else round here.’

‘Joy’s a nice enough girl,’ Frank acknowledged. ‘But I don’t see why our Rose has got to be brought home just because there isn’t anyone else for Joy.’

‘I’m not saying that.’ Jess sighed. ‘Look, if you want my opinion, our Rose’ll be ill if we make her go away again. She’s worrying herself half out of her mind. And I tell you straight, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Mrs Greenberry refused to take her back. She won’t want the responsibility.’

In the end, she won. Frank was never easy to persuade but he would, eventually, see reason. And even he could not withstand Rose’s distress at the idea of leaving home again.

‘All right. She can stay. But not the boys. They go back to Bridge End and they stay there till there’s no chance of any more bombing, all right?’

No chance of any more bombing.

December drew to a close. For the second year running, there were no bells rung to mark the passing of another year, no sirens sounded or snips’ hooters blown. New Year’s Day came in silently, slinking through the storms as if afraid to be seen, and 1941 began with an air of apology for not promising better things.

In bitter cold, Cardiff was raided and Bristol attacked on three separate nights. Manchester too was blitzed. Fires raged everywhere, buildings toppled, families were buried.

Fire engines raced through the streets, sometimes never reaching the fire they had set out to deal with. Ambulances were driven by young women like Gladys Shaw through streets lit by flames, while bombs and shrapnel rained about them, to hospitals that were themselves destroyed before they could get there. There were fear and panic, lawlessness and looting, never reported in the newspapers for fear of lowering the already fragile morale, and later buried in people’s memories as so many of the injured and dead were buried beneath the ruins of the shattered cities. It could not be acknowledged that the war of terror might be having its effect.

It could not be admitted that the bulldog tenacity, the will to carry on, the determination that this was a people who would never surrender, might be faltering at last.

Portsmouth had not been raided again, but nobody could dismiss the possibility that their turn would come. They went into the new year with trepidation, spending each night in the shelters just in case. Each day without bombing brought relief that they had still escaped, and a greater fear that it must come soon.

On 8 January a huge party was held for the children in the Guildhall. Tim and Keith were already back at Bridge End, but Rose went to it with Joy Brunner, though neither of them now thought of themselves as children. Joy had barely attended school since the war began, and had been virtually running the shop for months as well as looking after her mother for much of the time. Rose, out in the country, had been receiving only half-day schooling, and not much of that, for the older girls were expected to help with the younger children and she had spent a lot of her time reading to the little ones and assisting them with their sums.