The Girls They Left Behind (52 page)

‘She’s a good girl. They both are.’ That hadn’t always been Jess’s opinion, privately, she’d thought Peggy a bit too lax with her daughters, though Bert was strict enough. But you couldn’t complain about youngsters who’d worked like Gladys and Diane had, even if they were a bit flighty. ‘Did she go on driving after that?’

Peggy rolled her eyes. ‘Jess, we went everywhere with that van last night! You didn’t have to ask where to go - you just left the hospital and there was another street afire or someone flagging you down for help. It was bedlam. I thought we were going to have an accident, I did straight, the times we nearly crashed into fire engines and such. They had the lot there, City firemen, auxiliaries, soldiers, sailors, Marines. There must’ve been thousands of fires burning. And half the time, they had no water, the water mains were hit, see. What could they do?’

Jess knew all too well that the water mains had been hit.

Parts of the city were still cut off, and even those who still had some were asked to be extra sparing with it. And there was still no electricity. When darkness fell, you had to use candles, and there weren’t all that many of them, either. What with the coal shortage and problems with the gas supply as well, there was precious little comfort to be had anywhere this bitter January.

7 don’t want to see anything like that ever again…’

She and thousands of others echoed Peggy’s words that morning, as they stared at the ruins of their city, as they picked disconsolately through the rubble to salvage what few belongings they could, as they trudged away along the littered streets carrying a few pathetic bundles to find shelter with friends and relatives, or in the emergency centres that had been set up by the council.

What was left for them, now that so much had been taken away? For some, there was still a family; others had lost everyone they loved. For some, there was still a job; others had lost even that. For some, there was comfort; for others, nothing but despair.

The Evening News printed a special edition, with a message from the Lord Mayor set squarely in its front page. He himself had been bombed out, for he had moved into the Guildhall some months previously, declaring that since he spent all his waking hours there he might as well be on hand at night as well. He had left the building only minutes before the incendiaries struck. Now he paid tribute to the people of his city.

‘At last the blow has fallen. Our proud City has been hit and hit very hard by the enemy. Our Guildhall and many of our cherished buildings now lie a heap of smoking ruins… We are bruised but we are not daunted… we shall persevere with an unflagging spirit to a decisive victory…’

‘It’s as good as Churchill,‘Jess said, when Frank read it out to her. ‘It gives people heart when they read things like that.

And they need it, too.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Poor Kathy Simmons. And those two poor little girls. I wonder what’ll happen to them now, with no mother and their father away at sea.’

‘They’ve had a bad time of it,’ he agreed. But you know, they shouldn’t ever have been here. They ought all to have been evacuated, the lot of ‘em. And ‘

‘I know what you’re going to say,’ she interrupted. ‘So should I and Rose and the baby. Well, maybe we should. But how can we? You need me here to look after you, you know that. And I couldn’t bear to think of being away, not knowing what was happening to you. Annie said she tried to telephone to Betty this morning but she couldn’t get through, if there are any phones working, the authorities have got ‘em all. She sent a telegram instead, but that poor girl must have been going through agonies wondering how we all were. And if you want Rose to go back, you can be the one to tell her, I’m not going to.’

Frank sighed and tightened his lips but he knew there was no point in further argument. They’d had all this out before.

Jess saw her duty plainly as being by his side, and beyond that, she wanted to be here. She really had been miserable when she’d gone away at the beginning of the war.

‘Well, if you can stand stopping here after last night, you can stand anything,’ he said. ‘And don’t think I don’t appreciate it, Jess. I want you here, I won’t deny it, but I wouldn’t make you stop if you didn’t want to. And talking of Annie, how’s Olive?’

Jess pulled down the corners of her mouth.

‘Well enough, considering.. She’s really cut up about losing the baby. Derek’s not been told yet, he’s still out helping with demolition and so on. She’ll be better when he can be with her.’ She sighed. ‘I feel sorry for her, but like Annie says, it could be a blessing in disguise. At least the poor little mite won’t be blown to bits like little Thomas Simmons.’

Blown to bits, she thought. Babies in their mothers’ arms, blown to bits.

Betty opened her telegram with shaking fingers. The disruption of Portsmouth had delayed it, so that it was past afternoon milking when it finally arrived. She stared at the orange envelope with dread.

‘Shall I open it for you?’ Dennis asked, but she shook her head.

‘I’ve got to do it myself.’

Her hand shook so much that the paper tore half across before she could get it out of the envelope. Dennis watched her anxiously. Her face was as white as the milk she had just squeezed from the udders, and her lips quivered. Suddenly, her face distorted, her mouth squaring like a child’s, and she dropped the telegram and swayed. He caught her just before she fell.

‘Betty, what’s happened?’

She shook her head. The tears were pouring down her cheeks and she was making a strange, choking sound, half laughing, half crying. She let the telegram fall and it fluttered to the ground as she clung to his shoulders with both hands, beating her forehead against his chest. He gathered her close, holding her hard, rocking her and making soft little soothing sounds.

‘Tell me, Betty. Tell me. What’s happened?’ His own voice trembled. ‘Who - who’s gone? Is it your mum? Your dad?

Your’

‘No! No! It’s none of them - none.’ She gripped his collar and leaned back in his arms, gazing up at him. ‘They’re all right, that’s what it says, all of them, Mum, Dad, Livy, Auntie Jess, Uncle Frank, everyone.’ A sudden fear darkened her eyes and sounded sharply in her voice. ‘That is what it says, isn’t it? I haven’t read it wrong?’

Dennis loosened his arms and bent to retrieve the scrap of paper. He stared at the hastily-printed words. All safe. Love, Mum, Dad, Livy. He took a deep breath of relief and caught her close again.

‘No, sweetheart, you haven’t read it wrong. They’re all right. And you’ll find out any more there is to know soon enough. So now you can stop worrying and give me a hand mucking out these cows. They’ll be up to their udders in it soon, and that won’t make the milk taste very good, now will it!’

Betty laughed shakily and picked up her fork. ‘I’m sorry, Dennis,’ she said. ‘I’ve been a real misery today, I know.’

‘You haven’t been a misery at all. You’ve been worried stiff, and quite right too. Anyone’d be worried about their family, after watching the fires they had in Pompey all night long.’ He glanced towards the door of the byre. The smoke had been visible all day, still shot through with red and gold. ‘I hope Yvonne’s all right too.’

‘Oh, Dennis!’ Betty stopped raking and stared at him in dismay. ‘I forgot all about poor Yvonne. Oh, how could I be so selfish!’

‘And you’re not selfish either. Yvonne’s your friend, but your family’s your family.’ He worked for a few minutes in silence and then said, ‘There’s something I ought to tell you.

And now that you know your family’s all right…’

‘What?’ She stared at him in sudden terror. ‘Dennis, what is it?’

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Nothing to be scared of. It’s just that, well, I’ve decided I can’t go on working on the farm. I’ve got to do something more.’

Betty felt the blood drain from her face.

‘You’re joining up.’

He shook his head. ‘Not exactly. Well, in a way. I’m going to join the Pioneer Corps.’

‘But that’s the Army! You’ll have to kill people.’

‘No. I’ll be a non-combatant. I won’t be killing anyone. I won’t be fighting at all.’

She looked at him. There was something more, she could see it in his face. But at the moment, all she could think of was that he would be leaving the farm.

‘You’re going away,’ she said in a hopeless voice, and he nodded.

‘I’m sorry, Betty. I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to leave the farm and Mr and Mrs Spencer. It’s been like a home to me.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘I don’t even want to leave these cows, bless ‘em! But it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. And after last night…’ He moved restlessly.

‘I know what people like Erica think of me, and I don’t really mind about that. There’s enough like you and the Spencers who can see that a man has to be able to think and decide these things for himself.’

‘It’s a pity there’s not more of them on the City Council,’

Betty said with a flash of spirit. ‘I mean, they’re going right against the Government aren’t they, turning you off your job.

They’re not supposed to do that.’

‘No, they’re not. But there’s not much I can do about that, not without making a lot of fuss.’ He paused and she knew that he was trying to decide how to tell her the rest of his decision. Her heart sank.

‘You’re going to tell me it’s all over between us, aren’t you?

It was good while it lasted -‘ her voice trembled ‘- but once you’ve gone away … Don’t tell me that, please don’t tell me that… I’ll wait for you.’ She remembered Graham, furious because she wouldn’t marry him. ‘I’ll do whatever you want…’

‘But of course I’m not going to tell you that,’ Dennis said, staring at her in amazement. He saw her tears and crossed the space between them with two long strides, pulling her roughly into his arms. ‘Betty, my darling, I’ll never tell you that, never.

I love you. I don’t want to leave you, not for a minute. But I can’t stay here with an easy conscience. I’ve got to do something more to help, you see that, don’t you?’

She nodded speechlessly, her tears soaking his shirt. ‘But you said you never would, you wouldn’t even make uniforms in prison, and now you’re going in the Army.’

‘Non-combatant,’ he said quietly. ‘I won’t fight. I won’t even help by making it easier for others to fight. But I will help save lives. I’m going to be in the bomb disposal squad.’

There was a moment of silence. The cows shifted in their stalls. Somewhere out in the yard, Jonas called to his dog. In the shed next door the hens burst into noisy, excited clucking as Mrs Spencer fed them.

‘The bomb disposal squad?’ Betty repeated slowly. ‘But that’s dangerous.’ Dennis grinned wryly. ‘War is dangerous.

Think of last night.’

‘I know, but that, Dennis, it means defusing unexploded bombs, doesn’t it? Poking about looking for buried mines?

Going down in craters and making sure there’s nothing left to go off? It’s more dangerous than anything.’

‘Not really. There’s plenty of other people ‘

‘I’m not interested in them? she cried. ‘I’m interested in you. You’re the one who’s going to be taking unexploded bombs to bits to stop them going off. Dennis, you’ll be killed, I know you will. You only have to touch some of these bombs and mines, they go off as soon as someone lays a finger on them. I’ve seen them on the news at the pictures. And in papers.’

‘But the ones I’ll be dealing with will be the ones that haven’t gone off so easily. They’re duds. Look, a bomb that falls hundreds of feet from an aeroplane and hits the ground and doesn’t explode isn’t going to go off just because I touch it with one finger, is it?’

‘Isn’t it?’ she retorted. ‘Don’t treat me like a kid, Dennis.

I’m not a fool. Bombs do go off after they’ve fallen. Some of them are time bombs - they’re not meant to go off straightaway.

You can’t tell me you won’t be taking risks.’

He shrugged. ‘A few, yes. Not that many. I’m not treating you like a fool, Betty. It’s honestly not that dangerous. Not if you know what you’re doing.’

‘And do you know what you’re doing?’

‘No, not yet, but I will. I’ll be trained. And I’ve always been good with mechanical things. One of the first things I remember my dad being cross with me about was when I took his alarm clock to bits to see how it worked.’ He laughed. ‘I put it together again, but I had two or three bits left over that I didn’t tell him about, and it never worked properly after that.’

‘And is that supposed to cheer me up?’ Betty said. ‘How d’you think I’m going to feel when they come and tell me there’s only two or three bits of you left over?’ Her face crumpled and she clung to him again. ‘Dennis, please don’t go. Please stay here with me. Or do something else, something that’s not so dangerous. Bomb disposal - you couldn’t have picked anything worse!’

‘Perhaps that’s why I’m doing it,’ he said slowly. ‘Perhaps I want to show people that COs aren’t a bunch of lily-livered cowards. The trouble is, most of the jobs they give us are too safe. They make us look like skivers, hiding away on farms, or just carrying on with our peacetime jobs. It’s no wonder people turn their noses up. But I can’t do it any longer,’ he exclaimed with sudden passion. ‘I can’t stay here, looking out of windows while cities burn and people get killed. I want to be in there, helping save lives that should never be in danger. I won’t fight, I won’t kill, but I won’t stand by and see other people killed when I could be doing something to prevent it.’

He was silent for a moment, then he said quietly, ‘You’re right, Betty. It is dangerous, and I shouldn’t pretend it’s not, especially to you. If those bombs weren’t expected to go off, I wouldn’t be bothered about them. If they were that safe, they could be left there or picked up by anyone who happened to be passing. But they’re not. They can explode. And that’s why I want to work with them, so that I take the same risks as everyone else.’ He looked gravely down into her face. ‘I love you, Betty. That’s why there’s got to be truth between us. It will be dangerous, but I’ve got to do it. Can you understand that?’

She met his eyes. During the past few weeks, as their love had ripened and their understanding deepened, she had come to respect Dennis’s conscience and beliefs. They were not the same as hers, though she felt that with time they might come to mean more to her than the values she had grown up with. But she knew that he had already paid dearly enough to hold them. He had lost his job and many of his friends. He had served in prison. He was now working on hard and menial tasks on a farm. All these prices had been paid with cheerfulness and honesty. He had never shirked a task, but neither had he ever compromised his principles.