The War Widows (12 page)

Ana stared down at the face of the tiny woman with delicate cheekbones and flashing eyes. ‘How you be so still like boat on a lake, no ripples?’ she asked. ‘You have no tears. You not honour the dead.’

‘Oh, yes, I do! I went on living when all around me were dying. Here is a better life for me. The Japanese bombed our beautiful cities. It was a terrible time. I trekked to India with my family through the jungle. I will not talk about the time of walking bones and skellingtons, when we ate roots and drank water from leaves. I saw terrible things too, many die. What do you know? Better forget what is past. We shall make the best of living here, I know.’ She paused and gave a big sigh. ‘When it is cold and dark I think of blossom on trees, orchids and perfume of jasmine flowers. I think of spices and making
balachan
pickle with my mother. Her spirit looks down on me with kindness. She expects me to behave like a good Anglo-Burmese so I will. I have Joy and she is my sunshine. I will make sure she walks in sunlight always. We have a friend in Lily, who looks after us all. Then it is not so bad.’

‘This is bad! I wanna go home but how can I go home with no husband and a girl child? I have no dowry. Who will wed me now? There is nothing but war amongst my country and ruined towns. There is nothing for me there but starvation.’

‘Then we make our own sunshine, Ma Ana,’ Su said, passing Dina back into her arms. ‘Come, the bath water will be cold and the snake woman will shout at us again.’

‘I don’t want bath. I want fresh tomatoes warmed by the midday sun, the golden oil of olives ripe in the heat of the afternoon. I want to sit with a glass of retsina, watching the oleanders swaying in the evening breeze. How can I have any of that here?’ she replied.

‘The Bible says, ask and you shall receive, seek and ye shall find…’ said Su.

‘You believe that if I pray to holy St Aristaeus my dream will come?’ Ana looked up in amazement. How could a Greek saint perform miracles so far away?

‘It is written in the Holy Word. Everything comes to him who waits,’ added Susan.

‘How long I wait?’

‘As long as it takes.’

‘You talk riddles to me,’ Ana snapped.

‘I am trying to help you lift up your socks,’ Su replied with flashing eyes. ‘There you go again, moan, moan. What shall we do with this miserable bag of bones with baggy bosoms?’

‘You are a selfish pig. You think you are better than me with your fat baby,’ Ana snapped back. ‘I not speak to you again, ever…’

‘My baby is beautiful. Tell her, Miss Lily.’ Su looked for support but Lily had beat a hasty retreat downstairs.

‘What on earth is that racket going on upstairs?’ said Esme as they tidied away the remnants of the funeral
tea: soiled napkins and crumbs, a forgotten umbrella and gloves. ‘Go and see to it, Lil, I’m done in.’

‘I’ve been up once. Better to just let them sort it out like squabbling children,’ she replied, too weary to want more conflict.

‘And what would you know about that?’ Esme snapped.

‘A pack of noisy seven-year-old Brownies teaches you enough. If I chased after all their fallings-in and-out, we’d never get a badge done. Better to let them sort themselves out.’

‘But they’re mothers, not children…’

‘Then you go and sort them out,’ Lily replied. It was all so tiresome.

‘I don’t like your attitude these days. We never had this before—’

‘We never had to deal with Freddie’s girlfriends and babies either. Everything’s changing.’

‘They can’t stay here for ever. It’s like Manchester Piccadilly, all comings and goings, and you’ll want them on their way if there’s a wedding to plan.’

‘You won’t send them away, will you?’ The thought of her mother chucking them out was real now.

‘Oh, it can wait a while longer,’ Esme replied, not wanting another argument. ‘Family first and foremost, after all.’

‘Ana is crying ’cos she’s cold and the food is strange. She wants olive oil and a taste of home, just a bit of comfort.’

‘Well, she’ll have to want. This is Grimbleton. What’s the olive oil for? Is she sick?’

‘They cook with it in Greece and in the Bible lands too.’

‘What’s wrong with lard?’

‘Don’t ask me. She’s homesick.’

‘Then she can go home on the next boat and solve one of our problems.’

‘But little Dina, your own granddaughter-why must she suffer?’

‘I can’t think about that now,’ came Esme’s reply. ‘My head is throbbing with all that talking. At least they’ve shut up now.’

‘I expect they’re not talking to each other. The silence is deafening.’

‘So what would a Brown Owl do about that?’

Lily smiled. ‘Sit them down side by side and see what it’s all about, I suppose.’

‘What’s stopping you? Go to it!’

‘Not tonight, Mother. I’ve had enough for one day. Walt and me have hardly passed the time of day. I miss Freddie too, but the man they talk about isn’t the brother I remember. How many more girls did he make promises to? How many more seeds did he scatter?’

‘Don’t talk ill of the dead, lass. They can’t answer back.’

‘I’m not so sure about that. I think our Freddie has left us quite a few messages one way and another…’

For two days Ana and Su stomped about in silent protest, speaking politely only when spoken to. For two days everyone tiptoed around them as they glared at each other, hissing like angry snakes. When Su went
right, Ana went left, in and out of the house like weather girls in a cuckoo clock, coxing and boxing.

Then there was Ivy and Levi, dodging the flak, and Esme trying to ignore them. Lily was at her wits’ end. Should she intervene or stay silent, bang their heads together or go out and get on with her busy life and leave them to come to? Waverley House, big as it was, couldn’t contain all the warring factions, or keep the nosy neighbours from prying.

A house divided falls apart, Lily mused. It was time to stand in the firing line and say her piece, but why did it have to be her?

Don’t be a marshmallow, be a nut cracknel, she decided, gathering her courage. Let them all chew on that!

It was the children who brought the feud to an end. Placid little Joy began clambering to be picked up and fussed while Su was busy tidying the bedroom clutter.

‘Lazy slut, she never helps me,’ Su muttered loudly whilst picking up scattered clothing. ‘How Freddie made a baby with her…’

‘I not listen. She think she is Queen of England. I not listen.’

Joy began to cry and that set Dina howling.

‘Now look what you’ve done!’

Lily knew it was now or never. ‘Girls, girls, this has to stop right now,’ she barked in her sharpest Brown Owl voice. ‘What is the matter with you? If I can help I will, but this must stop. The business with my brother nothing can change, but sit down like ladies and let us clear the air.’ She pointed to the bed and the basket chair.

‘All she talks about is olive oil. What is so important about olive oil? She cries and beats her breast and upsets my Joy,’ said Su.

‘I think Ana is sad, yes?’ Lily turned to the Cretan girl. ‘You want to go home? Yes?’

‘Yes…
óchi…
I not know.’ Ana looked up with tears in her eyes.

‘No one is stopping her going to her island. I am sick of this beautiful island with olive trees, oranges and melons. It makes me hungry,’ Su responded.

‘No go back. Village is bombed. No one there.’ Ana shook her head, and Lily wondered what it must be like to have no family at all. Whatever she thought of her own, she couldn’t imagine not having anyone left at all.

‘I lose family too. There is just Auntie Betty but I will not go back, never. Here is the best place for my Joy.’

‘A girl with baby and no man not go back to Crete. All the men are dead. I bring shame on family name,’ Ana sobbed.

‘Don’t be so sorry for yourself.’ Su was losing patience again. ‘You have made it safely to England. You are lucky.’

‘But my sister…How I say it…soldiers come from sky like falling umbrellas to fight Tommies in the fields. We shoot them down like birds. My brother Stelios hide in the hills and Eleni takes food and guns strapped to her legs. Many Tommies are hit and we hide them in houses. The doctor at Red Cross show me how to tie up bleeding and keep them safe. Then the Germans march into village and search all the houses, smash our door, push us outside. We line up in square and they take the men away. They turn to see if women hide guns. They tear our shirts and shame us. Eleni have big
mark on her shoulder from shooting gun, the pressing make a mark. They take her too. I have no mark on my shoulder, I am not taken.

‘My mama is screaming and we follow to where they take them. They tie their hands and shoot them and leave them in the sun. My beautiful sister is lying there. The flies buzz over her. How I go back now?’

Lily felt sick just picturing the scene. ‘You did your best. No one blames you, Ana.’

The girl shook her head. ‘I feel bad inside. Everyday I feel bad. When I run in the hills and down into the town, I think of her. I help in the hospital. I see terrible things…’

Lily sat beside her trying to comfort her.

‘Terrible things happened in the jungle too,’ said Su. ‘My cousin stayed to help wounded soldiers and bring them to the border crossing. They caught him and tied him to a tree and stuck bayonets in his belly. I heard cries over and over in my head, ashamed that I am alive and he is dying and ashamed how much I want to live. A girl must flee the Japanese. They like fair-skinned girls to send to whorehouses. I have to run away but it is over now. We have to look forward.’

Ana nodded and wiped her eyes.

‘Soon Dina will walk like Joy and talk proper English like the lady on the wireless,’ Su offered.

‘No, she will talk Greek,’ Ana replied.

‘What for?

‘So she knows who she is: Konstandina Eleni.’

‘That name makes her foreign. Dina is better, like the film star Dina Durbin.’

‘Who is Dina Durbin?’ said Ana, turning to Lily.

‘I think she means Deanna Durbin, the Hollywood star.’

‘Huh! Deanna, Diana, Dina-all the same pretty name,’ sniffed Su. ‘An English name. She must be a proper English girl. You are in England now so why do you need olive oil?’

Ana looked up and smiled. ‘Oh, no. You cannot live without the olive tree. We crush the fruit into golden oil. I just want to smell it and touch it one more time before I die. It is the oil of life, oil of the Gods…’

‘There she goes again! There is plenty of time before you die,’ Su snapped.

Here we go again indeed, Lily sighed, just when things were calming down. ‘I’ve got some Palmolive soap.’

‘Tommy soldiers use the oil for piles on bottom,’ Ana grimaced. ‘All they want is chips, chips, chips.’

‘If it’s piles troubling you…we can try the chemist, love, the pharmacy? Timothy White’s or Boots will do. It’s too cold to grow olives in this country. We did have some little bottles on our stall before the war,’ Lily chipped in.

‘How can you cook without olive oil? We have big pot in the corner of kitchen. Creta oil is best in world. Does pharmacopia have some for me?’

‘We could go and find out,’ Lily offered with a twinkle in her eye.

‘Will you come with us?’ Ana asked with shyness in her voice.

‘If you wish, we will all go together in search of this
golden oil and stockings. I will buy you a new pair to put a smile on your face,’ said Su.

‘If it’s stockings you are after, try the Market Hall. Levi knows someone who sells them without coupons…but don’t say I told you or Ivy will have my guts for garters,’ Lily added.

‘Guts and garters-where can we buy these things?’ giggled Su.

Ana shrugged her shoulders. It was going to take a long time for them to learn the subtleties of the local lingo, and they’d need a referee for all their fallings-out, but at least the pair of them were agreeing on something. Perhaps a joint expedition into town would be a good place to start.

It snowed all night, to Lily’s dismay. The morning after, Susan was in the back garden screaming with delight.

‘Look! Look, Ana, Christmas card snow!’ she screamed, scattering the powdery white with her shoes like a child.

The girls were going into town for the first time. Perhaps the trip would be better postponed for another day, but they were already kitted out for the weather.

The sky was heavy with more snow to come and everyone was out in the back field, jumping, making tracks in the snow and throwing snowballs while the babies toddled and Neville shrieked in delight.

‘This is not proper snow,’ Ana declared. ‘In Germany it was as high as a house.’ But even she was racing around, helping to roll snow into a huge scrunching ball.
Lily fell backwards, flat out with her arms outstretched. ‘I’m making a snow angel.’ Soon Su and Ana joined her, lying in a line like paper cut-outs, holding hands.

‘Get up at once!’ screamed Ivy from the back gate. ‘Don’t make an exhibition of yourselves. What will the neighbours think?’

‘That we’re having a jolly good time,’ Lily yelled back. ‘Don’t be stuffy. Neville’s fine.’

Ivy clomped through the snow in her gumboots and snatched her child away. He kicked her and struggled so she fell onto the freezing ground in a heap.

‘Now look what you’ve done!’

Serves you right, thought Lily, but she bit her lip. They needed Ivy’s big pram for the outing to town.

Lily was accompanying them, to keep the truce and make sure they could navigate the streets into town. The little ones were muffled against the chill and topped and tailed in the large bucket pram, a blue Silver Cross and Ivy’s pride and joy. It had taken Lily hours to get this concession from her. Time to go inside and sweeten her up again.

Esme lent Ana a pair of galoshes but Su’s feet were so tiny that she wore overshoes that fitted over her bootees.

They picked their way down the pavements, sometimes walking in the road where the kerb was piled high with black slush, over cobbles that rattled the pram springs, making a jiggling ride for the children. It was a slippery downhill slide towards the town centre from the better end of Division Street, past the tannery and
Magellan’s Foundry, the railway station and over a slippery wooden footbridge. The cold wind stung their cheeks and Lily was glad of thick knitted mittens over her chilblained fingers.