War Babies (16 page)

‘The Battle of France is over . . .’ The new prime minister Winston Churchill’s voice growled from the wireless that June evening. If necessary, Britain would
fight alone.

Rachel heard the news at home, in the upstairs parlour, with her mother and Fred. The war was moving closer. The Maginot Line, built to keep the Germans out, had failed completely. The French
had signed the armistice, surrendering only six weeks after the Germans had invaded.

‘My God,’ Fred said, clicking the wireless off. ‘They even made them sign it in the same railway carriage – that’s where they signed the armistice in nineteen
eighteen. What a disaster!’

Peggy had wept a month ago when Mr Churchill made his first speech in the House of Commons as prime minister. ‘Our poor Mr Chamberlain! But oh, what wonderful words – I feel better
already for hearing him!’

This did not seem to last long, however, and she was soon full of woe again. ‘We’re going to be invaded, I know we are. Overrun! Those horrible Germans will be striding down our
streets, doing terrible, savage things . . .’

It was a tense, frightening summer as the Battle of France became the Battle of Britain, fought out over the south-east by the air force and the ground defences. By the late summer it was
becoming clear that they had fought off the invasion, but all through those months, rumours were flying. At work, Rachel found, there were stories of secret German invasions, of spies in exotic
disguises. Shortages of everything increased and everyone was being asked to hand in pots and pans to be melted down to make aircraft. There was a sense of unease and panic.

It was all coming closer, and there was the worst tension of waiting for the unknown. What was going to happen – and when?

When the air-raid sirens first went off, Rachel felt a few moments of relief. Now it was coming – it was beginning. This soon turned to panic and terror. They had heard
the sirens before, of course. There was a daylight raid in Erdington, to the north of the city, earlier in the month, but hearing it that night in late August, the sound made every nerve in her
body jump and jangle.

‘Down in the cellar everyone!’ Fred commanded.

They had prepared it down there, even though it was a cold, dank hole. Fred had got hold of a couple of old mattresses and they had a torch and an oil lamp ready as well as some blankets to take
down.

There was confusion at first, none of them used to this.

‘I ought to bring Cissy some milk!’ Peggy cried, dithering at the top of the steps with the sleepy child in her arms. Cissy was the only one of them who was calm.

‘Just get down in there where it’s safe,’ Fred bossed. ‘You go with her, Rachel. We don’t know how long we’ve got.’

Rachel followed her mother down the steep cellar steps, still just able to hear the horrifying yowl of the siren outside. Fred followed and in that moment Rachel realized another thing –
if this was going to happen a lot she would end up spending nights in the company of her mother and stepfather.

‘Hold your sister while I get sorted out,’ Peggy commanded.

Rachel scrambled onto one of the cold mattresses while Fred lit the tilly lamp. She held out her arms and Peggy lowered the plump child into them. Cissy, now almost a year old, had gingery hair
like her father’s but luckily, so far as Rachel was concerned, she did not look like Fred in any other way. Her hair fell in loose curls, she had a pink-and-white complexion and big blue eyes
which she opened now, looking round in bewilderment. Seeing her sister’s face above her, she made a little happy noise and smiled sleepily.

‘S’all right, Cissy – you go back to sleep,’ Rachel said. She cuddled the little girl close. She hadn’t had much to do with Cissy when she was a small baby. All
she’d done then was eat, sleep and scream, and Rachel kept resentfully out of her way. But nowadays Cissy was more settled and was starting to know who everyone was, and she had a sunny
personality. She adored her big sister and immediately reached her arms out towards Rachel whenever she saw her.

She’s all right, Rachel thought, with a rush of fondness for the little bundle in her arms. She is half my sister, after all. It was comforting now they were experiencing this first real,
frightening raid, to have someone smaller than herself to look after, especially someone so warm and sweet.

Peggy sat down on the other mattress beside Fred. He had arranged them at right angles to each other, along two walls. There was a bitter smell of coal dust and it was very dark but for the
light of the lamp flickering shadows across their faces. The night was warm, but the cellar always felt chill, and the damp from the cold bricks seeped into her back. Rachel wished she had a
blanket behind her and shivered, thinking what it would be like down here in the winter.

‘Right – I’ll have her back if you like,’ Peggy said.

‘It’s all right, she’s settled,’ Rachel said. ‘She can stay here with me for now.’

‘Huh – that’s a turn-up for the books, you taking an interest in your sister,’ Peggy began. But she was silenced by Fred.

‘Shh, wench – listen. That’s them coming!’

Peggy was too aghast even to protest about being called ‘wench’. They could barely hear the sound of the planes’ engines down there but the distant thumps and explosions were
not lost on them.

‘Oh my Lord,’ Peggy said. ‘We could’ve all died in our beds.’

They lapsed into a tense, listening silence, all trying to hear what was going on outside.

As it quietened a little, Fred muttered, ‘Those buggers – we should’ve finished ’em off good and proper the first time.’

Rachel did not see it until after work the next day, but she heard. The Market Hall. The news spread. One of the best-loved parts of Birmingham, the Market Hall had received a
direct hit.

She went to look after work, with Danny. Taking their turn they peered in through a hole in the side wall. Everyone gasped as they looked in. It was bad enough that you could already see the
roof was missing, that the place was nothing but a shell. But inside was still a shock.

‘It looks terrible,’ Rachel said, staring at the mass of twisted metal, the charred beams lying at angles over heaps of rubble. It was hard to believe that only yesterday it would
have been full of stalls and shoppers in all its usual bustle and colour, full of fruit and veg and flowers, of meat and poultry and fish. A couple of little Union Jacks had been stuck into the
desolate sea of destruction.

Danny was silent, seeming stunned. The fish market, where he worked, was just next door.

‘The clock’s gone,’ a woman’s voice said behind them. There had been an ornate clock in the Market Hall, with a striking bell and moving figures round it. ‘Burnt to
ashes, they say.’

The two of them moved away from the shell of the wrecked building, leaving others space to look. There was a sober, shocked atmosphere all around them and that was how they felt too. It was the
first time for them that the war had come up really close. When they had moved a little further away, Danny took Rachel’s hand.

‘It seems daft that they’ve sent Jess and Amy here when the other kids’re being sent away,’ he said.

No one ever mentioned Rose any more. What else was there to say but to mourn her quietly?

‘Mind you,’ he added sadly, ‘Auntie’s thinking about sending Amy away again. She don’t seem to like it here.’

Gladys had tried bringing the two girls to the Rag Market on Saturdays. Jess seemed to enjoy it, but Amy remained silent and sullen, however much Jess and Rachel tried to cheer her up. It was as
if she had shut everyone out and was in a sad, angry world of her own.

‘I’m at my wits’ end with her,’ Gladys said. She looked more tired and drawn in the face every time Rachel saw her. ‘I ought to get them into some sort of school
– but how are they going to deal with Amy, the way she is?’

All that summer, Gladys struggled to help the two girls adjust to being back in their family. Jess was quiet, eager to please, but somehow quietly wretched. Amy remained mutinous and
disturbed.

‘I’ve never seen a child like it,’ Gladys reported wearily one Sunday afternoon when Rachel was at the house. It was September, but still very warm. Jess and Amy were out in
the yard, the rest of them inside with the door open. Smells of smoke and ripe whiffs from the dustbins and lavatories drifted in. Flies blundered into one of the sticky flypapers Gladys had
hanging up. ‘Yesterday – I heard this noise from upstairs, thump-thump. When I went up, there she was, in the bedroom, just sat there, banging her head on the wall.’
Gladys’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m nearly at the end of my tether.’

People in the yard had been kind – or some. Ma Jackman, who seldom had a good word to say for anyone, gave the two arrivals hostile looks and kept saying, ‘They’re not right,
those two.’ Which Gladys said was quite something when you considered how odd Edwin Jackman had turned out – and who wouldn’t with a mother like that? Rachel had caught sight of
Edwin a few times. He was a pale, expressionless lad a couple of years older than her.

The Morrisons kept trying to help. Dolly was kind and motherly with the two girls. Mo would sit down in the yard, call them over and do little tricks of his. He’d blacken the back of a
plate with smuts on the fire and let them draw pictures with a matchstick. And he would tell them jokes, his wide pink face stretching into a grin. Jess would smile, but even he could not get Amy
to crack her face. She would back away from him angrily.

‘You gonna take her to Uncle Albert?’ Danny asked miserably. Rachel felt so sad for him. Getting his family back together had only caused more heartbreak. It was almost, now, as if
he wished them gone again.

Gladys looked uncertain. ‘My brother Albert and his wife live out at Sutton,’ she explained to Rachel. ‘He’s done all right for himself he has. He was our mother’s
little afterthought. He was too young to join up when the Great War came and he works in insurance. They won’t be able to call him up – he’s bad with his chest. He can hardly
breathe sometimes.’ She took a thoughtful sip of tea, holding the cup in both hands. ‘They’ve got two of their own – about Amy’s age. Albert’s never been one for
putting himself out much but Nancy, his wife – well, she’s all right from what I remember. I thought she was very nice. I think I’d better write to them.’

‘Amy might like it out there,’ Danny said. ‘With their kids.’

Gladys nodded, but she looked worried. ‘If she goes on like this, I wouldn’t wish her on anyone. But I’ve not brought up young ones that age, like Nancy has – I
don’t know where to begin.’

Rachel thought of Amy’s hard, angry expression and wondered if she would get on anywhere.

‘I hope they’ll help out, I really do,’ Gladys said desperately. She got up from the table. ‘I’ll do it – later. I’ll drop them a line.’

Rachel could see how upset Gladys was. She had been unhappy and ashamed that she had not been able to find the girls earlier, but now they were here, she couldn’t manage. She felt she had
let everyone down.

Jess and Amy drifted back inside then, so the conversation ended.

‘They keep telling her to go away,’ Jess reported. Amy had not been welcomed by the other children in the street. Her permanent look of sullen misery and angry outbursts of temper
had probably not helped.

‘C’m’ere, bab,’ Gladys beckoned her and pulled the child onto her knee, which to Rachel’s surprise Amy agreed to as if she was much younger than her years. She
leaned her head miserably on Gladys’s shoulder. ‘Shall I cut you a piece, bab – are you hungry?’

Amy shook her head. Rachel could feel the child’s deep unhappiness coming towards her in waves. Her heart ached for her, remembering how she had felt when her mother moved in with Fred
Horton, how lost and pushed out. How much more sad and bewildered Amy must feel.

‘Top up the pot, wench, will yer?’ she said to Jess, who got up, seemingly glad to be asked, and brought the pot to the table. As she poured the tea, Rachel thought how pretty she
was, with her sweet, freckled face.

‘If we went for a visit to Uncle Albert’s house,’ Gladys said quietly to Amy, ‘would you like that? There’s a big park there, with a stream. Not like
here.’

Amy gave a little nod into her shoulder. ‘Don’t like it here,’ she said in a voice so small they could only just make it out. ‘It’s dirty and horrible.’

‘All right, bab,’ Gladys said softly. ‘I know. But we’re your family and we’re what you’ve got in the world. We’re going to have to see what we can do
– if they can let you stay. We’ll go out there and see, as soon as we can. But you’d have to try hard to settle down. D’you think you could do that?’

Amy pulled back and looked intensely into her face. After a second she gave an uncertain sort of nod, before cuddling up to Gladys again. Gladys looked at Danny over her head and gave him a look
as if to say, ‘Heaven help us.’

November 1940

Rachel walked wearily along Alma Street, hugging her coat round her, collar up against the damp and cold. Under it she had on a green tartan skirt and a cream jumper. In
the bomb-damaged streets around her, children were careering about, laughing and yelling, but she hardly noticed them. Passing into the yard, she tapped on the door of Gladys’s house and
opened it.

‘Danny?’

He was sitting staring into the fire as if in another world. He jumped at her voice, and looked round. The room was tidy as ever and the house felt quiet and bereft.

‘They’ve gone then?’ Rachel shut the door and took her hat off, shivering.

‘Yeah,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘Soon as Auntie was back from church.’

She peeled her coat off. As Danny sat up straighter, she saw that he was holding his little notebook and the stub of pencil.

‘Have you been drawing?’ she asked carefully. She knew it was because he was upset.

Danny gave a sheepish smile. ‘Yeah.’ He held the little page out to her. She saw another of his rough sketches. Jack and Patch, both sitting down.

‘Where are they?’