Wartime Family (2 page)

‘You little—’ Henry aimed a blow at his youngest son’s head. It missed. In the past he would have gone after him and laid down the law. But not now. Henry Randall wanted the world to believe he was a changed man.

Young Stanley grinned cheekily. He mostly visited his father every Friday, sometimes staying the night. Today was Sunday and an exception, and he wouldn’t be staying. Today he was off home.

Biddy frowned as she watched Stanley wobble away on his sister’s bicycle, given to him when Lizzie had joined the Royal Army Service Corps. Stanley didn’t care that the bike was designed for a girl. Having transport meant he could live with his mother at the pawn shop in Bedminster and visit his father on Fridays when fish and chips were on offer.

Biddy Young was a bit disturbed and not a little put out. She regarded herself as Mary Anne Randall’s best friend. They’d shared secrets, disappointments and joys over the years – but perhaps they had not shared everything.

‘I never knew she ’ad any auntie. Never mentioned one,’ Biddy muttered, not to anyone in particular.

Henry looked over her head to the end of the street, his eyes following his visitor until George Ford had disappeared around the corner. Even then he kept his eyes focused on that self-same spot.

‘She didn’t,’ he said. ‘That’s why I didn’t give him ’er address.’ He turned back to Biddy. ‘Will you tell ’er when you see ’er?’

‘Course I will, though I won’t go round there today. I ain’t ’ad a wash today. I’ll pop round tomorrow and tell ’er.’

‘Water ain’t that scarce,’ he said, and went back indoors.

Undeterred by his comment, Biddy hurried back across the road. Of course she’d tell Mary Anne. She’d tell her that her old man had refused to pass on her address because he wanted to hurt her, and what could be more hurtful than standing in the way of a family inheritance? If Mary Anne had a bit of money coming to her, she might be generous and pass a bit on to her good friends – especially those who’d helped her claim it.

Glancing back over her shoulder she saw that Henry had closed the door. Old skinflint. Leopards don’t change their spots, and in her opinion, Henry Randall was still the brute he’d always been despite having given up the beer. He’d never forgiven Mary Anne for leaving him for another, younger man. Biddy didn’t blame her. Michael was lovely and she was sure they’d be happy together once the war was over and he was back from all that secret stuff he was doing. In the meantime she decided to take it upon herself to protect Mary Anne’s interests and so, first things first, puffing and panting she ran to the end of the street. She almost collided with a boy riding a makeshift bicycle made from pram wheels and a rusty frame.

‘Oi! You!’ She grabbed his shoulder. ‘Go and fetch that bloke you just passed. Him wearing the khaki mac.’

‘Give me a penny,’ he said, stretching out his hand.

‘I’ll give you a clip round the ear!’

‘I ain’t doing it for peanuts, Missus!’

He was resolute. Biddy growled at him. How come kids were so sharp these days?

‘Here you are,’ she said, her hand diving into her generous bra cup. ‘A farthing.’

He grimaced, thought about it, then took it, spitting on it before shoving it into his ragged pocket.

A few minutes later, George Ford reappeared, skirting a table of buckets, bowls and sweeping brushes outside the corner shop.

Biddy struck a provocative pose and flashed him a lascivious smile. ‘You wanted Mrs Randall’s address? Well I’m the one that can give it to you.’

Once the deed was done and he’d thanked her and walked away, Biddy turned back into the street smiling to herself. Even though she hadn’t managed to get George Ford back to her place for a cup of tea and whatever else might take his fancy, she’d done her best friend a good turn and was pleased with herself. Now to take the news back to her neighbours.

‘Guess what,’ she said to the first neighbours she came across. ‘That dirty old sod made a pass at me. I told him to sod off, told ’im I was a married woman.’

There were mutters of ‘cheeky monkey’ and ‘who does he think he is?’. Biddy basked in their attention. She felt like Jean Harlow, blonde, curvaceous and irresistible.

Henry Randall watched her through the front window. He saw the women glance over and guessed they were curious. He scowled. Bloody women. They were all the same, fit for only one thing. He turned away, opened a bottle of beer and poured it down his throat.

The air-raid siren was wailing its warning, the baby was crying and Daw was yelling but Mary Anne Randall carried on pouring the cups of tea they’d been about to drink into the thermos flask.

‘I can’t believe Adolf Hitler is sending over a raid on a Sunday,’ she muttered. ‘It must be another false alarm.’

Stanley was hovering, hands in pockets, shirt cuffs flapping around his wrists.

‘Ma, who’s Aunt Maude?’

Mary Anne continued to concentrate on the thermos flasks and sandwiches she’d prepared for going into the shelter.

‘I don’t know,’ she said vaguely. ‘Who is she?’

‘A man called round at Dad’s and said she’d left you some money.’

His mother stopped what she was doing and frowned down at him. ‘I don’t have an Aunt Maude.’

‘So you won’t be getting any money?’ Stanley’s tone was as disappointed as his expression. Pedalling back from his dad’s he’d dreamed of a shiny new bike – a boy’s version, not this silly girl’s bike that Lizzie had left behind.

Mary Anne chuckled to herself. ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’

Disappointed, Stanley shrugged and packed up his toy soldiers to take to the shelter. Grown-ups had strange ways that he didn’t always understand. He thought of his eldest brother Harry and what he would advise if he told him how he felt about grown-ups.
Grin and bear it
, that’s what he’d say.

‘The shelter,’ Daw was shouting. ‘We’ve got to get to the shelter. Ma, will you leave that! Can’t you hear the sirens?’

Mary Anne’s voice was as calm as her exterior. ‘Daw, you’ve always been a bit on the hysterical side. How many false alarms have we had? We’re too far west for the Germans to bother us. Our Lizzie told me that.’

Daw’s eyes were wide with fear. ‘Ma, it’s a raid! There’s bombs dropping!’

Mary Anne tutted loudly as she screwed in the top. ‘And on a Sunday too. Have they no respect?’

‘There’s loads of them,’ shouted Stanley, her youngest, a lad of ten who was as much of an armchair general as his father. ‘Watch out! Yer squashing me,’ he added as Daw squeezed through the doorway, the baby still squalling in her arms.

Mary Anne was about to follow her, then stopped. ‘The presents! Stanley, give me a hand here!’

Stanley poked out his tongue at his sister before racing back to help his mother.

There were glass-fronted cupboards on either side of the fireplace. Mary Anne plunged into the lower cupboards. Unlike the upper ones they were wooden fronted. She pulled out two brown carrier bags bulging with Christmas presents. Most were home-made – scarves, handkerchiefs and things made from hand-me-downs. Stanley took one, carrying it tucked behind him so that it bumped against his legs. His mother followed.

‘Hitler can bomb all he likes, but he isn’t going to destroy these and ruin our Christmas.’

Daw was getting frantic. ‘Come on!’ The baby squalled even louder.

Mary Anne pushed the second carrier bag at her daughter. ‘Take this.’

‘Where are you going?’

Christmas wasn’t just about giving presents. There was food in the larder, precious bits and pieces, some on ration and some acquired through friends of friends. Mary Anne headed for the small lean-to kitchen.

‘You go on. I’ll be right behind you. I’m not leaving the tea and flour and the Christmas cake.’

Daw didn’t wait. Bundling baby Mathilda into her pushchair, the carrier bag bouncing between her knees and the pram, she broke into a run. It was her mother’s opinion that the back yard was too small for an air-raid shelter. She preferred the public ones in Dean Lane.

‘At least there you can have a jolly time before a bomb hits,’ she’d quipped, referring to the singsongs, sometimes accompanied by an accordion.

‘Mum, don’t say that!’ Being brave didn’t come easily to Daw, whereas young Stanley took everything in his stride.

Mary Anne pulled everything she could from the cupboard: flour, tea, sugar, sultanas and precious tins of pink Canadian salmon. Plus the Christmas cake, of course.

‘Take this,’ she said, thrusting a bundle into Stanley’s arms. ‘Now go on after our Daw. I’ll be right behind you.’

A sudden thought made Mary Anne stop in her tracks. She looked up, thinking that perhaps the scream of the siren had changed in some way. It hadn’t, and yet some instinct telling her the sirens were different today had made her hesitate. And why had she gathered all her precious Christmas things together? She’d never done that before. Why today?

She shook the thoughts from her head. No matter what, she would follow her instincts. In the past she’d lived purely for her family, burying her true self beneath whatever they had wanted her to be. A mother. A wife. Now, since knowing Michael, she had become a woman, a mature version of the carefree girl she’d once been.

Jolting herself back to reality, she wove in and out of the furniture and out of the back door, locking it behind her. The front of the shop was securely bolted against the looters that bombing raids inevitably brought. A pawn shop was a magnet to such people. She’d kept things going in Michael’s absence and wasn’t about to lose it to thieves now.

She dashed off into the alley and down to Dean Lane. She was just in time to see Stanley disappearing down the steps of the shelter entrance. The sound of the sirens set her teeth on edge. She was glad to reach the shelter entrance, as being underground muffled the sound of the siren.

The shelter was bursting at the seams, but still she managed to push her way across to where Daw was sitting with Mathilda in her lap. The pram had been left outside. There was only room for people in here. The man on the accordion was squeezing away and singing ‘I’ll be with you in apple blossom time’.

The air was hot and rank with the smell of people. Normally it might have been bearable, but these people had little to eat, little water to wash with and hardly enough time to keep body and soul together. Everyone was beginning to look a bit grey around the gills.

Stanley found a few of his pals. As if by magic they all pulled conkers from their pockets and immediately started a game.

Daw was crying, big tears streaking her dust-covered face, the dust stirred up from the floor by tightly packed people. Her selfish temper suddenly took hold. She glared at her mother.

‘I wish I hadn’t come. It’s all your fault!’

There had been many times when Mary Anne had hidden the hurt caused by Daw’s comments. This was just another one, so she put on a brave face and tried to sound calm and collected.

‘I had to get the Christmas presents, Daw,’ she said as she squeezed on to the rough bench beside her daughter. She sighed. ‘I was looking forward to a proper Christmas, Daw. That cake’ll go down a treat. So will that salmon.’

‘I don’t care,’ Daw blubbered.

Daw had always had a bit of a self-centred way about her. Even now, she pouted as though she were still nine years old. ‘That isn’t what I meant. It’s coming to the pawn shop. If you still lived at home with Dad …’

Mary Anne clamped her teeth tightly together. Harry, Lizzie and even young Stanley accepted that Henry’s violence and drinking had been too much for their mother to live with. They’d also accepted that she loved Michael, who had been left the pawn broking business by his uncle. They’d met at the beginning of the war when she’d been running her own little business from her washroom at the back of the house. He was younger than her, though she was still a looker for a woman of forty plus. At first they’d been in competition, but that had soon melted away. They’d both been escapees – her from Henry and he from Germany.

Mary Anne turned her face away until she had gained more control of her emotions. Her heart ached to see Michael again. Sometimes she screwed her eyes tightly shut and imagined his features, afraid that she might never see him again, afraid that she’d forget what he looked like. His letters were few and guarded and sometimes, when she was at her lowest ebb, she wondered if he would ever return; if he would ever
want
to return. To help keep the doubts at bay, she tried to fill her time with the pawn shop and helping out in the Red Cross shop around the corner in East Street. She’d donated some of the pre-war pledges that had never been claimed. Some of it was sheer tat, stuff that went straight into the bin. The clothes, crockery and cooking utensils went to the shop.

It took a while to control her feelings and by the time she could, the walls of the shelter were shaking. Someone shouted that a nearby shelter had been hit. The panic was palpable, rolling through the people like a tidal wave. Shouting and screaming, a host of humanity clawed their way to the entrance, terror in their eyes. Children cried, women screamed and so did some men. Others, ARP wardens mostly, tried to calm everyone down and prevent them from going outside. ‘It’s raining bombs out there. Stay where you are. Stay where you’re safe.’

The boys stopped playing conkers. Stanley crept back to his mother’s side, hiding his face beneath her arm. Turning her back towards the shelter entrance, Mary Anne hugged Daw and the baby tightly against herself with her free arm. If a bomb was going to hit them, it would hit her first. Daw shook and trembled, sobbing against her shoulder.

‘I can’t stand this,’ she mumbled into her mother’s coat. ‘I can’t stand it.’

‘We’ll be alright. I promise we will.’

Mary Anne turned frightened eyes over her shoulder. Carrying others with them, those panicking pressed against the shelter entrance. Heads disappeared in the crush. Mary Anne pressed her daughter’s face more tightly against her own body, hoping that somehow she could protect her.

Suddenly the concrete roof trembled. Dust floated down in a milky haze, covering heads, stinging eyes and sticking in throats. A horror-filled hush descended, spreading through the concrete cloud.