‘Where’s Mummy?’
‘Upstairs, resting.’
Breathing heavily after his panic-stricken dash, Pierce slumped into a chair with relief. ‘I heard at The Terminus and cycled home as fast as I could,’ he said. The girls stared at him.
‘Cycled, Daddy?’ enquired Joan. ‘But you haven’t got a bike.’
‘There was one outside the pub,’ he replied.
‘Whose is it?’ asked Joan.
Pierce thought about this for a moment and smiled. ‘I haven’t the foggiest,’ he replied. ‘I suppose I’d better take it back.’
The following week, another spectacle in the sky filled those who saw it with hope and wonder – including Annie and some of her daughters. Annie had been taking to her bed for increasingly long periods but on one of her better days, she decided that she could do with some fresh air. So she pushed Anne in her pram to the rec, where Kath, Sheila and Pat were playing with some friends.
On their way back home, something in the sky caught Kath’s attention. She stopped and watched silently for a while, as clouds appeared to form a crucifix adorned with flowers, and a figure attached to it.
‘Look! Look up there!’ she shouted, and the others saw it too, to their astonishment. ‘What is it, Mum?’ she asked, feeling a little frightened of this apparition.
‘I don’t know,’ Annie replied quietly, still staring at the image. All four of them now stood rooted to the spot as the image gently faded away.
A shiver ran down Annie’s spine and she quickened her step on the way back to the house, hurrying the girls along with her.
‘What was it, Mum?’ asked Kath and Pat in turns. ‘Was it a miracle?’
Annie just repeated that she didn’t know and then said, ‘Probably just clouds.’ Even so, she felt unsettled by it. With the Blitz gaining momentum and the threat of a German invasion ever more present, the detail and clarity of the ‘vision’ were, in such difficult times, too great to be dismissed as nothing more than a natural cloud formation.
Back home, the girls told their sisters excitedly what they had seen, while Annie wondered if it really had been something extraordinary, or whether they had just been fanciful, imagining much more than was actually there. However, the following day they learnt that they were not the only people to have witnessed it. A headline in the News Chronicle read ‘Strangest Story of the War’, and reported how a shepherd had been tending his sheep on the Sussex Downs when he noticed a white line spreading slowly across the sky:
Gradually to his eyes it took the shape of Christ crucified on the Cross. Then six angels took form. The apparition lasted for two minutes, then faded. Mr Fowler rushed down the hillside to tell the village, and found he was not the only witness. Villagers working on the land said they had also seen it.
The Jarmans crowded around the paper. The article also quoted an evacuee named Mrs Steer, who had seen it along with her sister, Mrs Evans: ‘We could see the nail in the crossed feet of Christ, and one of the angels with arms upstretched appeared to be praying.’
The report added that similar statements had been made by seven other villagers. Another newspaper, the Southern Weekly News, also carried an account from Mrs Steer. Like Annie, she had been unnerved:
I happened to go outside my back door and noticed a white streak or road across the sky. Then gradually I saw a cross appear, standing upright, with Christ upon it. Shortly afterwards there were six angels on each side of him. It quite frightened me at first. I felt quite ill and I called my neighbour to look at it.
She also said that the figure of Christ had his head drooping to one side and remarked that the vision didn’t seem to be a cloud formation as it didn’t move. The image appeared gradually and then faded away slowly, lasting in all about two minutes.
The vision was a remarkable event in the Jarmans’ eventful war that was to stay in their memories for ever.
As the end of 1940 approached, Pierce arrived in Hailsham one Friday evening looking shocked.
‘I’ve got some awful news,’ he told Annie. ‘Dockhead Church has been bombed. It’s been turned to rubble.’
As Catholics, Most Holy Trinity Church – as it was formally called – played a big part in the Jarmans’ lives. It was where Annie and Pierce had got married and where they made sure their girls went to mass every Sunday.
‘Is everyone OK?’ she asked. ‘Everyone safe?’
‘Yes, no casualties,’ Pierce reassured her. ‘The convent is being used for mass.’
Having set the dockland area of the East End of London alight with their bombs, the Luftwaffe had recently switched their attention to the industrial Midlands and the North. Coventry was attacked by 449 bombers in a single night. Hull in Yorkshire suffered great damage. It was hard for Churchill or even Pathé News to put an upbeat spin on such devastation and loss of life. As the nation’s backbone was put to the test, the Luftwaffe returned to London once more on 29 December, a Sunday night during the Christmas holiday, with the country’s financial heartland, the City, as its target.
The area from Aldersgate to Cannon Street and Cheapside was set aflame, including nineteen churches, sixteen of which had been designed by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London. However, a dramatic photograph in the following day’s newspapers showed the dome of Wren’s most famous building, St Paul’s Cathedral, standing defiant and noble amongst the rubble, flames and smoke around it.
With the RAF denying the Luftwaffe air superiority over the South of England, Hitler postponed his plan to invade Britain in mid-September 1940, and turned his attention towards Russia. The bombing in London began to ease and, as it did so, Sheila’s best friend, Mary Eddicott, broke some news to her that left Sheila feeling physically sick.
‘We’re going back to London,’ she said at school playtime. She explained that her father had bought a greengrocer’s shop in Tooley Street, and that she and her family were going to help run it. With planes being spotted overhead so frequently in Hailsham, the Eddicotts felt that the town was just as dangerous as London, so why not go home?
‘If they can go back, why can’t we?’ a tearful Sheila asked her mother when she got home from school.
Annie put her arm around her daughter. ‘We’re safer here,’ she said. However, even as she spoke, Annie’s sadness at the prospect of losing her old friend Mary made her think that perhaps she and her daughters could return to Bermondsey too and be a complete family again. If only a house could be found for them. She discussed it with Pierce when he next visited.
‘It’s too dangerous, Annie,’ Pierce told her. ‘You’ve got to keep sheltering during the air raids. Where would you all go?’
Annie remonstrated with him, saying they would be near Stainer Street railway arch near London Bridge, which he had told her was being used as an ad hoc air-raid shelter. But Pierce held firm.
‘There’s nothing I’d like more than for us all to be back together again – but not if your lives are at risk.’
He was soon proved right. Not long after their conversation, Stainer Street arch suffered a direct hit on 17 February 1941. Sixty-eight people were killed, another 175 injured. For the time being, the Jarmans were staying put in Hailsham.
In any case, thought Pierce, Annie’s fast-deteriorating health prevented the upheaval of leaving Hailsham to start afresh in London. To their dismay, Annie found she was coughing up blood again, and as she spent more frequent periods resting in bed, Joan was by now very capable with household chores. She made sure her younger sisters got off to school on time and provided meals, despite the challenge of more and more food becoming rationed.
When she sat beside her mother’s bed, Mary felt too frightened to ask how she was. Annie understood, saying quietly, ‘I know what’s wrong. Don’t worry.’
Hearing the words and seeing the sorrowful look on her mother’s face made Mary panic. She didn’t want to hear any more. ‘You’ll be all right, Mum,’ she said quickly, adding, in an echo of Annie’s reas
surances in the past, ‘just some rest is what you need.’
The local doctor had been called to visit on several occasions already, but the next time he came and examined Annie in bed, he told her that he was going to ring for an ambulance to take her into hospital. It wasn’t to be just any old hospital, though. It was a specialist clinic for TB sufferers, many miles away from Hailsham and one she knew only too well – Grove Park. The thought of returning there filled Annie with dread, and she was distraught to think how far away from the girls she would be. This time, however, she was too weak to protest.
Mary was at work when the ambulance arrived and took Annie away but, knowing it was coming, she had kissed and hugged her mother goodbye that morning.
‘I’ll come and visit you at the weekend with Daddy,’ Mary had said. ‘Don’t worry, Mum. You’ll be better soon. They’ll look after you in hospital, you’ll see. Make you better and, before you know it, you’ll be back here with us.’
The rest of the sisters were home when the ambulance arrived.
‘Be good girls now, while I’m away,’ Annie said weakly as she gave them all a hug and a kiss before being carried outside, her daughters trailing behind.
Kate stood in the doorway. ‘Come inside now, girls,’ she said, and they rushed upstairs to the bedroom overlooking the street where they could get a good view.
Crowded together at the window, trying not to cry, they looked out at their mother getting into the ambulance. Annie turned and waved, and they waved back. She saw her daughters’ small faces framed in the window as she got into the vehicle and it drove away.
Joan choked back her emotion, not wanting her little sisters to know how worried she was, but tears rolled down Sheila’s face freely as she stared at the empty space where the ambulance had been. She stayed frozen to the spot, long after the others had moved away. She had never seen her mother as bad as this.
Despite the fact that Annie’s ill health meant that she had spent little time looking after the family in recent weeks and an increasing amount of time resting in bed, her absence from the house was very noticeable to the girls. With Pierce away working in London during the week, the sisters now felt their bond more closely than ever. They resolved to pull together and, in their mother’s favourite words, ‘not make a fuss’.
Mary continued to go to work and bring in some money, and life went on as well as it could. Annie was proud to hear it when Pierce visited her in hospital and spoke about how they were getting along.
But all of the girls were subdued. Kath and Pat were not so full of high jinks and Sheila retreated into herself even more, finding solace in books, now that her mother and her best friend were no longer around. Pierce too had lost his spark, which was noticeable to the girls when he arrived at the weekends.
Despite all of this, the girls comforted themselves in their belief that Annie would be out of hospital and back home with them soon – as had happened before. Even Mary and Joan, who had discussed the seriousness of their mother’s condition between themselves, thought this would be the case. Going to bed at night in the dark and quiet countryside during a war, without a mother or father around, was frightening, and the younger girls huddled together, reassuring themselves with talk of Annie’s recovery.
There had always been a night-time buzz of noise from the streets back in Bermondsey, especially after pub closing time. However, here in Hailsham all was quiet, and the blackout curtains prevented the moon from offering any illumination inside their bedroom. Sometimes, if they awoke in the small hours, the girls would temporarily think they had gone blind, and if they needed to use the precariously positioned toilet it took a concerted effort to feel their way there. The less adventurous sisters would light a candle but this frequently attracted complaints from their roommates.
Even though Annie loved her girls so much and worried constantly about them during her stay in hospital, she didn’t want them to visit her and see how poorly she was. Pierce told his daughters that it was best to leave their mother to rest for the time being and for them to ‘do her proud’ at home but, worried about her frailty and fearing the worst, he eventually persuaded Annie to let Mary accompany him on his next visit.
Mary was shocked to see how pale and weak her mother looked, lying there in bed. Annie was clearly having trouble breathing but did her best to communicate. She was eager to hear all the news and gossip from Hailsham and to find out how each of her daughters was doing. Mary recounted as much as she could, and even made Annie smile when she told her that Miss Hunt was still giving them cakes and pies. Even though she had been pleased to see her mother, on the train back home to Hailsham Mary, who by nature enjoyed a laugh, felt an aching sorrow. Little was said between father and daughter. Neither was much in the mood for conversation.
Back in the hospital, Annie, who had put on such a brave face for her husband and daughter, shed a tear once they had gone. Lying there, in that foreboding place to which she had hoped never to return, she longed to be back in the countryside – anywhere but the hospital – with her girls. It all seemed so far away now. She tried to think nice thoughts – of the happy times she had spent with her family both in Hailsham and Bermondsey – but each time she heard a moan or a rasping cough from a neighbouring bed, the words of that young lad who had carried her suitcase to the hospital gates four years earlier echoed in her head: ‘I didn’t think anyone ever walked out of this hospital.’
Much to the girls’ displeasure, after a few weeks of Annie being in hospital, their aunts moved in to live with them at Battle Road. The three women did little to contribute to the running of the house, and the girls’ elderly grandmother was not up to taking on anything too strenuous, so it was Joan who bore the brunt of the domestic work.
The aunts were certainly no substitute for the firm but loving Annie. They lacked the emotional skills of comfort, understanding and compassion the children needed in the absence of their mother’s care. Despite their comparative wealth, the aunts never bought the girls any treats either, not even sweets, and they could be very blunt and tactless, seemingly unaware of the family’s troubles.
‘I don’t think they want to look after us at all,’ Sheila said crossly to Joan as they were carrying some groceries back from the shop one day. ‘They just want to get away from the bombs. They know it’s safer down here.’
‘Well, maybe it’s just their way,’ said Joan, wise beyond her years and wondering how her mother would reply. Secretly she suspected her younger sister was right, and she knew Mary felt the same.
One evening, when they were sitting in the front room with their aunts, Joan, Mary and Sheila started talking about when they thought their mother would return. Nell, who had been reading a book, looked up and said bluntly, ‘She’s not coming home.’ The girls were shocked. Why would she say such a horrid thing?
‘She is coming home!’ Sheila shouted, with tears in her eyes. ‘She’s going to get better. She is coming home!’ And she stormed out of the room.
Joan went after her and comforted her in their bedroom, telling her not to take any notice. ‘You know what they’re like,’ she added.
However, two weeks went by and there was still no sign of their mother returning.
On a sunny day that June, Kath caught up with Sheila as she walked the short distance back home from school for lunch. They chatted away merrily as they walked down the side path and into the kitchen.
Inside, Sheila caught sight of Aunt Nell standing at the sink, peeling potatoes. ‘Oh, Aunt, they won’t be ready in time,’ she said apologetically. ‘We’ve only got an hour for lunch.’
Nell looked over her shoulder and replied brusquely, ‘Well, you’ll just have to wait, won’t you?’
Sheila then noticed Joan, who was standing quietly nearby, looking at her with a solemn expression on her face and holding a sheet of paper in her hand, a telegram. Sheila – always the most intuitive of the sisters – felt a sudden chill. Something was wrong and, somehow, she knew what it
was.
Now Nell turned fully towards Sheila and Kath and, wiping her wet hands on her apron, said simply, ‘Your mum’s dead.’
Annie died on 12 June 1941, at the age of forty-seven, four years after being told by a doctor that she only had ten months to live. Pierce, despite knowing that she was living on borrowed time, was a broken man, and the girls – Mary, sixteen; Joan, fourteen; Sheila, eleven; Kath, nine; Pat, seven; and Anne, two – were shattered to have lost their beloved mum.
CHAPTER 5
All for One
Pierce with his daughters in the garden at 18 Battle Road. Back (from left to right) Joan and Sheila; front (from left to right) Pat, Anne and Kath.
THE BRUTAL ANNOUNCEMENT of Annie’s death was all Aunt Nell offered her young charges. There were no words of comfort, no hugs.
There was the briefest of pauses before the silence was broken by a scream. ‘No!’ yelled Sheila. ‘No! No, she isn’t!’
Kath, too stunned to take it in, stood in confused silence.
It was Joan who came over to comfort her sisters and to show them the telegram that Pierce had sent to Nell from London, informing them of Annie’s death. The truth was there in black and white, and yet there was a pervading feeling of disbelief amongst the girls because each of them, Mary aside, truly believed that their mother would get well and return home to them, despite their worries. She had always battled illness and refused to let it conquer her. She loved them and wouldn’t want to leave them.
Mary had been the only one to see her so poorly in hospital and in her private thoughts she had feared that her mother would die.
‘I’ll tell your teachers that you’re too upset to return to school this afternoon,’ said Nell calmly.
Sheila took herself off to the bedroom where she looked out of the window – the same window through which she had last seen her mother being taken away in the ambulance a month earlier. She watched the other children walking back to school after lunchtime and, as much as she disliked school, she wished with all her heart that she too was going back there right now, because that would mean that everything was all right, everything was normal.
The Sisters of Battle Road Page 10