The Sisters of Battle Road

by J. M. Maloney

  Kath and Pat went off to the garden to try to get away from the oppressive atmosphere in the house. They looked out over to the fields, seeing through their tearful eyes the cows in the distance, the same cows they had first seen when they arrived at Battle Road and couldn’t wait to tell their mother about.

  ‘Who will look after us?’ asked Pat eventually.

  ‘Joan,’ said Kath without any hesitation, cuffing her running nose. ‘And Daddy, of course. We don’t need anyone else.’

  Mary was the last of the girls to learn of Annie’s death when she returned home from work that evening and, like her sisters, she was devastated by the news.

  ‘I can’t take it in,’ she said when she was alone with Joan for a while in the front room.

  ‘Did you think she was that bad?’ asked Joan.

  ‘She was bad but … well, she’s Mum,’ Mary replied. ‘She’s always bounced back.’

  As both of them shed tears, an angry Mary cried through her sobs, ‘God is so cruel! How can he take her away from us?’ and they cuddled each other in an effort to shut out the painful reality.

  The house was unusually quiet that evening, save for the sound of sobbing.

  When Pierce arrived the next day, the girls noticed how red-rimmed his eyes were and how ashen-faced he was, despite his best attempt to be strong in front of them. It was clear that he had been crying, and it took a lot of willpower to prevent his grief from overflowing once more as he embraced his girls.

  ‘Mummy would want us to stay strong,’ he said in a faltering voice. ‘We need to do her proud. She’s at rest now.’

  Sheila, acutely feeling the loss of her mother, now hated Hailsham more than ever and longed to return home to Bermondsey. In the afternoon, Aunt Rose asked her to help with some shopping in the High Street but Sheila didn’t want to go. She was so grief stricken that she just wanted to hide herself away in the house. Her eyes were red and sore from crying, and she didn’t want anyone to see her, but she did as she was asked.

  ‘Please don’t stop to talk to anyone,’ she urged her aunt.

  ‘I have to be polite,’ Rose replied, as insensitive as ever.

  Sheila just wanted to get back to the house as quickly as possible. Rose was in no hurry, though, stopping for a lengthy chat in the High Street with a woman who knew Annie. Rose talked about Annie’s death in her usual matter-of-fact manner while a distraught Sheila stood by with tears rolling down her face.

  ‘I didn’t want you to stop to talk,’ she said when they were finally walking home again.

  ‘I told you, Sheila,’ Rose snapped, ‘you’ve got to be polite. You would do well to remember that.’

  Sheila thought to herself, as she walked, that all three of their aunts were not the slightest bit upset about her mother’s death. They had never liked her. Now she understood why the aunts had come to stay: to be with them while Pierce was at Annie’s bedside. But she didn’t want them around for a moment longer.

  Pierce had thought it best that only Mary, as the eldest of the sisters, should attend the funeral back in London. It would be too upsetting for the younger girls and Joan needed to stay at home to look after them. They were secretly relieved. They had dreaded the idea of attending. Mary didn’t want to go either but she thought it too insensitive to tell her father and, in any case, he needed her support.

  A few days before the funeral, Pierce and Mary, along with Tom and Kate, travelled up to London on the train. With the family home having been bombed, they all stayed at the aunts’ house where, in the living room, Mary saw the familiar glass bowl of boiled sweets.

  ‘Have a sweet, Mary,’ said Rose, who saw her looking. Mary took one, once more wondering why they were happy to share sweets and cakes with them in their own house but never thought to bring some down to Hailsham. Indeed, when Annie was unable to afford the family ration of sweets, or bacon and other tasty treats, the aunts would use it for themselves and take it back home with them to Bermondsey.

  Before the war, Mary would often visit her aunts on a Sunday – not so much for their company but because she got to eat some of their sweets and fresh fruit, which the Jarmans didn’t have at home, along with a filling meal.

  The downside was that after tea – a slice of cake and soft drink for Mary – the aunts had their traditional nap in the double bed they all shared, despite there being two spare bedrooms. Although used to sharing a bed with her sisters, Mary thought it very odd that her aunts, at their age, did the same thing. They insisted that Mary join them, saying it would do her good to rest. She hated lying on that bed, wide awake and squashed between her aunts, while they all slept, and she would have to wait until they awoke before she could get up herself.

  It was usual for Irish Catholic families to have a wake, with the body of the deceased lying in rest in the family house for a few days prior to the funeral, so that wider family, friends and neighbours could say goodbye. However, because London was still being bombed and regular air-raid sirens meant that people had to rush to shelter, the custom had been suspended. They did have Annie’s body at the aunts’ house the night before the funeral, though, when luckily no air-raid siren sounded, and a few friends and neighbours called to pay their respects, share a drink and reminisce about life with Annie. There was some laughter between the tears at some of the anecdotes, which was a welcome relief.

  The coffin was placed in one of the spare bedrooms. Mary could scarcely believe that her lively, forceful mother was now lying inside that box behind the closed door. She felt scared each time she passed by the room and hurried along, trying not to think about what was inside.

  As the adults chatted quietly amongst themselves in the front room, Mary’s thoughts turned towards Annie’s rather irrational dislike of the local undertaker, Fred ‘Freddie’ Albin.

  ‘He’s a show-off,’ she would say to whomever was listening, whenever she saw him walking slowly in front of a funeral procession, top hat in hand and carrying a cane. ‘I’m not having him burying me.’

  Pierce was amused and the girls bemused at why she took so against him, as he appeared to be no different from any other undertaker putting on a show for the mourners. But she was adamant.

  ‘I don’t want him walking in front of me with his hat and stick in his hand, showing off,’ she would say.

  On the morning of Annie’s funeral, however, three horse-drawn carriages turned up at the aunts’ house and out of one stepped an immaculately dressed Freddie Albin, top hat perched on his head and cane in his hand.

  ‘I thought Mummy didn’t want Freddie Albin,’ Mary whispered to her father as they stood in the doorway whilst neighbours gathered nearby, in traditional fashion, to pay their respects.

  ‘We had to have him,’ Pierce replied in hushed tones. ‘He buries all Dockhead people.’

  Mary imagined her mother’s annoyance at not getting her own way. On top of it all was the way Pierce was dressed. Annie would have snatched the black bowler off his head had she been alive to see it. He had bought it for the funeral of a friend and she had hated it so much that she had buried it in the back of the wardrobe so that he wouldn’t find it. Joan had seen her making space for it and had asked what she was doing.

  ‘Hiding that bloomin’ bowler!’ Annie had cried. ‘It looks ridiculous on him. And if he asks where it is, you don’t know.’

  Now, that vivacious woman, full of life and opinions and love, was being hoisted onto her funeral carriage in her coffin. Immediate family climbed into the two other carriages and the procession made its way slowly to what remained of their old house in Abbey Street, preceded by Freddie Albin, walking solemnly with top hat in one hand, cane in the other.

  The procession stopped for a couple of minutes outside the bomb-damaged house and Mary, looking out of the carriage window, saw many recognizable faces as their old neighbours bowed their heads by the roadside. Then, Freddie got into one of the carriages and they made their way to St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cemetery in Leytonstone, t
he usual East London final resting place for the deceased Catholics of Dockhead.

  They crossed the river Thames at Tower Bridge and on both sides, friends and complete strangers alike stopped in the street as a sign of respect, men doffing their hats and caps, and several making the sign of the cross as the procession passed by.

  Alighting at the cemetery, they were taken into the small chapel, which Mary thought was a damp, miserable little place, not good enough for her mother. The coffin was brought in and the priest said a few words – none of which Mary listened to, as she felt too emotionally numb to take much in. Everything just seemed so unreal. The family knelt and said their private prayers before Annie was buried in the rather crowded cemetery amongst many other freshly dug graves, victims of the Blitz.

  As the coffin was lowered into the ground, grief overwhelmed Mary and her tears flowed freely but Pierce was intent on holding his emotions in check. Away from his daughter and family, he’d already shed many private tears and was finding it hard to imagine a life without his wonderful Annie. Mary thought her father’s behaviour more than a little odd, though, particularly when he turned to her after the burial and remarked, in what appeared to be a matter-of-fact way, ‘Well, that’s the last you’ll see of your mum.’ It was a response that was greatly out of character, leaving Mary deeply concerned for her father’s wellbeing.

  The funeral had been such an ordeal – Pierce was only glad that his younger daughters had been spared the experience. However, it was difficult to know what was more traumatic – being there or not getting the chance to say goodbye. Back in Hailsham that day, Joan did her best to carry on with life as normal, getting the younger girls ready for school and trying not to think about the funeral happening in London. During the day she busied herself by cleaning the house and taking Anne out for some fresh air.

  For Sheila, Kath and Pat, it was difficult to concentrate on school lessons or to talk to anyone other than themselves. They alone had the shared experiences with their mother; they alone knew the pain they were feeling. They yearned for the school day to end so that they could return home and not have to try to put on brave faces any longer. However, once back at the house, the haunting memories and unusual quietness did nothing to alleviate their suffering and, of course, Annie’s much-loved possessions all around the house served as constant reminders of her presence and absence – the photographs, her perfume, hairbrush and the clock with its regal chime.

  Pierce, Annie’s parents and the aunts all remained in London for a few days after the funeral but Mary wanted desperately to return to Hailsham and to her sisters, and so she made her own way back to the countryside on a Green Line bus from London Bridge. She stared out of the dirty window, seeing nothing, her vision blurred by tears and her mind filled with a confusion of thoughts, emotions and memories.

  She remembered the happy time, just before they were evacuated, when she and her sisters had finally persuaded their mother to let them go ‘hopping’. This was an excursion to the Kent countryside at the end of summer each year to pick hops for the manufacture of beer. It was regarded by underprivileged Londoners as a working holiday – the only type they could afford. An added attraction for children was that the season started in September, which meant they would have an extra four weeks off school after the long summer break.

  The girls had envied some of their friends who had been taken hopping in previous years and yearned to go themselves but Annie had always resisted. She may have had to scrimp and scrape all her life to make the pennies stretch but she was a proud woman and felt that she had enough to do at home, bringing up her large family. She wasn’t overjoyed at the idea of decamping to the countryside for four weeks either, living in very basic conditions and doing what she had heard was hard, dirty work. Besides, it would mean being away from Pierce.

  However, when Mrs Gardner, who lived across the road, invited Annie and her daughters to share a hopping bin with her in September 1938, Annie, after talking it over with Pierce, relented. ‘It will be a bit of extra money,’ he told Annie. ‘And a holiday for the girls.’

  Although there were trains from London Bridge, known as ‘hoppers’ specials’, the Bermondsey families opted to share a lorry down to the countryside in order to take more luggage and a few home comforts they suspected they’d need.

  On the day they were due to travel, all of the girls were up early and soon milling around outside the house, bursting with anticipation and waiting to catch sight of the vehicle. Although the drive from London to Kent was a long and uncomfortable one, crammed into the back of the lorry and sitting on the floor as there were no seats, they spent much of the journey in high spirits, singing ‘hopping songs’ that had been passed down through the generations. A favourite had many verses and slight variations of the lyrics from family to family, but the Jarmans soon picked it up:

  If you go down hopping, hopping down in Kent,

  You’ll see old Mother Riley a-putting up her tent.

  With a tee-aye-o, tee-aye-o, tee-aye-ee-aye-o.

  They say that hopping’s lousy, I don’t believe it’s true,

  We only go down hopping to earn a bob or two.

  With a tee-aye-o, tee-aye-o, tee-aye-ee-aye-o.

  Annie and the girls took up residence in one of the wooden huts where the beds were just benches covered with straw. Annie, determined to make things as nice as possible – as always – placed sheets over the beds but, even so, the scratchy straw was horribly uncomfortable and poked through the sheets, irritating their skin. The other furniture consisted of a table and some chairs, and cooking had to be done outside over a campfire – to all intents and purposes, they were camping. Annie, who so enjoyed her creature comforts, couldn’t believe what she’d signed up to. This was certainly nowhere near to her usual standards.

  Soon after they got there, the girls were sent off to gather twigs with the rest of the children. Whatever they brought back was amassed and lit and, when it had burned down to grey ashes, cooking began. Annie copied the other mums, chopping up vegetables and putting them in a pan of water to hang from a rod, resting on two makeshift tripods, over the ashes. Water for tea was boiled in the same way. It was basic but exciting for the girls and they all agreed – even Annie – that everything seemed to taste much better than at home.

  After an uncomfortable night’s sleep they were woken bright and early by the farm manager and taken directly to the hop farm where each family was allocated a bin – a rectangular-shaped piece of sacking that was carried along the field as hops were picked, stripped of their leaves and thrown into it. The girls were keen to help initially, but very soon realized that their new ‘game’ came with an element they weren’t so keen on – work.

  Mary felt herself smiling through her pain as she sat on the Green Line bus, remembering how she had complained to her mother that the smell of the hops made her feel sick. After further moaning and complaining from her other daughters, Annie sent them off to play. Their hop-picking duties were over for the rest of their stay but Annie didn’t mind in the least. For her, the most important thing was that her girls had a wonderful time.

  After a hard day’s work picking hops, the women would sit around the fire, talking and sometimes singing. At the weekends, Pierce, along with other husbands and fathers, caught the train down from London to join their families. Then, in the early evening, the adults would spend an hour or two chatting and singing in the local pub. The prospect of war was a recurring theme of their conversation and Annie, along with some of the other mums, felt sure that if war broke out, the farmer would let them stay there, even though he hadn’t remotely suggested or indicated such a thing.

  ‘We’re good workers, earning a living and making him money,’ Annie had said. ‘Why wouldn’t he want us?’ Then, looking around her, taking in the healthy faces, bronzed from their exertions in the sunshine, she had added, ‘I’d feel safe here.’

  With Annie now buried at Leytonstone, at peace in her final resting pla
ce, a few days after the funeral Pierce made his way to Hailsham on a bus, along with his sisters. The girls went to meet them in the High Street at the Green Line office. Despite her sadness, Joan had a wry smile when she saw her dad because he was wearing the black bowler hat that Annie had so detested. She wondered how he had managed to find it.

  In a quiet moment alone with his daughters, Pierce talked to them about the future. ‘You know that I need to carry on working in London,’ he said. ‘And that means that I can’t be with you. Of course, I’ll be here every weekend but …’ Here he took a deep breath. ‘I think it best if your aunts stayed with you.’

  He’d already discussed it with his sisters and they had agreed, but Pierce knew what the reaction was likely to be from his daughters. Predictably, the girls, as one, were horrified by this arrangement. Their aunts had always been found lacking in their affections towards their nieces, but never more so than in the aftermath of Annie’s death.

  ‘We’ll be fine, Daddy,’ said Joan. ‘We can look after ourselves.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Mary. ‘We don’t need anyone during the week. We’ve been managing pretty much on our own anyway.’

  ‘I can cook and get the girls ready for school,’ said Joan. ‘And shop.’

  ‘We can do everything on our own,’ added Kath helpfully.

  Pierce looked at his daughters fondly, feeling proud of seeing Annie’s resilient spirit in them.

  ‘And who’s going to look after the baby while you’re at school and work?’ he asked. They were silenced for a moment, not knowing what to say.

  ‘I’ll be leaving school in a few months’ time,’ said Joan. ‘I can look after her all day then and run the house. I know what to do.’

  Pierce smiled. He knew that was true. He looked at his daughters’ imploring faces and felt a rush of sadness and compassion that threatened to choke him.