The Sisters of Battle Road

by J. M. Maloney

  ‘Maybe your aunts can stay just until you leave school, Joan,’ he said, turning swiftly away. ‘But I’ll need to discuss things with the welfare officer.’

  Their evacuation had delayed Kath making her First Holy Communion in Bermondsey and so she made it in Hailsham with Pat, and a group of other girls and boys, in that summer of 1941.

  The two girls had looked forward eagerly to the day because it was such a special occasion. They got to dress up in white dresses with veils, like little brides, while their families looked on lovingly as they walked down the church aisle. The fact that their mother wouldn’t be there to fuss over them on their big day, and that Pierce was working in London and unable to get away, cast a dark shadow over their excitement. Mary had wondered if she could afford to buy the material to make them dresses but a local lady named Mrs Jenner, who had known Annie well, took pity on the girls and made beautiful white dresses and veils for them to wear. When they tried them on at home for the first time, their faces lit up with joy.

  ‘Don’t they look pretty, Pat?’ said Kath. She twirled around in her dress in front of the long wooden mirror in the bedroom, as Mrs Jenner helped Pat into hers.

  ‘It’s the best dress ever,’ said Pat breathlessly, copying her sister’s twirls.

  Joan looked on, smiling. ‘Thank you so much, Mrs Jenner,’ she said.

  Her thanks were echoed by her excited sisters before Mrs Jenner advised that they take the dresses off straight away and hang them in the wardrobe to keep them clean and crease-free for the big day. Grudgingly, Pat and Kath were helped out of their dresses and Joan hung them up, away from harm’s reach.

  After Mrs Jenner had left, Kath and Pat couldn’t help sneaking looks at their outfits. They had never owned anything so beautiful in their young lives. As delighted as they were, though, they couldn’t help but think wistfully how much their mother would have liked to have been there for the occasion. She would have been proud that they looked so pretty and weren’t ‘shown up’, as she would have put it, by the other girls.

  The evening before the service, the children due to make their Communion went to St Wilfrid’s Church to confess their sins to Father Frost. Then, the following morning, Kath and Pat could barely wait to get into their dresses.

  ‘Don’t rush, girls. You don’t want to tear anything,’ Aunt Rose warned as she watched them. The girls were untypically careful as they tried to keep their immaculate dresses clean.

  Getting ready for work that morning, Mary recalled her own First Holy Communion back in Bermondsey. She had also worn a white dress and veil, and had felt very special. As they had sung the traditional hymn ‘Jesus, Thou Art Coming’, she had believed passionately that He was indeed coming to her and the others on that day. After the service, they had made their way from Most Holy Trinity Church to their school, for a breakfast of soft-boiled egg and bread soldiers.

  Mary was fortunate enough to have had her mother with her then but now it was Joan and Aunt Rose who accompanied Kath and Pat to St Wilfrid’s, along with little Anne, who sat on Rose’s lap. Like Mary before them, the girls joined in enthusiastically with the hymn and then walked proudly down the aisle in line, hands pressed together in prayer, until it was their turn to see Father Frost hold aloft a communion wafer.

  ‘The body of Christ,’ he said.

  Kath and Pat, like all the children, were well rehearsed about every aspect of the ceremony. They replied ‘Amen’ dutifully, then opened their mouths wide for the priest to place a wafer on their tongue. They then bowed their heads and walked slowly back to their seats, letting the wafer dissolve in their mouths, just as they had been told to. Kath felt hers sticking to the roof of her mouth and desperately wanted to dislodge it. They had been warned not to touch the wafer with their fingers though, so, on the way back to her seat, she tried to use her tongue to release it instead.

  ‘Why on earth is Kath pulling such funny faces?’ whispered Aunt Rose to Joan.

  ‘I don’t know – but trust her to spoil the look,’ Joan replied, with a motherly shake of the head.

  That same summer saw Joan embarking on a new chapter in life when she left school, aged fourteen. Like her sister before her, she got a job at the Silverlight Laundry, working on a giant wringer with huge rollers. She and some of the other women would feed wet sheets into one side of the machine, which would be squeezed of water before emerging from the other side. It was a rather monotonous routine and lifting wet sheets was quite tiring, but she enjoyed the company of her work colleagues and felt relieved to be free from the pressure of school. What’s more, she was now being treated as an adult.

  Joan and Mary hadn’t stopped pressurizing their father to let them care for their sisters without the foreboding presence of their aunts.

  ‘I can give up work and look after the baby,’ said Joan, who had had quite enough of handling heavy wet sheets already.

  Eventually, Pierce visited the local welfare officer to discuss the possibility of his girls living in the house on their own. Faced with mild opposition, he found himself making assurances that his daughters were perfectly capable of looking after themselves. In the end, convinced by Pierce’s arguments, the welfare officer replied that he was happy for them to give it a go, saying he would keep an eye on them and that, so long as they were able to manage, the arrangement would be fine.

  The girls were delighted when Pierce told them the news but he repeated what the welfare officer had said and warned them that the smallest thing – even a row – might get reported to the authorities, and they’d no longer be able to live together without their aunts.

  Tom and Kate were also preparing to move back to Bermondsey, into a new house that had been found for them. However, Pierce explained that they, along with the aunts, would still visit and stay with the girls from time to time, just to keep an eye on things. Of course, he would be down at weekends too. In truth, the girls didn’t really need his reassurances, though – they were determined to succeed and their already close bond became even tighter.

  Joan gave up working at the Silverlight Laundry once her aunts and grandparents had returned to Bermondsey and took on her mother’s role in earnest, looking after her sisters, feeding them, shopping, and doing household chores. On warm days she would wheel little Anne to the rec in her pram and mix with the mothers there. Caring for such a young child was a big responsibility and she felt it keenly. However, some of the mothers at the rec, who had known Annie well, kept an eye on how Joan was doing and kindly offered advice as well as enquiring how baby Anne was faring.

  The Jarmans’ neighbours were very helpful too, touched by the fact that the girls had lost their mother. Rosie Goldsmith, next door, looked out for them and Miss Hunt stepped up her home baking …

  Mrs Gates, the lady who owned the Silverlight Laundry, even told Mary to cram the family’s dirty washing into a pillow case every week and it would be cleaned in the laundry for free, which was a big help to Joan.

  Slowly they became accustomed to life without Annie, but there were many tearful times when the terrible loss of a mother, one who had always seemed to know what to say and do, became unbearable. The girls had inherited her strong spirit and resilience but nevertheless they sorely missed having a mother to turn to for comfort and advice about the problems each of them were facing at the various stages of their lives.

  They coped on their own admirably, for the most part. However, Pierce’s caution to his girls about being on their best behaviour went unheeded one day when Joan, who managed the purse strings tightly, felt that she had a few pennies to spare for a rare treat of some sweets for her sisters.

  Kath was excited at being asked to be the one to buy them, and she hurried along to Bainbridge’s shop on the corner of Battle Road to carry out her duties. Inside the store, her mouth watered at the sight and smell of the colourful confectionery on display.

  ‘Can I have a quarter of sherbet lemons, please?’ she asked the elderly Mr Bainbridge.

 
; As he moved towards the jar of sweets, he noticed that it needed topping up. ‘I just have to pop out the back to get some more,’ he said to Kath.

  In the few moments while he was gone, Kath, alone in the shop, had a sudden urge that she couldn’t resist. Without really thinking, she found herself reaching over the counter to steal a small square packet of chewing gum, which she put in her pocket quickly before Mr Bainbridge came back.

  Kath felt the blood rush to her face and a roaring in her ears seemed to drown out all other noise when Mr Bainbridge returned. She was certain that he could tell, just by looking at her, what she had done. She couldn’t look him in the eye and handed over the money for the sherbet lemons swiftly before making a hasty exit, feeling a knot in her stomach as she walked out of the door. As she made her way along the street, she felt certain that everyone was looking at her burning face, aware of her crime. To make matters worse, she noticed the police station immediately opposite Bainbridge’s. What if someone came out and started questioning her, and found the gum in her pocket? They would arrest her, for sure. What would Joan say? What would Daddy say? Worse yet, what would her mother have said?

  She would have to get rid of the evidence. So, moving away from the scene of the crime as fast as she could, she took the chewing gum from her pocket surreptitiously and put each little square into her mouth at the same time. Finding a bin, she threw away the wrapper and chewed so voraciously that her jaw ached. At the next bin, she took the mangled gum out of her mouth and threw it in. Her heart was still thumping when she reached her house and she spent the rest of the evening worrying that the police would come rapping on the door at any moment.

  Kath avoided returning to Bainbridge’s for as long as she could but, weeks later, she was sent there on an errand by Joan. The idea was to push Anne there in her pram so that she could get some fresh air and maybe fall asleep. Arriving at the shop, Kath left Anne outside in the pram for a couple of minutes while she went inside. When she emerged, sweets in hand, Kath walked off cheerfully towards home, back along Battle Road and into the house. In the kitchen, Joan looked curiously at Kath.

  ‘What?’ asked Kath. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ This time, she wasn’t guilty of theft. Her conscience was clear.

  ‘Where’s the baby?’ Joan asked.

  Kath looked puzzled.

  ‘Where’s Anne?’ said Joan, with mounting anxiety.

  Kath froze, her eyes wide and mouth open. Then, she hurtled out of the door and ran full pelt down the road back to Bainbridge’s. There, to her great relief, she found Anne still outside in her pram, and fast asleep.

  Sheila’s closeness to her mother made the pain of her loss particularly deep. Her sisters had always called her the apple of her mother’s eye and, back in Bermondsey, Kath used to look on enviously as Annie curled Sheila’s hair patiently into cascading ringlets every morning.

  ‘Can you do mine like that, Mum?’ she would ask.

  ‘Your hair isn’t long enough, darling,’ Annie would reply.

  For six months after Annie’s death, Sheila had nightmares in which her mother wasn’t really dead at all. Instead, she was living back in London with their father because she no longer wanted to leave him on his own. The girls had only been told that Annie had died because she didn’t want them to think that she had abandoned them. In her sleep, Sheila would feel comforted that her mum was really alive and that she would see her again once the war was over and they could return to their life in Bermondsey. But then she would wake up, sweating on a damp bedsheet, and realize that she had been tossing and turning with the emotional turmoil of her dream. In that neverland, where the dream state permeates reality, for a moment she would be unsure whether her mother was really dead or alive. And then she would remember.

  Sheila never talked to anyone about her dreams and, by keeping them to herself, she could almost convince herself that what she had dreamt was true. In any case, she felt that there was no one she could confide in – they simply wouldn’t understand.

  Without her mother, she felt a wave of sadness each time she put her own hair into ringlets, missing the chats and laughs she used to have with Annie, telling her about things going on at school. She missed the protectiveness that only a mother can provide. What she didn’t know was that Joan – the most practical and mature of the sisters – was also experiencing very similar nightmares about their mother being alive back in Bermondsey. Like Sheila, she felt too foolish to tell anyone about them, and so they endured their anguish individually when they might have found comfort in each other.

  Joan also felt the pressure and sadness of having to be mum to others, when she dearly wanted one for herself. While Mary was at work and the others at school, at home Joan was reminded of Annie constantly in every domestic task she undertook. While she could offer reassurance to her younger sisters, there was no motherly figure to look after her; to listen to her concerns and offer advice and comfort. Whether it was lining up for food at the shops, taking her younger sisters to school or Anne to the park, Joan found herself amongst real mums – women – much older than herself, and she felt out of place and lonely.

  Her feelings were brought to the forefront of her mind when she went to watch Kath and Pat competing at the school sports day at the rec. Joan, holding Anne on her lap, was sitting on a bench with a group of evacuee mothers from London when one of the teachers announced that it was time for the mums’ race.

  A few game contenders stood up. While there was a general reticence amongst the London mums, they gave plenty of encouragement to Joan, who was taken aback.

  ‘No, I’m not doing it,’ she said. ‘I’m not a mum.’

  ‘Yes, you are. As good as,’ one of them replied.

  Joan still felt awkward but, after further encouragement, she got up and took her place with several others on the starting line. As she was considerably younger than the other runners, she won the race with ease and was cheered back to her seat, but she felt neither victorious nor happy. And she didn’t feel like a mum. She was only fourteen years old and she should have been cheering on her own mum. She missed Annie desperately.

  Mary had the distraction of work and of seeing a variety of people to help take her mind off the sadness that now enveloped the sisters every time they entered 18 Battle Road. She enjoyed interacting with the different people she met on her round. She loved to stop for a chat. At school in Dockhead, her teacher, Sister Bonaventure, had labelled her Miss Busybody because she was always turning around in class to talk to people. Eventually, the exasperated teacher had told her to sit at the back of the class so that there would be nobody behind for her to turn to. This suited Mary just fine because she could then talk as much as she liked to the girls sitting either side of her, so long as she used the girl in front as a shield. It wasn’t to last, though. One day, she pushed things too far by putting her feet up on her desk, confident that Sister Bonaventure couldn’t see her. She was right. However, the headmistress, Sister Fidelis, could see her very clearly indeed as she made her daily visit to Mary’s classroom and peered through the glass window in the door.

  When Mary caught sight of the nun, she tried hurriedly to get her legs down but it was too late. Sister Fidelis, who had a penchant for coming up with novel and effective forms of punishment, had already worked out what she would do.

  ‘No, Mary Jarman,’ she said in a loud voice, making the whole class freeze in fear. ‘If you’re feeling tired, then you would be better to sit like that all day.’

  Everyone was amazed by how kind Sister Fidelis was being but they soon realized – none more so than Mary herself – how much feet and legs could ache in a raised position. After Sister Fidelis had left, Mary’s teacher let her suffer for a while before making her switch seats with a girl in the front row. There Mary stayed for the rest of the term, under Sister Bonaventure’s watchful eye.

  Now, during the course of her job on the open road, Mary loved the chance to chat, her freedom and the fact that
she didn’t have an employer breathing down her neck. After a very traumatic and difficult time, it was a pleasure to be back at work.

  One of her customers had a beautiful collie dog which Mary would often admire. The woman told Mary that the dog was pregnant and that there would soon be lots of puppies around. On subsequent visits, Mary would enquire how the dog was and sometimes she would bend over to stroke the collie as she sat quietly in her basket. She found it soothing. When the litter of puppies arrived Mary thought they were the cutest things she had ever seen – light brown in colour and soft to the touch, they lay curled up, with their eyes squeezed tightly shut to the outside world.

  ‘Oh, aren’t they gorgeous!’ Mary said, all gooey-eyed. ‘They’re just like balls of fluff!’

  The woman laughed, then, to Mary’s amazement, said to her, ‘When they’re a bit bigger, you can have one, if you like.’

  Mary looked at her, not quite believing her ears. ‘Really?’ she asked.

  The woman nodded. ‘If you can give it a good home.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mary. ‘We’ll take good care of it.’

  The woman kept her word, and a couple of months later Mary proudly took one of the puppies home to Battle Road. She named it Paddy. Her sisters were very excited to have a dog of their own but the younger ones sometimes got frightened when it scampered around their feet and pawed at their legs. Kath and Pat weren’t used to dogs – Abbey Street had never felt big enough for one, and Annie wouldn’t have liked the mess anyway – and so they would scream and jump onto a chair to escape. The more they screamed, the more the puppy scampered.

  With no idea how to train the dog, it ran around the house and garden, eliciting frequent squeals from the girls. Eventually, frustrated by the noise and disruption, their granddad took it upon himself to train the pup. However, Mary was quite alarmed when she saw him smack it. Although it wasn’t a hard blow and, in Tom’s mind, nothing more than a reasonable reproof to teach the dog right from wrong, Mary took it to heart. Paddy was her dog, after all.