by Anne Bennett
‘Blackout, huh…’ Violet began, but Carol hadn’t finished and she went on, with a glance at her mother, ‘Some of the girls are training as pilots,’ and her eyes were dreamy.
Violet’s own opened wider in shock and horror. ‘Pilots!’ she shrieked. ‘I’ll not have you…’
‘Not for fighting, Mom,’ Carol said with a giggle. ‘They fly the planes down to the airfields in the south and that, and then take the train back. There’s not so many at the moment, but one of the officers told me he can see a time when they’ll need more planes and I’ll get my chance then if I’m really keen.’
‘You get on well with them all then?’
‘Oh yeah. ‘Specially the Americans.’
‘Americans?’
‘Volunteer Air Force. There’s a small company of them based there. Full of charm they are. Think they’re God’s gift, some of them.’ She thought for a minute and went on, ‘in the main, the black ones are nicer.’
‘Black ones!’
‘Yeah, like the ace of spades they are, and when they open their mouths their teeth look real white. Not that they ever say much to us, like.’
‘Are there many?’
Carol shook her head. ‘Just a handful, and the white Americans are not always nice to them.’
‘Why not?’
Carol shrugged. ‘Search me. Cos they’re black, I suppose. Mad, ain’t it? I mean, ain’t we got enough to do fighting the flipping Germans without scrapping amongst ourselves.’
Lizzie couldn’t agree more. She was horrified when Steve came back after just seven weeks away at a training camp and whispered he thought it was embarkation leave. He looked very smart in his uniform and the children were impressed, but Lizzie knew an army at war isn’t made up of military parades and polished boots and the ability to make up a bed with proper hospital corners. ‘It’s so soon,’ she said.
Steve laughed. ‘Hitler has rode roughshod over Europe and is still coming,’ he said, and added, ‘Maybe Churchill should have a word. Hold your hand there awhile, man, and play the game. Give our chaps a chance to have six months’ training before we engage in hostilities.’
‘No, but…’
Steve kissed her on the nose. ‘I’m as well-prepared as the next man.’
‘Are Stuart and Mike home too?’
‘Yeah, Mike went straight over to Ireland,’ Steve said. ‘She’s up the pole again, your cousin.’
‘No,’ Lizzie cried in disbelief.
‘Yeah, due in February, Mike said.’
‘She must be mad, and so must he. That will be six.’
‘Yeah, well maybe she’ll have a wee bit of a break now, if he’s away for a bit,’ Steve said. ‘It’s up to them, anyroad, but I want better for you.’
Lizzie sighed and leant her body against Steve and he bent and kissed her. Desire rose in her at the sweetness of that kiss, and if it hadn’t been for Tom, who’d turned three the previous week and was playing on the floor with the toy cars his mother had managed to find and buy him, Lizzie would have turned the key in the door and led her husband upstairs, though it was the middle of the afternoon.
She wished she could do this, for soon Steve would be gone and in danger, and suddenly she knew that, despite his faults, she cared for Steve greatly and wanted no harm to come to him. He took her in his arms and kissed her again. ‘I love you, Mrs Gillespie.’
‘Ah, Steve.’
‘You know why I’m doing this, don’t you? It’s for you and the kids, you do know that?’
‘I know that.’
‘Sometimes I’ve thought that I was daft joining up straight away,’ Steve admitted. ‘You know, with me a family man and all; and then I think, if this madman is to be stopped, everyone has to do their bit. We can’t run and hide and let others fight our battles for us and keep us all safe.’
‘I know, Steve,’ Lizzie said. ‘Don’t worry. I know where you are coming from—and knowing you as I do, it’s what I expected of you. I don’t ever imagine there was a time in your life when you let others fight your battles.’
‘No,’ Steve said. ‘But if I’m honest I did enlist in a fit of patriotic zeal, with me mates Mike and Stuart, like we was off on some great adventure. I know really that war ain’t like that. Sometimes you sort of wake me up when you get up in the morning to see to the children and I listen to you all and know I might lose all that I hold most dear.’
Lizzie knew he was right and he wouldn’t be the only one, but the die was cast now. There could be no turning back. All they could do was savour every moment of that precious leave together.
One dark, dismal, rain-sodden night in late October, the Royal Warwickshires were part of the British Expeditionary Force that sailed across the Channel, and Lizzie settled to life without her husband, with the additional anxiety that he was now in the firing line.
She was finding, like many people, that the blackout was the worst thing of all to contend with. Often any stars in the heavens would be hidden by the smoky Birmingham air, and if there was a moon at all it was usually obscured by cloud. She’d helped paint the white line down the side of the road as the Government had advised. ‘As if a bloody white line helps, when the night’s as black as pitch,’ Violet said contemptuously, but continuing to wield her brush.
Lizzie knew Violet had a point, for there were more people killed and injured in those first dark days, weeks and months of the war than from any type of military action. She didn’t see how white lines painted on the edges of pavements were going to help in stopping people falling off them, just as she couldn’t see how a white line around lamp and pillar boxes were going to prevent people walking in to them.
‘I keep out of it as much as I can,’ Ada said. ‘Make sure I’m back in the house well before dark.’
‘We all do if we can,’ Gloria said. ‘But what about the poor souls out at work all day.’
‘Yeah, must be dead depressing, that.’
‘What depresses me is those bloody awful black curtains at the windows,’ Minnie said. ‘The warden, the son of her up the entry, told me the fine’s two hundred pounds. Claimed he could see a chink of light from my window. There was nowt when we were both in the yard, though. Told him he must have imagined it.’
‘Anyroad,’ Sadie put in. ‘How can one chink through the smoky Brummie air light the way for enemy bombers?’
‘What bombers?’ Lizzie said. ‘There’s been nothing yet.’
That’s what made the whole thing seem so pointless. ‘It’s Hitler’s secret weapon,’ Barry said one day. ‘He ain’t bothering going to war at all, he just said he was, and now he’ll wait while we all kill ourselves on the bleeding roads.’
Eventually, the government announced vehicles could use shaded headlights. Shielded torches could be used too, though batteries for them were soon like gold dust. It was an improvement, but not much of one, and it was hard to find anything to be optimistic about as Christmas approached. There was little food in the shops and talk of rationing in the New Year. ‘Rationing what?’ Lizzie said, looking at the sparse array of food on the table. ‘Half of what I want now is unobtainable.’
‘Yeah, and if you say owt they remind you there’s a war on,’ Violet said. ‘As if we don’t know. Like you was dropped in from another planet or summat.’
There was very little festive stuff to buy at all, and virtually no toys. Lizzie scoured the Bull Ring and the little shops in side streets to find a yo-yo and skipping rope and a couple of colouring books and crayons for the children. And so, Christmas for them was the usual magical time, and they had no idea of the headache Lizzie had to produce the dinner they tucked in to with gusto.
Rationing came into effect in January and ration books became a way of life, although, as Lizzie prophesised, even your allotment was sometimes unavailable and she had to be more inventive to provide nourishing family meals. Every women’s magazine ran articles and recipes and there were even snippets in the paper and in the cinema, people told her, slo
tted in between the first mediocre film and the main one, and just after Pathé News.
‘It’s riveting stuff, all right,’ Violet remarked. ‘Fifty million ways to cook swede, turnips or carrots.’
Lizzie laughed, for it was a bit like that. The public were bombarded with advice and encouragement to eat home-grown produce. ‘The Kitchen Front’ gave out recipes each morning after the eight o’clock news and millions tuned in to Radio Doctor, who told people what foods were good for them and how to cook them. Potato Pete was only rivalled by Doctor Carrot, and one or both of these vegetables turned up in nearly every recipe in one form or another.
People were being urged to ‘Save Our Ships’, meaning the merchant ships bringing British imports from other countries, which with enemy action was always a hazardous procedure.
To cut down on imported goods, more food had to be grown. The phrase ‘Dig for Victory’ became popular, and to this end, next to the trenches, many parks now had furrowed rows growing all manner of things. Many of those lucky enough to have gardens had used some of their lush lawns, and flowerbeds too had been given over to growing cabbages, potatoes and the like.
‘So we won’t starve to death, like,’ Violet said. ‘But if I eat much more of them root vegetables, I just might be bored to death.’
‘Aye,’ Lizzie said with a smile. ‘Or be blown up by the gases inside you.’
Tressa had a baby girl on 26th February that she was calling Nuala. Lizzie wrote a long letter to her and said she’d be over maybe in the summer.
But then news came in of the German invasion of Norway and Sweden on 9th April, and the countries’ subsequent collapse was worrying. But there was soon a greater worry when Lizzie heard on the nine o’clock news that Hitler had invaded Belgium and Holland and inflicted great hardship on the people.
‘What does it mean?’ she asked Violet, but Barry answered.
‘It means the Maginot Line is bloody useless,’ he said. ‘Like I said it was from the beginning.’
‘What is the Maginot Line anyway?’ Lizzie said. ‘All I’ve heard since the beginning of the war is that this line, whatever it is, can’t be breached.’
‘It can’t,’ Barry said. ‘Well, not at least without great loss of life. The Maginot Line is a long line of deeply buried fortifications that were erected along the border that France shares with Germany after the last war,’ he explained. ‘But it stops at France’s border with Luxembourg and Belgium. If you were a German, what would you do?’
He’d bought the Evening Mail on his way home from work and he spread it out on the table. ‘There’s a map in its centre,’ he said. ‘And the line is marked clearly.’
Lizzie studied it and then said slowly, ‘if I was a German, I’d go through Holland into Belgium and across the border to France.’
‘And me,’ Barry said grimly. ‘And that’s what the German Army has done.’
‘Can’t they fight them off?’
Barry shrugged. ‘Only time will tell.’
No letters came from Steve, the papers made grim reading and Lizzie could scarcely bear to listen to the news reports. Flo was at her door every day, asking if she’d heard anything—as if Lizzie would keep such a thing to herself—and she was wailing and bemoaning all the time. Lizzie was desperately worried and trying to keep a lid on it for the children’s sakes. She wished Flo wouldn’t show such open emotion in front of them. They knew nothing definite yet.
‘Why is Granny always crying?’ Niamh asked at last. She’d come home from school to see her grandmother in floods of tears again.
‘She’s upset. It’s nothing.’
‘It’s about Daddy. She said so.’
‘She’s just concerned.’
‘She was crying her eyes out,’ Niamh said flatly. ‘Where is daddy? Why is she so worried?’
‘No one knows where he is, that’s why your granny is upset,’ Lizzie admitted, because she couldn’t think of a plausible lie.
‘We all know where daddy is,’ Tom declared.
‘Do we?’
‘Yeah, killing Germans, bang, bang, bang.’
Lizzie gave a sigh and picked her son up and held him close to hide her glistening eyes from the inquisitive Niamh. ‘Of course he is, Tom,’ she said. ‘Now why didn’t I think of that?’
She saw Niamh wasn’t satisfied and in a minute would start a barrage of questions, and so to forestall her she said, ‘How would you both like dripping toast?’
Niamh was starving, she always was when she came home from school, and dripping toast sounded just the thing. ‘Oh yeah,’ she said with glee. ‘And bagsy I have the toasting fork first. Tom’s no good anyway; he always drops the toast in the fire.’
‘I don’t!’
‘Yeah you do.’
‘Don’t.’
‘Do.’
‘Stop it,’ Lizzie said sharply. ‘Or neither of you will do it.’ But in reality she was pleased Niamh’s attention was diverted.
If only hers could be diverted so easily, Lizzie thought during the next few days, for neither papers nor wireless had anything remotely cheering to say. She roused herself to make an effort for Niamh’s sixth birthday, although any festive food was hard to find. The cake had to be baked without eggs and with extra sugar and margarine ration donated by Violet, and the only present she had was a doll which had once been Carol’s, though Niamh didn’t know that the doll was secondhand and she was delighted with the knitted outfits Lizzie and Violet had made for the doll she called Maisie.
The day after Niamh’s birthday, the veil of secrecy lifted at last. Allied soldiers were trapped on the beaches at a place called Dunkirk and the navy were having trouble rescuing so many, for the waters were too shallow for the big ships. They’d already commandeered some boats capable of crossing the channel to take the men from the beaches to the naval ships lying at anchor in deeper waters, but more were needed.
Once the dilemma was known of, more boat owners set off on their own, risking life and limb to bring home as many of the soldiers as possible. Soon the papers were full of pictures of men alighting from landing craft of all shapes and sizes, or disembarking from the bigger naval ships. There were pictures of them smiling for the camera as they accepted tea, sandwiches and cigarettes from the women of the WVS, or cheering from the railway carriages taking them home.
It was all over by the 4th June, and on the 5th Lizzie received the buff telegram. She opened it full of trepidation, steeling herself, and then went into Violet’s, needing to tell someone. ‘He’s alive,’ she cried. ‘Steve’s alive! Injured, but alive, and at a military hospital in Ramsgate.’
It was then she noticed the tears pouring unchecked down Violet’s face and the telegram crushed in her friend’s gnarled hand. ‘Colin isn’t,’ she said. ‘He was stationed on a gun boat, HMS Mosquito, and now he’s missing, presumed dead, and I bet them German bastards blew the thing clean out the water.’
‘Oh God, Oh Christ, Violet, I’m sorry,’ Lizzie cried, holding Violet’s shuddering body tight. She’d liked Colin, with his cheeky grin and infectious laugh. He’d worn his uniform with pride and was more prepared for war than many, but in the end did that count for anything?
Steve had had one of his legs and one of his arms badly crushed and was riddled with shrapnel, and Lizzie had gone down to see him in Ramsgate before he was transferred to Dudley Road Hospital. Stuart was also injured, but Mike had escaped virtually unscathed.
While Steve was in hospital, the Battle of Britain raged in the skies. Britain teetered on the edge of defeat. Invasion seemed imminent. The Home Guard no longer seemed ludicrous, though few people had any faith that the motley crew of old, young and disabled could take on the might of the highly disciplined German army, who’d trampled their way unchecked across Europe.
Signs were removed from roads and railway stations and posters told you that, ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’, and advised, ‘Keep Mum’. At railway and bus depots, others asked, ‘Is Your Journey Really Nec
essary?’
People were told to disable cars and bicycles not in use, to hide maps and to ‘Be Vigilant’. Across the water there were reports of Hitler massing boats and landing craft ready for invasion. ‘We’ve only got the RAF now,’ Carol told her parents, still devastated by Colin’s death.
But Carol couldn’t help being excited. Factories like Vickers were working around the clock to produce the planes as speedily as possible. Fighter pilots couldn’t be spared and so Carol got her wish. Many of the girls like herself had a crash course in learning to pilot a plane and then climbed into the cockpit and took it to Biggin Hill or wherever they were needed.
She never told her mother much about this work, but she often popped in for a word with Lizzie when she had a spot of leave.
‘So you’re enjoying yourself then?’ Lizzie asked, seeing Carol’s shining eyes.
‘Yeah,’ Carol said. ‘You don’t think me awful, then?’
‘Why ever would I?’
‘Well, you know, with our Colin dying and that,’ Carol said. ‘I did miss him. Still do. I keep expecting him to come in the door and start taking the mickey and that or ruffle me hair, cos he knew that used to get me real riled up.’
‘The way I see it,’ Lizzie said, ‘is that you are doing a valuable job. I didn’t know Colin like I’ve come to know you, but even I can guess he would be very proud of you and tell you to go for it if he was here today. Wouldn’t he?’
‘That’s exactly what he would say,’ Carol said. ‘I can almost hear him say it.’
‘So, that’s what you must do, and don’t worry either about enjoying yourself, like many do when a loved one dies’ Lizzie told her. ‘Grab life with both hands, Carol. We only get the one go at it.’