The Silent Lady

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The Silent Lady Page 22

by Catherine Cookson


  Also to Bella’s amazement, she seemed to enjoy the singing, especially when the four original band members got together and rattled out not only tunes from the old days, but also modern ones, especially funny ones like ‘Kiss Me Goodnight Sergeant Major, Tuck Me in My Little Wooden Bed’. If Reenee could have laughed, Bella knew she would, and then wondered if she was able to laugh inside.

  It took only one small incident to change all this. Reenee was near the door one night, where she had been seeing to a woman and her children who were sitting on a mattress. The small band was going out and Willie said, ‘Did you enjoy it?’ and Reenee was nodding to him and smiling, when one of the husbands who had come in from the outside pulled her round and grabbed at her coat, saying, ‘Why the hell must you always wear that dirty black nightgown? It spoils the look of the place!’

  That he was half drunk was no excuse, but before he knew where he was Andy’s big fist had caught him under the chin and levelled him. Then the others dragged him from the room and to the gate and threw him outside.

  By this time, away from the hubbub, Bella was assisting Reenee up the main staircase into her room, saying, ‘There now . . . there, lass. He was drunk. He meant no harm, not really, he was drunk. Don’t tremble so, lass. You’re all right.’

  In the bedroom, Reenee threw herself on the bed and, putting her hands behind her head, gripped the iron rails of the bedhead while her body stiffened and her middle began its old form of jerking up and down.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ wailed Bella. ‘You’ve not had one of these for years! If I had him here I’d kill him meself, and not only him, but also the one who first caused you to go on like this.’ And now she put a hand under Reenee’s back and the other one on her stomach and tried to still the movement. But, just as she had found before, this only seemed to accentuate the motion, until Reenee suddenly let go of the railings and her body crumpled into a heap inside the old coat.

  ‘It’s all right, my love. It’s all right.’ Bella was holding her and stroking her face, which was wet with tears.

  That’s new, Bella thought. She had never seen Reenee cry like this: her eyes had always become wet, but now the tears were raining down her cheeks. Bella muttered, ‘Oh, that swine! There’s always somebody to spoil things. Don’t worry, love. Don’t worry. You’ll not see him again, I can assure you of that.’

  But no matter how she tried on this night she couldn’t get Reenee to take off the coat; so she took off her shoes, covered her over with a blanket and said, ‘I’m off downstairs, love, to make a hot drink. Now, you’ll be all right.’

  Bella wasn’t surprised to see the six men down there in the kitchen waiting for her; and it was Carl who said, ‘Has she had one of her turns?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Bella; ‘the first in God knows how long. I had thought she was finished with them.‘

  ‘A bad one?’

  ‘Yes, very bad. She’s cried as I’ve never seen her cry before. But go on now, the lot of you, and thank you for coming up. But don’t worry, I’ll get her round again. I only know this, if it wasn’t for the few married couples that come in together, I would see that the men kept to the room in the basement of the other house and the women to the one in this house.’

  ‘It could be done,’ said John. ‘Most of the fellows are either in the Army or the Air Force or at sea. Others are on night shift and sleep in the houses during the day. We could give it a try.’

  ‘Oh, well, I don’t want to disturb them,’ said Bella. ‘They’ve got a lot to put up with, especially those with kids. Leave it; she’ll likely have come round by the morning . . .’

  Reenee didn’t come round in the morning, or the next day, or the next: she got up and sat huddled in her coat near the window of her bedroom. It was on the third day that she went down into the kitchen, where Willie greeted her as if nothing had happened, saying as she took her place at the table, ‘I don’t know what we’ll do, Reenee, if they ration flour. I’d hate to have to cut out the bread, wouldn’t you?’

  She looked at him and he looked back at her. There was an expression in her eyes that he hadn’t seen there for a long, long time. He couldn’t put a name to it, only that she looked lost.

  No amount of talking, all the kind messages sent up with Bella from down below by the regular patrons that they hoped her cold would soon be better because they missed her, left any impression on her. She just looked at Bella, then went on with what she was doing. The patrons of what was called Bella’s Pad all looked upon the poor lass as being a bit simple, not quite right in the head, but kindly nevertheless; and a number of the mothers did miss her, especially her attention to the youngest members of their families.

  The air raids on London were renewed after the Luftwaffe had finished off, as they thought, the fighter airfields on the edge of the city. The four members of the band were now all fire-watchers, helping the air-raid wardens. Andy and Tony were generally on together, as were John and Willie in their turn. Each pair had their own area. It was left to Joe and Carl to see to the patrons of Bella’s houses on nights when they were free of their own duties. This meant keeping watch on the gates until they were closed at eight o’clock; then, with the help of some of the regulars, distributing the bowls of soup and newly baked bread, on which each person would gladly put his own margarine or jam. Afterwards one or the other would go outside to be on fire-watch for the area.

  Generally, the first siren would indicate a coming raid sufficiently early for people to take cover. But this night there was no time after the wail of the siren ended and the thunder of bombs shook the house, penetrating to the pads. Bella had been sitting in the kitchen with Reenee, who could not be persuaded to go down the stairs into the basement again.

  That the bombing was quite close was evident, and Bella put her arms around Reenee and held her. She was amazed that Reenee’s body was not shaking with fear as hers was. In fact, it was Reenee who put her hand on Bella’s head and stroked her hair back from her brow, making sounds of sympathy in her throat.

  When daylight came to London the next morning it showed the first horrors of many more to come: houses still burning, whole streets laid flat like fallen packs of cards.

  The men were disturbed that Bella now had to sit out the raids with Reenee upstairs when there was more protection in the two basement rooms underground. It wasn’t until Willie got the idea of getting an Anderson shelter and putting it near the gate of the yard that Bella’s trouble was eased, because without any demur Reenee would go out of the front door, along the street, through the gate and into the shelter, which had been made as comfortable as such places could be.

  They had arranged two separate bunks and a little calorgas stove on which they could boil a kettle for a cup of tea. Also there were tins holding buns and biscuits, though they never seemed to eat them. There wasn’t much singing done downstairs either, these days, not since Dunkirk when the remains of the British Expeditionary Force were taken off the shores of France on 3 June 1940. One young woman’s husband had died of his wounds on the rescue boat coming over to England, and another’s husband had been rescued from the Dunkirk beach only to be drowned when the small boat in which he was being taken to a Navy frigate was bombed.

  Every now and again Mr Travis would visit Bella, but these days he was a sad man, for his two nephews, both in the Navy, had died when their ships had been torpedoed in the Atlantic while shepherding convoys of merchant ships from America.

  Bella could offer little comfort; she could only take his hand and pat it. And now he said, ‘I shouldn’t be talking to you like this, my dear, you who’ve had such a rough time of your own, so much to put up with . . .’

  ‘Oh, Mr Travis, I feel I’ve had nothing but luck in my life since I was fourteen. Although I hated working for Mr McIntyre, it was by luck that I came to do it, and I was very lucky then to meet you. And I look back and think what my life would have been without my dear Reenee; and there again you come into it, for not another man in your bu
siness would have guided me so honestly through that side. Had it not been for you, I know now that I couldn’t have let myself claim that money. I would have been afraid. But your advice and that of your family has made me comfortable for the rest of my days, and through that I have been able to make many others comfortable too. And you know, Mr Travis, I’m going to say this, I look upon you as a friend.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘then I am honoured, Miss Morgan, that you should think so of me. But what we have done for you is nothing to what you have for others and particularly for one of my brothers, and, incidentally, for the country at large.’ And when, later, they shook hands at the front door, it was as close friends they parted, he promising to look in again soon, and she telling him how welcome he would be.

  The war went on and so did the bombing. Many patrons of Bella’s Pad had lost their homes; some had also lost relatives. But nothing so serious touched Bella and her little family till one night in 1943. The sirens had gone, the shelters were full, the bombs were dropping, the fires were blazing, and the raid seemed never-ending. At last the All Clear sounded, and some settled down to sleep while others got up to go and see if their homes were still standing.

  Down in the Anderson shelter Bella was sitting on the edge of her lower bunk. She had a strange worried feeling on her. All the lads were out: Andy, Tony, John and Willie were all fire-watching; Joe was now with an ambulance team, and Carl was doing his turn in the communications office of the Fire Brigade.

  Bella waited until the autumn dawn broke before she left the shelter and made her way along to the wash-house. There were no lights on in there, so she went back to the shelter and said to Reenee that she was going indoors. Reenee, too, got up. She had been sleeping in her coat, so she pulled a scarf round her head and went out and upstairs with Bella.

  Bella had thought she might find either Joe or Carl indoors but there was no one.

  At seven o’clock, when not one of her lads had returned, she said to Reenee, who was making tea, ‘I’ve an awful feeling on me that something’s happened. They always come straggling back, but so far there’s not one of them in.’

  It was as she sat drinking the tea that Joe and Carl came slowly up the stairs and into the kitchen. They were both covered with dust and looked utterly weary.

  Immediately Bella was on her feet. ‘Had a bad night?’

  Neither man spoke, and she demanded, ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

  ‘There’s bad news, Bella,’ Carl muttered.

  ‘Bad news! Who?’

  It was Joe now who said briefly, ‘Andy.’

  ‘Oh, no! Not Andy!’

  Neither of them spoke; and Bella, her face blanched, turned to look at Reenee who had dropped into a chair and laid her head on her folded arms on the table. Bella wanted to go to her and say, Don’t have another turn, for God’s sake, not now, but she couldn’t speak. After a moment she turned again to Carl: ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘Yes. From what Tony tells me, the house next door had had a direct hit, and this one was on fire. There was a woman screaming, and he went in. He must have got to her because after the house collapsed they were found together. Joe was helping with the injured’ – he thumbed towards Joe – ‘but nothing could be done. Tony was there. His hands were burnt. John and Willie had been directed there, and arrived as they were taking the bodies to’ – he gulped and choked before he went on – ‘the mortuary. Tony went to the dressingstation, he wouldn’t go to hospital. The three of them are now back in the house,’ he tilted his head towards the wash-house, ‘but I’d leave them, Bella, for a bit; they . . . they’re so cut up. You see, they weren’t just like Joe and me here, odd bods, they were more like a family, like brothers. They’d been through a lot together.’

  It was a strange feeling for Bella. She felt she couldn’t cry, yet she wanted to do something like scream or throw something, break something. In this moment she realised that as Reenee was like a daughter to her, those six fellows were like the sons she had never had, and that the one who had laid bricks, built walls and, although not the cleverest of the four, seemed to lead the band, would not return home again.

  Andrew Anderson was buried four days later. The only mourners were his adoptive family, with the exception of Reenee who had not offered to attend and to whom no one had suggested it.

  The amazing thing to all of them was that not one of his relatives had come from Wales. They had fully expected his wife to put in an appearance, but no. Carl had written to tell her that Andy had died, but did not receive a reply, although he had written on the back of it, ‘If undelivered return to sender’.

  After the ceremony, when they returned to the house, they found that Reenee had set out the tea table in the sitting room. She had brought out the new china tea service Bella had bought for herself before the war, and the table was set with bread and butter, corned-beef sandwiches, and a plate of Willie’s buns, made with liquid paraffin, which Willie had discovered was a good substitute for fat.

  ‘Oh, that’s nice of you, lass,’ Bella said, and the men nodded their approval. What conversation there was among the six of them at the table touched only on their inability to understand how a wife and two daughters could ignore the fact that their husband and father had died saving someone from a burning house.

  ‘Now she can get married,’ Tony said bitterly. ‘She’ll be living with the fellow anyway.’

  ‘He never said anything about her from the day he came back that time, did he?’ Willie put in quietly. ‘And I don’t think he ever wrote to her again.’

  ‘That’s no excuse,’ said John; ‘those lasses could have sent a note, if not his wife.’

  Bella put in quietly, ‘He’s goin’ to be missed in more ways than one. D’you want to take on somebody else?’

  The chorus came, ‘No, Bella, we’ll manage.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said John, ‘we couldn’t stand another fellow in his place. We’ll manage, at least for a time. Don’t worry, Bella; we’ll rearrange things.’

  ‘How nice it was of that Mr Travis to send that holly wreath,’ Carl said, to which Bella replied, ‘He’s a good man, is Mr Travis, and a gentleman.’

  To everyone’s surprise, and Bella’s most of all, Reenee went downstairs that night, for the first time in months, to help the mothers with their children. Life went on and so did the war.

  The men were often asked by the ‘patrons’ to play again, but since Andy’s death they hadn’t done so.

  London was bombed continually; there was hardly a district that didn’t show skeleton houses or streets of rubble. Coventry had been laid flat, and many other cities, among them Liverpool and Plymouth, had been terribly damaged; more ships were sunk; food became scarcer; it looked as if the war would never end. Yet there were towns that never experienced a raid; others where a single plane had attacked, such as the one at Hereford that dropped a bomb near the munitions factory there. The spirit that prevailed over the whole nation, led by their great wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, was amazing.

  When American troops arrived in England, Bella said many girls and women, who should have known better, seemed to go mad; and all done under the guise of making the men feel at home . . .

  Then one day, 6 June 1944, an invasion fleet ferried armies of many nations across the Channel, and over the following months defeated the Germans in territories they had occupied: France, Holland, Belgium and Scandinavia. At last the Allies were winning, but at a terrible price.

  It wasn’t until 8 May 1945 that the slaughter in Europe came to an end. They called the day it was celebrated VE Day. The British, the Russians, the Americans and the French had won, and there began the huge task of reconstruction. In the meantime there were still the Japanese to defeat. One day a pilot dropped a bomb and devastated a Japanese city and everyone in it in one terrible flash. Now the war really was over, though the age of the atomic bomb had arrived.

  13

  On the day the war ended in Europe almost everyon
e in England danced in the streets – they’d all gone through so much together. Now it was over, though there were many who mourned that they no longer had anyone with whom to dance.

  Bella’s two rooms and the yard saw their share of gaiety and dancing: the boys even got their band together again and played jigs and waltzes and all the songs that were asked for . . .

  But joy is an emotion that cannot be held. Normality flowed back: there were houses to rebuild and repair; there were jobs to find. Not every man returning from service life found that his old job was open to him: new hands had been taken on; women had taken men’s places in many factories and were doing the work for less pay.

  Bella expected that soon her beds would no longer be needed, and she talked this over with the boys. ‘Wait and see,’ they said. ‘There are the single rooms, they are always booked up. Young fellows starting in jobs again are finding staying in those rooms is cheaper than going into digs or living with relatives. As for the beds, there’ll always be tramps on the road,’ to which Bella had whipped back, ‘I don’t want tramps, not real tramps. You lot weren’t tramps: down-and-outs, yes, but there’s a difference. The others do it from choice.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Bella,’ they said; ‘just leave it for a time. As long as you can keep us on, we’re satisfied.’

  ‘Oh, lads, I can keep you on. I can promise you that. If it comes to a push we could turn all of next door into single rooms.’

  ‘You’re right there, Bella.’

  For about six months or so after the war the beds were indeed fully occupied, mostly by single men who could not find any cheaper or better place in which to kip than Bella’s, so for a while they were kept busy. When things did begin to slacken off, the men cleared out the large room next door and redecorated it; then set about not only redecorating the latrines and wash-basins but tiling them. By 1947 the business was showing a big drop in those who needed a single night’s kip; so it was decided, starting next door, to convert all of the downstairs into double rooms. And in each of these was to be the luxury of a wash-basin.

 

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