by Annie Murray
My mind was racing madly ahead. What the hell were we going to find if Molly was over at our house? And then I remembered. How could I have forgotten? They wouldn’t even be there. Len and Molly had gone to the pictures – big excitement – and wouldn’t be back until after ten. Thank you sweet Jesus.
Lil was carrying on down my ear, sorry for herself, her voice hardly changing tone. Moan tone. ‘I’m that tired I can hardly get about these days. If it’s not work it’s the kids. Sometimes I ask myself why I go on with it all. Why I don’t just go and do the same as Patsy did and jump into the canal?’
‘Don’t say that. You don’t mean it, do you Lil?’
‘I do. Some days I really do. I mean what’s there ever going to be for me now? My life’s over. Only you can’t do a thing like that to your kids, can you?’
I didn’t blame her really. Only I was so relieved, after those moments of outright panic, to think the house would be empty when we got back, I was almost ready to dance down the road.
‘Things’ll get better, Auntie Lil. You’ll get a nice new house and move out – have a garden for the kids.’
‘At the rate Mary’s getting hers it’ll be the turn of the century before they find me one,’ she said despondently. ‘And I’ll be dead by then anyway.’
The house was dark. Blacked out of course, but there were no lights on inside when I opened the front door, finding myself grinning like an idiot with relief.
‘Come on in,’ I said. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
‘Doreen got anything stronger? Drop of port?’
‘Dunno. I’ll look.’
I lit the gaslight in the back room with a spill and found a tipple for Lil. I’d put the kettle on as well and was trying to poke some life into the fire when we heard it from upstairs. Clear and loud and horribly unmistakable.
‘Jesus,’ Lil said. ‘What the . . .?’
I couldn’t answer her. I went straight to a chair, pushed my burning face into it and pulled the cushion over my head as my mother’s cries upstairs reached fever pitch. Knees tucked up on the worn seat of the chair, I curled tight into the smallest speck I could manage.
But Lil was at me, poking my back.
‘Genie . . . Lift your head up. Genie!’ She yanked me out of the chair by one arm. I wouldn’t look at her, just covered my face with my hands, squinting out between my fingers. Lil hissed at me. ‘Who is that up there?’
‘It’s Mom.’ What an admission, my mom behaving like that.
‘I know. I can hear that much. But who the hell is that with her?’
‘Bob.’
‘Who’s Bob when he’s at home?’
‘A copper.’
Lil mouthed air like a fish. ‘Well how long’s this been going on?’
I shrugged. Couldn’t think. I couldn’t think of anything. The noise had calmed down upstairs.
‘The little bitch.’ Lil advanced on the door to the stairs.
‘Lil no, don’t! You can’t!’ But it was like shouting into an avalanche.
My legs were trembling so much as she stomped upstairs that I had to sit down, waiting for all hell to break loose above me. I kept thinking over and over, what are they doing here? They’re not supposed to be here. How could they do this? How could they?
The fight Mom and Lil had that night outdid anything I could ever remember before. Lil was fit to burst with outrage, righteous indignation, fury at being related to such an obvious trollopy bitch of a sister and, though she’d never have admitted it, pure, grass-green jealousy. And Mom – also outrage at being burst in upon while she lay stark naked in candlelight, her head lifting in panic off Bob’s King Kong hairy chest when she heard feet on the stairs. And anger and mortification at being caught in the act of complete, undeniable adultery.
The shouting, sobbing, cursing, slapping and recriminations went on and on. Some time, at about the eye of the storm, Bob slunk downstairs, half dressed in socks, drawers and shirt, looking like an ape in clothes. He pulled on the other bits, the trousers, jacket, even tie, as I sat crying. His shoes came flying down the stairs on the force of Lil shouting, ‘Take these with you, you filthy bastard, and don’t ever come back!’
Bob never said a word to me. Didn’t even look at me. He let himself out and left them to it.
May 1940
It was soon after that Mom started being sick. Course, not having had a babby myself, the sight of someone heaving over a bucket every morning didn’t automatically make me suspicious.
‘My cooking’s not that bad, is it?’ I said to her.
All I got in reply was a lot of groaning. Some mornings she’d say finally, ‘Oooh, I can’t go to work in this state. I feel terrible.’ And she’d crawl back up to bed and stay there until the middle of the afternoon. She did a lot of crying as well. A real lot.
I started to get worried. ‘Shall I get our nan?’
‘No!’ She found the strength to push herself up on one elbow. ‘Don’t you dare say a word to anyone. D’you hear?’
‘But you look terrible.’
She did too – face greeny white and clammy, hair in greasy strips. The room smelled stale and sweaty.
‘I’ll be better in a while. Just get me some water, and don’t breathe a word to anyone.’
By the evening she’d dress and come downstairs, unsteady on her feet, eat a little bit and sit, silent most of the time. This went on for days. The time that for the rest of us was really the beginning of the war almost passed her by. Suddenly Gloria’s news bulletins were once more the most important notches on which we hung our day. We listened in to The Nine O’Clock News in the evening like religious fanatics, shutting up anyone who dared open their mouth to interrupt.
Hitler invaded the Netherlands. More names of places we’d never heard of. More realization that there was a world out there where things were happening. Bombs fell somewhere outside Canterbury. And Mr Churchill became Prime Minister. I liked him. Nearly everyone did, I think, with his way with words. Made you feel carried along and full of strength, not like the others, all muttering away.
‘We have before us,’ he said, ‘an ordeal of the most grievous kind.’
But he made you feel noble, chosen in some way to do it, as if the fate of the world rested on us, each of us. Even Lil, the great sceptic, was impressed. ‘’E makes you feel it might all be worth it, doesn’t ’e?’
Life was beginning to gleam a bit brighter for Lil. Or at least it was going to revert back to what it was before. Mary Flanagan and her kids were to be rehoused in Stanley Street.
‘A front-house too, if you please!’ Lil said. But she didn’t really care whether the Flanagans were being moved into Buckingham Palace so long as they were well out of her hair.
Mom finally admitted one morning, between bouts of sickness, that she was going to have a babby. She was crying when she told me.
‘I can’t keep it to myself any more, Genie. You’re my daughter’ (she’d noticed!) ‘and I’ve got to tell someone.’ She lay back weakly sobbing into the pillow.
I was right out of my depth here. ‘Is it – er . . . is it Bob’s babby?’
‘Course it’s Bob’s!’ she wailed. ‘How many men d’you think I’ve been with the past few months?’
I felt sorry for her. I did, really. Because I knew she didn’t find having babbies any joy, and to cap it all this one was a little bastard and it wouldn’t take the neighbours long to work that out for themselves.
‘Are you going to tell ’im?’
Mom sobbed even louder. I sat down on the bed and touched her shoulder. ‘D’you want a cuppa tea?’
‘No, I don’t want a cuppa tea! How’s that going to help anything?’ Then she softened. ‘Sorry, Genie. No ta.’ She looked bleakly across at the window. I saw dots of white light in her eyes. ‘I want to tell him. I want everything to be all right – for him to want it. But after what happened . . .’
Since the Big Fight with Lil, neither she nor Bob had been near the place. �
�I’m scared he won’t ever want to see me now . . .’ And off she went all over again.
‘D’you want me to find ’im for you? Where does he live?’
‘You can’t go to his house,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘He still lives with his mom and her sister, and he says they’re both proper tartars. Look, he works at Moseley Police Station – if you could take a note?’
The note said, ‘I’ve got to see you. D.’ I made a detour on the way to my nan’s, going to Moseley first.
That night we heard the Germans had bombed Rotterdam. Everyone thought thousands and thousands of people had died, the doom-laden faces were back in my nan’s shop – ‘We’ll be next’ – and everyone started dusting off their gas masks again. Len had to take a cactus in a pot out of his and we sent him off with it again every morning. It was a shock. It was near, and getting nearer. The Dutch capitulated and the next thing was they were moving into France, into Belgium, Antwerp, Liège, Brussels, names falling like ninepins.
‘They’re saying at work,’ Lil told us, ‘that all the Germans’ve got to do is fly over. Some of ’em might even be here already. You got to be careful who you talk to.’
Straight away I had a mad, beautiful daydream that ‘Uncle Bob’ was really a Fifth Columnist spying for the Nazis who would soon be unveiled as the traitor he was, humiliated and tortured in public, then strung up in the Bull Ring to meet as slow and agonizing a death as possible.
Shame life isn’t that simple. When he finally turned up I let him in, still in his uniform.
‘Awright, Genie?’ He was very short with me, pushed past into the hall. We’d had no warning of him coming. Len was still at work at one of his endless shifts at Austin Aero. Luckily Mom was up and dressed and had managed to get some soup down her. She was wearing an old dress, and had dragged a comb through her hair. I didn’t get a chance to warn her, what with old Charmschool barging in like that. I heard her say ‘Bob!’ startled. She struggled weakly to stand up and held on to the back of the chair, smiling so sweetly at him, really trying hard.
‘What d’you want?’ I couldn’t quite make out his tone. It wasn’t angry or abrupt, more cautious and slippery.
‘I er, didn’t get a chance to say sorry. About what happened. My sister . . .’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Can’t ever get away from your family, can you? One way or another?’
Bob didn’t look particularly amused. ‘Is that it? I haven’t got a lot of time tonight.’
‘Bob, please.’ Mom’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Don’t be like that. It was our fault. We shouldn’t have been there – not then. Genie wasn’t to know . . . Look, Bob, stop—’ He was starting to turn away. ‘I’ve summat to tell you. Genie – leave us alone, will you? There’s a good girl.’
I went upstairs, feeling sick at everything that was happening. I didn’t want PC Bob anywhere within shouting distance of our house.
It didn’t take her long to tell him. Didn’t take him long to get to the front door either. Within minutes I heard it slam, and Mom’s howls of despair from downstairs. I found her lying along the hall on her front, arms stretched out as if she was heaving on an invisible rope, trying to pull Bob back.
‘Oh please, please . . .’ she moaned, until the words gave out to sobs with no sound coming at all.
Then there was a great banging on the door. I stepped over Mom. There was Molly, a big grin on her pork pink face. ‘Is Lenny in yet?’
‘No, he sodding well isn’t!’ I yelled at her, guilty for it before I’d even finished. ‘Sorry, Molly. No, he’ll be back later tonight.’
Molly peered in between my legs at Mom’s head on the floor behind me. ‘Everything all right, is it Genie?’
‘No, Molly, it’s not,’ I said savagely, and slammed the door in her simple face.
‘Nan, there’s summat you’re going to have to know.’
Mom told me to tell her and Auntie Lil, because she couldn’t face doing it herself. I told our nan first. Didn’t want Lil there ranting and raving.
We had a few quiet moments in the shop. Nan was sorting through sugar coupons. She looked round at me. I could see she was sort of steeling herself for something she half dreaded already.
‘It’s Mom. She’s expecting.’ My cheeks were aching hot. I couldn’t look Nan in the eye. ‘The babby’s Bob’s.’
Nan bent her head and pushed the coupons into her battered tin cashbox, her fingers working fast and nervously. I watched her strong profile, dark hair swept round, half covering her ears. ‘Nan?’
‘What?’
‘Did you hear me?’
She bent to push the cashbox under the worm-riddled counter. ‘I may be a lot of things, Genie, but I’m not deaf.’
‘I just thought you’d say something.’
Nan stood up. She looked tired. ‘What d’you want me to say? That she’s a fool? That she’s throwing away a perfectly good marriage? Your father may not be a Rudolph Valentino if that’s what she was after, but ’e’s been a good husband to her. ’E’s a worker. ’E’s never laid a finger on ’er and ’e’s looked after you and seen you all right. What more does she want?’ She passed a hand back over her forehead. ‘I don’t know.’
She let herself through into the house at the back. I heard her moving the kettle on the range and wondered where it was Nanny Rawson kept her feelings about all the horrible things that happened. She must have had a hump hidden somewhere where she could store and absorb them like a camel.
I followed her through. ‘Mom’s bound to ask what you said.’
Nan didn’t even turn to look at me. ‘No point in me killing the messenger is there? Tell ’er she knows where ’er family are. We ain’t going nowhere.’
‘Is there any news, love?’
Vera had run up to Nan’s shop in a pair of battered old slippers for a packet of fags.
‘I didn’t know you smoked.’
‘I do today.’ She bought matches too and lit up straight away.
‘The last letter we had was all wiggly,’ I told her. ‘He said he was writing in the wireless truck while they were moving along. Said he’d seen German planes dropping bombs and a great big crater where they’d blown up a farmhouse.’
Vera grimaced. I wasn’t sure if it was at what I’d said or the cigarette. ‘I bet your mom’s worried ain’t she, poor thing? If there’s anything I can do to help . . .?’
‘Ta.’ I couldn’t think of anything at all I could say about Mom’s state of mind at that moment. When Dad’s letter came she cried and cried.
‘Poor Victor. My poor Victor.’ Tears of remorse. She’d almost forgotten he existed over the past months and now she could see he wasn’t so bad after all.
I changed the subject quickly. ‘Mr Spini any better?’
‘He’s awright – it’s taking time.’ Vera shrugged. ‘Teresa’s the one who’s trouble – always wanting to be somewhere else away from us. She doesn’t do as she’s told and she makes Micky furious.’ Vera was starting to wave her arms. ‘We don’t know what she’s getting up to. She won’t listen to us. She and Micky had a set-to the other night because he tried to make her stay in and she disobeyed him. If he was in better health she’d’ve more than felt his hand across her.’ She sighed heavily. ‘As if there ain’t enough to worry about. What she needs is to find a Catholic boy like her – one of the lads from St Michael’s. Mixed marriages only cause trouble.’
‘Oh, I’m sure she’s not thinking of getting married!’ I laughed. Vera’s mind always ran on to the worst possible. Teresa marrying a Protestant!
She smiled suddenly, sheepish. ‘You think I’m stupid. But she don’t tell us what she’s doing or where she is. It’s not right. I wish she could be more grown up and sensible like you, Genie. D’you think you could have a word with her?’
Mom was managing to pull herself together by dinnertime these days, have a bit to eat and get to work.
‘The babby won’t show for a bit yet, so I’m not going to get asked any awkward quest
ions. If I don’t get out I’ll only sit here feeling sorry for myself.’ This came as a bit of a surprise to me because I’d thought that was exactly what she would do. What with Bob taking off and his bun in the oven I thought she’d be about ready for the canal herself. But after a few days of pure misery while she mourned her rejection by PC Bob and leaned on me as if I was an iron doorstop, she became almost cheerful. I was baffled. She started going on about my dad.
‘I’ve never given Victor enough credit for what he’s given all of us,’ she said one evening. ‘He’s been a good husband and father – not like some. And he’s given me you and Eric. It’s time I acted like a proper wife to him.’
I was so relieved she wasn’t in the depths of despair at this point that I didn’t think to ask her what she imagined Dad was going to say when he came home to find this little cuckoo in the nest. Surely she wasn’t going to con him again with one of her record pregnancies?
Lil, who’d already had her say in no uncertain terms, came to the conclusion that that was exactly what she was going to do. ‘He was here December,’ she said in her sarky voice. ‘And the babby’s due about next December. So it’ll be a good three months shorter than the first time, any rate. Poor old Victor, he must love her, God help ’im.’
‘Well don’t you go interfering,’ Nanny Rawson told her. ‘We’ve enough trouble already without you letting fresh air in your gob out of place.’
In the meantime, I got myself a new job. Nanny was recovered, barring a stiff knee. ‘You want to get out and earn yourself some more wages,’ she said. ‘I’m all right ’ere now.’
Lewis Broadbent’s foundry was an old family firm with a good reputation in the back streets of Highgate. In peacetime they made brass plumbers’ ware – taps and sink bases, washers and screws, but for the war effort the firm had gone over to making caps for shells and petrol cans, and other small parts.
A middle-aged woman called Doris with jet-black hair and watery brown eyes showed me round the factory, which was hot from the furnaces where they heated the brass, and noisy with the clank of metal and the chunking of the pressing machines.