Birmingham Blitz

by Annie Murray

  ‘Lord above, look at it.’ Mom stood with her arms folded, a rough dressing on her cut finger. ‘God in Heaven.’

  Gladys and Molly’s house was still standing, as were those on each side of it, but not much further along a great block had been blasted out of the terrace, the inside walls of some still left standing pointing jaggedly up, with their pathetic strips of wallpaper, their picture hooks and damp stains, and the rest of the houses smashed to charred rubble, bits poking out at all angles like spillikins.

  There were people out all along the street. Len rushed across and banged on Molly’s door and after a time Gladys opened it and the two of them came out, already dressed as they’d most likely been all night. The pair of them looked as tired and dishevelled as we must have done. In the quietest ever voice Gladys said, ‘Wasn’t it awful? Just a few more yards this way . . .’ and she looked along at the shattered houses, her eyes filling.

  Len put his arm round Molly, who huddled close to him. Along the street a vicar, shabby old mac flung over his cassock, stood comforting a man who was watching the rescue squad, his face full of fear and desolation. They’d already been working out there for several hours, and the flames had all been put out. We could hear sawing and drilling and the men calling to each other. A team was waiting with stretchers. Other neighbours were gathering round. Mr Tailor from our side of the road stood out in his braces, and everyone was squinting in the shocking sunlight, no one saying, but all of us thinking, as we stared glumly at the houses opposite, ‘Who’s in there still? Who’s dead?’ A horrible, dank smell hung over everything, of wet, charred wood and plaster, wisps of grey smoke still floating in the air like the ghosts of those already dead. And mixed with this, the sickening smell of gas seeping from broken pipes in the houses.

  One of the gossips I recognized from down the road was standing in front of what had been her house, two toddlers clinging dumbly to her coat and a baby yawling in her arms.

  ‘Look,’ Mom said. ‘Mrs Terry.’

  We went to her, seeing her shivering, the shock on her face.

  ‘We was in the Anderson,’ she said. ‘In the Anderson. The Anderson at the back.’ Their faces were brown with grime like panto gypsies but they all seemed unhurt. There was a mobile canteen at the end of the road handing out tea and we led her down, handing her carefully over the rubble because she didn’t seem able to look out for herself. As we waited for our turn they carried a stretcher past to a grey ambulance, the face covered by a sheet. We all watched, no one speaking, but somehow we couldn’t take our eyes off it.

  Those who could go had already been taken to first aid posts, but the workers were still having to follow the trail of the buried or dead, listening for moans, tiny gasps, any flicker of life entombed under the houses. I heard a voice somewhere saying loudly over and over that we had to boil all our water. The bombing cracked and destroyed water pipes and the water wasn’t safe.

  As Mrs Terry sipped her tea, handed out by the cheerful woman in the mobile canteen, we stood trying to offer her comfort by our presence, not knowing what else to say. Mom held the babby for her, trying to quiet it.

  ‘You can come back to ours and rest for a bit,’ she said. ‘They’ll find you a place to go after, won’t they?’ None of us was sure. We couldn’t think straight and it was all too new. Later we’d be able to gather our wits and ask one of the wardens where she could go.

  Mrs Terry shook her head. She didn’t know anything. She was in a state of paralysis. But she did hold out her arms to have her babby back. The two kids were chewing on the canteen’s stale buns, both of them unnaturally silent.

  A shout went up from amongst the wreckage. ‘Here! There’s someone under this lot!’ There was urgent activity, equipment carried over at a jerking run, men sawing, lifting chunks of masonry, throwing out objects here and there when they got further down, a clock, a clothes-horse, a skein of baby-pink wool. It seemed to take so long. After a time they called a nurse through to give an injection.

  ‘Morphine I s’pect.’ Mom shuddered violently, arms folded tight. ‘Christ, imagine being under there.’

  As we watched, a man appeared in the street in trousers but bare at the top, blood dark on his head and stains of it on the shoulder underneath. His feet were bare as well and he was turning his head frantically from side to side as if looking for someone. One of the ambulance crew led him gently away.

  ‘I’ve got to get over to your nan,’ Mom said. ‘See if they’re OK.’ She was agitated suddenly, pulled her fags out and was about to light up, hands shaking.

  ‘No!’ The warden almost flung himself at her, knocking it from her hand. ‘Can’t you smell the gas? You’ll have the whole bloody street going up!’

  ‘Sorry,’ Mom said. ‘Oh I’m sorry, I never . . .’

  But he was too busy to listen to apologies and had already gone.

  We were leading Mrs Terry and her children down towards our house when a murmur rippled through the straggling group of neighbours, a low moaning sound of everyone breathing out together. The rescuers were now pulling a body from the house where they’d heard the tiny sounds. It was a woman, and at the sight of her I saw Molly turn and bury her face in Len’s chest with a whimper of distress. So slowly and tenderly they lifted her out, as if they were handling some treasure precious to their own lives. She was unconscious now, drugged out of her agony by the morphine, but how and what she had suffered these hours was more than any of us could bear to imagine. Her face was almost untouched except for a few small cuts, and the upper part of her body appeared unscathed, though it was hard to tell as she’d been trapped down there and could be crushed. But when the bomb came down she’d fallen, and been trapped by the weight of her house, next to where the fire burned in her little grate. For these past hours the heat of it had smouldered along the lower portion of her body so that all that remained of her feet were gnarled things like charred twigs which crumbled, dropping in small bits as they moved her, despite all their carefulness. The clothes on the lower part of her seemed melted round her like black tissue paper. Her head lolled to one side.

  She can’t live. Everyone must’ve thought the same. Not after that. I knew her face. Mrs Deakin, a widow in her late sixties who’d always been kind. I saw the nurse who’d given her the injection turn from the sight of that grilled body on the stretcher and take deep controlling breaths. She was young, with light freckles on her nose.

  Silently we led Mrs Terry to our house, where yellowed leaves piled gently against the door as they would on any October morning, except that today they were mixed with ash and glass.

  After work that day I hurried across to Belgrave Road. There was a lot of damage in the area, gaps and mess where before it’d been whole. Life itself was wobbling. I had to rush because sometimes they came over as early as six and the sirens’d be off, barely giving you time even to get home.

  Teresa and Vera had volunteered their house to the WVS as a respite point where people could be taken temporarily for rest and help.

  ‘Otherwise we’re no use to anyone, are we?’ Vera said. ‘It’s the least we can do.’ It gave them a sense of purpose, and they both seemed lifted by it.

  At Nan’s they were already preparing for the raid. Lil had made a makeshift bed for herself and Cathleen under the table. The others would go down the coal cellar and they had coats and shoes rowed up and blankets ready.

  Lil, cooking chops, was in a state about Frank. ‘He was on yesterday and he’s on tonight. Thinks he’s got a charmed life. God, I do hope he’s careful with himself after that lot last night.’

  Mom’d told them about our street, but the other news on everyone’s lips that day was the Carlton Cinema. A bomb had come down in front of the screen when the place was packed. Killed nineteen.

  ‘They say they were just sat there as if they were still watching the film,’ Lil said.

  ‘That’ll be the blast.’ Nan was filling a flask with cocoa. ‘Does odd things. D’you know, Genie �
� when we came up this morning every window in the house was open?’

  I looked round. ‘All the glass is in.’

  ‘No breakages. But they were all open. Wouldn’t credit it, would you?’

  I only stopped there a few minutes, but in that time it would’ve taken an idiot not to notice there was something wrong with Tom. He wasn’t himself at all. I tried talking to him, making jokes, but he was pale and very jumpy, poor kid, very sunk into himself.

  ‘This is all making him bad,’ Lil whispered to me. ‘I don’t know what I can do for him.’

  I could do no more either, except give him a cuddle and say goodnight to go and face the next round. The days which had seemed such hard work before now seemed like a rest cure compared with the nights.

  And then it stopped. After two weeks of raids every night, suddenly there were days of no siren, no Mister howling, no shelter. It felt really peculiar. The bombing had so quickly become a way of life. But all the same you couldn’t relax because there was no guarantee it was over. They might go and bomb somewhere else but they’d be back, and we never knew when. The siren could go off any time. So throughout those days there was still the same fluttering heart and acid stomach. A couple of times during the raids I’d been woken suddenly from a quick snatch of sleep and been sick, such was the shock to my system. Even on those nights of quiet I kept waking, blood rushing, ears straining, not being used to a full sleep.

  One morning Mom came down, grey faced with tiredness and nerves. ‘I’ve decided. I’m never going out in that shelter again.’

  I gave a sarky laugh, readying myself for work. ‘Not till the next time.’

  ‘No. Never.’

  ‘Mom?’ I walked round and peered into her face but she was looking out somewhere way beyond me, one hand absent-mindedly stroking her big belly as if it was too tight and she needed to ease it. ‘You all right?’

  There was a long silence and I nearly asked again. But then, more firmly than I’d expected, she said, ‘I’ll be all right.’

  Something about her bothered me, though I couldn’t say what. It wasn’t as if I wasn’t used to her being lost to me, depressed or drunk, but she was stone cold sober this morning and she frightened me, nearly as much as she did when I’d found her standing out in the garden holding out her arms to embrace the bombs.

  I put tea in her hands. ‘Why don’t you go over to Nan’s today? Have a bit of company.’

  ‘Don’t fuss, Genie.’ She spoke dreamily. ‘Just get off to work.’

  To start with she was on my mind that day. I couldn’t get Mrs Deakin out of my head either, the horrible thing that had happened to her. I tried to think, Mom’ll be better once the babby’s over with and born. Give her something else to fix her mind on. I was beginning to look forward to that, a babby in the house, whoever its father was.

  It was a busy day at the factory with all the work and talk and the women asking me if I’d heard from Joe. Yesterday’s letter from him, safe for the moment with his squadron, was folded close to me in my pocket. I thought of us making love and blushed, blushed even more when they noticed and teased me. It had brought us even closer. I had no shame, no sense of wrong. Not with Joe. And not now during this war when you couldn’t take anything for granted. You took what you could and were grateful.

  I wanted to go round to Nan’s at the end of the day and look in on Tom, talk more to Lil about him. But by the time work finished I felt I ought to get home to Mom. Some instinct I had, that made me run half the way there in a cold sweat, not stopping to queue for any food. I don’t know what I was afraid of. I suppose I expected her to get drunk and have an accident one day. Fall when there was no one in.

  When I clattered in through the front door, Mister came at me like a cannon ball, yapping and jumping round my legs in ecstasy, licking whatever bits of me he could reach.

  ‘Mom, where are you?’ I needed to hear her voice.

  There was no answer, but then she hardly ever did bother to answer when I called.

  To my surprise she was in the kitchen standing by the stove. Cooking of all things. And the place looked as if she’d had a tidy up too.

  ‘Thought it was high time I did a meal,’ she said.

  I was all smiles of relief. ‘You feeling better?’

  ‘I’ll be OK.’

  I picked up Mister who was still frantic for attention beside me. ‘D’you go to Nan’s today?’

  ‘I popped over. Picked up a few things on the way back.’ She was stirring the pot, looking so frail standing there in the gaslight, pregnant, her hair loose, seeming younger than her years.

  ‘We’ll wait for Len,’ she said. ‘He can eat with us tonight, not at Molly’s.’

  She’d done stew and spuds, even a kind of egg custard for pudding, and the three of us sat together round the table, Gloria playing to us. Mom didn’t drink. Not a drop all evening.

  ‘Quiet without Jerry, isn’t it?’ I said. We were still waiting, could hardly believe it was another night free.

  ‘When all this is over,’ Mom said to Len all of a sudden, ‘you and Molly’ll have to get yourselves a little house somewhere.’

  ‘If there’s any left standing,’ I joked.

  She looked solemnly at me. ‘And you and Joe. He’s a very nice boy, Genie. The sort who’ll really look after you.’

  ‘And we’ll look after you too, Mom. Don’t you worry. And little’un in there.’

  She just gave a bit of a smile at that, as if to say it wasn’t her that mattered. She was so calm. Perhaps I should have seen that as odd but I was just glad. Things felt normal, whatever that was nowadays.

  We sat listening to Gloria and then Mom took herself off to bed. As she passed by my chair she rested her hand on top of my head. ‘Goodnight, Genie.’

  I was the last up. I switched the lights off and left Mister snoozing by the remains of the fire.

  The high wailing sound woke me and I was out of bed, completely awake, pulling on the coat I’d left at the foot of my bed. It stopped. Started again. It was only then I realized it wasn’t the siren but the other noise we normally heard along with it. Mister was howling, somewhere outside. I went and opened my window over the garden.

  It was very dark and I could only hear, not see him, howling and whimpering under my window.

  ‘Mister? How d’you get out there, boy?’

  There were more yowls as he heard my voice and the rasp of his claws scratching against the back door.

  ‘OK. I’m coming.’

  Going to the door, I wondered whether I’d dreamed him being by the fire when I came up, or whether Mom’d been down, put him out and forgotten him. But as soon as I was on the landing I smelt it, that stink of the mornings after the raids, the mean, seeping smell of gas. I tore down the dark stairs.

  When I opened the kitchen door the rush of it set me coughing and gasping. I could hear it hissing in the dark and the thoughts going round in my head were, who the hell, who’d been so stupid as to come down and leave the gas on in the middle of the night? I groped towards the back door and heard my feet knock into glass, bottles crashing together. Then I tripped over her legs and fell across the floor, banging my head and side. I got up and struggled with the back door key knowing now, knowing what was happening, taking gasps of air as I got the door open, sick with the gas. Mister tore inside and disappeared somewhere into the front of the house yelping and howling.

  Everything was automatic now, with a kind of perfection born of instinct. My steps across the kitchen, one hand over my nose and mouth, the other going to exactly the right dial on the cooker to shut it off.

  The hissing stopped. With more strength than I knew I had, I bent and pulled out the dead weight of my mother’s body from where she was lying, head resting on her crossed arms in the greasy base of the oven.

  November 1940

  Mr Tailor was the one I went to for help, after I’d knelt in the black kitchen, feeling along her wrist. My fingertips found the veins slanting
across her bones and a tiny pulse like a bird’s.

  I was retching from the gas and sobbing out all sorts of stuff to her. ‘Don’t die. Don’t do this . . . Don’t you bloody well go and die on me . . .’

  The smell was still awful in there – there wasn’t much of a breeze coming in – so I lifted her under her flopping arms, her feet bumping down the step into the garden and the cold air. I found the crocheted blanket and laid it over her. Mister was running in circles in the garden, barking.

  I went and picked him up, so glad he was there. ‘We’ve got to get help, boy.’ I ran down the road with his soft head pressed to my face.

  Mr Tailor was marvellous. Didn’t make a fuss. He found a working phone box and dealt with the ambulance, while Mrs Tailor was kindness itself in the face of my shaking. She made me sweet tea. I clung to my little dog and couldn’t stop my teeth chattering. They asked no questions. Most likely guessed most of it in any case. They took me to my nan’s, said they’d go round to Len first thing. It was three in the morning and I had to tell Nan what had happened. Nan sat down and stared ahead of her. It was Lil who did the crying for all of us.

  She was a long time in hospital. At first I was just scared she’d die, and she came very close. Death’s door, that’s what they say, and she was on the step, hand raised, knocking. She lost the babby. The labour came on with the shock and was born dead, much too small for this world. They said it was another little girl, although she’d thought it was a boy. She haemorrhaged badly and had to have a blood transfusion. For days she lay barely conscious and we’d sit with her in that ward at the Queen Elizabeth. Dots of light flashed round my eyes from exhaustion and I couldn’t keep my food down. They were bombing every night again now and we crouched in Nan’s house thinking ‘What if they hit the hospital?’