Birmingham Blitz

by Annie Murray

  There was a bang from upstairs, no explosion, just a real big thump from the roof and the planes passed over, followed by more.

  ‘Mrs Rawson—’

  I half crawled out from under the table and saw Morgan’s scrawny figure standing over the entrance to the coal hole, his shadow enormous on the wall behind him.

  ‘I think you’ve ’ad one of them incendiaries come through your attic . . .’

  ‘What do you mean my attic?’ Nan’s voice came back loud and clear. ‘This is your ’ouse, Morgan, not mine – you’d better get up there with that bucket of sand mighty bloody quick.’

  So there was Morgan forced into being the big man, creeping off up with the bucket. We didn’t know where it’d come down but he went to look up on his side. I imagined his gloomy attic with the white light of an incendiary up there sputtering like a firework.

  ‘Just hope he knows what he’s doing,’ I said to Shirl. I kept trying to be light and cheerful because I was embarrassed for her, but I didn’t want her to think I was going to hold anything against her, even though it wasn’t exactly normal behaviour to turn up at my nan’s as one of Morgan’s trollops. But now wasn’t the moment for explanations. We were all too busy listening to the movement of the planes. Keep going, you found yourself thinking. Just keep on going. Go somewhere else . . .

  Next thing was, Morgan came crashing down the attic stairs, first the bucket, him following, effing and blinding his way down making a hell of a racket until he landed with a groan in the shop.

  Shirl looked at me. ‘D’you think we’d better look?’

  ‘Not cowing likely. Not with this lot.’ Bombs were falling, proper explosives. ‘He’ll be all right.’

  He came through a minute later, groaning and cradling his right arm with his left. I peered out from under the oilcloth.

  ‘I think I’ve bust my arm,’ he moaned.

  ‘For God’s sake get under the stairs!’ I yelled to him and retreated back in to save my own head. Shirl had her arm round Tom.

  ‘D’you put it out?’ Nan’s voice boomed up from the coal hole. ‘Or couldn’t you even manage that?’

  ‘Heartless bitch,’ Morgan mumbled, backing into the stair cupboard. ‘Oh Christ, my arm!’

  The house shook, the windows rattled and a lump of something fell from the ceiling.

  I saw the gaslight flicker. ‘Blimey, this is a bad one.’

  Even with all the noise, we could hear Morgan groaning and carrying on. ‘Serves him right,’ I said. ‘Oversexed little bugger.’

  Shirl turned away, embarrassed again. I thought how different she looked tonight – hair all fluffed up, heavy eye make up and lipstick.

  It didn’t suit her. She had a sweet face normally.

  ‘What the hell’re you playing at, going with him of all people?’ I suddenly found myself shouting at her.

  Shirl shrugged sulkily, still holding on to Tom who trusted her instinctively, despite the tart disguise she was wearing. ‘He was nice to me.’

  ‘Nice to you!’

  When there was a lull, she said, ‘There’s only me and Dad at home, see, and he’s never had any time for me, even before Mom died. My life with him’s like a servant’s – nothing else. He isn’t even there at nights most of the time because he works a night shift now. But even when ’e is . . . ’E hardly treats me as if I’m human, Genie. Never a word except “Get this – fetch me that. Sit down and fucking shut up.” He kicks me out of the way as if I’m a dog. On my life, Genie. I wouldn’t lie to you. I’ve been so lonely, specially since you went. It was so nice with you at the factory, and I used to love coming ’ere.’

  I swallowed. All along I’d thought she was doing me a favour.

  ‘I met Eric down the pub—’

  That knocked me back a bit. All this time I’d never known Morgan had the same name as my brother.

  ‘I know he’s not God’s gift, ’ow ’e looks and that. But ’e’ll spend time with you. Say nice things—’

  ‘To get what he wants.’

  ‘He comments on how I’m looking and that. No one’s ever done that before. Dad never even looks at me. I’m sort of invisible so far as ’e’s concerned. Anyhow, after a bit Morgan started asking me to dress up for him a certain way – like this – because you know I don’t as a rule. Next thing was coming out ’ere. I knew what ’e was after and I’d have given it ’im. I was that lonely and that grateful.’ She looked at me with her huge eyes. I remembered they were china blue in proper light.

  ‘I’ve never done it before, I swear to you. I s’pose you haven’t the faintest what I’m on about, ’ave you Genie? What with all your family round you.’

  ‘I had no idea things were so bad for you. I do know what you’re on about, sort of. But Shirl, Morgan. I mean, he’s vile.’

  ‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’

  ‘But why should you be a beggar? You’re so pretty and kind – I bet loads of blokes’d give their right arm to go out with you—’

  Another moan came from the stairs cupboard. Shirl rolled her eyes. ‘Sounds as if someone already ’as.’

  That really set us off then, even Tom too, watching us, and Shirl and I were helpless with laughter and for a time the stupidest little thing set us off.

  ‘Oh, I’m glad you’re here,’ I said to her, wiping my eyes.

  It was a long, long raid that night, nearly ten hours of it until we heard the All Clear. There were some lulls when we crawled out and had a drink. Nan managed to fix up a makeshift sling for Morgan using an old strip of sheet, with a look on her face when she had to touch him like someone clearing a dead frog out of a drain. Morgan had to put up with whatever treatment he got and sat quietly sipping Bournvita. Seeing her with him then it dawned on me why she’d put up with him all these years. Amid all the hurts and setbacks of her hard life, which had, I think, cast her lower than any of us had guessed, Morgan was the one person she could always guarantee feeling superior to.

  ‘Much damage up there?’ Nan asked him.

  Nose pointing into his cup, he nodded, swallowing.

  ‘Your side?’

  ‘Yep. Great ’ole in the roof. Room’s in a hell of a state.’

  ‘Shame,’ Nan said. ‘Well, that’ll cramp your style for a bit, won’t it?’ And sparks of triumph glinted in her eyes.

  We were all exhausted next morning as much from tension as lack of sleep. Morgan drifted off saying he was going to get himself seen to, which Nan shouted after him was not before time. We sat round trying to rouse ourselves with weak cups of tea, because sleep or no sleep, there was work waiting.

  Of course Nan would normally have blown a gasket at the first sight of Shirl in Morgan’s thrall, but what with all the goings on in the night she’d had time to calm down. We’d spent most of the hours talking, Shirl and me, and it’d been a huge relief for me so that once again I felt it was her doing me a favour. I told her about Mom, about how I felt. Swapped my shame for hers. I didn’t talk about Joe though, couldn’t even speak his name.

  Between us we’d come up with a kind of plan.

  ‘Nan – Shirl’s not happy at home with her dad hardly being there nights and that and I’ve said she can come and live with us, back home, when Mom comes out of hospital. I could do with the extra help.’

  Nan considered this, looking sternly at Shirl. ‘You know what I think of the company you’re keeping. You’d better mend your ways. For your own sake as much as anything.’

  Shirl blushed a heavy pink and looked down at the floor. ‘It was the first time, Mrs Rawson. And the last. You can be sure of that.’

  Nan kept the kids home from school and they were already back in their beds sleeping the morning away. We heard Tom crying out in his sleep.

  Lil tutted, leaning towards the mirror to put her lipstick on. ‘I ought to get him away from here. It’s making him really ill.’

  The three of us, Lil, Shirl and I, set out for our different factories in the morning’s custard-coloured light
. It was raining, but even in a downpour you’d have that new-born feel of it being a miracle after the long, threatening night. Even in all my sadness and worry I felt my spirits lift. This was now, today, and I was alive.

  But there was so much devastation outside. Houses down along the road and all the morning shock and horror of it, the way everything looked squalid, and stank even worse. The wardens were on the street with the rescue squads, helping and reassuring. Someone said they’d hit the BSA over at Small Heath and a lot had been killed.

  ‘I hope Frank’s all right,’ Lil said.

  Vera and Teresa were out too, Vera helping a woman along the road with cuts on her face, taking her to their house. Teresa came over to me, hair scraped up in a hurried ponytail.

  ‘How’s your mom?’

  ‘Same really. They’re talking about her coming out next week.’

  ‘How’re you going to manage? You handing in your notice?’

  ‘I might,’ I said.

  I hadn’t decided until then, but even as she asked I knew that’s what I was going to do. Mom needed me and I found seeing Mr Broadbent very awkward now. Sooner or later he was going to ask why I wasn’t writing to Joe and I couldn’t answer. If I was going to be unhappy it was no more than I deserved, but I didn’t want to have to explain to him. Or to the other women who kept asking about Mom.

  ‘You all right, Genie?’ She touched my shoulder.

  I turned away. ‘Yeah. Better get on.’

  ‘Genie?’

  I looked round at her again, noticing properly the strain in her face. ‘Nonna Amelia’s very bad. They don’t think she’s got long. I thought you’d want to know.’

  ‘Oh Teresa,’ I said helplessly. Because that was the only way we seemed to be able to feel now about anything. Helpless.

  The next heavy raid on Birmingham wrecked a lot of the water mains. Instead of us boiling water after the raids there was now none at all for a period and they were having to send water wagons round. Without a hot cuppa first thing in the morning after a raid you felt hopeless. Couldn’t cope with the exhaustion, the jangled nerves and all the awful and weird goings on in the Blitz. The way everything was turned inside out, terraces ripped open like dolls’ houses, showing everyone’s private rooms. You heard stories about people caught on the toilet by a bomb, tales of relatives who’d died years ago appearing out of the dark, rumours of Fifth Columnists. All this was a bit much without Brooke Bond in the morning.

  In the middle of all this chaos, Lil dropped her own bombshell. She was leaving her well-paid job at Parkinson Cowan, and Frank, who so far had survived the raids like a cat with nine lives, was going to ‘set her up.’

  ‘He’s got me a little place in Hurst Street,’ she told us, aglow with excitement. ‘The rent’s a pound a week and he’s going to pay it for me to start with. Till I get going.’

  ‘Setting you up as what, in ’igh ’eaven?’ Nan hadn’t really got started on her yet but you could see it was coming. The world had truly gone mad.

  ‘A phrenologist and clairvoyant.’

  Nan opened and shut her mouth quite a few times before she could get going, like an old pair of bellows. ‘You what?’

  ‘He’s been teaching me.’

  ‘But he’s a mechanic!’

  Patiently, and with what seemed an astonishing steady sureness given the barminess of it, Lil explained. All this feeling of our heads that had gone on lately was practice for the real thing. Add to that knowledge of tarot cards and palm lines, throw in a crystal ball, and Lil was in business.

  But this was only part one of the grand explosion. Parts two and three were to follow swiftly on. Two: there was another wave of evacuation from Birmingham and she’d decided to send Patsy and Tom.

  ‘Look at the state of Tom,’ she said. ‘He can’t sleep without screaming, can hardly talk to you without twitching. He’s as thin as a rake and it can’t be doing him any good at school. Patsy can go and keep him company. And I’m not just sending him anywhere. Frank’s got an auntie lives over in Stoke and she says she’ll have ’em while things are bad.’

  Before Nan had had a chance to field that one, we were on to part three. ‘And I’m moving in with Frank over the garage. Me and Cathleen. It’s not far, and Kings Heath’s not getting bombed anything like as much as over ’ere. Don’t worry, Mom. I’m not going to be leaving you on your own all the time. Frank’ll be out so much with the ARP anyway we’ll probably be here as much as we ever are now!’

  I went back to our house to pick up letters. I never opened the ones from Joe. I gave Mr Broadbent my notice, speaking to him formally, not meeting his eyes. He was my employer, nothing more.

  ‘But why, Genie?’ He ran his hand through the white-streaked hair, absent-mindedly smoothing it down.

  ‘It’s Mom. I’ve got to look after her. There’s no one else.’

  ‘I’m sorry, love – serious as that, is it?’

  I nodded, looking down at the floorboards.

  ‘That’d explain it. Joe said in his last letter he hadn’t heard from you. If you’d said, we could’ve arranged more leave for you.’

  ‘It’s all right, thanks. I’ll need to be at home for good now.’

  Mr Broadbent came round from behind his desk towards me and I felt myself cringing. I set my face, chin out. Don’t be nice to me, I shrieked inside. Don’t give me sympathy or try to soften my feelings, because if I let myself go under any of this I shan’t be able to bear it.

  ‘Genie? You don’t look at all well yourself, love. You’ve got so thin.’

  It was true. There were pits under my eyes you could crawl into. ‘Everyone’s tired, aren’t they?’ I still couldn’t look at him. ‘You can’t be anything else with the nights the way they are.’

  I think he was probably a bit hurt, certainly puzzled, by the way I was behaving. But he was too nice a man, Mr B, to try and force his way past my wooden determination.

  ‘You’re sure this is the right decision? Everyone’ll miss you.’

  ‘I’m quite sure.’

  They had to carry Mom into the house that Friday when they brought her back. Two plump women were in charge of the ambulance and they laced their frozen hands together, gripping each other’s wrists, and made a kind of chair to lift her between them. I had a fire going inside and offered them tea but they said no, they had to go. Seemed to be relieved to be out of there. I didn’t blame them.

  Lil, who’d already given up work too, was with me, though Shirl hadn’t moved in yet. I couldn’t have stood it on my own. Lil was in enough of a state about the boys going off the next Monday, and seeing Mom there with her arm hanging all floppy by her side, and that dead half of her face, she started crying all over again.

  ‘Oh Dor – Dor.’ She knelt down and put her arms round Mom’s waist, resting her face in her lap, shoulders shaking.

  Mom looked down at Lil’s sleek head, and after a moment she brought up her good hand and started stroking Lil’s hair.

  She looked across at me as I stood watching, torn up inside, wishing I could cry as easily as Lil.

  Mom’s lips were moving. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, then managed it louder, her own tears falling now. ‘I’m so useless to everyone. I’m sorry . . . sorry . . .’

  Shirl moved in over the weekend. Just packed her bags and never told the old man where she was going.

  ‘Teach ’im a lesson,’ she said. ‘’E’ll be round to fetch me back else. ’E can learn to fend for ’isself for a bit.’

  I was so glad she’d come I hugged her. Even though I’d given up my job and could manage the house I was scared to be alone with Mom. Even Nan visiting when she could and Len popping in to escape from Gladys carrying on at him were not enough. Mom was like someone who’d been trapped in a dark well full of icy water and the coldness of it still billowed out from her. I was scared of catching her chill.

  Shirl was one of those people who’s happiest looking after others. Even with her doom-laden voice she could
give off cheer like catkins shedding pollen. She was still working of course, but come the evening she’d be rattling the front door to be let in and I’d feel relief rush through me.

  ‘’Ere y’are.’ Most days she’d thrust something into my hands, flowers or cheap meat. ‘Been over the Bull Ring. Thought these’d ’elp.’ It was her way of showing gratitude even though there was no need. My thankfulness was a giant compared with hers. I’d just about stopped being sick now Mom was home.

  Shirl and I’d cook together, chat. She’d tell me about her day. She brought news to us, what buildings were down across town. And she stopped me brooding as much as I’d have done left to myself. I never mentioned Joe to her. I thought I could cope, just about, with these other things. With Mom. But I couldn’t talk about Joe. Couldn’t allow myself to think about him. I thought of Mister as my dog now, shut the memory of Joe’s hands stroking him out of my mind. His letters were in a drawer, unopened. Soon he must stop writing and then that would be that. I could forget those kind of hopes, thinking I could have love like that. I didn’t know the state I was in, couldn’t see it for myself.

  I had a job to do here, that’s what I thought. And it was going to take everything I’d got. The doctor said that in time, Mom could recover. Perhaps not completely, maybe not the arm which was too dead. But she could learn to walk and probably to talk properly again. Only time would tell. She could get about on one leg holding the furniture with her good arm, steadying herself with the other foot. It wouldn’t take the full weight, but she had some feeling in it. She had to arrange the position of her right arm with the left one, bending it to rest in her lap when she sat down. And she sat for hours, not even trying to talk, listening to Gloria.

  If it was the last thing I did, I was going to make sure she got better. Looking after her was my job, and up to now what a miserable mess I’d made of it. But this time I was going to give it everything. I had to save her.