Pack Up Your Troubles

by Anne Bennett

  James David Hogan was born in November 1941, bigger and plumper altogether than his puny sister, Bridget, had been, and Maeve recovered quicker after the birth this time because she was slightly better nourished. She still saved as much money as possible and gave the best food to Bridget, the children in her care and Brendan rather than herself. But still, Elsie was glad to see the sheen back in Maeve’s hair and the hopeless look leave her face that had lost its gauntness. Elsie could see again the beautiful woman that Maeve still was, that had been hidden beneath extreme poverty and the ragged clothes that hung on her sparse frame.

  On 7 December Pearl Harbor was attacked and America entered the war. But all in all, in Birmingham life was more peaceful, at least on the war front, for there had been no raids since July. Maeve still had her own private war at home, but the house was warmer and the food more plentiful with the money Maeve earned. She hoped the end of the war would come speedily for the suffering of the people and yet when it did, she knew her source of income would dry up and she didn’t know what the hell she’d do then.

  TWELVE

  In the spring of 1942, Elsie and Maeve saw their first American GIs in the Bull Ring. What surprised them most were the black ones. ‘Jet-black, you know, shiny,’ Elsie told Alf. ‘And their eyes look so big in their head and their teeth so white.’

  ‘Don’t matter what they look like, as long as we’re fighting on the same side,’ Alf said.

  Most Birmingham people thought the same, and couldn’t understand the way some white Americans treated their black comrades. ‘Ain’t they all Yanks and all set to fight the bloody Germans and Japs, not each other?’ was a typical comment.

  But the GIs, both black and white, were soon a familiar sight in the city and the young girls found them particularly appealing. They spoke like most of the people they’d seen on the cinema screen, were dressed smarter than the average British Tommy and had more money to flash about, and they gave presents of chocolate, chewing gum and nylons to the chosen few.

  Maeve was as intrigued by the Americans as anyone else, but in the main found them too brash and loud-mouthed for her taste. She was, however, as pleased as punch by the tins of dried egg that were imported from America in June 1942. Eggs were not and never had been on ration, but were extremely rare due to the slaughter of hundreds of hens to save on foodstuffs at the beginning of the war, so dried egg – though nothing like the real thing – was very welcome.

  ‘Dig for victory’ was the slogan nearly three years into a war that looked as if it would drag on for ever. Many of the parks and any waste ground were dug up and crops planted. People were encouraged to eat potatoes and root vegetables that could be home-grown rather than imported goods, putting the ships carrying such things at risk.

  However, there was a limit to what people could do with potatoes, swede, carrots and the like. To help, a programme called The Kitchen Front was broadcast on the wireless just after the eight o’clock news and Elsie wrote down the recipes for her and Maeve to try out. The most famous of these was the meatless Woolton Pie named after Lord Woolton, who was the Minister for Food. It was fairly tasteless but most housewives had to resort to it, or something very similar, towards the end of the week when the rations were gone.

  ‘Do us for Friday,’ Elsie said, ‘when we can’t eat meat.’

  ‘As a change from smelly whale-meat pie or dried egg,’ Maeve said with a smile. ‘Sometimes at night I dream about food. Isn’t that a desperate admission?’

  ‘It’s a bit sad, all right,’ Elsie agreed. ‘Anyway, what’s to dream about? Even with Lord Woolton and his brainy ideas, what we cook is hardly the stuff of dreams.’

  ‘No, indeed,’ Maeve agreed with a laugh. ‘And it’s not that sort of food I dream about. It’s the stuff back home. Rashers as big as a man’s hand served up with an egg or two, or juicy pork with crunchy crackling, and chicken that would melt in your mouth.’

  ‘People like you should be locked up for destroying public morale,’ Elsie said in mock severity. She tipped the bag of second-hand clothes from the market they’d brought in with them as she spoke and began sorting through them. ‘Come on, let’s see if we can make something useful out of this lot.’ She gave a wry laugh and said, ‘At least it will be better than that damned Mrs Sew and Sew in my magazine. Making a blouse out of dusters, I ask you? Who the hell buys bloody dusters in the first place?’

  Maeve smiled as she helped Elsie sort the big bag of clothes they’d got from the Bull Ring that day. Both women were soon unpicking seams and cutting off buttons and zips while Jamie snoozed away the rest of the morning and Bridget played happily with Elsie’s button box. ‘Make do and mend’ was another slogan of the war at that time and the phrase ‘waste not, want not’ came into its own for to be a squander bug was the greatest crime in creation. But Maeve never took any sewing home with her, because it wouldn’t do for Brendan to think she had spare money to buy second-hand clothes. But the bit extra had made all the difference to her.

  Although the war carried on relentlessly, at least the raids had stopped. Then, towards the end of July 1942, Maeve was suddenly jerked awake one night. She lay for a few seconds wondering what had woken her. Then she heard it again, the steady drone of many planes and the distant thud and blast of the bombs. She jumped out of bed, pulled aside the blackout curtain at the window and saw the glow of incendiary fires.

  Where are the bloody sirens? she thought, lifting the sleeping Jamie and wrapping the cot blanket around him before waking Bridget.

  She was downstairs before the unearthly wail began, and realised that even those on watch had been lulled into thinking it was all over, for it had been a year since any form of attack. Even Brendan, on fire-watch duty that night, had remarked on how stupid it was when the raids had ceased.

  But Maeve took no chances. Afterwards she heard of people roused by the sirens that had turned over in bed, thinking it was a false alarm, and had lost their lives because of it. Two days later, when the sirens screamed again, there was a rush for the shelters, but still nine hundred people were killed or seriously injured over the two nights.

  ‘Do you think we’re for another pasting?’ Elsie asked Maeve after the second raid.

  ‘I hope not,’ Maeve said wearily. ‘Bridget is the very devil to settle again now. She thinks she’s up for the whole night if I wake her. If I tell her off, she makes so much row, she wakes her brother too. If there’s many more raids I’ll end up a gibbering idiot.’

  ‘Oh,’ commented Elsie drily, ‘no change there then.’

  But to everyone’s relief, there were no more raids and though most people sat or lay for some days and weeks later waiting for the siren to wail again, eventually they began to relax.

  In the spring of 1943 Maeve met Deidre Bradshaw at Mountford’s shop, seemingly buying up the place. ‘I’ve used some of Mom and Dad’s coupons and points as well as my own,’ she explained to Maeve. ‘It’s for a bit of a party. My Matthew is coming home for a while. He’s been injured.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. I’m delighted,’ Deidre said. ‘It’s only his leg. He was caught in a blast from a bomb but he’s all right. They’ve patched him up, like, and he might be home for a fortnight, he said.’

  There was no doubting Deidre’s delight when Matthew did arrive, walking with a stick, his leg still heavily bandaged.

  He returned to his unit in late April and Elsie, walking in on Maeve one day in June, announced with a smile, ‘Seemingly, it was only Matthew’s leg that was damaged then?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The bloody woman’s pregnant – Deidre Bradshaw. I’ve just met her coming home from the doctor’s.’

  Maeve couldn’t have been more pleased and told Deidre when she saw her. She seemed to be floating on air and had a permanent smile on her face.

  Angela Bradshaw was born in January 1944. Maeve left all the children in Elsie’s care and went up to see the baby.

  ‘S
he’s lovely, beautiful,’ she said to the proud mother, looking at the baby’s down of dark brown hair and the deep blue eyes that she thought would probably turn to brown like those of her mother and father.

  ‘Matthew’s over the moon,’ Deidre enthused. ‘Oh, Maeve, I can’t tell you how happy I am.’

  ‘You don’t need to,’ Maeve said. She didn’t tell Deidre she was pregnant herself. To do so would have brought to her mind the scene when she’d told Brendan, and the way he’d lashed out at her and split open her lip and made her nose pour with blood. ‘Over the moon,’ Deidre had said Matthew Bradshaw was. Maeve wished just once her own husband had reacted that way. But on no account would she take the pleasure from Deidre’s eyes, and she pressed her hand fondly and said, ‘You’ll make a great mother, Deidre, never fret.’

  Deidre did make a good mother, and the only sadness she had was that Matthew couldn’t share in the rearing of their wonderful daughter.

  Matthew was, however, back in late May of that year, along with many other serving men. Suddenly the area, deprived of men for so long, took on a different outlook, though most people knew so many men coming home together meant only one thing. It was the big push, everyone said. Make or break. God forbid another Dunkirk! But the Allies were winning, surely?

  No one really knew and everyone was fearful. Matthew Bradshaw was not the only one at the station when the time came to leave, who hugged his wife and kissed his child and wondered if he’d ever see either of them again.

  But D-Day was successful, if anything that caused so much loss of life as that could be deemed a success. But at least now people could see light at the end of the tunnel.

  It didn’t help Maeve. She gave birth to Mary Ann Hogan in July, aware that now she had three children to provide for and soon her income from childminding would dry up completely. She only looked after one child full time now, and another part time, for munitions production was easing. But Maeve wasn’t at all sure how her family would survive without the extra money.

  Still, others had problems too, she thought, one nice summer’s day in late August when she met a distraught Deidre in the street. Her sister Daisy’s husband had been killed in action, she said, and she had to go and see her. She was only glad that the blitz was over and it was safe to go. But for all that, she’d not take Angela, feeling sure her sister and the children would need all her attention.

  ‘Mom will look after the babby till I come back,’ she told Maeve, and added, ‘I’ll bring some clothes back with me for your two. My sister’s told me she’s just had a sort-out.’

  But Maeve never got the clothes. The news filtered through slowly. Deidre, Daisy and the three children had all been killed outright by some pilotless rocket called a V1, and rechristened a doodlebug, that had landed on the house.

  A white-faced, strained and trembling Matthew Bradshaw came home on compassionate leave. Angela had been left in the care of neighbours, for her grandparents were prostrate with grief. It was Matthew who had to organise the return of the remains of his wife, her sister and her children to Birmingham where they were buried together in Witton Cemetery.

  ‘Don’t it make you count your bleeding blessings?’ Elsie said as they watched the cortège move off from the house, and even Maeve, recovering from yet another clout from Brendan’s fist, agreed.

  And then, at last, it was all over. Hitler killed himself in his bunker in May 1945 and the war was ended. Despite the hostilities in Japan continuing, people’s joy could not be contained. They spilt out from the houses into the streets and parties were held everywhere.

  Maeve celebrated with the rest. Now at last they could stay in their beds at night, bring their children up in peace. The telegraph boy would no longer be viewed with dread, and the family unit would be complete once more. After almost six years of austerity and hardship and tragedy, it was hard not to be euphoric about the thought of peace.

  And yet Maeve’s life had got harder since the previous December, when production of munitions ceased and she was back to the poverty of those earlier years of her marriage. She had dipped into her savings again and again, for now she hadn’t even her mother’s money to keep her afloat and, despite Elsie’s urging, would not write her a begging letter telling her how bad things were.

  By April there had been nothing left in the tin and despite pawning everything she could spare, by the time the war ended Maeve was very much afraid they were either going to starve to death, or else be put on to the street. Extreme and relentless hunger stripped her of any shred of dignity and confidence and she watched the children grow thin and pasty, their little faces pinched. She was in despair. She begged and pleaded unsuccessfully with Brendan to let her keep more of the money the priest brought, and earned many a clout or punch because of it. He said he’d give her what for, and properly if she kept moaning. He seemed neither to know nor to care that the children were often hungry and always cold.

  ‘Tell the bloody priest,’ Elsie advised.

  ‘Father Trelawney? Talk sense Elsie, the man’s as good as useless,’ Maeve cried. ‘Anyway, d’you expect him to sit here every night and protect me from Brendan when he comes home bottled from the boozer? You know he’ll tell the priest all sorts and then lay into me afterwards and in the end it will make little or no difference.’

  Elsie said nothing. She knew every word Maeve said was true and she also knew that she was very near the end of her tether. There was no money now for a bag of second-hand clothes and none either to have worn boots cobbled. Without the issue of boots and stockings from the Evening Mail Fund, Bridget would have gone barefoot to school.

  Grateful though she was for the things from the Mail, Maeve was ashamed, just as she had been when the two older children had been issued with them. But she knew pride wouldn’t keep a child’s feet warm and dry and that fact she’d flung at Father Trelawney the previous Friday evening.

  In the middle of this abject poverty, Brendan suddenly demanded their older children return. But Maeve soon realised it wasn’t due to any love for them that he’d harboured over the years. ‘Kevin will be fourteen soon,’ he declared. ‘It’s about time he was out and earning. I’ll get him set on alongside me.’

  Maeve hesitated sending the letter. She didn’t want her son in the same brutalising industry as his father. True, the wages were high, or at least acceptable, but it made old men out of young ones. But when had her views or wishes counted for anything?

  She couldn’t say with honesty she’d never missed her children, and she had longed for them every moment they’d been away from her, but she didn’t know how she was going to feed an extra two on the pittance Brendan left her. But she knew she had to do as he commanded so she drew the writing pad towards her.

  The night before Grace and Kevin’s return, Maeve was too excited to sleep. She eased herself out of the bed carefully, so as not to disturb Brendan, and crept down the stairs. She would have liked to have made herself a cup of tea, but she only had enough to make Brendan a drink for the morning and she dared not use it up. She’d have to buy some more tomorrow before meeting the children.

  Bridget and Jamie were as excited as she was about their brother and sister’s imminent return. Jamie had seen the advantages of having a big brother around from other young boys like himself who had one, and on more than one occasion Maeve had heard him yell at a tormentor, ‘You don’t touch me, see, ’cos when my big brother comes home, he’ll kick your head in.’

  But though Maeve longed to have the children home again, she was worried how she would cope, even with the family allowance the Government had introduced. She’d almost wept in relief when Elsie had told her about it. That day she’d been desperate, for despite eating nothing herself, all she had for the children was the hard heel of a loaf they had to share and they’d been crying with hunger when Elsie came round all excited. She’d seen their distress and swept all of them into her house where she’d fed them reviving tea and toast, while she’d told Maeve of the news
that she’d heard on that morning on the wireless.

  ‘It’s for mothers,’ she’d said. ‘Mothers like you, who never get a decent amount of money for their families.’

  ‘But what good is it? Sure Brendan will have it off me the minute I get it.’

  ‘Don’t tell him. He don’t listen to the news and it comes in an order book you cash at the post office. He’ll never know.’

  Maeve had hoped he wouldn’t. He didn’t listen to the news, right enough, and she’d prayed none of his cronies in the pub would find out and tell him, or he’d kill her altogether. But then what were the odds? She’d had many a beating for less and she wasn’t prepared to let her children starve or perish to death. Damn him and men like him, she’d thought, and went straight to the post office to see about it.

  Maeve had been astounded at money just given out for nothing. It was, as Elsie said, given to the mothers to help them bring the children up, and though she got nothing for Bridget, because there was none for the eldest child, she got five shillings each for Jamie and Mary Ann. And, the lady had told her, there’d be another ten shillings when the older children returned, until they reached the age of fourteen and left school.

  The family allowance had been a great help, a godsend, but Maeve trembled every time she thought of Brendan finding out because she needed that money. He was seldom in the house where the children huddled in front of glowing ashes on a winter’s night, with one candle balanced on a cracked saucer as the only light in the room and went to bed in their icy attic with hunger pains cramping their stomachs and without even the comfort of a hot drink.

  But she was too wearied and scared to argue with him any more. She dreaded the thought of him really going for her again. At least, though, he’d laid no hand on the children recently. She’d promised herself that if he ever hit them as he had Kevin, she’d be off to St Catherine’s so fast her feet wouldn’t touch the ground. She’d bring the priest to the house herself to talk to Brendan. Funny that he was still nervous of the priest. She had no time for them, any of them, though she still went to Mass, for she had her immortal soul to think of.