To Audra it was a horrifying and shocking sight, this dog fight between the Air Force and the Luftwaffe. That it could happen in the middle of the day over England stunned her. She was momentarily rooted to the spot as she continued to stare up into the sky. Then one of the planes exploded in a great burst of flames and began to fall.
‘Mam! Mam!’ Christina cried, flinging down her brush and palette, running up the flagstone path.
The girl’s voice roused Audra, galvanized her into action. Grasping Christina’s hand, she raced her child back along the path and into the air-raid shelter. Audra blinked in the darkness, trying to adjust her eyes as she groped for the matches to light the candle. When she had done so, she carried it over to the orange crate that served as a table, and sat down next to Christina on a bunk bed.
‘I thought we’d better come in here for a few minutes, just in case of falling debris,’ Audra said, giving her nine-year-old child a reassuring look. She forced a bright smile. ‘I suppose we could have gone into the house, but I seem to run for the shelter these days.’
‘Everybody does, Mam.’ Christina’s brow furrowed. ‘It was one of the German planes that came down. Do you think it crashed near here, Mam?’
‘It’s hard to tell, darling… I’m not sure.’
‘It was such a lovely afternoon, and it happened so suddenly, Mam, didn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ Audra stared at the corrugated-iron wall of the shelter, an abstracted look crossing her face as she murmured in a saddened voice, ‘“Hearts at peace, under an English heaven”.’
‘That’s from the book your mother gave you long ago, isn’t it, Mam?’
Audra nodded. ‘Yes, it is. Rupert Brooke. I looked up into our lovely English sky a few minutes ago, Christina, and saw those planes going at each other hammer and tongs, and that line of verse flashed through my mind. I couldn’t help wondering just when our hearts would be at peace again.’
A flicker of fear touched Audra’s blue eyes, and she added, ‘It might easily have been Theo up there… he is so young, only nineteen. But then all of our Air Force boys are young. Oh, I pray that Theo is safe, Christie, I pray for him every day.’
‘Yes, Mam, so do I, when I pray for Daddy and Auntie Maggie and Uncle Mike, and all of my uncles and everybody who’s fighting for us.’
***
It was not long after this incident that the Germans stepped up their bombing raids on England and although London was the chief target, Leeds was one of the northern cities that came in for heavy pummelling.
Audra and Christina now found themselves virtually living in the air-raid shelter at night. But they were the only occupants. Try though she had, Audra had been unable to persuade old Miss Dobbs to join them; the other family in the third cottage in the cul-de-sac had closed it up for the duration, and moved to the country to stay with friends.
If Laurette was visiting them when the banshee wailing of the sirens started, Audra insisted that she spend the night with them in the shelter. She would not allow Laurette to walk home to Moorfield Road during a raid, even though the sky was brilliant with searchlights. Audra believed in following rules and regulations and they had been warned by the Civil Defence to stay inside.
The shelter was by now quite well equipped with cots, blankets and pillows, candles, paraffin lamps, a kerosene stove for heat, and a first-aid kit. Audra had stacked up tins of food, and every day she and Christina carried bottles of fresh water down to the shelter in case of emergency.
But in spite of the bombings, the perpetual fear, the worry about Vincent and the rest of their family and friends, and the hardships in general, life somehow went on.
The newspapers were full of talk about the German invasion of England in late August, but the English seemed to take this with a pinch of salt.
Audra’s attitude seemed to sum up the universal feeling when she said to Christina one day in late August, ‘Invasion or no invasion, you’re starting at Miss Mellor’s Private School for Girls when the winter term begins in September. You’ve got to have an education, whether the Germans land here or not. Besides, as Winston Churchill said, we’ll fight them in the hedges, if we have to, and demolish them to a man.’
‘You mean I am going to Miss Mellor’s School after all!’ Christina cried excitedly, breaking into smiles.
The two of them sat on the upper deck of the tram car going into Leeds and Audra turned to look at her. ‘Of course you are, why do you sound so surprised?’
‘Well, you haven’t mentioned it lately, even though I passed the entrance exam. I thought you’d changed your mind.’
‘Now why on earth would I change my mind, dear?’
‘I thought Grandma might have said something to you, Mam.’
‘Grandma?’
‘Yes. I heard her telling Grandpa that you oughtn’t to be sending me to a private school, that Christ Church was good enough. She said you had big ideas for me and that they’d only lead to trouble. I thought she’d said the same to you and that you’d listened to her.’
‘That’ll be the day,’ Audra replied with a hint of acerbity. ‘And just as a matter of interest, what did Grandpa say in response to Grandma’s comments?’
‘He said you were wise to reach for the stars, that he admired you for it, and then he told her I was going to be a great artist one day.’
Audra smiled to herself. Alfred Crowther had always been her friend. ‘Your grandfather is quite right, Christie.’
Christina tucked her arm through her mother’s companionably. ‘Is that why we’re going to town, Mam? To buy my school uniform?’
‘Yes, it is, and I’m thrilled you’re going to start at Miss Mellor’s, Christie. They have an excellent Fine Arts programme, and I’ve had several long chats with Miss Leatherson, the art teacher. She knows all about our plans, and she’ll prepare you well for Leeds College of Art.’
‘And then after that I’ll go to the Royal College of Art in London, won’t I, Mother?’ Christina looked into Audra’s face, her grey eyes bright with anticipation.
Audra could not help laughing. ‘Of course, I promised, didn’t I? But they won’t accept you until you’re twenty, you know. We’ve a long way to go yet.’
***
Christina and Audra had always been close, but they drew closer than ever during the war years. With Vincent away at sea it was just the two of them, and although they saw Laurette at least once a week, they were mostly on their own.
The glittering future she had planned for her child occupied Audra most of the time. When she wasn’t working like a Trojan and scrimping and scraping to pay for Christina’s education, she was imparting knowledge to her, finding ways to expand the child’s mind in other areas as well as in art.
Wartime conditions being what they were, there were not many plays coming to the theatre in Leeds. But when something new did open, Audra always tried to get tickets for them; she took Christina to classical music concerts and to the opera whenever a company came to Leeds. Books, too, especially the English classics, were also part of Audra’s cultural programme for her daughter, and Christina acquired a love of reading early in her life.
As always, films were the mainstay of their entertainment during the forties and they both derived a great deal of pleasure from their Saturday night jaunts to the local cinema. Usually Laurette accompanied them, for she and Audra had become dearer friends than ever, bound by so many common bonds and family ties, but mostly because of their deep and genuine love for each other.
As the war years dragged on, leaves were few and far between and neither Vincent nor Mike came home more than once between the summer of 1941 and the winter of 1942.
Both women worried a lot about their husbands who were away fighting, and about the rest of the Crowther family who were in the services. But they were women of strong character, and they learned to live with constant air raids, life in the shelters, rationing, shortages and hardships, and the terrible fear of losing loved ones. They did so w
ithout complaint, always endeavouring to look to the future, to the day when Britain would win the war and life would return to normal.
In October of 1944 Audra had a wonderful piece of good luck. Margaret Lennox, whom she had always idolized since her days in Ripon, was appointed matron of Leeds Infirmary. And almost immediately she telephoned Audra at St Mary’s to offer her the position of sister in charge of the main surgical ward. Audra accepted the job over the telephone, without having to think twice. Although it would mean travelling to Leeds every day, the money was much more than she was earning and the job itself was a challenge. Also, Audra had always dreamed of working with Matron Lennox again.
It did not take Audra long to settle into life at Leeds General Infirmary, even though it was a vast and hectic hospital and not as cosy and intimate as St Mary’s had been. But she found the work stimulating and satisfying; as she plunged into it with her usual energy and concentration she realized that it was helping to keep fear at bay.
Christmas of 1944 was the best one Audra and Christina had had since the beginning of the war, even though Vincent was not with them and was sorely missed. Maggie was the only member of the family who came home on leave, and she managed to keep all of them in peals of laughter with her wit and funny anecdotes about life in the women’s army.
To Audra’s vast relief the new year brought good news of Allied breakthroughs all over Europe. The tide was turning and there was no longer any question who was going to win the war. It was only a matter of time.
Soon Audra was reaching for the newspapers and switching on the radio with eagerness and excitement rather than dread. By the spring she had started to take heart, as had the whole of Britain. In March her spirits truly lifted when she read that the American First Army had crossed the Rhine over the bridge at Remagen and had established a bridgehead for the invasion of Germany. And then between 20 and 25 April the Russians entered Berlin and five days later the Third Reich collapsed. On 7 May the Germans surrendered unconditionally at Rheims in France.
Suddenly the war in Europe was over.
Audra and Christina could hardly believe it. They laughed and they wept and they laughed again, and they wept some more as they embraced each other fiercely in the cottage in Pot Lane.
Two days earlier, Christina had celebrated her fourteenth birthday and now she said to Audra, ‘But this is my best birthday present, Mam, knowing that it’s over and that Daddy’s safe.’
‘Yes, it is, darling,’ Audra replied, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief. She glanced at the collection of framed photographs lined up on the sideboard: Vincent, her brother William in the Australian Forces, Mike, Theo Bell, Maggie and Vincent’s brothers Frank, Jack, Bill and Danny, and Olive’s husband Hal. How smart they looked and so proud in their different uniforms of the armed forces.
She turned to Christina and said, softly, ‘They’re all safe, thank God! How lucky we’ve been… luckier than most.’
CHAPTER 31
Audra Crowther so concentrated on what she was doing in the next few years she hardly ever had time to pause, except to look at her lovely and gifted daughter.
But one day she found herself staring into the mirror on her dressing table—and taking stock.
It was a warm day in July of 1951, and later that afternoon Christina was graduating with honours from Leeds College of Art. It was a most important occasion in her daughter’s life, as well as her own and Vincent’s, and so not unnaturally she wanted to look her best.
Audra leaned closer to the glass, inspecting her face.
There were a few faint tell-tale lines around her eyes, and the stubbornness and resoluteness that had always marked her face seemed more pronounced than ever. But aside from these little flaws, if they could be called that, and a hint of grey at her temples, she decided she did not look too bad for forty-four.
Her light brown hair, cut short and framing her face in a flattering style, was still thick and luxuriant; her creamy complexion was as flawless as it had always been, and the blueness of her eyes had not dimmed over the years.
She reached for the bottle of foundation lotion. Usually she only had time to dab a powder puff on her nose and put on a trace of lipstick, before dashing off to Leeds Infirmary, where she still worked and was now a senior member of the staff. But today she was going to take her time and do a proper job of making herself up, and to this end she had borrowed some of Christina’s cosmetics.
After smoothing on the foundation, she powdered her face, dusted off the excess, added rouge to emphasize her high cheekbones, then used brown mascara on her lashes, before outlining her mouth with pink lipstick.
Satisfied that she had done the best she could, Audra sat back and regarded herself. She was momentarily startled by her own reflection. The makeup had brought out her best features and highlighted her eyes and her skin. Her face had taken on a fresh look, seemed more vibrant and alive. Pleased with the effect she had created, she brushed her hair, smoothed it into place with the comb and then, as a final touch, she added a dab of her favourite gardenia perfume behind her ears.
Standing up, Audra walked across the bedroom to the wardrobe, and took out the tailored navy-blue silk dress she had made for herself last week. It was a perfect copy of a Christian Dior afternoon dress she had seen in Vogue magazine earlier in the year, and she had clipped out the photograph, as she always did when she saw a style she liked, whether it was for herself or for Christina.
After placing the dress on the bed, she took out her navy bag, white fabric gloves, the small navy straw trimmed with a single white rose and the pair of navy court shoes she had bought yesterday.
Once she had slipped on the dress and shoes, Audra returned to the dressing table and sat down again. She put on her hat, added the marcasite earrings Vincent had given her for Christmas, her mother’s engagement ring, and her watch, and then she slid open the drawer and took out the box containing Laurette’s pearls.
Lifting the lid, Audra stared at them, admiring them. There was only one single strand, but the pearls were beautiful, of good quality. Mike had bought them for Laurette at Greenwood’s, the finest jewellers in Leeds, not long after the end of the war, and her sister-in-law had so loved them.
Audra sighed, touched by a sudden fleeting sadness for her darling Laurette, who had died three years ago. It had been sudden; she still hadn’t quite recovered from the shock. None of them had. Laurette had looked so well in the spring of 1948, but she had fallen sick that summer and by November they were burying her. It had been cancer. She was thankful that Laurette had gone quickly, that her suffering had not been prolonged. She missed her so very much. There would always be a void without Laurette—and for all of them.
Remembering the time, Audra sat up straighter in her chair. She took the pearls from the box and fastened them around her neck, looking in the mirror again, touching the necklace, smiling softly to herself. And she let go of the sadness, let go of the painful memories of Laurette’s passing. The last thing she would have wanted was for her to be sorrowful on a day like this. Laurette had always been so terribly proud of Christina.
Rising, Audra went to the bed, picked up her gloves and bag and hurried down the stairs. She dropped her things on the hall table next to the telephone, and paused, glanced at the grandfather clock, wondering what had happened to Vincent. He had said he would be home by one-thirty and it was already one-forty-five. He’ll probably want a cup of tea, she thought. He usually does. I’d better go and put the kettle on.
Apart from the shock and anguish they had suffered with Laurette’s death, the last few years had been quite good to the Crowthers. They no longer lived in the cottage in Pot Lane. They had moved into this much larger house in Upper Armley in 1949. It was not far from Charlie Cake Park, and it had three bedrooms, a dining room, a sitting room, and a big, family-style parlour-kitchen, where, as usual, everyone seemed to congregate. The rooms were spacious and there was a light, airy feeling about the house in general: it
had a happy atmosphere.
In particular, Audra loved the long back garden. She had planted it with rose bushes and delphiniums and a variety of other flowers, and with its smooth green lawn stretching down to two shady trees at the bottom, it was a little paradise in the summer weather. Audra derived much enjoyment from it, and from her flowers and the small vegetable plot she had started near the high back fence beyond the trees.
Vincent was more prosperous. Immediately after he was demobilized, at the end of the war, he had gone into partnership with Fred Varley and his son, Harry. And finally, after talking about it for so many years, he had enrolled in night school in Leeds, to study architecture and draughtsmanship. He no longer worked outdoors on the building sites, but ran the business with Fred; he did most of the planning, drawing and paperwork. Varley and Crowther was a small company, but they were kept busy with local building projects and Vincent was earning a decent living; he was able to support his family himself. The money Audra earned at the Infirmary went into the bank for Christina’s education and her clothes.
The war had changed Vincent Crowther.
His turbulent character and wayfaring ways had been somewhat tempered by the death and destruction he had witnessed in the Navy. He still liked to go to the pub at weekends, and he continued to bet on the horses, but he no longer indulged himself in romantic flings with other women.
Not that his relationship with Audra had changed. But after twenty-three years together they were used to each other. It was an enduring marriage, it seemed, and they shared a common bond, one that truly welded them together: their immense pride in their daughter, who had turned out to be very special indeed.
Audra was thinking about Christina and the clothes she still had to make for her as she filled the teapot and carried it over to the table. There were only ten days left before they went to London to get Christie settled in the little studio flat. Well, she would have time to cut and sew at least one more dress in that time, and the remainder of her clothes for college would have to be sent by parcel post.
Act of Will Page 29