An Unsuitable Mother

by Sheelagh Kelly

  ‘Indeed, we can’t – do you mind if I light my fag here?’ Given the go-ahead, Nell put one of the matches to it, then inhaled deeply and gratefully. The smoke from the tobacco hit the back of her throat like a blowtorch, rushing to fill the pit of each lung, before emerging with her next question. ‘Do you know if many have been killed?’

  ‘Dunno. I’m just waiting for the news to come on – but someone told me the Bar Convent really copped a bramah, and some of the nuns got killed rescuing others. Someone else came in and said the station’s completely flattened – and all the goods yards – trains and wagons thrown about everywhere, just like toys!’

  Nell suffered a jolt, as she pictured herself only a short time ago working in that vicinity. Had the casualty evacuation trains been a success, she might not be standing there now. ‘I wonder if the buses are still running,’ she murmured, with an absent drag of her cigarette.

  ‘Mine was!’ chirruped the girl. ‘Had to take a few diversions, though.’

  Nell thanked her and turned to go, but at that moment the BBC news came on, and so she paused to listen to the reader’s dulcet tones for a moment, only to hear what she already knew, that contrary to everything else the Minister was undamaged.

  ‘Oh that’s right,’ quipped the girl. ‘Let Hitler know, so he can come and finish the job!’

  It was obvious to Nell that, with such blithe spirit, the other had not lost a loved one, nor had her own home flattened, nor been up all night treating the wounded. But keeping this thought to herself, she quietly imbibed the rest of her cigarette, eyes narrowed against its rasping smoke, as she listened to one or two more items of news, before moving on her way.

  Wandering further through town, she could see by the vaporous pile of black timbers that it was true, the Guildhall had been completely gutted, only its stone walls left standing. Much of the neighbouring church too, shards of its stained glass embedded in the melted tarmac – though its clock was still attached to its bracket, as was the little admiral who stood atop it, proud if a little charred. The broken hands of its timepiece had frozen at the moment of impact.

  Driving away the thought of Bill’s watch, forever stuck at seven, Nell continued to the bus stop. Well, she announced to herself upon arrival, there was a queue at any rate. The British and their queues; amidst all this gross destruction, it was comforting, somehow, to know that there were certain things the Germans couldn’t take away. Tagging on to the end of the line, she hovered there with languid eyes, watching others clear away wreckage, not knowing if the bus would even turn up; nor was there anyone who could enlighten her.

  It did eventually come, and Nell hoisted her stiff limbs aboard. On quite a few occasions, though, it was forced to divert around a crater in the road, and with each scene of havoc her concern was to grow, to weigh upon her already burdened mind like a millstone, alongside the pounding headache and the thoughts of her heroic young lover and his son. She was finally to alight at the carriage works, and the nearer she drew to home, the worse her premonition. The railway yards had received a terrific trouncing – obviously the Germans’ main target, for it was true what the shop girl had said, it was a scene of annihilation, with sheds demolished and lines ripped up and twisted like coils from a burst mattress, and locomotives tossed hither and thither, just like children’s playthings.

  Hurrying now, Nell approached the avenue in which she had once lived – but already she could see that the street was roped off, with a sign that gave the reason: UXB. Furthermore, an elderly special constable was keen to limit sightseers, a great deal of whom were already gathered. Brought to an abrupt halt, Nell craned her neck to see beyond the barrier yet another scene of wreckage.

  ‘Are you a resident?’ asked the special.

  In dazed response, she shook her head, for her house was no longer to be seen, just a huge mound of rubble, and water spouting from a broken pipe, forming a puddle in what had once been her garden. ‘Not any more,’ she somehow managed to murmur through her state of shock, her eyes averting briefly to the Morrison table shelter that marked the Dawsons’ front room, its protective cage buckled but resolute in the ruins of its former abode; and the neighbouring houses, which bore lesser signs of violation – tiles ripped from roofs, curtains billowing gently through jags of glass, furniture outside some of them, salvaged by the owners and piled in neat stacks on the grass verge. Nell paid these only the briefest glance, before once again focusing her bleak confusion on the debris of her own home, as if mentally trying to piece it back together.

  ‘Then you’d better go, it’s not safe,’ issued the constable. ‘And you lot can move on as well, unless you’ve a valid reason for being here!’ With outstretched arms he began to herd the onlookers away.

  Jerked from her state of inertia, desperate to know the entirety of it, Nell took this opportunity and ducked underneath the barrier, and began to hurry towards the ruins of her home, picking her way through a layer of bricks and shattered glass, occasionally cockling over and wrenching her ankle, until finally reaching the place. There she was to sway in uncertainty, to look on as the Civil Defence teams and soldiers clambered back and forth across the rubble, attempting to make things safe, whilst simultaneously checking for casualties.

  What had become of her mother and father? Revisited by that painful cannonball which had clogged her gullet so many times, Nell glanced around her, but there seemed no one to ask. Lower down the street, a man with bloodied bandages sat on the kerb with his head in his hands. His face was unfamiliar, and, not wanting to intrude on his travail, she finally swallowed, and called to one of the workers instead.

  ‘Excuse me … have you any idea where I might find the residents of this house?’

  The face beneath the helmet was caked in sweat and brick dust; its owner broke off his labours to regard her at first in botheration, then in sympathy. ‘Related, are they?’ At her quick nod, he explained that he had just started duty, but, ‘I’ll ask my friend, he’s been here all night.’

  Thanking him, Nell cut a lonely figure as she stood awaiting an answer, pursuing him with forlorn brown eyes as he loped over to his colleague. The latter wore his pyjamas under his coat – Nell could see the cuffs protruding – but she was more intent on his face. Closely observing his lips as they formed an answer, her ears were to learn what her heart already feared: ‘Butter Market,’ came the barely audible reply.

  And as the first man stumbled back towards her, she knew without even looking at him the reason for his mask of pity, for the Butter Market had lately been designated a more macabre purpose, of housing the dead.

  Standing in that queue of equally hollow-eyed relatives outside the emergency mortuary, in the shadow of the city abattoir, Nell was to ask herself what on earth was the point in waiting here, shuffling along the pavement an inch at a time, when she knew for certain that her parents were deceased? But to leave now, as if grown fed-up of waiting, would seem disrespectful somehow, would attract the opprobrium of those who still retained that glimmer of hope; that asinine, optimistic glimmer that she herself had sponsored long ago, and knew to be a fallacy … and so she remained there, to shuffle along like a penguin with the rest, attacked by a series of what-ifs? What if William should be in that charnel house? What if the people to whom she had entrusted him had failed to keep him safe, and his corpse was amongst those arrayed?

  This was more than Nell could bear. She yanked her mind from the image, channelled it into a happier outcome, envisioned her son being carried to safety by loving parents, whisked away in a nice fast car into the country – perhaps he had already been evacuated long before last night …

  But all the while that she queued and shuffled, these worries were relentlessly to nag at her, peck, peck, pecking like the starlings at their gobbets of flesh. And no amount of reassurance from a kind-hearted trooper, who travelled down the line to certify that everything was under control, could dispel these monstrous what-ifs, until eventually it was her turn to enter the m
ortuary.

  Then, of course, all flights of fantasy were dispersed, as she was bludgeoned with the facts: invited to peer at one corpse after another, before finally identifying her mother and father, both relatively unmarked, save for a few cuts and grazes from the rubble, and apart from being very dead. Erect and dignified, acutely conscious to the weeping of others who patrolled the ranks of cadavers, she herself found it almost impossible to give vent to her distress, choked as she was by the guilt of walking out on them only the night before, her voice emotionless as it confirmed identity, delivered a few further details to the officer in charge, then emerged into the still-smoky morning.

  Unable to cry, with only a few hundred yards to travel from there to her digs, Nell made her silent way under the medieval Fishergate Bar, and into a blackened slum district, where a milkwoman on a horse-drawn cart was handing out her late delivery; past a pub and a Roman Catholic church; then along the insalubrious Walmgate, her face still wrought with shock upon finally arriving in the Preciouses’ dingy hallway.

  ‘Thank God!’ boomed a relieved Ma, blundering from the sitting room at the first sound of the door being opened. ‘We’ve been right worried! Haven’t we, Georgie – eh, the racket last night – our poor Milo hasn’t stopped trembling, have you, my honey?’ She was already hugging the whining terrier to her breast, and now added a series of reassuring kisses to his quivering black muzzle.

  ‘I’m sincerely glad to find you’re unharmed.’ Nell slipped off her coat, asking herself how she could sound so normal?

  ‘Well … not all of us.’ Ma had turned grave, and immediately Georgie’s eyes oozed brine, which he dabbed away with a hastily produced handkerchief.

  Glancing into the living room as she hung up her coat, Nell saw that it was obviously not Mr Yarker who had perished, for he sat in his usual place amidst a fog of cigarette smoke, looking even more haggard than usual. Still without mentioning her own loss, she turned questioning eyes on the Preciouses.

  ‘Mr Allardyce,’ whispered Ma, in as quiet a tone as was possible for her. ‘Hanged himself from the middle landing.’ She waited for this to sink in, but Nell was too stunned and too spent to offer anything more energetic than a parting of lips. ‘Georgie and me were under the stairs,’ went on Ma, ‘we didn’t know a thing till this morning when Mr Yarker came back from firewatching and found him on his way up to bed. Ooh, real upset he was – had to cut him down, you see. Eh, what a to-do. The police have only just taken the poor lad away. He certainly knew which banister to use: it’s the only decent stretch of timber in the house. Anybody my size would have brought the whole staircase down, but he was only a lightweight, poor chap.’

  Dull of eye, Nell moved her head in recognition. That accounted for Mr Yarker’s stark demeanour, Mr Allardyce having been his batman in the Great War, and a close friend ever since. Even after two decades Allardyce had still been afflicted by the psychological effects of that terrible shelling.

  ‘The noise drove him to it?’ she murmured a supposition.

  Still cradling the terrier, Ma gave a wordless nod, before adding quickly in her more characteristic tone, ‘Right, better get the kettle on, Georgie, and do this girl some breakfast, she looks worn out! Gas is off,’ she explained loudly to Nell, ‘but we’re managing to cook all right over the fire – come in, sit down!’

  ‘Nothing to eat, thank you, but a cup of tea would be appreciated.’ Only now realising that her throat was parched, Nell wandered after the couple into the acrid haze of the sitting room, where her first act was to deal Mr Yarker a little gesture of condolence. Receiving his dull nod in return, she sank gratefully onto a sofa, allowing a cat to jump onto her lap and taking comfort from its silken coat, feeling as if she were in another dimension. Her head was still pounding, and her mind spinning too with all manner of images.

  Georgie lifted the teapot lid to examine leaves that had been brewed so long ago they were swelled to the size of cabbage, then added more boiling water.

  ‘A piece of toast, mebbe?’ coaxed Ma.

  Nell refused, then took a deep breath, to reveal, ‘My parents were killed in the raid.’

  ‘Aw!’

  With Ma expressing such loud condolence, and old Georgie looking set to weep again, Nell closed her eyes and begged them tiredly, ‘Don’t, please, don’t say any more. I feel bad enough that I walked out on them, last night of all nights …’

  ‘Well, good job, I say!’ exulted Ma, as an ashen-faced Mr Yarker rose without a word and, like a wraith, drifted from the room. ‘Or you’d have been flattened too – aren’t you going to wait for a cup of tea, Mr Yarker?’

  ‘I’m drowning in fucking tea,’ came the typically blunt reply from the hall, before the outer door clicked shut.

  ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned it in his presence,’ droned Nell, her expression glazed. ‘He’ll feel bad enough.’

  ‘Stop bothering about what others are feeling,’ urged Ma. ‘You’ve had your own terrible shock. Eh, I’m that sorry, lass – but what a miracle you weren’t with them.’

  A depressed sigh came from her young friend. ‘I don’t know … it might have been as well.’

  ‘Eh, don’t be saying that!’ Ma levelled a finger in a gesture of reproof.

  ‘Why not?’ murmured Nell, her hand absently stroking the cat, who purred contentedly on her lap. ‘I let them down, and now I can never tell them how sorry I am, nor make it up to them. I’m no good to anyone.’

  ‘You are to us,’ soothed old Georgie, and he placed a cup of reheated tea on the table at her side. ‘Isn’t she, dearie?’

  ‘And what are you talking about, let them down?’ demanded Ma, still ignorant over Nell’s fall from grace. ‘All parents and children have squabbles, I’ll bet they were proud of you really.’

  Listening to their platitudes, Nell tried hard to believe them as she ran her hand over that silken fur, stroking, stroking, stroking – until inexplicably the cat took umbrage and jumped off her lap, leaving her to sit and stare, and the tears to trickle down her face.

  8

  An estimate of a hundred dead, an equivalent figure seriously injured, and many more with minor wounds. The toll might have seemed insignificant compared to other cities harder hit, but it was all too momentous for those who had lost loved ones, and for the multitude turned homeless. Within ninety savage minutes some nine and a half thousand houses had been destroyed or damaged; and many, like Nell, faced a lengthy wait for financial redress.

  Not that monetary inheritance was the first thing on her mind, or even on it at all. Despite being shocked, and burdened with guilt at having walked out on her parents, Nell had not the luxury to wallow, but, after snatching a few hours of fitful sleep, was compelled to perform the onerous task of informing her father’s kin. Her way there was painfully slow that late afternoon, not solely due to the potholes at every turn, but because the police had set up barriers at all entry points to the city, and were halting cars and turning back those who had come merely to gawp. A constable boarded the bus she was on and examined everyone’s identity card to check they had a legitimate reason to be there, giving Nell a good fifteen minutes in which to stew, before being allowed to go on her way.

  And after all that, it transpired that Uncle Cliff and Aunty Phyllis already knew.

  ‘I thought perhaps you would,’ murmured Nell, extending a comforting hand to her aunt, who had crumpled in tears upon seeing her, ‘but I thought I’d better come …’

  However, it emerged that the tears were not just from sorrow, but partly from relief.

  ‘We’ve been praying you were on night shift,’ said a gaunt Uncle Cliff, steering Nell through the wood-panelled hall into his equally brown sitting room, along with his wife. ‘But we just didn’t know …’ Whilst Nell’s aunty dabbed at her eyes, he explained that they had gone to check on his brother’s family as soon as it got light. ‘We’ve been asking around all day, trying to find out what shift you were on, but no one seemed to know – well, thank
God at least one of you is safe.’ On the last word his voice cracked, and his eyes misted over.

  With the others staring dully at the carpet, Nell shelved her own anguish and sprang to fill the void, selfishly relieved that they were unaware of her quarrel with her parents, and mentioning nothing of her permanent departure. ‘It looks like poor Mrs Dawson and Geoff got it too.’

  ‘Oh no,’ after clearing his throat, her uncle rushed to assure her, ‘we saw them down at the church hall when we went to look for our Wilf and Thelma. They’d barely a scratch on them – we had a word, to see if they knew where you were, but they didn’t even know what day it was. Seems the Morrison shelter saved them.’

  Nell heaved a sigh. ‘That’s good to know anyway …’

  ‘Well,’ sighed her uncle, ‘York’s certainly had its share now, hasn’t it?’ And they spoke for a little while on the tragedy.

  Aunty Phyllis blew her nose and managed to speak. ‘Eh, fancy this happening on your birthday. I intended to post your card this morn—’

  ‘It’s bad enough happening any day!’ Raw over his brother’s loss, Cliff beheld his wife with a look of impatience.

  ‘Well, yes, I didn’t mean it that way! I just didn’t want her to think I’d forgotten …’

  Tearful eyes beheld Nell, who had in fact forgotten her own birthday, but said now to avert further torment: ‘I knew what you meant, Aunty Phyl, and thank you for the thought.’

  ‘You must’ve been so shocked when you got home,’ breathed her aunty picking at her damp handkerchief, and receiving a plaintive nod from Nell, who answered:

  ‘I hoped that perhaps one of them might not … that they might have gone out to help when the bombs started to drop.’