Wartime Family

by Lane, Lizzie

  ‘The shelter,’ Daw was shouting. ‘We’ve got to get to the shelter. Ma, will you leave that! Can’t you hear the sirens?’

  Mary Anne’s voice was as calm as her exterior. ‘Daw, you’ve always been a bit on the hysterical side. How many false alarms have we had? We’re too far west for the Germans to bother us. Our Lizzie told me that.’

  Daw’s eyes were wide with fear. ‘Ma, it’s a raid! There’s bombs dropping!’

  Mary Anne tutted loudly as she screwed in the top. ‘And on a Sunday too. Have they no respect?’

  ‘There’s loads of them,’ shouted Stanley, her youngest, a lad of ten who was as much of an armchair general as his father. ‘Watch out! Yer squashing me,’ he added as Daw squeezed through the doorway, the baby still squalling in her arms.

  Mary Anne was about to follow her, then stopped. ‘The presents! Stanley, give me a hand here!’

  Stanley poked out his tongue at his sister before racing back to help his mother.

  There were glass-fronted cupboards on either side of the fireplace. Mary Anne plunged into the lower cupboards. Unlike the upper ones they were wooden fronted. She pulled out two brown carrier bags bulging with Christmas presents. Most were home-made – scarves, handkerchiefs and things made from hand-me-downs. Stanley took one, carrying it tucked behind him so that it bumped against his legs. His mother followed.

  ‘Hitler can bomb all he likes, but he isn’t going to destroy these and ruin our Christmas.’

  Daw was getting frantic. ‘Come on!’ The baby squalled even louder.

  Mary Anne pushed the second carrier bag at her daughter. ‘Take this.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  Christmas wasn’t just about giving presents. There was food in the larder, precious bits and pieces, some on ration and some acquired through friends of friends. Mary Anne headed for the small lean-to kitchen.

  ‘You go on. I’ll be right behind you. I’m not leaving the tea and flour and the Christmas cake.’

  Daw didn’t wait. Bundling baby Mathilda into her pushchair, the carrier bag bouncing between her knees and the pram, she broke into a run. It was her mother’s opinion that the back yard was too small for an air-raid shelter. She preferred the public ones in Dean Lane.

  ‘At least there you can have a jolly time before a bomb hits,’ she’d quipped, referring to the singsongs, sometimes accompanied by an accordion.

  ‘Mum, don’t say that!’ Being brave didn’t come easily to Daw, whereas young Stanley took everything in his stride.

  Mary Anne pulled everything she could from the cupboard: flour, tea, sugar, sultanas and precious tins of pink Canadian salmon. Plus the Christmas cake, of course.

  ‘Take this,’ she said, thrusting a bundle into Stanley’s arms. ‘Now go on after our Daw. I’ll be right behind you.’

  A sudden thought made Mary Anne stop in her tracks. She looked up, thinking that perhaps the scream of the siren had changed in some way. It hadn’t, and yet some instinct telling her the sirens were different today had made her hesitate. And why had she gathered all her precious Christmas things together? She’d never done that before. Why today?

  She shook the thoughts from her head. No matter what, she would follow her instincts. In the past she’d lived purely for her family, burying her true self beneath whatever they had wanted her to be. A mother. A wife. Now, since knowing Michael, she had become a woman, a mature version of the carefree girl she’d once been.

  Jolting herself back to reality, she wove in and out of the furniture and out of the back door, locking it behind her. The front of the shop was securely bolted against the looters that bombing raids inevitably brought. A pawn shop was a magnet to such people. She’d kept things going in Michael’s absence and wasn’t about to lose it to thieves now.

  She dashed off into the alley and down to Dean Lane. She was just in time to see Stanley disappearing down the steps of the shelter entrance. The sound of the sirens set her teeth on edge. She was glad to reach the shelter entrance, as being underground muffled the sound of the siren.

  The shelter was bursting at the seams, but still she managed to push her way across to where Daw was sitting with Mathilda in her lap. The pram had been left outside. There was only room for people in here. The man on the accordion was squeezing away and singing ‘I’ll be with you in apple blossom time’.

  The air was hot and rank with the smell of people. Normally it might have been bearable, but these people had little to eat, little water to wash with and hardly enough time to keep body and soul together. Everyone was beginning to look a bit grey around the gills.

  Stanley found a few of his pals. As if by magic they all pulled conkers from their pockets and immediately started a game.

  Daw was crying, big tears streaking her dust-covered face, the dust stirred up from the floor by tightly packed people. Her selfish temper suddenly took hold. She glared at her mother.

  ‘I wish I hadn’t come. It’s all your fault!’

  There had been many times when Mary Anne had hidden the hurt caused by Daw’s comments. This was just another one, so she put on a brave face and tried to sound calm and collected.

  ‘I had to get the Christmas presents, Daw,’ she said as she squeezed on to the rough bench beside her daughter. She sighed. ‘I was looking forward to a proper Christmas, Daw. That cake’ll go down a treat. So will that salmon.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Daw blubbered.

  Daw had always had a bit of a self-centred way about her. Even now, she pouted as though she were still nine years old. ‘That isn’t what I meant. It’s coming to the pawn shop. If you still lived at home with Dad …’

  Mary Anne clamped her teeth tightly together. Harry, Lizzie and even young Stanley accepted that Henry’s violence and drinking had been too much for their mother to live with. They’d also accepted that she loved Michael, who had been left the pawn broking business by his uncle. They’d met at the beginning of the war when she’d been running her own little business from her washroom at the back of the house. He was younger than her, though she was still a looker for a woman of forty plus. At first they’d been in competition, but that had soon melted away. They’d both been escapees – her from Henry and he from Germany.

  Mary Anne turned her face away until she had gained more control of her emotions. Her heart ached to see Michael again. Sometimes she screwed her eyes tightly shut and imagined his features, afraid that she might never see him again, afraid that she’d forget what he looked like. His letters were few and guarded and sometimes, when she was at her lowest ebb, she wondered if he would ever return; if he would ever want to return. To help keep the doubts at bay, she tried to fill her time with the pawn shop and helping out in the Red Cross shop around the corner in East Street. She’d donated some of the pre-war pledges that had never been claimed. Some of it was sheer tat, stuff that went straight into the bin. The clothes, crockery and cooking utensils went to the shop.

  It took a while to control her feelings and by the time she could, the walls of the shelter were shaking. Someone shouted that a nearby shelter had been hit. The panic was palpable, rolling through the people like a tidal wave. Shouting and screaming, a host of humanity clawed their way to the entrance, terror in their eyes. Children cried, women screamed and so did some men. Others, ARP wardens mostly, tried to calm everyone down and prevent them from going outside. ‘It’s raining bombs out there. Stay where you are. Stay where you’re safe.’

  The boys stopped playing conkers. Stanley crept back to his mother’s side, hiding his face beneath her arm. Turning her back towards the shelter entrance, Mary Anne hugged Daw and the baby tightly against herself with her free arm. If a bomb was going to hit them, it would hit her first. Daw shook and trembled, sobbing against her shoulder.

  ‘I can’t stand this,’ she mumbled into her mother’s coat. ‘I can’t stand it.’

  ‘We’ll be alright. I promise we will.’

  Mary Anne turned frightened eyes over her shou
lder. Carrying others with them, those panicking pressed against the shelter entrance. Heads disappeared in the crush. Mary Anne pressed her daughter’s face more tightly against her own body, hoping that somehow she could protect her.

  Suddenly the concrete roof trembled. Dust floated down in a milky haze, covering heads, stinging eyes and sticking in throats. A horror-filled hush descended, spreading through the concrete cloud.

  Mary Anne closed her eyes. She wasn’t one for church and praying, but war makes people dig deep. She offered up a silent prayer. Please keep my family safe. If you take anyone, take me. Please take me.

  The sound of crashing buildings and the rumbling and shifting around them gradually ebbed away.

  ‘They’re going over,’ someone said.

  Someone broke into loud sobs. Others murmured prayers of thanks. A hushed sigh seemed to drift like the dust across the huddled humanity. Because someone else had died, because the chance of a bomb falling on them had passed and fallen elsewhere, a sense of contemplative silence descended. Those that had rushed for the stairs now pressed themselves against walls, their eyes staring as though seeing what might have been. Medical people in an assortment of uniforms tended those who’d been injured in the crush.

  Two hours later, when the all-clear sounded, Stanley brought his head out from beneath his mother’s arm. Daw lifted her gaze and looked around her with staring, scared eyes.

  Fearing her daughter was on the verge of hysteria, Mary Anne gathered up all her courage and helped Daw to her feet. ‘Come on.’

  Even though the air outside was thick with dust, it was easier to breathe than in the shelter. Daw looked for the baby’s pushchair.

  ‘Where’s my pram?’

  Mary Anne looked beyond her to where rescue workers clambered over a pile of rubble. The neighbouring air-raid shelter had indeed taken a direct hit.

  ‘Those poor people,’ she muttered.

  ‘Are they blown to bits?’ Stanley asked, his eyes wide with ghoulish interest and just a hint of fear.

  Mary Anne didn’t reply. ‘Don’t forget the bag.’

  ‘Got it,’ he said, raising it so she could see he wasn’t lying.

  Ambulance bells clanged and people shouted. A hose was being unwound from a fire engine. She failed to see a fire, but smelled the smoke. Somewhere, amongst all this dust, were buildings, people and her road back to the pawn shop. Mary Anne suddenly thought of the thermos flasks of tea they’d taken into the shelter. They’d been scared too rigid to drink it.

  ‘We could have that tea now. It’ll still be warm.’

  Daw shook her head as she strapped Mathilda into her dusty and slightly bent pushchair.

  ‘Not me, Mother. I’m off home.’

  Home for Daw was above the corner shop owned by her husband’s uncle and aunt. It was at the end of the street Mary Anne had once lived in with her family. Their home at number ten Kent Street was gone now, destroyed in a previous raid. Henry had been moved out to Aiken Street in Barton Hill on the other side of the river. Stanley had moved in with her at the pawn shop, though he did visit his father every so often, especially on Friday nights – not so much out of love, but more because of the fish and chips bought from the shop at the bottom of Avonvale Road.

  There was no arguing with Daw. Mary Anne had decided years ago not to try. It was Daw’s way. She was selfish, though she’d never admit to it. She was conservative and she refused to accept that Mary Anne’s living with Michael would be for ever. She wanted things to be as they once were. Through her eyes they had been a cosy, loving family. The truth had been so different, but Daw would never see that,

  Leaning heavily into the pushchair, Daw scuttled off, the slightly wobbly wheels squeaking as she trundled the pushchair over the rubble.

  A well of emotion tugged at Mary Anne’s heart as she watched the head of little Mathilda bob to one side, peering past her mother so she could see her grandmother.

  ‘When will I see you again?’ Mary Anne shouted after her.

  Daw gave her a cursory wave over her shoulder, but no response. Mary Anne brushed a tear from the corner of her eye. Just dust, she told herself, but she knew it wasn’t true. She loved little Mathilda, her first grandchild, and couldn’t bear the thought of her growing up without recognizing who she was. Curtailing access to Mathilda was Daw’s way of exacting punishment on her mother for splitting up with her father. It was never said in so many words, only hinted at, but Mary Anne knew.

  Stanley tugged at the sleeve of her coat. ‘You alright, Ma?’

  ‘Just thinking,’ she said.

  It wasn’t far to the pawn shop. Normally it would have taken only minutes, but today the world had turned upside down. There was rubble everywhere, and fire engines, ambulances and people in various uniforms were all rushing around.

  Picking her way through the broken bricks and the twisted gas mains, she came to the alley that led out into East Street. The bag containing the Christmas things bumped against her legs. Stanley was carrying his in front, both arms wrapped around it. Despite the dust and rubble, a single tram had wound its way through East Street but had been stopped by the police.

  Mary Anne headed in the direction from which it had come, craning her neck in an effort to see through the devastation and down the side street to the pawn shop.

  A great cloud of black smoke blanketed the street exactly where the pawn shop was situated. With her heart in her mouth, she quickened her pace. Flames were licking upwards through the smoke. No! Not the shop!

  She ordered Stanley to stay put.

  ‘I’ll go and look,’ she said, piling her bundles against his dusty legs.

  She ran towards the shop front.

  ‘Oi! Where do you think you’re going?’ A policeman grabbed her arm. ‘You can’t go in there, love.’

  ‘That’s my shop!’

  Round-eyed she stared to where Michael’s business had been. The whole frontage was ablaze.

  ‘What will he say?’ she wailed, her hand over her mouth. ‘What will he say?’

  The shop was all they had and it meant a lot to him. Michael had inherited it from an uncle, who had inherited it from his father, who in turn had inherited it from his father. And now?

  Men with dirt-streaked faces fought the flames. Steam mixed with smoke, its hissing sound obliterated by that of falling masonry. A brick chimney stack groaned and began to topple. Warnings were shouted. The policeman holding Mary Anne pushed her behind the waiting tram. More dust, black and acrid, joined the fetid air.

  Another man wearing the uniform of an auxiliary fireman joined them. His face was soaked with sweat and grime. His nose was bleeding. He swiped at it with his sleeve.

  ‘I’d like to get my hands on the bugger that did that,’ he said grimly.

  ‘You’d better hitch a ride on a Lancaster bomber then,’ said the policeman.

  The fireman shook his head. ‘No incendiaries were dropped. It might have scored a hit, but I was hereabouts and didn’t see or hear it explode.’

  The policeman pulled a face. ‘Could have been looters who started it. They can be mean like that. Light it up for the sake of it. Just arsonists at heart.’

  Mary Anne looked disbelievingly from one man to the other.

  The policeman met her look and shook his head. ‘Not everyone supports the war effort. Some only support themselves.’

  The fireman produced an incredibly clean handkerchief from his pocket, folded it in four and dabbed it at his nose. ‘In these times you can never be too sure, but it’s a possibility.’

  Mary Anne closed her eyes and turned her face to the sky. Ash fluttered down, speckling her face. ‘Now what do I do?’

  ‘It’s your place, is it, love?’ said the fireman.

  She nodded.

  The policeman shook his head and tutted. ‘Well it looks as though only the front of the old place has had it, but you can’t go back in there, not for a good while anyway. Have you got any friends or relatives you can stay
with?’

  She shook her head. Her gaze drifted back to the smoking ruin that had been her home.

  ‘The Sally Army is down there.’ He pointed to a mobile trolley from which jolly-faced people were handing out tea and sympathy. ‘They might be able to find you a bed. And just beyond them is the Red Cross and the WRVS or whatever. You could ask them.’

  Numbly she gathered up Stanley and her things. In her mind she searched for solutions to her immediate problems. Immediate problems were all that she could attend to at this moment in time. Her first priority was to find somewhere to stay. Daw, her closest relative, lived on the corner of the old street above the corner shop. But she only had two rooms, hardly room to swing a cat. Overnight maybe? No longer than that. It wouldn’t work, but for now it would have to do.

  Henry also had a place. Stanley would have to go there, but Mary Anne couldn’t. She just couldn’t. The thought of living under the same roof as Henry, her husband, filled her with dread. The old memories resurfaced and wouldn’t go away. Yes, she’d been told he never entered a pub nowadays; that he was a changed man. But still, deep down inside, she knew she could never trust him to stay that way.

  ‘Come back when it’s cooled down,’ the policeman called after her as she walked away. ‘There might be something you can save.’

  She thanked him again.

  ‘Before you go,’ he said, lowering his voice and glancing in the direction of the fireman with the bloody nose. He beckoned her closer. ‘Are you Harry Randall’s mother?’

  ‘Yes.’ She was nervous about what he was about to say.

  His voice dropped to just above a whisper. ‘Well I didn’t like to say in company, but could he ’ave done anything to upset certain people? You know, some of the dodgy types he got ’imself involved with?’

  Admitting to herself that Harry was no angel had never been easy, and she certainly didn’t comment on it to complete strangers. Nowadays she contented herself with the knowledge that he was serving his country. In her books that made up for his past delinquency. That was why her response now was curt and noncommittal.