A Wartime Secret

by Annie Murray

  Ted shrugged, and she saw he had already lost interest. He headed for the door.

  ‘There’s a few spuds left at the far end,’ she said. ‘Fork’s in the privy.’

  She stood watching him, hand on her heart, thinking, Oh my Lord, I can’t go on like this.

  She walked slowly along Inkerman Street, between the sooty brick faces of the houses, calling greetings to a few of the neighbours. Mrs Astbury, ginger curls peeping out from under a scarf, was sweeping out her front room and she beckoned Grace over.

  ‘All right, are yer? I see you’ve got your Ted home. All right for some, eh? Dunno when my Len’s going to get back. I’m worried they’ll just send him over there next – you know, out east.’

  Grace forced a smile. She knew that Win Astbury had not set eyes on her husband for four years. Their son, Billy, was seven now. He would hardly remember a thing about his father. Win always managed to keep cheerful somehow, though.

  ‘Yes, ta, Win,’ she said, wanting to seem in good spirits. ‘He’s been back a few days. He’s only on leave, though – they might post him out there as well.’

  Mrs Astbury tutted. ‘Wicked, it is. They ought to send someone else, that’s what I think any’ow. Not that anyone ever asks me.’

  Grace managed a smile. ‘Billy all right?’

  ‘Oh, ’e’s all right. Always is – ’e’s a good lad. What about your little ’un?’ She gave Grace a meaningful look, but there was no malice in it.

  ‘She’s doing well, ta,’ Grace said, backing away. ‘Anyhow – best get to the shops before it’s all gone.’

  Win Astbury rolled her eyes. ‘It’s worse now than when it was still going on.’ She picked up her broom. ‘Bring me back summat nice!’

  They both laughed, knowing there was no hope of this. Grace hurried along the road, keeping a sharp eye out for Mrs Fitzgerald. She walked up Monument Road, past the church and the baths, and queued in various shops. After a long wait she managed, with a sense of triumph, to buy a few tomatoes.

  ‘T’ra!’ she called to the greengrocer, stepping out into the sunshine with her bag. ‘Ta very much.’

  And for the second time that day, she received a shock that jangled through her whole body and caught her breath. Only this time it was even worse. She ground abruptly to a halt.

  Walking along the road away from her, on the opposite side, was a man in a navy-blue fireman’s uniform. This in itself was not surprising. The fire station was not far away, round the corner. But the walk, the set of the man, was immediately familiar. No. It couldn’t be. What was he doing here? He didn’t come from Birmingham. He had been sent away, to where she did not know. The one thing she had known was that she would never, ever see him again.

  She narrowed her eyes, her breathing jagged. Was she going mad, imagining things?

  No. It was definitely him. The fireman who for those few crazy days when he was still in Birmingham had been her friend, and, without her ever deciding on it, her lover.

  It was him. It was Johnny Duke.

  II

  9

  ‘He’s sorry, Norm, he really is,’ Grace appealed the next morning, as she sat feeding Barbara at her sister’s house. ‘He never meant it.’

  ‘I know,’ Norm said gruffly. Norm was a cocky so-and-so, but in the end, he was also a kind man. They were at the table in the back, and Ronnie and Joe, their older lads aged eight and six, were playing in the yard. A ball kept thudding against the door. ‘His nerves are on edge – you can see. He looks terrible. What the hell’s been going on?’

  Grace shrugged. ‘He won’t say. He’s been in a camp in Poland is all I know. How the hell did they get to Poland anyway? He’s been poorly, I know that.’ She didn’t want to mention the wound on Ted’s shoulder, or his shouting in German. That felt like telling Norm too much.

  She looked across at her sister and brother-in-law with pleading eyes. ‘You can see why I can’t tell him yet, though, can’t you?’

  Joan and Norman exchanged a look.

  ‘Thing is, sis,’ Joan said carefully, ‘how long d’you think you can keep this up for? He’s got to know and the longer you keep him in the dark – well, he’s going to feel even worse when you come out with it.’

  Norm was nodding. ‘It ain’t right, Grace.’

  Shamed, Grace looked down at her lovely child, hugging her close. Barbara was discreetly covered by her cardigan, eyes just peeping out as she fed contentedly, her fingers gripping the edge of the cardigan. Grace seemed to be suffering from the separation far more than Barbara.

  ‘She’s all right,’ Joan said as if reading her mind. ‘But you can’t go on like this. He’s your husband, Grace – and you know what’s going to happen. If you don’t tell him, someone else will.’

  Grace nodded, looking up at her sister again.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I will. Just give me a day or two – please.’

  As she hurried back along the street, all the turmoil of her feelings rose in her. Joan and Norm barely knew the half of her shame and confusion. They did not know that yesterday she had seen Johnny Duke. They had no idea that as she made her way to the shops, and stood wearily waiting in the queues, that Johnny, the father of her child – sunny Johnny with his fair hair, his carefree laugh and strong, energetic body – had forced themselves so powerfully into her mind that she could barely think of anything else.

  Ted came home from seeing Larry seeming more cheerful.

  ‘The lad’s got a good collection of birds there,’ he said as they ate the last garden potatoes and a tough bit of fish that Grace had managed to buy. ‘He’s good with ’em. Real beauties, some of them.’

  ‘I daint think you went in for pigeons and all that,’ Grace said carefully.

  Ted chewed slowly – it seemed to her he did everything much more slowly these days – and rested his elbows on the table. His arms looked all bone and seemed longer than she remembered.

  ‘No – but I might now. Larry’s got a good bunch of lads round him – other fanciers. And he’s even got a couple of them Rollers. Beautiful birds, they are.’

  He took another mouthful and a silence descended which lasted so long that she thought he had said all he was going to say. But then he nodded towards the window looking over the garden.

  ‘I’ll get mending that coop that we’ve got down there. All it needs is a bit of sorting out.’

  ‘But you’re going away again – after your leave?’ she said, wondering if he had forgotten.

  ‘Oh ah – I know. But I can get it ready, can’t I?’ He looked away then, as if closing down the conversation.

  ‘Oh yes! Course you can,’ she agreed hastily. She was glad. It would give him something to do.

  But as Ted finished his meal, looking down at his plate, terrible thoughts came to her. What if, instead of her sitting here with Ted, she was with Johnny? What if it was cheerful Johnny sitting in front of her every day – and with Barbara here too? A family – tied by blood. Didn’t they really belong together?

  Horrified at herself, she tried to push the thoughts away. She got to her feet and on the way to the stove, touched Ted on the shoulder. The encouraging words she had been about to say were silenced by his jumping as if she had stuck a pin in him.

  ‘Oh!’ He put his hands on his chest, panting. ‘Oh God, don’t ever do that.’

  ‘Sorry, love. I daint mean . . .’ Tears rose in her eyes. Whatever was wrong with him? What had turned her calm, gentle husband into this wreck of a man, living on his nerves? She banished her tears. He didn’t mean it.

  ‘I was just going to say – about the pigeons. That sounds like a nice idea.’

  There was such a barrier around him that she did not dare ask anything when they were face to face in the daytime. Only in the dark of the bedroom did she try. It was easier when she could not see him, when she could try to imagine that he still looked like the man she had married. Even his voice was a little bit different – weaker, more tentative. But she could
pretend . . .

  ‘When you were in the camp, in Poland,’ she had tried last night, feeling as if she was walking across a thinly frozen pond where she might fall in at any moment, ‘what did you have to do?’

  ‘All sorts,’ Ted said tersely. ‘Worked in a sawmill at one time.’ He started to laugh, just for a moment, and she stroked her hand gently over his body, snuggling closer to him.

  ‘Well, you’d have known what to do,’ she said.

  ‘Worked on farms. One job, we was in a factory, boiling up beets. Great vats of ’em.’

  ‘What for?’ She had never heard of beets.

  ‘Sugar.’ She felt him shrug slightly, because it seemed obvious to him. ‘They look like parsnips. My hands’ve never been the same since. I did farm work. And in a brickyard.’

  She listened, trying to imagine, just happy that he was talking, even if it did not tell her much.

  ‘What happened to your shoulder, love?’ she dared to ask.

  ‘Bullet,’ he said. ‘That was back in ’40. On the way there.’

  She waited for more but nothing came.

  ‘When did you get let out?’ she tried.

  ‘January 23rd.’ His voice was clipped now, as if he was reaching the end of his ability to talk.

  Grace was bewildered. January? What had taken them so long? ‘How did you get back from Poland?’

  There was a silence, before Ted said quietly, ‘How d’yer think? We walked.’

  He turned away from her then, without another word. Once he was sleeping, Grace lay awake, staring up into the dark, feeling as if her husband, though only inches away, was still in a different country.

  And his face kept coming into her mind, no matter how hard she tried to stop it. His face, with his fair hair, like Barbara’s.

  10

  She first met Johnny after work on a snowy night in March 1944. The other girls at the factory were always on at her to come out with them. Grace did go sometimes, for a drink and a natter in a nearby pub. But she never went dancing or anything like that, even though Nora had invited her a few times.

  Nora, nineteen when she arrived from Belfast to fill shells for the war effort, was more of a home bird anyway and they had spent most of their nights in, the house swathed in blackout, drinking cocoa and nattering by the fire. It would have felt wrong to go dancing. Grace thought, how could she get up and stand in the arms of another man when she was married? That would have felt disloyal to Ted, and she knew somehow that he would have minded.

  The sky was a sombre grey as they left the factory that afternoon, the streets full of slow-falling flakes.

  ‘Come on, Gracie,’ her work pal Margaret urged as they moved among the crowds coming off the afternoon shift. It was freezing out. Everyone was pulling up their collar. Margaret was petite as a sparrow, with beautiful dark-eyed looks. ‘You can’t just sit in all your life, married or not! We’re going to make a night of it – go into Birmingham – Steven’s Bar. Might be a night they have some drink in.’ She made a comical face. Supplies of beer were so uncertain that you had to plump for a time when there might be some in and hope for the best. ‘Come on, get yer glad rags on and come with us for once.’

  ‘What – in this?’ Grace frowned at the sky. Snowflakes tickled her cheeks.

  ‘It’ll be all right. It’s only a bit. Come on, Grace. You hardly ever go out.’

  It was true. And for once Grace thought, oh, to hell with it.

  She had almost forgotten that she was beautiful, or could be. By then, Ted had been away so long.

  The early part of the war had meant so many broken nights of bombing, ack-ack guns going and the sound of planes drilling terror into your nerves. And for her it had meant all those weeks of not hearing from Ted after he was captured, not knowing, almost too afraid to think what might have happened. It was September 1940 before she heard from him through the Red Cross. Life had been too difficult and relentless to think about how else it might be. It was a case of getting through from one day to the next, fraught and exhausted as the city was smashed up around you; of wondering whether you would be alive when the dawn broke.

  After the bombing died down later in 1941, things had settled into a routine of drab hard work, of sitting in either her blacked-out house with Nora, or sometimes at Joan and Norm’s; of rationed food, and shortages of the most basic things like a bar of soap or stockings; of more exhaustion and the boredom and frustration of never knowing when it was going to end.

  At least Ted’s safe, she had kept telling herself. He’s out of it. I know where he is. His brief letters confirmed that much, even if they did not tell her more. Lov Ted was his most effusive way of telling her anything he felt. Every night she kissed the man standing beside her in their wedding portrait and tried desperately to remember the sound of his voice, the feel of his arms around her, the dreams they had shared. She knew she had loved him, that she still did. She hoped and prayed, trying to keep the closeness of him alive.

  By March 1944 he had been away for more than four years – longer than their married life before he joined up. More and more, as the months went on, she felt as if her young life was passing her by. If she and Ted had not managed to have a child before, how was she ever going to have a family now? The war was stopping that happening – perhaps forever.

  And in all that time there had been no one to put their arms around her and tell her they loved her, that she was beautiful. She wondered now if there ever would be again.

  The top of the building that held Steven’s Bar was bomb-damaged, but the pub had gone on trading on the ground floor. There was a fire in the grate, the windows were all blacked out, and it was cosy and getting quite hot and full of a beery fug. As she sipped her half of watery ale, Grace could feel her cheeks turning pink from the drink and the cold night outside.

  He was with a group of lads who came into the crowded pub. Grace and Margaret and their group of girls were crushed in on one side of the noisy room, not far from the bar. Grace was chatting to a girl called Angie about her boyfriend who was in the navy. Angie was a plump blonde girl with a plaintive voice.

  ‘I don’t know if ’e’ll come back to me,’ she was saying. ‘I mean we was only going out for three weeks before ’e left, but I liked him. ’E were nice. ’E’s writ me once or twice, but . . . Eh, Grace, ain’t you got nice hair?’

  She reached out to touch Grace’s crow-black locks, as if seeing her for the first time. They wore snoods at work to cover their hair.

  Grace had pinned her black, tumbling waves of hair back from her face. They lay over her shoulders and the deep-red blouse she was wearing with a black skirt. They were the warmest clothes she had.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘ta. But your hair’s nice – it’s pretty.’

  As they were talking, one of the lads pushed through towards the bar. He elbowed her in the back by mistake and she couldn’t help saying, ‘Ow – watch it!’

  ‘Oh – sorry!’ As he turned, Grace saw a lad with a strong frame, cropped fair hair and a wide, pleasant face.

  ‘S’all right,’ she said.

  Angie was still chattering on to her, but soon the lad was back carrying drinks for his group of friends. This time, their eyes met and he smiled. As he crossed the room, she couldn’t help watching him. He had the almost swaggering walk of a man with strong leg muscles. He was broad across the shoulders. As she looked he leaned to put the drinks down amid cheers from the others, then turned and looked back, and she knew, when his eyes found her again, that he was looking for her. Blushing, she turned away.

  She couldn’t seem to help herself. It was as if something in her had been sparked awake again. Through all the other talk of the evening she was aware of the lad, out of the corner of her eye, and every so often she saw him looking at her. Uneasily, she fingered her wedding ring, reminding herself. She was not in a position to go looking at other men.

  Before long, though, the lads made their way over, the presence of a group of girls too much o
f a magnet to resist. And he had made straight for her, as if claiming her. His blatant gaze, even before he had said anything, made her tingle all over, as if she was aware of every inch of her skin against her clothes. She found herself keeping her left hand in her lap.

  ‘Doing all right, are yer?’ he said. He was looking at her with such frank admiration that she felt a blush begin in her face and spread down to her chest.

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ she said, smiling. He looked nice: friendly and with upturned, laughing lips. His blue eyes also crinkled at the corners as if a smile was always on its way. ‘Where’re you from then?’ – because his accent was different.

  ‘Me? I’m from Leek – Staffs. Us lot . . .’ He nodded at the group of lads. ‘We’re all firemen. I was sent down here to help out when it was bad, like. Still here, though.’ He grinned then. ‘I like it – it’s a bit more lively than where I come from. My name’s Johnny, by the way. Johnny Duke.’

  ‘I’m Grace Chapman,’ she said.

  ‘You working?’ He took a good swig of beer and made a face into the glass. ‘More like gnat’s pee than ever, this, in’t it?’

  Grace laughed. ‘Yeah. These are my workmates. Some of them, anyway.’ She told him where they worked, in Ladywood. ‘Making tails for planes.’

  She noticed around her that most of the lads had started in on a chat with one of the group of girls, so she did not feel self-conscious.

  ‘I can’t see you in a factory,’ Johnny said. As he spoke she looked at his strong, masculine hand holding the glass. ‘You look like . . . I dunno.’ He put his head on one side, and feeling him examining her in such a concentrated way, Grace blushed and giggled. ‘You look like a singer. Or an actress.’

  ‘Me?’ She laughed. ‘I like the odd sing-song – but I’m no singer.’