The Rainbow Years

by Bradshaw, Rita

  She didn’t say goodbye to the town which had been her whole world for eighteen years. As puffs of smoke from the engine passed the window, she shut her eyes and leaned back against the seat. She had done it. She had got away without having to see him again. For now that was enough.

  Chapter 15

  Amy never could remember much of the journey to London. She could recall the train belching into King’s Cross station late at night, and she realised she must have slept for most of the time. After struggling off the train, a porter was on hand to carry her case, and he found her a friendly cabbie who recommended a cheap guest house not too far from the station. There was one single room vacant. It was very small but clean, and she paid the landlady a month’s rent in advance and collapsed into bed. There she remained for forty-eight hours. The dam finally broke and she was unable to stop crying.

  For two weeks after this she left her room only to eat breakfast at the guest house, and then later in the day dine on soup and a roll at a nearby café. All her waking hours were blanketed in a dull grey bleakness which saw no hope and no future, and at night she would plunge into nightmarish dreams from which she’d wake with her face and pillow wet.

  Her rational mind told her she should do something; begin to look for work, find a solicitor as she had said she would, write to Kitty and Ronald and let them know she was safe, but she didn’t know how or where to begin and so she did nothing. And all the time, whether she was asleep or awake, her arms ached to hold her baby and she longed for her granny. She seemed to have no control over her grief and it was tearing her apart.

  At the beginning of the third week Amy looked at the small amount of money in her purse which was all that remained from the cash box, and she was jolted out of the destructive cycle. She had to find work if she wanted to eat, it was as simple as that, and despite the fact that she had wished herself dead more than once in the worst of her anguish over what had happened, it just wasn’t in her nature to sit still and slowly starve. That night she bought a paper. Apart from domestic work, there were few jobs for women advertised. With very nearly two million men currently out of work, it wasn’t surprising.

  For the next few days Amy applied for every job that didn’t have the label ‘domestic’ on it, but be it in the laundries, factories, canteens or shops, there seemed to be thirty or more women for every vacant post. She knew her bleached, sickly appearance didn’t help.The two dresses she had brought with her hung on her like a sack now, although they had fitted perfectly before she had become pregnant.

  By the beginning of the fourth week, Amy was becoming resigned to the fact that she would have to take domestic work of some kind. It was poorly paid for very long hours but she had no choice. And she would have to move out of the guest house and find a cheaper room elsewhere in a less salubrious district. She was worried how she would cope with hard physical work; she still felt weak after the operation and completely drained at the end of the day. But needs must.

  She bought another paper to look at while she ate her evening meal at the café but felt too dispirited to open it as she sat staring into her bowl of soup.The proprietress, a garrulous little woman with round cheeks like rosy red apples, bustled over to Amy’s table. They had taken to passing the time of day recently and Mrs Briggs was aware of Amy’s search for work. She was also extremely intrigued by this young woman who kept herself to herself and who had the most arresting, saddest face she had ever seen. It wasn’t natural, Mrs Briggs reasoned, for a woman as beautiful as this one to be alone and friendless. There was a mystery here and she had always been partial to solving puzzles.

  ‘No luck then, dearie?’ Mrs Briggs gestured to the paper.

  Amy glanced up and forced a smile. ‘Not yet, no.’

  Mrs Briggs nodded sympathetically. Then she pulled out a chair opposite Amy and sat down, leaning forward as she whispered,‘Excuse me asking, dearie, but have you been under the weather lately? You look right poorly. Maybe a spot of rouge would help when you go after something.’

  Amy felt herself flush. ‘I had an operation,’ she said quietly, telling herself Mrs Briggs meant well. ‘But I’m better now. Well, nearly.’

  ‘An operation?’ Mrs Briggs’s voice dropped even lower. ‘Well, that’d do it. Make you feel bad for weeks, them hospitals. Never been in one myself but my Reg was took in a year before he died and he was never the same when he came out. Sickly he was, and him a six-footer with a belly on him like a good ’un. Did for my Reg, them hospitals.’ And then realising she wasn’t being exactly tactful, she added, ‘But of course it’s different with you, dearie.’

  Amy had never thought she would ever want to smile again but now she gave her first natural smile for weeks. She had seen the little woman in action several times over the past days and Mrs Briggs had a talent for putting her foot in it which was truly incredible. ‘Yes, it’s different with me,’ she agreed.

  Amy’s smile had always lit her face, and Mrs Briggs stared at her. The proprietress considered herself first and foremost a hard businesswoman. She’d had to be, she would tell anyone who would listen, what with her Reg dying when their youngest was still in nappies and the eldest of their six children three years away from working. Through blood, sweat and tears she had built the little café she and her husband had started together just after they had married into a thriving concern, but it hadn’t been easy. Seventeen years she’d been on her own, bringing up the family and running the café, and although there was only her Polly at home now she still didn’t know what it was to sit with her feet up for more than five minutes. Consequently she never let her heart rule her head. It didn’t put cash in her till or pay the mortgage. So it was with some surprise that she heard herself saying, ‘Look, dearie, my Polly - you’ve seen her serving now and again when she isn’t helping me out the back - she’s getting wed in a few weeks and her intended is adamant he don’t want her working.’ The sniff with which Mrs Briggs said these words left Amy in no doubt as to how the little woman viewed Polly’s fiancé.

  ‘I was going to put a notice in the window in the next little while for a cook-cum-waitress-cum-bottle-washer, someone who will muck in with me and do what’s necessary, you know? I can’t pay much, not as much as some, leastways, but Polly’s old room’ll be going spare and all meals will be thrown in. If you want to give it a try for a couple of weeks to see if you suit, you’re welcome. If we get on all right you could move in when our Polly goes.’

  Amy stared at the bright face in front of her. She had heard what Mrs Briggs had said but she couldn’t take it in. It seemed too good to be true. Aware that the little woman was waiting for a response, she managed to stutter, ‘I . . . I don’t know how to thank you, Mrs Briggs. I . . . It’s wonderful. I’ll do anything you want.’

  ‘I shan’t ask you to do anything I wouldn’t do myself.’ Mrs Briggs’s voice was brisk now. In truth she was wondering what she had let herself in for. The girl looked as though a breath of wind would blow her away. ‘But it’s no picnic, I tell you that now. You’ll be on your feet all day long and then there’s the food to prepare for the next day once we close and have cleaned up.You’ll be at it six days a week full gallop.’

  ‘I’ve worked in a café before.’ Amy tried to pull herself together and give the proprietress some confidence in her new employee’s capabilities. ‘And a restaurant.’

  ‘Have you now? Serving?’

  ‘As a waitress, yes, but we’d help out in the kitchen on occasion. Not often, though. But I’m a quick learner and I like cooking.’

  Slightly reassured, Mrs Briggs said, ‘Well, you know the sort of food I serve: good, plain and wholesome. None of the fancy rubbish you get up in the West End. Everything’s homemade; I bake my own bread, make my own pickle and relishes, everything. Cheap and filling, that’s what I’ve built my reputation on.’

  She stood up as she spoke and Amy, anxious to set the seal on the offer, said, ‘When would you like me to start, Mrs Briggs?’

 
; ‘Well, another pair of hands never goes amiss here. How about tomorrow morning? I open at six thirty to catch the factory staff who want a bit of a fry-up afore they start work but you needn’t come in till eight. There’s always a pile of washing up feet high by then.’

  ‘I’ll come at six thirty if you want me to.’

  Their eyes met and Mrs Briggs smiled. ‘Yes, all right then.’ She cocked her head to one side, for all the world like a bright-eyed robin. ‘I think you might just do, dearie,’ she said approvingly, ‘but we’ll see how we get on, eh?’

  The two of them got on very well. Admittedly for the first little while Amy arrived back at the guest house so exhausted she could barely undress before falling into bed. At five thirty in the morning, when she dragged her protesting body out from under the warm covers, she wondered how she would get through another day without falling asleep on her feet. But after a quick wash she dressed and did her hair and by then she felt more like herself.

  She always made a point of arriving at the café a few minutes before half past six, and she didn’t depart in the evening until a few minutes after eight o’clock, when it closed. Mrs Briggs had told her she could leave earlier while she was still waiting for Polly’s room, but Amy had decided to start as she meant to carry on. Besides which, and she didn’t feel she could explain this to her employer even though they were fast becoming friends, she welcomed the fact that she was too tired to think once she got back to her lonely little room. Her sleep was deep and dreamless these days and she was grateful for it.

  When Polly married her fiancé in the middle of August, the radio and papers were full of the news that Britain was increasing her defence spending to counter the threat from Hitler and his Nazi party, but the looming prospect of war passed Amy by. She was learning to cope with the present again; the future could take care of itself.

  Amy moved into the flat above the café the morning after Winnie Briggs’s daughter left. Her room was spacious; it contained a wardrobe, dressing table and three-quarter-size bed along with an armchair. It was light and cheerful, as were the small lounge and Winnie’s bedroom, and it boasted a bathroom complete with privy. Downstairs most of the area was taken up by the café, with a relatively small kitchen and scullery tucked away at the back of the building. This was where all the food for both the café and their own needs was prepared and cooked.

  From the moment Amy took up residence in the flat and hung her mother’s picture on the wall in her bedroom where it was the first thing she saw every morning, she felt settled. The workload was even heavier but being on the premises made all the difference and she enjoyed Winnie’s company in the evenings. The small woman was a natural comic who loved an audience, but she was motherly too. She fussed over Amy, making her eat more, and slowly Amy regained the weight she’d lost, the once vivid scar on her stomach beginning to fade to the silvery hue the doctor had mentioned.

  The scars in her mind were a different matter; these would stand no probing. For this reason Amy did not allow herself to think of the past at all. If she ever let her guard slip, the feelings of bitterness and anger were as raw as they’d been when she left the north, and then she was all at sea again. Consequently she trained herself to keep the door in her mind permanently closed.

  The grief for her baby and the loss of her grandma she couldn’t shut out, but these were separate emotions and distinct from the disillusionment and fury she felt over Charles and the devastating circumstances he’d had a hand in.

  Deep down in the layers of Amy’s mind was the knowledge she would have to contact her husband’s solicitors eventually. For the moment she told herself she couldn’t afford to engage a solicitor and in this way she put it out of her mind.

  One day she would deal with the past. One day she would contact Kitty and Bruce, take up the threads again. One day she would re-examine everything and perhaps it wouldn’t hurt so much. One day. But not yet.

  PART SIX

  1941 Air Force Blue

  Chapter 16

  ‘So, you all think you’ve got what it takes to be part of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, do you?’

  Amy didn’t make the mistake of speaking or glancing round the bus at any of the other WAAF recruits as the corporal who had been sitting beside the driver got to her feet. It was obvious the question was rhetorical.

  ‘Myself I doubt it.’ A pair of eagle eyes swept over the bus’s occupants. ‘But time will tell. You might not be aware of it now but when you volunteered it wasn’t for a glamorous life of chatting up handsome young airmen. You are coming onto a training camp and be trained you will, like it or not.’

  It sounded more like a threat than an encouragement.The young girl sitting beside Amy in the bus which had been waiting for the WAAF rookies at the railway station gulped audibly. Amy didn’t dare say anything to try and reassure her, not with the corporal still eyeing them.

  ‘You won’t like the food, you won’t like your barracks, you won’t like the drill instructors and you sure as eggs won’t like your service undies, but I’ve heard all the gripes before and then some, so save your breath. Do we understand each other?’

  A bus full of black, brown, red and blonde heads nodded in unison.

  ‘Good.’ The corporal allowed herself a grim smile. ‘Welcome to your temporary home in the back of beyond, girls.’

  The back of beyond was right. As the corporal carried on speaking, Amy glanced out of the window at the snowy fields stretching either side of the narrow lane down which they were travelling. When she’d volunteered for the WAAFs she had expected to be detailed to one of the camps in or around London for her basic training, not one on the outskirts of Hull. The intensive bombing of recent months and the increasing intake of WAAF recruits had meant volunteers were sent to wherever beds were available, and she had landed up much further north than she would have liked. Not that it really mattered, she told herself in the next moment. She had joined up to do her bit and Britain winning the war against the Germans was the important thing, not personal issues. The last eighteen months had all been leading up to this and even now it seemed incredible how life had changed so drastically.

  As the corporal talked on, Amy let her mind drift back to the moment when the reassuringly predictable life she’d led since moving in with Winnie had been shaken. Winnie’s Sunday roast had just begun to sizzle in the oven downstairs when they had heard Neville Chamberlain’s announcement that Britain was at war with Germany.They had stared at the wireless and then each other, the bright September sunshine outside the flat’s window out of keeping with the sombre news.

  The first war measure had been the introduction of a blackout which was rigidly enforced by a civilian army of ARP wardens, and Winnie had immediately made an enemy of the warden detailed to their area, referring to him as little Hitler. Amy smiled to herself. Dear Winnie, she was going to miss her and her fights with the warden. Even now she could picture Winnie’s gleeful face when a few months after the war had started, the newspapers had reported that more than four thousand people had died in blackout accidents, compared to three members of the British Expeditionary Force being killed in action. Winnie had cut out the article and waved it under the warden’s nose every day for a week until the poor man had threatened to get the law on her. Then had followed Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain, and suddenly the inconveniences of the blackout and rationing didn’t seem worth complaining about beside the constant fear of invasion or aerial attack.

  Amy’s eyes were on the bleak snow-swept scene outside the window but she wasn’t seeing it. She was back with Winnie on a gorgeous September afternoon the year before. There had been just a few fleecy clouds in the sky and the streets around the café had been full of Londoners enjoying the last of the summer’s sunshine, which had been good for business.

  The café had been full and she had been humming to herself when she and Winnie, along with their customers, had been drawn out onto the street by the sudden explosion of folk shouting and
pointing up into the sky. She would never forget the chill she had felt as she’d stood there with the sun blazing down. A great flotilla in V formation had gradually spread across the blue like a black rash, the scream of bombs following. The Blitz, that’s what the newspapers called it. And the planes had come every day from then on, over and over. How she hated them.

  The bus jerked over a pothole in the rough road and everyone rose an inch or two before settling in their seats again.

  That’s why she was here really, Amy thought, as she looked round the bus. That’s why she’d decided on the WAAF. She wanted to help Britain’s airmen fight the Luftwaffe, annihilate them as they had tried to annihilate everyone in London in those awful raids. The one at the end of December had cemented her decision to join up as soon as Winnie could get someone to help her in the café.

  The Luftwaffe had known the Thames was at its lowest ebb tide that Sunday night, and they had purposely sent high-explosive parachute mines to sever the water mains at the beginning of their raid. The thousands of firebombs they’d dropped on the city had turned it into an inferno and even now Amy could hardly bear to think of how many friends and neighbours had been killed. One of Winnie’s sons and his wife and three children had been crushed to death as they had hurried to the nearest Underground station. A wall had fallen on them. Polly had been killed when her Anderson shelter had received a direct hit. Her husband had been fire-watching at the time and had come home to no wife and no home.