A Nest of Singing Birds

by A Nest of Singing Birds (retail) (epub)

  ‘They’d have to come through Liverpool and they wouldn’t get very far, I can tell you. I’d batter any German who came down our street and all me neighbours say the same.’

  Other women joined in saying, some in detail, what they would do to the German soldiers and one woman, generally considered to be a part-time prostitute, boasted that she could see off any German.

  ‘What would you do, girl, give them VD?’ Queenie said and there was a general laugh. Anne was unaware what was meant by VD until Penny enlightened her.

  John told her that Mick, who had finished his examinations for Higher School Certificate, had been called up for the Royal Air Force. ‘He says it’s because he volunteered when he was too young and now he’s been pestering them, but I’ve been pestering all three services and got nowhere.’

  ‘It’s a pity you can’t pull strings,’ Anne said. ‘A fellow at work said the class system here is as bad as the caste system in India.’

  ‘Yes, and at the moment I’m an Untouchable,’ said John. ‘Some fellows I knew in Spain see this as a capitalist war and don’t want to fight. I don’t believe in war myself unless everything else fails but I want to fight now, Anne. England’s my country and I want to fight for it.’

  ‘You might get your chance if the Germans come here,’ she said.

  ‘“If the mountain won’t come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain”,’ said John, laughing heartily. ‘I’ll just have to keep pestering and hope for the best.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The eighteenth of July 1940 arrived and passed without any sign of the invasion threatened by Hitler. There were several air raid warnings in late July but little damage.

  In August Maureen’s friend Mary Mullen was married and a girl who worked with Anne was married on the same day. All the talk of weddings made Anne feel downhearted and impatient with the secrecy that John insisted on.

  When would they ever marry? she wondered. When would they even be known as a courting couple? She knew that John truly believed that he was protecting her by keeping their love secret, but she was becoming frustrated and annoyed about the situation.

  She went to watch Mary Mullen’s wedding on Saturday as Maureen expected her to be interested, but the sight of their happiness made Anne feel even more miserable.

  She felt even worse when she saw Stephen’s girlfriend in church, flourishing the engagement ring she had persuaded him to give her before he left to organise a factory in Newcastle for his firm.

  Anne tried to appear cheerful when she said goodnight to her mother but she was glad to go to bed to try to sort out her thoughts. She tried to decide whether she should swallow her pride and tell John how she felt or whether to just go on and hope for the best.

  She slept badly and felt tired and depressed all day on Sunday even though she saw John briefly late in the evening. She was working on the two o’clock to ten o’clock shift at the factory and on the Tuesday morning was up early to do some ironing, then she began to prepare the midday meal for herself and her mother and father and Aunt Carrie who was visiting them.

  She went listlessly to answer a knock on the door and was amazed to see John there and to be swept into his arms. ‘They’ve come, love,’ he said jubilantly. ‘Two letters. One from the ordnance factory and one from the Army. Both on the same day. Isn’t that typical?’

  ‘What – what will you do?’ Anne stammered. ‘Which—?’

  ‘Oh, the army. I’m sure they have priority and it’s what I want anyway. I’ll have to notify the factory,’ John said excitedly. ‘Oh, Anne, I feel free now, free to ask you to marry me. Will you, Anne, will you marry me, love?’

  ‘Yes, I will,’ she said quietly and John held her even closer and kissed her passionately.

  ‘Gosh, I feel so happy,’ he said. ‘I love you, Anne. I’ve waited so long for this.’

  It’s too much, too much, she thought, pressing her face against John’s. The change from misery to this singing happiness was almost more than she could bear.

  ‘Can we get engaged then?’ he was asking and she nodded, unable to speak.

  ‘Can we go right away now for the ring?’ he said, but there was a sound upstairs and Anne lifted her head.

  ‘Dad’s home for his dinner. You’ll have to ask him,’ she said, looking at him with delight.

  Pat Fitzgerald appeared and began to walk down the stairs and John met him halfway down. ‘I’ve got my papers for the Army, Mr Fitz. Can Anne and I get married?’ he said eagerly. ‘Can we get engaged today?’

  ‘Aye, if you want to, lad,’ Pat said, his calmness such a contrast to John’s excitement that Anne began to laugh. She felt as though she was floating on air.

  They went into the kitchen and John said to Julia, ‘I’ve asked Anne to marry me. Will you give us your blessing, Mrs Fitz?’

  ‘Indeed I will and gladly,’ she said. ‘Sure I couldn’t wish for a better husband for her.’ John bent and kissed her and Carrie kissed and congratulated Anne, saying, ‘You never know the minute!’

  ‘There’s nothing sudden about it,’ John said. ‘I’ve been getting a lot of flak about fighting in Spain and I didn’t want Anne to get any. We’ve been in love for a long time – well, I have anyway.’

  ‘And so have I,’ she said.

  ‘I suppose that’s why the other lads got the brush-off then?’ Carrie said, laughing, and Julia smiled at them.

  ‘Ah, yes. Anne was a good child but terrible stubborn. If she once got an idea in her head you’d never move it,’ she said. ‘The blessing of God on you both anyway.’

  Anne and John went immediately into town and chose a three-stone diamond engagement ring, then went to see John’s mother and grandmother who were delighted at their news. Anne had to leave for work for two o’clock but she proudly displayed her ring to her friends and they all sincerely wished her happiness.

  Anne managed to change to the early shift, six until two o’clock, so she had the rest of the day and evening to spend with John. He was due to report a week later but he left work immediately and they spent every possible moment together.

  John told Anne something of the abuse he had suffered.

  ‘It wasn’t just the fellows at work, although they were the worst, but the word had gone round. I was refused for the Rescue Service, you know.’

  ‘But why, John?’

  ‘Because they’re fools,’ he said. ‘Some of them are so thick they thought I was fighting against England in Spain.’ He laughed ruefully. ‘And of course I always had to argue instead and make things worse.’

  ‘Never mind. It’s all over now,’ she said. She wondered why John had not been more open with her but now she felt that she understood his situation better and they spent a blissful week together before he left.

  The air raids were becoming heavier and more frequent. Eileen came on leave on 28 August and it was fortunate that she was with her mother. There was the heaviest raid so far, lasting four hours. Anne was on night shift, Maureen was now driving an ambulance at night and Pat was using his skill as a builder to rescue people from bombed houses.

  Mill Road Hospital was one of the many places hit and Maureen was injured there, fortunately only slightly, and taken to another hospital. Later Sarah and her mother came to see Julia and she told them that Joe was at Dover and Anne had written to reassure him about them.

  ‘He’s worried about us,’ she said. ‘Lord Haw Haw said nearly everyone in Liverpool was dead and the few left were starving. Not that anyone believes that man.’

  ‘He’s a fool,’ Mrs Redmond said. ‘I believe he said weeks ago that Hitler would be in Buckingham Palace and he’d be in Knowsley Hall. I hope it keeps fine for them.’

  ‘Joe won’t hear anything from the BBC News,’ Anne said. ‘Everyone gets annoyed at work because there’s always a lot about the raids on London but when Liverpool gets it they say “the North West”.’

  ‘Isn’t that a good thing for people far from home, love?’ Mrs
Fitzgerald said in her gentle voice and Anne smiled and agreed.

  Sarah had told Anne that her grandmother’s lodger Josh Adamson had died of a heart attack at the start of the raid, but they said nothing of this to Julia nor of the casualty lists which were posted up containing many names of people they knew.

  Maureen soon recovered and returned home and letters came from Terry who seemed less downhearted than they expected. Stephen and Claire had become engaged before he went to Newcastle, but the engagement was short-lived.

  All the family felt that Stephen had been hustled into the engagement by Claire, who was a hard, devious girl, and were relieved when it was broken when he returned from Newcastle.

  Helen and Tony had been delighted when Helen became pregnant, but she had suffered a miscarriage in June and although always hopeful, had not become pregnant again. ‘Perhaps it was all for the best you lost the baby, Helen,’ her mother said when Helen went to visit her. ‘But I don’t think you should stay in Liverpool, with or without a baby.’

  Helen pressed her lips together for a moment then said quietly, ‘My place is with Tony, Mother,’ and left as soon as she could. The feeling of comradeship now in Liverpool, the feeling that everyone was in it together and helping each other, was something that her mother would never understand, she felt, nor her grief for the baby.

  The raids were increasing in number and volume. Maureen had returned to the wool shop and told Anne that her customer who knew the O’Neills had said that Kathleen had been injured on her head and shoulder by shrapnel and been taken to hospital in Winwick several miles outside Liverpool.

  ‘What about her mother and Cormac?’ Anne asked, but Maureen said she thought Kathleen had been hit returning from work.

  Anne felt guilty that she had not attempted to see Kathleen after Ella’s injury. I was daft to think that was Cormac’s doing, she thought, but it was partly the reason why she had not tried to see her friend.

  ‘Are they sure it was shrapnel?’ she asked Maureen who looked surprised. ‘Of course. I was nearly hit by some myself one night.’ And Anne felt foolish.

  In October and November the raids were taking place nearly every night, but in spite of the disturbed nights almost everyone turned up for work next day.

  ‘It’s worse than having a teething baby,’ Ruby grumbled. ‘I’m up and down the stairs and in and out of the bloody shelter like a hen on a hot griddle. I think I’ll stop going to the shelter. After all, if it’s got your name on it you’ll get it anyway.’

  After the night of 28 November even Ruby changed her mind. She had gone into a street shelter soon after the raid started at seven o’clock and incendiaries, heavy bombs and parachute mines had fallen on the city and suburbs.

  The street shelter had been hit and Ruby had been dug out to see a crater where her house had been and fires burning fiercely everywhere she looked.

  ‘It was like them pictures of hell we used to get in Sunday school,’ she told the other women when she returned to work two days later. She wore a large dressing over one eye and her hands were daubed with gentian violet but she insisted that she had been lucky.

  ‘Nineteen people in our street killed and them poor souls in Durning Road School. Three hundred, I got told.’

  A parachute mine had fallen on the shelter beneath the school and various figures were given for the number killed there. In addition to those who usually sheltered there were the passengers from two tramcars and people from a shelter that had already been hit.

  It was the worst raid so far but Maureen who had not yet returned to driving was with her mother in the shelter and Anne, who finished work at ten o’clock, had reached home, dodging from shelter to shelter.

  Wardens had yelled at her, she had stumbled over rubble and hosepipes, her path lit by the glare of hundreds of fires, she had been terrified by the throbbing of the engines of the bombers overhead and the crump of bombs, but she had run on. She felt sure that one of those burning houses was her own and fear for her mother drove her on.

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ she said, stumbling down the cellar steps and falling to her knees beside her mother. ‘I thought our house had been hit.’

  ‘We’re quite safe, Anne,’ Maureen said, looking at her warningly. ‘Dad reinforced all this cellar.’

  ‘Indeed you wouldn’t find better anywhere,’ said Mrs Bennet who had joined them in the cellar with her daughter. ‘Even a flush WC in the old washhouse an ’all. He done a good job.’

  Julia lay on her bed smiling at them, seeming unconcerned about the tumult outside, with her rosary beads slipping through her fingers. But she welcomed Pat with tears of relief when he returned home after the eight-hour raid.

  ‘How was it, Dad?’ Anne whispered as she took his dust-covered clothes to shake in the yard.

  ‘Awful, girl, awful,’ he said. ‘But we tunnelled through and got two little kids out alive. Saved by a piano falling and holding up a beam, thank God.’

  * * *

  A few days later before Anne went to work her mother asked her to go for bread. Anne took a tea towel from the dresser drawer. She paused with it in her hand. How quickly what had seemed strange had become normal, she thought. Taking a cloth to wrap bread because of the shortage of paper and queuing for things bought so casually before the war, like hairgrips and torch batteries.

  Ruby had told of buying a pair of corsets and having to carry them along Church Street unwrapped. ‘I tried every way to hide them,’ she said. ‘In the end I held them against my side under my arm with the suspenders dangling down and some woman said, “Eh, girl them suspenders look as if you should be milking them.” And me thinking I was hiding them! I felt ashamed.’

  It was strange, too, Anne thought, that everyone got on with their normal lives, in spite of the constant raids and disturbed nights, and had become used to seeing servicemen in so many different uniforms thronging the streets and the cinemas, and in the public houses she was sure, although she had never been in one.

  She and Sarah had been to the cinema the previous night and when the air raid warning sounded some people had left but most stayed. She and Sarah had been sitting under the balcony and when the warning was given they moved forward but continued to enjoy the film in which John McCormack sang ‘Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms’ and ‘The Dawning of the Day’.

  When the All Clear was given they walked home, recalling the dances and parties at which those songs had been sung and Anne thought Sarah was near to tears. I suppose she’s thinking of Terry, she thought, and squeezed Sarah’s arm, although ‘Believe Me If All’ had been Joe’s favourite rather than Terry’s.

  Eileen came home on leave at Christmas and Stephen who had returned to Newcastle also came home. Their mother seemed to rally as she always did for her children but no matter how she tried to conceal it, it was clear to all of them that she was near the end of her strength.

  Maureen decided that while Eileen and Stephen were home, the family should decide whether to tell Terry how ill his mother was. Helen and Tony came and Sarah was asked to come to a family conference. The young people gathered in the parlour.

  For a few moments there was a general discussion then Tony turned to Sarah. ‘What do you think? Would it be better to warn Terry so it’s not too much of a shock to him if anything happens to Mum?’

  Everyone waited for her opinion but Sarah said hastily, ‘I don’t know. I think you all know him better than I do.’

  They all looked surprised but Helen said firmly, ‘It’s not fair to put the decision on Sarah. I think we should vote on it and ask Joe’s opinion too.’

  ‘I have written to Joe about it,’ Maureen said, ‘but there hasn’t been time for a reply yet.’

  Anne thought Helen was right and Maureen said that she had been told when in hospital that patients often had remission in the disease their mother suffered. ‘Sometimes months or even years when they’re not cured but don’t get any worse.’

  ‘And Terry wouldn’t believ
e it if we did warn him,’ Tony said. ‘He’d pretend it wasn’t happening and it would still be a shock to him.’

  They decided not to warn Terry when they wrote to him and later Tony said quietly to Sarah, ‘I wasn’t criticising Terry when I said that, Sar. It’s just the way he is.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ she said. ‘Anyway, we couldn’t decide without Joe.’

  ‘That’s true,’ he agreed, and Anne who had joined them said consolingly to Sarah, ‘Maybe the war will be over soon anyway and Terry will see Mum.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ she said and told them that her parents were furious because Josh, her grandmother’s lodger, had left all his money and possessions to Kate and not even mentioned her grandmother who had looked after him for years.

  ‘What does your grandma say?’ Anne asked.

  ‘She said she doesn’t want his money but she hopes it won’t be the ruination of Kate,’ said Sarah. ‘It’s about a thousand pounds.’

  ‘Whew,’ Anne said. ‘I wish someone would ruin me with that sort of money.’ Afterwards she felt that Sarah had deliberately steered the conversation away from Terry, and recalling her remark that they knew him better than she did, Anne felt uneasy without quite knowing why.

  Joe came on leave in January but Anne remembered little of it when he went back. She had been moved to a different room in the factory and was doing more intricate work which involved the use of a micrometer and much greater concentration.

  She was on day work now but working very long hours, often increased by overtime, and was very tired.

  The work was satisfying but Anne missed the friends she had made and the free and easy atmosphere of the large room and the jokes and the singing. Her present working environment was very quiet.

  She felt downhearted for another reason too. She had been unable to visit Kathleen O’Neill but had heard that she was still in hospital and receiving treatment for the wound on her head.