A Nest of Singing Birds

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

  He was a gentle lover and for Anne it was all strange and wonderful. ‘I didn’t know it’d be like that,’ she said, as she lay in his arms. ‘I enjoyed it.’

  ‘Don’t sound so surprised,’ he teased her, kissing the tip of her nose. ‘You’re supposed to.’

  ‘Not from what I’ve heard,’ she said and John asked in surprise, ‘Why? What have you heard – and where, for that matter?’

  ‘At work,’ she said. ‘I didn’t understand half some of the women said but they gave the impression they didn’t like it. You remember Penny I told you about? She wasn’t married but went with a chap after a big dance and Ruby said, “What did you think, chuck?” Penny just said, “Frankly, I think it’s very overrated.”’

  John threw back his head and laughed and Anne laughed with him. ‘Very overrated,’ he kept saying and soon they were laughing so much that they had to put their heads beneath the blankets to stifle the noise, in case the farmer and his wife wondered at their hilarity.

  When they returned to Liverpool Joe, Eileen and Stephen, and John’s brother Mick, had already gone back but at a family gathering John was soon involved in an argument.

  Bombers were still going over Germany and he argued that it was indefensible to bomb cities where women and children could be killed. After the recent events in Liverpool few people agreed with him and Kate said pertly, ‘Our John’s always out of step with everyone else.’

  ‘So was his grandfather,’ Sally Ward said. ‘And he was usually proved right in the end.’

  Anne smiled at her gratefully.

  * * *

  It seemed that although sheer determination had kept Julia alive until the wedding, suddenly she could fight no longer. The tearing pain returned and the doctor prescribed large doses of morphia which he had kept for this time.

  For the last few days of her life Julia lay in a drugged sleep, free from pain and still managing a faint smile for Pat as he hung over her, gripping her hand. As quietly and uncomplainingly as she had lived she slipped away in her sleep at two o’clock in the morning of 21 October.

  Pat Fitzgerald was devastated. ‘What’ll we do without her?’ he asked pitifully and repeated it to all those who came to offer sympathy. Sally Ward was better able to comfort him than anyone else, yet it seemed to the family that she did little but simply hold his hand. From her he seemed to draw sufficient strength to get through the days until the simple funeral was over. Tony attended to all the arrangements and Maureen wrote to Terry with the sad news. Joe and Eileen were given short compassionate leave and Stephen came home for the funeral.

  The family drew together to help each other and most of them had additional sources of comfort. Sarah seemed to be closer to Maureen at this time than to Anne, as she and Maureen could speak freely to each other about the love they had to conceal from others. Maureen could see Chris more often now. He was living alone as Beryl was now in a private nursing home in Llandudno and Maureen was working in the Co-operative Stores.

  ‘I feel closer to Chris, doing the sort of work he used to do,’ she said to Sarah. Anne seemed uneasy now with Sarah, anxious not to show her happiness with John too clearly while there seemed no prospect of the end of the war and Terry’s return. Sarah too was uneasy about concealing her love for Joe.

  Anne was more comfortable with the married women she worked with, many of them with husbands in the Forces and with the same problems and hopes as herself.

  John had been moved to Norfolk and promoted to corporal and he wrote to Anne nearly every day, loving letters which helped to make her grief for her mother more bearable.

  All the family found their grief for Julia hard to bear and to see how their father suffered grieved them still more. Only when Helen and Tony told him that Helen expected a baby before Christmas did he seem to come out of his stupor of misery.

  Later Helen told Maureen that they had intended to wait until nearer the time to announce their news but that seemed the right moment. ‘We were only being cautious anyway, thinking of waiting to tell people, but everything seems to be going smoothly this time.’

  * * *

  In May Maureen registered for war work and was directed to a clerical job in an office near Sarah’s. Her left elbow was still stiff since her injury in the air raid and she failed a medical for heavier work.

  Joe wrote nearly every day to Sarah, enclosing the letters in an envelope addressed to Maureen, and now it was easy for her to deliver them.

  John was due for leave in June and Maureen suggested that Anne and John should make two rooms in the Fitzgerald house into a flat. Pat had agreed and Anne and John spent a blissful leave fitting it up as their first home. Pat told them to take what they liked and Carrie gave them linen and other items which were now impossible to buy.

  In November church bells were rung to celebrate the victory at El Alamein and everyone felt that at last the war might be near the end, although Churchill told them they were wrong.

  ‘It is not the end, not even the beginning of the end,’ he warned. ‘It is the end of the beginning.’

  ‘The old misery!’ Anne said indignantly to Sarah when they met. ‘He’s worse than Lord Haw Haw.’

  Sarah smiled. ‘Yes, but Winnie does tell us the truth, doesn’t he, even if we don’t like it? I’m not going to worry, though. Anything can happen, can’t it? No one really knows for sure.’

  Anne was glad that Sarah could be so philosophical about the war. She felt that she was longing more than ever for it to end so that she and John could spend all their time together. She spoke about it to Helen, who said gently, ‘It’s a shame, Anne. You and Sarah are missing so much. I feel almost ashamed that Tony and I are so lucky. Not just that he’s home with me but we had our courting days and you and Sarah missed even those. It doesn’t seem fair.’

  Later Anne thought about Helen’s words and began to feel angry with John. Sarah and Terry had no alternative but she and John could have had months of courtship before he went away if it had not been for his stubbornness.

  I should have been consulted because it affected me too, she thought, and wrote a terse letter to him. She read it through the following morning and decided not to send it, but a small niggle of grievance stayed in her mind.

  On 15 December Helen’s baby, a tiny perfect girl, was bom, but her labour was long and difficult and she was very ill for a few days after it. Now that Anne was a married woman Carrie spoke more freely to her and told Anne that the midwife was to blame.

  ‘She should never have suffered like that,’ Carrie said. ‘That flaming midwife hates calling the doctor in but Helen needed him long before he came.’

  By Christmas Helen was well again and the baby, Moira, was a delight to her proud parents and to all the family, especially her grandfather. In January Joe came home on embarkation leave and was more free to see Sarah because his father was so engrossed in the baby.

  Joe was still careful to keep their meetings secret lest some kind friend wrote about them to Terry, but Maureen and Sarah’s father made the meetings easier for them. Sarah had a few days’ leave while Joe was home and Maureen suggested, while Anne and her father were present, that Joe took Sarah out sometimes.

  ‘Aye, she doesn’t have much fun, poor lass,’ said Pat, ‘with our Terry so far away.’ Joe coloured and felt guilty at deceiving the family but no one seemed to see anything strange in the arrangement.

  In March Joe wrote from North Africa where the Irish Guards were engaged in heavy fighting, but he seemed cheerful and hopeful that the end of the war was coming closer.

  Anne was afraid that John would soon be sent abroad but the months went by and he was still in England. When the campaign in North Africa ended in success for the Allies in May everyone expected Joe to come home, but his company went straight to Italy. He wrote that it was not as he had pictured it as the weather was bitterly cold and wet with some snow. To Sarah he wrote that he would take her to Italy some day when the sun was shining.

  Late
in January news bulletins mentioned the Anzio landing in which they knew the Irish Guards were taking part and in February the dreaded news came that Joe had been wounded. No details were given, except that he was now in hospital in Naples.

  Pat had left for work when the news came and Anne and Maureen decided to telephone Tony at the factory. He was calm and decisive. ‘Don’t start guessing about Joe’s injuries,’ he said. ‘It could be something quite slight and they’d still let us know officially. I don’t think we should say anything to Stephen or Eileen or of course Terry until we know more. I’ll tell Dad though because he has a right to know.’

  ‘Thank God for Tony,’ Anne said. They decided that they should go to work as no more news could be expected yet and Maureen hurried first to see Sarah.

  They clung together in the waiting room outside Sarah’s office and Maureen told her what Tony had said. ‘I can’t help thinking though – as long as it’s not his eyes, Sar.’

  ‘Or a very bad wound,’ Sarah said fearfully.

  Two days later the family received a letter from Joe written in a field dressing station before he was taken by boat to Naples.

  Sarah told Maureen that she had received one by the same post. He wrote that he was only slightly wounded in the left arm and leg and was scribbling this note in case some officious nerk notified them.

  Suddenly it seemed that all the news was good. The German Army was in retreat in Russia and the Italian campaign was over. Joe recovered enough to rejoin his battalion and sailed for home on 7 March.

  He was given leave almost immediately. Very few of the battalion returned home as their losses had been so heavy and Joe told the family he was now in a holding battalion. ‘Mainly cooks and cripples,’ he said cheerfully and the family hoped that this would mean that he stayed in England, but when he returned to London after his leave the battalion was made up to strength and moved to Howick in Scotland.

  ‘I think they’re getting ready for the Second Front,’ Sarah told Maureen, ‘although Joe didn’t say so.’

  All the talk now was of the Second Front and everyone thought that the Army would have to land in France to finish off the war. ‘It won’t be like Dunkirk this time,’ Mr Redmond said to Anne when he saw her worried expression. ‘We are well prepared this time and Hitler is much weaker.’ She smiled at him gratefully.

  Sarah had told her that John had always argued with his father and defied him and she wondered why he could ever have behaved like that with this gentle man. Greg Redmond was a quiet diffident type, tall with grey eyes and dark hair like John, and Anne felt liking and respect for him.

  She could see that, although never aggressive, he was the strong rock on which his family relied. Much stronger than John for all his carry on, she thought, and then was shocked by her disloyal thought. It’s because of that talk with Helen, she mused, and decided that she must tell John about her grievance when he came home.

  Mick Redmond had finished a tour of operations and was on leave when John came on leave so the brothers were able to spend some time together for the first time for years.

  John told Anne that this was embarkation leave and he would soon be going to France but warned her not to mention it to anyone. ‘Careless talk costs lives,’ he joked. He had been promoted to sergeant and sometimes spoke very masterfully to Anne until she reminded him, half in fun and half in earnest, that she was not one of his soldiers.

  In spite of these small brushes, they spent a very happy leave, planning all that they would do when peace came and making love passionately every night.

  Kate Redmond was now engaged to a quiet American, Gene Romero, and he had been moved to the South Coast in readiness for the invasion. Soon after John’s return from leave he was moved to Eastbourne.

  In June the Second Front began and John was in the first wave of troops to cross the Channel. Gene landed a few days later and in July Joe went out with reinforcements.

  Just before John left England, the doctor had confirmed that Anne was pregnant and that the baby would be bom in January. ‘I’m not surprised, are you, love?’ John wrote. ‘After that wonderful leave. I’m absolutely walking on air.’

  Anne was excited and happy about the baby but she began to worry that John might be killed before the child was bom. Maureen scolded her gently. ‘This is not like you, Anne,’ she said. ‘Looking on the black side. You usually expect everything to go well.’

  ‘Because it always has for me,’ she said. ‘Except for losing Mum I’ve always been lucky but it’s bound to change sometime.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Maureen said. ‘These are just baby nerves, love. John will be fine, you’ll see.’

  Anne hugged her sister and smiled again. ‘What would I do without you, Mo?’ she said. ‘It’s just that the news is like a seesaw. One night they say everything is going well and the next that the troops are boxed in somewhere.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure we’re near the end now,’ Maureen comforted her.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  In August Eileen wrote to Maureen that she had met a marvellous man. ‘His name is Robert White, always known as Whitey. He’s six foot two, blue eyes and curly hair and all the girls are mad jealous because we’ve fallen for each other. I sound like a soppy young kid, don’t I? But honestly, Mo, if you saw him even you would fall for him. He’s like a film star only nicer. He’s just joined the squadron but he’s been flying for two years.’

  ‘Gosh, she has got it bad,’ Anne said when Maureen showed her the letter.

  ‘Yes, even I would fall for him,’ Maureen said. Something in her voice made Anne look searchingly at her and after a moment she folded the letter and took her sister’s hand.

  ‘I’m very selfish,’ she said. ‘Always wrapped up in my own concerns. I never ask about yours. That friend from the Fire Service you visited, Mo? What happened to him?’

  Maureen shrugged. ‘He got better – went back to the Fire Service,’ she said, but Eileen’s innocent remark seemed to have touched some nerve which made her say bitterly, ‘He went back to scrimping and saving to keep his horrible wife in comfort in a nursing home. Had to give up his house and live in one room and starve himself.’

  Anne squeezed her hand. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Chris. Chris Murray. He used to work in Lipton’s near the wool shop.’

  Anne was silent for a moment as she realised the implications. So Maureen had known him all that time. Aloud she said quietly, ‘And where’s his room, Mo?’

  ‘In a tatty house off Prescot Street,’ Maureen said bitterly. ‘It’s damp and miserable but it’s cheap.’

  ‘It’s a pity Margaret decided to stay in the country,’ Anne said. ‘He could have had a room next door.’ Then she suddenly jumped up. ‘Mo, why don’t you ask him to stay here? There’s plenty of room.’

  ‘But – what would people say?’ Maureen said, looking bewildered.

  ‘Who cares?’ said Anne. ‘There’s only Dad who matters and I’m sure he’d agree. He’s out a lot anyway at Tony’s or Aunt Carrie’s. The rest of us’ll just be glad you’ve got company. Ask Dad when he comes in and then fix it up.’

  With Anne, to think was to act and when her father appeared a few minutes later she said immediately, ‘Dad, Maureen has a friend who’s had to give up his house and live in a crummy room. I’ve suggested he lives here. What do you think?’

  ‘Whatever you like, girls,’ said Pat. ‘Any tea in the pot?’ Anne was reminded of the day that John asked her father’s permission for their engagement and his calm response then.

  Although still doubtful of the wisdom of asking Chris to live in the house, Maureen suggested the move to him. She was not really surprised when he refused. ‘No, we’ve got to think of your good name, Maureen,’ he said. ‘It was kind of Anne to think of it and not condemn us, but – well, we’ve managed so far being discreet about it, and I don’t think we should change things now.’

  ‘I was doubtful myself,’ Maureen admitted
, ‘but I hate to think of you in that awful room. And Anne – she’s so impulsive. She asked Dad right away.’

  ‘I’m surprised he agreed so easily,’ said Chris.

  ‘I think Mum really made all the decisions,’ Maureen said. ‘Dad was only concerned about how things affected her and now he doesn’t really care.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that room, Mo,’ said Chris. ‘I’ve heard of a better one in Hall Road, just as cheap.’

  Maureen told Joe about it when she wrote and he wrote back that he agreed with Chris. ‘I know people have a different attitude to things now than we had before the war but you and Chris are still the same sort of people. I think he realises that living in the same house would be very hard for both of you and might lead to something that would worry your tender conscience no end.

  ‘I’m glad though that Anne knows how things stand. She won’t talk about it to anyone but I’m sure she’ll find ways of making things easier for you, Mo.’

  Anne was disappointed that her plan was dismissed but suggested inviting Chris for meals. Mrs Redmond often gave her food from the parcels she received from her sister in America and the parcels sent by Gene’s family, and she produced a tinned ham and a tin of peaches for the meal.

  Helen and Tony came bringing two plate tarts made by Helen and all the attention was focussed on Moira, giving Chris time to overcome his nervousness, helped by Helen’s tact.

  After the meal they went into the parlour where Anne had lit the fire. ‘We used to have great parties here before the war,’ Tony said. ‘When we were all kids the man who used to teach Joe the violin said we were like a nest of singing birds. How about a song now, Dad?’

  ‘No, not me,’ said Pat, shaking his head and Maureen said quickly, ‘I’ll try to accompany you if you’ll sing, Tony, although I’m not as good as Eileen.’