by Beezy Marsh
It was just a brisk ten-minute walk to their flat on Allison Road but with every passing week, Annie couldn’t help noticing how out of breath she was by the time she got there. She’d married Harry just before the war broke out, but she still got butterflies every time she put the key in the lock and pushed open the front door; this was their home, a place to call their own. They had the two downstairs rooms in an Edwardian terraced house, a kitchen and a bedroom. They didn’t have to share it with anyone else in their family, which round these parts was quite something. An elderly couple had the flat upstairs and they shared the outside lavvy with them, and the copper on washdays, but Annie didn’t mind that. In fact, she’d help them out by running their sheets through the mangle in the back yard when she could because old Mrs Hill’s legs gave her trouble getting up and down the rickety back stairs which led from the upstairs flat directly into the yard. It was the same with shopping: Annie would take Mrs Hill’s coupons down to the butcher’s and the grocer’s for her, as she was headed there anyway.
Harry had a good job, as an engineer calibrating and testing the pumps for diesel engines down at Charles Anthony Vandervell and Co, which was known locally as C.A.V., one of the big factories about half a mile away, down Acton Vale. That’s how they’d met, when she was working there as a machine hand four years ago. Annie hadn’t taken to him at first, because he was a union rep, a serious, quiet, political sort and a good eight years older than her, not to mention the fact that she was a Londoner and he was from Newcastle upon Tyne.
But beneath his gritty exterior lay a man whose twinkling grey eyes made her heart flip and whose sense of humour was enough to give them both a fit of the giggles over the silliest of things. He’d won her heart when he’d come to lodge with them for a time at Mum and Bill’s in Grove Road and the next thing she knew, she was walking up the aisle, sewing curtains and expecting the patter of tiny feet.
All the factories in Acton were given over to the war effort now, and C.A.V. was no exception. Harry worked his shifts there but fitted in his ARP volunteering around them too.
A lot of folk moaned about the blackout and the precautions and got a bit shirty with the wardens hammering on their front doors with orders to ‘put that light out!’ Some called it a ‘Phoney War’ because there was no sign of Herr Hitler trying to set foot in the country and they were getting sick and tired of lugging gas masks everywhere, bumbling around in the pitch black, going without and queuing for one of the grocer’s carefully measured twists of sugar in a little paper bag, a pat of butter or a sliver of meat from the butcher.
But Harry insisted it wasn’t a waste of time. ‘The Nazis won’t rest until we’re all speaking German, you mark my words,’ he’d bark at people who failed to observe the blackout. ‘Don’t make it easy for them by lighting the way to your home so they can drop bombs on it, you blethering idiots.’
Once she was inside the front door, Annie fumbled in the dark for the candle and the box of matches she left on the table in the hallway and lit it. It threw shadows up the stairwell, which was dingy at the best of times, painted a grim shade of mustard brown. She wandered down the passageway into the scullery at the back, checking the blackout curtain was still pinned firmly in place before lighting the gas lamp on the wall. There was enough milk for her to have some Ovaltine, which was a bit of a treat before bed. Easing off her shoes – which were pinching something terrible these days, with her feet swelling so much – she sat down at the table and rubbed some life back into her toes.
The wireless sat on a cabinet next to the stove. George had made the cabinet for her and Harry, as a wedding gift, before the nightmare had started, when people still hoped against hope that another generation of young men wouldn’t have to take up arms, as their fathers had done before them, in the Great War. The wireless had been his parting gift to her, his green eyes alive with the excitement of going off to serve his country, like so many other eager recruits around town.
He’d shown her how to work the radio, tinkering about with the dial as Harry sat in his favourite armchair rolling a smoke and smiling at them both.
‘You’ll be able to hear everything I get up to on this, Annie,’ he said, as she saw him, for the first time, not as her little brother, but a grown man; how very handsome he looked, with his new short back and sides, his uniform pressed to perfection by Mum and his shoes polished so you could almost see your face in them. Annie was proud but nervous too, because George had been so sick with TB when he was little, it had given them all a fright. She’d always be his big sister, she couldn’t help feeling that way, but she tried to push her protective instincts to one side now.
‘Well, you’d better behave yourself over in France, then, or the BBC will be putting out a special announcement and we will hear it all, right here in Acton!’ said Annie, poking him in the ribs.
It all seemed such a long time ago, but he’d only been gone a few months.
She heard a voice saying, ‘Oh, George . . .’ and then realized it was her own. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry. Not tonight. It wasn’t good for the baby, all this sadness, was it?
Annie stood up and put her hands on the small of her back, which had started to ache again. She’d made another promise, to Harry, that she wouldn’t listen to the news broadcast before bed, but as her fingers flicked the switch and she twisted the dial, hearing the familiar crackle of the airwaves, she knew she was powerless to resist.
There was something comforting about it, even though Harry said it was probably the worry keeping her awake at night rather than the baby, who had the sharpest elbows and a kick so strong, it was surely going to be a boy, and a footballer at that.
The announcer’s voice enveloped her with a kind of warmth as she shuffled over to the stove and lit the gas ring to heat the milk in the pan. She dried her eyes.
‘This is the BBC Home Service. Here is the midnight news and this is Alvar Lidell reading it . . .’
Harry was a lump in the bed beside her, snoring softly as dawn broke.
Annie felt the chill of the lino under her feet as she padded across the bedroom and down the hallway to the scullery to make herself a cuppa. She switched on the wireless again, just to pass the time until she could pop out to the shops and get something for Harry to eat. He was on a late shift at the factory today.
The kettle was just coming to the boil, the steam working itself up into a high-pitched whistle, when the pips went to mark the top of the hour. Annie stopped in her tracks.
‘Good morning, this is the BBC Home Service. German forces have invaded Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg by air and land. The invasion began at dawn with large numbers of aeroplanes attacking the main aerodromes and landing troops,’ the presenter announced. ‘British and French troops have moved across the Belgian frontier in response to appeals for reinforcements.
‘In London, it has been announced that Winston Churchill will lead a coalition government after Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said he was stepping aside . . .’
Annie opened her mouth to scream but no sound came out. She clutched her stomach and sat down, the screech of the kettle filling the kitchen. Harry blundered in, half asleep, grumbling, ‘You could wake the dead with that racket, our Annie. I was trying to get some kip.’
She didn’t budge.
In an instant, he read the fear in her eyes and sat down beside her, putting his arm protectively around her shoulders. ‘What’s wrong, pet?’
‘The news,’ she said. ‘The Germans have invaded Belgium and Holland.’ She burst into tears. ‘What if we’re next?’
‘Well,’ said Harry, giving her a little squeeze, his brow furrowing as he spoke. ‘You know, it happened before in the last war, when the Hun broke through our lines in one area, but we beat them back in the end. They will never win.’
They sat in silence for a moment.
Annie nodded as if she was calmed by his answer, but a niggling doubt was gnawing away at her. She didn’t want to sa
y it out loud, but what if Mum had been right last night? What about her brother, George?
2
Annie
Acton, May 1940
All the housewives seemed to take out their frustrations about being at war with a renewed fervour for cleaning, and Bessie was no exception.
She stood, feet firmly planted, beating the living daylights out of a rag rug on the line she’d strung up across the patch of earth she called a back garden.
‘Oh, I’d like to give that Mr Hitler what for, I would,’ she said, whacking it with fresh vigour, sending dust and dirt flying all over the place.
Annie nodded in agreement. Bessie had forearms like two giant hams from all the years she’d spent scrubbing at the washtubs in the laundries. There were so many laundries crammed into the little terraced streets of South Acton it had the nickname Soapsud Island and the area had been the lifeblood of Annie’s family for as long as she could remember. She had worked there as a laundry maid when she was young; her stepdad, Bill, had spent long years as a dollyman, heaving wet blankets out of the tubs; and her mum still took in ironing for the laundry bosses as a favour now and again, because she was such a skilled silk presser. The family had toiled long and hard at one of the small hand laundries, Hope Cottage, before it closed and then Mum went on to one of the new power laundries with all the steam irons and presses, which she still grumbled about for being ‘newfangled’. Her methods had been tried and tested for generations. She still preferred to use the heavy ‘sad’ irons which she warmed on the range before working them with almost lightning speed across crumpled garments and turning out clothes which would be fit to hang in a shop window.
Some of the Soapsud Island washerwomen were as tough as old boots and Bill said only last night that Churchill should have thought of sending an army of them over to bash the Germans. ‘They wouldn’t stand a chance against the likes of Bessie! They’d be better at fighting than the bloody Belgians.’ The mere thought of Bessie knocking Hitler and his cronies for six was enough to raise a smile, even if they were all still worried sick about what was happening to George.
All the talk was of how the Belgian army had surrendered and the whole town was picking over every little bit of news they could get about what was happening to our boys at the front. Everyone had a brother, husband or uncle fighting over there.
‘Now,’ said Bessie, ‘Let me get you that shawl I’ve been knitting for the baby. Not long to go now, Annie. You sure you ain’t carrying twins?’
Annie looked down at the bump in front of her. She hadn’t seen her toes since Easter and her belly was straining against the thin cotton of the maternity smock she’d made for herself.
‘Doctor says it’s just one, but I’ve got to go up to the hospital in Willesden Lane when the time comes to have it,’ said Annie.
‘What for?’ said Bessie. ‘You’re fit as a fiddle! I thought you’d be having it round your mum’s in Grove Road.’
It was a bit embarrassing really, but all Annie’s medical forms had the words ‘elderly mother’ written over them in red ink. She didn’t feel old, at thirty-five, but compared to the rest of the mums going for their check-ups at the mother and baby clinic in Gunnersbury Lane, she was positively ancient. She’d worked all the hours God sent in the laundry from the age of twelve and then she’d helped her mum raise her half-sisters, Elsie and Ivy, so there hadn’t been much time for romance until Harry walked into her life, when she – and everybody else – thought she’d been left on the shelf.
Annie felt herself colouring up.
‘Sorry, love,’ said Bessie, realizing she’d hit a raw nerve. ‘It’s none of my business. It’s just if you were my daughter, I’d want to be there with you, at home, where I could be with you all the way through, that’s all.’ She patted Annie on the shoulders. ‘Doctor knows best, though.’
Bessie had known her since she was a girl and was a bit like a second mum to her, so she hadn’t meant to upset her at all. She was always fussing around people she cared about because she’d lost her only son in the Great War.
‘Will it hurt when the baby comes, do you think?’ said Annie, almost in a whisper.
No one really talked about it, giving birth. People exchanged glances and gossiped in hushed tones about ‘women’s troubles’ after they’d had a baby, but no one really explained it, not even her friend Esther, who had three of her own.
‘It’s best not to focus on the pain of it,’ Bessie said. ‘It goes very quickly and then you forget it because you have a beautiful baby in your arms. Just ask your mum.’
Annie didn’t want to bother her mum with her fears about giving birth, not now, not when everyone was so worried about the threat of invasion that the whole country had been told to go to church at the weekend to pray for the troops abroad.
Bessie bustled Annie inside to her upstairs flat. She had a couple of rooms in one of the run-down terraces in Stirling Road. ‘You look like you could use a brew. It’s not good for a woman to be standing up too long in your condition.’ Annie knew that protesting was useless. Bessie in full flow was more forceful than one of Hitler’s tanks, which meant she probably had some titbit of gossip to share.
Soapsud Island was still home to Annie in a lot of ways. Her family had moved across the High Street, yes, but she’d never escape the feeling that this was where she really belonged, in the grimy streets where kids made their own fun with a tin can, or a plank and some old pram wheels, and everyone knew everybody else’s business. Grove Road was a bit posher and people were friendly but they were in and out of each other’s houses a lot less than people from Soapsud Island.
Some might think the way of life in Soapsud Island was nosy, but there were plenty of old folk left without family to care for them because their relatives had gone away to fight. South Acton looked after its own. Neighbours would cook up a pie or plate up a meal for each other, help with the cleaning or just pop in to pass the time of day.
Bessie poured them both some tea out of her enormous brown pot, covered with a cosy she’d knitted specially, in a Union Jack flag design. ‘Now,’ she said, settling down on a rickety wooden chair, her haunches spilling over the sides, ‘have you heard from Vera lately?’
Annie shook her head. Vera was one of her oldest pals from her days as a laundry maid, her best-looking and most fun friend, but their paths seemed to have taken them in different directions since Annie got married just before the war broke out. Mum didn’t shed too many tears about that because she thought Vera was trouble with a capital T. Annie didn’t see it that way; Vera was more spirited and stubborn than most and she had got herself into some scrapes but it wasn’t her fault that life had been so tough. Her dad came back from the First World War a broken man and hit the bottle almost as hard as he belted Vera’s mum. Vera had learned, early on, she would have to stand up for herself if she was going to make it in this world. Bessie had a big heart and she’d always done her best to take Vera under her wing and keep her on the straight and narrow but something about her tone of voice made Annie wonder whether things had changed.
‘I saw her up the wet fish shop on Acton Lane the other day,’ said Bessie. ‘It ain’t my place to say but I thought she looked a bleeding mess. Hair like a haystack, thin as a stick and bruises all up her arms and legs where she’d been falling down drunk coming out of the pub, if you please! She’d been entertaining some handsome young chaps in uniform it seems and was one over the eight.
‘Mrs Parker said she’d practically picked her out of the gutter. It ain’t right, Annie, not for a lovely girl like that. People will talk.’
‘People are talking,’ said Annie, raising an eyebrow. It was lost on Bessie, who ploughed on: ‘I’m not one to gossip, as you know, but there’s a war on and girls like her, well, they can get themselves a bad reputation for’ – Bessie lowered her voice to a stage whisper – ‘spreading diseases.’
It took a few days for Annie to pluck up the courage to go around to Vera’s house
in Stirling Road, which was just a few doors down from Bessie’s. It wasn’t that she didn’t like her friend any more, she just didn’t know quite how to tell her what people were saying behind her back.
Vera’s mum, Old Mrs O’Reilly, had given birth to more kids than Annie had eaten hot dinners and since her husband upped and died, Vera had moved back in to help with the rent and raising her nieces and nephews. Her other siblings had their hands full making ends meet and there were a few who were on their own because their other halves were at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in the Scrubs, but no one liked to mention that. There were always hordes of little O’Reillys stampeding in and out of that house in Stirling Road, being chased out of shops, across the railway tracks or climbing into people’s garden sheds. You couldn’t stray far through South Acton without bumping into one, their startling blue eyes and nit-ridden mop of blond hair a dead giveaway for the local bobby, who’d grab them by the scruff of their neck and march them home.
Annie knocked on the door and Mrs O’Reilly answered, her hair done up in rollers and covered with a hairnet, a snotty-nosed toddler on her hip and another clinging forlornly to her legs. ‘Oh, hello love,’ she said, eyeing Annie up and down. ‘When’s it due, then?’
‘Couple of months,’ said Annie.
‘I didn’t even know you was in the family way!’ she said, her eyes narrowing a little. ‘Haven’t seen much of you lately, have we? Where’ve you been hiding?’