by Tania Crosse
Not that there were so many mouths to feed these days, what with only two of their six off-spring living at home. The eldest two, Kit and Gert, were both married and had long flown the nest. With a lifelong passion for trains, Kit had left grammar school at sixteen to work on the railways. Now he was the sub stationmaster at a place called Edenbridge Town in Kent. For a rural station, it was incredibly important freightwise, and had been even more so during the war. As a railway worker, Kit had been exempt from conscription, for which Eva thanked the Good Lord. Railway lines had been obvious targets for German bombers, of course, but a couple of bombs exploding near the Edenbridge lines at the beginning of the raids had been the extent of any danger. So Kit and his wife, Hillie, daughter of Eva’s best friend – ah, how she still missed poor Nell, though she’d been dead ten years or more – and their two little ones had been safe throughout the war.
As she puffed up to her own front door, her arms weighed down with the precious shopping, Eva glanced along the street to the little terraced house, a few doors down, where Nell had lived and suffered at the hands of her brutal husband. She’d been well out of it, poor love, for over a decade, but Eva swore she could still see her sometimes, waving with a forced smile, putting on a brave face. All the dreadful things that had happened belonged to another time, a previous, sad story, but Eva would never forget them.
Sadness tugged at her big, warm heart as she let herself into her own home. Number Twelve, where Nell and her family had lived, was empty yet again. When both Nell and her husband had died, the eldest daughter, Hillie, had moved back in to take care of her five younger siblings. Then when she had married Kit, all seven of them had gone to live together in Kent, and it had been some while before the house was re-let. A Mr and Mrs Goldstein had eventually moved in, an elderly Jewish couple who’d seen which way the wind had been blowing and had thankfully got out of Germany before Hitler had done his worst. Thank Gawd they had. The concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen had recently been liberated, and the horrific stories of what had gone on there were so evil and despicable that they were beyond belief. As it was, the Goldsteins had lived out their lives in relative safety in Banbury Street. Old Abraham had been widowed the previous year, and Eva and Stan had done their best to console him. But he’d literally pined away before their very eyes until he’d passed away just two weeks ago.
As they’d left no family, Eva had taken care of everything and, to her surprise, had discovered that the old man had left all he had to her as thanks for her kindness over the years. Not a huge amount of money, but some expensive jewellery that she kept under lock and key. There was what she believed was called a Hunter watch, worth a pretty penny on its own, three eighteen-carat gold rings, one with a huge diamond almost the size of a farthing, and some brooches, bracelets and necklaces that even Eva’s untrained eye could see were the real McCoy and not just paste. She’d never seen anything like it. Should be in the Tower of London with the Crown Jewels, she’d joked to Stan. But, for the time being, she didn’t quite know what to do with it all and somehow felt she could make the most of it when the war was over. For now, it was locked away in the little strongbox Abraham had kept it in, hidden beneath the floorboards with a heavy sideboard on top.
Sighing now as she dumped the shopping bags on the table among the debris of breakfast – such as it had been – Eva untied the scarf that hid the curlers in her hair. After all, you couldn’t let standards drop just because there was a war on! She’d never been able to afford a perm, although maybe she could now with her little legacy, but old habits die hard and she didn’t want to waste even a penny. So the curlers still went in every night and didn’t come out until just before Stan came home from work. She might not be the best housekeeper in the world, nor the best cook, or anything else for that matter, but she loved her Stan and always wanted to look her best for him. The last six years had taught her that. You never knew what was round the corner, so best to make the most of every minute.
Ah, good. The gas was working, and she could make herself a nice cup of tea. The third time she’d used the same tea leaves, but you got used to that. She’d be blooming pleased when this war was over – which it looked like it might be quite soon – and things could get back to normal. Ah, just think of it. No more rationing, no more blackout. No more fear. What bliss!
Just as she was pouring the weak tea into the chipped mug – she’d rinsed it under the tap in the scullery but it still had a brown tide ring in the bottom, but never mind that – a small sound from the hallway caught her ear. Her spirits lifted as she plodded back towards the front door. For, as she’d hoped, an envelope had landed on the mat. She recognised the writing before she stooped to pick it up. Oh, goodie! A letter from their eldest daughter, Gert. Neither of them had been any use at letter-writing before Gert had married and moved away, but they had learnt!
Now, Eva settled down in the old armchair with the stuffing hanging out and the springs gone so that it wasn’t comfortable any more, but she couldn’t bring herself to throw it out just yet. It had been her mum’s. And while the chair was still there, Eva felt as if Old Sal was still there, too, even though she’d been gone some ten years or so. Silly really. Sometime soon, she’d promised Kit, when the war was over and you could get something better than Utility Furniture, she’d let him buy her the new one he wanted her to have. She could afford to get one herself now, of course, but it was still a case of letting go.
Tearing open the envelope, Eva unfolded the letter. Only one sheet, but paper wasn’t always easy to get hold of. And Gert had filled both sides, keeping her writing small even if it wasn’t very neat. It would keep Eva content for a good few minutes as she deciphered the scrawl.
Dear Mum and Dad, Milly and Jake,
Hope you are all well, and no more flipping doodlebugs coming your way. Doesn’t look as if there’ll be any more, does it? They say old Adolf’s beaten. Let’s hope they’re right. I know I’ll be relieved, what with Rob out in France. He said in his last letter it’s really only mopping up the last pockets of resistance, but you never know. It was bad enough when he was wounded out in Sicily. He mightn’t be so lucky another time. I just want him back home and working his old regular hours at the bank.
Eva’s mouth twisted with rueful sympathy. It was all anyone wanted, wasn’t it, to have your loved ones safely back home? Gert had done well when she’d married Rob. They’d moved out to a pleasant Surrey suburb called Stoneleigh, where a whole grid of semi-detached, mock-Tudor houses had been built over a huge area. The front gardens were twice the size of Stan and Eva’s back yard, and many of the back gardens were a hundred feet in length!
Gert had ‘improved’ herself since her marriage and had even trained herself to speak the King’s English much better. But she was still the same old Gert, with a heart as big as the ocean, which was why Rob had fallen in love with her. They’d produced three bouncing sons in quick succession before war had broken out and Rob had gone off to fight. Though boisterous and unruly as they’d grown, the boys nevertheless had hearts of gold just like their mum, and Eva was as proud of them as she was of her other two more reserved grandchildren, Kit and Hillie’s son and daughter.
Have you heard from Gary recently, Milly?
The letter went on, and Eva could imagine her eldest daughter’s face creasing with compassion for her next youngest sister.
Must be so hard for you with him still out in the Far East with the Japs refusing to give in when it looks like the war in Europe could be over very soon. So keep your chin up, girl. And what about you, Jake? Have they accepted you into the Fire Service yet? You’ve been a runner for them all this time, so they should welcome you with open arms. I know you want to do better for yourself and you can’t wait to leave Price’s. I know I couldn’t when I worked there. Don’t know how you can still stand it, Dad, after all these years. Still, I suppose you’re in the sawmill, which is different. You two been to any good footie matches together recently?
Eva felt a little nick in her heart. Stan had worked at Price’s massive candle and soap factory down the road beside the river since he’d come back from the first war. Gert had worked there, too, in the candle-packing shed, until she’d married Rob. When war had broken out again in 1939, the family had agreed it would be better for Stan and Eva’s four younger children to go and live in relative safety with Gert and Rob in Surrey. However, in the summer of 1941 when the Blitz appeared to be over, Mildred and Jake had both insisted on returning home to London. Mildred had left school in 1940 and had been working in a shop on Stoneleigh Broadway ever since. Back in Battersea, she’d again been a shop assistant until she turned eighteen and was conscripted to work on the buses, which, to her delight, she found she much preferred. Jake had only just left school in the July of 1941, and Stan had got him his very first job at Price’s. It wasn’t ideal for him, but with the war on, everyone had to put their ambitions on hold.
And then, on 13th July 1944, at a quarter past ten in the morning, a V1 rocket had landed on Price’s, and Eva would never forget it.
Several of these massive flying bombs had attacked the area in the previous month, coming, without warning, at any time of day or night. It had been the Blitz all over again, or even worse. At least the explosive and incendiary bombs in the Blitz had been small by comparison, and were dropped by waves of enemy planes, the air-raid sirens warning of their approach so that you at least had time to seek some sort of protection in a shelter. But although the sirens went off occasionally, these new self-propelled, pilotless bombs came mainly undetected until it was too late, instilling a permanent fear into you as they cruised stealthily through the air before dropping onto their target, obliterating everything in sight. They made a droning sound like a massive insect, which was why they’d earned the nickname of buzz bombs or more usually doodlebugs. It was said that if their roar cut out when it was immediately above you that you knew you’d had your chips as they’d simply plummet out of the sky. By the end of June 1944, seventy to a hundred V1s had been reaching London every day.
Amazingly, though, up until that July day, there’d been relatively few civilians killed in the local area, despite all the terrible destruction the V1s had caused, though tragically it was a different story in other parts of London. Even when Price’s had bought it, only two workers had perished. Only two. That was how you’d come to think, Eva winced.
The factory’s pump house had been hit and fire had spread to the tons of oil and turps and animal fats, which had gone up like a tinderbox. Burning liquid had oozed out into the Thames, where seven barges had been moored, waiting to unload their cargoes of paraffin wax, and they’d been damaged, too. The sky around had been black with choking smoke, and when Eva had run out onto the street at the massive explosion that had shaken the house even at that distance and word had eventually come through that it was Price’s that had been hit, she’d been numbed with terror, as if the very flames that were starting to rage through the factory had set her veins on fire with fear as well. Her Stan, and their younger son. It had been Jake’s seventeenth birthday. Surely fate wouldn’t be so cruel as to take him on the day he’d planned to go out to celebrate with his mates that evening?
As it happened, both her men had been safe, but Eva would never forget the trembling that had consumed her so that she hadn’t been able to think straight. Her head had been reeling as she’d panted through the streets, still in her slippers, as fast as her wobbling legs would carry her, almost collapsing and wheezing as if her lungs would burst by the time she got to the factory.
The sight that met her eyes had made her sink down on her knees. A sea of fire against a black dome where the summer morning sky should have been. And then, among the chaos and the noise and the deafening crackle of leaping flames, she recognised two familiar shapes battling together with the force of the stream of water spurting from one of the many fire hoses that were blasting into the inferno. Eva’s heart had almost stopped beating, such was her relief. Of course. Both Stan and Jake were ARP wardens for the factory, and Jake was a runner for the fire brigade, though this wouldn’t be the first time he’d actually helped tackle a blaze.
Now Eva shuddered at the horrific memory and forced her attention back to Gert’s letter. Was there news of her two youngest children, Trudy and Primrose, who’d also been evacuated to Gert’s in 1939 and were still there? Ah, yes. Gert mentioned them next.
Trudy’s still doing so well at the Grammar, so she wants to stay on here till she finishes when she’s eighteen. Me and Rob don’t mind, and it’s been good company for me while he’s been away. She’s a bit busy with her schoolwork at the moment, but she sends her love. Primrose can’t wait to get home to you, though. I still think it makes sense for her to stay here until the end of term, then she’ll be leaving anyway as she’ll be fourteen by then, of course. No scholarship for her, but we can’t all be clever clogs, can we? I’ll miss her help with the kiddies, mind. She’s always been very good with them.
A tingle of pleasure rippled down Eva’s spine at the mention of her grandchildren. Proper handful, they were! She wondered how they’d turn out when they grew up and hopefully calmed down a bit. Would they inherit Rob’s diligence and the intelligent side of the Parker family, or take after their happy-go-lucky mother?
Eva was so pleased and proud, though, that, like her elder brother, Kit, Trudy was really clever and could even go on to university in time. Blimey, that’d be something. A first in the Parker family. Even Kit hadn’t done that. But Eva was secretly happy that the very youngest of her six children, Primrose, wasn’t as bright, and so would be coming back to Banbury Street when she turned fourteen in the summer. At least Eva would have three of her children at home to love and care for.
She knew she’d never been the shiniest penny herself, and the family home was probably the most chaotic and disordered on the street, but she’d do anything for anybody, like a huggable teddy bear that people turned to. She’d done her bit for the war, too, joining the WVS. A lot of them were middle- to upper-class women, some of whom had sneered down their noses at her London accent and the way she managed to make the uniform look unkempt.
‘Look, you stuck-up cow,’ she’d said, putting one particularly obnoxious woman in her place, ‘the tea what I serve from my urn is every bit as good as yours, and I serve it with a sympathetic smile and a kind word, which is more than what you do.’
‘That’s right, darlin’,’ a builder, covered in dirt and dust who’d been digging in rubble all night to rescue survivors, grinned triumphantly, and his mates had all cheered in agreement. ‘You tell ’er!’ And since that day, she’d been treated with far more respect.
She wasn’t on duty again until Thursday, but thankfully there shouldn’t be so much to do. The last of those terrible V2s to fall nearby – the size of trains and even worse than the V1s if that were possible – had been back in January, a dreadful business when seventeen people had perished in an explosion further down York Road from Price’s. And though the bloody things had brought appalling death and destruction to other parts of London since then, there’d been none for almost a month now. The Allies had liberated virtually everywhere in France, Belgium and the Netherlands and destroyed all the missile launch sites. With any luck, they’d driven the Germans back so far that they couldn’t even launch the flying bombs from aircraft either, which they’d taken to doing as a last resort. So there shouldn’t be any more V1s or V2s suddenly appearing overhead. Eva certainly prayed not.
Almost afraid to get her hopes up after so many years of fear, she turned her attention back to her daughter’s letter. Gert had signed off with lots of love and kisses, but there was an almost illegible P.S. squeezed in at the bottom.
So sorry to hear about Mr Goldstein. Has anyone else moved in yet?
Eva sucked in her bottom lip. She hadn’t told Gert about her legacy from the old man yet. Only Stan knew about it. They’d agreed to keep it a secret until after the war, and th
en Kit might have an idea about what to do with the jewellery. After all, he had connections with all sorts of trades through his work. Or their old neighbour, Charles Braithwaite, who’d managed the jewellery and fine gifts department at the local prestigious department store, Arding and Hobbs, before he was eventually promoted to senior manager. He might know how best to deal with them. But for now they’d have to wait and see.
As for Number Twelve, Eva was sure it wouldn’t be long before new tenants moved in. After all, with so many houses bombed during the Blitz and then being destroyed by these wretched flying bombs, people were desperate for places to live. So Banbury Street would have some new residents very soon, and Eva would have more chickens to take under her generous wing.
Two
Eva heard the front door open and the sounds of Mildred bringing in her bicycle and propping it against the wall in the hallway. A moment later, Mildred breezed into the back room. She threw her London buses uniform cap onto the table next to where Eva was chopping the carrots and turnips. Unpinning her hair, the girl shook her head and her auburn curls sprang out in a frizzy halo.
‘Hello, Mum. You OK?’ she asked, flopping down onto one of the kitchen chairs.
‘Yup. You had a hard day? You look knackered. I’ll just get your dad’s trotter on the gas and then I’ll make us a cuppa, fresh tea leaves and all.’
‘Yeah, hard shift,’ Mildred yawned. ‘’Specially the early morning. People trying to get to work and school or what have you. Thank Gawd I’ve finished for the day. Me feet are killing us. Here, tell you what, mind, a horse and cart just turned into the street behind us. Thought it was the coalman come early, but it had bits and pieces of furniture and that sort of stuff on it. I reckon it’s the new people moving into the Goldsteins’ old place.’
‘Really?’ Eva wiped her hands down her stained apron. ‘Wonder who they’ll be? Better go and say hello. Make them feel welcome.’