Getting the faintest whiff of burning, Ida hurried across to the stove, grabbing the tea towel from the back of a kitchen chair as she passed.
Winding it around her hands she opened the oven. She’d just pulled out the baking tray when the back door opened and Jerimiah walked in. She’d not seen him since the night before when she’d left to collect Patrick from Stella at five and she hadn’t set breakfast for him as he was going straight to court from the Home Guard HQ when he got off patrol at eight.
Jerimiah could usually pass for a man ten years younger, but not today. Today, with two days’ growth of beard, dark smudges under his eyes and lines etched around his mouth, he looked every day of his forty-four years.
‘Hello, luv,’ he said, unwinding his scarf.
‘I thought you’d be back ages ago,’ said Ida, shutting the oven with her knee.
‘So did I,’ he said, ripping off his coat. ‘Is my mother in?’
Ida shook her head. ‘She came in about an hour ago while I was giving Ellen lunch upstairs,’ she replied, putting the tray of pies on the table. ‘I called down to her, but she didn’t answer as she was in her room feeding her parrot. I saw her through the landing window rummaging around in the shed out back but by the time I got downstairs she’d gone out again. What happened at court?’
Her husband’s mouth pulled into a grim line. ‘I’ll tell you what happened . . .’
Ida stood open-mouthed while he recounted his mother’s brush with the magistrate.
‘Thirty pounds!’ she said when he’d finished, as thoughts of the rent book and gas meter loomed in her mind. ‘But I’ve got the butcher to pay as well as getting the last-minute things from the market and then there’s the—’
‘I know, me darling,’ he said, suppressing a yawn. ‘But you’re not to fret. And that’s why I popped in to the yard before coming home.’
Stepping across to his coat, which was hanging behind the door, he pulled a battered Oxo tin from the pocket then walked across to where she was standing.
‘There’s almost fifteen pounds in there,’ he said, handing it to her. ‘Plus, I’ve a bob or two still owed to me from others. It should tide us over until I start in the Fire Service in a few weeks.’
Ida stared at the tin in her hand for a moment then looked back at her husband’s haggard face. ‘But you need ready cash for the auctions?’
‘Until I get another horse there’s no point me buying a stick of furniture as I can’t move anything worth trading on the hand cart,’ he replied.
‘I thought you were hiring one of the brewery’s horses,’ said Ida.
‘So did I but the government bought half of the brewery’s drays for farm work and the brewery need the horses they have left to deliver the Christmas and New Year orders, so I’ve not a chance of anything for a week or more.’
Memories of the lean years after the American crash, when she and Jerimiah went hungry to feed four small children and keep a roof over their heads, flashed across Ida’s mind.
‘But don’t worry,’ he said, seeing the look on her face, ‘we’ll get by. We always have.’ His dark eyes grew warm as he gazed down at her. ‘Trust me, Ida, and I’ll get us through.’
They stared at each other for a moment then Ida smiled, and Jerimiah smiled back.
Then he yawned.
Without thinking, she put her hand on his arm. ‘Why don’t you catch a few hours upstairs before the boys come home, Jerry?’ she said, enjoying the feel of the soft hair on his forearm.
He shook his head. ‘I’ll be grand if I just put me feet up for an hour or so in the chair but,’ his hand closed over hers, ‘I could murder a cuppa.’
Ida laughed. ‘I’ll bring it through.’
He yawned again and ambled into the front room.
Relighting the gas under the kettle, Ida quickly put the tea in the pot while the water came to the boil. She poured the scalding water over the leaves then taking one of the large mugs from the dresser, she filled it from the pot, adding a splash of milk as he liked it and a generous two teaspoons of sugar.
Holding it high she walked through to the parlour.
‘One cuppa—’ She stopped.
With his feet up on their old threadbare pouffe, Jerimiah was sprawled in his chair with his head back and his eyes closed.
Treading lightly across the rag rug in front of the fire, Ida crossed the small room and placed her husband’s hot drink on the floor next to the leg of his chair. Then she straightened up. Running her gaze over the familiar contours of her sleeping husband’s face, she smiled. Bending over, she pressed her lips on to his forehead.
‘Come on, you two, or you’ll be late for Junior Club,’ said Ida, as she dragged the back wheels of the pram up the last few steps up to the shelter’s main door out on to the street.
It was Saturday, the day after Queenie had appeared in court and just five days before Christmas. It was also the morning after a night of some of the heaviest bombing they’d had for some time. The all-clear had sounded half an hour ago at six and those who worked on a Saturday had already left the shelter. Ida and her family were heading home too.
Ida had a full day ahead of her. With the whole family descending on them for Christmas, once she’d packed the boys off to the Shamrock League’s Saturday-morning boys’ club and seen to Ellen, she intended to clean the house from top to bottom.
‘Coming, Auntie Ida,’ Michael shouted from the bottom of the stairs.
‘Where’s Billy?’ Ida asked.
‘I don’t know; I told him to come,’ Michael replied.
Ida pressed her lips together and was just about to go back down the stairs when Billy appeared from behind the lower door of the shelter.
‘Where have you been, Billy? I told you ages ago we were going,’ said Ida.
‘Don’t go on,’ he replied, giving her a truculent look. ‘I’m here now, aren’t I?’
Resisting the urge to tear him off a strip, Ida took a deep breath. She’d hardly slept a wink last night. However, while most people had been kept awake by the Luftwaffe, Ida had the situation with Jerimiah and his mother to thank for her broken night’s sleep.
Although her mother-in-law had a tongue that could cut through steel and her antics would try the patience of the Lord himself, she couldn’t remember the last time Jerimiah had lost his temper with her.
It wasn’t any wonder, though, given what he’d been through in the last few weeks. With a mountain of household bills stacking up, they had no hope of finding the twenty-five pounds for the quarterly rent on the yard, let alone the same again for a new horse.
Reaching the landing at the top of the shelter, Ida looked at the baby sleeping in the pram. He looked so like his father Charlie it made her heart ache with the memory. She tucked the crocheted blanket around Patrick a little tighter and pushed the pram towards the entrance.
‘Well, Ida, it looks like we’ve survived to fight another day,’ said Ted Mitchell, Tilbury Shelter’s senior ARP warden, as he held the door open for her to manoeuvre the front wheels through.
‘Praise Mary,’ said Ida, crossing herself hastily. ‘Although there were times last night when I was expecting to find myself at heaven’s gates, I can tell you.’
‘You and me both, girl,’ said Ted. ‘Jerry did us good and proper last night.’
He indicated the scene outside and as Ida took in the sight that greeted her, her chin dropped.
She’d known that the Germans had taken full advantage of the clear winter sky from the relentless explosions and the constant shaking of the ground, but now, in the red glow of blazing buildings and the mellow yellow of the dawn light, she could see the full horror of the night raid.
The block of flats across from the entrance had been three storeys tall and home to at least forty families when she’d gone down into the shelter the evening before; now it was a pile of rubble. And it was the same all along the street. At the far end of the road a fire engine shot water in a high arch into
what was left of the bonded warehouse.
‘St John’s copped it,’ Ted went on, nodding towards the black smoke billowing skywards. ‘According to the copper who went by a while back, they’re still digging out survivors. And there’s nothing but a hole in the ground at the Sidney Street telephone exchange. If you ask me, it’s because our boys are giving them hell in the desert at Benghazi. Your Charlie’s out there, ain’t he?’
‘Yes,’ said Ida, a lump forming in her throat as she glanced at Charlie’s son asleep in the pram. ‘He’s part of the gun crew on a twenty-five-pounder.’
Ted grinned, showing a set of large, uneven teeth. ‘Well, I hope he gives the bloody Hun a right pasting.’
Ida forced a smile then looked down the stairs again. ‘Billy, Michael!’
The two boys, who’d been milling around with some other lads, clattered up the stairs.
‘About blooming time,’ she said, as they skidded to a halt in front of her. ‘Now let’s get home before we freeze to death.’
Billy shoved Michael. ‘Race you,’ he shouted as he tore off.
Having regained his balance, Michael pelted after him.
Ted chuckled. ‘I was just like that at their age. Full of beans.’
‘Full of mischief,’ said Ida. ‘And I’ve got them under my feet until they go back to school in two weeks.’
‘Well, boys will be boys,’ said Ted.
‘See you tonight,’ said Ida, pushing the pram after them.
‘God willing,’ he replied, touching the brim of his tin hat as she walked past.
As the road was blocked to vehicles, Ida guided the front wheels of the pram into the middle of the street. Picking her way between rubble and blackened beams strewn across the road, she followed the two boys, who jostled each other and laughed as they searched for shrapnel with German markings to add to their collections.
Although Billy, who had a September birthday, was a full ten months older than Michael who had been born the following July, they were both in the same school year, and due to move into secondary school next September. As soon as they went back after the New Year she would have to see about getting their names down.
She and Jerimiah hadn’t been able to afford to send the eldest three children to grammar school but they had managed to scrape the money together for Jo’s Coburn Girls School outfit. She and Jerimiah were hoping to do the same for Billy, if he passed the entrance exam, and send him to one of the local grammars, but now they would be funding Michael too. Although Raines was the nearest school, just the other side of Commercial Road, most of the pupils and teachers had been evacuated to Essex. Therefore, Ida had decided to apply to Parmiter’s Boys School, behind the Bethnal Green Museum.
It was a bit of a trot from Watney Street but if both boys got into Parmiter’s, then she would take Billy, Michael and Patrick to the Bethnal Green Tube shelter from September.
‘Mind yourselves,’ Ida shouted, as the boys hopped from one block of fragmented brickwork to another. ‘I don’t want to have to get the iodine out when we get home.’
The boys, their arms windmilling wildly as they wobbled on what had been a door arch, grinned then jumped down and sped on.
They were waiting for her by the steps of the Town Hall, talking to a couple of the ARP messengers standing by their bikes. As she drew close Billy and Michael waved their goodbyes and the boys peddled away on the bicycles.
‘Me and Michael are going to be messengers,’ Billy announced as she joined them.
Ida raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you now?’
‘Yes, when we’re old enough,’ Michael joined in. ‘And then we’re going to join the army like Charlie.’
‘I’ve been telling him how Charlie stayed to the end at Dunkirk cos he was loading wounded soldiers into ships.’ Jumping, Billy adopted a boxing stance with his fists raised. ‘And we’ve decided that we’re going to call ourselves the Brogan Brothers.’
The Brogan Brothers! An emotion she couldn’t name ran through Ida.
‘Yeah,’ Michael shouted, copying his brother’s stance. ‘The Brogan Brothers smash Hitler’s face in.’
‘And Göring.’
‘And Himler,’ added Michael.
‘And—’
‘And you two will be late for club if we don’t get a move on,’ cut in Ida, bumping the pram down the kerb.
They crossed the road and carried on but as Ida and the boys walked under the railway arch and into Watney Street, they stopped dead.
The glass from every shop, house and pub window lay shattered on the pavement and blackout curtains fluttered from upper-floor windows in the chilly morning air. Store owners crunched shards underfoot as they emptied their gaping shop windows of display stock to avoid it being looted.
A temporary ARP information post had been set up by Myer’s shoe shop and the warden sitting behind the desk was checking the list of casualties under the gaze of an anxious-looking crowd of people, many still carrying their night-shelter paraphernalia.
‘Where did it fall?’ Ida asked the woman auxiliary constable standing guard in front of the blown-out shell of the market’s Post Office.
‘On the paper works in Tarling Street,’ the officer replied. ‘High explosive, by all accounts; it only just missed the railway bridge. Plus a land mine blew up the Pipe and Drum alongside.’
‘Many dead?’
‘Dozens,’ the officer replied. ‘And double that carted away to hospital, which must be chock-a-block by now as the bloody Krauts hit us hard last night. They hit the Sidney Street telephone exchange, too, so we’ve been running around like blue-arsed flies cos all the lines are down.’
‘Ida!’
She looked around to see Jerimiah climbing over the broken trunk of a telephone pole that was lying across the roadway.
His khaki Home Guard uniform was now red with brick dust, which was also crusted in his hair and smeared across his face. He hurried towards her, limping occasionally as he clambered over the debris strewn across the road.
As always when she saw him each morning after another night of deadly bombardment, she sent a small prayer of thanks that he was still whole, but when Billy and Michael ran happily to him, Ida’s heart squeezed a little.
‘Your leg playing you up?’ Ida asked as he reached her, his arms around each boy’s shoulder.
He grinned, his teeth flashing white through the grime on his face. ‘Bit stiff, that’s all.’
‘Have you finished?’ Ida asked.
‘No, I’ve just come back to make sure you and the boys were all right,’ he replied. ‘I’ll have a quick cuppa and then head back to give a hand at St John’s. The mother superior and the three nuns from the school are still under all the rubble. It was bad all over. The Royal Dock had it bad as usual as did the Surrey and Bermondsey on the other side of the river, but I had a quick recce of our road and, thank God, other than a crack across me ma’s window, and a dozen tiles from the roof, our house seems to have escaped the worst of it. I had a quick check on Ellen – she seemed a little shaken but fine too.’
‘Praise Mary,’ said Ida.
‘You all right?’ he asked, casting his eyes over her.
She nodded. ‘And as always he slept right through the lot.’ She indicated Patrick still fast asleep after his morning feed.
Jerimiah gazed down at his grandson and a soft look crept across his face, causing Ida’s heart to squeeze again.
He raised his head. ‘We’d better get him and the boys home and out of this cold. Ma will have the kettle on by now.’
They set off and, after navigating the shell holes and lifting the pram over a fallen garden wall, they arrived at the bottom end of Mafeking Terrace. Seeing a couple of friends who’d just returned from the Turner Street Shelter, Billy and Michael scooted across the road.
‘Five minutes, lads, and then home,’ Jerimiah shouted after them.
Ida turned into the cool dampness of the side alley and wondered how Ellen’s nerves had held up duri
ng the night. Parking the pram in the backyard, she lifted Patrick as Jerimiah opened the back door and held it open for her.
She stepped in and through the blackout curtains, with Jerimiah just a pace behind her, and they both stopped dead.
The kitchen was freezing; there was no kettle simmering on the stove, no porridge bubbling in the pot and no smell of newly baked bread in the air.
Jerimiah and Ida looked at each other for a moment then Jerimiah strode through the house and knocked on his mother’s door.
‘Ma!’
There was no answer. He opened the door and went in. Prince Albert squawked a couple of times and Ida heard the bird’s cage rattle on its stand, then Jerimiah came out again and gave her a bleak look.
Ida put her hand on his arm. ‘I’m sure your ma’ll be home any minute now,’ said Ida.
‘No, sorry, mate,’ said Bert Fallow, the landlord of the Boatman, as he pulled a pint. ‘I ain’t seen Queenie since last week.’
Jerimiah forced a smile. ‘Thanks, Bert.’
There was still an hour to go before last orders at ten and the bar was packed with people enjoying a quiet drink. And it was quiet because for once there were no German planes in the sky above.
The sirens had gone off at six and, when the first bombs hit the ground twenty minutes later, everyone thought the evening was shaping up to be a rerun of the night before but, despite it being a clear crisp night, after a couple of runs, the Luftwaffe squadrons headed back to northern France and left East London in peace.
When the all-clear sounded at nine, Major Randolph Hitching-Wells had marched the rest of the Home Guard company back to the Methodist Hall but Jerimiah had forgone his cocoa and biscuits to continue his search for his mother.
To be honest, knowing his mother’s wandering ways, he hadn’t been too worried about her at first so after he’d thrown down his breakfast and a cup of hot sweet tea, he’d gone back to help dig the Mother Superior’s body out from the rubble that had been St John’s Church. Even when he’d got back at ten he hadn’t been too alarmed and, having been up almost thirty-six hours by then, had fallen asleep before his head hit the pillow.
A Ration Book Childhood Page 29