A Ration Book Daughter

by Jean Fullerton

  Within a few moments they were outside in the playground. Switching on their muted torches and shining them at their feet, they walked side by side towards the school’s main entrance.

  ‘So what were you doing tonight?’ Cathy asked, her breath turning to steam as she spoke.

  ‘I’m taking art classes here.’ Archie smiled. ‘It keeps me out of the boozers and trouble.’

  She gave him a little smile and they walked on past a pile of rubble on the other side of the road that had once been someone’s home.

  ‘How’s your little lad?’

  ‘Full of mischief,’ she replied. ‘But he seems to have a new word every day. What about your daughter?’

  ‘Aw, she’s grand,’ Archie said, feeling the familiar ache for Kirsty. ‘Got ten out of ten, she did, for her spelling test.’

  They had reached the main road, so they turned and walked along the side of Bethnal Green Gardens. Two policemen with canvas respirator bags strapped to their chests strolled by as a bus trundled past, its internal blinds pulled down and the slit cover on its headlamps casting a blade of light on the road in front of it.

  ‘So, you’re learning to type,’ he said, as they joined the last few stragglers heading for the shelter of the underground station.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I’m going to get a job when Peter’s a bit older, and as I’d rather work in an office than a factory, I thought I ought to learn to type.’ In the dim light an odd expression crossed Cathy’s face. ‘If I’d known then what I know now, I would have done it at school, but . . .’ She looked sad for a moment. ‘Also my big sister Mattie’s got her matriculation and I want to prove she’s not the only one who’s a brainbox.’

  ‘Have you got any other brothers or sisters?’ he asked.

  ‘Three brothers,’ she replied. ‘And three sisters. My brother Charlie is . . .’

  She told him about her family.

  ‘It sounds to me like your ma and pa had a full-time job keeping you from tearing each other apart,’ he said.

  Cathy laughed. ‘It was like that sometimes, but although some days us kids had potatoes for breakfast, dinner and tea, we survived, and I can never remember going to bed hungry.’

  ‘Aye, not many like us can say that,’ he said. ‘I’m an only child so I envy you being close to your brothers and sisters.’

  ‘I know. I’m very lucky but,’ she raised an eyebrow, ‘it wasn’t always peace and harmony, I can tell you. Sometimes Jo and I would fall out, and then it would be Jo and Mattie, and always about something stupid. But I’d be lost without them both. I really would. What about your family?’

  ‘There’s not much to say really. My ma’s family moved to Glasgow from Argyll half a century ago. Her father kicked her out when he found out she was pregnant, so she had to go to the nuns in St Nazareth House. They took her in, but when they tried to force her to give me up she snuck out one night.’

  ‘Couldn’t your dad help?’ said Cathy, aching for any woman in such a situation.

  ‘He’d long gone,’ Archie replied. ‘Ma doesn’t talk about him much, but he was a sailor called Marcus. From what I gather, they’d planned to get married but one day he sailed away and never came back. She found out she was expecting a couple of months after she’d waved him goodbye.’

  ‘How did she manage to survive alone with a baby?’ asked Cathy.

  ‘To be honest, I really don’t know, but she must have scrubbed every office floor in Glasgow in her time,’ he said. ‘Still, there was always food on the table and coal in the grate. Despite the falling-out with her father, Ma was close to her brother George. He worked in the Yarrow shipyard so, despite my being a Catholic, he got me an engineering apprenticeship when I left school.’

  ‘It must have been tough for you growing up,’ said Cathy, thinking of her safe childhood home.

  ‘It wasnae too bad. There were other kids in the school with West Indian or Indian fathers,’ said Archie, as memories of being ‘that darkie or sambo kid’ flitted through his mind.

  ‘It’s a bit like that in my school,’ said Cathy. ‘We had a few from Limehouse with Chinese fathers. What about—’

  ‘I think we’re here,’ Archie cut in, indicating the low-roofed entrance with the corrugated tin roof behind her.

  She glanced around.

  ‘So we are,’ she replied. ‘Thanks for keeping me company.’

  ‘My pleasure.’ He smiled down at her. ‘I’ll see you again sometime.’

  She laughed. ‘We do seem to keep running into each other, don’t we?’

  ‘Aye, we do,’ he replied.

  They stared at each other for several heartbeats then she glanced around again.

  ‘I’d better go,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘Me too. Goodnight.’

  She gave him a little smile then walked away, but as she got to the entrance of the shelter she turned and waved to him.

  Archie waved back and then she disappeared into the crowd.

  He guessed she’d been about to ask about his wife, which is why he’d cut across her.

  It wasn’t because he didn’t want to tell her. He did. He wanted to tell her about the heartache of losing Moira. And he would tell her, not on a pavement on a cold winter’s night but holding her in his arms.

  *

  Cathy followed the crowds making their way from the ticket hall down the hundred or so steps to the two platforms of Bethnal Green tube station below.

  ‘Evening, Cathy,’ said Bob Mitchel, the grey-haired veteran of the last conflict with Germany, who was now one of the shelter’s wardens.

  ‘Evening, Mr Mitchel,’ she replied. ‘You’re busy tonight.’

  ‘Do you wonder at it?’ he replied, as people nudged into them as they shoved past. ‘There’s not a cloud in the sky and I reckon the Luftwaffe will be keen to pay us a visit, especially now Monty’s shoving Rommel’s lot into the sea.’

  ‘My dad says much the same,’ Cathy replied.

  Bob nodded. ‘I saw your mum with the boys and your little lad earlier. He’s getting big.’

  ‘I know,’ said Cathy. ‘I can’t believe he’s three in June.’

  ‘They grow up too quick, they do,’ Bob replied. ‘My little lad was twenty-eight two weeks ago and floating about somewhere in the middle of the Atlan—’

  The two-tone wail of the air raid siren that had punctuated their lives for the past three and a half years cut across Bob’s words.

  On hearing the ear-jangling warning, those coming down the stairs surged forward again.

  Someone jostled Cathy from behind and she missed her step.

  ‘There’s no need to push!’ bellowed Bob.

  He took his whistle from his pocket with his old campaign ribbon stitched on and blew three short blasts.

  ‘Stop bloody pushing,’ he shouted over the boom of the ack-ack guns in Vicky Park and the sound of women screaming.

  Cathy continued down the stairs and turned right on to the westbound platform. Well, that’s to say it would be the westbound platform when the war was over.

  The sound of the shelter choir singing ‘Holy Night’ in preparation for the underground carol concert drifted over the chatter. Passing the people sitting next to the row of three-tiered bunkbeds, Cathy headed towards her and her mother’s spot.

  In addition to those who had a ticket and an allocated place each night, the shelter also housed a number of passers-by who, when the air raid siren went off, sought refuge. They often had to squeeze into any place they could find, including between the train rails.

  However, they were quite safe because although the work of extending the Central Line from Liverpool Street through to Woodford in the wilds of Essex was complete, before they’d been able to set the trains running along them, war had broken out and the plans had been shelved, so trains had yet to run along the rails. The work hadn’t gone to waste, though, as the Ministry of War had taken over the section of tunnel between Leytonstone and Gants Hill and the elect
rical firm Plessey had been relocated there and were now making equipment for the army, while the platforms in Bethnal Green station were used as air raid shelters.

  So, unlike people sheltering on platforms along the Northern, Piccadilly and Bakerloo Lines, who had trains rattling past and people stepping over them until midnight, those bedded down at Bethnal Green station had an undisturbed night – well, except for the bombs crashing all around them, that is.

  In the early days of the war, her mother and Cathy had taken Billy and Michael, plus Charlie’s son Patrick, to the Tilbury shelter. At first the conditions were truly appalling, but it didn’t take long for the strong-minded East End women like Cathy’s mother to bring order to the place. They’d forced the council to install proper toilets rather than a handful of buckets, stopped the Cable Street prostitutes plying their trade in the dark arches at the back and organised a ticket system for billets. They’d probably still be there now if Michael and Billy hadn’t been offered places at Parmiter’s Boys’ School. They’d started in September, over two months ago now, and, as the Bethnal Green shelter was just a stone’s throw away from the grammar school, Ida had applied for and got them a family ticket. They had been allocated bunks towards the far end of the platform, which was convenient for both the toilets and the WVS canteen in the stairwell.

  Smiling a greeting to people as she went, Cathy finally reached the Brogan family’s three-tiered bunk. As always, Ida was sitting in her folding chair and knitting.

  ‘Hello, Mum,’ said Cathy. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Better now madam’s asleep,’ she said, indicating Victoria bundled up in the bunk beside her.

  ‘Did Peter go down all right?’ Cathy asked, stretching up to look into the top bunk where her son lay curled up with Mr Bruno.

  Kissing the tips of her fingers then placing them lightly on his forehead, Cathy sat on the lower bunk.

  ‘Like a dream,’ Ida replied. ‘Michael took him to listen to Storytime in the library on the other platform while I fed Victoria, then after his warm milk I put his night nappy on him and he was asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. Did you have a nice time tonight?’

  The image of Archie McIntosh smiling down at her with those lovely blue eyes of his materialised in Cathy’s mind and her heart did a little double step.

  ‘I’m up to thirty words a minute,’ she said.

  Her mother looked impressed.

  Cathy sighed. ‘I wish I’d been a swot like Mattie and worked a bit harder at school.’

  Her mother reached out and squeezed her hand. ‘You’re doing it now, that’s the main thing.’ Slipping her wool over her needles, her mother gave her a considered look. ‘Are you sure about taking a lodger, luv?’

  ‘I am,’ Cathy replied. ‘It’s the only way I can think of to keep a roof over mine and Peter’s head now that Violet’s got all Stan’s money and refuses to give me any more housekeeping.’

  ‘What about you and Peter move back home?’ said Ida.

  Cathy laughed. ‘Don’t be daft, Mum. You’ve barely got room as it is without us trying to squeeze in. Besides, I’ll be damned if I’ll let that old witch drive me out.’

  ‘But having strangers in your house,’ said Ida.

  ‘I’m not just taking any old body,’ Cathy said. ‘They’ll need references, naturally, and I’m going to put “suitable for mother with one or two children” on the ad.’

  ‘Well, that might be all right,’ her mother replied. ‘And I suppose it’s a Christian kindness to offer a home to a mum and kids. But it—’

  ‘Mum, it’ll be fine, honest,’ Cathy cut in.

  Her mother gave her a dubious look and was about to argue but then, after looping a strand of wool over her needle, her gaze returned to the knitting pattern balanced on her knee.

  Taking in a lodger would be fine because, with prices going up day by day and the threat of eviction hanging over her head, it had to be.

  Chapter Eight

  AS SHE CAME through the rest centre’s door, Polly Nugent’s pale eyes darted around the hall until she spotted Cathy, then she hurried across to her.

  It was just after three on the second Thursday in December and over a week since Cathy had seen Sergeant McIntosh after her evening class. She and the other women sitting around the table were putting together the Christmas gift packs for the Merchant Navy.

  ‘Cathy,’ Polly said, a little breathlessly, as she came to a halt. ‘Someone told me you were here. Mrs Crowther from headquarters is in the office and wonders if you’ve got a moment?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Cathy.

  Polly left them.

  Maureen, who was pairing socks, looked at her questioningly.

  Cathy shrugged. ‘Search me.’

  ‘Well, go on then.’ Maureen nodded towards the door. ‘Find out.’

  As Cathy walked between the neatly laid-out camp beds, she was joined by Olive Freeman, who oversaw the knitting circle, and Dora Black, who looked after the salvage collection.

  They gave each other a baffled look. Stopping outside Miss Carpenter’s office, Cathy knocked on the door.

  Someone on the other side called out, ‘Enter.’

  Cathy opened the door and the three women piled into the former caretaker’s storeroom.

  Mrs Crowther, the area organiser, was sitting in Miss Carpenter’s place behind the desk. Beside her stood a very slim woman, and the contrast between them couldn’t have been starker.

  Taller by a head than every woman squashed into the small space, Mrs Crowther could best be described as strapping, and Cathy could easily imagine her in a gymslip, studded boots and brandishing a hockey stick having just scored the winning goal. Straining the seams of her WVS uniform to their limits, the straight cut of her steel-grey hair to just below her ears merely added to her combative appearance.

  The woman beside her had been fashioned in a very different mould. Thanks to her heeled court shoes, she was an inch or two taller than Cathy and as slender as a wand. With flawless make-up and her light chestnut hair combed into a French plait, she looked as if she’d stepped off a catwalk. Unlike Cathy, who’d had to take in the waist, let down the hem and turn up the jacket sleeves of her off-the-peg WVS uniform, the newcomer’s perfectly fitting forest-green suit had made to measure stamped all over it.

  There was a small smile on the woman’s cherry-red lips that didn’t quite make it to her cool grey eyes.

  ‘You wanted to see us,’ said Cathy as the door closed behind her.

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Mrs Crowther cleared her throat. ‘I’m sorry to pull you all away from your vital work, girls, but I’m afraid I bring bad news. Sadly, Miss Carpenter, who has overseen this rest centre for the last three years, was killed in last night’s air raid—’

  There was a gasp as the women, wide-eyed with shock, put their hands over their mouths.

  ‘I’m afraid her house in Bow Common Lane took a direct hit,’ continued Mrs Crowther, with a glint of moisture shining in her eyes. ‘Although she was in her Anderson shelter, the damn blast flattened the houses either side of her and their gardens to boot. I understand from the ARP warden chappie in charge of that area that the heavy-rescue boys are still using all their muscle to recover bodies from the site.’

  Feeling tears gathering, Cathy crossed herself, as did the others. Dora started to cry.

  The area organiser cleared her throat again. ‘However, there’s a war on and so we cannot let sentiment interfere with the vital work you do at St Breda and St Brendan’s Rest Centre. To that end, Mrs Paget here,’ she indicated the woman beside her, who inclined her head, royalty-like, ‘will take charge until further notice, for which we are all bally grateful. Her husband is the Rector of St Philip and St Augustine’s and she has led the WVS team at Smithy Street Rest Centre for the past two and a half years. With Christmas just around the corner, I know you’ll put your shoulders to the wheel as you did for Miss Carpenter.’

  ‘We will, Mrs Crowther,’ said
Cathy.

  Mrs Crowther cast her gaze around as the women nodded their heads and muttered their assent. Her ruddy face lifted in a head-girl smile.

  ‘Good show. I’d be grateful if you could all let your sections know as quietly as possible so as not to disrupt the work and then if you, Mrs . . . ?’ She looked at Cathy.

  ‘Wheeler,’ she replied. ‘Cathy Wheeler.’

  ‘Well then, Mrs Wheeler,’ said Mrs Crowther, ‘once you’ve given your team the sad news, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind giving Mrs Paget a quick tour and a rundown of the centre.’

  ‘And this is the cupboard where we keep all the spare toys,’ said Cathy, pointing at the shelves laden with die-cast soldiers, wooden trains and dolls of various sizes, most of which had both eyes.

  It was all of forty minutes since Mrs Crowther had departed and Cathy and Mrs Paget had started their tour of the centre. Cathy had introduced St B & B’s new organiser to the girls in the kitchen, the bandage-making team, her own second-hand clothing section and all the other groups of women who were knitting, stitching and packing in the hall. They had even looked in at the nursery, where the bigger children were having story time while the babies had their afternoon nap.

  They were now standing on the stage at the far end of the hall, where all the equipment the ARP divisions didn’t have room to store in Cable Street Mixed Infant School – where the Wapping and Shadwell ambulance service, heavy rescue, fire service and communication centre were all based – was stacked.

  ‘And this is the baby equipment that we loan out,’ continued Cathy, indicating the handful of battered pushchairs, ancient prams and wicker cribs parked alongside the spare canvas stretchers, stirrup pumps and boxes of first-aid equipment.

  ‘And how is that allocated?’ Mrs Paget asked, giving it a cursory glance.

  ‘Just as people need it,’ Cathy replied. ‘And we write who’s taken it in the loans book, which is kept in the office.’

  Mrs Paget gave her a tight smile but didn’t comment.