A Mother's Spirit (18 page)

It was too much. There was only so much tragedy and sadness that the human brain could take at one time. She was no good at work, for the tears constantly welling in her eyes were blinding her. Ben too would be coping with this loss. He would have heard about Elsie’s children at school, and really she needed to be with him so they could mourn together.

The supervisor was upset herself and knew that Gloria was in no state to be at work.

‘Take a couple of days off,’ she advised. ‘The news has knocked me sideways, to tell you the truth, and I think you need time to come to terms with it.’

Gloria thanked the supervisor and left to collect her son from school. His teachers too were sympathetic and agreed with her that Ben would be better at home. Ben’s face was chalk white and lined with tear trails and his eyes reflected his sadness.

Later Gloria learned that Elsie’s children hadn’t been the only friends he had lost that day: there were many empty desks in the school. Her heart went out to him, and to Joe as well, who settled down straight after the evening meal to write the hardest letter he would ever write to his mate Red McCullough.

Less than a month after those very sad successions of funerals, Joe received a letter from a friend of Red’s in the forces, saying that he had been killed in action. Though Joe knew he would miss him, he was glad in a way, because the McCulloughs had been a close-knit family and he knew Red would have been lost without them. But he grieved for him none the less. Red had been a good mate to him and a great friend to them all.

There was a lull in the air raids through the summer, and when they did resume in the autumn of that year they were sporadic and far more localised.

Then on 7 December, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and America was pulled into the war.

Gloria was unaccountably upset about it. ‘It might shorten the war, though, Gloria,’ Joe said.

‘No one knows whether it will or won’t in the end,’ Gloria said. ‘All I see it as now is an escalation of hostilities.’

No one could argue with that, and Christmas was again a very muted affair. Gloria looked forward to the New Year of 1942 with little enthusiasm.

The sirens blared out one mid-February day when Joe had only just left the house to go on duty. Ben had been about to get undressed, but Gloria told him not to bother.

‘It’s too cold,’ she said. ‘Just pull your siren suit over your clothes. I got it roomy.’

‘You got it so I could grow into it,’ Ben said. ‘You said so at the time, and the legs are so long that if I don’t turn them back on themselves they drag on the floor.’

‘Some people are never satisfied,’ Gloria replied. ‘You said the legs on your old one were too short.’

‘They were,’ Ben maintained. ‘And they cut me up the middle too.’

‘Ben,’ Gloria said in measured tones, ‘will you stop talking, get into your siren suit and fetch your gas mask? In case it has escaped your notice, we are not going to a Sunday school outing.’

Ben did as he was told and a few minutes later said, ‘I’m ready. Look, I’m waiting for you now.’

‘Watch it,’ Gloria said, lifting her coat off the hook. ‘Come on.’

The shelters weren’t as full as they had been the previous year, as many chose to stay at home and only sought shelter
if the raids came closer, but Gloria didn’t think her nerves would have stood that.

‘Someone’s getting a good old pasting tonight,’ remarked the shelter warden when the raid had been going on an hour or two.

And they were, and not that far away either. The droning of the planes, the whine of the bombs and the resultant explosions were perfectly audible. The planes came no nearer, however, and eventually, about two hours later, the all clear blared out reassuringly, and Gloria and Ben stumbled out into the night. They could see the raging fires spitting orange and crimson sparks into the sky, and scurried past, breathing in the familiar tang of acrid smoke mixed with the stink of cordite.

Gloria gave a sudden yawn. ‘Gosh, I’m tired,’ she said to Ben. ‘Bombing raids permitting, I will probably go to bed not long after you tonight.’

She was about to start getting undressed for bed when the knock came to the door. Alarmed at someone coming at that time of night, she called out, ‘Who is it?’

‘The police.’

‘Oh God!’ Gloria felt as if an icy hand had suddenly taken hold of her heart and she fumbled in her haste to open the door. A grim-faced policeman stood there, and with him the shelter warden she had been with just a few minutes before. ‘It’s Joe, isn’t it?’ Gloria cried. ‘It has to be Joe.’

‘Can I come in, Mrs Sullivan?’ the policeman said. Gloria let them though the door, her eyes never leaving the policeman’s face.

‘Would you like to sit down?’

‘No, I don’t want to do anything but hear what’s happened to my husband,’ Gloria said. ‘Tell me, please.’

‘Your husband has been injured, Mrs Sullivan.’

‘Injured, not killed? Oh, praise be to God,’ Gloria cried and then she caught sight of the policeman’s sombre face
and swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. ‘Is he likely to die from his injuries?’

The policeman shook his head. ‘These are questions I can’t answer. You must ask the doctors at the hospital.’

‘Which hospital?’

‘Well, they were trying Highgate Hill Infirmary as it was one of the closest,’ the policeman said. ‘It does depend on beds, though. We have a car at your disposal in case you have to travel some distance.’

‘But I can’t come with you,’ Gloria cried. ‘Not now. I have a son.’

‘That’s why I am here,’ the shelter warden said. ‘I will look after your son until your return. Go off with the policeman and find out how your husband is.’

Gloria nodded, took her coat from the hook and followed the policeman. She sat on her hands in the car to prevent them shaking, and held herself stiffly erect because she was afraid of losing control. She knew if she lost Joe, she wouldn’t want to go on. How would she cope without her beloved Joe, and how would Ben cope?

But he wasn’t dead, she reminded herself, and when she saw him she would will him to stay alive. But she didn’t see Joe when she arrived, because he had already been taken for emergency surgery. One of the doctors on duty said that he was extensively burned but also had internal injuries. ‘Brave man, by all accounts,’ he went on. ‘The fire officer who came in with him said he held up the entire weight of a house so that a family trapped beneath it could escape. And then with the last one through, it sort of caved in and crushed him.’

Gloria sank onto a seat. She really felt as if she couldn’t take any more, and she wanted to tell the doctor that she didn’t want a dead hero, she wanted a live husband, but she didn’t say this; she didn’t try to say anything for she knew if she tried the tears would have overwhelmed her.

She sat for over two hours in silence, praying inside her
head for the survival of her beloved husband before a young doctor, a harassed-looking woman in a white coat, with a stethoscope around her neck, came to see her.

‘Mrs Sullivan?’

‘Yes,’ Gloria said wondering if she had come to tell her that Joe had died on the operating table.

‘I examined your husband initially. He is a very sick man and will be in surgery many hours yet. It might be best if you come back in the morning.’

Gloria would have liked to have camped in the hospital overnight, but there was Ben to consider. She would come down first thing in the morning, though, and bugger the job. They could get someone else to sew the parachutes. Her first priority had to be her husband.

‘What are his chances?’ Gloria asked.

‘That is impossible to answer,’ the doctor said. ‘But he is gravely ill. The next twenty-four hours will be crucial.’

When Gloria was dropped outside her block of flats, she was aching inside with sadness.

‘Is there anyone you can ask to stay with you tonight?’ the policeman asked.

Gloria shook her head. ‘I have no family and no friends left now.’

She said a similar thing a few minutes later to the shelter warden.

‘My missus will come and stay with you, if you like,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t be on your own.’

‘No, really, I will be fine,’ Gloria said firmly. ‘It is very kind of you, but I want to be by myself for a while.’

‘You sure?’ the shelter warden asked anxiously.

‘Quite sure.’

Still, the warden left reluctantly but Gloria shut the door behind him with a sigh of relief. She wanted to be alone, to be able to release the tears that had been threatening since the police had knocked on her door.

And when the tears were spent, she felt light-headed and sluggish, and longed to lie down and sleep. But her mind was too active to allow her to do that and so instead she sat down at the table to write to Tom. He needed to be told, she thought.

Though she had never met Tom, Gloria felt she understood him a little because of his letters, and what Joe had said about him. She had never written to him herself, though, and she found it difficult to write for the first time to someone to tell them bad news, and so the letter was a brief one.

Gloria put the letter in an envelope to post on her way taking Ben to school in the morning and eventually she went to bed, where she tossed and turned through what was left of the night.

The next morning, Ben was surprised that his father had left for work before he had got up, which was what his mother told him. Other things were wrong that morning too, and his mother was tetchy and short with him.

Then, as they were ready to go, Ben said, ‘Why are you wearing the coat you wear for Mass to work? You have never done that before.’

‘It’s warmer than the other,’ Gloria answered shortly.

‘And you’ve done your hair different.’

‘I fancied a change, that’s all.’

‘And you’ve got black rings around your eyes.’

‘Ben, for heaven’s sake!’ Gloria exclaimed. ‘Don’t you know that it is very rude to make personal comments about people?’

‘Well, you have,’ Ben stated flatly.

For the first time in her life, Gloria really wanted to shake her son. She felt as if all her nerve-endings were raw and exposed. Every time she remembered the doctor’s eyes she felt sick with fear, and she could do without Ben going on and on. But she controlled herself and said, ‘I didn’t sleep well last night and that’s why my eyes are ringed with black, and don’t ask why I didn’t sleep well,’ she went on, with the ghost of a smile for his benefit, ‘or I just might clock you one.’

Ben grinned back and retorted, ‘Wasn’t going to ask anyway.’

Joe was a fighter and the doctor who came to see Gloria said he was delighted with the way he had pulled through the series of operations he had had through the night, though it was still touch and go, and the burns were also giving them cause for concern.

‘However,’ the doctor went on, ‘your husband seems to have the constitution of an ox. To be honest, I didn’t expect him to pull through last night or be half as well as he is this morning, so that is good news.’

‘Thank you,’ Gloria said. ‘Can I see him just for a minute?’

The doctor nodded. ‘You can peep in. But he won’t know you because he is heavily sedated and might be for some time yet, because he will be in tremendous pain from the burns.’

Joe lay like one dead, his shallow breathing the only sound in the room. Most of his body was covered in thin gauze strips that the nurse explained were to protect the burns. Gloria’s heart was filled with love and pity for her poor, brave Joe and the trials he had yet to go through.

Her boss at the factory, where Gloria went after she had
visited the hospital, understood about her need to take time off. ‘Mrs Sullivan, you have holidays owing to you,’ he said. ‘So take what you need now and you will still be paid if you take it as holiday pay.’

‘Thank you,’ Gloria said. ‘You are very kind.’

‘Not at all,’ the boss said. ‘It is only what you are entitled to.’

Gloria popped in to see the women too, to tell them why she hadn’t turned in that day, and they were all sympathetic and understanding about her need to be with her husband. As Winnie said, ‘I mean, this war work and being patriotic is all very well and good, but your own has to come first.’

Ben was pleased that his mother picked him up after school and he hadn’t to go to the club but he thought it odd. ‘You’ve never come to pick me up before,’ he said.

‘Well, normally I can’t,’ Gloria said. ‘But I haven’t been to work today.’

‘Why not?’ Ben asked because it was almost unheard of for his mother to take time from work.

‘I’ll tell you when we get home,’ Gloria said. ‘I am perished with cold.’

‘All right,’ Ben said, ‘but let’s hurry then.’

They did hurry through the dank, damp streets with the clammy fog swirling around them, and Ben was as pleased as Gloria was to reach the warm flat. She pulled the blackout curtains across the windows so that they could turn the light on before she took off her coat. Ben said, ‘Go on then.’

Gloria sat on the settee, drew Ben down to sit beside her and put an arm around him as she said, ‘The reason that I didn’t go to work today is to do with what happened to your daddy last night.’ And she went on to explain things to Ben.

She wasn’t aware when he began to cry, but when he looked up at her as she finished talking she saw the tears trickling down his cheeks. He scrubbed at them with the
sleeve of his jumper and said brokenly, ‘Is Daddy going to die?’

Gloria swallowed the lump in her throat and bit back the hearty reassurances she had been going to give her son. He deserved the truth, she thought, and so she said, ‘We hope not, Ben.’

‘But you said you’d seen him today. You must know.’