Keep the Home Fires Burning (6 page)

‘Dad uses words like that, ‘cos I’ve heard him,’ Magda maintained.

‘That’s different, and you know it, and if you don’t listen to me, I’ll tell Mom. Then you’ll be sorry.’

Magda knew she would be. Her mother had far harder hands than Sarah. So, though she still thought the world a bloody scary place, she kept those thoughts to herself.

On Friday morning the children to be evacuated were assembled in the school yard and Marion took Tony and the twins down to see their friends go off. The evacuees had labels with their names on pinned to their coats, and boxes, which Marion said held their gas masks, were hung around their necks. Some had their change of clothes and personal bits and pieces in carrier bags, while others held small cases, or had haversacks strapped to their back, like Mary, who was standing in the playground looking a little lost, but hanging on to her five-year-old brother, Raymond, for grim death.

She gave a half-hearted attempt at a smile when she saw the twins, but despite that, she seemed
cloaked in misery. In fact most of the children looked the same, and the mothers were little better, for many of them were in tears, though some were trying to put a brave face on it.

The teachers going with them rallied the children into some sort of order and then the headmaster led them in a rendition of ‘Run Rabbit Run’ as they marched towards the gate and to Aston station.

‘Where is the place of safety they’re going, anyroad?’ Magda asked as they walked home.

‘No one knows,’ Marion said. ‘That’s the terrible thing. Phyllis, Mary and Raymond’s mother, said all they were told was that wherever it was there would be host families ready to take in the children and care for them. She has no idea where that place is or what sort of family her two will end up with.’

‘Mary dain’t want to go,’ Magda said, ‘cos she was blarting her eyes out on the bus.’

‘Her mother was as well,’ Missie added.

‘Ah, yes,’ Marion said. ‘Poor woman was in a right state about it. One of the problems is that she doesn’t know whether she’s doing the right thing or not. She was just thinking that if the raids do come, she has to see to the two other little ones at home, so the eldest two would be better out of it for a while. If there are no raids she will have them back quick as lightning, I think.’

No one made any response to this because as they turned into their road, right beside their front
gate women had gathered, earnestly discussing something.

‘What is it? What’s up?’ Marion said.

Marion’s next-door neighbour, Deidre Whitehead, answered, ‘News just came through on the wireless. Hitler’s armies have invaded Poland and they are fighting for their lives.’

Marion felt quite faint, although it was news that she had been expecting.

Ada Shipley said, ‘That’s it then. The balloon has definitely gone up. We’re going to have another war and if my lad’s right it will be bloodier even than the Great War. God help him, wherever he is tonight.’

Hear, hear, thought Marion as she hurried the children indoors. God help all of us.

The gas masks that Marion brought home for them later that day were just as awful as Mary had said, and they didn’t look a bit like any picture of Mickey Mouse that Magda had ever seen.

‘I can’t wear that,’ she complained, frantically tugging off the mask that Marion fitted on her. ‘I can’t breathe with that flipping thing covering my face.’

‘Of course you can,’ Marion said unsympathetically. ‘You will be glad enough to wear it if there are gas attacks. This is not the time to make a fuss about little things.’

‘If you ask me, not being able to breathe is a pretty big thing,’ Tony said. ‘I can’t breathe either,
and I’ll tell you summat else as well: they won’t have to bother with sending no gas over here; the stink of rubber will do the job for them.’

Sarah felt sorry for the children. The gas masks were hideous, very smelly and uncomfortable to wear, and breathing once they were on was not easy. However, she felt she had to show the lead in this and so she said, ‘All right, so they’re not nice, but if we have to wear them then we have to, and that’s all there is to it. I’m sure that it’s just a case of getting used to it.’

‘Huh!’ said Tony contemptuously, but Marion threw Sarah a look of gratitude.

That night the talk around the tea table was all about the news that day. ‘The bosses heard it announced and came and told us lot on the shop floor,’ Bill said. ‘We have no option now, so I told the gaffer I’m off to enlist on Monday morning. He was prepared for it because I told him a while ago what I intended, once war was official, like.’

Marion swallowed the lump that seemed lodged in her throat and said, ‘Did he mind?’

‘Ain’t no good minding things like this in a war situation,’ Bill said. ‘Anyroad, he didn’t. He actually said if he had been a younger man he would have done the same thing and I weren’t the only one to go, by any means.’

‘He ain’t either, Mom,’ Richard said. ‘Remember them Jewish apprentices I told you about? Well, they’re all enlisting too. One of them said that he’s avenging the death of his parents because he thinks
they must be dead or they would have got word to him by now. I can quite see how he feels. There were others as well. There was a right buzz in the canteen over dinner, wasn’t there, Dad?’

‘There was, son. And if all those who said they were enlisting actually do it, the foundry will be very short-handed. Although women can take on a lot of the men’s work, like they’re talking about, some of the foundry tasks will probably be too heavy for most of them.’

‘So what will they do about that?’

Bill shrugged. ‘Search me,’ he said. ‘But every man jack of us that can get out there and fight should, because we have to stop the Nazis while there’s still time.’

Bill’s words brought a chill to all of them.

‘I can’t help wishing you didn’t feel this way, just as I wish that we were not at war with anyone,’ Marion said, breaking the silence, ‘but I know what you have to do and though I can’t say truthfully that you go with my blessing, I’ll support you the best way I can.’

‘You can’t say fairer than that,’ Bill replied, and as he put his hand over hers on the table, Marion saw his eyes were very bright.

No one dawdled at Mass that Sunday for the Prime Minister was going to speak to the nation on the wireless just after eleven o’clock. Polly and Pat, and other neighbours without their own wireless sets, were crowded into the Whittakers’ and at a
quarter past eleven they learned ‘this country is at war with Germany’. As the broadcast came to an end, some of the listeners had tears trickling down their cheeks, yet no one was surprised by the news.

Just then, a dreadful, ear-splitting sound rent the air. They all knew what it was – the siren signalling an attack ? and they all looked at each other fearfully, not sure what to do. It proved to be a false alarm but it galvanised Marion into action. For days, both in the newspaper and on the wireless, the Government had been advising householders to get together a shelter bag and put into it anything of value, such as ration books, identity cards, saving and bank books, insurance policies, treasured photographs, and maybe a pack of cards or dominoes, or favourite books for the children.

Marion hadn’t done it, as if not doing it was going to change what had been staring her in the face for weeks. Nor had she cleared out the cellar, though now that it had been reinforced it was where they might be spending a lot of their time. Their cellar was bigger than most, but this just meant that there was more room to house junk. As the all clear sounded, Marion said to Polly, ‘I went down yesterday and I had quite forgotten the rubbish we put in there, like the rickety wooden chairs, and that battered sagging sofa that we bought when we were first married.’

‘You might be glad of places to sit when the raids come.’

‘I know,’ Marion said. ‘I shan’t throw anything
away. But I will ask Bill to look at the chairs. He’ll soon make them a bit sturdier; he’s very handy that way.’

‘Oh, I wish Pat was,’ Polly said. ‘He finds it hard to knock a nail in.’

Marion said nothing, because that was best whenever Pat’s name came up. Instead she said, ‘I wonder what Mammy will say about the recent turn of events.’

‘Well, you’ll know soon enough, won’t you?’ Polly said. ‘I suppose they’re coming to tea as usual?’

Marion nodded.

‘You might not be so keen on having them over every week once Bill joins the army,’ Polly went on. ‘I doubt a soldier will get as much money as Bill picks up now, and you may find it a bit of a struggle. If you’re strapped at all we can help you out. God knows, you’ve helped us out enough in the past.’

‘Let’s just see how we go for now,’ Marion said. ‘We’ll likely know more when the men come back from the recruiting office tomorrow.’

It was a fair step to Thorpe Street Barracks, the other side of town, near the Horse Fair in Edgbaston, not a place either Pat or Bill had been to before. They kept up a steady pace, though as they passed the White Lion pub Pat looked at it longingly because the day was warm one.

‘I could murder a cold pint just now.’

‘It would be welcome right enough,’ Bill said, ‘but the pubs won’t be open yet awhile. Anyroad, it wouldn’t look well, enlisting in the army stinking of beer.’

‘Yeah, maybe not,’ Pat conceded. ‘And we’re nearly there, I’d say. This bloke down our yard, who went last week, said the barracks is about halfway down the road.’

As they passed rows of back-to-back houses Bill asked Pat how Polly had taken the news that he was going to enlist. ‘Well, she weren’t over the moon or owt,’ Pat said. ‘She come round, like, in the end, ‘cos it isn’t as if I’ve got a job to leave,
like you have. Anyroad, as I said to Poll, if we can kick them Jerries into shape soon, like, then our Chris might not be drawn into it. Tell you the truth, Bill, I’d give my right arm for my lads to stay out of this little lot. I mean, they haven’t really had any sort of life yet, have they?’

‘No, you’re right, of course,’ Bill agreed.

‘How did Marion cope with it?’

‘She kicked up a bit of a stink,’ Bill said. ‘Mind you, she doesn’t hold a candle to her mother. Bloody old vixen, she is.’

‘Did you tell Clara that we were enlisting together?’

‘Yeah, I did.’

‘Bet that didn’t go down too well. That woman hates my guts. I’ve never managed to provide for Polly the way the old woman thought I should.’

‘Yeah, but that wasn’t your fault,’ Bill said. ‘Anyroad, I think she has a short memory. She came from very humble beginnings herself, Marion told me. For the first few years of her life she was brought up in a damp, smelly, rat-infested cellar because her parents couldn’t afford anything better. Eddie wasn’t at the rolling mills then; he was a porter down at New Street railway station and he had to go each day to see if he’d be set on. Marion said that sometimes he had no work and so no money for days. She was often hungry and barefoot. D’you know, she began life as scullery maid in a large country house in Edgbaston when she was just ten years old?’

‘Did she?’ Pat said. ‘Polly never told me that. Course, being younger, she’d hardly be aware of it. Anyroad, I thought there were laws about that kind of thing?’

Bill nodded. ‘Marion should by rights have been at school until she was twelve, but apparently Clara said she could read, write and reckon up, and that was all the learning she would need, and a sight more than Clara herself had ever had, and it was time that she was working. She was so small when she began work she couldn’t reach the sinks and had to stand on a board. It must have been hard for her for she said some of the pots were nearly as big as she was and there were a great many of them and the hours were long. And yet she claims she was happy because when she began there it was the first time she could ever remember being warm and properly dressed, even in the winter. She lived in the attic of the big house, which she shared with the kitchen maid and two housemaids. For the first time in her life she had a comfortable bed of her own and a cupboard beside it to put her clothes in. She said it was like luxury.

‘She also had plenty to eat, because the master and mistress were generous, and Cook was a kindly soul who always maintained that the staff worked harder when their stomachs were full.’

‘Polly told me that,’ Pat said. ‘She said they always looked forward to her coming home on a day off because the cook would pack up a big basket for them all. Apart from that, their lives
were hard enough and she said nearly all her brothers and sisters died. Eddie must have been glad to get that job at the rolling mills.’

‘Well, it meant at least they could move into that back-to-back in Yates Street,’ Bill said. ‘Marion thought that things might get better for them all at last.’

‘Aye, and then old Clara was knocked for six when Michael died on one of those bleeding coffin ships,’ Pat said. ‘Polly remembers the unhappiness in the house then, although she was only young herself.’

‘Yeah, but Clara never let herself get over it,’ Bill said. ‘I’m not saying that you wouldn’t be upset – Christ, it would tear the heart out of me to lose just one of my kids – but in the end you have to face it and go on, and she’s never done that. All I’m saying is, Eddie couldn’t get a regular job for years and neither could his sons, which is why they made for the States in the first place, so I can’t understand why Clara should take against you for finding things to be the same. That’s just life, that is.’

‘Huh, I don’t worry myself about anything that old harridan says to me. It’s like water off a duck’s back.’

‘Good job,’ Bill said. ‘Anyroad, here we are.’

The barracks were large and imposing, and decorated with posters urging men to enlist.

‘Come on, let’s get it over with,’ Pat said, and they went in through the wide, square entrance with turrets on either side.

The entrance hall was packed, but those in
charge seemed to have it all in hand and the recruits were dealt with speedily. When all the formalities had been done and the forms filled in, they signed their names and were officially enlisted in the army, subject to their medicals.