Till the Sun Shines Through (37 page)

But when she said this one night to Mary as they made their way home, she told her off. ‘Don't be such a little snob,' she said.

‘I'm not!' Bridie said indignantly.

‘Yes, you are, judging people.'

‘I wasn't. I just said …'

‘I know what you just said and let me tell you those women work as hard as anyone and that's all that matters in this damned war,' Mary retorted sharply. ‘If it helps them cope to shout, or swear or smoke, then so be it. As for the lipstick, it's possibly to remind themselves they are women.'

Bridie thought Mary was probably right. After all, they hardly looked very desirable in their sexless overalls and boots with their hair coiled beneath a scarf in an effort to keep it clean as well as for safety reasons. But then Mary suddenly squeezed her sister's arm. ‘Don't mind me,' she said. ‘I snapped at you like a weasel. It's not you, it's me. I'm tired out and that's a fact.'

‘Don't worry about it. I'm the same,' Bridie replied.

It was true. In the first fortnight at the factory, Bridie nearly followed her children when they went to bed, she'd been so worn-out. It reminded her of the early days on the farm when she'd been so exhausted. She knew, like before, it would pass, her body would get used to it, and now, though she was still tired coming home, she would revive after a meal. In those early days she had come home in a sort of stupor, so weary she was barely able to put one foot before the other.

In an effort to ease the boredom,
Workers' Playtime
from the wireless was broadcast to the various workshops and it belted out the popular songs of the day, loud enough to drown out some of the noise of the machinery, especially when the women's voices singing along raised the decibel level.

Liam, largely influenced by his days at the nursery, loved singing too and often entertained Bridie and Katie before bedtime, belting out the nursery rhymes and other songs he'd learned at school.

Now he and Katie interspersed these with ‘Run Rabbit Run', ‘Hey Little Hen' or ‘Mairzy Doats', and other songs from the war like ‘Kiss Me Goodnight, Sergeant Major' which they'd learned from Jay and Mickey.

But despite
Workers' Playtime
the work was often heavy and very tedious. There was often overtime, which Mary and Bridie would do if they were able and not for the money alone either, but to make as much as possible to fight this blessed war. It used to wear both Mary and Bridie down, but what depressed Bridie most was seeing a pound of her hard-earned money going out to Peggy every week.

The woman was well able to find a job herself and with all her youngsters working now, she had no need to squeeze the money out of Bridie. But Bridie never bothered saying this, she just paid her, so that she'd leave quickly.

She could just about cope with seeing that much of Peggy and didn't want to give her any excuse to hang about and prophesy dire accidents that could befall her children when God took his revenge. That always made Bridie feel sick. She loved her children with a passion and protecting her children through the war was enough of a worry without Peggy adding to it.

But, even with the pound given to Peggy, Bridie was well paid and by careful husbanding of the money, she knew she would be able to replenish most of the money she'd taken from the post office account. This was made easier with the children having their main meal at nursery and school, enabling her to make the rations she was allowed go further.

But there was no sign of frugality when the men wrote to say they were being discharged. When the hospital authorities found out they were related, they'd found them beds in the same ward and arranged to have them released on the same day.

They'd been in hospital for six weeks when they came home that bright summer's day in mid-July, far longer than Bridie and Mary had thought. Tom was pleased, however, for though his physical injuries had healed, his mental scars had taken longer and he'd been in no fit state to be released earlier for his nightmares frightened him. He had dreaded going home until he was fully better because the sight of him screaming and thrashing in the bed, sometimes muttering and shouting or laughing hysterically, would seriously affect Bridie. That was all behind him now, thankfully, and he and Eddie had three clear days to spend with their family before they rejoined their unit.

When Bridie first saw Tom, she realised with a pang that the young man she had fallen in love with had gone for ever. There were drawn lines on his face and greying hair at his temples.

But his smile was still the same and she sped across the room, enfolding him in her arms, feeling the tension seep from him, as he said huskily, ‘Oh God, Bridie, how I've longed for this, to hold you tight and to cuddle my children. Nothing matters to me but you three. You must know that.'

Bridie did know. But Tom had seen things he could never tell her about that made his family all the more precious to him, like the town of Tournou they were making for as they'd been ordered to retreat. Before they reached it, they came upon lines of refugees – women, old men and children – machine-gunned as they had tried to escape the bombing. Some had been gunned down in the road and they lay there, spread-eagled in puddles of blood; others had cowered in ditches, but it hadn't saved them. Some had prams or barrows piled high with their possessions, the richer ones had donkeys or ponies pulling carts or had been leading their horses out of the town when the bombers came.

They heard the screams and cries of the animals before they got there. The scene would stay with him always, the dead bodies with the stench of death mixed with the smell of blood, their pathetic belongings spread along the road, their pet dogs dead or dying beside them, carts overturned and horses trapped beneath them, riddled with bullets and often with broken legs. They screamed in pain and the dogs whimpered and Tom and his friends put many out of their misery before going on, unable to do little else.

Tournou itself was pulverised by the bombing. Everywhere they looked, they saw shattered buildings reduced to a pile of rubble. Other buildings were split asunder, leaning drunkenly against their neighbour, their contents spilled out before them. The dead lay in rows on the streets and pavements and rescue workers tore at the piles of rubble with bloodied, blistered hands in the hope of finding more survivors, while dust swirled in the air, stinging eyes and lodging in noses and throats.

Tom was devastated. He'd heard of
Blitzkrieg
, the lightning bombing the Germans had practiced in Spain which had killed a thousand people in one attack. But a grainy photograph in a newspaper, or a broadcast on the wireless, did not begin to touch on the horror of it all.

He was appalled that what had happened in that Belgium town might happen in Birmingham, that Bridie and the children might be mercilessly gunned down trying to escape. He was desperate to get out of it, back to England where they could regroup and have another go at the madman and his brutal, butchering army.

None of this, though, could he share with Bridie. No way was he going to frighten her to death with the things he'd seen. Things that no human being should ever see.

Nor could he speak of the days they'd spent getting to Dunkirk with no food, drinking water from streams along the way, surviving on little sleep. When they stumbled onto the sands of Dunkirk beach, they were light-headed and extremely weak. The carnage around them and the noise was unbelievable.

The Stukas were circling the beaches, their machine guns relentless, and the Heinkels and Messerschmitts were bombing the small boats in the water, as well as the larger ships out at sea and the men diving into the water to escape or burrowing into the sand dunes. They lit up the sky in flashes as bright as day and answering them were the anti-aircraft guns set up along the beach and the RAF in their Spitfires, wheeling and diving around below and over the planes, the guns barking into the night.

Eventually, Tom and Eddie were pushed along a makeshift pier head made from debris on the beach and loaded onto a small pleasure cruiser. They'd gone no distance when the skipper was hit by machine-gun fire and, as he fell to the cabin floor, a bomb blasted the boat out of the water. Tom found himself floundering in the dark, in the grey scummy water littered with bodies, with no idea where his comrades, including Eddie were. He was eventually picked up by another cruising boat and had been ferried to the Winchelsea.

Eddie, he found out later, had also been picked up by a private motor boat and the skipper, finding the Navy ships full to capacity, took his load straight across the channel to the south coast. Both men had gunshot and shrapnel wounds when they arrived in England and Eddie had also damaged his arm and leg too, but fortunately not badly.

Tom wanted to protect Bridie from the debacle of Dunkirk, the humiliating and harrowing retreat and the horrors he'd witnessed, not least the bodies littering the beaches. But Bridie, like her sister Mary, had read all the papers and listened to every news report and surmised much from what Tom didn't tell her and by the haunted look that often came over his face.

The dangers Tom faced daily invaded Bridie's sleep, especially after he returned to his unit, until Ellen and Mary took her severely to task about it. She had to buck up and be strong and brave, for the children's sake if not her own, they told her. Did she think she was the only woman in the world to be going through it?

Bridie took to heart what they said. She went to work with a will, and talked to the children often about Tom, lest they forget their father, and prayed for him diligently every night. She could do no more.

The school holidays began and though Liam's nursery didn't close, it still left Katie on Ellen's hands all day, helped by the rather dubious attentions of Mary's sons. Mary had cautioned them, particularly Jay, about looking after Katie if they took her out.

She needn't have worried, for Jay had been enchanted by the frail-looking child since the day she'd been born. He thought she was like a perfect little doll and he'd no more risk any harm come to her than stick his own hand in the fire.

A change had come over him too since his father's return from Dunkirk; he'd realised that war was no game and that the time for childish tricks was over. He was twelve now and man of the house, for no one knew when his father would be home again. He would like to do something for the war effort himself, but he was too young to be considered in any professional capacity, but if looking after Katie meant his auntie Bridie could make more shell cases, then that was what he would do and, what's more, he'd do it well. ‘Do you know where we went today, Mammy?' Katie said at the tea table that evening and, without giving anyone a chance to say anything, went on, ‘Jay and Mickey took me to Cannon Hill Park and Jay let me plodge in the stream, but he kept hold of my hand so I couldn't fall in. I had to tuck my dress in the legs of my knickers so it wouldn't get wet. Jay said it was all right.'

Bridie felt little fissions of alarm run down her spine. Cannon Hill Park was a distance away and there were busy roads to cross. ‘I hope you were a good girl for them,' she said.

‘'Course I was, Mammy.' Katie said, indignant that her mother could have considered the possibility of anything else.

‘Did you hold their hands?'

‘Going I did, not coming back though.'

‘And why not?' Bridie snapped.

‘Because Jay carried me on his back because my legs were tired,' Katie replied. Bridie gave a sigh of relief.

Every night it seemed there was something else to tell about Jay. Jay had taken her to feed the swans and ducks that swam in the lake with stale bread and another day to fish for tiddlers with some little nets that Mary had. Katie was very disappointed her mother wasn't as excited as she was about the little squirmy things swimming aimlessly around in a jam jar.

‘You should see how fast Jay can push the roundabout in Calthorpe Park, Mammy,' Katie told her one evening. ‘It was the fastest ever and the swings went so high I thought I was going to come over the bar.'

Bridie was thoroughly alarmed by this and mentioned it to Ellen. ‘Jay would not do anything to harm the child,' she said firmly. ‘I must say I'm surprised at the turnout those boys are making, particularly Jay. He has mates around the door calling for him at every turn and yet he tells them he can't play about, that he has a job to do looking after his little cousin. I tell you, those boys have lifted nearly the whole load of looking after Katie from me.'

She didn't go on to say that she could have given the child scant attention without the help of the boys and outings would be out of the question with Sam to see to, because she didn't want Bridie to start feeling guilty. She knew the work her and Mary were doing, the work all the women were doing, was necessary if they were to win this damned war and defeat couldn't be considered.

Bridie, though comforted, asked Jay about the trip to Calthorpe Park when Katie claimed she nearly went over the bar. Jay laughed. ‘Don't worry, Auntie Bridie,' he said soothingly, ‘I'd never risk hurting Katie – I did push the roundabout fast, all the kids wanted me to, but I got on with Katie to make sure she wouldn't fall off or anything.'

The boy was so sincere that Bridie believed him and felt much better about leaving Katie in his care after that and was immensely glad that the boys took her out so often away from the dirty streets and dingy, disease-ridden courtyards. Even when the days were dull and cold, or the rain washed the dust from the streets, the boys would amuse Katie. They played games: Snakes and Ladders or Ludo and they taught her how to play dominoes and draughts. Sometimes, they'd listen to the Ovaltiney's show on the wireless and help her crack the code they gave out at the end, or sing along with the war songs from ‘Whistle While You Work'.