Home Fires and Spitfires

by Daisy Styles

  As his patient’s tears subsided, Jamie turned to Ada. ‘I need to examine her,’ he murmured.

  Ada stepped out from behind the desk where she’d positioned herself and laid a comforting arm around Zelda’s shuddering shoulders. ‘Shhh, sweetheart,’ she said softly, leading her to the narrow examination bed and helping her to lie down.

  When Zelda’s skirt and underclothes had been removed, Ada was yet again shocked by how thin she was; the only shape to her was the bump between her skinny ribcage and her bony pelvis. After Jamie had washed his hands, he carefully felt Zelda’s swollen tummy then, after fixing his stethoscope to his ears, he moved the instrument around her tummy in order to hear the baby’s heartbeat. Zelda lay as stiff and rigid as a plank.

  ‘Take some deep breaths,’ Jamie instructed.

  ‘Like this,’ Ada added, as she breathed slowly and steadily in and out.

  Zelda copied her pattern of breathing and gradually her pale body relaxed enough for Jamie to complete his examination. When he had finished, Ada helped Zelda to get dressed, then she returned to the chair across the desk from Jamie. In the best German he could muster Jamie spoke slowly and firmly to his patient.

  ‘Your baby is weak; the heartbeat is weak.’

  Zelda went so pale that Ada grasped her arm to stop her from fainting.

  Speaking in a mixture of English and German, Jamie purposefully didn’t avoid stressing the danger of Zelda’s delicate condition.

  ‘If you want your baby to live, you must eat, Zelda, you must rest, sleep and exercise.’

  With an agonized expression on her thin, pale face, Zelda replied, ‘I want my husband’s baby.’

  ‘Then you MUST take care of yourself,’ Jamie concluded. ‘It is the only way to keep your child.’

  Gracie’s examination with Dr Reid could not have been more different from Zelda’s; as Jamie had said previously to Ada, Gracie was strong and healthy. He did take the liberty of asking her how she got on with her new room-mate. Gracie was both kind and forthcoming.

  ‘Zelda cries a lot, especially at night when she thinks I’m asleep; she has nightmares too – she always calls out the name of her husband, “Izaak”. She’s frightened to death of t’other girls,’ Gracie informed Jamie. ‘When we go down for meals, I can see how scared she is, so I try to do the talking, but long term that’s not going to help her, is it?’ Gracie looked enquiringly from Jamie to Ada. ‘Surely things can’t go on the way they are?’

  Ada’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘You’re quite right, Gracie, things definitely can’t go on the way they are!’

  Later that day, at tea-time, Ada sat down at the large mahogany dining table, which was spread with plates of spam sandwiches and bowls of jelly. The residents weren’t taken aback by her presence, Sister Ada often joined them for a cup of tea when she had time to spare. Noticing that Gracie was there, though not her room-mate, Ada poured herself a strong cup of hot tea before helping herself to a spam sandwich as she sat back in her chair and calmly started to eat.

  ‘Off-duty, Sister?’ cheeky Annie asked.

  Ada shook her head as she set down her cup and saucer. ‘No,’ she responded. ‘Actually, I need some advice and I thought you might be able to help me.’

  Curious, the girls paused in their eating and drinking. ‘What kind of advice?’ ever suspicious Annie asked.

  ‘I wonder if any of you know how many refugees there are in Britain today?’ Ada started.

  A stunned silence met her question. Ada paused before she continued. ‘Over seventy thousand, most of them Jews, women and children seeking asylum. They come here with nothing, from France, Italy, Spain, Germany.’ Ada paused to sweep her eyes around the circle of women before she purposefully added what some already knew and others chose to ignore. ‘Zelda is one such, widowed by the Nazis, who shot her husband simply because he was a Jew.’

  A dumb embarrassed silence followed Ada’s delivery. Pushing her point home, Ada asked, ‘Have any of you taken the trouble to speak to Zelda?’

  Apart from Gracie every girl present shook her head. ‘So not one of you has taken pity on a poor refugee who has arrived here seeking sanctuary?’ Ada persisted.

  Heartless Annie shrugged. ‘She don’t speak English and I don’t speak German.’

  Feeling like she was going to lose her temper, Ada took a deep breath. Bessie lit up a cigarette before she boldly said, ‘She could be a bloody German spy for all we know.’

  Ada laughed mockingly at the very idea. ‘A pregnant German spy – I don’t think so! Disguised as a Jew on the run is a bit far-flung, Bessie,’ she scoffed.

  Impatient with their pathetic excuses, Ada continued with a sharp snap in her voice. ‘She’s scared stiff, she’s not at all well, and she’s very lonely. Would it be too much to ask, ladies, that you give Zelda a little respect, an occasional smile, a kind word?’

  Marie, one of the kinder girls, asked a genuine question. ‘It’s hard to communicate when you’re not sure how much she understands,’ she said with an embarrassed blush.

  Gracie intervened at this point. ‘I share a room with Zelda, and she understands more than you think. Just smile and say hello when she comes into a room, sit next to her and encourage her to speak,’ Gracie urged. ‘She needs friends.’

  Ada threw Gracie a grateful smile before she turned to the other residents. ‘For centuries Mary Vale has opened its doors to welcome outsiders. Let’s not stop now, ladies,’ she begged.

  Leaving the dining room, Ada slipped upstairs to Zelda’s room on the second floor. After tapping gently on the door, she entered to find Zelda gazing out of the large bay window that gave wonderful views of the marsh, now washed clean by the outgoing tide.

  ‘I’ve brought you something to eat, Zelda, dear,’ Ada said, as she set down a bowl of jelly and a cup of tea on a small bedside table.

  ‘Thank you, Sister,’ Zelda replied shyly. ‘You kind woman to me.’ Picking up the bowl of jelly, she dipped a spoon into it, ‘See, I eat,’ Zelda announced. ‘I listen to good doctor,’ she added with a trace of a smile.

  It was Gracie and kind Marie who led the vanguard to befriend Zelda. After Ada’s ticking-off Gracie absolutely insisted that Zelda came down for ALL of her meals, while Marie, in the dining room, insisted that everybody behaved decently at the very least towards Zelda. Annie and Bessie remained predictably hostile, but, as they were now outranked by the majority, the general attitude towards Zelda slowly changed. Though hesitant to start with, the residents made a conscious effort, offering baffled Zelda ‘a brew’ or ‘a butty’, which Zelda, equally keen to make friends quickly, accepted, though she wasn’t quite sure what she was agreeing to. Sitting at the dining table between Gracie on one side and Marie on the other, Zelda began to eat and drink healthily. Much to Gracie’s amazement, once she even tried to join in a discussion about the sex of her child.

  ‘Want boy,’ Zelda said, pointing shyly to her still small tummy. ‘Like husband.’

  ‘I have no husband,’ Marie replied.

  With her deep, dark eyes full of tears, Zelda added, ‘I also have no husband.’

  ‘Bastard Nazis,’ Marie muttered under her breath, as she poured out more tea for Zelda from the vast teapot Sister Mary Paul constantly replenished.

  Zelda cocked her head as she considered Marie’s words. ‘Yah,’ she agreed; then, with a sudden burst of anger, she repeated what Marie had said: ‘Bastard Nazis!’

  8. East to West

  A fortnight had passed since Harry had left, but he still had not returned home. Though worried sick about the whereabouts of her fiancé and what he might be doing, Diana had no choice but to write an apologetic letter to the vicar, putting on hold all of his suggested wedding dates, after which, emotional and frightened, she wondered what on earth to do. Exhausted after a long day in the Ops Block, Diana cycled back to her cottage and slumped in the armchair by the Aga. After loosening the waistband of her skirt, she stared ruefully at her now large tummy and cons
idered her options. With Harry still not back (and having absolutely no idea when he might return) Diana was beginning to realize that she couldn’t afford to sit around waiting for her beloved to walk through the door. With him gone it was up to her to make arrangements for the months ahead, and one thing was clear: she certainly didn’t want to give birth in the local cottage hospital.

  ‘I have to get away,’ Diana muttered out loud.

  Only recently had she rather shame-facedly seen the doctor on the RAF base, who had confirmed her dates and given her the names of several mother-and-baby homes. Diana had rather randomly chosen a place called Mary Vale, on the edge of the Lake District, where, when she had made enquiries, she had been told there was an immediate vacancy for a fee-paying resident.

  Though none of the officers in the Ops Block had alluded to her fiancé’s prolonged absence, Diana had coerced one of Harry’s pals on the base to meet her for a drink in the officers’ mess. Knowing how vital it was that she left a line of communication open between herself and Harry before she left Duxford, Diana came straight to the point.

  ‘I’m in a bit of a hole,’ she had blurted out as soon as they had sat down with their drinks. ‘You see, I’m pregnant.’

  Gordon blushed to the roots of his short wavy hair, then gulped back a large mouthful of bitter from his pint glass.

  ‘Harry and I were planning on getting married, but he’s been gone for weeks now, and I can’t afford to hang around here waiting for him; otherwise I’ll start to show and that will create quite a scandal,’ she added, as she lowered her eyes towards her swelling tummy.

  Looking like a cornered animal, blushing Gordon averted his gaze. Determined to keep his attention, Diana rolled on. ‘I’m just at my wits’ end,’ she said, and burst into tears.

  Handing her his perfectly ironed handkerchief, Gordon nervously checked that nobody was listening in on their conversation before muttering nervously, ‘What do you want of me, Diana?’

  Diana quickly mopped her eyes before reaching into her handbag for a letter that she handed to him. ‘When Harry returns to base, please would you give him this letter, which contains the address of where I’m going to have our baby.’

  Hoping to bring the conversation to a speedy end, Gordon gave an embarrassed nod. ‘Of course,’ he muttered.

  ‘And here’s a copy of my address for you too,’ Diana added with a trembling lip. ‘Please will you notify me of any news, be it good or bad?’

  Gordon briefly glanced at the address she had written down on a piece of paper. ‘Grange-over-Sands,’ he had grunted. ‘Bloody long way from Cambridge and the Fens!’

  Diana smiled bleakly. ‘A bloody long way from anywhere,’ she agreed.

  The Ops Block team were surprised by Diana’s sudden decision to transfer to a base nearer to her family home, a lie she had concocted one sleepless night that she clung to throughout all the awkward questioning she had to endure.

  ‘Don’t know how you managed a transfer quite so quickly,’ one curious girl queried.

  ‘Won’t you miss being near your nice young man?’ another had teased.

  Up in the viewing gallery Harry’s closest colleague, a man named Derek Robson, overheard the cross-examination going on around the mapping table and took pity on Diana. ‘Enough chatting, ladies, we’ve got work to do.’

  Though guilty about abandoning her war work, even though she knew she had absolutely no choice, Diana was ultimately relieved to leave Duxford; but when it came to leaving her sweet little thatched cottage she had wept. She had been so happy in Shelford, where she and Harry had spent so many happy times: walking by the river, cooking meals together, lying in bed wrapped in each other’s arms listening to the rain pattering against the windowpane. Was her beloved alive and well? Was he suffering, cold and hungry? She could bear any amount of waiting if only she knew that Harry was safe. Desperately trying to blank out memories that would break her heart, Diana determinedly set off on her journey to the Mother and Baby Home two hundred miles away on the other side of England.

  Ada was impressed by Diana’s good manners and calm composure when, hours and hours after the exhausted girl had left Cambridge, she was welcomed to Mary Vale.

  ‘Delighted to meet you, Miss Bishop,’ Ada said warmly. ‘How was your journey?’

  ‘Very, very long,’ Diana answered with a weary smile. ‘Endless changes on packed troop trains. I felt so sorry for the weary soldiers and sailors; some of them were so tired they slept standing up in smoky corridors; a few even climbed into the luggage racks, where they dozed off,’ she said, smiling. ‘Poor souls, they didn’t seem to have a clue where they were going.’

  Diana glanced curiously around the sitting room with its comfy old sofas and summer blooms; the phlox and carnations arranged in vases along the windowsills gave off a perfume that the cool evening air intensified.

  ‘Let’s just say, I’m glad it’s over,’ she added, as she gratefully accepted a cup of tea and a slice of bread and butter from Ada.

  ‘I gather from your letters that you worked as a WAAF on an RAF base in Cambridge,’ Ada commented. ‘Taxing work, I’m sure.’

  Diana nodded. ‘It was demanding work for sure, and pretty terrifying at times, but I loved every minute; it’s where I met my fiancé – we worked in the Ops Block,’ she said with a hint of pride.

  Ada knew too well not to question further; a girl arriving on her own was on her own for the most obvious of reasons: her man was gone. Changing the subject, Ada explained that Diana would have her own single room on the second floor. Since Zelda and Gracie had bonded so well in the time that they had shared the big double room, Ada certainly didn’t want to disturb their domestic arrangements, but she felt sure that Diana would enjoy being on the same floor as two women who were both due to give birth around the same time as herself.

  ‘You have your own room just across the corridor from two other pregnant ladies,’ Ada explained.

  Diana gave a grateful smile. ‘It will be such a relief to stop pretending,’ she admitted. ‘It’s been quite a struggle hiding my condition from my colleagues at work.’

  ‘You can relax all you want now,’ Ada said with a reassuring smile. ‘Everybody here is either expecting a baby or they’ve just given birth; you’ll be no exception. When you’ve had enough time to think things over, we can discuss your plans for the future.’

  Diana gave a polite smile. Right now she didn’t even dare to think about the future; she was simply grateful for sanctuary, a place where, she prayed, she would soon hear from Harry; then, hopefully, if her prayers were answered and they were eventually reunited, they could discuss their future together.

  After showing the newcomer to her room and the nearest bathroom, Ada bade her goodnight, then left her in peace. Diana washed the dirt of the day off her face and body, then gratefully snuggled down in her narrow single bed and closed her aching eyes. Listening to the soothing sound of the waves rhythmically breaking as the tide came in, Diana gave over her thoughts to Harry.

  ‘God bless you, my darling,’ she prayed. ‘Wherever you are, stay safe and come home to me soon.’

  The next morning, even though the blackout blind was drawn down, the light still managed to filter around the edges, giving Diana a chance to examine the room that would be hers for the coming months. Though it was nothing like the charming thatched cottage she had left behind in Cambridge, it was nevertheless clean and neat, with a high ceiling and a big sash window that, when she rolled back the blind, gave stunning views of a well-kept garden running down to a vast marsh, presently riotous with the calls of wading sea-birds.

  Suddenly hungry, Diana slipped out of bed and dressed herself in a cool, roomy, cotton frock, then headed down the corridor to the bathroom, where she bumped into two girls busy cleaning their teeth.

  ‘Hello! We’ve been expecting you,’ a girl with beautiful thick brunette hair said through a froth of bubbles. Wiping her mouth on a flannel, she smiled and extended a hand
to Diana. ‘I’m Gracie, and this is Zelda.’

  Gracie’s companion was small and delicate with a mass of bright red curly hair and a pale complexion flecked with freckles.

  ‘Pleased to meet you both,’ Diana said, as she warmly shook hands with her new neighbours.

  Smiling sweetly, Zelda said, ‘Our room is close to you, we welcome you.’

  Rather intrigued by her obvious German accent, Diana nodded enthusiastically. ‘Thank you, I’d like that.’

  ‘Pop in and see us any time you fancy a chat,’ Gracie babbled on. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m starving,’ she said, as she gathered up her toilet bag. ‘My advice to you as a new girl is, don’t hang about in the morning or there won’t be any toast left.’

  Zelda giggled as she trailed after her room-mate, calling, ‘You are always so hungry, meine Liebe.’

  Heading towards the stairs, Gracie threw her a cheeky smile. ‘Course I am, I’m pregnant!’

  Sitting between Gracie and Zelda, surrounded by a noisy crowd of residents, Diana marvelled at her new social group. They could not have been more different from the highly educated, ambitious young WAAFs she had previously spent her time with. Here heavily pregnant women sighed and groaned with the effort of walking or standing for too long, and unashamedly supported their heavy tummies as they moved around the Home. Diana noticed that chattering Gracie, with her bright smile and lively expression, constantly attracted attention; she was surprised by how much the residents turned to her for advice.

  ‘Are you doing Sister Ada’s exercise classes this afternoon, Gracie?’

  ‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world!’ came back the cheery reply.

  ‘Should I write to mi mam and tell her I’ve had the baby?’ another enquired.

  ‘Why not?’ Gracie retorted. ‘It’s not like she doesn’t know you’re pregnant!’

  ‘Father Ben says he’s found me some good folks who’d like to adopt my little boy – shall I accept?’