A Mother's Spirit

by Anne Bennett

  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.

  Dear Tom,

  I have never written before, but I thought you ought to know that Joe was injured last night helping people escape from a burning building, which later collapsed on him. They told me that he had quite extensive burns and internal injuries as well. He is a very sick man, Tom, and I am sorry to be the bearer of such bad news.

  Regards, Gloria

  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.’

  ‘He is very sick, but he is holding his own, and the doctors are pleased and a little surprised,’ Gloria said.

  ‘Daddy is hardly ever ill,’ Ben said.

  ‘I know,’ Gloria said. ‘They said that your daddy has the constitution of an ox, and I will see him every day a
nd stay with him as long as the hospital will let me stay,’ Gloria said. ‘I have taken time off from work to do just that.’

  ‘And he will get better in the end, won’t he?’

  Gloria gathered Ben into her arms and the tears seeped from her own eyes as she said firmly, ‘I promise you I will do my level best to see that he does just that.’

  TWELVE

  The day after Gloria told him about his father, Ben declared there was no need to take him to school each day as if he was a baby. Gloria knew that he was saying that it was his dad who needed her attention, not him, so each morning they set off in separate directions.

  The hospital was always bustling and busy, whatever time of the day Gloria arrived, and the staff seemed rushed off their feet. She’d wondered at first if they would allow her to visit daily, but they seemed to have no problem with that, so she sat in the room, holding Joe’s left hand because it wasn’t burned like the right one, and told him how much she loved him, and that he had to recover from this because she needed him and so did Ben.

  On the third day, Joe opened his eyes. They were vacant and unfocused, and she doubted he was aware of anything much. He had shut them again by the time the doctor Gloria had summoned had come to examine him. However, the doctor told her it was a very good sign.

  She went home not long after this, glad that she had something positive to tell Ben that evening, and then when she reached home she found a letter on the mat from Tom. In it he said that he had been so shocked at the news and that all of them were in his thoughts and prayers constantly. He expressed the deepest regret that he couldn’t travel over to give her some practical support, and if there was anything else she wanted, then she only had to ask. The love and concern that dear man had for them all could almost be lifted from the pages of the letter, and Gloria put her head on the table and cried as if her heart was broken because she had felt so alone.

  She wrote back to Tom, thanking him and telling of the small sign of recovery Joe had made. When Tom sent his next reply it was in a parcel addressed to Ben, and inside the package were sweets, chocolates and comics for him. Ben had never ever received a parcel in his life before and he was almost speechless with pleasure. He wrote a thank you letter straight away.

  Joe continued to recover very slowly, and Gloria kept Tom updated on his progress so he was aware of when he passed the crisis, when he fought against the fever that threatened his life, and when he began the first of the painful skin grafts. Each time in his reply Tom included something for Ben, often with a little note attached.

  Gloria began back to work when her holiday pay was used up, but left at dinner-time so that she could spend time with Joe and still be home for Ben when he had finished at his after-school club. At weekends she took Ben to the hospital with her, but had to leave him in the visitors’ room, for the hospital was adamant that children under twelve were not allowed on the wards. Ben was more than grateful then for the comics and sweets his uncle kept sending him because they whiled away the hours very pleasantly until his mother came back and told him all the news about his father.

  In the middle of April, there was another raid. Ben was in bed and asleep, and Gloria roused him quickly. He struggled into his siren suit while she packed the shelter bag.

  ‘It will likely be a light skirmish like the last few,’ the shelter warden said, ‘but better safe than sorry, I say.’

  He ruffled Ben’s hair in a way Gloria knew he hated and said to Gloria, ‘How’s your husband?

  ‘He’s doing all right,’ Gloria said. ‘He’s been having skin grafts for three weeks now.’

  The shelter warden whistled. ‘Very painful business, I hear that is.’

  Gloria pursed her lips and gave an almost imperceptible but definite shake of her head. She never discussed the pain Joe was in with anyone when Ben was in earshot, feeling the separation from the father he loved was enough for him to cope with.

  Before Gloria could say anything, however, there was a terrific explosion that seemed to be right above them. Ben gave a yelp of terror and the shelter warden exclaimed, ‘Christ Almighty! That was close.’

  But the words had barely left his lips when there was another explosion just as close and then another. He looked at Gloria and said, ‘I think it might be Tottenham’s turn tonight.’

  It soon became apparent the shelter warden was right. As the relentless attack continued, people streamed in from the neighbourhood, seeking some sort of refuge from the harbingers of hell spilling down on top of them. The raid went on for hours, and so close around them that Gloria almost waited for the shelter to be hit. The whistle of the descending bombs made her insides crawl with fear.

  When the raid was over at last, she stumbled out of the shelter with Ben to scenes of utter devastation, a large sea of rubble stretching out as far as the eye could see.

  With fingers of apprehension trailing down her spine, Gloria, with Ben by her side, walked down the short streets to where their small block of flats had once stood. All that was left was a gigantic mound of rubbish, littering the pavements and most of the road.

  Gloria stood and stared at it, as if unable to believe the evidence of her own eyes. She tried to tell herself that she should be grateful they were not hurt at all, that all the planes had destroyed was bricks and mortar, but it wasn’t just bricks and mortar to her. She had loved her flat, had kept it spotless and was always buying things to make it cosier. It symbolised the new future she was building with Joe and Ben, and now it was gone for ever.

  ‘What we going to do now, Mom?’ Ben asked, and Gloria didn’t answer him because she hadn’t the least idea. All she and her son had in the world were the clothes they stood up in – pyjamas, in Ben’s case – the shelter bag and their gas masks.

  Just then an ARP warden approached them. ‘You used to live here, ducks?’ he asked.

  Gloria nodded dumbly.

  ‘Have you got any relatives or friends who might take you in, like?’

  Gloria shook her head. Tears seeped from beneath her lashes and trickled down her cheeks.

  ‘Here now, ducks, you don’t take on so,’ the man said. ‘I’ll take you round to the WVS van and give you a feed first. It puts a new complexion on things on a full stomach, I always think.’

  Gloria wasn’t the slightest bit hungry. She felt sick with worry and thought that food would probably choke her.

  ‘But where will we sleep?’ she cried.

  ‘Don’t you worry about that,’ the man told her cheerfully. ‘Woodberry Down Mission has been taking people in. You won’t be the first I have taken there this evening. Now you follow me and I will soon sort you out.’

  Two days later Gloria wrote to Tom, but knowing what a worrier he was, she played down the despair that she was feeling.

  Dear Tom,

  Another bit of bad news, I’m afraid. Our flat was demolished in a raid the night before last. We were taken to a church hall nearby where we have been made very comfortable. You are not to worry about us; there are plenty in the same boat. Please don’t tell Joe what has happened either when you are writing to him. He can do nothing about it but worry, and he is doing so well, I would hate him to suffer a setback now.

  I have printed the address of where I am staying now at the top of this letter and look forward to hearing from you.

  In fact Gloria was trying hard to keep a brave face on everything, for Ben’s sake, and particularly for Joe, who knew nothing about the way they were living now. Inside, though, she really grieved for her lovely flat, which she had lavished such love and care on, reduced to a pile of masonry and everything in it crushed to bits. They had been down in the depths of poverty and despair for years, and the flat had been the outward sign that they were on their way up again, that the future was rosy once more.

  She had shed tears at night when all were asleep, muffling her sobs in her pillow, but after a few days she knew she really had to get over it. What she told Tom was right: she was by no means the only
person in such circumstances, and some were far worse off than she and Ben. Anyway, moaning never did any good and the kind people at the mission were doing their level best to help them.

  So when they were sorted out with clothes – a couple of shirts and pairs of trousers, socks and shoes for Ben, and a couple of dresses and cardigans, and shoes that had seen better days for Gloria, and the bare minimum of underclothes for both of them – she accepted them with good grace. Such few clothes, though, did mean that she seemed to be constantly washing them in the big laundry room at the back of the mission hall, but there again she wasn’t the only one.

  Gloria forced herself to get into the routine of living there, though the lack of privacy did bother her, and there was often too much noise for Ben to sleep very well.

  She had given her ration books in to the mission hall staff, and they provided the meals. It was always porridge in the morning and slices of the grey national loaf spread with margarine, and at night a stew of one kind or another with lots of vegetables and little meat, which they were all well used to now, and there was never much left.

  But however Gloria looked at it, she thought it a depressing way to live, and the only bit of good news as the spring unfolded into summer was that she could see Joe improving week by week. But when the doctors suggested discharging him at the beginning of July she was thrown into a panic.

  ‘We can do no more for him here,’ the doctor told her. ‘He will not be able to do much yet, and he needs peace and quiet in order to rest and recover properly.’

  Gloria thought of the noisy, clamorous mission hall and knew Joe would never recover there. But she knew where he would recover, and that was back in his old home in Ireland, where she imagined he would get all the peace and quiet he would need.

  Her mind recoiled from such a move, yet what was the alternative? In her heart of hearts, she knew there wasn’t one, and not one person who would be able to help her except kindly Tom Sullivan.