by Anne Bennett
‘All right for some,’ Flo growled out. ‘And why ain’t you at work today?’
‘There was damage,’ Lizzie said. ‘It wasn’t hit, but some of the buildings around were, and the factory was caught in the blast.’ She shrugged. ‘Might be back tomorrow.’
‘Well, I shall be out in a few days,’ Flo said. ‘So you’d best prepare yourself. Rodney’s worse, poor sod. Our Neil’s been to see him and told me.’
‘Neil?’
‘He weren’t with us last night,’ Flo said. ‘He was at the shop and he took shelter at a mate’s house, so he d’ain’t know about the house till the morning. Said his dad’s in a bad way.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘No you ain’t,’ Flo snapped. ‘Never give us the time of day, you. Well, things will change when I move in with you, I’ll tell you.’
That was Lizzie’s worst nightmare, and though she wouldn’t have wished a minute’s harm on Sandra’s family she blessed the fact she had a house full. But Flo wasn’t interested in Sandra Hearnshaw, like she wasn’t interested in anybody but herself and Steve. She didn’t listen to the tragic tale of the dead baby and dispossessed mother and her girls, who hadn’t a soul belonging to them.
‘I can’t believe you have the audacity to stand there and tell me you’ve given house-room to some strangers over your own flesh and blood,’ she shrieked. ‘By God, girl, you take some beating.’
Lizzie almost recoiled under the blast, issued with such venom. ‘Come on, Flo, be reasonable,’ she pleaded, but she knew, even as she spoke, that the woman had never been reasonable in the whole of her life. ‘Sandra has no one and she needs support.’
‘And I don’t?’
‘Aye, yes, but you have Gladys.’
‘Gladys! You know I never could abide our Gladys,’ Flo snapped. ‘Anyroad, it’s not for you to tell me where to lay my head. I’m family, and you owe me.’
‘I haven’t room,’ Lizzie said firmly. ‘I can’t turn Sandra and the two little girls out into the street. Gladys will take you in, I’m sure she will, and there’ll be room for Neil. He’ll hardly want to bide at his mate’s forever.’
‘You don’t want us, that’s the truth of it.’
Too right, Lizzie thought, but what she said was, ‘It’s not a question of wanting or not wanting. Sandra has nowhere to go and you have.’
Flo’s eyes narrowed. ‘It ain’t your decision,’ she growled. ‘You tell Sandra bloody Hearnshaw not to get her feet too far under your table, for she’ll have to take them out quick when I write and tell our Steve about you.’
‘Well,’ Lizzie said with a sigh. ‘We’ll have to wait and see.’
‘Yeah, we will. We’ll see all right,’ Flo said malevolently, and went on, ‘I tell you, I rue the day my lad ever saw you, for you’ve brought him nothing but heartache. He might have forgotten that you once got him locked up in a cell, but I never will. Christ Almighty! But I’ll have my day with you yet. You just see if I don’t.’
Despite herself, a shiver of fear ran down Lizzie’s spine at Flo’s words and the vindictive way they were spoken. She looked at the woman in the bed, her face contorted with hate, and knew she was eaten up inside with bitterness and misery. She should be able to feel sorry for her, but she couldn’t and she wouldn’t stay a moment longer to be abused.
She forced herself to speak calmly. ‘I must be going, Flo.’
‘Oh that’s right, run away. Truth hurts, so they say.’
Lizzie refused to rise to the bait. ‘I’m running nowhere,’ she said. ‘I’ve a lot to see to and may be back at work tomorrow. And I want to see how Rodney is.’
She thought Flo might call after her, but she didn’t, and gradually Lizzie felt her shoulders relax and her pounding heart slow down a little.
Rodney was very ill. As Lizzie was a relative, one of the nurses told her he had little chance of survival, and when she looked at the semi-conscious, delirious man in the bed, she didn’t doubt it. ‘His internal organs are all damaged,’ the nurse told her. ‘Crushed, mainly. All we can do is try to keep him pain-free. It won’t be for long.’ She put a hand on Lizzie’s arm. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s all right,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’m sure you’ve done your best. I must away now and write to my husband. God knows whether he’ll be allowed leave or not.’
She wrote that day, telling him of the raid and the injuries of his parents. She went on to highlight Sandra’s plight, playing on the tragic death of the baby and the distressed state of the children, knowing he would be affected by that, and suggested that Flo go to her sister’s when she left the hospital, sure that Gladys would welcome her.
Your mother isn’t at all keen, but I really think this will be for the best. Sandra hasn’t a soul to call her own.
She’d barely finished the letter by the time the sirens blasted out their warning and Sandra’s children began to scream in fear.
By the time Steve’s reply came, his father Rodney had lost his tenuous hold on life. Flo was almost ready to leave the hospital and Lizzie and Violet and quite a collection of other neighbours had watched a wee coffin with the remains of Billy Hearnshaw being lowered into the black earth in Witton Cemetery.
Lizzie, as a Catholic, was unable to attend the service, but she was glad she was at the graveside to support the weeping and distraught Sandra. She wished Malcolm could have got leave, but it wasn’t to be, and she felt so sorry for the woman, no older than herself, so distressed and full of grief.
The next day, Steve’s reply came:
I’m sorry about the old fellow, for all we’ve never been that close, and I know Ma can be difficult at times. I’m sure you’re right about her living at Gladys’s, it will be more comfortable for her, anyroad, with her getting on, and she’ll see that in time.
You’re right to offer Sandra a place. I’m a mate of her husband’s, Malcolm, and he’s a good sort. I know I’d want someone to do the same for you if the positions had been reversed. Terrible about the babby, though. Christ, Lizzie, you did the right thing sending ours away.
Don’t worry, I’ll write to Ma, telling her to go to Gladys’s. After all, this is war and everyone has to make sacrifices. I doubt I’ll get home, even for the old boy’s funeral. It’s madness here and I think I’m for overseas again, God knows where.
Try to look after yourself.
Love, Steve
Lizzie saw that her mother-in-law had had a similar letter by the set of her grim mouth and the doleful glint in her eyes when she went to the hospital that evening. Gladys and Neil were both there too, and they discussed Rodney’s funeral arrangements with the hospital authorities.
By the turn of the year, Flo and Neil were safely ensconced at Gladys’s and had no desire to leave, even when Sandra agreed to be evacuated with her girls. Lizzie was glad, for she’d seen the girls’ reaction to air raids since they’d been almost entombed on the 19th November. When the city had again been attacked in force on the 22nd November they’d been reduced to blubbering wrecks. God, it had been enough to frighten stronger people than those two wee mites she helped Sandra comfort.
That raid had fractured the water pipes coming into Birmingham. No one was told, but everyone seemed to know. Everyone prayed they didn’t have a raid the next night, knowing if it happened that the city would have been burned to the ground. But Hitler’s planes had pummelled the south coastal ports instead.
After that there had been a lull until December, and though the raids then weren’t too fierce, even with those raids the children had been beside themselves with fear.
The doctor gave them a tonic, ‘for they need building up,’ he said. ‘But, that’s only for the short term. In the longer term I would suggest you get them away.’
‘You mean evacuation?’
‘Yes, I do, Mrs Hearnshaw, for the mental health of your children.’
Sandra could hardly argue with that, but Christmas was around the corner, and when the New Year was heralded in with an
other big raid on the 1st January, it straightened her resolve and she went to see about it. She left on Saturday, 14th January, and Lizzie and Violet went to New Street Station to see her off to some unknown, but presumably safer, destination.
Lizzie hadn’t wanted Violet to go with her, for she had a hacking cough. She’d had it since just after Christmas, and even Carol, home for a few days, had been worried about her, although Violet told everyone not to fuss.
The draughty platform was really not the place for her that raw winter’s day, but she was as stubborn as a mule. ‘I’m all right, Lizzie,’ she said impatiently when Lizzie glanced at her as a spasm of coughing shook her frame and caused her eyes to water. ‘Everyone knows a cough lingers after a cold. I’ll be as right as rain in a day or two.’
In a day or two, Violet was in bed, and there she was to stay, the doctor said firmly. The ‘persistent cough’ turned out to be quite a severe case of bronchitis and she would be away from work till he gave her the say-so to go back.
Lizzie laughed as she looked at Violet’s mutinous face as the doctor left. ‘No good looking like that,’ she said as she tucked the covers around her. ‘You’ve met your match and no mistake. Now, lie quiet for once in your life, and I’ll make you some beef tea as the doctor ordered.’
‘Doctor’s orders,’ Violet said scornfully. ‘Huh. What’s he know anyway?’
‘More than you in this instance,’ Lizzie retorted, but she knew Violet hated being idle and she was smiling as she closed the bedroom door.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was a cold day, the sort of cold that caught in the back of a person’s throat and made teeth ache, and though Lizzie was glad the hooter had gone she wasn’t looking forward to the journey home, especially when one of the girls said, ‘I bet the trams won’t be running, there’s a proper pea-souper out there.’
‘As if the bleedin’ blackout ain’t enough to cope with,’ someone else said.
Lizzie couldn’t have agreed more, for the day was dark as pitch outside and it would be a miserable and lonely trek home if the trams weren’t running.
‘Ain’t you got a torch?’ someone asked as Lizzie set off into the gloom.
‘Aye, for all the good it is,’ Lizzie answered. ‘Gave out on me coming in this morning. I knew the batteries were going, but I couldn’t get any more, not for love nor money. I should have knocked at Violet’s and taken a loan of hers.’
‘Well, she’d hardly have need of it,’ the first girl said. ‘How is the old codger, anyroad?’
‘Ready to slaughter you if she heard you call her that,’ Lizzie replied with a wry smile. ‘She’s getting better slowly. All set for coming back, but it depends on the doctor.’
‘Well, bronchitis can be treacherous. Turns to pneumonia in no time if it ain’t caught early and treated proper.’
‘I know that,’ Lizzie said. ‘But it’s getting on for four weeks now and she don’t honestly know what to do with herself. She’s snapping the head off Barry and for little or nothing, and even young Carol got it in the neck for something stupid when she came home on a few days’ leave last week. Believe me, everyone will breathe a sigh of relief when she is eventually signed off.’
The women laughed. ‘Oh that would be right,’ one said. ‘Couldn’t never bear to be idle, Violet.’ And then she added, ‘You all right going home with no torch? I could walk with you a bit of the way if you like.’
Lizzie would have valued company, but she knew the woman had worked a full day like herself and was probably just as tired and hungry and longing for her own fireside. She couldn’t ask her to walk with her and then come all the way back, so she said, ‘No, it’s all right. I’ll go steady.’
‘If you’re sure?’
‘I am, really.’
The woman called their goodnights to each other as they went their separate ways, and though Lizzie longed to hurry she knew she risked breaking a limb if she did that. The darkness was so intense she felt she could put out a hand and touch it, and though she couldn’t see the fog she could feel the cloying dampness of it and smell the smoky stink of it in her nose and seeping into her mouth, despite the scarf wrapped around the lower part of her face.
There were no trams or buses and precious little else on the roads either. It was curiously quiet, the fog successfully muffling sound and the darkness hiding people and obstacles until they were suddenly before her in the gloom. She’d apologised to a tree and a pillar box before she’d gone very far. At least Jerry will give us a break tonight, she thought, and once I get home I’ll not have to leave it again till the morning and I’ll sleep the night through in my own bed.
That was something, for though the raids had eased a little and were no longer every night, as soon as people began to relax there would be another one, like the one just three nights before. Only on nights like this could a person be sure of a break.
Lizzie breathed a sigh of relief when she turned up Bristol Passage. She was bone-weary and starving hungry, but at least she felt more confident on her own territory. Even so, she nearly passed the entry and had to retrace her steps holding on to the wall.
Almost as soon as she’d stepped into the cobbled yard she cannoned into someone. ‘Sorry,’ she said, wondering why the person had no torch, but then maybe they had the same problem with buying batteries as she did. They were like gold dust to get hold of. ‘Can’t see a hand in front of your face, can you?’
There was no reply and she thought that odd. Everyone in the yard knew each other and there was no reason for anyone else to be down there. She opened her mouth to say something else and then was filled with fright as the person clapped a hand across her mouth. It was a big hand, a man’s hand, and smelt faintly of oil. As well as being fearful, Lizzie was also surprised and angry. She began to writhe and struggle and stamp on where she imagined the man’s feet to be, trying to wrest herself from his iron grip and demand to know what the hell he was playing at.
But then she felt a pain in her side so acute she tried to cry out against it. It was agonising, like a red-hot poker was burning her insides out. She felt her head swim as she sank to her knees with a gasp of agony. The man had released his grip on her mouth, and yet she was incapable of calling for help, or anything else either. Waves of blackness threatened to overwhelm her, and then she felt her head held tight by those big, muscular hands and her forehead was slammed hard onto the cobblestones. She crumpled in an unconscious heap and the man lifted her coat up and lay down on top of her.
An hour or so later, Violet, muffled up, on her way to the lavvy, tripped over the unconscious figure on the ground. She grumbled slightly, thinking one of the children had left something there to trip up decent folk about their business, and she shone her shaded torch over the offending item.
When she saw who the unconscious figure was she felt as if her heart had stopped beating. In a moment she was on her knees beside Lizzie and feeling her neck. Her relief when she found the pulse was immense and she wondered if Lizzie had fallen over something in the yard, or tripped on the uneven cobbles. Christ, that was easy enough to do in the bleedin’ blackout.
But she was suddenly aware of something soaking through her lisle stockings, and when she directed the torch there and saw she had knelt in a patch of blood that was still dribbling and seeping from Lizzie’s coat, she sat back on her haunches in shock. Dear, sweet Almighty Jesus, what had happened to Lizzie?
And then she was on her feet and crashing through the house, shouting for Barry to, ‘Come quick.’ Between them, they got Lizzie into the house and laid her on the settee. ‘You go for Doctor Taylor,’ Violet told the startled Barry, who stood staring at his injured neighbour with concern. ‘He should be at his surgery in Bristol Street and tell him to come as quick as he can.’
When Barry left, she looked with concern at the crimson stain spreading across Lizzie’s coat. She hesitated to take the coat off in case she would make whatever it was bleed more, but she stemmed the flow with line
n pads she had in the sideboard.
She hoped to God that Barry stressed the urgency to the doctor. She looked up at the clock and then put the kettle on, knowing whatever ailed Lizzie, hot water wouldn’t come amiss.
It was as she filled the kettle that she remembered Lizzie had had no bag with her. It was likely still in the yard and she went out to look. She saw it almost immediately, but there was something else beside it too, and as she picked it up she saw it was Lizzie’s knickers. No need to share that with the entire yard, she thought, and as she’d not taken time to remove her coat she stuffed them in her pocket.
* * *
Doctor Taylor was well-known in the neighbourhood and had been a regular visitor at Violet’s house because of her bronchitis. When his receptionist said Barry Barlow was waiting, he thought Violet had taken a turn for the worse, for she wasn’t out of the woods yet by any means, whatever she said.
But it wasn’t Violet that Barry had come to see him about, but their neighbour. Barry could tell him little. ‘The missus found her in the yard, on her way to the lavvy,’ he said. ‘Nearly went flying over her by all accounts. Anyroad, she’s bleeding from somewhere. It’s all over her coat and that. We didn’t hang about, like. Violet said to fetch the doctor quick, like, so I don’t know no more.’
The doctor knew by Barry’s agitated manner that the matter was a serious one, so the two were soon hurrying back as fast as the blackout would allow.
Barry was very fond of Lizzie and hoped to God she was going to be all right, but he wasn’t to find out straight away, for when the doctor saw the young woman and said he had to remove at least the top half of Lizzie’s clothes before he could examine her, Violet despatched Barry to the pub. ‘I’ll send for you if you’re needed,’ she said. ‘It’s not right you should stay when we’re stripping Lizzie.’
‘Are you sure you’re up for it?’ Doctor Taylor said, for he’d seen the two spots of colour on Violet’s cheeks and heard her laboured breathing.
