by Anne Bennett
‘No, you don’t, girl,’ Violet said. ‘Your hair’s not looking bad at all, and I think it will turn out to be wavy in the end.’
‘It always was,’ Celia said, ‘in my other life, when I was somebody’s daughter.’
Violet’s heart constricted with pity for the girl; and that’s all she was, just a slip of a girl. And yet she knew Celia would push away sympathy and so she said instead, ‘You’ll have a fine choice of jobs to choose from, anyroad. As long as this damned war goes on, at least.’
Two days after this conversation, very early one morning, Minnie tapped on the door. Lizzie had just come downstairs and she opened it cautiously as she seemed to do these days. ‘Minnie!’
‘I was on my way to the lavvy, Lizzie, but well…it’s your wall.’
‘My wall?’
‘And your door, like,’ Minnie said. ‘I think it’s bloody disgusting.’
Lizzie had opened the door as she spoke, and painted in black across it were the words: Filthy Stinking Whore.
Hoisting Georgia on one hip, she went into the yard. Across the front of the house was written: Bugger Off—No Trollops Here.
‘Thought you’d like to know, like,’ Minnie said.
Lizzie was shaken. The words were bad enough, but the menace and hatred, which a person or persons must have felt to write them, was harder to cope with. What was heartening, though, were those women from the court not at work, who turned out with mops, buckets and grim determination to help Lizzie and Celia remove every offending word in short order.
‘God,’ Celia said, after using the scrubbing brush on the brickwork. ‘I bet this house thinks it’s a birthday. I bet these bricks have never had such a clean since they were laid.’
But it wasn’t funny, and no one was pretending it was. Neither was the excrement pushed through the letter box on Christmas Eve, nor the woman who spat at Lizzie full in the face the same day as she was leaving Moorcroft’s with the rations.
Christmas would have been an awful time if Lizzie and Celia had not spent it in Violet’s house. Carol, who’d been told of Lizzie’s problems, was full of sympathy for her and got on famously with Celia. She had with her a young pilot, Gavin Honeyford, and both young people seemed determined to make it somewhat of a special time for all concerned. Even Violet packed away her sadness that Colin was dead and gone, which still surfaced at special times like this, and everyone was enchanted with Georgia.
Carol knew all about the rape and felt really sorry for Lizzie. All the coloured people she’d met had, in the main, been American airmen, and as she’d said before, often more friendly and definitely more polite and respectful than their white counterparts. However, whoever had raped Lizzie and attacked her so brutally was a maniac, plain and simple, for no sane and sensible person would do such a thing.
‘Do you ever think about it?’ Carol asked as the three young women washed up in the scullery. ‘You know, what he was like? Why he attacked you?’
‘Carol, long before I knew the man was black, I tortured myself with thoughts like that,’ Lizzie said. ‘The only reason I care about the colour of the man’s skin at all is because of Georgia and how it will affect her and make life harder for her.’
Carol acknowledged that that was probably the case, for while Georgia was beautiful and delightful, she was different. ‘Sometimes,’ Lizzie confessed, ‘I wish she could stay a baby, so that I can always be there to protect her.’
‘She’ll be all right,’ Celia cut in. ‘Whatever bastard fathered her, she has a bit of you in her and that means grit and determination as well as kindness.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Carol said with conviction.
‘Give over,’ Lizzie protested as her face flushed with embarrassment. ‘But as we are singing people’s praises, I do like your young man, Carol.’
‘Is he your young man?’ Celia asked. ‘You just introduced him as a friend.’
Now it was Carol’s turn to blush. ‘He is a friend,’ she said, ‘though I’d like him to be more. I’ve tried to hold back from attachments while the war rages, because some of the boys I even half-liked never came back, but I can’t seem to stop myself falling for Gavin.’
‘That’s the way of it when love lights,’ Celia said with a wide smile. ‘No telling where it will end up.’
Carol gave Celia a push and the three women laughed together.
‘Is there any washing up being done in there at all?’ Barry shouted through. ‘There’s too much hilarity for my liking, and here’s us gagging for a cup of tea.’
‘Hark at him,’ Carol said with mock indignation. ‘I’ll take his tea in and tip it over his head if he’s not careful, and then I’m going for a walk with Gavin.’
‘Don’t blame you, girl,’ Lizzie said, and hoped for Carol’s sake that Gavin would be one of the war’s survivors.
Early in the New Year, Celia opened the door to a woman she’d never seen before.
Lizzie was at the stove and she turned as the woman walked in. ‘Auntie Doreen,’ she exclaimed, pleased to see her because they’d always got on so well. She introduced Celia as a friend and said she was staying with her for now. Doreen, noticing how short the girl’s hair was, assumed she had been ill and asked no further questions.
Instead, she accepted the cup of tea Lizzie offered her and had it in front of her before she said, ‘Tressa has told me how things are, my dear, and I just wondered if you’d like to come and stay with us for a bit—your friend too, of course.’
Lizzie longed to accept. It would be marvellous to be away from the streets, away from the antagonistic people who tried in all ways to make her life a misery. But, practically, it was not a solution. Celia had got a job in Fisher and Ludlow’s factory in nearby Rea Street, which she was starting the following Monday, and she would be hesitant, Lizzie knew, to give it up.
But, more importantly, Lizzie knew that eventually Tressa would come back from Ireland. She’d have to when the war finally ended and Mike was demobbed and took up his old job in the car industry, and she now had six children. However big Arthur and Doreen’s house was, it would not take all of them, and by then if Lizzie had given up this house she’d never get another.
And so she thanked Doreen for the offer but had to refuse. Doreen could see her reasoning, especially with regards to the house, for accommodation was hard to get, but she felt bad that she could do nothing to help. When she voiced this, Lizzie said, ‘You have helped, just by coming to see me.’
‘The way I heard it,’ Doreen said, ‘you were sinned against rather than being a sinner, and I know you as an honest and respectable girl. No woman can be held responsible, in any way, for a violent rape. And now, before I go, could I see the baby?’
Lizzie could have kissed Doreen for her understanding, and later, as Doreen sat and held the baby, she was as entranced by her as others had been.
Celia had been at work just three days when Minnie came to tell Lizzie that Flo was coming down the street. ‘Someone’s gone to get Gladys, because Flo looks set to murder someone. If I were you, I’d lock your blooming door and not open it, whatever she does.’
Lizzie thought it good advice. She had been almost waiting for Flo, for she’d known she wouldn’t just let things drop, but now she was here Lizzie didn’t feel up to dealing with her. She locked and bolted the door and crept upstairs with the baby and prayed the child wouldn’t cry and betray them.
Flo firstly tried the door and then, annoyed to find it locked, she hammered on it shouting, ‘Come out of there, you bleeding trollop.’ Annoyed at no response to her knocking, she then let forth a string of obscenities at Lizzie and what she termed her ‘carry on’. Lizzie risked a peep from the bedroom window. Flo was wearing a long and shapeless coat and just had slippers on her feet, while her hair was unkempt and her eyes wild. In her clenched hand was a rock and, with a cry, Flo suddenly threw the rock at the livingroom window whereupon it shattered with a crash, sending splintered wood and glass spilling ou
t onto the yard.
Gladys arrived then, taking in the scene immediately. By then, Flo was weeping great, gulping sobs, and the women of the yard, alerted by the crash, had come to their doors to see what was going on.
‘Seen enough, have you?’ Gladys demanded, glaring around at them. ‘Piss off, the lot of you. We all know whose fault this is and that’s the sodding whore in there.’ She jerked a thumb at Lizzie’s house and, raising her voice, shouted, ‘I know you are in there, Lizzie Gillespie. That rock should have been used on your face, and by God I wish it had found its mark.’
Then Gladys turned to her sister and said crossly, ‘Put a sock in it for Christ’s sake our Flo. God Almighty, you’re blarting every time I look at you. Give us your bleeding hand and let’s go home.’ Flo lifted her hand as if she were a child and Gladys took it and led her out of the yard, just as Georgia began to cry.
Lizzie’s legs were trembling and she had the urge to sink onto the bed and, like Georgia, cry her eyes out, but she resisted it and instead she went downstairs to inspect the damage to the window. ‘Soon clear this up,’ Ada said, moving the debris around with her boot. ‘Then you need a bit of cardboard for now, like, and have a word with the rent man in the morning. Repairs is their job.’
Lizzie nodded and gave a sigh.
‘Don’t you mind her, ducks,’ Ada said. ‘Nutty as a fruitcake, her is. That business with Neil being beaten up has sent her over the edge right and proper. Everyone knows. People say her’s one body’s work to watch. Might be Highcroft Loony Bin for her before she’s much older.’
And then, seeing the guilty look on Lizzie’s face, Ada said, ‘Stop that. It ain’t your fault, none of it. Small wonder the old cow’s gone doolally tap, anyroad. All the badness she had inside is bound to send you mad in the end.’
Although Lizzie couldn’t help feeling somewhat responsible for Flo’s collapse, she was relieved when Violet heard on the grapevine that Flo had been taken to the mental home when she got too much for Gladys.
Father Connolly also visited one day, and Lizzie hid from him too. Gloria, seeing him at the door, told him Lizzie was now working. He was surprised, but had no reason to disbelieve Gloria and he thanked her for letting him know and never came back.
After their traumatic experiences at the hands of nuns and priest, neither girl was in any hurry to return to the bosom of the church. As Celia put it, ‘I’ll take my chance with the man upstairs when my time comes, and the first thing I’ll ask him is why he allows such evil people to do such awful things in his name. We’ve all heard of the wrath of God. Why didn’t he use a bit of that? Well, I’m finished with the clergy, nuns, priests, monks, the whole lot of them, and I imagine I’ll get on just as well.’
‘You will,’ Lizzie said. ‘You’re a survivor.’
‘You and me both,’ Celia replied, and she gave Lizzie a punch on the arm and the two laughed together.
The third Friday evening in February, Celia came home from work to a little bundle of cards for her eighteenth birthday. Seeing how pleased she was, Lizzie was glad she’d told Johnnie about the impending birthday in her last letter. He’d sent a card to her himself and Tressa had too. She didn’t know the girl, but wished her Many Happy Returns as a friend of Lizzie’s. Lizzie gave Celia a card of her own, but although there was no money for presents, and nothing to buy anyway, there was something else and she told Celia to shut her eyes and not peep.
Lizzie had carefully saved a little of her margarine and sugar ration for the last fortnight, and that previous day Mr Moorcroft had given her two eggs. She knew if Mrs Moorcroft had been around she wouldn’t have had sniff of them, but as it was she was able to make a satisfactory sponge cake. She even rummaged in the drawer of the cupboard set into the fireplace alcove for the candles she’d used on the children’s cakes in the past.
Celia threw her arms around Lizzie in delight and tried not to remember that her previous birthday had been spent alongside a stern father who was driving her to a living death—the convent near Sligo. She remembered how she’d ached and throbbed all over from the beating her father had given her and that not even her face had escaped. Her mother, terrified she would miscarry, had bathed the weals where the belt had bitten into the skin and refused to let Celia go until they’d healed somewhat, but her eyes had still had yellowing around them from the punches and her bottom lip had been puffy, while the lower one had a scar from the vicious punch that had split it open.
Celia remembered she’d stood and faced Sister Jude, so scared she badly wanted to pee and her hands were clammy with sweat, and Sister Jude had looked her up and down. ‘I see,’ she said at last. ‘Your father has already chastised you.’
Resolutely, Celia pushed such memories away. What good did it do recalling such things? This was another life, living with Lizzie, and the sumptuous baby, Georgia, as well as all the women in the yard, who always had a cheery word. And so she laughed and joked as though she hadn’t a care in the world.
Lizzie knew it was no life for Georgia, staying inside day after day until dusk fell, and she talked to Violet about it one evening. ‘She’s young to leave in a nursery, ain’t she?’ Violet asked.
‘Violet, she’d have a better life than she does here, when I am afraid to cross the threshold of the door,’ Lizzie said. ‘Anyway, I’m not thinking of now, this minute, I was thinking more of after Easter. I could have her weaned by then and she’ll be five months in April.’
‘I do see what you mean,’ Violet said. ‘Where was you thinking of going, like, cos I reckon you could have your old job back if you wanted. They know about Georgia, like, but they all remember the attack and the police coming round and they don’t hold you responsible, not one bit—at least not those who were there at the time. They have sent you their regards, like. Wouldn’t you consider going back there?’
‘I did,’ Lizzie said. ‘But I rejected it. See, I’ve never left any baby at a nursery school and I feel I’m better staying close to her. The factory where Celia works in Rea Street is just up the road from the day nursery. She is making wings for Lancasters and says they can’t get enough people. All I need to do is go down to the nursery and see if they will have a place for Georgia.’
Violet didn’t argue further. None of hers had been left in a nursery either, but these were strange times. ‘Won’t you miss her?’
‘Every time I think of it, my stomach gives a lurch. But we need the money and this will be better for Georgia. Everything I do is for her sake.’
‘I know that, bab,’ Violet said softly. ‘No one would ever doubt that.’
Lizzie visited the nursery in mid-March, for it was an early Easter that year, and the Matron in charge said places were available for mothers undertaking war work. She looked at Georgia sitting on Lizzie’s knee opposite her on the other side of the desk and asked, ‘Was your husband an American, Mrs Gillespie?’
Lizzie knew the reason the woman asked was because the few black men about were linked to the American forces, so she said, ‘My husband was a serving soldier in the Royal Warwickshires and he was killed in North Africa.’ She went on, for she knew she had to tell the truth about Georgia, before rumours were dripped into the woman’s ear, ‘Georgia is not my husband’s child. She is the result of a brutal rape I suffered last year in the blackout.’ And then, as the woman continued to stare at her, she asked, ‘Will that matter?’
‘Not to me, or any of the staff here,’ the matron said. ‘We treat the children equally, wherever they’ve come from. It might upset some of the mothers, but shall we cross that bridge when we come to it?’ The matron smiled encouragingly and Lizzie felt her shoulders relax and knew she was believed. ‘You get your job, Mrs Gillespie,’ the matron went on, ‘and we’ll be pleased to see your little girl on Tuesday, 7th April when we reopen after the Easter break.’
Even knowing she was doing the best thing, it upset Lizzie to deliver her baby into a stranger’s arms that first morning, however kind they appeared to b
e. She thought about her all day, and was glad of Celia’s company.
But, in the end, she got used to it, and what helped was that no one at nursery seemed to be the slightest bit fazed by the colour of Georgia’s skin. In fact, she was quite a favourite. None of the mothers seemed to mind either. She’d seen one or two of them look askance at her, some with plain disgust apparent on their faces, but they didn’t transfer this to the baby and Lizzie could cope with that.
By the early summer of 1942, the sight of GIs in the streets of Birmingham was not uncommon. There were a fair few black servicemen amongst them and Lizzie was usually cautious in her dealings with them, which Celia and Violet felt quite understandable in the circumstances.
Not everyone felt like Lizzie, though. In a world virtually starved of young men for so long, many girl’s were intrigued by the young GIs. They dressed smarter and seemed to have more money than the average Tommy; they brought a splash of colour into an England wearied by the restrictions of war, and caused many to remark wryly that, ‘They’re overpaid, oversexed and over here.’
Many British people couldn’t get over the disparaging way some white Americans treated their black companions. It upset the British attitude of fair play. ‘I mean, ain’t it enough to fight the Germans, Japs and Eyeties without rowing with one another,’ Violet grumbled. ‘I was stood in a queue in a ciggy shop on Bristol Street and these white blokes came in and told these black blokes, who had stood there ages, mind, to get to the back of the queue.’
In a country where queuing had become a way of life, jumping that queue unfairly was seen as a dreadful thing, and so Lizzie asked, ‘What happened?’
‘Oh, the man serving in the shop called the black fellers back and let the white chaps have the rough edge of his tongue,’ Violet said. ‘Said he decided who to serve and when in his shop.’
‘Quite right,’ Celia said. ‘I understand why you don’t like the coloured men and you have every reason, Lizzie, but any I’ve met have been really polite.’
