by Jane Bailey
It is a freezing night. I wake up a couple of times as I turn in bed, trying to shift a hot-water bottle cold as a slab of haddock.
Just before the call-boy comes I awake in a delicious cocoon of warmth. Behind me and all around me is a body; I am wrapped up like a baby in its mother’s arms, like Dumbo in Mother Elephant’s trunk. I lie very still, afraid that if I move it will all disappear. This is not a dream. The bedclothes send up a deep musky smell of grown-up. I am in heaven.
With the rapping on the door Joyce gets up quickly and I turn to see her. She informs me matter-of-factly that I went into their room for a cuddle because I was cold, and that she came to warm me up and must have fallen asleep.
Too many details. And anyway, I know she is lying, because I haven’t ventured out of bed all night. She talks in that crisp tone of hers, as if cuddling me were a complete mistake, which she won’t make again.
My mother does turn up, but the day before New Year’s Eve, and she has to dash back because she’s helping to organize the New Year’s Eve party at the munitions factory. She comes without the twins, though, so at least I have her to myself. She has stopped breastfeeding so her friend Dot is looking after them, and she did the same for Dot’s kiddie yesterday.
Somehow it isn’t the day I wanted it to be. My mother spends ages admiring Aunty Joyce’s needlepoint and her crockery and her pies and her rug and her smocked apron and her chickens and her home-made jam. I wanted to be proud of her, but instead I am ever so slightly ashamed of her rough language and her daft accent and her adulation of everything that isn’t hers. I have no idea that it is she who has the very thing Joyce wants most in all the world.
I want her to show Uncle Jack and Aunty Joyce what real loving is, but she just witters on and on and doesn’t seem to appreciate the gravity of any situation at all. She gives me a few sound hugs and the rest of the time plays the guest. Uncle Jack is kind, and makes her a cup of tea, which he never does for Aunty Joyce.
She brings me two presents: a bar of chocolate and a woollen tam-o’-shanter. I could’ve knitted one better myself, but I say nothing and look delighted. I take her for a walk to the farm in an effort to get her alone, but it all backfires in the mud and muck.
“Gawd! What ya trying to do to me? These are the only decent blinkin’ stockings I got!”
So she goes, paying Joyce and Jack far more attention than they deserve, and telling me how grown-up I am. And I am left in an ugly torment, wondering if I will ever be little girl enough to get my fair share of cuddles again. I throw the tam-o’-shanter in the hall, shut myself in my room and play disloyally with the knitted doll instead, turning her back and forth from one woman to the other.
No one bothers to wonder what Uncle Jack makes of it all. He is a man and probably doesn’t have feelings, but he cleans the mud off my little shoes and leaves them polished in the hall like he always does.
The way you look tonight
I have not seen Tommy to speak to since the nativity play, and I miss him. As I plod down the lane to the village hall I see Heaven House in the distance and wonder which window he might be sitting at, wonder if he is lonely or sad, or having exciting adventures with the other boys, which I would not be allowed to join in with. The grey-golden walls of that handsome house begin to thrill me every time I walk by. The sorcery of the ivy-clad balconies, the tantalizing studded green door, the knowledge that he is in there somewhere: I start to feel excited just catching a glimpse of it.
The mud has gone today, and the lane is hard, every footprint and hoof print filled with ice. There is no knitting group as such, but we have sorting to do, because so many of Our Boys will be home for New Year and they are all to receive knitted comforts to warm them in foreign lands and remind them of home. Personally, I can’t imagine anywhere foreign can be as cold as Sheepcote. Even in the village hall we breathe smoke. But conversation soon perks us all up, and we forget about our numb fingers as we contemplate the New Year’s Eve party.
“Tiz very kind of Lady Elmsleigh to have it up the ’ouse again,” says Mrs Glass.
“Oh yes!”
“Yes.”
“Well,” says Mrs Chudd, “I don’t know. It was her behind all that prisoners in church stuff last week, and you can say what you like, but our boys shouldn’t have to mix with the enemy like that, not while they’re home. She’s got some funny new-fangled ideas, she ’ave, an’ I don’t like it.”
“’Strue.”
“Well, there is that.”
“Oh, Tabs,” says Mrs Glass, “but it is kind of her. We’d never be able to fit much of a party in here. And if it’s her house, she can have who she likes.”
“That’s it though, she don’t think about how it feels for people what’ve lost loved ones at the hands of these people.” Mrs Chudd purses her lips decisively and matches two socks.
“I think you’re forgetting something,” says dear Miss Lavish. “She’s lost a husband and a son at the hands of ‘these people’, and what’s more she has a second son missing. Which one of us would feel like throwing a party for the world and his dog – two parties – if we were in that position?”
“She’s right, you know.”
“There is that …”
“Come to think of it …”
“I’m only saying,” says Chudd, sick with defeat, and whispering under her breath, “it don’t seem right to me, Germans in our church.” But she won’t give up. “This year we get a brown baby as Jesus, next year it’ll be doing a Nazi salute!”
“Oh, Tabby!” There are giggles.
Then Mrs Marsh picks up a pullover and holds it against her chest, ready to fold. “All I can say is, if it were your son taken prisoner, how would you want him to be treated by the locals?” There is a respectful hush. We would all like to think some kind German gave each of Mrs Marsh’s sons a slice of cake and a cup of tea before they passed away.
Conversation moves on to soap and stain removal.
“Anyone tried Rinso? Supposed to cut out the need for boiling.”
“Aunty Joyce has,” I venture, because it’s true. “She tried it on the nappies in the summer. I think it worked.”
“Nappies?”
“Nappies?”
I have to explain about the twins, and Aunty Joyce sending the nappies by post, but I have opened a can of worms.
“For a moment there …”
“D’you think she’d ever …”
“She’d suit another baby …”
“How was she?” demands Mrs Chudd. “With your little’uns?”
“Fine,” I say.
And then, even more dangerously, “Do you think she might ever have another herself?”
I shrug.
“Don’t she ever talk about it?”
“Tabs,” says Miss Lavish.
“P’raps he can’t get it up.”
“Tabs!” says Miss Lavish, and this shuts her up.
“Only wondering …” she tapers off, disgruntled.
But it starts me thinking, and I think it would be a very good idea. After all, the war is nearly over – everyone says so – and I won’t be here to keep them company much longer. And when I go, what will they have to do? I make a plan.
Lady Elmsleigh’s New Year party is much like Lady Elmsleigh’s Christmas party: an excuse for some merriment and expertly organized. This time the children have their own rooms, with a magician laid on (he is actually Mr Tugwell, but we all pretend not to notice), and a room full of mattresses and cushions for the very small children to fall asleep. I am not a very small child, and I sneak into the large hall to execute my plan.
Aunty Joyce is having an orange passed to her from the butcher’s chin. Mr Glass is deliberately making a hash of it so he can nuzzle her neck as long as possible, but Uncle Jack is talking to the vicar again and doesn’t seem to notice. Then she has to pass the orange to Ted Pearlman, the GI, and I watch with interest as he stoops gently to receive the fruit. Very briefly, she puts a hand
on his arm to steady herself, but it is hastily withdrawn and the whole orange delivery is over more speedily than most. Their team has won, whilst Miss Lavish is still struggling with Thumper in the next team, and Aunty Joyce conceals the slight flush to her cheeks with a grin of victory.
The music starts, and Ted Pearlman asks me to dance. I feel very grown up.
“You come here often?” he jokes, as we waltz around. “I asked myself, ‘Who is that babe with the cute face and no partner?’”
I am very, very happy dancing with Ted, even if I am perched on his toes. Uncle Jack is looking at me now and, although he doesn’t look exactly cross, he is not looking at Aunty Joyce, and that is simply not good enough.
When the music stops, Ted bows melodramatically, and I curtsey.
I notice Nancy, the land girl, is leading Uncle Jack by the hand on to the dance floor. I blow the air up my face in exasperation. This was not supposed to happen.
Now Uncle Jack is being foxtrotted around at a merry old pace by the very pretty Nancy, who knows how to handle a tractor and certainly knows how to handle a man. To my surprise he seems to be enjoying it. His face is all smiles, and he does cut quite a dash with her, I must admit. Of course, he glances over at his wife – to check her reaction, maybe – and she looks down at the tiled floor and scratches her nose.
I tug at Ted’s sleeve and stand on tiptoe. “Why don’t you dance with Aunty Joyce?” I whisper.
“You think she’d let me?” he whispers back.
“Try it!”
He does, and she accepts. Even I am surprised. A full-blooded man, heavily contaminated, and she agrees to touch him and be touched.
Now I am quite pleased that Uncle Jack is dancing with Nancy. She can get any engine going, and she can get any man going too. His face is pink with excitement, so pink and so excited that he looks for Joyce again (to check that she’s looking? To check that she isn’t?) and can’t find her. Back and forth they go, she so expertly weaving him about that he has the happy illusion of being a fine dancer.
This will do nicely. I lean back against the wall and snaffle a paste sandwich.
Ted is so tall next to Aunty Joyce. She turns her face up to his now and then, and looks so pretty I wonder he can stop himself kissing her. He has his large hand firmly on her back with the fingers spread wide, and he is holding her very close as they sway quickly to the rhythm. Her lips are very red tonight, and her cheeks quite pink, but as the dance wears on I watch them grow an even deeper pink.
At one point Nancy almost hurls Uncle Jack into them, for she is going quite wild now, whirling him all over the shop and getting dangerously close to his cheek. But he has seen his wife, and the smile loosens a little round the edges, and he keeps looking over.
The dance ends, Aunty Joyce gives a nervous little ‘thank you’ with her head hung low, and Ted gives a nod before returning to the sandwiches.
The next dance is a fast one, and Nancy looks for all the world like she might make another grab for Uncle Jack. But I step in fast.
I take Uncle Jack’s hand and pull him away.
“Oh no!” he says, laughing. “No more dancing, Kitty!”
But I keep pulling him, and lead him over to Aunty Joyce.
He looks at her and raises his eyebrows like a naughty boy waiting to be scolded. I take Aunty Joyce’s hand, place it in his, and give them a good shove towards the dancing. They both look at me in exasperation, and Aunty Joyce rolls her eyes.
“I can’t jitterbug!” protests Uncle Jack.
“Then do something else!” I say firmly. “Go on!”
They sort of shrug and sort of smile, and to my utter delight, they dance.
Chattanooga choo choo
Just before term starts Uncle Jack announces that he is taking the bus to work for a change, and he is taking me with him. I help Aunty Joyce pack sandwiches, and we set off on the seven-thirty to Gloucester through the cold January morning.
At first I think I must have done something wrong, and that he is trying to keep me out of mischief. But it soon becomes clear that this is Uncle Jack’s treat, and I begin to get very excited as he tells me about the train we will ride and the fireman I will meet, how the coal fires the steam and all about the signals. It occurs to me that Aunty Joyce and Uncle Jack seem to be falling over themselves to give me treats at the moment – almost competing with each other – but I am too busy enjoying myself to pay it too much attention.
The engine shed is a bewitching place, full of strange new smells and echoing metallic sounds. I have always marvelled at the size of trains when they come into the station, their impossible power, the blaze of glory in which they steam to a princely halt. But here, standing on the ground beside it without the platform to diminish it, I look up to see the engine is a colossus. It towers above me, dark and smelly and mysterious. Even the steps up to the footplate are mountainous.
“So this is the new driver!” says a friendly face, peering down from way up high.
“This is Kitty,” says Uncle Jack, lifting me in the air so that I can reach the first step.
The fireman grabs me under the armpits and pulls me up, smiling. “I’m George, your fireman. I ’ope you don’t make me work too ’ard.”
I smile, and Uncle Jack skips up the steps with impressive ease and is beside me. There is something about the way he is with me today that makes me feel he is almost proud of me. But this can’t be, because I am a wicked, disrespectful and foul-mouthed girl and always letting him down.
We soon get the engine up to steam, and set off along the track to who knows where in the late morning winter sunshine. There is an almost frightening energy in the pulsing of the pistons, and the way the footplate sways from side to side, rocking us about on our feet, makes it feel that we are riding some giant, untamed animal.
George opens a round oven door from time to time and shovels in the coal from the bunker behind. He stands on the left, and Uncle Jack on the right, and I sit on a wooden seat that pulls down from the side. Every time we approach a bridge someone waves to us from it, and the steam is pushed back from the chimney into our faces so that we drive blind for a few seconds when we come out the other side. Tunnels are even more fun, and we emerge in a huge blanket of steam as if we are in the clouds.
Uncle Jack lifts me up to see through the portholes at the front, then he sets me down and gives me his hat, and I stand in the driver’s position for the rest of the journey.
“When you get home you can tell your friends you drove a seventy-seven class tank engine,” says Uncle Jack.
We are carrying freight, and when we reach our destination Jack goes off to the lav while George and I tuck into our sandwiches.
“You’re doin’ well,” says George, his mouth full of bread. “You’ll make a good driver, you will.”
I tilt my head right back to smile at him under my driver’s hat. “I didn’t know I was coming today.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Uncle Jack never said.”
George shovels some more sandwich in before speaking. “ ’Ee always says ’ee’ll bring you down one day. Always talking about you, ’ee is.”
“About me?”
“Oh yes! Talks about nothin’ else! Thinks the world of you, ’ee does!” Then he adds with a wink, “An’ I don’t blame ’im.” He takes a shovel and wipes it with a cloth, then balances the shovel on the coals and breaks an egg on it from his lunchbox. “Miss Lavish – never-been-ravished!” He laughs, loudly. “You’re priceless, you are!”
“But how …?”
Uncle Jack comes back, and they talk for a while before George goes off to the station lav. “You want to go?” Uncle Jack asks. “George’ll show you where it is.”
“No, ta,” I say. “Got a bladder like an elephant, me.”
They both laugh, and George goes off, leaving me alone with Uncle Jack and our cheese and Flag Sauce sandwiches. I consider now might be a good time to broach things.
“Uncle Ja
ck …?”
“Yes?”
“Why don’t you and Aunty Joyce have another baby?”
He stops munching for a second, and then continues with an exaggerated nonchalance.
“Just one of those things, I s’pose … and not for you to go worrying about.”
I frown under my hat. “Why do grown-ups say things like ‘just one of those things’ when it obviously isn’t? You can have one if you want one, can’t you?”
He says nothing, and a blackbird trills furiously from a tree on the other side of the track.
“Is it because you don’t like children?”
“Don’t like children?” He turns to look at me, confused. “Do you think I don’t like children?”
He looks a little hurt, so I quickly take it back. “No, no. It’s just … I don’t see why you don’t have another. You’d be a good father. In fact, I think you’d be a very good father.”
He gives a modest smile. “It’s not as easy as just wanting one, Kitty.”
Of course I can’t just shut up and wait for him to speak, I have to keep goading him. “Aunty Joyce wants one.”
This is not a clever thing to say, for I don’t strictly know if it’s true, but it gets him going.
“Does she? Who said that? Did she say that? What’s she been saying?”
I scratch the side of my face hastily. “Well … it’s not that she said it as such, but I reckon she would be on for it. I can tell these things.”
Uncle Jack sighs. In disappointment? In relief? There is a long silence with just the rustle of paper bags, the crunch of apples, and the crotchety blackbird throwing another tantrum.
This is not good enough. I have to set things in motion.
