by Annie Murray
‘Yes, of course,’ Frances said. ‘But there’s no need to take him with you at this stage, is there? It’s so cold and miserable out there. He’s well settled here, and he’s been no trouble, Edie, really he hasn’t.’
‘Thank you ever so much,’ Edie said, amazed once again by Frances’s kindness. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t been so good about it.’
‘Not at all. Now, come and have a cup of tea while I put some food on. You look absolutely all in, dear. You both had such a night of it. You must go home and try and get some sleep.’
‘’Til the next air-raid anyway,’ Edie said gloomily.
Sipping her hot tea, she looked up at Frances. ‘I expect someone’ll come looking for him. But if they don’t, well, I must look after him. I just must.’
‘I know.’ Frances looked up from slicing parsnips the other side of the table. ‘He’s lovely. And you lost your own tiny one. I do understand, dear, how you must feel.’ Seeing Edie’s eyes fill, she went on, ‘Let’s just wait and see. But I’ve been thinking today. I’m sure we could all manage something between us. We all have to do our bit at the moment in whatever way we can. I’m sure I could help look after him until things are sorted out.’
‘Oh!’ Edie smiled in wonder. ‘Thank you. You’re so, so kind, Mrs Hatton!’
Seventeen
‘You sound blooming cheerful this morning, Ginger,’ one of the other girls observed, as she and Edie walked in for the morning shift. The various blocks of the works, swathed in camouflage, loomed around them in the grey morning. ‘Can’t say I’m ever up to singing at this time of day.’
Edie looked round. ‘Singing? I never was!’
‘Oh yes, you were! Humming, anyhow.’
‘Was I? I never even knew I was doing it!’
‘Well, someone’s put a smile on your face, haven’t they?’ the girl said cheekily, and one of the others joined in as they went in to collect their overalls.
‘Go on, tell us, Ginger! Who is ’e? Bit of a Christmas cracker then?’
Enjoying herself, Edie raised her eyebrows and gave them an enigmatic smile.
‘What you don’t know can’t hurt you, can it?’
The others ‘ooohed’ in response.
‘Daft pair,’ Edie laughed and went to her workroom to begin the day.
But it was true, there was a song in her heart. It was two days before Christmas and this month had been the happiest she could remember in a very long time. Today she felt especially fresh after a good night’s sleep unbroken by the air-raid sirens, but she had been up very early when David woke, giving him his morning feed and changing and dressing him. David was her name for him (‘He just looks like a David,’ she told Frances and Janet.) She thought it a nice, solid name, and right for him.
She sat in the kitchen drinking a cup of tea and cuddling him on her lap until he wriggled to be let down to toddle round the room, slipping on the lino in his little wool socks. Once or twice he sat down on his bottom with a bang, screwed up his face in pained surprise, then scrambled up and was off again. The very sight of him filled her with joy and tenderness and she could hardly wait until the end of the shift each day to get back to him and care for him. Over these very few weeks he had become the centre of her life.
In her happiness she pushed to the back of her mind the knowledge that he wasn’t really hers. He felt like her own, as if he had been a special gift brought to her to guard and cherish. She had been very jumpy in the first fortnight when he was with them. Every knock at the door set her heart pounding: was it someone who had come to find her little boy and take him away? Someone who had more right to him than she did? Such thoughts especially haunted her when she lay down to sleep at night. Who was she to deserve the care of such a beautiful child? What if his mother was alive, perhaps injured, in a hospital somewhere? Poor, heartbroken woman, to have lost her little boy! But no, Edie told herself. She had enquired repeatedly and left her address with the WVS and for the ARP warden in case anyone came to ask about ‘David’. But so far, no one had come. He must be an orphan and she was the one to save him. The thought that someone might still come and claim him was almost too painful to think about.
In any case, most of the day was too busy for her to dwell on these thoughts. The other element of her happiness was her inclusion in the Hatton household. After a week of her rushing back and forth with him to and from Stirchley every day, leaving him at the Hattons in the daytime, Frances suggested that Edie rent the fourth bedroom in their house and share it with David. At first she had been nervous of the idea, convinced she would be imposing on them, but Frances and Janet had gone out of their way to make her feel welcome, and soon, delighted, she agreed.
She adored living there, in the neat house, with its cosy kitchen where there was space for a table to sit round for breakfast. In the front parlour was the more formal, though pretty furniture: chintz-covered chairs round the hearth and the piano, which Frances and Janet occasionally played. There were dog-eared hymnbooks from when Frances had been a Sunday school teacher years ago, Mozart sonatas and ‘Für Elise’. But best of all Edie liked the snug back room with its cosy old chairs, colourful crocheted blankets draped over them to hide the bald patches. There were bookshelves and a wireless on the side table, and always newspapers and books and Frances’s bag of knitting. Edie came home every day with a sense of excitement at the thought of being so comfortable, so kindly treated and in such good company. Often after work she and Janet knelt on the Turkey rug by the fire making toast, warming a dish of butter on the hearth, and eating it with cups of tea and chatting unstoppably while David played on the floor. She’d never sat and talked so much in her life. Marie Falla was pleasant and easygoing and had found a factory job, so she was also working long hours, but when she came home she’d often come and join in.
As well as her fondness for Janet, Edie revelled in being close to Frances, for whom she felt something almost akin to worship. She would have done almost anything for her. Frances also encouraged her drawing and painting, and Edie had begun sketching her portrait, and was reasonably pleased with it, although she was really stronger at nature paintings. She also made herself as useful as she could, feeling that although she was paying rent she owed Frances Hatton far more than money and wanted to make things easier for her. Soon Frances said she didn’t know what she’d do without her in the kitchen.
‘Janet’s never been very handy like you are,’ she confided one evening when Edie had prepared the vegetables for dinner. ‘You’ve done those in record time – and with this little chap pulling at your legs all the time. You’re into everything, young man, aren’t you?’ She bent down to stroke David’s curls, and straightening up again, said, ‘I do want you to know, Edie, what a ray of sunshine he is for me in the house. I know you feel we’re doing you a favour, but you are doing us one as well. I don’t see much of my grandchildren. Marian, Robert’s wife, isn’t very family-minded. Having David about lifts one out of all the gloom of these days. And it’s very nice to have your company as well, dear.’
Edie smiled, delighted, and thanked Frances yet again.
‘I love living here,’ she said. ‘You feel like family much more than my own do.’
This was the absolute truth, though there were a number of unfamiliar things to adjust to. She loved the calm civility of the household, the kindness shown to everyone who came through the door. And quite a number of people did come through the door, many of whom were members of the Society of Friends. They were always very polite and pleasant, but also rather startling. She had still not puzzled out why so many Quakers felt it necessary to dress as if they were about to go on an extended hike over the Cairngorms. There was a Miss Cave who came from time to time who always wore walking boots and a woolly hat, even when invited for tea. And they were so intense and interested in everything that was going on, as if it was all their own personal responsibilty. Never in her life had she met people who talked like that, about
their charitable works, as if they thought they might make any difference to the way things were. So far as she had always understood it, things were as they were and that was that. And she was touched by their concern for each other: there had been sad news over the past weeks. Two local families of Friends had been bombed out. In one case no one survived, but in the other every possible help was given by everyone and Edie saw how kind they all were. She was very nervous in their presence to begin with, but as everyone was so nice to her she soon learned to relax. Even with the idea that they were Conscientious Objectors who would rather go to prison or labour on the land than go to war. What her own mother would have to say about that!
One of Edie’s favourite times came in the evening, on the days neither she nor Janet were out with the volunteer services. Frances always made sure the accumulator was topped up and they would shut out the dark, cold nights behind the blackout curtains, and gather round the fireplace with cups of tea and the wireless on for classical concerts and shows, Tommy Handley and ‘Hi Gang!’
Frances and Janet taught Edie how to play whist and canasta, as her family had never played cards at home, and Marie joined in enthusiastically. Frances usually had knitting on the go, Edie would sit with her sketchpad and they’d would turn the wireless off after the news and sit and talk until bedtime. Marie usually went up first and often Edie and Janet were left downstairs, Frances getting up wearily and saying, ‘Now don’t stay up too long you two, will you?’
Last night had been one such evening. Janet and Edie had each had a bath, Janet going first and Edie dipping into the same water and the two of them sat curled up in the two big armchairs in their nightdresses making the most of the last heat from the fire. Frances said goodnight soon after ten, smiling at the sight of the two of them drying their hair together, buxom Janet, rosy-cheeked from the hot water, her hair already beginning to corkscrew into curls when only half dry, and Edie with her elfin looks and freckles. She enjoyed the friendship that was blossoming between them. Edie’s background was a lot tougher than some of Janet’s other friends, Frances thought as she climbed up to bed. She’d seen that triangular scar on the girl’s arm and hadn’t liked to enquire. Janet had asked though, and Edie said, ‘Oh, bit of an accident. When I was small.’ Even so, there was something about Edie that made her feel very protective. Sometimes she seemed scarcely more than a child herself, and she was such a sweet girl: she warmed to her more than she ever had Joyce, whom she found a little insipid. She suspected Janet did too, but was too kind to say so.
‘Shall I make us a drop of Bournvita?’ Janet asked, struggling to tug a comb through her hair.
‘I’ll do it.’ Edie came back in a short time later with two cups of hot chocolate, half milk, half water.
‘We’ll get a little tree tomorrow,’ Janet said. ‘Well, Mom’ll get it I expect. We can decorate it.’
‘Ooh yes!’ Edie said, tucking her feet under the hem of her nightdress in the comfortable chair. ‘Davey’ll love it, won’t he?’
‘Of course he will.’ Janet smiled, seeing the way Edie’s face lit up at the mention of him. She had seen Edie transformed over the past month, from a sad, lost waif into a happy, loving young woman. While she rejoiced with her, Janet trembled for her as well. Supposing David were not an orphan. Supposing . . .? She knew Edie was aware of all these fearful possibilities, but they did not often mention them. It was too painful.
Over the past month the two of them had already grown very close. Sometimes Edie felt bad that she didn’t see nearly as much of Ruby as she had before, and Ruby had made one or two sharp remarks about it.
‘Aren’t you my pal any more?’
‘Course I am – don’t be daft,’ Edie told her. ‘It’s just that now I’m looking after David I’ve no time. Why don’t you come round to Janet’s and see us?’
‘Can’t, can I?’ Ruby said crossly. ‘What with our mom off tripping the light fantastic all the time. It’s just the same as when she was feeling bad nowadays.’
Edie was sorry for her, but it couldn’t be helped. If my own child had lived I wouldn’t have seen much of her, she reasoned. And she knew Ruby was hoping to have Frank home on leave immediately after Christmas. At least Ruby had a husband. They all had to get through the best they could these days. And Edie knew nothing mattered to her now as much as David did. But Janet, too, was a great source of happiness. She was so energetic and jolly and thought the best of everyone. Well – unless they were men, that was.
She’d been quite taken aback by her new friend’s attitude to the opposite sex. When she’d asked her innocently soon after she moved in, if she was walking out with anyone, Janet had said, ‘No I’m not!’ so emphatically that Edie hadn’t dared pursue it any further. She did wonder though whether those un-Janet like tears she and Ruby had witnessed the first day they met her had been caused by a man. After all, Janet was older than her, nearly twenty-six. She must have had some boyfriends by now. And one day, when they were talking in her room, Janet had opened a drawer to fetch out a pair of stockings. Janet’s belongings were always in chaos and from amid the jumbled items of underwear in the drawer, a photograph flicked out on to the floor by Edie’s feet. She caught a quick glimpse of Janet standing, with windblown hair, on a pier with the sea behind, beside someone. The someone was dark-haired and had his arm round Janet’s shoulders. Janet picked it up and immediately tore it up, casually dropping it into the waste-paper basket.
‘Some silly old thing,’ she said laughing. ‘I really should have a turn-out.’ Edie hadn’t liked to ask questions.
‘Feels quiet tonight,’ Janet said as they sipped their warm drinks. ‘Let’s hope it lasts.’
The past month had seen more terrible raids, one lasting thirteen hours. Edie and Janet had been at home that night and had spent the night in the Anderson, Edie carrying David and sitting with him in her arms. By morning they were stunned with fear and exhaustion. And on one of the nights of bombing this month, the bridge carrying the canal over Bournville Lane had been hit, so that water poured into D-block at Cadbury’s and the basements under the factory. Janet had told her that the wages department was down there and there had been pound notes floating about with the dead cats and pigeons from the Cut.
‘Be a nice Christmas present if they leave us alone,’ Edie agreed.
Janet, kneeling on the rug by the fire looked at her, head on one side. ‘I was wondering, and don’t take this the wrong way, but don’t you want to spend Christmas with your own family?’
Edie looked down, flushing, fingering the pale blue winceyette nightdress which Janet had given her.
‘Would you rather I did?’
‘I said don’t take it the wrong way!’ Janet reached over and squeezed her arm affectionately. For an uncomfortable moment Edie saw her eyeing the scar and she pulled her sleeve down. ‘I don’t know how many times I’ve told you, Ma and I love having you here.’
‘You’re so nice, both of you. I don’t deserve you.’ Edie stared into the fire. ‘But no, I don’t want to go to them. I’ve bought a couple of little things for Rodney and for Florrie’s kids but that’s all. Florrie’s gone back to Coventry now it’s quietened down.’ Her mom had the room for her now, but she wasn’t going back to that chilly welcome. ‘I’d much rather stay here, Janet.’
‘Good! And Christmas wouldn’t feel right without you now. Edie—’ Janet hesitated again. ‘Your husband, he died around Christmas, didn’t he? I realize it must be a sad time for you.’
For the first time, Edie told Janet everything about Jack, about Scottie MacPherson and how Jack’s death had come about. Janet shook her head as she listened, her eyes full of sympathy.
‘Oh Edie, how tragic. And he sounded so kind-hearted. And then your baby as well!’
‘Sometimes I think about how it would have been if they were both alive – Jack and my little boy.’ Edie pulled her knees up under her nightdress and stared into the fire. ‘Course, Jack’d be away now, like Frank. He�
��d just joined up. It was the night before he was going off to training camp. Frank was gutted. He was there, you see. I’ve never seen him like that before. He’s a tough sort normally. They were pals at school, he and Jack.’
There was a silence in which they heard rain blowing against the windows and the fire shifted.
‘You don’t have anyone then?’ Edie said.
‘I did.’ Janet spoke stiffly. ‘Well, I mean there’ve been a number over the years of course. I’ve been to dances and so on. No one special until the last one.’ She broke off.
‘Was he the one made you cry?’
‘Cry? Oh yes, he made me cry all right,’ Janet said harshly. ‘You mean that time at the bus stop? I feel so silly now, thinking about it.’ She leaned forward. ‘Thing is, Mom knows what happened, but we don’t say much about it now. You won’t breathe a word, will you?’
‘Of course not.’ Edie felt honoured to be confided in.
‘He was married, you see.’ Seeing Edie’s shocked expression she went on hastily. ‘I mean I didn’t know, that was the thing. Not to begin with. He kept stringing me along for quite a time and of course I was mad about him. When I found out I couldn’t just let him go like I should have done. Anyway, I did, in the end. Finish it.’ She stared sadly into the fire. Edie sensed that she wanted to say more, but she stopped.
‘It sounds awful,’ she said. ‘How could he?’
‘I know, and when I look back on it, he was so arrogant about things. So selfish. But I was in love, you see. He was rather handsome and took me out and about. Well, of course he did, he could hardly take me home, could he? He used me and I let it happen, silly little thing. Lied to my mother when I went to meet him, and that’s the part I’m least proud of. I don’t seem to be a very good judge of men actually. A couple of others didn’t treat me especially well. They don’t always seem to realize that we have feelings.’
Edie leaned down and put her cup on the floor. ‘You’ll find someone nice – I’m sure you will.’
