A Strong Hand to Hold

by Anne Bennett

  ‘No, no, I don’t think so,’ Bob said, ‘and that’s partly because of evacuation.’

  ‘Evacuation!’

  ‘This time, the poverty and deprivation have been brought into other people’s homes. Those in the country have been shocked by the city children’s appearance. Some have never slept in a bed or sat up to a meal, never handled a knife and fork and have lived on a diet of chips and bread and jam or dripping. Some have been sewn into their clothes, or have brown paper underneath their clothes in an attempt to offer more warmth for they are often quite inadequately clad. Many wear hob-nailed boots – well patched and cobbled, people say. But worse, there are those who wear canvas plimsolls with cardboard in, to keep their feet dry.’

  Jenny knew this was true. She’d seen children going to Paget Road School with footwear like that and no topcoats in the depths of winter. The Evening Mail gave away free boots to the poor and they wouldn’t do that if there was no need for it. She was just glad it had all been brought to other people’s notice.

  ‘You mark my words, this will push the Beveridge recommendations along quicker after the war,’ Bob said.

  Jenny was glad she knew what the Beveridge Report was; her father had talked to her about it. It sounded too good to be true – a free Health Service, family allowances to help the poorer families, and old-age pensions for the elderly. But here was Bob agreeing with it all, and saying it would all come true.

  She hoped he was right. It would mean people like her brother Anthony and Linda’s family had not died totally in vain, if a better Britain was built at the end of such an awful war, whenever it was. ‘D’you want another?’ Bob said.

  Jenny realized she’d finished her port and lemon. She wanted to talk some more to the man who so interested in her, so she smiled and said, ‘Oh, yes. Yes, please.’

  It was late when Jenny got home, much later than she usually arrived back, and she was glad that both her mother and grandmother were in bed. She was in no mood to be quizzed and have her evening spoilt by poisonous spiteful remarks. She wanted to lie in bed and go over the whole evening she had spent with Bob, when for a short time, she’d been found desirable and attractive by a man, very possibly for the first time in her life. And there was another day tomorrow. If, after that, the relationship went no further, and really there was no reason for it to, then at least she’d have this time to remember. With that thought in her head, she turned over and went into a deep sleep.

  ELEVEN

  Bob had asked to see her again, and realizing that she might only have this small snatch of time with him the following day she asked her boss for a day of her holidays. She knew he could scarcely refuse. She was no clock watcher and would always work over or come in early if asked. Added to that she seldom took all her holiday entitlement so he agreed to her request. Bob was pleased when he picked her up from work that night, ‘Let’s go somewhere and celebrate. Take in a picture or something.’

  ‘Lovely,’ Jenny said. But as they walked to the tram stop the sirens rang out. It was a fair step home and though the raid wasn’t as fierce as Jenny had witnessed, it was fierce enough and when they reached the Norton Pub an ARP warden directed them to the cellar under the pub which had been opened up as a temporary shelter and so they spent most of their evening in there.

  ‘Make it up to you tomorrow,’ Bob said as he walked Jenny home much later.

  ‘You don’t need to.’

  ‘I want to,’ Bob said. ‘I’ll pick you up about twelve o’clock.’

  So on Thursday lunch time they were strolling across St Philip’s churchyard in the centre of town. It was too cold for strolling really, it was a day for marching along, arms swinging, to get the circulation going. Instead, they meandered slowly and in the end Bob took Jenny’s gloved hand into his own pocket – making the cold day an excuse to cuddle closer.

  The air was so icy it hurt one’s throat to try to talk, but it didn’t matter, the silence between them was an easy and companionable one. Jenny’s mother and grandmother had been astounded that not only had she taken an unprecedented day off, but also that she intended spending it with Anthony’s squadron leader. It was unseemly they said, unseemly and forward. But she took no notice of what they said. She said none of this to Bob. She didn’t want to spoil the day, she wanted instead to imagine that this smart and handsome man was walking around town with her because he truly wanted to. She wished Bob had nothing to do with Anthony and didn’t feel he had to be kind to his sister.

  And if she were to chatter nonsensically about nothing at all, as she was wont to do if she was nervous, Bob might regret he’d asked to see her again, and she wouldn’t be able to bear that, so for this one day, she would pretend.

  She didn’t have to pretend the thudding of her heart against her ribs however and, pressed against him like she was, she was surprised he was unable to feel it. Maybe he did, maybe he knew how his nearness affected her. She went hot with embarrassment at the thought and Bob turned to look at her. ‘All right?’ he said.

  Jenny nodded, she couldn’t trust herself to speak. The look in Bob’s deep brown eyes had made her legs feel suddenly weak. ‘We’ve been out in this long enough,’ he said. ‘Let’s find ourselves somewhere to have a nice hot drink, shall we?’

  ‘All right,’ Jenny said, her voice little more than a whisper. Anything he wanted she would have agreed with, and they quickened their pace towards the town centre, Bob had not been there since the raids. He’d heard about them of course, but seeing the destruction made it worse somehow. Where Marshall & Snelgrove had stood was now just a heap of rubble. ‘There’s talk they’re going to level this, and build a big marquee over it for dances and concerts and things,’ Jenny told him.

  ‘Fairly nippy on a night like this, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘For a concert maybe,’ Jenny said with a laugh, ‘or anything else where you had to sit still for long. A dance would probably be all right. You’d have to prance round all evening, mind, or you’d stick to the floor with the cold. Still,’ she shrugged, ‘it might come to nothing, and it will be spring or summer before anything’s done.’

  Marshall & Snelgrove was only one shop but Bob was staggered by the mess the bombers had made of Corporation Street, New Street and High Street. There were blackened skeletons of shops with mangled buckled girders sticking up though the poles of assorted debris and masonry. They say the fires were like infernos,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Looking around I can imagine that,’ Bob said

  ‘In the end they often had to just let them burn,’ Jenny went on. ‘They ran out of water though they drained the canals and everything. The Evening Mail said the tar was on fire in the roads and it slid into the kerbs.’

  Bob didn’t speak for they had made their way to the Bull Ring and he was struck dumb at the devastation there. Every time he took his plane up, certainly in the early Battle of Britain days, he knew he risked being killed or maimed, like the other young airmen in his squadron. But he, like they, accepted those risks. What he couldn’t come to terms with was what the ordinary person in the street had had to put up with – even children like Linda who’d had her whole family wiped out.

  ‘We’ve got to win this damned war,’ he said grimly, and his hand tightened around Jenny’s and she saw his eyes were troubled.

  Then he seemed to give himself a mental shake and went on, ‘But for today, let’s try and forget it for a little while. We’ll go for a cup of something to warm ourselves up, walk around the shops a bit and then maybe go to the pictures. What d’you say to that, Miss O’Leary?’

  Matching his bantering tone, Jenny said, ‘That would be most acceptable, Mr Masters.’

  It was a shame the city centre looked so drab, Jenny thought afterwards, fortified by a steaming bowl of soup and feeling much warmer. The shops were a disappointment now that the afternoon had turned into a dusky evening. None of the sparsely decorated windows were lit up as they used to be. No Christmas lights twinkled outside the shop
s or in strands across the street. And once inside the shops, there was little to buy. Jenny remembered that the shops used to be very busy getting ready for the January sales at this time of year. People would queue for hours and hours to get in first, and whenever Jenny had gone as a child she’d been buffeted from side to side by the heaving crowds.

  Now the scurrying shoppers scarcely looked about them and seemed anxious just to do what they had to do and head for home. Jenny felt it was rather depressing and hoped Bob didn’t feel bored by the whole thing.

  He didn’t appear bored. He seemed not to find her company too tedious at all, and she couldn’t really understand it. She was surprised at the offer to go to the cinema. She really thought he’d thank her for the pleasant afternoon and be off to spend his last evening with someone more exciting than herself.

  She was very worried about going to the cinema with him anyway. She’d listened to enough of the other girls’ tales around the office to know what went on. ‘Groping,’ her friend Babs called it, ‘like a bleeding octopus.’

  Jenny had been appalled. ‘Do you … do you let them?’ she’d asked.

  Babs had smiled. ‘There ain’t no one law about it, Jen. Some you do, some you don’t. It all depends.’

  ‘Depends on what?’ Jenny had been desperate to know.

  ‘How much you like them. How much of a good time they give you.’ Babs had leaned towards Jenny, and went on in a lower voice, ‘Thing to remember Jenny is, if you let them go too far in the flicks, they’ll think you’re ready to go further once they get you outside, see?’

  No, she didn’t see. It was like a minefield and people just seemed to know the rules. How did they? Why did she worry so much over it? And how far was too far? If she let Bob put his arm around her, would he take that as an indication that she might sleep with him later? Surely not. The whole thing was ludicrous! But what if his hand should snake down her neck and cup her breast like her first date had done, so long ago? She couldn’t allow that, he’d think her fast – and what if he wanted a kiss? She went hot at the very thought. She wouldn’t mind a kiss, in fact she’d love him to kiss her, but you couldn’t go round kissing strange men, a little voice of reason said in her head. Was he a stranger? He’d been Anthony’s friend, but so probably had half the airfield, the annoying little voice said again. Would you kiss them all because they could claim an acquaintance with Anthony?

  Oh shut up. For a horrified moment, Jenny thought she’d spoken aloud. She hadn’t, but Bob had seen the definite shake of her head. ‘Are you all right? He asked again.

  ‘Yes, fine – never better.’ Jenny’s voice was high and brittle-sounding and her face tense.

  Bob wondered what she had been thinking about so intently to upset her, but he didn’t know her well enough to ask. Instead he said, ‘Have you seen Gone With the Wind?’

  ‘No,’ Jenny said. ‘I must be the only person in the world who hasn’t.’

  ‘I haven’t either,’ Bob said, ‘so that’ll make two of us.’

  ‘I know a lot about the film,’ Jenny said. ‘The girls at work have told me virtually everything about it.’

  ‘Don’t you just hate friends like that?’

  ‘Well, I don’t suppose they ever thought I’d see it,’ Jenny said. ‘I don’t get out much, you see.’

  Bob squeezed Jenny’s hand again and said, ‘Let’s hope you’re not disappointed then.’

  Jenny knew she wouldn’t be, not with him by her side, anyway.

  Night had fallen in earnest as they’d toured the shops and Bob said, ‘If we go into the next showing of the film, we could eat when we come out and I’ll still have plenty of time to see you on to the last bus before my train. Would that be all right, or would you prefer to eat before we go in?’

  ‘Oh, afterwards definitely,’ Jenny said. ‘Heavens, it’s no time since we had the soup.’

  The Odeon Cinema where Bob has envisaged taking Jenny was burnt out and barricaded and so they made their way to the Gaumont which they knew was all right and joined the queue for Gone With the Wind. The people, now well used to queuing, were friendly and carefree, out for a night’s entertainment. Jenny realised there were a fair few girls of her age, some in groups, some with young men, most in uniform of some sort. This was the life other young women lived, she realized, not the one of duty and drudgery that she had chosen for herself.

  ‘Blistering cold, ain’t it?’ a voice shouted from the crowd.

  ‘Too cold for Jerry, I’d say.’

  ‘They won’t be over tonight, too much cloud.’

  ‘Better be thankful for small mercies, eh?’

  Bob took Jenny’s hand in his again. ‘That’s one blessing,’ he said. ‘They’re right. There’ll probably be no raid tonight, the cloud’s too thick. I should have thought of it though after last night. We are risking it really.’

  ‘Well, it’s all right,’ Jenny said. ‘Anyway, I wanted to come and they’re right. Too much cloud for Jerry tonight.’

  The last thing Jenny wanted was for Bob to start worrying enough to take her home. But then, she told herself, why should he worry at all? They’d only met a few days ago. To Bob this must be just a diversion, a way to spend a few hours’ leave when he had nowhere else to go. She should face facts and not be reading stupid romance into everything he said.

  Suddenly a man went past whistling ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’, and memories tugged at Jenny. ‘That’s what Linda sang’, she said, ‘when we were trapped together, you know?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That song, “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square”,’ Jenny said. ‘She sang to pass the time at the end. She said she and her mother used to sing to her brothers sometimes to stop them being so scared in the shelter. She has a marvellous voice, you know.’

  Bob smiled, glad that Jenny couldn’t see it. She was dotty over Linda, he knew, and felt a measure of responsibility for her, for as well as sitting beside her for hours in the bomb-damaged house, she had helped dig her mother and brothers out of the wreckage first. He doubted Linda had such a great voice at all. His mother had taught music before the war, but then most of her pupils had vanished, evacuated privately or with their schools, and his father insisted on Francesca herself going to a place of safety.

  Bob remembered the mothers who would come with children they claimed could sing like angels or were gifted on the piano. Seldom had their claims been justified. He recalled the early caterwauling sounds that would come from the music room, that his mother could turn into a passable singing voice. Or the clumsy child thumping on the piano, whom she could turn into a satisfactory pianist, but none of them were gifted.

  ‘I would love to have the money to have her properly trained,’ Jenny went on. ‘I’m sure she could make something of herself.’

  Bob said nothing, but maybe if his mother came back to live in Birmingham as she kept threatening, she could listen to Linda and see what she thought. The girl was probably as bad as all the others, but it would please Jenny and he’d like to please Jenny, but he’d say nothing for now.

  Jenny thought his lack of response was because he didn’t like her talking about Linda. She’d not thought of her all day, and now she felt guilty standing in a cinema queue and not visiting the child in hospital. She vowed to store up all she saw to tell Linda the following day.

  The visit to the cinema was not at all the traumatic event that Jenny had anticipated. Once seated, Bob pulled a package from his pocket and gave it to Jenny. ‘I didn’t dare give you this in daylight, in case you were set upon,’ he joked.

  Inside was a box of chocolates, a small box, but all the same! Her eyes widened with surprise. Everyone knew sweets were hard to get, and chocolate – well, that was virtually unobtainable. ‘Where on earth did you get them?’ she whispered.

  ‘I have shares in the local sweetshop,’ Bob said, and in the dim light Jenny saw the sparkle in his eyes and the quirk of his mouth. ‘No really, I did get them from the loc
al shop. I worked there from when I was twelve, you see, first delivering papers and then behind the counter when I was fourteen, after school and Saturdays and holidays and things. They have a soft spot for me and I always call and see them when I’m home. If they have anything under the counter, they usually slip me the odd thing. I called in this morning, and they gave me the chocolates to give to my young lady.’ He smiled again and set Jenny’s heart dancing as he said, ‘So they’re yours.’

  Steady, steady, Jenny told herself. He doesn’t really mean I’m his young lady. It’s his way, part of his charm. No need to get excited.

  With that established, the evening was marvellous. The film was as wonderful as the girls at work had said it was, and all that Bob did was hold her hand. She should have been relieved she didn’t have to fight him off, and rebuff any liberties he tried to take. However, human nature being what it is, Jenny was surprised to find herself rather disappointed.

  Later, they ate in a little pub that was also a restaurant, just off New Street. Jenny ordered steak and was given a piece of tender, juicy meat the like of which she had not seen since the pre-war days. She was not used to alcohol and the wine Bob ordered went to her head rather. ‘Where do they get it all from?’ she asked. ‘This beautiful food, wine and everything?’

  ‘Better not ask too many questions, sweetheart,’ Bob advised. ‘Eat and enjoy.’

  ‘For tomorrow we die,’ Jenny continued, and then clapped her hand over her mouth, horrified at what she’d said. ‘Oh God, Bob, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said easily. ‘Don’t worry so much.’

  Don’t worry so much, Jenny thought. I need to worry. I need my bloody tongue cut out! How could I have been so crass and insensitive. In a short time, I will say goodbye to this man who has been so very kind to me. He will return to all sorts of dangers, and I’m sitting here ill-wishing him. It was like an evil omen that sent a shiver right down her spine.