Birmingham Blitz

by Annie Murray

  I went and sat by Eric, who no one seemed to have given a moment’s thought to.

  ‘Take no notice,’ I said, putting my arm round him.

  ‘Is she going to send me away?’ He had tears in his eyes. ‘Where am I going?’

  ‘Somewhere nice I expect. In the country. See the cows and sheep. It’ll be all right,’ I told him, though I hadn’t the foggiest whether it would or not. ‘Here – want a game of snap?’

  Eric nodded, picture of misery.

  ‘Right, now sit yourselves down,’ our Nan was saying. ‘As a mark of respect to Lola, since we ’aven’t seen much of that yet, we’ll ’ave a song.’

  ‘I’m not singing with her,’ Mom said.

  ‘That’s what you think.’ Nan got her squeeze box out from the corner and sat with it on her lap, legs apart, skirt pulling tight across her knees.

  ‘She’s wearing red bloomers,’ Eric whispered to me, distracted for a moment.

  ‘Doreen, Lil, stand up. You sing along too, Len,’ Nan urged him.

  I got the cards off Len and played with Eric, and Dad sighed with relief that they’d all stopped carrying on and the two loving sisters started on a song. Nan was fantastic on the accordion. She’d picked it up off her dad and she could play the piano too. Just about anything you asked in the way of songs. A gift that, that ran in the family until it got to me, apparently. Mom could have a go too, given the chance. She, Lil and Nanny Rawson all had good strong voices. People called them the Andrews Sisters, and they did a turn in the pub now and again. Times when they sang were mostly the only occasions when they weren’t arguing.

  So they stood in our front room with the sunlight fading outside and Dad lighting one fag after another to calm his nerves. They sang ‘The Rose of Picardy’ and ‘Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay’, blending their voices, and then that new song, ‘The Lambeth Walk’ everyone was mad about. Lil looked so pretty and not tired suddenly, Nan’s face was softer than usual and Len was swaying from side to side in his chair, face split by a smile, in heaven.

  Mom looked almost happy while the music was going on. I saw Dad watching her and there were tears in his eyes. Shook me a bit, that. I wondered whether he was thinking about Lola, or about the fact that he might soon have to go away, or whether he was wondering the same as I was: why Mom couldn’t find it in her to be happier with him – with all of us.

  Come the end of that week we were in for a surprise. I was working in a pawn shop in Highgate, which disgusted Mom, but it was one of the best jobs I’d had so far. That week, as we stood in the little shop on the Moseley Road, we watched a crowd filling sandbags to shore up the factories opposite. Every day there were changes. That Friday I walked home after work and saw the last evening rays catching the bloated shape of a barrage balloon, a silky light coming from it. Some people, Mom among them, were still saying, ‘Oh there’s not going to be a war.’ But if there was to be no war, what was all this for? Digging trenches in the parks, blackout curtains downstairs, and sending the kids away.

  We’d had the gas masks months. One day when I got home Mom’d said in a grim voice, ‘Look what’s arrived.’ There was a pile of boxes by the door. The masks were most off-putting. They looked a bit of a joke with their mouse faces until you put one on. When I pulled it over my face it was so tight, and the smell of rubber made you heave. The leaflets told us there’d be wardens round with rattles if we had a gas attack.

  ‘I couldn’t wear that,’ Mom said, shuddering. ‘Make me sick that would.’

  Dad, standing in shirtsleeves at the door, remarked, ‘I don’t s’pose being gassed’d make you feel all that marvellous neither.’

  I didn’t really understand about war. Everyone was forever on about ‘the Last One’ but I wasn’t born till nearly six years after it finished. All I knew was that everyone was living on their nerves. Mom was on at Dad because he might have to go away. ‘What did you have to go and join the TA for? Other men of your age aren’t being called up. How d’you think I’m going to manage without you here?’ she’d wail. Tears turned on as well. There was a feeling about, excited and deadly serious at the same time, building up like the tension in a dog waiting to spring.

  When I walked through the front door that evening I knew something was different. It was quiet, much more so than usual, but I could hear a voice in the back room. A man’s voice. Posh. I didn’t know who it was. I pushed the door open and before I’d had a chance even to open my mouth they all said, ‘Ssssh!’ without even looking at me. There they were, all sat round the table: Mom, Dad, Eric, Len. And in the middle of the table, shiny and new and absolutely gorgeous, there she was.

  ‘Blimey! Whose—? What—? Whose is it?’

  ‘Sssssh,’ they said again. Len was making gleeful sounds, bouncing up and down in his seat.

  The man’s voice went on for a moment longer, then music started to trickle out into the room. I tiptoed closer and stared. It was a beautiful thing, almost a couple of feet long, encased in veneered wood with a dark grain across it as if it had been washed by the sea. On one half of the front was the speaker, the overlaid wood cut into a sunburst. On the other half, set into a metal surround, was the dial, with little ebony knobs underneath it. Out from it, louder now, were coming the sounds of violins and trumpets and other instruments all pitching in together, and it gave me a queer feeling. Made me want to cry suddenly though I didn’t know why. Even Len went quiet.

  I didn’t get any sense out of anyone until Mom got up to put the kettle on.

  ‘So – whose is it?’

  ‘Len’s. He bought it. First wage packet.’ She moved her mouth close to my ear. ‘We made up the extra for him – saw he had enough.’ Her little brother. The one person in the world she’d kill to protect.

  ‘Is that yours then, Len?’ He looked as if he was going to burst, head nodding up and down like crazy.

  ‘Pleased as punch he is,’ Dad said. As if he needed to.

  I squeezed Len’s shoulder. ‘Aren’t you lucky? It’s really smashing.’

  Next day, Mom dragged Eric off to school for his evacuation rehearsal. The schools opened specially, even though it was the summer holidays. Mom had put away her ideas of being able to wangle a passage with him now it had dawned on her that Dad might have to go sooner than she’d realized. Eric had to go off with a small holdall for his clothes and a little bag for his ‘iron rations’ and his gas mask.

  It was a peaceful morning in one way. Dad sat and read the Sports Argus and we didn’t clear away breakfast for a good hour. Len settled himself down by his wireless and kept twiddling the dial, catching torn up bits of sound until he heard something he fancied.

  I was supposed to be cooking lunch, but I sat down for a bit too, feeling that without Mom around I could leave my hair loose and straggly and no one would tick me off for the grubby stains on my frock. I stretched my legs out in front of me, seeing how skinny and pale they looked, and wished I didn’t have a figure like a clothes-horse. But all the time worries about Eric kept flickering through my mind and I had a queasy ball of tension inside me. I thought about my family all being split up and suddenly they didn’t seem so bad any more and I wanted things to stay as they were.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘If there’s a war will you have to go straight away?’

  He laid the paper down in his lap and looked ahead. Outside someone was having a fire and rags of smoke kept drifting past the window. ‘Could be any time now, love.’

  ‘Oh.’ The music carried on quietly behind us.

  Dad turned his head to look at me. ‘I know I’m not all your mother would want . . .’ He couldn’t seem to finish that bit. ‘You will look after her for me, won’t you?’

  I nodded and he looked away again. ‘You’re a good wench.’

  That morning, while we were waiting and wondering, I heard a singer who was to become one of my favourites. Her voice came from the wireless strong and dark as gravy browning. We sat quite still while sh
e was singing. The second she’d finished, Len pointed at the wireless and said, ‘Gloria.’

  ‘What you on about, Len? They said her name was Anne Shelton.’

  He shook his head hard and pointed again. ‘Gloria.’

  I realized he meant the wireless itself, and I saw how much it suited her. Glorious Gloria. From then on she was never known as anything but Gloria.

  One Wednesday night we were all listening to Band Waggon, all in stitches at Arthur Askey, Len laughing at us laughing – hor hor hor – out of his belly. We had Gloria turned up high and I thought she was the best thing that had ever happened because before that I never ever remember us all sitting laughing together. Even Mom looked happy, and I saw Dad watching her, all hopeful.

  And then she stopped. Right in the middle of it, no more Gloria. Len was out of his chair, wild at the knobs. ‘Gloria . . . Gloria . . .’ Not listening to Mom, who was trying to say, ‘Lenny, it’s OK, it’s just the accumulator . . .’

  Len sank back on his chair and blubbed, fat slugs of tears rolling from his eyes and his shoulders shaking as if there was an earthquake. ‘Gloria . . . Gloria!’

  ‘LEN!’ Mom bawled down his ear. ‘GLORIA WILL BE ALL RIGHT. WE NEED TO TOP UP HER ACCUMULATOR!’ To the rest of us, she said, ‘Listen to me. Gloria. Getting as bad as he is.’

  She got through to him in the end and he stopped crying, but his face was dismal. He spent the rest of the evening with Gloria in his lap, lying across his thighs as if she was an injured cat.

  I took the accumulator in on my way to work the next day. There was a cycle shop on Stoney Lane would top them up for you. I’d never given much thought to what was in them before, but I soon found out because the aroma of spilt acid in that shop made my eyes water. It was eating into the floor.

  ‘You got a spare?’ the bloke asked.

  We hadn’t, though I thought we’d better get one so’s not to have this performance every time.

  ‘I’ll be back for it after work,’ I told him.

  So, come the evening I handed over threepence, and it would have been worth a shilling just to see Len’s face when I walked in with it. Gloria was on again straight away in time for The Six O’Clock News.

  Those last days of August we still waited and waited. It was like being held under water.

  The groups of people gossiping in Nan’s shop were saying, ‘Let’s get it over with if it’s coming. Just let us know one way or the other.’

  It was a time full of instructions. Leaflets through the door, the papers, and of course Gloria, who took our hands and led us into the war, giving out advice and information as we went. Hearing the voices which came from her was like someone sat right there in the back room with you. And she gave us relief from it, letting our minds slip away into plays and stories and songs.

  The newspapers were different. On 31 August Dad brought home the Birmingham Mail. There was the banner across the front, stark in black and white:

  EVACUATION TOMORROW . . . BRITAIN AWAITS HITLER’S REPLY.

  September 1939

  ‘Genie? can I come in with you?’

  It was before dawn. I could just see Eric’s outline in the doorway of my room.

  ‘What’s up?’

  He came silently up to my bed. ‘She’s sending me away, ain’t she?’

  I pulled the bed open. ‘Here – hop in.’

  ‘Ain’t she?’ His toes were chilly against my leg.

  ‘She thinks it’s for the best. You don’t want that nasty man Hitler dropping bombs on you, do you, Eric?’

  His tousled head moved from side to side against my chest. I put my arms round him, scrawny little bit that he was, and pulled the sheet close round us.

  ‘Little Patsy’s not going.’

  ‘But the Spinis are – Francesca and Giovanna and Tony – even Luke.’ My friend Teresa’s brothers and sisters.

  ‘They’ll all be together . . . I’ll be all on my own.’

  ‘You never know – you might be able to go with them.’

  But he was already crying, snuffling like a kitten, a hand pressing on one of my titties, such as I had.

  ‘Don’t wanna go. I don’t wanna.’

  ‘Now Eric – it won’t be for long,’ I kept telling him. ‘It’ll be for the best. Mom only wants the best for you.’

  I lay holding him, hoping that was the truth.

  Mom stood by the open back door with a packet of Players, blowing smoke across our thin strip of garden. I went out to use the privy. There were cobwebs under the roof, cut out squares of the Gazette on a string, and no seat. I sat on the cold white enamel feeling a breeze under the door. When I came out, a bird was singing. A thin mesh of cloud covered the sky but the air was growing warm. It was about six-thirty.

  Mom stood with one arm wrapped round the waist of her cotton nightdress, her bit of stomach pushing out from under it, other hand holding the cigarette in front of her face. Her skin looked pasty, nose shiny with night sweat. She was often like that, miles away, but this time her expression was drawn and frightened. I didn’t even think she’d seen me, until she said, ‘What’re we going to do?’

  I stared at her. I was angry at her for sending Eric away, and angrier because I knew she was right: there was going to be a war and none of us knew what would happen, and we were all confused and frightened.

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.’

  You’re the mom, I thought, not me. What you asking me for?

  ‘Mrs Spini’s got four to send,’ I said, stepping past her.

  ‘Thought she wasn’t going to.’

  ‘Changed her mind.’

  ‘Typical.’ Tutting. ‘Italians.’

  I filled the teapot. Mom turned, slit-eyed, smoke unfurling from her nose. ‘I’m only doing what I’m told, you know Genie.’ She pointed in, towards Gloria. ‘She – I mean they – say that’s what we’ve got to do. This is an evacuation area. So we’re s’posed to evacuate.’

  ‘Well that’s all right then, isn’ it?’

  ‘What are you looking at me like that for then?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I could feel the tears coming on. I turned away.

  We heard my dad coming down. The stair door pushed open into the back room.

  ‘It’s right, in’t it Victor?’

  ‘What is?’ He was stood there in his shirt and underpants.

  ‘Sending Eric out of harm’s way.’

  Dad looked in some amazement into Mom’s pinched, foxy face and saw that for the first time any of us could remember she was actually asking his advice. He pulled his shoulders back and stroked the reddish stubble on his chin. ‘I should say so. If that’s what they’re saying.’

  ‘Where is he, anyhow?’

  ‘In my bed. Still asleep. He came in in the night, crying.’

  ‘Shame.’ Mom stubbed out her cigarette, grey ash dirtying a white saucer. ‘Better get him up. It’s an early start.’ She went to the bread bin and fished out the stub end of a loaf. ‘I’ll make him a piece. He’ll need summat on his stomach.’

  Eric had to leave as soon as he’d had breakfast. His little bag and his gas mask stood forlornly in the hall. He clung to me, bawling his eyes out, and I was in tears myself. Hadn’t thought how much I’d miss him, even though he’d been stuck to me like my shadow all his life. There’d be no more Eric sneaking out after school with jam jars to sell for a ha’penny each, or driving us mad with that clattering go-cart of his with the back wheel falling off. No more walks to Cannon Hill Park to ‘get him from under my feet’ with a stale crust for the ducks. He suddenly seemed the most precious person I knew, my baby brother.

  ‘Can’t you come with me, sis?’ he sobbed, already in his little gaberdine coat.

  ‘I’ve got to get to work, Eric. Mom’ll look after you. We’ll see you soon.’ Someone had their hands round my throat. ‘Won’t be for long.’

  Mom didn’t say much, couldn’t. I did my best to h
ide most of my tears until they were away down the road. I stood waving him off, him turning, cap on his head, silver streaks of dried tears on his cheeks and new ones coming. He was twisting round, trying to wave, right the way to the corner. Then they were gone.

  I had a proper cry then, upstairs. Dad had gone out the back. I suppose he was upset too. After, I blew my nose, pulled myself together and hurried to work. I thought of Eric all the way there, wondering where he’d end up, what it was like outside Birmingham, and what an unknown family somewhere would make of the arrival of my snotty-nosed brother, Eric Rudolph Valentino Watkins.

  Palmer’s was on the Moseley Road, its golden balls hanging outside. It was a dark little shop and stank a bit inside of course, of frowsty clothes and camphor, of the gas lamp that was kept burning most of the time so we could see to write out the tickets, and of Mr Palmer’s fags.

  He was already in when I got there. He was ever so old – seemed it to me – fifty-something at least, with half-moon glasses, a paunchy stomach and grey hair greased flat to his head. The whites of his eyes had gone yellow, maybe from smoking, like his fingers. He was a shrewd operator, Mr Palmer, but well capable of kindness.

  ‘Ready for the Friday rush, Genie?’ he said as I walked in, shivering in the dank shop in my cotton dress.

  I liked Fridays. Payday – everyone coming to redeem the Sunday outfits they’d pawned on Monday for a bit of extra to see them through the week, and many would stop for a chat. We’d see them all back in the next Monday.

  ‘’Ere I am again,’ one lady used to say. ‘In out, in out, quick as me old man on a Sat’dy night.’ Took me a minute or two to work out what she was on about.

  ‘You get busy then,’ Mr Palmer said. He was half way through a fag and didn’t seem to be planning on shifting himself. I started tidying bits and bobs, dusting the crocks. He’d told me he’d never seen the place so organized before I came along.

  That was my trouble with jobs. If I wasn’t kept on the run I got bored. And not just a bit yawning bored, but screaming and running round the room sort of bored. I’d done all sorts: sticking Bo-Peep stickers on babies’ cots, taking calls for a taxi firm where I got so fed up I gave the windows a going over in my spare time . . . Soon as it got too slow my head filled with fog and my legs went heavy as brass weights. That was when it was time to look for something else.