Birmingham Blitz

by Annie Murray

  ‘Looks mighty like it though.’

  ‘Poland,’ Lil said with scorn. She lit a fag and sat back. ‘Where the hell is Poland anyhow?’

  Nan sat on the edge of her chair, sipping tea. ‘I’ve cleared out the cellar.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘What d’you think for? I’m not going out in those public shelters with just anyone. There’s not much space down there but we can fit and it’ll have to do. I’ve given it a scrub.’

  ‘Charming. Reducing us to sitting in the cellar.’

  ‘Want some bread and scrape, Genie?’ Nan said.

  ‘No, I’m all right, ta. Nan?’

  ‘What, love?’

  I told her about Mrs Wiles.

  ‘Well, what a thing,’ she said. ‘I thought you was looking a bit shook up. Poor old dear.’

  ‘Shame.’ Lil took a drag on her cigarette. ‘Be much nicer to die in Lewis’s, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Better not tell Doreen,’ Nan said. ‘She’ll only say that’s what you get for working in a pawn shop up ’ere.’ Mom put on a show of thinking people in Highgate were common, which was rich considering she grew up there herself. When I got the job I didn’t tell her for days.

  ‘You’d better be moving on,’ Nan said to me. ‘Got to see to this blackout palaver tonight. Your mother never got it done for the practice, did she? She won’t want all that on ’er own.’

  ‘She’s all right – it’s light yet,’ Lil said. She seemed to be coming round a bit now she’d got some tea inside her. ‘Eric get off all right, did he?’

  I nodded, miserable at the thought. Lil sat forward, her old sweet self for a moment. ‘You’ll miss him, won’t you Genie love? But he’ll be all right. He’s a good boy.’ She smiled at me prettily. ‘You’ll have to come round and see my lot when you want some company.’

  I found Mom in tears of course, with Len taking not the blindest bit of notice. It wasn’t that he lacked sensitivity. He’d most likely just given up by now. Soon as he got in from work he usually sat down by Gloria without even washing his hands unless we nagged him, and that was that.

  ‘My boy!’ Mom was carrying on behind her hanky. There was no sign of tea on the go. ‘My poor little Eric. How will we ever know if they’re looking after him properly?’

  I felt impatient, although all day I’d had nothing but the same thought in my mind. ‘Oh, I expect he’ll have a grand time,’ I said bitterly. ‘Forget we exist.’

  ‘But that’s what I’m worried about!’ Mom wailed. She flung herself up out of her chair, dabbing at her red eyes. ‘First I’ve got no son, and now I haven’t even got a husband!’ She clicked the stair door open and disappeared upstairs, slamming it behind her.

  ‘She’s crying,’ Len remarked.

  ‘You don’t say, Lenny.’

  I was really fed up with her. Sometimes I’d have liked to be the one who could flounce about and cry and behave like a child. I got sick of being a mother to my own mom. I wanted someone to sit down and put their arm round me while I cried because my dad and my brother had gone away.

  ‘I s’pose this means I’m cooking tea, does it?’ I snapped at Len, since he was the only person left to snap at, though I got no answer anyway.

  There was liver in the kitchen. I started chopping onions. Len fiddled with Gloria until music came streaming from her. I felt a bit better. Len beamed. ‘S’nice this, Genie, in’t it?’

  There was a voice kept coming on as I was cooking, saying we had to retune the wireless. Len was taking no notice, didn’t understand.

  I wiped my hands and went over. ‘Len, the man says we’ve got to turn the knob to a different number.’ Len stared blankly at me. I went and fiddled with Gloria’s dial and Len got a bit agitated.

  Just as I was dishing up, this voice said, ‘This is the BBC Home Service.’ I’d just called Mom down and we looked at each other expecting something else to happen.

  ‘The what?’ Mom shrugged and stepped over to look at herself in the mirror – ‘What a sight’ – then, as the light was waning outside, went round the windows, pulling all the black curtains she’d made. ‘This should’ve been done earlier,’ she said accusingly, pulling the ordinary curtains over them. ‘I’ll have to do upstairs tomorrow. Well this is going to be jolly I can see. Feels like the middle of winter.’

  My liver and onions wasn’t out of this world, though no worse than Mom would’ve managed, but she still turned her nose up at it.

  ‘Gravy’s lumpy. And how did you get the liver so hard?’

  We waited, tensed up as the nine o’clock bulletin came on, but there was nothing new, nothing definite, except that Australia had said she’d support the Allies if war broke out.

  ‘Who are the Allies?’ I asked.

  ‘Us of course.’

  When we turned Gloria off, finally, to go up to bed, it was eerily quiet. There wasn’t a sound from outside. Wasn’t something supposed to be happening?

  ‘I wonder what Victor’s doing,’ Mom said, turning all soggy again. ‘How could he do it to me?’

  Saturday 2 September. The day of waiting.

  It had been a golden afternoon, the city’s dark bowl lit by autumn sun. Two blokes whitewashing the entrance to an ARP post whistled at me on the way home. The balloons sailed in the sky, tugging gently on their lines.

  What’s up now? I wondered, stepping in from work that evening. The house was quiet again but I could hear music in the distance. They were out in the garden, Gloria too, on a paving slab with her accumulator. Someone was playing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ on the organ with twiddly bits.

  At the end of the garden, next to the wizened lilac tree, its mauve flowers now brown, stood Mom, Len and Mr Tailor from two houses along. They were all looking at a big, grey loop of corrugated iron and two other flat bits which were leant up against the fence. The Anderson shelter had arrived.

  ‘’Ullo Genie!’ Len boomed across at me. The others didn’t seem to notice if I was there or not.

  Mom was all worked up. ‘Isn’t this just the limit?’ She lit one cigarette from the stub end of another and sucked on it like a sherbet dip. ‘Isn’t it just like Victor to go away the day before the shelter gets here. How am I ever going to cope with all this?’

  ‘Look, love, you’re awright – I’ve said I’ll do it,’ Mr Tailor said. He was always the philosopher, Mr Tailor. Maybe because he had a grown up son whose testicles had never come down. Nan said with something like that in the family there was no point in getting worked up about anything else. He’d most likely be there on his own deathbed in the same grey braces saying, ‘Yer awright, bab – things’ll look better in the morning.’

  ‘I’ll sort it out for you, soon as I’ve finished my own. I’m not going anywhere, am I? Too long in the tooth for that caper. Look – you just have to dig down and put this bit in the ground—’ He pointed to the big curved bit which I saw was two sheets of metal bolted together at the top. ‘Then you put the soil back over the top, these bits are the front and back, and Bob’s your uncle.’

  Len had already got the spade and was all for starting off.

  ‘He could do it if I show him,’ Mr Tailor went on. ‘Big strong lad.’

  Mom was hugging her waist. I could see the shape of the Players packet in the pocket of her pinner. ‘Looks more like a dog kennel. I certainly don’t fancy sitting out in that of a night.’

  ‘It’s tougher than it looks,’ Mr Tailor said, slapping his thick, hairy hand on the side of it. ‘I’ll come and give Len a hand finishing it tomorrow – how’s that?’

  Mom nodded. ‘Look, I’ve got to get in and finish these flaming blinds. Been queuing half the morning for the material . . .’

  The organ music which had gone on and on stopped suddenly. ‘Sssh,’ I said. ‘Listen!’

  We walked back over the toasted daisies and stood round Gloria.

  ‘This is the BBC Home Service . . . Here is the six o’clock news . . .’

  Everyone stood st
ill. Mr Tailor raised one hand in the air, flat as if he was pushing against an invisible wall.

  The government had given a final ultimatum to Hitler. Withdraw from Poland or we declare war. They’d given him until the next morning.

  When it was over, another voice said, ‘This is Sandy MacPherson joining you again on the BBC organ . . .’

  ‘Not again,’ Mom said. ‘That bloke must be exhausted. He’s been stuck on that flaming organ all day.’ As she disappeared into the house she added, ‘Why does that Hitler have to do everything on the weekend?’

  The sun went down slowly, though not slowly enough for Mom, who was still toiling away on the Vesta, the reel of black cotton flying round on the top, cursing to herself.

  Without being told, I picked up the idea pretty quick that I was cooking tea. I saw there was a rabbit hanging by its hind legs in the pantry. Mom said Mr Tailor had got it somewhere. Don’t ask, sort of thing. ‘That’s for dinner tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Do summat with eggs tonight.’

  When I’d got the spuds on, I went and stood out in the garden. Len was working like mad digging out turf and soil, dry though it was. He was droning some kind of tune and he didn’t look back or see me.

  I took my shoes off, felt the wiry grass under my feet and wondered what it’d be like to live in the country with nothing but grass and trees. I wondered about Eric. The street was so quiet. Usually it was full of kids playing, in the gardens and out the front.

  And I thought this evening was like no other I’d ever known. Not even the night I left school when I knew I was going to a job next week and everything else would be the same, not like Christmas Eve, even though there was the same sort of quiet. Everything was shifting, you could feel it all around you, those balloons filling in the sky. No one had a clue what was going to happen tomorrow.

  I didn’t know whether to be excited or frightened.

  Mom still didn’t manage to black out the whole house by sundown. ‘Cotton kept breaking,’ she complained. She wasn’t very good at sewing either.

  We ate scrambled egg and potatoes. Len ate astonishing heaps of mash. It was a queer feeling sitting there with the windows all muffled. Made you feel cut off, as if you were in prison. And Mom decided for reasons of her own that we had to have the windows tight shut as well and nearly suffocated the lot of us.

  None of us could settle to anything. Mom said she couldn’t stand the sight of any more sewing. So we sat round Gloria and listened in. She was our contact with the outside world: Sandy MacPherson, records, news. Parliament had sat in emergency session. Len slouched, picking his nose.

  ‘Don’t, Len!’ Mom scolded.

  We sang along with ‘We’ll Gather Violets in the Spring’ and ‘Stay Young and Beautiful, If You Want to Be Loved.’

  We wondered what tomorrow would bring. There was a storm in the night and I barely slept.

  The Prime Minister was due to speak at eleven-fifteen. Mom was in the front at her machine again, tickety-tick, and I, who seemed to be cook for the duration, was stuck at the sink. Len was out digging, the ground softened by the rain.

  It dried out to a perfect, calm morning, though the air was humid. I could hear church bells early on, then they stopped.

  Our dinner was going to be late.

  ‘I can’t touch that thing,’ Mom said, pointing at the rabbit, its legs rigid against the door. ‘Make me bad, that would. You’ll have to skin it, Genie – we’ll have stew this afternoon.’

  What a treat. Didn’t she always find me the best jobs?

  I spread an old Sports Argus on the kitchen table. There were a couple of knives that needed sharpening and the kitchen scissors. It was a wild, brown rabbit with a white belly, and heavier than I expected. Its back legs were tied with string and it was sticky with a smear of blood where I touched it on one side. Its eyes looked like rotten grapes.

  Before I got started I went and switched Gloria on and heard a band playing.

  ‘What time is it?’ Mom called through.

  ‘Five to eleven.’

  There was a ring of blood like lipstick round the rabbit’s mouth. The ears felt very cold and there was a pong coming off it like fermented fruit.

  It was a hell of a job to get the head off. Our knives sunk in deeper and deeper but wouldn’t break the pelt. In the end I snipped at the neck with the scissors, but it took so long it made me feel panicky, as if I was fighting with it.

  The news came on on the hour. There was a knock at the front door.

  ‘Get that, will you Genie?’

  ‘Can’t – I’m all in a mess.’

  I heard her sigh, like she always did if I asked her to do anything. Peeping into the hall I saw Molly and Gladys Bender from across the road. I knew Mom’d be thinking, oh my God. They both stood there with big grins on their faces, each of them the size of a gasometer, still in their pinners. Gladys was Molly’s mom and by far the sharper of the two. They lived together and both did charring and you almost never saw them without a pinner or an overall. They both wore glasses and both had their hair marcelled and probably had done since it was fashionable sometime round the year I was born. Molly looked the image of Gladys except that Gladys, being twenty years older, had hair that wasn’t exactly grey, but dusty looking, and Molly’s cheeks weren’t full of red wormy veins.

  They were beaming away like a couple of mad March hares. ‘We was wondering,’ Gladys said in her blaring voice, ‘Mr Tailor said there’s to be an announcement – only, we haven’t got a wireless . . .’

  So all Mom could really say was, ‘Why don’t you come in then?’ and called to me, ‘Genie – get the kettle on, love.’

  Love? That was a sign we had company.

  ‘Don’t mind Genie,’ Mom said. ‘She’s doing our dinner.’

  I caught a whiff of Molly and Gladys. There were grey smudges down their pinners and they always reeked of disinfectant and Brasso and sweat. Especially sweat, but it was always mixed in with all these cleaning fluids and polish. They sat down, filling the two chairs. Molly craned to see out to the garden.

  ‘Oooh,’ she said. ‘Your Len’s busy, in’t he? We could do with borrowing him.’

  They chattered away to Mom, who was as polite as she could manage. I got into the rabbit by snipping up from under its tail with the scissors – tricky with me being left-handed – along the soft white belly. With the first cut a round hole appeared like a little brown mouth and the smell whooshed up and hit me. Lola. I opened it up and there was a pool of muck inside, and round it, holding everything in, a glassy film of pink, grey and white, tinged with yellow. The kettle whispered on the stove. It was ten past.

  ‘Shall I call Len in for you?’ Molly asked eagerly.

  ‘You stay put,’ Gladys bossed her.

  I called down the garden. Len dropped the spade and loped up to the house. I don’t know if he knew why he was hurrying but he’d caught the atmosphere, something in my voice. He stamped his feet on the step outside.

  ‘It’s all right – nothing yet.’

  I pushed my knife into the thin, tough film of the rabbit’s insides. There was blood everywhere suddenly. Soft jelly shapes slumped into my hand, cold trails of gut like pink necklaces, rounded bits with webs of yellow fat on them, green of half-digested grass when I pulled on its stomach and it tore. I knew which bit the liver was, rich with blood, four rubbery petals like a black violet.

  When I’d got everything out it had gone quiet next door. Nice of them to call me, I thought, washing my hands. Mom, Molly, Gladys, Len and I all stood or sat round, everyone’s eyes fixed on Gloria.

  ‘I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at Number Ten Downing Street,’ the Prime Minister said. Words we’d never forget. The announcement of war.

  ‘Now that we have resolved to finish it, I know you will play your part with calmness and with courage.’

  When Mr Chamberlain had finished they played the National Anthem. Molly and Gladys struggled grunting to their feet. Then church bells pea
led from Gloria, filling the room. We drank tea. None of us spoke for a time. No one knew what to say. Molly and Gladys weren’t grinning any more.

  ‘So it’s finally happened,’ Mom said at last. ‘Len – you’d better go out and finish off. Mr Tailor’s coming later.’

  Len wasn’t listening and nor was Molly, because they were staring hard at each other as if they’d never seen one another before, with great big soppy smiles on their faces. He walked backwards out of the room, tripping up the step into the kitchen.

  ‘I’ll have to watch him,’ Mom said when Molly and Gladys had departed, thanking us endlessly. ‘He may be soft in the head but he’s all man, our Len.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  Her head whipped round. ‘What d’you mean, you know?’

  I finally finished the rabbit, pulling back the skin from over the front legs like peeling a shirt off. The inside of the pelt was shiny and covered with hundreds of wiggly red veins like Gladys’s cheeks. When I got the skin off it looked small and helpless like a new-born babby. Tasted all right though, come three o’clock, with a few onions.

  We waited for the peril that was supposed to fall from the clouds. That’s when people started staring up at the sky, heads back, eyes narrowed. The night war was declared I went out into the garden after it was dark. Mom was despondent because they’d announced in the afternoon that all the cinemas were going to close.

  ‘Life’s not going to be worth living!’ she kept on. I wanted to get out of our muffled rooms.

  I leapt out of the back door closing it as fast as I could so’s not to spill any light. I walked down the garden. It was dark as a bear’s behind out there. Everything was quiet, deathly quiet I thought, really eerie.

  At the bottom of the garden I could just make out the hunched shape of the Anderson which Mr Tailor had put in for us that afternoon. Len had heaped the soil back on top. It was odd seeing it there. A web of searchlights danced in the city sky, but down in the garden you could barely see a hand in front of your face. No lights from the street, the houses, the cars. Nothing.