Birmingham Blitz

by Annie Murray

‘I have told Eric that you require him to be sent home for the Christmas holiday,’ Mrs Spenser had written. ‘I felt obliged to do so, naturally, but to be frank with you I am not sure that moving him again at this stage would be advisable. Eric seems most reluctant to go through the process of uprooting himself again, and I wonder whether it would not be better to surrender your own desires on this occasion and let him remain here until it is deemed safe for him to return to you permanently.

  ‘I shall, of course, abide by your final decision.’

  ‘“Require him to be sent . . .” I ask you.’ Mom ranted on for a bit about Eileen Spenser: stuck up, condescending bitch, and a few other choice terms. Then the doubts sneaked in.

  ‘Eric wouldn’t not want to come home, would he?’ Her face looked pinched and anxious. ‘This is his home. Not with some woman in Maidenhead.’ She was pacing around our little room. ‘Of course he wants to come back. Doesn’t he, Genie?’

  ‘Course he does,’ I said, feeling, in my sick state, as if the inside of my head was lunging around. I couldn’t believe Eric wouldn’t want to see us, even though it sounded as though he had a cushy number down there with this Mrs Spenser.

  ‘I’ll write and tell her what’s what,’ Mom said, searching for a pen to do just that. All she could find was the wooden handle of one of my old dip pens from school with no nib and no ink.

  Work didn’t go too well. I couldn’t use my left hand so tried to hold the brush with my right and I was slow and clumsy. I tried to keep busy, keep my mind off the pain, and crack jokes with the lads in the factory, but even Shirley noticed I wasn’t myself. ‘You sure you’re awright?’ she kept saying, and I thought how it was strange that everything Shirley said sounded like a moan.

  Come dinnertime I was feeling rotten. I went to stand up from my work place and the next thing I knew I was on a chair with my head between my knees and people fluffing round me. My right ear was hurting me now as well. Must’ve caught it when I went down.

  ‘You’d best get ’ome,’ Jimmy was saying, his face topped by black curly hair, swaying in front of me as I tried to focus again.

  ‘You’ve gone green,’ Shirley complained.

  I groaned, sick and dizzy.

  The gaffer said I should get off as well. It was a while before I cooled down and the inside of my head stopped throbbing and swimming about. After that I went cold and shivery.

  I headed out into an overcast, freezing afternoon, hugging my hand up against my chest as if it was a kitten needing protection. It felt so swollen and sore I’d have screamed if anyone had tried to touch it. I cut through on to Belgrave Road and up to my nan’s, thinking that if I came over faint again I could at least go in there for a rest. I thought about home, about curling up under the blanket on a chair with a hot cup of tea and the wireless on. The house to myself. Bliss.

  And then I saw them, across the road. By the doorway of Harris’s, where of course I couldn’t help my wretched eyes turning. They were standing just outside, Walt leaning one elbow up against the glass and her facing him sideways on. Some girl. She had copper-coloured hair, a sweet pretty face with an upturned nose, and was laughing away at something he’d said, the cow. He was smiling, talking, liked her a lot, I could tell.

  He had to go and catch sight of me across the road, and in that split second I saw a vicious smile sneak across his face. He moved deliberately closer to the girl and shouted across at me, ‘Awright, are you Genie? Nothing I can get for you today then?’

  The girl frowned up at him, hearing the taunting in his voice. Yes, you just be warned, I thought.

  ‘Found a better class of shop, ta,’ I shouted back, then pulled my collar up round my face with my good arm and hurried past with my nose in the air and Walt’s mocking laugh again to speed me along.

  It gave me new strength to get home. All the way I was saying to myself, you’re so stupid. You’re such a stupid little cow, Genie. Why would Walt be interested in you? You’ve no looks like that other girl and you can’t open your mouth to him without coming out with something tart or horrible. You deserve everything you’ve got. And after all, you don’t care anyway, do you?’

  But as soon as I was in the house I couldn’t pretend any more and the tears came. I couldn’t even find the crocheted rug I’d dreamed of sitting under. I sat in the cold back room hugging my throbbing hand and Janet, my old worn-faced rag doll I hadn’t touched in years, feeling frozen and ill and as sorry for myself as it’s possible to feel.

  The next two days disappeared down a long dark pipe full of confusion. Tossing from side to side in bed, conscious of nothing much except the agony in my hand and arm and unable to lie in certain positions because it hurt so much. Sometimes I knew there were people in the room. Len bringing me drinks of Beefex cubes which I sometimes drank and sometimes not. Mom’s face, her voice – ‘Genie? Can you hear me?’ – trying to get me to take a spoonful of some stuff or other. Nanny Rawson knitting by the side of my bed on the hard chair, knowing her mainly by the rough black wool of her sleeve or her singing. A patchwork of dreams, cooking smells, bits of talk: Walt, the girl, ‘bomb . . . IRA . . . doorway of Lewis’s . . . mess . . . Eric . . . Victor . . .’ Walt, her, that girl . . . Christmas carols and band music coming from Gloria downstairs. The lumps in the hot mattress swelled under me into molehills.

  By the time I could sit up and eat oxtail soup and hold a cup of tea myself, Eric was there perched on my bed.

  ‘You look bigger!’ I told him.

  ‘I get lots to eat. She’s got chickens and a vegetable patch. And I got a nice comfy bed and she uses table napkins. And you don’t have to go down the garden to spend a penny.’

  He’d also grown a couple of new teeth since he left.

  ‘Sounds a bit of all right then.’ I noticed Eric was talking a bit different, putting his aitches on. ‘You glad to be back?’

  Eric looked down at the old blanket with a bleak expression and shrugged. Then he met my eyes and managed a bit of a smile. ‘Yes. S’pose so.’

  ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’

  He’d gone stiff and shy.

  ‘Come on – come ’ere.’ I pushed the soup bowl aside and gave Eric a cuddle which he submitted to. He wasn’t just skin and bone any more.

  ‘Cor, Genie,’ he said, pulling away. ‘You don’t half pong, you do.’

  ‘Oh.’ I was hurt. ‘Well I’ve been stuck here for a bit.’

  ‘You been bad?’

  ‘I had a bad hand.’ I pointed to the dressing on my thumb. ‘It’s getting better.’

  ‘Mrs Spenser says, whatever happens, there’s no excuse for not keeping clean.’

  ‘Oh. Does she?’

  Eric was looking round my room as if he’d never seen it before. I had a bedstead, an old rickety cupboard and a chest of drawers, a mirror that hung on the wall by a nail and a couple of old squares of carpet on the floor. Suddenly he got up and started kicking the chest of drawers with his boots, hard, until he splintered the front of the bottom drawer. ‘Cheap!’ he shouted. ‘Everything’s cheap and old and rotten.’ His face was red and furious.

  I started crying but he took no notice, just stood there with his fists clenched.

  Eventually I said, ‘Dad’s coming home Sat’dy.’

  Eric looked at me for a second, then turned and ran back downstairs.

  Mom managed to wangle herself some time off work the night before Dad came home.

  ‘I’m having an evening out,’ she said, touching up her hair in front of the mirror in the back room. She had it hanging loose at the back and pinned up in a roll away from each side of her face at the front. ‘Wish the dratted mirror was bigger.’ She had to go right up to it to peer down and see if her dress looked all right. ‘You’ll be OK, won’t you Genie? You got Eric for company now.’ She was putting lipstick on, so it was mostly the vowels we heard.

  I sat watching: Len was peeling spuds at the table and Eric was playing Shove Ha’penny, nudging at me to join in. Apa
rt from his outburst to me, he’d just been quiet since he got home and Mom hadn’t seemed to notice any difference in him.

  ‘This is one of the things you don’t want me to tell Dad about then, is it?’

  She whipped round and gave me a really nasty look, eyes like slits. Then she tried to soften her expression. ‘Now Genie, there’s no need to be like that. It’s just better if you don’t say anything about Bob – your father’ll only go and get the wrong idea.’

  ‘Will he?’

  She stared hard at me. ‘Bob’s just a pal of mine. Someone to have a chat to – bit of company. I’ll just have to hope he doesn’t . . .’ She jerked her head in Len’s direction but he was well taken up with his potatoes.

  Come seven o’clock Bob arrived, in a suit this time, not his uniform, five o’clock shadow shaved off and a hanky dangling from his breast pocket. Smoothy bastard, I thought.

  ‘D’you tell your wife you’re on a late shift then?’ I asked him. I wasn’t going to act polite to him. He should’ve known better. They both should.

  ‘Genie!’ Mom snarled. ‘Not in front of Eric. Say you’re sorry.’

  I didn’t say anything, just walked off into the kitchen. ‘Come on,’ Bob said. ‘Let’s get out of here. Bringing your gas mask?’

  ‘Nah,’ Mom said. ‘No point, is there?’

  When they’d gone Eric said, ‘Who’s he then?’

  ‘Just someone Mom knows. They go out sometimes. He’s a copper.’

  ‘Bob,’ Len said.

  ‘That’s right, Len. Now let’s just forget about them, shall we?’

  ‘Mrs Spenser says—’

  ‘Will you shut up about that cowing Mrs Spenser!’ I yelled at Eric, finding my hand raised ready to hit him. He cowered in front of me which made me feel even worse.

  We passed the evening, ate our meal, had Gloria on. I played games with Eric, trying to make up to him. Make him want to be my brother again. Come nine I put him to bed and waited for Len to go. I wanted to have a good wash and brush up for the next day with Dad coming home, especially after Eric’s charming comment, but I wasn’t going to do it with them about. I still couldn’t find the yellow and green crocheted rug which I wanted to put on Eric’s bed. Normally it was kept folded over the back of a chair.

  I heated up two kettles full of water on the stove and filled a basin. The house was very quiet except for the clock ticking on the mantel. I switched Gloria back on low, so as not to disturb the others.

  I wanted to wash my hair, which was limp and greasy and smelt sour as I hadn’t washed it since before I was ill. I thought of Mom’s rainwater bucket outside. Why shouldn’t I have nice hair as well? God knows, I had little enough time to spend on my looks.

  I opened the back door and let a wide slice of light fall on the garden, trying to see the bucket. Blackout – what blackout? Couldn’t see it. I stepped outside. It was a freezing night. The air almost cut your face and I could see stars clear as anything. The bucket was down by the privy, but when I found it of course the water inside was frozen solid. Just my luck. I’d have to use the water I’d already got.

  Then I heard the noise. It didn’t scare me. Wasn’t that sort of sound. It was a giggle and it was coming out of the Anderson. I crept down there and stood outside, breathing very light little breaths. There wasn’t much to hear. Long bits of silence, whispering, then a burst of giggling. Mom’s giggling. I’d heard enough. Shaking with anger, I went back to the house. I thought of bolting the side gate on the outside to spite them but I didn’t want them traipsing through the house with me about to strip off.

  Bugger the both of you, I cursed to myself, tipping water wildly over my hair. At that moment I hated the whole world.

  ‘Long film was it?’ I asked Mom next morning.

  She’d stayed in bed late and came down yawning. She gave me a startled look, hearing the hate in my voice. ‘We went dancing. At the . . .’ She trailed off. Couldn’t think of a porky-pie fast enough. ‘It was really lovely.’

  When I said nothing and just kept looking at her, she said between her teeth, ‘If you dare breathe a word . . .’

  When Dad got home she was all over him. Poor Dad was as pleased as punch. Thought she’d missed him so bad she’d decided she loved him after all.

  He’d even brought a box of eggs from the farm where he was billeted.

  ‘You brought those all the way back on the train?’ Mom laughed. ‘That’s just like you, Victor – and look, only one broken.’

  ‘Lovely and fresh too,’ Dad said. ‘Laid this morning I expect.’

  When he saw our dad, Eric showed the first real signs of positive emotion we’d seen since he got back. Dad squatted down and Eric flung himself into his arms, face against the scratchy khaki uniform.

  ‘That’s a lad,’ Dad said. After a moment he held Eric away from him and looked at him. ‘You’re bolting! Must have grown six inches since I last saw you!’

  ‘It’s the country. Mrs Spenser seems to be looking after him a treat,’ Mom said smoothly.

  ‘We’ll play some football while I’m at home, shall we?’ He gave Eric a playful punch. They’d never played football together before. Eric’s face was a picture, lifted with delight. Dad looked younger and thinner in the face, with more life in him than I’d remembered. He looked over Eric’s shoulder. ‘Genie, you’re growing up too.’

  Shy suddenly, I went to be taken in his arms. Relief seeped through me and even my anger with Mom stopped bubbling and lay calm and still. Everyone was back. We could now at least pretend things were normal, that we were a proper family again.

  ‘Here – I’ve got summat for you.’ Dad pulled a little folded piece of paper from a pocket of his kitbag. ‘Not much, but I thought they’d suit you.’

  Inside were three ribbons, red, white and blue.

  ‘Patriotic too,’ Mom gushed. ‘What d’you say, Genie?’

  ‘Thanks Dad, they’re smashing.’ And they were. I was so chuffed, not just with the gift but because he’d thought of me. A smile worked its way across my face and settled there.

  ‘We’re having Christmas here,’ Mom said. ‘Our mom and Lil and the kids can come over. We’ll make a real celebration of it.’

  Dad put his arm round her. ‘That’s my wench. It’s good to be back where I belong.’

  The Spini household was alight with celebration. The kids were home!

  ‘And they’re not going back, neither,’ Vera vowed from behind one of the lines of washing strung across the tiny room due to the rain outside. ‘Never again.’ She poked her head out from behind a row of the damp children’s clothes which she’d washed as soon as they arrived home. Her face looked shaken out and softer, the tension gone from it. ‘Whatever happens, if anything ever does the rate we’re going, at least we’ll all be together.’

  The tiny back-house seemed to have shrunk even further now it was full of children, all bigger than they had been when they left. The two younger ones, Giovanna and Luke, who was now nearly five, came home and settled in as if they’d never left it. Francesca, who was twelve, was glad to be back with Teresa and her mom and dad, although she seemed more moody and far more grown up than before. It was Tony who was finding it hardest to settle back.

  ‘He keeps saying the house is too small,’ Vera said dismally. ‘The family he went to had a rabbit hutch not much smaller than our house.’

  ‘He’ll be OK – give him a chance,’ Micky said. He was happy now, sat at the table in the heart of the family, all his kids around him. ‘Another three months and he won’t remember he was ever there.’ He gave Giovanna’s cheek a playful pinch. ‘Who’s my beautiful girl, eh?’ And she went pink and said, ‘Gerroff, Dad!’ the little ponytail swinging at the back.

  It was Christmas Eve and I’d brought a few sweets for the Spini kids. They were all home after the rush in the shop, customers clearing the shelves of Brussels and chestnuts and potatoes. There wasn’t room for a tree, but Francesca, who was now used to being in charg
e, was organizing the younger kids, making streamers, so they were up to their ears in strips of paper and flour and water paste at the table and squabbling over the scissors. Luke was sat on the floor smearing paste down his legs as if he was embalming himself. They fell on the sweets, jelly babies and fruit drops – ‘Cor – thanks Genie!’ through hardworking mouths.

  Stevie was hooking bits of holly over the mantel, adorning a picture he’d got hold of of a shiny Lagonda. There wasn’t room for Teresa and me to sit so we stood around watching. Vera was stirring pots on the stove and the room smelt of stew and was steamy with boiling spuds.

  ‘What about a bit round here?’ Stevie said to Micky, pointing to his Italian tile.

  ‘Yes – go on. Put it there, put it everywhere!’ Micky waved his hands, ready today to decorate his house, his life, everything.

  Vera gave us all a cup of Tizer. Teresa was in a good mood too.

  ‘Must be lovely having Eric and your dad home,’ she said. ‘Proper family again.’

  ‘Ummm – ’tis,’ I said. I hadn’t told her about Mom and Bob of course. I just couldn’t. Even if I’d wanted to she hadn’t had much time for listening lately.

  Amid the chaos I whispered, ‘How’s Jack?’

  Teresa’s face clouded over for a second. ‘OK – I think.’

  ‘Haven’t you seen him?’

  ‘He’s busy.’

  ‘Take a hint then. He’s had enough of you.’

  ‘That’s just like you, ain’t it?’ She managed to snarl in a whisper, which isn’t easy. ‘Making me think the worst. I knew you were jealous.’

  ‘I’m not,’ I lied. ‘I just don’t want to see you get your feelings hurt.’

  ‘They won’t be,’ she said haughtily. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘Oi – you two aren’t falling out, are you?’ Vera scolded. ‘You staying to have a bite with us, Genie? There’ll be enough.’

  ‘Can’t, Mrs Spini, thanks very much. Got too much to do at home.’ In fact that brought me up sharp. ‘Blimey. I’ve got to go.’

  All the family kissed me and wished me a happy Christmas. Vera pushed a small packet into my hand.