Birmingham Blitz

by Annie Murray

  Second shift, on nights they could manage it, were the other two love birds. Now they’d moved into the house, the Anderson shelter not being the ideal place to carry on a romance, particularly because as the ground was no longer frozen it was sometimes ankle deep in water. I saw the first signs of trouble when the crocheted blanket appeared again, folded over the back of a chair like it had always been before.

  Thing was, Mom was still being uncannily nice to me. She did the ironing and brought me the odd treat when she could: sweets or bits of clothes, some new black shoes with a bow on the strap. I knew perfectly well it was hush money, bribes to keep me sweet, but at the same time I couldn’t bear to lose it. The price was knowing she took Bob up to my father’s bed while I sat and cried downstairs and Len, alone by this time of night, comforted me.

  ‘S’all right Genie, s’all right.’

  ‘It’s not sodding well all right,’ I’d sob, cringing in myself at the slightest sound from upstairs. But they were quite quiet, I’ll grant them. Len and I put Gloria on loud as we dared and tried to drown out even the slightest sign that they were there. I did a lot of that in those days – blocking things out, closing my eyes, my ears and my very heart.

  Some nights when I thought Bob was coming, sickly sweet as he was to me these days, I just stayed over at Nan’s and slept on the prickly horsehair sofa by the dying heat from the range and the ticking of her clock.

  It didn’t take Nan long to catch on. ‘I’m not a fool, you know, Genie. What’s going on with Doreen?’

  I couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘Nothing, Nan.’

  She sat quiet for a minute, the stick resting by her leg, her breathing loud, wheezy on her chest. ‘Is she carrying on behind your dad’s back?’

  I couldn’t tell her a real lie. Not Nan. I just sat there, wanting to die of shame.

  ‘Genie?’

  ‘She’s got a – friend.’

  ‘Thought so. She’d been like a bitch on heat since Christmas. I noticed it then but I gave her the benefit of the doubt.’ Nan pursed her lips, face grim. ‘Selfish little cow. Always been the same when it came to riding roughshod over everyone else.’ The extent of her anger took me by surprise.

  I was relieved Nan knew, but frightened to death at the same time. Mom’d never forgive me for letting it slip and if she found out I’d lose her again, just when we were getting on so well.

  ‘She says . . .’ I began timidly. ‘She’s never been happy with my dad.’

  ‘Happy? Happy.’ She turned the word round and about like someone looking for the chip at the edge of a saucer. ‘You show me someone who thinks they are happy. A marriage is a marriage and that’s that. Wasting time dwelling on whether you’re happy or not is a sure way into trouble.’

  I looked at her tough, lined face. Mom had told me that Grandpa Rawson used to bash her about till sometimes her face was almost unrecognizable. I wasn’t sure whether her missing teeth had dropped out with each child born or whether they’d been knocked from her gums by his fist. He didn’t restrain himself any better when she was carrying a child. She’d miscarried two on account of his violence. But even when she managed to lease the shop, when she had more money and could’ve got shot of him, she carried on, steadfast, in a marriage she’d chosen. ‘Where would leaving ’im have got me?’ And then he died. If there was anyone, Mom always said, who deserved heart failure, old man Rawson was the one.

  ‘Don’t say anything to ’er, will you?’ I begged. ‘Not at the moment. Things are all right really.’

  ‘Are they?’ Nan’s voice was sarky as it ever got. ‘So what’re you doing sleeping here on my couch?’

  I saw Teresa now and then. I wasn’t sure about the latest of what she was up to and at the moment I didn’t really care. I presumed she was thinking up all the backhand ways she could manage to meet Jack or Clem or whoever the hell it was. Good sodding luck to her.

  One night though, she came round to Nan’s.

  ‘I was hoping you was still here.’ She looked a bit down. ‘Fancy coming to ours for a bit?’

  I suppose I wasn’t very gracious greeting her. My mind was back in Balsall Heath, wondering anxiously what might be going on in our house.

  ‘You go on,’ Nanny Rawson said. She was standing ironing at the table which was swathed in an old, singed blanket. ‘Do you good to have some young company.’

  At the Spinis’ I found Teresa’s Dad in a bad state. He was downstairs, in a chair by the hearth, but his face was very pale, his skin clammy, and he seemed only able to talk in a whisper. Opposite him sat Fausto Pirelli, the young man who’d been in the shop that day they were all yelling at each other. His shadow fell on the wall beside him, nose like a hawk’s beak. He was talking, on and on in Italian in a soft, earnest voice, with a frown on his face. Micky seemed agitated, kept trying to interrupt, but when he tried to speak it ended in a bout of agonized coughing.

  Vera, standing by Micky’s chair, looked worried to death as well, and exhausted. ‘Micky was called to a factory fire yesterday,’ she whispered to me. ‘It was over Bordesley way, some chemical place, and he said the fumes and smoke were evil – choked him. He only just managed to get out. It’s done something terrible to his chest.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I hate seeing him like this. Micky.’ She leaned down and touched his hand, ‘please go to bed.’

  ‘Later,’ he managed to say, trying to smile at her, and indicating with an angry nod of his head that the other man was still talking. The anger was directed at him.

  ‘Fausto,’ Vera implored the man, and the rest was in Italian, but I could see she was begging him to go, to let Micky rest. He flapped his hand impatiently at her, saying, ‘Subito, subito . . . straight away,’ and not moving.

  The smaller children were in bed but Stevie and Francesca were at the table, not doing anything but listening and watching. Stevie’s eyes were absolutely intent on Fausto’s face.

  ‘Brew up, Teresa,’ Vera ordered quietly. I could see how tense she was.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked, following her into the scullery.

  ‘That stupid idiot.’ She jerked her head. ‘His family comes from the same place as Dad’s in Italy. They’re talking about what’s happening there – Mussolini . . . Fausto still reckons he’s a Blackshirt, even though he can’t find many to agree with him. They don’t like all that round here. He doesn’t even really know what it means – he’s all hot air. But Stevie looks up to him – thinks it’s big talk. Fausto hasn’t got a father of his own, he’s dead, so Dad feels responsible for him. He’s worried he’s going to get into trouble.’

  ‘Trouble?’

  Teresa shrugged. She seemed distracted, stood with the empty kettle in her hand as if she couldn’t think what to do with it, so I took it off her and went out across the yard to fill it and set it on the gas.

  ‘You worried about him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your dad.’

  ‘Yes – but the doctor said he should be all right. Needs time to let his lungs clear again. It’s not that, it’s – Jack found out about me and Clem.’

  ‘What was there to find out about you and Clem?’

  Teresa looked down at the floor in shame, face hidden by her dark hair. ‘We started to get a bit keen on each other and I went out with him a couple of times. And with Jack living so close to the factory and that, I knew I was going to have to tell him and he was so angry and said he never wanted to see me again.’

  ‘Well what d’you expect? Anyway, that’s all right, isn’t it, if it’s Clem you want to see.’

  ‘But I don’t know if I like Clem very much any more. He’s ever so cocky.’ She sounded very sorry for herself. ‘And I’m going to end up with nobody.’

  A wave of great weariness came over me. What a load of stupid rubbish it was. All of it. Men, women, girls, boys, love, romance. It was all a silly story put out at the pictures and in sixpenny romances to make us think such things were possible and then cast us in the deepest blu
e depression when we were brought nose up against real life.

  ‘Oh Teresa,’ I said. ‘For God’s sake just pull yourself together.’

  I went out and sat with Vera Spini, watching Fausto as he talked on urgently. He seemed very strange, as if something was burning him up inside. And I listened to Vera’s worries, which at least had some proper substance to them, leaving Teresa to sulk in the scullery.

  April 1940

  The spring was here with all its usual fevers enhanced, worse luck for me. And then the Flanagans’ roof fell in, two houses away from Nanny Rawson’s. I was out with Mary Flanagan, hanging out my nan’s washing and basking in a little thread of sun which had managed to reach in and light up the far side of the yard. One minute there was the Flanagans’ house, large as life, in tightly squeezed back-to-back line. The next, there was a massive great crash and glass shattering and, for what seemed an age afterwards, things groaned and shuddered, tinkled, smashed and finally settled, and sworls of thick dust rose up choking us. Minutes later, when the dust finally sifted down out of the air, we could see through to the street outside and there were people standing looking. My washing, needless to say, was black again.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and fecking Joseph!’ Mary was gasping over and over. ‘My house – will you look what’s happened to my house!’

  Then panic set in. ‘Where’s Geraldine?’ Mary laid her hands on each of the other two of her small children who were still at home, reassuring herself. ‘Eamonn, where was Geraldine? Was she in the house now, was she?’ She was screaming at the boy, shaking him. There was plaster and dust all over her red hair.

  All the neighbours were out of their houses. They stood round, numbed. No one seemed able to move. The thought that six-year-old Geraldine might be trapped under the weight of the house was too terrible to take in. Then people started saying ‘What about Mr and Mrs Griffin?’ and everyone wondered whether the elderly couple who lived in the front-house had been crushed under it, until Mr and Mrs Griffin were spotted out in the street with a crowd round them.

  A small bang was heard from the end of the yard and Geraldine, a child with hair as bright a red as Mary’s, emerged unconcerned from the privy saying, ‘Mom, what was that noise?’

  Mary dashed to her and whacked her one soundly round the ear. ‘You eejit of a girl! What did you think you were doing in there? Sure I thought you were dead.’ She clutched the bewildered girl against her great big chest, clinging to her while Geraldine bawled from the walloping she’d had. ‘Where’s our house gone, Mom?’ she sobbed over Mary’s shoulder.

  Mary stood up again slowly and turned to face the fact that she had seven children, a husband away in the RAF and no house. The slum houses in that area were built back in Queen Victoria’s day to give the worker bees who manned the factories a place to live, or at least exist. They were jerry built – the state of some of them was so bad it defied description – and Mary’s, after the harsh winter, the weight of the snow and then the thaw, not to mention the landlord swiping slates off the roof every time the rent was overdue, had finally given up the ghost.

  Mary was silent now and deathly white in the face. As everyone in the yard normally did in a crisis, she turned to my nan.

  ‘Edith – what in the name of heaven am I going to do?’

  Nan hobbled over and took command. ‘For a start what you’ll have to do is go to the Corporation and get on the list for another house. With seven kids they’ll have to get summat sorted out for you. In the meantime . . .’ She looked round the yard with the kind of expression on her face no one would dare disagree with, even Mary’s next-door neighbour and sparring partner, Clarys. ‘We’ll all make sure you’re all right, won’t we?’ There were nods, some more doubtful than others. ‘We can fit some of you in,’ Nanny Rawson went on.

  Where on earth? I was thinking, listening to my nan setting example by what I thought of as rash promises.

  By the evening it was sorted out. Lil’s kids stayed on in Nan’s attic bedroom. Nan persuaded Lil to move in with her and freed up the second bedroom for Mary Flanagan and her two youngest kids. Geraldine and one of the lads were taken in by another neighbour, the other kids by a third. And so, the teeming yard at the back of Belgrave Road, already overcrowded, ramshackle and insanitary, managed to redistribute itself with one less house to go round. The only person driven completely barmy by it was my auntie Lil, who already thought her own kids quite enough to cope with, ta very much, without having extras foisted on us.

  ‘How about a trip to the Lickeys?’ Jimmy said, and at the time I couldn’t think of anything better. It was a gorgeous spring, the skies powder blue, sun warm, any last nip on the air long gone now, and the trees uncurling their leaves to the spring air looked like a miracle after the winter we’d had. Even the yard behind our nan’s seemed a less drab place with sunlight streaming off the newly washed windows.

  Course, just as the world seemed the most precious and lovely the spring can make it, Hitler’s troops started to move across Denmark into Norway and we sat round Gloria waiting to hear the latest. In the newsreaders’ solemn voices we heard names which were strange on our lips, ones we’d never heard before – Narvik, Trondheim – bringing the world in on us. You could feel suspense in the air.

  Jimmy and I rode the 62 bus out to the Lickeys. The Lickey Hills are a beautiful, wooded ridge on the south edge of Birmingham where the trams and buses terminated after the long, tree-lined swoop along the Bristol Road. This was the place where hordes of factory-pale, work-weary Brummies would congregate on holidays and weekends to escape the claustrophobic closeness of the city’s walls and alleys, to feel they were in the country and picnic with the sun on their faces if they were lucky.

  Jimmy started trying to kiss me on the bus.

  ‘Oh, gerroff, will you,’ I said irritably. ‘Not in front of all these people.’

  Jimmy leered at me. Love, or at least a shortlived infatuation, is blind, I thought. His wonky eyes had given him charm and appeal at first. Now they looked as if they were squinting at me all the time, full of unwelcome lust.

  ‘No one’s looking.’ There were loads of kids on the bus which kept stopping to pick up more passengers until it was crammed full. People were clinging to each other in the aisle and there were shrieks of laughter when we swung round a corner.

  ‘I don’t care. You should behave yourself when there’s people about.’

  ‘What – so I don’t ’ave to when we’re on our own?’

  ‘Don’t you ever think about anything else?’

  It was well warm enough for my summer frock and Jimmy only had on trousers and a grey shirt that had once been white. We had a bag with bread and butter and cake, apples and a few lumps of cheese and bottles filled with cooling tea. I was excited. A trip to the Lickeys was a really special day out.

  We passed through Northfield, Longbridge, to the terminus at Rednal where the bus disgorged us all. Mothers in hats yelling at gaggles of kids, all with too much to carry, headed off in excitement for the paths to Lickey Hill or Cofton Wood.

  I’d have liked to go to the park with its ornamental pool, swans riding their reflections in the glassy water, and peaceful, dreamy paths and flowers. But no. Jimmy had other plans. Grabbing my hand, he said, ‘Come on – let’s get shot of all this lot, shall we?’ and dragged me off to the tracks that led off through the woods. It wasn’t that difficult to get away from the other day trippers. The Lickeys had paths winding all across them and through the trees. Many of the families out for the day walked as short a distance as possible and settled on the grassy hillside with a sweeping view of the surrounding counties, picnicking and lazing while their kids played round them, and hardly shifted all day.

  Truth to tell, I was already wishing I could have come on my own. I could feel coming over me the bored restlessness I felt more and more with Jimmy, making me want to tear about shrieking or thump someone, preferably him.

  ‘Come on.’ I pointed to a place on the grass
with rings of families in view. ‘This is a nice spot. Let’s have our picnic here, eh?’

  ‘Nah.’ Jimmy pulled me on further and further, into the woods. ‘Don’t want to be surrounded by people, do we? This way . . .’

  He dragged me right out to the edge of the place somewhere, finding a spot in the woods which no one else apparently thought was the great beauty spot of the Lickey Hills because no one else was there. It was pleasant enough, light darting in through the leaves, never still, and leafmould and twigs on the ground. But it wasn’t exactly the scenic view I had in mind. And I knew what he wanted. God, I was fed up at the thought of wasting a day in the Lickeys stuck to the end of Jimmy’s lips.

  ‘Now I’ve got you all to myself, ’aven’t I?’ He chuckled. ‘Come ’ere . . .’

  I saw those lips coming towards me again, a light stubble on the white skin above them.

  ‘Will you just lay off and let me eat my dinner in peace,’ I snapped.

  ‘Well, you’re not much company, are you?’

  ‘Can’t you think about summat else for a change? Or don’t you have anything else in your head at all?’

  ‘What I’ve got’s all ’ere,’ he said, patting his crotch.

  ‘So I’ve sodding well gathered.’ I shifted away from him and opened the packet of sandwiches. Boredom perched on me like a gigantic bird. I wished Teresa was here. Not that she was better at the moment, but with a bit of work you could get her mind off men.

  At least he let me eat for a bit.

  ‘Find you were hungry after all, did you?’

  Jimmy grinned. ‘Nice cake of your nan’s.’

  ‘She’s a good cook.’

  ‘My mom’s cooking’s terrible.’

  ‘So’s mine.’

  We laughed together. He was talking to me, which made a change.

  ‘I bet yours has never cooked a hen with the feathers on like mine did once.’