Birmingham Blitz

by Annie Murray

  I started off along the Moseley Road before realizing I’d forgotten the little scarf that went with my dress, and by the time I’d torn back to get it I was in a proper lather. Joe and I had arranged to meet in Moseley Village, about midway between where we each lived, and I ended up running half the distance as I was so afraid of being late.

  That mile and a half or so was torture for me. I was already in a state of nerves and Mom’s kind sentiments ringing after me pulled me right down. At the concert everything had felt right and full of promise. Joe’s smile, his eyes so obviously finding me, those short hours of forgetting all the grief happening to us. A dream world. Now all I could think of were bad things. Mistakes and hurts like Walt and Jimmy. The way they’d taken my hope and need and crushed them without a thought. Maybe I was all wrong again, clutching the end of a rainbow which would melt in my hand? There were all these differences between us: Joe was a grammar-school boy, older, his mom and dad had a nice house in Hall Green, and I was just a very junior pair of hands in his dad’s factory.

  But I had enough hope left to keep my feet, in their white buttoned shoes, trotting up the hill into Moseley, panting.

  I’ll know this time, I thought. When I see him again I’ll be able to tell whether I’ve got this all wrong.

  After all my running and fussing I got there early. It wasn’t yet six. But when I turned up towards the gates of the church I saw Joe was already waiting for me. He’d come. That at least. He had his hands in his jacket pocket and was leaning against the wall, but when he saw me coming he straightened up and freed his hands quickly in a way that made me see he was just as nervous as I was and it gave me courage.

  He smiled. ‘Began to think you weren’t coming.’

  ‘But I’m early,’ I protested, pointing up at the hands of the clock. ‘Look, it’s only five to!’

  ‘I suppose I just hoped you wouldn’t stand me up.’

  ‘Not if I said I’d come.’

  ‘You sound out of breath.’

  I joked. ‘Didn’t dare be late, did I?’

  We were at a loss then and stood looking at each other, and it seemed Joe’s eyes penetrated deeper than the surface of my face. It was like someone stroking me, trying to know me. The feel of someone looking at me like that suddenly made me want to cry.

  So’s not to, I grinned at him and said, ‘So – we going to stand ’ere all night then or what?’

  Joe looked at me steadily. ‘We could go to the pictures if you like. Or as it’s a nice night, how about a walk?’

  ‘Oh yes, a walk.’ After all, what was the point in sitting staring at a silver screen? That was for escape from life, and now we had life spread in front of us to move about in.

  ‘There’s a private park.’ Joe pointed across the Moseley Road. ‘My mom knows someone down there’d lend us a key.’

  ‘Is there? I never knew.’

  We borrowed a key from a thin, weary-looking woman called Mrs Munro who lived at one of the grand houses in Chantry Road, promising to drop it in on the way back, and she let us walk through a well-organized looking garden. At the bottom was a little wooden gate, and then the sloping edge of the park.

  ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ I said as we walked down together under the trees. ‘Fancy this being here all the time and me not knowing.’

  ‘It’s certainly tucked away,’ Joe agreed. ‘Seems a shame it’s private really, but then that’s why it’s so quiet. It’s not all that big though. We could go on somewhere else if you like.’

  In the dip at the bottom was a little lake. There were trails of white, cottony seeds on the grass and birds chattered loudly in the trees around us.

  ‘Loud, aren’t they?’ I laughed. ‘Sound like my nan’s neighbours gossiping.’

  ‘Jackdaws I expect.’

  ‘They the ones that pinch things?’

  Joe laughed. ‘They’re the ones.’

  At the bottom a path ran round the water and in the middle of it was a tree, its roots forming a tiny island. Water birds bobbed and skimmed around it.

  ‘Those are ducks,’ I pointed. That was about the limit of my knowledge. ‘What about them then?’

  ‘Moorhens.’ Joe squatted down near the edge, watching another group of nervous brown birds. ‘Nice little things them. Always look a bit worried. Specially when they’re out of the water walking about.’ He watched them for a few moments, smiling, then straightened up. ‘Shall we go round?’

  The path followed the curves of the lake, shady with trees on one side, more open the other. At the top of the hill you could see the enormous, elegant houses, with their balconies and fancy woodwork and ornate trees growing around them. I wondered what they did with all the space they had in there.

  Joe started asking me about myself, my family.

  ‘I still can’t believe that was the first time you’d sung with them. You looked such a natural. And what a family!’

  Yes, what a family, I thought.

  ‘First time properly in front of an audience, but I’ve sung with them all my life. Lil dropped me in it as a matter of fact. But we sing at home all the time, or at least we did before . . .’

  ‘Before what? The war?’

  ‘Mainly.’ I didn’t want to tell him too much. The less the better for now.

  Joe was silent for a moment. ‘Doris told me – I hope you don’t mind, Genie – that your father’s missing.’

  ‘Yep. Missing. Maybe. Or dead.’

  ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.’

  ‘No, it’s OK. Not a secret, is it? We don’t know, that’s all, one way or another. Be easier if we did ’cause then at least we could adjust to it. We’re not the only ones though.’ I told him about the Arandora Star and the Spinis.

  ‘God, how appalling! Yes, I remember hearing about that. But they still don’t know where they are?’

  ‘No. It’s killing Mrs Spini, Teresa’s mom. Very family minded they are. She can’t sleep. Teresa’s the one holding them all together.’

  ‘What about you?’

  I wasn’t sure what he meant by this, what he’d seen in Mom. He was sharp, Joe was, even though Mom’d put on a pretty good act that night.

  ‘Someone’s got to be in the house,’ I said stiffly. ‘Mom’s got her problems.’ I told him about Lenny, risked telling about Molly, and his reaction wasn’t shocked like I feared. ‘And I’ve got a brother, Eric – he went with the evacuation. But he’s eight years younger anyway so he’s a bit young to take on much even if he was here.’

  ‘That’s not so young. That’d make him what? Ten?’

  ‘No, he’s only eight.’

  ‘But that means – you can’t be only sixteen! I thought you were nearly my age, specially with all those jobs you reeled off to me.’

  ‘That was only some of ’em too!’ But I was anxious now. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘No, of course not. I’m just – crikey, that means you’re younger than that dreadful Nancy!’

  We both laughed then, easier together. ‘In years anyway,’ Joe added.

  We talked a lot about our families that night, and never did move on anywhere else. We walked carefully, side by side, round and round that lake I don’t know how many times and for all we noticed we could’ve been in the Bull Ring.

  It seemed the factory’s version of Joe’s family was exaggerated to say the least. Joe sounded surprised when I asked about his mother’s illness.

  ‘She’s not an invalid or anything. What gave you that idea? She just suffers from terrible headaches rather often. So the house has to be quiet and she just lies in the dark until it’s over.’

  He told me the younger of his two sisters, Louise, was still at school, and the older one, Marjorie, worked for a machine tools firm over in Witton, secretarial, and they thought, was on the verge of getting engaged.

  ‘She’s such a dark horse it’s impossible to know what’s going on with her.’ Didn’t sound as if they were close, but there was nothing in his voice to say she or
her sister were the whinging vixens that Nancy and the others had made out.

  ‘And you’re set to take over the family firm?’

  ‘Eventually. Dad’s got a lot of go in him yet. But yes, I like it. Good enough way of earning a living. That’s if things turn out.’

  We both knew what things turning out meant. Joe went quiet and the silence stood out after we’d been talk, talk, talk all this time. I’d told him far more than I’d expected, stopping short only at Mom’s pregnancy because it seemed too much to load on him, for him to have to accept. I was afraid of what he’d think. And, while it would seem disloyal to Mom as well, I also couldn’t help thinking how like her it would be to come between us and spoil things. We talked so long it was almost dark, and the birds on the water were faint shadows, making plopping or quacking sounds somewhere to the side of us.

  Joe put his hand on my arm for a second to stop me after these moments of quiet. ‘Genie – look, I’ve only got a week at home. Less now in fact. I’ll have to go on Wednesday night to be there for reveille Thursday morning.’

  ‘What’s revalley?’

  ‘Oh – when they get us all up, reporting for duty. It’s just I’d like so much – would you feel able to spend some more time with me? I don’t want to seem pushy, but after this week I don’t know when I’ll be home again, or where I’m going next now I’m a flyer—’

  I almost needed to laugh again, cover how much I was feeling for him, because I wanted to say, ‘I’d go anywhere with you, do anything,’ and I was afraid. But I managed not to fall into joking.

  ‘Course I’d like to.’

  Joe nodded and I saw he was relieved. ‘Would tomorrow be too soon?’

  ‘It’s my day off.’

  ‘So have you got time, or . . .?’

  ‘I can’t think of a single other thing I’d rather do instead.’ I still wasn’t joking.

  In what was left of the light I saw a smile spread across Joe’s face. He had such a giving smile, with no falseness in it, and I knew I wanted to see it directed at me for the rest of my life.

  ‘Good,’ Joe said. ‘Excellent. Neither can I.’

  For once I put aside all that was happening at home. I was going out and that was that. This was more or less what I told Mom. They wouldn’t starve, that was for sure, one way or another.

  Joe suggested we hire bicycles. He’d given his away earlier in the war and I’d never had one, so we went to the Ladypool Road, and set off on two enormous pushbikes with saddles it would’ve been difficult to match for hardness and lack of comfort.

  ‘I thought we could go along the canals,’ Joe suggested as we set off. The canal system criss-crosses Birmingham and you could get on the paths and go for miles. Personally I didn’t care whether we cycled round the Midland Red bus depot all day so long as it was with Joe.

  The pushbikes turned out to be a disaster.

  ‘Blimey,’ Joe said after only about twenty yards, ‘this one’s a boneshaker all right. Shan’t have any teeth left by the time we get back.’

  The chain soon came loose on mine and did it so regularly after that that I was soon spending more time off the bike than on it, and both our hands were black with grease.

  ‘It would’ve been better just to walk, wouldn’t it?’ Joe said, exasperated as we had to stop and fix the chain on my tricky mount for the umpteenth time. He seemed flustered. ‘I’m sorry, Genie – this isn’t turning out to be much fun, is it?’ He ran his hand through his hair in annoyance and left grease on its pale strands. ‘It was a daft idea.’

  I looked up at him from where I was bent over the bike, as I seemed to be able to fix the thing more easily than he could. ‘What you on about? It doesn’t matter, we’ll get there. Bikes are always like this, aren’t they?’

  ‘Well, mine wasn’t. Look, let’s not let them ruin the day. Shall we take them back and walk instead? I wanted to see you, not deal with these blasted things all day long.’

  So we walked the bikes back the scant mile we’d gone out of town to the bike shop, got cleaned up and went to join the canal in town. Joe gave a sigh of relief as we went and I realized he’d got himself more het up than I realized about the bikes, it not working. I suppose he wanted me to think well of him, and couldn’t get it into his head that these sort of hitches were just normal life to me. The few days out I’d ever had with Mom, Dad and Eric had always been full of disasters great and small. These ranged from falling in rivers or cowpats to losing Eric or forgetting the food, and everyone moaning and being evilly bad-tempered because we all wanted to do different things and couldn’t agree or afford to do any of them. This was nothing in comparison. And the company was the best.

  Despite all the factories along the canal, stretches of it were very pretty, with grass and buttercups along the path, and bindweed, keck, mauve fireweed edging the railway tracks. Joe was much better on the names than me, liked to name flowers, birds, animals and seemed to know them all.

  ‘I haven’t done this for years and years,’ I said, dimly remembering it from a time when the grass came almost up to my waist. ‘There’s never enough time for anything like this, that’s our trouble.’

  We walked along all morning, talking easily, pointing out the barges in all their bright colours, painted with roses and castles, jugs of flowers and birdcages, and the canal women in their bonnets.

  ‘I wonder what it’d be like living on here,’ Joe said. ‘Seems very romantic but I’m not sure I’d like it for long.’

  ‘Oh, I would. Nice little space, no one bothering you. I’ve always fancied living by a river, seeing trees every day and fields.’

  ‘None too many fields round here!’ Joe laughed.

  We settled to eat our lunch in a pretty spot, smelling the canal water and hearing trains thundering past somewhere behind us, though not exactly sure any longer where we were.

  We ate our sandwiches and some cake Joe’s mom had sent along, swishing away the odd wasp, playing with strands of grass, shedding seeds.

  ‘I’m ever so sorry about the bikes,’ Joe said.

  ‘You’re not still on about those flaming bikes!’ I gave him a playful nudge.

  ‘You really didn’t mind, did you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I couldn’t care less as long as . . . Look, it’s been smashing so far, OK?’

  Joe reached out suddenly and stroked my cheek with the palm of his hand. ‘I wish we had more time . . .’ He looked away from me, at the rippling colours of the water. ‘Then maybe I could be more sure of not making a fool of myself.’

  ‘You won’t do that.’

  He heard the solemn tone of my voice and looked back at me. ‘Won’t I?’

  As I shook my head he reached out and touched my face again. ‘Don’t look so sad.’

  ‘I’m not sad, Joe. I’m anything but sad.’

  His arms came round me and gently pulled me against him. ‘After I met you, that first day, remember? I couldn’t stop thinking about you. That was why I asked Doris about you. Genie—’ He moved his arm up, rested his hand on my head so I could feel the warmth of it through my hair. ‘You’re lovely, d’you know that?’

  I turned my head and looked at him deep into his eyes, making sure, quite sure, although really I already was, that he was speaking the truth, not giving me flannel, not teasing. And then I pulled him to me, this man, the one person in my life who really wanted me. I felt the beat of his heart against me and I knew I was safe with him.

  When he said my name again, making me look up, we kissed, and my arms slid up round his neck. And for the first time I answered that kiss and loved it, and not once did I find myself thinking about groceries. At last I began to get an inkling of what it was Lil had been going on about all this time.

  I stopped being the one who was responsible that week and spent every possible moment with Joe. He managed to get round his father, who had a soft spot for me already, and talked him into giving me a day off the day before Joe had to go back, though I didn’t tell
Mom about that. We took a tram out to the Lickeys. It was a beautiful day and we had the place more or less to ourselves. And blimey, wasn’t it different from the last time!

  This time I had a day of wonder, seeing all the lovely parts I’d missed when dragged along by Jimmy. We walked arm in arm round the green water of the lake.

  ‘That’s my dream,’ Joe said. ‘To have my own lake so I could keep birds. Imagine having something like this in your back garden!’

  We wandered through the woods, smelling the pines, and found a warm patch of grass between sun and shade where we had our picnic and stayed on and on afterwards in each other’s arms.

  Joe lay back against a tree trunk and I lay on my front, half across him, looking and looking at him. He closed his eyes for a few minutes, face turned up into a little pool of sun. I watched him, holding on tight to every moment, trying to remember every line of his face, his slim, pointed nose, the dark eyebrows, his lips . . .

  I moved up and kissed him. ‘You comfy?’

  ‘Not very.’ He straightened his head, opening his eyes.

  ‘Well, move then!’

  ‘I might if it wasn’t for this sack of potatoes slumped across me!’

  ‘Charming!’ I shifted myself over to lie on the grass and Joe lay down and settled next to me, pulling my head onto his chest.

  ‘I was trying to memorize everything about you,’ he said. ‘For when I go back. Big blue eyes—’

  ‘They’re grey!’

  ‘Are they?’ He leaned round and looked. ‘No – blue! Well, somewhere in between. Long brown hair, high cheekbones, sweet face . . . But none of that’s you, is it? I could describe you, but it wouldn’t be you.’

  ‘I was doing the same. I don’t want you to go.’

  ‘Why don’t you want me to come to your house?’ Joe asked suddenly. He’d offered to pick me up from home that morning and Mom would’ve been in.

  ‘No,’ I’d said, quick as a flash. ‘I’ll meet you in Navigation Street and then we can just get straight on the tram.’

  I didn’t want her anywhere near him this week, spoiling things. I wanted to keep this just for me. Ever since she’d known I was going out with Joe, that I’d found something of my own, she’d been poisonous with self-pity.