Meet Me Under the Clock

by Annie Murray

  ‘Come on, budge up,’ Pauline said, closing the door. ‘Let’s get our dinner down us before it’s stone cold. I didn’t cook a meal for the flaming Hun to spoil it.’ In the torchlight she struck a match and lit the oil lamp, switching off the torch so that a different set of shadows patched their faces.

  ‘It’s going to be a bad one, I can feel it in my bones,’ Audrey said.

  ‘That’s it, Aud – look on the bright side,’ Jack retorted, through a mouthful of potatoes.

  It was hard to think of anything but the noise outside. Sylvia, Audrey and Jack sat squeezed onto the wooden shelf on the left-hand side of the shelter, having to lean forward because there was a top shelf above them as well, for sleeping on. Pauline had a folding chair in the far corner and Ted waited until they were all in and then squeezed in another chair to sit on.

  The cold air was knifing up into their nostrils. They all sat in silence for a time. Jack was polishing off his tea regardless, and soon the rest of them did the same. Pauline put her plate down, took Jack’s off him and lit a cigarette. Jack leaned against the wall, seeming lost in thought.

  There had been a number of heavy raids this month already. Night after night the planes droned over Birmingham, looking to target factories and railways, wreaking huge damage and leaving houses without gas or water, as well as families without any homes. Many of Birmingham’s big works, like the BSA, Fort Dunlop and Lucas’s, had taken hits. With the lack of sleep and fear they were now experiencing, everyone was living on their nerves. For the moment, all squabbles were forgotten.

  ‘Why aren’t you working tonight, anyway, Sylv?’ Audrey asked, leaning down to put her empty plate on the floor. ‘It’s Friday.’ Sylvia’s latest job was as an usherette at the Theatre Royal in town.

  ‘I swapped with Betty,’ Sylvia said. ‘She wanted Saturday off, to see her feller. I didn’t think Ian would mind if I worked tomorrow.’

  ‘Mustn’t upset Ian now, must we?’ Audrey said. The barbed tone was back and immediately infuriated Sylvia, but she silenced herself with a last mouthful of stew. ‘You’re a soft touch, you are,’ Audrey tutted, also drawing back from a squabble.

  Perhaps, Sylvia thought, Audrey had had the same realization as herself: they might all be dead soon. It’d be terrible to die in the middle of a quarrel. ‘Mind you, you wouldn’t want to be in town in this. You might have done yourself a big favour.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Sylvia said uneasily. She pictured the lit stage in the theatre, the frightening determination that everyone showed to keep going, whatever was happening outside ‘I hope they’ll be all right.’

  The planes roared over. The ack-ack guns were pounding from Billesley Common. There were thumps and bangs in the distance. Sylvia was glad to have both Mom and Dad there. If they were all going to go, at least they’d go together. She found the smoke of Mom’s cigarette comforting, its tip glowing in the shadows.

  ‘Oh my Lord,’ Pauline said at regular intervals, between puffs. After a while she pressed the stub into the ground and stood up to arrange the bedding on the top bunk. She was a bulky figure in the flickering light, in her coat with a shawl wrapped round her head. Her breath came out in ghostly wisps.

  ‘You lie down, Mom, if you like,’ Audrey said. ‘I’m not sleepy – are you, Sylv?’

  ‘No, not yet.’ She blew on her hands. ‘I’m too blasted cold to sleep. Oh, let’s hope we can go in soon. If it lets up, I’ll go in and make some tea.’ She felt prepared to risk a lot, just for a hot cuppa.

  Pauline swivelled round. ‘God, Sylv – did you turn the gas off?’

  ‘Yes, it’s okay. Hey, listen.’ There was a brief lull outside.

  ‘Come on, Jack,’ Pauline patted the top bunk, ‘you’ve got school in the morning.’

  ‘No, I haven’t – it’s Saturday!’ Jack protested.

  ‘All the same, lad,’ Ted ordered, looking up from the newspaper he was squinting to read by torchlight. ‘Do as your mother says.’

  Jack scrambled up, grumbling, and got his book and torch out to read. He was deep into John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps.

  ‘Don’t go out there, Sylv,’ Ted said. They’ll be back any minute, sod ’em.’

  ‘Ted!’ Pauline protested. ‘All this language, in front of Jack!’

  ‘Doesn’t matter about the rest of us, of course,’ Audrey said. ‘Just the delicate little boy.’

  ‘Shut up, Audrey!’ Jack snapped.

  Ted looked up at his wife in his lugubrious way. ‘Pauline, there’s blokes up there trying to bomb us to smithereens. I don’t think the odd word is going to be the lad’s ruination.’

  ‘Oh, ow – aaagh, I’m ruinated!’ Jack cried, acting as if he’d been shot. He made choking noises followed by elaborate death-rattles. ‘Dad said “sod”. Eeurgh – those are my dying words!’ He shone the torch up at himself and made a corpse-face.

  ‘Very amusing,’ Pauline said, sinking down onto the chair in a layer of rugs. ‘Now, you just settle down, all of you.’

  The night seemed endless.

  ‘I hope Ian’s all right,’ Sylvia said, yawning. She and Audrey were each end of the little bunk, their legs squashed in beside each other.

  ‘Oh, I expect he is,’ Audrey said rather tartly.

  Sylvia thought Audrey was jealous. Boys were always after Audrey, and at last she, Sylvia, was the one who had an admirer! Ian was rather a catch. He was tall, quite good-looking (at least she thought so, whatever Audrey said), with a good job. He was six years older than Sylvia and was a radiologist at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which was a reserved occupation, so he would not be called up. It still felt like a miracle that Ian had fallen in love with her, silly old Sylvia, when they met at a local church fete. She had gone to buy an old rugby ball for Paul, from the White Elephant stall, and Ian came up and told her that it used to be his. He had seemed attracted by her straight away, and she was flattered by this and by his gentlemanly quaintness. He and his family lived a few streets away, in a nice house in Kings Heath, although he more often came to see Sylvia than she went to his family.

  ‘That mother of his is going to be the bane of your life,’ Audrey predicted from the other end of the bunk.

  Sylvia felt rage flare up in her. She felt like kicking Audrey’s legs off the side. But the remark hit home. Try as she might, she couldn’t warm to Mrs Westley, Ian’s mother. His father was nice enough, in a remote sort of way. He was a doctor and always seemed to have a lot on his mind. But she found Mrs Westley – a neat, brittle woman who had once been a nurse – cold and intimidating. Sylvia was sure that Mrs Westley looked down on her and thought she wasn’t good enough for her son. Ian told her she was imagining things.

  ‘You just need time to get used to each other, that’s all,’ he tried to reassure her. ‘She thinks you’re delightful – and so pretty! She told me so.’

  Sylvia chose to believe him, though she just couldn’t imagine Mrs Westley saying anything of the sort.

  ‘Well,’ she told Audrey now, ‘I don’t know how you think you know what’s going to happen. But since Ian and I are getting married, we’ll all have to get used to each other. She’s all right, really.’

  She heard Audrey say ‘Huh’ quietly.

  It grew late. Jack had put his torch out, but the oil lamp was still burning steadily. It was hard to know how much time had passed: in the shelter, all time felt the same. The girls heard another wave of planes approaching.

  ‘Audrey,’ Sylvia hissed, wriggling about to try and get comfortable, ‘d’you think Mom and Dad’re asleep?’

  ‘I think so,’ Audrey said. ‘Dad’s snoring. He can sleep through anything.’

  There was another silence while they listened to the banging, crumping sounds in the distance, and to Dad’s snores close up. The cold pressed on their faces. Sylvia found herself thinking, as she often did these days, about Raymond Gould. She imagined the huge ship in the grey, North Sea waters and a shudder passed through her.

  ‘Au
drey?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  Sylvia hesitated. ‘I was thinking about Raymond. Do you . . .’ she dared to ask, ‘I mean, d’you feel guilty about him?’

  ‘Guilty?’ Audrey sounded cagey. ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, he carried a flame for you, didn’t he?’

  There was a long silence and Sylvia began to regret saying anything. She waited for Audrey’s rage to break over her.

  In the end all Audrey said was, ‘I know.’ After another silence she half sat up, leaning on her elbow, and whispered, ‘I feel terrible – about what happened. Raymond was all right. Sweet. But I don’t feel guilty that I didn’t feel the way he did. It’d be like walking out with your kid brother, wouldn’t it? Imagine how it would feel, if it was you and Laurie. It’s not nice to say it, I know, but I found him a bit boring.’ She lay back again. ‘He’d have got over it. He wasn’t my type at all.’

  ‘I s’pose not,’ Sylvia said. She could see Audrey’s point. She had never given a thought to Laurie Gould, though he was nice enough. He was just a kid, compared with Ian. The thought of Ian filled her with a moment’s warmth. ‘Who is your type, d’you think?’

  Audrey gave a low chuckle. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Someone with guts, and dashingly handsome! Nobody I’ve ever met yet. I just can’t see me getting married to anyone. I don’t want to spend all my time in a pinner with kids round my ankles.’

  Sylvia listened, amazed at her sister, as she often was. It was nice that they were talking for once, but they were so different. The idea of a cosy house and children appealed to Sylvia. A house with Ian and a family, all safe and sound together. She would give Ian children! She might not be very clever, but at least that might be something she could do.

  ‘But what would you do all day?’ she asked Audrey. ‘You don’t even like your job. What would you do if you didn’t have a family? If you could do anything?’

  ‘Oh,’ Audrey said without hesitation. ‘I’d be an explorer. I’d go to India and Russia and China and make maps!’

  ‘Don’t they already have maps?’ Sylvia asked.

  Audrey laughed. ‘I don’t know. I just mean I’d get out of here – see the world. I just think men have a much better life. I don’t want to live like women are supposed to. It makes me feel so hemmed in. Sometimes, when I’m sitting in that office with all those sodding typewriters clattering away, I feel as if I’m going to explode with boredom.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you get another job?’ Sylvia suggested.

  ‘It’d just be more of the same thing,’ Audrey said, sighing. ‘Unless, I suppose—’

  She didn’t say what she supposed, because the noise outside built up again abruptly. There were planes loud overhead.

  ‘God!’ Sylvia whispered. ‘They’re so close.’ Fear built in her. She envied Jack and their parents, who were fast asleep.

  To her surprise, Audrey suddenly said, ‘Take my hand, sis.’

  ‘I can’t.’ There wasn’t enough room to sit up, even though they both strained towards each other. ‘Here –’ She pressed her feet against Audrey’s leg and they lay like that instead. Neither of them spoke.

  Go over, just keep going . . . She found her lips moving. Don’t stop here, please just keep going.

  There was an almighty series of bangs and long, crunching crashes, horribly close. The ground jerked under the shelter. Both girls instinctively wrapped their arms over their heads.

  ‘Uh! My God, what was that?’ Ted and the others woke with a start.

  ‘Oh! What’s happening?’ Pauline cried. ‘Audrey? Sylvia? Jack? You all right?’

  ‘Mom!’ Sylvia heard her voice come out like that of a frightened child. Thank goodness Mom was here. There were more explosions, and the ground was shaking again.

  ‘God, that was close,’ Audrey said hoarsely as it began to die away. ‘It’s not ours, is it? D’you think the Goulds are all right?’

  Jack jumped down and went to open the door of the shelter.

  ‘Don’t, Jack!’ his mother ordered. ‘For heaven’s sake, leave it.’

  But he had the door open and they all peered out to see a sky that was orange with the flames of fires. The outside air, full of bitter, burning smells, poured into the shelter, making them all cough.

  ‘Oh, my,’ Pauline Whitehouse gasped. ‘That’s our street, surely? Oh, Lord save us. Jack, shut it again, please. I can’t bear to look.’

  Now that they were all awake, they sat in tense silence, listening. Fire-engine bells tinkled in the distance. The raid was the worst they had known in their part of town. Sylvia never knew afterwards how much sleep she had managed. A little perhaps, in quick snatches. But it had started at seven, and it was six the following morning before the All Clear sounded. Now the Germans were in France, they could keep it up for hours, flying back and forth. It was a test of everyone’s endurance.

  Nauseous from lack of sleep, they all crawled out of the shelter in the morning, commiserating with the Goulds as they walked back to their houses.

  ‘Well, we got through another one!’ Marjorie called.

  ‘You all right, love?’ Pauline asked.

  ‘Yes – right as rain, ta.’ Marjorie waved bravely.

  However cold and stiff, though, they were alive! It was a wonderful and exhilarating to be out in the morning light, even though the air was still heavy with burning.

  ‘At last,’ Sylvia said, ‘we might get that cup of tea.’

  ‘We’d better go and see the damage,’ Pauline said.

  Sylvia checked on Mr Piggles, who was trembling when she took him out for a cuddle. But the big, lop-eared rabbit seemed happy enough when she let him loose in the garden to nibble the grass. As they walked into the house, the cats fled screeching outside. Mom put the kettle on and they all went to look out at the front.

  ‘Oh, my!’ Sylvia gasped. The road was full of rubble and there was a gap further along where two houses had been. An ambulance was parked near the end, unable to get right up to the houses because the road was obstructed.

  ‘Oh dear Lord – that’s Mrs James’s,’ their mother said, hand going to her heart. There were people in shocked huddles along the street. Pauline pulled her shawl back around her and hurried along to speak to them. Sylvia could hear a woman crying.

  ‘I’d better go and see if I can help,’ Ted said. He headed off along the street after his wife.

  The three of them followed, trying to take in what had happened to their close neighbours, thinking how easily it could have been them. They had to watch where they were walking over the rubble: glass crunched under their feet. Sylvia stared at the ruined shells of the houses, showing the remains of sooty fireplaces and fragments of flower-papered walls. Mixed with the smoke was a horrible musty smell.

  ‘God, look at it,’ Audrey said. There was bitter rage in her voice. Arms folded angrily, she stood for some time, taking in the piles of brick and plaster and timber, the mess of ruined possessions amid the rubble; a battered game of Ludo, smashed chairs, a pink dress twisted and filthy in the gutter. ‘Right,’ she said, furiously. ‘That’s it. I’ve decided. I’m not just sitting here any longer. I’m going to join up – today.’

  1941

  Four

  January 1941

  When Sylvia stepped out of the dark theatre, Ian was waiting for her. The audience, whom she had ushered into their seats, had already hurried away. They had to file out almost in darkness, the lights dimmed in the foyer so as not to let any glare escape. They had got through tonight’s performance without a raid, but the first thing everyone did outside, by instinct, was to look up at the sky. It was bitterly cold and foggy, but so far also blessedly quiet.

  ‘Hey, Wizzy, I’m here!’ Even Ian had taken to using the family nickname.

  Sylvia stopped, her heart lifting with excitement. He’d come to meet her – that was a rare treat these days!

  ‘Ian?’ She could hear his footsteps, crossing over from the bottom of Bennett’s Hill and sudd
enly he was right there, stooping to kiss her cheek.

  ‘Hello, pretty lady,’ his said in his quaint way.

  ‘Have you been waiting long?’ she said, pushing her arm happily through his. ‘You never said you’d be in town.’

  ‘Long enough for a quick one in the Gallery Bar. I came in earlier to meet John Dawson, a chap who was in my form at school. He’s off into the Navy, last-night nerves and all that. But I thought it was about time for you to finish, so I waited around. Come on, we’ve got a few minutes before the bus. Quiet tonight, thank heavens.’

  She snuggled up to him. ‘Oh, I love it when you’re here, waiting.’ It meant not having to feel her way, frightened, along blacked-out New Street on her own. In daylight, she knew, there were chalked signs saying, ‘BEWARE FALLING DEBRIS’. They could sit cuddled up on the shrouded late bus, talking over the day and snatching kisses.

  She took his arm and they felt their way cautiously between the scarred buildings. Ian had a tiny torch, which let out a thread of light, but in the fog it made the visibility worse, so he turned it off. They could hear, rather than see, other people in the street. Sylvia loved walking about with Ian. He was so nice-looking, tall and always sprucely dressed, with neat brown hair and a thin, clever-looking face. In this darkness, however, no one could see anyone at all. And tonight she felt nervous, for more than the usual reasons. Her stomach clenched whenever certain thoughts came to her.

  No one knew yet about the interview she’d had yesterday. In two days’ time she’d be gone from the theatre into an entirely new job! The idea of it made her thrum with nervous excitement. She still hadn’t told anyone – not even Ian. She had felt very emotional tonight, standing as usual, in her dark-red dress and neat black court shoes (her stockings were hardly holding together and she had mended endless numbers of holes in them, but there were no new ones to be had). Outwardly she was guiding the theatre-goers to their seats, polite and helpful, but in her head she kept repeating, Soon I won’t be doing this any more. As the music struck up from the orchestra pit, she stood at the back in the velvet darkness and felt tearful. She had been there for two years now, and in many ways it was a lovely job. But the restlessness – the feeling that everyone else was moving on and leaving her behind – had grown too much for her.