Meet Me Under the Clock

by Annie Murray

‘You don’t need all that. I went to see the vicar and explained the situation and he said, if I wanted, he could baptize him there and then. So we went into the church, and that’s what we did. All you need is a drop of water and a vicar – well, he said you don’t even need one of them, if it’s an emergency. You can do it yourself.’

  ‘Oh,’ Sylvia said. She felt strangely let-down, but saw that this made complete sense. A public ceremony for a child everyone knew was born out of wedlock? No, Mom wouldn’t have had it. ‘So what’s his name?’

  ‘Dorian Raymond,’ Audrey said.

  ‘Dorian?’ she said, bewildered. ‘Well, that’s unusual.’

  Audrey spoke, looking down into the baby’s sleeping face. ‘It’s just . . . When I was in the WAAF I knew a girl called Dorrie. It was short for Dorothea, but I liked the name Dorrie.’

  ‘Was she the one who sent you the postcard when you’d only been away for a day or something?’ Sylvia teased.

  ‘Yes,’ Audrey said lightly. ‘That’s the one. We’ve lost touch now, of course, because I moved on to another site . . . Doesn’t matter, anyway. But I liked that name and I thought: what boy’s name could I give him that would sound the same?’

  ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray,’ Sylvia said. ‘That’s the only Dorian I’ve ever heard of.’ She wasn’t sure about the name, but there was no point arguing. ‘It’s – nice. Dorrie. Little Dorrie. Have you told Mom?’

  ‘Not yet. I was hoping you’d come with me.’

  The sisters’ eyes met in understanding.

  ‘All right,’ Sylvia said. ‘Best go and get it over then.’

  Fifty

  June 1942

  Audrey laid little Dorian in the pram and covered him with a soft blanket. He looked up at her, wide-eyed, sucking on one of his fingers.

  ‘Your job is to go to sleep, young man,’ she said softly.

  It was a warm Saturday afternoon and she wanted to go out. At that moment it felt like the most important thing ever: to be out on her own, to get away from Mom – from all of it. Tiptoeing, she pushed the pram along the hall and was opening the front door when she heard feet on the stairs and turned in dread. It was Jack.

  ‘Aud, are you off out?’ He hesitated. ‘Can I come?’

  She looked up at him, surprised. ‘If you like.’

  Jack helped her ease the pram outside and, with Audrey pushing it, they set off down the shady side of the street. Jack loped along beside her in his grey flannels, his shirt-sleeves rolled up. He was a tall, athletic lad. In the nearly six weeks since Dorrie was born, Jack had, at first awkwardly, come to terms with the changes in the house and the fact that they were not as ideal as they might be. Laurie’s disappearance had also hit him very hard. He seemed to have grown up a lot in those weeks and even to have gained a couple of inches in height.

  Audrey was just beginning to relax in the sunshine when they reached a gaggle of children playing on the pavement. Seeing the pram coming, some of them stood up from the chalk game they had drawn and began to pull each other out of the way.

  ‘Thanks,’ Audrey said, smiling at the mixed group of boys and girls, most of whom were familiar.

  But as they walked on past there was an outbreak of whispers and giggles behind them. One voice half-chanted, ‘Little bastard ba-by! Little bastard ba-by!’ A few of the others joined in, in low voices.

  Jack slammed his hand onto the handle of the pram and Audrey grabbed his arm. ‘No, Jack! Ignore them. Just take no notice!’

  His face was red with fury. ‘Does that always happen – every time you go out?’

  ‘No, of course not. Just now and then.’ She forced him to walk on slowly. ‘If you play up to it, they’ll get worse. They’re only kids.’

  ‘Little sods!’ Jack fumed.

  ‘They’re just repeating what they’ve heard the grownups saying.’ Audrey tried not to let him see how hurt and angry she was. ‘They’ll only do it more if you take any notice.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can stand going out,’ Jack said.

  ‘I’m not going to miss the sunshine for those little squirts,’ she replied. But it was terrible, having such things shouted at you in the street. It made her feel dirty and ashamed – but she damned well wasn’t going to let them see that.

  Once they were through the park gates Audrey said, ‘Thanks for coming out with me. It’s nice to have some company.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Jack said. After a moment he looked round at her. ‘Are you all right, sis?’

  ‘Yes, I’m okay.’ She smiled to try and reassure him.

  Once the baby arrived, Jack had gradually been won over by him. Audrey was very touched to see how attached he was now to her little boy and how interested he was in him. But they still mostly related to each other through the baby. This was the nearest Jack had ever come to talking to Audrey about how she felt. What had happened with the children in the street had helped open things up. She gave a small sigh.

  ‘But . . .’ Jack began. He looked down at the path in confusion.

  ‘But?’ Audrey said gently. ‘But it’s not okay? I’m not married, and my baby’s a . . . is illegitimate?’

  Jack was red in the face now. ‘It’s not that I—’ He broke off. ‘I mean, I’m not blaming you. I just think it must be very hard for you, that’s all. Things like what just happened back there . . .’

  ‘It is, in some ways.’ Audrey thought about it. She was constantly surprised by the strength of her own feelings. She had felt so at odds with things, before Dorian was born. Life had cheated her. She loved the WAAF and all her friends, loved her freedom and independence, and now she was stuck at home, disgraced and under Mom’s thumb. Yet Mom had stood by her and, now that Dorian was here, even though she had not loved his father, she loved him with a depth of feeling that took her quite by surprise. All the confusion she had felt while she was in the WAAF had disappeared in the daily round of caring for this tiny child. It made things easier, even though it was hard work. Dorian had become her world and she didn’t have to decide anything else. She had in some way surrendered herself to nature – to being a woman – almost in the way that a log surrenders to the flow of a river. But she could not say any of this to Jack.

  ‘At least Mom and Dad didn’t put me out on the street.’

  ‘They wouldn’t have done that!’

  ‘There’s a lot would have done.’

  They walked on, into the sunlight. Audrey felt the warmth of the sun sink into her, relaxing her. But she could sense that Jack was full of tension. He was breathing heavily and clenching and unclenching his hands. Suddenly, in an urgent rush he said, ‘I just wish I could do something – about anything!’

  His face was red and he seemed close to tears.

  ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘What’s the matter?’

  Jack spoke, looking down at the ground. ‘I just feel so useless. I’m too young to fight. I don’t go to work – I’m just at school. Which I want, of course, but all the same . . . And everyone’s having such an abysmal time. And Laurie . . .’ Jack wept then. He couldn’t help himself.

  Audrey drew him onto a bench and put her arm round his shoulders. She could see how bad he was feeling, because he would never normally let anyone see him cry. Now he didn’t seem to care whether or not passers-by saw. He had adored Laurie. While everyone was feeling sorry for Sylvia, Jack was feeling Laurie’s absence almost as much.

  ‘How can he be dead?’ Jack said. He sat leaning his elbows on his thighs, hands over his face. Audrey could feel him shaking. His manly voice seemed at odds with the upset little boy who was crying beside her. Silently she wept beside him. The thought of the Gould boys, both of them, made her heart ache almost unbearably.

  ‘I just can’t believe he’s gone,’ Jack went on, ‘that he’ll never . . .’ He looked up at her with wet eyes. ‘We’re just never going to see him again. He’s not in this world any more.’

  She looked back at him, her own eyes streaming. ‘I know. I can’t take it in
, either.’

  ‘Sometimes I think Mrs Gould is always going to look at us – at me especially – and hate us for still being alive.’

  ‘No, Jack. It’s not like—’

  ‘It is! It’s different for you – you’re a girl. And Sylvia would rather Laurie was alive than me, as well. I know she would.’ He put his head down again and stared mutinously between his knees. Audrey looked at him, appalled to think he had been torturing himself with these thoughts.

  ‘Jack,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘I really don’t think you’re right. Of course Marjorie’s in a terrible state. Stanley’s had the doctor in more than once. And Sylvia’s trying not to show it, but I don’t think she’s coming to terms with it at all. I don’t know what to do for either of them. The way Sylvia just ploughs on is – well, it’s how she manages, but underneath . . . To tell you the truth, though . . .’ She stopped, hesitating to burden her brother with any more troubling thoughts.

  Jack sat up. ‘What?’ He raised his voice. ‘Don’t keep things from me, Aud – stop treating me like a child!’

  ‘Sorry,’ Audrey said, jiggling the pram in case Jack’s outburst had disturbed Dorian. ‘It’s Mom I’m worried about, as well. I know everyone’s feeling terrible for Marjorie and Sylvia, but Mom’s having to carry it for all of us. The other day I went into the kitchen and she was standing there, leaning on the table and just . . .’

  ‘What – crying?’ They both knew how rare it was for their mother to cry.

  ‘Well, no. She was just sort of breathing. Hard. She looked bad, as if something was happening. I thought she’d been taken ill for a moment, but then she saw me and just stood up straight and carried on. It’s the strain of it all, I think.’

  Jack wiped his eyes. ‘I’ll try and help more.’

  ‘We’ll all try. Don’t be hard on yourself, Jack. We all know how much Laurie meant to you – and Raymond, too. Everyone’s trying to bear something. In a way I’m luckier – I’ve got him.’ She half-stood up and looked, smiling, down at the baby. His eyes were closed, the lashes tiny dark crescents against his skin, but he was stirring. ‘It’s a funny thing,’ she said quietly. ‘I had no idea how it would be.’

  She indicated to Jack that they should walk again. They waited for an elderly couple to pass slowly, arm-in-arm.

  ‘Aud,’ Jack said. ‘That bloke who comes to see you. D’you like him?’

  ‘Colin?’ Audrey felt a pang of mixed emotions inside her. ‘He’s all right. He’s a nice man.’ Colin had come round three times now. The first time the excuse had been that he wanted to make sure Audrey was all right, and to see the baby. But he had come back twice more.

  ‘He’s in love with you, isn’t he?’

  Audrey blushed. ‘Is he?’ she said lightly. ‘Maybe.’

  She knew Colin was keen on her. Why would he keep coming otherwise? He was such a gentle, kind man. He was a good number of years older than she was, but she knew that if she felt anything for him, that would not matter. He had told her he was not married. He seemed besotted by her. In fact she thought about Colin far more than she was going to let on to Jack. What if Colin was the answer to all her problems? Here was a good man who might marry her, take on her child, and take her off Mom and Dad’s hands – make a respectable woman out of her in fact. It seemed too good to be true. Colin was genuinely sweet, and what right did she have to expect anything even half as good as that now?

  ‘He’s mad about you,’ Jack said. ‘It’s written all over his face.’ When she didn’t answer, Jack leaned closer. ‘Aud, he is nice, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, hearing the note of desperate hope in her brother’s voice. ‘He’s very nice.’

  Later that afternoon Sylvia came home from work, her jacket slung over one shoulder in the warmth. She ambled along from the bus stop on the Alcester Road, in no hurry to get home. She was seldom in a hurry to get anywhere these days. In the three weeks since she had heard that Laurie was missing there had been nowhere that offered a refuge from the gnawing misery inside her. The harshness of work was eased by the warm weather and everyone’s kindness to her. Even Froggy seemed gentler than usual. She had started to go out with her friends, when she could face it, to the pictures or visiting Elsie and her mother in Handsworth – anything to try and distract herself. In her own home everything was so strained and sad. The one spark of new life was little Dorian, but even he came at the price of Audrey’s shame and as a reminder of her own losses. At the moment Sylvia would rather be almost anywhere else than at home.

  She reached the house and was just about to go inside when next door’s front door opened. Marjorie Gould stepped out, as if she had been waiting for her. Sylvia managed not to gasp. She had not seen Marjorie at all since the day they heard the terrible news. She was shocked to see the gaunt boniness of the woman’s face. But at least Marjorie was up and breathing the air outside.

  ‘Sylvia, come in a minute, will you, love?’ she said in her thin voice. ‘I’ve got something I want to show you.’

  The house was quiet for a Saturday, Sylvia thought, then realized with a deep pang that this house, from now on, was always going to be quiet.

  ‘Stanley’s gone out for a ride on his bike with your father, as it’s nice out,’ Marjorie said as they went through to the back.

  The house was much the same as their own in layout. Every inch of it screamed memories of the young, lively family that had once rollicked through it. The bleakness of Marjorie’s loss washed over Sylvia again, almost dwarfing her own. She struggled to think what to say. Questions like ‘How are you?’ seemed so pointless.

  ‘I’m very thankful he and Ted are friends, the way they are,’ Marjorie was saying. She had the kettle on ready. ‘It takes Stanley out of himself a bit. He’s no good with all this . . .’ She swept her hand across her, as if to take in their family’s entire situation. As she brewed tea, she nodded towards the garden, where Sylvia could see Paul kicking a ball around in his dreamy way. ‘He’ll be busy for a bit. Come and sit with me.’

  They went into the back room with the tea and Marjorie produced a dark-red photograph album.

  ‘I wanted to show you,’ she said. ‘Stanley was quite keen on taking pictures, as you might remember. You’re in quite a few of them as well.’ Her gaunt features attempted a smile as she sat down, setting the book on her lap.

  Sylvia felt dread filling her. Marjorie wanted to show her pictures of them all as children: of Laurie, of that precious, sunlit past. She desperately didn’t want to sit here and be made to give way to emotion. But she could not refuse Laurie’s mother the one thing she wanted. In a way, painful though it was, she was longing to see them too. Marjorie seemed calm, at least for the moment.

  ‘Oh, look,’ Marjorie turned the black sugar-paper pages. ‘There’s the lot of you, before Paul, anyway – and Jack. D’you remember that?’

  The four of them were lined up along the garden wall in – typically of Stanley Gould – age order. Audrey, long, skinny and determined-looking sat beside slender, dark-eyed Raymond. Sylvia saw herself, unmistakable with her round, smiling face and wayward coils of hair. And there was Laurie, with his big eyes and chubby cheeks, caught somewhere between anxiety and a smile. Love and longing filled her.

  ‘Oh,’ she breathed. The grief welled up in her. ‘How lovely! Oh, it was all so lovely.’ She turned tearfully to Marjorie. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been to see you before,’ she began. ‘I couldn’t . . .’

  ‘It’s all right, love,’ Marjorie said. ‘I understand.’ She looked down at the album to speak the words she needed to say next. ‘Sylvia, don’t wait for him. I did it with Raymond, for a time. I never said, but I kept thinking they must be wrong, that he was out there somewhere and one day he’d just come home and there he’d be, same as ever.’ She swallowed. ‘If Laurie was alive, he’d have been in touch somehow. He or the Red Cross – someone. I know my boy. It can’t be, love. Don’t spend your young life waiting for someone who can�
�t be here any more. I thought I could say it to you, if no one else can . . .’

  For a moment they both kept their eyes on the photograph, then turned to each other. Marjorie opened her arms and drew Sylvia into them. Sylvia felt all the grief in her rise up and overflow.

  ‘You and Audrey are like my daughters,’ Marjorie said as they held each other. ‘Whatever else, you always will be.’

  Without saying any more, they both wept together.

  Fifty-One

  July 1942

  ‘Honestly,’ Sylvia said to Elsie as they walked to the bus stop among the crowd pouring out from the cinema, ‘I thought we’d gone to see something cheerful!’

  Most of the audience emerged looking tearful. When Elsie had suggested a trip to the pictures after an early shift, she tactfully suggested they go and see something light and enjoyable. So she had suggested a picture house that was showing Disney’s Fantasia, since neither of them had seen it.

  ‘It was fabulous, wasn’t it – but it really set me off,’ Sylvia said as they sat, still tearstained, in the gloom of the bus. She had been entranced by the picture with all the music and colours and fairies and at first she was completely lost in watching it. By the end, though, when they were playing Ave Maria, the beauty and soulfulness of it tapped into all her grief; her feelings welling up so that she had to control her sobs.

  ‘I know,’ Elsie said, blowing her nose. She was all emotional, as well. ‘I thought it was going to be cheerful – I didn’t think this was how we were going to end up. Look at the state of us!’

  ‘Well, that’s having a good time for you!’ Sylvia said. Seeing each other’s blotchy cheeks, they ended up in rather soggy laughter.

  They were heading back to Handsworth, where Sylvia occasionally stayed over now. Elsie had been very kind to her, trying to take her mind off things, and it was easier for Sylvia not to have to make her way home alone. Elsie lived with her mother, who was a widow, a cheerful but nervous lady, and they always went back to stay with her, so that she wasn’t left by herself. Sylvia found she could keep the worst depths of her despair at bay when she was away from home. She was afraid of imposing, but Elsie assured her that her mother loved to have new company.