Meet Me Under the Clock

by Annie Murray

  ‘She likes you,’ she told Sylvia. ‘She looks forward to you coming.’ They had a little put-me-up bed, which they could just fit into the sitting room for Sylvia.

  Mrs Phipps greeted them enthusiastically. She was in her mid-forties and Elsie resembled her in almost every way. Both were very thin and frail-looking and both had prominent teeth and watery blue eyes, which gave off a lively friendliness. The main difference was in their hair. Mrs Phipps’s, in colour a faded version of Elsie’s mousy rats’ tails, was plaited on each side and worn pinned in a little coil over each ear in the old-fashioned way. Elsie did the best with her thin hair, curling the ends with the help of nightly hairpins and pinning it back out of the way.

  ‘Ooh, I’m glad you’re home,’ Mrs Phipps exclaimed as they walked into the house in Rookery Road where Elsie and her mother had rooms on the first floor. ‘I’ve just put the kettle on. Did you hear they bombed the Rover this morning? That’s not where your father is, is it, Sylvia?’

  ‘Hello, Mrs Phipps,’ Sylvia said. ‘No, thank goodness – that was Solihull. Dad’s at the shadow factory.’

  There had been a few sporadic raids, even though most of the German attention was fixed on Russia these days.

  ‘Well, it’s nice to see you; go and make yourselves comfy – I’ve got a few biscuits. Are you hungry, Sylvia? I could rake up a bit of toast for you, if you like?’

  ‘Oh no, I’m all right thanks, Mrs Phipps,’ Sylvia said, not entirely truthfully, as her stomach was gurgling with hunger. But she didn’t want to eat Mrs Phipps out of house and home, and a biscuit would fill a gap.

  Mrs Phipps sat with them, still with her apron over her dress, and they told her all about the picture. She sat nursing her cup and saucer, beaming as the girls tucked into their tea and arrowroot biscuits. The sight of Elsie and her mom both grinning away, with those teeth sticking out, reminded Sylvia inescapably of a pair of cheerful rabbits, which made her smile as well. She had quickly grown fond of Elsie’s mom.

  ‘There’s a drop more in the pot, if you’d like it, Sylvia?’ Mrs Phipps got up.

  ‘I wouldn’t say no, thanks,’ she said.

  As Mrs Phipps went over to the little kitchen area of their flat, there was a sudden almighty crash from outside and she jumped so violently that the cup flew off the saucer and into the sink. Sylvia felt her whole body leap with alarm, and Elsie screamed.

  ‘Oh my Lord!’ Mrs Phipps cried, rushing back in, still clutching the saucer. ‘There must be a raid. That sounded close. Where’re the sirens? Did you hear anything, Else?’

  ‘No – I don’t think there were any,’ Elsie said breathlessly. They listened. Sylvia could feel the blood pounding round her body. They could hear it now: the familiar drone of aeroplane engines.

  ‘Come on, out into the shelter,’ Mrs Phipps urged. ‘Thank heavens you got home all right . . . Go on, Elsie – take the extra blankets and the torch. I’ll be out in a minute . . .’

  As she spoke there were hurried footsteps climbing the stairs and someone pounded on the door.

  ‘Mrs Phipps?’ A kind, elderly Welsh couple, Mr and Mrs Jones, lived in the rooms below them and Mr Jones’s deep voice came booming through the door. ‘There’s a raid on, I believe. Better be making our way outside.’

  ‘We’re coming!’ Mrs Phipps called. ‘Thank you, Mr Jones. Go on, girls.’

  Sylvia cursed herself for not bringing more clothes. Although it was summer, it was still cold in the middle of the night, squeezed into an air-raid shelter. Visions of her nice cosy night on Mrs Phipps’s folding bed evaporated swiftly.

  She and Elsie seized hold of everything they could, in the way of extra coverings, and hurried down the dark stairs. Mr Jones was helping his infirm wife along the hall towards the back door.

  ‘You go first, girls,’ he said. ‘We’re a bit slow, as you know. Switch the fire on for us when you get there,’ he quipped.

  ‘Oh, we will, Mr Jones – and the floodlights,’ Elsie said fondly. She always said that the Joneses had been like an uncle and aunt to her, as she was growing up.

  As soon as they got outside it became clear that things were worse than they thought. The muffled thuds they had barely heard while they were busy getting ready were becoming closer, and the planes seemed to be right overhead.

  ‘I’m going to tell Mom to hurry!’ Elsie cried, running back into the house. Sylvia stood out at the back, and within seconds she was completely terrified. The sky was already glowing an ominous orange from the fires, and the noise was loud and horribly close. Mr and Mrs Jones were hobbling along the garden.

  ‘Elsie!’ she shouted, torn between running to the house and heading for the shelter.

  There was a massive crash. All she remembered was a rushing sensation, as if she was being pushed and flattened against the wall, and there was hardness, jagged edges, a stabbing pain along her left side and then . . . nothing.

  Fifty-Two

  Someone was lifting her, causing agony in her body. She could hear whimpering, like an animal. Then there was only blackness. When she opened her eyes at last, she saw a nurse.

  ‘It’s all right,’ the nurse said. ‘You’re safe in Dudley Road Hospital. Just sleep, dear.’ A sharp sensation arrived in her left arm. Her lids were heavy and her eyes slid closed again – for how long, she did not know.

  The next time she opened her eyes she saw Elsie looking down at her.

  ‘Sylv? Oh, thank God!’ Elsie was crying. ‘No, don’t try and move – it’ll hurt you.’

  Sylvia moaned. Any attempt to move gave her pain in almost every part of her body, but most especially the left side of her chest.

  ‘You’re all right. They say you’ve got a few broken bones: your collarbone and some ribs. And you had – what d’you call it? – concussion. But you’re going to be all right.’

  Sylvia felt Elsie stroking her right hand, which lay outside the bedcovers. Memories started to crowd back to her: standing at the back of Elsie’s house; the noise; Mr Jones with his hobbling wife leaning on his arm.

  ‘What day is it?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s Wednesday. They say you’ve been asleep most of . . . Your mother’s coming in later . . .’

  ‘Elsie, your mom?’

  ‘She’s all right.’ Elsie had tears running down her cheeks. She was crying as if she just couldn’t stop. ‘Mom was coming down when I went back in, and when we heard – well, it was so close. We just threw ourselves into the cubbyhole under the stairs. If we hadn’t . . . The house is wrecked. We’ve had to go to one of the churches. And Mr and Mrs Jones were both . . . They didn’t —’ She really broke down now. ‘We found them in the garden; they were still holding hands.’

  ‘Oh, Elsie,’ Sylvia whispered, feeling tears rising in her as well. She was too weak to cry properly.

  ‘Thank God you’re all right, Sylv. When we went out, afterwards, and you were lying there, I thought: Oh, if we’d had to go and tell your mom! I couldn’t bear to think about it.’

  ‘What’re you going to do?’ Sylvia whispered.

  ‘We’re trying to find somewhere to go,’ Elsie said. ‘Gina says she knows someone who might have a room. It doesn’t matter – we’ll find something. But we’re alive, and so are you.’ She wiped her eyes and then squeezed Sylvia’s hand again, managing a watery smile. ‘Your job now is to get better – d’you hear?’

  Later, Mom and Dad came. Their eyes were very wide, as if they were afraid of what they might see. Sylvia pushed her features into a smile. Parts of her face hurt, especially the left side.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, keeping her breathing shallow because it hurt to do anything else. ‘Broken bones, they say.’

  ‘You were lucky,’ one of the nurses had told her. ‘You’ve certainly been bashed about, but it’ll all heal, given time.’ That was what people said about everything. Time. Compared to Laurie, this was nothing – just scratches and a few bones.

  Mom sat on the chair by the bed and Dad staye
d standing, holding his hat. Even lying down, Sylvia could see that they seemed cowed by the regime of the ward. Her mother was frightened of hospitals – she remembered people going in and never coming out. Hospitals and workhouses were all the same to her. They meant powerlessness and death.

  Pauline leaned forward, looking round as if someone might tell her off for moving.

  ‘We’ve been so worried, love. They say you’re going to be all right. What happened?’

  ‘You know what happened,’ Dad said, shuffling his feet. ‘It was a bomb, Pauline.’

  ‘Elsie and her mom are all right,’ Sylvia said.

  ‘Oh, they came to see us, straight away – as soon as you’d been brought in here. They were ever so kind. Poor souls, their house is all gone.’

  ‘They had a lucky escape,’ Dad said. ‘Rookery Road’s a terrible mess.’

  Mom had her hand on Sylvia’s, and she could feel her mother twitching. Mom looked very pale and strained.

  ‘I’m all right,’ Sylvia told them. ‘But I don’t know how long I’ll be in here.’

  ‘The sooner you’re home, the better. It’s that collarbone – that’s going to take some healing up.’ Pauline’s hands twitched restlessly again. ‘Audrey and Jack send their love; and Marjorie and Stanley, of course.’

  ‘How’s little Dorrie?’ Sylvia saw Dad look away down the ward at the mention of the baby’s name, as if uneasy at him being mentioned here. Then he must have realized that no one had any idea who they were, or of the circumstances of his birth, and he relaxed and looked back at her.

  ‘Oh, he’s bonny,’ Pauline said with a faint smile. They were all in love with the little boy. ‘Eating well. Sleeping better too.’ She paused. ‘Weather’s nice.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Sylvia said. She started to feel drowsy, her eyelids drooping. ‘Sorry, I just . . .’

  When she woke again, there was no one there.

  She stayed in hospital for two weeks. The early days were spent in a daze of shock and pain and she slept a lot. Eventually she was able to look round and take more notice of the other patients and chat to the ones nearby. She had a lot of time to rest and think – something she had tried to avoid doing these past weeks. At last she allowed herself to travel into her memories of Laurie. She would lie picturing their brief golden months together. And she thought about their past as children. An agony of sadness filled her as she let the pictures roll through her mind: of Laurie at every age as she had known him. The terrible grief that seemed to press on her like a weight was for herself, for the future they hoped to share together. But just as much of it was for him, for the simple fact of his not being here any more. She thought of all the young men who had died in the last war, and now in this one, and of all the people who loved them. When her mind dwelt on this it made the world feel a dark, bitter, pointless place. She remembered standing in Laurie’s arms, seeing his good-natured face looking into hers. His eyes had been full of love for her, and her heart cried out for him with need and loss.

  But she also remembered Marjorie’s words to her the day they were together – a mother’s truth that had to be faced.

  And Sylvia knew this was what she was trying to do as she lay in her hard, white bed, grateful to be alive herself. She wept many times that week, quietly letting the tears flow. The idea of accepting that a young man whom she loved, who had left full of life and only twenty-one years of age, was never coming back, felt an impossible feat. She was grateful to Marjorie for being strong and brave enough to spell it out to her: He’s not coming back. Don’t cripple your life with waiting.

  One afternoon, as the sunlight slanted in across the ward, she lay drifting in and out of sleep. A picture came to her of Laurie in his flying jacket, getting into a plane on a bright afternoon. The propellers were turning and she could see him smiling at her from the side-window of the cockpit. As the plane began to taxi he blew her a kiss. Soon the plane was speeding along, lifting off the ground, taking him further away every second. Before it moved too far away over the horizon and out of sight, she imagined that she saw him turn to her with a smile, a wave. And then he was gone.

  Fifty-Three

  August 1942

  After two weeks Sylvia left hospital. Her arm was in a sling and she was still in pain from her collarbone. Her ribs, the doctor told her, would heal themselves in time. It hurt her to breathe deeply, and she knew it was going to be weeks before she could do anything really active again. Work, for now, was out of the question. The cuts on her face were healing, though there was one on the left side that was going to leave a long scar.

  But she knew she was lucky to be alive, and it was lovely to be home! The house smelled different now, of warm, baby smells. Audrey came hurrying down as soon as she heard them come in.

  ‘Hello, sis!’ Audrey greeted her with a kiss, seeming delighted to see her. ‘You’re back sooner than I expected.’ She had been to the hospital once, but had left most of the visiting to Mom and Dad as she needed to be at home with Dorian.

  ‘They couldn’t wait to get rid of me,’ Sylvia said. ‘Careful, don’t squeeze me. And for God’s sake don’t make me laugh! Come on, let me see little ’un. I’ve missed him.’

  Dorian was lying in his cot in a state of sleepy rapture, a dribble of milk running down his plump cheek and his arms flung out at the sides.

  ‘Oh, look at him,’ she breathed. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. ‘Lying there like a little prince. He’s grown, Audrey – he’s much bigger than when I left.’

  ‘Is he?’ Audrey said, leaning over to look as well. ‘He’s a proper guzzler.’

  Sylvia turned to her. ‘You look ever so thin.’

  ‘He’s taking everything I’ve got.’ Audrey’s eyes were serious. She looked closely at Sylvia, who was struck by how much gentler her sister was these days. ‘Your poor face. But it is looking better than it was.’

  Sylvia touched the worst scar on her left cheek. ‘It’s going to show, but . . .’ She shrugged. ‘I know I’m lucky to be here – and Elsie and her mom are. It was a miracle, really.’ She looked down at her arm. ‘This still hurts. I’ll be stuck at home for a bit.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Audrey said, sinking down onto the bed. She seemed exhausted. ‘You can keep me company. It’ll be nice.’

  The girls’ eyes met and Sylvia smiled. ‘Yes. It will.’

  Everyone greeted her with great enthusiasm now that she was home and, even in her grief, Sylvia had a warm feeling of how lucky she was to have her family.

  Sylvia was amazed at how much sleep she needed. She would get up feeling a little bit better every morning, and ready to help her mother and go out for walks with Audrey and the baby. But by eleven in the morning, and certainly during the afternoon, she found herself falling asleep even if she was standing up.

  ‘Sleep’s a healer,’ her mother said, when she complained about it. ‘Best thing for you.’

  Everyone was being so kind. Dad and Jack were all consideration and helpfulness. Everyone knew how easily she might have been killed that night in Handsworth. Thinking of this gave her an intense appreciation of simply being alive. Pauline moved a comfy chair close to the window in the back room, and Sylvia sat for long periods looking out at the clouds moving across the sky and at the leaves of the apple tree at the bottom of the garden moving in the breeze.

  ‘I feel as if I’m in hibernation – like a hedgehog,’ she said to Audrey one afternoon as they were sitting together. Audrey was feeding Dorian, a muslin cloth draped over her shoulder for modesty’s sake. ‘Or a bird waiting to hatch out.’

  ‘I should make the most of it,’ Audrey said, looking up from concentrating on her son. She gave a wry smile. ‘Look at us: old maids together.’

  Sylvia shifted her position in the chair, wincing and watching her sister’s gaunt face. She didn’t often ask Audrey how she was feeling about things. There seemed no point. Things were as they were. Terrible things were happening in the world every day, and Audrey just h
ad to get on with life. But she was surprised at her sister’s calmness, considering how stormy and impatient she had always been previously.

  ‘D’you miss the WAAF?’ she dared to ask.

  Audrey gave a faint smile. ‘It all seems a long time ago now. A lot of the girls I knew will have moved on to other places.’ She shrugged. ‘No point in thinking about it, is there? I’ve made my bed . . . You know what they say.’

  ‘But – his father?’ Sylvia nodded at Dorian.

  ‘So far as Dorrie’s concerned, his dad was a fighter pilot who was killed. Nick wasn’t a pilot, and it’s not that likely he’ll get killed. But that’s all he needs to know, isn’t it? He’s never going to see him, so he might as well be dead.’

  Sylvia looked at her, troubled. ‘It’s not true, though.’

  ‘I’m not sure the truth is any better.’ Audrey sat up to transfer Dorrie to her other breast. She gave Sylvia the direct, challenging look that in the past would have quelled her sister into silence. But this time she held Audrey’s gaze.

  ‘So what is the truth then, exactly?’

  ‘That his mother . . .’ Audrey held out her spare arm, palm up, as if to declare something. She brought it back down to her lap again in a defeated way. ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  There was a silence, then Sylvia said, ‘And . . . what about Colin?’

  Audrey looked up with a strange half-smile. ‘Colin?’

  Audrey had been out walking with Colin a number of times in the afternoon, with the pram. Each time he called at the house he had come in specially to ask after Sylvia, and she liked his concerned, thoughtful manner.

  ‘Oh, come on – stop pretending!’ she said. ‘He’s ever so nice.’

  ‘Yes,’ Audrey agreed. ‘He is nice.’

  ‘Just nice?’