Meet Me Under the Clock

by Annie Murray

  But the thought of being with Colin for more than an hour or two filled her with desperation. Easing herself away from him, she touched his hand.

  ‘Shall we walk on?’ she suggested. ‘Otherwise little ’un will wake up.’

  Fifty-Five

  October 1942

  Just before Sylvia at last went back to work at the end of October, Elsie called to see her, to tell her that she and her mother had at last found a place to live – in Leamington.

  ‘The GWR have said I can transfer to Leamington station,’ Elsie told her. ‘They’ve been ever so good about it.’

  ‘Oh, Else!’ Sylvia said. ‘It’s good news for you, but we’ll all miss you. It won’t be the same without you.’

  Elsie looked even thinner, though that hardly seemed possible, and it was clear that she and her mother were under strain. Not only had they endured the terror of that night and of losing their home, but since then they had been crammed into one room in someone else’s house and the resentment had started to build up. The couple had children who were not only very noisy, but kept barging in on Mrs Phipps without invitation, and it was making life very difficult.

  ‘I know,’ Elsie said sadly. ‘But it’ll be good for Mom and me to have a fresh start. It’s not been easy. We’ve got the upstairs to ourselves there – not too far from the station. It’s very small, but it’ll be much better than all the mayhem where we are now. It’s a real stroke of luck for us. I don’t think Mom’s nerves would have stood much more.’ She smiled her rabbity smile. ‘I’ll miss you like mad, Sylv – keep in touch, will you? Come out and see us, now you’re better. It’s only a few stops away, and it’ll make the place feel more like home, having a pal round.’

  Sylvia promised that she would. She was very fond of both Elsie and her mother. They hugged each other fondly as Elsie left.

  ‘There’ll be plenty to do at the yard, with you gone,’ Sylvia said. ‘I’d better get myself back straight away.’

  However, when she presented herself at Hockley Goods Yard on Monday, it was not quite as she had expected. As she walked in across the yard, looking forward to seeing everyone, a couple of people who were busy with their work waved, and she saw Bill Jones the checker, who called out, ‘Hello, Sylv – nice to see yer back!’ But there was a remoteness to them. She had been away for three months and things had moved on.

  And she was in for another shock. The efficient-looking woman in the offices with tightly pinned hair looked through a file and said, ‘I’m afraid we’ve had to fill your position here. Just at the moment we don’t have a place for you. We’ve taken on a number of new porters.’

  Sylvia’s spirits sank even further. She was close to tears.

  ‘Having said that,’ the woman reached over for a file, ‘I’m fairly certain they’ll have a vacancy or two at Snow Hill.’ She thumbed through a couple of pages, saying, ‘Hmmm’ every so often. Then she looked up over her spectacles, reaching for the telephone receiver. ‘I’ll telephone them, if you wait a few moments.’ She hesitated. ‘Why have you been absent?’ Sylvia explained and the woman’s face softened a fraction. ‘This is heavy work, when you’ve had injuries like that. We’ll see if we can get you in as a luggage porter – should be a bit lighter.’

  ‘Should it?’ Sylvia asked glumly.

  The woman, who was in the process of dialling, glanced up with a wry look. ‘Well, we can live in hope.’

  Within five minutes Sylvia was walking round to Hockley passenger station to board a train into Snow Hill and take up a new job. Sitting on the train, she realized that before all her troubles she would have been more upset about this. Now, especially as she had been away from the yard for so long, it felt just like another change among many. Elsie wouldn’t be there anyway. And nothing in the way of change was as bad as losing Laurie. It was simply another job. It would be good to go out to work again. She’d been helping Mom, hanging the washing and doing things in the garden to get her strength back. She stared out of the window now at all the factories and smoking chimneys, at the soot-blackened, hard-working city, and felt resigned and calm. What did it matter where she worked?

  ‘Hey, look at you!’ Audrey said. ‘Let’s see the back.’

  Sylvia twirled around. She had decided to treat herself, before starting work, and had her hair cut in the new Vingle style – trimmed shorter, parted into four Victory Vs at the back, the four sections of hair rolled neatly and pinned.

  ‘That looks lovely on you!’ Audrey said. ‘Very stylish.’

  ‘Well, it certainly keeps this mop under control,’ Sylvia said. She was pleased with it. Somehow having her hair done was like a new start – in a small way.

  In fact she enjoyed getting to know Snow Hill. The damage from the bombing had been patched up for the moment and everything was working as usual for wartime – no frills, but efficiently. She enjoyed being busy, trying to take her mind off things. She moved from platform to platform, barrowing piles of luggage and other strange items: baskets of pigeons or chickens at times, and laden milk churns from the special milk wagons known as ‘syphons’. She got to know the parcels yard, the pearly light from its glazed brick walls, the horses and trucks coming and going. She loved the busyness of it all and it was a comfort.

  Her back and arms ached terribly for the first few days, but she was back in harness again and it felt good to be out among people on the bustling platforms, with the engines sweeping in, pouring smoke and steam up to the arched steel girders spanning the roof, with their churning pistons, the hiss of the steam and shriek of their whistles. Gradually she started getting to know people who worked around the station. Every afternoon there was the newspaper-seller yelling, ‘Get yer Spatchy Mail!’ She remembered dreaming of working at Snow Hill and feeling important. And, she had to admit, she did rather like the feel of moving briskly along the busy platforms in her uniform calling out, ‘’Scuse me!’ or ‘Mind your backs, please!’ as she struggled through the crowds.

  The only thing she found hard to bear was the sight of the station clocks, which filled her with an aching sadness. All those happy meetings that had taken place ‘under the clock’ – all those loved ones catching sight of each other’s faces among the crowds and breaking into happy smiles of anticipation – made her feel lost and lonely. She tried to avoid looking at them. What was the point of making herself even more unhappy?

  All that first week, as she got used to the work and the other staff at Snow Hill, everyone was full of excitement about the progress of the desert war and was listening out eagerly for news. After all these months of struggle, the Allies were at last breaking through and had set the German Afrika Korps on the run. One night in November all the family sat round the wireless in the front room as the sober voice of the news broadcaster at last announced a victory. El Alamein had been recaptured.

  ‘We’ve done it – we beaten Rommel!’ Jack was so excited he got up and ran round the room. ‘We’ve beaten them, sent them packing.’ He tripped over his mother’s basket of knitting and sprawled flat on his face, almost knocking himself out on the fender.

  ‘Jack, for heaven’s sake!’ Mom protested. But no one could really be cross. Jack got up, groaning.

  ‘So,’ Dad said. ‘Those bastards . . . And they haven’t got Stalingrad yet, either.’ He was looking quite emotional. ‘This calls for a celebration, Pauline – have we still got that bottle of port wine?’

  ‘Barely more than the dregs,’ she said. ‘But I’ll look.’

  Mom went out to the pantry and, after a short kerfuffle as she and Sylvia searched the sideboard for an odd assortment of glasses, they were all sipping a thimbleful of the pungent, sweet wine. Audrey and Sylvia sat side-by-side, taking it in turns to hold little Dorian, who smiled and gurgled, happy that they were all happy.

  The port made Jack even more excited, and he kept talking loudly about tanks and Monty and Rommel, and Mom had to ask him to quieten down. She sounded a bit tipsy after even a few sips, and her cheeks a
nd the tip of her nose had gone pink. She and Dad sat in a cloud of smoke, puffing away in celebration. Audrey and Sylvia exchanged a smile. Mom usually looked so careworn these days and it was nice to see her looking mellow and cheerful.

  ‘Well,’ Pauline said raising her glass, ‘let’s hope this is the start of a better run. We could do with some good news, we really could.’

  A few days later, a misty, grey Friday morning that seemed utterly dull and unremarkable became one that, for Sylvia, was stamped upon her memory forever.

  She was on an early shift at Snow Hill, having started work in the freezing darkness before dawn, unloading milk churns. There was the usual morning bustle, with the trains getting up steam, whistling and chugging away along the platforms, and people in a rush to get to work crowding up and down the staircases amid the echoing blare of announcements.

  Things calmed down a little after nine o’clock and she went off for a break and a welcome cup of tea with another of the porters, whom she chatted to sometimes. Refreshed, she then went back to work. She was pushing a barrow laden with heavy boxes over the cobbles of the parcels yard, her arms straining, when she met one of the foremen she hardly knew, hurrying the other way.

  He came straight up to her, suddenly wrenching off his cap to speak to her, which Sylvia found instinctively alarming, as if he was about to break bad news. The cap left his grey hair sticking up boyishly.

  ‘You’re Sylvia Whitehouse, ain’t yer?’

  She righted her barrow, nodding.

  ‘There’s someone to see yer – in the booking hall. Leave that.’ He indicated the barrow that she had automatically been about to start pushing again. ‘You can come back for it.’ Seeing her stricken face, he touched her arm for a moment with a concerned expression. ‘I hope it ain’t bad news, bab.’

  In turmoil, Sylvia ran through the station and tore up the stairs, scarcely able to breathe. What on earth could be wrong? Who would be waiting for her? The only person she could think of was Audrey.

  For a second she couldn’t see anyone in the booking hall that she recognized. She was looking around, feeling so full of panic that she couldn’t see straight. Once her eyes had focused, she saw them – two utterly familiar people, standing together under the big clock, arm-in-arm: her mother and Marjorie Gould. How small they looked, these two mothers, arm-in-arm in this big echoing place, in their winter coats and hats, dwarfed by the grand building and by all the crowds. They looked as if they were propping each other up. Their faces were deadly serious. Sylvia’s whole body went weak. The hope that the news might not be bad left her entirely. What had happened? Was it Dad? Or the baby? As she moved towards them, her legs were so shaky she could hardly get there.

  The pair of them seemed anxious and uneasy, looking round to try and see her. When she was quite near they suddenly spotted her. What Sylvia noticed then was Marjorie Gould’s face, which was overcome by an odd, pent-up expression, quite different from the way she usually looked these days. It was she who first spotted Sylvia and came tearing over to her, her face crumpling. She was trembling all over and crying or laughing – it was hard to say which – but in such a state that she could scarcely speak.

  ‘Sylv, look – take it: read it!’ Whereupon she burst into tears and couldn’t do anything except thrust the piece of paper into Sylvia’s hand.

  Sylvia stared at her in complete bewilderment.

  ‘Read it, love,’ Pauline said. She took Sylvia’s arm.

  Her hands shaking, Sylvia unfolded the paper. She was in such a hurry to devour the words that she had to look again and again to make sense of them. The letter was headed ‘AIR MINISTRY (Casualty Branch)’: ‘. . . to advise you that information has now been received’ – Laurie’s name jumped out at her – ‘your son Laurie Gould, Royal Air Force, has arrived in a neutral country’.

  If Mom had not been holding her, Sylvia would have fallen straight to the floor. Her knees buckled and she sank, her fall broken by her mother’s arm as her legs gave way. She sat looking up at them, shaking all over and holding in her other hand – she would believe it eventually – this letter about the man she loved.

  Pauline knelt on the hard floor beside her, openly weeping now, and put her arm round Sylvia’s shoulders. Marjorie also knelt down beside them, crying with joy. They were oblivious to all the people passing through the ticket hall, these mothers who would normally never have dreamed of making an exhibition of themselves. At this moment no one else existed.

  Sylvia, her face a ghostly white, looked up, searching her mother’s face and Marjorie’s. ‘So it means – does it mean . . . ?’

  ‘He’s alive, my sweet, that’s what it means.’ The tears coursed down Marjorie’s cheeks, ‘He’s alive, our boy is – and he’s coming back to us.’

  Fifty-Six

  November 1942, Miranda del Ebro Concentration Camp, Spain

  Laurie squatted on the rocky ground, his left hand shading his eyes against the low-angled sunlight of a winter afternoon. Rows of barrack-like huts stretched into the distance on each side of him. Around them moved swarms of men dressed, like him, in rough cotton uniforms.

  He had just returned from the latrines and felt limp and sick, his guts still griping. Even when you couldn’t see the latrines, the stench of them seemed to remain in your nostrils. They stood near the main entrance, suspended on a platform over the bed of the Ebro river, so that the effluent could be washed away downstream. A path led along the middle of the rows of huts, which at certain times of the day served as a meeting place for the camp inmates to stand around or sprawl on the ground. Around him groups of men of mixed nationalities were chatting, some playing cards or jackstones. Once the sun went down, the nights were bitter. The huts were overcrowded to bursting point, the only thing to warm the inmates being the heat of all the other verminous bodies.

  Laurie sat quietly, trying to think of anything except the cramp in his belly. He fingered the leather mitten that he wore at all times on his right hand, one of the pair they had made for him before he left Belgium. The edges of it chafed and itched. He leaned forward, bent almost double, rubbing his left hand back and forth over his scabby, shaven head. Then, out of a habit he was barely aware of, his fingers felt their way along the raw scar on the right side of his jaw.

  He tried never to dwell on the past months. His thoughts were all of the future. The letter he had written might have reached his mother by now. British diplomatic officials would get them out of here, somehow. One day, he would go home. This was the essence of everything, he had discovered – to have hope. And until hope was killed, you had to let it burn hard within you.

  ‘I say, are you English?’ These comprehensible words emerged out of the mixed torrent of French, Spanish, Polish and other languages in the camp.

  Laurie looked up to see who was speaking, shielding his eyes again. He winced as his guts griped.

  ‘Sorry, old chap. Like that, is it? Look – I’ll come down.’ The man squatted. Laurie saw a gaunt, dark-haired man, his hair shaven like the rest of them. He examined Laurie closely, a mix of curiosity and amused pity in his brown eyes. ‘Back-door trots, eh?’ He peered more closely. ‘You are English?’

  Laurie smiled faintly. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Oh, something about you. You could just about pass as a Frog . . .’

  ‘Has been known,’ Laurie said.

  ‘I dare say.’

  There was a silence. Laurie could feel the man’s intent gaze on him and looked down at the ground, searching for something to say. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got any grub?’

  ‘Ah, well now, let’s see. I could rustle up a steak-and-kidney pudding with heaps of mash and gravy – followed by suet pudding and custard. Or maybe you’re more of a fish man?’

  Laurie chuckled. ‘A good roast beef would suit me best, to tell you the truth. Not sure my innards could take it at the moment, though.’ He raised his head again and the two of them looked into each other’s half-starved faces. The food w
as completely inadequate in the over-crowded camp. Quietly the other man asked, ‘What happened: kite come down?’

  Laurie nodded. ‘The big one over Cologne. Made it over . . .’ Weakness made him gasp for breath. ‘Must have caught flak coming back. Not that I remember much.’

  ‘Hurt yourself?’ He eyed the mitten.

  ‘Smashed up my leg. Singed the hands.’ He held up his muffled right hand. ‘This one especially. I was lucky.’ He couldn’t go over it, not again. ‘How about you, chum?’

  ‘Bremen. We parachuted out – the pilot was killed, and the arse-end Charlie, poor lad. Not sure what happened to all of them, but three of us made it, and two of us are here. I’m Bob Stevens, flight engineer, by the—’ He held out his right hand to shake Laurie’s, then withdrew it. ‘Hell – sorry, pal.’

  ‘It’s okay – it’s not as bad as you might think. I’ve still got my fingers. They gave me the mitts to hide the worst of the burns; would have looked very fishy. I just keep this one on – it’s my . . .’ He shrugged, searching for the word.

  ‘Mascot?’

  ‘Sort of. I’ll take it off when – if – I get back to Blighty. Anyway, this one’s operational.’ He held out his less-scarred left hand and they shook. ‘Laurie Gould, navigator.’ He named his squadron.