War Babies

by Annie Murray

  Rachel stared at her.

  ‘A baby,’ Peggy said. ‘I am carrying a child. You will have a brother or sister.’

  ‘But –’ Rachel was astonished by this. ‘Aren’t you . . . too old?’ That was what Mrs Davies said sometimes. She’d had little Bobby and Mr Davies joked about having another six. ‘Oh, I’m too old for all that,’ Mrs Davies would say.

  ‘I am almost thirty-nine years of age,’ Peggy said sniffily. ‘There are children born to women a good deal older than me, I can assure you.’

  ‘Oh,’ Rachel said. She had no idea what to say next. None of this felt as if it was anything to do with her. But, just in case, she added, ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘It may be for you,’ Peggy snapped. ‘But it’s not for me and Fred’s none too pleased either.’

  Rachel found herself wondering about Danny, whether she would see him this week. In any week that was the best thing ever to happen.

  ‘Well,’ Peggy was saying. ‘Now you know. But you’ll need to be a help round the house. I shan’t be able to manage anything.’

  ‘All right,’ Rachel said. Leaving the room, she shut this abstract news entirely out of her mind. It was just another reason why the place where she lived did not feel like home.

  Most Saturdays when she was helping Gladys Poulter, Lilian and Mrs Davies would come to the market. Rachel knew that Lilian was disappointed that she no longer came into town with them. The two girls saw plenty of each other at school and at other times, however, and Lilian wasn’t one to bear a grudge. She was impressed by Rachel’s post in the Rag Market. It was lovely, standing there in the crowded market, suddenly to see their familiar faces coming towards her, smiling and always stopping for a natter. Mrs Davies and Gladys became quite friendly towards each other.

  ‘Ooh, I’d’ve liked your job,’ Mrs Davies told Gladys during a lull one morning. Rachel was making herself busy tidying the clothes while Lilian watched enviously. ‘Beats factory work hands down – that’s what I’ve always done.’ Mrs Davies had worked in the jewellery quarter before she was married the first time. ‘Still – I’ve got my little Bobby now and Bill likes me to stop at home, so I can’t grumble.’

  ‘I started off after the war,’ Gladys said. ‘Had to do summat and it was on top of another job in them days.’

  ‘Your husband . . . ?’ Mrs Davies asked carefully.

  ‘He passed away in 1916.’

  Rachel watched Mrs Davies’s sympathetic face and listened to her ‘Oh dear’s and ‘How dreadful’s. Rachel loved it when the two women chatted. It felt as if both of them were her aunties. Best of all was when Danny came across, sometimes on his break in the afternoon. There wasn’t a lot of talking, all through that time. They were young and awkward with each other. He’d nod to his aunt who’d tease him – ‘Oh my word, you stink like a lobster pot, Danny!’ – and she’d give him a sweet from her little bags of treats and ask him how trade was doing in the fish market. And he and Rachel would mainly look at each other. Rachel always gave him a smile, putting everything she felt into her eyes. And he’d say, ‘All right?’ to her and maybe they would say a thing or two. And Danny just seemed to like them both being there and would hang around for a while and go reluctantly back to work, saying, ‘Ta-ra – see yer.’ Rachel would watch him stride off across the market, tall and lithe, and the sight of him always gave her a twinge of excitement inside and she wanted to call to him, ‘Don’t go!’

  She was happiest away from home, and whatever was going on there seemed to have nothing much to do with her. This was where she wanted to be.

  Eleven

  ‘A filing clerk?’ Peggy said. But she had not the energy to be as snooty as she would have been a few months ago when she was saying, ‘My daughter will never go into a factory.’ Rachel left school at the end of the summer term and Peggy was heavily pregnant and too languid and tired to get worked up about anything, even if she had hoped for something more glamorous, like Lewis’s department store. ‘Well, that’s a start, I suppose,’ she sighed.

  Rachel had perversely decided that working in a factory was therefore exactly what she wanted to do. Lilian had got herself a job learning to be a bookkeeper for a firm making cricket bats and she seemed happy enough. Going to the Labour Exchange with her references, Rachel was told that she could go and work as a filing clerk and trainee office junior – at the Bird’s Custard Factory in Gibb Street.

  Rachel was pleased with the job. She liked the huge Devonshire Works off Digbeth, not too far from where she and her mother had previously lived, with its sweet, vanillary smells. The job would keep her out of the house for most days of the week. Miss Pike, the lady who was in charge of her, seemed even-tempered enough. She was in her thirties with her hair swept up into a neat pleat. When Rachel started the work, learning to sort piles of filing in the offices of the vast red-brick building, she found it quite easy. And best of all, the Works were not far from the Markets – and Danny.

  As that spring turned into a long, hot summer, all the talk was of war, of Hitler’s ‘sabre-rattling’ as people kept calling it.

  ‘They’re on about sending the kids off – evacuating them,’ Fred said one stifling evening as they sat round the table in the dark upstairs room. Eyeing Rachel with richly insincere concern, he said, ‘Maybe you should send this one off – keep her safe.’

  ‘No, I’m not going!’ The words rushed out of Rachel’s mouth before she could stop them. She wasn’t being packed off anywhere on his say-so!

  ‘No, Fred – they’re only talking about the young children,’ Peggy said in a weary voice. Her pregnancy was very much on show now and she was tired and resentful. None of it seemed real to Rachel – not that there was actually a baby in there. ‘They don’t send away the ones who’re out of school.’

  How much Fred Horton would love to be rid of her, Rachel thought! He wouldn’t have to bother with her then, the cuckoo in his nest who had to be fed and clothed. And now, with another child on the way who was actually his flesh and blood, how very much more she was in the way. But he wasn’t going to be able to!

  ‘Huh,’ he said. ‘I s’pose we’ll have to find her a decent job somewhere. There’s no need to look at me like that, wench – find some manners!’

  Her thoughts must have been written on her glowering face. Anywhere, so long as it’s away from you.

  Within days of her starting at Bird’s in August, there was an air-raid practice. When the howling alarm went off, they all trooped down into the enormous basement which was now to be an air-raid shelter.

  ‘Ooh, sign of things to come,’ one of the women said as they stood waiting in the dank underground space. ‘I hope they’re going to bring something down to sit on.’

  War was coming daily closer it seemed and the factory was even busier than usual.

  ‘Orders are pouring in,’ Miss Pike said. ‘You’ve never seen anything like it. Everyone’s stocking up in case of shortages.’

  The days were very busy and Rachel found that time flew without her needing to watch the hands of the big clock on the office wall. There was not much time to think of anything else as she put papers and documents in order in the huge filing cabinets. By the end of each day, despite the sensible black lace-up shoes Peggy had insisted on buying, her feet were aching and she was longing to sit down. But she liked the job – it was all right. Anything was better than hanging around at home.

  At the end of one afternoon, once she had picked up her things and gone down the stone steps out into the late-afternoon sunshine, she saw a figure standing a little way along Gibb Street. Her heart picked up speed. Tall and thin, leaning up against the wall in a way she instantly recognized: Danny.

  As she drew closer along the narrow street amid the other hurrying workers, she saw him spot her. He immediately slouched even more against the wall, as if trying to look nonchalant. He pulled his cap down further and pretended to examine his fingers.

  ‘Hello!’ she said. ‘What’re you doin
g here?’ Surely there was no other reason he could be here? Was he really waiting for her?

  He looked up, solemn-faced. ‘Oh, hello,’ he said, as if he had not especially been expecting to see her there, though he must have been. Suddenly he dragged his hat from his head. ‘All right, are yer?’

  ‘Yes. I’m doing all right. Working here –’ She held her arm out towards the Bird’s works.

  ‘Auntie said.’

  ‘I’ll still be coming to the market Sat’d’ys,’ she said.

  Danny seemed to take this in, and gave a nod. There was a silence. A stream of other people were moving past them. The silence went on. Danny seemed to have stalled. Why was he here? But Rachel sensed that something had changed. Now that she had left school things felt different. These days, they were both in the grownup world of work.

  ‘Do you . . .’ he brought out eventually. ‘D’you like fish and chips?’

  ‘Do I . . . ?’ Rachel laughed. ‘Yes! Why?’

  ‘Well, I thought we could get some.’

  ‘Haven’t you had enough of fish?’ she teased.

  Danny gave her a look. ‘We don’t eat it. We just push it about. D’you want some or not?’

  Rachel thought. Her mother would be expecting her home for her tea. Mom’s moods were very uncertain these days. But Danny meeting her, asking her to come with him – of course she would go with him. Nothing could stop her!

  ‘Yes. All right,’ she said.

  Without discussing it they headed out to Digbeth, the main road to town. It had been a very hot day and the sun was now sinking low, burnishing all the soot-blackened buildings with copper light. They passed the Digbeth Institute and the old pub. The street was noisy with trams, trucks and carts and they did not talk. She was just aware of him beside her, fractionally in front, hands in his pockets. He often kept his hands in his pockets, especially his right hand, as if he had hold of something. He had grown fast and was almost a head taller than her now. His head tilted forward slightly as he walked. She looked down at her black lace-up shoes. They might have been practical for standing a lot of the day but they were ugly so-and-sos. But she did not think Danny was paying any attention to her shoes.

  Danny had come to find her! That was all she could think. With him beside her, every part of her body felt more awake and alert. He kept swimming in and out of her mind. Sometimes Danny was all she was aware of, the fall of his feet in his big boots, the angle of his thin shoulders, the line of brown hair along his neck beneath his cap, the brown mole just below his left earlobe. While caught up in him she was oblivious to anything else. A moment later the sounds and smells would burst in on her.

  The Bullring was busy as ever, all its sights and smells rich to the senses. People milled around the stalls looking for late-in-the-day bargains. A thin fountain of sparks dropped from a knife-grinder’s stone. Amid the cries of the fruit and veg vendors echoing along Spiceal Street, she became aware of a deep, ponderous voice raised in song. Glancing back she spotted the man in front of the statue of Nelson, arms held out, his mouth a black, moving shape in his face:

  ‘That day of wrath, that dreadful day,

  When heaven and earth shall pass away,

  What power shall be the sinner’s stay?

  How shall he meet that dreadful day?’

  They passed further away so that she could no longer make out the words.

  ‘There’s going to be a war,’ Danny said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘People say so. I don’t know.’

  ‘I wish I could go,’ he said fiercely.

  Startled, she turned to him. ‘Why? You’re too young.’

  ‘I know. I know.’ He sounded frustrated. He stopped and looked around as if wishing he hadn’t spoken. ‘Let’s get some grub. I’m starving.’

  ‘I’ve got no pay yet,’ she pointed out. ‘I’ve got enough for a few chips.’

  Danny gallantly paid for both of them. They carried their newspaper-wrapped bundles, went back down towards the church and found a place to settle close to the church wall. The man seemed to have stopped singing for the moment. Rachel peeled off the outer layer of newspaper before the grease could seep through and laid it on the ground to sit on.

  ‘We can both squeeze on there,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to dirty my skirt.’

  They sat very close together, their bent thighs just touching. Rachel pulled her navy work skirt carefully over her knees, but even so they received some disapproving looks from passers-by. As she opened the packet of fish and chips her mouth began to water and she realized she was very hungry. Danny wolfed his down as well.

  ‘Nice,’ he said, in between mouthfuls.

  ‘Yeah. Lovely. Ta,’ she said. ‘That was nice of you.’

  Danny turned his head slightly. ‘S’all right. I’m getting wages now.’

  ‘So’m I. Or I will be when I get paid anyway.’ There was a pause, then she said, ‘Have you found your sisters?’ She did not really think they could have done or Gladys would surely have told her.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘She’s trying to find out – Auntie, I mean. She’s been round a few places in Birmingham, but no one seems to know.’

  He sank into silence again, tapping his feet. He was forever on the move, like something wound up.

  ‘D’you like your job?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah. It’s OK. I have to start early – it’s hard to get up.’

  ‘Why d’you want to go – to war?’

  ‘I dunno.’ Danny stared ahead of him. ‘It’d be different from here. Seems like you’d go places. It wouldn’t be boring.’

  ‘How d’you know? It might be.’

  ‘Yeah. I s’pose. But it’d be a different sort of boring.’ He turned a sudden grin on her.

  Rachel laughed. ‘I s’pose that’s one way of looking at it! Now you say it I wish I could go too.’

  They quickly finished the food and threw the paper away.

  ‘Can I walk home with you?’ Danny asked.

  Rachel was completely taken aback. ‘What, you – with me?’

  He shrugged. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But it’s miles, Danny!’ Gladys’s house was in Aston – across the other side of town. She knew she ought to catch the bus: she was already going to be much later home than her mother was expecting. But if she could walk with Danny . . .

  ‘Doesn’t matter. It’s only a few miles out my way. I’ve got nothing else to do.’

  This last comment was a bit of a dampener, but she tried not to mind. ‘You’re a case, Danny, you are,’ she said. But she knew she was blushing. She and Danny could walk together all that way!

  They set off in the balmy evening, along Digbeth, out of town.

  ‘This is where we used to live,’ she said, leading him into Floodgate Street. She showed him the house in the shadow of the railway arch.

  ‘You lived here?’ Danny looked up at the great blue span of the bridge and down at the scruffy little house. He seemed surprised.

  ‘We did. Not any more. Mom always wanted to get out of here to somewhere better.’ She thought bitterly of Fred Horton but she didn’t say anything.

  ‘It’s just like where we lived,’ Danny said. He seemed reassured somehow. ‘Before our mom passed on, I mean. And it’s a bit like Auntie’s. We live on a yard – off of Alma Street.’

  He sounded very young when he said that. For a moment Rachel felt like taking his hand but she thought better of it. They wound their way through Deritend, across to the Coventry Road.

  ‘D’you remember your mom?’ she asked. ‘I can only remember my dad a bit – I was very young when he passed on.’ Passed on. The silence of shame clung to her father’s death, but it seemed so remote from her that she scarcely ever thought of it. Peggy never mentioned him.

  ‘Course I can remember,’ Danny said, so fiercely that Rachel was taken aback. ‘She was the best, our mom. I’d never forget her.’

  ‘What was she like?’ she asked, encouraged that he seemed so keen to
talk.

  ‘Well, she was – you know – a proper mom. Nice and kind. It was the old man who spoiled everything. He always did, the drunken sod.’

  Rachel remembered the frightening man who had dragged Danny away all those years ago.

  ‘Have you seen him? Since you came back, I mean?’

  ‘No,’ Danny almost shouted. ‘And I don’t want to! I’ll kill ’im if I set eyes on ’im – I swear to God I’ll finish ’im off!’

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ she said gently.

  ‘Don’t you?’ He gave her a sharp look.

  She returned his gaze, steadily. ‘No. I don’t.’

  He made a sound of annoyance. ‘What would you know, any road?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said carefully. ‘But I don’t blame you, that’s all.’

  There in the street, on some dusty bit of the Coventry Road, he stopped abruptly and turned to her.

  ‘I want to show you summat.’ His hand was gripping the thing in his pocket, whatever it was, and he seemed unsure whether to bring it out.

  ‘What?’ she said, trying to sound encouraging.

  Danny hesitated for a moment, his eyes wide, searching her face as if to be sure of something.

  ‘Come over ’ere.’

  They were at the corner of a road with rows of houses. Leaning up against the low wall, Danny pulled from his pocket a cheap little notebook with a worn, dark green cover. The spine of it had been reinforced with a strip of black cloth about an inch wide, glued round it.

  ‘I found this in the home,’ he said. ‘There was a cupboard, with a few old books in and this fell out from under them when I was having a look. I tore out the pages which had writing on.’

  Rachel watched, feeling it better not to say anything. Danny opened it and showed her, turning the pages which were worn soft and old. Each page was covered with little drawings, done with a not very sharp pencil, many of them smudged. The drawings weren’t very good, but over and over again she saw the same thing. There was a boy in a hat – it looked like a straw hat – pulled down low, wearing raggedy trousers and no shoes. At his side was a little dog with perky ears, one sticking up, the other lying down. Half of the dog’s face was black, the other white, and he had a black splotch on the back of his otherwise white body. The boy and the dog both had big, sad eyes. Looking at them as Danny turned the pages, Rachel felt herself react in a strange way. Something about the boy and the dog – even badly drawn – tugged at her. She felt for them, tenderness for their sweetness. It was as if she fell in love with a cartoon boy and a daft-looking dog. Tears prickled in her eyes.