War Babies

by Annie Murray

  ‘When I was five,’ Rachel said. She didn’t feel like going into how or why. ‘There was just the two of us after that.’

  There was silence for a second. ‘She had it hard then, your mother,’ Gladys said.

  Rachel didn’t know what to say. She kept her eyes on her work, feeling the gaze of the soldier in the photograph looking down at them and her heart contracted with sadness, but she was too shy to say anything to Gladys about it. Gladys was so dignified and in a way, forbidding, that she could not imagine ever asking her about anything. She had an aura about her of both strength and a deep reserve. Rachel thought of the bedroom door upstairs, always closed. Once she’d asked Danny if he’d ever been in there. Danny had shrugged.

  ‘No. Why should I?’

  Rachel knew that she would never go against Gladys’s wishes. Gladys was the queen of the house and they both owed her so much. Rachel already loved and respected her. But she also realized in that moment that she knew barely anything about this woman who had taken her into her home.

  Twenty-Two

  The longer Rachel stayed in Aston, the more Danny and Gladys seemed like her real family. Gladys was in charge in the yard and in her own home and there was something reassuring about the way she was boss. Rachel soon learned the way she liked things done in the house: the places where she kept her crocks and kitchen things, the fact that her bedroom was private with the door always kept shut, the fact that she liked good manners around her. She was also very hard-working, forever mending or ironing something or out getting goods to sell on the market. All these things became details that Rachel never questioned. She felt at home.

  And it was wonderful that she and Danny could be together now, properly, even if that did mean nights squashed in side by side in Taplin & May’s cellar, or the air-raid shelter at the back of the next-door yard.

  The city was taking a terrible pounding. Everyone was bonded together by long nights of fear and sleeplessness. Sitting in the shelter with Dolly and Mo Morrison and the boys, and with Lil Gittins, they drew closer as neighbours. Except Ma Jackman whose response to sharing anything with her neighbours was, ‘You’re not having any of mine . . .’ Old Mr and Mrs Parsons refused to get up.

  ‘Me and the old girl’ll stay abed of a night,’ Mr Parsons had told Gladys when the bombing started the year before. ‘If it’s our time to go, we’ll go. We’d take so long to get in the shelter, my old girl and me, the raid would be over by the time we’d got there. Don’t you go worrying about us, Mrs Poulter. We’ll take what comes.’

  Just before Easter there came a raid as long and destructive as any that had gone before. They staggered out of the shelter in the morning wondering if anything could still be standing. There was no water in the taps and the air was rank with the smell of burning.

  ‘I wonder if Mom and Cissy’re all right?’ Rachel said as they limped stiffly back across the yard.

  Rachel had reached an arrangement with Peggy whereby she called in every week or two. Sometimes she longed for her mother’s approval and support; at others she thought, I’m a married woman now and she’ll just have to get used to it. At least it meant she could see Cissy, who was always overjoyed when she visited. She wanted her little sister to know she cared about her and wanted to be with her.

  Danny put his arm round her. ‘Best go and see after work,’ he said. ‘If you can get there. God knows what’ll be running after all this.’ Areas were often cordoned off where there was the worst damage, a landmine or an unexploded bomb.

  ‘How much more of it?’ Rachel said tearfully, exhausted by the very idea of a day’s work after the night of howling bombs, the ground shaking around them.

  ‘At least we’re all here today, that’s the main thing,’ Gladys said, walking beside them with a couple of blankets folded in her arms. ‘Let’s be thankful for that.’ She started humming one of her hymns. ‘Praise my soul the King of heaven . . .’ Gladys found a lot of comfort in hymns.

  As the exhausting day passed and the terrible damage across Birmingham became known, Rachel stopped feeling so sorry for herself and knew Gladys was right. A lot of the burning smell, they discovered, was from Summer Lane which had been bombed from end to end, and there was damage to St Martin’s church in the Bullring and many other places.

  Once again, against the odds, the Devonshire Works stood unscathed amid the destruction all around. Rachel struggled through that day at work as if in a dream, feeling queasy and worn out.

  That afternoon, when she finally got back to Aston, she had a shaming disagreement with Gladys.

  Walking into the cosy little house, queasy with exhaustion, she threw herself down at the table, resting her head on her arms, feeling she might never get up again. Danny was not home yet. The room smelt of ironing and Gladys was at the table, peeling potatoes in a bowl and humming again.

  ‘Did you see your mother?’ she broke off to ask.

  ‘Yes,’ Rachel mumbled to the tabletop.

  ‘House all right, is it?’

  ‘Yes.’ She did not mean to be rude, she was just so weary. She became aware of a movement near her and turned her head to see Gladys standing over her.

  ‘What’s up with you, miss?’ she enquired tartly.

  Rachel was beginning to realize that if there was one thing that was like a red rag to a bull with Gladys, it was people feeling sorry for themselves. But she did feel sorry for herself at that moment. She’d sat up all night, had been working all day – and she was expecting a baby. She was all in!

  ‘Nothing,’ Rachel said, still slumped over the table. ‘I’m just tired, that’s all.’

  ‘In case you dain’t notice,’ Gladys said, a dangerous tone in her voice, ‘we was all in the shelter all last night, listening to the same Jerry bombs falling from the sky. We still have to keep going, you know – the tea won’t cook itself.’

  ‘But I’m more tired than you,’ Rachel retorted. ‘I’ve been at work all day, and I’m the one who’s having a baby!’ She heard her voice turn high and whiny. ‘How would you know what it’s like? You haven’t got any children.’

  There was a silence so profound that she slowly pulled herself upright, filled with a plummeting sense of dread. She had never seen Gladys look anything like this before, not with her, anyway. Her jaw was clenched and her eyes bored into Rachel.

  ‘How do you think you’re in any position to say what I know or don’t know, miss?’ Gladys’s voice was low and hard.

  ‘I . . .’ She stuttered. ‘Well – you don’t, do you? Have any children, I mean?’

  In the tense seconds before Gladys could speak again, there were footsteps along the yard and Dolly’s voice called out, ‘Glad – you in?’

  Gladys softened the grim expression on her face. ‘Where else’d I be?’ she called. ‘Come in, Doll.’

  Dolly’s face appeared round the door. She had on a red flowery blouse and red lipstick. As ever she looked pretty and rather exotic. ‘All right?’ she said. ‘Ooh, ’ello, Rach – how’s the babby?’

  ‘All right,’ Rachel said shyly. She felt intense relief that Dolly had turned up when she did. Her heart was still beating fast after the way Gladys had looked at her. She’d better be careful in future. Gladys obviously thought she was getting above herself and she had never realized before that Gladys was so bitter about not having had children.

  Dolly stood leaning on the door frame. ‘One of my little buggers’s come home with nits!’ she complained. ‘I bet the whole lot of ’em ’ve got them now – I’m going to have to see to them tonight. I bet it’s that Carter boy Reggie knocks about with. He gets everything, he does – impetigo, fleas, you name it . . .’

  ‘Cuppa tea?’ Gladys asked, stemming the flow of indignation.

  ‘All right, ta.’ Dolly sank down at the table, pulling her cigarettes out of her pocket. She giggled. ‘I’ll laugh if Mo’s got them an’ all. We’ll never hear the end of it, ’spe-cially if it goes all round the factory!’

  Glady
s chuckled as well and Rachel felt relief seep through her. She hoped nothing more would be said about the disagreement.

  ‘I’ll get the boys to clean up that pram for you now the weather’s picking up, Rach,’ Dolly said. ‘It’s in the coal hole so it’s a filthy mess, but it’s not had anything nasty in it. It’ll clean up nice. And I’m not planning on filling it again!’ She gave her chesty laugh.

  Rachel smiled and nodded her thanks.

  ‘Now,’ Dolly said, coming over all motherly. She looked intently at Rachel. ‘How far on are you? About five months? When you’ve had it, you want to get yourself down to the clinic – it ain’t far. I know some of ’em don’t hold with it but I went with the last two and they was good to me. They’ll find you a few bits and pieces for the babby if you need it. And they’ll see everything’s all right . . .’

  Rachel saw Gladys watching them.

  ‘Should I, Auntie?’ she asked, looking very humbly at Gladys. Both of them knew it was a way of apologizing for the words they had had earlier.

  ‘Dolly should know,’ Gladys said, still speaking rather tartly. She took a seat beside her friend and started pouring tea. ‘If she says go, you go.’ Rachel took this as her cue to leave. The friends wanted to chat. But she also felt that she and Gladys had begun to make it up.

  ‘Danny – what the hell’re you doing?’

  Rachel lay on their attic bed on a sweltering hot summer night as Danny pranced around the room.

  As soon as they were married, they had taken up in the attic. The two of them shared Danny’s bed, a three-quarter-sized frame which was not too bad. Rachel had made the room as homely as possible with some clippings from magazines – girls in pretty frocks and hats and a seaside view taken in Cornwall. ‘That’s for Jack and Patch,’ she had teased Danny as she gummed it to the wall.

  Going to bed and cuddling up with Danny was Rachel’s very favourite moment of the day, especially on those blessed nights when there was no raid.

  ‘You’re so nice and warm!’ she exclaimed, the first time they slept a whole night together. ‘It’s like sleeping next to the fire.’

  But now a fire was the last thing she needed and Danny was jumping about like an excited flea.

  ‘Stop it!’ she hissed. ‘What’re you doing?’

  She knew perfectly well what he was doing – he was boxing his own shadow, as if there was an opponent coming at him through the door.

  Danny took another lunge, dancing light on his feet. Rachel watched him miserably. She was so hot and uncomfortable, her belly distended further than she could have believed was possible. Her skin itched, her legs and back ached, and she was forever having to go and spend a penny.

  ‘Littl’un in there must be pressing down on you,’ Dolly told her. Whenever Dolly said something about the discomforts of carrying a child, it was always with a knowing smile.

  ‘Oh – you should’ve seen me when I was carrying Fred,’ she would begin. Fred or one of the four other lads. Then a whole catalogue of horrors would follow – swollen ankles, heartburn, piles – oh dearie me, those piles. And that was before they got on to the birth itself. Don’t tell me! Rachel always wanted to scream. She would leave the room, upset and furious. She wanted them to give her sympathy, not fill her head full of terrifying ideas about what might be to come!

  Then this weekend the Morrison boys and a few other hangers-on had hauled their old perambulator out into the yard and spent a happy hour sloshing water over it – and each other, naturally – and polishing it up, with Mo trying to supervise the proceedings and getting almost as wet as them. When Rachel saw it sitting out to dry in the sun, it had made her stomach turn with a mixture of excitement and dread. A pram – for a real baby!

  ‘Danny,’ she said miserably. ‘Come ’ere, will you?’

  Danny directed a vicious right hook at some invisible opponent. Rachel watched him. It was one of those moments when she was filled with bitter envy. It might be that Danny was this baby’s father, but what difference did it make to him? His body was just as it had been before and his life would just go on as it had. She was the one having to put up with all this discomfort and not being able to lie comfortably in bed. Let alone walking about all day at work.

  ‘Danny.’

  ‘Wha’?’ He lunged again.

  ‘I want you.’

  ‘Oh . . . All right.’ He bounced onto the bed. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I just feel . . . I’m scared, Danny.’ The tears came then. ‘I don’t know what it’s going to be like. Feel it –’

  He placed his hand on her. Arms and legs were lurching about inside her drum of a belly. Their eyes met. She snuggled closer to him.

  ‘It’s a bit like having a bomb inside you,’ she said tearfully. ‘You never know when it’s going to go off and what it’s going to be like.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Danny said. Though she sensed that he too was frightened. He was about to be a father and he had only just turned seventeen.

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ Danny said. ‘You’re good at things, you are. And you’ll be all right at that an’ all.’

  She pressed her cheek against his warm chest, a little comforted. ‘That’s a nice thing to say,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to see, won’t we?’ She looked at him with big eyes. ‘Give us a cuddle,’ she said. ‘I need you near me.’

  So he took her in his arms and they held each other close. Rachel kissed his salty neck, feeling, in those moments, as if she had everything she needed in the world.

  Twenty-Three

  August 1941

  ‘Don’t forget your change, bab!’

  ‘Oh – ta.’ Rachel turned back with her bag of shopping to take the coins the woman was holding out to her in the baker’s shop.

  ‘You must be well off,’ a woman joked in the queue. ‘I’ll ’ave it off yer if you don’t want it – not that there’s much to spend it on these days!’

  The other women laughed and Rachel smiled vaguely.

  ‘That’s how you get when you’re that far on,’ someone else commented. ‘You can’t remember if you’re coming or going.’

  Rachel had now given up work as the baby was due any day. She felt self-conscious walking the streets, all big at the front and wearing a baggy floral dress that Dolly had lent her.

  ‘I know it ain’t pretty,’ Dolly said as both of them eyed the frumpy frock with sludge green leaves all over it. ‘Makes you feel like a sack of taters – but it’s comfy enough. I’m hoping never to need it again but I daren’t give it away – it’d be tempting fate!’

  Gladys kept telling Rachel that she wasn’t having her sitting around being waited on hand and foot – she could get out and do something useful if she wasn’t bringing in any wages. So Rachel had taken on some of the shopping.

  Before she finished work, leaving Bird’s sadly behind her, she went to visit her mother. Every time she saw her, Peggy looked at her with disdain.

  ‘The state of you,’ she had remarked several times. She seemed ashamed and embarrassed by the sight of her pregnant daughter.

  Rachel told Cissy that she might not see her for a little while but that soon she would be giving her a new little friend to play with. Cissy, at least, looked entranced at this news.

  These days Rachel felt neither happy nor sad about the baby. She just felt as if she was in a haze most of the time and all she wanted to do was lie down and sleep. She was just heading into the greengrocer’s when she almost collided with someone else in the doorway.

  ‘Oh!’ Rachel cried, startled, one hand instantly protecting her body and the baby.

  ‘Sorry!’ the other girl cried. She was a frail-looking, mousey-haired, blue-eyed person, not much older than Rachel, with a rather sweet face and dressed in a mauve shirtwaister dress that hung loosely on her skinny frame. Her wispy brown hair was dragged back any old how. She also seemed to have been in another world.

  ‘Oh – sorry,’ she said again. She stared at Rachel’s prominent belly, then in
to her face. Tears came very abruptly and ran down her cheeks. She turned away and could not seem to stop crying. Rachel was not quite sure what to do.

  ‘You all right?’ she asked awkwardly. ‘Did I hurt you?’

  The girl turned back, wiping her face. ‘Yes. No. I’m all right – only, I was expecting as well and my baby died, just last month. I was well on but it wasn’t moving and the doctor said . . . They made me have him, but there wasn’t a breath of life in him . . .’ She crumpled into grief again. ‘And now they’ve called up my Francis, God love him, and – well, I don’t know when I’ll see him and I just . . .’ She broke down again. ‘I just want a baby – that’s all. God, all I need is to hold a baby in my arms!’

  Rachel felt her throat begin to ache in sympathy with the other girl, who looked not much older than herself.

  ‘I’m sorry for you,’ she said. ‘That’s a terrible thing to happen.’

  ‘I’ve just got to get over it,’ the girl said. ‘Only with my Francis going as well – and I’m moving back in with my mother – what’s the use in paying two lots of rent? And I just . . .’ She shook her head, unable to go on.

  Rachel wasn’t sure what to say. She just stood there, feeling sorry.

  The girl pulled herself together eventually and told her that her name was Netta Fitzpatrick. They parted, wishing each other luck.

  Afterwards she could not stop thinking of Netta and her distraught grief after giving birth to a dead child. Feeling her own baby’s vigorous movements, she realized that she had a lot of luck already.

  It was sometime in the middle of the night when it began. Rachel, lying restlessly on her left side, trying to get comfortable, woke as a warm gush of liquid arrived suddenly in the bed.

  Ugh, she thought. I’ve wet myself. How can I have done that? She struggled out of bed to get away from the wet sheets. As she stood up, her abdomen clenched like a vice and she doubled up over the bed.

  ‘Danny!’ she gasped. ‘Wake up – I’m having it!’ This ended in a wail as the pain reached its peak, then died off.