War Babies

by Annie Murray

  She smiled at the sight of Danny’s looping, childish handwriting. Then her smile faded. The letter was dated at the beginning of May and the address: ‘Not allowed to say where I am.’

  Dear Rach,

  I’m in hospital at present but don’t worry, by the time you get this I shall be long gone out I expect. I got bitten by one of the bloodsuckers [the middle of the sentence was blocked out by the censor] arm swelled up like a football! It made me feel pretty bad but I’m on the mend now. Also, couldn’t use my arm, so no good to anyone.

  I’ve been lying here thinking about you and about home and your news about another little one on the way. I can hardly believe it. But I wish the war would just end and I could come home and look after you. We’ve all had enough. I don’t feel I’m very good with words but sometimes when I think of you and little Melly I feel like the luckiest person ever to have found you. You’re my everything, Rach. There’s a bloke I know here who knows all about the stars and he says you tell everything by where the North Star is because it keeps still. Well, you’re my North Star – everything revolves around you, my whole life and everything. All I want to do is get out of this rotten stinking country and come back to you again and be in our room, our bed. You’re what I dream about all the time, being home with you and Melly, and it keeps me going.

  Thing is, I’ve been told I’m joining my battalion tomorrow and [there was another missing part here]. So, I don’t know what’s going to happen next. All I can say is I’ll be thinking of you wherever I go, my lovely. I wish you could just walk in here now, God, I do. Sometimes home feels such a long way away.

  Holding you in my arms and in my heart, and sending all the kisses I can’t give you.

  Your husband, Danny.

  Squeezed in at the bottom right-hand corner was a tiny drawing of Jack in his straw hat and Patch, from the back, sitting at the top of a hill, looking out. The hill was more of a hummock as there was not much space, and in front of them Danny had drawn a little twig of a tree and a bird flying. The dog’s black patch on his back was an oval scribble in blue ink. She touched it lovingly with her finger, thinking of Danny sitting in a hospital bed somewhere, his pen moving over the paper, drawing Patch with his perky tail . . .

  She was surprised by how much Danny said in letters. He found it easier than talking. She realized that because now they were parted and he had to write, she had got to know him better. She thought her own letters were pale in comparison – we did this, Melly did that, I miss you. She was better at talking.

  Tears of longing and love for him ran down her face and she lay back on the bed and had a sharp cry to let out her feelings. Shame washed through her. To think how easily tempted she had been by that American, that she was so easily flattered by his attention! Curled on her side she lay aching for Danny. She felt sometimes as if she might explode with longing. The baby twitched inside her as if disturbed by her sobs. Oh, when would it all be over? How old would this baby be before he saw it? It felt like an eternity already since she had seen Danny, so much so that sometimes it seemed as if only his few letters made him real and brought him back to her just a little bit.

  Wiping her eyes she went downstairs. Dolly was still sitting with Gladys and they looked expectantly at her. She didn’t want to hand over the letter to them. It was hers!

  ‘He’s all right,’ she said and read out a few bits.

  ‘An insect!’ Dolly exclaimed, horrified. ‘Ooh, I bet they have really big nasty ones out there. The poor kid!’

  ‘I wonder where he is, exactly,’ Gladys said, half to herself. They all had the idea that he was ‘out East’ somewhere.

  Rachel felt herself tighten inside again. All this not knowing was so hard to bear.

  It started up again when the pubs had turned out. Melanie had long been asleep and Rachel and Gladys were off to bed. A voice was bawling across the yard, aggressive and male.

  ‘Oh Lor – who’s that?’ Gladys, her hair in a plait and her shawl over a nightdress, stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Loud, drunken yells were coming from outside.

  ‘Who d’you think! That bloke – Ray,’ Rachel said.

  ‘With a skinful inside him, by the sound of it.’ Gladys grimaced.

  From upstairs they heard the door of number four being kicked in, followed by Ray Sutton’s drunken roar.

  Gladys tutted. ‘Here we go. Come on – let’s get up to bed. There’s nowt we can do about it.’

  From her bedroom in the attic, Rachel heard smashing sounds and Irene’s screams. They kept it up at full tilt for a bit and Rachel lay listening, hating the noises, the high-pitched, hysterical screaming. She remembered a Mr and Mrs Pye from two doors up when they lived in Floodgate Street, the yells and screams that used to ring out of their house some Saturday nights. It always made her stomach knot up tight. She put her hands on her belly and felt the child twitch inside her. Oh, Danny, she thought miserably, trying to block out thoughts of what was going on in the house along the yard. Why aren’t you here? Where had he gone to since he wrote that letter? Anything could have happened. He could be . . . No, she mustn’t think that either. She mustn’t expect the worst before it had happened.

  Ray and Irene were both yelling.

  Stop it, she thought, trying to bury her ears in the pillow. Just sodding well stop. Eventually, at last, it did go quiet.

  The next morning, Sunday, she went out to get a pail of water from the yard tap and saw Irene strutting back into her house with a full bucket of her own.

  ‘She’s got a right shiner,’ Rachel said to Gladys. ‘But she’s prancing about as if she’s proud of it.’

  Gladys, drinking a morning cup of tea, made a noncommittal noise.

  ‘Why would she be proud?’ Rachel said. ‘God, if anyone hit me like that . . .’

  ‘Oh, I s’pect she’s just putting a brave face on,’ Gladys said. ‘Mind you, she can dish it out, that one.’

  Rachel added a drop of water from the kettle to the pail and did her few bits of hand washing. Tepid water and only the thinnest remaining wafer of soap – but it would have to do. A few minutes after she had carried the pail out to the washing line, Irene Sutton appeared as well. She couldn’t have been trying to keep out of everyone’s way then, Rachel thought. In fact it felt as if Irene had been looking out for her. Rachel eyed her from the side. Irene was wearing her grey baggy dress which was so crumpled and frowsty looking she must have slept in it. Her hair was scraped up behind her head. Rachel thought Irene’s belly was sticking out more than her own, even though they were at about the same stage. But then Irene was bigger altogether and she had already had two children.

  In silence, they hung their bits of washing together in a patch of sunlight. But as Rachel was coming to the end of hers, to her astonishment, she heard a sob from Irene. Seconds later, when another followed, she didn’t feel she could ignore it.

  ‘You all right?’ she enquired.

  Irene dropped the socks she had been hanging back into the bucket and put her hands over her face. More loud sobs came from behind her hands. Rachel dearly wished she hadn’t asked.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. It wasn’t hard to guess why Irene was crying. I’d be crying all right if my feller had gone on like that last night, Rachel thought. ‘D’you want a cuppa?’

  Irene shook her head emphatically. She removed her hands from her blotchy face and said, ‘Come in the brew’us a tick.’

  Rachel followed Irene’s ample figure along the yard. Her pink, plump arms protruded from the tight sleeves of the dress and her bare feet, the ankles swollen looking, were pushed into her ungainly brown lace-ups. She was a strong, stately-looking person and Rachel wondered how old she was. She dreaded what she might be about to hear.

  The brew house smelt of damp and soap and soot. There was ash on the floor from the fire hole under the copper and the spread remains of old candle stubs hardened on the windowsill. At one side was a stone sink which looked to be choked with the remains of someth
ing muddy.

  ‘Yow ’eard us last night then? ’Eard my old man, the way ’e goes on?’ Irene burst out. Her Black Country accent sounded strange to Rachel’s ears. ‘Look what ’e’s done to my face – I ay gunna be able to go out looking like this! And look at my neck – tried to throttle me, ’e did!’

  Tilting her neck, she gave Rachel a view of the bruising over her left eye and cheekbone, which were an angry red and mauve. The rest of her white skin looked tired and dry, down to her neck, around which were red, angry marks. Rachel was horrified.

  ‘He did that? God, he could’ve killed you!’

  ‘Nah,’ Irene said dismissively. ‘He day mean it. That’s just ’is temper, like. That’s my old man when ’e’s kalied –’ She sounded almost proud. Her voice softened. ‘Like a lamb, ’e is, in the morning after. Begging me to forgive ’im.’

  Her full lips turned up in a smile, then abruptly she burst into tears again. ‘Oh Lord, save me – what’m I going to do?’

  Rachel, now bewildered, could only say, ‘Oh dear – what’s the matter then?’

  ‘It’s Ray. I love ’im – I love ’im more’n my own life . . .’ Full-hearted sobbing prevented Irene from saying any more for a few moments. Her whole body wobbled with crying. Rachel stood helpless and baffled beside her. Why on earth was Irene Sutton suddenly confiding in her? And what did she expect her to do?

  ‘’E’s got another woman – I know ’e has,’ Irene choked out at last. ‘I guessed it but now I know for sure. ’E wouldn’t admit it but I know ’im – I know what ’e’s like when ’e’s got a bit on the side. And last night, he said . . .’ She couldn’t speak for crying for a moment. At last she gasped out, ‘’E said that ho ’e’s been with’s got a bun in the oven an’ all! And ’e says if ’er has a lad, ’e’s gonna leave me and go with her!’

  ‘No – he wouldn’t!’ Rachel said, shocked. ‘He can’t have meant it?’

  ‘I dunno.’ Irene looked miserably down at her feet. ‘I dunno what ’e’d do. When ’e’s kalied he says all sorts. But I just know I’ve got to give him a lad after two girls. He cor just have girls, he says. I dunno what I’ll do if I don’t.’ She stared at Rachel’s belly, pushing out her own blue-and-white dress as if an answer lay in it somewhere.

  Rachel struggled to find something to say and came up with the only practical thing she could think of. ‘Why don’t you come up the clinic with me?’ she said. She wasn’t at all sure about Irene Sutton. She seemed to be of very uncertain temper. But she thought she must be lonely to have confided in her. ‘I go with my pal Netta – she’s due about when we are. They’re nice up there and they make sure if your babby’s all right.’

  Irene looked rather blankly at her. ‘Clinic? I’ve never been to no clinic before. But all right – ta.’ She spoke with sudden warmth. In fact she seemed instantly recovered, her mood suddenly cheerful. ‘Let me know when you’re going and I’ll come with yer.’

  ‘You must be mad having another one in the middle of all this – and that husband of yours away,’ Peggy had said when Rachel took Melanie to see her the next Sunday. She made this not especially helpful comment in a disgusted tone. She had never found a way of mentioning Danny that did not sound contemptuous.

  Rachel came close to losing her temper. It had felt a long journey, traipsing over here on a warm afternoon when she would rather have snatched a nap. But Cissy and Melanie were devoted to each other and as well as that, for all Peggy’s faults, Rachel did not want to deprive Melanie of the chance to know her grandmother. For herself though, she realized, it hardly mattered what Peggy thought about anything now. She was very obviously having another baby and that was that, whatever Mom thought about it. It was Gladys who felt like a mother to her, who was really her family. Even so, she still hoped, in her heart, that her mother would be nice and encouraging, though she was usually disappointed.

  ‘Well,’ she said, sinking down onto a chair. ‘I can’t send it back, can I?’

  Peggy was installed in the little upstairs room with her feet up on a stool, having declared when Rachel arrived that she was exhausted. Rachel could see that her mother had aged since having Cissy. Her face was worn, her skin looser over her bones. Sometimes it was hard to believe that she was younger than Gladys.

  ‘Fred’s working himself into the ground,’ she declared, picking up a piece of sewing and then dropping it down again as if it was all too much effort.

  ‘What – selling blackout blinds?’ Rachel said, trying once again to stifle her sarcasm.

  ‘Oh, and all the other demands of the war,’ Peggy said. ‘And of course he worries so about Sidney.’ So, Rachel thought, disappointed, that greasy sod’s still alive then. ‘And fire-watching . . .’

  ‘Did you hear what happened at Bird’s?’ Rachel said, to interrupt the eternal trail of complaint. Gladys had heard from someone when she was in town. The fire-watchers had been, as usual, on the roof of the Devonshire Works in the night.

  ‘One of them spotted this parachute coming down,’ Rachel related. ‘One of those parachute mines and it was heading straight for them. They all stood there as it came closer and closer out of the sky – right across the roof. They were all waiting to be blown to bits! And then it just kept going, over the edge of the roof, and landed somewhere down below. It never even exploded!’

  ‘Oh, my word,’ Peggy said, fanning herself with a folded newspaper. ‘I think my heart would have given out. Ooh – don’t tell me any more, makes me feel quite peculiar.’

  ‘Well, it’s all right,’ Rachel said. Looking at her mother, again it came to her how distant she felt from Peggy. ‘You weren’t there.’

  Peggy gave her a look. ‘Why don’t you run and put the kettle on?’ she suggested. ‘I’m parched for a cup of tea.’

  Rachel struggled to her feet. Walking to the kitchen she remembered that when Mom was six months on with Cissy they had all been waiting on her, hand and foot.

  Thirty

  August 1943

  ‘If you don’t put that away, babby, the other kiddies’ll have it off you.’

  Rachel paused with one hand on the heavy door into the mother-and-baby clinic, which stood on the corner of the street of small brick terraces. About to push against it and go in, she looked down at Melanie, who was gazing defiantly up at her. Seeing those big blue eyes – Danny’s eyes – turned up to her, filled Rachel with an ache of longing. If only he was back home and she could feel his arms around her . . .

  Letting go of the door she held out her hand. ‘Give it me, Melly, and I’ll put it safe in my bag. Come on – let’s go in and see if Auntie Netta’s here, shall we? You can have it when we get home.’

  ‘No-o . . .’ Melanie was shaking not just her head but her whole body. She had just passed her second birthday, was a good little walker and was beginning to hold her own with words and was becoming mightily stubborn. With both hands she clutched her treasure to her chest. ‘Mine.’

  Rachel sighed, quelling her temper. ‘I s’pose he did say it was just specially for you.’

  ‘Children only,’ the greengrocer said earlier, when she was shopping. On the counter was a box half full of the glowing fruit, like distilled sunshine. ‘Here yer go, bab – get that down yer – do yer good. Don’t let your mother go pinching it off yer!’ He winked at Rachel, who didn’t think Melanie had understood that last part. But now she seemed to be taking him at his word! Rachel could see the bright stripes of orange skin between Melly’s chubby fingers.

  ‘All right then, but don’t blame me if one of the others tries to take it off you. In we go.’

  She opened the door into the dark, cavernous hallway of the building. A latticed window at the far end threw light onto the quarry tiles on the floor. Sounds came from behind the double doors to her right; the chatter of women over the bangs of the children playing on the wooden floor. Overlaying the building’s mustiness she could smell the sweaty female odours of the clinic which seemed particularly rank today and she
wrinkled her nose. She guessed what that strong smell meant – it meant she was in here, old Ruby, heaven help her.

  The clinic was like a little world of its own. Out in the streets, in pubs and on the buses and trams, so much talk was about the war – they’d got the Mussolini bloke banged up at last in Italy. But when were we going to open a second front? And as ever there was the struggle with food and rations – even though more was getting through now, thanks to the Americans. In here though, in the clinic full of expectant mothers, everyone was involved with their bodies, their ailments, their worries about children and husbands.

  Rachel pulled this second door open by its long brass handle and shepherded her mutinous little girl in front of her. ‘Go on, bab – in you go.’ She was looking forward to sitting down, the weight of her belly dragging at her today. She had one more month to go and was getting to the stage where she just wanted it over.

  The noise grew louder. The smell intensified. The nurses had to heat urine to test it and the smell was acrid. Rachel swallowed. Faces turned to look at her. From the other end of the room one of the nurses, who was ushering a woman behind a screen, gave her a welcoming smile. Rachel liked that nurse. She was red-headed, Scottish and kind. She was the only one who made sure the chairs were arranged for the clinic in a wide circle so that the mothers could sit round and let the children play in the middle.

  ‘So much better than sitting all in rows, wouldn’t you say?’ she had told Rachel on a previous occasion. ‘It’s not as if we’re in church, is it?’ There were a few toys provided and a gaggle of small children were moving about, corralled by the chairs occupied by women in varying stages of pregnancy. Rachel swallowed and looked across to see who was there. Melly stood beside her, cradling her precious orange.

  As she predicted Ruby was there, a mountain of a woman, sitting apart from the others. Surely to God she was too old to be having another? It was impossible to guess her age but there was a whole gaggle of kids who swarmed in and out of her house in the next street to where Rachel lived. The Scots nurse had confided that it was the first time anyone had ever got Ruby to come to a clinic of any kind to be looked after. Ruby, in a navy tent of a dress, was heaped on the chair, cheeks the red of raw meat, head lolling forward on her chins as she dozed, looking as if it was a relief to have a chance to sit down anywhere.