by Annie Murray
As they waited a few more people arrived, all – with one exception – women, who seemed to know each other at least by sight, and there was a low murmur of conversation.
At half past seven on the dot, Mr Black disappeared into the white, tent-like structure and they heard him calling up the stairs,
‘Yer ready now then, Dora?’
There came a muffled reply, then they heard what sounded like at least two pairs of feet on the stairs. Jess, in a slightly hysterical state, found herself picturing Mrs Black having four legs like a pantomime horse and had to force down the powerful urge to laugh which swelled up inside her.
Mr Black held the sheet aside, closing it behind his wife as she appeared. She was a small, neat woman, quite a bit younger than her husband by the look of her, dark-haired, with bold, shapely eyebrows. She was also dressed in black, and her hat was trimmed with black net. There was a stiff elegance about her movements.
‘Good evening, everyone,’ she said, looking round at them with composure.
‘Good evening,’ they all muttered.
‘We shall start with our hymn.’ She moved to the piano and began to play it rather well, but there were not many voices to make a swell of sound and their efforts at singing turned out as more of a mumbling,
‘Jesus lives! no longer now
Can thy terrors, death, appal us;
Jesus lives! by this we know
Thou, O grave, canst not enthrall us.
Alleluia!’
By the end of the first verse, Mrs Crawford and Polly were both crying and some of the others soon joined in. It was so sad it set Jess off crying too, thinking of Ernie’s sweet, friendly face and how happy he and Polly had looked together and now they’d never see him again. And it called to mind the day her mother died and she found she was crying for her too, and for her grandmother and baby Clara, until she was at least as upset as everyone in the room, and needed something to blow her nose on. She had to borrow Polly’s handkerchief.
They all sat down. The room was rather shadowy now, although there was still some silvery grey evening light coming from the window. Mr Black lit the three candles in a brass candelabra and placed it on the piano. For a moment they all sat quietly, except that Jess heard someone give a sniff and she frowned. It sounded as if it had come from in front of her, but that would mean someone who they couldn’t see was waiting behind the screen of sheets. The thought was rather spooky. She wondered at Polly coming here on her own: she must truly have been desperate.
Mrs Black sat down on the rather grand oak chair and took several deep breaths. Her little round tummy seemed constrained by her frock, and her full bustline looked fit to erupt out of it too. She closed her eyes.
‘I can feel the spirits are close to us tonight.’ She kept her voice low, intoning in a rather posh voice so it didn’t seem like natural speech. Despite her unease, Jess found she was reluctantly full of curiosity. If it was real it would be very nice to hear from Ernie again.
‘Who has grief pressing on them at this moment? Who shall I summon from the spirit world, the land of blessed light? Those on the other side are only gone before: they are watching over us, and they are still needful of our love and our communion with them.’
‘I . . .’ Polly sniffed. ‘I’d like to ’ear from Ernie . . .’
‘Ernie . . .’ Mrs Black said meditatively. Then opened her eyes and said in a normal voice, ‘You mean yer ’usband?’
Polly nodded. ‘Ernest Carter. Same as last week.’
‘Ernest Carter . . .?’ The eyes closed again. ‘Your wife would like to hear from you. Ernest, come to us: cross back from the other side to where your wife waits faithfully for you . . .’ Her tone turned incantational, like someone pretending to be a ghost.
‘I’m here,’ a voice said.
Jess nearly jumped out of her skin. She gripped Polly’s wrist.
‘Oh Ernie!’ Polly whispered.
‘I’ve come to see yer again . . . er, wife. I’m awright. It’s very nice over ’ere. Very comfortable and er, pleasant. Wish you could come and join me . . . well, when yer ready and that, I mean. I hope everything’s going along at home. Don’t worry about me. The wounds don’t hurt any more. Well – love for now then . . .’
The voice seemed muffled during the last sentence, in a way which sounded to Jess as if the person speaking was backing away up the stairs.
‘’E sounds different,’ she whispered to Polly.
‘Dying does that,’ Polly said tearfully. ‘Mrs Black told us that. They’ve gone to another place. They have astral bodies.’
Irene Crawford, next to Jess, was asking about her husband and son.
‘I’d ’specially like to ’ear from my son if you can manage it again. I know the Dardanelles is a long way.’
Mrs Crawford’s son William did want to speak to his mother and he seemed to be having a quite similar experience of the other side to Ernie. Jess found, after several encounters with the spirit world, that life over there didn’t seem to be any more varied or interesting than existence in this one and she began to lose interest. Until a thought struck her.
When there was a gap in the proceedings she said,
‘I’d like to call someone.’
Polly’s head whipped round. ‘Jess – what’re yer doing?’
‘I’d like to talk to my grandmother. She was called Alice Tamplin.’
She heard Polly gasp.
‘How long has she been gone from this world?’ Mrs Black asked in her strange, sing-song voice.
‘Er . . .’ Jess looked uncertainly at Polly. ‘Oh, at least twenty years.’
‘I see.’ Mrs Black was sitting with her eyes closed, obviously concentrating. There was a long silence. Jess was torn between amusement and nervousness. This would be a tough one for the man behind the screen! But still she found she was tingling with a strange sensation. Everyone was silent. An atmosphere of intensity had come over the room.
She’ll have to give up on this, Jess thought. She’s not asked me anything about her. How’s he going to know what to say?
She was looking expectantly at the little sheeted box, when Mrs Black abruptly put her head back, her body went rigid and she gave a long, horrifying howl. Jess felt her limbs turn to water. The howl was followed by a high keening of grief and distress and Mrs Black’s body jerked about as if in pain. Then they heard the sound of a woman sobbing as if her heart would break. There was nothing going on from behind the screen: it was all coming from Mrs Black. Jess couldn’t see her moving: her lips and throat were still, the noises shrill and disembodied. She and Polly sat rigid, gripping hard on to each other’s hands.
The desolate weeping went on for a short time, then stopped abruptly. Mrs Black relaxed into the posture she had been in before.
‘She is not quiet.’ She spoke softly. ‘She is not at peace. She cannot speak to you.’
‘Oh my God,’ Jess whispered. She was shaking all over.
Both of them were sober and shocked on the way home. Polly tried to talk. ‘You see? Marvellous, ain’t she? It does me so much good to know I can hear from Ernie.’
Jess didn’t reply. Away from the confines of the Blacks’ dark house she was struggling to make sense of what had happened. She had felt frozen in there, although the night was not chill. All the grief and sorrow and desperate hope congregated together seemed to cast a cold pall over the atmosphere. But she didn’t really believe in all that sort of thing, hadn’t until tonight. She’d been certain they hadn’t really heard from Ernie. It was clear as anything that there was a man behind the sheet doing all the voices. Why could none of them see it? Was it because they needed so badly to believe what Mrs Black told them, because they were so bereft and lonely? And if that was the case, did it really matter that she was a fake if she brought comfort?
But Alice . . . Had Mrs Black taken over the act of being Alice because she’d only got a ‘ghost’ who could do men’s voices? But how had she known what sort of pers
on Alice would be? Was it luck? But the sound of that weeping, when Mrs Black had been sitting so still, not apparently moving a muscle . . . The sound of it was locked, echoing round in Jess’s head. What if it was real, if their talking about her had somehow brought her spirit closer to them? Poor, unquiet Alice. Was she still out there somewhere, mourning, needing them in some way? With all these thoughts turning in her mind Jess was silent almost until they got home. At the end of Oughton Place she turned to her cousin.
‘Well Poll,’ she was trying not to show how uneasy she felt. ‘I’m glad I came with yer, but I shan’t come again.’
‘What’ll yer tell our mom?’ Polly stopped her for a moment. ‘You won’t make things difficult for me, will yer?’
Jess shook her head. ‘Course not. But Polly – what about Alice?’
‘We’ll ’ave to do summat to help her rest in peace.’
‘But what?’
Polly frowned. ‘I dunno. We’ll ’ave to put some thought into it. P’raps we could find where she’s buried, when we get the chance. But Jess – don’t let on to Mom. She’s been in enough of a state lately. Knowing this won’t help ’er.’
When they got home, Olive said, ‘Well – what was it like?
‘Oh,’ Jess managed a grin at her. ‘It weren’t too bad. Nice enough people, no madder than most. I don’t suppose it can do any harm.’
PART IV
Twenty-Nine
June 1917
‘Right, girls – come on over ’ere and gather round – I’ve got summat to say to all of yer!’
Vi, who was still the unofficial gaffer at the factory, was out in the yard, waving her brawny arms to get their attention.
It was a bright day, with a feeling of warmth and promise peculiar to early summer. It had rained in the night and there were puddles dotted about, but now they could hear birds on the waste ground beyond. Pigeons were muttering on the roof of the Rumbling Shed.
Sis winked at Jess as they met outside the office on their way to the canteen.
‘What does she want then?’
Jess shrugged. ‘Soon find out.’
There was already a crowd of women round Vi, and a sallow, jaundiced-looking lot they were, a number obviously full of cold even though the winter was long over, some with red, itchy skin from contact with the powder. They were all squinting, coming out of the sheds. Quite a few were coughing, including Sis who complained continually of having a sore throat. In the bright light Jess saw she was thin and tired-looking. Perce had been posted now and she had joined the ranks of the permanently worried.
Someone handed Vi a chair and she stepped up on to it, wobbling and flailing her arms before standing upright as it creaked under her.
‘To my mind,’ she bawled across the yard, ‘we’re all in need of a bit of a day out.’
Jess and Sis looked at each other and raised their eyebrows. ‘We’ve had a long, hard winter,’ – murmurs of agreement – ‘and yer all looking like yer’ve bin locked up in the cellar for six month—’
‘Feels like it an’ all!’ someone shouted.
‘So ’ow about a picnic out somewhere Sunday? Bring some grub—’
‘That’s if yer can get ’old of any!’ There was laughter.
‘—and we’ll go over the park . . .’
A discussion broke out about where it should be. Some wanted more of a day out, right out of town, and eventually it was decided that they’d go across to Sutton Park.
‘Ooh—’ Jess said. A quiver of pleasure went through her. ‘How lovely. It’s s’posed to be real nice up there.’
‘Poll could come, couldn’t she?’ Sis said. Polly was back at work, but had decided to find another job nearer home so she could pop back at dinnertime and look in on Grace. She found it difficult enough to be separated from her for even an hour or two.
‘I should think so,’ Jess said. ‘And Ronny’d love it.’
She went up to Vi. ‘Can I bring me cousin – ’e’s five?’
‘Bring who yer like, bab, so long’s yer can get ’em on the bus.’
As they dispersed to go and fetch their daily cup of milk, Peter Stevenson was standing watching, leaning against the wall by his office door. Jess saw Vi go up to him. A few moments later she came in to the little canteen.
‘’Ere – guess what. ’E wants to come along an’ all.’
‘What – Mr Stevenson, on a picnic with us lot!’
‘Blimey – ’e must be lonely.’
‘Did yer say ’e could?’
‘Well I could ’ardly tell ’im ’e couldn’t, could I?’ Vi grunted, lowering herself on to a chair, the enamel cup in one hand. ‘Oh me legs! Flamin’ ’ell, I’m old enough to be ’is mother! Now there’s a thought.’
It had been a dismal winter indeed. The cold and shortages of food, the queueing, the triumph of finding a potato in the shops when there was such a scarcity of them, the long, grinding hours at work day after day made nearly every aspect of life a struggle. Added to that was the yearning for loved ones, some had now been absent so long, and the constant gnawing anxiety for their safety.
My life, Jess thought sometimes, is made up of work and Ned. She dreamed about him as she worked, hour after hour, her arms and back aching. Of their future, when the war was over. Some days she burned with optimism, others she was full of fear and insecurity. He might be killed. He might change his mind. Perhaps already he’d decided he didn’t love her any more but couldn’t bring himself to tell her? On days like that she felt low and hopeless and tried to put him out of her mind. It was too unbearable to think about. If he was taken from her, her life would be empty. It would have no meaning.
She was comforted though, with regard to his safety, by his letters throughout the winter. He was at a quiet part of the Front, he told her. It was bitterly cold for a large part of the time, frosts which broke French records, but there was little in the way of shooting and shelling.
She tried not to ask more than to know he was all right. In the April his Company were involved in the fighting at Arras, helping to capture Vimy Ridge. Soon after he wrote and told her he was safe. Just occasionally he managed to say more to her than the facts and these parts were the greatest treasure to her.
Sunday started off cool and misty but they had hopes of finer weather. Jess, Polly and Sis piled on to the bus with Ronny. Polly had Grace in her arms.
‘You can come too, yer know,’ Jess had said to Olive. ‘It don’t matter who goes so long as they make their way and bring their food.’
Olive smiled. She was sitting back comfortably in anticipation of a day on her own. ‘Nice to be asked, but I’m going to ’ave a day’s peace without them two.’ She nodded at the two little ones. ‘No one keeping on at me or causing trouble.’ She fixed Ronny with a dire look.
There was a festive atmosphere on the bus as quite a few of the other workers had caught the same one. Ronny sat on Jess’s knee and Polly was next to her with Grace. Ronny had lost all his baby fat and was now a thin little thing with white, stick legs and knobbly knees, hair a vivid carrot colour and freckles all over his face. And he was trouble in motion, despite the innocent expression.
‘You’re not going to run off and be a nuisance, are yer?’ Jess spoke close to his ear over the noisy rumble of the bus.
Ronny shook his head absent-mindedly, knowing this was the right answer.
‘I wish this one’d get up and run about,’ Polly nodded at Grace. She was over a year now, and despite the limited amount of food about, was a rounded pudding of a child with thick brown hair and big blue eyes, who was barely showing any inclination to walk. ‘Tires me out lifting ’er, that it does.’
They’d got no sense out of Sis who sat reading and re-reading a letter she’d had from Perce and grinning to herself.
‘From the look of yer I take it ’e’s awright,’ Polly said.
‘’E’s being trained up to work in them tank things,’ Sis said proudly. ‘In the Tank Corps.’
; ‘Blimey,’ Polly made a face. ‘Well p’raps ’e’s safer inside one of them.’
As the city fell away and they moved towards the old town of Sutton Coldfield, things started to look more cheerful. The sun found a chink in the clouds and shone in a determined sort of way. When they got off the bus and walked into Sutton Park, the smell of the grass rising to meet them, Jess suddenly felt her spirits lift further than they had in a long time. She wanted to drop everything and run across the open expanse of green, over to the fresh spring trees at the other side, but knew she couldn’t leave Polly to carry the bags as well as manage Grace.
They strolled across among a crowd of other women from the works with their families around them, calling out noisily, the children chattering with excitement. Ronny, for the moment, seemed awed by the space round them.
Vi was there with two of her daughters, and a carrier in each hand, swaying from side to side as she walked across the grass. As usual she took charge.
‘Best stay in the sun,’ she squinted up at the clouds. ‘There ain’t much point in sitting in the shade when the sun’s hardly shining.’
Jess, Polly and Sis settled with a group of others. There were more arrivals from another bus and gradually the group grew, snaking across the grass, everyone close together but gathered into smaller clusters here and there. Some laid out mats and coats on the damp grass. Behind them, a short distance away was a row of trees edging a stream which ran through the park, and in front stretched the wide swathe of grass.
It was only mid-morning and too early for dinner, although that didn’t stop a few having a nibble of the food they’d bought. At first Ronny sat quietly between Jess and Sis as the women chatted, enjoying the freedom to loll on the grass and talk for as long as they wanted without having to go back to the sheds and fill grenades. Then a set of identical twin girls, both about seven, with ash-blonde hair and freckles, went up to Ronny and pulled him to his feet, each hoicking him by the hand.
