Somewhere Over England

by Margaret Graham

  On 29 December when there was due to be a tidal low-point in the Thames the Luftwaffe came again. The water mains were damaged at the start of the raid by high explosive parachute mines and then at least 10,000 fire bombs plummeted from the planes. In the crypt they could not feel the heat of the fires which raged unchecked until water was available again from more distant mains but in the morning they smelt and saw the devastation and that night there were more people who had been bombed out arriving to stay in the crypt. The next day, which was Monday, Helen was late in to work because she took them to the Town Hall to get coupons until their ration books could be replaced.

  Mr Leonard could say nothing because so many were late, unable to force their way through the havoc which had once been London. Some never came because they had been killed.

  That night the vicar explained as they all sat talking that a fire-watching rota was to be drawn up at the request of the authorities and those in the shelter were eager to put their names down. Helen decided that there should be soup available at one penny a cup and Marian volunteered to organise it. The old lady, Ruth, stood up and said that she thought there should be a knitting group to make socks and hats for the soldiers.

  ‘All you need to do is pull out old jumpers,’ she said, holding up a dark green one. ‘Just pull it out and knit it up again.’ And so a knitting group was formed, but Helen could not yet bear the thought of wool being drawn across her cut hands and so, instead, she formed a small choir at the back of the crypt and found solace in the music.

  The days passed and December became January. Britain and Australia’s attack on the Italians in the Western Desert proceeded. Nits became a problem in the shelter and Helen bent her head over newspaper and combed out several lice. One of the women was a hairdresser and soon most of the women had bobbed hair and Helen looked at herself in the mirror and wondered how Heine would have liked it. She did not cry this time but put her arms round the young mother whose husband was missing in action and, instead, held her while she wept.

  By 17 January Helen’s hands and control were improved enough for her to leave London to see her son.

  The train journey took six hours and was cold, so cold. Again and again the train was shunted into a siding to allow troops or goods wagons to pass but there was no raid as they travelled and little to see through the mesh of the windows. There were other mothers on the train, travelling to see their children. They were pale, tired. Their eyes sunken. No one talked very much but some slept, jerked awake with each stop only to fall asleep again within minutes. But Helen couldn’t sleep.

  She caught the bus from Thetford and dusk fell after twenty miles. The journey took one hour more, the slitted headlights picking up the white line painted at the side of the road but nothing of the flat countryside beyond. Helen eased her leg, flexed her hands, glad that her gloves covered the red scars. The bus stopped three times but each time another village was called out and Helen watched as the women she had travelled with on the train stepped down into the darkness. Would there ever be a time when they would see the welcome of lighted windows, she wondered.

  At last the bus pulled up again and the driver called, ‘Greater Mannenham.’

  Helen rose, lifting her bag from the seat beside her. She had brought Christoph a knitted hat from Ruth and some more books and one change of clothes for herself because she could not stay more than a night. She thanked the driver and stepped carefully from the bus to the road; her leg was still stiff, still sore. For a moment she couldn’t see Chris but then he was there, his arms around her, holding her, and she knew she must not cry but she did when she heard him say, ‘Oh, Mum, I’ve missed you.’

  She heard the bus move off, smelt the exhaust, and saw Laura standing behind Chris, but all she felt was his arms around her, his head pressed into her body. She dropped her bag and held him, stroking his hair, bending to kiss him, wondering how she could have forgotten the sound of his voice but somehow it had indeed become lost.

  They walked back through the centre of the village. It was cloudy so there was not even the light from the moon or stars to light their way. Laura held a torch covered with tissue paper and gripped Helen’s arm, guiding her along the lane while Chris held her hand tightly, causing pain to stab right up into her arm but it didn’t matter now that she was with her son.

  There was a fire in the inglenook and Helen sat on the settee, keeping her gloves on, saying that she was cold. One of her cuts had begun to bleed and Chris must not see. But Laura saw and beckoned her out to the kitchen while Chris sat on the rug in front of the fire and looked through the books. She bathed and dressed the cut and all the time there was the smell of stew in the air and Helen realised she was hungry. She realised too that she had not felt hunger since his death. She looked at Laura and knew she should tell her about Heine but the words hurt too much in her throat.

  Laura smiled at her, pointing to a chair, calling to Chris to come in and wash his hands. He ran through and Helen thought again how much he had grown, how strong and straight and tall he was. He ran the tap and it splashed up and over the sink but Laura just laughed and threw him a towel and Helen felt excluded.

  This was her child but she did not even know where the towels were which dried his hands. She didn’t wash them, or any of his clothes. She didn’t serve up his meal, as Laura was now doing, heaping rabbit, carrots and potato on to his plate and then on to theirs and now jealousy surged into her throat and chest and she was appalled.

  She looked down at her plate, not wanting to see familiarity between her son and this kind, plump woman.

  ‘Chris talks of you every day. There is no one in his life but you,’ Laura said.

  Helen looked up and, saw Laura looking at her and then at Chris and knew that after all she was lucky to have placed her son with this woman.

  ‘He knows that it hurts you much more to let him stay here than to take him back with you to London,’ Laura continued, and Chris looked up at her and smiled.

  ‘I think you’re very brave, Mum. You have to stay there. I know you do because we need the money. Laura has explained it to me and Daddy told me too, in one of his letters.’

  Helen picked up her knife and fork now, tasting the rabbit, the thick gravy, the potatoes, but there was no appetite again. Later she must tell him about Heine. Later.

  She listened while she ate sparingly as Chris told her how he had pulled the carrots and stored them in sawdust. How he fed the chickens and the pig and how they had called one of the piglets Heine and one of them Helen. She listened as he told her of the fat girl called Mary who was his friend and who lived in a cottage where no one cared. She listened but he did not talk of his friends at school. He did not talk of the games they played and he lowered his head and told her about the butterfly net Laura had found in the attic and she thought she saw a darkening in his eyes when she asked about his school friends and he did not answer.

  Later she asked Laura if the boys knew of Chris’s German heritage but she said that they did not. How could they? Only she and the rector’s wife knew. Helen looked closely at her son as they sat in front of the fire and could see no shadows now in those dark eyes so perhaps there had been none earlier?

  They sat and talked in the quiet of the cottage and Helen was restless. There was no normality in the hissing of the fire, the voice on the radio reading out the nine o’clock news, the hoot of the owl. There was no normality to this quiet evening which came from the peacetime past.

  She read to him in his room that night. A room warmed by logs burning in the grate, their light shielded from the sky by more slates, like the inglenook downstairs, Chris told her. She sat by his bed, holding his hand with her wounded one and she told him it was nothing and then asked him if everything was all right in the village. If the boys were his friends too, as well as Mary? He kissed her hand and held it to his cheek and told her she must be careful of the bombs because he loved her so much. He loved Laura too but more as a grandmother, not as he lo
ved her.

  Again Helen asked him if there was any trouble but this time he said, ‘No, Mum. Everything’s all right. Honestly it is.’ And most of the time it was. Most of the time.

  In the morning Helen fed the hens and the pig, watching the squealing piglets born too early.

  Laura said, ‘Too impatient, couldn’t wait for the spring. It’s because old Reynolds let his damned pig into the orchard.’ Helen laughed then walked with Chris along the lane, watching him as he stamped on puddles. Laughing as he slid on frozen skid paths. Listening as he told her about the blacksmith at the forge.

  He showed her the goat, their school and pointed to the copse in the distance to the left of a line of elms.

  ‘That’s where I’ll go with the net. Mary said she’d come. I wrote to Dad about it.’ He kicked at the frost-stiffened verge. ‘Mr Reynolds says the Germans are buggers. They drop bombs on you, hurt our animals, kill our people. They’ve hurt your hands. They’re buggers. That’s what Mr Reynolds says anyway.’

  Helen stood next to him, staring over at the copse, seeing the rooks’ nests high in the bare branches, hearing his words drop into the still air. Her face was pinched and cold. She wet her lips, clenching her hands, wanting to feel the pain.

  ‘It’s war that’s the bugger, Chris. Most of the people in it are like us. Doing things we don’t want to do just because we have to. No, I don’t hate the Germans but I do hate the Nazis and that’s the difference that you and I must remember. The Nazis hurt other Germans too. They’ve somehow dragged everyone into the war.’

  Chris turned to her. ‘But it’s easier to hate them all, isn’t it? It makes us the same as everyone else here.’

  Helen put her hand on his shoulder. His coat was getting too small. His sleeves were too far up his arms and his wrists would get sore from the cold wind soon. She must find him another.

  ‘But it’s not always best to take the easiest course, Chris, and we’re not the same, are we, darling? Daddy was born in Germany.’

  Helen gripped her son’s shoulder hard because now, in the cold brisk air while the frost lay white on the ploughed fields, she must tell him. She turned him to her, holding his face in her hands.

  ‘It’s all so difficult, Mum,’ Christoph said. ‘I wish you were here.’

  Helen nodded. ‘Yes, Christoph. I wish I was too because we are going to need one another more than ever now. Darling, listen to me; I have some terrible news.’ She paused. ‘Daddy died before Christmas.’ Her voice was not level, it was full of tears and she stopped for a moment, watching the blankness of her son’s eyes change to shock and then disbelief. He pulled away, snatching at her sleeve, breathing fast.

  ‘What do you mean, died? What do you mean? How could he? There were no bombs there. I never had to worry about him, only about you. I never worried about him. Never, never.’ He was shouting now, stepping away from her. She moved forward and grasped his shoulders.

  ‘And why have you had your hair cut? You look silly. You look stupid.’ He was hitting at her arms.

  Helen would not let go of him; she hung on, feeling the blows on the splinter cuts but understanding his pain, his rage, because it was the same as hers. Perhaps they also shared the same guilt at resenting Heine’s nationality.

  She hung on and hung on until at last he was tired and then she showed him the letter and he knew that his father had been brave and honoured and they clung together and mourned him properly, here, in private, where the wind was now blowing cold and sharp.

  They walked and remembered their lives together and Helen told her son of her anger at Heine when stones had been thrown, but she also spoke of her love. She hoped that Chris would talk to her but he didn’t.

  She stayed another night because her son needed her and the next and the next because she didn’t care what Mr Leonard said – this was more important – but then she had to return because she must earn her money and there was no work down here, Laura said, shaking her head. The farm had all the workers they needed and there was nothing else.

  The night she left Chris did not sleep. He lay looking up at the ceiling, seeing the beams in the glow from the ashes. He was glad his dad was dead. He was glad because now he could tell them at school that his father had been killed by the Nazis and maybe Joe would stop asking questions. So many questions. Would the stones start again if he knew?

  He turned on his side, the pillow was wet. He couldn’t stop crying because he wanted his dad. Wanted him to be here, to hold him, to be warm and alive; to hear his voice. He was brave, so brave, and what would he think of a son who said he was glad he was dead but who loved him so much that it hurt? Chris knew he would not sleep tonight because there was so much else in his head that was wicked and he could not tell his mother because she had the bombs and that was enough.

  Winter turned to spring and in the evenings Helen took her turn at fire-watching and in the crypt she arranged further education classes for the regulars. She smiled when the old man offered to teach boxing and listened when he told her he was a southpaw and had fought in all the booths in the country during the depression. She watched as he shadow-boxed and was glad when others did too because his dignity returned during those nights and did not leave him.

  The vicar arranged for a piano to be hauled from the church hall to the crypt and one of the young mothers taught Helen the tango and on Ruth’s birthday they had a party and the vicar danced with Helen. The raids grew fewer but every night the crypt was open and the flat was seldom slept in. She wrote to Chris each week and slowly found that she could sleep now, though she still woke in the small hours and wept for Heine and wished that it had all been different. That they had been born in another time when war was not a consideration and they had been free to love.

  In March Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Agreement with Britain and the crypt had another party and this time they did the hokey-cokey, with Ruth leading them. On 17 March Bevin announced the first steps in a massive mobilisation plan to release men for active service and Helen wondered if any of the farm workers in Greater Mannenham would be called up. She wrote to Laura and asked her to let her know because she knew that Chris would need her. Somehow she just knew.

  In April Germany invaded Greece and the bombing of Britain continued in earnest again. Throughout the long nights they listened to the crump of bombs and sometimes Helen led the choir in a sing-song and everyone followed, but not every night because relatives were killed and people needed comfort.

  On fire-watch duty Helen watched the flares being dropped and then the showers of incendiary bombs falling and knew that low level bombing runs would follow. Bert, the old boxer, was with her and said, as ack-ack hit one bomber which was flying in a straight line throughout his run, ‘He was a brave one all right. Poor bugger.’

  They both watched as the plane plummeted from the sky, a flaming mass to fall into the furnace of its own making. ‘Poor bugger,’ she echoed.

  At the end of April the British were pushed out of Greece and Chris wrote to tell her that the piglets, Heine and Helen, were now his. Laura had given them to him. Laura wrote to her to say that he seemed to be sleeping better and was glad that Helen had left the letter from Willi with him. It was folded in his top bedside drawer and she knew that he read it every night.

  On 11 May there was a brilliant bomber’s moon and over 500 German planes dropped hundreds of high explosive bombs and incendiaries within a few hours. It was claimed to be a reprisal raid for the methodical bombing of the residential areas of German towns and Ruth said, ‘The whole bloody world’s gone mad. These are people in planes dropping bombs on other people. They’re all dying. They’re all somebody’s sons and daughters. It’s a crying shame. That ’itler needs to be strung up.’

  Helen unpicked the jumper seam and pulled out wool, winding it around her healed hands. The hurricane lamps were dotted all over the crypt now; many had been brought by the people who sat around her and she was comforted by the smell, though the light was w
eak. As the hours passed she wrote a letter to Chris, telling him what Ruth had said and asking him to write to her because Laura had written that he was sleeping better, but was he really? Remember you can tell me anything, darling, she wrote.

  In the morning they trooped up the steps of the crypt and wept at the devastation everywhere. Helen passed through a shattered city on her way to work and arrived three hours late and wanted to slap Mr Leonard because he was on time. Joan did not arrive until the afternoon because their house had been hit, but they had been in the Underground railway shelter.

  There were cheers in the crypt on 28 May when the news came in that the Bismarck had been sunk the day before and Marian put a big notice on top of an old box.

  SCRAP

  Jam Jars, Iron, Bottles, Paper, Rubber

  Help to build planes and ships to sink the enemy

  The next day she and Marian brought aluminium pans from the flat and put them in the box because, as dawn had come, Helen had decided that it was her role to keep the Nazis and the Germans apart in her own mind and in her son’s. The Nazis must indeed be sunk.

  In the first week of June an exploding gas main ripped up the pavement outside the flat and they clambered through and into the hallway, but only to pick up the mail because they had to reach their offices. Laura had written to say that there was still no sign of the men leaving the farm but that Chris seemed to be fine and was looking forward to seeing his mother in the summer.

  On 22 June the Nazis broke their pact and invaded Russia and that night Helen lay on her camp bed and thought of Heine; heard his voice saying, We’ll be all right as long as Russia joins us.

  She rolled over on her side, whispering aloud, ‘Perhaps we’ll make it now, Heine. But we still need America on our side.’

  She cried though to think that he would not be here if they did survive and knew her grief, though dulled, still remained but it was mixed with anxiety for her son.