There is a Season

by There is a Season (retail) (epu

  She took her employment cards to the Labour Bureau and obtained clerical work with the Ministry of Defence. She was happy there although she missed Anne.

  Sarah was puzzled by the situation between Anne and John. She was sure that Anne cared for him, and equally sure that he was interested in Anne, but the affair seemed to make no progress. She spoke about it to her grandmother, and told her that she wondered whether she should try to give matters a push.

  ‘Don’t rock the boat, love,’ Sally advised. ‘Let them work things out for themselves. You might just do more harm than good.’

  Sarah took her advice but she was often strongly tempted to ask a few questions of them.

  John was having a difficult time at work, having to endure ostracism by the men he worked with who ignored him except to make cutting remarks about Russia.

  ‘I see your pals are doing a good job of carving up poor little Poland, with their German pals,’ he was told when Russia joined Germany in conquering Poland. There were even more savage comments when Russia invaded Finland in November. One man whose brother had died when the Royal Oak had been sunk at Scapa Flow was particularly bitter.

  At first John tried to correct them and put his point of view, but soon realized it was useless and simply said nothing. Nevertheless he was hurt by the unfounded accusations.

  His work had given him some knowledge of building structure and he had enrolled in the Rescue Service where he was learning how to rescue casualties from bombed buildings, although so far there had been no air raids.

  To Sarah the war seemed remote at this time. The Pathé Gazette news reels showed the funeral of German and English airmen killed in the raid on the Firth of Forth, and pictures of marching troops in France, but events nearer home seemed more important.

  There were often men in uniform at Church, at home on weekend leave, and when the twenty to twenty-two-year-old men were called up, three more of her dancing partners disappeared into the Army or Air Force, but so far there had been no casualties among her friends.

  She sympathized with the grief and worry of people in the district who had men at sea as the fighting there became more ferocious, but no one she was close to was involved, and her new job and Walter’s flight and Peggy’s new lodgers seemed more interesting.

  Walter had not sent any money to Josie since he left, although she was managing make ends meet with Mary’s and Sophie’s wages and her own money from the catering jobs. Edie was furious at her father for abandoning his family.

  ‘I’d have thought she’d be on Walter’s side,’ Cathy said. ‘She was always his favourite and very fond of him, wasn’t she?’

  Josie smiled cynically. ‘Twelve months ago she would’ve been,’ she said, ‘but she’s a married woman herself now.’

  When no money had arrived from Walter by the first week in December, Edie took matters into her own hands and later came in to tell Cathy and Sarah the story.

  She said that she had taken the tram to Prescot and walked to the BIC factory and waited outside, but so many men came out she decided that it was hopeless to look for her father and was just going back to the tram when she saw him in a shop buying cigarettes.

  ‘I hid round the corner,’ she said, ‘and followed him. He let himself in with a key to a four-roomed house in Rainhill. I knocked, and when he opened the door I pushed in.’

  ‘He must have got a shock!’ Cathy said.

  ‘Shock! He went like a sheet. I didn’t half tell him what I thought of him, and he was saying: “I haven’t had no spare cash.” And I told him, “You had enough for cigarettes and sweets because I seen you buying them, and not an ‘apenny for your own children.”’

  ‘What an excuse,’ Cathy said indignantly. ‘His family should be his first consideration.’

  ‘That’s what I told him,’ Edie said. ‘And a bit more besides. And then this little scrag end of a woman with peroxide hair come rushing out. She screeched at me, “I can see why he left you lot.”’

  ‘Impudent thing!’ Sarah exclaimed. ‘What did you say, Edie?’

  ‘I didn’t say nothing. I just give her a clout she won’t forget in a hurry.’ Edie began to laugh. ‘I knocked her flying into a plant stand and she fell on the floor with the aspidistra on top of her. You should have seen her little weaselly face peeping through the leaves, and soil all over her!’

  ‘What did your father say?’

  ‘Nothing. He just stood there with his mouth open, and I scarpered quick before he come to.’

  The next day a card for a catering job came for Cathy and she went to see if Josie had received one. She was scrubbing her front step but stood up and wiped her hands on her sacking apron, and said that a card had come for her also. She was still very thin and pale, but Cathy thought she looked better than she had done for some time.

  Josie said she did feel better. ‘I know where I stand, and it’s much pleasanter in the house. Our poor Mary hardly speaks, but she sits and smiles at everybody and seems happy.’

  ‘Come in for a cup of tea when you’ve finished the step,’ Cathy said, and when Josie came in later they laughed together about Edie’s sortie to Prescot.

  ‘She was upset about what he said about Mary, all the same,’ Josie said. ‘Did she tell you?’

  ‘No. She just told us what she’d said to him.’

  ‘Shows she was upset,’ Josie commented. ‘He said he might see me in the street when I go to visit my loony sister in Rainhill Asylum.’

  ‘Rotter!’ Cathy exclaimed. ‘Pity there wasn’t another aspidistra for him!’ They looked at each other and began to laugh.

  Cathy was indignant that John had been refused for the Services but secretly she was relieved. She prayed that the war would end before Mick was old enough to go. She felt that all her family were doing their bit for the war effort. Greg was still busy at the First Aid Post giving first aid training to the many volunteers, and John was training with the Rescue Squad.

  Mick had less to do as a messenger as more telephone links were installed, but he still carried some messages and was often on night duty. Sarah was on a fire watching rota, and Cathy herself was now a member of the WVS.

  Meanwhile she worried about Sarah’s health, Kate’s flightiness, and the knowledge that the shipping losses must mean even greater shortages and difficulty in finding food, as well as sorrow for the seamen’s families.

  Sally had known a period of great hardship at one stage in her married life, when she had to scrape together pennies to buy food and coal. Since then she had always kept a well-stocked store cupboard and a full coal cellar.

  As soon as her means permitted, Cathy had followed her mother’s example and so far she was not affected by the shortage of sugar, but in early November butter and bacon became rationed to four ounces for each person.

  The weather seemed to become worse every day. Coal could not be spared for bedroom fires and every morning the inside of the window panes was covered with frost flowers. The frost on the ground and the roofs was so severe that it looked like snow, and soon that came too, falling so thickly that it was several feet deep in places.

  Sarah and Cathy between them had made woollen hats and scarves, and warm socks and gloves for all the family, but in the bitter cold, with blizzards and icy winds, the plight of more poorly dressed people was pitiful. John gave away his gloves and scarf and later even his overcoat, and Cathy emptied the house of any clothes that could be classed as surplus.

  The family joked that they were afraid to go to work in case they came home to find all their clothes gone, but they willingly parted with anything they could possibly spare. Later in the war, when make do and mend was the order of the day, Cathy thought wistfully of the use she could have made of those clothes, but the thought was always followed by the memory of her father’s maxim: “Their need is greater than mine”, and she had no regrets.

  Men coming home on leave told of incredible hardships in unheated camps with no facilities for drying wet clothes, and
one of Peggy’s grandsons reported sick with frostbite in his toes after a night spent on a Scottish hillside without food or shelter, as the supply lorries were unable to get through to them.

  Peggy had soon solved the mystery of her lodgers, or thought she had. ‘He’s been a Major, all right, out in India,’ she said. ‘But I think he got thrown out of the Army. He hasn’t got no pension anyway, and they don’t seem to have two ha’pennies to rub together. She’s more of a lady than what he is a gentleman, and she told me her father had plenty of money at one time but made unwise investments.’

  ‘Is her father still alive?’ asked Sally.

  ‘No, he died three months after they got married, and I’ll tell you what I think – I think His Nibs came home from India on his uppers, and seen what he thought was a cushy number, a single woman living with her well off father. So he married her, and then the old fellow died and there was no money.’

  ‘He’d lost it?’ Sally said. ‘On these investments.’

  ‘He’d gambled it,’ Peggy said. ‘Though there’s always money for the Major to get drunk, although they live on the smell of an oil rag. I heard him one night when he was sozzled giving the pay out about her father and the gee gees.’

  ‘Poor woman, it’s not her fault,’ Sally said.

  ‘No, but he takes it out on her because he was disappointed. She waits on him hand and foot, too, and he gets all the food that’s going. She tells me she only has a poor appetite, but she soon finished a plate of scouse one day when she was in with me while he was out.’

  ‘Poor soul,’ Sally said. ‘Have you been round to Meg’s today?’

  Peggy’s face lit up. ‘Yes, I went round this morning. Willie’s brought his last in the house because it’s too cold to work in the shed, and Meg’s helping him with the cobbling. Handing him things and rubbing dubbing on some boots. She’s made up.’

  Sally smiled. ‘I saw them out together on Sunday and they looked very happy,’ she said. ‘They’re very snug in that little house, and it’s nice that Willie works at home.’

  ‘Aye, that was one reason I let him marry her,’ Peggy said.

  Sarah’s general health improved but the stiffness in her joints was worse after she had struggled through snow drifts and arrived home wet through. Her grandmother made her a red flannel vest and red flannel knee caps to wear under her stockings. She also wore strips of red flannel round her wrists.

  ‘I won’t click with anyone in the office in these,’ she said ruefully to Anne.

  ‘Not even Reggie,’ Anne laughed. ‘I should think he’d like something different, like red flannel.’

  ‘We had a good laugh today,’ Sarah said. ‘We had air raid drill, and we had to go down to the basement and put our gas masks on, and Reggie said to us that Mr Daulby looked better with his on than without it! When we came upstairs he said he thought Daulby should keep his on and said to him: “Don’t you think we should keep these on, Mr Daulby? To know how to work in them.”

  ‘Mr Daulby said, quite seriously, “No, Reginald. We won’t be expected to work throughout a gas attack.”’

  ‘He always rises, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, and sometimes Reggie sails close to the wind with him. He was saying today, “I don’t want a posthumous VC, thank you,” and Daulby said he was proud to fight for his country in the last war. Reggie had told us Daulby was in the stores all through it so he said: “I wouldn’t mind a safe job as a cook or in the stores,” and Daulby shut up.’

  ‘You like that job, don’t you, Sarah? I told the lads when I wrote that you looked a lot better since we moved.’

  Sarah still wrote to the three Fitzgeralds who were away from home, and as Joe had predicted, Eileen wrote back to say that she was a lot happier. Terry and Joe had finished their training and were expected home on leave but Joe was suddenly promoted to Lance-Corporal and sent on another course, and Terry came alone.

  ‘Too good to be true that they’d get home together,’ Anne said, ‘but it might be better for Mum if they come separately. Spread it out a bit.’ Terry looked very smart when he arrived. His uniform was immaculate, his boots shone like mirrors, and he walked with his shoulders thrown back and his head erect.

  ‘You have to walk like this or break your neck,’ he told Sarah. ‘They give you a cap with a peak like a cheesecutter when you arrive, and the tailor cuts it so that you’ve got to hold your head back to see where you’re going.’

  He was disappointed to find so few of his friends still at home. ‘They’re all over the place,’ Sarah said. ‘And in all different services. You should see the variety of uniforms in church on Sunday when people come home on leave.’

  ‘I’ve hardly seen our Anne since I came home,’ he complained. ‘She seems to be either working or in bed.’

  ‘She’s working very long hours,’ Sarah said. ‘All the factories are mad busy.’

  ‘I haven’t seen much of Stephen either. All he thinks of is wangling to be off at the same time as Claire.’

  Sarah laughed. ‘Yes, he’s badly smitten,’ she said. ‘But she’s a nice girl.’

  ‘Another good man gone wrong,’ Terry said with a grin. ‘My mother seems quite annoyed with Joe for getting made up to Lance-Corporal. She said she wanted us to stick together and look after each other.’ He roared with laughter. ‘I’d like to see the fellows’ faces if they heard that one.’

  ‘How is Joe?’

  ‘Oh, the same old Joe,’ Terry said carelessly. ‘Not much to say, but I think he’s doing a line with a girl in the NAAFI. He can always get cigarettes. I’ll miss them when I go back and he’s not there.’

  Sarah was surprised at the stab of regret she felt, but Mick came in then, closely followed by John, and the moment passed.

  She went to the cinema once with Terry, and once to the ceilidhe with Anne and him, but most of his leave was spent visiting relations. It was a common complaint by men on leave at this time that they were expected to visit their often numerous families, once to say hello and then to say goodbye, and the Fitzgerald family was extensive.

  Anne and Sarah were to accompany Terry to the station when he left, and before that he came to see the Redmonds. Sarah had visited a photographer’s in London Road for a studio portrait on her eighteenth birthday and a framed copy stood on the sideboard. Terry picked it up. ‘This is good, isn’t it? Have you got another copy, Sarah?’

  ‘Yes, I got three.’

  Her mother said, ‘They’re in that folder in the sideboard drawer, I think, love.’

  She pulled open the drawer and Terry took the folder from her and pulled out a photograph.

  ‘That’s great. OK, Sarah? I can have it?’ She nodded, and he put it in his wallet. ‘I’ll pin it up above my bed,’ he said, grinning.

  ‘In the gallery?’ she inquired dryly.

  ‘Ah, no, alanah, the one and only,’ he said, with a grin.

  At the station he kissed both Anne and Sarah in turn, lifting them up and swinging them round exuberantly while a group of Cheshire Regiment men whistled in admiration and envy. ‘Don’t be greedy, Mick,’ one of them shouted.

  Sarah was silent and thoughtful as she and Anne travelled home. She had seen a glance pass between Anne and her mother when Terry asked for the photograph and hoped that they were not jumping to conclusions. She would have been aghast to know that her silence was making Anne think that she was upset about Terry’s departure.

  Although she liked him, and had been proud to be seen with him, Sarah felt that events were rushing her along faster than she wished, or than Terry realized.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Kate was due to leave school at Easter and Cathy was determined to find her a job where she would not be with young men. One of the shops in town would be best, she decided, Blackler’s or C & A Modes, where the staff and customers were predominantly female.

  She cunningly stressed how smart Kate would look in a dark dress and white collar when she suggested the idea to her. Kate lik
ed the plan and a position was obtained for her without much difficulty in C & A Modes.

  The girl had been disappointed when the plan to send her to Norah in Morecambe for safety’s sake was cancelled, but Cathy was thankful that it had not been necessary when Norah told her that many airmen were stationed there.

  Cathy’s friendship with Norah had been resumed as though there had never been a break in it, and it was a great comfort to her that she could write quite freely to her friend about her worries, knowing that Norah would understand.

  Letters from Mary in America came less frequently now. ‘Having too much of a good time,’ Sally said caustically, and Cathy agreed.

  Mary’s few letters were filled with details about her little dog and its antics, and about her beach parties and other social events, many of which seemed to take place out of doors.

  Cathy had written to reassure her sister that their mother was not suffering any ill effects from the bitterly cold weather, and was not short of food or coal. Mary’s comments in reply were perfunctory and Cathy wondered whether she had needed any reassurance or whether indeed she even thought about them.

  She mentioned Mary’s latest letter when she wrote to Norah, and about the way her sister seemed to dwell on the sunny conditions in California while they were suffering such a winter. Norah wrote back, “Mary was always insensitive, but don’t let it get you down, Cath. She would swop all the sunshine etcetera to be over here with Greg, I’ll bet.”

  Cathy smiled at the letter. Only Norah, the friend of her youth, could make such a comment. Her mother had never noticed Mary’s attempts to entice Greg, and he had always thought he just happened to be the right sex to interest Mary, Cathy thought in happy innocence.

  She burned Norah’s letter, feeling more cheerful, and she and Josie worked at a Rotary Dinner that evening.