The Running Years

by Claire Rayner

  ‘You know what the doctor said. You can keep out of a sanatorium if you promise to work only three hours a day. So that’s all you're doing.’

  But it wasn’t easy without her, for there was no one else so reliable, and Hannah went doggedly on, working all the hours she could, growing more and more tired. And it was not only the factory. There were the firewatching rotas too. Someone had to sit on the roof each night, wrapped in heavy blankets in the corrugated iron lean-to, dozing uneasy over flasks of tea, waiting for warnings to sound so that they could leap up and go to lean over the parapets and watch for the telltale gleams of smoke which showed where incendiaries had landed. Hannah took her own turn with Marcus, one night a week. And then there as the canteen, her bit of special war work, she called it, looking after the air raid wardens who spent the nights waiting for the warnings to go on.

  And behind all that, the anxiety about the rest of the family. Not just Charles and Marie, but her brothers too. They had sent anxious letters and telegrams many times during the first months of the war, trying to decide whether to come home. Their barrage of doubts and questionings going on and on, had been irritating for Marcus.

  ‘If they want to stay put, the should stay and stop nagging us about it,’ he had snapped one morning, when they had been awakened from their exhausted sleep at an unconscionably early hour by the ringing of the telephone, so that yet another of Solly’s cables could be dictated by a bored operator. ‘I'm damned if I'm going to salve their consciences for them. Talk to Uncle Alex about it, for God’s sake, Hannah.’

  She had, pushing her way into his office on Monday morning through the crowds of chattering singers and dancers and actors. She had been startled to find him so besieged, and had said so, and he had laughed at her hugely, taking his cigar from his mouth with an expansive gesture, waving it about.

  ‘ENSA, dolly! I got myself involved with ENSA, well, sort o ENSA. Last time round it was catering, right? And I tell you something, I reckon I taught them a thing or two at the War Office on account of this time they don’t need that sort of help. They got it organized already. And anyway, I'm getting on a bit now! Why should I kill myself doing work that ain’t no fun no more? Catering ain’t no fun no more but this business, show business, that’s different. That I like. I tell you the truth, if it wasn’t I got my seventieth birthday past me, I’d go back to the old song and dance bit myself. I wasn’t so bad when I was a boychick! But fifty years ago and now - it’s different. But I still got my theatre interests, ain’t I? I got my heath and strength, ain’t I? I got my connections ain’t I? There ain’t many people knows so many people as I do. I can put a show together overnight with such stars, such style, such artistry, I can’t be touched! So I went along to Drury Lane, told Basil Dean what I reckoned I could do, so he got me going, said I could look after the civilian side. I sent three shows last week to factories in the North and Midlands, lovely little shows they was, a singer or two, coupla novelty acts. Now I'm working up another couple for the evacuees come Christmas.’

  She laughed at his own pleasure in his accomplishments, happy for a moment. Whatever happened, wars, and tragedies wandering children, lost homes, whatever happened Uncle Alex remained unchanged, even though he was now past seventy. She went round his desk and hugged him and he grinned at her and patted her cheek and for a moment or two they clung together in a bubble of contentment, pleased with themselves and each other.

  But when she told him of her anxiety at her brothers, he shook his head crossly.

  ‘Such schlemiels! I tell you they got no more sense than a pair of babies! I sent ‘em to New York originally to get ‘em outa your hair, to set themselves up, and now look at ‘em! Can’t think for themselves. I'll send ‘em some cables'll make their hair stand on end.’

  ‘Saying what? Come home or stay put?’

  ‘Stay put,’ he said crisply. ‘They got to be outa their bleedin' minds not to. What good will they be here, either of ‘em?’

  Yet still she was, deep down, distressed that was how it had turned out. Of course it was better that Jake and Solly should stay in New York. She had no home to offer them, and as Alex said, what good would they be here? Both too old for the army, even Solly who was two years her junior. They would be an additional worry, yet she felt obscurely that it would be better if they were all together. The war was a bad one, was going to get worse; they all ought to be together.

  it was not only Jake and Solly’s absence that disturbed her, it was the distress of her aunts and uncles and cousins as the younger members of the family were scattered. Young Lionel, David’s son, had joined the army; at nineteen he was a tall well set-up lad, full of energy and pride in himself, for had he not passed his matriculation with flying colours and started to study law at London University? First he would fight in the army, he had told David and Sonia and old grandfather Benjamin, and then come back to finish his studies and be the first judge in the Lazar family. Reuben and Minnie’s children and grandchildren too, had scattered, some going to the army and some sent away as evacuees. The East End seemed to shrink as the young faced disappeared. There were just the very old, and all the women and the babies; it seemed to Hannah sometimes like a ghost of its former self, the streets too empty, too quiet.

  But life went on, somehow, as they went about their day to day work, waiting for what? Since Dunkirk people had been sure that invasion was inevitable. Hitler had taken so much already, Norway and Denmark following Holland and Poland and France and most of the rest of Europe into his bag; why should he stop now? Twenty-two miles of Channel was all there was between him and us the wiseacres told each other in pubs and tea shops and factory canteens, why should that stop him?

  But it seemed to as a blazing June became a heavy July. The news picked up a little, as British bombers began night attacks on Germany, and that cheered some people. Though Marcus shook his head when Hannah repeated to him the talk of the factory floor. ‘They'll hit back,’ he said wearily. ‘Soon. They know it at the War Office. Very soon.’

  It seemed to start almost casually, one hot August night after another, with the sirens throwing their ululating cry into the dark sky just at the time, everyone grumbled, when people had gone to bed to try and get some sleep. They tumbled out into the shelters, wrapped in sheets, or, sometimes, fancy outfits especially made to be ‘Chic in the Shelter' as exhorted by the women’s magazines, made cups of tea over primus stoves an then went stumbling back to bed when the all clear sounded, complaining bitterly because there had been so little reason to get up in the first place. ‘Nuisance raids,’ the papers dubbed them and everyone agreed, coming to work bleary eyed for lack of sleep, ‘all because of them bleedin' sirens, shan’t pay no never mind to ‘em again, I shan’t' the workers told Hannah, and she shook her head at them and told them firmly that they should.

  And then, in September, it all burst over their heads. It was a hot Saturday afternoon when the factories had closed for the well earned weekend break and Hannah had twenty-four hours of relaxation to look forward to before she had to go off to the canteen for her Sunday night stint. She had undressed to bathe herself in the woefully tiny bathroom that had been rigged up for them in their stuffy rooftop flat, and had just tied the sash of her bathrobe when she heard the sound begin, that familiar whine, starting far away to the East and then swiftly, taken up nearer and nearer, until the siren based on the fire station around the corner began, almost deafening her.

  For a moment she stood there, tempted to ignore it; just another damned nuisance raid, that was all it was surely? But then she remembered Marcus’s anger when someone in the factor challenged his insistence they they always take shelter whenever the siren went. She sighed, and dressed again, irritable and sweatier than ever. If only Marcus was here! But he had had to go to Whitehall for a specially convened meeting to do with aircraft production. Florrie was out too, on one of her rare jaunts to the West End, little enough though there seemed to be to buy these days. Hannah made her
way out of the flat, on her way to the steps and the shelter, alone.

  She stopped though, at the top of the stairs, her head tilted listening to the sounds; the distant rumble of guns, and behind it a deeper more even burring that was something new. She frowned sharply and after a moment turned and went running up the last flight of stairs to the roof, to stand and stare out over to the east at the warm afternoon sky shimmering with heat.

  At first she could not believe what she saw, but then she took a deep breath and stood very still, for the sky was almost black with planes. Hundreds and hundreds of planes, German planes.

  64

  It seemed to go on for ever, although in fact it was only a week or two, that first really bad time, though there would be other bad weeks to follow, later. But all she knew then was the eternity of it. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that within a few days, almost, they accepted the pattern of the days and nights as normal.

  The became totally matter of fact about vanished buildings and the stench of high explosives and dust and burst sewers and gas mains and the squalor of streets littered with debris and houses with half a roof left bare to the open sky and wardens with red tired eyes and reception centres full of daze bombed out people. The shops she usually bought from disappeared or looked alien with boarded up windows and chalked signs reading 'business as usual.’ And she hardly noticed. Landmarks she had never really been aware of until they were gone vanished from her memory as they vanished from real existence. The gas didn’t pop when she tried to boil a kettle, because the mains had gone and she just shrugged; the electric light failed to come on and water to run in the flat and she didn’t even frown. She went through the days as serenely as though nothing unusual was happening. The workmen got the electricity fixed somehow when it failed, so she opened the factory again, and they went on doggedly turning out their khaki shirts and skirts and greatcoats as though they had never stopped. The gas company men managed to reconnect the supply, so they had hot food again and she forgot she had ben hungry; the water came back so they could bath and she said nothing. She just went on, unflurried by any of it.

  Because of Marcus. As long as he was all right, she was. And he would be all right for the meetings and eternity of planning sessions which filed his days were no longer held in the upper floor offices in Whitehall, but in safe, deep shelters underneath Horseguards' Parade. Once he left the flat in the morning to go to his job she could relax; he was safe, just as he had promised he would be. The danger from the raids was here in the East End of London, and in the City, both far from where he was, and that gave her all the peace of mind she needed.

  He, on the other hand, was far from happy, for Artillery Lane sometimes seemed to be right in the centre of the German target. Bombs came down in great showers, night after night, to flatten the surrounding streets and factories into dust. Yet, somehow, the factory survived, and went on working, which made it impossible for Marcus to prevail when he tried, and he did, very hard indeed, to persuade her to leave London.

  ‘I'll be fine here,’ he told her, holding her close as they curled up in their small shelter one night watching the oil lamp swaying on its post as the distant thudding of the guns sent vibrations through them. ‘But I go through hell knowing you're here. Please Hannah, to Daphne! I know you don’t like her much, but she’s safe there in the village, I’d sleep easier if you were with her.’

  ‘And I’d never sleep at all,’ she said, and tightened her grip on him, twining her leg round his into a Laocöon knot. ‘Can you see me sitting in a tiny village in the middlel of Herefordshire with nothing to do but drink gin with Daphne? Don’t be crazy, Marcus! This is where I belong, right here. I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to be fine too - as long as you are. I can cope with anything, and knowing you're safe with the brass hats makes me feel marvellous!’

  The heatwave went on which didn’t help, and a minor epidemic of gastro-enteritis hit the factory workers, making it almost impossible to go on working. Somehow, she and Florrie overcame that, by humping bucket after bucket of water up from the street stand-pipe to the lavatories; that went on for three days. And then, late one Friday afternoon, just as she was coming back from the bank with cash to pay the workers, the mains that fed the standpipe fractured somewhere back down the Commercial Road and the last trickle of water disappeared.

  She paid everyone with Florrie to help her, and sent them all away, and they went with relief to scurry fearfully through the littered streets back to the false security of their home. It didn’t matter what happened overhead; if you were in your own familiar shelter, that you had dressed up a bit with gingham tablecloths and cushions and even the odd plant or two, you could manage to keep your chin up. So they went, glad to to be free, glad to have their money in their hands, glad it was Friday.

  Hannah hesitated after they had gone, wondering whether to go to Whitehall and wait there for Marcus to be free. He had said she could do that any time she liked, giving her a special card that would get her in past the sentry, but she decided not to do that. It was five o'clock and Marcus had said he thought he could be away not much after half past.

  ‘We'll pretend we're real people again,’ he said. ‘Get dressed in ordinary clothes and go up to the West End and find somewhere to get a meal. There're one or two places which are still not quiet decrepit, I'm told, in Greek Street. Try to be ready, my love. Tonight we'll play at being human again.’

  She dressed, wishing she could bathe, but settling for the clean up with her last precious bottle of skin cleansing milk which was all she could manage, and even put on a little make up. It was the least she could do, she told herself, peering in the mirror at her pale face.

  ‘Florrie,’ she said as she came into the tiny living room. ‘Don’t hang around here. You can’t eat or anything - no water. So you’d be better off going to Uncle Alex’s place in Golders Green. I know you don’t like going, but tonight, what else can you do?’

  Florrie grimaced, but went willingly enough and Hannah hugged her briefly as she saw her off, filled as always with gratitude. Florrie never changed, always did what had to be done, and went on as though the german attacks were no more than another tiresome domestic upheaval of the sort she had coped with so well in the old days at Paultons Square. Now she stumped off to Alex’s big house to find a bed somewhere in its tangle of rooms, which wasn’t always easy, for he had opened his doors to anyone of the family who wanted to flee there.

  ‘We might even come out ourselves, later,’ Hannah called after Florrie’s retreating back. ‘We'll see how it goes tonight. Tell Uncle Alex if he’s there. He should be back from Liverpool now.’

  Quite why she chose to spend the remaining half hour before she could expect to hear Marcus’s feet on the stairs going through the cloth supplies she didn’t know. She was dressed in one of her favourite dresses from well before the war, an apple green crêpe de chine with a matching coatee, and it was hardly suitable for scrabbling among bolts of khaki serge, but still she had to do something and that was something that had to be done. She made her way to the back of the factory floor, where the cloth was stored and crouched down to begin her work, a ledger resting on one knee as she began to count the bolts. It was an awkward position, especially in her high heels pre-war shoes. She thought briefly, I ought to take them off, but didn’t for fear of ruining her stockings. Silk Stockings were not easy o come by these days.

  The sirens startled her when they began This time it did not start from far away as a gentle little whine but sprang into first life at the neighbouring fire station, suddenly blasting her ears so that she jumped. Her ledger went flying and so did she, tumbling forwards awkwardly and hitting her head on a corner of a cloth bolt. She lay stunned for a second as the siren shrieked above her head, filling her with a sense of urgency and she shook her head to clear it and tried to get up, only to find her ankle was twisted under her. She couldn’t move without agony. Th siren went on and on, joined now by other sounds, klaxons a
nd, most ominous of all, the deep throated burr of planes, pulsating so heavily that she knew at once they were almost overhead.

  She began to drag herself across the floor, ignoring the way her precious crêpe de chine dress snagged against the rough floor boards or the way tears sprang into her stockings, desperately trying to make her way across the factory floor to the door that led to the stairs and to the shelter.

  Marcus! He must be almost here, almost at the front door, maybe on the stairs already. She must get to the stairs and Marcus, she thought, and felt her face wet, almost with surprise. The pain in her ankle was excruciating, and it was making her cry without knowing it. She sniffed and rubbed her wet face and eyes against her shoulder, lifting her arm awkwardly, trying to see through the blur of her own tears.

  The burring noise got louder, and so did other noises, great bursts of explosions and the high pitched whistle of falling bombs and she stopped and tried to sit up and lifted her head and called, ‘Marcus?’ - absurdly because she couldn’t even hear her own voice above the din. If he had been on the stairs, he could not have heard her.

  It got worse, louder and louder and the building shook, the floor beneath her seeming to tilt, and she flung her hands out to catch at something alongside her to keep her straight, to help her on the way to the door and what seemed to be safety and reassurance and all she could feel above her head was the floor again, and she thought furiously ‘Stupid! It’s supposed to be underneath me - ‘ And then the floor hit her on the head, a huge flat handed blow that made her eyes seem to burst into great circles of light. And then there was nothing at all.

  A cold wet weight on her foot, as she tried to run, tried to rush along the platform to catch the train. But it wasn’t the train she was running for but a taxi with its flag up, and as she ran it turned away and she couldn’t run after it because of the cold wet weight on her foot. She opened her mouth to call after the taxi, furious at the driver for not seeing her here on the station platform.