‘A child, you say it was a child had these papers?’
The answering voice had developed a note of uncertainty. Katrin had harboured no desire to linger, street telephone kiosks were too public, anyone using them drew attention, more so when there appeared to be no obvious emergency. But opportunity had been too good for it to be lost for want of another minute.
‘Weren’t no babby!’ Her mind had worked rapidly. ‘Were a lad near enough to leavin’ school judgin’ by the size o’ him.’
‘Can you tell me his name?’
‘No.’ She had smiled at the lie. ‘But I’ve seen ’im afore, seen ’im wi’ a man by the name o’ Eldon.’
‘By the name of Eldon.’ Katrin purred the words aloud. It had not taken long to find a man named Eldon, one who lived in the same house as a young boy.
So what of Isaac Eldon now? If she heard he was rotting in hell the news would be pleasant. The boy? She took out the lavender silk scarf and held it to her throat. He was young, he would forget. And his mother, would she forget?
Twisting her shoulders Katrin watched the play of light touch the fragile silk highlighting the delicate colour against the grey of her jacket.
Why spend a moment worrying for Miriam Carson? Removing the scarf, she placed it back in the drawer.
Miriam Carson and Isaac Eldon.
Two birds with one stone.
And there were more stones yet to throw.
‘Thank heaven that’s finished.’ Thrusting her card into the time clock Alice depressed the lever with a jerk of annoyance. ‘Two more hours on top of what we already do, I tell you this government think we be the machines.’
‘I don’t suppose they do it out of choice.’ Stamping her own card, Becky smiled placatingly.
‘Huh! Then whose bloomin’ choice is it? I know it ain’t mine!’
‘I wouldn’t think anybody chooses, it’s just what we have to do.’
‘I bet I wouldn’t have my work day extended by two hours were I in the Forces, I’ll wager they don’t get put on like we do, extra time here extra time there ’til you don’t never know what time you get to leave this place.’
‘Well, if you don’t want to be invited to stay another couple of hours I suggest we leg it afore he gets here.’
Following Becky’s nod, Alice frowned at sight of the approaching foreman. ‘Just let him ask,’ she ground between set teeth, ‘he’ll be told what he can do with his invitation and I’ll even help with the shovin’!’
‘D’you think he heard?’ Having sprinted halfway to the factory gates, Becky stopped to fasten the buttons of her coat.
‘Who cares!’ Alice tossed the reply carelessly. ‘Can’t do nothing if he did.’
‘Reckon he could ask Whitman give you the sack same as Isaac Eldon.’
‘The answer might be more polite but I reckon the outcome would be the same, if Whitman couldn’t let me leave on grounds of insufficient workforce then he ain’t likely to do it ’cos old sore arse complains I was rude.’
‘Seems everybody be puttin’ extra time in tonight,’ the watchman called as the two girls passed. ‘Even the main office be workin’ over, I’ve just said goodnight to Whitman’s secretary, like as not you’ll catch up to her.’
‘Mebbe Kate has some news regardin’ Eldon.’
‘No, I haven’t heard anything more since he left.’ Katrin answered the question put to her in the bus queue.
‘Seems funny to me,’ Becky put in. ‘I mean you would expect to hear of his being took on some place else but there’s been nothing, least nothing Nora has got a whiff of or we would all know.’
Alice’s retort was sour. ‘Now there’s a woman should be given a new job, I reckon her be enough of a gasbag to fill every barrage balloon that’s made! Let’s put that to Whitman.’ She turned a glance to Katrin. ‘Speaking of him, why keep you so late?’
‘Mister Whitman was called away last night,’ she answered. ‘I was given the message when I arrived at the office this morning. His wife has been in Coventry for some months now looking after her mother.’
‘That be where he’s gone then?’
About to explain that he would be absent no more than a day or two, Katrin was forestalled by the wail of sirens.
‘Bugger!’ Alice exploded. ‘Extra hours, rain and as if that ain’t enough ’Itler sends his bombers, what more can a lucky girl hope for?’
Toward the front of the line of people standing huddled against the rain a voice called laconically. ‘Her can queue forra bus but her won’t get one, not afore the “all clear” her won’t!’
‘Well, I ain’t going back to Prodor not if it rains bombs!’ Alice hitched her gas mask decisively. ‘I’ve been in that factory all day and part of the night, I certainly ain’t spendin’ the rest of it in no bomb shelter.’
‘But . . .’
‘Don’t tell me no buts,’ Alice retorted quickly, ‘you go back if you want to, Becky Turner, but Alice Butler be going home.’
Katrin glanced hopefully along the street, though she knew no buses ran during an air raid. There would be very few people taking shelter, maybe the gatekeeper and a few of the labourers, but the others, the machine operatives, the tool setters and foreman, they always opted to carry on working. Even so she had no fancy for sitting in close proximity to any factory hand.
‘You going back to the shelter, Kate?’
Her decision made, with a brief shake of the head Katrin slipped from the queue.
Of similar mind, other people began to hurry away, their figures suddenly lost to the night.
Becky followed, her steps quickening to a run as a rapid drumbeat of sound echoed in the distance.
‘Oh Lord.’ She caught Alice’s hand. ‘That . . . that’s pom poms.’
Despite her earlier display of bravado, Alice’s insides trembled.
Anti-aircraft guns! That meant bombers coming this way. Maybe it had been wrong not returning to Prodor but now wasn’t the time for reflection. If they kept to a run maybe they could get home, things would be better once they were all with their own folk. Alice gasped against the breathlessness of running, ‘You . . . you best come home with me, Kate, you know . . . case your dad be still at work.’
Go with them to Cross Street, share a garden shelter with either of those families! Aversion sweeping her, Katrin made no answer. Her father would almost certainly not be home, he stayed late at his work so much more these days. But she would rather be alone than take the alternative.
Accepting Katrin’s lack of reply as a reflection of her own trepidation, Alice ran a few steps then was suddenly jerked to a halt.
‘Oh Lord,’ Becky was staring upward, ‘Oh Lord Alice, look at that, look, there must be hundreds.’
Looking up into a night sky rendered brilliant by gleaming ribbons of light, Alice and Katrin gasped on seeing what had Becky transfixed.
Sound beat in their ears, a great throbbing swell of sound which seemed to press on every part of the body, to drown out the mind, to force the eyes to close.
But their eyes did not close, wide open they gazed at the spectacle playing overhead. Aeroplanes lit by the criss-crossing of searchlights seemed to flit and dart among the long slender shafts like huge dragonflies, their great grey bodies flying so low they might almost be touched, droned on, a great swarm following endlessly wave upon wave.
‘Oh God Almighty!’ Becky instinctively touched a finger to forehead and breast making the sign taught from childhood. ‘Oh God, please . . .’
The request got no further, snatched away by the noise of a tremendous explosion. Out of the distance it rushed in on them, the tumult swallowing them then spitting them out against a high walled building.
Crouched in its shadow, fear bonding them close the three girls listened to the thunderous drone of aeroplanes accompanied by the continuous thud, thud of anti-aircraft barrage.
When would the next bomb drop?
Where would it fall?
The whole
world seemed to shake; roll upon roll it thundered, rippling through the darkness, successive crashes of tumbling masonry and breaking glass bearing witness to some terrific impact.
‘Oh, oh my God!’ Becky rose first, her face white and frightened in the glow of fire.
‘Seems to be Wood Green way. Somebody’s had a direct hit.’
‘We should go there, people will be needing help.’
‘No.’ Alice caught Becky’s arm as the other girl made to run. ‘The fire engines and ambulances will already be on their way.’
‘Alice is right,’ Katrin added. ‘Those people are trained where we . . . we would probably be in the way.’
‘I should have joined the Civil Defence,’ Becky whimpered, ‘I could have helped.’
‘Well, you d’ain’t and you can’t!’ Sense overriding shock, Alice answered with familiar bluntness. ‘Ain’t no use standing here moithering over what you could have done, it’s what you need do now should be botherin’ you.’
‘What Alice is saying is that it is not safe to stay here, we need to find a safer place.’
Head drawn into hunched shoulders, Becky could not repress a cry as more explosions thundered, the vibration of them rocking all three on their feet.
‘Where, Kate?’ she asked, tears of fright in the question, ‘Where is any place safe from them Gerries?’
Glancing at the wall they had crouched against, Alice called over the shouts of air raid wardens, over the noise of motor vehicles hurrying through the town, of crashing brickwork and splintering wood, of glass falling all around.
‘What about here?’
‘I don’t advise that.’
‘I don’t see why not, Kate,’ she retorted testily. ‘We are told to take shelter anywhere when a raid be on, and this be one hell of a raid or my name ain’t Alice Butler!’
‘I agree,’ Katrin nodded. ‘But bad as our situation is, it could become a lot worse should we try getting into there.’
‘Crikey!’ Alice’s half laugh sounded hollow as she read the name illuminated by the luminous red of flame. ‘I sees what you mean. Lloyds Bank – break into that place and it will be a case of move over Freda, I’m here to stay.’
‘Over there then, we should be all right in there.’
Looking to where Becky pointed, Alice felt no comfort from the tall spire rising black against the silver tracery of searchlights. Saint John’s Church, a house of God; you would think to be protected in there but a church had not protected Violet Hawley.
‘Not me,’ she answered resolutely. ‘I’ll be lyin’ in a churchyard soon enough. I’m going home!’
‘You be going into a shelter is where you’re going.’
Alice had stepped from the shadow of the bank straight into the arms of a policeman.
‘No.’ She pushed free. ‘I have to go home, my mum needs help with the little ’uns.’
‘Does her now?’ The deep voice rose over the strident jarring of structures threatening to fall. ‘Well, your mother’s going to have to manage on her own.’
‘You don’t understand . . .’
‘Neither it seems do you! Tonight don’t be Guy Fawkes’ night, them lights be pretty to look at but they don’t be fireworks, they be shells bursting and that glow you sees don’t be your usual garden bonfire, but people’s homes and work places burning. Now you three young ladies have a choice, either you goes into a public shelter or I arrest you for loitering with intent.’
‘Intent?’
‘That’s what I said.’ The constable glanced at the building they still stood beside. ‘This here is a bank and unless I am mistaken, which I’m not, then you three were loitering and that is a serious charge when you be found hanging about a bank, especially when doing so under the cover of an air raid.’
A public air raid shelter! Repugnance a quiver along her spine, Katrin joined the others, following after the policeman across the junction of Bridge Street and Holyhead Road.
‘He’ll leave us here.’ Alice whispered to Katrin as they approached the police station. ‘That’ll be our chance to scarper.’
Her brain busy, Katrin made no reply. Just a few yards further on would bring her to Russell Street and then into Lower High Street; once there it would take only a few minutes to run along Spring Head and across into Hollies Drive.
Drawing level with the police station, the constable halted.
This was it. This was their chance. The moment he disappeared through that door they would run.
‘I have to make my report.’ He paused, a fresh shower of bursting shells studded the sky with diamond points of shimmering light. Then, as if reading the thought passing through Alice’s mind, added. ‘But first I’ll just see you three safe in the shelter.’
15
Would she ever feel really clean again? Eyes closed, Katrin lay in the bath whose water she had scented with the last of Violet’s precious Les Parfums de Molinelle ‘English Roses’. Not her preferred choice, but much more preferred than the scents of slurry and machine oil.
How many hours had she been forced to sit in that shelter? So many she thought they were never going to end. Situated opposite the Municipal buildings, they were intended mainly for people from those offices but last night they had been filled with people who had had to leave public transport: men from iron and steel foundries, their hands and faces streaked with sweat-caked dust, and others who, though having washed, still smelt of oil and grease.
So many bodies, and all so close together. She settled lower in the water, drawing the fragrance into nostrils and lungs in which the odour of factories and oil-stained clothing still lingered. She would rather have faced the blitz, run home despite the danger of shells bursting overhead.
Was that how Freda Evans felt? Did she long to walk free of her ‘shelter’, to breathe air that was not stale with perspiration? Katrin smiled. Freda Evans would not walk free for quite a time. Maybe she should visit, wear the smart costume she had worn to the funeral, teamed with the hat she had chosen for that day – a jaunty chenille astrakhan, its grey and fawn giving the effect of tweed. The outfit had drawn several envious glances. She rubbed soap onto a flannel and smoothed the cloth over her breasts. Yes, she would visit Freda Evans, remind her of what she was missing by being imprisoned, give her a glimpse of the type of clothing she had never had.
A Cross Street girl! A convicted criminal! Katrin creamed scented lather along her arms. Freda Evans would never be more than that, never more than a factory worker in a soot-grimed Black Country town.
But Katrin Hawley was no Cross Street girl and, like the woman who had reared her, she had no desire to live the rest of her life in Wednesbury. Had Violet thought that one more fact the young girl had not recognised? Had she mistakenly believed it was hidden along with that other secret?
The flannel slipping from her hand, she slid lower into the water. No, mother, she murmured, your daughter knew them both.
‘You heard them, didn’t you Kate, you heard them girls talking?’
Yes she had heard them, possibly half the people in that public shelter had heard them.
‘It sounded great didn’t it?’
‘Sounded more like the circus to me,’ Alice answered, ‘all that jumping and twisting, you’d need be a contortionist to do half what they reckoned to be dancing; what was it they said it were called, Kate?’
‘Jitterbug.’
‘The jitterbug!’ Becky’s blue eyes gleamed. ‘It must be so exciting. Lor, I’d give a week’s pocket money to learn how to do that.’
‘Don’t need no learning.’ Alice shot a conspiratorial wink at Katrin. ‘Just go along to them houses the Corporation be demolishing along Lea Brook way, the bugs you pick up from one of them will have you jump and twist more than any dance them Americans can teach.’
‘Not only Americans, there were others, Continentals,’ Becky smiled dreamily. ‘They sound so . . . ooh.’
‘More than “ooh” considering the giggles that were going
on, I’d say a few of them wenches had been given lessons in somethin’ more than jitterbuggin’.’ Alice folded the newspaper which had held her margarine spread sandwiches. ‘My advice, Becky Turner, is stick to your church social.’
‘Huh!’ Becky sniffed disparagingly. ‘A cup of tea and no man younger than your granddad to dance with! I’d better not go too often, I don’t think I can take the excitement.’
Alice picked up her teacup. ‘Mebbes not,’ she said, taking a sip. ‘But one thing there ain’t no mebbes about, seeing the photos being among them girls I’d say them fellas ain’t no granddads.’
The shelter had been dimly lit but she had caught glimpses of the photographs courtesy of a torch held by a girl next to her. Katrin looked into her own cup. There was a saying, ‘A picture speaks a thousand words.’ She was hearing them now and each word held a promise.
‘I’d say they was the very opposite of granddads,’ Alice said again, ‘but even if they wasn’t I’d take me one any day.’
‘I wouldn’t refuse, they all looked . . .’ Becky giggled self-consciously, ‘. . . you know what I mean . . . attractive ain’t the word for them, they was gorgeous, and them uniforms so smart they had them looking more like film stars than pilots. Imagine.’ Becky’s dreamy look returned. ‘Dancing with an aeroplane pilot.’
‘You wouldn’t be, least not right off.’ Alice was matter of fact. ‘Going on what was said, them Americans come to Cosford bringing planes sent over from America while them from the Continent be there to train as fighter pilots.’
Aeroplanes were not all they brought. Katrin remembered giggling whispers of ‘stockings so fine y’can hardly tell a wench be wearin’ any.’
‘Did you see the stockings one of them wenches took out of her bag? They was like nothing I’ve ever seen, talk about pure silk, they was finer even than that, more like gossamer; said the fella offering them to her called them . . . ? I can’t remember . . . I know it were a word I’ve not heard before.’
A Step Too Far Page 11
