When the Lights Come on Again

by Maggie Craig

  He’d caught something in her voice. His look became quizzical.

  ‘Mario Rossi asked me out today,’ she told him. ‘And I said yes. We’re going to the pictures on Thursday night.’ Despite her concerns about their father, Liz smiled.

  ‘So Father’s got two shocks coming up? If you and Mario get serious about each other too?’

  ‘It’s only a first date, Eddie,’ Liz mumbled - but she was still smiling.

  Twenty-three

  She walked beside Mario in miserable silence. Their first date. Their last one too, by the looks of it - and it was all her own stupid fault. It wasn’t as if he’d tried to do anything so awful. He hadn’t jumped on her - nothing remotely like that. There had been no undignified tussle in the back row.

  He’d been the perfect gentleman, paying her in, buying her chocolates and letting her decide where they sat. She’d even sensed some amusement when she’d declined the double seats in the back row which were specifically designed for courting couples. The usherette had indicated them with her torch, but Liz had led the way to two separate seats a few rows further forward.

  They’d laughed together at the trailers and at the plummy tones of the newsreel announcer, opened the sweets and settled down to watch Flash Gordon save the Earth from the Martian invaders.

  Mario had tried to hold her hand a couple of times. That was all. Once he had slipped his arm about her shoulders. On each occasion Liz had shrunk away from him like a terrified rabbit.

  She knew he was puzzled. He had a right to be. And it didn’t help to be surrounded not by wee horrors, but by couples who seemed to have cast most of their inhibitions aside in the face of impending doom. Adolf Hitler had a lot to answer for.

  When they came out of the picture house he said only one thing. ‘Come on then, I’ll walk you to your tram.’

  They passed the café. Liz had thought they might have gone there after the picture, but Mario kept on walking. She couldn’t blame him.

  Until this evening, she hadn’t realized quite how much Eric Mitchell’s unwelcome attentions had affected her. The memory of how she had felt when he had touched her breast and pulled her against him had stayed with her. It had fluttered up into full-blown panic tonight.

  Yet she’d been wondering for weeks how it would feel to have her fingers intertwined with Mario’s, what it would be like to be kissed by him ... and to kiss him back.

  She stole a sideways glance at him, walking gentleman-like on the outside of the pavement between her and the road. Should she tell him about Eric Mitchell? Try to explain her complicated feelings? Ask him to be patient?

  Helen was the only other person who knew. Another girl could understand how it felt, that even though you hadn’t invited it in any way, you were still expected to shoulder some of the blame. You must have led him on. No smoke without fire. All those horrible things people said. They reached the Botanic Gardens.

  ‘This looks like a Clydebank tram coming now.’

  Liz looked up at him. She should thank him for treating her, but she was tongue-tied with misery. She’d made a real mess of things tonight.

  Mario gave an odd little laugh. ‘You’re very young, aren’t you?’

  She couldn’t think of anything to say to that either.

  ‘Here’s your tram.’ He lifted her hand and kissed it. Well, that was how it had started. It seemed miserably appropriate that it should finish that way too.

  A short, wiry man was making a beeline for Liz. He had a girl of about twelve with him, her blonde hair tied up in two neat braids. The yellow ribbons which secured them matched the gingham frock she wore under a lacy white cardigan. When they reached Liz he propelled his reluctant daughter in from of him, work-gnarled hands resting lightly on her shoulders.

  ‘This is Susan,’ he announced. ‘You’ll look after her for her mother and me, won’t you, Nurse?’

  No point in telling him she wasn’t a real nurse. Unkind, too. Despite Liz’s youth, her uniform seemed to confer an authority on her which people found comforting. Susan’s father’s voice might sound firm. That didn’t fool Liz for one minute.

  ‘Of course we’ll look after her,’ she replied, instinctively adopting a brisk, no-nonsense tone of voice. The girl was upset, but she looked clever and bright. She did her best to respond to Liz’s friendly smile, but her chin was wobbling furiously. She needed something to hang on to, some sort of a job to do. Liz had a brainwave.

  ‘In fact, Susan... I wonder if you might be able to help us out with something.’ Half turning, Liz indicated the crowded platform. All the children wore luggage labels around their necks, identifying who they were. Quite a few folk had been having nightmares about children getting lost in transit like so many unclaimed parcels.

  Adam Buchanan and Jim Barclay passed, ushering a group of children along and calling out, ‘This way for the pleasure trip special!’ Liz couldn’t see Mario, but she’d better put him out of her mind anyway. She had work to do.

  Susan was still tearful, but her face had grown more alert.

  ‘We’ve got so many people to look after, and there’s a wee girl I can think of who could do with a bit of cheering up,’ said Liz. ‘She’s a bit younger than you and she’s all on her own. I wonder if you might be able to look after her for us, Susan?’

  The girl’s chin stopped wobbling.

  ‘I’ll take her, MacMillan,’ came a voice. It was Cordelia Maclntyre, back from settling the little girl Liz had been talking about into her seat on the train. ‘So,’ she said cheerfully to Susan, ‘we’re going to recruit you as one of our helpers for the day?’

  Susan’s father followed his daughter with his eyes. When she climbed aboard the train after Cordelia, he put out his hand and shook Liz’s.

  ‘Thanks, hen. You’re brand new - and that posh lassie too.’ He had tears in his eyes. ‘That was a great idea. Giving her some responsibility, like. Her maw couldnae face saying cheerio to her. Didnae want to see the train pull out, she said. Now I can tell her Susie went off happy.’

  ‘You’ll stay?’ Liz asked him. ‘To wave her off?’

  ‘Well...’

  ‘It would help all the children.’

  He squared his shoulders. ‘All right, hen - I mean Nurse. If it’s for the sake of the weans. I’ll let you get on wi’ your work.’

  Watching him as he moved to the back of the platform, Liz thought that maybe it helped everybody cope if they felt they had a useful job to do. Herself included. Stop it, MacMillan, you’ve already decided you’re not going to think about him today.

  Another family was hurrying along the platform to her. Liz put on the professional smile. The only way for any of them to get through today was to remain stubbornly cheerful.

  It was Friday 1 September 1939 and Britain was sending its children to the safety of the countryside. The evacuation wasn’t compulsory, but the government had recommended it strenuously to parents in the affected areas.

  Those were the cities and towns huddled along the banks of the great shipbuilding rivers, the seaports, the great industrial conurbations of the Midlands and the north of England, London of course, Glasgow and Clydebank, Edinburgh and Dundee - all the places thought to be at imminent risk of German air attack.

  The newspapers and the wireless and the press continued to repeat the official line. The evacuation of our children does not mean that war is inevitable. And the band played believe it if you like. Or so Eddie had sung at breakfast this morning.

  ‘Well, Elizabeth?’ boomed Adam’s mother as she came sweeping towards her, another woman walking by her side. ‘How are we doing?’

  ‘Fine, Mrs Buchanan. Although I don’t think the train’s going to be full. A lot of folk seem to have changed their minds at the last minute.’

  ‘Honestly, these people! When others have gone to so much effort for them. What can they be thinking of?’

  The cut-glass accent, and the sentiments expressed in it, raised Liz’s hackles immediately. She gave Mrs
Buchanan’s companion a level look.

  ‘I expect they can’t bear to be separated from their children,’ she said. Amelia Buchanan threw her a curious glance and made the introductions. The disdainful lady was Lady Lydia Maclntyre - Cordelia’s mother. She might have guessed. Liz wondered if she was supposed to curtsey.

  ‘Can’t bear to be separated from their children? How extraordinary! I had Cordelia packed off to boarding school when she was seven.’

  Liz wondered fleetingly if the seven-year-old Cordelia had felt as nervous as young Susan when she had left home for the first time. She must have been homesick: as many of these children were soon going to be.

  At least they weren’t going to be subjected to her ladyship. Cordelia’s mother wasn’t coming with them on the journey. She’d just come down to wave them off. That was big of her.

  Five minutes before the train was due to depart, a woman came rushing along the platform, four children trailing in her wake. Skidding to a halt in front of Liz and the two older women, she wheeled round to her offspring and grabbed the tallest of them by the elbow, thrusting him in front of her.

  “This is Charlie,’ she announced. ‘He’s in charge o’ the others. I’ve tellt him they’ve no’ to be separated.’

  ‘We’ll do our best, Mrs... ?’ murmured Amelia Buchanan.

  ‘Your best is no’ good enough,’ said the woman, thrusting out her hand. Liz recognized the crumpled letter she held in it for one of the circulars about the evacuation arrangements which had gone out via the schools before the summer holidays. ‘It says here that the children of one family are to be sent to the same place.’

  ‘That’s the problem with teaching the working classes to read,’ came a soft murmur. Liz spun round and saw Cordelia.

  ‘Sorry, MacMillan,’ she muttered. ‘Only trying to lighten the atmosphere.’

  ‘They’ve no’ to be separated,’ Charlie’s mother repeated. ‘And that’s final!’ Liz recognized the belligerence for what it really was. The fierce Mrs Thomson was terrified at the prospect of sending her bairns off into the unknown but equally as scared of the dangers they might have to face if they stayed in the city.

  Liz went forward and crouched down to say hello to the children. Besides Charlie, who looked to be about ten, there were twin boys and a wee sister, clutching a ragdoll as though her life depended on it. She was a pretty child, but the laddies were an unprepossessing lot, their clothes threadbare, their faces none too clean. Liz had a horrible feeling she could see something moving in their hair...

  Something else was moving - under Charlie’s nose. As Liz watched, he drew his sleeve across his upper lip - not entirely successfully. His mother turned to her firstborn, wagging her finger at him.

  ‘You’ve a’ to stay together now! It’s up to you, Charlie Thomson!’

  ‘Aye, Ma,’ he said. He was struggling hard to maintain a manful attitude. Poor wee soul, thought Liz, he’s only a baby himself. Before she could think of something to cheer him up, Amelia Buchanan extracted a delicate handkerchief from the large handbag which she carried with her everywhere she went.

  ‘Dear me,’ she said to Charlie. ‘Your nose seems to be running. A summer cold is such a nuisance, isn’t it? Have a good blow now, young man.’

  It was more of an almighty sniff man a blow, but it saved Charlie’s face. Once she was satisfied that he had finished, Amelia dropped the handkerchief back into her bag, apparently without a qualm. Cordelia’s mother looked at her in horror.

  The children were cheerful as the train pulled out of the station, looking around them with interest as they crossed the Clyde and passed through the southern outskirts of Glasgow. There were houses and factories to be seen, an environment they all recognized.

  ‘You’ll maybe be missing your lessons because of all this carfuffle,’ said a helper, one of the few adult males on board the train. Charlie Thomson’s reply flashed back at him like lightning.

  ‘I’ll not miss them at all, mister.’

  It was a vestibule-type train, and the helpers moved through the open carriages, distributing the picnics donated by Glasgow bakers and packed into white cardboard cake boxes tied up with string. Smiling and chatting, they encouraged the children to relax and enjoy the trip.

  It wasn’t long before the train left the familiar surroundings of the city behind. Chocolate biscuits kept spirits high for a little while longer, but soon the children began to flag. The novelty had worn off.

  Some of them were snuffling quietly, others doing their best to look brave. Amelia Buchanan raised her elegant eyebrows in a gesture which reminded Liz of her son. He and Cordelia were attending to the young passengers at the other end of the train.

  ‘A sing-song, do you think?’

  ‘That’s a brilliant idea.’

  Liz had really warmed to Amelia today. Any woman who could let a snotty-nosed wee toerag like Charlie Thomson use her finest lace-edged handkerchief without turning a hair was all right in her book. At the start of the journey her fair hair had been as elegant as her eyebrows, pulled back into a chic French roll. Now it was escaping from its pins, strands of it sticking to the sides of her face. One child, having eaten too many chocolate biscuits, had been sick down her front. That hadn’t seemed to bother her very much either.

  Liz thought about what this lot might want to sing. Inspiration struck. They’d probably be fans of Gene Autry, the singing cowboy. Softly at first, she started singing one of his hits, South of the Border, Down Mexico Way.

  Amelia Buchanan joined in. She couldn’t carry a tune, but that didn’t matter. By the second verse, most of the children were singing along. By the second run-through they all were. Everybody had suggestions for the next song - and the next, and the one after that.

  Sitting up in his seat and taking a renewed interest in the outside world, Charlie Thomson pointed at what he had spotted through the carriage window.

  ‘What’s all that water out there, missus?’

  Amelia Buchanan beamed at him.

  “That, my dear Charlie, is the sea. You’re going to really enjoy living by it.’

  Several exhausting hours later, the public hall which had been the clearing house for evacuees and families prepared to offer them billets was half-empty, dusty and echoing. Most of the helpers had gone off for a well-deserved cup of tea or a breath of sea air before the train journey back to Glasgow.

  A woman with two daughters of her own had taken young Susan and her new friend in. That was going to be a lively household as soon as the new arrivals found their feet.

  Putting her fists into the small of her back, Liz arched her spine and let out a long sigh. She would go round and see Susan’s parents tonight - the other girl’s too - and tell them that they were both fine. She yawned. Or maybe she would leave it till tomorrow. It had been a long day, and it wasn’t over yet. The Thomson children had still to be found a billet

  Clutching her rag doll in the crook of her elbow, the wee girl had her thumb stuck so tightly in her mouth you’d probably have needed a crowbar to prise it out. With her other hand she was gripping her big brother’s hand.

  ‘I’ll take the little girl. I could probably scrub her up to something halfway presentable.’ The woman who’d made the offer laughed, clearly expecting her remark to be taken as a good joke. Charlie’s sister whimpered and redoubled her hold on his hand.

  ‘We’ve got to stay together, missus,’ he said firmly before any of the adults could speak. ‘Ma mammy’ll leather me if we dinna.’

  ‘Really!’ exclaimed the woman, looking down her nose at him. ‘Children should be seen and not heard, young man. One of my friends was saying that half of them haven’t brought the right stuff with them, either. Are we supposed to provide all that, because their parents can’t be bothered to? Don’t these people care about their children?’

  Liz, straightening up from her surreptitious health and beauty exercises, thought she might explode. She’d heard too many moans and complaints today,
and not from the children either. She could understand it in one way. The folk who were taking the evacuees in were being asked to do a lot: opening their homes to youngsters who were complete strangers to them.

  Some of them would have been badgered into it, persuaded to pull together in this time of national crisis. It must be difficult, being asked to turn your own house topsy-turvy to accommodate other folk’s children.

  But the complaints about them being badly kitted-out were unfair. As far as Liz was concerned, the people who made them were showing their own ignorance when they did so - like the people who’d drawn up the list of items evacuees should take with them to their new homes. They might have meant well, but the length and scope of that list showed all too clearly that too many people had absolutely no idea of the harsh living conditions endured by hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens.

  The evacuees were supposed to take ‘a warm coat or mackintosh, a change of underclothes and stockings, handkerchiefs, night clothes, house shoes or rubber shoes, toothbrush, comb, towel, soap, face cloth and a tin cup’. As an afterthought they had also been asked to bring a warm blanket. Liz laughed when she read that list and then had to explain to Cordelia what was so funny.

  What was so funny wasn’t really funny at all: the reality that lots of children didn’t possess a coat, let alone a warm one, that many of them had never owned night clothes, far less slippers, that while middle-class households might have several spare blankets, working-class families didn’t have enough bedcovers to keep themselves warm at night as it was.

  Liz glared at the woman who was regarding the Thomson children so disdainfully. How dare she look down her nose at these poor wee refugees? What they needed right now was a cuddle and some loving care - then they could have a bath and be scrubbed up.

  Like the children, Liz was tired and upset and worn out by being at the centre of so much emotion throughout the day. Her own personal emotions stemming from last night’s disastrous date with Mario weren’t helping either - and it all boiled over.