Birmingham Rose

by Annie Murray

  At least I’m doing something, she thought. She felt free for the first time in years. She pitied Jean, and all the other women left to fend for themselves with nothing changed in their lives except for more struggles to feed their families, and more worries to carry in their minds about their loved ones. Rose smiled across at Jean. Her sister-in-law, with her long blond hair tumbling untidily over the crumpled blouse she was wearing, smiled back, rather startled.

  ‘You heard from Teddy?’ Rose asked her, reminding herself that Jean, like Dora, was going through the hell of being separated from one of her children. Teddy, who was seven, had been evacuated out of the city.

  ‘I just can’t stop fretting about him,’ Jean said. ‘He says he’s all right, but I don’t know if it’s true, do I? And after what happened to your George I can’t sleep nights thinking about it.’

  ‘Oh, I s’pect he’s all right,’ Rose said, laying one of her slim hands over Jean’s plump one. ‘Not much chance of the same thing happening to both of them, is there?’

  January had been one of the coldest anyone could remember, the city clogged up with deep snow so the traffic could barely pass along the streets. It was a strange time. It felt as if everything had frozen up: the arteries of the city, the food supplies, which began to be officially rationed, and even the war itself. It had not begun to affect Britain with the intensity anyone had expected. The strange blanket of quietness brought to the streets by the snow, and the houses muffled at night by the white blanket outside and the blackout coverings inside, all added to the air of peculiar unreality.

  Rose stayed at home through the winter. She saw Alfie briefly at Christmas. He had long got over the shock of Sid’s outburst and was all for looking on the bright side.

  ‘We’re engaged anyroad, aren’t we?’ he said.

  He chatted on about army life and the pals he’d made, and while Rose enjoyed his company and was glad to see him looking so full of it all, she felt even more distanced from him.

  Sometimes she popped over to Small Heath to see Mrs Meredith, who always gave a gasp of delight when she opened the door, crying, ‘Rose, come on in, bab! I was just making a little cake, so you can take a few slices back with you!’ She always tried to feed Rose up like a turkey cock on whatever she had to hand, and always seemed to remain astonishingly cheerful.

  The same was not true of Dora. Rose had been worried about her all winter. When the weather hardened against them, Dora’s chest became infected and her lungs ached agonizingly as she coughed, bringing up terrible amounts of green phlegm. Rose and Grace nursed her as best they could, though Grace wasn’t at her best either during the cold, with her asthma.

  Christmas had been difficult. Edna managed to get over from Alcester with Harry. They put up a little tree and did their best to make it a jolly day, especially for the little boy’s sake and for the twins. Dora burst into tears at the sight of him when they arrived and wouldn’t let him out of her sight, holding and stroking his plump, healthy-looking limbs in a way which Rose never remembered seeing her do with any of them before.

  ‘I can’t let you take him again,’ she said to Edna. ‘I know you’ve looked after him as if he were your own, but I’ll not part with him again. Not unless things start to get bad.’

  Edna nodded, understanding how she felt.

  But the worst was that they hadn’t heard from George at all since the middle of October. He’d written three sentences saying he was with a family in Wales and he was all right. Then they’d had an equally brief note from a Mrs Beamish saying that George had moved from her care to work on a farm near by. Dora looked lined and tattered with worry.

  ‘He’s probably living the life of Riley,’ Grace said, without much conviction. ‘He said he was all right, didn’t he?’ They all tried to blame his silence on the bad weather.

  As usual it was the neighbourliness in the court which helped them all pull through. They compared the best ways to make the food rations go as far as possible. Mabel’s corned beef hash was voted one of the best dishes.

  ‘I fried the potatoes,’ she told everyone darkly. Though quite what in she wasn’t prepared to say.

  When the snow came, everyone who was around came out into the court and built a snowman for the little kids who were left and Gladys and Mabel built a fire outside from an old door out of Moonstruck House, which was now in bad repair and boarded up. Everyone chipped in a lump of coal and they managed to bake a few potatoes for the kiddies. The twins, Billy and Susan, both stood wide-eyed and pink-nosed by the fire, cramming the warm potatoes into their mouths. Rose had dressed them up in so many clothes to come out that they looked quite rotund.

  ‘All right, you two?’ she said, smiling at them. She leaned down and gave them each a kiss on their round, cold cheeks. They both nodded, mouths full. Rose looked wistfully at their lovely trusting little faces, and stood with a hand on each of their shoulders, wishing she could hold them forever and protect them from all harm.

  Afterwards they all had a snowball fight. It was a memory Rose knew she would treasure forever. She remembered Dora’s face smiling at the window, still not recovered enough to be out in it, but cheered by the sight. And Old Lady Gooch trotting with her swaying gait across the yard in pursuit of Gladys Pye, gleeful as a twelve-year-old, with a huge ball of snow ready in one hand. Soon Gladys was flat on her back on the snow, helpless with laughter.

  ‘I can’t get up!’ she shouted, trying to get her bandy legs in a position so she could stand up. ‘God Almighty, look at the state of me – I’m caked in it!’ And she collapsed into more helpless giggles.

  As darkness fell, everyone was getting cold, and they all went in for a hot drink feeling more cheerful than they had for months.

  By the time spring came and the snow turned grey and slushy in the streets and gradually disappeared, Hitler had progressed across Europe. Czechoslovakia, Poland, and now Norway and Denmark had fallen, and the forces of evil and destruction were pushing up against France, the Netherlands and onwards as if this was their destiny.

  One evening in April, Rose and Grace sat in their bedroom talking. It was a rare moment of leisure shared together, and they were taking it in turns to brush each other’s hair as they had when they were little girls. Through the window Grace saw Sid come shuffling in across the yard.

  ‘Dad’s back.’

  Rose began to sing softly: ‘The day thou gavest Lord is ended,’ and both of them fell back giggling on the bed. It was a relief to get rid of some of the tension they all felt.

  ‘You are terrible,’ Grace said, wiping her eyes.

  ‘Well,’ Rose started to unpin Grace’s brown hair. ‘He always seems to be on at me.’

  ‘You always answer back.’

  ‘I can’t help it. I know he’s got some good in him really, and a lot of what’s happened hasn’t been his fault, but I just wish we’d had the chance to see him before and know what he was like.’

  ‘I think you’re quite alike. He was stubborn and determined to get on in them days. Like you are.’

  ‘Like I was,’ Rose corrected her. She stopped brushing and sighed. ‘I don’t know what’s happened to me,’ she said, hesitating to say what she was thinking.

  ‘You mean you don’t want to do all them things you used to talk about when we was at school?’

  ‘Yes. Well, no. It’s just . . .’ She sat down next to Grace and spoke very seriously. ‘When Alfie was here and we were together and everything, I felt as if I was in a kind of dream all the time. I didn’t have to think for myself, and after all that happened with Joseph and Lazenby’s I was glad not to have to. You know what blokes are like – they always think they have to do all the thinking for you. So I just let him. It was easy. Nice in a way. Like having a rest.’ She smiled rather wistfully at Grace who watched her sister’s brown, troubled eyes, rather puzzled at what she was getting at.

  ‘You miss him, don’t you?’ she said, thinking this was the right response.

  ‘
I miss his company,’ Rose said carefully. ‘And I want the best for him of course, for him to be safe wherever he is. But now he’s gone – I don’t know.’ She looked at her sister.

  Grace saw that her eyes had the life back in them that always made Rose so striking as a child.

  ‘I feel as if I’ve just woken up or something,’ Rose said. ‘Now that I can’t just lean on him. I know it’s an awful thing to say with the war and everything but I suddenly feel happier than I have in years.’

  ‘But you do love him, don’t you?’ Grace asked, bewildered. She longed to have a young man of her own to walk out with.

  Rose looked away, down at the floorboards. ‘I like him of course. But I can’t honestly say I know whether I love him or not.’

  Grace made tut-tutting noises. ‘You don’t half get yourself into some messes, you do.’

  Rose was silent, trying to think of some way in which she could express the overwhelming sense of restlessness she had felt since Alfie left. The past, before Joseph, had welled up, and she found herself thinking about Diana and the Harper-Watts with an aching sorrow for what she had lost.

  Suddenly she said, ‘You know those women we saw in town today?’

  ‘The recruitment lot you mean?’

  As they’d walked along Colmore Row, a long line of women had marched past, many of them carrying placards which urged: ‘We have the Work – We want the Women!’

  They were employed by many of the industries round the city. Some of them were wearing dresses and skirts, but a large number of them had on baggy dungarees in dark, heavy materials. Rose had been startled at the sight of them, but also warmed and excited. How strong and capable they looked! She had always known women who worked in factories, of course – Dora had for years. But she could never remember seeing them marching together like this, looking as if they really belonged in the world.

  ‘I want to do something for the war effort, something really useful. I’ve been thinking about it all day. There’s that new place they’re recruiting for – the Nuffield over near Albert’s place. They need a lot more workers. I thought what with Albert being away and Jean on her own with the kids, she’d be glad of a bit of company. And I could do war work in the factory.’

  ‘I’ll miss you,’ Grace said.

  Rose laughed. ‘I was only talking. I haven’t done anything about it yet!’

  ‘No – but I know you when you’ve decided on something. And Mom was only saying the other day how sorry she feels for Jean. She’ll let you go as long as you come home now and then.’

  ‘Course I will,’ Rose said. She began to feel excited.

  Suddenly they heard a shriek from down below, then Dora’s voice yelling up the stairs, ‘Rose! Grace! Get down here quick! Quick!’

  ‘What’s got into her?’ Grace said as they clattered down the stairs into the dusk light of the kitchen. They found Sid and Dora both standing by the Morrison shelter, the top of which was laid up for tea.

  Warming his hands by the stove was George.

  Both the girls fell on him, trying to hug and kiss him.

  ‘George! Where’ve you been?’

  ‘How on earth did you get here?’

  Their delight soon wavered and turned to concern. George pushed them off roughly. As they looked at him properly they started to take in the state he was in. He’d always been a skinny kid, but now he looked gaunt and hollow round the eyes. His legs, poking out of a filthy, torn pair of shorts that they’d never seen before, were stick thin, making his knees look pathetically bony. His skin was grey and shadowy with deeply ingrained grime and his hair, dull with filth, was sticking out in tufts all round his head. But the worst was his eyes. The expression in them was blank and hard, making him seem a person quite strange and alien to them.

  As she stood looking at him, Dora burst into tears.

  ‘What’s happened to you?’ She went to him and squatted down, putting her hands on his shoulders.

  George pushed her away as if she were some kind of monster. ‘I want some grub,’ he said. ‘NOW.’

  ‘Don’t talk to your mother . . .’ Sid started to say, but Dora gestured at him impatiently to be quiet. Sid himself looked shocked at the sight of his son.

  ‘I’ll get you some broth. And here’s some bread to be going on with,’ Dora said gently, slicing a huge chunk off the loaf. ‘And you can tell us in your own time.’

  ‘Fat lot you care,’ George snarled. ‘You’d have left me there to rot – the whole effing lot of you.’

  ‘George!’ Dora cried, her cheeks still wet. ‘Oh George, that’s not true. It wasn’t like that. They told us you had to go. Because of the bombs. And we was told you were all having a marvellous time. I didn’t want you to go.’

  George gave her a look of complete contempt and then started on the soup. He ate like a starved animal. He flung chunks of bread into the bowl and pulled them out soaked in soup, cramming them into his mouth apparently quite unbothered by how hot they were. The family were silenced by the sight. Rose felt her insides tighten with anger and sorrow. George only paused to scratch his head every now and then with soupy fingers. They could see the nits moving between his clogged hairs.

  When he’d finished he pushed back his chair and said, ‘Now I need some kip.’

  ‘Leave him for now,’ Dora said as he went upstairs. In the short time since George had returned, her face seemed to have fallen into even heavier, darker lines. ‘I s’pect he’ll talk to us after he’s had a sleep.’ And her face crumpled in distress again, her lips pulled back as she cried, showing the dark gaps between her remaining teeth. ‘I only wanted to do the best for him!’ she cried. ‘I knew it was wrong to send kids away to strangers.’

  When she crept up later to look at her own little stranger of a son, he had thrown himself just as he was on his old bed and pulled the blanket over him. In the candlelight she watched him for a few moments as he slept. His frail body was never still. His eyes and his arms twitched about and he kept moving his head, painful whimpering noises breaking out of him.

  What his life had been over the past seven months emerged only gradually as he began to adjust slowly to being at home again.

  So far as they could gather, the first month hadn’t been too bad. The Beamish family who had picked him out originally had been quite decent. They lived in a village near Llanelli in South Wales and regarded taking in evacuees as their contribution to the war effort. Unfortunately, in their enthusiasm they had taken in three at once, including George. As they already had four children of their own, they quickly realized that introducing into the family three city kids with their strange ways was too much. The children of the house had rebelled and turned against the newcomers, and in particular they disliked George, the only boy of the three.

  Eventually George was told that they were going to pass him on to a Mr Evans who owned a farm some distance away from the village, who wanted a boy old enough to lend a hand on the farm.

  George had not felt at ease in the first house, but at least there had been company and, as he said, ‘They gave you as much grub as they could spare.’ Now his problems really began. Mr Evans was a short, burly man with a gingery-coloured beard who lived alone on the farm. He had no idea about children and no ambition to learn. George had spent most of the past six months almost entirely alone, except for the surly, religious-minded Mr Evans, a few chickens, a dog and fields full of sheep.

  He had not been allowed in the house except for his meals which Mr Evans supplied when he remembered – at best once a day. In the evening he usually brought him into the cold, stone-flagged kitchen for some kind of soup or stew. The rest of the day he went without. In the beginning, as it was the end of September, George had found a few blackberries. As the winter drew in there was nothing. He slept in the barn where Mr Evans had supplied him with one filthy blanket stinking of dogs. During the day he had to help on the farm – herding and feeding sheep when there was work to be done, and being sent round with the
dog to catch rats.

  George woke in the morning often before it was light, to a hard prod from the farmer’s boot and a gruff ‘Get up now’, which was often Mr Evans’ longest utterance of the day. He communicated more readily with a cuff or a kick, as if George was just another of the sheep or dogs from the farm.

  Once the snow came, George lived wrapped permanently in the stinking blanket and an old pair of boots of Mr Evans’ that he wore over his own shoes. The snow cut the farm off from everywhere, so there were no letters, there was no one to talk to, not a word of kindness or of even the most basic communication. He lived like the animals: waking, sleeping, eating only when given the chance.

  Some time after the thaw came he walked away from the farm one night and reached Llanelli by the morning. From there he jumped trains to Birmingham. He hid his wiry, emaciated body in any cranny necessary to escape the guards on the train, sometimes ducking and dodging as they moved along between carriages. And a couple of days later he was home. They may have abandoned him, but where else did he have to go?

  His one remaining, overriding emotion was that of anger towards his family. They had sent him away to this place, left him for months now without a word of contact, as if they didn’t care whether he was dead or alive. And for that he would never forgive them.

  Thirteen

  Rose moved to Erdington at the end of April and was taken on the night shift at the new ‘shadow’ factory, as the extra factories built to extend wartime production were called, at Castle Bromwich, right on Birmingham’s northern edge. They taught her to use a rivet gun for attaching the metal plates which made up the wings of the Spitfires.

  When she first walked through the gates of the huge works she felt so frightened that she nearly turned back and went home again. The rows of long production sheds where they turned out the Spitfires and Lancasters stretched further than she could see. There were people walking about briskly in overalls, all looking as if they knew exactly where they were going.