Birmingham Rose

by Annie Murray

  The raids began early that night. Rose spent part of those long hours lying in Sid’s place in the bed beside Dora’s restless, feverish body. The rest of the time she sat up or stood by the window, frozen in spite of the blanket wrapped round her.

  The seemingly endless groups of planes droned past overhead, ack-ack defences hammered at them, and finally there came the crump of bombs landing at a distance or a much louder explosion if they were nearer. Then the planes roared away again. She peeped out from behind the blackout curtains and saw the searchlights moving over the city and the sky orange from the reflected light of the burning buildings. She thought she could smell smoke, but wasn’t certain if it was her imagination.

  She thought of Jo Pye out there helping to put out the fires, and Gladys and the kids all crushed into their shelter.

  I should have volunteered for the ARP or something like that, she thought. Where I could have been out helping people.

  Suddenly there was a huge explosion, so close that the house shook and the windows rattled. Rose found that she was lying flat on the floorboards without having thought about it.

  Dora stirred. ‘Grace . . . ?’

  Rose crawled shakily over to the bed. ‘It’s me – Rose.’

  ‘Oh. What was that?’ Dora sounded very drowsy.

  ‘Don’t know. Wasn’t us, anyway!’ It could only have been a street or two away though, she thought. Astonishing that the glass was still in the window. Good job they’d taped it across. If she hadn’t had her mother to look after she felt she would have panicked, her nerves were stretched so taut.

  ‘D’you want a drink?’ she whispered.

  Dora accepted a few sips of water, with Rose supporting her arm. She was so frail, her face and limbs pared right down to the bones. Feeling the ghostliness of her mother’s body, Rose knew that she didn’t have much time left to her.

  ‘D’you remember those nights we spent together up with the babbies?’ she asked Dora.

  Her mother nodded her head very slightly. ‘It weren’t right – you losing yours like that.’

  ‘I miss him still – terrible sometimes.’

  ‘Course you do – mine too – it never goes.’ The coughing took her over again, and the attack seemed to go on for a long time. Rose was quite oblivious now to what was going on outside. Dora seemed to doze off again when the coughing eased up, but suddenly she said, ‘You’ll always have Billy and Susan.’

  Rose knew she was saying, look after them, keep an eye on them for me. She reached out and took her mother’s hand gently in her own.

  ‘Sod them out there,’ she said. ‘I’m coming in to lie down.’

  When she returned wearily to work the following night she noticed that the space beside her where Maureen usually worked had been filled by another girl, whom she’d never seen before.

  ‘You done a swap have you?’ she said, puzzled. ‘What’s happened to Maureen?’

  The girl said she didn’t know because she’d been asked to move over from another block. Rose saw Madge, an older woman who worked in a position near by, moving quickly over to her.

  ‘You’ll have to know, Rose,’ she said. ‘Maureen was killed last night on the way to work. One came down when she was going for the bus. House came down on her. She never stood a chance.’

  Hurriedly someone fetched a chair for Rose, who had turned a sick-looking white in the face.

  ‘You all right love?’ Madge asked. ‘I never meant to give you such a shock. Only I didn’t think you two that close.’

  Rose sat under the remorseless lights of the vast factory, her mind a collage of confused thoughts. Maureen walking out for her bus from her lonely digs, the bomb coming down like a great slug in the darkness, and a small Irish girl called Josie, little Josie whom Maureen adored and whose heart would break.

  A fortnight later, on a frozen, gusty December afternoon, Rose, looking pale and exhausted, stood between her father and sister at Dora’s funeral. They walked back from the graveside under an iron sky, between the leafless trees, Sid, Rose, Grace and George. They hadn’t called the little ones back. With Sam away, this, for now, was the family.

  But as the wind murmured in between the skinny branches of the trees that bleak afternoon, Rose glanced back to the spot from where they had walked. And she knew that the centre of the family, the person who had kept them together, now lay buried beneath the fast-freezing ground.

  PART TWO

  ITALY

  1943–1945

  Fourteen

  March 1941, Berkshire

  The truck swayed along the narrow country lanes, its huge khaki bulk looking out of place between hawthorn hedges and elms. From the half-open back of the truck women’s faces looked out at the early spring countryside and they waved at people they passed. They all held on to anything they could to keep from falling on top of one another. Deeper inside the truck, where it was almost too dark to see, someone was singing ‘My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean’ in a loud, tuneless voice.

  ‘So this is the British army,’ a voice piped up over towards the daylight end. ‘You can see why they call them cattle trucks, can’t you! I say – you’ve got your foot on my case. Move it, would you? There’s a dear. Mustn’t have my things crushed before we’ve even started.’

  ‘You won’t be needing crêpe de Chine where we’re going!’ someone shouted over the growling engine, and the others round her tittered. The voice had come from a large woman with peroxide blond hair. ‘And stop that bleedin’ racket, will you?’ she yelled down at the singer. ‘Me head’s thumping something awful already.’

  Rose, who was standing near her towards the back, silently agreed. As the afternoon had worn on a tight band of pain had stretched between her temples so she felt almost unable to think, exhausted as she was from all the newness and strain of the journey further away from home than she’d ever been before. She could hardly feel her feet in her old down-at-heel shoes and she was hungry. The few sandwiches Grace had packed for her were long gone. The day seemed to be going on forever.

  ‘Here . . .’ She realized the blonde was speaking to her through the gloom of the truck. ‘You deaf or something? I said pass us me bag will you? Yeah. That one.’

  Rose bent down unsteadily and got hold of the heavy carpet bag. She pushed it to the other woman along the floor of the truck.

  ‘Ta. Where’d you come from then?’

  ‘Birmingham.’

  ‘Ooh ar!’ the blonde squawked. ‘Yow’m a Brummoy then – orroight are yer!’ she mocked.

  ‘That’s all right with you is it?’ Rose snapped at her. She couldn’t place the woman’s own accent.

  ‘Now girls,’ a voice called from the light end. ‘No point in being cattish. We’ve all got to get along and live together. There’s a war on, remember.’

  The blonde said, ‘Oooh, yes. I’d almost forgot!’ and rolled her eyes round in such a comical way that Rose couldn’t help grinning.

  ‘What’s your name then?’

  ‘Rose. What’s yours?’

  ‘Gloria. From Deptford. That’s London to you. This is a lark innit?’ Gloria stood with her solid legs braced apart as far as space would allow. ‘Could do without the old school tie brigade though.’

  While they had waited for their transport at Didcot Station surrounded by piles of army supplies, the women had gathered instinctively into two groups. The old school tie group, as Gloria called them, looked much better dressed and cared for, and one of them even had a fur collar on her coat. From the loud conversations in their posh accents, Rose gathered that several of them were bound eventually for the élite Intelligence Corps. There was a rather mousy, timid-looking girl with reddish brown hair who Rose noticed because she seemed to be constantly on the point of bursting into tears. She didn’t seem to be sure which group she belonged in, and hung around the posher ones as if hoping to be taken under their wing. The second group, which Rose and Gloria had fallen into, looked scruffier, mostly togged up in second- or thir
d-hand clothes and lumpish old coats. Gloria seemed the most brashly confident. A couple of them looked pale and unhealthy and terrified. One clearly had nits, so everyone shrank back from her.

  The journey from the station to the camp was roughly four miles.

  ‘I say – I think we’re here!’ someone soon called out. Others pushed towards the back end to get their first sight of the camp where they were to spend their first three weeks of initial training. Rose could see nothing at all.

  ‘Golly, sentry boxes,’ one of the posh girls said. ‘Those chaps look jolly cold, don’t they?’

  ‘Look at all that barbed wire. Makes it look frightfully serious, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Let’s hope they’ll let us have a cup of tea now. I’m quite parched.’

  The truck stopped abruptly at the reception hut and they scrambled out with their bags, those from the dark inside screwing up their eyes as they reached the daylight. The March afternoon had turned damp and windy. They all looked round at the camp which extended along the edge of the Berkshire Downs. There were row upon row of Nissen huts with corrugated-iron roofs, and round the camp stretched the spiky border of the barbed wire. It was a bleak scene, with no trees and few bushes between the huts, and the rounded greyish hills curving away beyond. Rose experienced the same feeling as on her first day at Castle Bromwich, an urge to turn round and run home. But home was much further away now, and there wasn’t much to run back there for.

  After they had filed into the reception hut they were each given a printed postcard to fill in saying they had arrived safely and where they were. Rose addressed hers to Grace.

  A brisk officer with an Eton crop introduced herself to them as Lieutenant Waters. ‘I’d like to welcome you to the Auxiliary Territorial Service. I know everything must seem very new and strange to you now, and I’m sure you’re all rather tired and cold. But you will get used to us and our ways here and, before long, our ways will of course become your ways.’

  She went on to say that they were part of Platoon 4, and that later that day they would be issued with ATS uniform, of which, she assured them, they would become very proud after a few weeks. Rose listened rather blankly, sitting on a hard wooden bench beside the girl with nits, who kept fiddling with her head.

  Then a plump woman in uniform came in and announced herself their corporal.

  ‘Right!’ she shouted at them. ‘Outside in threes!’

  Carrying their cases, they slouched and stumbled out of the hut into the cold and stood in rough lines, three abreast.

  ‘Let’s see you begin on some marching,’ the corporal yelled. ‘When I say march you lead with your left foot. Ready? Right – march! Left, right, left, right, left . . . left . . . left . . .’

  And the line of women, tall and short, plump and skinny, in as great a variety of clothes, tried to discipline their tired legs and march, heavy cases swaying in hands, to their huts. Rose heard Gloria give a snort of laughter at the sight.

  Hut J, into which Rose was ordered, housed twelve women in beds with black iron frames, six down each side. Along the middle of the floor ran a very shiny strip of brown lino, and in the centre of the hut stood a stove, its rather rusty pipe angling up and out through the roof. It was not lit at the moment and the hut, with its drab greenish walls, felt cold and cheerless.

  Rose sat down, slipped her shoes off and rubbed her slim, icy feet. She closed her eyes for a moment, wishing she could lie down on the bed and sleep straight away. She opened them again at the sound of a voice next to her.

  ‘Gawd! This is the first time I’ve ever had a whole bed to meself.’

  A skinny girl with a pale, rather rat-like face, her lank greasy hair held back by a couple of kirby grips, was unpacking her things on the next bed. ‘How about you?’ she asked Rose.

  ‘Me too,’ Rose said wearily. She was tired and didn’t feel like talking. The girl had an accent rather like Gloria’s. Her name was Tilly and she came from Canning Town. Rose realized she meant London as well. Between all her actions Tilly kept biting furiously at her rough nails.

  Rose got up slowly from the bed and started to open her case. As she glanced down the long room she saw that Gloria was up the far end, and she recognized the mousy girl who’d been hovering round the posh group at the station.

  Standing by the bed on the other side of her was a girl with wavy brown hair and round, healthy-looking cheeks. For a second Rose was startled by how much she reminded her of Diana.

  The girl smiled at her. ‘You look done in,’ she said. ‘Come a long way?’

  ‘From Birmingham,’ Rose replied. ‘It’s felt like a hell of a long day.’

  ‘Yes, I’m lucky. My people only live over near Oxford, so it hasn’t been too much of a chore for me. My name’s Muriel, by the way.’

  Rose warmed to Muriel. She was well spoken, but without a trace of the stand-offishness she’d sensed in some of the others.

  ‘We’ll be able to help each other out, won’t we?’ Muriel said. ‘Did you know that these funny mattress things are called biscuits? Odd, isn’t it?’

  Rose saw that the mattress on the iron frame was made up of three thin sections: – the ‘biscuits’. They also had two sheets each and four blankets.

  Suddenly there was a to-do at the other end of the hut. The mouse was in tears.

  ‘What’s up with her?’ Tilly asked, with more curiosity than concern. ‘Can’t see there’s much to have a crying match about. S’like a boarding house here I reckon!’

  The mouse, whose name turned out to be Gwen, had promised to write to her mother the instant she set foot in the camp and had just realized she had lost her writing paper.

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, wrap up,’ Gloria said to her. ‘Someone’ll give you a bit of paper. And you’ve already sent her one of them cards, so what’re you fussing about?’

  ‘But the card didn’t say anything,’ Gwen sniffed. ‘And Mummy worries so. She’s a widow, you see.’

  Rose thought for a moment of Sid, and of Grace left to look after them all. She thanked her stars Sid had the BSA job to keep him occupied. And Grace had told her that in a few weeks when she had reached eighteen she was going to volunteer at a first aid post. ‘That way I can stay home with Dad and George and still do something useful,’ she’d said stoically.

  Now Rose wished overwhelmingly that her sister was there with her. It would be so good to see a familiar face.

  Muriel found Gwen a sheet of paper and an envelope, but the moment she sat down to write they were all ordered out again. The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent rushing from one thing to the next: getting fitted into their stiff khaki uniforms and peaked caps, pulling at skirts and tunics to make them fit over hips and busts, and collecting a huge mound of kit: steel helmet, greatcoat, groundsheet, respirator . . . And clothes and more clothes, the shirts and slacks and gloves and everything you could think of except, for some reason, handkerchiefs. There were shrieks of laughter at the sight of the heavy underwear and thick khaki stockings.

  ‘Cor – look at them passion killers!’ Gloria cackled, waving a pair of stockings round her head.

  Then there was bed making and a quick meal of poached egg on toast in the Naafi canteen and, finally, bed.

  Rose lay under the sheet and heavy army blankets. A couple of girls were crying. It was very dark in the hut, but Rose guessed from the direction of the sound that one was Gwen. She wondered if she ought to get out and try to comfort her, but she couldn’t think of anything to say and wasn’t sure Gwen would want her.

  The hot cup of tea she’d drunk earlier had begun to ease her headache, but she could still feel her heart thumping too fast. Unable to sleep in this strange new place, she thought over the peculiar day she’d had and back to one event in particular.

  That morning when she had left Catherine Street, she told Grace she’d rather say her goodbyes at number five. ‘I’d sooner think of you here when I’m gone,’ she said. ‘And you’ve got enough on your pla
te without traipsing into town with me.’

  Grace had fussed around her like their mother would have done, and Rose couldn’t help thinking how much her sister looked like Dora now that her face had become thinner. The two of them packed up Rose’s few things in a small, decrepit suitcase.

  ‘I’ll miss you like anything,’ Grace said shyly, with tears in her eyes.

  ‘D’you think I’m deserting you?’ Rose asked. She had felt many pangs of guilt at going off and leaving Grace at home.

  ‘We’ll be all right,’ Grace said. ‘I’ve got used to you being over at Jean’s, and if you was here with Dad the pair of you’d do nothing but fall out anyhow. It’s best this way – specially with Alfie being stuck out there and everything.’ Grace still persisted in her fantasy that Rose was pining dreadfully for Alfie.

  Sid had said a gruff goodbye to Rose before he left in the morning. ‘I don’t s’pose they let you lasses get anywhere near the action like the blokes. Just make sure you don’t give ’em lip and you’ll be all right.’

  George just said, ‘Tara,’ as if Rose was off down the shops for the morning.

  ‘You’ll let me know how Billy and Susan are, won’t you?’ Rose begged Grace. ‘And Harry of course,’ she added quickly. ‘It’s going to be the worst thing, not having any kids around.’

  The sisters embraced. The strong grip of their arms round each other said everything. Neither was the sort to make a fuss. Rose walked away from Court 11, past the bomb rubble at the end of Catherine Street.

  Sitting on the bus into town, she began to feel this was actually real. She was really going to leave Birmingham for the first time. Her stomach churned with nerves and excitement. It was a bright, blustery morning and she stared hard out of the window as if trying to remember every stone of her city: the dark factories, Smithfield, St Martin’s, and all the other less obvious places that were so much part of her. She couldn’t imagine anywhere different. Leaving it all was terrifying now she was actually facing it. But this was what she had always wanted, wasn’t it? To see something of what was outside? The war had at least given her that chance. She sat hugging the small, battered weekend case on her knees, the one familiar object in a world that was shifting all around her.