by Annie Murray
They continued talking in the kitchen as the kettle hissed on the gas.
‘But as they were showing me out – it was one of the younger typists was told to take me – we passed this old lady with her specs on a chain round her neck. She looked ever so old to me, but the girl nudged me and said, “D’you know who that is?” Course I said no, and she said, “That’s Mr Collinge’s secretary, Miss Hurley. Ooh, she’s a tartar!” So I said, which I shouldn’t have really, “The sort who can strike you dead with a look!” I mean it was bad of me, but we just got the titters then. It’s a good job I was on my way out!’
To Katie’s relief, Vera smiled faintly. Her mimicry could often raise a smile from her mother. It seemed to bring out something irreverent in her.
‘I’ll be keeping out of her way.’ She turned from laying out the cups. Carefully she said, ‘Are you all right, Mother?’
‘Oh – yes, just a bit tired,’ Vera said. ‘I could do with a cup of tea. I’ve only just got in. So when do you start?’
‘Tomorrow. I hope I can do the job: I don’t know if he realized I’m only nineteen, but he never said anything. It’ll keep me on my toes all right – and I haven’t met Himself yet, either. That’ll be the acid test.’
As they drank tea she sneaked glances at her mother when Vera was not aware of being watched. Since Patrick had died, Mother had become even more anxious, worrying about the slightest thing, especially since the war had begun. The worst months of the Blitz had taken their toll on everyone’s nerves, but it seemed to have affected Vera particularly badly. She had kept on her job at Lewis’s and had helped out in the first-aid post in the store’s basement when times were at their worst, until her nerves got the better of her and she had had to stop. She had suffered with a lot of sickness, bouts of gastroenteritis that she was sure were brought on by nerves. Unlike the very tight, controlled mother Katie had always known, Vera had begun having fits of weeping and shaking, which Katie found frightening. If she tried to comfort her, Vera would turn against her and tell her to go away and leave her alone.
‘Go on – go!’ she screamed at Katie once during a particularly bad outburst. ‘What use has anyone ever been to me?’
She had visibly aged, her hair almost completely grey now, her face haggard, though still handsome in its way. Katie felt she always had to be strong and positive, to keep her mother’s spirits up and spare her worry. She did feel sorry for her, and it made her own life easier too if she kept the peace.
In the winter of 1940, after the worst of the bombing of Coventry, Katie had moved to her new job with Serck Radiators, as it was nearer home. She didn’t have to travel so far to work, which was easier for her, and she knew that Vera worried constantly about her, especially in her previous job, at a firm in Oldbury, which was quite a journey away. A few times the airraid siren had gone off before she had got off the bus and they had crawled into Birmingham or even abandoned the journey, making all the passengers pile off into the nearest shelter they could find. There was one night in November when Katie hadn’t got home and had spent a cold, cramped night with strangers in a factory cellar, listening to the thump-thump of bombs falling around them. She had had to go straight back to work the next morning, knowing that her mother would be beside herself with worry.
For a short time she had been out with a lad she met at a dance that Pat had talked her into going to, at the Moseley Road Baths. They would lay boards over the pool and use it as a dance floor. Katie was shy of young men and scarcely knew how to dance, or what to talk to them about. The only man she’d ever really known was Uncle Patrick! But her pretty looks soon drew the attention of a slim, dark-eyed young man who said, over the noise of the music and shuffling feet, that his name was Terence Flowers.
‘D’you want to dance?’ he asked politely, then added disarmingly, ‘I’m not much good at it, I’m afraid.’
‘Me neither,’ Katie confessed. There’d never been a chance to learn to dance, but she wished she could. It looked fun whirling round the dance floor. Was it really that difficult?
‘Well, shall we just have a go?’ Terence suggested. ‘Everyone just seems to move their feet somehow – I don’t think it matters.’
‘So long as we don’t trample on each other too much,’ Katie laughed. She felt fluttery and nervous. She didn’t know many lads, having no brothers, and had never been out on a date. They were just starting up with ‘Java Jive’ by the Ink Spots.
‘I like this one.’ Katie smiled.
Terence held out his thin arms and gingerly they linked hands, shuffling round the floor. They instinctively liked each other and ended up laughing at one another’s attempts to dance. Terence clowned around, joining in with the lyrics, and he had an impish smile that Katie liked, even though she couldn’t hear much of what he was saying to her. After a couple of dances he leaned close to her ear and said, ‘Shall we sit the next one out?’
They stood at the side, looking across at the changing cubicles, and tried to talk, though it was difficult over the noise. Katie kept seeing her friend Pat’s blonde head in the crowd, dancing with a huge, stocky bloke she’d met that evening. Once they danced past quite close, and Pat gave Katie a cheeky grin and a wink.
Terence told her he worked at the Austin. They got on well that evening, and as they were leaving, he asked if Katie would like to go out with him again. Shyly she agreed, though with misgivings as to how she was going to explain this to her mother. Vera was so fiercely over-protective that she didn’t like Katie doing anything.
‘Who was he?’ Pat asked as they left the dance hall. ‘He looked nice – all puppy-eyes!’
‘He’s called Terence Flowers,’ Katie said.
Pat snorted. ‘Good job his first name’s not Colin – Collie Flowers, get it?’
‘Ha-ha,’ Katie said. ‘Anyway, what about that hulk you were dancing with?’
‘Oh . . .’ Pat wrinkled her nose. ‘I shan’t see him again – he smelt terrible.’
Katie laughed. ‘Well, I s’pose that’s as good a reason as any!’
It was difficult going about in the blackout, but she did see Terence a couple more times. One evening they went out to the Alhambra Cinema on the Moseley Road. Katie loved going to the pictures and the Alhambra was very exotic, with a big glass bowl lit up against a blue ceiling to look like the sun, and pretty-coloured tiles. They watched a funny film called The Man Who Came to Dinner and she found herself laughing as much at Terence’s infectious chuckles as at the film itself. She came out of the Alhambra feeling very fond of him.
Another night they even went over to Selly Oak and met his mom, a nice, welcoming lady from whom Terence had clearly inherited his brown eyes and dark arched brows. They sat and drank cocoa together and chatted, until Katie was horrified to realize how late it was.
‘Oh, my word!’ she leapt to her feet, heart thudding. ‘I must get home. My mom’ll be having a fit!’
‘Don’t worry,’ Terence said, seeming puzzled. ‘It’s only just gone nine. I’ll see you home.’
It took them quite a while to get from Selly Oak to Sparkhill. The bus across from the Bristol Road was running late and, standing in the dark Edgbaston street, Katie found she was getting more and more wound up. She could never relax, where Vera was concerned.
‘I’m not half going to get it in the neck when I get home,’ she said miserably.
‘It can’t be that bad, surely,’ Terence said. ‘Here, I’ll come in and explain that we were at mine and we forgot the time.’
‘Don’t you think I can manage to explain that for myself?’ Katie snapped sharply. She was immediately ashamed. ‘I’m sorry, Terence – but the last thing you must do is come in. You don’t know my mother. She gets herself in a right state.’
‘Don’t you want me to meet her then?’ He sounded hurt.
‘Course I do – but not tonight. She’s bound to be all mithered about me being late and she’s just as likely to snap your head off as anything.’
&
nbsp; She and Terence said goodbye at the bus stop.
‘It was really nice of you to come all this way,’ she said. ‘I hope the buses behave for you, going back.’
‘That’s all right,’ Terence said easily. ‘See you soon, eh, Katie?’
She wondered if he would try and kiss her or anything, but he didn’t. He was a nice, friendly person and she enjoyed his company. But perhaps he walked out with a lot of girls on just a friendly basis? She was so ignorant about how it all worked – men and women, courting and all that went with it – that she didn’t know what might be normal at all.
The house was quiet, and dark. As she crept along the hall, Katie realized with surprised relief that her mother had gone to bed. Thinking she might as well go straight up herself, she didn’t bother to turn on the light in the hall and felt her way along the wall to the stairs. She had stepped onto the first stair when the voice came from the dark back room.
‘And where, pray, have you been?’
‘Oh!’ Katie jumped violently. ‘Mother! What on earth are you doing there, sitting in the dark?’
Stepping down, she felt around for the switch in the back and turned on the light. As soon as she did so, she wished she hadn’t.
Vera was sitting bolt upright in her chair beside the fire, which had almost gone out. The room was very chilly. She stared across the room at the wall, not meeting Katie’s eyes.
‘Mother?’ Katie faltered, shrinking inside. Nothing was said, but she felt as if she was in a room full of gas. If she were to strike a flame, however small, the whole house would blow up.
Vera got up and, ignoring Katie as if she wasn’t there, went upstairs and shut herself in her room.
Eight
Katie found her first weeks working at Collinge’s rather lonely.
After that night she had not seen Terence again. He had left a couple of notes for her, but she didn’t reply, and he gave up. Vera had gone up to bed that night and, afterwards, had not spoken one word to Katie for two days. Mealtimes were silent, the two of them at the table, avoiding each other’s eyes.
At first Katie was resentful. All I did was go and see a friend for one evening, she thought. But as her mother’s thunderous silence began to work on her, she felt first deflated, then guilty. Her mother was expert at tugging on the reins of her emotions, and especially at making her feel guilty. She knew Vera worried. And she had had such bad shocks in her life: first her husband dying, then Patrick. She was always afraid of something terrible happening to Katie, who was the only person she had in the world. By the time the silence had gone on for the third day, Katie came home from a tough day at Collinge’s feeling close to tears and ready to eat humble pie. She just couldn’t stand another evening in, with Vera giving her the silent treatment, the only human sounds coming from an occasional muffled voice from outside, beyond the swathing blackout curtains. She might as well give in. Vera always had to be in the right.
Before either of them had even begun cooking tea, Katie went to her mother in the kitchen. Vera was standing at the sink in the scullery, her hands in water.
‘I’m very sorry if I’ve upset you,’ she said. ‘I never meant to. I was just out with someone I met. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I promise.’
Vera turned her head, and for a second her eyes wore a harsh expression as if she was about to speak angrily. Then she looked down at her hands in the water.
‘You must . . .’ She swallowed. ‘You must consider my feelings. Here I am, all alone . . . You go off, and I’ve got no idea where you are, whether you’re with some man.’
‘But—’ Katie tried to interrupt. She hardly ever went out! Her mother was making her sound like a wild and uncontrolled man-eater!
Vera silenced her again with a look. She lifted her hands out of the sink and reached for the towel on its nearby hook.
‘I think it would be better if you didn’t go out of an evening.’ She dried her hands and put the towel back. ‘I mean, look what happened to your uncle . . .’ She covered her eyes with a hand for a moment. Katie realized they both knew that Uncle Patrick’s death had not been an accident, but never could this be admitted out loud. ‘At least until the war’s over.’
‘Until the war’s over?’ Katie was outraged ‘But that could be years – we don’t know when it’s going to end, do we?’
‘Of course not – but did you hear what I said? I’m not having it. You’ll stay in.’
Katie had not had much of a social life before, but she had at least seen some of her girlfriends. She’d more or less lost touch with her old school friend Amy, who had worked on the Woolworth’s counters after leaving school, had married a boy called Dickie when she was seventeen and moved over to Northfield. So far as Katie knew, Amy was looking after their little boy while Dickie was away in the army. And with her mother’s curfew on her, which she was sitting out, hoping that she would soon change her mind, Katie only managed to see Ann or Pat on a Saturday.
The nice friendly typist she met when she went to the firm for the first time must have left by the time she got there, as she never saw her again. One or two of the other girls in the pool were nice enough, but the other shorthand typists at Collinge’s were older than her, and though none were as old and fearsome-looking as Miss Hurley, they were more like mothers to her than friends. There was an especially kind one called Maureen, who sometimes stopped by and asked how she was getting on.
At first she found the work daunting. There was the walk into the factory, being eyed up by the young men with their loud, saucy banter and admiring remarks thrown in her direction. She tried to ignore it, but she dreaded ever being sent down into the works and having to walk past lines of the gawping, greasy-handed young men. And there was her boss, Mr Graham, a crusty, heavy-featured man in his forties, who came to work in a shiny, badly fitting suit. He smoked almost constantly and sent her out in the dinner break to buy him Capstan Navy Cut tobacco to feed his hungry pipe. She came home with her clothes stinking of it at the end of each day. He was pleasant enough, but was under pressure and curt with her, especially at first when she made mistakes and misunderstood things about the work schedules that she was hammering out on her big Remington typewriter.
‘Good God, woman!’ he exploded sometimes. ‘Are you trying to thwart the war effort single-handedly? Type this again – it’s a shambles. The place’ll be chaos!’
But most of the time he did acknowledge that she was really quite good at her job, for a beginner. And that he was prone to exaggeration. One morning, soon after she arrived, he stopped in the middle of dictating a letter that she was hurriedly recording in her fast Pitman shorthand and stared at her from under his bushy eyebrows as if seeing her for the first time.
‘Miss O’Neill – may I ask how old you are?’
‘Nineteen, Mr Graham.’ Katie looked up, to her annoyance feeling a blush spread through her cheeks.
He stared a bit longer and then said, ‘Good heavens. Nineteen. Is that all? They’ll be sending us tots in napkins soon . . . Now – where was I?’
They soon came to an understanding. The firm was at full stretch producing carburettors and other parts for military vehicles, for which firms like Standards in Coventry had converted their manufacturing for the duration of the war. There was a job to be done and everyone was expected to get on and do it. The works beneath them was going at full tilt, the place humming with activity.
The air raids had petered out completely for the moment, it seemed. Nothing had happened since July, and one day Mr Graham remarked, ‘At least we can get on with our job these days, instead of having to dive down into the flaming cellar all the time. To tell you the truth, Miss O’Neill, we often didn’t go down into the shelter. I used to say to my typist then, “Come on, let’s stick it out and get on with it, or we’ll never get through it.” ’
‘And did she?’ Katie asked, since he seemed to expect a response.
‘Course she flaming did! And none of the Hun have hit this bu
ilding, I’m glad to say. But if they tried it again, I’d expect you to do the same!’
Occasionally she caught glimpses of the Old Man, as everyone called him, Mr Arthur Collinge, who was not so very old – in fact probably younger than his secretary Miss Hurley, and not nearly as intimidating. Sometimes she would pass him in the corridor, often holding an armful of papers, a grey-haired man with a sagging but kindly looking face, and he would half smile and murmur ‘Good morning’ whether or not it was the afternoon.
Katie joined everyone in the works canteen for her breaks, and gradually became accepted among the other women and shared the works gossip and jokes. Now and then a group from ENSA came to entertain them and there was a sing-song. She came to enjoy Collinge’s over the first few months there, and was so tired by the end of the day that, for the time being, not being able to go out at night didn’t seem too much of a hardship.
Nine
‘Katie – here, coo-ee!’
Katie stood by Lewis’s, looking round through the Christmas crowds, and only after a minute worked out where the voice was coming from. Ann’s plump figure was skipping up and down and waving, over by the airraid shelter.
‘Oh, there you are!’ Katie hurried over to her. ‘Sorry – couldn’t see you for looking!’
‘You had your head in the clouds as usual, I s’pose,’ Ann tutted, but she smiled fondly. Ever since they had been at the Commercial School together, Ann had cast Katie in the role of the clever one, while she was the one with the down-to-earth common sense. Katie knew that neither was quite true, but she played along with it.
‘Where d’you want to go: Lewis’s? We could go and see all the decorations.’
‘No,’ Katie said quickly. Vera was working there today and she wanted to keep well out of her way. She kept the peace at home, but at a price. All the time she was tiptoeing round. ‘Let’s go over to Lyons’s.’
