by Annie Murray
Winter 1944
Somewhere in the distance, she could hear a baby crying. Muzzily Katie opened her eyes to see pale-blue walls, and a big dark wardrobe. She tried to move, but flopped back, a wrenching pain shooting through her belly. She heard a crackling noise and realized she was lying on sheets of newspaper. Her breasts ached sharply. Between her legs was some sort of cloth pad, and everything down there felt damp and sticky.
‘Oh, dear God. Oh, Mom, Mom, why aren’t you here?’ she murmured in a heartbroken voice, before slipping back into sleep.
‘Katie?’ It seemed only seconds later that she was woken again. The stickiness had grown worse. A face floated into focus. ‘How’re you feeling? I’ve brought little’un up for you.’
No, Katie thought. Don’t make me do anything! I can’t manage – I can’t even get up.
But Ann’s mom, Mrs Miller, plump and capable like her daughter, came and sat on the side of the bed – Ann’s bed, which normally she shared with two of her younger sisters. Mrs Miller’s thin, faded hair was scraped up in a bun and she was missing several front teeth, which gave her a rakish smile. The bundle she was holding in her thick arms gave off snuffling noises, sneezed, then let out a vexed-sounding wail. Mrs Miller wobbled with laughter.
‘Hark at him! ’E wants his dinner, ’e does!’
Exhausted as she was, Katie pushed herself up again, full of longing curiosity about the little being who had shared the night’s ordeal. The nightmare of the hours of pain in the darkness was still close to her, but now he had arrived, she wanted nothing more than to hold her son. Sitting up, she frowned.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Miller. I seem to be bleeding rather a lot.’ She was worried about staining the bed.
‘It’s all right, bab, I know how it is. Don’t you worry – we’ll soon get yer sorted out. ’Ere ’e is, look! ’E’s a fine lad – look at that hair! Go on, that’s it: you give him a feed.’
The little boy took the breast enthusiastically and Katie winced as he started to feed. She stroked the mop of black hair that was slathered to his head. She could see nothing of Simon in him, only her own dark looks, and about this she felt stingingly triumphant.
‘That’s it!’ Mrs Miller encouraged her. ‘You’ve got the idea. You’ve got a lovely little lad there – a good size an’ all. He was well over seven pound.’
Katie smiled faintly. ‘I feel as if I’ve been hit by a tram.’
‘Ooh, I know, bab, believe me, I do! Listen, what you’ll want is a nice cup of tea. Now, give him a few minutes on each side and you’ll stay evened up that way. I’ll go and get you some tea and a bit of bread and scrape – that’ll set you up.’
‘You’ve been ever so kind,’ Katie said tearfully.
‘Don’t mention it, love. You’re our Ann’s friend, and we couldn’t have you doing it all on yer own, could we?’
The baby had come early. Katie had calculated that it was due towards the end of February, but yesterday, a fortnight sooner, she had felt strange sensations as she was sitting at her desk at work – a hot, melting feeling of something giving way inside her. It was only later, after she’d walked home, that the pains began.
She had always kept out of the way of her crabby landlady as much as possible, going straight to her room, cooking solitary little meals on the single ring, only having anything to do with the woman if she had her topcoat on, which she hoped hid her swelling figure. As soon as the pains began, she knew there was only one person she could turn to: Ann. The Millers were already keeping an eye out for her. When Mrs Miller heard just how alone in the world she was, she had insisted that Katie go round there for Christmas dinner, taking everything she could in the way of rations, and she had squeezed in with all the family and received a kindly welcome. She was more grateful to the Millers than she could have put into words.
Thanking providence that it had begun in the evening, when she was not at work and it was dark, she put a few things in a bag and walked along to Ann’s house on Stoney Lane. Mrs Miller took one look at Katie, bent over, gasping, on the doorstep and said, ‘Oh dear – like that, is it? Come on, we’d better get you upstairs. Ann!’ she bawled into the house. ‘Get yer bed ready!’
She sent one of the younger children out for the midwife, a Mrs Mulvey.
‘That’ll give Mrs M a shock, us lot calling for ’er,’ she joked as she helped Katie to climb the narrow stairs. The younger children were watching curiously from the hall. ‘I’ve ’ad everything taken away down there now – she’ll think I’ve ’ad a little miracle happen!’
Katie gave herself up gratefully into the hands of kindly Mrs Miller and the midwife, and the crushing waves of pain. The only things she was aware of were the squeezing of her drum of a body, and someone wiping her forehead with a cool rag from time to time. How the rest of the family were managing, she had no idea. She was only aware, distantly, that after she had managed at last to push the baby out, feeling as though all her bones would crack apart in the effort, and he was taken downstairs to be shown off in the small hours of the morning, there came the sound of a cheer from the waiting children and it brought tears to her eyes that someone else in the world was pleased to welcome him.
All the next day Katie slept, on and off, feeding and holding the baby in between. The house had gone quiet, except for Mrs Miller moving about and panting up the stairs to see how she was, and whether she wanted another cup of tea or something to eat. Katie started to feel bad that she was causing such a fuss. She’d handed Mrs Miller her ration book of course, but apart from that she was too exhausted to do anything but lie there. She felt tearful and vulnerable to painful thoughts. Her mother’s rejection of her played endlessly in her mind. Then sometimes she let herself imagine Simon coming into the room, seeing his son and being delighted and tender towards them both, and for a few moments it made her weep with longing. It was no good. She’d wipe her eyes fiercely. She had to harden herself, finding her bitter anger so as not to dissolve into despair. Never, ever again, she vowed, would she put her trust in a man.
One morning, instead of Simon, she found herself thinking about Em, and dwelling on all that had happened all those years ago. She wondered how Em was, whether the Browns still lived in the same street. There had been a sweet perfection about their childhood friendship – and she had wrecked it. But she knew that it was as much her mother’s fault, forcing on Katie her mean, superior ways, and again she burned with hurt and anger towards Vera. She’s no mother of mine . . . She longed to see Em – for that freckly, smiling face that she remembered to come into the room now and see her, and for things to be all right. She told herself not to be so silly. Em would have grown up and changed completely now, and she certainly wouldn’t be pleased to see her, of all people! But it’s funny, she found herself thinking tearfully, we were only babies really, but I still think of her as the best friend I’ve ever had.
‘You’ll soon pick up,’ Mrs Miller told her on one of her visits to the bedroom, finding Katie wet-cheeked once again. ‘There’s you, all on yer own – t’ain’t right, that. But don’t you worry. We’ll see yer all right.’
‘You’re so kind,’ Katie kept saying, though the tears kept on coming. She couldn’t seem to stop them.
As soon as Ann came in from work that evening she was up the stairs.
‘Where is he? Ooh, let me have a hold. I’ve been looking forward to this all day!’
Katie was sitting up in bed with the baby in her arms. Since the end of school there’d been a trail of smudgy-faced, amiable Miller children up and down to ‘’ave a look at the babby’. As she held him, he gazed up at Katie with a blurred, confused expression. She found it hard to let go of him when she handed him to Ann. In that one day she had been amazed to find that she had a fierce, tender attachment to him.
‘You’re looking a bit better,’ Ann said. ‘You looked ever so pale and poorly this morning.’
‘I felt it,’ Katie said. ‘But your mom’s been looking after me so nicely. I feel better.’<
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‘He’s beautiful. Aren’t you?’ Ann smiled and cooed down at the little boy until Katie was laughing. ‘I feel quite jealous.’
‘Oh, I could tell you a few things to talk you out of that for a start!’ Katie said. ‘Ow, I mustn’t laugh! I’ve never been so sore in my life. It’s like going through the mincer!’
They both sat adoring the little boy for a while longer. Katie felt as if she had a glow around her. But there was a whole host of things she was worrying about.
‘Look, Ann – you’ve all been so good to me. But I can’t keep taking your bed . . .’
Ann held up a hand. ‘Don’t even mention it. Tonight, you’re sleeping there. You’ve got to recover properly. Some of the girls are bunking up with Mom and Dad, and the rest of us are downstairs, but we’ll manage. We’re a hardy lot, us Millers – we can sleep anywhere.’
Katie’s face grew very solemn as her fears spilled out. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, Ann. I can’t just stay here, imposing on all of you. I mean, I’d like to give your mom some money for a start.’ Ann was holding up her hand in protest. ‘But I can’t go back to St Paul’s Road – I know she won’t have me, not now. I’ve got nowhere on earth to go.’
As soon as she felt a bit better Katie insisted that she move downstairs and let the Miller girls, Ann, Hetty and Dora, have their bed back.
‘And the moment I can find somewhere to go, I’ll be out of your way,’ she promised Mrs Miller. She insisted on paying her rent, feeling guilty that she had Simon’s money, yet was living off the Millers.
‘One thing I should do is go and see Mrs Thomas,’ she told Ann. ‘She’s a friend of my mother’s, but in her way she’s been very good to me as well. She told me she wanted to see the babby when it was born. I’ll go and see her this afternoon.’
It felt very strange venturing out in the cold winter air after she had been inside for so long. She felt as if giving birth had taken her on a long, strange journey and she had come back to find everything looking slightly altered from how it was before she left. She knew she was the one who had changed. Even her coat was stretched out of shape now that her belly had gone down again. She walked to the tram stop, holding her little boy swaddled up and wrapped in a white woollen shawl and feeling painfully self-conscious – surely everyone she met could tell she wasn’t married, that she was a fallen woman! Their eyes seemed to bore through her. But every time she looked into that sleeping little face, she knew that nothing anyone said mattered more than the fact that she was with him and he with her, no matter how hard she had to struggle.
She cradled him in her arms on the tram, caressing his cheek with a finger. Ann kept saying, ‘So what are you going to call him then?’ So far Katie had not said anything. She knew she would name him, but she could hardly go to a priest and ask to have him baptized, could she? Not in her situation, or not without telling more lies. But then, if she didn’t baptize him, would he go to hell? That was what she had been brought up to believe. Would it be better to lie, to say that the father was overseas? She had already lied about that, but lying to one of the Fathers felt worse still.
In her heart she knew what she was going to call him. There was something in the set of his face, the thick, dark hair, that gave her a feeling she would not have named to anyone – that she had given birth to her father, or to someone who was so like him that it was as if, in a strange way, he had been given back to her.
Leaning down she kissed him. ‘Michael,’ she whispered. ‘My little son, Michael.’
She also knew that when she went to see Enid Thomas, her visit would be reported to her mother. And she wanted Vera to know – to realize what she was missing, and to know that she had named the baby after her father, who had not rejected her. Life had rejected him.
‘Oh!’ Enid gasped in amazement when she opened the door. ‘Katie, love – oh, come in!’
She was delighted at the sight of both of them and spent ages admiring the baby and holding him.
‘What’re you calling him?’ she asked as she took a break from cuddling him to brew some tea.
‘Michael Patrick O’Neill,’ Katie said confidently. ‘After my father and uncle.’
‘Oh, that’s nice,’ Enid said. She looked solemnly at Katie. ‘You haven’t seen your mother?’
Katie shook her head sharply, though she felt tears close to the surface. She swallowed them down. ‘But I suppose you have?’
‘Yes, love, I have.’
Katie wanted to hear how much Vera was regretting her decision and her cruel treatment of her daughter, how she longed to see her grandchild, but Enid went on, ‘I can’t believe it really, Katie, the way she is. I’d never’ve thought it of her. We’ve had words about it, I can tell you. But she’ll never say more than that it’s not my business – that she’s asked you to go, and she doesn’t want to hear any more about it.’ She shook her head, carefully spooning tea. ‘I can’t understand her: that she’d treat her own flesh and blood the way she has. I’ll stand by her – we’ve been friends to each other for too long to do anything else. But to tell you the truth, I can’t help seeing her differently after this. You know I lost my son, don’t you?’ She looked up, her eyes filling with tears. ‘I’d give anything, anything, to have my William back on this earth alive again. And I look at how she’s going on . . . I think it’s terrible. Really terrible.’
‘Thanks, Enid,’ Katie said, touched. ‘I don’t understand it either.’
They sat talking and admiring the baby until Katie realized time was getting on. She gathered Michael up and thanked Enid, before setting out again.
The evening was grey and smoky and she was glad of the gloom as she walked through her old neighbourhood, ghosts of times past all around her. She thought of the old school on Cromwell Street. It had been her favourite school by far, the fun she had had there with Em. Again she felt a deep pang. She pulled the brim of her hat down further and hurried along, lost in thought, wanting to get away from there in case anyone recognized her.
Rounding a corner, she almost collided with someone. They both stepped back, their eyes meeting for a fleeting moment, then hurried on.
‘Sorry!’ the other person called.
It only sank in as she continued along the road: the voice, the pale face she had seen in the dusk. It had been Em – taller and older, but otherwise just the same and immediately recognizable. It had been her, hadn’t it? Emma Brown. All she could remember of the last time she saw Em was a haunted figure in the street when her mother was poorly, hurrying here and there with no time to stop and join in the other children’s games. She ached to think of Em in those days, how skinny and sad she had looked, and how cruel she had been to her.
Sitting on the tram from town to Balsall Heath, looking out at the dark streets, Katie felt very low. She’d lost her father, Uncle Patrick and then Em – and now both Simon and her mother. Was she cursed or something? Was there never going to be anyone she could love who would stay with her? She held Michael close and tight.
‘You won’t leave me, will you?’ she whispered.
He slept on, with complete trust.
1946
II
MOLLY
Twenty-Three
Calais, June 1946
‘Molly – are you awake?’
Molly’s eyes flickered open in the dark Nissen hut. For a second she was confused. She had slept in so many wooden army huts that she could have been anywhere. Her head felt heavy and her mind dull, as if she had had no sleep at all. Close by she made out her friend Cath’s outline, half sitting up in the next bed.
‘I am now,’ she muttered drowsily. ‘What time is it?’
‘Almost five. Sorry if I woke you, but we’ll have to be getting up in a tick anyway.’
‘Sounds as if the wind’s dropped?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
All night a gale had blown, buffeting the hut so that it felt as if it might lift off the ground and be tossed away. They all had
high hopes of crossing the Channel first thing that morning, and as Molly listened it did sound as if the wind had calmed.
By eight o’clock they had been at the quayside for half an hour waiting to embark. Around them rose a buzz of excited chatter from this contingent of ATS and a sprinkling of WAAF girls, some of the number who had volunteered for postings to Belgium in 1944 and were now being demobbed. Molly knew that Cath shared their excitement, though she faced a good deal of uncertainty. Her family were in Ireland and she had long left them behind. Instead of returning there, she had decided to wait in London for Derck, her Dutch fiancé, to be released from the army as well. She and Orla, another ATS girl, were planning to try and find digs together. It was going to be very sad to say goodbye.
In fact Molly was anything but excited. A heavy dread filled her, making her feel queasy, on top of the poor night’s sleep. She stood on the quay in that steel-grey morning with her kitbag and the old case with leather straps she had bought in Birmingham before she joined up. Holding tight to the well-worn, familiar handle of the case that had travelled so far with her, it felt at that moment like her only friend in the world. She lit a cigarette, smoked one, then another.
The crossing was calm and quite pleasant, and Molly managed to keep her spirits up while she was still with Cath. The two of them, and Orla, went and walked up and down the deck, looking out over the sea.
‘I still can’t take it in,’ Cath said, her eyes reflecting the grey water. Even her wayward auburn hair looked subdued under the heavy clouds. ‘We’re actually leaving the army – it’s over. I don’t know if I’m sad or glad.’ She took Molly’s arm and squeezed it. ‘I’ll be glad when I see Derck’s lovely face smiling at me, I know that. But my God I’ll miss you, Molly. You’ve got to promise me we’ll keep in touch, now? Are you sure you won’t change your mind and come and stop in London with us?’
‘Oh no – ta,’ Molly said. ‘And of course I’ll keep in touch, you daft thing.’
