A Nest of Singing Birds

by A Nest of Singing Birds (retail) (epub)

  She began to take a different route so that she approached her home from the other end of Magdalen Street and avoided a meeting with John. It was a miserable time for Anne as she was unable to attend dances or the cinema during the period of mourning for her grandmother.

  ‘I feel a hypocrite,’ she told Sarah. ‘I can’t really grieve for my grandma. She was always saying she’d be glad to go to her reward so she’s got what she wanted, and I was never very fond of her. I hate this black dress too.’

  Her dress had been made by a local dressmaker who had made it with a deep frill of black satin round the neck.

  ‘I feel like Dog Toby in it,’ Anne complained.

  ‘Why don’t you take the frill off and have a plain round neckline?’ Sarah said. ‘My aunt in America sent us a photo of herself in a black dress after Grandad died and it was very plain. It looked chic.’

  ‘Oh, Sarah, it probably cost the earth. And then your aunt is beautiful, isn’t she?’ Anne said. ‘My dress fits where it touches.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask your mum if you can take the frill off and I’ll ask mine to alter your dress if it’s all right?’ Sarah suggested.

  Most of the family were present when Anne asked her mother if she could have her dress altered, and after she had gone to see the Misses Dolan Tony said, ‘I think it’s a shame Anne can’t go out and enjoy herself. I know it was very upsetting for you, Mum, when Grandma died, but we can’t expect a kid like Anne to live like a hermit for six months.’

  ‘I don’t see the point of it myself, either,’ Eileen said. ‘If it was one of us it’d be different. The last thing you’d want to do would be enjoy yourself, but everyone says it was a happy release for Grandma.’

  ‘God between us and all harm!’ Julia exclaimed, crossing herself. ‘Don’t even say such a thing, child.’

  ‘When we were young it was deep mourning for a year and half mourning for six months,’ Pat said. ‘I don’t know when this six months idea came in but it’s little enough to show respect for the one that’s gone.’

  ‘Sure I knew people that were never out of black with the deaths coming the way they did,’ Julia said.

  Pat sat smoking in silence for a few minutes and no one else spoke but suddenly he said, ‘How much of it was real, Julia, when you come to think of it, and how much for fear of what people would say? We carried on the traditions but young ones want to question everything, and maybe they’re right.’

  ‘’Twill do Anne no harm to leave off the dances for a few months out of respect for her grandma,’ Julia said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the old ways.’

  She agreed that Anne should have her dress altered by Mrs Redmond though and Anne was delighted with the result. Mrs Redmond called to see Julia one afternoon as she sometimes did now and Julia told her of the conversation about mourning.

  ‘My dad didn’t believe in mourning. Well, public mourning,’ Mrs Redmond said. ‘He said you could grieve without having to prove it to the neighbours by wearing black.’

  ‘But it’s a matter of showing respect to the dead,’ Julia said, and Mrs Redmond agreed rather doubtfully.

  ‘That’s what people are brought up to believe.’

  ‘Our young ones don’t seem to think we should be in mourning for my mother because she was glad to go,’ said Julia.

  ‘My dad didn’t welcome death and we were broken-hearted,’ Mrs Redmond said. Her eyes filled with tears and she hastily wiped them away. ‘I went out to work waiting on and some of the women were such comics I couldn’t help but laugh at them. I felt guilty and then I thought of what my dad would have said. He was such a loving man. He’d only have wanted us to be happy.’

  ‘I’m sure he would, the good man, Lord rest him,’ said Julia and Mrs Redmond went on, ‘I came home one night and Sarah told me my mother had told her she should start going out and enjoying herself, and I was relieved. I wanted to suggest it to Sarah but I didn’t know how Mam would feel about it. She said it would help Sarah to get over the loss, and it did.’

  Julia was half convinced that she should tell the young people to go to the cinema and dances again but she consulted Pat. ‘Let them leave it another two weeks to make the two months,’ he advised.

  ‘And don’t be upset because they want to, girl. They mean no disrespect to your ma.’

  ‘You’re right, Pat,’ she agreed. ‘Life is short and they’re only young once.’

  Chapter Twenty

  Anne and Sarah began to attend modern dances and were an immediate success with the young men who went there. They still visited the cinema and the caelidhes so before long Anne’s life was as hectic as ever.

  Sarah told her that John was so discouraged by his failure to find work that he had decided to try elsewhere in the country. ‘He thinks the blacklist will only be for Liverpool, but he says he won’t go until after Christmas.’

  Anne felt a stab of pain, although she told herself that she was not interested in John Redmond any more, yet eagerly accepted an invitation to Sunday tea from Sarah.

  She feared John might not be at home but he was, and was very excited because he had been promised a job. ‘I hated the thought of leaving Liverpool,’ he said, looking intently at her.

  Anne blushed and said quickly, ‘And what’s the job?’

  ‘It’s labouring. Stan Johnson, the chap my father works for, has a finger in all sorts of pies, including housing. Dad told him I’d lost that labouring job and he said if that was what I wanted to do, he had a job repairing houses he owns.’

  Anne hid her doubts and congratulated him, but later she said to Sarah, ‘It seems a bit of a waste for John to do labouring, doesn’t it? I mean, after he stayed on at the college to sixteen then worked in offices. Do you think he’ll like labouring?’

  ‘He says he will,’ Sarah said and laughed. ‘You know John. He’s been going on about the dignity of labour.’

  Anne smiled. ‘He practises what he preaches though, doesn’t he?’ she said and Sarah agreed.

  At teatime Anne was seated next to Sarah’s grandmother who talked to her about her family at first then said, ‘It’s good news about John’s job, isn’t it?’ Anne nodded and Mrs Ward went on quietly, ‘He’s been a troubled lad this last year or two, but he’ll sort himself out soon.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Anne asked.

  ‘He takes things very much to heart like his grandad did,’ the old lady said. ‘Both worrying about the troubles of the world and how to cure them, but John’s been talking to his dad about this Spanish business and other things and he’ll work things out soon.’

  ‘He knows so much about everything,’ Anne said. ‘Things that are happening in foreign countries.’

  ‘Too much,’ Mrs Ward said. She smiled at Anne. ‘His heart’s in the right place but he’s a bit mixed up so we’ll have to give him time.’

  Anne felt a rush of affection for the wise old lady whom she felt was offering comfort and advice to her. After tea Sarah and Anne and John went into the parlour to play records and John sat down beside Anne and began to talk about his job.

  She felt that they were really making progress but Sarah’s friend Edie Meadows, who lived nearby, came in. She was a big, boisterous girl with a loud voice and dominated the conversation.

  ‘I’ve just come for the skirt your mum’s fixed for me,’ she said. ‘Oh eh kid, I had a smashing time last night. I went on a chara to Blackpool with the girls from work and we never stopped singing. We had a real good time but of course me dad had to spoil it when I got home. Carrying on and saying I was up to no good, out till that time. I hate him.’

  Anne looked at her in amazement, not sure that she had heard aright, but Edie rattled on, ‘I’m beginning to think me Aunt Mary’s right to hate fellers.’ She looked at Anne. ‘I’ve had a fight with my feller, haven’t I, Sar? I don’t care if I never see him again.’

  ‘You don’t mean that, Edie,’ she said, but Edie said defiantly, ‘Yes, I do. Is that the time? I’d bett
er go. I’m supposed to be meeting a feller for the pictures at eight o’clock.’

  ‘So you don’t hate all fellows?’ John laughed.

  ‘They’re all right to take me to the pictures,’ she said. ‘Ta, ra then.’

  ‘Poor Edie,’ Sarah said when she had gone. ‘She’s really upset about falling out with Bert. They’ve been going out on and off for years.’

  ‘I couldn’t believe my ears when she said she hated her father,’ Anne said.

  Sarah shrugged. ‘I don’t like him either, but her mum’s nice, isn’t she, John?’

  ‘Yes. She’s been Mum’s friend since they were kids,’ he said. The conversation was general for a while then John excused himself, saying he had to find out more details about the job from his father.

  Anne was disappointed. She had felt that they were getting on so well until Edie appeared. Why does he blow so hot and cold, she thought, even within the space of a few hours? When she was leaving, John reappeared and he and Sarah accompanied her to the corner of Magdalen Street.

  When Anne left them she thought of the first time she had stood on that corner saying goodnight to John. I had such high hopes then but all this time and we’re no further on, she thought. Why don’t I just forget him?

  Yet although she was annoyed with herself for doing so, she was now coming home again every night by the route where she had so often met him. It was several weeks before she realised that now that he was working he would not be free to walk about the neighbourhood.

  Sarah told her that her father and John had been discussing the possibility of war with Germany, but they had hastily changed the subject when her mother came in.

  ‘But they don’t think we’d fight with Germany, do they?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Dad was saying that Herr Hitler had done wonders for Germany. Pulled them up by their boot strings, was what he said, but then they were talking about the Treaty of Versailles and about war reparations being hard on Germany.’

  ‘You hear some interesting conversations in your house, don’t you?’ Anne said. ‘I never hear anything like that at home.’

  ‘Do you really want to?’ Sarah said with a grimace. ‘I think you have great talks in your house when all the family are in. I really enjoy them and they’re not worrying like this war talk.’

  ‘I think it’s just talk,’ said Anne. ‘I know Hitler is always falling out with foreign countries but it’s got nothing to do with us, has it?’

  Sarah came to tea on Sunday and when all the younger members of the family were in the parlour afterwards, Anne spoke about the talk of war. She implied that they had heard it in the shop and Tony said reassuringly, ‘Don’t worry about it. There’s always talk like this, Anne, but it’s usually politicians just trying it on for some advantage. What they call diplomacy and some people call sabre rattling.’

  Anne happily dismissed the gloomy thoughts from her mind, which was filled as usual with thoughts of young men, dancing and cycling. But in August Sarah came into the shop one Monday morning looking worried.

  ‘I went to Dovecote yesterday to see Maisie,’ she said. ‘When the tram passed Springfield Park, you know, by Alder Hey Hospital, I could see trenches dug all over the park. A woman on the tram said we’d be at war by Christmas.’

  ‘How would she know?’ Anne said scornfully. ‘The trenches might have been dug for anything, water pipes or sewers or something.’

  ‘But Maisie told me there were gas masks in some depots ready to be given out. Even ones for babies.’

  ‘You always hear tales like that. I don’t know who starts them,’ Mabel said. ‘Don’t be such a worrier, Sarah.’

  But suddenly in September everyone was talking about war. A customer asked Sarah if her brother had been near Guernica in Spain when bombs were dropped on it from aeroplanes. ‘Hundreds of people were killed,’ the woman said. ‘That’s what’ll happen to us.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Mabel said. ‘It’s different with these foreign countries. Stands to reason nobody’d dare to bomb us, because we’d do the same to them and they know it.’

  Everyone began to listen carefully to the news bulletins on the wireless and to buy newspapers as soon as they were printed, yet people found it hard to believe that war could really happen. Except Mabel. She had completely changed her views and now declared that she was sure war was imminent.

  The Foreign Office issued a warning to Hitler on 28 September of the consequences if he attacked Czechoslovakia and the following day the fleet was mobilised.

  ‘And our Joe still at sea,’ Anne said fearfully to Sarah. ‘Mum says she wouldn’t mind if only he was home and we could all be killed together.’

  Everyone was frightened and worried but on 29 September the Prime Minister flew to Munich and returned waving a document which he said meant: ‘Peace in our time.’

  ‘God bless Mr Chamberlain,’ Anne said. ‘I didn’t realise how worried I was until I stopped worrying. I’m really going to enjoy life now.’

  Mabel had told everyone that she was sure that war was about to start, and at first she seemed disgruntled that she had been proved wrong, but soon was as ecstatic as everyone else about the news.

  Services of Thanksgiving were held in all churches and very well attended, and in cinemas when Mr Chamberlain was shown on Pathé News holding up the document, audiences stood and cheered. He was Anne’s hero, too.

  Sarah told Anne that her parents were annoyed with Mick, who was now sixteen years old and appeared older. He had gained five distinctions in his matriculation examinations and it had been decided that he would stay on at the college until he was eighteen to take Higher School Certificate.

  During the war scare he had tried to enlist in the Royal Air Force, giving his age as eighteen, but had been refused. ‘The trouble is they’ll send for him when he is eighteen and we were hoping he’d win a scholarship to go on to university. They’ll be annoyed at the college too,’ Sarah said.

  ‘What does Mick say?’ asked Anne.

  Sarah shrugged. ‘You know Mick,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t care if it snows.’

  Another result of the scare was that Edie Meadows and her boyfriend made up their quarrel and became engaged, to the delight of Edie’s mother.

  ‘I don’t mind Mrs Meadows being pleased, and I can understand it because it makes things a lot easier with Mr Meadows, but she’s sort of sympathising with Mum because I’m not engaged!’ Sarah said. ‘I’ve told her I’ve no intention of settling down with anyone yet. I’m having too good a time.’

  ‘Same here,’ Anne said, but neither girl was being entirely truthful. Anne felt that she would be willing to abandon the good times to settle down with John, although pride prevented her from admitting it.

  Sarah’s interest in her friend’s brother was far more vague. Joe Fitzgerald was so much older and moved in a different circle, and on the few occasions that Sarah had seen him he had shown no interest in her, but she liked him and knew that he enjoyed reading and poetry as much as she did.

  They were both amazed to find that because of the war scare young men who had been quite content to go out with them on their terms suddenly wanted to start serious courting.

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with fellows lately,’ Anne complained. ‘They know we’ve always gone out with more than one of them and they’ve always accepted it. I don’t care if they go out with a different girl every day of the week as well as me, but suddenly they want to be the one and only.’

  ‘I know,’ Sarah said. ‘I can’t understand it.’ She had a row with a young man named Nick Owens when they were all at the caelidhe one evening and he told her that he wanted her to be his girl and not go out with anyone else.

  They were a large group including the Anderson cousins and were all amused to see quiet, timid Sarah so furious. ‘He’s got a cheek,’ she raged. ‘Why should I settle down with him out of all the fellows I’ve been out with? I told him I’d just as soon have Bob Doyle or Jimmie Rafferty,
but I’m not settling down with anyone.’

  ‘Never mind, alannah,’ Terry said in a mock brogue. ‘I’ll be your steady feller.’

  ‘She’s not that hard up,’ Anne retorted amid laughter, but soon she had the same experience with another young man.

  ‘What’s got into them?’ she said to Maureen. ‘I know I went to the ice rink and the pictures with Bill O’Hagan but he knew I went out with other fellows as well. Now he’s talking as though he owns me.’

  ‘They probably feel they should sort out their lives because of the risk of war,’ Maureen said. ‘But don’t be hustled into anything unless you really want to, Anne.’

  ‘I won’t,’ she said, ‘and neither will Sarah. We like these fellows but we don’t want to marry them.’

  ‘Then don’t. Wait until you’re really sure,’ Maureen said, and Anne hugged her affectionately.

  ‘I suppose the war worry took people different ways,’ she said. ‘Me and Sarah just feel that life is twice as sweet. Sarah says it’s like being in the condemned cell and being let out. The grass is greener and the flowers more beautiful just because we nearly lost them.’

  Maureen laughed. ‘Very dramatic and poetical,’ she teased. Anne giggled. ‘I suppose we are,’ she admitted, but it was true that life felt sweet to them.

  She had not seen Kathleen O’Neill again, but she met Ella one day and heard news of Kathleen. ‘I was glad to see her at the pictures with you,’ Anne said. ‘I feel guilty because a teacher in school asked me to stay friends with her after we left, but somehow I never seem to have time.’

  ‘It’s hard for her though,’ said Ella. ‘Her mother’s so queer. It’s a battle every time Kathleen wants to go out with me, with that brother of hers as well as her mother.’

  ‘But she still goes out with you?’

  ‘Yes, but not often, though. We only go to the pictures but there’s a scene to face every time when she goes home. I tell her to stick it out and they’ll get used to it. She’d have no life at all otherwise, Anne, and she’s such a nice girl. Her family are so queer.’