A Nest of Singing Birds

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

  Anne was surprised and fascinated by Penny’s earthy language, delivered in the same plummy voice. She could hold her own in the bawdy jokes and the double entendres, many of which meant nothing to Anne, although she laughed when the other girls did.

  Anne’s quick wit made her popular and one of the women said admiringly, ‘You can tell you come from a big family, girl, the way you come out with the wisecracks.’

  Everyone talked about boyfriends and husbands, especially those who had both, and Anne was quizzed about her boyfriends. She talked freely about the many young men she and Sarah had been out with, and sometimes had the women in fits of laughter, but she never mentioned John.

  Now that they were working different hours it was not so easy for him to contrive to meet her ‘accidentally on purpose’ as Anne privately called it.

  The bitter weather was ending and everyone was feeling more cheerful when Joe was due to come on leave, but shortly before he arrived his mother had a vivid dream in which she saw him lying dead on a battlefield. She clung to Joe when he came home and he spent most of his leave with her, though he went with Anne one day to see Sarah and her family and told Sarah that Terry had her photograph pinned up above his bed.

  She seemed embarrassed and muttered that her mother had given Terry the photograph but before she said any more Mrs Redmond began to ask Joe about the war news. ‘Nothing seems to be happening in France does it?’ she said. ‘Do you think it’s true that the Germans are starving, Joe?’

  ‘No. I think the Germans are probably being told the same about us,’ he said, smiling. ‘It does seem to be stalemate though, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Perhaps it will all just fizzle out?’ Anne said hopefully.

  When Anne and Joe left the house he said, ‘Aren’t they a nice family, Anne?’

  ‘Yes, Terry’s a lucky fellow,’ she said.

  Joe said nothing for a minute then he said in a low voice, ‘It’s quite settled then, Sarah and Terry? She said her mother gave him that photograph.’

  ‘Well, she did, but it was when we were going to the station to see him off. He asked Sarah for the photo and he was doing his usual stuff, you know, hand on heart. Sarah seemed quiet and upset when we saw him off anyway.’

  Joe had several long conversations with Maureen and she told him that the war had brought happiness to her and Chris. ‘I know it’s wrong, Joe, when it’s been a tragedy for so many people, but it’s made life easier for us. Chris only has to go to see his wife once a week in that cottage hospital and we’re able to meet quite often now.’

  ‘How long will they keep her there?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think they’ve tried to send her out several times but she likes it there so she’s managed to discover fresh symptoms and stay on longer. Chris and I just make the most of each day.’

  ‘And you don’t let scruples about his being a married man trouble you, I hope?’

  ‘No-o,’ Maureen said doubtfully. ‘Nothing troubles me while I’m with Chris, but sometimes at night I worry.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Joe advised her. ‘It’s a sham of a marriage that should never have taken place and you’re doing no one any harm. Except maybe yourself,’ he added. ‘I worry about your future, Mo.’

  ‘Don’t, Joe,’ she said. ‘Who knows what’s in the future for any of us? It’s best to live for the day.’

  Joe saw Tony only briefly as he was working long hours. He and Helen were blissfully happy, alone now in the house where they had lived with Helen’s mother for the first few weeks of their marriage. With the threat of bombing it seemed sensible for Mrs Daly to go to stay with a widowed friend in Rainford and she seemed to have settled there very happily.

  Julia tried to smile as she said goodbye to Joe but she hugged him fiercely. ‘Be careful, son,’ she begged him. ‘I’ll be praying for you.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ he said, kissing her. ‘The army aren’t going to waste all this training.’

  * * *

  Only a short time after Joe left, the ‘phoney war’ as it was called seemed to be over when Hitler invaded Norway and Denmark. Later in the month Terry arrived home again on a short embarkation leave, full of stories of the Irish Guards leaving for, he thought, Norway.

  ‘You should have seen what they took with them,’ he laughed. ‘Any amount of cases of champagne for the officers and crates of beer for the other ranks.’

  ‘They’ll never be able to fight with that inside them,’ his mother said but Terry only laughed. ‘Take more than that to affect our fellows.’

  Terry arrived late on Friday night so on Saturday he went to see Sarah with an invitation to tea from his mother. Anne had to leave for work but Helen and Tony arrived and Stephen’s girlfriend Claire.

  After tea Sarah and Terry, Stephen and Claire and Tony and Helen went to the caelidhe and all enjoyed it. Helen whispered to Sarah that it had been confirmed that she was pregnant and the baby was due in late November.

  ‘We’ll tell Tony’s mum after Terry goes back, to cheer her up,’ she said. ‘But we’ll keep the news in the family for now.’

  Terry had to go back on Sunday night and before he left for the station hugged his mother and looked fearfully into her drawn face. ‘You’ll have to eat more, Mum,’ he said urgently. ‘You’re only skin and bone.’

  ‘I’m grand, son,’ she said gently. ‘God bless you now and guard you always.’ A shadow seemed to have fallen over them, perhaps a premonition that they would never see each other again, and they stared at each other as though trying to commit each other’s features to memory.

  Anne and Sarah saw Terry off at the station and Anne tactfully went to the station bookstall while Sarah and Terry said goodbye. Terry was still feeling the sadness of leaving his mother and was more subdued than on their last leave-taking.

  Anne came back with cigarettes and chocolate and magazines and said goodbye to Terry, then she said she would wait for Sarah at the entrance and left them together.

  ‘I’ll be going abroad soon,’ he told Sarah. ‘But we’ll write often, won’t we? You’re my girl now, aren’t you?’ Sarah kissed him and nodded, her eyes filling with tears, more in sympathy with the stricken couples around her than on her own account.

  The news bulletins were confusing, giving different versions of what was happening in Norway, and the accounts of a debate on the situation in the Commons only confused people still more.

  There had been noisy, angry scenes and in the end a member of Chamberlain’s own party stood up and said to him, ‘Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.’

  Anne was angry and upset when she heard the news and found that many of the women at work agreed with her. ‘What a way to treat a man who saved us like Chamberlain did,’ Anne said. ‘Leo Amery… I’ve never heard of him. What gives him the right to talk like that to a man like Mr Chamberlain?’

  ‘Trying to get himself noticed, I suppose,’ said one of the other girls and an older woman said angrily, ‘Churchill in charge! Look at the men who got killed in the Dardanelles because of him.’

  Less than a week later Churchill made a speech telling the British people that ‘All he could offer was blood, toil, tears and sweat’ and strangely this united the country behind him.

  ‘I think we might be safer with him,’ Anne said, ‘but I still think that fellow shouldn’t have spoken like that to Mr Chamberlain.’

  Eileen was home on leave when a letter came from Terry to tell them that he was off to France. ‘He’ll soon be home again,’ she comforted her mother. ‘The German Army must be too spread out, with going into Belgium and Holland as well as Norway and all the other places.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right, love,’ her mother agreed. ‘Terry seems in good spirits anyway. You mustn’t let this spoil your leave.’

  A letter card came from France, but it told them little except that he was well and a letter followed. The news from France was that the French Army was withdrawing into prepared positio
ns to lure the German Army into a trap, but soon everyone realised that the Germans must be sweeping all before them.

  ‘If only we knew what was happening,’ women said to each other as news came that Holland had been flooded and then that Rotterdam had been blitzed and the Dutch had surrendered.

  ‘What in God’s name is happening to our lads in France?’ said Ruby whose son was with the British Expeditionary Force like Terry. But they could only wait and listen for any scrap of news.

  Soon it was clear that France was overrun and men began arriving home from the evacuation at Dunkirk. Desmond and Dominic were among them. They had managed to stay together although they had lost all their kit and most of their clothes.

  ‘Did you see anything of Terry?’ Carrie asked them anxiously and they only said that they had not seen him without saying how ridiculous the question was. They had both been asked about other men who were in France and answered patiently, knowing that the distraught women who asked them were only clutching at straws.

  Sarah had been surprised at Mrs Fitzgerald’s calmness but Anne told her that her mother and Maureen spent every possible moment in church and it seemed to comfort them.

  Joe came home on leave and this brought even more comfort to his mother. He told her that he thought Terry was a prisoner of war because he had spoken to men who had returned from his company. ‘Most of them were accounted for,’ he said. ‘The wounded men were taken off and other fellows saw what happened to the men who were killed. The ones not accounted for were in little pockets that were cut off and taken prisoner and I think that’s what happened to Terry.’

  ‘But will the Germans ill treat him?’ Julia said anxiously.

  ‘No, Mum, they’re not allowed to by the Geneva Convention,’ he said gently.

  Soon after Joe went back the family were notified that Terry was a prisoner of war, and given the address of the Stalag in which he was. Anne ran down to tell Sarah before she left for work and was surprised by how calmly her friend took the news.

  All her concern seemed to be for Terry’s family, especially his mother, and Anne was even more surprised when Sarah refused to go back to the house with her. ‘I have an important document I have to finish,’ she said and insisted on going in to work. ‘After all, it’s your celebration.’

  Sarah’s mother and grandmother had followed her so they stood in a group on the step with several neighbours adding their congratulations. ‘Come in, Anne,’ Mrs Redmond urged but she said she must get back to her mother.

  She was running back home when she turned a corner and met John pushing a handcart full of building materials. He stopped and Anne excitedly thrust the official letter at him.

  ‘Our Terry’s alive! He’s a prisoner,’ she said joyfully.

  ‘Good!’ he exclaimed, impulsively flinging his arms round her. ‘That’s smashing news.’ Anne hugged him in return, her face bright with happiness. At last! she thought, looking up at John.

  He kissed her and held her close. ‘Oh, Anne, I love you. I’ve wanted to do this for ages,’ he murmured.

  ‘And I love you,’ she whispered, drawing his head down to her and kissing him. He still held her close but several people passed and he raised his head and drew away from her. ‘This is too public,’ he said. ‘Can I meet you later and have a talk?’

  ‘Of course,’ Anne said immediately, ‘I can meet you tonight after work.’

  ‘We could go in the park,’ he said. ‘I’ll meet you where the gates used to be if that’s all right with you.’ Anne agreed, disappointed that he had not suggested meeting her outside the factory where her friends could see him, but happy to meet him anywhere.

  He looked lovingly into her face, but made no attempt to kiss her again. Anne could see, though, that he was trembling as he picked up the handles of the handcart and moved away. She almost skipped home. Some of her joy was because of the news about Terry, but most was because John had at last told her that he loved her.

  After all this time of wondering, when her instincts told her that he was in love with her yet he seemed to draw down a shutter between them so often, it seemed almost too good to be true. Her mind was filled with memories of his words and his kisses and thoughts of their coming meeting.

  Her mother was surprised that Sarah was not with her but Anne explained that she had important work to finish. ‘She seemed more glad for us than for herself,’ she said. ‘And not very excited at all.’

  ‘Everyone’s different, child,’ her mother said. ‘Sarah’s not one for showing her feelings, that’s all.’ She looked fondly at Anne’s bright eyes and happy face. ‘Your joy is plain to see, anyway, pet.’

  The day dragged for Anne but at last she was free to hurry to meet John. He was standing by the bushes near to where the gates had once been and he took her in his arms and kissed her passionately. ‘Thank God for the blackout,’ he said. ‘I don’t want us to be seen together, Anne.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ she exclaimed in surprise and indignation.

  ‘I’m a bit of an outcast, love,’ he said, ‘and I don’t want you to be involved with all that.’ He slipped his arm around her and they walked through the park to sit on a secluded seat there.

  ‘What do you mean – an outcast?’ Anne asked in bewilderment.

  ‘Because of my time in Spain. Ever since I started this job for Stan I’ve had wisecracks about being an anarchist, Anti-Christ, the lot. And it’s not only the fellows I work with either. Other people think that about me too.’

  ‘But you go to church!’ Anne exclaimed then blushed. ‘Sarah told me you went to confession and Holy Communion at Easter.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean anything to those fellows,’ John said. ‘I’ve told them that I was fighting Franco and he’s a fascist the same as Hitler but once these fellows get an idea in their heads they just don’t listen.’

  Anne slipped her hand into his. ‘They’re probably jealous too because you got the job through your dad and then you were offered the foreman’s job.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ he said with a look of surprise. ‘You know, Anne, you can get too close to a problem and not see it properly. You’re very wise.’

  ‘I’m not often accused of that,’ she said, laughing and John smiled at her. ‘I know the sly digs are worse after Stan’s been at the job. He has a habit of giving me messages for my dad or asking about the family that doesn’t go down well. Mind you, I earned that foreman’s job, but I didn’t take it because I knew the problems I’d have had with the men.’

  ‘You should disregard them. They’re just ignorant,’ Anne urged, but John said stubbornly, ‘Yes, but the fact remains I’m an outcast. Look at the times I’ve been refused for the forces. They don’t say it’s that, but I know it is.’

  ‘You’d think they’d be glad to have you because you’ve got experience in fighting,’ Anne said indignantly.

  ‘Exactly, but I’m afraid it’s the old class system again, Anne. Fellows from universities who fought in Spain are being given jobs in Intelligence or Censorship where they could do a lot more damage as traitors than a squaddy like I’d be. They’re appointed by fellows from the same public school or university or club, I suppose.’

  ‘It’s not fair,’ Anne said passionately. ‘I didn’t know you had all this to put up with, John.’

  ‘So now you know why I didn’t want you to be known as my girlfriend, Anne. I didn’t want this stigma on you too. But you knew how I felt about you, didn’t you?’

  ‘I’m not a mind reader,’ she flashed, but then she said more gently, ‘I’m not worried. I don’t see any stigma, as you call it.’

  John put his arms round her and kissed her passionately. ‘I love you, Anne.’

  ‘And I love you,’ she whispered. They kissed again and John held her so close that she could feel the beat of his heart, but then he said stubbornly, ‘I wanted you to know, love, but I don’t want us to be known as a courting couple, not by our families or anyone, until I get this cleare
d up.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous! You don’t think our families think that about you?’

  ‘No, but then other people would know. This must just be between us. Promise me.’

  Anne promised, too proud to plead for others to be told, yet at the heart of her joy there was a small core of resentment that John was dictating terms to her.

  Now though she stifled that feeling and gave herself up to the joy of being in his arms and hearing how long and how deeply he had loved her.

  It was difficult for Anne to hide her feelings but she said nothing, even to Sarah although she knew that her friend was puzzled by the situation. They both avoided mentioning John though Anne longed to talk about him.

  She met John frequently now by arrangement but always they spent the time where they were not likely to be seen. Sometimes Anne was annoyed by this unnecessary furtiveness and sometimes wondered why John had not explained the situation to her sooner and let her decide whether she wished to be involved with him, but she pushed these doubts aside.

  Fortunately she was unaware how often in future years she would resent John’s making decisions which involved both of them without consulting her.

  These were small details now, swallowed up in the joy of knowing that she was loved by the man she had loved silently for so long.

  * * *

  It would have been harder to conceal their happiness at another time, but now everyone was engrossed in weightier matters. Now that France and the Low Countries were overrun the Germans were bombing shipping in the North Sea and threatening to invade England on 18 July.

  Churchill had made a speech after the surrender of France in which he said, ‘We shall fight them in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight them in the hills, we shall never surrender’ and his belligerence was echoed everywhere, not least in the factory where Anne worked.

  The news that Hitler was planning to invade Britain was greeted with derision. Queenie, a woman who worked opposite Anne, had her own theory. With a fine disregard for geography she decided that if the Germans came by sea they would land at the Pier Head.