Far From Home

by Anne Bennett

  Anne Bennett

  Far from Home

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my lovely husband Denis in

  recognition for the way he battled lung cancer with

  such courage and determination and also for the way

  he kept upbeat throughout.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  One

  Kate Munroe’s feet dragged as she reached the house. After…

  Two

  The next morning, Sally woke with a jerk; she lay…

  Three

  By the time the three girls reached High Street and…

  Four

  The following morning, as Susie settled herself in the tram…

  Five

  Kate knew that if this antagonism her mother had for…

  Six

  The next morning, Kate got up in a really good…

  Seven

  Kate and Sally went to town first thing the next…

  Eight

  Kate was interested in where David’s family lived. He had…

  Nine

  Kate told Susie all about what had happened at the…

  Ten

  Phillip Reynard and all young men of a similar age…

  Eleven

  By the time Kate and David came back from their…

  Twelve

  Kate told David that he owed it to his family…

  Thirteen

  David arrived around midday on Sunday 24 December. When Kate…

  Fourteen

  New Year’s Eve 1939, the first New Year of the…

  Fifteen

  After Nick and David returned, Kate made a decision to…

  Sixteen

  Just a few mornings later, Kate was at work when…

  Seventeen

  Before they were able to find anything out about ARP…

  Eighteen

  Over the next weeks, as the summer took hold of…

  Nineteen

  November was only a few days old when Kate got…

  Twenty

  Four days after David and Nick went back, German bombers,…

  Twenty-One

  The citizens of Birmingham were not told of the fracturing…

  Twenty-Two

  The German planes returned the next night but in far…

  Twenty-Three

  Kate awoke from her drugged sleep some hours later. Her…

  Twenty-Four

  ‘Mammy asks me in every letter when I am going…

  Twenty-Five

  Kate was unable to go to work until her stitches…

  Twenty-Six

  The short tram journey home was taken in virtual silence,…

  Twenty-Seven

  As they travelled to Ireland the following day, Helen wondered…

  Twenty-Eight

  Only two hours after the three women had left the…

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Other Books by Anne Bennett

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ONE

  Kate Munroe’s feet dragged as she reached the house. After a week’s work in the radiator factory she was always tired by Friday and the cold and dank late October evening didn’t help her mood. She was glad of the big, thick, navy coat, the light blue hat pulled on over her dark brown curls, and the matching gloves encasing her hands, which she had saved for weeks to buy.

  She sighed with relief as she let herself into the entrance hall out of the biting wind, but it was very dark as she closed the door behind her because there was no light in the hall. ‘I haven’t bothered with the expense of having an electric light installed in here when the gas lamps were taken out,’ the landlady had told her when she moved in. ‘There’s a streetlight just outside, so I thought it would probably be light enough.’

  Kate thought that was all very well, but the door into the house was almost solid, so the only light came from a half-moon window right at the top. The house was converted into flats and so the postman would leave any letters there on the hall table for people to help themselves and sometimes in these dark, autumnal days, it was hard to read who the letters were for in such dim light. It was the same that night, and Kate was shifting through the pile of envelopes, scrutinizing them carefully, when suddenly there was a scraping noise from the space under the stairwell and she called out a little nervously, ‘Who’s there?’

  There was no answer and, gathering all her courage, Kate called out again, ‘Come on. Come out and show yourself.’

  Through the shadowy dimness, she saw a figure emerge and move towards her. She relaxed a little: it was obvious from the outline that the figure was female and slight, but it was not until she got up close that Kate gasped in recognition. Her dark brown eyes were looking straight into the anxious blue ones of her young sister.

  ‘Sally,’ she cried. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I came to see you.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Kate said shortly, but suddenly her blood ran like ice in her body and she asked almost fearfully, ‘Are you in some sort of trouble?’

  Sally blushed, even in the half-light Kate saw her cheeks darken, but she answered decidedly enough: ‘Not that kind of trouble. Not what you’re thinking.’

  In relief, Kate let out the breath she hadn’t even been aware she was holding. ‘Tell you the truth, Sally, I don’t know what to think,’ she said in exasperation. ‘Let’s get this straight. Is anything wrong at home?’

  Sally hung her head and twisted her feet on the floor, as Kate knew she did when she was troubled about something, and mumbled, ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Well, how “not really”?’ Kate said, feeling that she wanted to shake her younger sister. And then another thought struck her and she said, ‘I suppose Mammy and Daddy know you’re here?’

  Sally lifted her head and Kate got her answer by the stricken look in her sister’s face, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears. ‘Good God, they don’t, do they?’ she cried. ‘They know nothing about this?’

  Sally shook her head and Kate sighed as she snapped, ‘Well, this can’t be gone into in the entrance hall. You’d better come up to the flat. Have you anything with you?’

  Sally nodded. ‘The old brown case with the broken lock. It was all there was – I had to wrap a belt around it to keep it shut.’

  ‘Well, fetch it,’ Kate said. ‘And I hope you are fit enough to carry it, because I have no intention of doing it for you. I live on the second floor.’

  They made their way upstairs and Kate listened to her young sister labouring behind her with the large case. Her own mind was teeming with questions; there was no way Sally should be in Birmingham at all and she could see problems ahead. She had obviously left the family farmhouse in Donegal in Northern Ireland in a hurry, without the knowledge or permission of their parents, and Kate had the feeling that she was the one who would be left picking up the pieces of her reckless, young sister’s decision.

  She opened the door to her flat. Behind her she heard Sally sigh in relief. Kate ushered her inside and in the glare of the electric light saw her white and anxious face. ‘Look, put your case down and take off your coat,’ she said more kindly. ‘There’s a hook behind the door.’ She crossed the room as she spoke and drew the curtains, cutting out the damp, chilly night. ‘I’ll put the kettle on and make a cup of tea and you can tell me all about it.’

  Sally didn’t answer, and when Kate came back into the room with two steaming mugs on a tray, she was standing in the same place. Though she had unbuttoned her coat, she hadn’t taken it off, and as she looked at Kate she asked, ‘Is this all there is?’

  Instantly Kate bristled. ‘Yes,’ she s
aid in clipped tones. ‘What did you expect? The Ritz?’

  ‘No,’ Sally said sulkily. ‘But you said …’

  ‘I never told you or anyone else that this place was anything better than it is,’ Kate said firmly. ‘And if you thought it was, then that was in your imagination. I’m a working girl, Sally, and this is all I can afford.’

  ‘So it’s just the one room?’ Sally said, still shocked by the bareness of the place her sister lived in.

  ‘Basically,’ Kate said. ‘Behind the curtain in the far corner is my bed, and beside that is a chest of drawers for my things with a mirror on top so that it doubles as a dressing table. There are hooks on the wall for anything that needs to be hung up.’ She led the way to two easy chairs in front of the gas fire and placed the tray on the small table between them. ‘Take off your coat and come and sit down.’

  Sally obeyed. As she sat down in the chair Kate had indicated, she asked, ‘What about a kitchen?’

  ‘British kitchens are nothing like cottage kitchens in Ireland,’ Kate said. ‘Here a wee cubbyhole of a place with a couple of gas rings and a few pots and pans and bits of crockery on some rickety shelves passes as a kitchen. But,’ she added as she handed Sally one of the mugs, ‘here I have running water and a proper sink, which is more than I had at home. We even have a bathroom on the next floor down and we can have a bath just by turning on the taps. It has a proper flush toilet that really startled me the first few times I used it.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ Sally said. ‘People say they have them in the hotels in the town, but I’ve never had an occasion to go into the hotels, never mind use the toilets.’

  ‘No, nor me before I came here,’ Kate said. Then she added, ‘This might not look much to you, but, let me tell you, it’s a lap of luxury compared to the place we were reared in. So, now,’ she added, fixing Sally with a steely look, ‘are you going to drink this tea I’ve made and tell me what the hell you are doing here, or are you going to sit there all night criticizing the place I live in?’

  Sally felt suddenly ashamed of herself; she swallowed the lump in her throat that threatened to choke her, obediently took a sip of the tea and said, ‘I’m sorry, Kate. Don’t be too cross with me because I’m already feeling that I’ve been really stupid.’

  And then she shivered suddenly, and Kate saw tears drip down her cheeks. She said impatiently, ‘Oh come on, Sally, cut out the waterworks. You know that won’t help. You’re cold and hungry too, I expect. You’ll feel a bit better when I have the fire lit.’

  ‘How will you do that?’ Sally asked, looking at the ugly monstrosity sitting in the hearth.

  ‘Like this,’ Kate said, and she turned a tap to the side of the fire, lit a match and, with a pop, flames danced at the bottom of the grille. ‘It’s a gas fire,’ she told her sister. ‘And when I come home on a winter’s evening, it has the room warmed in no time. It makes it look cheerier too. Now come on and tell me what this is all about. Did you have a row? Was that it?’

  Sally shook her head. ‘No. It was … Oh, I don’t know. I suppose … I suppose I just got fed up.’

  Kate stared at her. ‘Sally, you can’t run away from home because you’re fed up,’ she said. ‘God Almighty, we all get fed up – you just have to get on with it. And what exactly were you fed up about?’

  ‘You know,’ Sally said. ‘Being at the beck and call of Mammy really. It’s “Sally do this” and “Sally do that” morning, noon and night. But nothing I do pleases her.’

  Kate laughed. ‘That’s just Mammy’s way,’ she said. ‘It’s the lot of daughters to help their mothers. I had years of the same when I was at home, especially after young James was born. At the time, if I remember rightly, you weren’t expected to do anything and were able to swan around the house like Lady Muck.’

  ‘But you got away.’

  ‘I was eighteen when I left home,’ Kate said. ‘And Susie had found me this flat, not far from her parents’ house and a job of work. I didn’t do as you did and up sticks and take off. You won’t even be seventeen till the turn of the year.’

  ‘Mammy’s on to me all the time,’ Sally complained. ‘And I never have any money of my own. She buys all my clothes and doles out the collection for Mass, as if I was the same age as James.’

  Kate knew Sally had a point – she’d never had any money either. Just before leaving home her mother had taken her into town and bought her some new outfits and a nice smart case to put them in, and her father had pressed the princely sum of £10 into her hand. She had protested that it was too much, but he had insisted. ‘Take it, darling girl,’ he’d said. ‘You will be a long way from the support of your family and may have need of this before too long.’

  Sally had obviously been thinking along the same lines because she said somewhat resentfully, ‘Mammy and Daddy couldn’t do enough to help you leave home.’

  ‘And I have told you why that was,’ Kate said. ‘I was older and wiser and doing it the right way, that’s why.’

  She knew it wasn’t only that, though. She was sure her mother had guessed the feelings she had for her cousin, Tim Munroe. Tim’s father, Padraic, and Kate’s father, Jim, were brothers. On the death of their eldest brother, Michael, after the Great War, they’d split the farm between them, and so the families had seen a lot of each other. Tim was two years her senior, as familiar as any brother, and they had always got on well.

  When she reached sixteen, though, she realized that she wasn’t looking at Tim in a brotherly way any more, or even in a cousinly way. She knew she truly loved him as a woman. She knew Tim felt as she did – she had seen the love-light in his eyes – but he hadn’t said anything about how he felt because it was forbidden for first cousins to enter into any sort of relationship, and marriage between them was totally banned.

  Kate’s mother, Philomena, had soon become aware of how the young people felt about each other, but she’d not said a word to either of them. She had been a little alarmed, but she had told herself they were both young and she thought and hoped it was a phase they would grow out of, had to grow out of: they knew the rules of the Church just as well as she did. She watched her daughter and Tim covertly for two years, but if anything their feelings seemed to deepen as they grew older. She didn’t know what action to take for the best.

  Then Susie Mason had come on her annual holiday to her grandparents’ farm. She had always been a great friend of Kate’s – Kate’s parents liked her too, and always made her welcome, although Philomena often wished she wouldn’t go on quite so much about the fine life she was having in Birmingham where she lived with her family. After she left school, she told them how she now had money of her own to spend and plenty to spend it on. Philomena would watch Kate’s enthralled face as she listened. She was always worried that Susie’s words might unsettle her – and indeed they did, because Susie brought the life and excitement of city life into that small farmhouse, and it contrasted sharply with Kate’s more mundane existence.

  Susie worked in a factory, but even that was not so bad, she declared. ‘You think of the wages at the end of the week,’ she said with a nod of her head and a twinkle in her eye. ‘There’s the clothes you can buy real cheap, especially when you go round the Bull Ring, and then you can wear those clothes when you visit the music hall or cinema.’

  She went on to describe some of the acts she’d seen in the music halls that were peppered about the city, and described the cinema, proper moving pictures that she said she went to see once, maybe twice a week. ‘Dancing is all the rage now,’ she told them in the summer of 1935, and she seemed to almost squeeze herself with delight as she went on: ‘Oh I just love dancing. I have started taking lessons to do it properly. You’d be great at it, Kate, because you have natural rhythm. Look how good you were at the Irish dancing, and there was me with two left feet.’

  Kate, who would give a king’s ransom to see even half the things Susie spoke about, looked at her with dull eyes. She always waited excitedly for Sus
ie’s annual visit and listened avidly to her news, but when she had gone it was as if someone had turned the light out. Kate would see the days stretching interminably out in front of her, each one the same as the one before. The only light in her life was her love for Tim, and she couldn’t speak about that.

  Susie was off again. ‘’Cos as well as the waltz and quickstep and that, they do the new dances coming in from America, music to the big bands, you know?’

  No, Kate thought, I don’t know. I don’t even know what she is talking about. How would I?

  Philomena watched Kate’s face and suddenly felt sorry for her. She also saw that Susie might provide a way out of the situation as regards Kate and Tim. She hated the thought of her daughter leaving that small cottage and living a long way away, but she also knew that she and Tim had to be kept apart for their own good. And Kate had to be the one to go away because Tim couldn’t be spared. He was his father’s right-hand man and, as the eldest son, the one who would inherit the farm one day.

  So to Susie’s great surprise, Philomena said, ‘Susie’s right, Kate. You were always a fine one for the dancing. You’ll have to go to Birmingham and see for yourself. Would you like that?’

  Kate wasn’t sure she’d heard right. She stared at her mother, and even Susie was silent and seemed to be almost holding her breath. ‘Do … do you really mean it, Mammy?’ Kate said at last.

  Philomena’s heart felt as if it was breaking, because she knew that once gone, Kate would in all likelihood never come back to live at home again, but then thinking of the alternative said, ‘Yes, of course I mean it.’

  Kate had to get things straight. ‘For a holiday, Mammy?’ she asked. ‘I’d love that. Oh indeed I would.’