Till the Sun Shines Through

by Anne Bennett

  There was no way on earth Bridie was going to leave it a day longer than necessary. Knowing she was in no position to insist, she resorted to pleading her case. Eventually, Dr Havering was brought to the phone and he agreed to see Bridie the following morning.

  When Bridie put the phone down, her hands were shaking. What a performance just for the chance to possibly see her own children! She remembered the horror stories she’d heard about the care agencies getting their hands on children and refusing to return them, and remembered how frantic Eddie had been not to risk that with Mickey.

  Rosalyn thought the whole thing ridiculous, but when she thought of the dingy, depressing room Bridie had, she felt her heart sink. Bridie though, she knew, looked no further than having found her children and bringing them home.

  She said nothing about this until she and Bridie had stripped and washed in the kitchenette of Bridie’s attic room and changed into clean fresh clothes, then she said carefully, ‘I think we need to find you another place – a better place – if you want your children back.’

  Bridie looked around the room dispassionately. When she’d moved in there, she hadn’t cared about anything or anyone, but now she saw it would never do. ‘I can’t afford much,’ she said. ‘Though I see this isn’t right.’

  ‘What about the money Tom sends you?’

  ‘That probably still goes to the Mission,’ Bridie said. ‘I didn’t tell them I was leaving, I just walked out.’

  ‘Oh Bridie,’ Rosalyn said in exasperation. ‘They are probably worried to death about you. Tom knows where you are, I suppose?’

  ‘Now he does – Mammy wrote and told him,’ Bridie said. ‘He sent me the one letter, but no pay cheque, and I never wrote back. That time there was nothing to tell him except I had nothing to live for and wanted to die. He’d not want to hear that.’

  ‘No, of course he wouldn’t,’ Rosalyn said. ‘Let’s hope after tomorrow you’ll have good news to give him. But for now, we must go back to the Mission and tell them how and where you are. Maybe you can stay there for a wee while. If not, having Tom’s money will give you a deposit, which you will need for a better place.’

  Father Flynn was delighted to see Bridie, though he saw from her white, strained face, sunken eyes and extreme thinness that she’d been far from well. He welcomed Rosalyn warmly too, glad that Bridie had some support. He listened with excitement to match her own about the news of the children, but when she asked if she might bring them there eventually, he shook his head sadly. ‘The place is more full than ever now,’ he said. I couldn’t squeeze you in with a shoehorn. Father Shearer took some of my overflow just last week and now the presbytery is also bursting at the seams.’

  There were three pay cheques of Tom’s at the Mission which Father Flynn gave Bridie. She said she would write to Tom and ask him to continue sending his money there as she wasn’t at all sure where she’d be living. However, the search for more suitable accommodation proved fruitless and increasingly depressing as they toured street after street. Sometimes there were rooms available, but they forbid pets and children, or were far too expensive. Most reasonably priced places were chock-a-block and many private houses had more than one family living in them.

  ‘Maybe I could get a job,’ Bridie mused as the two made their way home from the General Hospital where they’d been to tell Jay the news. ‘Then I could pay out more. I had one before in munitions. I’d get another one easy enough. I was thinking of it anyway.’

  ‘And then how would you care for the children?’

  ‘I got Liam into nursery last time,’ Bridie said. ‘Katie was at school all day.’

  ‘And you had people by to help you,’ Rosalyn reminded her. ‘How would you get Liam off to nursery and Katie to school and be on time for work? And what would happen at half past three when Katie left school? Who would see to her until you came home? What about holidays? And how d’you think they’d fare anyway, being pawned off with strangers after all they’ve been through?’

  Bridie, listening to Rosalyn, knew she was right. If her children were at the orphanage and were returned to her, they would need her to care for them, her constant presence to reassure them.

  ‘It’s a bit like the chicken and the egg,’ Rosalyn said.

  It was depressing stuff all right, and Bridie told herself to take one day at a time. If the children at Oakengates were hers, then surely anyone could see they’d be better off with their natural mother, whatever situation she was in.

  As they sat on the train on the first leg of their journey the next morning, Bridie told herself not to be so downhearted. God, more people than her lived in unsuitable accommodation in that war-ravaged city and they got by. She was sure she’d make the superintendent of the place see that she could cope.

  Rosalyn had insisted they get up early and have a bath and change into fresh clothes. She said that looking smart would give Bridie confidence. ‘You’re going to run out of clothes at this rate,’ Bridie said, struggling into another outfit of Rosalyn’s.

  ‘I might,’ Rosalyn agreed. ‘I shall have to buy more. I’ll give Todd a call and tell him to release some money into my account.’

  She didn’t, in fact, need to call her husband for that; she could withdraw money at any time herself. But she was in a quandary over Christmas arrangements and she needed an excuse to phone Todd. He hadn’t been happy with her returning to bomb-riddled Birmingham at all just because a friend she’d not seen or heard of for years was in a spot of bother. But as she seemed set on it, he expected her to spend the festive season with him. How could she leave Bridie to fend for herself? And yet her husband stared danger in the face night after night. She owed it to him to be by his side.

  Todd certainly saw it that way and told Rosalyn so forcibly. Rosalyn, however, said nothing to Bridie, feeling she had enough on her plate. When the ordeal at the orphanage was over, she’d perhaps have a better idea of how things stood.

  The train soon left the city behind and they passed wide open countryside with fields of cows and others of sheep. Occasionally horses looked over the farm gates, watching the train pass. Except for the lack of hills, it could have been Donegal and Bridie felt a tug of homesickness.

  The train pulled into Sutton Coldfield Station, and from there they had to take a Midland Red bus to the terminus past Four Oaks, where the conductor directed them further. ‘It’s a tidy step,’ he said, pointing ahead. ‘You go along that lane there for a mile or so. The place is on the left. Can’t miss it.’

  Rosalyn made a face. Her shoes were not made for trudging along muddy, country lanes in December. She said nothing, however; Bridie was already curled up as tight as a spring and so she took her arm and strode out boldly.

  The conductor was right. No one could miss Oakengates, a huge and beautiful English manor house set in its own grounds. At the entrance to the drive, Bridie looked at Rosalyn a little fearfully. The sheer size and beauty of the place daunted her already fragile self-confidence.

  Rosalyn gave her arm a squeeze. ‘If your children are here, it’s through no fault of yours. Hold on to that.’

  ‘Do you know what struck me on the train?’ Bridie said. ‘You remember the doctor saying they had two children in after that raid who died? I so didn’t want them to be mine that I never asked questions about them. Maybe this is all a wasted exercise – maybe they did die after all.’

  ‘And maybe they didn’t,’ said Rosalyn, catching hold of her arm. ‘Come on.’

  The gravel crunched beneath their feet and to each side of the path, where once Bridie imagined had been green lawns, were vegetable patches. The house looked even more imposing close up and they went up the three white steps that led to a terrace that ran along the front of the house and tentatively rang the bell.

  They were expected and were ushered straight into the Superintendent’s Office. As they entered the room, he left his place behind the desk to welcome the women with a hand outstretched. ‘I’m Doctor Havering,’ he sai
d. ‘Which one of you made the phone call?’

  ‘Me,’ Bridie said. ‘My name is Bridie Cassidy.’

  ‘And you have reason to believe your children might be here?’

  ‘Yes. The doctor in the Children’s Hospital told us about the two wee children you had taken in here a day or so after the raid on 22nd November. A boy and girl, he said.’

  ‘And what makes you think they’re yours?’

  ‘Just a feeling.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Rosalyn put in. ‘Are they or aren’t they? Don’t play cat and mouse with Bridie like this. Surely the children were able to tell you their names?’

  ‘I’m not playing cat and mouse, believe me, Miss …’

  ‘Mrs,’ Rosalyn told the man firmly. ‘Rosalyn Flemming. I’m Bridie’s cousin.’

  ‘Ah, well, Mrs Flemming. The problem, you see, is that the children have not yet spoken.’

  ‘Not spoken,’ Bridie said, aghast. She recalled that the doctor at the hospital had said the same, but she’d put that down to shock. But shock surely didn’t last a month? ‘They can’t speak at all?’

  ‘They can speak,’ Doctor Havering said. ‘Their vocal chords are intact. It’s trauma that’s brought it about.’

  ‘Trauma!’

  ‘The effects of the raid,’ the doctor told her. ‘Eventually, with treatment and time, they will recover. We have a psychiatric wing in the hospital annexe. Many children we take in are damaged in some way.’

  ‘Wouldn’t returning the children to their own mother help them?’ Rosalyn asked.

  The doctor ignored Rosalyn and directed the next question to Bridie. ‘Mrs Cassidy, forgive me,’ Doctor Havering said. ‘But I have no proof you have any connection with these children at all. Have you any photographs, anything to prove your claim?’

  Bridie took out her shelter bag and pulled out the children’s birth certificates and the photographs Ellen had taken. ‘These are a little out of date now,’ she said. ‘Katie is six and Liam is just four.’

  Doctor Havering knew that he was looking at the two children that he’d had in his psychiatric wing. The girl was so fine-boned and the boy so sturdy yet he’d thought them to be twins for they were the same size. He’d worked solidly to try and unlock their tortured minds, but while their physical injuries had healed, he’d been unsuccessful so far.

  After almost three weeks they’d been physically well enough to rejoin the main wards of the hospital wing of the orphanage and he had hoped being with other children might help them to speak. To aid this process, he’d suggested separating the two and so Katie went into the girls’ section and Liam to the boys’.

  He had to admit now that this theory hadn’t worked and if anything they’d become even more withdrawn. They sat, hour after hour, immobile and silent. The other children were puzzled and unnerved by them and so left them alone but not even that appeared to bother either of them. They seemed to be locked within themselves and he was sure they were in need of full-time professional psychiatric help. He himself was a doctor of psychology and if he’d had no success, what chance would a layperson have with them? But he needed to tread carefully – he could tell Bridie Cassidy was a desperate woman. ‘Why has it taken you so long to track down your children, Mrs Cassidy?’ he asked, returning the photographs and certificates to her.

  ‘Is it them?’ Bridie cried, barely hearing the man’s words.

  ‘Answer the question, please.’

  Bridie sighed and began her story again, just as she’d told the doctor at the hospital. His reaction when she had told him how everything had happened had been sympathetic, but she could read no sympathy in Dr Havering’s eyes. He just sat and looked at her until eventually she cried out, ‘Now, for pity’s sake, Doctor Havering, have you my children in your care?’

  ‘I have two very sick children similar to those in the photograph,’ Doctor Havering answered. ‘It’s hard to believe your little girl is six – she’s so small – though now I can see the resemblance to you it’s more understandable.’

  The breath that Bridie hadn’t been aware she was holding left her body in a great sigh of relief and she leapt to her feet. Her heart was singing. The man had spoken trauma, but she was sure anything could be cured once the children were back with her, where they belonged. She turned to Rosalyn, her face alight with joy. ‘Rosalyn, they’re alive! Alive! Oh God above, I can hardly believe it. All these days and weeks thinking of them as dead.’

  Rosalyn ached for her. She and Todd had no children. They’d been married in March 1938, and when Rosalyn had raised the subject, Todd had said the world was too unstable to bring a child into. In 1939, when war was declared, Rosalyn realised he’d been right, especially when he applied to join the Volunteer Air Force almost immediately. She didn’t know how she’d have coped with what Bridie and many like her had endured. The rationing and the blackout were bad enough, but then so was the dilemma of what to do with your children. Some sent them to live with perfect strangers to try and save them, while others kept them at home, suffering the raids together. And what raids, what terror, what destruction!

  She knew how Bridie was feeling now – the elation, the extreme joy – and yet she feared for her. She knew she had looked no further than finding the children alive and well and assumed then that she would take them home. Rosalyn very much doubted that this would be the case. Doctor Havering’s next words confirmed her fears. ‘Your children are not well enough to leave the orphanage yet,’ he said. ‘Now we have names for them we might make more headway, but for the time being you must leave them with the professionals.’

  ‘Leave them?’ Bridie said incredulously. ‘But I can’t leave them. They’re my children – they should be with me.’

  ‘Would you risk their mental health because of a selfish whim of your own?’ the doctor rapped out. ‘I don’t think a court would uphold your claim.’

  Bridie sank defeated into a chair. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying that, for the moment, your children are better left where they are,’ the doctor said. ‘When they are deemed fit for release, this will only be done if you are able to provide a suitable home for them.’

  Bridie stared at him. ‘A suitable home?’ she replied incredulously. ‘In a war-ravaged city? Don’t make me laugh.’

  ‘This is no laughing matter, Mrs Cassidy,’ the doctor said gravely. ‘That is the criteria which must be fulfilled before your children can be released from our care.’

  Bridie stared at him and noticed the coldness in those blue eyes. He was authority and power – his word was law. She knew it and he knew it. ‘Can I see them?’ she pleaded.

  ‘Would that really be fair?’ the doctor said. ‘That could do more damage than ever, I feel.’

  Bridie’s bleak eyes sought Rosalyn’s sympathetic ones and Rosalyn stepped forward and held tight to Bridie’s arm. ‘Can we come again?’ Bridie asked.

  ‘I hardly think …’ the doctor began as Rosalyn hissed at him, ‘For God’s sake, if you’ve a heart at all, use it.’

  ‘’Phone us after Christmas,’ the doctor said. ‘And we’ll tell you how things stand.’

  Rosalyn was aware how despondent Bridie was and to cheer her a little on the way home she said, ‘You’ll have good news to tell your Tom now anyway.’

  Bridie turned sorrowful eyes to Rosalyn. ‘Have I?’

  ‘Of course you have,’ Rosalyn said impatiently. ‘Up until a few days ago, you thought your children were dead, crushed or blown to pieces. Now you know they are not. Okay, they’re damaged by their ordeal and no wonder, but they’ll recover. Children are very resilient. Tom has the right to be told his children are alive.

  ‘All right,’ Bridie conceded. ‘I know that really and I will write to him tonight. I just wish I had something more definite to tell him.’

  That evening, as promised, she sat down and wrote a letter to Tom she’d hardly dared imagine she ever would.

  Dear Tom

  I have some a
mazing news for you. Our children are alive! Can you believe it after all this time? They were taken out of the ruins of the house before I got there and with them being so small, they were taken to the children’s hospital rather than the General. They were sent from there to the hospital wing of an orphanage in a a place called Four Oaks, where I tracked them down. The children have been ill, traumatised from their ordeal and not yet ready to leave hospital, but I thought you should know as soon as possible. I will write more later. Tell Eddie the good news if you can.

  Love Bridie

  Rosalyn scanned the letter before Bridie sent it and could understand why she’d told Tom so little. She said nothing, but as if she had spoken, Bridie said, ‘If I’d told Tom how it really is, what could he do but worry? I don’t want him to do that. Christ, hasn’t he enough to worry about as it is?’

  ‘I know,’ Rosalyn replied. ‘But this is bound to buck him up.’

  It did more than buck Tom up. He gave a whoop of joy as he read Bridie’s words. Tell Eddie she had said. Tom had the desire to tell the whole damned world, have it announced all over the camp, stuck to the notice board at the NAAFI. But the news filtered through the camp anyway and every one of the men was genuinely pleased for Tom. Most were family men themselves and they all worried about their loved ones back home, knowing in this war it wasn’t only fighting men at risk. When Tom and Eddie had returned after their funerals, both men broken by tragedy, many suffered with them and now they rejoiced with Tom.

  The following day, as they ate dinner in a city centre café after visiting Jay, Rosalyn broached the news to Bridie that she would be staying with Todd for Christmas. At first, Bridie had been horrified that Rosalyn was to leave her over Christmas: Rosalyn had been the one who’d pulled her out of the mire, bullied her into cleaning herself up and evaluating her life, before helping her search for her children. But when she heard Rosalyn’s voice as she talked of Todd and saw the light shining in her eyes, she realised she was selfish to expect Rosalyn to spend Christmas with her when her husband, who she so obviously loved, was just a few miles away, especially as her man was in the front line. The Battle of Britain might be won, but young pilots were losing their lives daily.