Frank opened his mouth, but somehow the words stuck in his throat. Whether it was because he didn’t want to tell anyone else before his mam knew or whether it was some instinct that made him cautious, he couldn’t have said. All he knew was that he didn’t want to tell this girl. Her accent troubled him even though he told himself that she was a Swiss national; she wasn’t the enemy. Instead, he forced himself to say, ‘I haven’t a clue. They’re all very secretive about where they fish now.’
He couldn’t see her expression but he heard her mutter, ‘I know’, and there was a resentful edge to her voice as she added, ‘it makes my job very difficult. I rely on news for my livelihood.’
‘It must do,’ Frank murmured, but still he wasn’t going to tell her anything.
The evening high tide was just before ten and so it was very late when the first trawler limped into number one fish dock and moored at its berth. But tonight there would be no fish to unload and Frank could see the lumpers standing in readiness even though they were already realizing they probably wouldn’t be wanted tonight. Frank stepped closer to the ship that had moored; it wasn’t his father’s ship, The Havelock. He turned away but instead of going back to stand near the girl, he approached the group of lumpers and sought out his uncle who, of course, knew exactly where the trawlers had been.
‘Any news?’ he said softly.
Harry shook his head. ‘Does your mam know?’
‘No, I thought it best not to say owt till we know.’
‘You do right, lad. Jessie told me you’d managed to stop her saying anything to Edie.’
Frank and Harry stood side by side, waiting for what seemed an eternity.
‘He’ll have to be here soon,’ Harry muttered, ‘else he’ll miss the tide.’
Ten minutes later, another trawler came through the lock and seemed to be heading towards The Havelock’s berth.
‘God willing,’ Harry murmured, ‘this is Archie.’
Nine
It was indeed Archie’s ship and Frank and Harry slapped each other on the back with relief, but then their euphoria sobered as Harry said, ‘But what dreadful news he’s coming back to after being a hero himself. I think I’d best leave you to it, Frank. You know where me an’ Jessie are if you want anything. Anything at all.’
‘Thanks, Uncle Harry,’ Frank murmured, but his gaze was now on the men coming down the gangway. The last one off, as always, was Archie. He staggered off the ship, his face grey with fatigue, his eyes large with the horrors he had witnessed. Frank went at once to his side and put his arm around his father’s waist. The older man leaned on him with gratitude.
‘Frank,’ he said hoarsely, ‘I’ve just been to Hell and back. And God knows, I’m lucky to be here.’
‘I know, Dad, I know.’ Frank hesitated. How was he to tell the poor man the terrible news?
‘Does your mam know where I’ve been?’
Frank shook his head and then haltingly added, ‘Dad, there’s bad news . . .’
Archie stopped and turned to face him. ‘What is it? Tell me.’
‘It’s Laurence. There was a telegram and then a letter. He was killed on the beaches at Dunkirk.’
Archie closed his eyes and let out a low growl of pain. ‘I was there, Frank, and to think I couldn’t save me own son. There were thousands and thousands of men on the beaches, lines of them wading into the sea to be picked up by the little ships. And there were Stukas dive-bombing them every three quarters of an hour or so. Maybe I could have . . .’
‘Dad, don’t think like that. Of course you couldn’t possibly know where Laurence was, but you’ve saved a lot of other mothers’ sons.’
‘Aye, aye, we have, but not me own, eh?’
As they walked slowly home, Frank supporting his father, Archie said, ‘Don’t tell your mam where I’ve been. We’ve never had secrets all our married life, but this is something I can’t tell her, lad, ’specially now. At least, for the time being. Promise me?’
‘Of course, Dad, and I’ll see that Irene says nothing either, not even to her own mam.’ He smiled wryly, ‘’Cos you know those two. Lil wouldn’t be able to keep it from her, so it’s best she doesn’t know either.’
Even though it was late when they walked through the door, they found that Lil, just as she had done for the past three nights, had a meal waiting and the kettle on the hob, but Archie went at once to kneel beside his wife’s chair and put his strong arms around her. Slowly, Edie turned to face him and then she let out an anguished cry of pain, like the yowl of a wounded animal and sobbed against his shoulder, the tears flowing fast.
Lil nodded and turned away, tears in her own eyes. ‘I’ll leave ’em to it, Frank love. She’ll be all right now Archie’s home and she’s letting go. It’s what she needed to do.’
‘I’ll come with you, Aunty Lil. It’s high time I made sure that Irene’s all right.’
The whole family were grieving; Shirley and Reggie tried to carry on as normally as they could, but they were devastated to think that they would never again see their adored older brother. Shirley sat in her bedroom and composed a letter to Beth, but the letter was blotchy, stained with her tears. She sent it to the only address they had for Beth, the Forsters’ home in South London, but she had no idea when or even if it would reach her sister. Though they’d received letters from her since she’d left home, they had no idea exactly where she was or what she was actually doing.
‘She’ll be living with the Forsters, I reckon, if she’s working with him,’ Edie had tried to comfort herself when Beth had first left home. But no one actually knew. They all feared she could already be doing something very different.
As for Reggie, he felt lost and lonely. He played football in the streets with the other boys, but his heart was no longer in it; he’d always liked playing with Laurence best, but now he’d never be able to do that again.
‘Have you sent word to Jessie?’ Archie asked his wife gently when the first storm of weeping had subsided into a dull ache in her chest.
Edie nodded. ‘Frank went to see her that night. I think she came round, but I was in such a daze, Archie, I can’t really remember who was here and who wasn’t. Only Lil. She stayed with me all the time.’
Of course, the Kelsey family were not the only ones to lose a loved one; all over the country similar telegrams were being delivered and there were other losses in Grimsby too. And whilst they sympathized and felt an affinity with all those who were suffering the same devastation, it didn’t really make it any easier for them. Laurence was their boy, their son.
‘My beautiful boy. He was such a bonny baby, Lil,’ Edie said as she sat with a box of old photographs on her knee. ‘You didn’t know him when he was really little, but here, look at this photo we had done at the photographer’s in town. Look at his fair hair and chubby little legs. Oh Lil, I was just reckoning of the day when he would come home again, but now he never will.’
Very slowly, life returned to some sort of normality. Once she was over the initial, searing shock, Edie’s natural strength and resilience rose to the surface once more. She’d grown up alongside families who had lost their menfolk at sea; fisherfolk, sadly, were used to tragedy, but it didn’t make it any easier. This was something different. War took countless numbers of men, a whole generation. Grief from the losses in the last war still overshadowed so many lives – especially in Grimsby where the pals’ battalion, the Grimsby Chums, had lost so many local boys. And now it was all happening again.
When Archie had to go back to sea, Edie, with Lil beside her, returned to the WVS centre and threw herself into the work.
‘I’m doing it for my boy – I’m doing it for Laurence,’ she said bravely. ‘It’s what he would have wanted – and would expect – me to do.’
Now she had other worries at the back of her mind. Frank was finding it harder and harder to find regular work and soon, she knew, he would be called up. Beth had obviously received Shirley’s letter for when she replied, Edie cou
ld tell she felt the loss keenly. She had been the closest to Laurence in age and they had always been good ‘mates’. Edie tried to comfort herself with the fact that Beth must still be living with the Forsters.
But life, as Edie was always being told, had to go on. And it did. Whilst she would forever mourn Laurence’s death, the living must be cared for. And there was Irene’s baby coming, due in September. It was like her mother’s old saying, she thought. When someone goes out of a family, another comes into it. Edie wondered if they would call it after Laurence, if it was a boy. She hoped so.
It was in late June 1940 when the first bombs fell on Grimsby. The very same day that the French signed the armistice with their invaders, and, with engineered irony, in the same railway carriage used in 1918 for the German surrender. Adolf Hitler was gleeful, his revenge for what he saw as the humiliation of his own country was complete. Britain stood alone and the war was coming even closer to home; casualties were to be expected amongst the civilian population. It was not just soldiers who would lose their lives now.
Talk began again of evacuations into the relative safety of the Lincolnshire countryside for youngsters and mothers and babies.
‘You ought to go,’ Frank urged Irene. ‘I’ll be going any day now and—’
‘I’m going nowhere until this baby is born. I want him – or her – to be born in Grimsby, preferably here at home.’ Irene was determined and nothing – and no one – would change her mind. She could be remarkably stubborn when she wanted to be, Lil thought. More bombs fell on the town in July when the enemy targeted the docks, but as the missiles all fell into the river, no damage was done. The Battle of Britain had begun and the RAF was valiantly trying to prevent the Luftwaffe attacking coastal ports, radar stations and airfields in the south of England.
Early in September, Frank got his call-up papers and the next morning, Irene went into labour.
‘Must have shocked her into it,’ he joked, but his eyes were worried as he listened to Irene’s cries from the room upstairs. ‘I just wish the midwife would hurry up.’
‘No need for any midwife,’ Edie said, coming through the door. ‘If me and her mam can’t see this babby into the world, it’s a pity. Now, Lil, have you got everything ready?’
Lil nodded, but Frank still wasn’t sure. ‘Oh but, Mam, I don’t think—’
But Edie was already on her way up the stairs carrying towels and a bowl of hot water.
The baby boy slipped easily into the world with a minimum of fuss in the afternoon of 5 September and two days later, three hundred German bombers flew over London; the blitz on London had begun in earnest.
‘They’ll be back here,’ Frank warned. ‘Once they’ve had a go at the capital they’ll start systematically on all the major cities and the ports’ll be a major target. We’ve already had a taste and so has Hull.’ The city across the river had been bombed for the first time three days before Grimsby had been targeted in June. ‘Irene, you’ve got to go and take our son with you. This time I won’t take no for an answer.’
‘But what about Mam? I can’t leave her here all on her own.’
‘She wants you to go as much as I do. You’ve got to think of the baby now, love.’
‘All right, you win,’ Irene said, with a wan smile.
‘I’m sending our Reggie with your Irene,’ Edie announced the day before another batch of evacuees were due to leave the town. Reginald Kelsey was now ten and Edie didn’t like him running wild through the streets, especially now that there was the real fear of bombing. A new pastime had developed for boys of his age; scrambling over bomb sites, searching for bits of shrapnel as souvenirs. And if their house took a direct hit, not even hiding in the cupboard under the stairs was going to save them. ‘Shirley won’t go now she’s working full time.’
‘Do you think the authorities’ll make her do some sort of war work?’ Lil asked.
Edie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She’s a bit young yet, but our lives do seem regimented by the war effort, I grant you. Mind you,’ she added, laughing wryly. ‘It’d do that little madam good if they did call her up. She’d have to do as she’s told for once in her life.’
When Beth had been at home for the wedding and for a little while afterwards, she had taken Shirley to the cinema or shopping, encouraged her to curl her hair and experiment with make-up. But when she’d left home again, Shirley slipped back into her old ways, and now took little interest in her appearance – apart from keeping herself neat for work – or in making friends. And her tongue had become sharp and, it had to be said, spiteful. Edie sighed over her younger daughter. It seemed she was only happy when Beth was at home. And now, with Irene going too, Shirley would be even lonelier than she had been already.
‘She’ll be missing her sister,’ Lil said and, as she was perhaps the only person who could raise such a painful reminder, added, ‘and she’s lost Laurence too. She idolized both of them. And now, because of his loss, she’ll be frightened the same thing might happen to Beth, especially now the bombing in London is so appalling.’
‘She’s not the only one who’s worried,’ Edie replied tartly and then her tone softened. ‘Sorry, Lil, it’s just that it’s always there, you know. I think about Laurence all the time and now there’s Beth to worry about too, to say nothing of the fact that we’re getting bombed here, an’ all. That’s why I’ve decided to send Reggie to the country. Archie said I ought to and I think he’s right. It’s not so bad now I know he’ll be going with Irene and little Tommy.’
Edie had been gratified to hear that her grandson was to be called Laurence Thomas but that he would be known as Tommy. A christening had been hastily arranged for the previous Sunday and, with Frank reporting for duty the day after, there was nothing keeping Irene, Tommy and now Reggie, too, from joining one of the evacuation parties.
‘They’re not going far away,’ Lil reported to Edie. ‘Only to a farm in a little village near Louth. Won’t that be grand, Edie? They’ll have good food and fresh air.’
‘They might as well be on the moon for all that we’ll be able to visit.’ Edie was not to be comforted.
‘We might be able to go now and again,’ Lil said, trying to be positive. ‘Maybe your Harry could take us.’
‘His car’s laid up now for the rest of the war. He can’t get the petrol.’
‘Then we’ll find out about bus or train times. The train might be easier. Irene said the last halt before Louth is Fotherby and that’s near where the farm is,’ Lil said, determined not to be beaten. ‘At least we can go and see them somehow and no doubt Frank will be in this country for a while, training. He’ll get leave.’
Edie sighed. ‘But they’ll not be here. They’ll not be at home where they should be, will they?’
The following morning, Edie watched her youngest child walk down the street away from her, the box containing his gas mask slung around his thin shoulders. He carried his little suitcase in one hand, but the other was clinging to the handle of the pram, which Irene was pushing.
‘Now, you stick with Irene,’ Edie had warned him, trying to give Reggie’s face yet another wash and to smooth his hair, but he’d wriggled away from her.
‘Aw, Mam, don’t.’
‘Hold tight to the pram. I don’t want you getting lost. I think I ought to come to the station . . .’
‘He’ll be all right, Auntie Edie,’ Irene had said, ‘I promise. The billeting officer has said we’re going to the same place. A farm right out in the countryside. He’ll soon be running around in the fresh air and – hopefully – there’ll be plenty of food.’
‘I wouldn’t bank on it, duck. Farmers have to abide by the rationing just like the rest of us.’
Irene had laughed, her long blond hair blowing in the wind, her cheeks dimpling prettily. ‘Oh aye, and you reckon they’ll send men from the ministry to scour the hedgerows counting just how many eggs the hens have laid.’
Edie had laughed with her, but as her young son, daughter-in-la
w and brand-new grandson walked away from her, she felt her heart constrict.
‘They’re all going, Lil,’ she’d said with a catch in her voice, though she was determined not to cry. ‘First Laurence and then Frank and Beth and now those three. I’ve only got Shirley left.’ The words were left unspoken, but Lil was in no doubt that of her five children, Shirley was the last one Edie would have wanted left at home. Lil knew Edie well enough to be able to say gently, ‘Mebbe you and Shirley will grow closer now.’
Edie’s ‘Mm’ was non-committal.
‘Come on in to my place and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea,’ but Edie resisted the invitation until her family rounded the corner at the end of the street and disappeared from her sight.
‘There they go,’ Edie said shakily. ‘How am I to bear it?’
Tactfully, Lil did not remind her friend that it was the same for every mother in the land as Edie added mournfully, ‘And when we’ll see Beth again, I don’t know.’
Ten
Despite the terrible news about Laurence, which she must learn to live with, Beth was enjoying herself, though she felt a little guilty at admitting it when the country was plunged into war, when the blackout increased motoring accidents and even pedestrians in the darkened city didn’t feel safe. Rationing was now beginning to bite and the black market was a temptation many could not resist as even goods that were not on ration soared in price. She wrote home to her family reassuring them that she was fine and that she was still with the Forsters, which, at the moment, was the truth, even though she was no longer acting as a nanny to the children. Each day, she travelled into the city with Alan Forster and acted as his secretary, though she could tell her family none of this. Alan Forster, because of his knowledge of France, was getting more involved in secretive work.
‘I want you with me, Beth,’ Alan told her as they journeyed to work together one morning in late October. ‘I can’t tell you much at the moment, but it’s all very exciting and I think you’re the right sort of person we need, if only,’ he added, his voice dropping almost to a whisper, ‘we can persuade the authorities that women are capable of taking an active part.’
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