A Ration Book Childhood

by Jean Fullerton

  A pang of longing for those happy days when she and Ellen were thick as thieves and twice as bold bubbled in her chest.

  ‘But your mum picked up a tune quicker,’ Ida replied.

  She and Ellen stared at each other for several moments then the undulating wail of a siren filled Ida’s ears.

  The nurses pottering about the ward stopped mid-task and started directing the patients who could walk to leave their beds and chairs and evacuate the ward. Nurse Sullivan appeared wearing a tin helmet with a W painted in white on the front. Standing on a footstool she blew her whistle.

  ‘There is limited space in the hospital basement,’ she shouted in a strong, clear voice. ‘And priority is given to the sick so visitors who are within walking distance of their own shelters are requested to make their way there now.’

  Two of the student nurses marched over to Ellen’s bed.

  ‘Right, Mrs Gilbert,’ one said briskly, kicking off the bed’s brake, ‘let’s get you tucked away safely.’

  Fear flashed across Ellen’s sallow face.

  ‘Don’t worry, Ellen,’ Ida said, taking the boy’s small hand in hers. ‘I’ll take care of Michael.’

  Scooting past the man leading the sing-song, Michael dived behind the old pram and crouched down. Holding on to the curved steel of the handle, he peered out from behind it to where David Manny, a skinny boy with a crop of ginger hair, stood counting out loud with his hands over his eyes.

  He’d heard people moaning about Tilbury Shelter, but he couldn’t understand why because it was blooming brilliant. Firstly, there was a proper canteen, so you didn’t have to bring your own food, and secondly, there was all sort of things going on, like draughts tournaments and talks about the ancient Egyptians, but the best thing about the massive space under the warehouse was there were lots of boys his own age. Of course, they’d given him the once-over when he arrived, but Billy, Auntie Ida’s son, had told them he was his brother, so they let him join them.

  He still wasn’t quite sure how he was Billy’s brother, but his father said he’d tell him when he got older. He didn’t mind how, really; he was just glad that Billy was his brother. And not only that but now he had three sisters and a big brother too. Plus, and perhaps the best thing of all, Mr Brogan was his father.

  He and Auntie Ida had only got as far as Commercial Road when the all-clear sounded so instead of going to the shelter they had gone to pick up Billy and their blankets before setting off again. They’d collected a baby along the way too, and arrived at the shelter just as the WVS canteen started dishing up supper. After a big plate of sausage and mash, Billy’s mum had sent them off to play. He’d been doing that ever since.

  He didn’t know exactly what time it was, but he did know it was ages past his bedtime and that he hadn’t had so much fun since he couldn’t remember when.

  He spotted Billy on the other side of the shelter, tucked in behind a pillar, and waved. Billy grinned and beckoned him over. Michael glanced across at David, who was searching behind a pile of crates, and then dashed across.

  ‘Let’s hide in there,’ said Billy, pointing at a half-size door in the wall.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Michael.

  Billy shrugged.

  Michael cast his eye over it and bit his lip.

  ‘Unless you’re scared,’ added Billy.

  ‘I ain’t scared,’ Michael replied, shoving the other boy. ‘Just wondered if your fat head would get through the hole.’

  Billy grinned again, his teeth flashing white in the dim light above.

  Keeping low, they scurried across to the door and went through. The door led into what must have been a storeroom so leaving the door open to let the light through the boys tucked themselves out of sight.

  With their backs on the wall and their arms resting on their knees, Michael and Billy caught their breath.

  ‘It pongs a bit,’ said Michael, wrinkling his nose.

  ‘It’s the marge in the basement,’ Billy informed him. ‘It’s gone off.’

  He rummaged around in his pocket then pulled out his handkerchief and unwrapped it.

  ‘Want a gobstopper?’ he said, holding out the cloth containing two fat balls.

  ‘Ta,’ said Michael, popping the nearest one in his mouth.

  ‘Do you think the Luftwaffe will come tonight?’ asked Michael as he sucked the fluff off his sweet.

  ‘Perhaps they will if the fog goes,’ said Billy. ‘But when I get bigger I’m going to join the army like Charlie and kill lots and lots of Germans.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Michael. Then he asked, ‘Who’s that baby that your mum collected on the way here?’

  ‘Patrick,’ said Billy. ‘He’s Charlie’s boy.’

  ‘Why don’t his mum take him to the shelter?’

  ‘Cos she works at night in a West End club,’ Billy explained.

  Michael looked astonished. ‘She’s a singer!’

  ‘No, she’s a tart,’ Billy replied. ‘At least, that what my mum calls her.’

  ‘I like your mum,’ said Michael, without thinking. He did, too. Although when he’d met her at the hospital she’d looked like a right dragon, but as they’d walked back to her house she’d asked him what his favourite lessons at school were and laughed at the knock-knock joke he’d heard on the radio that morning. She’d even bought him a pennyworth of chips in the fish shop on the way back to her house.

  ‘She’s all right, I suppose,’ said Billy. ‘But you know she ain’t my real mum.’

  ‘Isn’t she?’ said Michael, looking surprised.

  ‘No, she’s not,’ Billy replied. ‘Pearl, her younger sister, is my real mum. She wears nice clothes and is very rich. It was ’er who bought me the Hornby train set.’

  ‘Did she?’

  Billy gave him a smug look. ‘And the model Spitfire hanging from the ceiling.’

  ‘That too?’ asked Michael, unable to hide his awe. ‘She must be loaded.’

  ‘She is,’ Billy replied. ‘In fact, I reckon she’s richer than some of those toff tarts who talk posh and swank about up West.’

  ‘We had a girl down our street who had a baby but didn’t want it and— Ow,’ Michael yelled as Billy punched him. He rubbed his arm. ‘That hurt.’

  ‘Well, don’t say it,’ Billy replied.

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘That Aunt Pearl didn’t want me,’ Billy replied, his eyes shining bright in the dim light of their hiding place. ‘Because she did. I know she did because she always buys me nice presents.’

  ‘Why did she give you to your mum, then?’ Michael asked, feeling slightly bemused by it all.

  Billy shot him an angry look. ‘I told you she ain’t my mum.’

  Michael sighed. ‘All right, keep your hair on, but why?’

  ‘Because . . . because she did,’ snapped Billy. ‘That’s all. But I bet one day she’ll come and fetch me back and I tell you something: she wouldn’t always be smacking me for nothing like you know who does.’ He thumbed over his shoulder to where Ida was feeding the baby a bottle.

  ‘Does your mu— Auntie Ida smack you a lot?’ Michael asked, as a chorus of ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ drifted through the open door.

  ‘All the time,’ said Billy. ‘What about yours?’

  Tears sprang into his eyes. Pretending to wipe his nose, Michael dashed them away with the back of his hand. He shook his head. ‘When I was little but not for a long time.’

  ‘That’s cos you’re a mummy’s boy,’ said Billy.

  ‘I’m not,’ shouted Michael, grabbing hold of the other boy’s arm.

  Billy shook him off and scrambled to his feet. ‘Mummy’s boy, mummy’s boy,’ he mimicked in a falsetto voice as he scrambled back through the tiny doorway.

  Left alone in the cubby hole, Michael closed his eyes. An image of his mother lying in the hospital bed with a tube in her arm materialised in his mind and his eyes stung again. Resting his forearms on his knees, he hung his head as all the fears about his mother that
he’d kept at bay for months surged up and whirled in his mind.

  Billy called something to him, but Michael didn’t hear him because loneliness pressed down on him. The smell of the rancid margarine below filled his nostrils as an empty painful space opened in his chest, stopping his breath and making his heart pound. Scrambling to his feet, he stumbled towards the low entrance and, heedless of the rough concrete scraping the skin from his knees, crawled back into the main part of the shelter. The jumbled sounds of babies crying, children laughing and people talking and singing hit him like a wall as he emerged.

  He turned left and then right and back again, his gaze searching for something he couldn’t define. Someone called his name, but he ignored it and ran stumbling over the ends of blankets and baskets, crashing into people.

  An ARP Warden with white hair and a bushy moustache stepped in front of him, arms outstretched. Michael dodged to the side but didn’t see the child’s toy in his path and tripped. He put his hands out to stop his fall but before he hit the ground a pair of motherly arms scooped him up.

  ‘It’s all right, Michael,’ said the woman’s voice as he was enveloped into a soft warm bosom. ‘Shush, shush, sweetheart, you just have a good cry.’

  So, clinging on to Billy’s mum for all he was worth, Michael did.

  Putting her foot on the axle, Cathy pushed down on the pram’s handle and lifted the front wheels clear of the back step.

  ‘Is that you, Cathy?’ Mrs Wheeler called from the front room.

  ‘No, it’s bloody Jack the Ripper,’ muttered Cathy, shutting the door behind her.

  ‘Cathy!’ the old woman screamed again.

  ‘Yes, of course it’s me,’ she shouted back, pulling the blackout curtain aside and wheeling the pram in.

  Peter, who was sitting up amongst the pillows and blankets, looked anxiously up at his mother and stuck his thumb in his mouth.

  Unbuttoning her coat, Cathy hooked it on the back of the door then went to the kettle on the stove. It was cold.

  Cathy’s mouth pulled into a hard line. God forbid her mother-in-law should drag her fat arse out of the chair and boil it in readiness for supper.

  Filling the kettle, she put it back on the gas and lit it. The blue flame spluttered a little and then flickered into life. Well, half-life really as they’d just had a note from the gas board informing them that a proportion of the domestic gas supply was being diverted to factories until further notice.

  ‘I hope you haven’t scraped the paint off the door bringing that pram in like you did yesterday,’ her mother-in-law called out.

  Cathy didn’t reply.

  ‘I said—’

  ‘I heard you,’ snapped Cathy.

  Sending a withering look towards the front of the house, Cathy unstrapped Peter from his harness. Taking off his woolly balaclava and coat, she lifted him out of the pram and carried him through to the front room.

  Stan’s mother was sitting in her usual place by the fire. She gave Cathy a look that could have stripped paint.

  ‘What time do you call this, then?’ the old woman snapped.

  Cathy glanced at the clock. ‘Seven thirty.’

  ‘And you should have been home hours ago to get me my supper,’ the old woman added.

  ‘And I would have been if they hadn’t diverted the bus from Stratford because of an unexploded bomb in West Ham Lane,’ Cathy replied.

  ‘But I’ve been waiting for my tea,’ moaned Mrs Wheeler. ‘You know I like it at five o’clock prompt.’

  ‘Well, you should have got it yourself, shouldn’t you?’ Cathy replied, setting Peter on the floor by his box of toys.

  ‘And the air raid siren went off at two,’ the old woman continued.

  ‘I know. I was in Boardman’s and had to carry Peter down two flights of stairs to their basement,’ said Cathy.

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t have had to if you’d stayed home instead of gadding about enjoying yourself and spending money,’ Mrs Wheeler replied. ‘You know I don’t like being alone during a raid.’

  ‘Well, you were all right then, weren’t you?’ said Cathy. ‘Because the all-clear sounded after thirty minutes because it was a false alarm.’

  Her mother-in-law’s sour look deepened. ‘You’ve got no consideration for my nerves and I’m going to write to my Stan and tell him.’

  ‘You do that. Anyway,’ her eyes flickered to the two empty cups on the coffee table and then back to the miserable old woman, ‘you haven’t been alone, have you?’

  ‘As it happens, Mrs Fisher from number seven popped by.’ Mrs Wheeler gave Cathy the sweetest smile. ‘She’d heard something when she attended mid-week communion at St Dunstan’s this morning, something she felt it her Christian duty to tell me about . . .’ A glint of pure delight lit the old woman’s pale eyes. ‘Your father and his bastard son.’

  Cathy’s heart lurched uncomfortably as her mouth went dry.

  ‘I always knew your family were a bunch of rogues and ne’er-do-wells,’ Mrs Wheeler continued with glee, ‘but I didn’t think even your father was an adulterer and fornicator, too.’ She jabbed a bony finger at Cathy. ‘I warned my Stan – begged him, in fact – not to get himself mixed up with you and your bog-trotting family but would he—’

  Turning on her heels, Cathy marched out of the room.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Mrs Wheeler screamed after her.

  Cathy didn’t reply. Fury coursing through her veins, she crossed to the door and all but ripped Peter’s coat and hers off the hook.

  She threw them on to the pram and then, ignoring her outraged mother-in-law, she marched upstairs. She stripped the top two blankets from her bed, folded them into a manageable size, then carried them back downstairs and tucked them at the end of the pram.

  Grasping the handle, she kicked off the brake and shoved it through the door into the front room.

  Mrs Wheeler glared at her. ‘I’ve told you before not to bring that thing in here.’

  Cathy ignored her.

  Peter’s bottom lip started to tremble and, looking fearfully at his mother, he let out a piercing wail.

  ‘For goodness’ sake,’ said Mrs Wheeler, holding her forehead dramatically. ‘Can’t you keep that child from making a racket for once?’

  Bending down, Cathy scooped up Peter from the floor. She kissed his tears away then bundled him into his coat.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Mrs Wheeler as Cathy strapped him back into his pram.

  ‘Out,’ snapped Cathy, slipping her son’s hat on and swathing him in blankets.

  ‘Out!’ shouted her mother-in-law. ‘Out where?’

  ‘Anywhere as long as it’s away from you,’ Cathy replied, shoving her arms in her coat sleeves.

  ‘But you haven’t made me my supper,’ said her mother-in-law, looking incredulously at her.

  ‘No, I haven’t, have I? And I’ll tell you something else.’ Cathy gave her a tight smile. ‘I’m not going to. Not today, not tomorrow and never again. I’ve had it up to here’ – she placed her finger on her eyebrow – ‘with you and your whining. As far as I’m concerned, you can starve to death. And I’m not spending another night listening to you snoring and farting either, so you can have the shelter to yourself; I’ll be making my own arrangements from now on.’

  A hateful expression contorted the old woman’s face. ‘You wait. I’ll write to Stan and—’

  ‘I couldn’t care less what you tell Stan,’ snapped Cathy. ‘But I’ll tell you this, my dad’s not perfect but he’s not a traitor to King and country, so if you want to gossip to the neighbours, you can talk about your Nazi-loving son.’

  Gripping the handle firmly, Cathy pushed the pram out of the parlour and into the kitchen, scraping the wheel hub along the sideboard door as she passed.

  As a fretful baby started niggling a couple of arches away, Michael stirred in his sleep. Ida put aside her knitting and, stretching across, tucked his blankets a little closer around his shoulders.

  She
was in her usual spot under the second arch from the back, on the right-hand side of the old warehouse. Like many others who used the shelter nightly, she was flanked on both sides by old sheets strung across the washing lines that hung between the pillars to give them a bit of privacy.

  Most of the nightly activity had stopped now as children settled to sleep and their parents had a hot drink and listened to the BBC’s nine o’clock news.

  Michael was lying beside Billy on what had been one of the loading platforms. Both boys were wrapped in blankets against the cold and Ida’s covers were neatly folded ready for her to slip beneath when the warden turned off the lights at ten. Of course, Patrick had been fast asleep in his pram for hours and would probably wake her in the wee small hours for another bottle but, with a bit of luck, she’d get a solid four hours either side before people started getting ready for work at six.

  Satisfied that Michael had settled again, Ida rested back in her deckchair and took up her knitting. It was one of Jerimiah’s old jumpers – it had worn through at the elbows and neck, but there was still enough good wool in it to make Billy a sleeveless pullover.

  Taking a needle in each hand, Ida drew out the unravelled wool from the ball ready to start a new row. A smell of something so faint she could barely catch it drifted up and an image of Jerimiah flashed into her mind.

  How could she forgive him? And even if she did somehow manage that, could she go further? Could she rekindle her love for Jerimiah? She didn’t know.

  Her eyes drifted back to the sleeping boy and she thought of his mother.

  Perhaps it was impossible. But if she was to have any hope of loving Jerimiah again then she must stop torturing herself by imagining them together.

  It wouldn’t be easy, not by a long chalk. It might even be impossible, but if they were ever to rebuild their shattered marriage she would have to try.