Women on the Home Front (130 page)

‘You fuss. She can wait, I am tired,’ said Ana, furious. ‘Leave her alone!’

‘Sorry, Ana, I was trying to help you,’ Su said, putting down the child, but Dina held up her arms and reached out for her, making matters worse.

‘Don’t. I no need help from you. She can wait,’ she snapped, but Susan for once snapped back at her.

‘Everything waits for you…you are a lazy mother. You never wash under your arms, you smell and your
baby smells. You stink this room out. I don’t like to live with your smells.’

Ana sniffed her armpits. There was a stain under her blouse but she smelled of milk and woman. What was wrong about that? The blouse needed a wash but so what?

‘I am clean. I washed yesterday. It is too cold to wash all over when the ice freezes the water. You fuss,’ she said, seeing with satisfaction the look on Su’s face. ‘You have plenty money for soap and new clothes.’

‘That is none of your business. I am a British citizen. I know how to do things proper,’ Su argued, brushing down her skirt and fiddling with her bracelet.

‘Look at you. You all gold bangles and earrings. I have nothing.’

‘That is not my fault. You make everyone sorry for you…poor Ma Ana…in a labour camp, a prisoner of war. How do we even know you speak the truth? You stole my Freddie. You told him lies too? I have had a bad time too. Why do you quarrel with me when I am trying to help you?’ she shouted back at her. ‘I have done nothing to you.’

‘He think you dead. I not steal him, he was ripe for picking,’ Ana argued, gathering the dirty clothes up in a huff of indignation. ‘All these silk curtains you are hanging up-you shove your silk skirts in my face every day. You think you are number one wife. I have nothing and now you take my baby as well,’ she sobbed.

‘I try to help you but you do not like anything I do. You are one sorry lady, always moaning like the wind through the trees. It is cold and dark. It is cruel
weather. I cannot help the weather in England. If you want sun go back to Greece. If you stay then pull up your socks and get on with job,’ said Susan, folding her arms determinedly.

Lily was standing in the doorway listening, her eyes wide. ‘What is going on?’

‘What is all this pulling up of socks, Lily? I no wear socks. It is too cold. I have only one pair of stockings and if I pull them they tear. Then I have nothing on my legs. I have no clothing coupons,’ Ana sobbed.

Susan shook her head and smiled. ‘It is a typical English saying. It means you grit your teeth and smile when you are hurting inside. No one wants to see your hurts. The British want you to get on with “jolly good show,” go to work and keep the train on the track no matter what happens,’ she slowed her words so that Ana could understand. ‘Forget your troubles and try harder. Troubles pass like walking by fire, you have to walk through smoking darkness with a stiff upper lip and no tears, until you see blue sky again. “Keep Right On to the End of the Road”-we sang that song on the long march out of Burma.’

‘But there is no blue sky in Grimbleton. It is all fog and grey clouds, smoking gun chimneys and sulphur. Where has the sun gone, Lily?’ Ana wept, turning from Su in disgust. ‘I no speak to her any more. She is dead. Freddie say she is dead. She tell stories.’

‘So you think I am a liar, that Joy is not his girl? You tell her, Lily, you tell her she smell! I am used to sweat and heat and warm sun, the heavy warm rain of the Monsoon weather but this is where we are and we must be grateful, Ma Ana, grateful for a roof over our heads
that does not leak, food at the table. Daw Esme does not turn us away. We must give respect to dragon mother. She is sad. She has lost a son and we have our beautiful daughters,’ Susan shouted. ‘In death we have life, that is what the vicar tell us.’

Ana stared down at the face of the tiny woman with delicate cheekbones and flashing eyes. ‘How you be so still like boat on a lake, no ripples?’ she asked. ‘You have no tears. You not honour the dead.’

‘Oh, yes, I do! I went on living when all around me were dying. Here is a better life for me. The Japanese bombed our beautiful cities. It was a terrible time. I trekked to India with my family through the jungle. I will not talk about the time of walking bones and skellingtons, when we ate roots and drank water from leaves. I saw terrible things too, many die. What do you know? Better forget what is past. We shall make the best of living here, I know.’ She paused and gave a big sigh. ‘When it is cold and dark I think of blossom on trees, orchids and perfume of jasmine flowers. I think of spices and making
balachan
pickle with my mother. Her spirit looks down on me with kindness. She expects me to behave like a good Anglo-Burmese so I will. I have Joy and she is my sunshine. I will make sure she walks in sunlight always. We have a friend in Lily, who looks after us all. Then it is not so bad.’

‘This is bad! I wanna go home but how can I go home with no husband and a girl child? I have no dowry. Who will wed me now? There is nothing but war amongst my country and ruined towns. There is nothing for me there but starvation.’

‘Then we make our own sunshine, Ma Ana,’ Su said, passing Dina back into her arms. ‘Come, the bath water will be cold and the snake woman will shout at us again.’

‘I don’t want bath. I want fresh tomatoes warmed by the midday sun, the golden oil of olives ripe in the heat of the afternoon. I want to sit with a glass of retsina, watching the oleanders swaying in the evening breeze. How can I have any of that here?’ she replied.

‘The Bible says, ask and you shall receive, seek and ye shall find…’ said Su.

‘You believe that if I pray to holy St Aristaeus my dream will come?’ Ana looked up in amazement. How could a Greek saint perform miracles so far away?

‘It is written in the Holy Word. Everything comes to him who waits,’ added Susan.

‘How long I wait?’

‘As long as it takes.’

‘You talk riddles to me,’ Ana snapped.

‘I am trying to help you lift up your socks,’ Su replied with flashing eyes. ‘There you go again, moan, moan. What shall we do with this miserable bag of bones with baggy bosoms?’

‘You are a selfish pig. You think you are better than me with your fat baby,’ Ana snapped back. ‘I not speak to you again, ever…’

‘My baby is beautiful. Tell her, Miss Lily.’ Su looked for support but Lily had beat a hasty retreat downstairs.

‘What on earth is that racket going on upstairs?’ said Esme as they tidied away the remnants of the funeral
tea: soiled napkins and crumbs, a forgotten umbrella and gloves. ‘Go and see to it, Lil, I’m done in.’

‘I’ve been up once. Better to just let them sort it out like squabbling children,’ she replied, too weary to want more conflict.

‘And what would you know about that?’ Esme snapped.

‘A pack of noisy seven-year-old Brownies teaches you enough. If I chased after all their fallings-in and-out, we’d never get a badge done. Better to let them sort themselves out.’

‘But they’re mothers, not children…’

‘Then you go and sort them out,’ Lily replied. It was all so tiresome.

‘I don’t like your attitude these days. We never had this before—’

‘We never had to deal with Freddie’s girlfriends and babies either. Everything’s changing.’

‘They can’t stay here for ever. It’s like Manchester Piccadilly, all comings and goings, and you’ll want them on their way if there’s a wedding to plan.’

‘You won’t send them away, will you?’ The thought of her mother chucking them out was real now.

‘Oh, it can wait a while longer,’ Esme replied, not wanting another argument. ‘Family first and foremost, after all.’

‘Ana is crying ’cos she’s cold and the food is strange. She wants olive oil and a taste of home, just a bit of comfort.’

‘Well, she’ll have to want. This is Grimbleton. What’s the olive oil for? Is she sick?’

‘They cook with it in Greece and in the Bible lands too.’

‘What’s wrong with lard?’

‘Don’t ask me. She’s homesick.’

‘Then she can go home on the next boat and solve one of our problems.’

‘But little Dina, your own granddaughter-why must she suffer?’

‘I can’t think about that now,’ came Esme’s reply. ‘My head is throbbing with all that talking. At least they’ve shut up now.’

‘I expect they’re not talking to each other. The silence is deafening.’

‘So what would a Brown Owl do about that?’

Lily smiled. ‘Sit them down side by side and see what it’s all about, I suppose.’

‘What’s stopping you? Go to it!’

‘Not tonight, Mother. I’ve had enough for one day. Walt and me have hardly passed the time of day. I miss Freddie too, but the man they talk about isn’t the brother I remember. How many more girls did he make promises to? How many more seeds did he scatter?’

‘Don’t talk ill of the dead, lass. They can’t answer back.’

‘I’m not so sure about that. I think our Freddie has left us quite a few messages one way and another…’

For two days Ana and Su stomped about in silent protest, speaking politely only when spoken to. For two days everyone tiptoed around them as they glared at each other, hissing like angry snakes. When Su went
right, Ana went left, in and out of the house like weather girls in a cuckoo clock, coxing and boxing.

Then there was Ivy and Levi, dodging the flak, and Esme trying to ignore them. Lily was at her wits’ end. Should she intervene or stay silent, bang their heads together or go out and get on with her busy life and leave them to come to? Waverley House, big as it was, couldn’t contain all the warring factions, or keep the nosy neighbours from prying.

A house divided falls apart, Lily mused. It was time to stand in the firing line and say her piece, but why did it have to be her?

Don’t be a marshmallow, be a nut cracknel, she decided, gathering her courage. Let them all chew on that!

It was the children who brought the feud to an end. Placid little Joy began clambering to be picked up and fussed while Su was busy tidying the bedroom clutter.

‘Lazy slut, she never helps me,’ Su muttered loudly whilst picking up scattered clothing. ‘How Freddie made a baby with her…’

‘I not listen. She think she is Queen of England. I not listen.’

Joy began to cry and that set Dina howling.

‘Now look what you’ve done!’

Lily knew it was now or never. ‘Girls, girls, this has to stop right now,’ she barked in her sharpest Brown Owl voice. ‘What is the matter with you? If I can help I will, but this must stop. The business with my brother nothing can change, but sit down like ladies and let us clear the air.’ She pointed to the bed and the basket chair.

‘All she talks about is olive oil. What is so important about olive oil? She cries and beats her breast and upsets my Joy,’ said Su.

‘I think Ana is sad, yes?’ Lily turned to the Cretan girl. ‘You want to go home? Yes?’

‘Yes…
óchi…
I not know.’ Ana looked up with tears in her eyes.

‘No one is stopping her going to her island. I am sick of this beautiful island with olive trees, oranges and melons. It makes me hungry,’ Su responded.

‘No go back. Village is bombed. No one there.’ Ana shook her head, and Lily wondered what it must be like to have no family at all. Whatever she thought of her own, she couldn’t imagine not having anyone left at all.

‘I lose family too. There is just Auntie Betty but I will not go back, never. Here is the best place for my Joy.’

‘A girl with baby and no man not go back to Crete. All the men are dead. I bring shame on family name,’ Ana sobbed.

‘Don’t be so sorry for yourself.’ Su was losing patience again. ‘You have made it safely to England. You are lucky.’

‘But my sister…How I say it…soldiers come from sky like falling umbrellas to fight Tommies in the fields. We shoot them down like birds. My brother Stelios hide in the hills and Eleni takes food and guns strapped to her legs. Many Tommies are hit and we hide them in houses. The doctor at Red Cross show me how to tie up bleeding and keep them safe. Then the Germans march into village and search all the houses, smash our door, push us outside. We line up in square and they take the men away. They turn to see if women hide guns. They tear our shirts and shame us. Eleni have big
mark on her shoulder from shooting gun, the pressing make a mark. They take her too. I have no mark on my shoulder, I am not taken.

‘My mama is screaming and we follow to where they take them. They tie their hands and shoot them and leave them in the sun. My beautiful sister is lying there. The flies buzz over her. How I go back now?’

Lily felt sick just picturing the scene. ‘You did your best. No one blames you, Ana.’

The girl shook her head. ‘I feel bad inside. Everyday I feel bad. When I run in the hills and down into the town, I think of her. I help in the hospital. I see terrible things…’

Lily sat beside her trying to comfort her.

‘Terrible things happened in the jungle too,’ said Su. ‘My cousin stayed to help wounded soldiers and bring them to the border crossing. They caught him and tied him to a tree and stuck bayonets in his belly. I heard cries over and over in my head, ashamed that I am alive and he is dying and ashamed how much I want to live. A girl must flee the Japanese. They like fair-skinned girls to send to whorehouses. I have to run away but it is over now. We have to look forward.’

Ana nodded and wiped her eyes.

‘Soon Dina will walk like Joy and talk proper English like the lady on the wireless,’ Su offered.

‘No, she will talk Greek,’ Ana replied.

‘What for?

‘So she knows who she is: Konstandina Eleni.’

‘That name makes her foreign. Dina is better, like the film star Dina Durbin.’

‘Who is Dina Durbin?’ said Ana, turning to Lily.

‘I think she means Deanna Durbin, the Hollywood star.’

‘Huh! Deanna, Diana, Dina-all the same pretty name,’ sniffed Su. ‘An English name. She must be a proper English girl. You are in England now so why do you need olive oil?’

Ana looked up and smiled. ‘Oh, no. You cannot live without the olive tree. We crush the fruit into golden oil. I just want to smell it and touch it one more time before I die. It is the oil of life, oil of the Gods…’