Birmingham Blitz (46 page)

It was true. There were pits under my eyes you could crawl into. ‘Everyone’s tired, aren’t they?’ I still couldn’t look at him. ‘You can’t be anything else with the nights the way they are.’

I think he was probably a bit hurt, certainly puzzled, by the way I was behaving. But he was too nice a man, Mr B, to try and force his way past my wooden determination.

‘You’re sure this is the right decision? Everyone’ll miss you.’

‘I’m quite sure.’

They had to carry Mom into the house that Friday when they brought her back. Two plump women were in charge of the ambulance and they laced their frozen hands together, gripping each other’s wrists, and made a kind of chair to lift her between them. I had a fire going inside and offered them tea but they said no, they had to go. Seemed to be relieved to be out of there. I didn’t blame them.

Lil, who’d already given up work too, was with me, though Shirl hadn’t moved in yet. I couldn’t have stood it on my own. Lil was in enough of a state about the boys going off the next Monday, and seeing Mom there with her arm hanging all floppy by her side, and that dead half of her face, she started crying all over again.

‘Oh Dor – Dor.’ She knelt down and put her arms round Mom’s waist, resting her face in her lap, shoulders shaking.

Mom looked down at Lil’s sleek head, and after a moment she brought up her good hand and started stroking Lil’s hair.

She looked across at me as I stood watching, torn up inside, wishing I could cry as easily as Lil.

Mom’s lips were moving. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, then managed it louder, her own tears falling now. ‘I’m so useless to everyone. I’m sorry . . . sorry . . .’

Shirl moved in over the weekend. Just packed her bags and never told the old man where she was going.

‘Teach ’im a lesson,’ she said. ‘’E’ll be round to fetch me back else. ’E can learn to fend for ’isself for a bit.’

I was so glad she’d come I hugged her. Even though I’d given up my job and could manage the house I was scared to be alone with Mom. Even Nan visiting when she could and Len popping in to escape from Gladys carrying on at him were not enough. Mom was like someone who’d been trapped in a dark well full of icy water and the coldness of it still billowed out from her. I was scared of catching her chill.

Shirl was one of those people who’s happiest looking after others. Even with her doom-laden voice she could give off cheer like catkins shedding pollen. She was still working of course, but come the evening she’d be rattling the front door to be let in and I’d feel relief rush through me.

‘’Ere y’are.’ Most days she’d thrust something into my hands, flowers or cheap meat. ‘Been over the Bull Ring. Thought these’d ’elp.’ It was her way of showing gratitude even though there was no need. My thankfulness was a giant compared with hers. I’d just about stopped being sick now Mom was home.

Shirl and I’d cook together, chat. She’d tell me about her day. She brought news to us, what buildings were down across town. And she stopped me brooding as much as I’d have done left to myself. I never mentioned Joe to her. I thought I could cope, just about, with these other things. With Mom. But I couldn’t talk about Joe. Couldn’t allow myself to think about him. I thought of Mister as my dog now, shut the memory of Joe’s hands stroking him out of my mind. His letters were in a drawer, unopened. Soon he must stop writing and then that would be that. I could forget those kind of hopes, thinking I could have love like that. I didn’t know the state I was in, couldn’t see it for myself.

I had a job to do here, that’s what I thought. And it was going to take everything I’d got. The doctor said that in time, Mom could recover. Perhaps not completely, maybe not the arm which was too dead. But she could learn to walk and probably to talk properly again. Only time would tell. She could get about on one leg holding the furniture with her good arm, steadying herself with the other foot. It wouldn’t take the full weight, but she had some feeling in it. She had to arrange the position of her right arm with the left one, bending it to rest in her lap when she sat down. And she sat for hours, not even trying to talk, listening to Gloria.

If it was the last thing I did, I was going to make sure she got better. Looking after her was my job, and up to now what a miserable mess I’d made of it. But this time I was going to give it everything. I had to save her.

Saying goodbye to the boys, Tom especially, was terrible. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him as we seemed to have lost Eric.

‘Soon as it stops we’ll come and get you,’ I told him, hugging him tight. Tom nuzzled his face against me, seeming younger than eight.

‘Promise, Genie?’ He looked up at me, those melting brown eyes full of tears. He was trying so hard not to let them fall.

‘I promise.’ I was struggling too, holding back my own tears. I may have longed for the release of it on lots of occasions but this was no time to start blarting. ‘It’ll be an adventure. You know, when I went out of Birmingham—’ I came out with that without thinking and stopped short. My day out with Joe in Kenilworth. How long ago that seemed! It had happened to someone else. I couldn’t think about that now. ‘It was beautiful. You’ll see. And you’ll be able to write and tell me all about it and I’ll write back.’

Lil and I went to put them on the train and waved them off, their little faces at the window, Tom’s glum, Patsy full of bravado.

‘So like his dad, our Patsy,’ Lil said.

I comforted Lil. Nanny Rawson was livid with her and had been since she’d announced her intention, as Nan put it, ‘to pack your kids off so you can play about with That Chancer of yours.’

‘But Mom,’ Lil had said to her, ‘things are so different now. If you find a bit of happiness why not hold on to it and bugger the rules?’

‘That’s all very well,’ Nan retorted. ‘But whose rules are you living by now, eh?’

‘It’s not like that, Genie,’ Lil sniffed as we walked through town on the way back. ‘I’d have sent Tom anyhow, the way he was. And Frank says he wouldn’t have minded them living with us. He likes kids. Wants some of his own.’ Lil blushed, looking away.

‘Nan knows really that they’re better off out of it,’ I told her. ‘It’s you living in sin she can’t stand. You’ll never see eye to eye on that in a million years. She’s waiting for lightning to strike you.’

Lil looked sober. ‘Like Doreen.’

When I got home I found Mom had got up and moved. In the still, silent way she had about her now, she was standing with her back to me, leaning on the doorframe which led out of the back room, staring across the kitchen.

‘Mom?’ I hurried to her.

Her eyes were fixed on the cooker and I felt terror rise in me. She was thinking about it. She’s going to do it again! Jesus Christ, no.

‘I can’t remember.’ She brought out the words, turning to look at me. Her face was so thin now, her open eye looked enormous. It was terrible seeing her face in that state. The worst part. ‘Don’t remember doing it.’

‘Mom, come and sit down.’ I helped her to the chair, her leaning on my shoulder, hopping and shuffling. ‘I’ll make a cup of tea.’ She seemed glad to sit down and as I filled the kettle I told her the boys had gone.

‘Poor Lil,’ she said.

When I brought her the tea she whispered, ‘This is no life, Genie.’ I thought she meant her own reduced, miscarried, crawling-about existence, and I opened my mouth to tell her again how much better she was going to get, when she added, ‘Not for you.’

I knelt down and took her hand. ‘I don’t mind, Mom. I just want to help you get better. You’re my mom, and that’s all that matters, honest it is.’

She shook her head, wouldn’t believe it. ‘How’s your Joe?’

I managed to bring a smile to my face. ‘He’s all right, Mom. Things are fine. Really they are.’

Shirl and I stood outside Lil’s shop in Hurst Street. It was a narrow, scruffy frontage, squeezed between other shops, with filthy maroon paint flaking off the woodwork and its old sign, saying ‘Stubb’s Pawnbrokers’, roughly whitewashed over. The golden balls had gone from outside though. Lil had evidently given the windows a going over but it still looked seedy and depressing.

‘Bit of a dump, innit?’ Shirl pulled the ends of her mouth down comically. ‘I thought this was supposed to be ’er big break?’

‘Well, give her a chance. She’s only been here a week.’ I was trying to be brave on Lil’s behalf. She deserved some sort of new start, even if it did feel she was leaving the rest of us in the lurch.

On the pavement in front of the shop an old piece of blackboard had been leant up under the window. Chalked on it in swirly writing were the words: ‘Liliana – Professional Phrenologist – 2/6d, 5/-, 7/6d.’

‘Flipping ’eck, not cheap, is it?’ Shirl exclaimed.

Underneath in smaller letters it read, ‘Tarot, Fortunes, Palm Readings.’

‘’Allo girls, come on in!’ Frank stood in the doorway in his shirtsleeves, although it was freezing, looking miraculously handsome. ‘Lil!’ he shouted into the shop. ‘Your Genie’s ’ere!’

‘Cor, look at ’im!’ Shirl hissed at me. ‘’E’s a bit good to be true, ain’t ’e? Can see why she’d risk ’er everything for that.’

I nudged Shirl hard with my elbow to shut her up and Frank stood back to let us in. It was dark inside and made even more gloomy by the winter day outside.

Lil, though, was looking anything but gloomy.

‘Blimey, Lil. What do you look like?’ I stood back staring at her, laughing. My auntie had been transformed into a gypsy. She had on a very full skirt in blues, reds, orange and green and a blouse which was just as bright with pink, orange and black flowers. She had her hair pinned up and a red silk rose, which matched her red lips, fastened over her left ear, and there were big gold earrings clipped to her earlobes. She pulled the skirt out at each side, curtsied, then twirled round on the wooden floor so it billowed out like a parachute.

‘What d’you think of ’er?’ Frank said, sounding like someone who’d just bought a new motorcycle. ‘Looks right for the part, don’t she?’

She did look gorgeous of course, but so strange and different I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Was this Frank’s influence, changing her, making her into someone else? And was what they were doing all a con anyway?

‘This is it,’ Lil said, turning round to look at the room. ‘What d’you think?’

Course the place was very like Mr Palmer’s shop in a way, only a bit bigger. The room was painted the colour of milky tea and there were long, filthy marks along the walls where shelves must’ve been taken down, and damp stains on the ceiling, which was flaking. There was still a counter at the back with oddments of clothes and crocks left by the previous owner, and Lil and Frank had put a table and two chairs in the middle of the room. On the table was a tiny vase with another silk flower stuck in it, and a crystal ball.

‘Ooh,’ Shirl said. ‘Can I ’ave a look in?’

‘You can look, but you won’t see much,’ Lil said.

Shirl bent over the table squinting into it. ‘Well what d’you see then?’

‘Oh, you’d be surprised.’ Lil laughed mischievously. ‘I had this woman in yesterday, said she could see mountains in the crystal ball. Convinced, she was. Said she’d always had this dream of going to Switzerland. “I’m going to go!” she said. “After the war’s over.” So there’s one very happy lady thinking she’s going to see the Alps. D’you know what it was?’ She pointed over the counter. ‘See them egg-holders?’ Upside down on the counter was a white china holder for a half dozen eggs. ‘It was them she could see reflected in the glass!’

We all laughed, Frank loudest of all. I mean it was funny after all, but I couldn’t help wondering about it. ‘Well, is any of it true then, what you tell ’em?’

‘Course,’ Frank said, through a fag he was lighting. The cigarette hissed and crackled between his lips and he pulled it out and glared at it. ‘Christ! What are these things they’re passing off for fags nowadays? It’s a proper profession. And it’ll be a good little earner. She’s got quite a talent for it your auntie ’as.’ He winked at Lil. Shirl was poking around in the leftovers from the pawn shop.

‘Has Nan been to see you?’ I talked to Lil. Wasn’t any too sure about Frank these days. He was taking over a bit much for my liking.

‘Nah, not on your life.’

‘Well she wants to see you.’

Frank tutted. ‘Never lets up, does she?’

I turned on him. ‘She’s Lil’s mom. And she was looking after her long before you came on the scene.’

‘Oi, Genie, no need for that,’ Lil said. I saw Shirl look round at me. ‘Frank didn’t mean anything, did you?’

Frank gave me his most charming grin. ‘Course not, no offence, Genie. She’s a great old stager your nan.’

I stared hard at him. Cracks were showing here. No one, as Nan kept pointing out, should have a smile so bewitching or shoes you could see to powder your nose in.

Some woman came in then with an anxious face wanting her palm read, and Shirl and I took off to do our shopping.

‘Go and see Nan,’ I said to Lil before I went.

She touched my arm. ‘Don’t fret. It’s all right, Genie – things are OK. I’ll go tonight.’

‘I just hope she knows what she’s doing,’ I said to Shirl. ‘Our Lil thinks she’s the world expert on men, but I can’t say I’m any too sure about that one she’s got there!’