Far From Home (16 page)

‘Does he have to know?'

‘I'd say so,' Kate said. ‘You can't keep a secret of a thing like that. I shan't rush to tell him, though, but when David has leave he will be living with me – and what if I was to have a child?'

‘Oh. I hadn't thought that far ahead,' Susie said. ‘Do you want a child? I mean, when we are at war and everything?'

‘It isn't a case of wanting or not wanting, is it?' Kate said. ‘Not when you're a Catholic. You know that. I suppose if a baby comes then it comes.'

‘But do you want one?'

‘Not really,' Kate admitted. ‘Not yet, anyway, but in the meantime I'll keep Father Patterson sweet by turning up at church on Sunday mornings.'

 

‘You will take care, won't you?' Kate asked David anxiously the following morning as she watched him buttoning up his top coat. Then she gave a wry smile
as she went on, ‘What nonsense we speak at times. You're not joining up to keep safe, are you?'

David gave a shake of his head, ‘No, not really.'

‘I suppose what I mean is, don't be a hero or anything.'

‘I'll do my level best to come back to you safe and sound,' David said. ‘Will that do?'

‘I suppose it will have to,' Kate said.

‘Anyway,' David said, ‘you are getting ahead of yourself. Even if I do pass the medical and the other tests to see if I am pilot material, I will only be training for some time yet.'

‘I know,' Kate said in a soft voice.

David lifted her head up and felt his heart contract as he saw her eyes full of trepidation, and he wrapped his arms around her as he said gently, ‘You know, I love you more than life itself and what I want is to come home to you when this little lot is over.'

Tears were trickling down Kate's cheeks and she was annoyed, for those were the tears that she promised herself she would never shed because it might make things harder for David. She cried brokenly, ‘That's what I want too.'

The kiss nearly took her breath away; it was as if a furnace had been lit inside her and she moaned and leaned against David and felt him harden. He pushed her away, saying, ‘We have no time for that alas. Now come no further than the door; I want you waiting for me here when I come home again.'

‘I will be,' Kate said. ‘And for me it can't come soon enough.'

‘I feel the same,' David said, and he kissed her tenderly on the lips. She watched him clattering down the stairs through a haze of tears.

As soon as he had gone from view, she ran across to the living-room window to see him striding down the street. Then she sat down and scribbled a note to her mother, explaining her rush to get married as she told Susie she would; then, before all courage deserted her, she posted the letter straight away.

 

The boys had been gone just a few days when cinemas, theatres and dance halls opened up again. No bombs had fallen and the government decided that these places of enjoyment were good for the morale of the nation. Everyone was relieved, though there was still the blackout to contend with. ‘Will you try and get your old job back?' Kate asked Sally, who she was visiting the Saturday after the announcement.

Sally shook her head. ‘No, I don't think so.'

‘Lure of the money too much for you?'

‘It isn't only the money,' Sally said. ‘Though two pounds five shillings is not to be sneezed at. But there are downsides. Nothing had prepared me for the noise, and at first I was so tired when I came home, but I am getting more used to that now. There's loads of dirt and dust, and the stench of the oil makes our clothes pong something awful, even under the overalls; I can even smell it on my skin when I get undressed. And my hair is permanently lank, however much I wash it.'

‘It must have been awful for you at first,' Kate said sympathetically. ‘Factories are very dirty, noisy places. I didn't think I would stick it at first and I might not have done if I hadn't known that Susie had spoken up for me and I didn't want to let her down. After all, she
had been there since she was fourteen and coped with it. Anyway, it wouldn't have been a very sensible thing to do to leave my job, because Britain was in the middle of a massive slump and jobs were much harder to come by then than they are today.'

‘Well, I got to thinking about Phil,' Sally said. ‘He didn't choose to go in the Army or get a choice in whether he was to be taught to kill people or not.'

‘So, you feel you're doing your bit?'

‘Yeah, sort of.'

‘I fully understand that,' Kate said. ‘And while you make mortar bombs, the radiator grilles that we are finishing off in the polishing shop now are for military vehicles, troop trucks and the like. I am proud of that.'

‘That's it,' Sally said. ‘I mean, when most of the youngish, fit men are drafted into the Forces, there will only be us left to make the ammo and guns and tanks and so on that the Army can't fight without.'

Ruby came into the room at that moment and, hearing Sally's comments, said, ‘And we have to fight and fight to win. Murdering bastards they are, the lot of them. Mark my words, the only good Germans are the dead ones. I'm proud of Phil and all the other young fellows like him. And,' she added to Sally, ‘talking of Phil, you have a letter, and if it says the same as mine, which I'm sure it will, then you'll be a very happy girl.'

Sally took the letter from Ruby and ripped the envelope in her haste to read what Phil had to say. She scanned it quickly and then turned to Kate, her bright eyes shining as she said, ‘He's coming home, Kate. Phil's coming home on leave.'

Kate made her way home feeling pleased and happy
for her sister – and also for Ruby – as Phil had been away many months. But she was also apprehensive because she knew that Phil's leave was probably embarkation leave and he would soon be in the thick of it, fighting an army that had goose-stepped its way almost effortlessly through half of Europe, like some sort of unstoppable monster.

 

A week later, Phil was home. Any trace of the boy that might have lingered when he left was gone, and in its place was a man with a resolute step and a confident air. But he was as courteous and kindly as ever and had eyes only for Sally. It almost hurt Kate to see such love and she knew that, though they were young, the love they had for one another was the sort that would last a lifetime. She trembled for Sally and Phil and herself and David and all other lovers facing such a fractured future.

Kate said nothing of her fears in the weekly letter she wrote to David, though she mentioned that Phil had come home for a spot of leave, nor did she make any mention of the censorious letter she had received from her mother. It said more or less what Kate was expecting: that Kate was living in mortal sin and didn't she care about her immortal soul, destined for Hell's Flames, or any children of this union that would be  bastards? There was more in the same vein, but Kate folded up the letter, pushed it back in the envelope and put it in the box with all her mother's other letters.

Once upon a time, such a letter would have greatly upset her, but she found it hardly mattered what her
mother thought of her life. She had more than enough to worry about already without adding more to the list. What she did tell David was about her adventures in the blackout.

She had been part of the army of women that painted a white line down the edge of the road. Dolly and quite a few of the tenants came out to help.

‘What good do they think white lines are going to be?' one woman remarked. ‘My old man says as how white has to have summat to reflect against to do any good at all.'

‘Maybe if there was a full moon?' Dolly ventured, but another woman pooh-poohed that idea. ‘D'you think in these smoky, cloudy skies you would see a helpful moon?'

‘I'd say not,' said another. ‘Nor any twinkling stars either.'

‘Well, I don't know,' said the first woman. ‘But summat has to be done. I apologized to three pillar boxes, two trees and a telephone box that I bumped into on my way home from work last night.'

The women laughed heartily, but really it was no laughing matter. People had been injured bashing into things or falling off kerbs, or being run over and even killed by motor vehicles, which were allowed no lights either in darkness that was sometimes as thick as pitch. ‘This blackout is Hitler's secret weapon,' Kate said. ‘He isn't going to bother bombing us at all. Just wait till we all kill ourselves bumbling about in the blackout.'

‘You could be right at that,' one woman said.

‘Yeah, but in case you're wrong, maybe we should do what we volunteered for,' another remarked.

Grumbling good-naturedly, though realizing the futility of what they were doing, they painted white lines on the kerbs and rings around the odd tree or pillar box. It didn't help and no one really thought it would and, as the nights drew in, everyone had to take extra care getting to and from work.

But though in her letters to David she told this in a comical way, she found the inky blackness very depressing. ‘You're not even safe on the buses,' she complained one morning. ‘Look at that one yesterday that went straight over an island because he didn't see it.'

‘And it's so cold and blustery as well,' Susie said. ‘The constantly grey skies don't help anyone's mood and the low clouds mean that it's dark by early afternoon. That lovely hot summer is just a memory now.'

‘I know,' Kate said. ‘No chance of an Indian summer this year.'

‘No, indeed not,' Susie said.

And the girls were right because all through October, every day seemed colder than the one before, with an icy nip in the air. In November, rain-driven gale-force winds began battering the coast, and 100,000 Anderson shelters were delivered to Birmingham. Kate did not find this reassuring, she found it terrifying, but Susie had been perplexed when she had said so.

‘If the Germans drop bombs from the air, then isn't it good that people have somewhere to shelter away from them?' she asked.

‘Yes, I suppose,' Kate said. ‘I mean, yes, of course, but it's just—'

‘You don't like the thought of aerial bombing,' Susie
said. ‘And neither do I, but we can't do anything to stop it if it happens.'

‘Burrowing down in the ground like that is awful,' Kate said. ‘Like some sort of animal.'

‘I'd rather be underground than up top if bombs are going to be flying about,' Susie said. ‘Anyway, Dad has applied for one.'

‘Has he?'

‘Yes, the garden is big enough,' Susie said. ‘And people say if you put enough dirt on top you can grow things. Anyway, Mom said better be safe than sorry, and so Dad sent off straight away because he said he wants to build one while the boys are still there to give him a hand digging the trench and before the ground is too hard with frost and that.' Then she looked at Kate and said, ‘What will you do?'

‘A woman at work said Birmingham will be safe from aerial raids, being two hundred miles from the coast.'

Susie grimaced as she said, ‘I doubt that could be true, because I would say that planes can cover a great distance in a short space of time. Anyway, if they thought Birmingham was so safe, they wouldn't be insisting on a blackout here or have all these Anderson shelters delivered. So just say the woman is wrong and a raid starts, where will you go? Is your landlady installing an Anderson?'

‘There wouldn't be any point, would there?' Kate said. ‘The house is all flats. It would have to be a mighty big shelter to fit us all in. Dolly said that if there are raids we're all to go down the basement. That will do me, anyway.'

‘Check it's reinforced then,' Susie advised. ‘Because it might have to withstand the weight of the house falling on top of it.'

‘Oh, Susie, stop being such a worry-guts,' Kate said.

‘Someone has to be.'

‘Why?' Kate asked. ‘No bombs have fallen yet.'

‘Famous last words,' said Susie.

 

The staggering list of casualty figures on the roads caused the government to have a rethink about the blackout. The result of the rethink meant that shielded headlights on cars were allowed and they also said that people could carry shielded torches.

It was amazing, Kate thought, how comforting that thin pencil of light could be – that was if you could get hold of a torch and batteries, which disappeared from the shops faster than the speed of light. But still, if you were the owner of these precious commodities, it was a little easier and safer to get about, and yet as November slid into December, Kate couldn't work up any enthusiasm for a wartime Christmas.

Christmas spirit was hard to find, even in the city centre, where there were no lights festooning the city  streets, no spluttering gas flares turning the Bull Ring into fairyland, and not even flashing window displays in the shops to tempt a person inside. And it was a depressing sight when you did go in, because there was little to buy. ‘They say rationing is being started in January,' Susie said. ‘But a lot of what you ask for now in the shops is unavailable.'

‘Yeah, and if you complain in any way, they say that there's a war on.'

‘That's right,' Susie agreed, and added with a sigh, ‘'case it might have slipped your mind like.'

The two girls felt very despondent, and Sally was little better. ‘I was so looking forward to Phil coming home,' she said. ‘It was really terrific and that, but when he went back I had to learn to live without him again, and this time it's worse because I know that he is now “somewhere in France”, so how can I get excited about Christmas? I do try to keep my worries to myself for Ruby's sake, but it's flipping hard to do.'

‘I know it is,' Kate said. ‘Come to my house for Christmas dinner at least and we'll try to cheer each other up.'

‘Thanks,' Sally said. ‘It would be nice to be together anyway.'