Tin Hats and Gas Masks (14 page)

Everywhere they went in the spring of 1944, Johnny and Annie saw signs of something big stirring. London was full of troops of every nationality. One of Ron’s closest friends, whose parents lived along the street from the Bookmans, was killed at the battle of Cassino.

On their evening walks throughout May they encountered army vehicles rumbling through the streets and out of London. All the talk was of the second front, the invasion of France and on the 8 o’clock news on the 6 June, the first reports of the landings came over. An hour and a half later these were officially confirmed when John Snagge announced, ‘D-Day has come. Early this morning the allies began the assault on the north-western face of Hitler’s European fortress.’ The following morning the headlines in all the papers said D-Day.
Allies land in France.

‘Reckon it really will be all over by Christmas now,
Annie. I’ll get me barrow yet,’ Johnny said a few days later.

‘I’m glad I’m not a man,’ said Annie. ‘I used to think I’d like to be at one time. Men can do so much more than women. Well, they could before the war, but now women are coming into their own, so watch out, Johnny.’

He laughed. ‘I’m glad you’re not a man, Annie.’

‘It must be terrifying to be amongst those first ones who landed in France,’ she said.

‘Exciting too. We’re the conquering ones now. Don’t think I realized before how awful it would have been if we’d been invaded, Annie. Somehow I couldn’t imagine it.’

It was a wonderful summer for them, and Annie had plans to move into Rosanna’s family’s spare bedroom by the autumn, if she could persuade her parents of the advantages. She reeled them off to Johnny one evening. ‘Nearer my work, I can give a hand with Rosanna’s mother, cheaper, and safer,’ she giggled, ‘than living on my own. And my trump card, Johnny, I know they want to go to America to see my aunt, Mummy’s sister, and now that I’m working I can’t go with them. And I would hate to stay in the house all alone …’

Johnny laughed and hugged her. ‘I hope you won’t manipulate me like this when we’re married, Annie.’

She looked suitably shocked. ‘Of course not. I’m doing this for you.’

Johnny’s mum often packed sandwiches for them during those summer Sundays.

‘Do be careful,’ she would say as they set off.

Frequently they took the Green Line bus into the country,
and with their haversack rations walked, talked and loved each other.

Once Mrs Bookman said tentatively, ‘Johnny, you and Annie are still children, really you know. Fifteen might seem grown-up to you but growing up isn’t just what age you are. Don’t you think you ought to mix with other friends more? What do her parents think about you two always going off together?’

‘Her parents don’t care a jot about her, Mum,’ Johnny replied, ‘and don’t worry because I wouldn’t hurt Annie for all the gold in the world.’

They had a wonderful summer. Mr and Mrs Evesham did not go to America after all. ‘We shall wait until the war is over now it’s heading that way, then we will know you are safe,’ was the reason Mrs Evesham gave to Annie.

Annie smiled to herself over this. Perhaps it salved their consciences, she thought, the fact that they were doing everything possible to make her
safe
. Safe from what? From the bombs? Well, no one was completely safe from them, wherever they lived, although some areas were of course safer than others, she conceded.

She realized that they thought she was safe from boys too, now that she was living at home. Most of her own age-group seemed like children to her, but the city was full of troops passing through on leave. Many of them were a long way from their own homes and were very lonely. Some girls her age were boy-mad, she knew, but from the moment she saw him she had only wanted Johnny. She didn’t know what the attraction was, and at first she hadn’t wanted or needed him in a loving sense. But the magnetism
was there right from the start, when she saw him following Mrs Dover up the stairs, a tiny, frightened but defiant child.

Perhaps that was what she loved about him, his fierce independent spirit – or was it those huge dark eyes in that high-cheek-boned pale face? Or the way he made her laugh? She hadn’t known then and she didn’t now. It wasn’t love she thought, not right at the beginning, but the seeds were sown then and they grew alarmingly. Sometimes it frightened her how much she loved him.

She looked at flats nearer to her work, but as well as being scarce they were pricey and she wasn’t earning the sort of money to keep up with those rents. Sharing would be the answer, but she didn’t fancy sharing with anyone, except Johnny, she giggled to herself. If the chance to share but still have your own room occurred, she would consider it, but meanwhile the best way to save was to live at home. Her father gave her a dress-allowance, and as clothes were on coupons some of this she saved.

She hadn’t talked to Johnny about money yet, not in a serious way. She knew he didn’t earn as much as she did, but that didn’t matter. It would be their joint income that would count when they were wed. Five years seemed long enough to put a bit in the bank now that they were both working, but Annie knew that Johnny actually kept very little of his wages. After he had given his mother some, she was sure the rest went on their outings. He would seldom allow her to open her purse.

They hadn’t discussed where they would live when they were married either, but she had her own ideas about this.
Somewhere in the country perhaps. It would have to be a small place at first, but she didn’t mind that. Not Winchurch or Bushton, they were too far from London, but there were many places she had passed through on the train in the days when she was travelling up to meet Johnny every Saturday. One of those would do nicely. Johnny had enjoyed the countryside once he had settled down and they could rent a little shop and work it up together.

The doodlebugs, which gave an eerie warning as they cut out, and later, in September the V2s, rockets which gave no warning and left a huge crater, were still coming over, but Annie pushed the idea that either of them might not survive to the very back of her mind. Our troops were getting closer to Germany every week, and optimism in the country was high.

In the autumn Annie had promotion; she went to the inner office to work and a new girl came to do the post, run the errands and make the tea. Her new position carried with it a rise in pay. ‘Not a lot,’ she told Johnny, ‘but it will add to our savings.’

‘What savings, Annie?’

‘For later when we get married.’

‘Blimey, Annie, it’ll be years and years yet.’

‘I know that,’ she answered placidly, ‘but if I start now we’ll have something in the bank when we need it, Johnny.’

‘But I’m not contributing. That’s your money and it isn’t fair for you to go without things.’

‘I’ve got everything I want, Johnny, honestly.’

He was silent for so long she thought she had really upset him, then he said suddenly, ‘’Course, when we are married, Annie, I’ll have my own barrow. I’ll make a bit more then.’

‘Later you might be able to have a shop, Johnny, have you thought about that?’

‘Not really, but I suppose we could. Be warmer than the barrow in the winter. Depends when the war’s over though, doesn’t it, gal, and how much the rents are? You’ve more overheads with a shop.’

She left the thought with him and snuggled close. ‘There’s plenty of time,’ she said.

By Christmas victory looked certain, but when? On the wireless Adelaide Hall was singing ‘The Happiest New Year Of All’, and Annie saw Mrs Bookman wipe the tears from her eyes when she heard the song. There were photographs of Jim and Ron in their army uniform, standing either side of the mantelpiece, and when she was there one Saturday night, waiting for Johnny and his dad to come home, Mrs Bookman picked them up and said, ‘One thing, Annie, the war should be over now before Johnny has a chance to join up.’

‘Yes. You’ll be glad to see your other sons home, too.’

‘It’s not finished yet,’ Mrs Bookman said cautiously, ‘and there’s a lot gone. Young men, and women, who had all their living to do. It’s a wicked world, Annie.’

Johnny and his dad came in then, and the quiet moments were broken, but Annie felt that Mrs Bookman had at last accepted her as part of the family. She thought, she realizes that Johnny and I will get married one day, and
she was talking to me woman to woman.

Annie spent Christmas Day with the Bookmans, although her parents thought she was spending it with Rosanna and her mother. But on Boxing Day she stayed in with her own parents. She didn’t invite Johnny because she knew he would hate it, and she wasn’t sure whether her mother would agree anyway. If she didn’t, Annie thought, we would quarrel, and it would do no good.

She had passed her first typing examination in the autumn and now with a working knowledge of bookkeeping, sixty words a minute on the typewriter, and a basic knowledge of shorthand – her speed wasn’t too good yet but she was working on that – she had hopes of finding a more lucrative paying job in the New Year.

In December 1944 there was heavy fighting in the hills and forests of the Ardennes in Eastern Belgium. The fog and wintry weather, and the difficult terrain, kept the battle raging for six weeks.

Annie and Johnny knew the Bookmans were worried because there had been no word from Ron. There was a brief note from Jim in time for Christmas, on which he had drawn a rotund and cheeky-looking snowman. Charlie Bookman tried to jolly them all along by saying how unreliable the post could be at times like this and, with all the greetings coming and going, his was probably in a bag that had got pushed to the bottom of the pile or even sunk at sea.

As January blew the icy winds across the channel to Britain even he refrained from comment, at least within Johnny's and Annie's hearing.

It was the beginning of February 1945 when Ron was reported ‘missing, believed killed.' Mrs Bookman took the news as Annie would have expected, with great courage.
Johnny was inconsolable.

He swore and shouted, cursed and cried, but only with Annie. ‘I have to keep up the pretence that he isn't dead when Mum's around,' he said, one night. ‘She's clinging to that “believed killed” bit. Not proven. But Annie, he's dead, otherwise they'd know where he was.'

‘I think you're right, Johnny, but, although your mum's hoping and praying for Ronnie's return, I think she realizes and accepts this too. But, well, it's that streak of optimism in her, Johnny. I think she's been marvellous.'

‘And I haven't?'

‘I didn't say that.'

It was their first quarrel, and it took off in a way that scared them both. And although in the end they weren't arguing over the implied criticism, but over deeper issues of their ability to understand the other's feelings, it hurt Annie badly that such a tragedy could start it up. They stood at the bus-stop in silence. Never before had the bus seemed to take such a time. It usually arrived much too quickly for them. Annie broke the strain. ‘Don't wait,' she said, ‘I can manage.'

Johnny walked off. Seconds before the bus arrived he returned, seeming to materialize by her side in the queue without her seeing him coming. ‘Sorry, Annie. I'm a bit het up,' he said.

Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I'm sorry too, Johnny. I didn't mean any of the bad things I said.'

‘Nor me. Blast, here's the bus. Tomorrow night?'

‘I'll come round straight from work.'

They didn't stay in. Mrs Bookman urged them out,
Annie suspected that it was so she need not put on a brave face any longer.

It was too cold for walking for long, yet neither were in the mood for the pictures, so they went to the Express Dairies, their favourite drinking place. They sat on high stools and talked about Ron. ‘Jim'll take it hard,' Johnny said. ‘They were close. Being so much younger I was never part of their set-up, but I – well, I guess I looked up to them both in my way. Yes, they were both my heroes. I feel so mean, Annie, I grumbled because Mum left Ron's stuff in the bedroom when I came home. I wanted to clear it all out. Now, well, I don't know what to do. I lay in bed last night and looked up at his shelf and I – I blubbed like a baby, Annie.'

‘Johnny, oh Johnny, I wish I could help, but there's nothing I can say that would, is there? It is
just
possible that he's a prisoner, or injured, but—'

‘I know. I hope, well I just hope it was quick, Annie. See, that's one of the things about it: we don't know. Either where he is or where he died, or how. I don't know why, but it would help I think, if we knew.'

They bought another hot chocolate and spun it out, then they walked very slowly towards the bus-stop. Johnny wanted to take Annie right home, but she insisted that he simply waited with her until the bus came each time.

‘Where is the sense in you coming all that way and then having to come back again, probably walk back too if we were very late? The bus stops almost outside our place anyway, so I have hardly any distance to travel.'

‘I always time it, Annie,' he said. ‘Those eerie doodlebugs
are still coming over. And the V2s. It's not over yet.'

‘It's like your mum says, Johnny, “If it's got your name on you'll cop it, and if it hasn't you'll be one of the miraculous escapes we read about”.'

The bus hove in to sight, lumbering along from the gloom of the night. ‘I love you, Annie,' he said as he gave her a quick kiss before she boarded.

Annie didn't tell her parents about Ron because she had never told them about Johnny. She thought her mother was much too naïve to believe that she had stopped seeing him when she was told to. But if she believed it then it served her purpose for the myth to continue. Annie suspected that her mother, while wanting to do her duty as a parent, would rather have had no children. They had never been close because they had never been together. From the age of seven Annie had been away at school, even sometimes during the holidays if her parents had been in America visiting her mother's sister.

That argument didn't always hold good with her because she knew girls at boarding-school who were close to their parents. It depends on the reason they send you, she thought. Our children, Johnny's and mine, will not be sent away to school until they are old enough to cope with the separation. A good education yes, but a home too. Like Johnny's home, but wealthier. Or was she being a snob again?

Four and a half weeks later, in early March, news of Ron's safety arrived. The family joy was tempered with sorrow that he was minus a leg.

‘But that's nothing,' Mrs Bookman was quick to point out, ‘in return for his life.'

Doris, Jim's wife who had come round that evening to hear about it said, ‘I hope he thinks so.'

‘They'll fit him with a wooden one eventually, and there won't be much he'll miss out on, Doris. Look at Douglas Bader – both his legs gone yet he leads the same sort of life as if he still had them.'

‘Maybe he's the exception.'

‘Aw, don't be a Jeremiah, Doris. Ron's alive and that's all that matters. To him as well as us. I'm sure of it.'

Annie was quiet. She could understand Doris's point of view, but she knew also that if it was Johnny they would cope. And Ron hadn't left a regular girlfriend behind as far as she knew, so any girl who took him on would know the score right from the beginning.

Ron was flown home later in the month and Annie went with Johnny and his parents to the Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot to see him.

‘Lost me tag in the bloody battle, and I'm not swearing. That's what it was,' he told them. ‘That's why they said I was missing. They didn't know who I was 'til I was patched up a bit an' in a fit state to talk to 'em. Lost me bloody leg, not me memory or me marbles, I said to the doc and he laughed. He was a blooming hero, that man. Worked night and day 'e did.'

Ron was cheerful and looking forward to coming home.

‘Back in Blighty, that's all we've wanted these last years, most of us. And there's many worse off than me,' he told them. ‘I felt bitter at first, but when you look around these
places you see things different like. See, about the only thing I'm not going to be able to manage is a bike, and that won't worry me too much. I'd rather have a car anyway when I've got the ready. They said I would be able to drive a specially adapted car and I'd get help.'

‘Hope they keep their word this time,' Charlie muttered in the background, ‘I remember the last war and the promises.'

Annie and Ron had not met before and as they were leaving Ron said, ‘Can I kiss your girlfriend, Johnny? You beat me to it young'un – now if I'd seen her first  ' They all laughed as Annie leaned over the bed and kissed him.

It was a relieved family who boarded the train to take them back to London that day.

‘He's got the right spirit,' Maggie Bookman said quietly. ‘It mightn't be as easy as he says now, but he'll get by. Some of those poor blighters in there made yer heart bleed. At least our Ron's still got one good leg and both his 'ands and 'arms.'

Charlie took her hand in his. ‘You're a happy woman now you've seen him, aren't you, duck?'

‘'Course I am. And don't tell me you weren't worried by how he'd be too, Charlie Bookman,'cos I wouldn't believe you.'

Johnny nudged Annie and they grinned at each other as the train steamed its way back to the capital.

The war in Europe was drawing to a close, the allies advancing steadily. Jim wrote home to say that even the Germans were hanging out welcome flags.

‘You know, Annie,' Johnny said to her one evening,
‘there's a bit of me that's disappointed. I know that's an awful thing to say, but I'd have liked to do my bit, and now that it's all going to be over by the summer I shan't get a chance.'

‘Johnny Bookman, it's more than awful, it's a wicked, wicked thing to say or even think. Your mum was right the other week when she said it's the men who cause the wars. Look at you, spoiling for a fight, wanting to have a go. Surely you don't want to risk getting your legs shot off too?'

Johnny had seldom seen her so passionately angry. ‘You don't understand, Annie. I suppose women look at these things differently. I'd hate leaving you and I reckon I'd be scared when it came to actual fighting, but I'd be there, a part of it.'

‘Rubbish. War's not like a fisticuffs in the school playground, Johnny.'

‘Anyway it won't happen, so that's that. It will all be over before my time comes, but I still feel a bit cheated.'

‘Well, your mum and I feel relieved.'

Things were working reasonably well at the Evesham home.

Annie insisted on paying her mother a small amount each week now that she was living back with them. She left fairly early in the morning to get to work in Clerkenwell and always made sure to say whether she would be in for dinner in the evening or not. Her father asked her about her work and she told him the truth: that she was really a general dogsbody in the office at present.

‘Even with promotion I'm only second from the lowliest
one there, but I don't mind that, I'm learning a lot about the book trade, and after the war, when there's more paper about, we shall take off, I'm sure. Might even write a book myself one day, you never know.'

Her mother maintained a hurt silence about it all and Annie never volunteered extra information in case it rebounded on her. She knew how disappointed her mother was that she had rejected plans for finishing-school and what she called ‘a good marriage.'

When they decided the time was right now for them to make that visit to America, which they had been planning for so long, it was her mother who said, ‘Could you go and live with Rosanna for six months while we're away, Anita? I think that is the best plan. You're there more often than at home anyway,' she added.

‘Sure. When are you wanting to go?'

‘End of the month. We shall return in October, so you can have Christmas at home.'

‘I'll pop in from time to time and check on the place,' Annie said. ‘You go and enjoy yourselves.'

‘There will be no need to check.' Mrs Evesham looked at her daughter. ‘We shall let the house while we're gone. That has been taken care of.'

Annie, who had had visions of living at home and saving the money she would have paid in rent was stunned.

‘Letting it? Why? I mean I could just have wanted to stay on, you know.'

‘I thought you couldn't wait to move in with Rosanna, and this arrangement suits us, Anita. Mr and Mrs Peckham
need a base for six months. They come highly recommended. Even so, I shall put some of the expensive breakables away, but the rest of the furniture and fittings will stay as they are. We would like to meet Rosanna and her parents before we go, naturally.'

‘Oh. Yes, of course. I'll arrange something,' Annie said, wondering how she was going to get out of this one.

‘You tell one lie, Johnny,' she said to him that evening, ‘and it rebounds a hundred times. What do I say now? I don't want to get in any deeper.'

‘You'll have to live somewhere, Annie. Have you any relatives or friends in London? Wish our house was bigger. I know you didn't want to come to us, and now with Ron coming home it wouldn't be possible, but it would be good if you were living near.'

‘That's an idea, Johnny. If I could find a place close to you and your family….'

‘I'll keep my ear to the ground,' said Johnny. ‘Sure to be something, but what you tell your parents I really don't know.'

‘I suppose I'll have to tell them another lie. Say that Rosanna is leaving. Oh heck.'

When Mrs Bookman learned of the dilemma, without the deceit of the invented Rosanna, of course, simply that Annie needed lodgings for six months while her parents were away, she said calmly, ‘Don't rush it. You can stay here while you're looking, dear. Ron won't be home for some time yet and if Johnny doesn't mind sleeping downstairs on the bedchair, you can have his room.'

Annie demurred. Nothing would make her say that her
parents, if they came to see, would not entertain her living in the cosy little house that she had come to love. If only I were a few years older I could go my own way, she thought, but at present the law could probably make me conform.

She began a search for suitable accommodation immediately, looking, as Johnny had suggested, in his area. After all she was travelling a good distance to work now, which defeated her original argument anyway.