Tin Hats and Gas Masks (15 page)

Annie was at home the evening her father had a heart attack. It was a rare occasion, for normally she saw Johnny every night, either at his house or in town. But that evening she was working late and Johnny was going to the hospital to see his brother. ‘I won't come round afterwards,' she said, ‘I'll have a night indoors, wash my hair and everything, it will save doing it on Sunday morning.'

She had come out of the bathroom, the towel round her head Carmen Miranda fashion, when she heard this odd sort of strangled cry. Almost like a cat caught in something, but they had no pets. She stood at the top of the stairs and listened. There it was again. Puzzled she went downstairs to investigate, and found her father rolling in pain on the floor.

‘Dad. Oh no.' She ran to him and he gasped, ‘Doctor. Fetch….'

She ran into the hall and phoned 999, then rushed back to him. ‘It's all right, there's an ambulance on the way. Is it easier?'

He actually tried to smile at her, but his face twisted into a grimace and although the sweat was running in rivulets down his cheeks he felt icy-cold.

Mrs Evesham was at a meeting, and she came in as the ambulance arrived. Only one of them was allowed to go with him, so Annie reluctantly stayed behind.

‘Ring me from the hospital,' she pleaded with her mother, ‘as soon as he's in bed, and tell me how he manages the journey, how he is.'

She went in and closed the heavy front door. It was nearly an hour later when Mrs Evesham telephoned. ‘Your father has had a heart attack, Anita. I'm staying here the night.'

‘Will he – is he – going to be all right?' There was silence for a few moments, then Mrs Evesham's voice again, thick with tears. ‘We don't know, but if he can get through the night there's a chance.' And for the first time in her life Annie heard her mother crying.

The phone went dead while she was trying to think of something comforting to say. Afterwards she longed for Johnny, but because the Bookmans hadn't a telephone she couldn't contact him without being out of the house for hours, and she was afraid to do that, just in case.…

She phoned the hospital early the following morning and was told that her father had had a comfortable night. That was all. Just before she left the house the telephone rang and this time it was her mother, who said she was coming home for a few hours.

‘I'm just off to work, Mummy, but I'll be home this evening. You – you can reach me at the office if – if you
want me,' she added tremulously. ‘I'll leave the number on the pad.'

It was an hour before her normal time, but she wanted to break her journey and see Johnny before going to work.

‘I'll meet you and come to the hospital with you this evening,' he said when she told him the news.

If Mrs Evesham was surprised to see him, indeed if she even recognized him as the boy with her daughter at Buckingham Palace two years before, she gave no sign. Seemingly completely composed again now, she outlined the hospital instructions to her daughter.

Johnny went to the hospital with them but only immediate family were allowed in. He was in the waiting-room downstairs when Annie returned. ‘I think he's going to be all right, Johnny. He is very ill, they said, but he looks better. It really frightened me how he looked the night it happened.'

‘Well, we can spend the evening here and you can pop in and see him again.'

‘No, Sister said no excitement and only one person there. Mummy is staying for a while then she'll go on home. I said we were going out but that I wouldn't be late in.'

‘And she didn't try to stop you?'

‘No. I think she's still in shock, Johnny. You know it's – it's really shaken her up.' They left the hospital hand in hand.

The American visit plans had to be cancelled, and also the renting of the house.

‘Of course there is no need for you to go to Rosanna's now, Anita,' Mrs Evesham said later in the week.

‘No, of course not, Mummy.' Johnny had not been back to the house with Annie, and she told him her mother hadn't mentioned him at all.

‘Well, we'll see what happens,' he said, ‘but it would be good if she accepted that we're courting, because whatever her attitude, it won't make any difference to us, Annie. You're for me, there'll never be another.'

When Annie missed a period she put it down to shock over her father's heart attack. A few days later she realized that her breasts felt exceptionally tender. Did that happen when you were pregnant? She didn't know, but the missed period now began to bother her. Surely she couldn't be pregnant? It must be the shock of her father's illness. It had affected her more deeply than she would have expected a few months ago.

When Johnny said one evening, ‘Hey, dreamer, where are you? I've spoken to you three times without a flicker of response,' she flared back at him.

‘All right, all right, keep your hair on. It wasn't important really, but it's nice to get an answer sometimes.' He reached out and smoothed her hair. ‘I love you, Annie.' Annie burst into tears.

She sobbed on his shoulder for some time, yet she couldn't tell him what was wrong. Not until she was sure. And somewhere inside her she knew it couldn't be true – it hadn't happened before, and at first she had been afraid it might, so why now? No, it was coincidence. Worry and shock did halt periods she knew, she had read it somewhere and that must be what was happening. By next
month she would be back on an even keel with everything.

‘Sorry, Johnny.' She lifted her head. He took his handkerchief from his pocket and gently wiped her eyes.

‘That's OK. I didn't mean to make you cry, darling. You're still pretty worried about your old man, aren't you? But he is going on all right, you know. The hospital would tell your mother otherwise.'

Ron was told he would be discharged within a couple of weeks, and the last letter they had received from Jim was optimistic and full of plans for when the war was over.

‘You know, Annie,' Johnny said one evening over a snack meal before they went to the pictures, ‘I've been thinking about your idea of a shop instead of a barrow. I don't want to be poor all me life. And Ron'll have to have something to give him a start – Dad's business won't support us all. Mum's earning good wages now in the factory, but she'll be out of a job when the war's over, and when you and I get married we'll need to be on our own anyway. So what do you think about me trying to get a job in a shop as a start, and looking around for a place to rent?'

‘Sounds fine, Johnny. What sort of place? I mean, what would we sell?'

‘Fruit and veg, I suppose. It's the only thing I know how to sell. I was helping me dad with that when I was a nipper. Buying too, from the market. See, I wouldn't know how much with anything else than coster stuff.'

‘It sounds OK to me, Johnny. I'll help too, later, after we're married, but until we are I can keep on with my job. It's not a bad wage now. Unless of course I have to go when the men come back from the war. I don't know how
I stand with my firm.'

She was still worried as to whether she was pregnant, and wished she really did have a friend called Rosanna in whom she could confide. In books and articles she had read the mother-to-be always suffered from morning sickness, and Annie clung to the hope that it was a false alarm triggered by the trauma of her father's illness, because she definitely hadn't been or even felt the slightest bit sick in the mornings or any other time.

Her next period was almost due, and she banked all her hopes now on that.

Johnny felt buoyant. Victory in Europe was imminent, and within a short while surely victory in Japan too. Ron was home and managing well on his crutches. He was looking forward to having the wooden leg fitted. ‘Be as good as new then,' he boasted. He had turned the coster-barrow idea down quickly.

‘I want to get into industry,' he said. ‘Cars, that'll be the thing of the future. In ten years' time everyone who wants one will have a car and I aim to be in on this potential money maker.' He and his dad had several friendly arguments about it and Ron was adamant. ‘It's going to be different from what it was like after the last war,' he said. ‘We're all better educated, and after six years fighting we know what we want for our country. A Labour government for a start, a government for the working people.'

Annie half-listened to this talk when she was in Johnny's house, and pondered about it in the privacy of her bedroom at home. She had never taken notice of politics and government before, but now, with her and Johnny's
previous life styles being so different from each other, she began to think about the kind of Britain she wanted for them both.

She was still worried in case she was expecting a baby, yet part of her refused to believe this could be so. Physically she felt fine. Each day she ran her hands across her stomach and it was as flat as before. The tenderness in her breasts persisted. In two days' time her period was due again. And she was sure that this time it would come. Beyond that she refused to think.

When it didn't she knew she had to do something about it. She did feel sick now, but it was the deep-welled sickness of desperation. Whatever would they do if she was with child?

She made an appointment with a doctor in London, picking his name from the telephone book in the office, and phoning from a call-box during her lunch-hour. The doctor, when she visited, was very gentle with her.

‘How old are you and what makes you think you might be pregnant?' he asked.

‘Sixteen,' she said tremulously, ‘and, yes I could be. I have a regular boyfriend and …' close to tears now, and not knowing how to put the act into words her voice dropped to barely a whisper. ‘We … I … we have loved each other.'

The doctor looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I'll do some tests,' he said. She paid his receptionist and tried to put the matter from her mind but it was impossible. She had to wait a week for the results of the tests, and she didn't know how she was going to get through it. Unless by some miracle
she came on before the week was up.

Her father was now on the mend, although still in hospital. ‘No sudden shocks or stresses,' the heart specialist told them.

‘Of course not,' Mrs Evesham said. ‘We lead a very quiet sedate life, there will be nothing to bring on another attack. I expect it was the strain of the war.'

Annie wondered how that could be, but she supposed that even for her father and mother, who appeared to have carried on their lives in the same way apart from a few restrictions they could do nothing about, the war had taken its toll. She doubted if she could have told them about a baby in the normal way, but she knew now that, if it were true, telling them in the circumstances was impossible. So she began to make plans. But her brain didn't seem to be functioning fully any longer, and she only got as far as returning to Winchurch or Bushton, finding a job and some lodgings, and having her baby there, away from everyone she knew in London.

And Johnny, she would have to tell him and he would be the one to visit her then, as she had travelled to meet him every week when they were parted before. And as soon as they legally could they would marry. Unless, unless he rejected her then. Boys didn't marry girls who … but Johnny would. It was his baby too. And somehow they would have to manage until that time. Annie cast her mind back to all the books she had read where a girl had a child out of wedlock.

She returned to see the doctor on 7 May, and had her worst suspicions confirmed. He advised her to see her own
doctor and to tell her parents, which in the quiet of his room and with his concerned eyes upon her, she agreed to do.

She had to jostle her way through the crowds when she came from the surgery, for in spite of daylong speculation about a German surrender, and no official announcement, the people were celebrating anyway. There seemed to be thousands about, on the pavements, in the roads, some even climbing the lampposts!

Her pregnancy wasn't such a shock as she had thought it would be. Over the past few weeks, in spite of telling herself that it was not so, she had partly prepared herself for the news. She wasn't seeing Johnny until the following day, and she felt no desire to change the arrangement. It would give her time to plan her words.…

The knowledge that the tests were positive didn't truly hit her until she was on the way to Johnny's house the following evening. Winston Churchill had broadcast to the nation at three o'clock, and Victory in Europe was official. At nine the King was to be on the air. The war was over, and the peace had started. But she had to tell Johnny about the baby. Before she left she checked with her mother that she would be all right.

‘Yes, thank you, Anita. I shall visit your father as usual, then come home and listen to the happy news on the wireless.'

She didn't even remonstrate with her to ‘be careful', Annie went with a heavy heart now to meet Johnny.

The family had been joined by Jim's wife, Doris, her parents, and several neighbours, and the rejoicing was in
full swing when Annie arrived. Everyone there kissed her, someone gave her a Union Jack and Johnny put his arm round her shoulder and said, ‘We're all going up to Trafalgar Square, that all right with you, Annie?'

‘I … yes … I suppose so.'

He squeezed her shoulder. ‘It's going to be a night we'll always remember,' he said.

At one point during the dancing Annie thought, maybe I shall lose the baby doing this, isn't that what happens sometimes? Maybe I won't need to tell Johnny at all.

She seemed to be standing outside herself, conscious of the dancers and the singing, the jubilation and cap-over-the-windmill atmosphere; yet a small core held back and wrestled still with the shattering knowledge that she was expecting a baby, and she had to tell Johnny.

At ten minutes to twelve she could suddenly stand it no longer. ‘Johnny.' She plucked at his sleeve. ‘Johnny, can we go somewhere quiet? I have to talk to you.'

Amazed, he looked at her. ‘You've got to be joking, gal, where would you find somewhere quiet on a night like this?'

‘I don't know Johnny, but we must. It's terribly important.'

‘All right. Keep close to me and we'll try to find our way out of this crowd.' Holding hands they wove in and out of the celebrators, several times getting caught up again in the exuberant dancing.

‘Come on, youngsters, tag on the end,' an elderly man wearing a paper hat said, and he put his arm round Annie's waist in an effort to get them to join his line of
high-kicking, dancing people.

In a shop doorway, away from the concentrated crowds, Johnny took her in his arms and kissed her passionately. Some sailors going past called out cheerily. Annie pushed him away. ‘I want to talk, Johnny.'

‘What is it, Annie? You've gone as white as a sheet. Aren't you well?'

‘I saw the doctor yesterday, Johnny, and I'm going to have a baby.'

At first he didn't seem to understand. ‘You're going to have a baby?' he repeated.

When she didn't answer he said again, ‘A baby?'

She nodded, for suddenly no further words would come.

‘But … oh Annie. When?'

‘In the … in the autumn. The doctor thought about November. Oh, Johnny, what are we going to do? I can't, I can't tell my people, it would kill Dad now.'

‘We'll get married,' he said. ‘Yes, we'll be married sooner than we thought, that's all.'

‘Will they let us, Johnny? How old do you have to be?'

‘I don't know, Annie, but Mum'll know. She'll know what to do about the baby too. Oh Annie, does it hurt?'

She was crying as she said, ‘Of course it doesn't, not yet anyway. Johnny, you do want to marry me, don't you? I mean, you don't have to, you know. I … I could go away somewhere and have the baby quietly. I've got some money saved, then it could, could be adopted….'

That seemed to jolt Johnny out of his stupor.

‘Never. It's our kid. Maybe we're a bit young to be
parents, Annie, but we'll manage. I'll get a job, a better job, and we'll find some rooms somewhere. Look, let's . . let's go home now.' He looked at his watch. ‘The others won't be in for ages – even Ron's gone round to a pal's house for the night, and we can sort ourselves out, like.' Gently he put his arm round her again and kissed her, ‘Why, you're shivering Annie. Are you cold? Come on, we'll get home and have a nice cup of tea.'

They telephoned Mrs Evesham from the first box they came to, to find out how Annie's father was and to tell her that Annie was staying the night with Johnny's family. Then, while the rest of them were singing and dancing the hours away, Johnny and Annie sat together on the settee, holding hands and tremulously working out their future.

When the family returned about four o'clock in the morning, they were both asleep, Annie in Johnny's bed upstairs, and Johnny on the bedchair downstairs.

It was the weekend before they had a chance to tell Johnny's mother. They told her together, Johnny taking the lead.

‘Mum,' he said, ‘we need some help. We've got ourselves in a mess and we don't know the law about getting married.'

Mrs Bookman, who was in the kitchen preparing dinner dropped the saucepan she was just about to fill with water.

‘What sort of a mess?' she said. Then, looking at the two strained faces, ‘Oh, my God, you're only children yourselves.'

Mr Bookman and Ron were down at the pub. She pulled out a kitchen stool and sat down heavily on it. ‘You had
better tell me everything. When is it due?'

By the time the others returned, dinner was cooking and the house was quiet. Even the wireless had been turned off, as Mr Bookman commented when he entered. ‘Thought you'd gone and left me, ducks,' he said, putting his arm round his wife's waist and swinging her round several times. ‘What's the matter?' He looked from one to the other. ‘You all look as though you dropped a quid and found a tanner.'

They told him; well, his wife told him. Ron was there too – Annie discovered there were few secrets in this family. A crisis for one was a crisis for them all.

‘You bloody young—' but Mrs Bookman intervened. ‘It's too late for that sort of talk, Charlie. We have to do what is best now for Johnny and Annie and … and the baby.'

‘What do your parents say about it?' Mr Bookman turned to Annie and she saw tears glinting in his eyes.

‘They … they don't know.' In spite of her efforts she couldn't stop her voice from quivering.

‘And they mustn't know,' Mrs Bookman said, looking at her husband. ‘Annie's father is still in hospital recovering from a heart attack. He wouldn't be able to stand the shock of news like this.'

‘He'll have to know, or her mother will. It'll be up to her whether she tells him or not.'

Mrs Bookman shook her head. ‘Poor woman's got enough worry, and from what Annie tells me I doubt if they'd help her much. Although,' she went on, turning to the girl, ‘many mothers say they'd turn you out, but when
it comes to it they don't.'

‘Mummy would.'

Mrs Bookman placed a restraining hand on her husband's arm. ‘The way I see it is that we're in the best position to help Johnny and Annie at the moment. Later, when your father is better, Annie, we can have a rethink, but for the present we'll respect both your wishes and keep your secret.'

‘You can't keep a thing like this secret.' Charlie Bookman was pacing the tiny room, back and forth, back and forth.

‘We have to, if we don't want her father's death on our consciences. Listen, if Annie gets a job away somewhere … she has suggested returning to where she was evacuated, but I think that's a bit risky. I hate being deceitful but it is the best thing in this case, I think. Johnny stays here and earns as much as he can, and when Annie can no longer work she returns to have the baby.'

‘Maggie, sometimes you take my breath away. There's no room for a baby here.'

‘Of course there is,' she replied calmly. ‘It won't be for long, and during the time Annie's waiting for the little ‘un to arrive Johnny will be looking for a job and a flat. He can do bar-work in the evenings, window-cleaning, there are a lot of odd jobs he can pick up if he searches around. And it won't matter if it's one room to start with, they can go on from there….'

Mr Bookman, and Ron too, put forward several more obstacles, but she dismissed them all. ‘You can always find a reason why not,' she said quietly, ‘but it's the baby you've got to think about now. Poor little mite didn't ask to
come into this world, but it's on the way and it's got two parents living, which is more than many have after this last six years. Who are we to deny it that? It's our grandchild too, remember, and if you can't help your own then it's a poor look-out for the rest of humanity. Now if that dinner's finished cooking we'll stop talking about it while we eat. OK?'

‘OK,' they all weakly agreed.

Annie didn't think she could eat a thing, but with encouragement from the others she managed to get through.

Afterwards she followed Mrs B, as she had taken to calling her, into the tiny kitchen.