War Babies (11 page)

He sank into silence again, tapping his feet. He was forever on the move, like something wound up.

‘D’you like your job?’ she asked.

‘Yeah. It’s OK. I have to start early – it’s hard to get up.’

‘Why d’you want to go – to war?’

‘I dunno.’ Danny stared ahead of him. ‘It’d be different from here. Seems like you’d go places. It wouldn’t be boring.’

‘How d’you know? It might be.’

‘Yeah. I s’pose. But it’d be a different sort of boring.’ He turned a sudden grin on her.

Rachel laughed. ‘I s’pose that’s one way of looking at it! Now you say it I wish I could go too.’

They quickly finished the food and threw the paper away.

‘Can I walk home with you?’ Danny asked.

Rachel was completely taken aback. ‘What, you – with me?’

He shrugged. ‘Yeah.’

‘But it’s miles, Danny!’ Gladys’s house was in Aston – across the other side of town. She knew she ought to catch the bus: she was already going to be much later
home than her mother was expecting. But if she could walk with Danny . . .

‘Doesn’t matter. It’s only a few miles out my way. I’ve got nothing else to do.’

This last comment was a bit of a dampener, but she tried not to mind. ‘You’re a case, Danny, you are,’ she said. But she knew she was blushing. She and Danny could walk
together all that way!

They set off in the balmy evening, along Digbeth, out of town.

‘This is where we used to live,’ she said, leading him into Floodgate Street. She showed him the house in the shadow of the railway arch.

‘You lived here?’ Danny looked up at the great blue span of the bridge and down at the scruffy little house. He seemed surprised.

‘We did. Not any more. Mom always wanted to get out of here to somewhere better.’ She thought bitterly of Fred Horton but she didn’t say anything.

‘It’s just like where we lived,’ Danny said. He seemed reassured somehow. ‘Before our mom passed on, I mean. And it’s a bit like Auntie’s. We live on a yard
– off of Alma Street.’

He sounded very young when he said that. For a moment Rachel felt like taking his hand but she thought better of it. They wound their way through Deritend, across to the Coventry Road.

‘D’you remember your mom?’ she asked. ‘I can only remember my dad a bit – I was very young when he passed on.’
Passed on
. The silence of shame clung
to her father’s death, but it seemed so remote from her that she scarcely ever thought of it. Peggy never mentioned him.

‘Course I can remember,’ Danny said, so fiercely that Rachel was taken aback. ‘She was the best, our mom. I’d never forget her.’

‘What was she like?’ she asked, encouraged that he seemed so keen to talk.

‘Well, she was – you know – a proper mom. Nice and kind. It was the old man who spoiled everything. He always did, the drunken sod.’

Rachel remembered the frightening man who had dragged Danny away all those years ago.

‘Have you seen him? Since you came back, I mean?’

‘No,’ Danny almost shouted. ‘And I don’t want to! I’ll kill ’im if I set eyes on ’im – I swear to God I’ll finish ’im off!’

‘I don’t blame you,’ she said gently.

‘Don’t you?’ He gave her a sharp look.

She returned his gaze, steadily. ‘No. I don’t.’

He made a sound of annoyance. ‘What would you know, any road?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said carefully. ‘But I don’t blame you, that’s all.’

There in the street, on some dusty bit of the Coventry Road, he stopped abruptly and turned to her.

‘I want to show you summat.’ His hand was gripping the thing in his pocket, whatever it was, and he seemed unsure whether to bring it out.

‘What?’ she said, trying to sound encouraging.

Danny hesitated for a moment, his eyes wide, searching her face as if to be sure of something.

‘Come over ’ere.’

They were at the corner of a road with rows of houses. Leaning up against the low wall, Danny pulled from his pocket a cheap little notebook with a worn, dark green cover. The spine of it had
been reinforced with a strip of black cloth about an inch wide, glued round it.

‘I found this in the home,’ he said. ‘There was a cupboard, with a few old books in and this fell out from under them when I was having a look. I tore out the pages which had
writing on.’

Rachel watched, feeling it better not to say anything. Danny opened it and showed her, turning the pages which were worn soft and old. Each page was covered with little drawings, done with a not
very sharp pencil, many of them smudged. The drawings weren’t very good, but over and over again she saw the same thing. There was a boy in a hat – it looked like a straw hat –
pulled down low, wearing raggedy trousers and no shoes. At his side was a little dog with perky ears, one sticking up, the other lying down. Half of the dog’s face was black, the other white,
and he had a black splotch on the back of his otherwise white body. The boy and the dog both had big, sad eyes. Looking at them as Danny turned the pages, Rachel felt herself react in a strange
way. Something about the boy and the dog – even badly drawn – tugged at her. She felt for them, tenderness for their sweetness. It was as if she fell in love with a cartoon boy and a
daft-looking dog. Tears prickled in her eyes.

‘Who are they?’ she asked, trying to make her voice sound normal.

‘Jack and Patch,’ Danny said, in a voice which made it sound as if he was talking about characters he knew well. ‘Patch is the dog,’ he added, unnecessarily.

She could hardly find words for him. Looking up at him, she could not hide the tears in her eyes. ‘They’re lovely, Danny. Did you do them?’

She saw him take in her reaction, a flare of feeling in his eyes as if something had kindled inside him.

‘Yeah. I kept them with me. If anyone’d tried to take it off me I’d’ve laid ’em out. I had to once – they left me alone after that. Look – d’you
like this one?’

He found a page where Jack and Patch were standing side by side, seen from behind, Patch’s tail tipped with black and curving over his back. All she could see beyond were squiggles.

‘Jack and Patch at the seaside,’ he said, his voice full of proud longing.

‘Oh – yes!’ she said. ‘That’s the sea, is it? Have you ever seen the sea? I’ve never.’

‘Mom and Dad took us once,’ he said. He closed the book again and slid it into his pocket, not removing his hand, as if he had to check constantly that it was safe. ‘It was
before our Amy come along. Our mom’d had our brother, William. He died – he was only a week old. And we went on a trip – to perk her up, I think. Dad decided we would. It was the
best thing he ever did. We got on a train at Snow Hill and we went all the way down south to the sea. It was magic.’ There was a smile in his voice even though it did not quite reach his
face. ‘I couldn’t tell you where it was now, but it was the best thing ever. The sun was hot and Jess and Rose and me all went in the sea. And Dad was all right, that day. It made our
mom smile. I never knew there were places like that.’

He stopped suddenly as if he was embarrassed or had just run out of words. Turning towards her, for a tense second he stood looking at her. She wasn’t sure what she could see in his face,
whether he was angry even. Had she said something wrong? He was breathing fast, as if full of emotion. With a force which took her by surprise, he stepped towards her and wrapped his arms roughly
around her, pulling her close. Rachel hardly dared breathe. She was so taken aback she could think of nothing to do or say and she did not have time to relax in his arms or think clearly about what
was happening. She was sure she could feel the violent beat of his heart, though she couldn’t be sure that it was not her own.

Before she could return the embrace he let her go, without speaking. They walked the rest of the way to Hay Mills in a silence that was full of feeling but not uncomfortable. She felt bound to
him, as if there was a cord between them.

‘This is where I live,’ she said at last, pointing at
HORTON’S DRAPERS & HABERDASHERS
. ‘Don’t come in,’ she said.
‘My stepdad’s there.’

Danny looked up at the building as he had at the house in Floodgate Street. ‘What’s he like – your step-dad?’

Rachel wrinkled her nose, shrugging. ‘All right. I s’pose.’

Danny seemed to understand. ‘Can we . . .’ he began, his strong hands in front of him, moving uncertainly. ‘Can I come and meet you again?’

She gave him a smile. ‘Yes,’ she said. Yes didn’t seem enough to say, but it was all she meant. She wondered for a second how she looked to him, standing there in her new work
clothes, blue skirt, white blouse, her shoulder-length hair pinned back at one side.

He smiled. A happy smile. ‘I’ve . . .’ He stopped. ‘Come and see me and Auntie one day? At home, like?’

Rachel nodded. ‘If you like.’ But she was pleased, fizzing inside.

Danny kept looking at her. He seemed to find it hard to leave, and eventually began walking backwards before he turned away. ‘All right. See yer soon.’

She watched him walk back along the road and wondered if he would catch a bus or walk all the way. She could still feel the force of need in his arms as he held her to him, and clasped the
little notebook in his pocket.

Turning to the house, she was caught by another emotion – dread. She was so late getting home! There would be trouble. But she didn’t care in the slightest. All she cared about was
Danny.

September 1939

‘Rachel?’

She woke, startled, from a deep sleep, hearing her stepfather’s voice through the bedroom door, quavery with panic.

‘Rachel – it’s your mother. The pains’ve started. I’m going for Miss Lofthus, I think her name is . . .’

Wide awake now, she almost fell out of bed. Opening the bedroom door, she heard a muffled groan from the other end of the house. It was disturbing – she did not know anything much about
babies being born.

‘You stay with her,’ Fred instructed. There was no arguing, though the idea of being left on her own with these strange sounds made her legs turn to jelly.

He was off down the stairs. Rachel crept along the landing and stood outside her mother and Fred’s bedroom door. She heard nothing for a few moments, then there was a low whimper and she
heard her mother say, ‘Oh dear God.’

Trembling, she tapped on the door and went in. A dim light glowed on the bedside table. All she could see in the bed was a humped shape under the bedclothes. As she went close she saw that Peggy
was facing down onto the mattress, on all fours in the bed. This was even more disconcerting.

‘Mom? You all right?’

Peggy turned her head. Her hair was hanging loose, unbrushed in a wild, frizzy mass. There was a tense expression on her face as if she was listening to some other sound that Rachel could not
hear. ‘Yes . . . I’ll be . . . Oh!’ she cried. As the wave of pain began to sweep across her she gasped, ‘Go down and put the kettle on – and a pan of water . .
.’

Rachel dashed out to obey as the unnerving groaning sounds began to take over, relieved to be out of the fuggy bedroom and down in the back kitchen out of earshot. She filled the kettle and the
biggest pan she could find, lit the gas under them and stood, her heart pounding, willing Fred to come back.

‘What’s going on?’

Sidney’s voice startled her horribly. He was at the kitchen door, bare from the waist up, his hair rumpled. She shrank away from his fishy white body with the shadow of thick hair on his
chest, not even looking at him properly.

‘It’s my mother. She’s having the baby.’

Sidney grunted. ‘Oh Christ . . .’ He slouched off upstairs again.

Rachel listened to the kettle’s whisper, wondering what was supposed to happen next. The last thing she wanted was to go upstairs herself.

Eventually she heard the front door open, and the sound of voices. As Fred Horton led Mrs Lofthus up the stairs, she heard the woman say, rather grumpily, ‘Let’s hope it’ll be
on its way very soon. It’s not as if it’s her first, is it?’

It was only then that Rachel fully took in that a new person was about to arrive in the house.

It felt like an endless night. Contrary to what Mrs Lofthus had predicted, the baby was not in a hurry to be born. Fred Horton spent the night in the parlour, alternately
smoking and snoozing and demanding cups of tea. Rachel stayed almost all the time in the back kitchen. Her job became that of supplying tea to Fred and Mrs Lofthus, a heavy woman with thick chins
and swollen ankles who stayed on the chair by the bed, mostly dozing with her head on her chest despite the groans of pain from beside her.

The first time Rachel crept upstairs and into the bedroom carrying a cup and saucer, she found Mrs Lofthus swigging out of a little brown bottle which she hurriedly corked and slipped into the
pocket of her vast, grubby-looking apron. Over the bodily smells in the room was a heady reek of spirits.

‘Oh!’ Mrs Lofthus exclaimed. ‘You startled me, you did.’ She narrowed her eyes under their bushy brows. ‘What’s that you got?’

‘A cup of tea for you,’ Rachel said.

‘Ah – well, I could do with that,’ Mrs Lofthus said, pulling herself more upright. ‘Got plenty of sugar in, has it?’

‘Yes,’ Rachel fibbed. She’d put half a spoon in.

‘Anything to eat? I could do with a bite to eat, bab,’ she wheedled. ‘Sitting up all night like this.’

‘I’ll look,’ Rachel said. Peggy started to stir then, as if another of the pains was beginning, and Rachel hurried away out of the room. As she did so, she heard Mrs Lofthus
say, ‘That’s it – come on, hurry along now will yer, madam. Push the thing out and let’s get it over with.’

By the time a thin dawn light appeared there was still no sign of the baby. On and on it went as the sun rose and the day grew warm and fine. Fred moved restlessly in and out of the shop, even
though it was a Sunday.

‘I can’t stand all this waiting,’ he said to Rachel as their paths crossed. ‘When’s it going to end? Alice didn’t take long.’ He was biting at his
fingers and smoking one cigarette after another. ‘Oh my word, I do hope she’s going to be all right.’