War Babies (20 page)

‘Just need to sit up,’ she whispered. They rearranged themselves side by side with the jacket over them, their heads close together.

‘Rach?’ In the gloom she could see his breath on the freezing air. ‘You angry with me?’

She felt different now. Sleep had changed things. She laid her hand on his chest under the jacket, feeling the bony warmth of him. ‘No. I was angry with Mom. Am angry. And I’m
scared, Danny. I don’t know what it’s like having a baby and what will everyone say and I’ll lose my job and how are we going to live?’ She started feeling overwhelmed again
at all these thoughts, but she was determined not to cry.

He clasped her hand. ‘I’ll look after you. I
will.
I can work and Auntie’ll let us live with her, at least to start.’

‘Has she said so?’

‘No. Not as such. She’s asked me what I think I should do and I just say we should do the right thing and get married. Beyond that . . .’ He shrugged. ‘I dunno. But Rach
–’ He turned to face her and she could see the gleam of his eyes. ‘I don’t mind. I know we’re starting young, but family’s everything – we’ll be
family. Auntie says –’ He hesitated.

‘What?’

‘She says I’ll have to make a man of myself. I want to be a man – proper like. Not like my father. Not just give up on everyone. Whoever’s in there . . .’ He
stroked her belly. He seemed more able to believe in the baby than she did. ‘That’s family.’

‘Oh God, Danny – I feel too young.’

He nodded. ‘I know. But what’s to do?’

‘If it’s a girl, d’you want to call her Rose, after your sister?’

‘No. That’d be sad. Let’s call her summat . . . modern.’ He thought. ‘Melanie.’

‘Melanie? Like in
Gone With the Wind
?’

‘I s’pose so. It’s pretty – I think anyway.’

‘What if he’s a boy?’

Danny chuckled. ‘Tommy. Like Tommy Trinder – he’s funny he is.’

‘Not Jack?’ She thought of the sweet, happy boy in his sketches.

Danny thought for a moment, then said quietly, ‘No, not Jack.’

‘Melanie or Tommy.’ Just for a second she was caught by excitement.

It was possible for a while to forget how cold it was. They sat holding hands under the jacket. The big man beside Danny stirred, opened his eyes and fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette.
‘All right?’ he said blearily, nodding at Danny as he lit up. Danny nodded back. The man said nothing else.

‘Danny?’ Rachel whispered. ‘We’re going to have to get married, aren’t we?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I don’t even know what to do. Mom’ll have to agree to it.’

‘I have to ask you, don’t I?’ Moving closer to her ear, Danny whispered, ‘Rachel Horton, will you marry me?’

She looked into his face, their noses almost touching. She knew she was where she wanted to be, whatever else. Her home was with Danny. ‘I will,’ she said. ‘I love you, Danny.
I just want to be with you. I want us to have a nice little house with running water and a bathroom and a garden for the children . . .’

‘And you’ll be Mrs Booker,’ he said. ‘Like our mom was.’

‘I will, won’t I?’

He kissed her solemnly. ‘Rachel,’ he said in wonder. ‘Rachel Booker.’

The next day was utterly exhausting. The all-clear sounded at last, just before dawn. By then there was no point in trying to get to Aston. It was nearly time to go to work.
They stayed in the shelter even when a lot of the others turned out to go back to their houses. Cold air slid down the stairs and cleared the atmosphere a little. The lady in the hairnet came round
with a kettle full of tea and gave them a cup each. Rachel drank it, then had to rush up outside to be sick.

‘Oh dear,’ the lady said. ‘That’s being up all night for yer. You going to work?’

Rachel nodded groggily.

‘Well, look – have another cup and see if you can keep it down.’

‘You’re ever so kind,’ Rachel said.

‘It’s no bother, bab,’ she said, pouring the last of the tea. ‘All you people’ve got to get to work – and you look all in.’

‘Come to ours after,’ Danny instructed her as they parted for the day. He kissed her gently. ‘We’ll talk to Auntie. She’ll be all right.’

It seemed astonishing to her after every raid that when she got to Digbeth, the Devonshire Works were still standing, still producing custard powder despite all the struggles with rationing.
Some of the streets around had been badly smashed up in other raids, mess and rubble everywhere. Such a large factory right in town seemed fair game, but so far, though the gutters were littered
with spent incendiary canisters, the air thick with smoke, Bird’s stood intact. She worked all day in a daze of tiredness and it seemed forever before it was time to go.

She stepped thankfully outside, her whole body aching with exhaustion. At the corner of Gibb Street she saw, not Danny, but a woman in a camel coat and dark green hat waiting with a toddler in
her arms. It was a moment before she took in the baby’s gingery hair and excitement at seeing her, and realized that it was her mother and Cissy.

‘Way-chaw!’ Cissy was shouting, waving her arms. That was the best she could do in saying Rachel’s name.

Warily Rachel approached them. She took Cissy’s hand, smiling at the little girl who bounced and gurgled with pleasure. Their mother’s stony expression softened a fraction.

‘She was asking for you,’ she said.

Rachel shrugged. Trams rumbled along Digbeth. She waited to hear what Peggy had to say. It was typical of her to use Cissy as a reason for coming.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Peggy came out with eventually. As this obviously didn’t get them anywhere, she added, ‘I was hasty last night – what I
said.’ She still sounded on the edge of anger and she spoke without looking at Rachel. Her eyes fastened on the other side of the road.

‘I don’t want to cast you off.’ This did not sound wholly convincing and she stalled for a moment. ‘You’re going to marry him – that . . . that
creature?’

‘His name’s Danny,’ Rachel flared. ‘Danny Booker. You knew his auntie, remember?’

Peggy looked down at her feet. ‘I don’t want any of this anywhere near Fred.’

Any of this? Rachel’s thoughts burned inside her. Well, it wasn’t my choice to be anywhere near Fred in the first place. But she kept them to herself.

‘Where will you live?’

‘With Mrs Poulter – in Alma Street.’ She hoped to God this was true.

Her mother nodded. She seemed helpless.

‘Will you come to our wedding, Mom? We will get married – but it won’t be much.’

‘I don’t know.’ Peggy’s voice was desolate, on the edge of tears, but she seemed, as ever, to be feeling sorry for herself. ‘I’m losing a daughter.’

‘Only if that’s what you want,’ Rachel retorted.

Peggy’s head shot up and the tears did not come. She seemed startled. ‘I need time to think,’ she said abruptly.

‘Mom –’ Rachel was near tears herself now. ‘I’m expecting. I
am
.’ She still had to struggle to make herself believe it. ‘We’ll get
married, Danny and me. Only you have to say we can . . .’

Peggy gave a sharp bark of a laugh. ‘A shotgun wedding. Oh – just what I’ve struggled for all these years, scrimping and slaving to bring you up nicely so you could marry
well.’

Rachel continued to look at her. ‘Better a wedding than none. He could’ve run off and left me. He’s good, Danny is, Mom. He
is.
’

Her mother seemed to pass through a moment of unbearable tension. ‘Very well,’ she snapped eventually. ‘Marry him then. You’ve made your bed – you can lie on it.
But don’t expect any help from me. I’ve had enough of sacrificing myself for you.’

Rachel watched as her mother walked self-righteously away from her in her neat winter coat, along Digbeth. Guilt and shame mingled with her hurt and anger. She wanted to cry after Peggy,
‘I’m sorry, Mom – I know you’re ashamed of me, but please don’t go! Please just stay with me and be my mom!’ And, as her tears started to come, her inner cry
turned to, ‘Can’t you be nice? Can’t you think of someone except yourself – just for once?’ But within seconds, without looking back, Peggy had disappeared, merging in
among the crowds along the pavement.

On a snowy February afternoon, Rachel and Danny stood side by side in front of the altar. The church was cold and dark and outside, the sky was so low it seemed to brush the
spire. Rachel had put on everything she possessed in the way of clothing under the pretty silk dress they had bought from the Rag Market, the colour of almond blossom. Even so, her feet, in a
little pair of fawn court shoes, were numb with cold. She was carrying a bunch of pale cream narcissi.

Peggy had softened enough to let her come into the house and collect some of her things.

‘I can’t have you here for long,’ she said, tight-lipped at the door. ‘You must understand that.’

‘I’m getting married,’ Rachel told Peggy haughtily. ‘So I wouldn’t be here anyway.’

She packed her clothes and a few belongings and defiantly took her leave. But she felt so miserable getting on the bus along the Coventry Road, her mother’s only positive words, thrown at
her back, being, ‘You might as well let me know when the wedding is.’

Rachel was surprised to realize just how happy Gladys was to have her moving in. She had lost Jess and Amy. Nancy reported that though there was still a long way to go – Amy was still
wetting the bed – the sisters were happier and more settled out there than they had ever been in Aston. As well as feeling that she had let them down Gladys was happy to have another girl in
the house.

‘If it wasn’t for your mother I’d’ve said wait a bit until you get married,’ she told Rachel. ‘Just to be sure. But now . . .’

‘But we want to get wed anyway, Auntie,’ Danny protested. He was all for it, eager as a puppy, as if it was just the thing he had been waiting for.

Gladys gave him a tight-lipped look, as if to say,
You’ve no idea, son
. ‘But now you’re here,’ she went on, ‘I’d best go and see the vicar and get
the banns read. Get things done proper. And Danny – until you’re wed, Rachel’ll sleep in the room next to me. You stay up in the attic.’ She gave him a fierce, meaningful
look.

‘All right, Auntie,’ Danny said.

‘And you can wipe that grin off yer face an’ all, lad,’ Gladys retorted.

And now, without too much fuss, the day had arrived.

‘I now pronounce you man and wife.’ The vicar smiled valiantly at them, as if trying to chase an expression of sceptical doubt away from his features.

We must look like children to him, Rachel thought, feeling the strangeness of the brass ring which Danny had bought, encircling her finger. We aren’t much more. And he’s probably
guessed that I’m in the family way even though it doesn’t show. A blush of shame spread across her cheeks, but she smiled up at Danny, so smart today in a suit. His blue eyes met hers
and he looked happy and fizzing with excitement. He took her hand.

‘Wife,’ he whispered, in amazement. ‘You’re mine now. Mrs Booker. Family.’

Behind them, on one side of the aisle stood Gladys, in a grey woollen dress with a spray of red silk roses pinned above her left breast, and Dolly Morrison – who would always go to a
wedding, given the chance – in a fuchsia-pink frock and teetering navy high heels. On the other was Peggy, alone apart from Cissy, who kept calling Rachel’s name. She stood very
upright, wearing a smart navy coat and hat, with an air of trying to rise above everything that was going on.

They did not have an organist or any hymns. Two lit candles on the altar gave the only light apart from pale daylight falling through the windows. Afterwards, they trooped quietly back down the
aisle, this tiny wedding party, and stood just inside the church, the freezing wind gusting in through the open door. Rachel held Cissy and made a fuss of her. Peggy had dressed her up very nicely
in a little pea-green wool coat and hat and her plump cheeks were rubbed pink from the wind.

‘Waych!’ Cissy kept saying excitedly. Rachel melted with fondness at the sight of her. She was going to miss living with her baby sister.

‘This is Danny,’ Rachel told her. Cissy beamed.

‘Danny!’ she cried, clapping her hands.

Danny laughed. ‘She’s got my name better than yours.’

‘She can’t say her r’s yet,’ Rachel laughed. ‘Can you, Ciss?’

‘I remember you from the market,’ Gladys was saying to Peggy.

‘Oh, that was a long while back,’ Peggy replied dismissively.

Rachel saw Gladys sizing her mother up. She observed the strength in Gladys, her determination not to be talked down to. Rachel felt, once again, very annoyed with her mother. When it came down
to it, Peggy and Gladys did exactly the same sort of work. Why did Mom always have to act as if she was so superior?

‘Well,’ Gladys said, ‘whatever we might think, these two’re man and wife now. You’re our Danny’s mother-in-law and you’re welcome in our house whenever
you’d like to visit. In fact we’re going back there to toast the pair of ’em now, if you want to join us.’

‘I see,’ Peggy said. ‘No, I don’t think . . .’

Rachel could see she was extremely uncomfortable with Gladys’s directness and everything else about her. She had started referring to Gladys as ‘that gypsy woman’.

‘And you can come if you want to visit your daughter and your grandchild, when it arrives,’ Gladys went on bluntly. ‘Unless they’re welcome at yours.’

‘We’ll have to see.’ Peggy spoke resentfully. ‘You seem to have taken over everything,’ she added. ‘I can’t see that I shall be needed. I think
I’d better be going now.’ She turned and started out, down the church steps.

‘Mom!’ Rachel said, hurrying after her, suddenly close to tears. This was her wedding day after all. And she was still holding Cissy, as Peggy realized when she reached the pavement
and had to stop. ‘Don’t be like that with Auntie . . .’ She held her sister tight as Peggy went to wrench Cissy from her arms. Cissy began to squawk in protest.

‘Auntie?’ Peggy said savagely, hauling Cissy away from her. ‘Since when has that woman been any auntie of yours?’ Once again she was about to walk off.

‘When will I see you?’ Rachel said. She felt cold and low now. Was this how it was always going to be? And today, when she needed her mother to be with her, to be on her side, Peggy
had spoiled everything.