War Babies (25 page)

Rachel caught hold of Danny’s arm, determined not to be separated from him until the very last moment. He turned, with her on one arm, his bag on the other shoulder, and gave a wave before
they set off along the entry. But as they travelled from Aston on the tram, Danny suddenly seemed cold and shut off from her, just when she needed him to be warm and close. He sat staring out of
the window as if he was already miles away. By the time they got to New Street and found the right platform, he had still not said a word and she was welling up.

‘Danny!’ She pulled his arm in the milling crowd of uniforms and civilian clothes all jostling together. ‘Don’t be like this. We might never see each other again!’
And she was in a storm of tears.

Danny, looking wretched, pulled her to him and they held each other tightly, as if there was no one else in the world.

‘I love you,’ she said passionately. ‘I’ll always love you.’

Danny held her even tighter. ‘I love you too,’ he whispered. She saw then that he could not speak because he was afraid he might cry. ‘Gotta go,’ he said. ‘Look
after our little Melly.’ And he pulled away, out of her grasp, as if he could bear it no longer.

Rachel would never forget the sight of his sad face looking through the train window, the trail of smoke and steam obscuring it as the engine got up speed and pulled away. He gave a last wave,
then withdrew inside. She felt as if she was being torn in half. She walked back to the tram stop after leaving the station, the sounds of the city coming back to her now that she was not wrapped
up in him. She felt desperately alone and empty.

Ever since, she had ached for him, a feeling like a heavy weight in her chest. She had been miles away, doing her washing, until Dolly appeared.

‘Terrible, all these young’uns going off,’ Dolly was saying, stoking the fire under the copper for her washing water. ‘But then they need age on their side. I said to Mo
the other night, “Eh, husband of mine, why don’t we go out – have a bit of a dance? We ain’t been out to the dance hall for ages!” And he sat there in his chair and
said, “Dance? I can hardly get myself up the stairs to bed these days, let alone flaming dance!”’ She turned, grinning. ‘That’s my old man for you – no good
sending him off to war!’

Rachel couldn’t help laughing, and pegged out Melly’s clothes in the chill wind of the yard, feeling a bit cheered up.

Life now consisted of looking after her daughter and sitting in with Gladys night after night. Gladys, as ever, had busy hands, sewing and mending clothes she had acquired to
sell, ironing and folding, and Rachel helped as much as she could. But she could not hide her misery at missing Danny. Gladys, she realized, had long worked out her own collection of comforts
– her sweets, her trips to the cinema and her religion. She sang hymns to cheer herself up, but it didn’t work for Rachel, who had scarcely ever been to church anyway.

‘You ought to come out with me,’ Gladys suggested. ‘When I’m buying stuff. It’d get you out of yourself.’

‘Well, I can’t get that thing on the bus.’ She nodded at the pram. ‘I could come with her and carry her, I suppose . . .’

‘Hmm.’ Gladys pondered a moment, hands on hips. ‘It’d be good to have the pram – we can put stuff in it. It’s hardly worth going anywhere walking
distance.’ ‘Most of the areas within reach were as poor as their own. ‘’Cept Erdington maybe . . .’ Her face lit up. ‘I know – we can’t get it on the
bus but we might get it on the train. How about we go out to Sutton and do the rounds a bit – and we could call in on Nancy and Albert and see the girls?’

The train chugged out from Aston between the miles of soot-stained factories and lines of cramped houses, all covered in a pall of smoke, even on this quiet day. Gladys had
hurried back from church and off they went to the railway station. Rachel found she was excited to be on a journey. North of Erdington everything started to open out and become more spacious and
green. Rachel sat with Melly on her lap, looking out through the grimy window at the bigger houses with gardens, most with their curved, corrugated-steel Anderson shelters and the rows of
allotments, some with people in them bent over, digging. It quickly began to feel like another world.

She looked at Gladys opposite her, with her dark hair plaited and coiled round her head today, her striking blue eyes and black coat. She was so used to Gladys now that she seemed very normal,
but seeing her out here, and the curious stares of some of the ladies in the carriage, she remembered that Gladys was unusual and exotic to other people.

‘Here –’ Gladys passed her a sandwich with a thin filling of cheese and raw onion. ‘Get this down you.’

‘We’ll stink if we eat that!’ she protested in a whisper. She did not want to attract attention. There was a woman in a fancy hat opposite her giving the pair of them
appraising looks.

‘Well, it’s all we had,’ Gladys murmured back. ‘So take it and stink, or leave it.’

Rachel was far too hungry to leave it and they would be doing a lot of walking. Despite feeling self-conscious, she quickly ate the piece, trying not to make faces at the strong taste of the
onion. As they were swallowing the last mouthfuls, the train pulled into Sutton Coldfield.

They walked out through the gracious old town in the direction of Four Oaks, stopping along the way to knock on the doors of big houses. Rachel felt her heart beat faster each
time they waited for a door to open, remembering the stinging rejections her mother had sometimes suffered. Sunday afternoon was not a good time to be disturbing people, but it was the only time
they had. And there was something about Gladys, her striking looks, her dignity and air of knowing what she was about that did not seem to provoke this. By the time they were getting closer to the
edge of town and Gladys’s brother’s house, they had Melly sitting propped up at one end of the pram and a neat pile of garments and linen at the other.

‘I’ll have to come out here again,’ Gladys said, seeming pleased. ‘It’s worth the fare, all right. Having madam’s carriage to put it in is a help
too.’

Once they had eaten the rest of the sandwiches sitting at the edge of Sutton Park, they made for Gladys’s brother’s house.

Gladys had not prepared Rachel for Albert and Nancy. The door, one in a row of country terraces strung along the road, flew open to reveal a plump, beaming man in brown trousers, shirtsleeves
and stockinged feet, the socks a bilious shade of green, one hand brandishing a brown teapot.

‘I was passing the door and you knocked!’ he announced. His lips looked very pink under a rather overgrown, tobacco-coloured moustache. ‘Come in, sis – oh! Pram! Baby!
Young woman! You’ve brought every possible thing of loveliness, Gladie!’

‘Hello, Albert,’ Gladys said.

‘Is that them, Albert?’ they heard from upstairs, in a slightly strained tone, as they waited in the narrow hall on grey linoleum.

‘It’s them!’ He started to disappear towards, presumably, the back kitchen, crying out, ‘I’m filling the pot!’ But he stopped and came back, still with the
pot in his hand. ‘Come in. All the girls are somewhere. Well, except the one who’s a boy – but then of course, he’s not here!’ He laid a hand on his chest. Rachel
heard the crackle as he breathed. Only then she remembered he suffered badly from asthma. ‘Go into the back room. Chairs. Sit . . .’ He vanished, with a mention of biscuits along the
way somewhere.

Rachel left Melanie asleep in the pram, which was blocking most of the hall, and followed Gladys. The back room overlooked a long strip of garden. Gladys went to the window immediately,
fastening her eyes on the sight of the two girls out on the grass. Rachel followed her gaze. The lawn near the house gave way to a long vegetable patch and at the far end was the Anderson shelter,
covered in grass and weeds. It took Rachel a moment to realize that one of the girls playing there was Amy, because her dark hair had now grown long and was flowing free down her back. The other
girl, also with dark, but finer hair, she had never seen before. The two of them were playing clap-hands games and in the quiet, you could just make out that one was singing the rhyme.

‘Looks all right, doesn’t she?’ Gladys said. Her breath fogged the window. There was a wistful but relieved tone to her voice.

They heard feet thudding hurriedly down the staircase and a voice saying, ‘Oh, I’m sorry to be so long and not down here when you arrived! Hello, Gladys, love – and you must be
Rachel?’

Rachel turned to see a small, plump woman with a haphazard bun of black hair, bright blue eyes, pink cheeks and a snub nose. Smiling, homely, friendly, it was a face that it would be impossible
not to warm to.

‘We’re all at sixes and sevens,’ she chattered on. ‘But then when aren’t we? Now Albert – Albert?’ she shouted. ‘Are you making that
tea?’

‘Ye-es . . .’ came a doubtful reply from the invisible kitchen.

‘Well, are you or . . .?’ She lowered her voice. ‘Sorry – I’d better go and see what he’s up to. You never know with Albert. He’s likely got into the
bag of seed potatoes – he was talking about them this morning . . .’

She disappeared for a time, during which there was a muffled altercation from the kitchen and then she reappeared, squeezing round the pram with a tray and cups, flustered, but beaming.

‘Lovely baby!’ she remarked. ‘Here we are – tea! Now I know you want to see the girls. I’ll call Jess down in a tick. And our John’s out, I’m afraid
– off playing football with some other lads.’

‘Amy looks well,’ Gladys said.

Nancy’s face clouded slightly for the first time. ‘She is, I think,’ she said, arranging the cups, which had painted strands of ivy round them. ‘Oh, she was a sad little
thing when she came – well, you know she was. At least now, she’s –’ she whispered this – ‘
dry at night
.’ She passed Gladys a cup of tea.
‘She and our Margaret are almost inseparable. They’re in the same form at school and . . . Well, it’s helped Amy. Sometimes I think it might be a bit much for Margaret, but she
says, no, it’s all right. After all, she and John have never been close. Anyway, Jess is getting along all right. Nancy crossed the room to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Jess love!’
she called. ‘Come on down! Your auntie’s here!’

‘You’ve been a godsend,’ Gladys said. Rachel knew just how heartfelt this was and she also smiled gratefully at Nancy, as she sat down again.

‘Well, those poor little girls – and oh, I can’t tell you how much better it’s been since those London boys left. They were just children really but they were fish out of
water. And some of their habits! I’ve never seen the like – ooh, I wouldn’t want to start on it, not at tea. But we do what we can and I’m ever so fond of these two –
they’re like our own now. Ah – here’s Jess.’

‘Hello, Auntie,’ Jess said, smiling as she came in. ‘Hello, Rachel.’ She spoke in a soft, shy voice but seemed pleased to see them.

‘You’ve grown up again, my girl,’ Gladys said. Jess had the top portion of her honey-brown hair brushed back from her face and pinned up at the back, while the rest hung loose.
She was sweet-faced and pretty. ‘Quite a young lady now, aren’t you?’

‘Ah, Miss Jess!’ Albert said, appearing at last in his quaint way. ‘What a very fair infant someone has left lying about out here!’

Rachel smiled. Suddenly she seemed to be permanently smiling. ‘If she’s still asleep, I’ll leave her there.’

Nancy went and called the other girls in and at last the two ten-year-olds appeared, Amy holding Margaret’s hand. Margaret, a dark, snub-nosed, sensible-looking girl, like her mother,
said, ‘Here are your visitors, Amy.’

Amy peered out unsmiling from under her heavy fringe.

‘Hello, bab – come and see me,’ Gladys said. Amy stood her ground. It took a while, as they all drank tea, for her to sidle over and at last settle close to Gladys.

Melanie woke and Rachel brought her in, and even Amy agreed to hold her. When Melly got hold of a hank of her hair and tugged on it, Amy’s face broke into a grin at last, showing big,
square teeth.

‘Stop that, Melly,’ Rachel said. ‘You’ll have her hair out by the roots!’

‘It’s all right,’ Amy said, watching as Melly sucked messily on a biscuit. She seemed fascinated by her.

The adults all talked about the war, the endless shortages and the food Albert and Nancy were growing. They wanted to know how Danny was.

‘Still doing basic training,’ Rachel said, happy to hear him talked about. ‘He might come home after that – for a bit of leave.’

‘I hope he’s writing to you,’ Nancy said.

Danny had written a couple of short letters, telling her little bits of what he had been doing. But on each, in the top corner, he had drawn a little picture of someone she recognized –
Patch the dog. She noticed, after Danny left, that he had taken his notebook with him. It had lain untouched in a drawer for months, but now, it seemed, he had decided he needed it again.

They left Albert and Nancy’s house after a couple of hours and headed back towards the railway station. Rachel felt warmed by the visit to this chaotic but kindly household.

‘I think they’re all right, don’t you?’ Gladys said as they walked through the falling dusk, Rachel pushing the pram. ‘I fear for Amy – she’s an odd
child. But she did seem a bit better.’

‘Yes – it’s lovely for them here, Auntie,’ Rachel said. ‘And Nancy’s so kind. But you did your best while they were with us.’

‘Yes,’ Gladys said. After a moment she added, ‘Bit different here though, ain’t it?’ And in her voice, Rachel could hear an ache of longing for the life and family
her brother and his wife had, out here in this green, spacious place.

May 1943

The morning the new neighbours moved in, Netta Fitzpatrick was round at the house. She and Rachel saw quite a lot of each other, and especially now because, within a week
or so of each other, they had found out that they were each expecting a baby again and both babies were due in September.

Netta sat with her hand constantly pressed to her five-month swell of belly as if she could protect its fortunes by thinking about it at every moment of the day. All through the pregnancy so far
she had been alternately tearful with dread and excited.