War Babies (45 page)

By tea time, two large cakes sparsely dotted with fruit were on the table, surrounded by thinly cut sandwiches. It reminded Rachel, painfully now, of the day she had gone
round, the day of Dolly’s birthday tea. That felt like another life now. She was bewildered by the whole occasion. Gladys had not warned her before that morning that this was what she was
planning, nor had she asked for any help. She had sprung it on them all and then got on and prepared everything with a quiet, almost reverent determination. She had even bought a tin of salmon for
the sandwiches. Her best embroidered cloth was on the table. The big crock teapot had been brought down from the shelf and the pretty one, like a country cottage, and all the best cups and plates
were laid on the table. Dolly promised to bring a few extra ones.

Before anyone came, Gladys went upstairs, reappearing later in a peacock-blue frock that Rachel had never seen before. Her hair was brushed and swept up high on her head and she was wearing
deep-red lipstick. As she came into the room, Rachel and Melly both gasped.

‘Auntie – you look
ever
so nice!’ Melly cried.

‘Ta, kid,’ Gladys said. ‘There’s no need to sound so amazed.’

To Rachel’s surprise, she noticed that Gladys seemed very nervous. She was sorting out cups and knives by the table and several times she dropped something. One of the cups dropped to the
floor and, by a miracle, did not smash.

‘Let me do that, Auntie,’ Rachel said. She was trying to put two and two together in her mind, but when she did she was not sure if she was getting four, three, or some other
completely different number. She wondered, with a dawning of possibility, whether, on the quiet, Gladys had a new man she was about to introduce them to, a surprise guest. After all, Gladys went
out and about, to the markets, the church, often on her own. And plenty of men were interested, Rachel could see. Was that what all this was about?

‘D’you want me to get changed – smarten up a bit?’ she asked. ‘And the girls . . .?’

‘Oh – only if you’re in the mood,’ Gladys said. She seemed absent-minded. ‘There’s no real need. I just . . . I wanted . . .’ And she trailed off and
never finished the sentence.

‘All right,’ Rachel said, thinking that she would maybe just tidy everyone’s hair instead. She did not dare ask any more. ‘Come on, girls –’ She beckoned to
Melly and Cissy, who could not seem to stop gazing at the table and the food on it. Their noses were twitching like a couple of terriers. ‘Come and have your hair brushed.’

Dolly was the first to appear at the appointed time of four o’clock.

‘Mo’ll be here in a tick,’ she said. ‘But I thought you might need a bit of a hand, Glad?’ She looked at the newly tidied room, the beautiful table, Tommy all
scrubbed up in his chair and the little girls and Rachel with ribbons in their hair. ‘It doesn’t look as if you do, though! Ooh – this looks nice! And don’t you look a
picture, Glad –’ She stood admiring Gladys’s dress. Rachel could see the baffled look in her eyes but she did not ask any more. ‘That’s beautiful, that is. Sorry about
the state of me – I’d’ve dressed up if I could fit into anything!’

‘You look lovely as ever, Dolly,’ Gladys said. ‘Come on – you have a seat. I’ll brew up in a minute.’

The big kettle and another pan of water were steaming away on the stove. Gladys warmed the teapot and started spooning tea.

‘So come on, Glad, put us out of our misery – what’s all this in aid of?’ Dolly said, obviously deciding on the direct approach.

Gladys had her back to them. The vivid blue dress showed off her voluptuous curves, and she had an apron tied over the top.

‘You’ll see,’ she said. Once again, Rachel could hear the nerves in her voice and Dolly picked it up too. Their eyes met and Rachel shrugged. Dolly rolled her eyes.

‘Well, you are a woman of mystery,’ Dolly teased. ‘Come on, Glad – there can’t be much you can have kept a secret from me after all this time. Spit it out then
– who is ’e?’ Dolly had obviously had the same thought as her, Rachel realized.

Gladys laughed suddenly, turning to them. ‘A feller, you mean? Ach – no. Tried a few of those, dain’t I? Never again – oh, no. Not worth it. I want a quiet life, I do.
Anyone can bend down and pick up nothing.’

Rachel and Dolly exchanged glances again, as if to say,
Well, that’s telling us.
Gladys popped the lid on the teapot, slipped the cosy over it and carried it to the table. At that
moment a bedlam of Morrison boys erupted into the yard and a few seconds later they were clustered around the door. The youngest, Freddie, was now eight.

‘Hang on, hang on, yer little buggers – wait for me . . .’ They heard Mo come lumbering along behind. ‘Now you watch your manners or you’ll be out on your ears . .
.’ He and the eldest boy, Ernie, had each brought a chair with them and Reggie, the middle boy, was carrying an orange crate. ‘Look, you can’t all fit through the door at once.
Have some sense . . .’

‘Come on in, lads,’ Gladys said. ‘Come and have a bit of tea.’ She went and switched the wireless on and big band music streamed out in the background.

‘Cor – look at all them cakes!’ Freddie exclaimed with all the food-obsessed glee of an eight-year-old.

Rachel watched Tommy as the boys crowded into the room. His face lit up and he started squirming in his chair with excitement. The girls, however, retreated to one corner of the room as if
rumours of plague had just arrived. The Morrison boys were good-natured, all of them, but as far as Melly was concerned, and Cissy especially, they were
boys
and best avoided.

‘Well, this is very nice, Glad,’ Mo said, easing his capacious backside down onto one of the chairs as if he was afraid it would collapse under him. ‘Very nice indeed. Knock it
off, Reggie,’ he instructed number three, who was fourteen. ‘Leave Freddie alone. Right, lads –’ Mo held up a thick finger in admonishment – ‘I ain’t going
to say it again. Mrs Poulter has made us a very nice tea and you lot can sit down and behave yourselves, or –’ He jabbed his thumb towards the door.

The youngest children sat on the rug by the fire and Gladys poured tea and everyone munched on the sandwiches, egg and jam for the children, the tinned salmon ones reserved for the adults, while
the music played softly from the wireless.

‘You make sure you get one or two of those, Dolly,’ Gladys said, holding the plate out to her. ‘It’s good for the baby.’

‘Ta, Glad.’ She looked down at herself. ‘It’s getting to the stage when there ain’t much room in here for food!’

‘You eat, wench,’ Mo instructed. ‘We’ve got to keep you strong.’

‘Huh,’ Dolly said. Then she smiled, looking around. ‘It’s funny to think – this time last year the war was still on and we never knew when it was all going to be
over, did we?’

‘We knew it was coming by then,’ Mo said.

‘Yes, but that waiting – and then, when the news came . . .’

‘Ah – that were a good day,’ Mo said. ‘All the lads down the Salutation . . .’

Dolly rolled her eyes. ‘That sounds like any other day to me.’ She and Gladys smiled. Rachel was sitting beside Tommy to help him enjoy the party. No one mentioned Danny. What was
there to say that they had not already said? She looked across at Gladys. Beneath the smiling and celebration, she could still see the tension bunched up in her.

‘Cissy, Melly,’ she whispered. ‘Offer round some of the cake.’

Cissy looked very reluctant and Rachel realized that her little sister really needed to come over more often. She was shut up in that flat with their mother and Fred far too much. Melly was used
to the Morrison boys. She got up and took a plate of cake round, bossing them about. ‘Only
one
bit, Eric . . .’

They sat enjoying the spread and reminiscing about the war, some of which, now it was all over, took on the memory of an adventure – the nights in the shelters, the wreckage they found
when they ventured out in the mornings, all the anxious, frightening times they had lived through.

As the children ate, the noise in the room increased more and more.

‘It’s no good feeding ’em,’ Dolly said, smiling round at her bunch of now very lively lads. ‘It only gives ’em ideas.’

‘You lot,’ Mo ordered. ‘Out – go and have a run-round.’

Melanie came over to Rachel. ‘Can Cissy and me go out too? Rita and Shirl’re outside.’

‘Yes – off you go,’ Rachel said.

The room went suddenly quiet, only the adults remaining, and Tommy, still slowly eating scraps of his tea. He could feed himself well now, with his right hand.

Rachel looked at Gladys, seated at the head of the table. She was taking in shallow, nervous breaths. After a few moments, she drew herself up straighter, as if collecting herself.

‘Right,’ she said. Everyone looked at her. ‘Now all the young’uns have gone, I’d like to tell you all summat. I dain’t ask you all round here just to talk
about the war.’ She got up and clicked off the wireless. It felt very quiet. Gladys laid a hand over her heart and took another breath.

‘What’s up?’ Dolly leaned forward. ‘Are you all right, Glad?’

‘I will be,’ Gladys said. ‘Only I want to tell you summat that I should’ve done years back. Rach – go upstairs for me, will you? On my bed you’ll find a
little box. Bring it down for me, bab.’

This was another shock. Rachel had never had reason to go into Gladys’s bedroom before. Pushing open the door, which was always kept so firmly closed, she wondered for a
second whether she was going to walk into some surprise, some secret Gladys had been keeping all these years. But what she saw, glancing around, was a simple, tidy room which Gladys had always kept
as her most private place, in the way that she seemed to keep so much about herself private.

Dark blue curtains hung at the window. There was a small, rectangular rug on the floor of a Chinese design she had seen sold at the market, a dressing table with Gladys’s tortoiseshell
hairbrush and comb laid on it alongside a box of talcum powder. There were a few hairpins and kirby grips lying about and several strings of coloured beads dangled over one corner of the mirror.
There was a dark wardrobe, one wooden chair and the bed, covered by a spread of deep red chenille. Resting in the middle, in the slight sag of the mattress, was a cardboard shoebox, plain and
battered at the corners. Not wanting Gladys to think she might be delaying to peep inside, she picked it up at once and carried it downstairs. It had a certain weight, but was not heavy.

Everyone else’s eyes fixed on it as she came in and placed it on the table in front of Gladys, resplendent in her exotic blue dress. Rachel felt her heart beating fast, as though
Gladys’s nerves were catching.

‘Well,’ Gladys said, her cheeks flushed. ‘There’s a few things I want to get off my chest.’ She didn’t open the box. For a few seconds she closed her eyes and
Rachel couldn’t decide whether she had suddenly changed her mind, or was perhaps praying, composing herself. At last she looked up again, across the room, not at anyone in particular.

‘It’s almost to the day, but not quite,’ she said. ‘Thirty years. It should be the nineteenth of April, not the twenty-first, but I kept it for the weekend. But on the
nineteenth, last Friday, my boy would have had his thirtieth birthday.’ Seeing their uncomprehending faces, she went on: ‘April the nineteenth, nineteen sixteen, he was born. His name
was Alfred John. Alfie, he always was to me. My little Alfie.’

Tears rose in Gladys’s eyes for a moment, but she wiped them swiftly away, as if to say,
No, not yet – I haven’t finished.

‘Glad?’ Dolly spoke gently, but there was a hurt bewilderment in her voice. ‘You had a boy, of your own? Is that what you’re telling us? And you’ve never said, in
all this time?’

Rachel felt things jolting into place in her mind. No wonder Gladys knew exactly how to care for a baby, was so fierce about holding onto family . . . She sat listening, stunned.

‘His father never saw him,’ Gladys went on. ‘We married in 1915, but by the time I had Alfie, he’d passed on.’

Immediately, everyone’s eyes turned to the faded photograph on the mantelpiece, of the pale, smiling soldier. Rachel saw Mo shake his head sorrowfully. Two of his brothers had gone away in
1915 and never come back. She noticed that the black crêpe was no longer draped around the picture. At last, perhaps, Gladys was going to talk about him.

‘Your Harry,’ Dolly said softly.

‘I know what you’re all thinking.’ Gladys’s voice was quiet and very sad. ‘And I’ve let you because – well, I couldn’t stand to talk about any of
it. It was just to let you think . . .’ She paused a moment. Looking at the photograph she went on: ‘That’s not Harry. My Harry looked nothing like that. That picture’s of
my brother John. There were four of us and he was the oldest – John, Mary, me and Albert. John was killed on the Somme, in 1916.’

Mo made a tutting sound and shook his head sadly. No one knew what to say. The only sound came from Tommy rattling his little toys on his tray and the distant shrieks of the children
outside.

Gladys lifted the lid from the box and laid it carefully to one side. ‘This was Harry.’

She brought out a photograph and they all saw a broad-shouldered man with thick, dark hair, a bushy moustache and laughing eyes. Immediately, Rachel could see that he looked a match for Gladys
in a way that the slim soldier on the mantelpiece did not. He was dressed in a suit, not an army uniform.

‘Harry never went to war – they needed him here,’ she went on. ‘He was at Kynoch’s – he knew all about the chemicals that went into the bombs. That’s
where I met him. I worked there at the beginning of the war, until we married and then I got out – thank the Lord. It would’ve finished me off like it did some of the other girls. I
never felt properly well when I was there and your skin’d go yellow . . . None of us felt right after a spell there. Any road, Harry and I married in September 1915. I was already
expecting.’ She looked down for a second, embarrassed. ‘I’m not proud of the fact – it just . . . Well, that was how it was. That winter, we had the blackout – we had
it in that war too. Harry was coming home from work and he was knocked down and killed by a tram. I’ll never know how he didn’t hear it coming. No time to say goodbye, nothing. Married
five months and that was that. We were living in Erdington. We had quite a nice little house on his wages – better than this anyway.’ She glanced around the room. ‘I had to get
out, of course. I couldn’t keep up the rent on my own, so I moved back in with my mother and father. Albert, my brother, was still at home – he was ten or eleven. My Alfie was born in
the April. We would have been all right. I was grieving for Harry, but my mother was a good soul. She looked after Alfie and I went back to work – not at Kynoch’s, though. I
couldn’t have stood it, thinking I saw Harry everywhere.’