Now the War Is Over Read online

  ANNIE MURRAY

  Now the War is Over

  PAN BOOKS

  For our Rachel XX

  Contents

  March 1961, Selly Oak Hospital

  I 1951

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  II 1953

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  III 1954

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  IV 1955

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  V 1956

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  VI 1959-60

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  VII 1961

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Fifty-Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-One

  Sixty-Two

  Sixty-Three

  Sixty-Four

  VIII 1962

  Sixty-Five

  Acknowledgements

  Q & A Annie Murray

  Keep in touch

  War Babies

  March 1961, Selly Oak Hospital

  ‘Nurse! Student Nurse Booker – what on earth has got into you? You never, ever—’

  The remainder of Sister Anderson’s admonitions about what student nurses must never, ever do faded into a bewildered silence as she stood in the doorway of the ward sluice.

  Melly felt the glower of Sister Anderson’s eyes drilling through her as she leaned over the sink, her clammy hands locked to its cool whiteness. She knew that the senior staff usually saw her as an intelligent student who was eager to please. She wanted to be the best nurse you could ever be but she had just rushed off in the middle of the Sister’s showing her a procedure, in a quite disgraceful manner.

  Melly hung her head, with its neatly fastened mouse-brown hair and nurse’s cap. She was trembling so violently that she was afraid her legs might give way. Her heart felt as if it was about to pound right out through the front of her chest.

  ‘Nurse?’ Sister Anderson tried again, though her voice was a fraction less harsh now.

  Melly simply could not turn round. How could she explain to Sister that every day had become a nightmare to her, of exhaustion after lying awake, her mind churning; that she could no longer concentrate on anything, that she felt as if she was going mad? And even worse, that when Sister had requested her to remove that drip from Mr Brzezinski’s arm, she had seen that bead of blood, round and shiny as a ladybird in the crook of his elbow . . . And while she knew this was normal and that the platelets would make the blood solidify into a scab, in her mind the blood forced its way out, gushing, pumping . . . She had actually seen it: the bedclothes dyed red, the pulsing tide of it coming and coming, unstoppable . . . And that was when she ran . . .

  ‘I –’ she gulped, trying to find words, desperate for anything on which she could hang a normal thought. For days now, everything had felt so grey, so full of fear and panic, it was as if she was locked in this prison alone and no one could hear her.

  She heard Sister’s footsteps moving closer and her body shook even harder, as if in the face of great danger. Sister Anderson was in her forties, a sturdily built woman with pink cheeks and grey eyes, her brown hair always in the neatest bun under her frilled cap. She was stern, though usually fair: an excellent nurse, everyone said so.

  Melly could feel Sister Anderson standing just behind her.

  ‘What is the meaning of this, Nurse Booker?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she managed to say. ‘I just can’t . . .’ She held out her hands. ‘I can’t stop shaking.’

  ‘Nurse –’ The Sister’s tone was gentler now, but there was still a tough firmness to it. ‘I understand that recent events have been difficult for you. We have all been aware of the . . . circumstances. But shocking and upsetting things happen. It’s in the nature of the work. A nurse has to be able to face such events and not be borne down by them. You have to keep going and do your best for your patients. And you never, ever dash about like that on the ward.’

  Melly hung her head. She knew nothing now, except the leaden, joyless feeling that filled her, the panic that rose in her however hard she tried to stifle it.

  ‘I do understand,’ Sister Anderson went on. ‘But you must also realize that this situation cannot continue. We do not expect displays of emotion from our nurses. If you cannot control yourself, your nursing career will be at an end. You will have to think of withdrawing from—’

  ‘No!’ Melly whirled round. ‘No, please! I want to be a nurse. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.’ Her usually sweet and cheerful face looked pale and strained. ‘Please, Sister – just give me a few moments. I’ll try, I really will!’

  ‘Very well. Take a short break now. I shall expect you back on the ward in twenty minutes. In command of yourself.’

  ‘Yes, Sister,’ Melly whispered. Looking down, she could see Sister’s solid black shoes move away, leaving her alone.

  She tried to do as she was bidden. But she still could not move. She sank down, leaning against the wall next to the sink, and wrapped her arms around her knees.

  I

  1951

  One

  March 1951, Aston, Birmingham

  All Melly had wanted to do that terrible Saturday morning was to give Mom a surprise. The baby was due any day now and her mother, Rachel, was sickly and exhausted.

  ‘You’ll have to go down to the shops again for me later, Melly.’

  Rachel Booker stood, holding on to the back of a chair for support as the children finished their bit of breakfast. Her face was pale, twisted with nausea. ‘We’ve no lard – we need cheese . . . bread . . .’ She was talking half to herself but Melly was taking it all in. ‘You can go later. Mind Tommy and Kev for me while I lie down for a bit, there’s a good girl. I must’ve overdone it yesterday. Oh – I’ll be glad when it’s over.’

  Clutching her belly she crawled off upstairs.

  Melanie Booker, nine years old, looked about the cramped room, the only downstairs living space of a back-to-back house. There was a gas stove, the table and chairs, a stool and armchair, and a sideboard where they kept the crocks and cutlery. The most impressive feature was the old iron range, which they only lit in the winter. A door opened to a tiny scullery with a sink, though there was no running water in the house. It had to be carried from the tap in the yard. Dad and Auntie had done the house up last summer. They stoved the house yet again to get rid of the bugs and papered the walls with a green-on-white pattern of trees and country scenes. Auntie Gladys was proud of her house and kept it nice, even though it was a running battle against damp and vermin in all
these back-to-backs on yards which clung round the heart of Birmingham, pressed in tight between factories and warehouses.

  The room was crowded enough now, but soon there would be a pram in there again . . . Mom was forever cursing the place, saying it was a ‘flaming rathole’. But so far as Melly was concerned, it was home.

  Melly was used to being in charge of her brothers. Two-and-a-half-year-old Kev, a wiry, active little lad, was on the floor, a crust in one hand, which he was posting absent-mindedly into his mouth along with a ration of snot. With the other hand he was scraping a tin lorry back and forth along the lino. He was brown-haired, with thin, dark arcs of eyebrows which made him look both innocent and quizzical. Tommy, who was seven and darker in looks than Melly and Kev, was in his special chair, still eating his breakfast too. He could feed himself well enough with his good right hand, but the muscles of his tongue gave him trouble. It took him a long, laboured time to eat his food.

  ‘Right, Kev – eat up now,’ Melly bossed him. ‘You’ll get muck all over it, else. And keep out of my way while I do the washing-up.’

  She dragged a chair over to the gas stove. Clambering up, she lifted the heavy kettle down with sturdy movements, to pour hot water into the enamel bowl she had placed on the floor. She had to get on the chair again to put the kettle back. Then, narrowing her eyes against the steam clouding from the bowl, she carried it carefully to the table, added some cold and washed up the breakfast things, leaving them overturned to dry. Wielding the heavy broom, she swept out the room, working round Kev, chasing scraps of crust from under the table to cheat the mice.

  She wanted to please her mother – to do everything so that Mom would not have to work while she was feeling so poorly. Dad and Auntie had already gone out, because they worked at the Rag Market on Saturdays, so it was up to her to help around the house.

  A daring idea came to her. She would go and do the bits of shopping now. This was nothing new – she was always popping up and down the road for Mom. But this time she would take Tommy with her!

  ‘You finished, Tommy?’

  Tommy nodded and said, ‘Yes,’ with his usual sideways mouth movement. They’d thought Tommy would not be able to walk or talk – but he could do a bit of both, in his own fashion.

  Melly wiped his mouth and hands and made sure he was strapped into the chair contraption that their neighbour, Mo Morrison, had rigged up for him. Mo had adapted Tommy’s first chair for him when he was very small. This was the next size up. Mo had taken another wooden chair as Tommy grew and modified it. He fixed arms on and a high headrest. There was a bar across the front that you could swing round to stop him falling out. This one had better wheels than the last – with rubber on – so it was easier to push along. Mom had always been determined that Tommy should not be shut away.

  Melly went to the mantle and rattled the jug where her mother kept the ration books and bits of loose change. She wrapped the coins in a rag and pushed it into her pocket. Then she went and scooped Kev up into her arms and carried him out into the yard. He roared with annoyance.

  ‘Shurrup, our Kev,’ Melly said as she carried him. ‘You’re going to see Auntie Dolly.’

  Theirs was one of five houses built round a brick yard, accessed through a narrow entry on to the street. Three of the houses – or half houses – backed on three others which faced on to the street, sharing a roof with them. The other two were built up against the wall that divided their yard from the one next door. The far end was bounded by the blank, sooty wall of a wire-spinning firm called Taplin & May’s. The Booker family lived at number three on the yard with Melly’s dad’s auntie, Gladys Poulter. Melly carried Kev to number one and knocked on the door.

  ‘What’s up, bab?’ Dolly Morrison, a pretty woman with dark Italian looks came to the door wiping her hands on her apron. ‘You all right – yer mother’s not started . . . ?’

  ‘No,’ Melly panted. Kev was a slender child, but heavy enough and he was wriggling like a fish on a hook. ‘Can I leave him with you for a tick? Mom’s having a lie-down and I said I’d go up the shops . . .’

  ‘Course you can, bab. Here, give me him. Donna’ll be all over him.’

  Mo and Dolly had six children – five boys, all blonde, before Donna, their adored little girl, had come along with her brown eyes and black curls.

  ‘Ta,’ Melly said. She ran back to Tommy. ‘Come on then – we’re going to the shops for our mom.’

  Melly had pushed the wheelchair before, short distances. It was hard, but she was determined. Getting it out over the step was the first problem. As she struggled to shove it over the door frame and into the yard, Ethel Jackman, the bad-tempered woman from number two next door, saw her.

  ‘What d’yer think you’re doing?’ she said, crossing the yard, shoulders draped in washing. Ethel was in her fifties and had lost her only son in the war so they made allowances, even though she’d been almost as crabby before.

  ‘What’s it look like she’m doing?’ Irene Sutton from number four came breezing over. ‘Want a hand with that, bab?’ Peroxide blonde, heavyset, aggressive, Irene was never usually this helpful but she was more than happy to oblige if it annoyed Ethel Jackman. Melly shrank from her. Irene’s youngest daughter, poor little Evie, was the same age as Tommy. Everyone in the yard looked out for Evie because Irene had taken against her at birth. What with this and Irene’s loud, Black Country ways – ‘that yowm-yowm’ they called her because of her accent – her drunken husband and squalid pit of a house, she filled Melly with dread. Mom said Irene was like a big child herself. But Melly did need help and it was clearly not coming from Ethel Jackman. She nodded.

  ‘There yer go –’ Irene tensed her brawny arms and hauled the chair out for her.

  ‘Ta,’ Melly whispered.

  ‘Mind how yer go . . .’ Irene said, unctuously amiable.

  Melly pushed Tommy across the yard’s uneven blue bricks and along the entry to the street. Her muscles were already beginning to tremble with the effort of balancing the chair, which she could hardly see past, and keeping it moving forwards. She managed to turn out on to Alma Street.

  Many of the houses along the busy road were small business premises. They were a mixture of metal bashers – drop forgers, metal stampers and piercers, motor-spring makers, wire makers – and other little businesses. There were shops selling furniture, coffee shops, the pawnbrokers, grocers, painters and confectioners and little hucksters’ shops which sold almost everything. The place was full of sounds: metallic hammering and bashing from behind the walls of the various works, vehicles coming and going, bicycles whisking along, shouts and conversations, a dog barking somewhere. The gritty air was full of smells of glue and metal mingled with the whiff of freshly baked bread and beer as they passed one of several pubs along the street.

  At this moment Melly could smell more than she could see. She kept her head down, pushing Tommy, only her own feet in her scuffed brown T-bar shoes visible to her on the mucky blue brick pavement. It was hard work keeping it in a straight line and her arms ached. She only just steered the chair round a heap of galvanized buckets, narrowly missing them. Every few yards she had to stop for a rest. But Mom would be so pleased – she’d taken Tommy out!

  The grocer’s where Mom usually did her shopping seemed much further away than usual, but at last she stopped outside it and weighed up what to do. It dawned on her then that Mom only took Tommy to the shops if she or Dad were there. Now she could see why her mother didn’t go alone. It looked impossible to get Tommy’s chair in through the door and even if she did, it would take up most of the space inside. But she was reluctant just to leave him outside on his own.

  ‘I’m gonna have to put you here while I go in,’ she said to Tommy. ‘You stop here – all right?’

  Tommy nodded silently. She could not tell what he was thinking.

  Just as she was moving the chair sideways, to rest against the grimy bricks of the front, she heard a woman say:

  ‘Oh,
dear – look at that. Fancy bringing that thing out for everyone to see. Shouldn’t be allowed.’

  She didn’t trouble herself to keep her voice down. Melly could see she was talking about Tommy.

  ‘Ugh,’ her friend said. ‘Cripples make me feel bad. Come on, Josie – let’s get past. I don’t like to see it.’

  Melly hung her head until the women had passed, her cheeks raging hot. She was trembling with embarrassment and hurt, hearing their cruel words. Once they had passed she looked up to see the backs of two middle-aged women belted into neat little macs, with shopping bags over their arms, talking with their heads close together. She felt like running after them, shouting at them . . . She was already close to tears. She shouldn’t have brought Tommy out! She knew people could be unkind but now she was here with him on her own it felt as if it was all her fault.

  ‘Just going to get a few things,’ she said brightly to Tommy. He must have heard the women. There was nothing wrong with his hearing even if nasty people like that behaved as if he was deaf. But Tommy showed no sign of being upset. She patted his leg. ‘Won’t be a tick.’

  Melly fidgeted in the gossiping queue inside the little shop, everyone holding their ration books, grumbling about the way there were more queues and less food now than during the war. The tiny shop was crammed with things and smelt of fire-lighters and salty bacon and cheese. It seemed to take forever for the other women to finish their bits of shopping. She kept glancing out of the window at Tommy. She could see the side of his head, the dark curve of hair over his ear as he sat waiting.

  Mrs Bracken who ran the shop looked a little startled to see Melly on her own.

  ‘Not with your mother today then?’ she asked. She was a widow, thin but cheerful and kindly. Lowering her voice, she said, ‘Has she had it yet?’

  ‘No, not yet,’ Melly said. ‘But she’s a bit poorly.’ She pulled the ration books out of her pocket and asked for their groceries – a loaf, some lard, bacon, tea and cheese. The lady was cutting cheese in her deliberate way when a commotion began outside.

  ‘Oh, Lord love us, what’s that?’ Mrs Bracken said, looking up, the cheese wire poised in her hand.