War Babies Read online

  Rachel did not see it until after work the next day, but she heard. The Market Hall. The news spread. One of the best-loved parts of Birmingham, the Market Hall had received a direct hit.

  She went to look after work, with Danny. Taking their turn they peered in through a hole in the side wall. Everyone gasped as they looked in. It was bad enough that you could already see the roof was missing, that the place was nothing but a shell. But inside was still a shock.

  ‘It looks terrible,’ Rachel said, staring at the mass of twisted metal, the charred beams lying at angles over heaps of rubble. It was hard to believe that only yesterday it would have been full of stalls and shoppers in all its usual bustle and colour, full of fruit and veg and flowers, of meat and poultry and fish. A couple of little Union Jacks had been stuck into the desolate sea of destruction.

  Danny was silent, seeming stunned. The fish market, where he worked, was just next door.

  ‘The clock’s gone,’ a woman’s voice said behind them. There had been an ornate clock in the Market Hall, with a striking bell and moving figures round it. ‘Burnt to ashes, they say.’

  The two of them moved away from the shell of the wrecked building, leaving others space to look. There was a sober, shocked atmosphere all around them and that was how they felt too. It was the first time for them that the war had come up really close. When they had moved a little further away, Danny took Rachel’s hand.

  ‘It seems daft that they’ve sent Jess and Amy here when the other kids’re being sent away,’ he said.

  No one ever mentioned Rose any more. What else was there to say but to mourn her quietly?

  ‘Mind you,’ he added sadly, ‘Auntie’s thinking about sending Amy away again. She don’t seem to like it here.’

  Gladys had tried bringing the two girls to the Rag Market on Saturdays. Jess seemed to enjoy it, but Amy remained silent and sullen, however much Jess and Rachel tried to cheer her up. It was as if she had shut everyone out and was in a sad, angry world of her own.

  ‘I’m at my wits’ end with her,’ Gladys said. She looked more tired and drawn in the face every time Rachel saw her. ‘I ought to get them into some sort of school – but how are they going to deal with Amy, the way she is?’

  All that summer, Gladys struggled to help the two girls adjust to being back in their family. Jess was quiet, eager to please, but somehow quietly wretched. Amy remained mutinous and disturbed.

  ‘I’ve never seen a child like it,’ Gladys reported wearily one Sunday afternoon when Rachel was at the house. It was September, but still very warm. Jess and Amy were out in the yard, the rest of them inside with the door open. Smells of smoke and ripe whiffs from the dustbins and lavatories drifted in. Flies blundered into one of the sticky flypapers Gladys had hanging up. ‘Yesterday – I heard this noise from upstairs, thump-thump. When I went up, there she was, in the bedroom, just sat there, banging her head on the wall.’ Gladys’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m nearly at the end of my tether.’

  People in the yard had been kind – or some. Ma Jackman, who seldom had a good word to say for anyone, gave the two arrivals hostile looks and kept saying, ‘They’re not right, those two.’ Which Gladys said was quite something when you considered how odd Edwin Jackman had turned out – and who wouldn’t with a mother like that? Rachel had caught sight of Edwin a few times. He was a pale, expressionless lad a couple of years older than her.

  The Morrisons kept trying to help. Dolly was kind and motherly with the two girls. Mo would sit down in the yard, call them over and do little tricks of his. He’d blacken the back of a plate with smuts on the fire and let them draw pictures with a matchstick. And he would tell them jokes, his wide pink face stretching into a grin. Jess would smile, but even he could not get Amy to crack her face. She would back away from him angrily.

  ‘You gonna take her to Uncle Albert?’ Danny asked miserably. Rachel felt so sad for him. Getting his family back together had only caused more heartbreak. It was almost, now, as if he wished them gone again.

  Gladys looked uncertain. ‘My brother Albert and his wife live out at Sutton,’ she explained to Rachel. ‘He’s done all right for himself he has. He was our mother’s little afterthought. He was too young to join up when the Great War came and he works in insurance. They won’t be able to call him up – he’s bad with his chest. He can hardly breathe sometimes.’ She took a thoughtful sip of tea, holding the cup in both hands. ‘They’ve got two of their own – about Amy’s age. Albert’s never been one for putting himself out much but Nancy, his wife – well, she’s all right from what I remember. I thought she was very nice. I think I’d better write to them.’

  ‘Amy might like it out there,’ Danny said. ‘With their kids.’

  Gladys nodded, but she looked worried. ‘If she goes on like this, I wouldn’t wish her on anyone. But I’ve not brought up young ones that age, like Nancy has – I don’t know where to begin.’

  Rachel thought of Amy’s hard, angry expression and wondered if she would get on anywhere.

  ‘I hope they’ll help out, I really do,’ Gladys said desperately. She got up from the table. ‘I’ll do it – later. I’ll drop them a line.’

  Rachel could see how upset Gladys was. She had been unhappy and ashamed that she had not been able to find the girls earlier, but now they were here, she couldn’t manage. She felt she had let everyone down.

  Jess and Amy drifted back inside then, so the conversation ended.

  ‘They keep telling her to go away,’ Jess reported. Amy had not been welcomed by the other children in the street. Her permanent look of sullen misery and angry outbursts of temper had probably not helped.

  ‘C’m’ere, bab,’ Gladys beckoned her and pulled the child onto her knee, which to Rachel’s surprise Amy agreed to as if she was much younger than her years. She leaned her head miserably on Gladys’s shoulder. ‘Shall I cut you a piece, bab – are you hungry?’

  Amy shook her head. Rachel could feel the child’s deep unhappiness coming towards her in waves. Her heart ached for her, remembering how she had felt when her mother moved in with Fred Horton, how lost and pushed out. How much more sad and bewildered Amy must feel.

  ‘Top up the pot, wench, will yer?’ she said to Jess, who got up, seemingly glad to be asked, and brought the pot to the table. As she poured the tea, Rachel thought how pretty she was, with her sweet, freckled face.

  ‘If we went for a visit to Uncle Albert’s house,’ Gladys said quietly to Amy, ‘would you like that? There’s a big park there, with a stream. Not like here.’

  Amy gave a little nod into her shoulder. ‘Don’t like it here,’ she said in a voice so small they could only just make it out. ‘It’s dirty and horrible.’

  ‘All right, bab,’ Gladys said softly. ‘I know. But we’re your family and we’re what you’ve got in the world. We’re going to have to see what we can do – if they can let you stay. We’ll go out there and see, as soon as we can. But you’d have to try hard to settle down. D’you think you could do that?’

  Amy pulled back and looked intensely into her face. After a second she gave an uncertain sort of nod, before cuddling up to Gladys again. Gladys looked at Danny over her head and gave him a look as if to say, ‘Heaven help us.’

  Seventeen

  November 1940

  Rachel walked wearily along Alma Street, hugging her coat round her, collar up against the damp and cold. Under it she had on a green tartan skirt and a cream jumper. In the bomb-damaged streets around her, children were careering about, laughing and yelling, but she hardly noticed them. Passing into the yard, she tapped on the door of Gladys’s house and opened it.

  ‘Danny?’

  He was sitting staring into the fire as if in another world. He jumped at her voice, and looked round. The room was tidy as ever and the house felt quiet and bereft.

  ‘They’ve gone then?’ Rachel shut the door and took her hat off, shivering.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘Soon as Aunti
e was back from church.’

  She peeled her coat off. As Danny sat up straighter, she saw that he was holding his little notebook and the stub of pencil.

  ‘Have you been drawing?’ she asked carefully. She knew it was because he was upset.

  Danny gave a sheepish smile. ‘Yeah.’ He held the little page out to her. She saw another of his rough sketches. Jack and Patch, both sitting down.

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Oh, at the top of a big hill, covered in grass,’ he said. ‘Somewhere like the Lickeys where you can look down – only higher. You can’t see out when you live in a place like this. One day I want to climb a big mountain – the biggest I can find.’ He closed the book and put it in his pocket, as if the conversation was over.

  ‘So is Jess staying as well?’

  Danny shrugged. ‘Depends.’

  Gladys had written to Albert and Nancy and waited in trepidation for an answer. When it came, it was much warmer than she’d feared. At the time the family had two evacuees from London’s East End living with them in Sutton Coldfield. It was not proving a success.

  ‘It sounds as if it’s driving them all round the bend,’ Gladys said, when the letter came.

  Nancy had written:

  All they really want is to go back home to mother, bombs or no bombs. And who can blame them? The mother is a tough nut but fond of them. She wants her boys back – they want to go. They’re nine and seven and they’re miserable – and so are John and Margaret. These Cockneys are fish out of water here in such a country place. So the long and short is, they’re going. Two girls would be a relief after that and they are Albert’s nieces after all. Poor little things. We do really want to do our bit for the war any way we can, so let’s give it a try. And what with all the raids you’re getting, they’re best out of there. Bring them here and we’ll do our best to make them welcome.

  It was true: the bombing had intensified and there had been some terrible raids. The sirens would often go off in the evening when they were eating. For Rachel this meant finishing off her tea in the cellar. Danny, Gladys and the others ran round to the shelter at the back, or into the cellar of the wire-spinning works at the end of the yard. Even bombers that were not heading for Birmingham often flew overhead, on their way to wreak havoc on Liverpool or some other city, and it was impossible to know whether it was their turn until they had passed over.

  Everyone was getting more and more tired and living on their nerves.

  ‘These girls are in a bad enough state as it is,’ Gladys said. ‘I’m going to get them out of here.’

  So Danny had said goodbye to his sisters again that morning, not knowing if or when he was going to see them again.

  Now he stood up and came over to Rachel once she had her coat off and had laid it on a chair. He put his hands on her shoulders, looking for her to return his gaze. Their eyes met and she placed her own palms lightly each side of his waist, feeling the warm hardness of his boy’s body. Man’s body, she thought. He’s a man now.

  ‘Give us a kiss,’ he said, with a half-begging smile. He seemed very raw in himself, and hungry for her to be close.

  They cuddled, kissing and warming each other in silence for a while. Despite the sadness of it, both of them knew what this afternoon meant: for once, just for once, they had a little bit of time by themselves.

  ‘Are you going to make me a cup of tea?’ Rachel said eventually. ‘I’m starving, I am.’

  ‘If you want. I thought you’d had dinner?’ Danny said, going to the range. He put the kettle over the fire.

  ‘I could still do with a cup of tea.’

  He came back to her, taking her in his arms again. The kettle began to murmur. The air smelt of coal dust and something sweet, spicy and mouth-watering.

  ‘Has Auntie been baking?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘Yeah – she made buns to take over there. She left us a couple.’

  They drank tea and ate the spicy buns at the table. Danny kept reaching over and stroking her hand. He seemed caught up in her, as if he could think of nothing else. Even when she told him snippets of news, little things Cissy had done or that she had chatted about to Lilian who was once more bored to tears at work, he hardly seemed to be listening and hurried down his tea. He seemed distracted and restless, one knee twitching up and down.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked eventually, although she knew really. His family, or what was left of it, was being scattered once again.

  ‘Nothing.’ He gazed at her, then held his hand out. ‘Come here, to me.’ Pushing his chair back, he drew her towards him. She felt excited by his demand, as if something new and more adult was happening between them. As she stood over him, he looked up at her and patted his leg. ‘Come and sit here.’

  She settled on his lap, giggling, smoothing the skirt over her thighs. ‘God, Danny, d’you think the chair’ll stand it?’

  Without answering, he buried his head against her and she cuddled him close, stroking his face. His hand moved up and down her back. He raised his head and his lips reached for hers.

  They sat for some time, kissing, their exploring growing bolder. Rachel did not know, for sure, how this might continue. But she knew her body felt alive and more awake all over than ever before, that each time Danny’s hand smoothed over her breasts she wanted the feel of it to go on and that there was a melting ache of longing between her legs. There were no words for it. She could only follow the feelings, this being here with Danny, so close to him, his powerful need, and hers.

  ‘Come upstairs with me.’ He surfaced, looking at her, but he seemed half in a trance.

  ‘Upstairs?’

  ‘Yes . . . Yes . . .’ He took her hand again, leading her up the twist of the first staircase.

  ‘God, it’s dark up here,’ Rachel said at the top of the first flight of stairs.

  ‘I know,’ Danny said. ‘Auntie always keeps her door shut – she dain’t like anyone going in there.’ He pushed open the door of the other room where the girls slept and they could suddenly see a bit better.

  ‘Why?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘I dunno,’ Danny said. ‘I s’pose she just likes to be a bit private.’ He was not interested in this conversation. With both hands on Rachel’s waist, he steered her up the bare treads of the attic stairs.

  There was a bed up there now, Danny’s single, black iron bedstead, a chest of drawers and chair and a bright peg rug on the floorboards. The light was cobweb grey and it was very cold compared with downstairs, air seeming to force itself in around the windowpane. Rachel was already shivering.

  Danny pulled her close. ‘I want to see you, Rach. I can’t think of anything else – please, let me. I need you . . .’

  ‘See me?’ she said, doubtful.

  Danny made a gesture with one hand that took all of her in, top to toe. ‘See you – all of you.’

  His eyes held an intense expression. She was astonished and gratified that she could make him feel so much, make him need her so much, it seemed, by just being there. She was full of tender emotion, wanting to hold him and care for him. She barely understood where this was leading, except in the vaguest terms, but she felt she would do anything for him. Overcoming her misgivings she gave a little nod of her head.

  His trembling fingers were not used to the delicate buttons of her blouse and she had to help him. Danny undid his own shirt and slipped his hands in under the muslin grey of her blouse, pressing their bodies together. She could smell him more strongly now, his salt-sweat, boy smell. She pushed back the shoulder of his shirt and kissed his bare arm, the rounded hill of muscle. But she was beginning to shiver violently.

  ‘Come into bed.’ He pulled back the sheet and tan-coloured blanket.

  The sheets felt icy on her skin at first. She stayed sitting up, pulling the bedclothes round her, only in her panties now, her hair tickling loose on her shoulders.

  ‘I wish we had a fire,’ she said, through chattering teeth.

  Danny seemed not to notice.
He was pulling off his clothes. He came and knelt on the bed, gazing at her. His fingers curled into the top of her panties and began to tug them down.

  ‘You’re so bloody lovely,’ he said. Then, in a tone not rough, but urgent, he said, ‘Lie back.’

  And he fell forward into her embrace with a sound like a sob. Pure instinct made her raise her legs.

  It was afterwards that she would always remember. The act itself was strange, his hardness jabbing his way into her, the burn of pain at first, before the feelings of pleasure grew in her. She was moved by the urgent explosion of his pleasure. But then, as he surfaced, endearments tumbled from his lips, things she would never have thought of Danny saying: ‘I love you . . . You’re my woman, my sweetheart . . . I need you. Nothing feels right without you.’ And he was soft and curled in her arms and she felt a melting love for him overwhelm her. ‘I’m frightened you’ll go – that one day you won’t be here,’ he said into her neck, as he lay in her arms. She held and stroked him. ‘I’m here, Danny,’ she whispered, her own softness also taking her by surprise. ‘I love you like no one else. I’m not going away. You’re all I want in the world, my love. I just want to be with you.’

  He drew closer, holding her like something utterly precious, his hand on her belly. Rachel drew the covers closer around them like a warm cocoon. With one hand she ran her finger over the fair trace of hair above his upper lip, her other trailing the strong runnel of his spine with her fingers. She shifted so that their eyes were level and they wrapped their gaze around each other.

  ‘I don’t want to go home,’ she said, nuzzling against him. ‘I don’t ever want to go anywhere ever again.’

  ‘Don’t then. Stay here.’

  ‘Don’t be daft – I’ve got to.’

  ‘I want you here.’ He looked seriously at her. ‘I feel safe with you, Rach. It feels as if you’ve always been here. You make life feel right.’

  She kissed him. ‘So do you.’

  ‘What’ll we do?’

  She drew back a fraction. ‘What d’you mean?’