Birmingham Blitz Read online

  It was Nan who’d arranged everything for Lola: the plot in Lodge Hill Cemetery, registering the death, the hearse. Mom had one of her times of deciding she couldn’t cope. But she was the one in charge today, pinner over her nightdress, dispensing orders. The house filled up with shouting.

  ‘Doreen – I need a shirt collar . . .’ Dad didn’t tend to move when he needed anything, just sat tight and hoped it would appear.

  ‘Here!’ she hollered up the stairs from the back room. Could bawl like a fishwife she could, when she forgot she was trying to be respectable. She had a collar in one hand, loaf under the other arm, the top half buttered. ‘It’s starched.’ Course it was. I’m surprised she didn’t starch his underpants.

  ‘Genie – I want you out scrubbing the front step before you think about getting dressed up. Eric—’ thwack—‘get your hands off. Look – the table’s all smears now!’

  ‘I daint mean to,’ Eric snivelled, clutching his smarting ear.

  ‘Genie – just get him out of here. Keep out of my way. And Lenny, sit down, will you? You’re getting me all mithered. At least you’re ready – even if it is hours before time.’

  Len launched himself backwards into a chair so the cushion would’ve groaned if it were capable. His clothes were too tight and none of us had had any breakfast, but Len still had the grin stuck on his face that had been there since Monday when he got his first ever job, aged twenty-nine. He was going to pack shells at the Austin works, travel out on the bus, the lot, and he was so pleased with himself he’d hardly been able to sit still since.

  ‘You’d best go in the garden for a bit,’ I advised Eric. ‘I’ve got to scrub the step.’

  ‘Can’t I come and watch you, Genie?’

  ‘All right. If you have to.’

  I completed my chore in the morning sunlight, made hazier by all the smoke from the factory chimneys. The smell of manure rose from the horse road and there was a whiff in the air of something chemical. Eric stood leaning against the front wall, sniffing and idly scuffing his shoes against the brickwork.

  ‘You’d better pack that in,’ I said, ‘or you won’t half get it.’

  Then I was allowed to get changed. I had one decent dress which Mom had knocked up on her old Vesta machine. First time she’d made me anything. It was a pale blue shirtwaister, and I wore it with a pair of white button-up shoes which were scuffed grey round the toe-tips and pinched at the sides, but I could at least still get them on. I felt awkward in that dress. That was partly because Mom had managed to get the waist too high. And I suppose I didn’t think of myself as a girl – not a proper one, like my friend Teresa, and other girls who liked to dress up. I was so skinny, Dad used to say, ‘We could use you as a pull-through for a rifle’ – elbows and knees sticking out and my socks would never stay up. I was supposed to be a woman by now, getting ‘bosoms’ and acting grown up. After all, I was out at work. But it was all a flaming nuisance, to my mind. Your monthly coming on, rags chafing in your knickers. I didn’t half wish I was a boy sometimes.

  Downstairs in the back room I peeped in the oval mirror. My face looked back at me from the yellow glass, big grey eyes almost too big as my face was so thin and delicate, pointy nose, though not sticking out as far as Mom’s. My straight, straight brown hair was parted in the middle and hung thick over my shoulders. Auntie Lil used to say I was prettier than my mom. She may’ve said that just to rile Mom of course. I gave myself a smile which brought out my dimple, like a little pool by the right side of my mouth.

  Dad emerged from the stairs and said, ‘You look a picture, Genie. Be nice to see you doll yourself up more often.’ I went pink. Dad seemed to be having trouble turning his head. Must’ve been the starch in that collar.

  Mom’d been fussing on the way. ‘Victor, your tie’s not straight. Genie, you take Len into church and make sure he behaves himself. Eric, for pity’s sake stop sniffing.’ Poor Eric. Very snotty, my little brother. Whatever the time of year there was always a reservoir of green up his nose.

  They were all waiting outside St Paul’s Church in their Sunday best, a line of desperately polished shoes, and coats even though it was the middle of summer, giving off a smell of mothballs. Nanny Rawson had on a navy straw hat and her mud-coloured coat which she’d bought off a lady second-hand, saying you could get away with brown on any occasion. She was a wide lady, walked rocking from foot to foot the way you might shift a full barrel of beer. She had an ulcer on her right leg so it was thickly bandaged, and round, muscular calves as if someone had dropped a couple of cricket balls down inside her legs. To match her hair she had a bit of a black moustache, which is more than my grandad had. Bald as a pig’s bladder he was. But of course he’d been dead ten years by 1939.

  There were a group of four people in shabby clothes and down-at-heel shoes who I thought looked ever so old, and when Dad went to them, red in the face, sweat on his forehead, I realized these were some of the uncles and an auntie we never saw. He shook each of their hands or slapped their shoulders, said, ‘Awright are you?’ and couldn’t seem to think of anything else to say. Mom was looking down her nose at them, and they shifted about on their feet and looked embarrassed. I went and shook hands too, and one of the men looked nice and kissed me, and they said, ‘Hello Eugenie,’ the woman with a sarky note in her voice. I don’t think she was my proper auntie. She just married someone.

  Lil was there with her kids. She had a wide black hat on with a brim which we’d never seen before. Mom sidled up to her nodding her head like a chicken at the hat. ‘Cashed in your pawn ticket in time, did you?’

  Dad was saying, ‘Doreen,’ pulling her arm. ‘Remember who we’re burying today, please.’

  ‘I’m hardly likely to forget, Victor,’ brushing his hand off. ‘Since I was the one left to deal with it all while you were off playing soldiers.’

  Dad’s cherub face was all pink now, his voice trembling. ‘How many times do I have to tell you, the Territorial Army does not play soldiers. Don’t you realize just how serious . . .’

  Lil started putting her threepence ha’penny in too, her lovely face puckered with annoyance. In a stage whisper she started off, ‘Don’t forget, you stuck up cow, that some of us do a job of – Patsy!’ She broke into a yell, catching sight of him leaping gravestones like a goat. ‘Get here – now!’ That was our Lil for you. Scarcely ever got through a whole sentence without having to bawl out one of the kids.

  ‘Pack it in, the lot of you,’ Nan hissed at them. ‘They’re staring at us.’ She tilted the straw hat towards the aunt and uncles whose eyes were fixed on us. ‘Doreen – go in,’ Nan commanded, still through her teeth. ‘And see if you can keep your gob shut.’

  ‘Come along, Eric.’ Mom flounced off in her mauve and white frock, yanking Eric along in his huge short trousers which reached well below his knobbly knees.

  Dad seemed flustered, not knowing who to sit with, and ended up following me in with Len. I took Len’s hand. ‘Come on – I’ll look after you.’

  He came with me like a little kid. No one wanted to sit in the actual front row so we filed into the second lot of pews. Len’s knees were touching the back of the pew in front, his enormous thighs pressed against mine. It wasn’t that he was a fat man, he was just built on a huge scale. He kept looking round at me, pulling faces and grinning.

  ‘S’nice this, Genie, in’t it?’ I think he liked the candles and the coloured glass. He pointed to his fly buttons and said loudly, ‘What if I need to go?’

  ‘You just tell me,’ I whispered. ‘I’ll take you out. Try and keep your voice down, Len.’

  He heard Cathleen, Lil’s three-year-old, laughing behind us, so he started laughing too – hor hor hor – hell of a noise, shoulders going up and down.

  ‘Len.’ I gripped his arm, nervously. ‘You’re not s’posed to be laughing. Lola’s in that coffin up there.’ I pointed at it, flowers on top, the lot.

  ‘In there?’ He pointed a massive finger.

  I n
odded. ‘She’s dead – remember?’

  But that set him off even worse and I had to start getting cross and say, ‘Now Len, stop it. You mustn’t.’

  Along our pew Mom was frowning across at Eric for pulling snot up his nose too loudly. Then there was a bawl from behind. Cathleen must’ve pulled Tom’s hair and made him whimper and Lil had smacked him one low down on the leg hoping no one’d see. He blarted even louder and Cathleen was grinning away to herself under those angelic blond curls, the mardy little cow. Nanny Rawson, next to the aisle in our pew, swivelled round and gave them all the eye from under that hat.

  A train rattled past at the back of the church. At last the Reverend started in on his prayers. ‘We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we carry nothing out . . .’

  I started to feel sorry for old Lola now I couldn’t smell her. Dad was a bit upset and blew his nose a lot. He’d tried to do his best for her. After all, she was his mom, even if she was a miserable old bitch. He was forever telling us it was just her age. She wasn’t always like that. Mom’d say, ‘Oh yes she flaming well was.’

  But I sat there and thought what a rotten life she must’ve had. Terrible poverty they lived in when her kids were small. A slum house, not even attic-high, two up, one down on the yard, with nine children in the house and never enough to go round. Didn’t make her a kind person. Her husband did his best, from what Dad said, but he was a bit of a waster. My father was her little ray of sunshine. Bright at school and had always held down a job. The other kids drifted away and mostly stayed away.

  I looked across at the coffin as we stood up and started in on ‘Abide With Me’. I thought about her old wasted body in there. How she’d climb out of bed very quick and pull her clothes up to sit on the chamber pot. Sometimes I’d get a glimpse of something hanging down there, like an egg, white and glistening. She’d sit for an age, grunting and cursing, willing urine to flow the way you will a late train to come. Sometimes she’d put her hand up her, try and push it back and relieve herself, and she’d give a moan. Soon as she lay down again it’d all come in a rush and I’d be clinging to the edge of the mattress trying to keep as far from her as I could, almost crying at the smell.

  Poor old Lola. Thank God she’d gone.

  ‘I hope they don’t notice I’ve eked the salmon out with milk,’ Mom whispered, stirring the teapot in the kitchen at the back. ‘Here, take these through, will you Genie?’

  I carried the sandwiches to the front room, Mom’s willing slave as ever. Willing because I’d have done anything for her if only she’d be glad I existed. She was being quite pally-pally with me today because she needed my help.

  Everyone was crushed into the front room except Lil, who’d taken the kids out to let off steam in the garden. Eric and Little Patsy, a year his junior, were brawling on the grass like puppies.

  It went all right, just about. Dad’s brothers and sister were either silent or very very jolly and the uncles loosened their threadbare ties, asked each other for a light and stood about smoking and sweating. There wasn’t the room to sit down. The auntie spent a lot of time peering in Mom’s china cabinet. They ate all they could and went out saying, ‘We’ll have to do this again,’ but all knowing the truth was that it’d be at the next funeral, and departed even more awkward than when they arrived.

  So that left our family with the curling egg sandwiches and nubs of Madeira cake to get on in our usual affectionate way. I stuck with Len and brought him more helpings of food because he could eat for ever, his mouth churning away like a mincer.

  Lil had brought the kids back in. She was a stunner, our Lil, and like a flypaper to men. Like Nanny Rawson she looked as though she had a touch of the tar-brush: she had tresses of black hair, almond-shaped brown eyes and olive skin, and today she’d got a dab of colour on her lips. Before she had the kids she sometimes used to put curl papers in her hair, and it hung in shiny black snakes down her back. Wild as the wind she was then, all high heels and make up. She worked as a french polisher in a toy factory, on gun handles and little carpet sweepers.

  Mom’d always been jealous of her. Lil’s looks of course, for a start, even though she was worn to the bone nowadays with the kids. Lil was chosen as the May Queen when they were kids at school and Mom’s never forgiven her for that. But I think another part of her jealousy was Lil moving back in with our nan after her husband died. Well, I say died. Patrick Heaney was his name. Cheerful Big Patsy. Mom never liked him. Doesn’t like the Irish full stop, and his other crime was to make Lil happy. Patsy got into a fight one night – more of a friendly by all accounts – but the other bloke knocked him over on the kerb and he had a nasty bang on the head. He was never the same after. Turned to the booze, had fits, couldn’t get out of bed of a morning. Next thing was they were dragging him out of the canal. It was a shame. Lil was in pieces. But at least while he was alive she really had something with Big Patsy that Mom’d never had. You could see it in their eyes. She’d sit in his lap, even after Little Patsy was born. Popped out a couple of kids in as many years.

  But she couldn’t cope on her own, what with holding down a job and the kids and their third child Cathleen being only a titty-babby. Poor Lil.

  Cathleen sat on Lil’s lap and started pulling at her waves of black hair.

  ‘Leave off, will you?’ Lil snapped. ‘Never get a second to yourself with kids, do you? Can’t even fart in peace.’

  ‘Give ’er ’ere,’ Nan said. She took the little girl on to her enormous lap and bounced her until she squealed.

  Lil sat back, tired as usual. Her mouth turned down more nowadays. ‘How about another cuppa tea, Dor, now that lot’ve gone?’

  ‘You know where the kettle is,’ Mom said with her usual charm.

  ‘I’ll get it.’ I went to the kitchen and made tea, not that I expected any thanks for it, and when I got back they were arguing. Mom and Lil that is. Len was shuffling a pack of cards. He never played anything, just shuffled. He and Dad usually just sat waiting for the wenches to burn themselves out.

  Our nan had a look in her eye I didn’t quite like. She was sat forward. Cathleen had got down and was on the floor waving her legs in the air, showing off her bloomers.

  ‘Because,’ Nan was saying, ‘it’s the practice run Sat’dy, ain’t it?’

  ‘I’m not sending my kids nowhere,’ Lil said, scraping at egg on Tom’s face with her nails. ‘Whatever Adolf bloody Hitler’s planning.’

  Hitler this, Hitler that, all we ever heard nowadays. I put the tray down, pushing plates aside. Everyone was keyed up about the thought of war war war.

  ‘Your mom’ll need you at ’ome,’ Nanny Rawson said to me. ‘You can look after your dad.’

  ‘Why?’ Lil looked at Mom. In a nasty tone she demanded, ‘Where’re you off to then?’

  ‘With Eric.’

  Eric looked from one to the other of them, mouth full of cake and a hopeless expression on his face. He knew he wasn’t going to get a say.

  ‘You mean you’re sending him? To live with complete strangers?’ Lil was on her high horse. She caught hold of Cathleen and cuddled her tight, doing her best impression of the Virgin Mary.

  ‘That’s what we’re supposed to be doing, isn’t it? Or d’you want your kids bombed and gassed like they say they will be?’

  ‘But just sending him off . . . Poor little thing.’ Eric looked about as depressed as anyone would be faced with the choice of bombing and gassing or being sent away to live heaven only knew where. ‘Anyhow,’ Lil said. ‘You don’t need to go to the practice. Not as if you’re going with him, is it?’

  Mom was silent for a split second. Everyone stared at her. She stuck her chin out. ‘I thought I’d go.’

  Dad sat up then. News to him, obviously. ‘But Doreen . . .’

  Nan was scandalized. ‘You mean go off – leave Victor and Genie?’

  ‘Not for good. I thought I could just deliver him. Have a look over where he’s going.’

  ‘But you’
re not allowed,’ Lil argued. ‘I’d be allowed to go, with Cathleen so young, but you’re not – not unless you’re a helper or you’re . . .’ Lil looked ever so suspicious all of a sudden.

  Mom stared back at her, brazen, nose in the air.

  ‘You’re never going to tell them . . .’ Lil started laughing a real nasty laugh. ‘Oh I get it. Well it wouldn’t be the first time, would it? After all, you were “expecting” when you got Victor to marry you, weren’t you? Longest pregnancy on record that one. What was it? Fifteen months?’

  Dad had gone nearly purple in the face, to the roots of his hair. Mom stabbed her knife into the last piece of Madeira cake as if she wanted to kill something. ‘You bloody little bitch.’ I thought she was going to slap Lil but Nanny Rawson was on her feet pushing them apart.

  ‘That’s enough from the pair of you.’ She stood with her arms outstretched between them.

  ‘She only said she was pregnant so she could beat Stella to the altar!’

  ‘Well at least I’ve still got a husband – I’m not dragging my kids up in the slums.’

  ‘But you don’t give a monkey’s about sending Eric off to live with Christ only knows who . . .’

  ‘That’s why I’m saying I’m expecting you silly cow – so I can get on the train with him . . .’