War Babies Read online

  ‘I’ve had enough,’ Peggy went on, ‘of being treated like that by people who . . .’ The tears came then. She couldn’t hold them back. ‘Oh God!’ she cried, hands over her face.

  ‘He’ll come round,’ Fred said. ‘I suppose he hasn’t got over his mother. He’s not a bad lad really.’

  Peggy didn’t reply and Fred held her, trying to give comfort. ‘It’s all right, my dear, my darling Peggy. Don’t take any notice. All that matters is you and me, isn’t it?’ He lowered his head and rested his cheek against Peggy’s. ‘No one else – just us two?’

  Rachel slipped from her seat and left the room. She looked about anxiously to see if Sidney Horton was outside the door but there was no sign of him. Then she tore along the shadowy landing to her bedroom at the end. Peggy had made the bed up for her and she lay down in the dusky light, on an eiderdown that stank of mothballs. She hated everything about this new life she was being forced into. Everything was wrong – it even smelt wrong. And she had to live with these horrible, rude men. But most of all she kept hearing Fred Horton’s soft, persuasive voice – ‘All that matters is you and me . . .’ She knew that she counted for nothing. She felt the big, alien house around her and she had never felt more lonely and bereft. She curled tightly on the cold sheen of the eiderdown and let the sobs begin to shake their way out of her.

  Six

  October 1938

  ‘Rach – wait for me!’

  Rachel was on the way to school along the Coventry Road. It was a blustery morning, filthy puddles in the gutters, the carts and cars splashing through them. She turned, face screwed up in the mizzling rain, to see a thin, pale girl called Lilian struggling towards her. Rachel smiled, cheered by the sight. Over these past miserable months, the arrival of Lilian and her family was by far the best thing that had happened.

  Lilian caught her up, wheezing and pressing a hand on her chest. ‘Don’t go so fast – I can’t keep up,’ she complained.

  Lilian was a sweet, sickly little thing with long, white-blonde hair which clung flat to her head and was tied up loosely behind. She was wearing a brown tweed coat which was too big for her and a felt hat, and she had very white skin through which you could see mauve veins at her temples. There were blue shadows under her pale blue eyes. She was thin as a twig. And she was nice. Like Peggy, Lilian’s mother had been widowed and remarried, and Lilian had just one baby brother, ten years younger. Unlike Rachel she had a mother and stepfather who were kindly people and went out of their way to look after her and pay her attention.

  Mrs Davies stayed at home to look after the little boy, Bobby, and they were happy for Rachel to come round any time she wanted to. She had taken Lilian back to Fred Horton’s house once to meet her mother, but now they always went to Lilian’s. She would do anything to get out of Horton’s – as she called it to herself, never ‘home’ – as often as possible.

  The girls scuttled from one shop awning to another, trying to dodge the rain.

  ‘Stop a minute,’ Lilian begged, when they’d dashed under another one. She stood propped against a box of pears on the greengrocer’s outside display, her lungs heaving.

  ‘You feeling poorly?’ Rachel asked. Lilian’s chest sounded really bad.

  ‘I’m all right. Just need to catch my breath.’

  As they set off again, Rachel said, ‘Can I come round yours later?’

  Lilian’s mother, Mrs Davies, was a blonde, homely woman, who always gave Rachel a warm welcome and was glad to have company for Lilian.

  Lilian shrugged. ‘Course.’ She peered at Rachel. ‘Why don’t you ever want to go home?’

  It was Rachel’s turn to shrug. ‘I just don’t, that’s all.’

  Stepping inside Horton’s filled her with dread. It was like moving from light into darkness.

  Ever since Peggy married Fred Horton, she had given up her hard-earned regular pitch on the market and worked alongside him in the brown surroundings of the shop. She was good at selling, cutting lengths of cloth with long-bladed scissors, measuring strips of lining or ropes of brocade with tassels, doling out threads and pins, tailor’s chalk and needles, spools and zip fasteners. She also let it be known that the business now offered a tailoring and alteration service. When she was not in the shop, moving around on the swell of Fred’s patter, she was occupied in the back room of the house. She had cleared out the storeroom and put a table in there for sewing. The needle of the sewing machine seemed to chuk-chuk up and down almost without stopping. And she hated any interruption.

  Peggy was in Fred’s thrall. As a young child, Rachel had sensed that her mother did not relish her company, but after Harold Mills’s death, neither of them had anyone else. Nowadays, her mother gave off an impatient air of busyness and boredom at the very sight of her. She had far too much to do to be bothered occupying a child – important business demands. What’s more, she had something she had never had before – a devoted husband.

  Fred adored Peggy. He adored her so much it was sickening. Slobbered over her, Rachel thought. The picture of his first wife Alice in its decorative silver frame, which had been in the parlour upstairs when they arrived, had since disappeared. Fred needed a woman. Peggy was queen. Rachel could see, jealously, that this dumpy man held genuine affection for her mother. This she could not deny. But this new coupling was so tight at the joins that it left no room for anyone else. Their evenings were spent sitting comfortably in the back room, the wireless on or reading the newspaper. When she came into the room they looked up as if to say, ‘Oh – are you here?’ They wanted no one else.

  ‘Off you go – run and play,’ she was told constantly. Either that or ‘Sit quiet for a bit,’ or ‘It’s time you were in bed.’ But who, in this dark, soulless house, was she meant to play with, and where? Meals were almost the only times she saw her mother. She had less and less of Peggy’s attention.

  Several times, after they had all gone to bed, Rachel crept along the dark passage wanting her mother, even just to hear the sound of her breathing and know she was there. She moved as lightly as she could, stopping at the door of the front bedroom and pressing her ear to the wood. Mostly there was silence. Once she heard Fred Horton snoring. Another time, both their voices and strange, blurred grunting sounds. She never did dare to call out. Each time she slunk back to bed, uncomforted.

  It was no better in the daytime.

  ‘Leave me in peace, Rachel, for goodness’ sake,’ Peggy would snap at her. ‘I’ve got an order to finish.’

  Rachel sometimes stood down at the door of the back room. She watched her mother’s neat form busy at the sewing machine in her powder-blue dress, or her dusty pink dress, each made by her own hands. Peggy’s hair would be pinned back out of her eyes. Her body would rock slowly as her foot worked the treadle of the machine. Sooner or later, when Rachel could not resist making a slight noise to let her mother know she was there, an arm would shoot out to shoo her away. Peggy did not even turn round. ‘Go on – off you go. Find something to occupy you.’ Even her back seemed to give off a forbidding message. Don’t bother me.

  The only time her mother looked after her with her eyes fully on her was for a couple of days when Rachel was in bed with a stomach upset. Then she had sat with her a while and been kinder and more motherly. But mostly it felt as if Peggy was moving away from her down a long, gloomy corridor, further and further until she would be gone altogether. Rachel imagined this sometimes – the colour of her mother’s dress fading away into dark nothingness – and fear would stop her breath.

  She could have borne all this: feeling she was a nuisance. Mom was there, at least. Fred treated her well enough, for a stepchild; not unkindly. She was fed and clothed, had a bed to sleep in. He was not cruel as such. He just had no interest in her at all. But at least she had a friend in Lilian.

  She could tell Lilian some things – that she did not like her stepfather, that her mother was forever busy. What she could not put into words was the way Peggy had betrayed her when it cam
e to Sidney Horton.

  Seven

  In the beginning, Sidney, who was nineteen, had been as interested in Rachel as in a speck of dust under his feet. But by the time they had been living there for a few weeks, his gaze had swivelled round and fixed on her. She was now a thirteen-year-old and with her mother’s big-eyed, pretty looks, though she was fleshier than Peggy, pink cheeked, with straight, shiny brown hair cut in a bob to her jaw.

  When she passed him in the hall, or upstairs, he started saying, ‘Hello, Rachel,’ in a funny way she didn’t like, mocking, sneering. She would just whisper back and hurry past, never looking at him. She started to feel him eyeing her while they were listening to his father droning on about the day’s business. Evidently Sidney was just as bored as she was.

  One afternoon, at the end of a very close, hot day, she was sitting on the stairs. She often sat there, on a step near to the top, because she didn’t feel comfortable or at home anywhere else. Peggy told her to move if she came across her there.

  ‘It doesn’t look good for the customers, you sitting there. And they can see your knickers.’

  But Rachel didn’t care. She did it all the more.

  She was reading a book of girls’ stories, about saints and heroines. Caught up in a tale, she was only faintly aware that someone had come in at the back door through the kitchen, his boots clumping along towards the stairs. Through the banisters she saw his sludgy hair come past, the thick neck and slouching shoulders. Her heart slammed with panic. Don’t let him be coming upstairs! It was too late to move away.

  Sidney put his foot on the first step, his left hand on the banister. His sleeves were rolled in the heat, to show hairy arms. He always looked dishevelled.

  ‘Aha – what’s this then?’ He spoke in the tone people used for telling stories, when the fox spots the chicken, or the wolf claps eyes on Little Red Riding Hood.

  Rachel’s heart banged in panic. She folded her arms across her, leaning forwards and shuffling as close to the wall as she could get.

  ‘You can go by,’ she said, looking down at the carpet, the dusty treads.

  ‘Oh ar – I’ll go by when I’m good and ready,’ he said. She could feel him staring at her. She felt very silly and vulnerable in her ankle socks, with her bare legs and skirt not even covering her knees. The hairs on her arms were standing on end. She could just hear the tick-tick of the sewing-machine needle behind the door of the back room.

  ‘You waiting for me then, are yer?’

  She had to look up. ‘N-no – I was just reading.’

  ‘Why’re you sitting on the stairs if yer not waiting for summat then, eh?’

  ‘I dunno. I just . . .’

  ‘Eh?’ His face was right up close suddenly. He stank of the wire works and of sour, oniony breath.

  Rachel shrank back, staring down into her lap, the white cotton frock decorated with a pattern of little blue squares and triangles.

  ‘Well, I think you’re waiting –’ His voice was barely above a whisper. ‘You’re a little liar. Here you go then – I bet this is what you’re after.’

  He pushed his hand between her legs. She cried out at this hard, hairy arm forcing along the tender skin of her thighs. His fingers met the gusset of her knickers. She whimpered as he poked about, hard, hurting her. Her mind could barely take in what was happening. After a few seconds he yanked his hand away and was off and away up the stairs. She heard him climbing up to the attic – and his laugh, like a braying mule.

  That was only the beginning.

  That night, lying in bed, she thought she heard someone moving with secretive, stealthy steps towards her room. She stiffened in the dark. The adults had not yet gone up to bed – it was too early.

  The footsteps stopped at her door. There was a long silence. She strained her ears, hardly breathing. The bedcovers felt like ropes around her. Finding that her chest was almost bursting, she took a gasping breath. The blood was banging round her body. Who was out there? Why didn’t they say something, or go away? The tension of not knowing grew unbearably in her. But she did know. She knew it must be Sidney Horton.

  The silence went on for so long that she began to wonder if she had imagined the noises. Maybe Sidney had gone up to his own room after all and she had misheard? Her blood began to slow gradually. She dared to shift in bed, her eyes open into the dark. Gradually her eyes began to want to close.

  There was a tap on the door, not loud, but definite. She jerked wide awake again, her body revving up in fear. Again it came, and then she heard him calling in a low, sing-song voice, ‘Rachel. Ra-a-achel . . .’ The tone was both mocking and cajoling.

  There was no lock on the door. He must know that. And he must know that she knew that he knew it.

  ‘Rachel. You’re not asleep. I know you can hear me.’

  She had no idea what he was about, what he wanted, but she was rigid with terror. There was a menace in him, in his horrible silky voice. She thought she might burst with fear. It was impossible to move. She lay in bed like a stone statue while the blood continued to thunder round her body.

  There was a little sound. The doorknob was turning. It was slightly loose and rattled when you touched it. She heard it move back and forth, waiting any second for the door to open. Her breathing was a shallow flutter and her stomach sickened. Those seconds seemed to last for hours.

  Sidney turned the doorknob back and forth several times. After what seemed an eternity she heard his footsteps moving away and he retreated up to his own room. She gasped for breath, shaking all over. It took her a very long time to get to sleep, convinced that if she did she would open her eyes and find him in her bedroom. For what, she did not know, but the thought terrified her.

  It became a hobby of Sidney’s to torment her. In the daytime, if they ever ran into each other in the house, he almost always laid a hand on her somewhere in passing. It might have been only on her shoulder as she dashed past him, on her thigh at the table when no one else was looking, or a pat on the head. She never stayed long enough near him for him to repeat his first groping up her dress. But it was as if every time he saw her he was warning her – I can do what I like when I like. I’m biding my time and don’t you forget it.

  Rachel was too young and innocent to have any real idea what he might do, but his air of threat sent her into a constant state of vigilant fear. One afternoon she could not bear it any longer. She went to Peggy in the back room, and found her leaning over the table, cutting a piece of green cloth.

  ‘Mom?’

  ‘Umm – I’m very busy, Rachel, as you can see.’

  ‘I . . .’ Her throat closed with tears and she could not speak. As she stood at the door, wiping her eyes, Peggy looked up.

  ‘Oh dear –’ Her tone lay somewhere between sympathy and impatience. ‘Whatever’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s . . .’ It was hard to find the right words for the nightmare of her bedroom hours now. ‘It’s Sidney,’ she blurted. ‘He keeps . . . He keeps coming and bothering me.’

  ‘Sidney?’ Peggy was listening now, the scissors held down at her side. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘He keeps coming to my bedroom.’ Nothing could capture the terror of it. Her words seemed tame. ‘Saying things.’

  ‘What – into your bedroom?’ There was a note of alarm.

  Rachel shook her head. ‘No, but he keeps saying things.’

  ‘Oh –’ Peggy was a bit puzzled – none of this seemed serious. ‘Well, he’s your brother now, sort of. You’ve never had brothers to deal with before. I’ll ask him not to tease you too much – but you need to toughen up a bit, dear. Girls who have brothers get used to this sort of thing.’

  Did they? Rachel wondered. How did Mom know? She had no brothers. And Lilian didn’t have to get used to this, did she? Her brother was only little.

  ‘Just tell him to stop teasing you. He’s a silly boy that one.’

  Rachel could see her mother’s eyes drawn back to the cutting out. She drifted away,
with a desperate, lonely feeling inside.

  She realized that her bedroom door opened inwards and using every bit of strength, when she went to bed, she managed, bit by bit, to haul the end of the chest of drawers up close to it. Every morning she had to shift it again but it made her feel safer. At least he could not get the door open.

  But it did not stop him standing at the door, tormenting her.

  ‘Rachel – I’m here. You can hear me, I know you can.’ There would be that rattle of the doorknob. ‘Shall I come in? You want me to, don’t yer? You’re a dirty girl – I know you are. Shall I come in and play some games with you?’

  The names he called her got worse. She often didn’t know what he was talking about but his talk made her feel sick and soiled. She was being accused of things, labelled with things. Was she dirty? What did that mean?

  ‘You’re a dirty girl, aren’t yer? Eh? A dirty little ho. I know what you’re up to . . . I’m going to come and show you what’s good for yer . . .’ On and on he rambled, night after night, his hand on the doorknob, turning it as if he was about to break into the room.

  This went on, most nights, for almost three weeks. And one night, at about nine o’clock when Peggy and Fred were still downstairs, he did try to come in.

  ‘Are you there, Rachel?’ He had been standing at the door for some time, his low, wheedling voice going on and on. It completely wracked her nerves, even though she had the chest of drawers in the way. ‘Well, Rachel,’ he said, as she lay, tense and silent. ‘I think it’s time I paid you a visit.’

  Rachel gasped. The handle turned and there was a bang as the door hit the side of the chest of drawers. Foul language came from outside. Sidney could not seem to make sense of why the door would not open. He was losing his temper. He pushed on the door again and again.

  ‘Whatever’s going on up there?’ Rachel heard Fred Horton’s voice down in the hall, followed by her mother’s: ‘Is everything all right, Fred?’